The Spectral Blaze

“Anything?” Balasar asked.

“Not yet,” Khouryn said. He turned toward Biri. “I noticed you and a couple of the Imaskari wizards casting a spell a while back.”

She shrugged. “More divination. It didn’t reveal anything. But that could be because Gestanius has countermeasures in place.”

“I imagine it is,” Balasar said. “But saying so won’t keep our new friends from getting restless. They’re going to want to turn back pretty soon.”

“We have lanterns,” Biri replied, and Balasar liked the matter-of-fact way in which she said it.

“That we do,” he said. “Still-”

“Look at that,” Khouryn said.

Balasar turned. The dwarf was using his new battle-axe, a cherished heirloom and gift from the Daardendriens, to point at a spot where the high wall met the vaulted ceiling.

Balasar squinted then said, “I don’t see anything.”

Khouryn gri

Predictably Medrash looked keen as a newly honed dagger to learn what was afoot. Clad in a black greatcoat with four layers of shoulder cape, the crystal globe that served as his arcane focus cradled against his chest, Nellis appeared almost as eager. The diplomat had been startled when Tarhun ordered him to join the expedition, but at some point on the sea voyage, his attitude had shifted, and he was enjoying himself.

It was Jemleh who advanced in a more leisurely fashion. Tall for a human, the Imaskari commander wore the same sort of ink black greatcoat as Nellis. But his had an oval onyx clasp to hold the high collar shut, and he carried a cane with a crook carved from the same stone to help him cast his spells.

“What do you need?” he asked.

Khouryn pointed as he had before. “It looks to me like there’s a rift at the very top of the wall, right before it bends out and turns into ceiling. It’s hard to see because it’s almost beyond the reach of the lights, and because of the way the stone humps out to either side. That makes it look like just an indentation, not the start of another tu

Jemleh squinted at it for a couple of heartbeats. “I think it is just an indentation.”

Biri smiled. “We don’t have to speculate.” She murmured a rhyme and pressed her hands together as though making a snowball. Between them appeared an orb of light like the ones the Imaskari had conjured except that the glow was golden, not silvery. She tossed it and it floated upward.

Its radiance spilled into a gap broad enough to allow the passage of even the biggest creatures assailing High Imaskar. It would be tight for the largest ones, but they could squirm through. Balasar felt a pang of excitement.

“You have good eyes,” Jemleh told Khouryn. “I admit we never noticed that. But you don’t know that it goes anywhere. There could be a back wall just beyond reach of the light.”

Balasar gri

“Right,” said Medrash. “We don’t.” He turned and beckoned for a couple of warriors of the Cadre to come forward. Jemleh achieved a similar result by pointing to a pair of Imaskari soldiers with his cane.

Nellis conjured another ball of light and floated it halfway up the wall. Gripping a first handhold, Medrash started to climb. Other men-at-arms followed. Meanwhile, the two Imaskari mages muttered incantations that Balasar realized were the same, perhaps a charm to enhance their strength or agility. Biri didn’t, though. Smiling, she simply awaited her turn to begin the ascent.

Balasar stuck close to her as they pulled themselves up. But there were plenty of places to grip or plant one’s toes, and she didn’t need any help. Above them, one of the Cadre warriors hauled himself up onto the floor of the gap and swore softly.

When Balasar reached the top, he saw what the excitement was about. Though it was impossible to know how far it extended, he and his companions had entered a cave every bit as spacious as the one below. He found it vaguely disquieting that such a prominent feature had gone undetected. It made him imagine a whole world riddled with lightless, secret spaces whose existence no dragonborn ever suspected, even when they were right above his head, beneath his feet, or within arm’s reach.

Mainly, though, it made him eager to press on. He looked around for Medrash and Khouryn; then everything went black.

He realized some countermagic had put out Biri’s light. He snatched out his broadsword; he and Medrash had left their greatswords behind in Skyclave, the Imaskari capital. The larger weapons were fine for showing what important fellows they’d become, but they preferred the blades with which they’d practiced all their lives when it was actually time to fight.

Khouryn bellowed, “Troglodytes!” Then came a thunk that was likely his axe cleaving flesh. An Imaskari yelled something in his own language. Perhaps trying to make a new light, Biri rattled off a spell in dactylic trimeter.

Balasar smelled a putrid odor. Instinct prompted him to pivot to the right and cut. His blade sliced something that gave a hissing screech. At the same time, he felt something sweep past his head as his foe’s attack, whatever it had been, just missed him.

Then amber radiance flared through the cave, revealing that their foes did indeed appear to be troglodytes, cave-dwelling reptilian savages like stunted parodies of dragonborn. But they had long necks like the creatures that had attacked Balasar and his companions beside the Methmere, skins that gleamed like quicksilver, and a quicksilver fluidity to their movements.

The cave started flickering from light to dark as Biri’s magic fought the power that sought to snuff her conjured glow. It made everything appear to move in a series of sickening, disorienting jerks.

Balasar had gashed his particular foe across the snout. It was hardly a mortal wound, and he followed up with a lunge. But the creature melted into shapelessness as if it really were made of liquid metal, flowed and splashed out of reach of the attack, and reformed itself. Its jaws opened.

Balasar abruptly remembered that the long-necked reptiles beside the Methmere had possessed breath weapons. He sidestepped, held his own breath, and lifted his buckler to cover his face.

A jet of vapor washed over him. His eyes burned and filled with tears. But in spite of them, and the flickering, he could just make out the troglodyte rushing him. He ducked a stroke of its flint-studded war club and thrust his point up under its ribs. It collapsed and Biri cried out behind him.

He turned. Two troglodytes had grabbed her by the arms, a tactic that deprived her of the use of any spell requiring mystical gestures, and were wrestling her toward the edge of the drop. She started shouting words of power, but Balasar doubted she could finish the incantation in the moment she had left.

He jerked his sword out of the creature he’d just killed, rushed Biri’s assailants, and slashed the throat of the one on the left. The other let go of her and pounced at him with raking claws and snapping fangs. He jumped out of the way, killed the thing with a cut to the spine, and only then recognized that he himself was teetering on the very lip of the drop. The wretched flickering was still playing tricks on his eyes. He heaved himself forward and banged down on his knees. It hurt but it was preferable to plunging to his death.

The ambient light belatedly grew brighter and steadier. Several paces away, Medrash had set the blade of his sword shining with Torm’s power. Peering around, Balasar was relieved to see that only a couple of his comrades were down. No doubt that was because there actually weren’t all that many quicksilver troglodytes, and those there were had only primitive weapons. Apparently they’d counted on their breath attacks and the explorers’ blindness to even the odds.