Escape from Undermountain

The silversa

They snaked past the glowering thanatars and coiled their smooth ante

The silversa

The chamber of the silversa

Corin sighed glumly, sitting slump-shouldered on the cold stone floor. "I'm sorry, everyone," the young lord said ruefully, "This is all my fault. We wouldn't be in this scrape if I hadn't gone and dashed off into the forest like such a dolt." He looked up at Artek with sad blue eyes. "You were right, you know. And so was my father. I can't do anything well. But you needn't worry. I've learned my lesson. I won't try to help ever again." He sighed deeply. "I apologize for getting you into this, Ar'talen. For your sake, I hope you can get me to Darien Thai and force him to have that tattoo fixed. But for my part, I don't care if I ever see the surface again."

The nobleman hung his head and fell silent. Guss gazed at him with worried green eyes, cradling Muragh in his clawed hands. Beckla shot a sharp look at Artek. It was clear she wanted him to say something. Artek just shook his head. Everything he had said before had been thoughtless and cruel. What could he say now that wouldn't simply cause more damage? It was better if he simply remained silent.

With a sound of exasperation, Beckla stood up. The silversa

"Look at all this stuff," she said in sudden amazement.

"What is it?" Muragh asked.

She rummaged through one of the piles. "Broken wizard staves. Shattered wands. Cracked potion vials. Old spellbooks." The wizard looked up in wonder. "It's all magical paraphernalia."

Artek quickly stood. "Is there something that might be able to help us?"

Beckla frowned. "I'm not sure. Pretty much all of it seems to be broken or damaged. But there might be something of interest here…"

She kept searching, and the others joined her. As far as Artek could tell, all of the items-staves, rods, magical crystals-seemed to have been deliberately smashed. Perhaps the silversa

Just then, Guss let out a grunt of surprise. With a claw, he plucked something gold and glittering from one of the piles. "Beckla, take a look at this. I'm not sure, but it looks to me as if it's-"

At that moment, the silversa

"Decided then are we, yeses?" one of the silversa

"Yeses, yeses," answered another. "More learn we mussst, before gain can we knowledge theirsss."

The first silversa

Artek glared at them warily. "What do you mean, 4ake us apart?"

"Take apart mean we, yesss?" the silversa

Several silversa

"Worry not, yesss?" the leader of the silversa

The silversa

One of the silversa

"Get back, you metal worm!" the wizard cried. She shouted several arcane words, and blue magic crackled between her outstretched fingers. "Get back, or I'll melt you!"

The silversa

"Magic, yesss?" they cried excitedly, clustering around the wizard. "How cassst you did magic? Ssshow usss, yesss? Ssshow usss!"

The silversa

Artek leaned over to murmur in her ear. "What in the world did you say to them?"

"I told them I'd teach them how to do magic," she whispered back.

"You what?"

“Yоu heard me, Ar'talen."

"I heard you, but I don't understand. I'm no wizard, but even I know that only living beings can wield magic."

Beckla nodded. "I know that, and you know that. But they don't know that" Her smile broadened into a grin. "As it turns out, the silversa

Beckla gestured subtly toward the heaps of broken artifacts. That's what all this stuff is for. Somewhere along the line, they developed a crazy notion that when magical objects are broken, their magic is released. They sleep near these heaps of junk in the belief that, over time, they'll absorb some of that magic."

Artek shook his head at this absurdity. "So what are you going to do?"

"You'll see," she replied mysteriously. She approached the waiting silversa

Corin, Guss, and Muragh looked at Artek questioningly, but he only shrugged his broad shoulders. He had no idea what the wizard intended to do.

"All right, then," Beckla said crisply, addressing the mechanicals as she might a class of new apprentices at a school for mages. "Casting magic really isn't all that difficult. It's simply a matter of using the proper inflection. Now, follow my movements as best you can, and repeat after me."

She weaved her arms in a complex pattern while uttering a string of words that, to Artek, sounded far more like nonsense than they did magic. The silversa