by Paul S. Kemp
Azriim smiled a mouthful of fangs, which disconcerted Thyld.
I understand, but I must contact them directly, Thyld, without the intervention of you or the Kraken Society.
When Thyld seemed still to hesitate, Azriim dispensed with the niceties.
Listen carefully: If you do not tell me the names of your contacts now, I will torture you until you do.
At the mention of torture, Azriim sensed a flash of agitation from Serrin.
It seemed to take Thyld a moment to understand the importance of Azriim’s words. When he did, he began to shake. So too did Dolgan, but out of a different sentiment all together.
Azriim continued, If you tell me what I want to know, you will be paid handsomely.
That was a lie, of course. But like all lies, it came easy to Azriim.
Three times Thyld opened his mouth to speak and each time nothing but a squeak emerged. Finally, Dolgan clapped him on the back of the head. His claws scratched open the human’s scalp. Thyld squealed and bled.
“There,” Dolgan said in his guttural tone, after licking his fingers clean. “At least something other than a squeak is coming out. Now answer the question, creature.”
Thyld blurted a reply, “Kexen the slaver, for Ssarmn, and Ahmaergo the dwarf for the Xanathar. Both have ways of sending information up the hierarchy. Both will pay you well.”
Azriim knew the names. With only slight effort he would be able to locate and set up meets with each of them. He fixed Thyld with a stare. The human recoiled as much as his bonds allowed. The stink of fear leaked from his pores.
“When are you due to report back to your superiors in the Kraken Society?” Azriim asked.
The human hesitated, apparently sensing the danger that lurked behind that question.
“Ten cycles,” he said at last.
Cycles. Skullport’s skulkers had dwelled in the dark for so long that they no longer divided twenty-four hours into day and night, but instead into two twelve-hour cycles. Azriim would have five days before Thyld’s superiors noticed his absence. Time enough.
The human must have mistook Azriim’s thoughtful silence as something more foreboding.
“Th-that’s the truth,” Thyld stammered.
Azriim waved a hand dismissively, his mind still on how to move his plan forward. A Xanathar caravan was arriving through a magical portal within the next six hours.
That should do, Azriim thought.
“What are you going to do with me?” Thyld asked, the trepidation in his voice evident.
Azriim ignored the human, eyed his broodmates, and silently asked the question. They could spare Thyld, he knew, and merely keep him prisoner for the time it took for their plot to unfold. In another five or six days, it would all be finished and the seed of the Weave Tap planted. After that, it could not be undone, and whether Thyld was alive or dead would be irrelevant.
Serrin answered his look with a predictably efficient response.
We should not leave him alive. If he is found, or escapes, it would compromise our efforts.
Dolgan licked his lips and nodded, eyeing the crown of Thyld’s head hungrily all the while.
Azriim too nodded. He had been thinking much the same thing. Leaving Thyld alive would entail taking an unnecessary risk. Azriim enjoyed risks, but only when they brought him a thrill. He saw no thrill in sparing Thyld.
With his mind made up, he leaned in close to Thyld—the proximity of his fangs and eyes sent the human into a virtual paroxysm of terror. Azriim studied the human’s face with care, took one last look at his build, and began to change. His squat dwarf frame lengthened, his head narrowed, and his build slimmed. In moments, he looked very much like Thyld, complete with a weak chin and potbelly.
Seeing that, the human slumped in his chair.
“You’re not going to let me live,” he said.
“You’re not going to let me live,” Azriim parroted, adjusting his vocal cords to approximate Thyld’s tone. “No, I fear not. But if it dulls the pain any, I will need your robe.” He eyed the rag at his feet with distaste before adding, “Unfortunately.”
The human said nothing, merely hung his head in resignation.
We should not leave a body, Dolgan projected, with eagerness in his tone.
Azriim knew that too. Though he preferred brains almost exclusively, they would need to devour Thyld’s entire body. He sighed and took out the wand that transmogrified one creature into another. He looked to his broodmates.
Alive or dead for the feast? Azriim asked.
Alive, Dolgan responded quickly.
Azriim nodded. He would use a silence spell to mask the human’s screams. He took a deep breath.
“What are you hungry for?” he asked his broodmates.
Thyld began to weep.
Dolgan had requested that Thyld be turned into an ogre before they ate him, bones, hair, flesh, and all. Azriim shook his head as he walked. The big slaad’s tastes were sometimes inexplicable. After cleaning up and retaking Thyld’s form, Azriim exited the storehouse and made the rounds of Thyld’s appointments. Hungry for more sensation, and intoxicated with the aftereffect of consuming Thyld-the-ogre’s brain—Azriim had taken that choice morsel for himself—he bedded two of Thyld’s whore-spies at Aryn’s before paying them their stipend.
Shapechanging had its benefits, he thought.
Later, he would set up meets with Kexen and Ahmaergo. But first, he and his broodmates had a Xanathar caravan to intercept.
SENSELESS MASSACRE, SENSIBLY DONE
Azriim, Serrin, and Dolgan crouched amidst a grouping of thick stalagmites and waited. There was no sound except the quiet, anticipatory respiration of the slaadi, and the steady, monotonous drone of dripping water from somewhere near the high ceiling.
Azriim shifted his weight from one clawed foot to the other. The stone floor of the chamber felt damp under his hind claws. The dank, stale air slicked his leathery hide—the closest he could come to perspiring while in his natural state. He felt a bit awkward in his own skin. Of late, he’d been more comfortable as a humanoid, particularly when he took his preferred half-drow form. He attributed the feeling to the enjoyment he took in humanoid fashions, humanoid females, and to the pleasure he took in the sensitivity of humanoid skin. In slaad form, he wore not high fashion, but only a leather belt with pouches, a canvas satchel, and a thigh-tube for his wands. And his slaad skin was not sensitive but tough, coarsened to withstand the seething chaotic energies of the Plane of Limbo. In his natural form, he could hardly have felt the playful brush of a humanoid female’s fingertips.
He pushed such things from his mind. Violence needed doing, and soon.
Though the darkness was as black as demon’s blood, Azriim and his broodmates could see out to a spearcast as well as if they were on the surface of Faerûn under a noon sun. The cavern in which they waited was fifty paces wide, perhaps two hundred paces long, and tall enough that Azriim could not have touched the lowest-hanging stalactite had he been standing on Dolgan’s broad shoulders. The floor, which otherwise would have been covered completely in stalagmites and uneven patches of cracked stone, had been cleared down the center of the cavern and worn smooth by the passage of many feet. It looked much like someone had hacked a cart road from the forest of stalagmites, which was probably not far from the truth.
The only apparent ingress and egress into the cavern was an archway in the southern wall that opened onto one of the innumerable, winding tertiary tunnels that forked off of a main tradeway leading back to Skullport. But Azriim knew better than to believe first looks. There was another way into the cavern, he knew. Or at least there would be soon.
Along the north wall, opposite the opening that led back to the trade tunnel, a band of exposed rose hematite traced a rough, horseshoe-shaped arch in the otherwise unremarkable stone. The tines of the horseshoe started near the floor, ten paces apart, and met to form the top of the arch halfway up the wall of the chamber. It looked as if an unsteady hand
had attempted to draw a huge doorway, an observation that also was not far from the truth.
In Azriim’s magic sensing sight, the lines of hematite glowed a soft red, indicating a latent dweomer.
Azriim knew that the hematite arch was a real doorway, the endpoint of a magical one-way portal that had its beginning thousands of miles away in a dirty storehouse on the outskirts of Hillsfar. He had learned of its existence after much investigation, a bit of torture, and two murders. Apparently, the Xanathar had reached an agreement with the First Lord of Hillsfar regarding the use of the portal: demi-humans, and other undesirables in Hillsfar, were escorted by Xanathar agents from the First Lord’s dungeons to Skullport’s slave pens and were never seen again on the surface of Faerûn. Azriim had to acknowledge the arrangement to be good business. The Xanathar received slaves that he could sell and the First Lord relieved himself of all trace of certain undesirable prisoners. The slave shipments came through on the eighth of every tenday—that very day—sometime between the fifth and tenth hour of the second cycle.
At first it had surprised Azriim to learn that the Xanathar did not post guards near the portal and typically didn’t send a team to meet the agents that came through. He had thought that such a valuable, permanent means of cross-continent transport would have been heavily guarded, but after thinking about it he saw the Xanathar’s wisdom. Posting guards in the tunnels, or sending escort teams out of Skullport, would only have drawn unwanted attention from the Eye’s rivals in the city—namely Zstulkk Ssarmn. It would have been only a matter of time before the beholder would have had to fight a war in order to hold on to the gate.
No, secrecy was the best option. Rivals couldn’t take something about which they were ignorant. Of course, even the strictest secrecy could be compromised if one knew where to look.
And what to look like, Azriim thought with a smile.
Beside him, Dolgan was growing restless. Unfortunately, Azriim and his broodmates had already been waiting impatiently for over two hours. Dolgan had the hardest time with the wait. He wanted violence, and wanted it soon. The big slaad shifted irritably from foot to foot, chewing his lower lip and emitting a low growl with each movement. His claws made an annoying scrabbling sound on the stone floor of the cavern.
“Be still,” Azriim ordered. Unless something unforeseen had occurred in Hillsfar, he knew that the Xanathar caravan would be coming through soon. “The time is near.”
“That is what you said an hour ago,” Dolgan muttered.
The big slaad stopped shuffling his feet and instead began to rock on his heels. Azriim tried to ignore his lumbering broodmate.
Beside Dolgan, with one clawed hand on a stalagmite and the other loosely holding a falchion, Serrin stared holes into the hematite archway. As always, Azriim’s smaller broodmate was focused only on carrying out the task. Serrin was efficient, Azriim acknowledged, but he lacked verve, he lacked style. Still, he had his uses.
Unlike Serrin, Azriim and Dolgan bore no weapons. They would rely on their magical abilities, and if it came to it, their claws.
As if in answer to Dolgan’s impatience, the hematite lines of the archway began to glow more brightly in Azriim’s vision—latent magic turning patent. At first he thought he might have been imagining the change, but as the glow intensified he knew the gate was opening.
“They are coming,” he said.
“I see it,” Serrin replied softly.
Azriim spoke an arcane word and caused a wall of silence to form at the mouth of the tertiary tunnel behind them. Sound traveled far in the Underdark, and he did not want the din of battle to travel up to the tradeway and attract the curiosity of any passing creatures.
The outline of the archway began to pulse, glowing like embers even to ordinary vision. A low hum, probably inaudible to humans, emanated from the stone. Like a spreading bloodstain, the red glow expanded from the hematite border lines and started to fill the space in the interior of the arch. Soon, the whole of the arch was blazing red.
Dolgan grew so excited that he began to drool. Azriim scowled and took a step away from his broodmate to avoid getting spittle on his feet. Quickly, he recited the word to another spell and cast himself and his broodmates in a concealing darkness that even magical light could not easily penetrate, though the slaadi could see through it clearly. From the inventory of wands provided to him by the Sojourner, he withdrew a thin, birch taper capped with a narrow diamond.
Once we begin, Azriim projected to his broodmates, while eyeing the shining portal, we have not longer than a two hundred count to finish it.
His broodmates signaled their understanding.
Any longer than that, Azriim knew, and they would be risking intervention by the Skulls. While Skullport’s rulers rarely patrolled that far out of the city, they could sense powerful magic at work and likely would appear to quell a magical disturbance near a tradeway.
And just such a disturbance would soon occur, Azriim thought. He had no doubt of how he and his broodmates would fare if they were cornered by Skullport’s rulers. One, perhaps two Skulls would be destroyed. But he and his broodmates would be slain or forced to flee. More importantly, the Sojourner would not be pleased….
The hum coming from the portal took a lower pitch and the red arch flared blindingly bright. Even within their magical darkness, the slaadi shaded their eyes with their forearms. The stone within the arch looked to Azriim as red and viscous as melted ore. The entire cavern was cast in crimson. Far back in the stone, shadows took shape, wavering images distorted by distance and magic. Muted voices sounded.
Within moments, the glow diminished and the shadows within the arch grew sharper, larger, and took on shape and color. The voices grew more distinct.
The shimmering portal began to give birth, squeezing men and carts from the wall of glowing stone. The travelers’ voices echoed off the walls of the cavern.
“Mind that!”
“Stay close!”
Armor clinked; boots thumped.
Eight men emerged first. Four wore red tabards, chain mail, and red plumed helmets—Hillsfarian guardsmen, no doubt. The other four were clad in plate mail and hard looks—likely returning Xanathar agents. The Hillsfarian guards held bare swords in one hand and glowing sunrods aloft in the other. The Xanathar’s agents bore cocked and loaded crossbows. Their eyes and their crossbow sights swept across the chamber, passing over and past the darkness-cloaked slaadi.
Wait for all of them to come through, Azriim projected, sensing the eagerness of his broodmates.
Moving quickly and saying little, the eight men formed a protective arc of flesh and steel before the still-glowing archway while the rest of the caravan began to follow them through. Two creaking wagons emerged, each pulled by two giant, surefooted, subterranean lizards as large as ponies. The wagons, tightly crammed with slaves—chained elves, half-elves, and dwarves mostly—were little more than wheeled cages with an attached driver’s bench. The slaves wore the hopeless expressions of the damned. They must have sensed that the underground hell they’d just entered was to be their final stop. A fat teamster drove each of the slave wagons, guiding, prodding, and cursing at the lizards, which answered with hisses and flicked tongues.
After the slave wagons were through, six more crossbow-armed guards stepped through the portal and flanked them to either side, eyeing with wary gazes both the shadows of the cavern and the forty or so demi-human slaves destined to toil and die in Skullport’s darkness. The slave wagons and guards moved forward to make room while two more wagons began to emerge through the still glowing portal.
These last two wagons, each also pulled by a pair of giant lizards and manned by a single driver, piqued Azriim’s curiosity. He craned his neck to see.
Both were built of duskwood, completely enclosed, and visibly locked at the rear door. They looked like giant chests on wheels. Several more armed men accompanied those wagons, including, at the rear, a huge man whose enameled black armor sported on the breas
tplate a great eye, surrounded by eight smaller, lidless eyes: the symbol of the Xanathar.
Azriim silently “tsked” the armored man’s weatherworn overcloak and unshined boots. He decided then and there that the human was a poor dresser and no doubt would go unmissed when he died.
With the emergence of the two enclosed wagons, the portal began to dim, fading first to rose, and finally dying to nothing more than a wall.
That is all of them, Serrin said without a hint of eagerness.
Beside Azriim, Dolgan’s respiration came fast and hard.
The armored human moved up and down the assembled caravan and barked orders in oddly accented Common. Men stiffened at his passage, lizards snarled, and slaves averted their gaze or cowered.
The caravan, clustered together like wine grapes, prepared to move out.
Azriim played out the anticipation just a moment longer, then—
Now, he projected, and began his mental count to two hundred.
As one, the slaadi stepped out from behind the stalagmites. Azriim pointed the Sojourner’s wand at the armored human, spoke the arcane word of command, and discharged a searing stroke of lightning from the diamond tip. The bolt hit the human squarely in the breastplate, drove him backward five paces, knocked him prone, and left him belly-up and smoking on the floor. The energy arced to another nearby guard, blew out his eyes before killing him then arced to another, and another, sending each into a spasmodic, burning death. Finally, no doubt drawn by the iron of the cage, the lightning bolt found its way into one of the slave wagons and alternated from one to another of the wretched demi-human slaves, sparing all of them a life of servitude by painfully killing each in turn.
Before the stunned guards could effectively respond—before they could do more than utter shouts of warning, scan the darkness for their attackers, and wildly fire a few crossbow bolts—Dolgan and Serrin called upon their innate magical abilities and fired fist-sized balls of fire from their outstretched claws. Both of the fireballs struck the cavern’s floor in the midst of the bunched caravan and exploded into gorgeous spheres of heat and flame. The screams of the humans were lost in the explosion as the fireballs roasted the caravanners and giant lizards alive, incinerated the surviving slaves in their cages, and knocked over, but did not set aflame, the two enclosed wagons. The temporary inferno dried the damp from Azriim’s skin, for which he was grateful.
