The Seal of Karga Kul_ A Dungeons & Dragons Novel - Alex Irvine [101]
They reached a landing, hexagonal in shape, with doors in each of the six walls. “You would not want to open the wrong door here,” Uliana said. She walked slowly in a counterclockwise circle, touching the center of each door as she passed it. After a complete circuit, she stopped at the door directly underneath the staircase. Before she touched it, the door opened, disappearing into the wall. As they passed over the threshold, Remy looked and could see no sign that the door had ever existed.
Down they went again. “We are at the deepest levels of the ancient chambers cut into the cliff,” Uliana said. “Soon we will be below the level of the sea. I have not been this way since my initiation into the Mage Trust. I hope I never come here again.”
Remy thought he could smell the sea, but all he could see was the immediate length of the passage in front of him. The floor glistened in the Erathian light sparkling from Keverel’s helm and the head of Uliana’s staff. When they came to a branch in the passage—the first they had encountered since going through the door—Uliana nodded toward it and said, “The knights, if they come, will come from there.”
“They will come,” Keverel said.
They passed the branch and Remy looked to see if he could detect any light from approaching dragonborn paladins. The branch was dark. “They will come,” he echoed, and they passed on.
The roof of the passage grew higher, and vaulted. “Now we are in an ancient level that existed long before Karga Kul was called Karga Kul. Archives in long-dead languages mention this place as myth. It is possible that the builders of the first of these labyrinths opened a portal to the Abyss intentionally.”
“Never a good idea,” Lucan said.
“Your sense of humor is inappropriate,” Uliana said.
Paelias winked at his elf cousin. “But appreciated,” he said softly.
Next they came to a massive stone door, polished to a gloss that shone in the near-darkness. It was built of fourteen panels, seven black and seven red. “The colors of our vanished forebears,” Uliana said. “Red for blood and war, black for ink and knowledge.”
“Blood and ink,” Keverel said. “Books and killing build cities.”
Lucan looked surprised. “Irreverent, holy man? That’s unlike you.”
“Proximity to the Abyss, perhaps, pollutes my demeanor,” Keverel said, gritting his teeth.
“Leave him alone,” Remy said.
Lucan looked to him, flashing a bit of the suspicion Remy had seen in him right after joining the group back at Crow Fork Market. Then he looked away. “All of us need to back down,” he said. Flicking an arrow from his quiver, he spun it through his fingers like a baton and slipped it back in, choosing his saber instead.
The rest of them dropped hands to hilts as Uliana worked an invisible charm that opened the fourteen-paneled door. It swung silently back, revealing a great chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness and its walls writhing with ancient relief sculptures. They entered, and for a moment looked on in astonishment. “A marvelous people they must have been,” Uliana whispered. “I mourn them though they have been dead for thousands of years. The world is impoverished by their absence.”
Remy listened to her, and wondered what it must be like to think so deeply about the past. The present was more than enough for him to handle. The sculptures on the walls were of great heroes, three times the height of a man, depicted in postures of combat against demonic enemies. “They built this place as a shrine and a warning,” Keverel said. “How long has the seal lasted?”
“How long since the Road-builder shed his mortal life and became a lich?” Uliana answered. “The records become partial, then fragmentary, then …” She gestured up at the sculptures. “Then they are gone. Perhaps someone, somewhere, knows. I fear, though, that the only beings who know the true history of the seal and the city that became Karga Kul are …”