Conspiracy tddts-6

by J. Robert King

  Let there be no more Ffolk, no more Mar. We, Aetheric III, are Ffolk, and yet we could not have ruled without your aid, Ikavi Garkim-and you are Mar. Let there be no more Ffolk, no more Mar, but only warriors of Doegan. We shall triumph together, or die together.

  But warriors are not enough. For the fiends to be beaten back and defeated, we will have to become far more than ever we have been. We must be transformed. We must emerge from this poisoned chrysalis into new, winged life. We must transcend.

  Either way, Aetheric III, mage-king of Doegan, will forever cease to be.

  Interlude

  Congratulations

  So much for being mesmerized.

  All right, all right, so you got the girl already. You two could be a little quieter in the next room, so the rest of us could get some sleep. Of course, Rings and Belgin are making as much noise with their snoring, and In-grar's probably asleep, too.

  Congratulations, Entreri. I doubt she'll be getting a new heart from you.

  And what the hell is it with these dried sponges for pillows? I feel like I'm sleeping on the bottom of the damned sea.

  Chapter 6

  Contention

  Next afternoon, Miltiades was more grim-faced than usual as he strode slowly ahead of his men. The adobe slums around him looked as run-down as he felt. Still no luck.

  After the fiasco at the Mar funeral, Miltiades and the paladins had headed back toward the palace to get washed and rested. En route, though, Lord Garkim and his guards had caught up to them. Too battle weary to offer resistance, the paladins were quickly surrounded and slowly questioned about every detail of their encounter with the pirates earlier. Once that whole battle had been reviewed, Garkim had grilled the warriors about their antics at the Mar funeral. It was clear that Garkim, a Mar himself, was angered by the attack, but had orders to take no action yet.

  At last, chastened, burned, and defeated, the paladins returned to the palace, where their wounds were treated and their aching bodies bathed. Next morning, healed and polished, the warriors returned to their grueling search for the Fallen Temple and Eidola. By that afternoon, they had walked every major thoroughfare and most of the minor ones. Trandon all the while wore the pendant Khelben Arunsun had given them. It was supposed to glow anywhere within a mile of Lady Eidola, but the rock had remained dark.

  Kern seemed more disappointed than the rest. "I probably ruined the magic of that thing when I wore it. Sometimes being antimagical is a real nuisance."

  "And sometimes it's a great boon," Trandon replied. He pinched the chain in two fingers and gently lifted the amulet from his chest, letting it dangle in the air before him. "Besides, I think it's still magical." His eyes followed the last light of day as it shimmered across the gold filigree. "It doesn't look disrupted."

  "You don't know any more about magic than I do," snapped Kern. He stopped in his tracks, dust whuffing up from his feet. "I'm sorry. Frustration has always been my greatest foe, the one emotion that can master me. Forgive my outburst."

  Trandon waved the apology away. "There's nothing to forgive. We all are anxious about Eidola."

  Kern lifted bis gaze toward the blue sky, giving itself over without sunset to a silken black. "She's probably not even here. It wouldn't surprise me if our host lied to us about her presence in the city."

  "That wouldn't surprise me either," Trandon replied. He let the stone sink slowly back to his chest. "But, for some reason, I feel she is here, only warded by some particularly powerful enchantment. If only we could-" He broke off midsentence, seeing that Miltiades had halted before them and signaled them to silence. With soundless tread, Kern, Trandon, and Jacob edged toward the silver paladin, who stood with his head cocked, listening.

  "What is it?" Jacob whispered. Miltiades silenced him with an emphatic wave of his hand.

  They listened. At first, they heard only the hushed whispers of a Mar slum. From beyond that came the distant bustle of the city. Beneath those everyday sounds, though, was a strange wet rumble. The noise was quiet but seemed to come from everywhere-the streets, the walls, the shops, the sewers…

  "Something's coming up!" Miltiades rasped, uncertain.

  Next moment, two warhammers, a sword, and a staff were hefted, ready for whatever horror might arise.

  And arise it did, in a thousand thousand places- from the trash pit at the end of the street, and the weed-choked culvert at the crossroads, and the shattered sewer grate… The rumbling grew deafening, as though whatever approached was using the very face of Toril as a war drum. Then, through every crack in the mud roadway and every well or pit or grave came a reek somewhere between offal and brimstone-a hot smell as if the sewers themselves were boiling.

  Columns of steam formed. Shards of mud burst outward. Things emerged. Iron floodgates that had endured decades of monsoons shattered and spun away, ringing like claxons. Into the space where they had been, horrors scrambled: serrated horns, spiked sagittal crests, eyes as long and thin as scythe blades, jaws that were no more than bone and daggers, bodies of wire and scale, clawed talons, stinging tails… And these were only the nearby beasts-blood-hued monstrosities that clambered up from the culvert beside Miltiades. In the distance, he glimpsed grasping tentacles, hairless rat tails, vast wings of skin…

  "Tyr aid us! Fiends!" Miltiades shouted in the midst of a mighty swing of his warhammer.

  The gleaming head of the weapon struck a demon's horned nose, driving the spike back through the thing's skull and into its brain. It fell, lavender gore jetting from ears and eyes.

  "Stay tight! Backs together!" Miltiades shouted needlessly. The charge of fiends had already formed the others into a defensive circle. Miltiades had no more time for orders; the next fiend had arrived.

  It was meaty and pink and muscular, and it brandished a cat-o'-nine-tails in a three-fingered fist. The bits of iron and shattered glass tied into the leather thongs glowed with fiendish fire, swarming up behind the beast's fat-lipped grin. Then lashes descended and wrapped themselves around Miltiades. Iron and glass sank in, stinging wasps. They pinged against his silver armor and burned through leather straps and muslin pads.

  Miltiades roared, struggling to yank his arms free from his sides. The beast roamed, too, or laughed. It hauled on the cat-o'-nine-tails with one arm, spinning the paladin, and brought down its saber.

  The sword keened through the air and struck the head of the blessed hammer, which swung free as Miltiades whirled. The hammer batted back the blade but missed the pink meat of the monster's face. In that moment, Miltiades could think only one thing: Where hammers fail, let calmer heads prevail.

  Crack. He had never head-butted a fiend before.

  There was an inarticulate curse as the wall of muscle buckled and fell, senseless, to the ground.

  "Maybe I do have a hard head, after all," he gasped before meeting the next onslaught.

  Beside him, Kern was having no easier time of it. He still battled his first fiend, a spell-warded scorpion-man whose poison-dripping tail jagged like lightning. The red-scaled creature fought with a berserker's fury, a wizard's magic, a warrior's twin scimitars, and a scorpion's mesmerizing tail. It was all Kern could do to grab a breath between swings of his gleaming hammer.

  The maul cracked off the darting tail, knocking it aside but failing to crush it. Green sparks around the hammerhead showed why. Magical protections. Kern had no time to watch where the tail went: the creature swung one of its scimitars. Kern blocked, flinging up the butt of the hammer. He pulled the attack with his back swing.

  The other scimitar descended. It bit through the gold mail glittering on Kern's shoulder and found flesh beneath.

  Kern ducked toward the blade and flung it off with a bloodstained brassard. He kicked out hard. His boot rang off a pectoral scale.

  A pair of the thing's eight legs reached out to snatch him off his feet and drag him down.

  Kern leapt back from the snatching claws, turned a flip, and kicked the scorpion man in the jaw. It shud
dered, stunned for a moment. Kern landed in a crouch. He came up swinging. His hammer cracked the same spot his foot had just hit. The beast shuddered again and shook its head to clear it. Kern helped. The blow that finally smashed through the magical defenses also smashed the bug-man's cranium, and sent the thing collapsing like a struck tent.

  "Tanar'ri," Kern spat, along with some of his own blood.

  These were the worst opponents in all the worlds, creatures so lawless their every move was unpredictable. They routinely killed more of their own in battle than of their foe-and still won.

  A spidery thing ambled in toward Kern. He bounced his hammer haft in one hand and counted the number of enemies they now had: the Fallen Temple, the mage-king, Artemis Entreri and his pirates, the hosts of the Abyss, and the coming darkness. If they stayed any longer, they'd be fighting the whole world.

  The spider-thing-an eight-foot-tall beast with the blood-grizzled body of a greater wolf-lunged.

  Kern hurled the hammer head at the beast's gaping jowls. Once again, green magic sparked around the weapon, deflecting it.

  The jaws clamped onto Kern's bloody shoulder. Huge black legs strained backward, lifting him from the ground. Wolf teeth pressed through his golden armor and bruised his flesh. Four of the spider's legs wrapped his torso and clutched him against the prickly abdomen. The paladin's warhammer was uselessly fouled in the tightening legs.

  This is the end, Kern realized with strange calm, clutched to the belly of the monster. This beast will squeeze me to death. I should not be surprised-an antimagical man battling a purely magical being…

  The beast went still around him. It dropped, smashing Kern beneath its body. The wolf torso shattered on his chest and fell in petrified, coal-black chunks.

  Kern scrambled to his feet. All around him he saw fragments of the brittle, frozen body of the wolf-spider.

  An antimagical man battling a purely magical being…

  That was how he must fight these monsters-get in close enough that his very presence froze their sorcer-ous hearts.

  Letting out an unseemly whoop, the paladin swung his hammer high, beckoning the next comers.

  Jacob heard the shout. He stood to one side of Kern, but was presently occupied with his own troubles- namely a scaly-skinned lizard-man with a double-ended trident. The slit-pupilled fiend had already won past Jacob's sword dozens of times, and the man's belly was spotted with cuts and jabs. Sweat poured from his face to his neck and ran cruel fingers into his wounds.

  The three barbed points of the lizard-man's trident flashed past Jacob's slow sword and spitted him across the middle. Jacob gasped. Blood rimmed his lips as the thing yanked him forward. Its forked tongue flickered in anticipation.

  This is nonsense, Jacob thought, writhing on the skewer. I needn't die like this.

  The lizard-man hoisted Jacob on the trident and held him up to an appraising eye. Its tongue tickled along the man's bloody cheek. The monster opened its jaws, set with tidy rows of conical teeth.

  Jacob placed a hand almost tenderly on the creature's neck. Before its teeth could bite down, its head rolled loosely forward and dropped to the ground, revealing a cleanly sheered neck. The stump was cut at an angle, like the pruned branch of a hedge.

  Jacob yanked the impaling tines from his gut and stepped away as the body followed its head to the ground.

  Trandon, meanwhile, was busy fighting an ever-reaching land squid. His quarterstaff was fine for pum-meling hard heads and tripping up ankles and jabbing bellies, but the writhing squid had none of these. Each blow from Trandon's staff landed with an unimpressive thud. The spineless creature oozed away, cushioning the attack to a soft halt.

  This is like battling a mud hole, Trandon thought. Except, of course, that mud holes don't lash back.

  Trandon reeled away from the slap of a tentacle. Suckers popped as they peeled from his neck. They left a line of circular red welts.

  "Oh, bother," Trandon said, slapping a hand to his neck.

  He glanced to both sides, then pointed a finger and growled something. Black lightning crackled out from his staff, sizzled into and around one of the monster's probing tentacles, and made a smoky boom within the beast. The land squid deflated into a smoldering puddle.

  Still, the monsters were many, and darkness had fallen.

  Chapter 7

  Conflict

  Night was stealing into the palace as Noph crowded with Shar and the others behind the drapes of the great hall. They had arrived here by way of the kitchen garbage chute, and so had slithered through mounds of fish tails, shucked clamshells, greasy cuttlebones, and jellyfish heads.

  They stank like the mage-king, himself.

  Noph felt especially bad for Ingrar, who had the keenest nose among them. Of late, he could tell what was in a locked room merely by sniffing beneath the door. Just now, Ingrar couldn't smell anything but the remains of the mage-king's lunch.

  "The emperor will keep the bloodforge well guarded and near him," Entreri said. "If Noph's memory of the palace serves, beyond the great hall is a wide, crescent-shaped corridor that connects all the ceremonial spaces. The high double doors at the center of the crescent give into the audience chamber. Beyond it lies the mage-king's personal quarters-his tank. The bloodforge must be there."

  "But I told you," Noph said, "there's no way to get at the mage-king through the audience chamber. The tank takes up one whole wall. The glass is impervious to all attacks, magical or mundane. The water is poisonous. And even if the glass could be broken and the water were safe, you'd still be swept away and drowned."

  "Impervious is an overrated word. The bloodforge is in there with him; I'm sure of it. If we have to drain the tank and beach the big fish, then we have to. Besides, I have ways of breaching the unbreachable wall and surviving the flood and the poison. I have this." Entreri twirled a flat silver plate in his fingertips.

  "What is it?" Shar asked, leaning close against him.

  "A little thieving device-the fellow selling them came from a place call Sigil. Stick this on a wall or window, and it creates a gate to the other side. The thief can stick a hand through and snatch whatever he can reach. Of course an assassin such as myself might be more likely to throw a dagger through-"

  "You're going to throw a dagger at a fifty-foot-tall squid-man?" Noph interrupted.

  "Something a little more subtle," Entreri assured him.

  "First we have to reach the chamber-have to get past an army of guards between here and there," Belgin groused. The sharper's face was looking more drawn and sickly than usual. "There's probably two outside the great hall, four outside the audience chamber, eight outside the mage-king's tank, and between sixteen and thirty-two guarding the bloodforge."

  "Perhaps now, but not in a few moments from now," Entreri said. "I've planned a diversion." He nodded toward the doors of the great hall. As if on cue, shouts rose outside.

  "Fire! Fire in the treasury!"

  The pirates and Noph cast unbelieving glances at Entreri. He shrugged. "It isn't really the treasury, but the gift room beside the treasury. And it isn't really a fire, but a certain present from Neverwinter, one that emits a sleep-inducing smoke. The guards will rush to the treasury only to lie down and nap."

  A murmur of mirth passed among the crew as they listened to the growing sounds of mayhem. The shouts and stamping feet died away to silence.

  "Follow me. Swords out."

  They did, their steps confident behind their ingenious leader. He had thought of everything.

  Noph reached his free hand toward Shar, but she moved away, approaching Entreri. Her own free hand grasped the assassin's, and his fingers squeezed.

  Congratulations, Entreri, you damned skunk, Noph thought.

  Behind him, Ingrar tripped on a chair leg. Noph glanced back at the blind young man: he looked white-faced and shaky.

  "Let me guide you along," Noph suggested, hand grasping his.

  Ingrar nodded and gripped Noph's hand tightly.


  "Bring him up here," Entreri hissed. He and Shar stood at the two grand double doors-white, with gold leaf on a filigree trim.

  "The master summons," Noph told Ingrar, though the blind man was already hurrying toward the voice. In a panting moment more, the two reached the double doors.

  "Give it a sniff," Entreri said. "Is anybody out there?" Ingrar drew a deep breath through the door space.

  Conflicting emotions crossed his face. At last, he released the air in a whisper. "One guard remaining. He's young. He's standing against the wall to the right side."

  "Good enough for me," Entreri said noncommittally, kicking the right door outward.

  Wood and iron thumped against a soft bulk. It groaned once and slid. A young guard slumped from behind the door. His face was ringed with the downy curls of an early beard.

  Entreri glanced at the blind man. "You couldn't smell the beard?"

  Without further comment, he and Shar shoved past the half-open door and the unconscious guard and stalked down the curving hallway. A wave of Shar's hand hastened Noph and Ingrar forward.

  "Anyone up here?" Entreri asked.

  Panting as he and Noph caught up, Ingrar replied, "Used to be. The smell is cold, stale. They're gone. Wait. There's one at the head of the audience chamber. On the right. Just ahead, around the bend."

  "Young? A beard?" teased Shar.

  Ingrar shrugged. "I'd say, yes."

  Entreri drew a dagger from his belt and skulked forward. "Lucky for him you did." He slightly modified his grip on the dagger before hurling it.

  The blade flashed through the air, slipped past the white belly of the wall, and struck the young guard in the head. He convulsed once before collapsing, bloodless, to the ground.

  "Excellent aim," Shar commented.

  "I didn't have to hit him with the handle, you know," Entreri said coldly. "Noph, keep the Seer close at hand."

  Following the assassin's lead, the pirates dashed to the gilded double doors of the audience chamber. Entreri shoved the unconscious man out of the way, retrieved his dagger, and threw back the doors. Cold, humid air rolled over the group.