Ryld had been born in a similar warren, had fought like a demon to escape it, and he felt a strange reluctance to venture in, as if squalor wouldn’t let him escape a second time. Unwilling to appear timid and foolish in the eyes of his friend, he hid the feeling behind an impassive warrior’s countenance.
Pharaun, however, freely demonstrated his own distaste. The porcine eyes in his illusory orc face watered, and he swallowed, no doubt trying to quell a surge of queasiness.
“Get used to it,” said Ryld.
“I’ll be all right. I’ve visited the Braeryn frequently enough to have some notion of what these little hells are like, though I confess I never entered one.”
“Then stick close and let me do the talking. Don’t stare at anybody, or look anyone in the eye. They’re likely to take it as an insult or challenge. Don’t touch anyone or anything if you can avoid it. Half the residents are sick and probably contagious.”
“Really? And their palace gives off such a salubrious air! Ah, well, lead on.”
Ryld did as his friend had asked. Beyond the threshold was the claustrophobic nightmare he remembered. Kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls, bugbears, hobgoblins, and a sprinkling of less common creatures squeezed into every available space. Some, the warrior knew, were runaway slaves. Others had entered the service of Menzoberranyr travelers who picked them up in far corners of the world, took them back to the city, and dismissed them without any means of making their way home. The rest were descendants of unfortunate souls in the first two categories.
Wherever they came from, the paupers were trapped in the Braeryn, begging, stealing, scavenging, preying on one another— often in the most literal sense—and hiring on for any dangerous, filthy job anyone cared to give them. It was the only way they could survive.
This particular lot had likewise learned to live packed into the common space without the slightest vestige of privacy. Undercreatures babbled, cooked, ate, drank, tended a still, brawled, twitched and moaned in the throes of sickness, shook and cuffed their shrieking infants, threw dice, fornicated, relieved themselves, and, amazingly, slept, all in plain view of anyone with the ill luck to look in their direction.
As Ryld had expected, within moments of their entrance, a pair of toughs—in this instance bugbears—slouched forward to accost them. With their coarse, shaggy manes and square, prominent jaws, bugbears were the largest and strongest of the goblin peoples, towering over the rest—and dark elves, too, for that matter. This pair was, by the standards of their destitute household, relatively well-fed and adequately dressed. They likely bullied tribute out of the rest.
“You don’t live here,” rumbled the taller of the two.
He wore what appeared to be a severed goblin hand strung around his burly neck. Drow occasionally affected similar ornaments, usually mementos of hated enemies, but they sent them to a taxidermist first. It was too bad the bugbear hadn’t done the same. It would have prevented the rot and the carrion smell.
“No,” Ryld said, tossing the bugbear a shaved coin, paying the toll to pass in and out of the house. “We came to see Smylla Nathos.”
The hulking goblinoids just looked at him, as did several others creatures. A scaly, naked little kobold tittered crazily.
Something was wrong, and the Master of Melee-Magthere didn’t know what. He felt a sudden tension and exhaled it away. Looking nervous was a bad idea.
“Isn’t this Smylla’s house?” he asked.
The shorter bugbear, who still loomed nearly as huge as an ogre, laughed and said, “No, not no more, but she still live here . . . kind of.”
“Can we see her?” said Ryld.
“What for?” asked the bugbear with the severed goblin hand.
The weapons master hesitated. He’d intended to say that he and Pharaun wished to consult Smylla in her professional capacity as a trader in information. It was essentially the truth, though that didn’t matter. What did was that he hadn’t expected it to provoke a hostile response.
Pharaun stepped up beside him.
“Smylla sold our sister Iggra the secret of how to break into a merchant’s strongroom,” the wizard said in a creditably surly Orcish rasp. “How to get around all the traps. . . . Only she left one out, see? It squirted acid on Sis and burned her to death. Slow. Almost got us too. It’s Smylla’s fault, and we come to ‘talk’ to her about it.”
The smaller bugbear nodded. “You ain’t the only ones wantin’ that kind of talk. Us, too, but we can’t get at the bitch.”
Pharaun cocked his head. “How come?”
“A couple tendays ago,” said the bugbear with the severed hand necklace, “we decided we was tired of her bossing us and her lamps hurting our eyes. We jumped her, hit her, but she chucked one of those stones that makes a flash of light. It blinded us, and she run up to her room.” He nodded toward the head of a twisting staircase. “We can’t get through the door. She locked it with magic or somethin’.”
Pharaun snorted. “Ain’t no door my brother and me can’t bust through.”
The bugbears exchanged glances. The smaller one, who, Ryld noticed, was missing several of his lower teeth, shrugged.
“You can try,” the larger one said. “Only, Smylla belongs to us, too. Hit her, bleed her, slice off a piece of her and eat it, but you can’t keep her all to yourself.”
“It’s a deal,” Pharaun said.
“Come on, then.”
The bugbears led them through the crowded room and onto the stairs, where they still had to pick their way through lounging paupers. Partway up, the brute wearing the decaying hand put it in his mouth and began slurping and sucking on it.
At the top of the steps were a small landing and a limestone door with a rounded top. Two sentries, an orc and a caninefaced gnoll with sores on his muzzle, sat on the floor looking bored.
The disguised teachers made a show of examining the door.
“Can you knock it down?” Pharaun whispered.
“When the bugbears couldn’t? Don’t count on it. Can you open it with magic?”
“Probably. It’s magically sealed, so a counterspell should suffice, but I don’t want our friends to observe me casting it. That really would compromise my disguise. Stand where you obstruct their view and do something distracting.”
“Right.” Ryld positioned himself in the appropriate spot and glowered up at the two bugbears. “We can open it. What loot is inside?”
The larger bugbear scowled and, the odious object in his mouth garbling his speech a little, said, “We made a deal. It didn’t say nothing about no loot.”
“Smylla took Sis’s treasure,” Ryld replied. “We want it back, and extra too, for wergild.”
“Hell with that.”
The bugbear with the missing teeth reached for the knife tucked through his belt. Ryld could see it was a butcher’s tool, not a proper fighting blade, but no doubt it served in the latter capacity well enough.
Ryld rested his hand on the hilt of his short sword, the weapon of choice for these tight quarters, and said, “You want to fight, we’ll fight. I’ll slice your face off your skull and wear it like a breechcloth, but my brother and I came to kill Smylla, not you. Let’s talk. If you never get the door—”
“Open,” Pharaun said.
White light shone at Ryld’s back, making the bugbears wince. Squinting, the warrior whirled and scrambled for the opening.
“Hey!” yelped the smaller bugbear.
Ryld felt a big hand fumble at his shoulder, trying to grab him, but it was an instant too slow. He followed Pharaun over the threshold and slammed the door.
“You need to hold it shut,” the wizard said.
“I can’t do it for long.”
Leaning forward, Ryld planted his hands on the limestone slab and braced himself.
The door bucked inward. For a heartbeat, the dark elf ’s feet slid on the calcite floor, then they caught, and he held the barrier in place. Barely.
Meanwhile, Pharaun was peering about.
He gave a little cry of satisfaction, picked up a small iron bar, and set it so it overlapped the edge of the door and the jamb about halfway up. When he took his hand away, the charm remained in place.
“This is quite a clever little device,” the wizard said. “Oh, and you can let go now.”
Pharaun turned the mechanical locks his spell of opening had disengaged, snapping each shut in its turn. It was actually the enchanted length of iron that had up to then kept the goblinoids out, but he thought he and Ryld might as well be as secure as possible. It also seemed the courteous thing to do.
His hostess, however, didn’t seem to appreciate the gesture.
“Get out!” she croaked. “Get out, or I’ll slay you with my sorcery!”
The masters turned. Smylla Nathos had lit her sparsely furnished room with a pair of slender brass rods, the tips of which emitted a steady magical glow. They protruded from the necks of wax-encrusted wine bottles like tapers sitting in candelabra, which they perhaps were meant to resemble. Maybe Smylla missed the spellcaster’s traditional mode of illumination but couldn’t obtain it anymore.
She herself lay at the limit of the light, on a cot in the shadows at the far end of the room. Pharaun could just barely make her out.
“Good afternoon, my lady,” the wizard said, bowing. “It shames me beyond measure to ignore your request. Yet should this gentleman and I pass through your door a second time, the bugbears and their ilk will rush in, and that, I think, is the very eventuality you sought to forestall.”
“Who are you? You don’t talk like an orc.”
“My lady is a marvel of perspicacity. We are in fact drow lords come to consult you on a matter of some importance.”
“Why are you disguised?”
“The usual reason: To confound our enemies. May we approach? It’s tedious trying to converse across the length of the room.”
Smylla hesitated, then said, “Come.”
Pharaun and Ryld started forward. Behind them, the bugbears were cursing, shouting threats and questions, and pounding on the far side of the door.
After four paces, the wizard’s stomach turned at yet another stench, this one humid and gangrenous. He’d half expected something of the sort, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. Even the phlegmatic Ryld looked discomfited for an instant.
“Close enough,” Smylla said, and Pharaun supposed it was.
He had no desire to come any nearer to that wasted form with its boils and pustules, even though the enchantments bound into his mantle and Ryld’s cloak and dwarven armor would probably protect them from infection.
“Can you help us?” asked Ryld.
The sick woman leered. “Will you pay me with the magnificent greatsword you wear across your back?”
Pharaun was somewhat impressed. The illusion of pig-faced orcishness shrouding his friend made Splitter look like a battleaxe, but Smylla’s rheumy, sunken eyes had pierced that aspect of the deception.
When he recovered from his surprise, Ryld shook his head. “No, I won’t give you the sword. I worked too hard to get it, and I need it to stay alive, but if you want I can use it to clear away the goblinoids outside. My comrade and I are also carrying a fair amount of gold.”
Her dry white hair spread about her head, Smylla lay propped against a mound of stained, musty pillows. She struggled to hitch herself up straighter, then abandoned the effort. Apparently it was beyond her strength.
“Gold?” she said. “Do you know who I am, swordsman? Do you know my history?”
“I do,” Pharaun said. “The gist of it, anyway. It happened after I more or less withdrew from participation in the affairs of the great Houses.”
“What do you know?” she asked.
“An expedition from House Faen Tlabbar,” the wizard replied, “ventured up into the Lands of Light to hunt and plunder. When they returned, a lovely human sorceress and clairvoyant accompanied them, not as a newly captured slave but as their guest.
“Why did you want to come? Perhaps you were fleeing some implacable enemy, or were fascinated by the grace and sophistication of my people and the idea of living in the exotic Underdark. My hunch is that you wanted to learn drow magic, but it’s pure speculation. No outsider ever knew.
“For that matter, why did the Faen Tlabbar oblige you? That’s an even greater mystery. Conceivably someone harbored amorous feelings for you, or you, too, had secrets to teach.”
“I had a way of persuading them,” Smylla said.
“Obviously. Once you reached Menzoberranzan, you made yourself useful to House Faen Tlabbar as countless minions from the lesser races had done before you. The difference being that you were accorded a certain status, even a degree of familiarity. Matron Ghenni let you dine with the family and attend social functions, where you reportedly acquitted yourself with a drowlike poise and charm.”
“I was their pet,” said Smylla, sneering at the memory, “a dog dressed in a gown and trained to dance on its hind legs. I just didn’t know it at the time.”
“I’m sure many saw you that way. Perhaps some saw something else. From all accounts, Matron Ghenni behaved as if she regarded you as a ward, just one notch down from a daughter, and with the mistress of the Fourth House indulging you, few would dare challenge your right to comport yourself like a Menzoberranyr noble. Indeed, no one did, until she turned against you.”
“Until I fell ill,” said the sorceress.
“Quite. Was it a natural disease, bred, perhaps, by the lack of the searing sunlight that is a natural condition for your kind? Or did an enemy infect you with poison or magic? If so, was the culprit someone inside House Faen Tlabbar, who saw you as a rival for Ghenni’s favor, or the agent of an enemy family, depriving their foes of a resource?”
“I was never able to find out. That’s funny coming from me, isn’t it?”
“Ironic, perhaps. At any rate, several priestesses tried to cure you, but for some reason, the magic failed, whereupon Ghenni summarily expelled you from her citadel.”
“Actually,” Smylla said, “she sent a couple trolls, slave soldiers, to murder me. I escaped them and the castle, too. Afterward, I tried to offer my services to other Houses, noble and merchant alike, but no door would open to a human who’d lost the favor of Faen Tlabbar.”
“My lady,” said Pharaun, “if it’s any consolation, you were still receiving precisely the same treatment we would have given a member of our own race. No dark elf would abide the presence of anyone afflicted with an incurable malady. The Spider Queen taught us the weak must die, and in any case, what if the sickness was contagious?”
“It’s not a consolation.”
“Fair enough. To continue the tale: Unwelcome anywhere else, you made your way to the Braeryn. Despite your infirmity, some magic remained within your grasp, and you employed it to cow the residents of this particular warren into providing you with a private space in which to live. I daresay that wasn’t easy. Then, using divinatory rituals, your natural psionic gifts, and whatever secrets you’d discovered during your time with House Faen Tlabbar, you set up shop as a broker of knowledge. At first, only the lower orders availed themselves of your services, then gradually, as your reputation grew, even a few of my people started consulting you. We wouldn’t let you dwell among us, but some were willing to risk a brief contact if they anticipated sufficient advantage from it.”
“I never heard of you,” said Ryld, “but within the district, your reputation seems to be considerable. We’ve been asking questions all day, and more than one suggested we seek you out.”
The door banged particularly loudly, and he glanced back to make sure the bugbears weren’t breaching it.
“That’s all I know of your saga,” said Pharaun, “but I infer from the hostility of your cohabitants that a new stanza has begun.”
“I suppose I couldn’t bluff them forever,” Smylla said. “My powers, sorcerous and psionic alike, are all but gone, devoured by my malady. Once I acquired my stock in trade pr
imarily through scrying, divinations, and such. In recent years, I’ve cajoled my secrets from a web of informers, whom I betray one to the other.”
The withered creature smirked.
“Well,” said Ryld, “I hope you teased out the one we need.”
She coughed. No, it was a laugh. “Even if I did, why would I share it with you, dark elf?”
“I told you,” the warrior said, “we can protect you from the bugbears and goblins.”
“So can my little iron trinket.”
“But eventually, if you simply remain in here, you’ll die of hunger and thirst.”
“I’m dying anyway. Can’t you tell? I’m not an old woman—I’m a baby as you drow measure time!—but I look like an ancient hag. I just don’t want to perish at the hands of those miserable undercreatures. I’ve ruled here for fifteen years, and if I die beyond their reach, I win. Do you see?”
“Well, then, my lady,” said Pharaun, “your wish suggests the terms of a bargain. Oblige us, and we’ll refrain from admitting the bugbears.”
She made a spitting sound and said, “Admit them if you must. I loathe the brutes, but I hate you dark elves more. It was you who made me as I am. I bartered information with you for as long as I had something to gain, but now that the disease is finally killing me, you can all go to the Abyss where your goddess lives, and burn.”
Pharaun might have replied that as far as he could tell, Smylla had sealed her own fate on the day she decided to descend into the Underdark, but he doubted it would soften her resolve.
“I don’t blame you,” he said, making a show of sympathy. It wouldn’t have deceived any drow, but even though she’d trafficked with his race for decades, perhaps she still had human instincts. “Sometimes I hate other dark elves myself. I’d certainly despise them if they served me as they’ve treated you.”
She eyed him skeptically. “But you’re the one who’s different from all the others?”
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 17