The gully dwarf peered at her face through the darkness. "Huh! Friend of yours, is he? Poor friends you have. He came. He kicked me. I hope he falls in privy!"
Sara couldn't help but chuckle. "To be honest, so do I. Did you see where he went?"
"Bad friend," the gully dwarf muttered, wrinkling his flat nose. His long, scraggly beard drooped down his chest. "When he kick me, I follow to see if I could help him down a privy. But he go in that shop, the one with three hands on sign. He not come out yet."
"Thank you," Sara said, and she gave him a copper coin for the information. She left him gleefully stuffing the coin into a ratty bag by his feet, and she hurried along the street to the shop he described.
It was there on her left, a new wooden building and one of the few of stout construction. Its shutters were closed, and the door, when Sara tried it, was firmly locked. The sign above the entrance showed three red hands in the form of a triangle and read "The Red-Handed Pawnshop."
Figures, Sara said to herself. The front of the shop was totally dark, but when she checked the sides of the building, she noticed a slip of light shining from one of the rear windows. She slipped noiselessly down the side alley and found a crack in the shutter of the window. When she applied her eye to the crack, she could see two men sitting at a worn table in what looked like an office. The men were drinking from flagons and engaged in a spirited conversation. Although she could not see the second man well enough to identify him, she recognized the first man immediately. She had found Massard.
Her excitement rising, she pushed closer to the window and tried to hear what the men were saying. It was difficult to hear them because they were across the room and the stranger had his back to Sara. She only caught a few words: "Nightlord"… "artifacts"… "good prices." It was enough to send her curiosity soaring.
Then Massard picked up a bag lying on the floor near his feet. He tipped it over and dumped the contents on the table in front of the strange man. A number of items of different sizes spilled out. Sara strained to see what they were.
The stranger moved his oil lamp closer to the objects to examine them, and the light gleamed on their surfaces. Outside, Sara's mouth fell open. She knew at least one of those items. She had found it herself that afternoon in the rubble removed from the temple and had given it to Massard to pass on to the Nightlord. She could not mistake it, a silver armband decorated with a geometric pattern of lapis lazuli. The other things appeared to be equally as interesting: a delicate silver cup, a tattered pouch full of rolled scrolls, some bits of armor, and a dagger encrusted with jewels.
The stranger looked pleased. Massard sat back and smirked.
Sara grinned. So that's what the old thief is up to.
She heard a sound behind her. Then something very hard hit her on the back of the head.
The first sensation she became aware of was a throbbing pain in her head. The second was of being carried by her arms and legs.
She heard a voice mumble through a thick fog, "Let's dump her in the ruins. The horax will dispose of the body."
She was dreaming. Surely this was a nightmare. It had to be.
She felt hands on her ankles and on her arms. Her body jerked and swayed. She heard footsteps pad on stone.
Suddenly she was falling. She hated dreams about falling. They always ended with a sickening crunch, and she'd wake in her bed sweating and panting. This time was different. This time she landed with a sickening crunch, and she woke to find herself on a dirt floor in total darkness.
Terror jolted her back to reality. Her first compulsion was to freeze. She could see absolutely nothing around her, no walls, no floor. She could not even see her own hands. She huddled on her stomach where she landed and felt panic build within her like the nausea rising in her stomach.
Somewhere, far in the distance, she thought she heard footsteps that quickly faded away. A heavy silence closed in on her. No! No! her consciousness cried. Don't leave me here!
But she knew it was already too late. Whoever had dropped her in this black hole had already left. She was alone.
She lowered her pounding head, too terrified to move. She wanted to scream, but some subconscious knowledge kept her quiet. There was danger here, wherever here was. She vaguely remembered hearing someone say something, something about… what?
In frustration, her fingers dug into the loose dirt and gravel under her. She paused and ran her hands through the dirt again. The feel of that crumbled earth and broken rock felt familiar, and the familiarity jolted another memory loose in her aching mind. The voice had said "ruins." That was it! They had dumped her in the ruins!
Ever so carefully Sara eased to her knees and reached her hands outward in a circle around her body. Far to her right, her fingers brushed a stone wall. Her breath came out in a sob of relief. It was something substantial in the endless darkness, a solid barrier against her growing terror. She scrambled close to the wall and pressed her back against it. With the comforting stone behind her, she could let her whirling thoughts slow down into some semblance of sense.
She put her pounding head between her hands. A large lump, sticky with blood, lay under her hair on the back of her head. Nausea still roiled in her belly. She took several slow, deep breaths and tried to think through the waves of dizziness that rolled through her.
She realized now she was in the ruins of the old temple-that blasted shrine so aptly named the Temple of Darkness. Just knowing that eased much of her fear. The lord mayor had said the work crews had only excavated a few of the lower levels. If all else failed, she could just sit here until daylight when the slaves returned to their labors.
But even as part of her mind took comfort in that, another scrap of memory intruded into her thoughts. There was something else the strange voice had said, something about a… horax? The name sounded vaguely familiar; she just couldn't remember why. Her head was still dazed from the blow, and her mind seemed slightly out of focus.
She inhaled deeply and began to take stock of her situation. The air was very cold and smelled of dust and old stone and dank mold. She realized her cloak was gone and her sword, too.
Her hand suddenly grabbed for the thong around her neck. Cobalt! If she could summon him, he could help her out of this hideous darkness. But the thong and the dragon scales were gone, and a burning sensation at the back of her neck told her it had been torn off.
She slumped against the stone, feeling terribly alone and vulnerable. Horax… a doubt nagged at her. What was a horax?
The cold began to penetrate her uniform, and she shivered. What she wouldn't give for a cup of tarbean tea and a light.
Sara dug her fingers into her knees. This was ridiculous. Why should she sit here the rest of the night and slowly freeze to death while Massard sat in his warm tent, counted his money, and laughed up his sleeve? That son of an ogress had done this to her, and by any god that still paid attention to Krynn, she was not going to let him get away with it! She had to get out. She had to confront him with his crimes and make him choke on his own arrogance.
She lifted her hands above her head and felt her way up the wall until she was standing upright. If there was a ceiling to this corridor or room or whatever she was in, it was beyond her reach. Keeping her hands flat on the wall, she extended her senses outward to seek any clue she could find that could help her find a way to go.
Slowly small details nudged into her awareness. There were tiny sounds she had not noticed before: the steady drip of water far away, the scuttling of a rat's feet on stone, and a very faint rattle, as if a bit of gravel had slipped loose and rolled down a slope. She also felt a slight movement of air on her right cheek. And where there was moving air, there had to be some sort of opening.