City of Hawks

Chapter 22

Great claws scrabbled as the lions tried to stop their precipitous slide down the polished stone sides of the trap. Gord, as he fell, set his mind, thinking that perhaps the whole thing was some form of illusion.

Neither feline nor human succeeded. The slide continued despite outthrust claws and positive thinking. In seconds all eleven victims were dropped from the steep chute into a circular pit no less than twenty feet deep. The lions landed on their feet, shaken but unhurt. Gord also came through unscathed, for his training as an acrobat enabled him to handle the fall without difficulty and immediately move thereafter to the far wall in order to avoid being crushed by a plummeting lion.

The lightlessness in the circular pit was so extreme that not even the eyes of the shadow-lions could penetrate its murk. Then a pale luminosity issued forth, casting a soft, pale green light all around the small chamber. Some vestige of the talisman’s force still lingered within Gord’s ring, as he had suspected. The young adventurer had wished idly for light by which to see, and in the next instant a dim radiance began to issue forth from his eyes.

The two great male cats snarled and their hackles rose at the phenomenon. Gord spoke soothingly, and both Smokemane and Hotbreath calmed down, even culling their respective females to show the lionesses that all was well and to restore their own lost dignity. That was a very important thing to the big cats.

“This is good… perhaps too good to be true!” Gord exclaimed.

“You think a death trap is good?” old Smokemane growled.

Gord could not restrain himself from taking the head of the big lion and roughly stroking it. The gesture was both one of affection and reassurance. “This place was designed to catch intruders and imprison them in its depth until the guardians within the stronghold could come and deal with what they had caught according to need. Now, at Snuffdark, no sentry stands, no warder watches. I will leave this place in a moment, and soon I’ll have all of you out too!”

The lions stood still, Smokemane’s tail showing jerky twitches of uncertainty. Gord, meanwhile, took his dagger and went to work on the hard and polished stone with which the cylindrical hole was faced. He needed but scant niches for fingertips and toes. The work was simple, and soon indeed he was high above the upturned heads of the lions, legs disappearing over the pit’s rim.

He had pretended confidence at his ability to release his companions, but Gord was deeply worried that he would not be able to do so. The males weighed six or seven hundred pounds each, conservatively. The females were only slightly smaller. How could he ever manage to get such massive cats out of a well that was more than twenty feet deep?

A narrow walkway circled the pit. Opposite the place where the victims were precipitated into its depths by the smooth-floored chute, there was an arched opening, a tunnel of about six paces width and somewhat lower than it was wide. Although the radiance cast from his eyes was waning, Gord could still see well enough to manage a rapid exploration of the passage. There were rooms on either side of the tunnel, and behind a heavy grill the young adventurer spied several wooden shapes that could only be ladders.

The lock of the iron grating was easily dealt with, and in no time at all Gord was dragging a thick-timbered ladder back along the way he had just come. He slid the thing over the lip of the well, guided its end to the floor below, and then ran back up the tunnel once again, returning with a second ladder. This he placed beside the first, then slid down it to the bottom of the pit.

“I have placed these two ladders at as gentle an angle as possible,” Gord said to Smokemane. “You and your mates must use them to get out of this place, placing half of your weight on each. Go up the incline, and when the uppermost portion of the ladder is reached, it will be necessary to use your forepaws to draw yourselves over the rim. Don’t worry-the stone there is rough and cracked.” Gord looked into first Smokemane’s big eyes, then Hotbreath’s. “Can you and the lionesses do that?”

Before either male could growl in reply, a sleek female shot past them, leaped upon the pair of sloped ladders, and clambered up. “Yes,” she growled, and then gave a scrabbling leap and was atop the pit’s edge, peering down with feline hauteur. While Gord watched, all the remainder of the lionesses then climbed upward and out. The great males followed, with the wood groaning and bending under their weight, but not breaking despite the strain each of them placed upon the timbers. Finally Gord scampered up, doing so as easily as if he were serenely ascending a flight of broad steps.

“It might be beneficial to be a changeling, going from decent form to that of a hairless ape whenever the need arose,” the first lioness to climb free of the pit growled in droll, feline fashion as Gord sprang nimbly atop the well’s edge. He made no reply, but thought how nice it would be if he could become a great cat at will!

Soon enough the party of man and lions reached the terminus of the passage. A foul stench warned them of something ahead, and in the square chamber at the end of the passage was the source of the terrible odor-a dozen huge yeth hounds, lying almost dormant.

This place was certainly more than a Snuffdark lain it must be Imprimus’ main headquarters. Its pack of watchdogs, the yeth, were by no means active now, however. Snuffdark had brought all to a languid and torpid state. Under other circumstances, these creatures probably would have been roaming the tunnel, baying their fearsome cries whenever an intruder appeared. At the sight of the lions, though, the hounds were up and snarling. One threw its head back and began a mournful howling, a note that began in the low register and rose quickly beyond human hearing.

The sound made Cord’s hair stand on end, and he almost dropped his sword and dagger. At the first baying the lions responded with a chorus of coughing roars. The deep roars reverberated and echoed deafeningly in the enclosed, underground environment. In fact, the lions’ challenge to the monstrous yeth was so loud that the canines instantly left off their howling and attacked with bared fangs.

While the big cats were weakened by Snuffdark, they were not so reliant on shadowy light as were the mastifflike yeth. The dogs never had a chance because of this. While Gord fought for his life, fending off a pair of male yeth nearly as high at the shoulder as Gord was tall, the ten lions literally tore up the remainder of the evil pack of night-black monsters.

“I owe you for that,” Gord said, panting. Hotbreath had just taken care of the last yeth as the hound had been about to close its massive jaws on the young thief’s throat. The short sword and dagger were good blades, but definitely not the best things to use against these huge dogs.

“And you, lord, brought all of us safely from the pit,” the big male said, cleaning the dark blood from his paws and jowl. “Ferragh!” the lion growled in disgust. “There is no debt for my service in killing the yeth-you owe me a fat kill so I can get the vile taste of hounds’ blood from my mouth.”

“Consider it done! I will find some source of light for us, and then we must press on. The hidey-hole of Imprimus must be near.” Hotbreath went to the others to pass along the information, and Gord began a search of the large, square chamber. His light-vision was continuing to fade, and soon they would be in utter blackness again unless he could do something.

Three doors led from the kennel chamber. Each was set into the middle of one of the walls, and each of the heavy wooden panels was flanked by a pair of cressets. None were alight, but an examination revealed that there was a residue of oil in each. Using hunks of cloth and old weapon shafts that littered the hounds’ kennel, Gord soon had constructed three torches, their rag-topped heads soaked with the fuel taken from the cressets. By plying the tip of his dagger against the stone wall, he created a spark and thus ignited one of the rag-poles.

“Now, friend lions, I shall have to rely upon you entirely for my defense,” he said to the cats as he held the flame aloft. “With this torch now our only source of light, there will be little I can do but hold fast to it.” The thing cast only a dull illumination. In the realm of shadow, flames normally burned with a pearly, dove-gray radiance. During this season of absolute blackness, the oppression of Snuffdark caused even the hottest of fires to burn a drab and pallid gray. The sooty smoke of the torch rose from flame of dun, and a penumbral circle of light barely made visible objects that were but a dozen feet distant.

“We understand,” Smokemane answered for all. “Lead us to the way we’re to take, and leave the rest to us…” The huge male’s growled reply came loudly in the chamber, the last part trailing off into a snarl that indicated just how the lion contemplated handling his share of the expedition.

“There,” Gord responded, pointing to the left of the passage that led to the pit. His keen eyes had seen the dingy hair of the yeth hounds on and around the right-hand portal. That indicated a high probability that behind was nothing more than a storage room, the place the dead hounds’ food had been kept in all likelihood, and in any event a way seldom if ever used by the masters of the place. Otherwise, no accumulation of the beasts’ shed coats would be there. Similarly, the center door showed minute traces of corrosion on ring and hinges. These, and the fact that it was the only one of the three portals that opened outward, made Gord highly suspicious of it. He was willing to wager that it was a cleverly trapped device to catch and slay unwary intruders. “We go through that way. It is the only portal which sees regular use.” he added unnecessarily; lions care little for such reasoning, after all.

The door was pushed open easily enough. Behind it was a short landing and a long, worn flight of steps leading down. As the sputtering torch cast its scant, almost brown illumination, Gord went down the rough-hewn stone stairs, Hotbreath padding before him and the nine other great cats filing after. All were moving quickly, for soon the time of absolute dark would be over. Snuffdark would not recede gradually the way Twilight had waxed. The blackness came instantly at the final waning of the brightness, and it disappeared as quickly. When Snuffdark’s grim time was finished, Shadowrealm regained its usual pallor of shadowy silvers, manifold grays, deep blacks, until Mool waxed and the oppression followed again-a year’s span, as time was measured on the Plane of Shadow.

When they finally reached the bottom of the long stairway, Gord saw that they had arrived at what must be the very heart of the gloams’ stronghold. Above were the places for guards, hounds, and the rest. Down here were the workrooms, laboratories, and libraries of those who sought to usurp the rule of this plane for themselves.

Gord’s rapid exploration of the chambers that opened onto the gallery at the bottom of the steps revealed all this. It also provided him and his escort of lions with better light, for in one alchemical study he discovered an oddly fashioned lamp. It was enclosed in a crystal-sided box, making it almost a lantern. The fuel inside it was unidentifiable, but it had what was clearly a wick, and when the nearly exhausted torch was applied to it a healthy flame sprang forth. From this lamp came a misty light of luminous gray. The radiance spread into the hemisphere ahead of the lamp, casting its strange illumination a distance of almost twenty paces. Now the group was far better prepared to see and search.

Although this seemed the nerve center, there were certainly other places that had to be found. During Snuffdark, the gloams would be bolted closed in their personal chambers-unless they were of the same sort as Imprimus. Gord knew that fiend would be entombed in his casket or sarcophagus, awaiting the return of shadows upon the plane, at which time his powers would again be restored and waxing.

When he had attempted to get Shadowfire from Gord, the gloam-lich had been constrained by the power of the approach of Twilight. The brightest and darkest times of Shadowrealm were the only ones when Imprimus’ powers were diminished. The brightness of Twilight would certainly slay the vampiric lich if he were not safely hidden from it. The total gloom of Snuffdark made Imprimus very weak and without his full range of powers. It did not harm him physically, as the radiance of Twilight would; Snuffdark made the gloam subject to attack, however, through causing him great weakness. That, Gord hoped, would prove as fatal as the full face of Mool in its single period of glory.

“Gord! I smell bad smells. This way.” The rumbling communication came from Hotbreath. His body was in rigid point as he glared toward a dim recess of the subterranean library. With the guidance given by the big male lion, Gord quickly located a secret exit from the place, a door concealed by a shelf of ancient librams and scrolls. Again steps were discovered, and the young adventurer headed down them immediately, bringing a tail often lions after him.

There was a charnel reek arising from the narrow stairwell. Even Gord’s human hearing could also detect sounds coming from below. Then the light of the lamp shone on the gray pallor of shadow-bones. It was evident that the ghouls and corpse-eaters of the material plane had counterparts dwelling in Shadowrealm, for mingled with the stench of death were the unmistakable odors of those foul creatures who dined upon corpses and delighted in decay.

“What lurks below, friends,” Gord said softly, “is such which I can fight but poorly, bearing as I do our light.”

“Eaters of dead humans,” Smokemane nearly roared in reply. “We have encountered them once or twice, for such things will contest with us over our kills if they have not other flesh to feed on.” Gord noted that the cat made no distinction between human folk, such as found on Oerth, and the phantom folk of this plane. The phantoms were, in fact, the parallel of humans, their equivalent in Shadowrealm. But the gloams were something else, something unnatural, as inimical to the phantoms as to all other clean forms of life. The two big males squeezed past Gord and bounded downward. After them went the lionesses, and the battle was on.

Light held high, Gord hastened down the stairs immediately after the last female had shot past him. Snarls and roars were intermingled with the horrible shrieks and yapping of the ghouls and their even worse and more foul cousins, the ghulaz, as they sought to defend themselves from the lions’ ferocity. As reflections of the undead of the material plane, these eaters of corpses were severely afflicted by the time of total lightlessness. Although all creatures of Shadowrealm were affected by the gloom of Snuff-dark, lions being among the roster of animals, the great cats were by no means as weakened as the ghulaz and ghouls. The slowly moving, lethargic creatures were fighting desperately to save themselves, but their defense was not strong enough either to give serious injury to their attackers or give themselves hope of prevailing. The evil undead quickly understood this fact and sought to retreat.

Unlike the chambers above, where masonry combined with hewn and polished stone to form elaborate spaces, carven pillars, and the stuff of habitation, the place of the undead was stark and foul. The area was certainly a natural cave with only a few marks to indicate that hammer and chisel had worked its stone. Niches in the walls indicated the place might once have been a catacomb-although these recesses might simply have been cut to provide the ghoulish residents of the place a more comfortable and “homelike” atmosphere.

The uneven floor of the cave was a foul mess of bones, partially consumed carcasses, and filth. More bones and rotting cloth were evident in the niches and in odd corners of the large space where ghulaz or ghoul went to feed on some particularly choice morsel of corpse, or to take its ease. The creatures of this charnel cave, however, sought not to hide in niche or cranny. Instead, the smaller ghouls were shambling off toward a dark opening to the left, while the larger, dog-faced ghulaz were seeking refuge behind an upthrust slab of rock at the right rear of the chamber.

Gord ignored the lesser things. “The big ones-ghulaz!” he shouted to his feline comrades. “We must take them. Follow me.” With that, the young adventurer headed straight for the place the six dog-featured undead had slunk into. The space the shelter provided was certainly insufficient to hide all six. There had to be some egress there.

As the lamp shed its pale illumination on the place, however, Gord saw nothing but bare stone. No ghulaz, no exit. Nothing.

“I smell the reek of those things,” Smokemane growled. “They are near, but I cannot see them.”

Obviously, some powerful magic was at work. By utmost effort, Gord marshalled his will and disbelieved as he touched the rock wall of the sheltered spot. The combination worked. A small opening existed here after all-a narrow, low place that a man could squeeze through, but far too small for one of the great shadow-lions to use. “Stay here, my friends,” Gord rumbled to the lions. All of them were wounded by now, although most not seriously, but at any rate the big cats could do nothing to assist him in what must be done next. Somehow he had to deal with the ghulaz alone.

“I must take the light and go down this little tunnel,” he said quickly to Smokemane. “Use your noses to guard against the return of the death-stinking two-leggers,” he ordered, pointing to the place through where the ghouls had vanished. “Wait for me here. If I do not come back in the space of time you take to sleep a short sleep, go the way the stinking ones went. I think there must be a way above in that direction. I cannot offer you more than that.”

“We came willingly, lord. It has been a good hunt, and we have killed many. If it comes time, all of us will become prey ourselves without mewling. We will fight and die as lions do, and we will thank you for the honor you gave us,” the huge old male said, ending with a coughing that soon became deeper and louder. Hotbreath and the lionesses quickly joined, and In a minute the cave reverberated with the roars of a half-score of mighty cats loudly voicing challenge to the vile inhabitants of this foul, subterranean place.

Gord entered the narrow passage and found, to his mild relief, that the noise made by the angry lions lessened considerably once he was a few feet inside the cylinder. Lamp in his left hand and short sword in his right, he pulled himself through the tunnel opening with his elbows. Once he was past the narrow entrance, the tubelike passage was large enough to allow first crawling on hands and knees, then hunched walking. The way was still difficult, for the tunnel twisted in a generally leftward direction and inclined steeply. Worse, the horrible reek of the ghulaz so filled the little space that Gord had to fight back nausea as he hurried ahead.

In addition to his physical difficulties, Gord had a mental obstacle to overcome. How would he, alone, with only a sword and a dagger, fight and defeat six of the grisly dog-faced undead? He had to do it somehow, and survive the encounter as well, if he was to attain his ultimate goal of killing the gloam-lich. Failure to find Imprimus soon, very soon, would certainly spell his death anyway; and at the hands of that one, it would be an even more foul end than that of being slain by the ghulaz. If his weapons and his wits failed to see him through, then Gord was resigned to die fighting the hideous undead he pursued.

The stench grew suddenly stronger. Then Gord turned a corner and came face to face with one of the grinning things.

The greater ghoul had certainly meant to be there, waiting to take the young adventurer by surprise. The full glow of the strange light Gord held, though, seemed to affect the dog-visaged creature most adversely. The almost palpable beam of grayish radiance struck the dull, lifeless eyes of the creature, and the ghulaz seemed blinded and confused.

The effect lasted but a brief time, but it was an ample enough interval for Gord. He was already moving to attack at the first sight of the hideous thing. His enchanted blade swept forward in a glittering, upward arc that struck the ghulaz low in its abdomen and continued upward to slice the thing open from groin to ribs. The ghulaz howled, its foul breath gagging Gord as it voiced a scream of pain. Gord struck again with his sword, crossing from left to right along the creature’s neck. The keen edge of the weapon nearly sliced all the way through the leathery hide of the ghulaz, and the undead monster toppled backward from the blow, thin neck severed, its head flopping as it fell, attached by only a bit of sinew and hide.

The passage beyond was filled with the comrades of the thing. Although the tunnel was now high enough for Gord to stand upright, the walls were still only some three or so feet apart-room enough for but a single opponent to engage him. The greater ghoul immediately before him was crouching, beastlike, as if readying itself to spring. Now that the first monster had fallen, the rays of the lamp were now fully in the second one’s face. The canine features of the thing contorted, and it turned its head aside to avoid the illumination, freezing into motionlessness. Likewise, the monster immediately behind was affected by the pale light. When the beams fell upon its eyes, the third ghulaz growled foully and tried to back away. In response, Gord thrust the light ahead somewhat and stepped toward the stooped one that had averted its gaze. Neither it nor the one behind could retreat, for the three others behind them were trying to crowd ahead to get at this human who dared to follow them.

Horrible whining sounds came bubbling from the throats of the two ghulaz bothered by the illumination. The first dropped to all fours, now ready to attack. With the strength of desperation, Gord swung his sword down at the near-prone ghulaz’s hairless head. The impact jarred him, but the thing’s cranium split, exploding in a mess of rotten bone and putrid brains. Without hesitation, the young adventurer stepped upon the foul remains, so as to bring himself closer to the remaining undead monsters.

Now those behind their fellow understood what they were up against and set up a fear-filled yapping and gabbling as they sought to find escape from the terrible foe. It was certainly too late for the foremost of the ghulaz. Gray rays illuminated and short sword flashed, cutting and stabbing to send it to whatever nether plane it belonged upon. The three remaining survivors were now making good their flight, however.

Gord raced ahead, striking hard at the bony back of the hindmost ghulaz. The blow was more than sufficient to sever its spine and send its shrieking spirit into the hellpits along with those of its comrades.

Now but a pair of foul things remained, but both ghulaz were well ahead of Gord. He followed them as quickly as he could, and it was immediately evident that they were not quick enough to make good their flight. The rearmost of the two fell to his ferocious attack as easily as the others had been slain, and the last of the monsters was cowering just ahead, face pressed against a boulder that sealed off the tunnel. It was in a dead end and knew that true death was finally coming for it. Gord gave it a swift, painless end, even though such a thing deserved it not.

As the last of the dog-faced monstrosities fell, Gord noticed glyphs inscribed upon the big boulder it had been standing next to. The shadowy letters and signs squirmed under the light, writhing as do blind slugs exposed to the sun when a rock is overturned. Then the sigils actually began to make a frizzling sound and send up little streamers of oily-looking smoke.

Despite all that activity, the sort that usually presaged the disappearance of such signs, the glyphs remained upon the stone, and Gord feared to touch them. Then he thought of something: The lamp had been found in the gloams’ stronghold, so that any wards magically placed here would certainly not be affected by its illumination. Wisely, the young thief suspected that when he saw the strange effects of the radiance upon the glyphs, what showed before his eyes was something to delude any who saw it, to lull an intruder into a false sense of security so that he would think the glyphs had been neutralized and then expose himself to the protective force they still held within.

Although he hated to touch the foul form, Gord lifted the carcass of the last ghulaz he had killed and leaned it against the boulder. Nothing happened, just as he had assumed; not enough force was being applied. Then Gord put his upper back against the slain thing’s stinking body and began to push, using the ghulaz as a cushion between himself and the glyphs upon the rock he had to displace.

Now the protective sigils were beginning to do their work. Gord felt bones in the ghulaz’s body snapping, muscles and flesh losing their rigidity-the body was actually decomposing, disintegrating, from contact with the magically protected boulder! The stench was so noisome that Gord was actually regurgitating as he continued his exertion.

After a few moments that seemed like an eternity under the conditions, the remains of the ghulaz were almost jellylike, but were still substantial enough for Gord to push against, sickening though it was to do this. He could not stop now, for he had felt the boulder move slightly. Then the big stone shifted abruptly, and the hole it guarded was unblocked.

Breathing through his mouth, Gord tried to clean himself as best he could by wiping hands and torso against the rock wall. Then he stooped and entered the space between wall and boulder, passing with a feeling of hope and dread into what he was sure was the lair of Imprimus.