War Of The Spider Queen - Condemnation Part 8

Though Coalhewer had insisted that the city was open to folk of all races, provided they brought gold, Halisstra could not convince herself that a pair of dark elves were truly safe in Gracklstugh. The short, stocky gray dwarves crowding the streets went about their business with a sullen purposefulness that Halisstra didn't like at all. They didn't laugh, or primp and preen, or even trade veiled threats with one another. Instead, they glared angrily at pa.s.sersby of any race, including their own, and stomped along beneath heavy shirts of mail, fists gripped tightly on the hafts of axes and hammers thrust through their broad belts. Only after Halisstra and Danifae had pa.s.sed half a dozen folk of other races in the streets did she begin to relax.

Halisstra paused in a spot between two towering smelters and looked around.

"There. I know little Dwarvish, but I think those signs advertise weaponsmiths."

They turned down the street, which was little more than a winding footpath rounding the castle-like stalagmites. Past the great stone pillars, they came to something resembling a town square of sorts, an open place surrounded by low, fortlike buildings of mortared stone. Here they found a large storefront displaying dozens of weapons and suits of armor beneath a merchants sign.

"This seems promising," Halisstra said. She ducked through the low door and stepped inside, Danifae behind her.

The place was filled with martial accoutrements of all sorts, much of it dwarven, but a number of pieces from other racesheavy iron blades of orog-work, kuo-toan armor made from the scales of some great pale fish, and black mithral mail of drow-make. Two well-armed duergar busied themselves with a.s.sembling a suit of half-plate armor at a workbench to one side of the door. They fixed suspicious stares on Halisstra and Danifae when the dark elves walked in, and kept a wary eye on them as the priestess and her handmaid examined the merchandise.

"Mistress Melarn," Danifae called.

Halisstra turned to find the girl gazing up at a well-made suit of drow chain mail, worked with the emblem of a minor House she did not know. A matching buckler hung near the mail, with a morningstar of black steel alongside it. The head of the weapon was fashioned in the shape of a demonic face with twisting, spikelike horns. Halisstra carefully muttered the words of a spell of detection, and smiled at the result. The arms were magicalnot overwhelmingly so, but certainly as good as or better than anything she'd hoped to find in the city.

"What can you tell us of these drow arms?" she asked of the shopkeepers.

The duergar halted their work. The two might have been twins; Halisstra could hardly tell them apart.

"Trophy," one of them rasped. "A captain in the service of Laird Thrazgad sold 'em a couple of months ago. Don't know where he got 'em."

"They're enchanted," said the other dwarf. "Won't be cheap. Not at all cheap."

Halisstra moved over to the counter, and fished a small pouch from inside her hauberk. She pored through its contents, and picked out several fine emeralds to set on the counter.

"Do we have a deal?"

The gray dwarf stood and approached to study the emeralds.

He scowled and said, "More than that. A lot more."

Halisstra met his gaze evenly. She hadn't managed to carry away much from her House before it fell, and she simply couldn't waste it on a gray dwarf's greed, not if she had other options open to her.

"Danifae, have another look at the mail," she said over her shoulder. "Make sure it's what you want."

Danifae read her intent perfectly. The girl picked up the morningstar and hefted it in her hand, feeling out its balance. As Halisstra had hoped, the second dwarf became nervous, watching a dark elf handle merchandise so valuable. He set down his work and moved over to keep a closer eye on her, making sure he stood between Danifae and the door. Danifae immediately began to offer a variety of comments about the arms, admiring the mail, questioning the strength of the enchantments, and generally engaging the fellow in conversation.

"It'll take five times that weight of gemstones," the duergar at the counter told Halisstra. "And they'll have to be good stones, too."

"Very well, then," Halisstra said.

She shrugged a leather case from her back and set it on the countertop. Unwrapping it carefully, she withdrew her lyre, a small, curved instrument of dragonbone, strung with mithral wire and chased with mithral filigree.

"As you can see, it's an exquisite piece of work," she said.

She picked it up and strummed it as if to show off its qualitiesand quietly sang a bae'qeshel song. The dwarf gaped at her, then recoiled in horror when he realized she was casting a spell. Before he could call out a warning, the magic of the song ensnared him.

"What's going on there?" the duergar watching Danifae demanded.

"Tell your friend it's all right," Halisstra whispered across the counter. "You don't want the lyre."

"It's fine," the first dwarf said. "She's offering the lyre, but we don't want it."

"Of course not," the second muttered. "Do you see any instruments in here?"

He returned his attention to Danifae, who asked him about the best way to care for mail in damp places.

"Now," said Halisstra to the dwarf she'd beguiled, "we're a little far apart at the moment, but I'm certain we can strike a good bargain. You're going to sell us the arms my handmaid is looking over. Will you take the emeralds as a down payment? I will come back in a couple of days with a very handsome sum to square my account."

"The stones'll do as a down payment," the merchant allowed, "but my partner won't be happy with that. He'll think you don't mean to come back."

"Let him think I've paid in full, then, and he won't trouble you." Halisstra said.

She thought for a moment more, then leaned forward and held the fellow with her eye.

"You know," she said softly, "if something were to happen to your partner, the entire business would be yours to run as you see fit, wouldn't it? You could keep all of the profits, couldn't you?"

An avaricious gleam came to the merchant's eye.

"I think you're right," he said. "I don't know why it didn't occur to me before!"

"Patience," Halisstra advised. "Anytime today would be fine. Oh, and I would appreciate it if you didn't mention to anyone else that my friend and I had done business with you. Let's just keep this between the two of us."

Nimor departed Menzoberranzan, carrying various payments and tokens to indicate that Reethk Vaszune had entered into an arrangement to provide the wizards of Agrach Dyrr with certain spell reagents and components on the small chance that he might be required to talk his way out of the city. The details of the true arrangement he had forged he carried in no place except his own mind. The Anointed Blade of the Jaezred Chaulssin was well satisfied with his work of the past few days. While he did not strictly need Agrach Dyrr for what he had in mind, the accommodation he'd reached with the ancient master of the House would make the task ahead of him much easier.

Nimor slipped from the Qu'ellarz'orl into a small side cavern leading out into the Dark Dominion. He had come to know the maze of dangerous pa.s.sages surrounding the great city quite well in the past few months, and he quickly found a dark, quiet spot un.o.bserved by any of the city's defenders. The Anointed Blade stretched out his hand toward the blank stone of the pa.s.sage wall. The Ring of Shadows gleamed on his left hand, a small circle of inky darkness that seemed more like a tiny hole in the world than a piece of ornamentation. Among its other powers, the ring made available to him the ability to walk paths in the Plane of Shadow and so freed him from many of the constraints that travel on foot would otherwise place on him.

He stepped forward toward the wall, and vanished into the Shadow Fringe. His destination lay not much more than a hundred miles from Menzoberranzan. He'd made the trip several times before, and it rarely took more than an hour. No son of Chaulssin had much to fear walking among the shadows, so Nimor occupied himself during his journey by weighing the value of his alliance with Agrach Dyrr, and wondering whether the ancient sorcerer who secretly ruled the House could be trusted to do as he said he would.

Nimor followed the dark path the ring forged through the Shadow Fringe for a measureless span of time, and the road began to twist back toward the mundane world. It was nearly impossible to judge the pa.s.sage of hours in the Fringe, but the magic of the spell was such that the path it created would, in its own time, emerge at the desired destination. The a.s.sa.s.sin set his hand to the hilt of his rapier and took the last step of his journey, stepping through a veil of gloom into a large, vaultlike chamber of carefully fitted stone blocks. Only one door led from the room, a great portal of iron reinforced by strengthening spells. Nimor drew from beneath his mail vest a large bronze key and fitted it to the looming portal. The door swung open with a squeal of rust.

Beyond the door stood a great, dark hall lit by red-glowing coals in iron braziers. Like the vault it was made of dressed stone, its ceiling supported by ma.s.sive columns, but unlike similar chambers in drow palaces, the s.p.a.ce was devoid of decoration or adornment. Nimor felt the presence of some number of guardians, though they chose not to reveal themselves.

"It is I, Nimor Imphraezl," he said. "Inform the crown prince that I am here."

From the air beside him several duergar guards appeared, shedding their invisibility. The gray dwarves stood a head shorter than the drow, but they were broad of shoulder and long of torso, their legs thick and short, their arms powerfully muscled. They wore black plate armor and carried battle-axes and shields emblazoned with the symbol of Gracklstugh. One duergar woman, her rank indicated only by a single strip of gold filigree on the brow of her helm, studied him carefully.

"The crown prince has left instructions to show you to a guest apartment in the palace. He will call on you shortly."

She made the courtesy sound like an order.

The a.s.sa.s.sin folded his arms and suffered himself to be marched off by a pair of the prince's own Stone Guards. The gray dwarves eyed him uneasily, as if they expected mischief from Nimor. In truth, there was little love lost between duergar and drow, despite the fact that Menzoberranzan and Gracklstugh had stood as neighbors for millennia. Gray dwarf and dark elf had fought more than one vicious war for control of the hundred-odd miles of cavern and chasm that lay between the two cities. The fact that no such war had been fought in a century or more simply indicated that both races had come to hold a grudging respect for their enemy's strength, and not any real lessening of the ill will between them.

The guards led him through the labyrinthine corridors of Gracklstugh's palace and showed him to a large suite in a disused portion of the fortress. The furnishings were simple and functional, as fitted duergar taste. Nimor settled down to wait, moving over to gaze out of a slitlike window at the gray dwarf city beyond the palace. The city was as unlovely as ever, a reeking cauldron of smoke and noise.

After a time, Nimor noted the approach of footsteps outside and turned as Horgar Steelshadow entered the suite, flanked by a pair of Stone Guards.

"Ah," the dark elf said, inclining his head. "A good day to you, my lord. How fares the City of Blades?"

"I doubt that you care," Horgar replied. For the ruler of such a powerful city, the crown prince was in many ways unremarkable. He looked very much like all the other duergar in the room, with a sullen cast to his eyes and a hairless skull. He carried a scepter of office and did not wear armor, which was all that differentiated him from his bodyguards. He motioned the guards to remain by the door, and strode over to speak quietly to Nimor. "Well? What news?"

"I believe I have found the allies I was seeking in Menzoberranzan, dear prince. A strong House eager to see the current order of things overthrown, but whose loyalty is not in question there. The hour of your victory approaches."

"Hmph. House Zauvirr was eager to hire our mercenaries in Ched Nasad, but d.a.m.ned few of Khorrl Xornbane's folk came back. I don't doubt that you or that Zammzt fellow whispered the same thing in Khorrl's ear when you hired his company."

"Xornbane's losses were regrettable, but in truth we did not expect the exceptional effectiveness of your stonefire bombs against Ched Nasad's calcified webs. Absent that unforeseeable chance, Khorrl Xornbane would have taken the city with House Zauvirr."

The duergar prince scowled, his beard jutting out like a bottlebrush.

"I warned Khorrl that dark elves have a habit of poorly rewarding mercenaries, especially dwarves. I won't let another of our mercenary companies march into peril like that again. Xornbane was an eighth of this city's strength."

"I have no need of a single company of mercenaries, Prince, no matter how large and fierce," Nimor a.s.sured him. "I have need of your whole army. March in your full strength, and you need not fear defeat in detail."

"It still smells like an insidious drow ruse to me."

Nimor frowned and said, "Prince Horgar, if you are hesitant to hazard any risks at all, you will rarely win a throw of the dice. You have an opportunity to achieve something great, but I cannot tell you that your success is guaranteed, or that there are no risks in our enterprise."

"We're not talking about a handful of coins riding on a stupid game," the duergar prince said. "We're talking about my throne riding on a war that could take a turn I don't care for in any number of ways. Don't try to sh.o.r.e up my resolve with empty observations about risk and reward."

"Very well, then, I shall not, but I will point out that when last we met you said you wanted only one thing before you would consent to lead your army against Menzoberranzan, and that was a substantial ally within the city itself. I have provided you that ally. When will it ever be better for you to strike out at the threat a strong Menzoberranzan poses to your kingdom? Their priestesses are powerless, they have already endured a costly slave rebellion, and now I bring to you a great House willing to a.s.sist you in your efforts. What more do we lack, Prince?"

The duergar scowled and turned away to stare out at Gracklstugh. He stood for a time, thinking hard. Nimor watched him waver, and decided it was time to set the hook.

Lowering his voice, he moved close and said, "What better way to secure your seat against the unruly lairds you fear, than by distracting them with a campaign beyond your borders? Even if you should fail to take Menzoberranzan, some diligent planning should ensure that the forces of the most dangerous lairds seem to find the deadliest part of any battle you fight. In truth I believe it is within your grasp to win a great victory over Menzoberranzan, and wreck the strength of your most rebellious n.o.bles at the same time."

The duergar prince grunted and studied Nimor closely.

"You presume much, dark elf," said Horgar. "What is it you hope to gain by destroying Menzoberranzan, eh? Why do you seek to set me on this course of action?"

The a.s.sa.s.sin grinned and clapped the duergar on the shoulder. The Stone Guards in the chamber shifted nervously, disapproving of the contact.

"My dear Prince Horgar, the answer is simple," Nimor said. "Revenge. Your army is to be the instrument of my vengeance. Naturally I recognize that you will not raze Menzoberranzan simply because I ask it, so it is a necessary part of my design that you are provided with the suitable motivation to do what I wish done. I have worked long and hard to bring about the circ.u.mstances under which the army of Gracklstugh might be aimed at the city I hateincluding, I might add, a.s.sisting you with the small problem of your father's thoughtless longevity. How can I make my purpose plainer?"

"I paid for your help in that case with hundreds of stonefire bombs," the duergar prince said, bridling. "Do not speak of my father's . . . death again. If I came to believe that you might seek to influence my actions with that story, I would have to make sure that whatever information you possessed never came to light. Do you understand me?"

"Oh, I did not mean anything by the remark, Horgar. I merely pointed out that I had been useful to you before, and that I may prove useful again. Now, can I count on the army of Gracklstugh, or not?"

Horgar Steelshadow, Crown Prince of Gracklstugh, reluctantly nodded a.s.sent.

"We will come," he said. "Now, explain to me who exactly will be aiding us inside Menzoberranzan, and how he'll be able to help."

Ryld could feel hateful eyes lingering on his broad back as he followed Valas and Coalhewer through the streets of the duergar city. He was all too conscious of the fact that he was out of his element. He towered a good twenty inches over any of the gray dwarves, and his coal-black skin and inky piwafwi didn't help him to blend in at all. The three travelers wound their way through a swordsmith's district, a narrow alleyway lined on both sides by open-air forges where duergar in leather ap.r.o.ns hammered endlessly on glowing metal. Ryld knew a thing or two about good steel, and he could see at a glance that the dwarves knew their work.

The weapons master quickened his step and drew alongside Valas.

"Where are we going?" he asked as quietly as possible over the ringing hammers. "I thought we needed to obtain some sort of official license or pa.s.s. Shouldn't we be heading for a courthouse, or something?"

"If ye wanted a royal license, ye would," Coalhewer answered, "but that would take ye months and cost ye a fortune in bribes. No, I'm takin' ye to call on the household of the clan laird Muzgardt. He'll give ye a writ o' pa.s.sage that should get ye where ye want to go."

Ryld nodded. It was not so different from Menzoberranzan, after all.

"How far will Muzgardt's writ run?" Valas asked. "Will it get us out of Gracklstugh's dominions?"

"Muzgardt's clan be merchants. They deal in ale and liquors throughout the Deepkingdom, and sometimes bring outside brews into the citydrow wine, svirfneblin brandy, even some vintages from the surface, or so I hear. Ye'll find his folk all over the realm." Coalhewer laughed a nasty laugh and added, " 'Course, Muzgardt sells pa.s.sage to those as want it, too. He likes his gold."

Ryld smiled. Coalhewer was a grasping, avaricious fellow by anyone's standards. Muzgardt's greed must be something noteworthy indeed for a dwarf like Coalhewer to comment on it.

They came to the end of the street of swordsmiths and found themselves back in the vicinity of the Darklake, though farther north along the sh.o.r.e. Before them stood a huge, ramshackle brewery made from loose stone stacked to make walls between the petrified stems of a small forest of gigantic mushrooms. Big copper vats steamed within, filling the air with a heavy, yeasty stink. Dozens of copper kegs stood nearby, and burly gray dwarves swarmed over the place, mashing fungus, mixing fermenting ma.s.ses, and filling casks with freshly brewed ale.

"A dwarf's second love after gold," Coalhewer said with a crooked smile. "Ah, Muzgardt's lads do good work, I tell ye."

The dwarf led Ryld and Valas into the brewhouse and past the huge vats to a small shack or shelter in the back of the place. A pair of gray dwarves stood in heavy mail armor, wicked-looking axes resting close at hand. The guards glared angrily at the dark elves, and picked up their weapons.

"What d'ye want?" one growled.

"Thummud," Coalhewer replied. "Got a business proposition for him."

"Stay here," the first guard said.

He ducked through a ragged curtain in the doorway, and returned a moment later.

"Thummud'll see ye, but the drow'll have t'leave their weapons at the door. Don't trust 'em."

Ryld looked at Valas and signed, Are we worried about an ambush?

The scout replied, Coalhewer knows there are five more in our party, including a capable wizard and a draegloth. I don't think he'd lead us into a trapbut watch your back anyway.

"Enough finger-talk," the guard snarled. "Talk so's we can understand ye, if ye've got anything to say."

"Always," Ryld said aloud to Valas.

He gave the duergar a hard look, but shrugged Splitter from his shoulder and set the greatsword against one wall. He unbuckled his short sword from its sheath at his hip and set it nearby.

"There's a curse on the big blade," he said. "You won't like what happens if you try to handle it."

Valas set down his shortbow and arrows, then dropped his kukris to the ground. The duergar guards checked the two dark elves for concealed weapons, then ushered them into the gloomy shelter. The place was an office of sorts, with ledgers and records scattered about. By a large standing clerks desk stood one of the fattest gray dwarfs Ryld had ever seen, a round-bodied fellow with thick arms and heavy shoulders. Duergar tended to run toward a gaunt, broad-shouldered build despite their short, powerful stature, but the brewmaster Thummud was as round as one of his kegs.

"Coalhewer," he said by way of a greeting. "What can you do for me?"

"I've got a party of dark elves as need a writ o' business from Muzgardt," Coalhewer said. "They'd prefer not to wait on a royal permit."

"What sort of business?"

"We deal in gemstones, mostly," Valas said. "We're looking into setting up transport through the Deepkingdom. We need to be able to move around and talk to a lot of people, and as Coalhewer said, we don't want to wait for months to get a royal license."