Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [104]
Grypht emitted the scent of warm tar, elated over their prospects for success.
"We may actually reach him before Moander does."
Alias had already started down the stairs with Dragonbait at her side. Akabar and Zhara followed. Grypht and Breck brought up the rear.
They hadn't descended more than twenty steps when their way was blocked by a caved-in section of the ceiling. The finder's stone pinpointed a tunnel, big enough for everyone but Grypht to crawl through, dug through the rubble. Once Dragonbait made it through to the other side, he whistled back the distance to Grypht, and the wizard summoned a dimensional door to carry him past the cave-in. Grypht's head brushed the passageway ceiling, but he motioned them onward, unconcerned.
Both Grypht's staff and the finder's stone lit the darkness around them, glowing like torches, but the finder's stone also sent out a bright beacon of light to indicate Nameless's direction. The beacon led them to two more cave-ins. Each time Grypht circumvented crawling through them with dimensional doors, so that the huge lizard was the only one of them not covered with dirt when they reached the locked iron grate.
"Olive would be useful right about now," Alias said to Akabar as she shook the door to test its strength.
Grypht motioned for everyone to back away from the grate. Lifting his robe like a grand lady crossing a puddle, the saurial wizard kicked one of his huge legs at the lock. The door flew open with a crash.
"Now, that's a trick I've never seen Elminster do," Breck said with a chuckle as he followed the others through the open grate.
The finder's stone's beam suddenly shifted direction, shining down a gap in the passageway's lined stone walls. Beyond the gap lay a natural tunnel.
Dragonbait sniffed the air and hesitated.
"What is it?" Alias asked.
"Orcs," the paladin said in saurial.
Alias whispered back to Akabar, Zhara, and Breck, "Dragonbait smells-"
"Orcs," Breck finished the swordswoman's sentence.
"How did you know?" Alias asked, surprised.
"I've smelted them many times before," the ranger answered. "How do you think I got the name Orcsbane?" Breck moved to the front of the party and drew his sword. Anticipation gleamed in his eyes.
Alias held the ranger back. "Let Dragonbait look with his shen sight first," she said.
"His what?" Breck asked.
"His shen sight," Alias explained. "He can detect evil like a paladin in the Realms can, only he can detect more detail about what sort of evil."
Dragonbait summoned his shen sight and concentrated on the passageway ahead of them. "There's something else up there," Dragonbait said to Alias after several moments. "Something even more evil than orcs."
The swordswoman translated the paladin's words for the others.
"There must be some other kind of creature leading them," Breck said, stepping into the cleft. "Probably ogres" He hurried down the passage.
"It is not ogres," Dragonbait said in Saurial. "It is something much, much worse."
Alias eyed the ranger's hastily disappearing form. "Then we'd better hurry before whatever it is gets to Nameless," she said, following the ranger. Akabar and Zhara hurried after her, leaving the two saurials behind momentarily.
"What is it, Champion?" Grypht asked the smaller saurial as he moved up beside him.
"I think-" Dragonbait hesitated.
Grypht stood patiently while the paladin reached out with his shen sight to try to determine what sort of evil he sensed. "It's too far off to see clearly, but it's so powerful and dark that I think it must be a minion of Moander's," the saurial said.
"Not surprising," the wizard said. "Let us hope it is not the bard whom you see."
Dragonbait nodded in agreement. He didn't even want to think about how terrible it would be to try to convince Alias they couldn't trust Nameless, that they may even have to destroy him.
The paladin stepped into the cleft between the rocks. The wizard squeezed in behind him, and together they hurried after the others.
The stench of the orc warren