The Seal of Karga Kul_ A Dungeons & Dragons Novel - Alex Irvine [78]
If, that is, the suddenly unsealed box had not doomed the city all by itself.
Remy could remember feeling that Philomen was among the greatest citizens of Avankil, a leader of all the Dragondown Coast. Now there could be no doubt. He had not only sent Remy out into the deserts to die, he was engineering some kind of plot involving demons and the undead. “If I ever see Philomen again,” he said over the Road-builder’s bones, “I will kill him.”
Overhearing, Biri-Daar came to them. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First we had best see what Philomen went to all this trouble for,” she said. The rest of them gathered around and Remy set the box on the cleared drafting table. The sigils, both broken and intact, glowed a deep yellow, darkening toward orange. Remy opened the box. Within, set into a velvet bed, was a chisel perhaps eight inches long, octagonal in cross-section with each face carved minutely in long strings of runes.
“Ah,” said Keverel and Biri-Daar simultaneously.
Another glow appeared from a writing desk in a corner of the study. Every head turned to see that it came from a quill in a jar. The quill was long and curling, cut from the tail feather of a phoenix and burning as brightly as if that bird was at that moment immolating itself. But it was not burning; it was aglow, fiercely, as if challenging the chisel that at that moment was rising from the box.
“Hold it, Remy,” Biri-Daar said. “Steady it.”
“No,” Keverel said, but Remy had already caught the chisel. It was hot in Remy’s hands, but not too hot. The cleric looked as if he might say something else, but he held his tongue and went to the writing desk. Gently he touched the quill and plucked it from the inkwell in which it stood. “It is as I feared,” he said softly.
“What is?” Paelias asked.
“The Road-builder’s phylactery is Moidan’s Quill,” Keverel said. “We must get to Karga Kul before he returns.”
BOOK V
BETRAYAL
An hour after the Road-builder’s death, the six survivors clustered just outside the portcullis at the Keep’s main gate. “Obek,” Lucan said for perhaps the fifth or sixth time. “You heard this from someone who claimed to have heard it from someone who knew the man who had no hands that claimed to have lost his hands in this very keep. Do I have that right?”
“Give or take one someone,” Obek said.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Our alternative seems to be climbing back up the inside of the Road-builder’s Tomb,” Paelias said.
“Would you like me to go first?” Obek said. “I’m willing.”
“How will we know it works?” Lucan asked.
“Enough,” Biri-Daar said. She stepped forward and cast the rope off the broken bridge. It snaked out, falling into the sky, looking terribly frail and thin when it had reached its full length. Biri-Daar stepped back. “If you’re still willing, Obek.”
“Ah,” he said. “Sacrifice the tiefling.”
“The tiefling should perhaps remember that he offered.”
Everyone stood around for a count of perhaps ten. Then Obek picked up the rope, swung it loosely around one gloved forearm, and lowered himself over the edge. They watched him descend until he was out of sight. “We should still be able to see him,” Paelias said. “There is an illusion at work.”
The rope appeared to swing loosely in the breeze below—above—the Keep. “Lucan,” Biri-Daar said. “Then Keverel, then Paelias, then Remy, then me.”
In that order they descended the rope and disappeared. “Probably the tiefling is killing us one by one as we appear … wherever it is that we appear,” Paelias said as he swung over the edge. “Just remember as you die that I told you not to trust him.”
“Those will be my last thoughts. Yes, they will.” Remy cast his