Sentinelspire - Mark Sehestedt [70]
"I see fine," said Sauk, "though I could walk this way with my eyes closed."
The floor was smooth as any Lewan had walked inside the fortress, though a fine layer of sand and grit crunched beneath their boots. After a while he was surprised to realize that he could see. Not much at first-just a large shape outlined before him. It was Sauk. Really no more than a deeper darkness against a slightly-less-darkness beyond, but there was no mistaking it. Light ahead.
A bit farther on, the walls began to widen, only a bit at first, but then they fell back altogether and the echoes of their footsteps came from far away. Lewan could see quite well. Tiny shafts of sunlight, stray motes of dust wafting here and there, rode on thin sunbeams that fell from the ceiling far, far above. It was barely any light at all, but Lewan's eyes were so used to the dark, his pupils so wide and hungry for any illumination at all, that he could take in most of what Sauk had called the Gallery of Stone Faces. A huge room-larger than any king's court; larger even than many castles' outer courtyards-of unworked stone. But in the midst of the gallery, set haphazardly across the floor in no discernible pattern, were dozens and dozens of statues. A few were smaller than Lewan, but most were at least man-sized, and some were far larger. All were hideous-demons, devils, monsters, misshapen beasts, twisted humanoid forms, and more. The statues seemed to look down on Lewan and his two companions as they walked the maze between them. Again Lewan heard something skittering in the nearby gloom.
Lewan figured they were about halfway across the gallery when he caught sight of a moth as it flew between the sunbeams. The gray light caught in its wings, making them seem unnaturally bright in the dimness. Lewan watched it flutter off into the darkness. He had just lost sight of it off to his right when he heard a sharp snap! from that direction, very much like the sound of jaws closing over a moth that had flown too close.
Perhaps it was just being in the dark for too long, but as they walked, Lewan began to think he could see movement out of the corners of his eyes-stone heads that turned to watch as they passed, a muscular manlike thing with a bat's face whose grin seemed to grow after Lewan's first glance. Now and then, he thought he could hear a scraping, like the twisting of stone, over the sounds of their boot heels on the grit-covered floor. But each time Lewan whipped his head around to follow the movement or look in the direction of the sound, he saw nothing but leering faces, motionless and cold as stone.
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When they emerged into the full light of day again, Lewan breathed a great sigh of relief. After a life lived in the open, sleeping under stars or boughs more often than not, Lewan had begun to feel trapped by all that stone.
Squinting as his eyes readjusted to the light, Lewan turned back to see the way they had come. Around the passage, carved into the stone itself, was a monstrous, leering face. Its open mouth formed the entrance to the tunnel, and its eyes, lacking both iris and pupil, seemed to stare down upon them.
The tiger emerged from the yawning mouth and padded over to her master.
"Taaki, gu th'nukh," said Sauk, and the tiger bounded away.
Lewan watched her go, and saw that they had emerged into a narrow canyon that wound its way down the mountainside. The walls were so tall that only a narrow strip of sky broke the view of stone, and all the canyon lay in cool, dry shadow.
Sauk turned to Lewan. "Talieth said you need woods, preferably with running water."
"Yes," said Lewan.
"Then follow me."
The half-orc switched the long, narrow bundle to his other shoulder, then turned and began walking down the canyon. Lewan followed.
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Early afternoon though it was, the sun had long since sunk behind the jagged cone of Sentinelspire when Sauk led them into the woods-a