Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,38

just a passing ripple of Faerzress, then she realized it was holding steady. Another portal? With rising excitement she moved to it—only to bump into a barrier that felt as solid as stone. It appeared to be a magical ward, capable of keeping ethereal creatures at bay.

The green glow extended far above and below her, and for some distance on either side. Like the stone, it had numerŹous cracks, wide enough to admit an ooze, but too narrow for Cavatina to pass through. She forced herself against the barrier, hoping it would give way, but it didn’t.

She pressed her eye to one of the cracks and peered inside. She saw a natural stone cavern with cracks in its walls, floor, and ceiling. The black ooze was inside the cave, slithering toward a score of other creatures: slugs, oozes, and slimes of varying hues. They sat, quivering, at the center of the room, as if waiting for something.

Several tunnels led away from the cavern. Cavatina spotŹted movement inside one of these: a figure walking toward the main cavern with smooth, flowing steps. It turned out to be a naked drow—an exquisitely beautiful male with eyes of a shade Cavatina had never seen before: pale green, like a newly budded leaf. The odd-looking drow moved without hesitation to the oozes, slimes, and slugs. He halted, his arms raised. As Cavatina watched, horrified, the creatures swarmed him, flowing over the drow in layers like quivering blankets. When they parted again, the drow was gone. Not even a smear remained.

“Self-sacrifice,” Cavatina whispered. Had the drow been drugged? Compelled by an enchantment to offer himself to the creatures? Or had he been one of Ghaunadaur’s followŹers, going willingly into the maws of the slime god’s minions? She’d heard the fanatics sometimes did that. She shook her head in disgust.

Cavatina decided to see where the drow had come from. She made her way around the edge of the cavern to the tunnel he’d just come through. The magical barrier surrounded that tunnel, too. Like the cavern, the tunnel had numerous cracks in it—cracks that extended to the magical barrier. She worked her way around the tunnel, looking for a gap large enough to pass through. There wasn’t one. She expanded her search. The magical barrier, she learned, enclosed an enormous space—an area that might be almost as large as the Promenade itself.

By pressing herself against the shimmering green glow here and there and peering through cracks, Cavatina could see what lay inside the rest of the space. Most of the areas she peered into were natural caverns like the first, but a few were proper rooms, cut from the native stone. One of these held an enormous iron scorpion that turned restlessly, its stinger tail scraping the ceiling of the too-small room.

“A scalander?” Cavatina mused aloud. Was this the one Meryl had babbled about? It had been down here a long time, judging by the accumulated grit on its body and the numerous gouges its stinger had scraped in the ceiling.

Cavatina continued to explore the limits of the magical boundary. Tunnels led away from the central caverns, each surrounded by a tube-like extension of the magical barrier. All dead-ended after a short distance except one: a tunnel that led past what looked like a recent lava flow. Just beyond this point, a staircase slanted upward. It was enclosed by the glowing green barrier too.

Cavatina climbed through the stone beside the staircase, and found herself in an abandoned mine tunnel with a ceiling level with her chest. That told her she was in one of the oldest secŹtions of Undermountain, far below the Promenade: the ancient mithral mine excavated twenty-six centuries ago by the dwarves of Melairbode. Bluish light rippled through the wall and disappeared. Even this deep, there were traces of Faerzress.

The portal that led back to the Hall of Empty Arches lay somewhere within these mine tunnels—though Cavatina doubted it would be much help. Even if she did manage to find it, she doubted it would transport her while she was in ethereal form.

The magical barrier extended only as far as the top of the stairs, which ended in a simple, open arch, just high enough for a dwarf. Inside the arch, the magical barrier was a difŹferent color. Instead of green, it glowed with a golden light that shaded to green at its edges. On the other side of this barrier, at the top of the staircase, sat an enormous gray ooze. It pressed