Escape from Undermountain Read Online Free PDF Page A

reliably. Certainly it had been months, perhaps as many as six. In that time, he had explored the cell as far as his chains allowed, recalling everything about prisons his father had taught him as a child, but he found no hope. The walls and floors were made of flawless stone without crack or crevice, as if forged by sorcery rather than hewn by hand. Nor had his father's tricks worked upon the shackles, or the bolts that bound the chains to the wall.
    "I remember your words, Father," he whispered through cracked lips. "And damn your wretched half-orc soul to the Abyss, for they have failed me now."
    With a groan, he slumped back against the wall. His father had been right about one thing-the dark was in him. And in the dark he would die.
    It might have been minutes later-or perhaps hours, or even days-when a metallic noise ground on the dank air of the cell. Artek cracked his eyes. Chains jingling, he stiffly sat up. Had the guards finally brought him some water? He ran a parched tongue across his blistered lips. It had been a long time. He eyed the place in the dark where the slit of faint light always appeared, and through which food and drink were pushed with a stick. Puzzled, he saw only unblemished darkness. Then the grinding sound ended with a sharp clang!
    All at once the perfect blackness of the cell was torn asunder. A tall rectangle of blazing fire appeared before Artek. With a low cry of pain, he shrank against the wall, shielding his face with his hands.
    "Looks like our little friend here is afraid of the light," said a coarse voice.
    "Isn't that just like a rat?" a second, wheedling voice laughed.
    At last Artek's brain grasped what had happened. For the first time since he had been locked in this cell, someone had opened the door. Blinking away stinging tears, he slowly lowered his hands, trying to force his eyes to adjust. Two hazy forms stood in the open portal. Guards, one with a smoking torch. Artek supposed the light it cast was in truth dim and murky, but to his eyes, so long in the dark, it seemed like a brilliant sun.
    Why…? His lips formed the word soundlessly. Deliberately he swallowed, then tried again, straining to voice the sounds. This time the words came out as a croaking whisper. "Why have you come for me?"
    "Somebody wants to see you," growled the first guard, a tall man with a dog's drooping face.
    "What… what for?"
    "Rats don't ask questions," snapped the second guard, a corpulent man with beady eyes. "They just do what their betters tell them if they don't want new smiles cut around their necks."
    With a large iron key, Dog-Face unlocked Artek's chains from the ring in the wall. He jerked on them, pulling the prisoner roughly to his feet. Artek cried out as blood rushed painfully into his cramped limbs. He staggered, but another harsh jerk on the chains kept him from falling. Gradually the fire in his legs dulled to pins and needles. After a moment he could stand on his own, though only in a hunched position. Before his imprisonment, thick muscles had knotted his short, compact frame. Now, beneath his filthy rags, bones stuck out plainly beneath sallow skin.
    "Looks like prison food hasn't agreed with you, rat," Beady-Eyes chuckled.
    Artek eyed the gut straining against the guard's food-stained jerkin. "You might want to give it a try yourself," he said hoarsely.
    Beady-Eyes glowered darkly, sucking in his stomach. "Bring him out!"
    Dog-Face pulled hard on the chain, and Artek stumbled forward, barely managing to keep his balance.
    "I can't walk with my feet shackled," he gasped.
    "He's right," Dog-Face said. "And I'm not going to carry him."
    Beady-Eyes scratched his stubbled jowl. "All right. Unlock his feet. But don't get any ideas about going anywhere, rat." He took the center of the chain that bound Artek's shackled wrists and locked it to an iron band he wore around his own thick wrist. A yellow-toothed grin split his face. "You'll be staying close by me."
    In the corridor outside