Escape from Undermountain - Mark Anthony [1]
Oh, yes you can! Jardis countered silently. He knew Sulbrin better than Sulbrin knew himself. The wizard uttered doom far more readily than hope. Yet they could always count on him in a scrape-ever since he had helped them, two perfect strangers, in a bar fight. He'd given that nasty hobgoblin captain a magical hotfoot, and gave Jardis and Trisa the chance to escape.
Long gone now were the days when Sulbrin was a scrawny mage's apprentice who couldn't cast two simple cantrips in a row. So were the days when Trisa was a freckled street urchin picking pockets for a living. Though Sulbrin was more spare than ever inside his drab gray robe, he radiated an aura of power. And there was Trisa, lithe as a cat in her supple leathers, her beauty as dangerous as it was bewitching. Just look at them now.
Jardis grinned, shaking his head. Look at them? By Torm! Look at him!
Back when the three had met, he had been nothing more than a stripling farmboy who had run away with his father's sword. And now? Face of a lad still, yes, but he could swing a two-handed glaive with one hand, hold steady a shield in the other, and not even breathe hard. He never bothered with armor anymore, except for the studded bracers on his wrists. Just his leather breeches, and two straps around his broad, bare chest so he could sling his sword on his back. That was all he needed to make his way.
None of them were youths anymore. They were the Company of the Red Wolf. And damn them to the Abyss if they weren't going to be heroes.
"All right, I'm there!"
The thief perched atop the idol's left ear, bathed in a pearl-white glow. From a hole in the ceiling, filtering down from far above by device unknown, a single beam of moonlight pierced the dusky air. The beam fell directly upon the crystal in the center of the idol's forehead: Savras's Third All-Seeing Eye. Shards of light radiated outward, basking the column-lined temple in diamondfire.
"Remember my warning!" Sulbrin hissed. Concentration twisted his visage. Green magic still crackled around his clenched hands. "The beam must not be broken, or the doom of Savras will be upon us!"
Trisa stretched her lean form. She reached for the glimmering crystal with one hand, while in the other she gripped a circular mirror fashioned of polished silver. Jardis watched, breath suspended. Sweat trickled down the naked muscles of his chest. It was unusually hot for so far below ground.
Trisa's hands hovered above the crystal, just beyond the pearly beam of light. She shut her eyes in a brief prayer-no doubt to Tymora, Mistress of Fortune. Then, in one deft motion, she plucked the crystal from its socket and placed the mirror in its stead. For a frozen moment all three stared at the statue, waiting for the curse of Savras to strike them down.
The beam of light did not so much as waver. The idol gazed forward in beatific serenity.
Trisa thrust the crystal into the air. "I've got it!" she crowed exuberantly.
"You're going to get it, all right, if you don't quit your gloating and climb down!" Sulbrin gasped hoarsely. "My magic is failing."
"Hey, Jardis!" Trisa shouted. "Think fast!"
She tossed the crystal in a glittering arc, then sprang lithely down from her perch. Jardis raised a big hand. His fingers closed around the jewel just as Trisa landed in a catlike crouch. Groaning in relief, Sulbrin withdrew his arms. The wizard's counter-spell shattered. Like a blazing serpent, white-hot fire shot upward from the dais, coiling around the idol in a coruscating spiral of crystalline death.
Jardis gazed at the stone in his fist. It winked brightly, as if it were indeed a mysterious eye.
Everyone had said they were fools to venture into Undermountain. It was said that only the mad and the desperate gambled their lives in the ancient maze beneath Mount Waterdeep in search of wealth and fame. Instead, the sane gambled on the fates of those who dared to go below. Every night