The Key

They passed turn after turn, passage after passage, always descending, always following the main tunnel. Naull lost track after they ignored more than three dozen side passages and her legs started growing weary. As they passed yet another shaft, this one to the left, she paused to examine the map and announced, "I think we're almost there."

Looking around, the party saw that a short distance ahead, the passage opened up on the left hand side. Instead of two walls and a ceiling, they saw a wall to the right but the ceiling and left wall were gone. Alhandra held up her lantern, but they couldn't see much in its dim light.

"Krusk?" Regdar asked. "Do you see anything?"

Peering into the darkness, the half-orc scanned the area. "Steps—thirty, maybe forty feet ahead. They wind down to the left then drop about forty feet," he said, leaning over the edge. "Flat area down there."

"That's all?"

Krusk nodded.

"All right; let's go. Be careful," Regdar added. "I don't want anyone falling off the edge."

They made their way down the passage and found the stairs quickly. Naull wondered how anyone managed to bring a wagon beyond this point but figured if there was a large, open area to the left they might have had some sort of unloading mechanism. It certainly wasn't important now. The stairs were smooth and slick with the cavern's dampness. The party moved cautiously, Krusk in front and Regdar at the rear.

About halfway down (as they figured the distance), Krusk stopped suddenly.

"Passages. All around the outside of the room," he said.

Regdar, who now followed the half-orc in the order, looked up at Naull.

"What do you think? Want me to light things up a little?" she said.

"Can you?" he asked carefully.

He remembered her light spells; they didn't provide much more illumination than a torch. She smiled back smugly.

I've been waiting for this, she thought, flexing her fingers in preparation.

She pulled out a small round stone she'd prepared and said a few words in Draconic. With a flash, the stone glowed brightly. In an instant, they were all blinking in daylight.

"Whoa!" Regdar shouted, surprised.

Naull grinned back. "New trick," she said, winking at him.

She tossed the glowing pebble in her hand and caught it.

"I'll say."

The cave looked like someone had torn the roof off and revealed the noonday sun.

They saw Krusk's passages almost immediately. The stairs curved down into the circular room, then ended a little more than twenty feet from where the party stood. A dozen passages, each sealed with a gate of some sort, ringed the outside wall. As they moved down into the open area, each in turn saw that the floor was covered with thin slime. They poked it warily, first with Naull's quarterstaff, then the tip of a dagger. Finally, Regdar pinched some of the residue between his mail-covered fingers and sniffed it.

"Normal," Regdar said, "but slippery, I imagine."

The party moved into the room and fanned out. A heavy-looking portcullis barred each of the passages. Naull walked up to one.

"Look at this!" she exclaimed.

The effect of the daylight spell stopped a few inches beyond the iron bars.

"Krusk," she called, "come over here a minute."

The half-orc sloshed through the mud, and at Naull's direction, he squinted through the iron bars. As he came away, he shook his head.

"Can't see anything," he grunted.

Naull held the daylight pebble up to the bars and hesitated. With a piece of string, she tied the pebble to the end of her quarterstaff and extended it between the bars of the portcullis. The light in the cavern went out suddenly. Someone—Naull thought it was Alhandra—gasped. She pulled the staff back and the light returned.

"What did you do?" Regdar snapped. He'd been startled, too.

Naull explained, "It must be a darkness spell—and a powerful one. It looks like there's one in each of these passages."

They looked around and saw that it was true.

"What do we do, then? Which way do we go?" Alhandra asked.

They stood in silence for a few moments, Naull idly tossing the pebble in her hand again. Then she remembered Krusk's recitation. She turned to the half-orc, who seemed to be testing the bars of one portcullis.

"Krusk! The key—you said the key would show us the way. Pull it out!"

Krusk paused only for a moment, then pulled the key out from beneath his chain shirt. The disk glowed again as he revealed it to them. In the effect of the daylight spell they could all see that the flat, flame-decorated key gleamed brighter than before.

But other than that, it did nothing.

"Try walking in front of the doors," Regdar suggested.

Krusk looked at Naull, then at Alhandra, and did as Regdar said. He held the key in his large, open hand and walked slowly around room. The rest of the party followed him, watching carefully for any sign from the disk or the passages.

Nothing happened.

"Well, that was no help," Naull grumbled. She picked up her right foot and looked in disgust at the slime. "Anybody see anything on any of the doors?"

Each portcullis looked identical and unmarked to her. Naull moved to the center of the room so the rest of the party could see every portcullis at once. She grew bored as they searched, however, and started flipping the stone in the air like a coin. The shadows in the room bounced up and down.

Finally, Regdar had enough. Breaking off his search at the sixth door, he strode to the center of the room and grabbed Naull's wrist in mid-toss.

"Stop that!" he said, frustration in his voice. "You're giving me a headache."

The pebble dropped past Naull's hand and plopped into the slime covering the floor.

"Oh, great," Naull said irritably as she crouched to retrieve it. "That's just great, Regdar."

She picked at the slime with her hands. Though the light centered on the pebble, it didn't make it any easier to find when it was covered in muck. She ended up having to sweep whole sections of the floor clean with her hand.

"Yuck!" she complained, flipping grayish slime off her fingertips. "I should make you do this, you know," she said to Regdar. "At least you have gloves!"

The fighter stared at the floor. Without looking away, he called out, "Krusk! Alhandra! Get over here!"

He crouched and started pushing away the muck with both gauntleted hands. Slime splashed up into Naull's face and she recoiled, then slipped and fell onto the floor, the glowing pebble back in her hands.

"Hey!" she protested. Regdar shot her an apologetic look but kept on sweeping. "Hey!" Naull exclaimed again as she saw what he was doing. "Hey!" She got down on all fours and helped.

It took several minutes, but when it was over the four slime-soaked adventurers had cleared away a large section in the center of the circular room. The floor glistened damply, but with most of the slime gone, they could see what looked like a giant version of the key: A ball of flame emblazoned on the floor. The tail of the flame pointed quite distinctly at the third door from the stairs.

"Now that's more like it," Naull said, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

"But how do we open the door?" Alhandra asked.

As they looked from one to another, Naull had an idea.

"Krusk, stand in the center of the room," she said, "then pull out the key and orient it like the one on the floor."

The half-orc followed the first two directions, but balked at the third. Naull didn't understand what the problem was until Alhandra stepped up to him and moved the disk in his hand so that the tail pointed in exactly the same direction as the one on the floor.

"Right," Naull said, "now walk straight toward that door."

As Krusk stepped across the room, Naull thought she saw a faint light coming from beyond the portcullis. She and the rest of the party followed Krusk. As they neared the passage, they heard a faint creaking sound. Slowly, the portcullis rose. Beyond it, they saw a stone-lined passage, wide enough for all of them to walk abreast, lit by torches that had somehow sprung to life.

"I guess that's the way," Naull said.

They stepped inside.

A few miles away, up and to the east, other feet stepped inside a cave.

"Are you certain they came up here?" Grawltak growled fiercely.

The scout nodded. They had followed the soft-skins' trail from south of the village and only stopped once for a short rest. His gnolls were tired, but their noses still worked. They'd found the horses only a few hundred feet away. They slew the dark one, but the gray bolted farther into the canyon when they'd approached it.

The gnoll pack butchered the fallen horse and took as much meat as they could carry. They were messy and loud about it, but Grawltak let them enjoy themselves while he considered his next move. He pushed them hard, and would push them harder. If the soft-skins went underground, then they must be following the map his mistress said the half-orc possessed. He needed to keep pressing them, to catch them if possible. Horse blood would have to do for sleep and fresh-killed meat would have to do for rest.

Grawltak himself could not enjoy it. He needed to check in with his leader. Crouching down on all fours, he pulled out the disk and set it on a rock. He chanted until it glowed to life.

"Mistress ..." he said.

The red face answered.