Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,11

apprentice of Halaster—the wizard who used magic to carve out much of Undermountain.”

“Him, I’ve heard of,” Leliana said in a wry voice. Among the drow, Halaster was a name often followed by an oath. Centuries ago—long before Qilué had founded the Promenade—the “mad mage” and his followers had waged war upon the drow of Undermountain, slaughtering hundreds, if not thousands. Halaster had harassed the drow with his spells through the long centuries since. When the mad mage had died four years ago, Qilué had led the priestesses of the Promenade in a song of rejoicing.

“I’ve been thinking about the construct we followed here,” Naxil continued. “Trobriand was known as the ‘metal mage.’ He was famous for his constructs. The portal may have deposŹited us in one of his sanctums. That would explain why the crab made for it.”

“How do you know so much about ancient wizards?”

Naxil’s eyes crinkled. “My father was a sorcerer. An alcheŹmist. I was training as his apprentice, before I joined the Masked Lady’s dance.”

Leliana’s eyebrows rose. Naxil was a boy of hidden talents. “Do you know any spells?”

“Only a couple of cantrips—and not terribly useful ones. I can inscribe objects with an indelible House glyph, and”—his fingers twitched, and his voice suddenly shifted to a point behind her—”I can shift sounds.”

“Not bad,” Leliana said. “So why did you give up wizardry?”

His expression flattened. “I got tired of the beatings.”

A silent understanding passed between them. Leliana had been raised in Menzoberranzan, the daughter of a noble House. She too had learned early on that prestige and punŹishment walked hand in hand. Her back was clear now, but for years she’d worn the scars of her mother’s lash. When she’d borne a daughter of her own, Leliana vowed to give her a better life.

She wrenched her mind back to the present. “Expensive, to build constructs out of gold,” she commented.

“Practical,” Naxil countered. “Gold resists acid—that’s one of the ways you can distinguish it from the coarser metals. The only thing that will dissolve it is aqua regia. Trobriand obviously intended that the crab survive the oozes, once it had used the portal.”

Leliana glanced up the tunnel, to the dull red glow. “Let’s see what lies ahead,” she decided. “I’ll lead. You watch my back. Keep close, in case I need to sing us out of here.”

They made their way down the tunnel. Here and there, Leliana could see a momentary flicker of the Faerzress that had spread far and wide when the Crones worked their fell magic with the voidstone. Its light was drowned out, however, by the red glow from up ahead.

The farther they went, the brighter the glow became. The air grew hotter and drier. Leliana breathed warily, alert for the first signs of lightheadedness. If there was lava ahead, as she suspected, the air in the tunnel could prove poisonous. She glanced back at Naxil and saw sweat beading his brow and trickling down his temples. His hair and clothes were damp, as were hers.

They came to a place where the passage bent sharply. Leliana motioned for Naxil to halt and peered around the corner. The tunnel beyond it was bisected by a deep crevice in the floor that glowed with an eye-searing red light. Heat made the air above the crevice shimmer. Leliana sniffed, and caught the whiff of sulfur she’d been expecting. Somewhere deep in that crack, lava flowed.

The gap was too wide to jump. She decided they’d risked enough for one day. Time to get out of here and report what they’d discovered.

“Touch my back,” she whispered to Naxil. “We’re leaving.”

He did so, and she sang a hymn of return, but the sudden lurch of slipping sideways through the dimensions didn’t come. The prayer should have conveyed them both to the Misty Forest shrine: her designated sanctuary. It didn’t.

Naxil waited. His eyes held a silent question.

Leliana shook her head. “Trobriand must have warded his sanctum against teleportation. I’ll try something else. Keep watch.”

She stepped away from Naxil, sheathed her sword, and hummed a wordless prayer. With one hand touching her holy symbol, she turned slowly. Which way? she asked silently. Which way is the Promenade? She concentrated on its most prominent feature: the statue of Eilistraee that had been erected at the site of Qilué’s victory over Ghaunadaur.

The magic took hold, halting her. Her extended hand jerked straight up.

“By all that dances,” she exclaimed. “The Promenade is directly above us!”

Leliana nodded to herself. That explained how the tunnel ahead had cracked open