“That one,” Alexander said, pointing to a passage across from the staircase entrance. “It looks like it used to be a smithy.”
“Good enough,” Isabel said, heading for the passage and sprinkling a pinch of concealment dust after they’d passed the threshold. They moved cautiously by the soft, eerie glow cast by the jar of luminescent lichen Isabel had taken from Hazel’s workroom. The corridor ran for a hundred feet before reaching several flights of stairs leading deeper under the mountain. It opened into a large room, cold and dark. Alexander appeared again as a ball of light, revealing dozens of workstations lining the walls of the room. Each included a forge, anvil, and an assortment of tools, many of which were rusted to the point of uselessness.
Isabel was beginning to think they wouldn’t find anything they could use until she came to the workstation at the far end of the room. It was larger and more elaborate than the rest, flanked by two heavy stone tables, each cluttered with an assortment of old tools. Resting on the large anvil were two hammers, both rust-free and sturdy. One was a single-handed tool while the other was a heavy sledge hammer.
“Those are enchanted,” Alexander’s disembodied voice said.
“Good, maybe they’ll be enough to break through the wall,” Isabel said. “Any idea what they do?”
“No clue.”
Isabel picked up the smaller of the two. It was lighter than she expected, far lighter than it should have been. Frowning, she brought it down on the corner of one of the stone tables. As the blow fell, the weight of the hammer increased markedly, striking the table with tremendous force, breaking a chunk off the corner and sending it bouncing across the floor.
“These will do nicely,” she said, handing the larger of the two to Hector.
“Now we just have to break through the wall without the Sin’Rath hearing us,” Hector said.
“Not much chance of that,” Isabel said. “I’m hoping they followed our tracks into the menagerie, but I suspect they left a man or two behind in the black-and-white room so we’ll have to be careful.”
Ayela was sitting on the floor, leaning against the forge nearest the door. “This body is so weak,” she said, struggling to stand. “I’ve never felt so tired in my whole life.”
“Ayela, I need you to be strong right now,” Isabel said. “It won’t be much longer but we have to move. Can you move?”
She nodded wearily. Isabel smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder before heading back up the stairs. They stopped at the top for a moment so Ayela could catch her breath, then headed back toward the black-and-white room in the dark, feeling along the walls for guidance. Near the entrance, the flickering light of torches warned them of the soldiers standing guard.
“Two men, one in the staircase landing, the other just inside the corridor leading to the menagerie,” Alexander said.
“Please don’t kill them if you don’t have to,” Ayela said.
“We won’t,” Isabel said. “We’ll target the one in the corridor first. I’ll hit him with a force-push, then finish him with sleeping powder. Hector, you keep the other one off me, then we’ll do the same to him. Ayela, you wait in the corridor until they’re both down.”
Isabel cast her shield spell, then they crept up to the threshold silently, remaining in the shadows to assess the situation. One of the first soldiers to enter the room had stepped on a black square and now lay dead on the floor with dozens of darts stuck in him from all different directions. The other two were exactly where Alexander said they would be.
Isabel prepared a pinch of sleeping powder and started muttering the words of her spell, then sprang into a dead run across the room being careful to stay on the white squares. She caught the man in the corridor by surprise with her force-push, sending him sprawling. She was on him a moment later, holding her breath as she flicked the dust into his nose and mouth. His struggling subsided a few moments later and she rolled to her feet.
Hector had the other man down, one arm wrapped around his neck from behind; the man struggled against the choke hold but succumbed moments later. Isabel sprinkled sleeping dust over his face just to make sure he remained unconscious.
“Good work,” she said to Hector. “Once we take this wall down, we won’t have much time. They’ll probably hear us and come running.”
“They’re in the chamber with the ghidora,” Alexander said, appearing beside Isabel. “If you’re going to do this, now’s the time.”
She nodded to Hector. His first blow against the wall cracked it from floor to ceiling. He looked at his hammer with renewed respect before landing his second blow. Each strike weakened the integrity of the stone wall until a large chunk fell through into the darkness beyond. Each strike also reverberated through the stone of the keep, no doubt alerting the Sin’Rath to their presence.
A few blows later and there was a hole large enough for them to climb through. Isabel went first, Alexander lighting her way. Ayela was next, followed by Hector. The passage was easily twenty feet wide and almost as tall. They moved quickly but cautiously for several hundred feet down the gently sloping passage before Alexander stopped a few dozen feet in front of a huge circular stone door. It looked almost like a giant gear with teeth along the edge fitting into a recessed track that ran off into the wall to the left. In the recesses of several of the teeth were heavy steel locking pins that fit into slots in the wall surrounding the door, holding it in place.
“I can’t go any farther,” Alexander said, appearing next to Isabel with a ball of light hovering over his head, “but I’ll stay here to provide light. Once you get the bones, I won’t be able to get near you.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Isabel said.
“I’ll still keep an eye on you,” he said as his body vanished, leaving only the orb of light.
Isabel approached the door, then stopped, staggered by the effects of the Goiri bones as their power enveloped her. Azugorath’s tendril that had been gripping her soul for so long released and withdrew like smoke blowing away on a breeze. Feelings of relief washed over her. The constant effort of resisting the Wraith Queen’s influence coupled with the vigilance necessary to prevent her occasional pushes to gain control had been taking its toll.
Then she realized that she could no longer touch the firmament, she could no longer feel her link to the light or the dark … or link her mind with Slyder. Sudden fear gripped her. She could deal with losing her magic, but Slyder was her oldest friend. She couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. Then she thought about what she’d said … that killing Phane was worth any cost. With a lump in her throat and renewed resolve, she stepped farther into the null magic field and examined the door.
The locking pins were all that was keeping it from rolling aside into the wall. She tried to pry one free but it was wedged, so she went to work on it with her hammer, which had become heavier when she entered the area and lost its ability to change weight in midswing.
Hector started working on another pin. It was difficult and slow-going but before long they had all of the locking pins removed. At first the door wouldn’t budge when they pushed against it, trying to roll it sideways along its track. Only after Hector used his hammer like a crowbar against the teeth at the base of the door did it break free and start to slowly roll aside.
Beyond was a large circular room with a domed ceiling covered in gently glowing green lichen. In a heap before the door was a pile of bones. The creature had been large, maybe nine feet tall during its brief lifespan. It had died trying to escape the place of its unnatural birth.
Isabel knelt before the remains of the Goiri, looking into the empty eye sockets of the unnatural skull half-buried in debris, wondering about its brief existence. The sound of boots came reverberating down the hallway, followed by the flickering of torchlight that played across the fine dust swirling over the Goiri’s bones.