The sludge thing wasn’t alone.
“Leap!” Dahlia yelled back to Entreri as Regis went crashing out the window. Seeing her lover’s predicament, dangling and hardly yet in control, the sludge rolling out beneath him, Dahlia jumped back toward the center of the room and took up her enchanted staff, Kozah’s Needle. She swatted at the thing, releasing the pent-up lightning energy within the powerful weapon, blasting the muck and webbing—but if she was harming the thing, if the thing was even alive, it did not show.
Worse, the impact sent sludge flying, the same acidic substance that had melted the table. Dahlia fell back, stung about her face and hands, her vision blurred.
“Artemis!” she yelled from the window.
“Go!” he shouted back, and with both hands on the beam now, the assassin began to rock back and forth.
Dahlia understood immediately, for she had witnessed the graceful acrobatics of Artemis Entreri enough to hold confidence that he’d come sailing through the window right behind her.
She didn’t have a choice anyway, for the sludgy sod continued unwinding, nearly filling the room already. Dahlia had nowhere to go but out.
“Now!” she yelled back to Entreri, throwing herself through the broken window. She might as well have been speaking to the sludge, though, she realized in that last terrible moment, for as she exited, she glanced back to see Entreri in his last swing. But just before he let go, the sludge creature snapped upward, its entire perimeter rising about the room like some giant snare trap. Entreri leaped and was lost from Dahlia’s sight immediately, engulfed by the sludge monster, enwrapped and dropped to the floor within a cocoon of stinking feces, sludge, and webbing.
Dahlia tried to grab at the windowpane, tried to catch herself and get back in to save the man she loved.
But she couldn’t quite reach it, and she fell away, clawing at the side of the building to somewhat lessen her fall, spewing curses and denials all the way down to the ground. She landed hard, but managed a roll to absorb the impact and avoid too much damage. She thought to go right back up the wall to the room, but before she could begin the climb—hands scraped and raw from the fall, her knee bruised, one eye swollen and closed, the other still blurry—she heard closing footsteps and swung about to see armored soldiers coming at her, three left, two right.
She was too bruised, too disoriented, and too blind at that moment to even begin to flee, so Dahlia slipped her hand to a trigger on Kozah’s Needle and broke her metallic staff into two pieces, one in each hand. A second movement had those two falling in half, joined end to end by a length of fine and strong metal chain.
In the same singular, fluid procession, she sent those nunchaku into wide and flamboyant spins, moving them all about, hoping to keep the soldiers at bay long enough for her to recover from the drop.
But the three to her left commanded all of her attention, and when she at last had driven them back enough to spin about, the other two were simply too close!
Except then they weren’t, one flying backward, then the other, thrown to the ground and each with a leering, undead apparition looming behind, the specters clutching garrotes as they choked the life from the soldiers.
Dahlia didn’t understand the shocking scene in that moment of confusion, but neither did she hesitate, diving out to the left, rolling to the ground, then back upright just before the kicking feet of the two desperate soldiers as they thrashed about.
The other three came at her, the middle one slumping as she did, to her knees, then facedown to the ground, a small dart sticking from the back of her neck.
A quick glance past that fallen soldier answered Dahlia’s questions, for there, perched on a balcony of the next building, peeking out from behind some drying laundry, she spotted the blue beret of Regis. Somehow that little fool had taken down three of her attackers in short order, leaving two for Dahlia, who had shaken the sting from her eyes now and had her nunchaku spinning once more.
Regis glanced at the broken window over to the side, then down at Dahlia and past her to the far end of the alleyway. He knew that more enemies were coming, likely from every direction. They had to move, and quickly.
“Time to be a hero,” the halfling whispered and drew out his rapier, the magnificent blade that had once belonged to the great Pericolo Topolino. He glanced down, then widened a grin as he considered the clothesline strung around this balcony.
He jumped up, caught it, cut the line with a deft flick of his blade, and swung down, the gallant halfling hero swooping down to rescue Dahlia.
He came in far too high, fumbled and flailed, and got his rapier nowhere near either of the opponents facing Dahlia. He swung past, nearly falling from the rope as he tried to better angle his return pendulum swing.
But no, on this second swing he did no better, and the return angle scraped him against the building, stealing his momentum, leaving him hanging some ten feet from the ground and far to the side of Dahlia’s fight. The halfling did manage to invert, hooking his leg within a spiral of the rope. He replaced his rapier on his belt and fumbled with his hand crossbow, trying to set a bolt—which was no easy task, hanging upside down!
“Hang on,” he quietly implored, glancing nervously to Dahlia. Then he nearly laughed aloud, realizing that the woman needed no further help from him. She rolled between her assailants, nunchaku spinning to whack at their weapons and shields, then coming in close to clang together, each rap of the metallic poles causing an arc of energy, the magic of Kozah’s Needle creating and holding the lightning.
Above her head went those strange weapons, spinning furiously as she cut fast and turned to the left, her left arm coming down suddenly in a powerful backhand that sent her nunchaku slamming against the nearest soldier’s shield. And there, Dahlia released the energy, a sudden shock and blast that folded the shield and sent the poor soldier flying hard across the narrow alleyway to slam into the wall.
Regis yelped, trying to warn Dahlia of the remaining soldier’s short charge.
Dahlia was continuing her turn, however, and that kept the left nunchaku sweeping before her again, the right one going into a sudden vertical spin that brought it down and around, coming up under her armpit, where she clamped her upper arm tight about it, holding it fast, her right wrist down-turning, straining to tear it free.
As she came fully around, square to the charging soldier and, more particularly, that soldier’s leading shield, Dahlia jerked the trapped nunchaku free, snapping it forward like a serpent’s strike. This one, too, released its pent-up charge as it connected with the shield, but so powerful and focused was the strike, so direct the release of lightning, that the nunchaku drove right through that shield, right through the forearm holding the shield, and right through the soldier’s armor, stopping the burly warrior in his tracks—indeed, sending him flying backward.
Regis rolled over, unhooked his leg, and scrambled down the side of the building. He sprinted past Dahlia, who watched him curiously, and to the two warriors who had been garroted by the specters, the creatures still tugging at the cords around the necks of their victims—cords that had been the snake side-blades of Regis’s darkly magical dirk.
Regis knew the deeper secret of those specters, and he exploited that now, poking each in turn with his rapier, the single touch making the monster vanish.
Neither of the prone soldiers moved at all—the halfling had no idea if they were unconscious or dead, nor did he have the time to check.
“Run!” he told Dahlia, who was back beneath the broken window, her staff returned to its full length. “No!” he added, when it seemed like she meant to go back up.
As if to accentuate the halfling’s point, at that moment, a thick and short demonic beast appeared at the window to throw a heavy block down at Dahlia. The agile elf woman dodged aside, just barely, as the block crashed into the cobblestones.
“I can’t leave him!” she yelled at Regis.
“Neither of us is any good to him dead,” the halfling repl
ied.
Shouts came at them from both sides of the alley. More demons appeared at the window, raining stones.
Across the way the pair sprinted, Regis leaping upon the building wall and scrambling up, Dahlia setting her staff between two cobblestones and vaulting high to land on the first balcony.
Arrows and hurled stones chased them up the side of that building. Regis made the roof first and pulled Dahlia up behind, tugging her along as he ran off.
“Yasgur’s,” Dahlia told him, the name of a safe house all in Bregan D’aerthe and House Topolino knew, and she turned aside, running across the roof, leaping to the next in line, then to the end of that one, where she planted Kozah’s Needle again and in a great running vault cleared the wide street to crash down on a distant roof, where she collected herself and ran on.
Regis thought the leap impressive, but couldn’t really stop and marvel at it, for he too was running for his very life. He heard the shouts below and behind, the heavy footfalls of armored boots on the cobblestone streets.
He couldn’t outrun them. He thought to use his beret, a magical cap of disguise, but it was early in the morning and the streets were deserted. What guise might he don to fool them?
He came over the peak of one roof and realized that he was running out of room, for the buildings were farther apart now and he couldn’t keep going roof to roof.
He moved to a nearby chimney, too tight for him to squeeze in. He pulled the magical pouch from his belt and lay it atop the brickwork, opening it as far as he could.
A moment later, that pouch fell down into the hearth of a private Waterdeep home.
With her vaulting skills and staff, Dahlia was far afield of the pursuit in short order. She came down to the street and turned back, thinking to circle in behind the soldiers and get back to the room and Entreri. She did get close, and at an angle that allowed her to see the now darkened window.
Could she get there?
She was picking her course, determined to try, when she spotted the procession.
Dahlia fell back, trying to catch her breath. Below her, marching along the alley, went a host of soldiers—Margaster soldiers, she presumed—along with a quartet of short and thick demonic, dwarflike creatures, each holding a pole of a litter bearing the thing that had unrolled upon them in the room, now balled up like a fecal sculpture of a closed tulip.
Dahlia knew what was inside that foul, deadly flower.
Foresby Young had a lot of work to do that day. The architect had been commissioned to redesign a warehouse space for a merchant guild and they wanted to see the drawings later that same tenday.
He went into his workshop, which had once been the den (and would be again once his wife’s patience had run out, he knew), and spread out his parchment upon his drawing table. He thought a fire might be in order here. He was always inspired by the dancing flames of a good fire, even on hot days in the summertime.
He took a log from the pile and bent low to toss it in, but paused. “What?” he asked, placing the log on the floor and reaching in among the remains of the previous day’s burn, where sat a leather pouch of some sort.
“Now, how—” he started to ask as he pulled it open, but the end of the question came out as a gasp as a small dart flew out of the pouch and stabbed him under the chin.
Foresby tried to scream, but no, he was already falling backward to the floor, and was fast asleep before he even plunked down.
Out of the pouch, the wonderful pouch of holding, crawled Regis, taking in a big gulp of air after the stuffy confines of the extradimensional pocket.
He looked around, noted that dawn had come, then tapped his beret.
A few moments later, a young human girl walked out of the house of Foresby Young. She trotted, she skipped, she giggled and played the silly games young humans often played, all the while making her determined way to the house of farmer Yasgur.
Where Dahlia waited.
Buzzing . . . stinging . . . little bursts of fierypainbrightandorangeflashing . . .
They’re climbing up under my pants, biting, a thousand wasps, a thousand thousand countless. Too many.
Gackgadsgod, ah! In my mouth! They’re in . . . Why can’t I move? Why can’t I see? O the pain, the little pains, too many little pains altogether.
Wasps! Not wasps!
Fierypainbrightandorangeflashing . . . kill me. Kill me, please.
Dahlia . . . Dahlia . . .
Part 3
Cultural Boundaries
So many guiding sayings follow us our every step, but are they wisdom or boundaries? Snippets of value to be heeded or the lesser ways of lost times, best forgotten, or at the very least updated?
So many times, I find these traditions, or ancient wisdoms or ways, to be the latter. The very notion of the wisdom of the day seems . . . malleable, after all, and if we are to be tied to the ways of our ancestors, then how can we hope to improve upon that which they have left us? Are ritual and tradition so very different from physical structures? Would the dwarves stop mining when they reached the boundaries of the tunnels in their ancient homelands?
Of course they would not. They would dig new tunnels, and if in that work they were to discover better materials or designs for their scaffolding, they would use them—and likely would go back to the older tunnels and better the work left behind by their fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
Why, then, would this be different in matters of tradition? Certainly among my own people, traditions are limiting, terribly so. Half the population of Menzoberranzan is trapped into lesser roles, their ambitions caged by words older than the oldest dark elves, words inscribed millennia past. Part of the reason in this case is obvious: Lady Lolth and her decrees. Indeed, religion, to those of the faith, any faith, is often unbending and not subject to the scrutiny of reason or to pleas against simple injustice. The Word is eternal, it is claimed, and yet, on many occasions, it is obvious that it is not.
Why, then, do these so-called wisdoms hold on so tightly?
The whims of an unavailable, and conveniently unassailable, deity are only part of the answer, I believe. The other part goes to the darker corner of the ways of every reasoning race. For those traditions kept past all plausible rationales or obvious moral failings, those held most fervently, too often serve those who gain the most by keeping them.
In the city of my birth, those in power do not have to compete with half the population. The matrons need not worry about a patron, surely, and indeed, by tradition, can use their male counterparts as they please. Even those acts as personal as lovemaking are determined by the demands of the women of Menzoberranzan—and let there be little illusion about the “love” in such an act—and a man who will not comply could face harsh retribution for his insolence. Only women can serve as the head of a house. Only women can sit on the Ruling Council, and even the highest-ranking man in the city, typically the archmage of Menzoberranzan, is, by tradition, by edict, by the demands of those merciless rulers, still counted more lowly than the lowest-ranking woman.
The drow are not the only people cornered and held fast by such systemic indecencies—far from it! In Wulfgar’s tribe and throughout many of the peoples all about the north, tradition demands patriarchy instead of matriarchy, and while the men are not as brutal in their control as the drow women, the result, I expect, isn’t much different. Perhaps the treatment is softer—I recall Wulfgar’s shame, so profound that it led him to run away from us, when, in a fit of demon-induced memories, he struck Catti-brie. I could never imagine Wulfgar beating a woman intentionally, or demanding sexual pleasures from her against her will, but even in his contrition there remained inside him for many years that soft condescension. He must protect the women, he thought, which might be a noble undertaking, except that it came with an unspoken—but surely evident—belief that they were not capable of protecting themselves. He placed them on a pedestal, but as if they were fragile things—he simply could not bring himself to understand the tru
e competence of a woman, even one as powerful, intelligent, capable, and proven as Catti-brie.
It took him years to brush it aside and fully recognize the value, the equal worth and potential, of Catti-brie and of all women. So ingrained were the teachings of his earliest years that even when he was faced with so much clear and convincing evidence of the error of his ways, it took a great effort on his part to free himself.
Yes, to free himself, for that is what it is to fully accept that that which you have been taught so thoroughly, the designs of the entire society around you, might be in error.
Wulfgar let go of the nonsensical sexism of his people, and the greatest beneficiary of that dismissal was, in fact, Wulfgar himself.
Dare I hope the same from Yvonnel? For this is Jarlaxle’s hope, I know, and his quest, and one in which he continues to use me as his shining example. I can only laugh.
And can only hope that the powerful matrons of Menzoberranzan don’t grow so tired of Jarlaxle’s games that they come and kill me to take from him his preeminent symbol.
There are people all about free of such sexism, of course, but they, too, are chained by their ways. In the Delzoun dwarf tradition, the gender of a dwarf is unimportant against the weight of merit. There is in Mithral Hall now a queen, Dagnabbet, daughter of Dagnabbit, son of Dagna. It matters not. Her rule will be judged by her actions alone. In every aspect of dwarven life, from combat to cooking to mining to ruling and everything in between, merit and competence are all that matter.
If the person in question is a dwarf.
I cannot complain—far from it!—of the treatment I have received from the dwarves in my many decades on the surface, but that was more the matter of Bruenor’s personal compassion. For he is a true credit to his people. A friend is a friend and an enemy is an enemy, and not the size of one’s ears, the color of her skin, or the height he stands makes a lick of spit difference to King Bruenor Battlehammer.
Boundless Page 20