In Menzoberranzan, where a goddess and her priestesses reigned supreme, few female dark elves ever found it necessary to sell their bodies. Only a handful of the sick and infirm, dwelling in the most abject need, had ever stooped to such a degradation. Accordingly, one might assume that any male wishing to purchase intimate companionship would find his choice limited to these rare unappealing specimens or the females of one of the inferior species.
But that wasn’t quite the case, at least not if a male had a heavy purse. The reason was that, while they generally devoted their military efforts to fighting cloakers, svirfneblin, and other competing civilizations of the Underdark, drow cities on rare occasions waged war on one another. Once in a while, such conflicts yielded female prisoners.
The prudent, legitimate thing to do with such potentially dangerous captives was interrogate, torture, and kill them. That fact notwithstanding, Nym had on several occasions managed to bribe officers to give him their prisoners, whom he then smuggled into Menzoberranzan and down to the cellar of the Jewel Box.
Nym had gone to all this trouble based on the shrewd and wellproven assumption that a goodly number of Menzoberranyr males would pay handsomely for the privilege of dominating a female, and in his establishment, one could do anything one wanted with a captive. Nym would even provide a customer with a bastinado, a brazier of coals, thumbscrews . . . his only stipulation being that one must pay a surcharge if one left a permanent mark.
Since the brothel’s existence was an open secret, Pharaun wasn’t sure why the matron mothers hadn’t shut it down. On the face of it, it certainly seemed to encourage disrespect for the ruling gender. Perhaps they felt that if a male had a refuge in which to act out his resentments, it would make him all the more deferential to the females in his home. More likely, Nym was slipping them a substantial portion of the take.
At any rate, the Jewel Box seemed a reasonable place to seek information concerning rogue males, especially if one had a spy in place. Pharaun wasn’t confident that he did anymore, but one never knew.
The stairs emptied into a hallway of numbered doors. Moans of passions and grunts of pain sounded faintly from behind several of them. It was busier than usual.
The mage strolled down the passage until he found number fourteen. He hesitated for an instant, then scowled and turned the largest of his keys in the lock. The door swung open.
Seated on the bed, shackles clutching her wrists and ankles, Pellanistra looked much as he remembered, the same powerful, shapely limbs and heart-shaped face, with only a few more scars where one or another of her visitors had pressed down two hard, as well as a split lip and closed, puffy eye where a more recent caller had beaten her.
She lifted her face, saw him, and charged with her long-nailed hands outstretched. Then she staggered as one of her governing enchantments riddled her body with pain, and an instant later hit the end of the chains securing her to the wall. She lost her balance and fell on her rump.
“Hello, Pellanistra,” Pharaun said.
She spat at him, then screwed up her face at another flare of punishment. The gobbet of saliva fell well short of the wizard’s soft, high boots.
“Much as I dislike descending to the obvious,” Pharaun said, “I feel compelled to observe that you’re only hurting yourself.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Come on, let’s sit and have a talk, just like in the old days. I’ll even remove the shackles if you wish.”
“We had a bargain!” she said.
“I refuse to have an extended conversation with someone sitting on the floor. It compromises my dignity as much as it does yours. Come on, be sensible. Take my hand.”
She didn’t do that, but, chains clinking, she did clamber to her bare feet unassisted. He caught a whiff of some flowery scent that Nym had forced her to wear.
“Now, isn’t that better?” he asked. “Do you want the manacles off?”
“We had a compact, and I was holding up my end.”
“I wish you’d invite me to sit down.”
“You abandoned me!”
Pharaun spread his slender, long-fingered hands and said, “All right, priestess. If you think it necessary, we’ll belabor the self-evident a bit longer. Yes, I recruited you into my service. Yes, you were doing splendidly—well on your way to earning your liberation—but my circumstances changed. Surely you heard something about it.”
“Yes. You backed the wrong sister, and Greyanna made a fool of you. She killed her twin, and you were powerless to stop it. If you hadn’t turned tail and run away to Sorcere, she would have slain you, too.”
Pharaun smiled crookedly. “I don’t think I’ll encourage the bards to put it quite that way when they compose the epic story of my life.”
“But after you established yourself up on Tier Breche, after you were free to come and go as you pleased, you could have returned here.”
“I have, on occasion, just not to call on you. I thought it might be a little awkward.”
“I could have helped you the same as before.”
“Alas, no. After my withdrawal from House Mizzrym, I no longer had a stake in the power struggles within my family or among the noble Houses, either. I no longer needed intelligence about such matters. The only rivalry that concerned me was the one among wizards, and even if you number the foremost practitioners of my art among your guests, I doubt they whisper the esoterica of their newly invented spells in your ears. When it comes to our discoveries, we wizards are a closemouthed breed.”
“You don’t know what it was like for me . . . is like for me, abused and degraded by my inferiors, constrained in body, mind, and soul, unable to commune with Lolth. . . .”
Pharaun raised his hand. “Please, you’re embarrassing yourself. You sound like a whining human, or one of our foul cousins in the World Above. Cease this tirade, take a breath, and think, then you will realize, enemy of Menzoberranzan, that my concern for your well-being has always been, at best, limited. How could it be otherwise? Sentiment certainly wasn’t strong enough to make me spend a fortune buying you free of Nym, or, if he and I couldn’t strike a deal, break you out of here. Not when you hadn’t fulfilled the terms of our covenant. As you no doubt recall, you were supposed to provide me useful information over the full course of twenty years. I admit it wasn’t your fault that you couldn’t, but still, that’s just the way things fell out.”
“Fine,” she gritted. “You’re right, I’m being ridiculous. In forsaking me, you simply behaved as any sensible drow would. Now what in the name of the Demonweb do you want?”
He nodded at the other end of the room and said, “May we . . . ?”
She gave a curt nod, and they seated themselves, she on the mattress of her wide octagonal bed and he on a cushioned granite chair.
“This is much nicer,” he said. “Would you like me to send for some wine?”
“Just get on with it.”
“Very well. I imagine my plight will amuse you. After the goddess knows how many years breathing the rarefied and dispassionate air of scholarship, imparting knowledge to eager young minds, advancing the frontiers of the mystic arts—”
“Murdering other wizards for their talismans and grimoires.”
He grinned. “Well, that was implied, of course. Anyway, after all that, I find myself again embroiled in the more mundane aspects of life in our noble metropolis. There’s a puzzle I must solve on pain of the archmage’s severe displeasure, and I will be grateful unto death and beyond if you help me unravel it.”
“How would I do that?”
“Don’t be disingenuous. It doesn’t suit you. The same way as always. I assume foolish boys still sometimes gossip and boast to their hired females, even though if they stopped to think about it, they’d remember you loathe them and wish them only ill. I likewise imagine that you still sometimes find yourself obliged to entertain at gatherings where such idiots, unmindful of your presence, discuss their most secret affairs with one another.”
“In
other words, you wish to resume our old arrangement. Which still had four years to run. If I assist you with your current problem, will you continue to concern yourself with ‘mundane’ affairs, or will you lock yourself away in your tower once more?”
He considered lying, but his instincts told him she’d see through it.
“I’m not entirely sure what will become of me,” he said. “As far as I know, if I’m successful, I ought to wind up reestablished in Sorcere with all my transgressions forgiven, but for some murky reason, I wonder. I’m caught up in something I don’t yet understand, and only the dark powers know where it will lead.”
“Then if you want my help, you’ll have to set me free . . . today.”
“Impossible, I don’t have the requisite funds on my person, nor the leisure to dicker with Nym, for that matter. You know he’d stretch any negotiation out for days, just to be annoying. Nor do I have time to arrange an escape.”
She only stared at him, and he understood.
“Ah,” he said.
“Is it a bargain?”
“It is if you actually give me some help. My problem is this: An unusual number of males have run away from home of late.”
“That’s your errand? To find some rogues? What makes it important enough to send a Master of Sorcere?”
He smiled. “I have no idea. Do you know anything about it?”
She shook her head. “Not much.”
“Frankly, any crumb of genuine information will put me ahead of where I am now.”
“Well, I’ve heard only the vaguest hints, but they suggest this isn’t just a case of an unusual number of males deciding independently to elope. They all ran to the same place for the same reason, whatever that reason may be.”
“I thought as much,” said Pharaun. “Otherwise, why would Gromph be interested? But it’s reassuring to hear that your own agile mind has arrived at the same conclusion.”
She sneered.
Pharaun absently ran his fingertip along one of the swirling lines woven into his robe.
“I doubt a threat would suffice to draw so many boys away from home,” he said. “Some would have the courage to defy the threatener or the sense to appeal to their kin for protection. Nor would a hypnotic charm do the trick. Aside from the natural resistance to such effects that all we dark elves possess, some of the males would have carried wards in the form of amulets and such. No, I think we have to assume the rogues sneaked away of their own volition to accomplish some positive end. But what?”
“They’re organizing a new merchant clan?”
“I thought of that, but Gromph says no, and I’m sure he’s correct. For if that were the case, then why the secrecy? Since trade is important to all Menzoberranzan, people don’t generally object when a male becomes a merchant. It’s one of the two or three legitimate ways to distance oneself from Mother’s harsh and arbitrary hand.” He grinned. “No offense. I’m sure that in happier times, the males under your authority had no reason to complain of you.”
“You can bet I would give them reason now.”
“Given your more recent experiences, that’s understandable. So, if the rogues aren’t putting together a caravan, what are they doing? Preparing to flee Menzoberranzan for good and all? Or, goddess forbid, have they slipped away already?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t tell you precisely where they are, but I believe they’re still somewhere in the city proper, the Mantle, or conceivably out in the Bauthwaf.”
“Now that truly is good news. I wasn’t keen on a hunt through the wilds of the Underdark. Not only is there a general lack of amenities, the winemakers are uncorking the new vintages the tenday after next.”
Pellanistra shook her head. “You haven’t changed.”
“Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, let’s get down to the crux of the matter, shall we? I require names. Which of your visitors dropped these ‘vaguest hints’ which you have so sagaciously interpreted?”
She gave him a smile radiant with spite. “Alton Vandree and Vuzlyn Freth.”
“Who themselves subsequently disappeared and are thus unavailable for questioning. It makes sense, I suppose, but it’s unfortunate all the same.”
“I’ve given you everything I have,” she said. “Now fulfill your end of the deal.”
The wizard frowned and said, “My dear collaborator, it would devastate me to disappoint you. Yet I stipulated that you’d have to offer me information of some significance, and frankly, I’m not sure you’ve delivered. I really know little more than I did before.”
“Do it, or I’ll tell every soul who comes into this cell that you’re looking for the runaways. Perhaps that will have some ‘significance’ for your mission. I assume it is supposed to be a secret. Things usually are where you’re involved, and you haven’t mentioned a legion of assistants following you about.”
Pharaun laughed. “Well played. I surrender. How shall we do this?”
“I don’t care. Burn me with your magic. Stick a dagger in me. Break my neck with those long, clever fingers.”
“Interesting suggestions all, but I’d just as soon that Nym didn’t bill me for your demise. If we can make it look as if your heart just stopped of its own accord sometime after I look my leave, I’ll have a chance.”
He cast about, noticed the thick, fluffy pillow on the bed, picked it up, and experimentally gripped it at both ends. It felt good in his hands.
“This ought to work,” he said. “Perhaps you could oblige me by lying down?”
chapter
five
Ryld sipped his chilled, tart wine with a sense of satisfaction, secure in the knowledge that the game, though technically still in progress, was already won. In three more moves, his onyx wizard and orc would trap and mate his opponent’s carnelian mother.
As usual, he had accomplished his victory without recourse to the dice. Truth to tell, those clattering ivory cubes with the magically warmed images incised on the faces were the one aspect of sava he didn’t like. They interjected blind luck into what should be a contest of pure cunning.
Ryld’s adversary, a scrawny young merchant clansman with an uncouth habit of letting drops of liquor slide from the corners of his mouth as he guzzled, had thrown the dice early on and gloated when chance allowed him to eliminate one of the older male’s priestesses.
Shoulders hunched, brow sweaty, he stared at the board as if the fate of his soul were being decided thereupon. A truly competent player would have recognized almost instantly that there was only one move he could make. Indeed, he would have foreseen the inevitable mate just three moves hence and resigned.
Mindful of his true purpose for visiting the Jewel Box, Ryld, doing his best to sound only casually interested, took up the thread of the conversation that he and the slightly tipsy trader had been carrying on in fits and starts.
“Did your cousin give you any warning that he was going to run away?”
“No,” the clansman answered curtly. “Why would he? We despised each other. Now shut up! You’re trying to break my concentration.”
Ryld sighed and settled back in his spindly, flimsy-looking limestone chair. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed something that made him sit up straighter, double-check the precise position of Splitter leaning against the wall, and stealthily loosen his short sword in its oiled sheath on his belt.
He himself didn’t quite know what had alerted him. These weren’t the first circle of revelers he’d watched rise from their seats and draw their weapons, either to play at fencing or to settle a quarrel that had nothing at all to do with the hooded male defeating all comers at sava. Indeed, within the confines of the Jewel Box, blades rasped from their scabbards with a certain regularity. Superficially, this new quartet was no different, but somehow Ryld knew that they were. Sure enough, they stalked straight toward him and his oblivious opponent through the fragrant haze of incense. Other patrons, likewise sensing the swordsmen’s intent, made haste to clear the way.<
br />
A blade with a glowing redness—an imprisoned spirit perhaps— oozing inside the adamantine, flicked in a horizontal sweep at the tabletop. Ryld caught the weapon and pushed it away before it could upset the sava pieces or his neatly stacked winnings. The long sword was as sharp as only an enchanted weapon could be, but he managed the grab without cutting his hand. Finally startled from his reverie, the scrawny boy looked wildly about.
“May we help you?” asked Ryld.
“We’ve been listening to you,” said the owner of the long sword.
Though not so big as Ryld, he was nonetheless husky and tall for a drow male, and the points of his prominent ears seemed to reach above the top of his head like a bat’s. He was the best dressed and plainly the leader of the foursome, even though his broad, sullen face bore the mottled bruises of a beating. The weapons master assumed that some noble female must have seen fit to give the male a pummeling. His companions would think none the less of him for that.
Especially since, Ryld noted, two of them were hurt as well, moving a trifle stiffly or slightly favoring one leg. Perhaps they were all kinsmen, and one of the priestesses in their House had gone on a regular tear.
“You’ve been asking a lot of questions about runaways,” the swordsman continued in a threatening drawl.
“Have I?” Ryld replied.
He reflected that it was too bad the three musicians had left the stage a few moments back. He doubted that anyone had managed to eavesdrop on his conversations while the longhorn was shrilling away.
The other male scowled and asked, “Why?”
“Just making conversation. Do you know something about the rogues?”
“No, but I know that in the Jewel Box we don’t like it when people are too curious. We don’t like them hunting runaways. We don’t like them listening to every private thing we say and reporting back to the Mothers.”
“I’m not a spy.”
Maybe he was, but he had no intention of confessing it to this fool.
“Ha!” the swordsman scoffed. “If you were, you wouldn’t admit it.”
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 7