The Seal of Karga Kul_ A Dungeons & Dragons Novel - Alex Irvine [79]
Biri-Daar nudged him. “Your turn.”
With the rope in his hand, Remy paused. “The Road-builder knew that the quill was necessary to keep Karga Kul from being overrun. To keep the demons on the other side of the Seal.”
“What better way to guarantee a long life?” Biri-Daar said. “Or unlife. We’ll talk this over when we’re on the ground. Right now the goal is to get there. Go.”
Remy went, lowering himself up into the sky. For the first time since coming out into the courtyard of the Keep, Remy felt strong vertigo. He shut his eyes and concentrated on letting himself down, hand over hand, bracing himself with a coil of rope around one foot. The thought occurred to him that he might open his eyes and find himself on the Astral Plane. But when he did open them, as his feet found solid ground, he was standing on the rune-scored stones of the keyhole. The rest of the group had already built a fire and set to having a look at some of the more interesting objects they had found in the keep. Paelias, Keverel, and Lucan read over some of the Road-builder’s scrolls. Obek was tapping at the stone in a ring he had taken from the dead Moula. He also carried a satchel filled with other booty, such as they had found in their brief search of the Road-builder’s study and other parts of the Keep on their way to the broken bridge.
No one had yet said a word about Kithri, but all of them felt her absence. When Biri-Daar appeared no one asked how it happened that they could climb down into the sky and end up where they had ended up. The Road-builder’s magic, the magic of the Inverted Keep itself … some phenomena did not bear close examination. If they happened, they happened. They were to be experienced, not understood.
Paelias, crosshatched with cuts from his trip through the greenhouse window, was the first to address their situation head-on. They had eaten, drunk, passed around the last of a flask of spirits Lucan had picked up back at Crow Fork Market. The eladrin was whittling a small flute when in the middle of the task he broke off and said, “The way I understand things, our situation is thus. We are in possession of Moidan’s Quill that is needed to reinscribe the Seal of Karga Kul. We are also in possession of a chisel that one assumes was intended to destroy that seal. Moidan’s Quill cannot be destroyed except at the cost of losing the city of Karga Kul to demons; if the quill is not destroyed the Road-builder will appear in its vicinity at some indeterminate but not distant time. So our current task is to get to Karga Kul, talk to the Mage Trust, evade capture or death at the hands of the vizier of Avankil and his minions, and replenish the Seal so that the quill can be destroyed. Do I have that right?”
“In a general sense,” Biri-Daar said.
“What about the chisel?”
“The chisel … Remy, let me see it,” Keverel said. He inspected it for a moment before going on. “Those runes speak of service to the Demon Prince Orcus. He and his army are massed on the other side of the Seal, awaiting their chance to pour across any threshold into our world. Clearly Philomen has pledged his life and his service to the forces of the Abyss. Just as clearly, he hoped to get the chisel to Karga Kul, either via allies in Toradan or by other means we have not yet understood.”
Keverel handed the chisel back to Remy. “The chisel and the quill must be kept apart. Philomen will be on the hunt for one; we must not let him capture both in the event that things do not fall our way.”
“No. We were drawn together,” Biri-Daar said. “Bahamut has made it so. Do you not see? The restoration of the Knights of Kul and the salvation of the city of Karga Kul, these are the same task. Bahamut has led me to destroy Moula, the apostle of Tiamat. Now he leads me on to finish the work against the demons of the Abyss that threaten the city of the Order