The City of Splendors

by Ed Greenwood

  “Alarm-cord still stretched, door still closed, and—hear that giggling?—my gels at the door outside, with hot platters of something to make us all a little less fearful! Men, ’tis time to talk of the new buildings we’ll raise together before the season’s out, and those we must repair before they topple! No New Day talk around the ladies, mind!”

  “We’re not fools, Dyre,” Whaelshod muttered under his breath.

  “Oh, no?” Lhamphur whispered, his own knuckles white on the hilt of his still-sheathed dagger. “Let’s hope not, or the heads that roll won’t be the ones wearing the masks of the Lords of Waterdeep.”

  You must find him, Piergeiron had said. From what I’ve seen this day, I’m certain any father would rejoice in such a son.

  The First Lord’s words echoed in Mrelder’s mind, mocking him with the hope he’d cherished for more than a year. The false hope.

  He knew. He had yet to open his eyes, but he knew the graft had been a failure.

  There was a dull, phantom ache where his left arm had been. If the gods had granted Golskyn’s prayers and found Mrelder a worthy host, he would now be aflame with searing pain. Not lightly did the monstrous gods award their favors.

  A faint, unfriendly hiss came from somewhere beside him. Then another, slightly fainter.

  Mrelder fought his way up through the darkness. As lantern-light flared before his eyes, he turned his head toward the hissings.

  The dying sahuagin lay on a table beside him, its gills flaring weakly as it gasped out its last breaths. A foul scent came from the charred, blackened stumps that were all that remained of not one, but all four of its scaled arms.

  Four times had the followers of Lord Unity attempted the graft, and four times Mrelder’s body had refused to accept the gods-given improvement.

  “My son lives,” Golskyn said coldly, looming over Mrelder, “and the sahuagin dies.” His tone left little doubt as to his opinion of this state of affairs.

  “I … I’m sorry,” Mrelder managed to murmur.

  “My sentiments precisely,” his father replied, each word burning like acid. He drew a long dagger from its belt-sheath. “The mongrelmen follow me because I tell them they are more, not less. They enjoy the special favor of the True Gods. They are already well along the path only the strong may take. They are my children. I need no other.”

  Golskyn lifted the knife high.

  This was it. His father’s patience was at an end. Forlorn dreams and schemes flooded Mrelder’s mind, a storm-flow of regret and loss. All would fade with him, thrown away in this dark cellar, all …

  One idea caught in the rush of thoughts, looming rather than being swept on. A moment later, it was joined by another—and fresh hope, as Mrelder realized the two notions could become one: the sahuagin-shaped Walking Statue and the Guardian’s Gorget.

  “There’s another way,” he gasped.

  “To end your worthless life?”

  “To gain the strength of mighty creatures!” Mrelder gasped excitedly, seeing it all now.

  The priest’s uncovered eye narrowed. “Explain.”

  Mrelder nodded, but the words he needed would not come. As his stupor faded, the pain came in waves. He reached across to the other table to pluck away a strip of the dying sahuagin’s scales from one of its stumps. Holding up the ribbon of hide, he managed a single word: “Gorget.”

  For a long moment Mrelder prayed to any gods who might be listening that his father would remember the letters he’d written about Piergeiron and the Walking Statues, wherein he’d told Golskyn about this wondrous magical piece of the First Lord’s armor, enspelled to command the great constructs.

  Golskyn lowered the knife. His uncovered eye regarded his son thoughtfully. “This has possibilities. You can do this? With your … sorcery?”

  Mrelder nodded. Perhaps he could prove to Golskyn that magic and items that held it were worthy sources of power, and in doing so earn his father’s respect.

  And, not incidentally, save his own life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Naoni Dyre sang softly to herself as she spun the last few chips of amethyst into shining purple thread.

  A hole in the kitchen doorframe held her distaff: a long-handled runcible spoon, both ladle and fork. Instead of wool or flax, it held a steadily diminishing pile of rough amethysts. Delicate purple fibers spilled between its narrow tines in a curtain of gossamer purple that drew down into a triangle. At the point of that triangle Naoni’s deft, pale fingers were busily at work, drafting the fibers together and easing them onto the shaft of her spindle.

  It was a simple drop spindle, a round, smooth stick ending in a flat wooden wheel and hung suspended by the fine purple thread. As it spun, its weight pulled the fibers from the gemstones, and the thread collected in a widening cone atop the wooden wheel.

  It was no small skill, keeping the spindle moving at the perfect speed—not so fast that it broke the delicate thread nor so slow that it fell to the floor. To Naoni, the rhythm was as natural as breathing.

  When the last of the gems slipped into thread, Naoni eased the spindle to the floor. She didn’t fear a fall might shatter her work. Anything she spun became as strong and flexible as silk, for Naoni Dyre was a minor sorceress.

  Hmmph. Minor indeed. The ability to spin nearly anything into thread was her lone gift.

  “You, dear sister, need a spinning wheel.”

  A fond smile lit Naoni’s face as she turned to greet Faendra. Her younger sister was the very image of their dead mother: a petite and pretty strawberry blonde, plump in all the right places, with blue, blue eyes that promised sunny afternoons, and a pert little nose that matched a smile that was never far from her lips.

  “Spinning wheels are far too dear. What would Father say about such expense?” Naoni asked mildly.

  Faendra propped fists on hips and thrust forth her chin in imitation of their father’s manner. “Buy a proper wheel, girl, and stop spinning thread like a Calishite slave! Good tools will triple your coins, or may Waukeen damn me to the poorhouse,” she growled, in tones as deep and gruff as she could manage.

  They laughed together, but Naoni’s mirth quickly faded to a sigh. Her father knew she spun and earned fair coin, but dismissed attempted talk about her work with a brusque, “What’s yours is yours.” He was far more interested in her ability to run the household with frugal efficiency.

  “Perhaps it’s time to consider a wheel,” she said. “Jacintha would be pleased to have more gem thread.”

  Faendra eyed the glittering skeins carefully laid out on the sideboard. “What wouldn’t I give for a gown of Jacintha’s gemsilk!” she said wistfully. “Perhaps this time the gnome could pay you in cloth?”

  “Little chance of that; most of gemsilk’s value is the gems, not the labor.”

  The younger girl sniffed. “Oh? Who else can spin such thread?”

  “I know of none other,” Naoni admitted, “nor know I another weaver who has Jacintha’s gift for weaving many sources together into cloth. If not for her, how would I have gems to weave? We’re fortunate to have found each other; I’ve no quarrel with our arrangement.”

  “So be it,” Faendra said lightly. “How soon can we be in the Warrens?”

  “We can leave as soon as I finish this last skein.” Naoni picked up a niddy-noddy, a simple wooden frame of three sticks, and began to wind the thread around it.

  “Niddy niddy noddy, two heads with one body,” Faendra chanted, grinning. “You taught me that rhyme when you made your first frame. How old was I then, I wonder?”

  “Seven winters,” Naoni said softly. She’d begun spinning the year their mother died, leaving her, a lass of twelve winters, to run the household and raise a frolicsome little sister.

  Her swift hands made short work of the winding. “If you’ll summon Lark, we can leave.”

  “I’m here,” announced a low-pitched voice.

  The young woman who emerged from the buttery resembled her namesake: small, trim, a
nd as brown as a meadow bird. Her long hair was gathered back into a single braid, and she wore a brown kirtle over a plain linen shift. A green ribbon bound her brows to hold back stray wisps of hair, and its two ends had been laced into her braid. A matching sash was tied around one of her bared arms. Her nose was perhaps too narrow and a bit overlong, and her bright brown eyes disconcertingly keen, but she was pleasant enough to look upon.

  Naoni gave her a tentative smile. Her father, in keeping with their new-found affluence, had insisted they hire a servant, but his elder daughter was still not sure how a mistress should treat a hired lass.

  Her sister had no such worries. To Faendra, every stranger was a friend yet unmet, and any girl living under her roof as good as a sister. She picked up a skein of glittering purple and draped it around Lark’s shoulders.

  “What say you? Wouldn’t you love to wear a gemsilk gown?”

  Lark carefully lifted the skein and set it aside. “For my work, in this heat? It’d be as wet as washrags by highsun.”

  “Don’t be goose-witted. You wear such gowns to noble revels, not for cheesemaking!”

  “I’ve been to many such,” Lark replied, in a tone that implied her memories of revels were neither fond nor impressive.

  “To serve, yes, but not on the arm of some handsome, wealthy young man!”

  Lark’s lips thinned. “I know my place and want no other.”

  “Let’s wrap and bundle the skeins,” Naoni said hastily. They all got on well enough, but Lark had little patience for Faendra’s thinking: beauty was its own guild, and the business of its members was to charm all the world into doing their will.

  Faendra gave her sister a sunny smile. “I’ll just change my gown and freshen my hair.” She danced out of the room, humming.

  “She’ll not reappear until the task is done,” Lark murmured.

  True enough, but such truths would sit ill with the master of the household. “My father would not like to hear it said that any Dyre shirks work,” Naoni observed carefully.

  “Then I’ll say instead both Dyre sisters are willing workers,” Lark replied dryly. “Naoni’s willing to work—and Faendra’s willing to let her.”

  Naoni smiled faintly, shook her head, and wrapped linen over her basket. “That’s the last of it. It seems strange so much thread can be woven from a handful of gems.”

  “Stranger still you can do it at all.”

  Faendra reappeared, twirling to show off her new blue gown and slippers dyed to match. The bodice was fashionably tight, the sleeves thrice-puffed and slashed to best display her rounded, rosy arms, and the slim skirt hugged her hips and thighs before flaring out in a graceful sweep.

  Naoni frowned, gray eyes stern. “You’re dressed very fine for the Warrens. Is that wise?”

  Her sister danced over to kiss Naoni on the tip of her nose and then spun away with a grin. “You worry overmuch.

  Let’s be off!”

  As the three girls made their way through Dock Ward, the streets were as crowded and bustling as usual, but no fights or spilled wagons drew crowds and slowed them. Even the everpresent handcarts were fewer and less precariously loaded than usual.

  They were soon standing in a narrow alley that ended in a tangle of ramshackle buildings. Naoni tapped on a sagging door half-hidden behind a rotting pile of broken barrel-staves.

  It swung open to flickering torchlight amid darkness and the familiar hard stares of a pair of halfling guards. Mostly hidden beyond the doorframe, they were dressed as human urchins, and their belts bore cheap, bright-painted leather scabbards. Despite their childish, harmless appearance, those scabbards held swords that were very real and very sharp.

  “A fine afternoon to you both,” Naoni said, hefting her covered basket. “I’ve business with Jacintha.”

  The guards nodded and silently drew back to let her pass. The three girls ducked inside, and Lark spread her hands, palms up, to show she bore no weapons.

  “You, too,” one hin said in a surprisingly gruff voice, nodding at Faendra. “Palms, pretty one?”

  The younger Dyre sister rolled her eyes and held her arms out wide as if to ask “And where might I be hiding anything in this gown?”

  The guard nodded, and the door was already being thrust closed behind them as Naoni handed the basket to Lark and took a torch from the guards’ barrel. Lighting it from their wall-torch, she started along the tunnel.

  The smell of damp stone arose strongly around the three, and they took care not to brush against the walls. The Warrens was one of Waterdeep’s lesser-known neighborhoods. It had been centuries in the making, beginning with stone houses built along hilly streets. Betimes a higher floor would be added here, or a walkway built across a street from house to house there, and with the passing years stretches of streets were completely hidden from the sun, and many lowest floors became cellars. Rebuilding shored up the lower levels and worked upward from there, and beneath a few blocks of bustling Waterdeep, the slow result of this tireless reaching for the grander was a forgotten layer.

  Many Small Folk dwelt here. Gnomes, halflings, and even the occasional dwarf found a congenial and discreet address amid the dark cellars and narrow tunnels of the Warrens.

  The lasses passed several gnomes coming the other way, and polite nods were exchanged. Jacintha was so highly regarded that Naoni, by association, was counted among their own.

  Soon they reached a familiar arched door. Twice as wide as it was tall, it stood open, letting out a rhythmic, slightly ragged clatter to echo in the tunnel.

  A soft clack and sweep filled the room, swelling around the three lasses as they entered. Half a dozen looms clattered busily in the low-vaulted stone hall, but one slowed smoothly as the weaving-mistress left off her work and bustled over with a smile of welcome.

  Jacintha was, as usual, too busy for additional pleasantries, taking the basket from Lark without pause to unwrap the skeins and hold them up into the lantern light.

  She stared hard and nodded. “Fine, very fine.”

  Faendra had already wandered over to Jacintha’s loom, which bore a silky, almost translucent amber fabric. Woven into it was a pattern of dragonflies with brilliant, glittering wings.

  “How’s this done?” she marveled, peering closely. “Many colors … but all the threads, warp and weft, seem of one …”

  “And are,” the gnome said briskly, “made from your sister’s amber thread and silk I dyed to match. One drop of amber had a dragonfly trapped in it, as I recall. The pattern’s none of my doing; it came of itself as I was weaving. ’Tis a pretty thing.”

  “Indeed it is,” Faendra said longingly. Something brighter caught her eye. “What of this?” she asked, waving at a nearby glittering swath of red cloth.

  The gnome smirked. “That’ll become a nobleman’s evening cloak. Take two paces to your left and gaze on it, letting your eyes lose focus.”

  Faendra did as she was bid, and after a moment burst out laughing. “There’s a pattern: a male peacock, all a-strut!”

  “Fitting for those who wear such things,” Jacintha observed dryly, “and fitting amusement to those of us who don’t.”

  She unstrung a pouch from her belt and handed it to Naoni. “Your coins are on one side, and the next gems to be spun on t’other. Peridot, a very fine pale green.”

  “That hue would suit Naoni, with her hair and eyes,” hinted Faendra.

  Her gaze slid to a bolt of shimmering blue that matched her own eyes, then moved to the pouch holding Naoni’s payment, her meaning all too clear.

  Naoni looked up from examining the gems to give her sister a warning glance. “A lovely green,” she told Jacintha. “I’ll enjoy spinning it.”

  It was the way of gnomes to remember faults, longings, and other weaknesses for future bargaining. Before Faendra could say anything else, her elder sister made swift work of the farewells and hustled her companions back out of the Warrens.

  As Father expected her to know the sites where Dyre mone
y or men were at work, Naoni led them up Redcloak Lane to check on the recent damage.

  One entire run of scaffolding was a near-ruin. Faendra surveyed the bustling workmen and murmured, “I begin to see why Father was so a-fret.”

  Naoni frowned. “Even so, I dislike this talk of New Days and challenges to the Lords.”

  “Old men’s foolishness,” her sister said cheerfully, putting a lilt to her hips for the benefit of the watching laborers.

  “Such talk’s nothing new,” Lark observed. “Common folk have always complained about nobles, and rumors about the Lords are as old as Mount Waterdeep itself.”

  Naoni nodded. “The Lords know their own work best.”

  Lark made a sound that was suspiciously like a sniff. “Some may be good, fine men behind those masks, but I’ll warrant most of them are no better than they have to be. Still, Waterdeep goes along well enough, and I’d just as soon not shave the dog to spite its fleas.”

  “Perhaps Father wants to be a Lord,” Faendra put in lightly. “I suppose many might be unhappy that Waterdeep’s governed in secret, for how can they rise in power and influence unless they can see the path ahead?”

  Naoni winced. Despite her frivolities, her sister saw people with disturbing clarity. Sudden fear rose in her: did Faendra know their mother’s secret?

  No, that was impossible, surely! Naoni had hidden those letters and journals very carefully. And well she had! In his current temper, Father needed no reminders of Ilyndeira Dyre’s sad taste of Waterdhavian nobility.

  Redcloak Lane was behind them now, and Faendra had strolled into a smaller crossway than Naoni would have chosen.

  They almost brushed shoulders with a cluster of dockers arguing heatedly over ownership of a battered crate in their midst.

  Naoni was only six or seven strides past the men when a realization struck her with a sudden chill.

  The argument had fallen silent.

  She glanced back. One man was only a few paces behind her, moving very quickly and quietly.

  He gave her a grin that might have been charming if he’d still possessed most of his teeth. “What’s in the pouch, pretty one? Let’s have a look.”