Lidia and Yoshimo re-entered the temple. The first signs of age were creeping into the day; the beams of light from the spaces in the dome above were slanted as they lit the dancing dust motes in the air. The only sound was their footfalls; the only witness to their actions was the stern gold statue of Amaunator on the altar.
"Now, there's nothing of value here?" Yoshimo said, seeming somewhat skeptical.
"That's what the shadow dragon said," Lidia replied.
"What do you call a dragon with no hoard? A liar," he said, with a glint in his eye. "I'd bet my last red ink that this one had something interesting hidden away."
He surveyed the room. "Well, there seems to be no break in the wall pattern here, for a start. When you wandered in for the first time, where was he?"
Lidia pointed to the center of the room, where the stained tiles were arranged in a sunburst enclosed by a ring. "Right here."
The dragon's body itself was long gone; what hadn't dissipated into the air had been destroyed through Amaunator's power. The only sign that the dragon had been here was the overwhelming oily stench that still lingered in the air and some black stains on the flagstones.
Yoshimo moved towards the same spot and got down on his hands and knees. He murmured, "If there's anything this sort of creature likes, it's to mislead and misdirect."
He examined the mosaic, crawling from one spot to the next and rapping on the floor with his hand.
Finally, he worked his way out to the ring, where the last rays of the sunburst stretched like a many-petaled flower. He stopped, then leaned downwards until his face was only inches away, then he looked up, giving an excited shout.
Lidia went over to take a look with him. He pointed to a hairline crack just outside the ring. She could barely see it herself and was about to express some doubt, but she started tracing the crack's path with her hand.
It was a perfect circle.
"Well, there's the door, but how does one knock?" Yoshimo wondered aloud.
"It's not locked, is it?" she asked.
He smiled. "That's the first question, yes? I doubt the shadow dragon ever expected anyone but himself to come here. He might have put an illusion over this spot — erased this seam with a single spell. And when the dragon was dispatched, just like that" — he snapped his fingers — "there's now a door laid out for all with eyes."
"Laid out, but only a dragon could lift it," Lidia said.
"Hardly," Yoshimo replied. "No talons could work such a fine edge loose."
Lidia stared down at the pattern. It bore a striking resemblance to the etchings on the gold symbol that now stopped the portal to the Plane of Shadow.
It suddenly occurred to her that the shadow dragon might not have made this entry himself. "This door might have been something that the temple residents used," she said, "and the dragon found handy."
"That's a possibility," he said. "I don't suppose that ghost shared any such information with you?"
She shook her head. "We had more pressing matters."
She heard a whispering voice again, fainter and unintelligible. When she'd heard it the first time, she'd assumed that it was the same voice that threatened her as she'd opened herself to the Astral Plane, the same voice that sometimes spoke in her dreams.
But this time, the whisper was milder, gentler. It seemed to be coming from the altar. Lidia stepped carefully towards its source, approaching the golden statue.
"What are you doing?" Yoshimo asked. "The god is dead, but that does not give us cause to rouse him from slumber."
Lidia understood his caution, but felt no fear of the stern face above her.
The song from the vision in the Astral Plane appeared in her mind, instantly imprinting upon her the tune and the words. She repeated them, singing the song aloud to the statue. When she finished and fell silent, the memory emptied itself from her mind, leaving only the vague sense of what a snippet or two of the song might have been.
The statue's eyes briefly flashed a golden light. The whispers faded.
The round slab split itself into three with a rumble and slowly slid open, retreating beneath the ground. Yoshimo stepped off, watching in fascination as the floor opened.
Lidia mouthed a silent thanks to the altar, then went to see what the floor had opened up.
Where the mosaic had been was now a giant hole in the ground, ten by ten feet wide and pitch-black, except where a beam of light passed through. With this bit of illumination, one could tell that the hole ended about six feet underneath.
Lidia concentrated on the darkness below, then cast out a thought. She felt nothing.
"I'm going in," she said. She attached Azuredge to her belt and held onto the opening's rim. She lowered herself until her arms suspended her, then let go.
Her feet hit the ground only a few inches away, her nose filled with an overpowering, musty smell. The only sound was the faint dripping of water upon stone.
She rested her hand on Azuredge and willed the weapon to give light, bathing her surroundings in a moonlike glow.
She had landed in a stone room, almost like a well-polished cellar. It wasn't big — about twenty feet square with smooth walls and floor. There was no sign of life, or unlife, for that matter.
Yoshimo followed her down shortly, his feet touching the floor more softly than hers had. He carefully scanned the room, but he couldn't find any hidden traps for anyone that had made it this far.
But he pointed to one corner: "We're not the first ones here."
They approached it and found a skeleton curled up on the floor, clothed in rotting, tattered, slimy leather and clutching fingerbones around a nearly pristine-looking leather pouch.
Yoshimo gently lifted the pouch from the bony hand, then opened it up.
Out tumbled a small, mithral medallion on a silver chain, landing on the stone floor with a faint, hollow-sounding clink. With it came a letter; oddly enough, the paper was fresh and the ink a stark black, as though the message had been written and folded only yesterday.
It read:
"The mithral in this place is almost gone, and after all my years of prospecting, this is all I have to show for it. My family will be disappointed. I have heard of a new cache that has been discovered in one of the old local temples, and will take one more look before I journey back to the city.
— Idras Tombelthen."
Lidia picked up the medallion, which was half as light as anything made in silver or gold. It was small and artlessly made, but its silver-blue, highly polished, almost luminous sheen spoke to its worth. Still, if this was the "cache," someone probably came away disappointed.
Were they the only ones who knew now that no mithral was here? She doubted it, but she quickly sketched the medallion and tucked the dead man's note away in her journal, just in case.
Meanwhile, only one other corner of the room held the dragon's hoard. It was much less than what Yoshimo might have expected, but it was a hoard nonetheless, a small pile of several dozen black semi-precious stones: agni mani, onyx, and jet, all tumbled to a water-smooth finish.
However, at the bottom of the pile was a single black opal the size of a fingernail, displaying a whole rainbow of colors against a smoky grey backdrop.
They admired the opal for a moment, but were somewhat hesitant to pick it up, each urging the other towards it. Finally, Lidia took it and put it away in a pouch for safekeeping, declaring that they would sell it and the mithral medallion as soon as possible and split the proceeds in six.
"What about this?" Lidia asked, carefully picking up something nearby leaning against the wall: a thin, etched metal slab about two hands tall and nearly covered in rust.
Yoshimo said, "It has some writing, but I can't read it."
Lidia moved the metal sheet closer to her light source to get a better look. She had only a passing familiarity with the letters before her, faded and nearly indistinguishable from the coat of rust. Unlike the curving strokes that made up Common, this script was filled with different lines and marks hanging from tall, straight strokes. It made her think of an army on the march, armed with motley weaponry.
"Can you make sense of it?" Yoshimo asked.
She furrowed her brow and studied it further. "These are Dethek runes, and the language is Dwarvish. I can't read most of it, but one set of words — aragh dorth, 'war hammer' — appears a couple of times."
She picked out another word. "And barak, which means 'strength.'"
"What do you think it might be?"
"I'm not sure," she said. "But if it's about a war hammer, maybe there's a dwarven smith in Athkatla that might make more of this."
"Most of the time, anything 'dwarf-forged' in Athkatla is produced and sold by enterprising humans," Yoshimo said, "If a genuinely dwarven axe or coat of mail has ever made it into the Promenade, it's likely rotting in some vault."
"That's unfortunate. Why is that?" she asked.
"The dwarves often enchant their weapons and armor, and magical items are illegal unless the Cowled Wizards make an exception for it," he said. "The Wizards don't bother with little things like magelights, timepieces, or trinkets, but as soon as they sniff out enchanted weaponry, they find some way to get their sticky fingers upon it."
Lidia passed Azuredge from hand to hand, understanding now why the knights had wanted to offload it before returning home. And, she remembered Larry and Jaheira's staff-spear, both of which she'd encountered entirely by accident.
She knew she had a limited standpoint, but she thought the Wizards' efforts seemed uneven. "I wonder if they sell the confiscated weapons for a 'fee' of some kind?"
Yoshimo laughed. "Ah, you're learning."