Skein of Shadows (dungeons and dragons)

by Marsheila Rockwell

  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 platinum 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-lon
g 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 mouth 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.”

  “Because none of us will be around for the Baron to collect from if we go over his limit, anyway?” Greddark asked semi-seriously as he took the paper and tucked into a pocket.

  “No. To make sure we are,” she replied, making sure they all heard her. Whatever her private thoughts on their odds, she needed to project confidence. “What we don’t have in quantity, we’re going to have to make up for in quality. Nobody I’d trust more to make that call than a dwarf.”

  “A fellow dwarf,” Greddark corrected, raising a few eyebrows among Laven’s men. No — her men, now. Best to make sure they knew it before they headed into the darkness.

  “Greddark’s my second in this. Whatever he asks or tells, it comes from me. Clear?”

  Laven answered for them all.

  “As a diamond, and twice as precious.”

  Sabira nodded.

  “Get to it, then. Hopefully I’ll be done with this nonsense by the time you get back.” As they began to disperse, she called out. “Zi! A word?”

  The wizard looked at Laven first, but the Vadalis man ignored him, sending a not-so-subtle message that he wasn’t the one Zi should be asking for direction anymore. Sabira appreciated the support; she’d had a feeling the bald man would prove troublesome.

  Zi walked over to her side, looking at her warily.

  “Yes?”

  “Where’d you get your training?’

  “Excuse me?” He drew himself up, clearly affronted that she’d felt the need to ask. But she had neither the time nor the inclination to coddle his ego.

  “It’s a simple question-the kind I normally expect my employees to provide an answer to, not another question. Do I need to repeat it?”

  Zi’s face was a smooth as his head so he had no brows to draw together in anger, but he didn’t need them. It was there in his eyes and in the hard set of his jaw.

  “No, Marshal. I learned from my mother, who learned from hers. I’ve had no formal training.”

  Sabira hadn’t been expecting that. While self-taught mages weren’t unheard of, most at least spent some time studying with the masters at Arcanix, or the Tower of the Twelve, or one of the other smaller arcane colleges throughout the Five Nations. Well, she amended silently, most who were any good.

  “What would be your assessment of your skills in relation to say, an instructor at Arcanix?”

  “I have no idea; I’ve never met one,” Zi replied bluntly. “Why that particular unit of measure, if I may ask?”

  Sabira figured it wouldn’t hurt to let him know, and it might just make him reconsider his superior attitude.

  “Because the pretty blonde who went down into Tarath Marad taught there for several years, and all her power and ability didn’t suffice to bring her back out again.”

  “So you are here to finish what she started,” Zi said, a smug smile forming at the corners of his mouth.

  Well, so much for improving his attitude.

  “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but I can tell you one thing- you won’t be part of it either way, unless you give me an idea of what you can do. Now.”

  Zi considered her for a long moment. Then he shrugged.

  “I don’t know what you want from me, Marshal. A list of spells? Would you even know what half of them did?” A valid point, she supposed, but she needed some way to quantify his abilities. She wasn’t used to working with magic-wielders who didn’t also wield more mundane weapons.

  She shrugged, waiting.

  “How’s this, then? I was born and raised in the Demon Wastes. I left home at eighteen and made it to Sharn, on my own. I lived there for five years before I signed on with a crew out of the Lhazaar Principalities. I rose to first mate before the captain lost a race with a hurricane and steered us into Shargon’s Teeth. I was the only one who survived, and I’ve been in Stormreach ever since. Saved Laven from some trouble in the sewers a few months back and decided to follow him out here when the guard got a little too interested in him.” His dark eyes burned into hers. “Don’t let the pauper’s robes fool you. I may not know cards, Marshal, but I know magic.”

  Sabira was impressed in spite of herself. Surviving to age eighteen in the Wastes was an accomplishment in its own right, but to have made the two-thousand-mile journey from there to the City of Towers by himself, crossing some of the wildest and most dangerous terrain in all Khorvaire, was a feat worthy of a bard’s tale. Which might be exactly what he was feeding her, but somehow she didn’t think so-mostly because he didn’t seem to think she was worth the effort. If arrogance was any indicator, he and Tilde probably had comparable skills, based on that alone.

  “Well, I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Zi inclined his head to her, not quite respectfully, but probably as close as she was going to get until the first time she pulled his backside out of the fire. “Make sure Greddark procures some new robes for you, though. I don’t want someone mistaking you for a tent in the middle of the night. Could be awkward.”

  She turned away from him, not waiting for a reply. It was both a dismissal and a show of power-you only turned your back on someone who you either knew wouldn’t attack you, or who you knew you could defeat if they did. It wasn’t a tactic you used on someone you respected, but just as she had yet to earn the mage’s respect, he had yet to earn hers.

  The
line had moved while she’d been putting Zi in his place, and there were only three more people between her and the door.

  “Name and business?” the bored-looking doorman asked the half-elf at the front of the line, but before he could reply, Brannan stuck his head out and waved her up, earning her venomous looks from the people she bypassed.

  “Making new friends?” the Wayfinder asked as she brushed past him and entered the mayor’s foyer.

  “No thanks to you and your tame drow,” she responded with a little more rancor than she’d intended. But not much.

  Brannan’s eyebrows arched.

  “My tame drow?” he repeated, before a look of understanding dawned. “Ah. The locals have been telling stories, I see.”

  “Yes they have-quite entertaining ones, too, I might add. It’s a regular Livewood Theater out there. Or maybe the Phiarlan’s Carnival of Shadow would be a better comparison. With you as the ringmaster, of course.” At the Wayfinder’s puzzled look, she continued. “A ‘usage fee,’ Brannan? Really? From the guy who didn’t know a corpse would contaminate the town’s stagnant water source? Tell me you’re not behind this, and getting a percentage of it in addition to whatever you’re charging for hiring out your murderous guides.”

  “He’s not.”

  Sabira turned to see an older, heavy-set man with strokes of gray at each temple and two lifetimes’ worth of wrinkles on his face. The man’s shifting blue eyes widened in recognition when he saw her, though she was certain she’d never met him before. He hid it quickly, but Sabira had seen enough. The look, coupled with the too-symmetrical features and eyes that couldn’t quite stay the same color, let her know exactly what she was dealing with.

  The mayor was a changeling.

  And there was only one changeling on Xen’drik who would know who she was on sight.

  She kicked the mayor in the chest, knocking him back against the foyer wall, then had her urgrosh out of its harness before either he or Brannan could react. With the Siberys shard tip pressed against the mayor’s throat, she leaned forward and smiled.