by Paul S. Kemp
With effort, Cale paddled himself around and saw the guide’s head bobbing above the water a stone’s throw behind him. Magadon had an arm wrapped around the unconscious Riven’s throat and used his other hand to help keep them both afloat.
“Jak?” Cale asked.
“I don’t see him,” Magadon answered.
Cale spun around, kicked himself as high out of the water as he could, and scanned the dark surface. The halfling was nowhere to be seen.
“Jak!” Cale called.
He swam through the water between him and Magadon, spreading his arms out wide, waving them under the water, increasingly concerned. He swallowed several mouthfuls of river water; it tasted like iron.
“Jak! Little man!”
Cale’s hand brushed up against a small form floating just under the water. He grabbed the halfling by the hair and pulled him to the surface. Jak’s eyes were closed; his face pale. Cale couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He wrapped an arm around him and held his head out of the water.
“I’ve got him, Mags,” said Cale. “But he looks nearly drowned too.” He scanned the riverbank. “That beach to our right, the one with the clear spot between the tall boulders. See it?”
“I see it,” Magadon said.
For the first time it occurred to Cale that Magadon appeared to see well in darkness too. Another gift from his fiendish father, Cale supposed.
A dim white luminescence flared on the beach between the boulders—Magadon’s psionic power manifesting. Pale lizards scrabbled out of the sudden light, and bats fluttered in agitation above.
“Get Jak to shore,” Magadon said. “I’ll bring Riven.”
With Jak in his arms, Cale shadowstepped from the water to the beach.
Behind him, Magadon swam for the shore, dragging the unconscious Riven and grunting as he splashed through the water.
Cale laid Jak down on his back on the beach, just at the perimeter of Magadon’s psionic light, and tapped the halfling’s cheeks. No response. Cale pulled his soaked mask from his pocket, laid his regenerated hand on Jak’s chest, and whispered the words to a healing spell. Still nothing.
“Mags….”
“Turn him around, hold him upright, and squeeze his chest,” Magadon called, still swimming. “His lungs are filled with water.”
Cale nodded, picked the halfling up from under his armpits, adjusted his hold, and squeezed his ribcage.
“Jak!”
The halfling lay limp in Cale’s grasp. He squeezed again.
With shocking suddenness, the halfling spasmed back to life, coughed up a stomachful of river water, then immediately vomited his partially-digested rations from breakfast. Cale couldn’t help but smile. He lowered Jak, still coughing, to the ground.
Cale knelt beside him, put a hand on his shoulder, and asked, “Are you all right?”
Jak coughed a bit more and dry heaved before the fit passed.
He groaned and managed a weak, “I’m all right. Thanks.”
Cale nodded, thinking that Jak still looked pale.
By the time Magadon neared the shore, Riven had already regained consciousness.
“I can swim, godsdamnit,” said Riven, sputtering. “I don’t need to be ca—”
The assassin inhaled a mouthful of water, sending him off into a fit of coughing and cursing.
“Keep your mouth closed,” Magadon ordered.
The guide continued to swim to shore until they reached the shallows and could wade. There, he helped Riven get his feet under him and the two stumbled onto the beach.
“You look like all Nine Hells,” Riven said to Jak.
The halfling was too tired to respond.
With all of them safely on the black sand beach, they sagged to the ground and lay there for a time, saying nothing, with Faerûn for a ceiling and a score of stone points aimed at their chests.
“We convinced the river fey,” Magadon said at last, with a touch too much disbelief.
“You sound surprised,” Cale said.
Magadon shook his head, sat up, and wrung out his hat. Somehow, he had managed to keep it, though he had lost his oversized backpack to the river.
“Not surprised, just … pleased. What did you tell him?” the guide asked Cale.
“What I plan to do someday,” Cale answered.
Magadon accepted that without further questions.
Once Jak was more or less recovered, he looked around with interest. He took in the tunnel, the river, and the darkness.
“The Underdark, eh?” he said, and reached for his pipe. He frowned when he found it and the pipeweed sodden. “You have any dry leaf, Zhent?” he asked Riven.
“You ought not smoke, Jak,” Magadon admonished.
The halfling waved the guide’s advice aside and said, “I’m guilty of a handful of vices, Magadon. I’ll not let a little river water keep me from my favorite.”
Magadon said nothing and Riven tossed Jak his tin.
Jak popped it open and smiled when he saw that the interior was still dry. The halfling tamped the pipe and tried to light it, but the river had left his tindertwigs soaked. Cale smiled at Jak’s forlorn expression.
“That’s Tymora looking out for you, Jak,” said Magadon. “Smoke later.”
“First thing I get when we get to Skullport,” the halfling said, “is a tindertwig.”
He tossed the dry tin of pipeweed back to Riven, who absently snatched it from the air.
Riven climbed to his feet and wrung out his cloak and gear as much as he could.
“We follow the river’s current,” the assassin said. “It empties into the harbor outside Skullport. The cavern containing the city is not far.”
They all nodded but no one else stood. Cale gave Jak and Magadon a short time more to recover themselves before climbing to his feet.
“Ready?” he asked and extended a hand to Jak.
“Ready,” Jak answered.
He took Cale’s hand and pulled himself up.
Magadon rose, checked his blades, inventoried his gear not lost to the river, and nodded.
The City of Skulls and the slaadi awaited.
Following Riven’s lead, they picked their way between the sharp rocks along the riverbank’s black sand beaches for what felt to Jak like hours. The phosphorescent lichen provided just enough light to travel by, albeit slowly. Throughout, the halfling alternated his gaze between the water and the cave mouths that opened in the wall of the tunnel. Both the water and caves were black and quiet, as though they hid dark secrets. They made Jak nervous.
“They’re just holes Fleet,” Riven said, “and ordinary river water. In truth, I’m surprised we’ve seen no ships. There are invisible, intangible portals all along the river, each made visible and operational by a unique magical phrase. That’s how most of the slave ships arrive and leave.”
Jak noticed that Riven’s voice dropped slightly when he said the word “slave.” The halfling wondered but did not ask if the assassin had been crewman or cargo the last time he’d set foot in the City of Skulls. Riven offered nothing more, and they continued onward.
After a time the river and the riverbanks began to widen. From ahead, carrying down the tunnel, Jak caught the faint sound of voices and activity. A short time later, its source still hidden behind a curve in the passage, Jak saw a soft orange glow reflecting off the black water ahead: flickering firelight, rather than the steady, dimmer orange phosphorescence of the ubiquitous lichen.
Riven stopped and turned around to face them, as though he had just made up his mind about something.
“We’re nearly there, now,” said the assassin. “Remember what I said. We keep a light tread here. Do not attract the attention of the Skulls. I’ve seen what they can do.” He looked hard at Jak and Cale. “You’re going to see things here….” He trailed off, shook his head and stated, “You cannot right what’s wrong with this place. Understood?”
Cale and Jak shared a look but both nodded. Jak wondered what Skullport cou
ld offer that he had not seen before. He supposed he would know soon enough.
Seemingly satisfied, Riven turned and led them forward.
While they walked, Jak fell in beside Cale and whispered, “I’ve never seen the Zhent so agitated.”
He watched the assassin’s back—the tension visible there—and wondered again what had happened to Riven in Skullport.
Softly, Cale replied, “Me either.”
Jak heard something odd in Cale’s voice, something like guilt.
He looked up at his friend and asked, “What is it?”
Cale rested his shadow-birthed hand on his sword hilt and gave Jak a forced smile.
“Nothing, little man. Just thinking.”
Before Jak could press further, he noticed something unusual about Cale’s sword. Fine wisps of shadow clung to Weaveshear’s scabbard, leaking through the leather and swirling around the hilt.
“Your blade,” Jak said, a bit more sharply than he had intended.
Riven and Magadon heard Jak’s exclamation and turned to look. Cale looked at the blade, at each of them, and nodded.
“It’s been like this from the start and it’s getting worse as we get closer to the city. It’s the magic here, I think. It’s attracted to it, as though it wants to be unsheathed.”
Riven’s eye narrowed in a way that Jak did not like.
“If that steel draws the Skulls’ attention, First of Five,” the assassin warned, “this little dance is going to end early.”
Jak thought much the same thing.
“Then let’s just stay smart,” the halfling said. “We tread lightly and keep our steel in our scabbards until we find the slaadi.”
“It’s nothing more than shadows,” Cale added. “It won’t draw anyone’s attention.”
Riven said nothing, only turned on his heel and continued on.
Cale, Jak, and Magadon followed.
After only a short distance more, the tunnel through which the Sargauth flowed opened without warning onto a breathtaking cavern that formed an underwater bay as large as many surface lakes. Delicate, natural stone spires rose out of the still water to merge with stalactites hanging from the ceiling—and those melded, majestic pillars of stone were the only visible support for the cavern. Jak didn’t need the stonelore of a dwarf to know that magic must have buttressed the cavern. Otherwise, it would have long ago collapsed of its own weight. He looked at the shadows still clinging to Cale’s blade and thought that Weaveshear must have been responding to the presence of that supportive magic.
Perhaps that was the very magic the slaadi intended to drain with the Weave Tap? Jak wondered. He didn’t care to think what might happen if the slaadi succeeded. The whole cavern would collapse, crushing everyone.
In the center of the dark bay stood a rocky island adorned with a brooding fortress of gray stone. Orc and human guards patrolled the parapets. Torches hung from the walls, casting the pockmarked stone in shadow. The dark windows looked like mouths open and screaming. Looking at that fortress gave Jak gooseflesh.
“Skull Island” Riven said, following Jak’s gaze. “Fortress of the Iron Ring, the master slavers of Skullport. All slaves in the city start there for … for treatment. Not our problem, Fleet.”
Jak nodded, but thought he heard in Riven’s low tone a promise: Not yet our problem. Yet again he wondered what had happened to Riven in the Port of Skulls.
A thick stone arch spanned the water, reaching across the bay from the edge of Skull Island to disappear around the curve in the tunnel. Torches burned at even intervals across the bridge. A few fishermen—two of whom were goblins—sat on the edge of the span with their lines lowered into the dark water. Several coffles of slaves shambled across its length toward Skull Island harried all the while by savage, whip-wielding bugbears.
Seeing the poor slaves and imagining what awaited them in the Iron Ring’s Tower caused Jak’s gorge to rise.
Perhaps the slaadi should succeed, he thought. The destruction of Skullport might be a blessing for Faerûn.
“This way,” Riven said, leading them onward.
They continued to hug the bank, drawing closer and closer to the darkest hole in Faerûn. They passed several small fishing boats tethered to rocks, posts, and makeshift docks. They also passed several fishermen—mostly goblins and thin humans in tatters. No one spoke to them and they spoke to no one, though all eyed them with suspicious, furtive gazes.
At some point, the black sand beach gave way to a packed earth path that hugged the cavern’s wall. They walked single file.
Skullport’s piers came into view first: twenty or so timeworn wooden quays that jutted into the waters of the bay. Each sat on stout wooden posts that Jak thought must surely once have been masts. Ships floated in perhaps half of the berths. Jak noted a longship, several clippers, a wide-bottomed river barge, even a schooner from the Inner Sea. Lanterns and glowballs hung from the gunwales of many of the ships. Shadowy figures, their identities lost in the darkness, unloaded crates and people from the holds. Heavier cargo was lifted out with rope and a block and tackle attached to wooden posts near the berth. Goblin deckhands swarmed the wharves shoreside, carrying crates, rope, and urns off the ships to waiting lizard-pulled wagons. Armed overseers shepherded, monitored, and sometimes whipped the living cargo that emerged from the holds.
Most of the slaves were human, though Jak saw elves, dwarves, and even a few gnomes. He also saw many women and a few terrified children. The sight nearly undid him. He had to stop walking. He bent at the waist, hands on his hips, and took a series of deep breaths. He did not think he could keep down the vomit.
“Keep yourself in one piece, Fleet,” Riven growled.
“Shut your hole,” Cale said, and placed his hand on Jak’s shoulder. “Look at it all, little man. Look at it and remember. We’ll come back one day. I promise. And when we do we’ll visit the Iron Ring.”
Jak heard in Cale’s voice the same steel he’d heard when Cale had faced off Vraggen under the Twisted Elm. Violence lurked in that tone; righteous fury. Jak had no doubt that Cale intended to return, that he would return.
The thought somehow made the scene a little less abominable, but only a little. He patted Cale’s hand in gratitude, recovered himself, and looked at it, remembered it. He signaled to Riven that he was ready to move on.
The path widened into a road that ran along the wharves. A vast cavern opened off of the bay and retreated into the bedrock of the Underdark. To Jak, it looked like the open mouth and twisting gullet of a beast, more a Dragon’s Jaws than the falls along the Dragon Coast could ever aspire to. Within it, covering it like the black rot, stood the City of Skulls, an amazing hodgepodge of dilapidated buildings. Many were stacked atop each other; others clung precariously to the cavern’s walls.
A bewildering array of rope bridges, swings, and wooden planks hung between the upper buildings and extended back into the cavern, the highest of which stood a bowshot above the cavern’s floor. Busy with a steady stream of foot traffic, they vibrated like spiderwebs.
On the cavern floor between the wharves and the city itself stood a great market. There, illithids, duergar, trolls, ogres, orcs, and the worst of humankind bought and sold the unfortunate creatures who stood atop the tall selling blocks. Bids carried to Jak’s ears and an excited hum electrified the still air.
They would have to walk through the slave market to get into the city.
Jak felt lightheaded. Cale fell in beside him.
“Find the strength, little man,” Cale said. “I need you here. Don’t surrender to this place. And don’t give Riven the satisfaction.”
Jak managed a nod. He was clutching his holy symbol so tightly it was digging into the flesh of his palm.
“The city is unguarded?” Magadon asked Riven, obviously trying to distract Jak. “We can just walk in from the wilds of the Underdark?”
Riven nodded toward the stalactite-dotted ceiling and replied, “It’s not unguarded, Mags.”
Cale took him by the arm and pulled him along. Weaveshear continued to leak darkness, but the Skull seemed to take no notice.
“Don’t stare, Fleet,” Riven said to Jak, then turned to Magadon. “Even if it was unguarded, Mags, what would it matter? The worst of the Underdark is welcomed here, not fenced out.”
To that, Magadon said nothing.
Together, the four comrades picked their way along the wharves, dodging the filthy goblin deckhands, bugbear overseers, and slaves. The ringing clang of chains was everywhere, and slaves were everywhere. With an effort of will, Jak resisted the impulse to comfort the captives and kill their sadistic overseers.
When Jak saw that animated corpses worked beside the goblins and sailors to unload some of the cargo, his knees again went weak. The stink of their rotting corpses revived his nausea. Cale steadied him.
“It’s too much, Cale,” he said softly.
“No, it’s not,” Cale replied.
They made their way into the market. The smell of sweat, rot, and decaying fish filled Jak’s nostrils. Torches and glowballs illuminated the horror. And the sounds….
Jak tried to filter out the hopeless groans and screams of the many slaves, the ring of chains, the eager snarls of the hungry buyers, and the shouted bids of the would-be purchasers. The market was as much an eatery as a labor pool. Jak saw an illithid—right out in public—immobilize an enspelled teenaged boy and begin to burrow its facial tentacles into his skull. He could not bear it.
“Cale,” he said between gritted teeth, averting his eyes.
“Straight through, Riven,” Cale said, still pulling Jak along at a near jog. “Get us to a room.”
Riven looked back and nodded. His one eye fixed on Jak and the halfling was surprised to see in his gaze not contempt but understanding. For a reason he could not explain, Jak felt comforted.