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.But Jack still couldn't help but feel that Zandria had excruciatingly poor timing.He had too many other things to think about, so, with a mind full of dark suspicions and an uneasy heart, he met Anders and Tharzon near the house rented out by the Company of the Red Falcon and followed Zandria into Sarbreen.The Guilder's Tomb proved to be a surprisingly accessible place.From the sewers beneath Tentowers, an old vertical shaft led to a deep drain tunnel far beneath the city.Deeper tunnels and complexes intersected the shaft at variousintervals, like floors of a building connected indirectly by a laundry chute or dumbwaiter.About sixty feet below the city sewers, a long, vaulted passage slanted across the vertical drop, leading to a broad chamber guarded by fierce-looking stone statues of grim dwarves.Zandria's company splashed through the sewers for a time, then rappelled down to the intersecting passage and marched only a hundred yards to reach the place.Jack, Anders, and Tharzon followed at a discreet distance.Dwarves were hewers of rock and carvers of stone; Sarbreen, their ancient city, was bored through the rocky prominence of Raven's Bluff, in some cases hundreds of feet below the surface.The place was a maze in three dimensions, an endless labyrinth of shafts and passages, halls and chambers.In over a century and a half of human habitation on the hillside above, no one had ever mapped more than a tiny portion of Sarbreen's lost halls, but no part of Sarbreen was more than an hour's walk from the city above—if one knew the way.If one didn't, the dwarven ruin might as well have been a wilderness the size of a kingdom.Most expeditions returned empty-handed after wandering aimlessly for hours or days through the same chambers.A few encountered old dwarven traps, hidden pits, and deadly blades that scythed out of dark alcoves, and some ran into dangerous and deadly monsters—undead things that hungered for the blood of the living, ferocious scavengers that fed from the city's effluvia drifting down from above, and horrifying aberrations that crept up into Sarbreen's halls from even more mysterious and remote depths far below the light.Jack had abandoned dungeoneering as a pastime after one such encounter.Hours of tedium punctuated by rare moments of utter terror hardly seemed like a heroic pursuit to him.Besides, the few expeditions that were successful brought their loot back to the surface, whererogues like Jack could easily help themselves to someone else's good fortune.Following the brilliant magical lights of Zandria's company, Jack and his companions carefully tailed the band to the broad chamber at the end of the passageway.They carried no lights of their own; Tharzon's dwarven eyes were more than capable of piercing the darkness, and Jack worked a spell he knew that sharpened his own sight.Anders they led carefully along until they were close enough to see by the distant light of Zandria's expedition.The three rogues found a spot to wait about a hundred feet down the hall and settled in to watch."What do we do next?" whispered Tharzon.Jack replied, "Let's see if Sarbreen's legendary perils do that work for us.Zandria is not a mage to be trifled with.She has at least two capable swordsmen with her—I met them when I visited their stronghold in the city.See, there they are." In the yellow light flooding the end of the hall, Zandria's companions spread out to search the chamber, while the Red Wizard consulted papers and notes before a gleaming slab of stone in the center of the far wall."Those other two in armor are probably priests," Tharzon added.He pointed to a short, stocky man and a young, athletic woman with a shaved head."See the emblems of Tyr, there, and Tempus? Best to figure that they are both trained warriors, too, as well as potential spellcasters."The dwarf shifted slightly to change his view."There's another fellow in dark clothes, probably a lockpick or burglar.""That makes six to our three," Anders observed."We should have brought a couple more stout lads to even the odds.Jankizen from Shadystreets would be useful.""Jankizen can't add two and two twice and come up with the same result," Jack snorted."Besides, more help means more shares." He peered down the hallway at the small pool of light.Zandria and her allies were busy readying for a fight, checking weapons and arranging potions and scrolls so that they could be easily found in a hurry."They're getting ready to open the tomb.Wait here, lads.I’ll creep a little closer to see what unfolds.""Don't get caught," Tharzon muttered.Jack winked at the dwarf and wove his spell of invisibility, vanishing from sight.He stepped out from behind the broken columns they'd chosen for cover and advanced toward Zandria's company, picking his steps carefully.Invisibility did not make him inaudible as well, and the crunch of a thoughtless footstep on rubble or a carelessly kicked stone would alert Zandria.Mages had spells to reveal things invisible, and Jack had no wish to put the Company of the Red Falcon on its guard.At the moment, the adventurers stood in a loose half circle surrounding Zandria as she faced the wall opposite the entrance—except for the swordsman Brunn and the Tyrian priest, who deliberately watched the hallway outside for the approach of any enemy from that quarter.Jack nodded in appreciation; these were professionals, as he'd suspected
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