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Coming back to the group, Babushka hears Thuskar's remark and sighs. "Yes, that's probably what we have to do. As much as I would love to explore it further. And I hate getting back out into the heat. Maybe we should go back to where we left Artemis, and make more detailed plans there? It might be easier with out heads cool than half-baked."

"Agreed." Jerrard says with a concerned look, he was trying to help to. "Let us leave and soon." Moving to head away from the mine he raises a hand. "Shall we?"

"Oh yes!" Locky announces with a little skip of her feet, the mine was sooo boring, at last they were moving.

"You are going to have so much fun." The Kender says cheerfully to Syriana, getting ready to move.

Rubbing the scratch on her cheek she darts in front of Jerrard and stands by the entrance once more. "Babuskha?" She asks.

"I'm coming" the gnome says and stretches out a hand for the kender to take. "We have to be careful, let's check if the barrier that strange dwarf made is still there."

They move along the corridor cautiously, checking around the corners with their infravision. If nothing occurs, they will go on to the entrance hall.

"Let's go then," Thuskar says, relighting his torch. The party starts to make their way back to the entrance hall, Syriana keeping as close to Ulster as possible.

The party treks back through the corridor, passing the large hole they saw earlier, then around the corner and back south. Ulster went into the winch room to open the door all of the way, and they stepped back into the entrance hall.

It was still empty, save for the dervish corpse with the slit throat It was still night outside.

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Random encounter check (1d10): 2, no encounters.

Locky's Detect Evil spell ends.

Babushka looks back to the corridors longingly. How much she would have liked to explore that mine, to be underground, and not in the scorching heat that would come as soon as the sun was up again! She sighs and watches the other's actions. In her opinion, they should settle down and make plans...

"The heat in the morning will not be comfortable. We need healing and protecting, otherwise we will not fair well out there." Jerrard says simply, watching the reaction from the Gnome.

"I need rest to do that." Locky responds.

"Looks like we'll need to set a watch until morning then," Thuskar says. "That'll be tricky without light. We lost the lantern, and I don't have enough torches to last that long."

"I wonder if anything in that store cupboard might burn?" Jerrard asks as he rubs his wounds, "There were wooden barrels were there not? We could burn those."

"I'll get some!" Locky bounces up onto her feet. "I'll help."

Thuskar and Locky go into the storeroom, and manage to find some broken wood from old barrels to use for a fire. Once gathered in the entrance hall, Thuskar sets to get the fire going with his flint and tinder.

The smoke wafts out, through the front door, and out into the night air.

"So what's our next step?" asks Thuskar. "If we go with Ulster's plan, that means we need a safe place to take the princess."

"The princesses, and the child prince" Babushka corrects Thuskar. "And ourselves, after the coup. In a land we do not know, in conditions alone are enough to kill us."

Then she moves over to Syriana. "Tell me, the mage who hurt you, was it the Khan's Vizir? And what exactly did he do to you?"

Syriana takes a step back when Babushka advances. "The vizier's name is Timur-i-Ling. He is a creepy man who always hovered over me when we were in the same room. He was always touching me whenever he found the excuse...but not in the way you would expect a man to. There was always something...cold and calculating about it. Like he was examining a corpse the way a mortician does..."

Babushka looks at the young woman carefully. She sees nothing unusual, but because she doesn't know the people, she asks directly. "Is there something that makes you different from the other women at the palace, that he could be especially interested in you, and not Imani, for example?"

Indeed, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly special about Syriana at first glance. She's young and probably quite pretty when she's not covered in ash and dirt and her clothes aren't in tatters.

She shrugs. "I am no one special, as far as I know. My father is just a merchant, although a wealthy one. The khan accepted me as his wife as a token from my father, who hoped to elevate his own position. As is standard practice," she adds. "Before that, I was a nobody."