by Jeff Crook
“I had no idea I was making any progress at all,” Cael said, fishing for a hint as to the purpose of this interview.
“Your Inner Circle hasn’t killed you yet,” Oros commented as he poured himself another glass of wine. “I call that progress.” He settled back in his chair and massaged the glass between his huge, pawlike hands, eyeing the elf curiously.
Cael returned his gaze without blinking for as long as he could stand it, but his curiosity soon got the better of him. His eyes flickered once more to the cabinet standing in the corner.
Noticing this, Captain Oros asked. “Would you like to see what is inside it?”
“If it is not too much trouble, shaffendi,” Cael answered. Oros laughed. “I’ve seen much of the world, my friend,” he said. “In my travels, I learned a bit of Elvish—enough to know that you just insulted me.”
Cael chuckled.
“Shaffendi is one of those untranslatable Elvish words, often used in reference to pompous twits,” the Guild captain continued as he approached the cabinet. He removed a small key from his pocket.
“Your forgiveness, m’lord,” Cael apologized, bowing his head. “It is a habit I developed in my dealings with humans. The ignorant like the sound of the word and so believe it to be a title of respect.”
“That’s quite all right,” Oros laughed. “I know a smattering of perhaps a dozen languages. For example, if I were to address you as the Great Khashla’k, you might never know that I had called you a horse’s ass.”
“A hit, m’lord,” Cael acknowledged. “You score on both points.”
“I had hoped you might use a more respectful Elvish term when addressing me,” Oros said. “One day you might call me shalifi.”
Cael grew serious. “That word is not lightly spoken, m’lord. Human scholars translate it as ‘master’ or ‘teacher,’ but its true meaning reaches far deeper.”
“That I know all too well,” Oros answered respectfully. “I only mentioned it because I like you. You have great talent, great energy and ingenuity. Many months have I watched you, Cael, tracking your career. The Vettow Ivory, that was yours, was it not?”
Cael bowed his head in assent.
“It is folk like you who are the future of the Guild—the daring, the bold. With a strong hand to guide you, there is much we could achieve.”
“I don’t work well with others,” Cael countered. “I prefer my own company. I am a loner, an outsider. Others may walk in the light of day, but I am a dark elf, cast from the light.”
Captain Oros burst out laughing. “Is that what you tell people?” he asked.
“It’s true!” Cael shot back. “I am thoroughly evil. I was cast out by my mother’s people for practicing the dark arts!”
“Pah! One look at you tells me that you don’t have what it takes to be truly ruthless. You are dangerous, yes. All of us are dangerous in our own way. You may be twice my age, my friend, but young you are nonetheless. A shrewd judge of horses, ships, and people am I. That is how I have achieved my position.”
“You know nothing,” Cael said with a smile. “I love the shadows. I embrace the night.”
“Be careful when you embrace the darkness that the darkness doesn’t embrace you,” Oros answered sharply. “Listen well to what I and others teach you. It will save your life.”
“I do just fine on my own,” Cael snapped. The wry smile faded from his lips. “Give me a sword and I will show you what my true shalifi taught me.”
The Guild captain merely dismissed Cael’s bluster with a wave of his hand. “I am sure you could cut me to ribbons. I am no swordsman. I am a leader of swordsmen. I get others to fight my battles for me. Kolav, for instance.”
A door opened and the minotaur ducked into the room. Cael leaped to his feet and put a chair between himself and the monster. Kolav laughed as he fingered the giant tulwar hanging at his belt. “That’s twice you’ve challenged me, little elf,” he boomed. “Be careful, or someone will make you eat your bragging words and wash them down with your own blood.”
“Melodrama is not your forte,” Cael said. “Why don’t you go find a nice fat heifer to play with?”
“Khashla’k!” the minotaur snarled. With a speed belying his giant stature, the monster leaped across the room and snatched the heavy chair from in front of the elf. He flung it aside like a piece of doll furniture. Cael dodged aside and grabbed the wine bottle from the table.
“If I am to fight, at least give me a sword!” he shouted. Was this, then, to be his test?
“I’ll give you a sword! Right between your ribs!” the minotaur returned.
“Kolav!” Captain Oros barked. The minotaur instantly halted, but a rumbling growl shook the room. Cael put the wine bottle to his lips and took a long swig, then returned it to the table.
“Leave us, now,” Oros ordered the minotaur. Reluctantly, the beast obeyed. However, he paused at the door and swung his great horned head around to glare at the elf.
“You will pay for your disrespect, elf,” Kolav growled. “The day of my revenge shall come. Challenge me a third time, and oath or no oath, I shall eat your liver.”
With those words, Kolav slammed the door with such force that it split down its length.
“What did he mean by that?” Cael asked as he righted his chair. Despite his attempt at a casual demeanor, his heart pounded in his chest. It was all he could do to calm himself.
“Didn’t you know? Elven liver is a minotaur delicacy,” Oros said.
“I meant the oath. What oath?” Cael asked through gritted teeth.
“Kolav has sworn an oath to serve me without question,” Oros answered.
“How did you manage that?” Cael asked. “I’ve always heard minotaurs are headstrong brutes, incapable of following a human master.”
“Yes, they are a great deal like freelance thieves,” Oros returned. “Yet they have their own code of honor. This one, his life I saved. He swore to serve me in exchange. But his tale is woven with the contents of this cabinet,” the Guild captain continued as he unlocked the sea cabinet. He threw wide the doors and stepped back to display its contents.
To Cael’s great disappointment, there was no fabulous pirate-won treasure inside. Instead, the cabinet contained a finely wrought model of a three-masted Palanthian galleon. The skill and care with which it had been carved showed in the warm glow of its planks and the careful detail of its ornaments and rigging.
“This is the Mary Eileen,” Captain Oros said, his chest swelling with pride. “She was the best command I ever had. A fast ship, a trim ship, the best ship in the Palanthian fleet, and I the youngest captain ever to earn so prestigious a command. I sailed her for five years, the best years of my life, but I drove her aground in a storm west of the Teeth of Chaos, and before I knew what was happening a pirate galley crewed by minotaurs was upon us. I lost all hands, and was myself captured by the minotaurs and chained to an oar. After a weary three months, the minotaurs were in turn rammed by a warship of the Knights of Takhisis, near Port Balifor. I was able to free myself and my bench companion from the chains and escape the sinking ship. The Knights took us captive, but my family paid my ransom, and I was released. I paid for the release of my bench companion, for we had become close mates in those three months aboard the minotaur galley. That companion was Kolav, and he has been my servant to this day.”
“She’s a fine ship,” the elf agreed as he eyed the model. “It broke my heart to lose her,” Oros said. He grew quiet, and spent quite a long while staring thoughtfully at the model. Suddenly, he laughed, and reaching into the cabinet he pulled the model out and placed it atop the table where they had dined.
“Look here,” he said as he pointed at the crow’s nest at the top of the main mast. There, carefully balanced on the lip of the basket, stood a tiny gull made of carefully folded paper. The paper was old and yellowed, as though the toy gull had stood there for many years, Wings poised for a flight that had never begun.
“Alynthia plac
ed that there,” Oros chuckled. “By the gods, it must have been twenty years ago. She took three voyages aboard the Mary Eileen, she and her father. I had a bosun’s mate aboard the ship then. He used to thrill Alynthia with his little animals, which he made by folding scraps of paper. Poor old chap. He went down with the ship. I was just glad Alynthia wasn’t aboard that day. I haven’t been to sea since.”
At these words, the door jerked open. Alynthia appeared there, a scowl darkening her face as if she suspected she was the subject of the conversation she had just interrupted. She stepped back, motioning to the elf. “Come with me!” she snapped.
Draining his glass to the lees, Cael clunked his glass to the table. He wiped his lips.
“I am ready,” he said.
Chapter Twelve
So what did you two talk about?” Alynthia snarled as she led the way down the hall. It was the first words she had spoken to Cael since they’d left Oros’s chamber. About twenty silent minutes had passed, minutes in which he could feel the tension seething within her. She walked in front of him, her back as stiff as a ramrod.
Cael began to suspect she was leading him in circles. Though the hall was bare of any identifying ornaments, a couple of doors looked familiar, as though he had passed them several times before.
“Nothing much,” he responded.
“Did he tell you why you were summoned?” she asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
They continued on in silence for a while, passing another familiar-looking door. Cael grew impatient He stopped. With- out seeming to notice, Alynthia continued down the hall and vanished around a corner. He stood for a moment, irresolute, listening to her footsteps fading away in the distance. Finally, with an exasperated sigh, he hurried after her.
As he turned the corner, he tripped and fell sprawling to the floor. Alynthia stepped on his back and pinned him to the floor. Her lips twitched with anger. “You will follow me without question, even if I choose to lead you in circles!” she snarled as she ground her heel into his spine.
“Yes, Mistress,” he groaned, trying to squirm free of her boot.
“And you will call me Captain, do you understand?”
“Aye, Captain,” he answered.
“Now get up!” She stepped aside and allowed him to stand. He dusted the knees of his trousers and waited for her to lead on. She stalked away, her heels pounding on the stone flags of the floor.
“Never question my orders,” she continued, turning the same corner for perhaps the fourth time. “As a freelance, individual initiative has served you well enough, but in the Guild it is a dangerous habit. There are people in this city who pay handsomely for protection.”
“Meaning they pay you to not rob them,” Cael said.
Alynthia ignored him. “Only the Guild captains know who they are, so we can’t have you going off on a lark. You hit who I tell you to hit and no one else. Understand?”
“Aye, aye, Captain, sir,” Cael barked like a theatrical pirate.
Alynthia stopped beside a low door, turned, and fixed the elf with a cold eye. “Do try not to be such a buffoon,” she said as she opened the door. Beyond, a staircase led down into shadows.
“Where are we going?” Cael asked as he followed her down.
“Didn’t I tell you not to ask questions?” she barked. “Your only concern is to follow me.”
Cael reluctantly obeyed. They reached the bottom of the stair and stepped into a low, smoky, torchlit hall. By the damp, heavy stone of the walls and arched ceiling, Cael guessed it to be deep underground.
Unlike the other parts of the Guild house that he had seen, this section was alive with activity. Young men and women scurried about, tending to duties that at first glance seemed bewildering in their variety. Two burly chaps strained to carry a heavy iron door, while a girl of no more than ten summers followed them, holding a large basket of sparkling black plums. Three men bearing double jars of oil squeezed through, careful not to spill a drop. A little further down the hall, a pair of dull-eyed Kalamanites tended the torches lining the walls, replacing old, smoking torches with fresh new ones. Suddenly, a half dozen youths bolted past in hot pursuit of a young girl clutching what appeared to be a merchant’s money belt, while a peg-legged instructor hopped after them, shouting to the girl that she had damn well better not let them catch her, or else she’d receive a right smart hiding. He bobbed and smiled to Alynthia as he passed, then continued on his way, loosing a string of curses at the pursuers, promising double punishment if they couldn’t catch a young strip of an girl like that.
Alynthia led the way down the hall. Soon they passed doorways opening both to the right and to the left. In one room, a band of black-clad thieves were performing a series of acrobatic exercises that made even the agile-footed elf stare in amazement. In another, a meal of common but hearty food was being served to a small group of brown-robed senior apprentices. They conversed in whispers. Through a third door, Cael saw a startling variety of Palanthian citizenry, from waterbearers to sailors to bejeweled and perfume-pomaded nobles. An elder master thief stalked among them, eyeing each sweating apprentice with deliberate care, and delivering praise or correction, or, when necessary, a punishing thwack of his stick to each deserving student of the arts of disguise.
“Today you shall begin to learn the discipline of the Guild. You’ll forget your independent ways and learn to appreciate the company and camaraderie of fellow thieves,” Alynthia explained as she led the way.
“Surely you don’t intend to place me with these,” Cael said. “They are children.”
“No, I have a regimen of very special training prepared for you,” she said with a laugh over her shoulder. “I am sure you have heard of the tests given to apprentice wizards at the Towers of High Sorcery.”
Indeed he had. Once, when the moons of magic still coursed nightly across the sky and the Towers of High Sorcery were centers of magical learning, those apprentice mages deemed worthy enough were accorded a test to see if they were prepared to assume the responsibilities that came with learning spells of power. The tests were voluntary, because failure invariably meant death.
“So I am to be tested, like some apprentice mage?” Cael asked incredulously. “I should think my besting you in the house of Gaeord is sufficient proof of my abilities.”
“It is not your abilities that are to be tested,” she snapped back, a little overloud. She lowered her voice, continuing, “You are still an apprentice in the ways of the Guild. You must watch how we operate, so that you may learn to anticipate the actions of your colleagues in the Inner Circle. You must learn to depend upon them for your very life, and they must be able to depend on you for the same. When you are truly a team, you will be able to act together without speaking, and live and breathe as one.
“In the days of the old Guild, few thieves trusted each other, few would work together toward a common goal. This distrust, this selfishness led to the Guild’s downfall, by black betrayal. When Mulciber reformed the Guild, she used the example of the Knights of Takhisis to teach her captains how to organize and lead people who do not naturally work together. This is what you must learn. This is what you will begin to learn, tonight.”
“Me, a Knight of Takhisis!” Cael laughed.
“Be quiet, you foo1!” Alynthia barked.
They had reached the end of the hall, where a low, iron door stood, set deeply into the ancient stone. Few thieves were about in this area, and no one guarded this door, though it looked stout enough to be the entrance to a treasure chamber. Alynthia stopped before it and motioned for Cael to move in front of her. He stepped forward and ran an appraising eye over the door and its massive lock.
“My test is to pick this lock?” he asked.
“Of course not, you idiot!” she cried. “Haven’t you been listening to me? This is not a test of your individual ability. It is a test of your integrity.”
“Then I will fail, for I have none,” the elf responded wit
h a smirk.
“Then you, or one of your companions, will die,” she answered coldly. “If you survive and one of your Circle dies because of your failure, rest assured, the others will gut you like a herring. And I won’t stop them.”
Chapter Thirteen
Cael pushed against the door. It swung open with an iron groan, revealing a stairway carved through solid rock. No torches lit the way. It descended into inky darkness. The stone walls were wet and dank and crusted with gray mold.
He turned back to Alynthia. “What’s down there?” he asked.
“Yours is not to question. I am ordering you to go there, so there you must go.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I will kill you here and now. You wouldn’t be the first to die at this door,” she added, as her hand strayed to the dagger strapped to her thigh. Glancing down, he noticed a number of large, brownish spots staining the stone floor.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“I thought so,” she answered with a smile.
Cael crossed the threshold onto the first step. Immediately, his feet flew out from beneath him, and he found himself sliding down a long dark slope. Alynthia’s voice seemed to follow after him, mockingly pleasant in its tones. “First lesson,” she called. “Never trust only what you see with your eyes. Go ahead—I’ll be watching you.”
The journey down was a swift one. Someone had gone to great care to prepare this passage so that the sliding was almost fun, despite the vile odor of the substance coating the stone. But it was really too brief a journey to be able to relax and enjoy the trip. Besides, Cael worried about what he might meet at the bottom.
His eyes didn’t have time to adjust to the darkness, or he might have been prepared for what awaited him. Suddenly, the slope was no longer there. His heart hammered in his throat. He was flying though empty space and total darkness. A rank stench rose up and slapped him in the face just before he landed hip deep in garbage. Luckily, the stuff broke his fall. He swore several of the more descriptive dwarven curses taught to him by Kharzog Hammerfell and struggled to climb atop the garbage heap before he sank any deeper.