We stood there in silence, the tension gone, but the vileness of the place remained, like a stench that lingers after a rotting corpse is taken away. I did, however, breathe easier as did my companions.

"What just happened?" Charles asked his eyes wide.

"It is called adventuring, boy," Dimitri said to him as he walked into the cave a short way. "Get used to it."

We all laughed at that and Amenaruu said, "I must dismantle this altar and bless this place to erase the…echoes of that false god. I will leave you all to retrieve the object of our quest for I will not desecrate a grave, not even for you my good friend, Barrim."

"I understand," I said with a nod and then I heard a whistle from Dimitri and he came out carrying two handfuls of gold trinkets.

"That cave is stuffed with treasure!" He said with a smile stretching from ear to ear.

"Offerings to Serpis' god and put there to mock his priest, no doubt," said Amenaruu. "Giving him treasures and immortality and power and leaving him here in the forsaken place where it was all meaningless. I will bless the treasure to make sure none of that poor man's bad luck follows us back."

"Dimitri and I will enter the burial chamber," I said to my people. "We have more experience in that than the rest of you. I do not want to lose another one of you to some careless accident this close to the end of our adventure."

There was still a threat from the evil things that lived in this valley, so that we had to remain cautious. I told Helena that she was the main spellcaster if they were attacked. I gave her my medallion and told her to contact me with mind-speak if we were needed. She stood on her toes and kissed my cheek.

"For good luck," she said, smiling at me. The rest of our party was smiling as well, except for Charles who had a black look on his face.

"Ready?" Dimitri asked a me a few minutes later as he slung his leather pack of delver's tools over his shoulder. I took a similar, but less complete set as well.

"Ready," I replied and we went into the cave using our enchanted lanterns to light our way. The entrance to cave was stuffed with treasure, and that heartened me greatly for my companions would not go away empty handed from this quest. The natural cavern gave way to worked stone, beautifully done. The floor was carved as if it had been tiled with crisscrossing lines making a diamond pattern on the floor and fluted columns were carved in relief reaching overhead to for round arches.

Dimitri said, "Dwarf work. We will have to be extra careful, they are tricky bastards."

Dimitri lay down on his belly and with a lantern and a small mirror inched forward, examining every inch of the floor. Occasionally, he would mark the dusty floor with an "X" inside one of the diamonds that made up the floor pattern. When he crawled some forty feet (12m) his lantern illuminated a wooden door banded in iron with a simple latch locked with a rusted padlock.

"You can come forward," he said to me at last, "but do not step on any of the diamonds I marked with chalk, they are pressure plates for traps. I made my way carefully up the hall until I was next to Dimitri as he squatted, examining the door and the lock. He held a small lens in front of his right eye as he looked the lock over.

"Rusted lock and no key to open it," Dimitri said. "What should we do?"

"Snap the lock?" I asked back, knowing Dimitri was expecting that answer and that it was wrong, but I humored him.

"That is what you are supposed to do," he replied in a superior tone, "and that is what was mean to kill you. Look, there is a gap between the latch and the door on the bottom side of the latch even though the latch is supposed to be attached to the outside of the door. You can see the door has been hollowed behind the latch to allow it pivot. If we pry on the lock, the latch will pivot and set off the trap."

"Do we cut off the lock?" I asked my friend.

Dimitri shook his head no, and then pointed to a section of the door near the bottom.

"The grain pattern on these planks do not match the ones above, even though they are supposed to be the same pieces of wood. In fact, these are upside down."

Dimitri reached in his pack and pulled a very thin piece of meatal with a hook on one end and slipped it into the gaps between the planks of wood.

"Lucky for us," he said, "this wood has dried out over the centuries, it makes the gaps between the planks wider."

He wiggled the thin strip of metal around until it hooked on something and then he, with some effort, got the latch holding that section of the door to release, and three planks came off together, revealing a hole big enough for one person to crawl through.

"Somebody put that small panel back upside down, which was fortunate," Dimitri stated, "because it may have taken me a long time to figure that out if they had not done so."

Dimitri pulled out a piece of straw the length of a man's forearm and reached through the opening. The straw trick I knew, he was testing for tripwires. Next came his visual inspection and then he crawled through the hole and a few minutes later called for me to come through. I was bigger than Dimitri and I had to squirm a lot more to get in, but I made it. I was starting to sweat, it was hot in this hole. Once inside, I could see the back of the door and the trap mechanism attached to set off some fiendish trap. This room was small, maybe ten feet by twelve (3m x4M) and the floor was smooth stone and gone were the fancy fluted columns and there was another door, similar to the previous door except it was not locked. Dimitri handed me his mirror.

"Look through the gap on top of the door where the door has settled," he ordered me.

I did so and said, "Arrow trap set to go off when the door is opened."

"Thought so," Dimitri said. "There is a mark on the door behind us where the thing was tested to see if it worked"

Hehe made a pushing motion for me to back up against the wall opposite of him. I did so and he retreated as well and then used a hook at the end of a folding wooden pole. He used this hook to open the door, and when he did the door screeched on rusty hinges until it was fully open a large crossbow bolt sped out of the room beyond and imbedded itself in the door behind us.

Looking through the door, we could see a Dwarven crossbow mounted on the wall opposite of the door, its limbs powered with springs to fire the bolt. The room was the same size as they one that we were in, but on the left there were stairs leading downward. With the trap triggered Dimitri once again tested for trip wires but found none. The he tapped on the stone floor with his hook on a pole. Five feet in (1.5m) the sound of the tapping changed. Dimitri rand the point of the hook over the plane stone floor and easily scratch the surface of the stone.

"Plaster," he said to me, "covering a pit trap. Step on it, and down you go."

Once Dimitri figured out how wide the trap was, we were able to jump over it easily enough. We then moved to the stairs, moving down them slowly, testing each one.

"How are you faring?" That mental message from Helena and I answered back with and all is well message in the silent language of thought. I did not tell Dimitri of the contact since he was concentrating on his job. The only thing we found was the second to the last stair was extra tall, which would make someone trip. At the bottom of the stair, in a small antechamber with an open archway across from the stairs, was another plaster covered pit trap. Come down the stairs, trip and fall and crash through the false floor into the pit, or find the trick step and be overconfident and walk onto the fake floor and fall into the pit.

This was the last trap and we moved into the tomb itself. There were four sarcophagi in the room, each bearing an effigy and all three of them close but the last one, the lid was leaning against the wall. There was a mural on the wall, dusty, but the still bright colors shown through dust. They showed King Ivanisla, his queen, and his sons. One of the sons, the younger of two it looked like, had his eyes scratched out. I noticed the scratched out eyes first before I saw the rest of the face and I must have gasped.

"What?" Dimitri said, suddenly concerned."

"That mural," I replied, "do you see the person with his eyes scratched out?"

"Yes?"

"That is Lord Valker. This is his family's tomb."

"So Lord Valker is actually Prince Valker," Dimitri said shaking his head. I guess that is how he knew where to find this place. Do you see our prize?"

I looked over to where Dimitri was pointing and in the hands of the effigy of King Ivanisla, was the crown with the three gemstones glowing dully in our light so covered in dust and cobwebs was it. The king held the crown up as if he were offering it too us. On his stone head, he wore a replica carved in the same white marble as the rest of the effigy.

"It looks like it is ours for the taking," I said to Dimitri without moving.

"That is exactly what it looks like," Dimitri agreed.

"Then it has got to be trap," I said.

"That is the way I figure it," he replied.

"Hold on," I said as I dug through my pack to find the scroll I had brought. I shook it out of his holder and spread it out in the light of our lantern and then read the Arcane spell written on it. It was a Dispel Magic spell that should reveal the truth.

The illusion covering the crown in the hands of the effigy dissipated and the gleaming gold turned to a dull brass, but the stone crown on his head was suddenly revealed to be the true crown.

"Let me check it to see if it is trapped," Dimitri said, "and then we can get out of here."

It took more than an hour and answered another mental inquiry from Helena. While Dimitri did his work, I quickly sketched the faces of the King Ivanisla and his family, minus Valker. I was just finishing up when Dimitri gently removed the crown from its marble head.

"Let us leave," he said and I agreed.

We soon joined our companions and it was nearing night, but I decided Gerrex, Charles, and Brey could bring Godfrey and our wagons forward. They arrived just before darkness had completely filled the valley and we showed them the treasure and Godfrey and his men were ecstatic.

There is little else to tell of the adventure from this point onward. We left unmolested from the valley with wagons and horses ladened with treasure. We had no trouble on our journey back, partly because we had dealt with our hidden enemies and partly because we traveled in the company of a tribe of Orcs, which no sane creature would normally attack. There was only one episode that might be of interest. We stopped near the willow bordered stream again to make camp and Helena and I went to the stream to speak. We sat on the bank next to each other with her stoat familiar sleeping in fold of her skirt that covered her lap.

"You know that I love you," she said almost sadly. "But tell me true, how do you feel about me?"

"Take of that magic necklace," I said to Helena and when she did so I placed my medallion on her instead. "Reach out and see what my feelings are."

Her face showed her concentration and then it melted into softness and her eyes glistened a little and then I bent over and kissed her fully on the mouth.

We made it back to Gensmot and were the talk of every tavern and inn for two weeks. Angus and his cronies, now with bad reputations and few prospects, had to look on with envy as we rolled in with our treasure.

Amenaruu lamented us having to destroy the blessed crown, but it had to be done. Our mission had been to return the Bloodstone only as there was no way Valker could stand to be around a blessed object. Amenaruu's dismay was lessened when I presented him with the emerald and told him he could use it to heal the poor in the city.

Well into the early morning hours, I unrolled the flying carpet we had taken from the illusionist and, having discerned its command word on our trip back, I flew it up into night to the top of Valker's tower where a faint red glow cold be seen.

Valker and Shasanni were there in moonless night.

"The word is all around the city that you had returned," Shasanni said when I stepped off of the carpet and onto the stone tower.

Lord Valker must have fed recently and well for he no longer looked like a frail man ready to die, but a young man of maybe twenty five and in his prime, just like his image in his family's tomb.

"I have," I replied, "and my quest was successful."

"May I present to you," the Doppelganger said, "Boris Valker, the new lord of this tower."

I bowed low to the vampire and said, "I bring you the Bloodstone, Your Highness."

Shasanni looked puzzled as Valker laughed and said, "I see you have discovered another secret about me. May I ask how you did so?"

I handed him the small leather pouch with the gem in it and he dumped out into his palm. It glistened in the red light. I then said, "I saw the effigies of your family, and yourself in the tomb of your father, mother, and brother, but you as well. Although your image had been mutilated, I am afraid."

"That does not surprise me," Valker said. "When I was captured by Crecie in a skirmish, I was forced to become a nosferatu and at the behest of my undead master, I was forced to betray my father, the king."

"You did not become undead willingly?" I asked surprised, and I could tell Shasanni was as surprised as I was.

"No," he said. "I was not given the choice. I can never be buried on the sacred ground of my family's crypt, nor even set foot in it. But I would have like to have seen the likenesses of my family once more, for even the memories of a vampire fade over the centuries."

I said nothing but reached into my satchel and removed my journal. From it I tore the sketches I had made in the tomb and handed them to Valker. He took them, curious at first and then he sat down on a nearby stool, his face showing real emotion for the first time and it was a sublime sadness. I think if he had been able to cry, he would have shed a tear just then.

"It seems you have given me a great deal more than I asked for," Valker finally said in a hushed tone.

"Your good will may evaporate in a moment. I have information about the cult that has been trying to kill you, the cult of the purple rune. I can name for you their true nature and their true purpose."

Both of them looked at me, their eyes now full of wariness and danger. I began to speak and tell them of what I had learned from Chai and I did not leave that tower until the morning was dawning and then I returned to my anxious apprentice who had waited for me looking up at the tower all night.

EPILOUGE

One year and three months after we returned to Gensmot and one year after my marriage to Helena, my adventuring party met once again at the new Temple of the Aten where Helena and me were bringing our children to be dedicated to the Aten. Homer and Penelope were twins, bore a month ago and favoring their mother in looks.

The news of the Cult of the Illithid was spread as far and as wide as we could hope to make it and although many did not believe what I had to say, Lord Valker and Gensmot's Doge believed me and I had become far too involved in the machinations and intrigues of Gensmot's court since I had gotten back. I also bought the my shop, which thankfully Lenni had not burned down in my absence, from my crook of a landlord. I then rebuilt the broken tower attached to it by the simple expediency of placing mud bricks in rows and turning them to stone. There was a real war brewing now between the Assem and the Varis kingdoms to the south and alliances were being made. No one was naïve enough to believe that this was just coincidence and so Gensmot was fielding its first army in the last hundred years. Gerrex and the Orcs of the Red Cougar clan formed the backbone of that force. They also made up a large portion of the Cult of the Aten's new membership, but only a portion for it had grown in popularity thanks to its acts of charity that endeared it to locals, which of course made many of the other cults angry. The wealth we had brought back had helped the Aten spread his message of light.

The weather had been cold and wet, but this day as we traveled by carriage, my bride and I, it was quite fair and sunny. Amenaruu was beaming in the sunlight of midwinter's day dressed in white wool robes to keep out the chill. Brey was there for the ceremony with his new wife, the widow of Wil Marlet who had been the woman who watched him when he fought Gerrex in the Pits. Her name was Winifred. They were talking with a sullen Charles, who was Brey's premiere pupil in his school of fencing. Dimitri was there of course, dressed in a fine blue silk shirt and with a black cape with silver fastening and Lee, who was staying with the priests of the Aten and who had become great friends with Amenaruu was there talking to him. The surviving Venetti had returned to their homeland wealthy men and Godfrey was off on another expedition with another adventuring party somewhere. Gerrex was there, standing silently by but he nodded to me and Helena when we walked in with Amenaruu. both Helena and I we were surprised by the extra guests that had shown up. One was Shasanni, bearing a dedication gift from the new Lord Stargazer, who could not make it to the ceremony. The other woman was Argenta, the silver dragon in human form and a large well-built man standing next to her. When I saw his face I recognized Lowen, the Lammasu. I greeted both these august personages with great delight and puzzlement at them being there, and I said as much to them. After the ceremony, Helena I had a chance to speak to them alone and once again I expressed my delight but great surprise that they were there.

Lowen just smiled and said, "We are here to see the ones who can stop our enemies, your two children."

"Our children?" Helena asked a bit taken back.

"Indeed," said Argenta. "Did we not say it would be an act of creation that would set about the destruction of the foul ones."

"You said that the quest we were on was only a catalyst for something else. That something else was the birth of our children?" I asked astonished. "That entire quest was just so I would get Helena pregnant?"

"Indeed," smiled Lowen, "that was the entire reason."