In the midst of that insanity, Dahlia dropped back to the floor, releasing two-foot lengths at the ends of her four-foot center pole. She had those outer poles spinning even as she landed, and she came right out of her crouch and pivoted left, launching a strike that caved in the skull of the nearest undead beast.

They were too agonized, too agitated and insane, to coordinate their movements against her, and Dahlia waded through them. Every reaching arm shattered under the weight of her spinning staff. Any ghoul’s face that got too near to her felt the butt end of Kozah’s Needle’s center pole.

She sprinted clear, down a tunnel, and when she heard pursuit, she broke the center pole apart and set her two weapons into coordinated motion, building momentum.

The ghouls neared—a pair of them, she believed.

Dahlia rounded a corner, her free poles spinning furiously at her sides, back to front. Then on one turn, she flipped her wrists under, bringing that spin even tighter so that the poles came up into her armpits, where she locked them tight. And she never eased the pull from those front poles in her hands right before her, up and angled away, straining to pull their ends free. Dahlia growled and tightened every muscle in her body, it seemed, straining greatly to hold the back poles in place while at the same time straining to yank them free.

She leaped out at the last moment to face the pursuing ghouls, and at that instant lifted her elbows. The poles shot forward with tremendous force, each flying like a spear into the ugly face of a surprised ghoul. The sickening splat of their butt ends cracking through skulls, one sounding wetter as it drove right through a ghoul’s eye, came as sweet music to the elf.

Everything seemed to freeze in place at that moment, Dahlia and the ghouls holding that macabre pose for what seemed like many heartbeats. The elf woman exploded into action again, tugging the ends free of the ghouls’ already rotten brains. They snapped straight back behind her own head where she shifted her hands ever so slightly to use that momentum to put them into reverse spins at her sides, then overhead with her right hand and down and across to smash the side of the skull of the ghoul on her left. At the same time, her left hand went up over her head and followed the same path as the first, only left to right, and that other ghoul’s head snapped to the side as it flew against the wall and crumbled into a dead heap.

Dahlia casually set the poles into motion again and stared back the way she’d come, though even with her keen elf vision, she couldn’t see much.

But there was no pursuit. She reformed her staff and buckled it once more into a single walking stick, then tapped it on the stone to bring forth the flickering blue light.

“Ah, Valindra Shadowmantle,” she whispered as she started away, “I do hope you’re worth all this trouble.”

Dor’crae was a vampire, and a vampire couldn’t sweat, of course, but still he felt the moisture all over his body, his clothes clinging uncomfortably to him. Normally, Dor’crae wouldn’t have needed a light to navigate subterranean chambers, but his complete inability to see anything piqued his curiosity.

He brought forth a candle and some flint and steel, and when the wick finally caught, the vampire peered around even more curiously. He was in a wide, high chamber, as he had suspected, but he still couldn’t see very much at all, just an opaque wall of steam brightened by his pitiful candle.

“What is this place?” he whispered to himself.

He had passed into a chamber full of steam that smelled like piles of rotten eggs, and that hissed as if he’d entered a pit of vipers. He’d traveled many miles from Luskan after several days following the inland “root” of the fallen Hosttower. The tunnels were of dwarven craftsmanship, surely, though it was obvious to Dor’crae that no dwarves had been there in a long, long time.

He kept the candle burning, though it was all but useless, and slowly navigated the chamber. He moved toward one hissing sound, and found it to be a vent in the floor, a crack in the stone through which poured more hot steam, and the awful smell only worsened.

He found no other easy exit from the chamber, but his eyes widened with surprise when he noted that the root of the Hosttower did not continue through it but snaked down one wall and disappeared through the floor. The vampire smiled, thinking his journey at its end. He blew out the candle and became as insubstantial as the steam around him. The vampire flowed through a crack in the floor, descending beside the root.

Several days later, somewhat shaken but thoroughly intrigued, Dor’crae arrived once more in the chambers of Valindra Shadowmantle.

The queen of Luskan’s underworld had many candles burning, and seemed more animated than usual, more lucid. She greeted Dor’crae pleasantly, even expressing her regret at not having seen him for a tenday.

“I followed the root of the Hosttower,” he explained. “You remember the Hosttower …?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know the place, the grand hall where it disappears under the ground?”

“She has no answers for you,” came another voice.

Dahlia stepped into sight from around one of the many decorative screens set about the chamber. She gave a little grin and nodded toward the skull gem on the shelf, the one inhabited by the spirit of Arklem Greeth. “But he does.”

“You’ve been …?”

“Tell me of this ‘grand hall’.”

“It’s a most remarkable place, as big as some cities in the Under—”

“Gauntlgrym,” Dahlia interrupted, and Dor’crae looked at her, obviously not understanding.

“The ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves,” Dahlia explained. “Long lost—some consider it a myth.”

“It is real,” said Dor’crae.

“You explored it?”

“I was turned away before I could get too far.”

Dahlia looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

“Ghosts,” the vampire explained. “Dwarf ghosts, and darker things. I thought it prudent to return to you with what I had unearthed. What did you call it? Gauntlgrym? How can you know?”

“Greeth told me. The Hosttower was tied to that most ancient of dwarven cities, and was built by dwarves, elves, and humans in a long-ago age, and for the benefit of all, though few dwarves ever lived in the Hosttower itself.”

“But its power benefitted this city, this ‘Gauntlgrym’?”

Dahlia crossed the room, shrugging as she went. “I would expect as much. Arklem Greeth knows little more, or at least I could discern little more, though I will try again soon enough. He is old—not that old, of course, but he seems confident of the work, masonry and magical, that built the Hosttower of the Arcane, and that it was indeed somehow tied to …” Her words trailed off as she noticed the puzzled look upon Dor’crae’s face.

“You wear two diamonds again in your right ear,” the vampire explained. “Eight in your left, and two, again, in your right.”

“Surely you cannot be jealous,” Dahlia replied.

“Borlann the Crow needed incentive, I expect?”

Dahlia merely smiled.

“Jealous?” Dor’crae replied then, with a laugh. “ ‘Relieved’ would be a better word. Better another in your right ear than you come to believe your left might look better with nine.”

Dahlia stared at him for a very long time, and the vampire feared that perhaps he hadn’t been wise to tip her off to the fact that he understood the significance of her jewelry.

“We know where to look now,” Dahlia said after a very long and uncomfortable silence. “I will continue my work with Arklem Greeth, gaining whatever insight he has to offer, and you must gather as much information as can be found about Gauntlgrym, or of how we might navigate its wards, like these ghosts you speak of.”

“It’s a dangerous road,” the vampire replied. “Were I trapped in this physical body, I would have had to fight my way in, and fight my way out, against formidable foes.”

“Then we will find even more formidable allies,” Dahlia promised.

Chapter 5 - A Drow and His Dwarf

WERE IT NOT FOR THE MORNINGSTARS SET DIAGONALLY ACROSS HIS back, their glassteel heads bobbing with every stride, Athrogate might have struck passersby as a diplomat rather than a warrior. His thick black hair was well kept, and his long beard was neatly tied into three thick braids set with shining onyx gems. He wore another onyx—a magical one—set into a circlet on his head, and his broad belt, dyed black, imbued him with great strength. Black boots showed the scuffs of a thousand mountains and a thousand trails. The rest of his clothing was of the finest cut and style: breeches of deep gray velvet, a shirt the color of the darkest of amethysts, and a black leather vest that served as a harness for the mighty weapons strapped to his back.

He was a common sight in Luskan, and his shadowy relationship with the dark elves was the worst kept secret in the City of Sails. But Athrogate walked the streets openly and often, in appearance, at least, alone. It was almost as if he was inviting some opportunist to take a try at killing him. And the dwarf liked nothing more than a good row, though that pleasure had been hard to find of late. His partner frowned upon it.

He walked to the corner of a building across the street from his favorite pub, Bite o’ the Shark—an apt name for anyone who had ever sampled the establishment’s private stock of Gutbuster. At the corner of an alley, Athrogate put his back against the wall and took out a huge and curvy pipe and began tapping down his pipeweed.

He was well into his smoke, blowing rings that drifted lazily over the street, when a striking elf woman exited Bite o’ the Shark and paused near a gathering of drunks, who began throwing suggestive, lewd comments her way.

“Ye see her, then?” the dwarf said out of the corner of his mouth, pipe still firmly in place.

“Hard to miss that one,” a voice answered from the shadows beside him. With the suggestive cut of her skirt, the high black boots on her shapely legs, the low cut of her blouse and a striking black and red braid, his words seemed a great understatement.

“Aye, and I’m bettin’, sure as the sun’s settin’, that one o’ them fools’ll go for her jewels. And oh, then they’ll know in the heartbeats to come, that her sticks’ll play skulls with the sound of a drum.”

The voice in the shadows sighed.

“Never gets old, does it?” Athrogate asked, quite pleased with himself.

“Never was young, dwarf,” came the reply, and Athrogate bellowed, “Bwahaha!”

“Someday, perhaps, I’ll come to understand how your thoughts flow, and on that day, I fear, I’ll have to kill myself.”

“What’s to know?” Athrogate asked. “One o’ them’ll go too far with her, and she’ll put the lot of ’em on the ground.” As he posited that very thing, one of the drunks stepped toward the elf and reached for her buttocks. She neatly dodged and smiled at him, wagging her finger and warding him away.

But he came on.

“Here it comes,” Athrogate predicted.

The man seemed to fall over her in a hug, from the vantage point of the dwarf and his companion, at least, but when the dwarf started congratulating himself on being right, the voice in the shadows pointed out that the drunk was up on his tiptoes. He started to turn slowly, the woman coming around to put her back to the open street. The elf had spun her walking stick and poked it up as he came at her, locking its tip under his chin and driving him up to his toes.