The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [110]
Lei nodded, her expression grim. “Let’s go, then.”
She adjusted her goggles as she moved forward, and something occurred to Daine. How does she know what those goggles do? The lenses were a gift from Thelania, but Daine never saw Lei put them on while they were awake. Now they were dreaming she was wearing them, apparently to some useful effect, but if the powers of their weapons were based on their own memories, how could this work?
Daine shook his head. He had his sword and his dagger, and that was all he needed. The rest of this dreaming could go to Dolurrh, for all he cared.
They’d moved less than fifty feet down the hall when Lei raised her hand. Danger! She knelt, making a few passes over the ground, and when she stood, she had a blast disk in her hand.
One of Krazhal’s blast disks.
Daine realized—this was where the dwarf had set the charge to bring down the tunnel. He glanced back at Jode. How was this possible?
“It’s part of the environment,” Jode whispered. “You knew it would be there. I suggest we move past and let Lei reset it.”
“I’m not a sapper,” Lei said. “I can place it, but not to do maximum damage.”
“Lady Lei, I seriously doubt that it matters,” Jode said quietly. “It’s not even real. It exists only because it has a role to play, and if it’s supposed to bring down the tunnel, I suspect your skill in placement won’t be the deciding factor.”
“What if I just keep it?” Lei whispered.
“I think it’s better if we don’t find out.”
Daine nodded. “Enough. We move on. Replace the disk behind us.”
They emerged in a large chamber. As Jode had suggested, it was a barracks of sorts … a barracks for warforged. There were no beds, no tables. The warforged needed no rest. Instead, the room was littered with the tools of war. Weapon racks were largely empty, but a few swords and maces hung from the walls, along with quivers of arrows. A small forge filled the room with heat, and hammers and tongs lay scattered around it. There were no molds, nothing that would serve to create new weapons. This was simply a repair station, where warforged could remove the wear of battle.
Daine gestured. Keep moving. Doubt gnawed at the back of his mind. What if there was nothing to find? What if this place was simply an outpost for the warforged now on the battlefield? Could he and Jode have explored and left? No, he concluded. Because Krazhal and Kesht didn’t survive the night.
Lei led them through the barracks and down a hall. The smell of molten steel filled the air, mingled with another scent. Sap? Burning wood? They came to the entrance of the next chamber, and Lei stopped short in amazement.
They stood on a wide platform at the top of a flight of stairs, with at least a hundred steps leading down to the floor of the hall. The chamber was a vast sphere, with walls of polished black marble covered with lines and sigils, complex engravings that pulsed with crimson light. But it was the object in the center of the chamber that took his breath away. It was a pillar of black marble, but it was neither smooth nor uniform in shape. Rather, it looked like the trunk of an ancient tree, gnarled and twisted, with patterns of red light in place of the lines of bark. It was studded with glowing stumps, as if limbs had been severed with a perfect blade. The base of the pillar was hidden in a radiant pool. Fibrous tendrils—massive roots—rose from this pool and spread out across the floor, each terminating in a stone pod.
“It’s a creation forge,” whispered Lei. “This is what House Cannith uses to produce warforged.”
“So whoever’s running this place was using this to make the warforged army?” Daine said.
“They must be,” Lei said. “But only one who bears the Mark of Making can use a creation forge.”
“So … rogue heirs? Or was your house creating an army for its own ends?”
Lei shook her head. “It still doesn’t make sense. There’s no practical reason to produce such a diverse range of warforged. The labor and resources required to create the variety of designs we saw on the battlefield would be immense, and to what end?” She squinted