Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [64]
Twilight bit her lip. She shouldn't have cared, but it still hurt.
"Here!" exclaimed Slip from just beyond the once-enspelled doorway. She stood inside a narrow alcove off the corridor. "Look at this! Some manner of markings!"
Fighting the discomfort that came from being contradicted by Liet, Twilight knelt down beside the halfling. Sure enough, something had been etched into the inside of the doorway-four roughly vertical lines with dashes, crosshatches, and markings that rose parallel to one another, almost like tally marks.
"What are they?" asked the halfling.
"Qualith," said Twilight. "Illithid. Crude. Scratched with a talon, mayhap."
"A mind flayer wizard?" Davoren said doubtfully.
"Sorcerer, more likely." The warlock just shrugged as if to dismiss the distinction. "I've seen stranger things."
"You say that often," said Liet.
"And 'tis true every time," Twilight said, eliciting weighing looks. Mystery was comforting-he'd come just a little too close to her that night.
"Believe it or not, these are the marks of the Illithid language. They record emotions and thoughts." She ran her fingers over the markings.
"What need has a race of mind mages for written wotds?" Davoren scoffed.
"Telepathy has a limit," said Twilight. She laid her hand flat against the writing. "And this message was left for someone." "Can you read it?" asked Liet.
"Qualith is amazingly complex, meant to be read by illithids themselves. It would take extraordinary talent or decades of study to decipher these markings," said Twilight.
"So which do you have?" asked Liet.
Twilight smiled. It was hard to stay angry at the youth. Perhaps she could forgive him his lack of support. Later, perhaps, once he had well-and fully-atoned.
Eyes shut, she traced her fingers down the four lines.
"Anything?" asked Slip, shifting anxiously.
"Resentment," said Twilight, "at being imprisoned. Rage, at the writer's captor. A touch of fear, at the power of those above. And a name." She scrunched her brow in thought. "This illithid was a prisoner of a place called Negarath."
From the way the warlock reacted, Davoren knew the name somehow.
"You recognize this word?" asked Twilight.
Davoren bared his teeth. Their battle had certainly made him less guarded in his contempt for everyone and everything.
"Never you mind," he snapped. "This prisoner is long gone, as is anything else in this wizard's sanctum. There is no danger."
Twilight cast a supplicating look back toward Liet, longing for support, but the youth merely shrugged. Twilight bristled.
"Very well, then," said Twilight. "We move forward, against my judgment. I want that noted."
The others nodded, and only Gargan looked at Twilight with something approaching uncertainty. Not that he acted on it.
What good are you if you don't speak up? Twilight cursed.
The corridor beyond the back chamber of the wizard's sanctum turned out to contain many such alcoves for holding prisoners-in magical stasis, Twilight reasoned. The alcoves were empty and appeared to have been so for some time. Twilight felt no magic active anywhere in the corridor. The dark pathway terminated in another portal, this one complete with a stout stone door.
Twilight could hear no sounds through the door, so she examined it. She found no hidden needles or pressure plates, and while the device used a dozen sliding bars in a complex design-a dragon grinning as though bemused-the actual lock seemed simple enough. She slipped out her picks and fell to work, springing the device in a few breaths.
"Sand. Something feels wrong," Twilight said as she stood and stepped back for Gargan to push the door open. The door cracked and creaked, then swung open on its own into darkness, lit only by dim candle flames. "I think-"
"What's the worry?" Slip asked. She smiled at Gargan. "It's just-" she gasped.
Twilight looked into the darkness, as did the others. In the chamber beyond, four startled lizardmen blinked at the companions, roused from