Skein of Shadows

by Rockwell, Marsheila

  Greddark snorted.

  “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll order a double.”

  Sabira gave the dwarf a dark look and turned on her seat so she was facing the man.

  “You’ll have to forgive my friend. He got a little too much sun on the way here, and heat makes him cranky.” She shrugged apologetically. “It’s a dwarf thing.”

  The man’s eyes flicked over her once, taking in the quality of her armor and the Siberys shard adorning the urgrosh on her back.

  “Deneith?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  She nodded, holding out her hand.

  “Sabira.”

  “Laven d’Vadalis,” he replied, shaking her hand. “Didn’t expect to see any more of you lot here after the last group didn’t make it back.”

  “Oh?”

  “Pretty blonde took ’em down—Blademarks, I think. None of them ever came back up again.” His eyes—hazel, like Elix’s, Sabira noticed with a sudden pang she forced quickly away—narrowed. “Well, except their guide. One of the Unders.”

  “Unders?”

  “Drow who live under the mountains and the desert, came up when the caverns were opened. Umbragen’s the name I think they use, but most everyone else just calls them Unders.”

  “Yeah, because they get under your skin, and stay there,” one of Laven’s companions interjected. “Like a cactus needle, or a scorpion sting.” The woman’s comment was greeted with grunts of assent from the others at their table.

  The corner of Laven’s mouth quirked upward.

  “Glynn’s just mad he turned her down,” he quipped, which earned him a half-hearted punch from the woman and chuckles from his friends. Then he turned serious again. “You here to finish what the blonde started?”

  Sabira gave him her most ingenuous smile, then lied through her teeth.

  “I’m here to get rich. Aren’t you?”

  Laven laughed and raised his mug.

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  As the Vadalis man gulped down his own Tainted Well, Sabira took stock of him and his companions. Laven wore boiled leather armor and carried a worn but well-kept sword. Glynn was similarly dressed, with a brace of daggers across her chest. The two others at the table were also human, one in battered chain and the other in heavy robes Sabira suspected had been fashioned out of a wagon covering.

  She revised her assessment of Laven and his group; they probably weren’t animal handlers, after all. They looked more like hired hands down on their luck, hoping to make a little coin. A situation she just might be able to help them with.

  “So, who’s the best person to work for out here if I want to accomplish that goal?”

  Laven set his mug down and regarded her curiously.

  “You look more like the order-giving type than the order-taking,” he said after a moment.

  “Maybe I just want to know who my competition is,” she replied with an arch look. She didn’t really want to spend time playing games with him, though. She couldn’t go into Tarath Marad with only three swords at her side—not if she wanted to come back out again. Best just to get straight to the point. “Who are you working for?”

  The Vadalis man blinked once at her directness.

  “We’re sort of … independent contractors,” Glynn answered for him.

  Sabira shifted her gaze to the other woman, whose close-cropped black hair did little to hide either her scars or her age.

  “Not enough work in Stormreach for you?” Sabira asked her. This was the crux. She wanted men who’d follow her into the depths. She needed men who were desperate enough to do it.

  But there were degrees of desperation, and to the reasons behind it. Guisarme, Jester, and Skraad had ultimately followed her because she offered them a better choice—not the only one. Hiring men without options was like loading your quiver with warped quarrels. Sure, some of them would fly true, but it only took one to break in the groove and render the crossbow useless, and you defenseless. She needed to make sure Laven and his group weren’t here in Trent’s Well because there was nowhere else they could go.

  The dark-haired woman shrugged.

  “I get bored easy.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sabira thought she saw Laven wince. She wondered when Glynn had gotten bored of him.

  “So you’re looking for money and excitement?”

  “Aren’t you?” Glynn countered, throwing her own earlier question back at her with an impish look.

  Sabira smiled. She had a feeling this partnership would work out just fine.

  She was about to open her mouth to begin the negotiation process when a hush came over the tavern and all heads turned toward the entrance. Sabira turned to look as well and saw Xujil standing there, scanning the room. His gaze fell on her and he started toward her table. As he passed, people hastily got up from their tables, leaving coin beside their unfinished drinks on their way out.

  When it became clear what the drow’s destination was, Laven glanced at Sabira.

  “Another cranky friend of yours?”

  Sabira met his eyes coolly. If working with the drow was going to be a problem, she needed to know it now. She could find other men to go down into the caverns; she couldn’t find another guide who knew the route Tilde had taken.

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, this should be fun, then.”

  Sabira turned back in her seat to face the drow as he stopped next to her table, the only one aside from Laven’s that was still occupied. Even the kobold piper and shifter dancer had left the tavern, leaving them alone, except for Raff’s twin, who might have been a statue for all the attention he paid them.

  “Marshal,” the drow said by way of greeting, and Sabira almost groaned. That was going to drive Laven’s price up, she was sure.

  “Something I can do for you?” she asked shortly, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

  “The mayor asks everyone who enters Tarath Marad to register with him and pay a small usage fee, to help offset expenses incurred by the town in housing and feeding so many extra people. Since Brannan is unable to register for you, he requires your presence.”

  Sabira cocked an eyebrow at that. That was some pretty shrewd governing for a guy who dumped a dead body in a well and didn’t think there’d be consequences.

  “Where is he?”

  “At the mayor’s home, in the cavern,” the drow replied, unperturbed by her less than welcoming tone.

  “Tell him we’ll be along shortly.”

  “Brannan asked me to bring you—”

  “I’m sure he did, but we’re in the middle of being unavoidably detained. Tell him we’ll be there just as soon as we’re done here.” She knew the drow was from a culture alien to her and that he hadn’t been on the surface long enough to acclimate, but he would have had to be from a completely different plane of existence to mistake her expression.

  Xujil inclined his head.

  “As you will.”

  She waited until the drow had exited the tavern before turning back to Laven and Glynn.

  “I believe we were just about to discuss you coming to work for me?”

  Glynn gave her a wide smile, and Sabira could fairly see the coin pile growing in the other woman’s head.

  “Ir’Kethras too? You do run with some interesting folks, don’t you … Marshal?” Laven asked, hazel eyes gleaming.

  Sabira kept her own smile intact, though mentally she was sticking long needles in the soft spots between Xujil’s toes. Rusty ones. Possibly coated in poison.

  “Just Sabira. I’m on vacation,” she replied airily. “And as far as Brannan goes—well, you said you wanted to get rich. No better way than by learning from someone who already is.”

  She looked Laven and his companions in the eye, one by one.

  “We’re going into Tarath Marad, farther in than anyone else has lived to tell about, and that drow everyone seems to hate is the one who’s going to lead us there. I can pay you one hundred plat
inum apiece. Half now, half when we get back, plus a percentage of the profits on anything we find that we wind up selling. You provide your own weapons and your own bedrolls; I’ll provide the rest. Wealth and a wild time. What do you say?”

  Laven didn’t hesitate.

  “We’re in.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Zol, Barrakas 17, 998 YK

  Trent’s Well, Xen’drik.

  As they made their way out of the Shimmying Shifter—a rather ironic name, given that the dancer had barely been moving—Laven introduced Sabira and the others to the rest of his group.

  “This here’s Rahm, and this is our resident wizard, Zi,” he said, gesturing first to the man in chainmail, who nodded affably, and then at the bald man, who didn’t. “Don’t mind him. He lost his robes in a game of Jarot’s Bluff. Been in a mood ever since.”

  That explained the poorly-sewn canvas he was wearing.

  “Who’d he lose to?” Sabira asked, idly curious.

  “Glynn.”

  Ah. Well, she’d come close to betting the clothes off her back a time or two herself, so she wasn’t one to judge, but she did wonder what the other woman had done with the robes. The dark-haired woman didn’t seem to be any more the dress-wearing type than Sabira was.

  “It wasn’t the losing that upset him so much as her trading them for a couple of new daggers,” Laven continued. “He wasn’t too happy about that.”

  “Please,” Glynn scoffed. “That cheap Thrane cotton wouldn’t have stopped a gnat bite, let alone a blade. At least the canvas is thick enough to offer some actual protection. I probably saved his life.”

  “How very philanthropic of you,” Greddark interjected wryly. “I’m sure the profit you made had nothing to do with it.”

  Glynn looked at him askance.

  “Of course it did. Wouldn’t have been a point to it, otherwise.”

  Greddark laughed at that, and the others joined in easily. Well, all except Zi, but Sabira was pretty sure she saw the corner of the wizard’s mouth twitch upward when he thought no one was looking.

  She hid a relieved smile of her own. Integrating two very different groups into one cohesive team was a difficult enough task under the most ideal of circumstances, and these were anything but. It helped that everyone seemed to have a sense of humor. The better they got along, the better their chances of surviving this mission.

  Well, some of them, anyway. She held no illusions that everyone who went into Tarath Marad with her would come back out again, not when thirty Blademarks and a powerful sorceress hadn’t been able to do so. But her little group of misfits had something Tilde’s men hadn’t—a willingness to break the rules. Whether or not that would be enough to keep them alive remained to be seen.

  “So, tell me why everyone in Trent’s Well seems to hate our guide,” Sabira said in a low voice as the others began to chat and swap war stories behind them. “What did he do—poison the water supply?”

  Laven didn’t seem to get the joke. When he looked over at her, his face had grown serious.

  “Not just him. All the Unders—well, the few of them that stayed up on the surface, anyway. Wasn’t here when it happened, but from what I’ve heard, it seems they didn’t take too kindly to being discovered. They’re fighting some kind of war against some other Unders down there and I guess they thought the folks in the expedition were allied with their enemies. Followed ’em back up here and slaughtered the whole mess of ’em in their sleep before Brannan could talk ’em down. Killed their families too—women and children. Even an infant. Townsfolk would’ve started their own war if the Wayfinder hadn’t intervened. Got the mayor to grant the Unders amnesty, or some such—probably by appealing to his bank account. But not before the townsfolk took one of ’em and skinned him alive, then staked him out over a nest of scorpions.” Laven shook his head, bemused. “Funny thing is the other Unders didn’t seem to care that they killed him, just that they let scorpions defile his corpse.

  “Anyway, now there’s a few of ’em who guide expeditions down into the caverns in exchange for ‘surface magic.’ Brannan and the mayor pretty much run the whole thing—make a nice profit off it too.”

  “Apparently,” Sabira said, remembering Xujil’s matter-of-fact comment about a “usage fee.” The drow had seemed oblivious to the hostility of the taverngoers—he certainly hadn’t evinced any guilt or shame that she could see. She dared to hope he hadn’t been involved in the tragedy Laven had recounted, but she had to be sure. A good player could still win with the deck stacked against them, but not if they didn’t know about it beforehand.

  “So exactly what role, if any, did Xujil play in all this?” she asked.

  They were walking up the steep slope now, and it took the Vadalis man some time to answer. Sabira thought at first it was because he was winded, but then she saw his face.

  “Your guide? He’s the baby-killer.”

  The conversation lulled after Laven’s revelation, and Sabira focused on her surroundings. Mostly so she wouldn’t have to focus on the fact that the drow that was going to help her find Tilde was the worst sort of murderer, someone she’d gladly bring to justice herself if she didn’t need him so badly. She wondered if Tilde had known, or if it would have made a difference if the sorceress had. By all accounts, she’d been as much at Breven’s mercy in this situation as Sabira herself was. Maybe more, because Sabira liked to at least imagine that she could have refused. With Tilde’s all-consuming need to be accepted by the House that had turned its back on her mother, Sabira wasn’t sure Ned’s sister had really had that option.

  The path wound its way up the side of the mountain in between boulders larger than some of the mechanical wagons below, and along the edge of sheer escarpments that promised a painful end to anyone inattentive enough to step out of its globe-lit boundaries. Small tufts of desert grasses grew here and there, brown and sickly but stubborn. Lizards long since grown accustomed to the steady tramp of feet up and down the slope sunned themselves unconcernedly on small rocks, or scampered away with a hiss if they felt themselves threatened. Every so often they would have to press themselves up against the edge of the path as other groups made their way back down from the caverns, usually with empty soarsleds after a delivery of supplies, but some few bringing back spoils from their expeditions. Sabira saw piles of what looked like hardened cobwebs, a cluster of black blades with cruel, serrated edges, and slabs of stone covered with alien glyphs that glowed an angry red in the sunlight.

  “More draconic?” Sabira heard Skraad ask behind her, gently ribbing Greddark, who she imagined had probably been quite intrigued when those slabs passed by.

  “No. Though it does look somewhat familiar … a little like the writing the duergars use, but harsher. More primitive.”

  Sabira felt something cold tiptoe down her spine at the dwarf’s words. She’d never seen duergar writing, and only knew one word in their language: eddarghe. The name for a ghastly white flower that was also shared by the half-duergar assassin who’d kidnapped and tortured Ned, and had ultimately been responsible for his death. Eddarga—Nightshard—had also killed almost two dozen people in her decade-long killing spree, almost adding Sabira, Aggar, and the entire population of Frostmantle to her tally before she was done.

  Sabira had hoped to never cross paths with another of the deep-dwelling dwarves again—though she knew Gunnett, Eddarga’s sister and accomplice, was still out there somewhere, plotting against Aggar and the rest of the Tordannon family. Her family, now. But it somehow hadn’t occurred to her that she might encounter duergar on this excursion into the depths, and the idea filled her with dread. A dread she quickly stomped on and kicked aside. She was here to save Tilde and if any of Nightshard’s distant kin got in her way, they’d suffer the same fate the assassin had. It was that simple.

  They rounded a boulder the size of a small house and the cavern that housed the rest of Trent’s Well and the entrance to Tarath Marad opened up in front of them like the mout
h of the mountain. Here, the path was shadowed, and the everbright globes along its edge sprang to life, bathing them all in an icy bluish light. As they walked from the heat of the desert morning into the relative coolness of the cave, Sabira couldn’t repress a shiver that had very little to do with the temperature change.

  The last time she’d gone beneath a mountain, her companion had died—a slow, agonizing, brutal death. She couldn’t help but wonder which of her new companions would do the same on this trip.

  Several buildings dominated the floor of the huge cavern, situated on either side of a rushing river that flowed in from the west and went back out again on the east side. A stone bridge led from one side to the other, lit by more of the blue everbright lanterns, though these ones floated overhead instead of protruding from the ground.

  Sabira could see a smithy, what looked like the sort of general supply store common to rural towns and even a small tent with a hand-lettered sign set outside that read, “Artifact Collector.” There were other buildings, built mostly of stone and scavenged wood, that Sabira assumed were homes.

  It didn’t take much guesswork to determine which one belonged to the mayor. A massive two-story structure, it was the only house that boasted a facade constructed from the remains of giantish ruins, complete with massive faces on either side of the door. They had to have been transported all the way from Stormreach at considerable cost. Sabira wondered again at the “usage fee” and the mind behind it.

  There appeared to be a line of people waiting to see the mayor, so Sabira turned to Greddark.

  “No point in all of us wasting our time here. Why don’t you take the others and see what sort of supplies you can scrounge up for us? I’d like to head out tonight. Tomorrow, at the latest.” She pulled out Breven’s letter of credit. “Charge what you need to; don’t worry about the cost.”