Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [105]
Erevan. Damn you. This is all your doing. At that moment, Twilight remembered the powers granted by her erstwhile patron. She had been so distracted that she hadn't given them much thought.
Thanks to Erevan's blessing, she had a keen sense for items of value, and could meditate to find the location of a chosen object-or person. She considered using this talent to find Liet. It would not be a judicious use of her power-revealing him in the captivity of the sharn would not aid her. And it might fail entirely if he were dead. Either way, Twilight couldn't bear to know.
Davoren, though… if Slip had escaped, why not the warlock?
Twilight decided, on a whim, to search for Davoren. Focusing her mind in the way Neveren had taught her, she reached out with her senses to find-
Davoren was not a prisoner of the sharn. In fact, he was only a little way ahead of them, ascending the caverns as they were. As her thoughts lingered upon the warlock, she sensed him moving, shadowing them from ahead.
Twilight's eyes widened as she realized the only possible explanation. Davoren. Gestal.
"What is it?" Slip asked, turning worried eyes toward Twilight.
"Silence," Twilight said.
They passed through the warrens, subtle as shadows. Had any of the others been with them, their progress would have been hindered, but these three were the stealthiest of the seven. The halfling was a thief, the goliath a hunter, and she herself, after all, was the Fox-at-Twilight. The fiendish lizards on guard were not oblivious, but the three could pass them. They stole through the lizards' den, their eyes always moving.
The individual cells of the warrens epitomized wretchedness. Tattered straw mats rotted next to broken urns that must have been beautiful a thousand years ago, and now contained only mud and bones. Misshapen shamans shouted vile praises to a demon while hideous fiendish lizards crouched about cook fires, telling bawdy and violent jests in their clicking and hissing tongue. Twilight understood, by virtue of the earring, but did not wish to listen. She didn't want to think about what might be in those cook pots.
It was not difficult to find a tunnel that rose from the warrens, but it was increasingly difficult to pass by the scores of fiendish lizards that milled around the place. Dozens of times, the three ducked into the shadows or behind boulders to avoid detection as bands of the creatures appeared around a corner or lunged from a natural archway. For all their clumsiness and ugliness, the creatures were damnably silent when they moved.
Still, Twilight was determined. She kept the others hidden and, more importantly, moving. Her hand was never far from Betrayal's hilt, but she knew they could not risk a fight-not when a hundred or more of the creatures could swarm them from all sides and still summon others.
Twilight had watched Tlork fight, and though she had not seen Gestal, she knew he must be a powerful priest indeed for a sharn to fear his power. The only way they would win such a battle was if they could fight it on their terms, on ground of their choosing. They bided their time seeking a way past the fiendish lizards, making slow progress, shadow to shadow, dodging small clusters along the tunnels.
Until a commotion disturbed the barbaric tranquility.
The buzzing hiss that went through the hallway was their only warning. Twilight managed to duck and pull Slip behind cover just in time to avoid Tlork, who came rumbling around a corner. The troll's elephantine leg pounded down not a hand's breadth from her taut ankle, but Twilight knew better than to flinch.
Bellowing incoherently, the thing that had been a troll smashed a lizard out of the way and stomped down the passage. They scattered before him like ants after syrup, fleeing into passages and holes even she hadn't seen.
The only one who did not flee was the goliath, who slipped