Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [91]
The passage sloped upward to her left, but the grade was almost undetectable.
"This way?" she asked, pointing up the gradual slope. "Not really a stairwell, but it slopes up."
Xet pealed in the affirmative and flew ahead.
Kiril unsheathed Sadrul, the gift of Al Qahera. The razor-sharp blade glittered in Xet's glow. Angul, still in his sheath, groused.
Kiril paused and said, "I ask the gods of Sildeyuir to watch over my friend Thormud. See him through to safety." See to it, if my past service and sacrifice meant anything at all, she silently added.
A long journey in the dark was thus begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Chill air brushed Warian Datharathi. He cried out and fell on his face. His prosthesis went dead and its light failed. He gasped for breath. He felt as if he'd just finished a sprint where he pushed himself too hard. Yet his arm hadn't killed him…
Coughing and shaking, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Where was he?
Darkness was all he saw… and a broad ribbon of stone knifing through it. Stars settled into focus above him… and below? Vertigo tumbled his stomach.
He blinked. Unconsciously, his fingers tried to work themselves into the hard rock, abrading the fingertips of his natural hand. It was the stone of a great obelisk, similar to one of the menhirs that ringed the portal through which he'd plunged. But this menhir was wider. And much, much longer, like a path. Or a bridge, over nothingness.
The stone path traced an unwavering line as far as he could see-which was unnaturally far. Illumination leaked onto the path from an undefinable source, making a road of light through a sea of blackness scattered with tiny glimmers.
Warian crawled forward and peered over the side. Void beckoned in all directions. From what he could see, if he fell, he'd never find the ground, only endless, vacant space.
Wait. No, it wasn't quite empty. He spied a mote of radiance below. The mote… it was actually a dimly lit chunk of stone dozens of paces across-an island in a sea of night. Demolished walls of a templelike ruin gaped up at him from the isle. Light leaked from the temple walls, twinkling with witchlight. The entire edifice receded as he watched it. Gazing around the vast space, he noted tiny flickers of light in every direction, all moving along seemingly random paths.
"What is this place?" he asked aloud. He was having difficulty processing a vista so far outside his experience.
Too tired to stand, he shambled on hands and knees to see what might lie behind him.
He was at a nexus of three paths. The one he'd first gazed down apparently had no end. The second was long, miles long maybe, and seemed to plunge into a wavering, colored curtain.
But the third path seized his attention. The third stone road ran for only a few hundred paces, then connected to a massive, irregular boulder. Crystal encrusted the third path in a lattice of purplish mineral. Warian was reminded of the inside of a geode. He held out his false arm and compared. It was a match.
The encrustations gradually thickened along the third path as it approached the massive chunk of strangely shaped stone. The path was a gradient leading toward the heart of the lode, he supposed. The encrusted surface of the path had been half cleared, mined away.
The crystal that remained on the road's surface was scarred, broken, and littered with sparkling dust and debris. A battered wagon was parked a dozen or so paces down the path. Shovels, tamping poles, pickaxes, and other mining tools lay haphazardly scattered on the road.
Where were the miners? Did they fall?
His eyes narrowed as he studied the irregular shape at the path's end. It looked like a giant egg that someone had cracked. The glint of pure crystal sparkled along the seams.
No doubt about it-this was Shaddon's new lode.
Screaming,