"What's wrong with you, Ar'talen?" Muragh complained. "Cant you read what it says?"
"No, I can't," Artek snapped. He glanced question-ingly at Beckla.
"Don't look at me," the wizard told him. "I can't read it either. Though I'm willing to bet it's a naughty poem," she added with a disgusted glance at the skull.
"Excuse me," Corin said suddenly, pushing past them to get a closer look at the column. He peered at the words with his blue eyes, then clapped his hands excitedly. "Oh, this is absolutely fascinating!"
Artek and Beckla stared in shock at the nobleman.
"You can read this, Corin?" Artek asked.
"Of course," Corin replied smoothly, as if it were a silly question. "It's written in Thorass."
"Thorass?"
"That's right," the nobleman said. "Thorass, also known as Auld Common. It's the tongue our ancestors spoke long ago, and from which the current common tongue is derived. I learned to read it as a child, studying the old Silvertor family history. It goes back centuries, you know. In fact, it all started when-"
"I'm sure your family's story is enthralling, Corin," Artek interrupted. "But we're in a bit of a hurry. Do you think you could just tell us what this says?"
Corin studied the words a moment more, then nodded to himself. “ 'On this, the fiftieth day of our search for our master, came we to this place,' " he translated.
That's it?" Artek asked.
"That's it," Corin confirmed. "Oh, except for this." He pointed to the last two lines of writing. The message is signed, Talastria and Orannon."
"And who are they?" Beckla wondered.
Artek made a leap of intuition. "I think I know," he said. The message says that they came here in search of their master. Who could that be, except for Halaster himself? So Talastria and Orannon were two of his apprentices."
"Whew!" Muragh groaned. "I thought you were never going to get it!"
"You could have just told us, you know," Artek noted caustically.
"What? And spoil all your fun?"
Artek bit his tongue. It wasn't worth a reply. The important thing was that they had found the ancient trail of two of Halaster's apprentices.
"Come on," Artek said. This arrow must indicate the direction the apprentices were traveling in. If we follow, we may find what became of them-and maybe a way out, too."
Together, they hurried down the underground avenue in the direction the arrow had indicated. Clouds of thick dust settled sluggishly in their wake. Their shadows, conjured by Beckla's pale magelight, rippled across the passage's walls like weird giants from an ancient nightmare. Artek tried not to look at them-this was an eerie place. In silence they continued on as countless tree-columns slipped by.
It was Beckla who saw the words scratched into the wall beside a keyhole-shaped archway. The stones of the arch itself were oddly scorched and cracked.
"It took us many days to destroy the fire elementals that barred this door! " Corin translated slowly. But now the way is clear, and our search continues, on this the fifty-sixth day of our quest.'"
As before, the message was signed Talastria and Orannon. Beneath it, an arrow pointed through the archway. They stepped through the opening and into a dim corridor. Artek shivered. It was strange to be retracing the ancient steps of the two lost apprentices. Steeling his will, he started down the corridor. The others followed. After the loftiness of the main avenue, this passage was cramped and forbidding- apparently, it had been a lesser way of Underhall. Dark water dripped down the smooth stone walls and trickled across the floor. Unconsciously, the three humans drew closer together.
When they came to a flight of stairs, an arrow scratched into the wall pointed down. Talastria and Orannon had come this way. Artek led the others down a hundred slimy steps before the corridor leveled out and continued on again through the darkness.
"What are all these strange silvery marks on the wall?" Corin wondered aloud. Though he spoke in a whisper, the sound of his voice hissed uncomfortably around the corridor. No one had an answer for him.
Four more times they came to a flight of steps, each longer than the one before. At the head of every stairway, an arrow indicated that the two apprentices had descended it. Breathless, they reached the bottom of the fifth flight only after Artek had counted five hundred steps. It was there that they finally learned the answer to Corin's question. Another message was scratched into the hard surface of the wall.
"'We know not what day of our search this is, for all sense of time was lost to us in the arduous battle for the five stairs,' " Corin said, reading the ancient inscription." Upon every step of every stair waited a fiend of the underworld, conjured by our master's magic. To gain but a single step, we were forced to slay a slavering fiend. We destroyed a hundred on the first stair, two hundred on the next. Never did we stop-save to rest briefly and restore our magic- until we destroyed the five hundredth fiend on the fifth and final stair. We are both gravely wounded from the ordeal, yet surely only something of the greatest worth could lie beyond such a terrible barrier. It is our belief that the end of our search is near at last. And surely, once we find our master, he will make us whole once more.'"
"A fiend on every step," Beckla echoed with a shudder. "It must have taken the apprentices years to get past these stairs. The silvery marks on the walls must be scars left from the spells they cast to destroy the creatures."
Artek nodded grimly. "Let's see what they found at the end of their search."
It was not much farther. After a hundred paces, the corridor ended in a pair of massive stone doors. Emblazoned on the door were letters of gold. The letters spelled out two words that they all now easily recognized: Talastria and Orannon. The group exchanged uneasy looks, and Artek pushed on the doors. They swung open easily. Beckla held out her hand, and the flickering magelight illuminated the long chamber beyond.
The sides of the chamber were littered with countless fragments of stone. Only after a moment did Artek realize that some of the fragments were shaped like clawed hands, others like leathery wings, and still others like grotesque heads-they were parts of gargoyles. Dozens of them had once lined the chamber, but now they were smashed to bits. At the far end of the room was a dais of dark stone, and on the dais rested two oblong boxes hewn of porphyry. No, not boxes, Artek realized. Sarcophagi.
"It's a tomb," Artek said softly as he sensed the truth. Talastria and Orannon thought they would find their master at the end of the stairs, on the other side of the fiends. Instead, all they found was their own tomb-no doubt created for them by Halaster himself."
That's a cruel joke," Corin said, aghast.
"On us as well as on them," Beckla replied glumly. "I doubt a dead apprentice is going to be able to show us a gate out of this hole."
"Don't be so hasty," Muragh replied testily. There might be something in here that could help us."
Artek drew in a deep breath. "I suppose it's worth a try. We came all this way, so we might as well spend a few minutes poking around."
Together, they stepped into the tomb of the lost apprentices. It was an eerie place. Artek could almost imagine the two wizards, wounded and dying after their battle on the stairs, stumbling into this chamber only to find the two waiting sarcophagi. Did they laugh madly as they laid themselves within their own coffins? Artek did his best to shake the disturbing image from his mind. While Beckla and Corin began poking around in the shattered remains of the stone gargoyles, he headed for the dais at the far end of the chamber.
All at once an icy wind rushed through the tomb. With an ominous boom, the stone doors swung shut. Artek spun on a heel, staring back at Beckla and Corin in surprise. As one, the wizard and the nobleman gasped. A chill danced up Artek's back.