The great walls that once ringed the cities were breached in more than a dozen places. She avoided the larger, more easily navigated breaks on the assumption that they would be guarded. She chose a hole that afforded her shoulder plates enough space to slip through.
The wreckage of the town spread out before her in all directions. Occasionally a section of wall remained braced by a door or corner, but there wasn’t a rooftop to be seen on any of the old buildings. Ahead and a little to the east stood the fortifications of the old citadel, rebuilt by the Zhentil Keep soldiers trying to hold the region. A campfire blazed in that direction, so Alias moved off to the western section of the city.
A scraping noise came from back by the hole she had used to enter the city. She whirled around, blade ready, expecting some assassin, wishing it were Dragonbait, but there was no one there. Just loose rubble, she thought, disgusted with her nervousness. She continued west.
Rather than walk in the streets, Alias picked her way over the razed walls. Anything that might have survived the dragon invasions, human armies, and looters had been carried off long ago. If there was treasure to be found in the city, it was well-hidden.
There was a jiggling of horse-rigging in the streets, and Alias crouched behind the wall. A single rider approached. He held his reins in one hand and a hooded lantern in the other. Enough light leaked from his lantern that Alias could see he wore a scarlet cloak and a silver helmet with a single plume jutting from the top, also scarlet.
As she watched the rider pass, something across the street caught Alias’s eye. Reflecting the rider’s lantern light, lying in the rubble, was a familiar symbol—a fanged mouth gaping in the palm of a hand.
Moander, at last, Alias thought with glee. A third stroke of luck. Tymora must be favoring her. She crept out from behind the wall, ready to dodge back into the shadows if the horse so much as nickered. The horse and rider continued down the street, eyes forward, oblivious to her presence.
Alias scurried across the street, but when she reached the broken stone there was nothing there. Was her mind playing tricks on her? A mossy smell assailed her nostrils. She peered into the darkness, searching for its source.
The pile of rubble where she stood was part of a ring of collapsed wall. Within the toppled stone was a broad pit. At first, Alias thought it must just be the cellar of some collapsed building, but the darkness within the center was so complete that she realized it must be a very deep hole. She spotted a narrow staircase winding around the edge of the hole’s interior. On the wall by the first few steps was another hand glowing blue.
The glow of her tattoo was insufficient to illuminate the stairs so Alias risked pulling out the finder’s stone. Its light seemed dimmer here, illuminating no more than four or five extra steps, but that was enough for Alias to make out a set of tracks preceding her into the pit, tracks made by something with three-toed feet, separated by a single groove, made by the heavy tail of a lizard.
What do you know? Alias thought. The finder’s stone did help me find someone who was lost. She began her descent into the pit. Each step felt as if she were pushing against water, as if something were resisting her entry. The stairs were steep as well as narrow, and the rim of the pit soon rose over her head and swallowed her.
With total darkness around her, the yellow glow of the stone seemed to grow brighter, but Alias no longer needed it. An azure aura sprang from beneath her right sleeve. Alias hesitated and wondered if she were walking into a trap. Of course, her arm was going to glow as she got nearer Moander’s temple, just as it had glowed in the presence of Cassana’s kalmari and the crystal elemental. She didn’t know what she had to worry about. Moander was locked up. According to the goatherd in Shadowdale, only someone unborn could free the ancient god.
Since she knew she’d been born—she could remember the day quite clearly: the snoring of her mother, the cooing of the midwife, being sniffed at by the house cats—she had no fear she might accidentally unleash one of the evil elements responsible for her mutilation and lost memory.
Alias could now discern pungent, all-too-human smells. The pit was used as a midden. The stench grew more powerful the deeper she went. The steps grew damp and slick, and pockets of muck and slime collected in the depressions worn into the stairs by a millennium of visitors. Bits of green goo dripped from one step to the next.
A stone bounced down from above, followed by a shower of small rocks. Alias looked up, expecting to see someone tossing a bucket of something foul over the rim of the pit, but only the dark sky hung over the darker hole.
A stray soldier idly investigating the city, Alias guessed, and continued her descent until she came to a wide, stonework platform ringed with rubble. The staircase ended, though the pit continued down. The finder’s stone was unable to light the bottom of the stinking darkness. Alias doubted if even the moon could do so were it to shine directly in. There was no trace of Moander’s sigil.
Alias studied Dragonbait’s tracks. The three-toed imprints wandered about the muck-covered platform, to the beginning of the blocked stairs, to the edge of the platform, to the wall of the pit, but there was no trace of them after that.
He wouldn’t have jumped over the edge, Alias puzzled. She lifted the finder’s stone and investigated the slime-encrusted walls. There was a faint vertical shadow from a line of moss buckled against more moss. The line continued above her head, running horizontally and then back down. It was a door, recently opened and closed.
Reluctantly, Alias ran her fingers along the slimy moss and lichen, feeling for a catch to push, pull, or slide. In the center of the door, at waist level, she discovered a hole. Mindful of finger guillotine traps set against intruders, she poked her smallest finger into the hole.
No blade sliced at her digit, but a stinging charge of energy ran up her arm. Her runes writhed and danced, but caused her no pain. From behind the stone wall came the clattering of lock mechanisms tumbling and falling.
When the azure sigils were still again, though still glowing, Alias withdrew her finger and stepped back. The hidden door swung out silently. A foot thick, it pivoted on an unseen post.
Beyond the doorway, the smell of fresh waste and muck gave way to the older decay of ancient paper and bones. Warm, dry air blew from the passage. The walls were carved with tiny, intricate, flowing designs. They reminded Alias more of the tree sculptures grown and shaped by elves than of something wrought of dead stone.
Then she saw the three-toed footprints on the dusty floor. The curiosity that had beckoned her this far now tried to drive her forward like a fire forcing wild animals through the woods. She was sure that not only Dragonbait, but the answers to all her questions lay at the end of the mysterious passage before her.
She wanted to rush right in, but her adventurer’s sense of caution asserted itself just in time. Stepping back on the platform, Alias grabbed a large, wedge-shaped rock from the pile of rubble and slipped its smaller edge beneath the door. She found several others like it and shoved them beneath the door as well. Then she shifted a pile of rocks to the edge of the door frame.
Satisfied with her precautions, she entered the passage. About six paces down the corridor, she felt a stone beneath her foot shift nearly an imperceptible amount. Behind her, the door jerked a hand’s span but was held fast by the rocks. Something mechanical whined a high-pitched plea. The whining grew louder as though the trap were crying out desperately to fulfill its only purpose in life. Within a minute, the whine dropped in pitch and then was silent. The door was still. Smiling to herself and feeling smug, Alias continued down the corridor.