vi-sualize. If I'm able to cast it, I might use it to find the Crescent Blade. If, that is, you could tell me where I should begin my search. Where was Mathira when she disappeared?"
"She was last seen in Harrowdale," Uluyara answered. "From there, she was to travel south to Scardale, then on to Blackfeather Bridge. She could hardly go missing along so well traveled a road, and so we assumed she veered from it and became lost. Mathira's business was urgent and perhaps caused her to choose a shorter route - to travel to Blackfeather Bridge in a direct line across the Cold Field, instead of circling around it by road."
Already Halisstra was deciding how to use her spell to best ad-vantage. She'd travel to Harrowdale, orient herself in the direction of Feather Falls, and march in as straight a line as possible, casting her spell every eight hundred paces - the limit of its range.
"How big is the Cold Field?" Halisstra asked, picturing some-thing the size of a large cavern.
"Unfortunately, the Cold Field is widest from northeast to south-west," Uluyara said. "It's openground - so no more than a two-day march at a steady pace. But it will be far from easy. You'll be lucky to reach the other side of it alive. Luckier still, if the ghosts that inhabit that bleak place haven't driven you mad long before you leave it."
"Won't any of the other priestesses be coming with me?" Halis-stra asked.
"Most have already left to search for the yochlol that killed Breena. The one or two who remain have other, equally pressing matters to attend to. I don't know if they can be spared."
Halisstra's eyes narrowed, and she asked, "You don't really expect me to find it, do you?"
"It isn't that, child," Uluyara answered softly. "It's just that some journeys must be taken alone." Her gaze drifted up toward the tree-tops. The singing had stopped. Breena's body had been laid to rest.
The night air was cold, but Halisstra felt a fire begin to smolder inside her.
"I'll find the Crescent Blade," she vowed. "On my own. I don't need help from anyone."
She turned and strode into the forest, back to the shelter she shared with Ryld. Uluyara might not have faith in Halisstra, but there was one greater who did.
Eilistraee.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Valas waited, a kukri in each hand, at the end of the tunnel that Pharaun had bored through solid stone with his magic a moment be-fore. Perfectly smooth and slightly oval in shape, the tunnel was not quite high enough for Valas to stand fully upright. He stood with shoulders hunched, his hair brushing the magic-warmed stone.
Pharaun, a pace behind him, chanted softly, holding the tiny seeds that were the spell's material component between forefinger and thumb. The mage had prepared well over the course of the four days it took them to reach the portion of the Underdark that lay beneath Myth Drannor. He'd already cast the spell several times, extending the tunnel until it was more than a hundred paces long. If the rogue who'd told Valas about the portal had been accurate in his estimates, the distance between the corridor behind them and the vault they hoped to reach was close to that figure. The next spell should see them through the intervening rock.
As Pharaun completed his spell, flicking the seeds at the tunnel's end wall and pointing with his forefinger, Valas braced himself. The stone before him shimmered, then seemed to melt away in front of Pharaun's finger, revealing a large room about ten paces ahead. A rush of stale air came back along the tunnel, carrying with it the smell of dust and desiccated flesh.
Quiet as a spider, Valas crept forward and peered into the ancient treasure vault. It was, as the rogue had described, immense. Circular in shape, it was perhaps a hundred and fifty paces across and fifty paces high, with a domed roof whose ceiling was inlaid with intricate mosaics. Those, wrought in polished pebbles - many of them semi-precious stones - depicted a number of the surface elves' gods, bows in hand with arrows nocked. Portions of the mosaic had fallen away in spots where tree roots had grown down through the ceiling, bulg-ing its masonry inward. Chunks of stone and a scattering of earth lay on the floor below. The gods that remained in the mosaic frowned down into the empty room as if angered by its decrepit state.
At floor level - about five paces below