City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [119]
Daine opened his eyes, just far enough to peer at his surroundings. The chamber was dim, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He was in a long stone chamber with arched ceilings that disappeared into shadow. There were no windows, and Daine guessed they were deep underground. Beyond the cloying odor, the air had the same stale scent as the sewers below Sharn. This must be Khyber’s Gate, he thought.
The room came into focus, and he could see tanks and tools lined up along the walls to his left and right. Strange objects floated in vats of luminescent liquid, but he was too far away to make out details. He spotted Lei’s pack lying on the floor a few feet away from him, but there was no sign of his sword.
Then he saw Lei. A table was in the center of the chamber. In the dim light, he hadn’t seen it at first. The surface was curved and covered with opalescent enamel, and the reflected light of the glowing fluid glittered on the dark surface. Lei lay spreadeagled on top of the table, arms and legs pinned by heavy manacles. A few odd objects were scattered about—vials of fluid, knives of various shapes and sizes, and … a handful of crystals. I wonder if those are Alina’s shards, Daine thought.
“There’s no point in pretending to be unconscious, Captain Daine. I heard the shift in your breathing.”
Teral’s voice came out of the shadows to Daine’s right. Wrapped in his armor of flesh, Teral’s voice was deeper and had a horrible wet rasp. Teral stepped into the light. He had changed into a loose cloak, and he glared at Daine with a terrible grin on his raw, bloody face.
Daine raised his head and looked Teral in the eye. He could see Hugal and a few other shadowy figures lurking in the darkness. Hugal was wearing Daine’s sword. He caught Daine’s eye and giggled.
“What happened to you, Teral? What have you done?”
Teral moved with astonishing speed. Daine never saw the slap that slammed his head back against the wall.
“Mind your tone, Daine, or I might take your tongue … or worse. I’ve pushed Olalia about as far as I can. Perhaps you should be my next toy.”
Daine glared at Teral. He could feel a trickle of blood where his right cheek had grazed the wall.
“It is not a question of what I did, Daine. It is a question of what was done to me. I was saved. You wandered the Mournland for months. In that time, did you ever find any survivors?”
“We found nothing that could be saved.”
“Yet I came to Sharn with over a hundred, myself included.” He glared up at Daine, his eyes crazed behind his horrible mask of flesh. “I was there on the night of the Mourning, Daine. I saw the mists with my own eyes. I could never explain it to you. It was … pure, transcendent beauty, land and life reshaped without regard for mercy or reason. It was over in a moment. I was still alive, but I could not move. I could only lie there, feeling my body slowly shifting from life to death. No sovereign lord came to defend me. No Silver Flame shielded my soul. But at the last moment, when the light had gone from my eyes, they found me. They pulled me back from death, filling me”—he ran a hand across the ghastly layer of muscle that covered his skin—“with new life. Together we found others. Their mortality burned out of them by the Mourning, they were vessels waiting to be filled by the power from below.”
Daine glanced at Lei, hoping she would stir. He needed to buy more time. “I see that the power from below bought you a nice home here in the sewers.”
Teral hissed, and his barbed tongue flickered into view for a moment. “There are forces in the deeper darkness that you can’t begin to understand. The world could have been theirs in ages past, and it will be in the days to come. The Mourning is the first sign of their return. Through our