Shadowdale (14 page)

And then I will give Lord Ao the identities of the thieves, and I will be returned to my home!

There was no time to rejoice in the moment, however. There was only time to act. Shackled as she was, Mystra knew that she could not escape her bonds. Yet her bonds — and the attentions of the hakeashar — had not completely kept her from saving up enough mystical energy to throw one last minor spell.

Mystra concentrated, and suddenly felt a connection with Caitlan.

Come at once! Mystra commanded, her words thundering within the skull of the girl. Use the final spell I granted you and come at once. Do not wait for the others. They will arrive soon enough.

Suddenly the connection was broken, and Mystra heard Bane’s footsteps. Blackthorne was gone. Bane stopped in front of the goddess.

“Have you changed your mind?” Bane said. “Decided to join me after all?”

Mystra was silent.

Bane sighed. “A pity that you will be dead soon. After all, how many more times can you endure the hakeashar? The torments it inflicts on you as it violates your essence must be beyond belief.”

Mystra did not stir.

“I will find a way to overthrow Ao with or without you, Mystra. You’d be wise to join me before I must kill you.”

When the Goddess of Magic remained silent, Bane turned from her and walked to the scrying pool, where he resumed the vigil for the guests camped right outside his castle.

Come at once, Mystra commanded, and Caitlan responded. Despite the words of the goddess, ordering her to leave her newfound friends behind, Caitlan was tempted to rouse Midnight or Kelemvor, and tell them of Mystra’s summons. Tell them that no more time could be wasted; they had to go to the castle right away.

But Mystra’s commands had to be followed to the letter, so Caitlan silently repeated the words to the spell, and was lifted into the night sky. Cyric didn’t even hear her stir. And despite her exhilaration at the experience of sailing through the air, Caitlan never forgot the somber reason for her night.

The goddess needed her.

Along with Mystra’s summons, Caitlan had received a complex series of images, and by following the real life counterparts of these images she soon arrived at Castle Kilgrave and entered it undetected. Caitlan sensed a consummate evil in the place, although the dusty corridors she traveled through seemed harmless enough. Eventually the girl found the chamber where she saw the odd, glowing form of the Goddess of Magic.

Mystra did not appear the least bit human. The goddess had been shackled to the wall of the dungeon with strange, pulsating chains, and she hovered across the room from Caitlan like a ghost.

A horribly deformed man was in the chamber, as well. He stood in the center of the room, staring into an ornately carved tub that held dark, black water. Caitlan saw that his features were part human, part animal, and part demon. Turning suddenly, the deformed man glanced in the girl’s direction, but she stayed hidden in the shadows. It was as if he heard her enter the dungeon or somehow sensed her presence.

The dark man turned to Mystra and smiled. “I do wish the sun would rise, so those pitiful humans could come and entertain me.”

“They’ll do more than entertain you, Bane,” Mystra said.

Caitlan almost gasped. The deformed man was Lord Bane, God of Strife! He must have taken an avatar, like Tymora did in Arabel.

It was then that Caitlan knew what was expected of her, and she rejoiced in the knowledge of her ultimate fate. Before her, Bane shouted at the goddess, hurling vile threats against her, imploring the captive goddess to join him in some mad plan he had devised. Mystra did not respond, and Caitlan feared that the goddess’s essence was dwindling, that the goddess might die. Then she shook herself from such thoughts and waited for Bane to turn away long enough for her to cross the distance that separated her from the Goddess of Magic.

Then it would be Mystra’s turn to rejoice.

New Acheron

As the heroes crested the final hill and looked down into the valley where Castle Kilgrave lay, they saw the state of absolute disrepair the castle had fallen into. Kelemvor felt his heart sink as they rode to the ruin.

“Unless some creature got her or the ground swallowed her up, Caitlan is here somewhere,” the fighter said. “But I still don’t understand why she ran off.”

Cyric sighed. “I’ve told you a dozen times this morning, Kel: I don’t think she ran off. Caitlan was still asleep when I came on watch, and I didn’t hear her leave.”

“But that still doesn’t explain where she went,” Midnight said, her concern for the child evident in her voice. “Or how she got out of camp without anyone hearing her.”

“With all the strange goings on,” Adon said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the ground did swallow her up.”

Kelemvor tensed. If the girl was dead, or even just gone for good, he wouldn’t get his reward. A slight ripple ran through his muscles. “Get off this horse, Adon. Now!”

“But — but —”

When Kelemvor didn’t even turn around to argue with him, Adon realized he’d best just walk the rest of the way to Castle Kilgrave. He didn’t like sharing a mount with the fighter anyway; he sweated too much.

Kelemvor turned his attentions back to the castle. There could be no question that Castle Kilgrave had once been magnificent. The castle’s design was insidiously simple, which made the place all the more intimidating. The keep was a perfect square, with gigantic cylindrical towers placed in each corner. Huge walls connected to the windowless towers, and a massive obelisk jutted from the wall facing the heroes on one side — obviously the entrance. The entire structure had the look of bones left out in the sun to bleach.

As the heroes got closer, they saw that the castle was three stories high, and was surrounded by a moat that had dried up long ago. Whatever creeping terrors the moat once held to frighten away thieves and assassins were now reduced to fragments of misshapen bone that jutted from the rich brown earth and served as excellent grips for Cyric as he descended into the bowl-shaped crevice.

“Try to climb up to the gate,” Kelemvor called to Cyric as the thief reached the bottom of the dry moat and started to climb toward the castle.

“Still stating the obvious,” Cyric muttered under his breath. “That’s our Kelemvor.”

The drawbridge stuck partially open, and the massive chains that worked its mechanisms were rusted together, refusing to make even the slightest sound as Cyric climbed from the moat to the base of the chains and grabbed hold of them, using the huge links as hand and footholds. Cyric climbed higher then, to a crumbling ledge, and followed it to the side of the partially raised drawbridge itself. There, Cyric slid between the bridge and the wall, and dropped fifteen feet to the floor. Moments later, he forced the mechanisms to lower the drawbridge.

Kelemvor, Midnight, and Adon tied the horses to the posts that stood as sentinels before the drawbridge, and took only their weapons and some torches with them as the bridge creaked noisily to the ground before them.

“So much for stealth and subtlety,” Midnight sighed. “Perhaps we should simply wait here for the owners to welcome us in, too.”

Adon found the mage’s comments amusing. Kelemvor did not. “Let’s just get this over with,” the fighter growled as he headed across the bridge. “We can still hope for some reward if we can find Caitlan or her mistress.”

Cyric stood at the gate, his sword drawn, waiting for a foul guardian to rush at the heroes as they entered Castle Kilgrave. But no creature reared its ugly head. In fact, the drawbridge’s loud descent seemed to attract no attention at all. “This is very odd,” the thief said as the heroes joined him. “Perhaps we’ve found the wrong ruined castle.”

Kelemvor frowned and led the way into the first, huge room of the castle. Visibility within the walls was difficult, even with the glittering torches the heroes carried. But it soon became clear that the vast main entry half was completely empty, and the party headed down a corridor across the room from the gate.

Cyric looked into many of the small rooms they passed as the heroes made their way deeper into Castle Kilgrave. The rooms he saw were all very similar — the shattered remains of a table propped up against one wall, the broken seat of a once-regal chair laying nearby, the decaying corpse of some animal that had found its way in and starved, or became diseased before it met its death in a corner. Other rooms were completely vacant.

The corridors themselves were framed by ivory pillars trimmed with gold at intervals of every sixteen feet. The gold had mostly been scraped away. The rugs that ran through the halls were water-logged and ruined, although the patterns and materials, visible even through the grime, revealed them as once-priceless fineries. The ceilings were arched, and the details of the intricate plasterwork representations were obscured in all but a few cases. The random images visible were odd, chaotic mixes that spoke of clashes between titans, and faceless monarchs who sat upon thrones made of skulls. Not once did the plaster hold an illustration of kindness or joy.

After almost an hour of wandering and finding nothing to substantiate the child’s wild story, Cyric put voice to the notion that troubled them all.

“Gold,” he said sarcastically, his words echoing wildly through the deserted and shadowy corridors.

“Aye,” Kelemvor said, wishing not to be reminded. A violent shudder ran through his body, and the fighter reminded himself that the quest was not over yet. He still might get his reward.

“Riches beyond imagining, adventures beyond belief,” Cyric said, cracking his knuckles to relieve the boredom.

“My limbs ache,” Adon said quietly.

“At least they’re still attached,” Kelemvor reminded him, and the cleric fell silent.

“Perhaps there are riches to be found here,” Cyric said at last. “Some reward to justify our efforts, at the very least.”

“Don’t you think this place has been picked clean many times before?” Midnight waved her torch around. “Have you seen anything of value here so far?”

“Not yet,” said the thief. “But we haven’t gotten very far.”

Adon was not convinced. “If Caitlan’s mistress was held prisoner here by brigands, human or otherwise, we should stay long enough to find the body and give it a proper burial. Perhaps Caitlan is already here somewhere doing just that.”

“Then the best thing to do is split up so we can cover more ground. Adon, you go with Midnight and search the lower floors. Cyric and I will search upstairs,” Kel said at last. “We must get some reward for this journey, and I’m not leaving until we find something of value.”

When they found a staircase, Kelemvor and Cyric departed to search the upper levels, hoping to find Caitlan — or at least some hidden riches in what had surely once been the royal bedchambers of the wealthy families who raised the fortress long ago.

Adon accompanied Midnight on a search of the castle’s lower levels. They descended the spiral staircase, the air growing colder as they made their way beneath the ground. Just as they stepped off the final landing and moved into a small antechamber at the foot of the stairs, Adon uttered a startled cry, A wrought iron gate had descended, impaling one of his billowing sleeves and holding him in place while two other gates shot out, one at each side, their long spears threatening to end the cleric’s life.

The cleric tore loose before the gates slammed into place, but he was now separated from Midnight. Adon looked at his torn sleeve, mourned it for no more than a second, and moved to help Midnight as she tested the strength of the bars from the other side of the barricade.

“Kel!” Adon yelled. “Cyric!”

Midnight knew the cleric’s cries would not be heard — at least by their friends. She turned away from the bars and was shocked to find a heavy wooden door, three times her height, blocking the way behind her. The door had not been there moments ago. Then there was a scraping at the door, and the sound of a voice crying out beyond it.

“Caitlan?” the magic-user cried. “Caitlan, is that you?”

Midnight leaned in close to the door and strained to make out the sounds more clearly. The door flew open then, revealing a long, empty hallway. The crying had stopped.

Midnight shook her head. “Adon, you wait here and I’ll see where this leads.”

But when she turned around, the cleric was gone.

Kelemvor and Cyric found the upper levels of the castle in the same state of decay as the ground floor. The only thing that seemed odd was the total lack of windows. Not a single opening had presented itself since they attained the uppermost floor, and each chamber they visited was much like the one before it, either empty or filled with broken furniture and tattered rugs.

At one point they came upon a huge chest, the lid rusted shut. Kelemvor drew his sword and shattered the lock. They both pulled at the lid, then recoiled as their efforts were rewarded by the sickening smell that accompanied their “treasure.” Within the chest they found the corpses of a small army of rats. The sudden exposure to the air caused the bodies to decompose rapidly, and they melted into a disgusting pulp that dripped from their splintering skeletons.

As Cyric and Kelemvor returned to the corridor, the fighter felt his muscles tighten and pain shot all through his body. “There’s nothing here!” he cried. The fighter dropped his torch and put his hands up to his face. “Get out of here, Cyric. Leave me alone!”

“What are you saying?”

“The girl must have been lying all along. Just leave my mount, take the others, and ride out,” Kelemvor said.

“You can’t be serious!” Cyric said.

Kelemvor turned his back on the thief. “There is no reward to be found in this place! There is nothing! I renounce the quest.”

Cyric felt something strange beneath his feet. He looked down and saw that, beneath him, the tattered rug had begun to reweave itself, its brilliant patterns spreading outward like wildfire down the hall in both directions. The rejuvenated carpet seemed to root itself into the floor; then it sped upward and covered the ceiling.

The corridor began to shake as if an earthquake was tearing through the land beneath the castle. Chunks of the wall broke free and fell on Kelemvor and Cyric, but the blows were absorbed by their armor and they protected their faces the best they could. Then the rug moved to attack them, as if giant, powerful hands were using it like a glove. The rug was clearly trying to grab the warriors and crush the life from them.