Pool of Radiance_ Ruins of Myth Drannor - Carrie Bebris [19]
Kestrel waited for someone else to enter first. She might have agreed to accompany these misguided do-gooders on their suicide mission, but she had no plans to stick her neck out an inch further than she had to. She’d do what she could to keep the party alive and intact-thus improving her own chances of survival-but her commitment ended there.
“Go ahead, Corran,” she prompted. The holy knight seemed to have appointed himself the leader of their little group anyway. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“I assume that’s supposed to reassure me,” he said, “but I can’t help wondering if I’ll feel a knife in my back.”
Don’t tempt me, she thought. Aloud she said, “Only if you keep us standing here much longer. The sooner we go in, the sooner we get this over with.”
“Let us enter, then.” Sword in hand, Corran strode forward into the flickering torchlight. “May Tyr guide our steps-and our hearts.”
“Whatever.”
The two women entered after the paladin, with Durwyn bringing up the rear. Corran chose the path that broke off to the right. Kestrel thought they should have paused at the fork and listened for clues to what lay ahead in each direction, but she didn’t care enough to speak up, and she didn’t feel like arguing with him this early in the morning. If he wanted to believe that his god guided his steps, that was fine with her-she just wished he and Durwyn would make less noise clanking around the stone corridor in their armor. They must have alerted the entire undercity population to their presence already.
When they reached the third fork, she couldn’t hold her tongue anymore. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?” she asked.
He stopped, turning to face her. “Do you?”
“No, but it might help to listen ahead instead of just parading through.” No sooner had she spoken than she thought she heard a voice murmuring in the passage to their right.
He opened his mouth to respond, but she covered it with her hand. “Hush!” She cocked her head, trying to make out the words.
“What do you hear?” Ghleanna whispered.
It was a low, guttural voice. An orc? Probably, but she wanted to find out for sure. “Wait here.” At the mage’s raised brows, she added, “I won’t go far.”
She crept down the right passageway, moving soundlessly and keeping to the shadows created by the flickering torchlight. After a few dozen yards, she still couldn’t see the speakers-she’d determined there were two of them-but she could hear them clearly, and the low rumble of many voices still further down the corridor.
“Ugly wizard need more guards. Blood Spear Tribe come today. Meet here later.”
“Broken Skull Tribe show who boss.”
“No! Ugly wizard say no fight each other.”
They were orcs, all right. Either that, or the stupidest-sounding humans she’d ever overheard. She padded back to the fork, then trod about thirty yards down the other passage. She held her breath and listened closely but heard nothing but the crackle of torches. She returned to the group.
“A couple tribes of orcs are gathering in the right passage,” she said, deliberately leaving out the mention of the “ugly wizard”-one of the scarred mages they’d heard about? Knowing Corran, he would want to confront the spellcaster immediately. “I vote we go to the left.”
The others concurred. They headed down the left corridor, passing several solidly built wooden doors inscribed with glyphs-all of them different, none of them recognizable to anyone in the party. Kestrel tried to pick the locks of the first two doors, but discovered them magically, not mechanically, sealed.
“They must require those other Words of Opening the clerics talked about,” Durwyn said.
“You think?” Kestrel retorted. Leave it to Durwyn to state the obvious.
Several hundred yards farther, they came upon a doorway that glittered in the torchlight as they approached, as if it held a door of glass. When they reached