The companions made their way North to the village of Kor-Paurja, a copper mining village about a week north of Cheykor. Along the way, they managed to run into almost every conceivable hazard:
- Amsotha, the party's scout, fell down an abandoned well and was stuck there for several hours until the rest of the Company eventually found him.
- Feiala, the party's Guide, nearly led them into a dangerous landslide before realizing her mistake.
- Artana found what looked like a good, safe place to rest--but it turned out to be the hideout of some army deserters and highwaymen, who ambushed the party while they slept. Fortunately, Thoranrai noticed their danger and awoke the party in time.
Just after the latter episode, Feiala noticed what appeared to be strange animal tracks--great cloven hoofs--which, however, vanished in the sunlight. Thinking back, she recalled the story that had begun to circulate a year or two ago of a party who had been ambushed by the Arjagbori (the Horned Things) of legend, on their way to Ralakarr from Sencankarr. All trace--including the bodies and even the tracks--of the Arjagbori were said to vanish with the rising of the sun, though most considered these fanciful details to be mere superstitious rumors, like the rest of the story.
Finally making it to the village, they were able to find the beggar Yuralesh, who was known to have a local reputation as a swindler and was even rumored to be working in concert with a group of local highwaymen and deserters in the area--probably the same ones the Company had encountered and killed a few days earlier. In any case, Yuralesh promised he could show the Companions the "old mine" where the girls were being taken, in exchange for half of the treasure they retrieved (Artana clarified that this would only be half of her own cut) from the mine. Asking around, the Companions learned that the hills north of town had been believed by the locals for several generations back to have been haunted, and there were stories of those who became lost in the hills after dark being kidnapped, eaten alive, or witnessing strange and gruesome sacrificial rituals--like seeing a headless figure stirring a great brass cauldron full of limbs.
A few hours before sundown, the Company met Yuralesh on the north side of town, and followed him into the hills. Some time later--just as the red sunset in the West was giving way to an eerie twilight--he brought them to a crack in the side of an ancient mount which appeared at sundown and which seemed to widen as it grew darker. This, Yuralesh told them, was where the girls had been taken. The Companions lit torches and proceeded inside, only to be attacked by two Arjagbori--in fact, the very Horned Things of legend--who were guarding the entrance. The heroes triumphed narrowly, with both Thoranrai and Amsotha having taken the brunt of the fighting, the latter bleeding heavily due to a wound inflicted by one of the deadly scythes wielded by the horned monsters. Moving forward, they followed a long, snaking tunnel, adorned on either side by bas reliefs which portrayed Amborian history--or rather, an alternate version of it. It showed, for instance, the feud that broke out between the Treianraal and the Sothbori at the wedding of Lanenomen and Alyeitalya, as actually having been between the Treianraal and the Serpent-folk, the latter of whom it portrayed as the rightful natives of the lands around the Sea, driven off and oppressed by the coming of the folk of Starland. At the end of the tunnel they entered an antechamber, guarded by two enormous serpents of stone, who watched them motionlessly with huge eyes of glowing gems. Feiala tried to destroy the eye of one of the stone guardians, but only shattered her longsword in the process. Moving past the guardians--a task which daunted more than one member of the party--they pushed on through carven bronze doors and came at last to the great, central hall of what they had now realized must be an underground palace or temple complex.
There, arranged in a semi-circle around the base of a throne, were some two-dozen or so girls, all of them young, all of them arrayed in white, all of them laid out upon slabs of stone. A strange, twisted figure of a woman with serpentine eyes and a red amber crown upon her head, stood over them, seemingly drawing something from them, when the Companions entered. Pointing to them and uttering a word of command, the Serpent-woman sent forth four of her Gaunt Men to oppose the Companions, while she herself fled the scene...
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