took a deep breath, inhaling the heavy aroma of the air around her.
“Do you not feel it?” Dor’crae asked. “You, who have lived at the edge of the Dread Ring of Szass Tam, must sense the transition.”
Dahlia nodded. She did indeed feel the damp chill, the smell of death, the sense of emptiness. Death, after all, was about all that she had known for the past decade of her life—continuously, personally, pervasively.
“It’s a sweet thing,” Dor’crae whispered to her, his voice going husky as he moved near to her exposed neck, “to walk in both realms.”
Dahlia’s eyelids felt heavy and for a few heartbeats she was hardly aware of the vampire’s approach. It was as if she smelled the invitation to the other realm, permeating her very being.
She popped open her eyes and they flashed dangerously at the nearby vampire. “If you bite me, I will utterly destroy you,” she whispered, mimicking Dor’crae’s teasing tones.
The vampire grinned and stepped back, remembering to bow once as he did.
She shifted just a bit to show Dor’crae the brooch she wore, the gift from Szass Tam that granted her heightened powers against the undead. A vampire would prove a formidable opponent to any living warrior, but with that brooch, and her own amazing physical discipline, Dahlia was quite capable of following through on her threat.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked.
“Behold the gateway to the undercity,” Dor’crae explained, moving to a nearby ruin, a pile of broken stones scattered in a roughly circular pattern as if they had once formed the rim of a well.
Dahlia hesitated and glanced across to the island that had once held the Hosttower of the Arcane, its rubble still clearly visible, and her expression remained doubtful.
“There are tunnels,” Dor’crae explained. “Beneath the waves.”
“You have been down there?”
The vampire smiled and nodded. “It is where I seek my respite from the sunlight. A most remarkable place, and with a most remarkable hostess.”
That last remark had Dahlia looking at the vampire with intrigue. “Hostess?” she asked.
“Yes, an exquisite creature.”
“Do not mock me.”
“You will like Valindra Shadowmantle,” the vampire promised.
With a flourish of his arms, Dor’crae flipped his cloak up over his shoulders. He seemed to blur, and Dahlia had to momentarily look away as the vampire transformed into a large bat, which dived into the well, disappearing from sight. With a sigh, knowing Dor’crae knew she couldn’t easily follow, Dahlia slipped into the hole. She had her staff doubled into a four-foot walking stick, and she spoke a quiet command and tapped it against the stone. Its folded end reacted to her command with flickering bursts of blue-white light.
Down Dahlia went, staff in one hand, her free hand and two feet working fast to bring her down the well. After about thirty feet, the narrow shaft opened up below her, so she crouched as low as she could and poked her staff below, illuminating the chamber. The floor was barely a dozen feet below her, so she didn’t even bother to squirm lower and hook her fingers to hang, but just folded up and dropped.
She landed in a crouch and glanced all around to find Dor’crae back in human form and waiting for her near another hole. Down they went again, to a crossing corridor and through a door into a side chamber. Several staircases, ladders, and narrow chutes later, they came into a labyrinth of tunnels and corridors, ancient structures, walls and doors and broken stairs, the oldest incarnation of the city that had come to be known as Luskan.
“That corridor,” Dor’crae indicated, pointing west, “will take us out to the islands.”
Dahlia walked over, leading with her illuminated walking stick, studying the walls and floor.
“Along its ceiling, you’ll find a mystery of the Hosttower,” Dor’crae explained.
Dahlia opened her staff to its full length and allowed the crackling light to wander to the tip once more. Then she thrust it above her, nearly touching the remarkably high ceiling of the tunnel.
“What is it?” she asked, running the staff tip along what seemed like veins in the ceiling.
“Roots?” Dor’crae asked as much as answered.
Dahlia looked at him curiously, but recalled the tree-shaped appearance of the now destroyed Hosttower of the Arcane.
Then a hissing sound from the tunnel spun her around, staff at the ready as some undead beast rushed at her, its long tongue darting between pointy yellow teeth.
Dahlia put her staff into a spin, but Dor’crae intervened, stepping forward and lifting his hand toward the ghoul and staring at