Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [99]
Hands lifted her and her feet scrabbled across the stone.
She looked up, and it was Gargan lifting her. "We go," the goliath said.
The sham's hands blazed with golden magic, and arms reached from portals around them. Then the world shuddered to a halt, burned away as though scribed on parchment. They felt a sensation of falling, and then they were elsewhere.
Gods-only-knew how long later, Twilight stirred. Darkness had become her world, but that was easily remedied. She opened her eyes and perceived flickering torchlight. She saw the prison where they had left Tlork.
"We've arrived, it seems," Twilight said.
She was glad when Gargan, completely unexpectedly, broke the silence. He was kneeling at her side. Twilight felt weary and inexplicably old. She took his hand.
"How mighty is this creature?" Gargan asked. "This… sharn?"
Twilight shrugged in a fatalistic way. "What little I know, I shall put by analogy," she said. "You have heard of the Seven Sisters, or the Sage of Shadowdale?"
Gargan shook his head.
"Thay, perhaps," she said. "All the red wizards?" Again.
"The empire of Shade?" That got a nod. Curious.
"Well, then," said Twilight. "All the princes of Shade would jump to do a sham's bidding, for if they didn't, it would likely destroy a city out of whim before resuming its morning meal of the stillborn children of gods."
"Ah."Gargan nodded hesitantly.
There was a pause. They both sat silent, listening for any sign of an occupant other than themselves. The dungeon was still.
"There must be another way down," she said. "If we must sink to rise, that is."
The goliath nodded, and they stole about the prison together, hands on hilts. They plied their senses at their keenest, followed every instinct, and explored every tiny crack and crevice in the floor and walls with their fingers. Dust, bits of bone, scraps of metal, and flecks of refuse Twilight didn't want to identify obscured the cold, damp stone.
They made their way into Tlork's chambers. The troll was not at home. All they found was a destroyed onyx griffin. Twilight resolved not to forget their hunter's strength.
"Why did you argue?" Gargan asked suddenly, making Twilight jump.
She slowed her heart with the exercises Neveren had taught her. "What?"
"You argued for his 'word,' " Gargan said. "What means this?"
"A promise. Not that I suppose it matters much to a sharn, but I would not break my word, once given." She managed to smile. "That's why I never give it."
Gargan did not find that amusing. "You argued for something you knew to be false? "he asked. "Why?"
"I was hoping to get him to release Liet." She hated herself for her feelings, but she was past such considerations now. "Then we could flee this place, the three of us."
"Davoren and Slip? Would the sharn think Gestal had killed us and free them? "
Twilight shrugged. It truly did not matter. "Wouldn't miss him," Twilight said. Then she sighed. "And she'd be regrettable. But for all we know, they're…"
She did not finish the thought. For all they knew, Liet was dead.
"You would shirk our duty to them?" Gargan said. "Our companions."
Twilight waved. "Duty is overrated," she said. "I am a creature of chaos, as is the sharn. We both know this-there would be no surprise." That wasn't strictly true, but it might as well have been. She had never dealt with a sharn before, but the fact that this one was cursed made the situation even less predictable.
At that moment, Twilight brushed away dust and some old bones and found a crease in the floor. She traced the outline of a door cut into the stone. Through the bones, fur, and filth that littered the floor, she found an old brass ring attached to the stone. Twilight twisted the ring. The stone gave a lurch and sank downward, then to the side, revealing darkness below.
There came a sound of scuffling on stone, and Twilight looked down the hall, toward the levitating disk they had used to ascend to the crypt above. She thought she saw a flicker of movement.
"Who?"Gargan asked, drawing his sword.
Twilight shrugged. "We've