by Paul S. Kemp
To further his plan, Azriim would “borrow” Thyld for a time, use his contacts, and trade on the Kraken Society’s legitimacy. Then, when all of the variables were in place, he and his broodmates would locate the hidden chamber, lure the Skulls away, and plant the seed of the Weave Tap.
Ahead, the open plaza of the Slavers Market was thronged with an auction day crowd. Shouted bids rang loudly in the dank air. Dozens of torches on tall posts illuminated the plaza and sent smoke curling through the caliginous air toward the ceiling. Two chained ogres in filth, flab, and worn leather tunics stood on a raised wooden platform while a middle-aged human with an elaborate mustache, fat-puckered arms, and a bright red tunic stood before them and managed the shouted bids carrying from the crowd. Near the platform, a line of chained slaves—one of them an attractive human female—awaited their turn on the block. The irony of slavery in Skullport was that few of the slaves were actually put to work in the city. The great slave market simply provided the venue for purchasing and selling. The slaves themselves were typically shipped out into the darker corners of Faerûn and the Underdark.
Beyond the plaza stood the docks, and ships of all sorts lined the piers, from Calishite slave-schooners to Luskan clippers. Most arrived via the many gates that dotted various areas of the Sargauth’s channel. Some made the journey from the surface seas via an intricate, secret network of magical locks and hoists. Crates, bags, and urns of goods lay neatly stacked in piles along the docks. The calls of sailors and goblin dockhands occasionally penetrated through the noise of the auction to reach Azriim’s ears.
Azriim’s magic sense suddenly caused the back of his throat to tingle and drew his eye upward.
There, high above the plaza, watching the auction and wharves with its inscrutable, eyeless stare, floated one of the Skulls. A dim orange nimbus surrounded it, and its gaze moved slowly hither and yon, seeing all.
Azriim willed himself to be unobtrusive.
Without warning, the Skull swooped down from its high perch and whizzed low over the crowd, trailing a tail of orange light. A gasp went up, fingers pointed, eyes went wide, and the auctioneer fell quiet. Many people fled the plaza, hunched over and terrified. The Skull swooped out wide, turned a half circle, and sped back toward the crowd. Azriim feared he might have been discovered, but no. The Skull stopped directly in front of a thin human male dressed in an ill-fitting gray tunic and leather breeches. A sword hung from his belt but his hand stayed well clear of it. When the human stared into those empty eye sockets, he visibly shook. He licked his lips nervously. The people and creatures around him cleared away, leaving him alone with the Skull.
An anticipatory hush fell over the crowd. The auctioneer seemed frozen with his jiggling arm held aloft, about to accept a final bid for one of the ogres. Like Azriim, the audience knew what was coming—slaughter or slapstick. Either way, an amusing spectacle in Skullport.
The Skull’s jaw did not move when it spoke.
“You are a pilferer of trivial things,” it pronounced, loud enough to be heard throughout the plaza. The man shook his head and started to protest, but the Skull went on, “Thieves are not tolerated in the Market. Speak now the name of the favored hound of the third son of the fourth high arcanist to rule Iolaum or face immediate punishment.”
The accused thief’s face flushed red to his ears. Fear paralyzed him, though he looked like he wanted nothing more than to run.
“Wh-what do you mean?” he stammered. “I … I didn’t steal nothing. I don’t know any arcaners.”
“Incorrect,” said the Skull.
At that dire pronouncement, the thief must have sensed the fullness of his danger. He finally managed to break free of his fear-induced paralysis and turned to run. Even if there had been somewhere to go, he was too late. The Skull spoke a series of arcane words and a green beam fired from its eyes. It struck the man in the back, swallowed his scream, and instantly reduced him to a pile of fine dust. A handful of silver coins, scattered in the soot, was all that remained of the offender.
“Retrieve your stolen property,” the Skull announced to no one in particular, and began to fly off. As it rose back toward the top of the cavern, it gave its pronouncement. “Thievery shall not be tolerated at auction, nor time with eggs, lest they be hatched. Heed well.”
For a moment, no one moved and all was silent. Then a laugh sounded, and another, followed at last by the low murmur of a satisfied audience discussing the show. A mad scramble ensued, with several skulkers grabbing for the silver. Within moments, the voice of the fat auctioneer rose, the auction resumed, and the first of the ogres went into bondage.
Disintegrated for a handful of silver, Azriim thought. That was the power of the Skulls, the studied but unpredictable application of discipline that kept the populace respectful and the chaos manageable. Smiling, Azriim relocated Thyld amidst the crowd and continued to follow him through the plaza.
At first, Azriim thought Thyld was heading for the Murkspan, a somber stone arch bridge that reached across Sargauth Bay to set its far footings in the dark earth of Skull Island where stood the crenellated walls and fortress tower of the Iron Ring, the master slavers of Skullport. All slave ships docked at Skull Island to brand and inventory their cargo in the fortress before it could be sold in the plaza. The Ring took its cut of all trade in flesh.
But Thyld turned left and knifed through the crowd, steering wide of a group of illithids, and headed for the fish market.
Azriim followed at a distance, weaving his way through the coffles of slaves for whom buyers would soon bid. Whips cracked; slaves moaned and cried. Would-be buyers poked and prodded the merchandise.
Though Azriim had no sympathy, as such, for the humans and other fodder destined to toil and die in the dark of Skullport, he could imagine few fates for himself worse than a life spent in bondage. Even the relatively moderate boundaries put on his existence by the Sojourner drove him to near madness. While it was true that the Sojourner treated Azriim and his broodmates well, that only made them well-treated servants. Thinking such thoughts boiled up the strange emotional dichotomy he always felt when he considered his “father”—an admixture of love and hate, fear and respect.
He controlled his emotions by reminding himself that he would have his freedom, and be transformed into a gray, when he had assisted the Sojourner in obtaining the Crown of Flame. Azriim didn’t know what the Crown of Flame was, nor what the Sojourner intended to do with it, but he knew it must be a mighty artifact indeed to be so desired by his father.
Thyld made a straight path through the fish market and headed down a narrow street lined with rickety taverns and shops. The smell of bad food and the shouts and laughter of patrons boiled from the shutterless windows.
Ignoring the fishermen who lined the street hawking the long, pale fish of the Sargauth, Azriim followed Thyld. The fishermen ignored him too. Azriim took the form of a muscular duergar slaver, complete with a whipblade, a scarred face, and a hard scowl. No one seemed to find him worth more than a first glance. Though he missed the grace of his preferred half-drow form, he deemed the duergar shape less obtrusive. Drow, he had learned, were obsessed with House affiliations, especially recently, when rumors in Skullport told of a drow civil war. Azriim had no time to waste with explanations to every passing drow of his seeming “Houselessness.” He did miss the comfort of his usual fine attire, though. The coarse tunic and trousers he wore in his duergar guise made even his dwarven flesh chafe.
He eyed a passing illithid with two troll thralls in tow. The flayer’s face tentacles twitched. No doubt he had just received some psionic contact. The towering trolls—green-skinned walls of teeth, claws, and muscle—eyed him with the slack expression of the psionically dominated.
Azriim feigned fear as he passed, though were he in his natural form, his own claws and teeth could have torn apart both trolls and illithid alike. He found himself wondering what illithid brain might taste like if the tide was turned on the brain-eating creat
ure. The temptation to make psionic contact with the mind flayer almost overcame him, but he resisted it. The Sojourner would not be pleased if he took unnecessary risks. His task was to locate the source of the mantle. He kept his focus on Thyld.
The human made a right and turned down a narrow alley. Having learned the man’s habits, Azriim knew that Thyld was heading to Aryn’s House, a brothel and hostelry, to “seed the soil,” as Thyld called it, by paying his informants. Thyld had three spies among the girls at Aryn’s. After paying the doxies their tenday stipend, and providing bonuses for any especially useful information they may have gleaned from their patrons, he would move on to the next location. Azriim knew them all.
Are you prepared? Azriim projected to Dolgan.
His broodmate’s mental voice answered immediately, We await you at the storehouse. Everything is ready.
Dolgan had secured a room in an isolated storehouse along the docks and Azriim had carefully memorized the look and feel of the space. In order to use his teleportation rod, he needed to have a clear mental image of his desired destination.
He picked up his pace and closed on Thyld.
Though the Sojourner had warned Azriim against casual use of the teleportation rod while in the Underdark, Azriim had little choice but to utilize it. Unfortunately, in order for the rod to transport Thyld, the human had to be either willing or unconscious. The former was unlikely and the latter presented a problem. Azriim could not simply knock Thyld out on the street and steal him away. Witnesses to the human’s vanishing—and the consequent rumors that would quickly circulate through the city—would defeat the whole purpose of Azriim’s plan. Accordingly, he needed to be somewhat more creative.
Moving quickly, he came up behind Thyld.
“Out of the way, human,” he grumbled, in his coarse dwarf’s voice, and bumped into Thyld as he passed him by.
As he did, Azriim mentally channeled arcane energy through his hand and into Thyld, turning the human invisible. Azriim could still see Thyld, of course; his vision was that keen.
Though Thyld could see himself, and thus did not know that he was enspelled, it would be only a moment or two before he began bumping into passersby and deduced that something was amiss. Azriim had to act quickly.
He feigned dropping something in the street and bent over to retrieve it. Thyld walked by him, still oblivious to the fact of his invisibility. The moment the human passed by him, Azriim surreptitiously palmed a coin with one hand and with the other removed from a leather tube on his thigh one of the handful of wands given him by the Sojourner. Made of carved ivory, and inscribed with many arcane symbols, the wand fired a beam that would transmogrify the target into any creature or object Azriim desired.
While still purporting to be searching the packed earth road for the fictitious item he’d seemingly dropped, Azriim surreptitiously pointed the wand at Thyld and whispered the words, “Cave shrimp.”
The thin yellow beam struck the invisible Thyld in the back. He was able to utter only the beginnings of a scream before his form shrank and shrank, down to that of a tiny shrimp. A passing mercenary spent a moment looking confused by the sourceless, choked-off scream, but quickly went about his business.
“There it is!” Azriim exclaimed, hopping forward two paces and retrieving Thyld-the-shrimp.
The tiny creature squirmed in his fist. With his other hand Azriim held up the coin he’d palmed, brought it to his eye, and smiled as though he’d just picked it up. None of the other passersby looked twice.
Still smiling, but for a different reason, Azriim walked a few paces down a dark side alley. When he thought no one was observing, he willed himself invisible. Still holding the squirming Thyld in his hand he waited for the human-shrimp to become incapacitated from lack of air.
I have him, he sent to Dolgan. I will be along presently.
Dolgan projected an acknowledgment.
Azriim pulled out his teleportation rod while Thyld’s struggles grew fainter and fainter. When they stopped entirely, he deftly manipulated the rod and transported himself to the storehouse.
Serrin and Dolgan awaited him there. Serrin, in the form of a dark-haired human corsair, wore high boots, a falchion, an earring, pantaloons, and a blue silken shirt. Azriim envied him the silk. Dolgan had taken the form of a thin, balding drunk, dressed only in dirty trousers and a homespun tunic pitted with holes. His potbelly looked as though it hid a melon.
The small office stood empty but for a desk and a high-backed chair. Three large wax candles sat atop the desk and provided the only light. A coil of fine rope sat beside them.
Azriim threw Thyld-the-shrimp onto the chair and pulled another wand from the leather tube at his thigh. Made from duskwood and capped with an opal, the wand dispelled magical spells and effects.
Hoping that Thyld had not already died—but only because it would be inconvenient otherwise—Azriim pointed the wand at the Thyld-shrimp and caused it to dispel the human’s transformation. The shrimp burst, grew, and gave birth to a human, a human who was not breathing.
Had Azriim not had such distaste for expletives, he would have cursed.
“Uh oh,” Dolgan said, and bent over Thyld. He grabbed the human by his receding chin and turned his head back and forth. He looked back to Azriim and said, “He’s dead, I think.”
The big slaad sounded indifferent.
“I can see that,” Azriim snapped, and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Help him.”
Dolgan frowned, dumbfounded. “How?”
“I don’t—”
Thyld inhaled sharply and deeply, a long breath that rattled with phlegm.
The slaadi shared a look of mild surprise, and Dolgan looked vaguely disappointed.
“Secure him,” Azriim, smiling, said to Dolgan. “And take off his robe.”
Dolgan asked no questions. He stripped off the human’s robe and cast it at Azriim’s feet, then used the coil of rope to tie the still-unconscious and only semi-dressed Thyld to the chair. They waited. After a few moments, the human began to groan. In short order, his eyes fluttered open.
To his credit, Thyld took in his situation and managed to not look panicked. He didn’t even struggle against the bonds, possibly because he appeared to be the prisoner of a drunk, a sailor, and a badly dressed duergar.
Having gathered his wits and some of his dignity, the human eyed them coolly, each in turn.
“How dare you attack me in the street! Do you know who I am?” he asked, in a nasally, imperious tone. “And who I serve?”
Azriim “tsked” at the bound human and said, “Poor grammar is the sign of a lazy mind. Of course I know who you are and whom you serve. That is the very point.” He gave a hard smile and let that sink in. “But you do not yet know who we are. Allow me to make introductions.”
At Azriim’s mental command the slaadi all began to change. Their ridiculous manling forms grew bulky, leathery green skin formed tightly over powerful musculatures, clothing stretched and tore, mouths exploded with fangs, and claws burst from fingertips. Thyld’s eyes went wide and he began to struggle against his ropes, but managed only a mild rocking of the chair. His mouth hung open but no words came forth. A string of spittle hung between his lips like one of the hemp highway’s rope bridges.
Azriim felt more at ease in his natural form than in that of the duergar. He flexed his claws, ran his tongue over his fangs. When he reached out his mental senses to touch Thyld’s mind psionically, he tasted the human’s terror. He worried that Thyld might begin to yell out for help.
“If you begin to shout, I will use this claw—” Azriim held up his forefinger—“to sever your vocal cords.”
Then you will answer my questions this way, he projected. Do you understand?
Thyld looked so fearful that Azriim was concerned that the human might become incoherent. No doubt Dolgan’s hungry presence did little to make the man feel at ease. The big slaad stood behind the bound Thyld, drooling and shifting from foot to foot with e
xcitement. Dolgan was so intoxicated with Thyld’s fear, so eager for Thyld’s blood, that he had sank his upper fangs into his lower lip hard enough to draw his own black blood, which mingled with his spit.
We understand each other now, I think, Azriim projected soothingly. And I’d go so far as to say that we’re on familiar terms. Friends almost.”
“What do you want?” Thyld said, looking from Azriim to Dolgan and back to Azriim.
Azriim let his mental voice drop to a suitably menacing tone.
I require that you answer some questions, Thyld. Without expletives, and without lies. If you tell a falsehood, I’ll know. If you curse, or otherwise give voice to vulgarity, I will punish you.
Thyld seemed unable to speak. Sweat dotted his high brow. At last he gave a sharp nod.
You are an agent of the Kraken Society, Azriim projected, and nodded at a small tattoo inked onto Thyld’s bare chest—a purple squid in a red field. In addition, unbeknownst to your superiors, you sell information on the side to the various factions in Skullport.
The human did not deny it, simply stared wide-eyed and breathed hard.
Azriim continued, That fact need never leave this room. But it happens that I am in possession of information that would be of interest to Zstulkk Ssarmn and possibly the Xanathar. Who are your contacts within those organizations?
He held up a clawed hand to forestall any protests that Thyld might have offered. Azriim already knew that those organizations were nearly at war—the fact was integral to his plans. Ssarmn, the yuan-ti slaver, and the Xanathar, the beholder crime lord and slaver, had been quietly murdering one another’s operatives for months. They needed only an additional spark to turn their campfire of a conflict into a conflagration.
Thyld shifted uncomfortably in his bonds. Azriim could see the human’s mind racing, desperately seeking for a way out of his current straits.
“I can provide you an introduction,” Thyld offered. “My contacts are accustomed to speaking only with me.”