Understanding lit up Ashi’s face. “The Bonetree hunters would have no use for writing-”
“-but Dah’mir would!” Dandra finished for her. She looked to Singe. “Do you think this writing is why he laired here?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out.” He lifted his rapier like a beacon and started down the corridor. “Follow me.”
For a moment, Geth wondered if the wizard realized how much he resembled Robrand when he took command of a situation. The thought brought another twinge of shame-another flash of better times among the mercenaries of the Frostbrand company. He forced it out of his head. Dandra had said it best: they had to work together.
That would have been easier if Singe had been willing to give him something more than a sour frown. Geth drew a shallow breath. “One battle at a time,” he muttered to himself, then winced. Another of Robrand’s gems of wisdom. He reached across his body and drew his sword, taking what comfort he could in the simple, solid weight of the weapon.
Around his throat, the stones of Adolan’s collar were a reassuring weight as well. He touched them. Grandmother Wolf, he thought, I wish you were here, Ado.
They crept down the dark hallway slowly, spreading themselves out so that they were close enough for comfort but far enough apart to swing their weapons if the need arose. The further they traveled along the script-lined corridor, however, the more Geth suspected that they had nothing to worry about. The shadows were still and silent. The dust of ages that lay on the floor had been disturbed by passage-Ekhaas, he presumed, since all the footprints looked the same-but there was no sign of struggle or violence. The air smelled of nothing but dust and rock … and maybe, if he breathed deep, old metal. He slid his sword back into its sheath.
At his side, Natrac leaned a little closer and whispered, “A different place from Jhegesh Dol.”
Geth nodded silently. The ghostly daelkyr fortress that the two of them had passed through in the depths of the Shadow Marches had been lonely and eerie as well-but it had also born the horrendous touch of its otherworldly master and been haunted by the spirits of his tormented victims. The tomb-like quiet of Taruuzh Kraat was welcome by comparison.
“They’re the same age, though, aren’t they?” Geth said. “The Dhakaani Empire was destroyed in fighting the Daelkyr War. Taruuzh Kraat and Jhegesh Dol might have both been occupied at the same time.”
“On opposite sides of the war, thank the Host.” Natrac nodded to the blade in Geth’s scabbard. “But your sword is that old, too.”
Geth looked down at the heavy Dhakaani weapon. “I try not to think about that.”
Natrac was silent for a moment, then added, “You really have Singe worked up. Him and Robrand both.”
“I try not to think about that either,” growled Geth. “Hold tight to your own secrets, Natrac.” He moved away from the half-orc.
The corridor they followed curved gently and soon rooms began to open off of it, then intersecting hallways. All of them were lined with writing as well, some of the characters larger or smaller, some patches of text isolated, others running uninterrupted for paces. It was like walking through an enormous book. Aside from the writing, the rooms they passed were empty. Geth took a wary glance through each doorway and down each hall that they passed. The ruins might have been dry, but the passage of centuries had left behind only those things that could resist time’s hunger. A fireplace, a counter crafted of stone and brick, scattered metal fittings amid the stains left by long decayed wood, a jumble of broken crockery fallen where some shelf or cupboard had crumbled.
And while Taruuzh Kraat might not have carried the terrible threat of Jhegesh Dol, the unending streams of text began to wear on him. Geth caught himself twitching and turning at half-glimpsed motion, only to realize that it was just another passage of writing on the wall. He bared his teeth and the hair on his neck and forearms bristled.
“When I was at Wynarn,” Singe said abruptly, his voice brittle on the still air, “there was a researcher who specialized in planar cosmology. He usually wrote out his calculations in chalk on a slateboard, but sometimes when he was caught up in a problem that was larger than in his board, he would write on the walls of his classroom. One morning another researcher came in and found him backed into a corner, trapped by his own notes.”
“A few years ago in Zarash’ak, one of the scions of House Tharashk went mad and wouldn’t stop writing,” said Natrac. “It was a scandal. She scribbled on anything she could reach with anything she could get her hands on. She had to be restrained or she would bite her fingers and try to write with her own blood.”
Breath hissed through Dandra’s teeth. “You’re not helping!”
Geth glanced at her. Dandra’s face was tight, her jaw tense, her eyes half-closed in concentration. The others saw it, too. “Dandra?” asked Orshok.
Dandra lifted her chin. “It’s Tetkashtai,” she said. “This place frightens her. Il-Yannah, it frightens me. There’s madness here. You’re lucky that you can only feel the edges of it.”
“This was Dah’mir’s lair,” Singe pointed out. “Maybe something of his power is still here.”
She shook her head. “No. This is different. It’s-” She drew a rasping breath. “It’s older. An echo of something that happened a long time ago.”
“Can you tell what?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head again. “But it’s getting stronger.” She raised her glowing spear to light the way ahead.
To her or Singe, Geth realized, it probably looked like the corridor just kept going on and on. Out beyond the edge of human or kalashtar sight, though, the shadows opened onto a deeper darkness, like the shallows at the edge of a lake. “There’s something up there,” he said sharply. “The hallway ends.”
He felt an instant of bitter satisfaction as Singe’s face wavered between disdain and the need to ask for help. The wizard’s disdain won, though. He pushed forward, striding down the corridor. Everyone else followed hard on his heels. In only moments, the deeper darkness that Geth had glimpsed came into the light-a high archway with some kind of balcony beyond. Singe and Dandra stepped through the archway and out onto the balcony, their glowing weapons held high. Geth stopped just a pace behind them.
They looked down over a great chamber that still retained vestiges of the natural cavern it had once been. Vaulting arches of worked stone leaped across a high, rough ceiling. The lower walls had been smoothed and cut straight, but the chamber was still an irregular oval more than a score of paces wide and easily twice as long-even Geth’s keen eyes couldn’t make out its far end in the shadows. Broad stone stairs hugged the wall to one side of the balcony on which they stood, leading down to the floor ten paces below.
Spaced out along the walls and set into alcoves were the cold hearths of half a dozen ancient forges, soot staining the walls around them. Some still had the crumbling remains of huge bellows connected to them. Anvils, tools, and huge stone benches had been piled into the alcoves as well, all tumbled together as if they were nothing more than toys. Every smooth section of wall had been filled with more writing, though in this chamber the Goblin words were interspersed with strange sketches and diagrams.
In the center of the chamber, standing atop a broad platform, a strange sculpture of white stone reached up toward the ceiling. A thick base rose from the platform, narrowed, then spread and split into dozens of curved segments. The entire sculpture was cut with grooves across and along its surface. In places, sharp ridges and thorny spikes jutted out from it. The thing had an unpleasant, sinister look to it-so unpleasant and sinister that it actually took Geth a moment to realize what it was supposed to be.
“Grandmother Wolf,” he breathed. “It’s a tree.”
“If this is the Hall of the Revered, it must be the grieving tree,” said Singe. He looked at Orshok. “That’s what kind of tree grows underground, I guess. A stone one.”