Storm of the Dead by Lisa Smedmen

Author:Lisa Smedmen [Smedmen, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

Mazeer lifted the bottle to her lips, inhaled, and swam forward a few more strokes. Her exhaled

bubbles flattened against the roof just above her head. A Nightshadow swam immediately

ahead of her, his feet fluttering the water. Ahead of him, the passage they were following

narrowed to a crack that looked barely wide enough for a drow to squeeze into. The cleric

paused there, sculling in place, and stared into the fissure, his face illuminated by the blue-green

Faerzress that permeated the nearby stone. Mazeer took another suck on the bottle that trailed

by a cord from her wrist, and swam up next to him.

Another dead end? she signed. The Nightshadow shook his head and his mask fluttered back

and forth like wave-lapped seaweed. It

leads down. His chest rose and fell as he breathed water.

Mazeer sucked another breath from her bottle. Bubbles continued to stream out of it as she

lowered it, tickling her arm. This is pointless. We should go back. This place is a labyrinth.

It looks as though the crack widens, about a hundred paces below. What if it's the passage that

leads to the Acropolis?

Mazeer peered down the narrow crack. She'd been uneasy about closed-in places ever since the

time, as a novice wizard, she'd miscast a teleportation spell and wound up wedged inside one of

the college's chimneys. Unable to climb out, unable to refresh her teleportation spell because

her spellbook was inside her pack, mashed tight against her back, she'd remained stuck inside

the chimney until she was faint with hunger and thirst and her clothes were soiled. Eventually,

someone conjuring darkfire in the fireplace below had at last heard her hoarse screams for help.

She'd made a point, after that, of learning a spell that would reduce the size of her body. It

helped, a little, to know she could use it to free herself if she did get stuck. Yet as she stared

down into that long, narrow fissure the old fear made her shudder. She didn't want the

Nightshadow above her, blocking the way out.

You go first, she signed. I'll follow. ,

The cleric nodded and edged sideways into the gap. He nodded at the wands sheathed at her

wrists. Just don't be too long in following. If this leads to a monster's lair, I don't want to be

fighting alone.

Mazeer laughed out the breath she'd just drawn from the bottle. 'Monsters' didn't scare her.

Back at the college, she'd slain everything the teachers had summoned and thrown at her.

Hordes of undead, however, were another matter entirely. Given a choice, she hoped the fissure

would dead-end in a monster's lair, and that one of the other search teams would have the

dubious honor of finding the route to the Acropolis. Daffir had predicted that one of the pairs of

searchers would find it, though he'd been woefully short on details. Nor had Khorl been much

help in predicting what they might face along the way, despite his haughty pride. So much for

the "best" the College of Divination could provide. Eilistraee's priestess had been right,

Kiaransalee's followers weren't so crazy that they couldn't cast wards.

The cleric pushed away from the ceiling, forcing his body down the fissure.

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