A group of more than a dozen grabbed up all of the precious torches stored at the far end of the hall, at the mouth of a tunnel the group had planned to traverse after their rest stop, and went running away.

Others followed in the chaos.

Temberle knocked down another bat, and Hanaleisa matched him. Other nightwings swept out of the chamber in pursuit down the tunnels.

When it finally ended, just over a score of refugees remained, with three of those badly wounded.

“It won’t hold,” Hanaleisa said to her brothers and uncle as they gathered together their scant supplies and few remaining torches. “We need to find a way out of here.”

“Uh-uh!” Pikel emphatically disagreed.

“Then light your staff!” Hanaleisa yelled at him.

“Ooooh,” said the dwarf.

“Hana!” Rorick scolded.

The monk held forth her hands and took a deep breath, composing herself. “I’m sorry. But we need to move along, and quickly.”

“We cannot stay here,” Temberle agreed. “We need to get as close to Spirit Soaring as we can manage, and we need to get out of these tunnels.”

He looked at Pikel, but the dwarf just shrugged, hardly confident.

“We have no other option,” Temberle assured him.

A commotion behind them turned them around, and Rorick said, “The scout returns!”

They rushed to the fisherman, Alagist, and even in the torchlight, they could see that he was thoroughly shaken. “We feared you dead,” Hanaleisa said. “When the bats came in—”

“Forget the damned bats,” the man replied, and the punctuation of his sentence came as a thump from the distant corridor, like a rumble of thunder.

“What—?” Temberle and Rorick said together.

“A footstep,” Alagist said.

“Uh-oh,” said Pikel.

“What magic?” Hanaleisa asked the dwarf. “Uh-oh,” he repeated.

“Gather up the wounded!” Temberle called to all still in the chamber. “Take everything we can carry! We must be gone from this place!”

“He can’t be moved,” a woman called from beside an unconscious man.

“We have no choice,” Temberle said to her, rushing over to help.

The chamber shuddered under the reverberations of another heavy footstep.

The woman didn’t argue as Temberle hoisted the wounded man over one shoulder.

Pikel, torch in hand, led the way out of the chamber.

“Come on, then!” Ivan yelled into the darkness. “Not with yer head, ye damned squid, but all o’ ye! Come and play!” He didn’t have his axe, but he hoisted a pair of rocks and banged them together with enthusiasm bordering on murderous glee.

That physical manifestation of anger echoed the dwarf’s sheer rage, and once more, the intrusions of Yharaskrik faded to nothingness. If the illithid had come to him that time with any hope of possessing him again, Ivan believed with confidence, that delusion had come to an end.

But the dwarf was still alone, battered and bloody and lost in the dark, with no real expectation that there was a way out of those forever-twisting tunnels. He glanced over his shoulder to the watery cavern, and considered for a moment going back and trying to figure out a way in which he could survive on the fish, or whatever those swimming things might be. Could he somehow strain or heat the murky water enough to make it potable?

“Bah!” he snorted into the darkness, and decided that it was better to die trying than to simply exist in a dark and empty hole!

So off Ivan trudged, rocks in hands, a scowl on his face, and a wall of rage within him just looking for an outlet.

We walked for hours, often stumbling and tripping, for though his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, he still had to feel his way along. He found many side passages, some that led to dead ends, and others he took simply because they “felt” more promising. Even with his dwarf’s senses, so at home underground, Ivan had little idea of where he actually was in relation to the World Above, and even in relation to where he had first dropped down into the murky underground pond. With every turn, Ivan held his breath, hoping he wasn’t just going in circles.

At every turn, too, the dwarf tucked one of his stone weapons under his armpit, wetted his finger, and held it aloft in search of air currents.

Finally, he felt the slightest breeze on that upraised finger. Ivan held his breath and stared into the blackness. He knew it could be but a crack, a teasing, impassable chimney, a torturous wormhole he could never squeeze through.

He slammed his rocks together and stomped along, clinging to optimism and armoring himself with anger. An hour later, he was still in darkness, but the air felt lighter to him, and he felt a distinct sensation on that wetted finger whenever he lifted it.

Then he saw a light. A tiny spark, far away, rebounding off many turns and twists. But a light nonetheless. Along the walls, rocks took more definitive shape to the dwarf’s fine underground vision. The darkness was surely less absolute.

Ivan rumbled along, thinking about how he could organize a counter-strike against the dracolich and the illithid and their huddled, shadowy minions. His fears went from his own dilemma to his friends up above, to Cadderly and Danica, the kids and his brother. His pace increased, for Ivan was always one who would fight like a badger for his own sake, but who would fight like a horde of hell-spawned badgers when his friends were involved.

Soon, though, he slowed again, for the light was not daylight, he came to realize, nor was it any of the glowing fungi so common in the Underdark. It was firelight—torchlight, likely.

Down there, that probably meant the light of an enemy.

Ready for a fight, Ivan crept ahead. Knuckles whitening on stones, Ivan gritted his teeth and imagined the sensation of crushing a few skulls.

A single voice stole that bellicose attitude and had him blinking in astonishment.

“Oo oi!”

CHAPTER 21

FACING THE TRUTH

Cadderly emerged from the room after spending more than half the morning with Catti-brie, his face ashen, his eyes showing profound weariness. Drizzt, waiting in the anteroom, looked to him with hope, and Jarlaxle, who stood beside Drizzt, looked instead at his dark elf companion. The mercenary recognized the truth splayed on Cadderly’s face even if Drizzt did not—or could not.

“You have found her?” Drizzt asked.

Cadderly sighed, just slightly, and handed the eye patch to him. “It is as we believed,” he said, speaking to Jarlaxle more than Drizzt.

The drow mercenary nodded and Cadderly turned to face Drizzt. “Catti-brie is caught in a dark place between two worlds, our own and a place of shadow,” the priest explained. “The touch of the falling Weave has had many ill effects upon wizards and priests across Faerûn, and no two maladies appear to be the same, from what little I have seen. For Argust of Memnon, the touch proved instantly fatal, turning him to ice—just empty ice, no substance, no flesh beneath it. The desert sun reduced him to a puddle in short order. Another priest carries with him a most awful disease, with open sores across his body, and is surely failing. Many stories …”

“I care not of them,” Drizzt interrupted, and Jarlaxle, hearing the edge creeping into the ranger’s voice, put a comforting hand on Drizzt’s shoulder. “You have found Catti-brie, caught between the worlds, you say, though in truth I fear it is all a grand illusion masking a sinister design—perhaps the Red Wizards, or—”

“It is no illusion. The Weave itself has come undone, some of the gods have fled, died … we’re not yet certain. And whether it is the cause of the falling Weave, or a result of it, a second world is falling all around ours, and that junction seems also to have increased the expanse of the Plane of Shadow, or perhaps even opened doorways into some other realm of shadows and darkness,” said Cadderly.