City of Torment

by Bruce R Cordell

  The two coppery monsters had three eyes that blinked from beneath bony ridges, one below another. The mottled quartz creature had five eyes scattered randomly across its blunt head.

  In near unison, the aboleths extruded tooth-studded tongues from lipless, tri-slit mouths. The tongues coiled and rasped across their chosen orbs, bestowing brutal kisses.

  Having paid their gruesome respects, the creatures shot upward, moving five or six times as fast as they’d descended and with far greater stability.

  When the aboleths were no more than dots high above, Anusha whispered, “What just happened?”

  Yeva shook her head, her face slack with worry.

  “Up is the way we need to go too. We should follow the aboleths,” continued Anusha.

  “Follow how?” Yeva gestured at the titanic orrery that dangled unsuspended. Then her face softened. “Ah. We are not bound to the world or its laws, lacking the flesh of our making. I should have learned that when we passed through the wall.”

  Anusha grinned. “That’s right! I haven’t tried this before, but I’m sure I can pull it off. You can too, if you concentrate hard enough!”

  “So long as you focus on both of us rising upward, it may be possible. Otherwise, you’ll leave me behind and I’ll gutter out. I don’t believe I have an independent existence outside your attention, Anusha.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Anusha. “You know things I don’t, so I’m sure you’re not a figment of my imagination.”

  “I didn’t say you are imagining me. Just that my consciousness only persists while yours does. You are my anchor.”

  “Well, we can see if that’s true later,” Anusha said, shaking her head to clear it of Yeva’s implications.

  Anusha raised one hand and imagined she held a rope, a rope that ascended to the limit of her sight, but one firmly attached to a support. A length of elven cord dangled down. She gave a few experimental yanks. It seemed solid enough.

  She lifted her other hand from the sphere’s side, and the faux rope held her. Yeva watched her a moment longer, then reached out and grabbed the rope herself.

  Anusha looked up and imagined the rope being winched upward, slowly but surely.

  “Here we go,” she said, even as their feet lifted away from the great black sphere.

  They rose higher. The sphere they’d emerged from was revealed as a colossal obsidian globe whose circumference Anusha couldn’t even begin to guess. It was easily as large as a castle.

  Anusha and Yeva rose higher in the dim light. From the increasing vantage, it was easy to see that all the stone spans and spheres were one vast mechanism—a mechanism infused with magic enough to grow new components.

  As they watched, four new arms sprouted from yet another orb.

  “Look, at the edges,” Yeva said.

  Anusha glanced away from the newest growth to see what Yeva indicated. Three gargantuan metallic hoops circumscribed the entire assembly of large and small spheres. The rings seemed forged of brass or perhaps gold. Each hoop rotated in place, their edges barely avoiding the four walls that encapsulated the entire incredible device. Or perhaps it wasn’t that the hoops rotated, but instead that the glyphs scribed upon them squirmed round and round. The idea made Anusha slightly sick.

  She returned her attention to the four newest arms. Each disgorged a globe. One was pale green, another coal black. The last two were a mixture of dark blue and red. Each flashed with a unique line of symbols—

  The imagined rope in her hand thinned, and they stopped rising.

  “Better concentrate,” Yeva said.

  Anusha gave a quick nod and envisioned the rope in her hand anew. She strained to feel its solidity and uncompro-mised connection to the ceiling she hoped was somewhere above.

  Their ascent resumed.

  “Sorry,” Anusha said. “I was thinking—last time we saw the orrery expand, aboleths were drawn to investigate.”

  “I had the same thought.”

  Their steady rise finally pierced the indefinite gloom to reveal a flat ceiling. It was apparently composed of the same stone as the distant walls. It also hosted patches of glowing mold. A circular hole pierced the ceiling’s center. Brighter illumination streamed through the hole.

  “I’m going to take us through,” Anusha whispered, pointing at the opening. Yeva nodded.

  As they approached, Yeva pointed to a nearby patch of “mold.” It wasn’t mold—it was a patch of irregular ice. The same kind of glowing ice she and Yeva had escaped from!

  Yeva said, “Apparently the Eldest’s memories have condensed out of the ether in more than one place in this putrid city.”

  “Oh gods,” breathed Anusha. They had come close enough that she saw a shape frozen in the ice. A little boy looked back at her with wide, blue eyes.

  Then they passed through the opening into a new space damp with a fetid, oily stink.

  Aboleths pressed around the hole, leering at them with too many red eyes and reaching tentacles. Anusha swallowed a cry of alarm. Her arm jerked as the imagined rope snapped them another twenty feet upward in only a moment. Her head spun, and she lost her bearings. She kicked her legs, unconsciously looking for purchase, but she did not let go of Yeva or her imagined lifeline.

  Nothing immediately attacked. Anusha got control of her breathing. They dangled thirty or so feet below a slick ceiling of rough stone. She turned and stared at the tableau below, trying to make sense of the scene.

  Aboleths clustered around the hole from which they’d emerged. The creatures huddled in discrete rows radiating away from the circular gap. The rows contained differing numbers of aboleths; one line had just three, another at least twenty.

  Most of the aboleths had bluish backsides the color of darkened bruises, with reddish underbellies. Some claimed distinct colorations from their brethren, and of these, some were noticeably smaller than average, others larger.

  All possessed too many red eyes, and all voiced a screeching, chantlike rumble that wove through the air like a swarm of blood-seeking insects. She hadn’t heard the sound from below. Had they just started? None of the creatures seemed to be looking up at her or Yeva dangling above them.

  Four of the rows convulsed. A ripple of movement pushed four creatures from their perch on the hole’s edge. They dropped, tentacles flailing, like stones into a well, into the orrery chamber.

  “Those four—did you see their color?” Yeva said, loudly enough to be heard over the vocalizations. “Green, black, and two blue-red. Like the globes just born below. It means something. The symbols, the colors … I think these beasts are conferring on themselves the power of flight!”

  Before Anusha could comment, something moved to her right.

  An aboleth hovered just ten feet from her and Yeva. It was the mottled quartz one with five eyes they’d seen below, rasping a newborn orb with its toothed tongue. Four of its eyes roved around, searching. But one was focused directly upon Anusha.

  The creature loosed a questioning tone like the chirp of a curious crow. Simultaneously, a voice devoid of personality echoed in Anusha’s head, Is it of the body? Is it of Xxiphu? Is it benign? Is it a parasite? What is it?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars

  Thoster stood at the wheel watching his crew take Green Siren out to sea. His hands were clasped behind his back, and his stance was one of stern attention. The crew dallied less when the captain’s eyes were on them.

  But his mind was on Seren. The wizard had always been trouble. He’d just never realized how much. A price on her head, set by Thay itself. He wondered what the amount had grown to.

  Not that he was tempted to collect on it himself. Anyone foolish enough to claim a fee from Szass Tam deserved whatever he got. No, he worried about the attention Seren’s presence drew to his ship. Attention a whole lot more dangerous than he’d have knowingly risked.

  “’Course, the dam
age is already done,” he muttered. Morgenthel knew Seren was on Green Siren, knew Thoster’s name, and knew the wizard had protectors. He wondered how closely Morgenthel and Thay were actually entwined. Hopefully, the man was merely a bounty hunter who talked big. Such things were possible. Were he in Morgenthel’s shoes, Thoster would claim more familiarity with Thay’s rulers than was strictly true.

  Seren was back on deck, checking the integrity of her chalk-scribed circle. The woman seemed intent on continuing her employment with the half-elf. He’d always assumed the woman’s desire for gold was purely mercenary. Apparently, she hoped to purchase back her life.

  He wondered what it would take to purchase back his own.

  “Mharsan!” Thoster called to the first mate. A woman with a long silver braid looked up from berating a crew member. “I’m going below. Keep on eye on things.”

  “Aye, Cap’n!” she said.

  Mharsan had stepped into the role of Green Siren’s first mate after the previous one met a bloody end below Geth-shemeth’s isle. She was competent, though just as taken with rum as her predecessor.

  Thoster walked down the aftcastle stair and saw Raidon. The monk sat propped against the mainmast, his legs crossed and his eyes blank as glass marbles. He didn’t seem actively worried about Seren’s revelation. ’Course, who could tell with the half-elf? The captain suspected the spellscarred man wasn’t right in the head.

  It seemed everyone aboard was damaged in some way. Perhaps Thoster most of all.

  He made his way to where their prize slept. The captain’s dog lay outside the cabin. Blackie let no one approach other than himself, Raidon, and Seren.

  He patted the dog on the head in return for a lick, then entered Anusha’s cabin. It was the very room Japheth had hid the woman in during their first sea crossing. He chuckled to recall how the warlock hinted at gorgon hearts within to dissuade visitors. Thoster played along with the warlock’s game because it was amusing to do so. At the time, he hadn’t realized what was at stake.

  The captain looked down on the woman. She was gaunt and possibly ill. Some sort of enchantment kept her fed and limber, or she’d have died long before. But it was obviously no replacement for the real thing. Even Thoster could see that if she didn’t wake and resume eating and moving soon, she’d die.

  “Your mind’s trapped in the relic, eh?” Thoster said, his voice quiet.

  The relic. He shook his head. Most days, he tried not to think about it. It was too confusing, and it made his stomach sour. The Dreamheart had more than one claim on him, and until he had it in his own two hands, he’d decided not to choose which he’d satisfy.

  That wasn’t something he’d advertised to Raidon.

  Thoster lowered himself onto the cot next to Anusha’s open travel chest. She didn’t move, save for her continual shallow breathing. The perfect listener.

  “The time to decide is nearly upon me, ain’t it?” he asked her. “Maybe what I’ll do about the relic does bear thinking on, just a bit, since I have your ear.”

  The captain produced a pipe and a miniature coal urn from a pocket of his coat. He filled the bowl with a sweet-smelling pinch of tobacco and lit it with an ember. He thought better with a little smoke in the air.

  “So, here’s where I stand, ghost. First,”—he ticked up one finger—“I told Behroun I’d retrieve the trinket for him. ’Course, that was before I knew what it was. Still, Behroun paid me a good sum, and apart from occasional piracy against merchantmen out of Amn, I count myself an honorable sort. Helps the reputation too.” He chuckled.

  “Second,”—another finger joined the first—“I told Raidon I was done with Behroun and would help find the relic so we could smash it to flinders. I didn’t say those words lightly. Well, not too lightly. I don’t want to see monsters raised out of the Sea of Fallen Stars. What sane privateer would?

  “Lastly, and most importantly.” A third finger. “What of my own need? For all my yarns about my misbegotten sire, I’m beginning to worry. If I claim the relic for myself, I might be able learn the truth about my … condition. Every year the changes grow worse.”

  The captain pulled back one coat sleeve to reveal his left forearm. Half the skin had sloughed away, revealing glossy green scales no different from a fish’s. It sickened him to look at it, yet he could hardly pull his gaze away. And this was not the largest patch afflicting him. All his self-deprecating jokes paled before the underlying truth.

  He’d long delighted in his ability to swim better than others and hold his breath for heart-stopping spans of time. That ability had saved him more than once.

  Things were different since he’d returned from the cursed isle where the great kraken laired. There, he’d been wet longer than dry. He’d been surrounded by those damned fishy kuo-toa, fighting them, killing them, being bled on by them … and that walking statue! When he saw it, something inside his head trembled, as if on the verge of making some kind of sense!

  Thoster blearily recalled falling to his knees in front of the rogue eidolon they’d fought, begging his allies to leave “her” alone. Madness! Why’d he done that?

  He couldn’t remember. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Something had been familiar about that damned shrine. He didn’t want to think on it.

  The change in his flesh was accelerating. He worried that achieving full understanding might make the change come all the quicker.

  “Look at it, will you?” he exclaimed, waving his scaled arm. “When will it stop? Am I becoming a fish-man … a kuo-toa mayhap? Or something with even less of a mind when all’s said and done?”

  Anusha had no answers. Even were she awake, she couldn’t know how he’d come to suffer his curse. It was something he’d not shown anyone else, though he suspected Nogah might have known somehow. He’d never asked her, and now she was dead, taking Thoster’s secret with her.

  He allowed his coat sleeve to ride back down to his wrist, covering the unsightly blemish. He drew another breath from his pipe. The glow from its bowl glinted in his eyes.

  “The way everyone seems to go on about the Dreamheart’s power … I wager I could use it to stave off what’s ailing me. After that, well, sure, let Raidon break it into a thousand pieces.”

  Thoster puffed, then said, “’Course, that’s rubbish—ill luck follows me like a cold wind. The monk’s given up chasing the warlock and the Dreamheart. Now we’re heading straight into the earth to where the relic was spit up.”

  He shook his head.

  “Which means no one gets it. Behroun can take a long walk off a short pier, eh? Raidon’s decided it don’t matter anymore; thinks he’s got bigger fish to hook. The drug-addled warlock already has it …”

  Thoster scratched his chin. “Aye, the warlock’s had the orb for quite a spell. And in all that time, he ain’t managed to wake you up, poor lass. Either his sorcery is too weak for the job … or your mind ain’t actually trapped in it.”

  He stirred the burning leaf shreds in his pipe bowl with a wood splinter.

  “Japheth ain’t no slouch. I’ve seen what he’s capable of. By now he’d have had you out of the stone if you were in it. Which means … you ain’t!

  “So where are you?”

  The pirate peered close at Anusha. Then his eyes widened.

  “I wonder … I have an idea where your mind’s gone. And I’m but a simple man of the sea. If I can figure it, your cloaked protector with his fancy pact can do the same.”

  The captain stood. He said, “Raidon tells us the relic is part of Xxiphu. I bet ten years’ take your mind’s drained down to the same place.”

  He nodded to himself. “I could be whistling past the graveyard, but I bet we find Japheth and his orb when we reach our destination. Ha! Maybe I can borrow the Dreamheart from him then. He won’t be expecting us, that’s sure.”

  Thoster inclined his head. “Rare’s the person who listens so well without interruption. I might grow to like such a thoughtful companion.”

  He stud
ied the woman. Despite her sallow countenance, she was still pretty, though a sad sight too. He wondered if she’d live. It surprised him to discover he hoped she would.

  Thoster quit Anusha’s cabin, leaving behind the scent of burned tobacco.

  Seren’s jaw ached. She realized she was gritting her teeth.

  The wizard worked her mouth open and shut, imagining her muscles relaxing. She had to let go of the tension, or she would spoil the ritual.

  It wasn’t that she was surprised bounty hunters yet sniffed after her trail. Others had tried to apprehend Seren over the last several years. A few she had killed in self-defense, and the others had lost her trail. The last attempt had been four years earlier, well before she shipped out with Green Siren.

  And now Dhenna Shavres had let it be known to wizard takers everywhere that Seren was still alive and somewhere on the Sea of Fallen Stars. Why had she trusted that woman? She hoped Morgenthel refused to pay Rose Keep’s finder’s fee, having failed to capture his quarry.

  Not much she could do about that now. Just continue with her own plan, slipshod as it was.

  If she could gather enough gold, perhaps the regent would rescind her death warrant …

  Part of her knew the undertaking was probably foolish. Szass Tam wasn’t known for giving second chances to his foes. Her only hope was that the regent didn’t actually consider Seren an enemy or, better yet, even know her name—she was far too insignificant! It was probably a sycophant or lower-level functionary who had put the price on Seren’s head. If she could pay that off, plus a hefty bribe on top of the value of the lost treasury, then she might just purchase her life back.

  And if she wanted it, perhaps her rightful place in the power structure of Thay …

  The hairs on her arms prickled as if a phantom breezed past. Her throat grew tight with apprehension.

  There would be opportunity to worry about that later. Now it was time to concentrate on the job at hand.