by Paul S. Kemp
Selgaunt’s plenty contrasted starkly with the ruin and deprivation of Skullport.
Shop after shop lined the broad, paved avenue, their doors thrown open, their proprietors offering seller’s smiles at the passersby. The typical mix of travelers, traders, merchants, mercenaries, adventurers, pickpockets, laborers, and beggars populated the walkways. Horse-drawn carts, noble coaches, and humble farmers’ wagons loaded with grain and other foodstuffs rolled along the cobblestone streets. Livestock lowed and grunted from roadside pens. A squad of Scepters, Selgaunt’s city watchmen, walked amongst the milling crowd, eyes alert for thieves. Each wore black leather armor and a silver-hilted blade, with a green weather-cloak thrown over the whole. Out of habit, Cale avoided eye contact.
Children darted between the pedestrians. The call of street vendors filled the air, rising above the general rush of the crowd to hawk everything from dried flowers to three-day-old bread.
The afternoon sunshine did not quite offset the coolness of the brisk autumn wind. The air carried the faint tang of Inner Sea salt, horse manure, and the aroma of cooking meat. Everything looked, sounded, and smelled exactly as it always had, but Cale could not quite shake the feeling that Selgaunt was different.
Walking beside Cale, Jak said, “Not a slave in sight. Nice to be home, eh?”
It struck Cale then.
Selgaunt was not different; Cale was different. Worse, he was not sure the city was his home anymore.
“Cale?” Jak prodded.
Cale kept his brooding to himself and said to Jak only, “It is good to be back, little man.”
Though he knew it would sting his skin, he decided to pull back his hood and endure the sunlight. He could not spend the rest of his life hiding from the sun or he would end up like the majority of Skullport’s skulkers—pale shadows slinking furtively through the darkness. He wondered how Varra had maintained her dignity while living in such a sunless pit; he wondered, too, what she would think of Selgaunt, gleaming in the sunshine. Thinking of her reminded him of their kiss. He could still taste her lips. It took real effort to put thoughts of her out of his mind. He tucked the stump of his wrist into his cloak pocket and walked along.
“This is a different city than Starmantle,” Magadon observed, eyeing the people, high fashions, and elaborately architectured buildings of Selgaunt. “Quite different.”
Cale nodded.
In Starmantle, still more or less a frontier town, buildings and fashion were designed to be functional. In Selgaunt, one of the most sophisticated cities in the Heartlands, buildings and fashion were styled to be stunning. Wooden buildings with simple architecture predominated in Starmantle, while in Selgaunt, fully half the buildings were made of stone or brick, and almost all of them had one kind of architectural flourish or another. In fact, an architecturally ordinary home or shop in Selgaunt was a sign of tastelessness at best, financial distress at worst.
“Bit different from Skullport, too,” Jak said, and there was no mirth in his voice.
“Truth,” Magadon said somberly.
Cale said nothing, merely looked out on the sea of pale faces around him. He had little in common with them anymore, if he ever had. They were human; he was a shade. He wondered if he would happen upon anyone from the Uskevren household: Tamlin, Shamur, or … Tazi. The thought summoned a pit in his stomach. He could imagine how they would look upon him now that he was … transformed. Nine Hells, even Jak sometimes looked at him with fear in his eyes. Only Varra and Magadon looked at him like he was still a man, and Cale suspected that was because both of them knew darkness almost as well as Cale.
He pushed the maudlin thoughts from his mind and distracted himself by focusing on the passersby, noting weapons, movements, glances. He had not lost his trained eyes, and he picked out the professionals with satisfying ease. The thieves were apparent enough to him that they might as well have been wearing a uniform.
And something else was apparent to him, too—shadows. He was as conscious of the location of shadows as he was of his own hand—those cast by people, by buildings, by carts. They were his tools now; he was connected intuitively to the dark places around him. The realization both comforted and disquieted him.
“I think I’ll purchase a new hat,” Jak said, eyeing with admiration the wide-brimmed wool cap perched atop the head of a fat merchant with a ratty moustache. The little man doffed his filthy and torn hat and slapped it against his thigh, then replaced it on his head. “Mine is a little road worn. Some new clothes, too, maybe.” He eyed his burned pants with dismay.
“We should re-equip entirely while we’re here,” Magadon said. “Rations. Field gear. Arrows for me. I’ll handle that. I assume we won’t remain long, Erevis?”
Cale did not know, so he shook his head. “We will see, Mags. It depends on what we can learn.”
They had very little to go on. The Sojourner had mentioned the Eldritch Temple of Mystryl but the reference meant nothing to Cale. He thought he knew someone who might be able to help—Elaena, the High Priest of Deneir in Selgaunt. She had healed Jak once, when he had been wounded by a demon, and she, along with all priests of Deneir, valued lore and lost knowledge. She might have heard of the Eldritch Temple. Cale hoped she would remember them and agree to assist.
“Surely we’ll be here at least long enough to clean up?” Jak asked. “I mean, look at you two. You look like you’ve been swimming in a sewer.”
Magadon smiled. “We have been swimming in a sewer. And you look little better, Jak Fleet.”
Jak grinned, doffed his cap, and bowed.
Cale agreed with Magadon’s assessment. Skullport was a sewer, and its stink still clung tenaciously to his clothes, to his skin, to his soul.
“We ought to fill our bellies, too,” Jak said, warming to his subject. “Roadtack and conjured food can sustain a halfling only so long.”
Magadon nodded at Jak and smiled. “Especially this halfling.”
“That’s truth,” Jak said, and patted his stomach. “Venison, I say. Or pork.”
“Hot beef stew,” Magadon said.
Cale forced a smile and nodded agreement. He knew that recent events had left a mark on his friends. Over the last few hours—hours, he thought, marveling that so much could have occurred in so short a time—they had fought the Skulls of Skullport, barely escaped a collapsing cavern in the Underdark, journeyed to and from the Plane of Shadow twice, and fought the most powerful spellcaster and mindmage that any of them had ever encountered. Jak and Magadon looked drawn, wrung out. Their banter told Cale that they needed to engage in something ordinary to remind them that all was not slaves, shadows, spells, darkness, and danger. Walking under the sun on the streets of Selgaunt, they looked as relaxed as Cale had seen them in a tenday. They needed human activity. Strange that Cale did not feel the same need.
“Let’s take a meal now,” Cale said to accommodate his friends. “And gear up. Afterward, we will call on Deneir’s temple.”
“Elaena,” Jak said, nodding. “A good thought. Worth a die cast. But as you said, food first. So follow me. I know a place.”
The halfling turned off Rauncel’s Ride and led them a few blocks to a clapboard-sided tavern and eatery called The Workbench, frequented by watermen and laborers. Oars, a rusty anchor, and various old tools hung from the walls. The thin tapmaster took in their appearance, wiped his hands on his apron, and frowned. When Cale flashed platinum the man grew immediately solicitous.
Sembia remained Sembia, Cale thought, as he handed over a pair of platinum suns.
Few other patrons sat at The Workbench’s sturdy tables, and those who did minded their own affairs. Cale, Magadon, and Jak enjoyed a hearty meal of day-old chicken stew, stale bread, and an entire wheel of soft, sharp goat cheese. Cale surprised himself by savoring every bite. He could not remember anything ever tasting so good. Perhaps he needed ordinary activity after all.
Afterward, the trio spent an hour in one of Selgaunt’s many shopblocks. There, they replac
ed travel-tattered cloaks, tunics, breeches, and boots, and Magadon re-equipped them with field gear and more hardtack. Cale enjoyed watching Jak haggle with the merchants. The little man was as professional and skillful a haggler as he was a gambler and pickpocket.
By the time they were done, the bell tower of the Temple of Song and the hour-callers on the street announced the fifth hour after noon. They’d enjoyed nearly two hours of peace. It had done them all good.
“Back to it,” Cale said, and the three headed toward Temple Avenue.
They walked east along Tormyn’s Way, leaving behind the shops and inns of the northwest corner of town. Soon they were moving through narrow avenues lined with residences. The homes, though small, were built of sturdy wood or brick, and even the most modest had a tiled roof—a long distance from the ramshackle squalor of Skullport.
As they moved east, the small structures gave way to grander homes built of quarried and magically-sculpted stone. Squads of Scepters grew more commonplace, as did the presence of carriages.
In the distance ahead, overlooking the city from its perch atop a high rise, stood the crenellated towers and high walls of the ridiculous Hunting Garden of the Hulorn. The thick, gaudy towers of the Hulorn’s palace stood behind the garden and just poked their tops over the garden’s walls, as though peeking out in embarrassment.
Not far from there, Cale knew, stood the sprawling grounds and manses of Selgaunt’s Old Chauncel, including the squat, walled towers of Stormweather. He grew wistful, thinking of his old life.
He had been away from the city only a few tendays, but felt as though he had been gone a lifetime. His stomach clenched when he thought about what he had left behind. Jak must have seen it in his expression.
“You all right?” Jak asked him, looking up with concern.
“Yes,” Cale lied. “The light is bothering me some, that’s all.”
“Of course,” Jak said. The little man’s gaze looked off toward the Hulorn’s palace, toward the abodes of the Old Chauncel. He knew the city as well as Cale.
Jak said, “I left Mistledale after I’d seen twenty winters. I went back once and only once, a few years after leaving. Did I ever tell you about that?”
Cale shook his head.
“I wanted to see the lake where I’d fished as a boy with my father and uncle, to see some of my childhood friends, the hillside home I grew up in. That sort of thing, you know?”
Cale nodded.
“And while I was there I realized that my memory of things had more shine than the things themselves. I realized, too, that sometimes leaving a place changes you, and when you go back, you realize it isn’t really your home anymore. That’s how it was for me in Mistledale. By the time I came back, I’d changed, grown beyond it. It’s sad in a way. Old friends drift away, sometimes even family. But growth is part of life.”
“It is, eh?” Cale asked.
“It is,” Jak affirmed, and popped his pipe into his mouth. “I think you understand that as well as any.”
Cale did not answer, so Jak lit with a tindertwig, took a draw, and blew it out. Eyeing Cale sidelong, he said, “For some people, a place is home. But for men like us, people have to be home. And not just any people. Friends. The friends who live through the changes with us, who grow with us.”
“Truly said,” Magadon offered.
Cale took Jak’s meaning, and it helped him get perspective. He had changed, perhaps grown beyond the Uskevrens. Perhaps he was nostalgic for Stormweather and his old family because they represented the simpler life he’d once known, the smaller stakes. It had not always seemed so then, but he had been an ordinary man when he had served Thamalon the Elder–not a shade, not the First of Five—and events had not felt quite so big as now.
“I hear your words,” he said to his friends. “And thank you.”
His friends said nothing, merely walked beside him in silence.
Cale knew that he had to adjust—to what he had become and to the scale of events in which he was participating. His days as an ordinary man were long over. He had only a short time to ponder the realization. They rounded a corner and walked through the large granite arch that signified the western end of Temple Avenue.
The wide street stretched before them, teeming as always. Pilgrims, petitioners, and priests crowded the stone-flagged avenue, praying, preaching, and proselytizing. Chants and songs filled the air, with the ring of gongs and chimes. The multitudinous colors and styles of robes, vestments, and cloaks created a swirling sea of colors that ran the length of the street.
The brisk wind and nearness of the bay did not efface the aroma of incense, perfume, and unwashed bodies. The air was syrupy with the smell. Cale inhaled deeply, cleansing his nostrils of the last of Skullport’s fetor.
Five temples dominated Temple Avenue—fanes dedicated to Milil, Sune, Deneir, Oghma, and Lliira—though another dozen or so shrines stood in their shadows. Midway down the avenue, the construction on a new temple to Siamorphe, the goddess of hereditary nobility, was progressing apace. Cale knew that the cornerstone had been hallowed and the foundation laid three months earlier. In another month or three, the structure would be complete. The Talendar family, a rival to the Uskevren, was financing the construction. The second son of the Talendar, Vees, had returned from Waterdeep as a priest and vocal advocate of Siamorphe. By financing the building of the Noble Lady’s temple, the Talendars hoped to curry favor with the church hierarchy, expand the worship of Siamorphe to the most cosmopolitan city in the Heartlands, and ensconce their son as a high-ranking priest.
Cale smiled. As always, rank was not necessarily earned in Selgaunt. Sometimes it was bought. But from what little Cale knew of Siamorphe’s faith, he imagined that things might not go as the Talendar hoped. Bloodline meant everything to the faithful of Siamorphe, but Selgauntans little understood that. Wealth mattered in Selgaunt, not lineage.
Sitting areas for public contemplation dotted the street—stone and wood benches situated under the red and yellow autumn canopies of dwarf maples. Each bench generally shared the shade with one or two monstrous sculptures, the legacy of the late Hulorn’s fetish for peculiar statuary. All of the works depicted this or that hybrid monster: manticores, chimerae, owlbears, and the like. Starlings perched in the nooks of the statues and their droppings painted the stone and marble with splashes of white.
Cale, Magadon, and Jak weaved their way into the crowd and moved toward the Hallowed House of Higher Achievement, Deneir’s temple, which stood near the eastern end of the avenue, where the street curled back into the city proper.
As they walked through the throng, they saw a gray-robed trio of Ilmatari priests sprinkling flower petals into a fountain and praying to their god for an end to a pox afflicting an outlying village. Dancers in red gossamer and adorned with finger gongs swayed through the crowd, lay worshipers of Sune who promised with the swing of their hips the pleasures of the Firehair’s worship. The tallest of the dancers ran her fingertips over Cale’s shoulder as she passed. When her painted fingernails came away trailing shadows, her eyes went wide.
As they passed the small but popular shrine to Tymora, the Lady of Luck, Jak and Magadon both walked over and flipped a copper piece into the public offering plate set outside the doors.
“A copper to the Lady returns tenfold in gold,” Jak said, uttering a traditional Tymoran prayer of offering. Other passersby did the same, offering the same prayer or a slightly modified version. The priestess standing near the offering plate, garbed in a blue robe chased in silver piping, thanked them all and offered the Lady’s benediction.
“Dare much,” she said. “And the Lady keep you.”
Cale kept his coppers in his pocket. He did not think that the Lady of Luck would appreciate the coins of a servant of the Shadowlord.
Groups of faithful walked past them in close-knit groups, talking amongst themselves, eyeing the wonders of the street. All looked suspiciously at Cale, Jak, and Magadon. Cale knew that he and his co
mpanions looked less like worshipers and more like predators. Other than Cale, Jak, and Magadon, and a few pairs of whistle-carrying Scepters on patrol, almost no one else on the avenue bore weapons openly.
Cranks and aberrant philosophers held court on the avenue’s walkways, or under the eaves of a maple, shouting sermons and nonsense at anyone with whom they made eye contact. They reminded Cale of the madman who had accosted him back in Skullport. Cale could not remember what the man had said to him but for some reason he thought it important. It escaped him and he put it out of his mind.
A few noble coaches rolled slowly down the center of the road, the occupants looking out from their lacquered havens with looks of benign disdain. Cale knew that worship on Temple Avenue by the nobility was more about status than piety. All noble households had at least a shrine to the family’s patron deity within their manse. The rich worshiped in the public temples to see and be seen, mingle with the other rich, flaunt their baubles, make and break alliances, and gossip.
Cale remembered Thamalon once telling him that more deals were done in the churches and festhalls of the city than ever were done across a desk or in a parlor. Cale knew it to be true, and thinking of the Old Owl and his practical wisdom turned Cale sentimental.
To his left, the whitewashed bell tower of the Temple of Song jutted into the sky like the finger of a titan. A quartet of songhornists, accompanied by a shawm player, stood on the temple’s portico and softly played. A crowd stood around them, smiling and clapping.
Farther up the avenue stood the sprawling Palace of Holy Festivals, Lliira’s temple. Colorful pennons atop its roof flapped in the breeze. Music and laughter leaked from the doors, audible even from a distance.
Across the street from Lliira’s temple stood the elegant, soaring spires of Firehair’s House, the temple of Sune. The architecture of Sune’s temple sported many suggestive protuberances, shafts, openings, and curves. Two flaming braziers shaped like salamanders flanked the tiered stairway that led to the temple’s double doors. The priestesses never let the flames in the braziers go out, even in thunderstorms. Beauty was everlasting—that was the message of the ever-burning flames. Sune’s temple served not only hedonists, artists, and aesthetes, but also Selgaunt’s prostitutes by providing temporary shelter and minor healing magic to those in need. Many such women subsequently converted to the worship of Sune and thereby turned the practice of their livelihood into a kind of worship. Cale remembered that a jest among the men of the Old Chauncel was that the temple’s presence had resulted in Selgaunt having some of the most attractive and disease-free working women in the Heartlands.
