The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [121]
Markoun shrugged, grinned, and let his own weapons spill out onto the ground in a rushing clatter. Bound would be a good state for Klamantle-bound and gagged, even better. That thought carried him right to the door, and Klamantle's gentle opening of it and gesture for him to enter.
Enter yawning darkness whence the Lady Silvertree and her three armed companions had gone, only moments ago. Markoun swallowed, came to a sudden halt-and earned himself a hard look from Klamantle.
He smiled, shrugged, and stepped into the waiting darkness. Ready to hurl deadly magic? Of course. As always. Might I have a target, please?
***
"Spread out and keep low and quiet-but stray not far," Craer murmured in their ears and watched as they did his bidding. Crouching silent and motionless in the gloom, the Band of Four peered around.
It was like a vast, dark cavern, low overhead where they stood, and rising to dusty, cobwebbed heights ahead. Craer held out his hands for silence, and the Four kept as quiet as they could, Sarasper jamming two fingers up his nostrils to quell a sneeze.
Dust and the reek of mold were everywhere. This must be the library of the dead wizard Ehrluth, unless there'd been other domed libraries in Indraevyn of old. On all sides of the crouching adventurers were bookshelves… empty bookshelves.
Dark, smooth spans of fluted wood, their runs broken by stone columns. Curving, concentric circles of shelves, pierced by straight aisles that radiated from a circle of bare tiles under the center of the dome-where six pillars of faintly glowing air stretched from floor to the high ceiling-to many sets of outer doors. Closed, dusty, dark. Yet somehow aware, waiting. Something small-a pebble?-fell or clattered, very faintly, in the distance; the sound echoed around the dome. Indeed, they were not alone.
This might just be their waiting tomb, a deathtrap to swallow them all with ease. The Four exchanged glances and then began to silently point at things in the gloom that seemed most interesting… or ominous.
Those central pillars of light seemed too soft to be sunlight, throwing too little illumination outside their confines. There were lesser glows in the vast chamber, too-glows that moved. Slowly and silently, undulating or creeping along and down some of the shelves. Craer raised one hand in a "stay here" gesture, and then pointed at Hawkril and the door they'd come through, reminding the armaragor to be ready for other arrivals. An instant later, the procurer crept around the corner of a shelf like a supple spider and moved to where he could get a better look at the nearest glow.
It seemed to be some sort of man-length caterpillar, or furry snake-a long, fuzzy segmented body, gleaming pale white, shot through with wandering pink veins. It looked raw, like a grave maggot or a shellfish torn out of its shell.
Craer stared at the thing as it traveled patiently down a shelf, its head-if it was a head-waggling about in an obscene, silent questing after… what?
Flesh? Paper? Leaves? The more he looked at it, the more it looked like a caterpillar; the most monstrous such thing he'd ever seen. Craer moved a few paces closer-and then crouched down, swiftly drew back, and went scuttling back the way he'd come.
Embra almost put her dagger into his face when he reappeared suddenly around the corner of the shelf. She let out an indrawn breath in a trembling sigh of relief, and he gave her a grin and tapped her shoulder with a few fingers in silent reassurance.
His words took that feeling away again. "Man in leathers, atop the shelves yon," he murmured. "Saw me looking."
Sarasper drew a knife and Embra took another knick-knack into her hand; Hawkril already held steel in both hands and was looking and listening intently, head questing from the door behind them to the gloom all around.
The ceiling hung close above the tops of the tall bookshelves around them but soared up to form the dome nearer