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Now alone, Elryn looked around at the trees, saw nothing moving or watching, shrugged, and followed his fellow Sharrans onto the slab.
Even before their battle with the elf who'd slain Iyrindyl with such casual ease, he'd thought this entire scheme of holy Sharrans trying to be mages was wrong...dangerously wrong. Dreadspells, indeed. Still, if by some miracle what lay at the other end of this teleport was not one huge trap, it just might lead to enough magic to win them Darklady Avroana's holy approval... and survival long enough to enjoy it. He smiled slowly at that thought, said, "Karsus," with slow deliberation, and watched the world whirl away.
A red radiance lit up the darkness, gleaming back from a hundred curves of metal and countless gems. The light was coming from the floor...wherever they'd walked, the boot prints were a-glow.
It was too late to cry out a warning about awakening guardian spells or beings...Vaelam was already wading through knee-deep, shifting wonders to pluck at a gauntlet whose rows of sapphires were winking with their own internal light: the lambent glow of awakened magic, echoed in sinister chatoyance from a dozen places around the crypt. The low-ceilinged room was crammed with heaped treasures, most of them strange to the eye, and all of them, by the looks of it, harboring magic.
Elryn managed to keep from gasping aloud, but he was conscious of the quick glance Daluth threw him and knew his awe and wonder must be written plainly on his face.
The junior Dreadspells certainly hadn't wasted any time. Hrelgrath seemed to be waltzing with an armored figure as he tried to wrest a gorget from it, and a row of sheathed wands slapped and dangled against Femter's right thigh, depending from a gem-encrusted belt that enwrapped his waist as if it had been made for him. It had altered to fit him, of course. The eager-eyed priest was already reaching into another heap of armbands and anklets, seeking out something else that had caught his eye. Vaelam was drawing on the gauntlet, now, his eyes already on something else.
Only Daluth stood empty-handed, his hands raised to deliver a quenching spell should one of the reckless younger Dreadspells unleash something that could doom them all.
Elryn darted glances in all directions, saw nothing moving by itself and no doors or other ways out of the stone-walled room, and asked quietly, "Oh most diligent Dreadspells, has anyone spared a thought for how we'll be able to leave this place?"
"Karsus," Hrelgrath said clearly, the gorget clutched triumphantly in his hands.
Nothing happened, but Vaelam was already pointing into the farthest, dimmest corner of the chamber. "Another 'K' in a clear spot of floor yonder," he reported. "That'll be it."
"Aye, but to take us back out...or in deeper, to somewhere else unknown?" Daluth asked.
"Moreover, if I was intending to slay thieves who found their way hence uninvited, the way out is where I'd place guards of one sort or another," Elryn added, then...having not moved a pace from where he'd appeared...said, "Karsus" carefully. No whirling before his eyes occurred again, but he was unsurprised.
Slithering metallic sounds heralded Vaelam's continued digging...and as Elryn watched, he saw Femter slip something into his robes, his fingers working at a hitherto-hidden underarm pouch.
"Take nothing you ca
Femter's head snapped up, and he blushed as he found Elryn's eyes upon him. He opened his mouth to say something, but Daluth forestalled him by asking the room at large, "Has anyone found something whose powers are obvious?"
He was answered by shaken heads and frowns.
Elryn used the toe of his boot to open a small black coffer, lifted his eyebrows to the ceiling when he saw the row of rings it contained, snapped it shut again, then blinked at what had lain next to it.
"Daluth," he asked quietly, inclining his head toward the heap of gleaming mysteries by his boot, "that circlet...hasn't that symbol been used to mean healing?"
Daluth pounced on the diadem. It was of plain but massy gold over some more durable metal, and it bore the device of a gleaming sun cupped in two stylized hands. "Yes," he said excitedly. He held it up to show the others and snapped, "Find more of these. Leave off looking at other things for now."
The lesser Dreadspells did as they were bid, digging and tossing aside treasures, and rising, from time to time, with cries of satisfaction. Daluth took the items they proffered...four circlets and a bracer...and Elryn snapped, "Enough. All of you, take only so much as what you can wear or carry, and leave swords and helms and suchlike behind. We dare not try to awaken anything here. Gird yourselves as if for battle, I don't want to see anyone staggering under an armload of loose items."
He reached down and plucked up a number of scepters from among a litter of metal-bound tomes, platters and smaller boxes. Then, as if in afterthought, he casually picked up the black coffer, its dozen rings riding safely hidden inside it.
A few moments of work with the long thongs that always rode in his belt pouch, and the scepters were riding ready at his hip, the coffer hidden down the front of his breeches. Elryn was ready. He said briskly, "Vaelam, the honor is yours, I believe. Take us from this place."
The youngest Dreadspell looked at the clear space at the back of the crypt, waiting in silence for him, swallowed, and said, "You said there might be guards...."
Elryn nodded. "I have every confidence that you'll deal with them quite capably," he said flatly, and waited.
Reluctantly the youngest priest-turned-wizard picked his way through the crowded room, slowing as he approached the letter on the floor. Four pairs of eyes watched him go, their owners crouching down behind heaps of unidentified magic. Vaelam sent them all a look of mingled anger and despair, drew himself erect, and snapped, "Karsus."
As swiftly and as silently as he'd first left them, Vaelam disappeared.
As if that had been a signal, something moved in the heap nearest to Hrelgrath, rising amid a clatter of many small things sliding and tumbling as the Shar-ran stumbled back, moaning in wordless alarm.
"Do nothing," Elryn snapped. In frozen silence the four men watched a glowing sword rise into view, its naked and glittering blade aimed somewhere between Daluth and Elryn. It seemed a good five or six feet long, its ornate hilt a-wink with many lustrous gems, an ever-changing array of runes and letters flickering momentarily up and down the blue flanks of its blade.
"Hrelgrath," Elryn ordered, "follow Vaelam. Keep low, and do nothing in haste. Go now."
When the second sweating Dreadspell winked elsewhere, the sword in the air seemed to shiver for a moment, but otherwise moved not. Elryn watched it for a while, then said slowly, "Femter, follow the others."
Again the sword stayed where it was. When only Daluth and Elryn were left, the senior Dreadspell asked his most capable comrade, "In case some spell prevents us from ever returning here, is there anything in particular we should bear with us?"
Daluth shrugged. "It'd take years to examine all that's here...and even then, we'd only know a few powers of each thing. This is utterly … fantastic. There's more magic crowded in here around us than I think all who worship Holy Shar, in their thousands, can muster. If I have to take just one thing...let it be that stand of staves, yonder. Four staves, I think, almost one for each of us, and all of them sure to hold some sort of magic we can wield in a battle. If we can awaken them, we can at least play convincingly at being archmages ... for a little time."