War in Tethyr

26

"I can't believe they're going to put Countess Morninggold to death tomorrow," the gangly, pimple-faced youth whispered loudly. The stinking water that lapped their ankles and the slimy sewer walls took his words and cast them in all directions, in the faces of the little party and bouncing down the passageway. "Is there nothing we can do?"

A drop fell from the low-groined ceiling onto the back of Simonne's neck and rolled down it like an ice slug. She forced herself not to think of what it was.

"Yes," she said more softly. "We can try to be quiet and not get caught. Beyond that-Gond teaches us to make the best use of what fortune places in our hands. We can but trust to his providence and our own resources."

By jittering torchlight she surveyed her doughty band: gnomes interspersed with youthful humans and even a smattering of half-elves, faces green-tinted at the stench and knowledge of what was gurgling about their boots. Some of the nongnomes were fellow Gond followers, others the priestess's friends. The way they clutched their motley collection of knives, clubs, swords, and short bows showed far too plainly for Simonne's taste that none of them was a fighter by training or experience.

She looked to the figure by her side. It was even shorter than she, clad in a dark brown cloak with hood thrown back to reveal a head of chestnut curls. It held a hoodwinked bull's-eye lantern in one small hand.

"You're sure this is the way, Nikdemane Birdsong?"

The halfling nodded, a trifle impatiently. "Down this path, through the narrow passage that forks off to the left there yonder. It's the back way into a subterranean lagoon that feeds into the Sulduskoon and thence to the sea. There's an ancient stone pier where we used to smuggle goods whose makers didn't care to purchase guild stamps or ask a syndic's leave to do business."

"You'd not steer us wrong?" she asked, wondering what she would do if he did.

He gave her a look of fine halfling disdain. "I'm a thief, tinker priestess. But I steal goods, not children. Not even bigfeet deserve to be served so."

She nodded. She wondered at her own motivation in undertaking this mad caper. She suspected with a touch of chagrin that she and her followers shared a reason: the creed of their red-bearded smith god was Action counts! Yet they all did far more talking than acting.

Here was their chance to take action that would truly count.

Father, she thought, I don't think even you could disapprove. But withal, I do this for you.

She gestured with her three-shot repeating pistol crossbow, recently invented by a fellow priest of Gond Wonderbringer. "Let's go. And please keep it quiet!"

Lying side by side on their bellies, Simonne and Nik Birdsong inched forward up a sloping passage uncomfortably low even for the gnome woman, although the halfling had walked insouciantly upright until both went prone for the final stretch. Gaining the lip first, the little thief gave Simonne a quick grin of vindication. As he turned back, the priestess saw his expression change to disgust. She writhed up beside him.

The tunnel mouth opened twenty feet above the floor of a vast torch-lit chamber. The black galley bobbed gently alongside a mossy stone pier, tied fore and aft to protrusions that might once have been winged statues, but had long since worn to amorphousness — an indication of their age, securely hidden as they were from the erosive forces of wind and weather. The black square-rigged sail hung limp from the yardarm, but there was no mistaking the stylized black nail and Z rune against a white circle — the emblem of the Zhentarim.

Simonne's breath caught in her throat. There was also no mistaking the identities of the men busy herding a coffle of weeping, stumbling children up the gangplank and into the slave ship.

All wore the pure-white robes of the priests of Ao.

Angry murmuring and clatter awoke Zaranda from a fitful but blessedly dreamless sleep. She rose from the bed, feeling as she did so an internal blow to the heart: this is my last morning. She sought to pass the shock off with a joke, murmuring, "Need they make such racket raising the wheel of justice?" as she shuffled to the window.

Dawn was turning an overcast sky the color of sour milk. Down on the plaza men fought. Some wore the bronze armor of Hardisty's civic guard. Against them strove men in tradesman's garb, with here and there a black-shelled city policeman among them.

Zaranda blinked and dabbed at sleepy eyes. When she looked again, the scene was the same. She marked dark, unmoving shapes strewn liberally across the plaza's sandstone flagging. Some only approximated the human form, not all of them closely. Raising her eyes, she saw pillars of smoke upholding the clouds.

She sat sideways on the sill and watched. The battle flowed off the plaza and out of her field of view. Which side was winning, she couldn't tell, if indeed either was. Occasional armed bands hurried across the plaza, looking apprehensively over their shoulders. Now and again Zaranda saw a roil of activity away up one of the streets radiating from the central square.

Try as she might, she could make no sense of what was happening. She gave it every effort: better than contemplating the way her life would end a few hours hence…

The sound of three door bolts being shot back sent her heart into her throat. She gasped. Then she set her jaw, rose, and faced the door with chin high and shoulders squared.

The door opened. Duke Hembreon came in. He wore plate armor that had once been enameled blue with fastidious white trim. Now it was blood-splashed and fire-blackened. His head was bare; blood from a wound stained pink the hair on the right side of his head. In one steel-gauntleted hand, he carried a broadsword with a notched, gore-crusted blade.

"Good morrow, Your Grace," Zaranda said. "Has the council grown too impatient to wait for noon?"

The old nobleman staggered across the floor and sat down with a thump and a clangor. He grounded his sword tip on the floor and leaned on the hilt as if the chair didn't offer support enough to keep him upright.

"The council is no more," he said. "Zaranda Star, I owe you a mighty apology."

She cocked an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Is that so? Well, Your Grace, I have been expropriated, pursued, persecuted, kidnapped, tortured, slandered, and sentenced to agonizing death. With all due respect, you'll have to do better than that."

He glared at her. Slowly the fires of anger died from his blue eyes, and his great head drooped.

"You are right, Countess Morninggold. More right than you know, for I must crave a boon of you."

"A boon?" She laughed. "Start talking, Your Grace."

"Where ought I to begin? Last night a party of armed citizens surprised a Zhentarim slave galley taking on a shipment of kidnapped Zazesspurian children in a cavern beneath the city. Supervising the vile deed were men wearing the robes of Ao's supposed priesthood."

"So Ao hasn't decided to take an active interest in the affairs of this plane after all."

The survivors confessed they were in fact priests of Cyric."

Zaranda sucked in a sharp breath. That's in character, I suppose. That upstart god loves deception for its own sake." The greatest evil deity currently known in the Realms, Cyric had been born during the Time of Troubles, even as Bhaal, Myrkul, and Bane, whose portfolios he had usurped, were destroyed.

"And Armenides-?"

The duke held up a hand. "In hiding. But more of that anon. Pray let me tell my tale in order. It is painful enough."

Zaranda gestured him to proceed.

"Scarcely had word of the discovery reached the council's ears than a frightful thing came to pass. Those children of our most prominent citizens who had joined the All-Friends rose up and began to slaughter their parents. Deymos, Baron Zam, and the Lady Koran are known dead at their offsprings' hands; Hafzul Gorbon stove in his only daughter's head with a mace as she stood over her mother's corpse with dripping blade, then lay down beside his wife and slit his own throat. Others-" He shook his head.

"Gods! Tatrina?"

He sighed. "She has vanished into the Palace of Governance, wherein Hardisty has crowned himself king and declared her his consort. At least I dare hope she has not been… affected."

"I hope so as well. But why do citizens and constables battle blue-and-bronzes in the streets?"

"An hour before dawn, even as the last of the murderous youths and maidens were being subdued, dark-lings poured forth from the sewers in unimaginable profusion and began to slay. The civic guard got orders not to fight them. Many deserted; others tried to disarm citizens and constabulary and became embroiled in the fighting you saw. A number are fortified up with the usurper Hardisty. Most have barricaded themselves in their barracks and wait to see which way fortune's winds blow."

He shook his head, like an old lion who has found temporary shelter from a pack of hounds who have harried him near death. "The hinges are blasted off the gates of all the hells. Earl Ravenak's swine rampage against nonhumans and foreigners. Artisans battle the syndics of their very guilds. The supposed forces of order fight one another. The scions of Zazesspur's finest families are turned to monsters by some means none can divine, have slaughtered the leaders of our city and been slaughtered in their turn. And all must be over-thrown if the darklings are not stopped."

He raised his head as if he had a tombstone yoked to his neck and looked at Zaranda. "It seems we are to know the Ten Black Days of Eleint again, all compressed into a single day."

She went to the stool, sat down, and began to massage her temples. "So," she said. " The evil ran deeper I than I imagined… than I could have imagined." She looked up at the duke. "What do you want of me?"

"I have myself just come from fighting the darklings. We are sorely pressed. The issue-the very survival of Zazesspur-remains in the gravest doubt."

"You want my help."

"I beseech your help, Countess Morninggold. Though I fear that all the help you can possibly provide might not suffice to stem the evil tide."

She spread her hands. "I'd love to oblige, Your Grace, but I have an appointment to be spread out on a giant wheel and have all my bones broken in a few hours."

Hembreon moaned. "You are pardoned. Your sentence of death is overturned and rendered null. We were deceived."

"Has the council voted to nullify my sentence? You said yourself that most were unaccounted for."

With surprising alacrity the duke whipped up his sword. "Whoever tries to gainsay me, I will strike down with my own hand. I warrant your life with my own. This I swear on my honor."

"Very well." Zaranda nodded briskly. Turning to the table, she took up pen and parchment. "Send a patrol to convey this message beneath a flag of truce to my friends. Needless to say, you must also alert such forces as remain loyal to the council that we're on the same side now."

The duke was too soul-weary to take umbrage at being ordered about like a scullery whelp by his erstwhile prisoner. "It shall be done."

"It'll take time for our reinforcements to arrive. See if you can scare me up some spellbooks. I'll memorize such spells as I can while we wait."

"You will not join the fight at once?"

"You flatter me, Your Grace. Would my single blade make that much difference against numberless hordes of darklings? Especially since I'm without my magic sword?" She shook her head. "As it is, I don't know what good my few paltry spells might do, either. But I'll seize any advantage I can with both hands."

The duke sighed, rose heavily. "I had hoped-" His voice trailed away, and he blinked back tears.

Zaranda looked up from her writing. "Out with it."

"My daughter… I had hoped-if there is any hope-that you might rescue her."

"What if she doesn't want to be rescued?" The look of agony that washed over the old man's features brought her instant shame.

"Don't worry, Your Grace," she said quickly. "The first item on my agenda is breaking into the Palace of Misrule over there and cutting King Faneuil the First and Last's black heart right out of his chest."

She finished writing, signed the parchment with a flourish, and held it out to him. "After my friends get here."

A knock at the door roused her from a surprisingly deep sleep-surprising in that she had simply lain down to rest her eyes while waiting, and was not plagued by nightmares. Perhaps she was too tired to dream. Or perhaps the owner of that dry and loathly Voice had more pressing claims on its attention.

She woke with a fearful start: they've come to take me and break me! By the time she remembered that those festivities had been called on account of reign- the reign of evil, to be exact-the door had opened and into the city hall clerk's office, which she had commandeered after her release, came Nyadnar.

"It speaks well for your presence of mind that you can sleep under these circumstances," the sorceress said.

"What surprises me is that I could sleep last night at all," Zaranda said, rising from the makeshift cot. "What can I do for you?"

Day turned the pallor of Nyadnar's features marmoreal, giving her the weird, poignant beauty of an ancient statue brought to life. She wore her customary robe of midnight-blue velvet, and over it a gray cloak to shield her from the sporadic drizzle. From beneath the cloak she produced a bundle of books and age-yellowed papers, bound up by a purple ribbon. These she laid on the table.

"My early spellbooks," the enchantress said. "Any spells known to you, you will find therein."

Zaranda stared at the bundle as if it might at any moment transform itself into a raging dragon. "The world must be spinning seriously out of balance," she said, "for you to take such measures on my behalf."

"Don't leap to conclusions; that displays a lack of mental rigor," Nyadnar said. "It might be necessary that you fail spectacularly."

"Then I'll have to try my best to disappoint you," Zaranda said with a she-wolf grin. "In the meantime, though, I thank you."

The sun was setting when another knock roused Zaranda from her studies. "What is it?" she called, knuckling sand-blasted eyes.

A policeman opened the door. "His Grace the duke sends his regards, milady. He bids me tell you your friends approach."

"Well met, Zaranda Star!" called Farlorn the Hand-some, waving jauntily from the back of his dapple-gray mare. "Your beauty is most resplendent, all things considered."

Mounted on his dark bay, Stillhawk met her eye and nodded greeting.

It took all her strength to keep her knees from buckling right there on the city hall steps. The pressure of tears unshed stung her eyes.

The two men swung down from their horses and walked up to her. When Zaranda made no move to embrace them, the half-elf cocked an eyebrow inquisitively.

"Where are the others?" she asked quietly. "Where are Shield, and Chen? Where's Goldie?"

The sky was gray as a gull's back, save near the horizon where fire held sway. The air was thick with the smells of death and burning and decay. The darklings stank like dead things even when alive, if alive they were. Even if Zazesspur survived, it would take time to eradicate their stench.

"I thought you'd have heard," said Farlorn. "The beast betrayed you to the baron's men; we clapped him in irons and have kept him there ever since. The girl has been in a most powerful sulk since you vanished. She refused to accompany us today."

Have I done wrong? Stillhawk signed.

Zaranda touched his arm. "If so, not intentionally. I suspected Shield for a time myself. But I feel as if a Wrong has been done."

Farlorn tuttutted and shook his head. "Ah, Zaranda. Once again, you're letting the softness of your heart weaken that hard head of yours-"

"Hey! Zaranda! Randi!"

Zaranda turned. Trotting across the plaza from the south came Goldie, bearing Chenowyn on her back.

At their side loped Shield of Innocence.