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The pendant emitted an aura of magic. Q’arlynd nearly left it where it was, but the mystery of what a priestess of a forbidden faith was doing in Ched Nasad intrigued him. He broke the chain and slipped the pendant into a pocket. It would prove useful, should he ever need to cast doubt on someone’s loyalties.

The priestess looked young, perhaps still in her first century of life. Her forehead didn’t yet have frown lines. Q’arlynd didn’t recognize her. Perhaps she was a scavenger, come to Ched Nasad in search of plunder.

His lips twitched at the irony of it. All she’d harvested from the ruin was death.

He eased the rings from her fingers and pocketed them. Then he slid her sword half out of its scabbard. The blade gritted against something. Sand had found its way into the scabbard. The blade was steel, rather than adamantine, and filigreed with gold. It looked like something the surface elves had made. It wasn’t something Q’arlynd wanted to keep. He preferred fighting from a distance, with spells. He slid it back into its sheath and continued to search the body.

A dozen tiny swords hung from a metal loop attached to the priestess’s belt. They reminded Q’arlynd of keys on a ring, though their edges had no notches. They were silver and shaped like the pendant but not magical. On an impulse, he unfastened them from her belt and pocketed them, too. He felt around inside her pockets but found nothing of interest. The insides of her pockets were also gritty—more sand. Her clothes, however, were dry, so it wasn’t river sand.

He yanked the boots from her feet. They were too large for him at the moment, but their magic would shape them to his feet, assuming he decided to keep them and not barter them away. One of the boots had several tiny spines embedded in its sole, and at the end of each of the spines was a moist chunk of green plant flesh. She must have stepped on a spiny plant. Q’arlynd sniffed them, but the scent wasn’t one he recognized.

He plucked the spines out and tossed them aside, then stroked his chin with a forefinger. “A surface plant?” he mused aloud.

He stood, contemplating the mystery the priestess presented. That she’d used magic to reach Ched Nasad was clear. The vegetable matter on the spines was still fresh, which it wouldn’t be if she’d walked to the ruined city through the Underdark. She couldn’t have teleported there. The Faerzress that surrounded the ruined city would have made the odds of arriving on target about as unlikely as …

Well, as unlikely as winding up in the precise spot for a rock, dislodged by a foot above, to strike her dead.

A portal, perhaps?

If there was a portal, it was something Q’arlynd wanted to keep to himself.

Knowing that others might see the body and draw the same conclusions he had, he touched it and spoke the words of a spell. The body vanished from sight. A second spell ensured that the invisibility would remain in place. Straightening, he reached into a pocket for a tiny length of forked twig, and spoke a divination. He closed his eyes and slowly turned, the twig in his hand.

There. A faint tug at his consciousness caused him to lean forward.

Opening his eyes, he set out across the shifting rubble. He’d only gone the equivalent of a dozen paces when he saw a horizontal crevice between two slabs of rock—an opening just large enough for a drow to worm through on her belly. The mental tug came strongly from within.

He kneeled and peered inside. At the back of the crevice, something glowed with an eerie purple light: magical script, arranged in a semi-circle along the curved top of a half-buried arch. He’d been right! The dead priestess had arrived through a portal. The top half of the arch was clear. The rubble that had previously hidden it from view must have tumbled through the portal after it was activated. The lower half of the arch was still hidden by an enormous slab of fallen stone. Still, enough of the portal was clear for it to be useful.

And—here was the truly amazing thing—he’d seen that portal