Son of Khyber_ Thorn of Breland - Keith Baker [48]
The answer soon became clear. The narrow tunnel opened into a massive chamber. A basalt altar stood in the center of the room, a long dark table carved from the floor itself. Narrow niches covered the walls, and Thorn could see a stub of bone protruding from the nearest of these.
A crypt, Steel mused.
“More like an ossuary,” Thorn whispered, thinking back to a previous mission. It seemed a likely assessment. Glancing in one of the nearby alcoves, Thorn saw a dozen goblin skulls grinning up at her. And there were tools scattered about the altar—rusted knives and remnants of shattered pottery, likely tools and salves used by embalmers.
Then she saw the net.
Four pillars of dark stone surrounded an altar. But these columns weren’t ceiling supports, as Thorn had first thought. Instead, a wide net was stretched out between the pillars, the rope in remarkably good condition considering its apparent age. Bones were trapped within the mesh. More than just bones: Thorn could see pieces of rusted armor and decaying cloth. The remnants of a hundred bodies or more, suspended a good twenty feet from the floor.
There are open shafts in the ceiling, Steel observed. This must have been a central repository for bodies. A corpse would be dropped into a pit somewhere above, and routed here, falling into the net until the embalmers could tend to it. From the looks of things, they had a little more work than they could handle.
“I hate it when work piles up,” Thorn said. She examined the room closely, watching and listening for any signs of motion, but there was nothing. Bits of bone were scattered across the floor, pieces that had slipped through the net above. Eerie as it was, the room seemed to be empty. Thorn could see the mouth of a tunnel on the opposite side of the chamber, and so she carefully began to make her way across.
She was almost at the altar when Xu’sasar struck. The drow woman had been pressed against one of the pillars, and now she stepped out behind Thorn. Her bone wheel spun through the air, curved points glistening with venom. Fortunately, Thorn had been expecting an attack. There was no time for conscious action, but the instant she heard the whir of the wheel, Thorn rolled down and to the side, twisting to face her opponent. The throwing wheel smashed into a pillar behind her, and Thorn heard the rattle as shards of stone fell to the floor. The wheel spun back through the air before she could move, returning to Xu’sasar’s hand with supernatural swiftness.
“I do not fear death,” Xu’sasar said as she drew back for another throw. “And I am not afraid to slay my reflection.”
Thorn rolled behind the altar before the blow could land. As before, there was a shower of shards as the bone wheel struck the stone pillar. The force of the throw was amazing, as was the fact that the bone was unaffected by the impact. Thorn couldn’t risk being hit. But she did have one advantage. She could see in the darkness, but she’d also been able to fight a medusa with her eyes closed, guided solely by sound and scent. Xu’sasar had managed to take Thorn by surprise, but now Thorn was able to pinpoint the dark elf’s position, even as she crouched behind the altar. She heard the whisper of the bone blade as it returned to Xu’sasar’s hand, heard the soft sounds of the dark elf creeping closer to Thorn.
Xu’sasar leaped over the altar in one swift motion, a jump surely empowered by magic. Her bone weapon had shifted both shape and mass, and now it was a long blade on a short haft, wielded in both hands.
But Thorn was ready. When the drow was at the apex of her leap, Thorn rose and hurled