The Thieves’ Guild

by Jeff Crook

  “I suppose not,” Cael bitterly commented. “Seeing as how I’ve never had a family to lose.”

  Alynthia took his hand and pulled it close. “All the more reason to rejoin the Guild. The Guild will protect us, give us a home. The Guild is family, kith and kin, people we can depend on, even for the protection of our lives.”

  “They want to kill us!” Cael snapped.

  “Please, Cael,” Alynthia cried.

  He looked in her dark eyes. Facing innumerable dangers did not frighten the beautiful captain of thieves, but the thought of losing the Guild terrified her beyond description.

  “Very well,” he sighed.

  She smiled, pulling him close.

  “First, my staff,” he finished.

  At her dark look, he said, “You promised. The Reliquary is a hopeless quest. Now we get my staff. After that, I will stop at nothing to help you regain your place in your precious Guild.”

  “Our precious Guild,” she corrected, taking his hand and leading him down the stairs to the street below. They turned toward the rising sun and hurried away.

  A pair of eyes followed their progress until they were out of sight. Then the owner of those eyes, a red-robed sorceress, stepped from an alley across the street and turned west, toward the Shoikan Grove and the Three Moons shop.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Footsteps receded down the hall, leaving the passage in quiet shadows. Alynthia peered out from a curtained alcove, making certain that everyone had gone, before stepping out from the hiding place where she and Cael had just spent the better part of five hours waiting for Arach Jannon to leave his study. The door leading to the Thorn Knight’s chambers was visible from the alcove, and Sir Arach had just hurried down the hall, called away to some important late night meeting by a palace page. Alynthia and Cael had wondered if he would ever leave, and they were becoming concerned that the mage might sleep in his underground study and laboratory, deep beneath the lord mayor’s palace, rather than in the upper chambers indicated on Alynthia’s detailed floor plan as the bedchamber of the lord high justice.

  Their acquisition of the map had neither come easily nor quickly. They had spent an interminable eight days waiting while Claret scoured the markets of Palanthas, finally finding a copy in a bibliophile’s shop on Windsong Street. During those eight days, Cael had nearly climbed the walls with impatience.

  Sir Arach’s laboratory lay deep beneath the Lord’s Palace. The chambers and passages leading to them were discovered during the construction of the first Lord’s Palace. As the passages connected directly to the sewers, the lord at that time ordered these entrances blocked. Not long afterward, the Thieves’ Guild had cleared it, replacing the wall with one of their own devising, one with a door only they could find. Their entrance into this hallway came by/way of that ancient, not-so-blocked-up passage connecting to the sewers. Alynthia knew about the door, of course, and she knew how to spot it and open it. She had been taught this by her husband, Oros uth Jakar, but she had never actually been here. Still, after only a half dozen attempts, she had managed to open the door.

  Now, as she stepped out from the alcove and motioned for Cael to follow, she once more removed the parchment document from her pouch and, by the light of a nearby torch, examined the layout of the lord’s palace. The level of detail of the document was impressive, for it showed not only the visible rooms, but the hidden ones as well. In addition, all exits and doorways, both mundane and secret were also described.

  Cael stepped out from the alcove and joined her in studying the floor plan. “Here is Sir Arach’s laboratory,” she said, indicating it first on the map and then by pointing to a door a short distance down the hall.

  “Let’s go then,” Cael said.

  “Wait! We dare not try the door. It’s probably warded. Remember what happened at Mistress Jenna’s? We have no magic to dispel the wards,” Alynthia said.

  “How will we get in?”

  “There is a secret door here,” she said, tracing the symbol on the paper with her finger. “I doubt even he knows about it. If we are lucky, it won’t even be locked. But if it is…” She smiled beneath her mask and patted the pouch at her belt.

  She continued. “From there, a short hall and another secret door. This lets directly into the laboratory. Let’s hope it isn’t blocked by a stone table or fixed cabinet.”

  “Or guarded,” Cael added.

  Alynthia pouched her map and then slipped down the passage, moving by habit from torch’s shadow to torch’s shadow, while the elf paced noiselessly behind her. They passed one door that stood ajar, open onto empty darkness, a storeroom perhaps. Next they passed the door through which Sir Arach had exited moments before. Now Alynthia slowed and allowed her fingertips to gently brush the stone wall. This passage was deep underground, one of the many secret vaults and treasuries beneath the lord’s palace. The wall was cut from the limestone bedrock that underlay the entire city, carved by patient dwarven hands more than twenty-five centuries ago. Here and there a crack marred the otherwise polished surface, evidence of the destruction of the first Cataclysm, when the gods hurled a fiery mountain upon Krynn, destroying the gleaming city of Istar, creating new seas and draining old ones. Not even Palanthas, beloved of Paladine, City of Seven Circles, was left unmarred, though it faired better than most. The dwarves have a saying—heroes live and die, trees grow tall and wither, and all are soon enough forgotten, but stone never forgets. Palanthas the fair might forget the Cataclysm, her bards might no longer sing of its horror and tragedy, but the stone on which she was built still bore the scars of that day.

  Cael paused to look at the marred stone, wondering at its age. Once more, as on that morning of the Spring Dawning festival, he felt a great love for this city surge through him, and he found himself loath to leave it despite the dangers. Palanthas the Ancient was perhaps the city’s best epithet, he thought. Few other works of human hands had endured so long or so gloriously.

  Alynthia tugged at his sleeve. “What are you doing?” she asked. “The secret door is over here!”

  “I forgot about the secret door,” he answered dreamily.

  “What is wrong with you?” she hissed.

  “Nothing,” he answered, pulling himself together. “Have you found it?”

  “Yes. Now come on.”

  He allowed himself to be drawn another ten yards down the hall, to a place where the wall was breached by a small portal hardly tall enough for a kender to pass.

  Alynthia ducked through without explaining how she had found the door. By the look of it, when closed it was probably indistinguishable from the wall. Such was often the case with dwarven construction. Cael followed her into the low passage beyond, pausing only to close the secret door behind him.

  The passage was filled with such darkness as is only known in the deep places of the earth. The walls of the tunnel felt close, the air stale as though it had not been stirred in a thousand years. A little dust of the ages, raised by their shuffling passage, made them cough. Before long, the passage turned right, and after a dozen feet ended. Alynthia felt along the wall until she found the release. With a quiet snap, the tunnel’s end opened a crack. Alynthia pushed against it, and it swung open with hardly a sound. They crept into the room beyond.

  Not even the treasure chamber of Mistress Jenna could compare to the magical laboratory and study of Arach Jannon, Knight of the Thorn. Along the further wall and flanking an iron door that looked heavy enough to defy the stoutest battering ram, stood bookshelves sagging under the weight of magical tomes, encyclopedias, and spellbooks. No doubt, the Thorn Knight had been confiscating them from travelers and visitors to Palanthas for years. In their presence, one felt a strange uneasiness, for although magic was gone from Krynn, many of the books still contained hidden power.

  Along the wall to the left stood a complete alchemical laboratory, replete with beakers, jars, urns, crocks, braziers, kettles, chafing dishes, retorts, crucibles, and alembics, all atop a
large flat marble table whose entire surface was scored by acids of varying strengths. On a smaller table behind it stood a rack of mortars, pestles, probes, tubes, straws, spoons, spatulas, droppers, sifters, grinders, and various other implements for the measuring and preparing of reagents. Beside the marble table, a large, black rendering caldron dangled from a chain that was suspended over a fire-blackened pit in the floor. In this pot stood Cael’s staff, its lower third soaking in a roiling, viscous liquid that glowed a sickly shade of green and boiled even though no fire heated it.

  With a little cry of dismay, Cael leaped across the room and snatched his staff from the caldron. Droplets of the weird green fluid fell hissing on the floor, but the staff appeared undamaged. Cael carefully wiped it clean with a rag he found on the conjuring table, then tossed the rag into a corner. It began to smoke, and a strange stink filled the air.

  “I wonder what that stuff is!” Alynthia pondered aloud as she peered into the caldron. The green liquid had ceased boiling. Now only an occasional large slow bubble burst to the surface.

  “I wonder what was on that rag,” Cael coughed. “Gods, what a smell! Let’s get out of here.”

  As they ducked through the secret door and closed it behind them, the smoldering rag erupted into purplish flame.

  Alynthia and Cael hurried silently along the passageway, back toward the sewer entrance. As they neared the doorway, Cael grabbed his companion and pulled her back down the hall. The ancient door was ajar. They ducked into the curtained alcove just as the door swung wide. They dared not even look out to see who approached.

  They had no need. The voice that echoed down the passage was one both thieves knew well. It was a voice neither masculine nor feminine, a voice as harsh and cold as the black void between the stars.

  “Wait here for my return,” Mulciber growled.

  A pair of voices assented in whispers. The door closed with a muffled click. Brisk footsteps quickly approached, passing outside the curtain behind which the two thieves hid, and continued down the passage in the direction Sir Arach had taken.

  Slapping back Alynthia’s attempts to stop him, Cael parted the curtain and peered out. What he saw made him start, and brought a soft gasp from his companion as she, unable to resist, ducked in front of the elf to have a look for herself.

  This was no wizened archmage creeping along bent over a cane and with breath rattling like someone dragging a coffin from a tomb. The person beneath those long black robes and hood was huge, a veritable bear, with a brisk stride and vigorous swing of the arms. It wasn’t a “she,” it was a “he” who disappeared into the darkness of distance, his footsteps echoing.

  “Mulciber is no more a woman than I am a dwarf,” Cael whispered.

  “I think you are right,” Alynthia agreed, with frowning eyes. “Let’s follow her… him,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Let’s have another look at your map,” Cael whispered. They had followed the sound of Mulciber’s footsteps for some time, and the passage had gone on straight as a swordblade through the solid rock for many more steps than either thief remembered seeing on the map. A quick glance at the floor plan confirmed their suspicions. They were now in some new construction, one that probably began at that staircase they had passed a minute ago, one that wasn’t covered on the map. Mulciber’s footsteps led this way, and they were determined to follow.

  As Alynthia folded up the map and stowed it in a pouch, Cael asked, “What would Mulciber be doing here?”

  His beautiful companion shrugged, her dark eyes filled with worry, but she did not voice her thoughts. Instead, she hurried onward, her soft boots making little sound as she walked. Cael followed.

  Eventually, the passage brought them to a crossroads. Directly ahead, the passage sloped upward, illuminated at regular intervals by torches set into the walls. To the left, a stairway descended steeply into darkness. To the right, another passage joined this one. They paused, listening, but were unable to determine the direction of the echoing footsteps. Alynthia swore softly in indecision.

  “I don’t like the feel of those stairs,” Cael said as he peered into the darkness. “There’s a lion’s den smell about them.”

  “Straight ahead, then,” Alynthia said. “That way, at least, is lit by torches.”

  They hurried up the slope. Cael, the taller of the two and likely to be the first to spot anything ahead, now took the lead. The slope only took them a short distance, no more than a bowshot, before it leveled out again. In the distance, a brighter light shone between thick pillars. They slowed their steps, cautiously approaching the end of the passage and entering a cavernous chamber brightly lit from above.

  They found themselves on a pillared balcony overlooking a wide circular arena. The floor was scattered with straw, and beside some of the pillars stood barrels of tools: long brooms and brushes, mops, and rakes. Numerous cedar buckets, most of them filled with water, were stacked near the balcony’s edge. Also near the edge stood a pair of fine, tooled-leather dragon-saddles.

  Clearly, they were still underground, but this place could well have served as a coliseum, had there been seats for the spectators. Instead, there was only the one balcony, six pillars deep around its entire circumference. Twenty feet below the balcony was a sawdust floor ringed by a stone wall. Into the wall had been cut numerous tall archways, which, by their darkness, spoke of cavernous chambers beyond. Above, the stone arched in a great dome, the top of which was covered by a peaked wooden roof. Magical globes of light floated and hovered about the massive chamber, some meandering among the pillars of the balcony, others gliding mere inches from the floor. One or two bumped about the wooden roof as though trying to find an escape.

  The air here had a peculiar reek to it. It was a stable-smell: hay and sawdust, leather and grease, saddle soap. There was, however, no odor of horses. Rather, something more pungent pierced the air, sharper in the nostrils, an ozone smell, and the coppery smell of fear. The two thieves paused for a moment, nodding to one another in silent realization of where they were. This was the Dark Knights’ dragon stable. The place was nothing more than a rumor on the streets of Palanthas, but those rumors spoke of a place where blue dragons were housed, ready to fly to war at a moment’s notice. Rumors also said that wyverns, the small vicious cousins of true dragons, were kept here to fly as couriers to any region of Ansalon.

  Warily now, realizing the true extent of their danger, Cael crept up to the edge of the balcony. At first, the room had appeared empty, but as he gazed over the ledge, he saw that the black-robed master of the Thieves’ Guild was standing directly below him, his arms folded across his massive chest. Alynthia slid up beside Cael to view their great leader. Her dark eyes burned as she gazed down at Mulciber.

  She recoiled, pulling the elf away from the edge of the balcony. From beneath a darkened arch opposite the chamber where Mulciber stood, two Dark Knights appeared. One wore the black armor of a Knight of the Lily, the other the gray robes of a Thorn Knight. The two stopped just beneath the arch, one resting a gauntleted hand on the pommel of his long sword, the other folding his hands into his robes.

  Even from this distance, Alynthia and Cael recognized the Knights. Sir Kinsaid’s eyes gleamed like agates as he stared across the chamber at the dark-robed figure of Mulciber, while Arach Jannon’s narrow visage peered out from the depths of his gray hood.

  Alynthia trembled as her fingers dug painfully into the elf’s shoulder. “Will there be a fight?” she whispered in his pointed ear. “Should we help Mulciber?”

  From below came Sir Kinsaid’s thundering voice. “It has been a long time since last we met, Avaril,” the Lord Knight said.

  Alynthia stiffened at these words, all the illusion draining from her eyes.

  “Aye,” came the answer, a deep voice, no longer the harsh, vaguely feminine croak of Mulciber.

  “Oros!” Cael hissed. He pried himself from Alynthia’s frozen grasp and crawled to the edge of the balcony, but he fe
ared to draw too near lest the Dark Knights spot him. He backed away until he reached the shadows of the columns, leaving Alynthia huddled on the floor, staring dumbly at her own hands.

  As he ghosted among the columns, circling the huge chamber, the conversation continued below.

  “The same deal as before, old friend?” asked Sir Arach. “You turn over everyone, and in exchange, you take your pick of the treasures.”

  “Aye,” the dark-robed figure answered grimly. “It’s a cycle of nature.”

  “Everyone,” the Thorn Knight reaffirmed. “Including the elf and his accomplice.”

  Cael crept through the shadowy columns to the edge of the balcony.

  The dark-robed figure pulled back his cowl, revealing the ashen face of the Captain of the Eighth Circle of the Guild. He swallowed, then nodded his assent. “What must be must be,” Oros said. “I have never been one to shrink from the hard realities.”

  “What will you offer to assure your cooperation?” Sir Kinsaid growled. Possibly, he was as disgusted by the thief’s betrayal as was Cael. “This time I will brook no return of the Guild. This time, it ends.”

  Oros opened his robe and swung a heavy bag forward, dropping it with a metallic thud on the floor. Cael crept closer to the edge of the balcony.

  “Coins?” the Lord Knight of Palanthas laughed without mirth. “Is that the limit of your imagination? With all the treasures in your hoard, you bring coins. You underestimate me, Captain Oros,” he ended sarcastically.

  “I do apologize, my Lord,” said the black-hooded figure.

  An angry Cael looked back along the curve of the balcony and saw Alynthia staring at him, silent tears soaking her mask. As quickly as it had come, now, his anger cooled. He knew his place was beside her. He began to edge away to safety.

  At the same time, the staff in his hand began to vibrate. The vibration rose to a barely heard hum and then to an audible buzz.