Crypt of the Moaning Diamond

by Rosemary Jones

  Such things weren’t natural. Take this war, thought Ivy, which had started because Procampur’s ruler decided to honor his treaties. Now, most kingdoms and city-states had treaties with one another, but rarely bothered to read them, let alone act upon them. But Procampur had a treaty with Tsurlagol that they would protect the city from outside invasion or, if invaders managed to take control of Tsurlagol, free the city. When the inevitable happened, and Fottergrim’s ramshackle army of orcs and hobgoblins (and a few humans and half-breeds who should have known better) captured Tsurlagol, Procampur’s ruler decided to go to war. Unfortunately, the orderly city had only an orderly army—just enough to serve its own needs, but not nearly enough to defeat the forces encamped in Tsurlagol.

  To free Tsurlagol, Procampur needed more than its own citizens. It needed, as its senior nobles and officers had most reluctantly admitted, to hire mercenaries. After a long hot summer of paying the untidy and decidedly disorderly mercenaries, Procampur’s Thultyrl desired a quick end to the siege. The Thultyrl was a king who could afford to pay to have the siege broken, and the Siegebreakers had all the technical, practical, and magical expertise needed to make that happen—or so Ivy had spent the last tenday assuring the Thultyrl. The Siegebreakers also badly needed the payment promised by the Thultyrl, but Ivy felt that Procampur’s ruler did not need to know that. It might make him inclined to haggle, and she preferred to be the only haggler in a transaction.

  Now, all Mumchance and the rest of her Siegebreakers needed to do was collapse a section of Tsurlagol’s sturdy walls. All Ivy had to do, and she considered her job the harder of the two, was persuade the impatient Thultyrl to give her friends enough time to complete the task. For the last tenday, she had trudged far too many times up the hill to the Thultyrl’s tent to explain once again why the walls could not fall instantly. She wondered if the Thultyrl would believe her this time.

  Ivy skipped over the ditch that separated Procampur’s section of the camp from the mercenaries’ tents. Shallow and narrow, the ditch served no defensive purpose. It existed to warn mercenaries returning from the latrines in the dark to head down the hill rather than up the hill.

  As they climbed the hill to the Thultyrl’s pavilion, located squarely in the center of Procampur’s tents, Ivy paused and turned to the north. From here, she had the clearest view of the city on the opposite hill. As usual, a few mounted troops were trotting back and forth in the valley, well out of range of Fottergrim’s archers. The horsemen raised a fine cloud of dust, as the grass and any other vegetation had long ago been trampled. The sun caught a glint of armor along the tops of the walls. Ivy squinted. Tall shadows and bright helmets were clustered thickest along the southern wall. Fottergrim had stationed the bulk of his troops there to watch the horsemen in the fields below. According to reports from the Thultyrl’s scouts, another array of orcs and hobgoblins, well mixed with a few bugbears, kept watch along the eastern wall, ready to raise the alarm if any charge came up the harbor road. Looking south and looking east was exactly what Ivy wanted. Let Fottergrim keep his attention fixed in those directions. She had no intention of entering the city through the eastern gates or by a charge up the steep southern hill. Ivy preferred Fottergrim’s army to mass their largest numbers where she was not going.

  “Any sign of Fottergrim today?” she asked Sanval.

  He did not pause in his steady march up the hill, but answered over his shoulder. “Earlier. Shouting insults as usual and daring us to try the gates.”

  “Then he’s got hot oil, hidden archers, or a good spell set there,” said Ivy. “Your Thultyrl’s restraint is spoiling all his fun.”

  “The Thultyrl,” said Sanval in the faintest rebuke of her casual tone, “cannot wait forever.”

  “Your officers are pressing him to go home again?” It was less of a question than a statement. It was an unpopular war, and costly, and Procampur’s nobles and merchants liked to see a profit in their ventures. Since Sanval was apparently willing to talk politics, if nothing else, Ivy wanted to obtain as much information as possible. The more the officers pressed the Thultyrl to end the war quickly, the faster the Siegebreakers had to dig. If the walls of Tsurlagol did not fall soon, the Thultyrl was going to try some other tactic to draw out Fottergrim and engage him in a decisive battle. And that, in Ivy’s opinion, would be a disaster. Nobody was going to pay the Siegebreakers for failing to make a wall fall down.

  “Another petition has come from the merchants. They protest the loss of the Thultyrl’s leadership and demand that he return to his duties in the city. There are a number of civil cases that need his judgment,” Sanval said.

  “And none of your green-roof merchants can settle their own disputes?”

  Sanval started to say something and then thought better of it. Obviously it went against his personal code of conduct to criticize his fellow citizens. Ivy sighed and wished the gentlemen of Procampur were more like the humans of Waterdeep or the gnomes of Thesk: ready to slander anyone of low or high station. If Ivy knew what the various factions in the camp wanted, she could always bargain in such a manner that made it seem like everyone was going to be satisfied (even if the only ones who really benefited were her Siegebreakers).

  “It is impossible to explain to an outsider,” began Sanval, apparently responding to the deep sighs that she heaved behind him. “Our customs and our laws are very ancient and must seem strange to someone like you.” He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. Obviously he felt unable to describe what he thought “someone like you” meant, but Ivy had a good idea, and she was more than a bit annoyed by his judgment. Looking messy did not mean that she lacked understanding of the way that silver-roof nobles lived. She understood all too well—she just chose to live differently.

  Ivy began to sing in her crow’s voice. Daughter of a bard, she couldn’t carry a tune to save her life. But she had the same wicked memory for lyrics that she had for accents. Also, only last night, she had found a minstrel with a goodly collection of bawdy songs favored in the worst parts of Procampur. “I’m quite the red-roof girl, in fact, all the warriors declare …”

  Now Sanval sighed, turned around, and quickened his pace through Procampur’s tents. The Procampur pavilions followed the same straight lines of their city’s famous Great Way, not at all like the mercenary section of the camp where the canvas coverings randomly clustered. There, mercenaries pitched their tents in whatever order they liked. Far from the latrine pits was considered a prime location for most mercenaries; other than that, they didn’t pay much attention to their surroundings. But in this section of the camp, tents were planted in perfect formations, with the rustling banners and ribbon tent edgings matching the colors of Procampur’s famous roof tiles: gold for the Thultyrl’s personal enclave, silver for the nobles, yellow for their servants, black for the priests, and so on. The only color not showing was red. That was the symbol for adventurers as well as the areas that housed those adventurers passing through Procampur. That element, as far as the Procampur army was concerned, was already too thoroughly represented by the mercenary camp.

  Ivy marched behind Sanval, doing her best to uphold the mercenaries’ low reputation. She continued the song that was worth every drink that she had bought for the harper’s parched throat. By the time she reached the second verse, with the rousing line of “Once the men lived for my sighs, but now they want a peek of …” the back of Sanval’s neck shone pink beneath the rim of his helmet.

  The Thultyrl’s pavilion dominated the center of Procampur’s section, much as his palace reigned in the center of the city. One enormous tent, with silk walls dividing the interior into multiple rooms, housed the Thultyrl and his many retainers.

  Only their arrival at the Thultyrl’s tent prevented Ivy from completing the ballad. Even she didn’t have quite enough nerve to sing the last three lines of I’m Quite the Red-Roof Girl in front of the Thultyrl’s stone-faced bodyguards, members of the famous Forty who followed him in every pursuit. />
  The two on guard today were standing rigidly at attention and staring into space. The one on the left was very young, and Ivy noticed his cheeks were very flushed under the flanges of his helmet. Her voice may not have had the quality of her mother’s, but she could pitch it to be heard over long distances. She must have been singing even louder than she had intended. She glanced at the other bodyguard. He was older, and he was not blushing, but he did wink at her as she passed him.

  During the day, the canvas outer walls of the Thultyrl’s pavilion were rolled up to allow the breezes to blow through the tent; but the gold silk walls were down—probably in a vain attempt to keep the dust from covering the scrolls belonging to the scribes busy working inside the pavilion. The dozen scribes assigned to the Thultyrl’s Great Codex fought a constant battle with the grit of the camp, which clogged their inkpots and stained their fine parchments. Still, as far as they were from their cool halls, they continued their mission to copy Procampur’s many laws into one great law book. Behind them paced the legal scholars, already debating the exact wording of each law, consulting the original crumbling texts that were being copied, and occasionally leaning over a scribe’s shoulder to correct a comma there, a dash here.

  As Ivy stood there, brushing biscuit crumbs onto the canvas floor, she reflected that she had known commanders who went to battle with their entire families, often dragging whole harems of lovers and children to a siege camp. But the Thultyrl was the first that she had known who brought his secretaries and lawyers to the edge of a battle. When she had first heard of the Thultyrl’s personal passion—the Great Codex to be placed in a library to eclipse all libraries—she had expected to meet an old man, white-haired and wrinkled, determined to build a monument that would outlast his death.

  Instead, this Thultyrl was her own age, an energetic young man who adored hunting so much that he had also brought his hounds, his hawks, and his master huntsman with him. It was the hunting that had led to his present incarceration in bed. While coursing a stag in the hills above Tsurlagol, his party had surprised a troop of mountain orcs coming to reinforce their kin inside the city’s walls. During the ensuing dust-up, the Thultyrl had been speared in his leg, breaking the thighbone.

  Now the Thultyrl commanded from his camp bed with all the sweetness of temper of a lion tied to a stake. Ivy could hear him roaring as they paused beside the scribes scratching at their scrolls. Sanval conferred with two more members of the Forty, sitting on stools in front of a silk curtain embroidered with flying griffins—the personal symbol of this Thultyrl. A scribe’s apprentice pushed past Ivy to pull last night’s guttered beeswax stubs from the silver candlesticks. The Thultyrl was rich enough to keep his pavilion lighted all night long for his scribes, but not wasteful enough to allow them to throw away good beeswax. The incense pots were already lit, in a vain attempt to stifle the usual morning stink wafting through a war camp. No one was smiling, and everyone was working in absolute silence, which meant the Thultyrl was in worse humor than usual. After a long whispered conference, Sanval gestured for Ivy to follow him. He lifted aside the gold silk curtain to let them pass into the inner room of the Thultyrl’s tent.

  The Thultyrl was clutching a snow white towel to his freshly shaved chin. The barber was crouched on the floor, his bowl clutched to his chest and his forehead pressed against the purple wool rug hiding the canvas floor of the pavilion. The barber appeared frozen in the traditional bow signifying absolute obedience (and terror) that former Thultyrls had instituted in their courts.

  “Oh, for the sweet suffering of every black-roof priest,” swore this Thultyrl, “get up, man! You will not be beheaded for nicking the Thultyrl’s royal chin. Beriall, pay the poor fellow something extra for his fright.”

  Beriall, the Thultyrl’s personal secretary and the camp steward, swept forward with a swish of perfumed robes and whispered to the barber. The man nodded and tentatively smiled, bobbing his head as he retreated backward out of the tent.

  “A man should be able to curse when his chin bleeds without his barber collapsing on the carpet,” grumbled the Thultyrl, still dabbing at the nick with the towel.

  “If he is a commoner, the barber will swear back at him. If he is a king, the barber will grovel. It is the way of the world,” answered the Pearl in her deep voice. Behind every Thultyrl stood a Hamayarch, the highest rank of wizard in the court. The Hamayarch ruled the magic users of Procampur as the Thultyrl ruled other citizens. But the Hamayarch always bowed to the Thultyrl and ruled under the Thultyrl’s blessing. The Pearl had held the title of Hamayarch for at least three generations. Her true name, her age, and even her race were unknown. Tall and slender, with hair the color of snow and the face of girl barely in her teens, some whispered that the Pearl had elven blood. Others claimed demon ancestors for her.

  Having met many strange inhabitants of the North in a tumultuous childhood spent wandering behind either her bard mother or her druid father (but rarely the two together), Ivy doubted the Pearl of Procampur was either elf or demon. There was something very human about the Pearl’s eyes, even though they were a strange aquamarine color and slanted slightly down at the corners.

  According to camp gossip, the Thultyrl had left the Pearl behind to govern Procampur. But the day that he was speared in the thigh, she had appeared inside his tent and had overseen his physicians as they dressed his wound. Since then, the Pearl remained always close at hand. She seemed to have arrived without servants of her own, coach, horse, or baggage, but she appeared each day in clean linen and silk. Today, the Pearl’s white hair was looped up in an elaborate coronet of braids, baring her ears, which were pierced and studded with three diamonds on the left lobe and two rubies on the right. Her hands were covered with rings of both silver and gold, many set with gems. The Pearl favored linen as her undertunic, topped with a layer of embroidered silk displaying white peacocks on a dark blue background. She rustled when she moved, a sound like dead leaves stirred by a cold wind.

  If the Pearl was winter in her dress, then the Thultyrl was all warm summer. A thin silk tunic lay open across his smooth brown shoulders, baring a chest already gleaming with sweat. A light blanket was draped across his lower body, hiding the wounded thigh and preserving the Thultyrl’s modesty.

  When he saw Ivy, the Thultyrl called for his campaign desk. Pressing a hidden spring on the brass-and-wood box, the Thultyrl watched with the satisfaction more typical of a young boy than a king as the campaign desk sprouted shelves and drawers and a long flat surface on top. Beriall rushed forward to pull out a map scroll from one polished drawer; from another drawer, the man unearthed bronze map weights in the shape of rearing griffins with their wings outstretched. With the fluttering of his plump fingers, Beriall unrolled the map and positioned the weights carefully. With a growl of impatience at Beriall’s usual fussiness, the Thultyrl beckoned Ivy forward. Beriall stepped back to allow Ivy a clear view of the map, sniffing loudly as Ivy passed him and whisking his silken robes close to his ankles as if he were afraid that her mere presence would stain his beautiful peach-colored skirts. Used to Beriall’s sniffs and occasional muttered comments about barbarians in the tent, Ivy examined the map as the Thultyrl had indicated.

  Ivy loathed the map. She had peered at it at least once a day for the past eight days, always conscious of the Thultyrl watching her. The map showed the walls of Tsurlagol in exquisite detail: every gate, every tower, every turn.

  “Well?” asked the Thultyrl. “Do you remain satisfied with your choice?”

  “Very satisfied, sire. As we expected, the ground is soft and unstable at the base of the western wall,” said Ivy, who had walked that section of Tsurlagol’s walls two nights ago, skulking in shadows, and praying that she didn’t twist an ankle in one of the ruts and holes. She had not told the rest of the Siegebreakers that she was checking the walls again (she knew how much they would protest), and it would have been incredibly embarrassing if the sun had come up and caught her lying in full view of F
ottergrim’s archers, just because she’d put her foot in a rabbit hole.

  “The weakest section is here, the southwest corner, where they joined a new wall to an old wall.” She tapped that turn on the map with one grimy finger, noting the smudge that she had left yesterday from the same gesture. “We’re already shifting ground water toward that spot, and it is running deep enough that Fottergrim’s watchers won’t see anything. But water alone won’t be enough. We need to tunnel, as we discussed earlier, and crack the foundations from underneath. Then the water can do its work and bring the wall down.”

  While Ivy was talking, one of the Thultyrl’s officers approached him. Beriall tried to block his way, but the Thultyrl waved the officer closer. The man carried papers for the Thultyrl to stamp with his personal signet. Once that was done, Beriall hustled the man away. No conversation with the Thultyrl went uninterrupted, but the man had a ruler’s ability to focus on three things at the same time. Ivy stayed where she was. When the Thultyrl wanted to, he would start asking her questions again. It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know the answers.

  “Another draft on the treasury,” the Thultyrl said to the Pearl. “These mercenaries will drain us dry if we don’t end this soon.” Beriall returned to his position at the Thultyrl’s right shoulder, nodding at the last comment and staring directly at Ivy. One of the codex scholars appeared at the Thultyrl’s side with a stack of rolled scrolls. The Thultyrl nodded his thanks and dropped the scrolls into an already overflowing basket by his side.

  “Once inside the walls,” said the Pearl, “we can recover our expenses from Tsurlagol’s treasury. The treaty does allow for that.”

  “It does,” sighed the Thultyrl. He popped open a drawer in the campaign table and pulled out an ivory message chit, which he handed over his shoulder to Beriall. The secretary beckoned one of the Forty to him and handed off the chit. That man bowed and rushed away to fetch whomever the chit signified. The Thultyrl ignored the passing of the chit and concentrated on his conversation with the Pearl. “But we can’t bankrupt Tsurlagol—we are supposed to be saving the city after all.”