Magic, of course, would have helped him to escape easily. But the Weave remained dull and distant, so much so that Jack began to fear that it was somehow completely absent in the dark elves’ domain, or that his long imprisonment had completely numbed his ability to perceive it. Whenever the overseers weren’t watching (which wasn’t often) he tried every spell he knew, with the same result-he waved his hands, he babbled some nonsense, and nothing happened. And, naturally, if any overseer caught him skulking off to do nothing, a beating followed immediately.
In the rare moments when Jack discovered enough energy to take note of his situation, all he could manage was a sort of confused indignation. Someone was the author of his misfortunes, but he had no idea who, because he couldn’t remember a thing about how he’d come to be entombed in the mythal stone. “A man can be measured by the quality of his enemies,” he told himself, “and clearly I had many formidable adversaries.” He knew, for example, that the ever-prying, ever-suspicious Knights of the Hawk blamed him for a number of thefts and escapades in the noble quarters of Raven’s Bluff. Jack didn’t see why they should trouble themselves about such things when he went to great lengths to spread his depredations around a large number of wealthy folk, none of whom were greatly injured by any one burglary on his part; his attentions were certainly no more onerous than ordinary taxation, and they didn’t set the Knights of the Hawk on tax collectors, did they? That, of course, suggested the possibility that one of the city’s thief guilds had arranged for his abduction to remove him as a rival, but that, too, seemed unlikely. Guilds were highly imaginative in their methods for dealing with freelancers such as Jack, but entombing him in a magical rock a mile below the surface seemed overly … subtle.
“Subtlety is the hallmark of a wizard,” Jack mused aloud when next he resumed his deliberations. The fact that he was magically encysted rather than simply bricked up in an alcove was clearly a sign of arcane talent. Therefore, it seemed likely that his unknown adversary was a wizard of some sort. Three potential culprits sprang immediately to mind: Zandria, the Red Wizard who had often threatened Jack for meddling in her affairs; the mysterious Yu Wei, the wizened old Shou who served the Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan; and the dreadful necromancer, Iphegor the Black, who so far as Jack knew consented to serve no one. If Jack were to be honest with himself, all three had good reason to act against him. Jack had been the principal actor in the defeat of Myrkyssa Jelan’s plot to infiltrate Raven’s Bluff, frustrating the master plan of Yu Wei’s liege-lady. He’d raced Zandria to the prize of the Guilder’s Vault in ancient Sarbreen, capturing the most valuable treasures before she recovered them. And it was unfortunately true that Jack might have had some small part to play in the untimely death of Iphegor’s dearly beloved familiar, which had taken the form of a rather small and frail mouse. The necromancer’s failure to provide himself with a sturdier companion was hardly Jack’s fault, but Iphegor might have seen things otherwise.
Zandria, Yu Wei, or Iphegor? Or the Knights of the Hawk? Or some hitherto unknown enemy? Someone was responsible for the fact that Jack now stood knee-deep in rothe dung, driven to exhaustion by vicious dark elves and their even more vicious slave overseers as he slowly starved to death, and the more he thought it over, the more the sheer injustice of the thing angered him.
The worst part of it was that his antagonist had likely been dead for decades. Even if he somehow managed to escape from his current thralldom, he could do little to set the matter straight other than perhaps dumping a bucket of rothe dung on the grave of his deceased enemy-a purely symbolic act, and not at all as satisfying a redressal as he might hope for. “It’s said that living well is the best revenge,” he finally resolved. “Fair enough; the course of my retribution is clear.” The sooner he could leave the fields of Chumavhraele behind him and enjoy life in some civilized place again, the better.
With a sigh, he picked up his shovel and attacked another pile of rothe dung.
One day (Jack had discovered that there was, in fact, a “day” of sorts in the dark elves’ fields and mines, marking mealtimes and rest periods) the tedium of his routine was broken by a commotion in the stockyard close under the battlements of Tower Chumavhraele. Jack was engaged in filling a cart with dung for transport back to the fields where the mushrooms that served as rothe fodder were grown when a gang of hobgoblins marched out of the great fungal forest, driving before them a score of human men and women. Most of the other field-slaves paused in their work to stare at the procession; Jack decided that it was safe to follow their lead and indulge his curiosity, so he lowered his shovel to watch.
“What is this?” he whispered to the slave working alongside him, a stoop-shouldered dwarf named Hargath, who had so far ignored him-a better treatment than Jack received from many who worked under Malmor’s supervision.
“New captives,” Hargath replied. “The slavers catch ’em up top and bring ’em down here to sell to the dark elves.”
The prisoners were a sorry sight, indeed. Some were injured, limping along or nursing bloody gashes and ugly bruises. Most were in their smallclothes, although a few had managed to keep a torn shirt or a ragged pair of breeches around their waists through the long march down from the surface. They bore their misfortune in a variety of manners, some stoic, some weeping and pleading, a few glaring about in anger. Jack’s eye was drawn by one fine-looking young woman with short-cropped hair of midnight black and a proud, defiant set to her shoulders. Her brocade dress suggested that she came of a well-to-do family, or at least had before falling into the slavers’ hands. She and her fellow prisoners were all bound with iron manacles, which in turn were fixed in staggered pairs to a great chain that all the captives together had to carry. The hobgoblins-no, actually, some of the slavers were human, Jack noted-jeered and cursed at their prisoners as they rearranged them into ragged lines to best display them for sale.
“What will become of them?” he asked the dwarf.
“Who cares?” Hargath muttered. “Some for the fields, some for the tower kitchens, most to the mines and tunnels, I guess.”
A small party of drow emerged from the castle and came out to meet the slavers. Jack recognized a few of the guards he’d seen patrolling the edges of the paddocks and fields, including Varys, the one who’d beat him for speaking on the day he first arrived. A priestess in the black and silver garb of the demon-queen Lolth led them. The priestess eyed the captives with a grudging nod, and then turned to one of the human slavers. “These seem better bred than the wretches you typically pawn off on us, Fetterfist,” she said. “I am impressed; they might actually last a tenday or two before keeling over.”
“My wares are largely a matter of chance, my lady, but sometimes opportunities arise,” the human slaver replied. He was a tall, bony man with a lantern jaw and long yellow hair that escaped from beneath a curious leather cowl obscuring the upper half of his face. “On most occasions I ply my trade in cheap winehouses and squalid slums, but yesterday I fell on a careless merchant caravan a few miles outside of town. There are no consumptive doxies or shiftless drunkards here; these are strong, healthy drivers and porters.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Of course, my expenses were higher than normal, and I must charge accordingly for these.”
“Your expenses are hardly my concern,” the drow priestess observed. She poked at the shoulder of a sturdy young man who stared down at the ground.
“Ah, well. If you will not make an accommodation for goods of exceptional quality, I suppose I’ll return to my customary methods,” Fetterfist the slaver replied. “There’s no point in paying for a large crew to bring you quality goods if I can’t make up the difference in costs at the time of the sale. I’ll be back in a few days with a lot of the typical quality, which I’ll be happy to sell you at the customary price.” He motioned to his men, who began to push and shove the captives back into marching order.
“Wait a moment,” the priestess objected. “Where do you think you’re taking these?”
/>
“Back to the surface, of course. I know a pirate of the Inner Sea who would be happy to take them off my hands.”
Jack smiled at the slaver’s skillful shrug of resignation. The fellow knew a thing or two about bargaining, it seemed, which likely came in handy in his sinister vocation. He very much doubted that Fetterfist had any pirate acquaintance waiting to buy whatever the dark elves wouldn’t take, but the priestess had no way to know that. The suggestion brought a sour glare to her ebony countenance.
“I think not, Fetterfist,” she snapped. “The captives stay here. If you don’t care for that, you and your men can join them.”
The tall slaver smiled beneath his cowl. “Then who will bring new stock to your doorstep next month, or the month after?”
The dark elf scowled, but she, of course, had no answer to the slaver’s point. Instead she ignored Fetterfist for a moment, and continued her scrutiny of the wretched captives he’d brought her. “I see twenty-three here,” she observed. “That makes one hundred and fifteen pieces of gold at the normal price.”
“I couldn’t possibly sell these for less than eight pieces of gold each, my lady,” the slaver replied with such earnestness that Jack almost believed the fellow. He reached out and seized the pretty dark-haired girl by her bare arm, dragging her out of line. “And this one is quite special, indeed. I have here Seila, the daughter of Lord Norwood; I am sure that your marquise would find her a useful prize indeed.”
“Norwood’s daughter?” the priestess said. Her eyebrow rose, and she turned to study the dark-haired young woman, who squared her shoulders and glared back defiantly. “That might be worth something.”
“She is yours for five hundred gold crowns,” Fetterfist said.
The priestess snorted. “Ridiculous! I know very well that you would not dare to sell her anywhere in the surface world, slaver. Her father’s agents would pursue her, and you, to the ends of Faerun. However … the marquise may find her plight amusing. I might pay fifty gold crowns for her, I suppose.”
Jack nodded to himself. The Norwoods had been around during his days in Raven’s Bluff; he wasn’t surprised that the family had continued to flourish during the intervening century. If the girl was a Norwood, then she came of a well-to-do family, indeed; she must have an army of retainers and hired swords searching all over the Vast for her.
“My lady, you wound me, you truly do,” Fetterfist protested. At that point the slaver and the priestess fell to dickering over the price, arguing back and forth, but Jack noticed that Hargath had suddenly lowered his head and started to shovel again. With one more glance for the dark-haired girl in the fine dress, Jack followed suit, throwing heaping shovelfuls into the stinking cart.
“What’s this? Shirking again?” Malmor roared from behind Jack. The fat bugbear was remarkably light of step when he put his mind to it, and Jack couldn’t count the times the overseer had managed to sneak up on him. Naturally, Malmor had come upon the scene in the moment after Hargath had resumed work and before Jack had done the same. The bugbear snatched one of the slave-beating sticks-actually a specially preserved tentacle from a grell, Jack had learned-and gave Jack a terrific smack across the shoulders. The blow would have been bad enough, but the tiny stingers in the treated tentacle added a blaze of fiery agony to the overseer’s switching. The unfortunate rogue cried out and folded to the ground in pain, overcome by Malmor’s savage blow.
“You work, you eat,” Malmor snarled. “Work not, eat not, no, no. If you hope to eat tomorrow, you had better not let me catch you shirking again.” The bugbear kicked dung into Jack’s face while Jack was groveling on the ground, and then he strutted away, evidently satisfied that he’d put Jack in his place once again.
“If you won’t be eating at the end of the shift, could I have your portion?” Hargath asked.
“But of course,” Jack mumbled in reply. “I am nothing if not generous toward my friends. Although I would like to point out that next time you notice Malmor approaching, you might offer a small cough or low whistle to put me on my guard.” He slowly climbed back to his feet and looked back toward the new slaves. It seemed that Fetterfist had concluded his dealings with the priestess; the slaver gang was busy turning their captives over to the dark elves. The dark-haired girl was looking right at Jack, wincing; he realized that the commotion Malmor had caused by beating him must have attracted her attention.
“Well, that’s one way to catch the eye of a pretty girl,” he reflected. With as much grace as he could muster given the splattering of rothe dung he wore and the agonizing burning in his back, he gave her a rueful smile and a small bow before picking up his shovel and returning to work. The drow quickly sorted through their new slaves, breaking them up into several different groups. One group was marched back down the road through the mushroom-forest toward the lakeshore excavations, and another toward the mines and tunnels. The girl and a few others were led to the tower that overlooked the fields and shore, while the remainder was assigned to the rothe paddocks to work under Malmor. The bugbear welcomed his new drudges with blistering oaths and frequent clouts to heads and shoulders.
Jack watched the dark-haired girl vanish into the shadows beneath the castle’s walls. He liked to think he’d made an impression on her. With his back and shoulders burning from the grell-stings, he returned to his work.
With the arrival of new captives, Jack was surprised to discover that conditions in the fields improved somewhat. His days were still full of dull, filthy toil, but the presence of fresh workers in the paddocks meant that there were more hands sharing the labor. The bullies and malcontents among the old slaves turned their attentions to the task of putting the new slaves in their proper place in the paddocks’ pecking order. More important, Malmor had more workers to keep track of than before, and his eye was not fixed constantly on one prisoner. Jack found more opportunities to carefully survey the bounds of his world, taking note of the obstacles surrounding the paddocks and the frequent patrols that deterred any would-be runaways. He spoke with the newcomers about the route they’d taken down from the surface and what they’d seen in their march through House Chumavh’s territories. He even found more time to quietly experiment with his spells, trying to determine what exactly was wrong with his magic. He was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that he would have to make his escape with his native stealth and guile, but he’d be much more likely to reach the surface alive if he could take on the shape of a dark elf or simply turn invisible and walk off. Unfortunately his spells still eluded him; the magical Weave was dull and dark, and the unseen strands of magic that should have responded to his words and gestures refused to answer him.
A few days after the arrival of Fetterfist’s slaves, Jack was roused early to go up to the tower kitchens to draw breakfast for the field-workers. At first he bitterly resented the loss of a half-hour’s additional rest, but he realized that the chore at least offered him the chance to see a part of his surroundings he hadn’t yet-and perhaps catch a rare and precious glimpse of a female with fewer than four legs. With three other field slaves, he pushed the oxcart-like trolley with its empty tin pails over a road that circled beneath the battlements of Tower Chumavhraele. Strange, soft-glowing globes of purple and green magelight drifted along the crenellations or hovered above the dark gates, casting an eerie eldritch light over the castle’s spires. Orc, bugbear, and the occasional ogre or minotaur slave warriors stood their posts vigilantly, supervised by drow sergeants and officers. None took any special notice of the field-slaves and their creaking cart as they followed the path to a small side-gate leading in to the kitchens.
The kitchens were huge, a vast maze occupied by scores of cooks, dishwashers, and scullery servants. The field-slaves’ porridge bubbled thickly in a large cauldron by the door, under the supervision of a middle-aged half-orc woman who carried an overseer’s stinging-rod at her broad waistband. Jack and his fellows brought in the pails, filled them, and loaded them back on the cart. “Hurry up, you
stupid clods,” the overseer bellowed. “Now my kitchen stinks of rothe crap. I should flog the lot of you!”
Jack decided on the spot that he had no more use for the chore of fetching porridge, but then he caught sight of the dark-haired Seila Norwood. She was toiling as a laundress, stirring sheets and spreads in a huge vat of steaming water. The girl happened to look up as he walked past, arms full of tin pails, and their eyes met for an instant before she turned away to tend another vat. Jack could see the exhaustion and despair in her eyes, but there was something else there, too, a small spark of defiance that hadn’t quite faded; he hoped that his own eyes still held that spark, too.
From that day forward, Jack made it his mission to be chosen for meal-fetching as often as possible. The trick, of course, was that one couldn’t very well ask to do it or else Malmor out of pure spite would simply say no. The bugbear assumed that if anyone wanted one job over another it was because they’d found a way to shirk or malinger. Jack tried to arrange his dung-shoveling and slop-hauling in such a way that he’d be in easy sight of the push-cart they took up to the castle kitchens when mealtime drew near, and that was partially successful; the bugbear and the other overseers were in the habit of ordering the first person they caught sight of to do whatever needed doing next. But after a day or two Jack realized the real trick was to act as if he didn’t want to push the heavy cart up to the castle, after which Malmor naturally picked him first at every opportunity. Sometimes it worked, and he saw the girl; sometimes it didn’t, and he missed her in the kitchens.
A couple of tendays after he’d seen her in the castle kitchens, Jack finally found a chance to speak to the captive noblewoman. The rothe were brought in from the paddocks for shearing, because the drow made a thick, oily wool from their shaggy coats-nothing a dark elf would wear personally, but useful enough in the sort of places where surface folk might use canvas or heavy burlap. It was a difficult and dangerous job. The rothe didn’t care to be sheared and were only too happy to gore anybody associated with the task, but in time it was done, and the dirty rothe clippings were gathered in huge bales and brought up to vats set up outside the castle kitchens to be boiled clean.
Prince of Ravens frr-1 Page 3