Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [96]
His demon glove strained toward the portal. Gage spent another ten heartbeats examining the doorway before darting forward, diving to cleat the sprawled bodies at the last moment. He tucked his shoulder and rolled to absorb the impact of his quick entrance. The steep stairs beyond made this tricky feat even more difficult, but Gage executed the maneuver with panache.
At the stair's foot a tunnel led off, its downward slope noticeable. The tunnel's rock walls were streaked with deposits of white stone, but the light from the entrance topping the stairs didn't reach far. Gage produced a clear glass vessel and shook it vigorously. The chemicals within were inimical to each other, and given time, slowly separated. When mixed, the hostile essences fought, producing light.
His gauntlet yanked forward with surprising strength.
Gage grunted and resisted. His glove muttered, "Never forget, your soul is forfeit."
"I quaver in my boots," the thief replied. "Behave. Don't forget, acid burns. Remember what happened last time?"
The glove muttered something too quietly for Gage to hear. "Better. Now lead on. Quietly."
Gage advanced down the tunnel, surrounded by a dim sphere of light, his eyes wide for any evidence of his quarry.
Gage gave his light another vigorous shake to rejuvenate its intensity. How long had he walked these sttangely smooth tunnels?
"More importantly," he muttered aloud, "how'd Kiril and her friends get so far ahead of me?" He gave his gauntlet a suspicious squint.
Ahead, a hole in the floor gaped nearly the entite diameter of the tunnel. His light picked out individual strands of thickly intertwined webs that obscured the hole's sides, but opened into a twisting funnel at the hole's center. A cold, dusty wind blew from the gap, as did a rushing, full-throated roar of moving water.
His eyes lit on a papery scrap that lay ensnared in the web about two body lengths down the funnel. Though stuck, its outer edge wavered in the chill breeze.
"I am on the right trail," he whispered, relief washing over him. The chance of the glove misleading him wasn't out of the question. It had grown more willful since the other glove, with the eye, was burnt to ash by Angul.
Gage stared into the webbing, wondering who had dropped the scrap of paper-Kiril, or one of the other two? Vellum was expensive. In fact…
The thief removed his pack. From it he produced an elven rope, a selection of iron spikes with eyeholes, and a battered mallet. He selected a point on the wall and sunk the spike with three strikes. The echoes of the malietfalls made him wince. Too late for second thoughts!
He threaded the rope in the anchored spike, tied one end into his belt, and let himself over the edge of the webbed hole. Hand over hand he lowered himself until he was close enough to snatch the lone vellum scrap from the sticky strands. It took a little careful tugging to extract his prize without ripping it. It was blank. Unpenned and already-spent spell scrolls possessed the same sense of limitless possibility in their clean expanse. They seemed eager for the next spell, the wilder and more potent, the better. Of course, they also represented a tidy sum of gold. He stowed his prize, worth a tenday's lodging in the finest festhall in Laothkund.
As Gage hauled himself out of the hole, he heard the unmistakable cry of a wailing infant below.
"What in Akadi's name…?" He glanced down. A many-limbed white bulk filled the web tunnel beneath him. Dozens of pale, stone-hard eyes fixed on his own. From its mandibled mouth came the pitiful mewls of a crying baby.
Gage screamed. The gargantuan thing, its legs shaking off the dust of ages, rose beneath him. Its flesh was stone, as if a statue come to life.
The thief groped at his belt, his terror-numbed fingers finding the proper clasp more through luck than skill. He grasped a warm bulb-his most prized alchemical item, and worth considerably more than a tenday