Tombs and Tomes

"Get my Rod!" Sorn heard the necromancer shout. Just then a lucky swipe from one of the men at arms caught him a glancing blow and sent the little halfling sailing over the heads of living and undead alike. He hit the wall and slid to the floor.

Sorn shook his head to clear it and stood up. A skeleton stood before him, the rictus grin wheezing breaths of foul air as it swung a rusty sword in a great overhand motion. Sorn rolled to avoid the strike and vaulted up the ribs of the monster, kicking the neck vertebrae with all his might. The skull flew off the shoulders and went clattering off into a corner.

"None of you will possess my secrets-"

Sorn turned, still standing on the headless skeletons shoulders. Their was a burst of midnight purple fire and a flash of black light.

Suddenly the fighters from the center of the room were gone. Valesar, Han, Kol, Heljah, Quinten, even the vagrant men of that scoundrel who had swaggered in moments before and caused all this trouble.

"No!" Sorn bellowed in rage and launched his little halfling body across the intervening space, grabbing the Rod from the surprised necromancer. He bashed the undead wizard over the head with Rod, and then gripped him by the high collar of his cloak and hauled him close, barely registering surprise that, with the Rod in his hand, he was able to touch the ghost. "What did you do to them?" He demanded hoarsely.

Taliesor was laughing hysterically. "They'll never get out now, never! No one does."

Sorn shook him, "Where did they go," he demanded. Outside the tower, circling Tera screamed her rage in response.

The tower was silent. The skeletons had stopped fighting as the ownership of the Rod once again changed hands, and the scum following Ireselan, those still alive, now grouped together to one side of the room, on guard but uncertain on what to do.

"I sent them to the shadowlands." Suddenly the undead wizard was in control of himself again. He stood up and tried to grab the Rod from Sorn's hand, but the halfling swiped him away and the necromancer turned the motion into brushing his robes. "If they survive and manage to reach the gateway back into the real world before sundown tomorrow, then our curse is broken." The wizard gestured to himself and the other undead. "But no one ever escapes, and so my secrets are safe."

"Bring them back!" Sorn bashed the rod against Taliesor, and the wizard stumbled back from the fury of his onslaught.

"I can't," Taliesor growled. "Even if I wanted to. It is up to them now."

Sorn turned to the other skeletons. "Bring me the works of Taliesor the wizard." He demanded, icy fury dripping from every inch of the small man.

"No!" Taliesor tried to snatch the Rod back again, but Sorn held him back.

"If you won't help me, than perhaps something in your notes can." Sorn snarled.

He gestured at the leftover men of Ireselan. "Make sure they don't interfere." Suddenly the little group was ringed by a skeleton army, swords drawn. The men made no move except to put their swords away and their hands up.

One of them shouldered forward, only to be pushed back by the other men and the angry gesturing of a skeletal warrior. "Let me help." He said angrily.

Sorn glanced back. "Who are you?"

"Tomas Redorc. You're not the only one's got people missing. My brother's in their too. Let me help!"

Sorn nodded wearily, "Fine." Perhaps they all weren't complete scum after all.

The other men tried to rest as best they could, but they started uneasily at any movement of the skeletal warriors around them. For their part, the undead were near-motionless, only twitching their skulls around to watch the living soldiers, or perhaps adjust their position slightly.

The undead wizard had disappeared, Dol Dorn knew where. Sorn settled down, legs crossed among the papers and scrolls the skeletons brought before him, glancing alertly to the soldier Tomas once or twice. The soldier seemed to know what he was doing, and as long as none of the scrolls disappeared beneath his leather jerkin, Sorn was content to let him work, but his grip on the Rod of Command never ceased.

They organized the papers into two stacks, looking through them frantically. The long night through they found nothing, and when dawn came they were still searching. Finally, Tomas ran across something.

"Look at this," he said. "It's from Tome of Dwarven Legends."

The volume told of how, long ago, dark warriors from a shadowy world had raided dwarven strongholds for slaves, passing through doors of night written by blood. The dwarven slaves worked for their masters, Shadar Kai, for long years before discovering the secrets to escape.

"It says here that they could pass from place to place in the shadows of the Ash trees, the only trees growing their. That darkness was light for them, and blood opened doorways."

"Like Heljah's poem." Sorn nodded.

The bandit cocked his head questioningly, then went on after Sorn didn't say anything more. "It also says that they couldn't use regular magical healing or rest while they were their. The Shadar Kai masters made them drink some sort of liquid, called Menelith, that gave them strength and healed their wounds, but without being able to sleep many of them slowly went mad. Finally they discovered a secret doorway between worlds, the way the raiders had used to penetrate the dwarven strongholds, but it was too late. Because they had been living off Menelith, they could not pass through the gates themselves."

Sorn looked peered over the arm of the human soldier. "So how did they escape?"

"It says that they prayed for their gods to protect and save them. Finally, a warrior of light comes, and "bestoed on us the sunging and rhymes of teim." something like that. Anyway, they got this song, and they started to sing it, and opened the gateway for them. The bandit peered at the notes. "It says in the margin, 'see volume five page nineteen in 'Songs of Power'".

They cast about, looking for it. Finally, in frustration, Sorn turned to one of the skeletons. "Bring me a copy of the book "Songs of Power", and be quick about it."

The skeleton turned and ran out of the tower. They continued searching for more clues, but couldn't find anything until the undead creature marched back, about an hour later, carrying a leatherbound tome containing a ream of unorganized loose parchments.

They pawed through the pages, finally finding the one they were looking for. "I can't read music." Sorn said in frustration.

"Neither can I." Tomas stared blankley at the notes on the page, arranged in bars and little dots and lines that made his eyes hurt.

"Can any of you read music?" Sorn demanded of the other soldiers. By now several others had joined them in the search, although Sorn had given careful commands to the skeletons to kill anyone who tried to take the Rod from him.

"Any of you?" They shook their heads, except for one, slightly in the back. He looked sheepishly at the others, then raised his hand.

"Afore I became a soldier, me mum had me take lessons with the priests. I can read the notes." He took the parchment from them and cleared his throat nervously. The music had no words to it, a simple tune only.

The soldier began to sing, wordlessly, and the skeletons began to sway with the melody. The other warriors looked around nervously, and started back from the center of the room. Papers rustled and swirled in a little vortex, and cold purple light, like a miniature star, began to glow in the center of the room. Abruptly there was a flash of dark light again, and a portal stood in the middle of the room. Traceries of purple fire outlined strange runes, lines of power flowing to the door. On the other side of the glowing doorway they could see a mirror of the room they were in, but colder and gray, sapped of color.

"One of us should go through." Tomas said. "Find them, and tell them what we've found out. Give me the Rod, and you can go through." Tomas demanded suddenly.

"I'm not trusting you with this." Sorn snarled. He edged back from the warriors, who had shifted suddenly to circle the halfling. The skeletons encircled them, a ring of cold steel and skull-grinning faces, and the soldiers stopped.

"And how am I supposed to trust you?" Tomas grumbled back. "The Rod won't do any good once the they get out, the necromancer said so himself. One of us has to go through."

All of them looked at the portal. It hummed a strange noise that penetrated to their bones, purple light crackling around the edges.

"Me, or you." Sorn said, pointing at Tomas. "Not the others. We'll flip a coin." Tomas nodded once.

Sorn dug a coin out of his pocket. "Call it in the air," he said, and then flipped the coin.