[HQ Ignorance] Scene 33: A Meeting In the Bowels of Seguarane

[Lev Lafayette]

Scene 33: A Meeting In the Bowels of Seguarane

Aided by the communications of Icthya with the birds,
fishes and rats a point of ingress to Seguarane is
discerned; from the riverside, beneath the fortified
harbour where a small number of knights and wizards
still hold the winding clifface path to the Outer Wall
there is an entrance which eventually leads to the
city well.

In the early hour of the morning Icthya and many
Aldryami launch a series of spectacular raids against
the harbourside. None are designed to penetrate its
significant defenses and all are designed to draw
attention away from the Mostal Kalen. It is only
through the magics of Icthya and his own hardy
constitution that allow the stone man to travel
beneath the water; he cannot swim (indeed, he sinks
like the stone from which he is made), but he can walk
along the river bottom. Following a fish summoned by
Icthya, Kalen travels beneath the harbour into a
tunnel that leads into Seguarane city.

The first stop is an bronze gate under the water,
nominally designed to prevent the entrance of large
fish and also as an afterthought to prevent the
entrance of any imaginative thieves. The magic on the
gate is weak and old however, and Kalen evokes the
Iron Dwarf magic of Unstoppable Advance, easily
shattering the defenses and bending the bronze to his
will.

After traveling some hundred yards or more in the
pitch darkness, Kalen's Earthsense detects a landing
and makes his way onto it. The stonework here is old
and impressive; Kalen is impressed by the quality of
the masonry and concerned that one so broken the
Guilarm The Fat could have taken control of such a
structure. He only hopes he can "repair" the situation
before the fecund Aldryami growth tears apart the fine
craftsmanship.

Again journeying another hundred yards, Kalen comes to
a halt. Finally his poor hearing hears the scuttling
of various noises around him. Grasping about on the
wall, he encounters a torch, which he brings to light.
As his Earthsense told him, he is in a chamber, some
twenty by ten yards across. What it did not tell him
was he was not alone; Kalen scans his surrounds and
finds himself surrounded by large rodents, almost two
feet in lenth, with razor sharp teeth and scale hide.
"Bazak!" Kalen exclaims to himself, calling the rubble
rats by their proper name. One or two or even ten
would be little threat to an Iron Dwarf; but a score
or more?

One of the runners hops up onto a stone with
disturbing ease. It has red eyes, and white hair with
an agouti hood. It sniffs at Kalen then, amazingly, it
speaks. "Stoneman. Not very good eating. But food has
suddenly become scarce, our children are many and we
hunger. Why should we not eat you?"

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