The Inquisitives [2] Night of Long Shadows

by Crilley, Paul

  Cutter waited until the man finished. “You done? I hope so, because you take that tone with me again and I walk.”

  “Good! Please. Walk.”

  “I don’t think you want me to do that.”

  “On the contrary. I’ve had a difficult time of late, and the last thing I want is someone of your caliber hanging around causing trouble.”

  “I see.” Cutter made a show of glancing around, looking bored. Then he took the silk-wrapped bundle from his pocket. “You won’t be needing this, then?”

  “What is it?” Xavien reached out and took the bundle, unwrapping it to see what was inside.

  When he saw the shard, he actually dropped it. Cutter couldn’t believe his eyes. Xavien yanked his hands out from under it as if it burned him. Cutter caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Are you insane? Do you know how much trouble it was to find this?”

  Xavien gripped him by the shoulder and moved him closer to the windows. He made sure no one was nearby before he spoke. “Where did you get it? I was told it was lost.”

  Cutter shrugged. “I don’t like to leave a job undone. I went back to the university after the Watch left. He’d hidden it in his office.”

  Cutter could see Xavien running everything through his mind. The old man looked out at the rising sun. “There’s still time,” he said to himself.

  Cutter kept quiet, hoping Xavien would say something else that would tell him what was going on.

  No such luck. Xavien turned his attention back to Cutter.

  “You were supposed to deliver this to someone.”

  “At the Goblin’s Revenge. Yes. But I doubt they’ll still be waiting for me.”

  “No, of course not. You’ll have to take it directly to him. He doesn’t have much time.”

  Damn. Was Salkith supposed to know where this person lived? But then, why arrange the drop at the tavern?

  “Where am I meant to take it?” he said, chancing a risk.

  “Quiet. I’m thinking.” Xavien pursed his lips and stared at Cutter for what seemed like an age. He moistened his thin lips. “You understand I’m going to trust you with something that is dangerous to know.”

  Cutter didn’t say anything.

  “If word gets out, or if anything goes wrong, we’ll know it was you. We have resources you wouldn’t believe. You will never escape. You will be hunted down and killed.”

  “I don’t like threats, Xavien.”

  “I understand that. I’m just telling you how it is. There’s a lot at stake here. I need you to finish what you started. And just so you know I appreciate your … enthusiasm to finish the job, I’ll triple your fee. But only if you deliver the shard.”

  “Who to?”

  “A priest.”

  “A priest? What would a priest want with this?”

  “Because he is a priest of the Shadow. Please do not ask any more questions, because I won’t answer them. You will find him at the Temple of the Six in Khyber’s Gate. He is an elf called Anriel. Are these instructions clear?”

  “You want me to go down to Khyber’s Gate during Long Shadows? I think I’ll need more than triple.”

  “How much, then?”

  “Ten times the original amount.”

  Xavien didn’t even blink. “Done. Now hurry. He must have the shard before the changing of the next Watch. Tell him the rest of the plan is back on track. He will understand.”

  Xavien turned his back on Cutter and walked away, disappearing through a distant door. Cutter watched him go, then headed across the floor to the lift.

  “Khyber’s Gate?” said Torin. “Why there?”

  “I’ve told you what he told me. You know as much as I do.”

  “A priest of the Shadow,” said Wren. “Can it be a coincidence that this is happening now? During Long Shadows?”

  “No way,” said Torin. “The Shadow’s priests have more power now than at any other time during the year. I’d say that whatever they’re doing could only be accomplished during these three days.”

  “That makes sense,” said Cutter. “Remember what he said about there still being time, and that it had to be done today.”

  “And today is the last day of Long Shadows.” Wren sat back in his chair. “I don’t like this. Not one bit.”

  “Neither do I, but if I stand any chance of finding out who did this to Rowen, I have to follow it through.”

  “And don’t forget clearing your name of murder,” said Wren. “I realize that’s not quite as important as revenge, but it’s high on the list of priorities.”

  Torin shook his head. “Are we seriously suggesting we let him take the Khyber dragonshard straight to the people who wanted it in the first place? That professor died because he didn’t want it falling into their hands.”

  Wren frowned. “He’s right, Cutter. It’s too dangerous. We have no idea what they want it for. Taking it to them is a stupid thing to do.”

  “What makes you think you have any say in the matter?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m the one holding the dragonshard, and short of killing me and stripping it from my corpse, there’s no way you’re going to stop me from going to Khyber’s Gate and finding out why Rowen died.”

  Wren stared at him. “You know, you’re a very hard man to like.”

  “Just as well I don’t care then, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Just as well.” Wren stood and moved around the table. “Torin, I seem to have left my money at home. Pay the bill, will you? We travel to Khyber’s Gate.”

  The third day of long Shadows

  Sar, the 28th day of Vult, 998

  The way Cutter looked at life, the rich people landed at the top of the pile—the bankers, the businessmen, the politicians (the crooked ones, at least), and the higher echelons of the criminal world.

  Directly underneath were the people who kept them in those positions—the badly-paid workers, the people who borrowed their money and had to pay interest, the people who voted them into power, and the people who supported crime in any number of ways.

  At the bottom were the people who did everything else. The ones who cleaned up the messes everyone else made, and the ones who took an active role in the criminal lifestyle, working directly for the crime bosses at the top.

  It was the same with the city. At the very top of the pack was Skyway, a part of the city that floated above Central and Menthis Plateau. Then there was the Upper City, where all the aforementioned bankers and politicians lived. Middle City housed the workers, the people who scraped and saved just to get by. Then there was the Lower City where Cutter lived. He considered it pretty much the bottom of the barrel, but the one thing Sharn had taught him was that someone was always worse off than yourself.

  Below Lower City were the Depths. The Depths held the sewers of the city—huge, algae-covered aqueducts that once carried water but now shipped the city’s effluence to Khyber knew where. Beneath these sewers were ancient ruins and mold-ering buildings—all that remained of Sharn’s earlier ages.

  And underneath that, underneath everything, were the Cogs.

  The Cogs stretched underground the whole length and breadth of Sharn. Lakes of fire dotted the landscape of the Cogs. Channels of sluggish lava carved through the bedrock, powering the industrial heart of the city. The Cogs were home to the city’s foundries and forges, the slaughterhouses and tanneries. The stench of sulfur was ever present, and oily black smoke lurked around chimneys that were no more than uneven holes cut in ceilings, too small to handle the belching smoke. The walls were stained black, the slightest touch leaving hands covered in grime.

  A short visit to the Cogs meant hacking up filth and soot from your lungs for a week.

  This was where Khyber’s Gate lay. Khyber’s Gate was the only housing district in the Cogs, and its crumbling tenements were home to nearly all the goblins and bugbears who worked there.

  “So what’s the plan?” asked Wren. They walked nervously through the all-
but-deserted streets.

  “Identify Anriel and find out what he knows.”

  “What if he doesn’t tell you?” asked Torin, looking around and fingering one of the many knives he had armed himself with after learning where they were going.

  “He’ll tell me.”

  Wren stepped around something messy in the street. “I understand you need the shard to get inside the temple,” he said, pausing briefly to check the sole of his shoe, “but Cutter, you can’t let the shard get out of your sight. Do you understand that? Whatever they have planned for it, it can’t be good.”

  “I’m not stupid,” said Cutter. “Host, you’re like an old woman, you know?”

  Torin looked around uneasily. “Where is everyone? This place is like a ghost town.”

  “Last night was the final night of Long Shadows,” said Wren. “I’ll bet everyone had a bit of a party.”

  “Oh. So those weren’t dead bodies we passed a while back? They were just drunk?”

  “Mmm … no. I think those were dead bodies. Those goblins are just passed out, though.” Wren pointed at three goblins and a bugbear lying on the pavement outside a tavern.

  “I have to say I’m a bit confused as to how one gains entry into the headquarters of one of the most powerful criminal gangs in the city,” said Torin.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Cutter.

  “And?”

  “And I haven’t come up with anything.

  I’ll play it by ear.” “I’ll lay odds you end up using your fists.”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “There are more elegant ways of achieving one’s goals, Cutter,” said Wren.

  “Like what?”

  “Like using an invisibility potion.”

  Cutter stopped in his tracks. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. I picked it up from my apartments before we went to the college. The thing is, the effects won’t last very long.”

  “But it’ll get me inside?”

  “Yes. And another one will get you out.”

  “Then that’s all I need.”

  They stopped at a side road that traveled to their left and seemed to end against a sheer rock face. Except it wasn’t a rock face. Cutter could see flickering light through small openings scattered all the way up to the stalactites of the distant roof. Two guttering torches framed an almost invisible doorway carved from the rock. That was it. The infamous Temple of the Six.

  “Doesn’t look like much,” said Cutter.

  “Maybe so,” said Wren, “but it has warrens that extend for miles below ground. As far as I know, it was built by some of the original inhabitants of this city, long before any of us showed up.”

  “I’d better get moving,” said Cutter.

  Wren handed him two small vials.

  Cutter pocketed one and opened the other. “All of it?”

  “Every drop,” said Wren.

  Cutter emptied the contents down his throat. It tasted like the medicine his mother used to give him. He grimaced and smacked his lips, dropping the vial to the ground. He looked at his hands as they slowly faded from sight.

  Cutter moved to the side, watching Wren and Torin to see if they could detect the movement. But their eyes remained fixed on the spot where he had been when he took the potion. He turned onto the road without a word and headed for the temple. He could hear his footsteps and his breathing. He should have asked Wren about that. Could other people hear him? Or were his sounds masked as well? He decided to play it safe and assume others could hear him. That way, there’d be no surprises.

  The doors were closed, but as he pushed on them they slid smoothly inward. He quickly stepped to the side, in case someone was standing there. Nobody appeared, so he slipped through the door and into a long corridor. The walls were roughly carved from the rock, all angles and hard lines. Coldfire torches lit the way.

  He pulled the doors closed and set off down the hall. At the bottom of the corridor was an anteroom with three passageways leading deeper into the temple.

  Four priests of the Keeper stood at the far right passage. They were dressed in rags, their faces dirty and drawn. Cutter froze, but they hadn’t heard him. They were too busy looking at a parchment of some kind. Cutter slipped around the wall and took the corridor closest to the entrance.

  It led to a staircase that wound up through the rock. He took the stairs and reached another long corridor, this one lit by real torches. The greasy flames guttered and spat oil onto the walls. Black smoke marks smeared the rock above the sconces.

  It occurred to Cutter that he had no idea how to find Anriel. He knew that Daask had allowed the shrines to the Shadow and the Keeper to be rebuilt, but those shrines could be anywhere. And he had no idea how long the invisibility would last.

  He moved cautiously down the corridor, pressing himself hard against the wall every time someone approached. It was happening more and more frequently. Goblins and bugbears and orcs roamed the corridors, shouting greetings or cursing each other as they passed.

  He realized he must be in the Daask headquarters. None of the creatures he passed looked like priests. In fact, the last priests he saw were those back in the anteroom.

  He’d taken the wrong corridor.

  Cutter retraced his steps as fast as he could. The priests were gone from the anteroom, and he took one of the corridors to the right. It led to a staircase that cut sharply down through the rock.

  At the bottom was a square room with a single door. No chance of getting lost this time. Cutter eased the door open and listened. He heard distant chanting. A good sign. Chanting usually meant priests. They liked the sounds of their own voices.

  He slipped into the corridor and followed it as it cut a jagged and uneven path through the rock. Cutter reckoned that whoever carved the path simply turned in another direction every time they hit a seam of hard rock, coming back to the original direction whenever they could.

  The path eventually spat him out into another hallway. This one was paved with heavy flagstones, the walls more smoothly cut. Doors were spaced evenly along the corridor, and between these doors, coldfire torches cast small blooms of blue light up the walls and onto the ceiling. Cutter heard the chanting clearly now. It came from his right.

  So. What was his next move? He’d stumbled in blindly, not knowing how he would find Anriel, but now that he was here, he needed a plan. He couldn’t just wander around hoping to bump into him. That could take forever.

  He tried one of the doors, and was surprised when it opened into an untidy room. Someone’s sleeping quarters, by the look of it. Cutter entered and closed the door behind him. A desk stood against the far wall, cluttered with old books and loose pieces of parchment. He picked up a book and checked the spine. It was called Giving Birth to the Light. He flicked through the pages, reading a passage here and there, and realized the book was a treatise on how the Shadow spawned Aureon, and not the other way around, as was the generally accepted belief.

  Finally. A bit of luck. At least he knew he was in the correct temple.

  He opened the door to step into the corridor. A goblin walked past the room. It had almost passed the doorway when Cutter pulled it open. Cutter saw the goblin slow and start to turn. The human quickly pushed the door closed but didn’t engage the latch. He took a few steps back. A moment later, the door opened and the goblin poked its head into the room. It took a quick look around, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and went back about its business. Cutter waited a few seconds before slipping into the hallway. The goblin was walking down the corridor, heading to the stairs.

  Cutter turned and walked toward the chanting. A corridor branched to the left. He peered around the corner and saw a short hall that ended at a pair of double doors. Two priests stood guard. Cutter pulled back. The main corridor continued past the short passage and disappeared through an entrance with an iron gate barring the way. He could carry on that way, but the chanting priests were the first signs of lif
e he’d seen down here. Would Anriel not be in there with the others? Should he wait for them to finish and try to pick him from the crowd?

  He was still deciding when the chanting stopped. Cutter looked up in alarm as he heard the double doors open. He backed away, retracing his steps down the corridor.

  He had just passed the room where he had found the book when a priest strode into the corridor and stopped. He was dressed in the black robes of the Shadow. His face was ancient and wrinkled, his skin so white as to be almost translucent.

  The priest lifted his nose into the air, turning this way and that like an animal catching a scent.

  Then he turned and looked in Cutter’s direction, his face cracking with a hideous smile that revealed a mouth full of diseased gums.

  “I s-e-e you,” said the priest in a sing-song voice.

  The two priests who stood guard at the door walked up to stand behind the newcomer. He pointed in Cutter’s direction. “He stands, watching us. Bring his body to me.”

  In a single fluid movement, the priests whipped aside their robes and grabbed hold of crossbows, loosing bolts at Cutter. He dropped into a crouch and the bolts sailed above his head to clatter against the wall, raising sparks as they skittered against the stone.

  Cutter turned and ran. The old priest shouted after him. “There’s nowhere you can hide! I can smell the magic.”

  Cutter sprinted back to the square room, then leaped up the stairs two at a time. He heard the distant sounds of pursuit. He had an idea, but he had to hurry.

  The goblin who had looked into the room was halfway up the stairs. Cutter slowed when he heard the scuff of the creature’s footsteps and made sure his own passage went unheard. He slipped the second vial of invisibility potion from his pocket and uncorked it. He rounded the next turn and saw the goblin’s back.

  He had to judge his moment just right. Cutter approached the goblin. The ripe odor of sweat emanated from it. Cutter reached out with one hand, aiming for its scrawny neck.

  The goblin whirled around and flung an elbow into Cutter’s face. He staggered into the wall, almost dropping the vial. The goblin’s eyes were wide as it looked frantically around the confined space for its attacker.