The doorway looks like a black rectangle cut directly out of the stone face of the mountainside. Mack assesses the immediate area closely for traps and finds nothing. Sabreena reaches out with her senses, but detects no threatening presence. Alys binds a light spell to a stick, then throws it into the entryway. The light fades as the stick sails through the air, as though enveloped in a stifling fog made of shadows.

  Everyone regards the doorway with extreme suspicion.

  “Hang on,” Janette says. “I think I’ve got a summoning spell I can try.”

  This spell requires time to prepare. The party spends the next hour idling while Janette meditates, stilling her thoughts to better perceive the presence of nearby spirits.

  Bored, Torvald declares he will just go in and see what happens. Before he reaches the doorway, however, Alys and Mack block his path.

  Alys snaps, “Knock it off, would you? We’re trying to enjoy this.”

  “Yeah, well,” counters Torvald, “So am I. Torvald is a gnome of action.”

  “Torvald needs to sit his ass down until we find out if there’s something to hit,” says Mack. Sabreena and SyemDyesit agree.

  “Fine. My next three turns are staring vacantly at the nearest tree. Anyone want a beer?”

  “They aren’t cold yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter, don’t care. Hurry up and meditate.”

  For the next forty-five minutes, Torvald stares vacantly at a tree. SyemDyesit investigates the area for anything he might find useful and harvests bark and mushrooms from the nearby trees, as well as collecting some of the loose stones hidden under the dead leaves and low-growing plants. Alys recites litanies which bestow blessings on Sabreena, Torvald, Mack, and herself. Sabreena and Mack keep watch.

  When Janette finishes her meditation, she casts a summoning spell.

  By using chalk to draw directly on the rock beside the door, Janette draws a binding circle and calls forth one of the Nameless Dead residing in the mountain. The circle sends out a pulse into the mountain, thrumming in the very air. The sound resonates strangely. For most of the party, this is only temporarily disquieting.

  Alys, however, narrowly avoids injury, and the effects of her blessing litany are nullified as a consequence.

  “Sorry,” Janette says. “Didn’t know that’d happen.”

  Resentfully, Alys responds, “It’s fine. Glad I used the litany ahead of time.”

  The spirit that surfaces from the confines of the binding circle is humanoid in shape but indistinct, its features blurred by the passage of time. It pulls itself into the circle, out of the stone, as a person might rise out of a manhole, and stops when the circle is level with its hips. It appears to gaze at Janette from a face with only hollows where its eyes ought to be.

  “Wwwhhhyyy…?”

  All except Torvald look at the spirit, alarmed by its ghastly voice.

  Janette once again finds herself apologizing, adding, “I’ve called you to see if there are spirits here who might tell us about what is within this mountain.”

  “Within…? Within…” The spirit assesses its surroundings, straining to recall this place and its nature. “Closed. Always closed. In my life, never had the door been opened.”

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  “Did you ever hear rumors of what was within, or why it was closed off?”

  “Forgotten,” says the spirit. “Forgotten since before I lived.”

  Alys whispers, “How old is this spirit?”

  With her comprehensive knowledge of necromantic manifestations, Janette assesses the spirit has been dead for at least eight hundred years before returning to the conversation. “Are there any other spirits nearby who might know?”

  After a moment’s consideration, the spirit says, “None. All gone.”

  SyemDyesit, concerned, asks, “They were destroyed?”

  “I believe it means they’ve fallen so far out of memory that there’s nothing left to summon.”

  The spirit agrees with Janette.

  Mack suggests, “Maybe we could send the spirit in as an advanced scout, look around for us.”

  The spirit pats the surface of the mountain. “Bound,” it says meaningfully.

  “If I remove the binding, will you go in and investigate the entrance for us?” asks Janette.

  “Yes.”

  Janette uses a hand to swipe at the chalk, breaking the binding. The spirit pulls itself through the remains of the circle and crawls down the wall on all fours to the ground, then continues into the darkness beyond the entrance.

  The party waits.

  And waits.

  “It seemed a little slow,” notes Sabreena. “Maybe it’s —“

  The spirit bursts out of the black fog, skittering on all fours, hissing and snarling. Its shape has stabilized into something like a skeleton with a layer of skin pulled tight over its emaciated form.

  The spirit swipes at Mack, then at SyemDyesit, then dives through the air toward Torvald.

  The blessing litany Alys cast deflects the spirit, stunning it. Onderrew steps in to protect Torvald from further assault, drawing his sword and piercing through the spirit’s chest, pinning it in place.

  “Janette, as I recall, necromancers often keep spirit traps handy. Do you have one in your pack?”

  Janette frantically checks her equipment, then offers up an ornate bottle with a swing-top. She points the mouth of the open bottle at the spirit, which automatically begins drawing the spirit in.

  Onderrew sheaths his sword again as the spirit trap takes hold. “Whew. That was exciting. What do you suppose that means?”

  “That this place makes ghosts go crazy?” suggests Sabreena.

  “It definitely strengthens them,” says Alys. “But you remember when — uh — I’ve learned, from past experience with the Order, that the Nameless Dead sometimes lose their reasoning capabilities and attack the living if they think they have an easy target.”

  Everyone looks at the still-vacant Torvald, enraptured by the tree.

  “Yeah, so,” Janette says, “To build on what Alys said: they’ll definitely do that, but it had agreed to perform a service — Nameless Dead with a mission usually stay focused on a purpose. And it’s weird that its form changed.”

  Mack asks, “Can you talk to it while it’s in there?”

  Janette holds up the bottle. “Hey. What happened?”

  The spirit, vaporous in its containment, swirls agitatedly. “Between, between — not here nor there — there is no mountain within the mountain —“

  “Talk sense,” Janette commands.

  There is a pause, then the spirit says, “The labyrinth stands open. There are no living and there are no dead on ground so consecrated. It will know who you are. I… I had a name…”

  The spirit falls silent, too affected to continue. Its words continue to linger in the air as the party members look at each other uncertainly.

  Torvald claps his hands together. “All right, cool, the meditation thing work out? I got the beer.”