Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [69]
Sevaera said, "I suppose it's a spell of a sort. It's a permanent source of magic that opens a door to somewhere else! The portal is a trade secret of Datharathi Minerals. We're mining extraplanar material, crafting it into prostheses of various types, and selling it in Vaelan to rich nobles and merchants. We're making a fortune, and we've only just started."
"Where does it lead?" asked Warian.
"Where do you think?" snorted Sevaera. "Somewhere strange, somewhere odd-someplace no one else has access to. We've cornered the market on the crystal."
Warian squinted at the stone circle, trying to catch some hint of the realm beyond it.
"Not now," said his aunt. "We're late for a meeting." She turned to the right and walked past the workbenches and the prostheses, toward an open door.
Warian wondered where all the miners had gone, as well as all the artisans that must have been diligently carving the crystal displayed on the workbenches. Perhaps the mine was between shifts.
Through the doorway was a small corridor that emptied into a decorated chamber. Book-filled cases, leather stools, warm magical lamps, and wall hangings concealed the fact that the room was far below the earth. But a thick coating of webs covered most of the ceiling and the corners of the room. This feature seemed ominously out of place to Warian.
A high-backed leather chair commanded the room's center, facing away from the door but toward a great, multifaceted orb. The orb was carved of crystal, and it hung suspended on an iron chain. Warian gasped when he saw that each facet glowed with a separate image, as if from a different viewpoint. It was a riot of moving pictures, impossible for him to look at for long.
"What is that?" he asked.
The chair turned from the orb, and a figure rose from where it had been seated.
It was his grandfather, Shaddon Datharathi, of course.
But a much-altered Shaddon since Warian had seen him last. Warian gaped at the changes, unable to take his eyes from the glittering crystal facets of his uncle's new flesh.
"Welcome, Warian," said Shaddon. "You and I have much to discuss."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Thormud was sick, but wouldn't admit it.
He could be such a witless, obstinate knob, reflected Kiril.
Sometimes he acted just like a… a dwarf!
She shook her head and spat. Kiril didn't share an automatic dislike of the only other populous, long-lived mortal race of Faerun, as did some elves she could name, but sometimes you had to call it like you saw it.
The bitter taste of whisky from her last mouthful sustained her, but it didn't wipe away the darkening flush on her employer's face, or dry the perspiration from his brow.
The jouncing stride of their mineral destrier added to the dwarf's discomfort. They ascended a winding, narrow pass between the Giant's Belt mountains on their right and the Dustwall on their left. But worse than the summoned destrier's gait was the unrelenting sun.
Kiril mopped the dwarf's brow again and adjusted the impromptu shade she'd erected over his seat. Thormud was sweating so much, she could hardly keep him from dying of thirst.
"Tell me again why you've decided we should travel by day instead of night as you were previously so fond of?" she asked the dwarf.
"Prince Monolith thinks it best," was all the dwarf had the strength to say.
"Stuff Monolith," she muttered, but acquiesced without further argument, as she had on the previous two instances when she'd brought up the same point. Because of the shadowy, voidlike power of whatever lay beyond or through the crystals, Prince Monolith thought it better to travel by day, when that influence might be weaker.
Prince Monolith stalked ahead of the destrier, following the narrow rut that served as the trail over the pass. They had not yet met another traveler. Given the steepness of the trail and the sheer drops to either side of the switchbacks they zigzagged up, Kiril wasn't surprised.
The rut traced a crevice between a wooded slope on their left and an open drop to their right. The drop fell away into a vast gorge-far at the bottom,