"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
- Albert Einstein
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Chapter 46: Zorvak'mur
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We stood at the mouth of the cavern that held Zorvak'mur and looked on the illithid city for the first time.
There wasn't much to see. There were no living things in sight. Several hundred feet away stood an immense, ring-shaped platform which hovered in the air with no apparent foundation to hold it up. Other rings were just visible, rising above the first like steps and peppered with disturbingly bulbous structures. In the center of it all stood a dome. The dome was gray and pink-veined and I would have liked to call it marble, except that it looked damp and vaguely translucent and altogether too organic to be stone.
A long, winding ramp led up to the first ring. It was slightly wider at one end than the other. "Is it just me, or does that ramp look kind of like a tentacle?" I asked.
Deekin stared upwards. "Yeah, Deekin was kinda hoping you not gonna say that."
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry, just don't say that word."
"What word? Tentacle?"
"Bo-oss!"
"Oops. Sorry."
Valen was speaking to Quarra. "You know what to do," he said. "Wait as long as you can, but if we do not return in the allotted time, consider us lost." He said it with hair-raising calm, as if contemplating his own enslavement and death was old hat, for him. "Do you remember the way back?"
Quarra scowled at her superior officer. "You need to ask?"
Valen lifted an eyebrow, surprisingly calm in the face of Quarra's insubordination. Then again, she wasn't just any drow – she was someone he knew and trusted, and with Valen, that seemed to breed enormous tolerance. After all, he hadn't strangled Imloth yet. "No. You are right. I do not," he said, and stepped away, the worry that should have been there before finally showing on his face now. "Remain vigilant. I do not like leaving you alone in this place without someone to watch your back, but I do not see that we have much choice."
Quarra shrugged. "I'll be fine." Her grin wouldn't have looked out of place on a pirate flag. "I'm not the one playing with the tentacle-heads." Then she saluted him, fist to chest, and wheeled her lizard around in a tight circle. "Don't get him killed, priestess," she cast over her shoulder.
I slanted her a sardonic look. "I couldn't help but notice you didn't mention anything about me dying."
Quarra waved a hand in either farewell or dismissal. She didn't bother to turn around. "We need him. We don't need you."
I watched her go. "She's all love, isn't she?"
Valen shrugged. "At least she is no longer insulting you."
Really? "Cause telling me I could feel free to crawl off and die doesn't sound like a compliment to me. I thought about arguing with him. Then I remembered Enserric's comment about how me and Valen kept yowling at each other like a pair of cats in heat, and I bit my tongue. To give myself something to do other than talk, I settled the greenstone circlet more securely on my head. Crowns really weren't made for people with curly hair. My hair couldn't decide whether to forcibly eject the thing or permanently entangle it, so as a compromise it was trying to do both at once. "How do I look?"
Valen looked at me. "R-"
I pointed a forefinger at him. "The next word out of your mouth had better not be 'rich'."
"-regal."
"Ooh. Nice save."
Valen's face was as straight as a plank. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." I kept my own face straight and adjusted my circlet again. I'd expected it to tingle or burn or do something special when I put it on, but it just sat there. Maybe this wearing-magic-items thing wasn't so bad. Or maybe the trader had sold us a mundane piece of jewelry and we were all about to die. "So if I'm a slave trader, what are you two?" I was stalling. I knew I was stalling. I just wished I knew how to make myself stop.
Valen shrugged. "We are your thralls."
I frowned. "Most humans down here are slaves." The words left a bitter taste in my mouth. The truth often did. "Will the illithid believe that I'm the one in charge?"
"To a mindflayer, all other races are thralls. They do not differentiate."
"Right. So why aren't you wearing this thing?" Valen gave me a long look, then pointed wordlessly to his horns. I blinked. "Oh. Uh. You have a point." He had two of them, actually, and they were both on his head, seriously impeding his use of headgear.
Deekin piped up. "Deekin could make Boss look like a drow, if you wants." He grinned. "Deekin been practicing his illusions. He can make Boss look like anything. Well, almost anything."
Valen frowned suspiciously. "You are able to cast spells of Seeming?
"Sure thing!" The bard paused. A wincing little grimace of embarrassment curled his snout. "Er. Although…"
I didn't like the sounds of that. "Although?"
The bard fidgeted with his quill. "Deekin been practicing lots on himself, but other people? Ummm. Not so much."
I remembered Teddy and his experiments and that one time he'd accidentally fixed an illusion on Hana that made her look like an ogress for about a week. At least, I was pretty sure it had been an accident. You could never quite tell, with Teddy. "That's all right, Deeks. I think I'll stick with being human."
"Yes." Valen's voice was emphatic. "This spell seems like a terrible idea. Let us not try it."
Deekin had no lips, but he still somehow managed to pout, or at least to convey the general impression of pouting. "Aw, c'mon." His fingers moved, and he started to hum. "Here. It not be so hard. Deekin even shows you!"
I didn't feel a thing. "Show me what?" Then I looked down at my hands. My eyes bulged a little. My skin had gone from tanned olive to ebony. I felt a visceral horror, seeing a stranger's hands where mine had been. Then I studied my hands a little longer. Was it me, or did my hands look more graceful now? My horror faded. "Wow. That's wild." I took a lock of hair between my thumb and forefinger and stretched the corkscrew curl out until I could just see it. It had gone from dark brown to bone-white. I dropped the lock and looked up. "What do you think? How do I look?"
Valen was wearing a distinctly unflattering expression of horror. "Wrong. Utterly and absolutely wrong."
On second thought, maybe he wasn't so smooth after all. "Gee, thanks. Nice to know I'm hideous."
Valen's face went red. "That was not…" He stammered to a stop, opened his mouth a couple of times, and tried again. "I did not mean…" He broke off. His eyes fell on something behind me. His face tightened. His voice turned urgent. "Rebecca."
I froze. The look on his face said it all. "There's one of them behind me, isn't there?" Valen nodded. I swallowed hard and turned. The blood drained from my face. "Oh sweet mother of god."
A mindflayer was floating towards us like a ghastly balloon. It was close to seven feet tall if I was any judge, but it was skeletally thin. Most of it was mercifully covered in a black and purple robe that was all angles and points, but the robe didn't hide its slimy purplish-gray skin, the sunken sockets of its eyes, or the fact that its face was tentacles.
Silently, the illithid drifted closer. I stared. Its face is tentacles. I was screaming on the inside, and it was only by some miracle of adrenaline and Valen's steadying presence next to me that I wasn't also screaming on the outside.
The illithid came closer. Its face is tentacles. I'd seen a lot of shit since coming to this world, and I'd thought I'd gotten pretty good at dealing with it, but this…this was too much. My nerve strained, close to breaking.
The illithid had almost reached us. Its face is tentacles. The tentacles writhed and twitched hungrily as the illithid came near, and I remembered, at exactly the wrong moment, that they used those tentacles to suck out people's brains, just stuck the things up your nose and in your ears and shloomp. My nose wrinkled, and I blew a sharp breath out of my nostrils, as if to dislodge an imaginary tentacle. I couldn't help myself. It was instinct, instructions arriving straight from my hindbrain in a desperate attempt to protect my forebrain.
The illithid stopped a few feet away. Its sunken eyes stared at me, devoid of any expression that I could read.
Then its mind reached out and touched mine, and my stomach heaved. I could feel it probing my mind, looking for a way in, like a finger poking at the membrane bounding my brain. I had to lock every muscle from my jaw to my gut to stop a shudder.
The pressure on my mind increased. I felt a moment's unreasoning terror, blind and paralyzing. Then the circlet went ice-cold on my forehead, and the mental pressure lifted abruptly. The mindflayer recoiled. I felt a flicker of…is that confusion? I couldn't tell if it was the illithid's or mine. I was plenty confused already, and there was no reading the emotions on that alien face, if this thing even had emotions to begin with.
There was a pause. Then a strange voice filled my head. That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was that the voice was almost…pleasant. Cultured. Civil, if a touch disdainful. These are the caverns of Zorvak'mur, the illithid said inside my head. What business do you have here?
My jaw was clenched too tightly to speak. I pried it open. "I've come to buy slaves from your auctions." That was our cover, at least. The last thing we needed was for word to get out that Lith My'athar was trying to negotiate the mindflayers out of the alliance the Valsharess had negotiated them into.
The illithid regarded me in a way that almost seemed thoughtful, though its alien face and sunken eyes were impossible to truly read. That probing sensation returned, then darted back at another flare from my circlet. Tentacles twitched. I might let you in, but your thoughts are hidden to me. A long, four-fingered hand lifted, delicately pointing at the circlet on my head. You will have to remove that…item before I will allow you entry.
My thoughts were hidden? Oh, my god. I think this thing on my head is working. I started to breathe again, and found a little steel to put into my voice, fucked if I knew how. "No deal. I'm here to buy slaves, not become one."
The mindflayer's tentacles writhed. A strange gurgling sound came from beneath. It took me a moment to realize that it was laughing. You cannot blame me for trying, it spoke into my head, as if I'd found it leaving a whoopee cushion on my chair instead of trying to trick me into letting it destroy my mind. Very well, you may keep the enchantment that protects your mind. I will allow you to enter Zorvak'mur. But know that the Elder Brain is aware of your presence and knows your thoughts, even if they are strangely muted to me.
I wanted to nod, but I was too petrified to even do that, so I settled for staring blankly ahead and uttering a curt, grim, "Understood."
The illithid didn't nod or bow. It just turned, and, without another word or even any sign of acknowledgement, it drifted away.
I waited, my back straight and every muscle in my body tensed, until the illithid was safely out of sight. Then I sagged. My knees almost buckled. "Fuck," I gasped.
A hand cupped my elbow, steadying me. "What did it say?" Valen asked softly.
I gulped for breath. "I t-think that was the w-welcoming committee." The quaver in my voice was humiliating, but it wouldn't go away. "It…it tried to get into my head."
Valen grunted. "Hell of a welcome."
"I know." I tried to grin. It came out a lopsided, sickly thing. "G-guess they were all out of fruit baskets."
Valen laughed. It was grim and brief, but it was a laugh. His posture eased a little, and he took his hand away from my elbow, as if he felt like he no longer needed to hold me up. "Fortunately, it seems that your mind is still very much your own."
I hoped he was right. "How can you be sure?"
His voice was wry. "Because only you would say such a thing."
I laughed, too. A little. Then I looked down, because I wasn't supposed to be laughing at his jokes. My eyes fell on my hands. They'd gone back to looking human, at some point – not that it really mattered, in hindsight. If something could look into my head, what did the color of my skin or the shape of my hands matter?
Deekin's arms wrapped around my calf. "What did the mindflayer say?" the bard asked anxiously. "Did it lets us in?"
"When it couldn't break in, it tried to talk me into taking off the circlet." I swallowed. "And when that didn't work, it agreed to let us in." I straightened. A droplet of sweat trickled down my spine. It wasn't the first of its kind. The back of my blouse was stuck to my skin. I've been here for five minutes, and already I need a bath and a drink. "Let's go get this over with. The less time we spend here, the better."
Valen's voice was soft but fervent. "Agreed."
Deekin still hadn't let go of my leg. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to walk with him attached to me like that, but I didn't have the heart to tell him to stop. Besides, the contact was comforting, and I needed all the comfort I could get.
The ramp up to the city was steep and made of stone. It was paved with tiny mosaic tiles in swirling patterns that I was trying really hard not to think of as 'like tentacles'. We reached the head of the ramp and paused. "Which way?" I wondered.
Valen spread his hands. "You are the wayfinder, not I."
All I'd done was find religion, and suddenly everybody was mistaking me for somebody who knew what she was doing. I looked around. We were standing on an elevated circular road. It was as wide as several avenues put together. More ramps led up towards a second, inner ring, like spokes on a wheel. That one held the central dome, which loomed over everything, but further along this ring, I saw smaller domes that hinted at the existence of buildings – and where there were buildings, there might be people, and where there were people, there might be answers. "Let's just walk around, see what we can find," I decided. As far as decisions went, it wasn't exactly earth-shattering, but Valen and Deekin followed me without protest, so it couldn't have been too bad.
The street was silent, but not empty. People of all descriptions filled it - drow and duergar, surface elves and dwarves, humans and half-elves and half-orcs, and even a few halflings. It would have been inspiring to see so many people from so many different races all living together in peace, if not for the fact that every single one of them had the vacant stare of lobotomy patients. Mind flayers drifted among them, outnumbered but unmolested. They ignored us completely, not even responding when I tried to stop them to ask directions.
I passed a human woman - dark-haired, thin, and dressed in the remnants of a cotton dress. Her bodice was torn wide open, leading to a wardrobe malfunction that would have made most women gasp and clutch fabric to their chests and scurry for cover, but this woman neither noticed nor cared. All of her attention was devoted to methodically dipping a mop into a bucket of steaming water, flopping the dripping mop-head from bucket to pavement, and mopping the street. Dip. Flop. Mop. Blood was trickling out of her nose. Her face was blank. I tried to talk to her anyway. "Excuse me?"
Dip. Flop. Mop. Soapy water slopped onto the pavement. The woman didn't pause, didn't even look at me. Deekin tugged my hand. "She not be there, Boss," he whispered. "Her mind be gone. She won't say anything. She probably not even understand what you be saying."
I stared at the woman and felt my jaw clench. This was worse than slavery. At least slaves still had their minds. These people didn't have even that. And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. Even if I killed every mind flayer here, it still wouldn't bring these people back, and what good would it do to free a few hundred people here if it let the Valsharess win and enslave hundreds of thousands more?
A hand settled on my shoulder. "Easy," Valen's voice murmured.
I turned my head to glare at Valen. My jaw jutted out belligerently. I was in no mood to be calmed, and less to be lectured, though I was definitely spoiling for a nice little fight. "What?" I snapped.
For once, Valen didn't take the bait. "Do not 'what' at me. I know that look."
Those baby blues were too much. They saw right through me, as clear and cutting as crystals. I returned my stare to the dead woman. Oh, she was breathing and she was walking, but in all the ways that mattered, she was dead. "What look?"
"The look of someone who wants to lay waste to everything and everyone around them." His voice hardened. "I know how you feel, but it is because I know how you feel that I am telling you that you need to walk away, Rebecca. Only a fool picks a fight with the illithid on their own turf, and I did not take you for a fool."
I shook my head and blinked back tears and half-flung a helpless hand at the woman. "Look at her."
His voice was steel-lined and steel-braced. "I am looking. And I like it no more than you do. But she is beyond saving. They all are. And if we join them, we will not only have failed them, but we will have failed the Seer, the rebels, and every living sentient in the Valsharess's path."
I breathed and stared and breathed again, fighting back tears. Valen was right. Damn it. I took one last, long look at the woman's face. She had laugh lines at the corners of her eyes, now unused. I wondered where she came from, and what her name had been, and whether she had people back home who missed her. I tried my best to fix her face in my memory, because that way at least I knew there'd be one person in the world who remembered her.
Then I stepped aside and walked on, feeling like a fraud. I'm sorry, Shaundakul. I hoped he wasn't as disappointed in me as I was. Decent people weren't supposed to turn their backs on people who needed help, but when everybody needed your help and helping one person would hurt another, what were you supposed to do? Some choices were impossible, and some were more impossible than others.
We walked on. Valen's stride started to shift into that ghetto swagger – his hand on the hilt of his flail, his face gone tight and cold, his eyes snapping blue fire, and his whole posture one of barely-restrained aggression. I eyed him sideways. "You're gettin' a little gangsta there, Valen."
He glanced at me, though not for long. Most of his attention was going to monitoring the threats around us – glaring at them, really. "What do you mean?"
"I mean you're acting like you're about to mug somebody. Or start a turf war." After lecturing me about not starting fights, he looked like he was spoiling for one. "Could you maybe tone it down a little?"
The tiefling's voice was strained, and there was a faint ring of red around his irises. "No. I cannot." His eyes scanned the street systematically – left, right, up, down, repeat. "This place is making every instinct in me scream that we are in danger."
I kept looking at him. He was flexing his free hand restlessly. The motion was making interesting things happen to his arms, things that made the straps of his arm-guards creak with strain and the black leathers he wore beneath it stretch taut over his biceps. I gulped and looked away. "Fine." I had to stop and clear my throat. "Your instincts aren't wrong, anyway." I wondered if the Elder Brain was watching and listening and peeking into my mind, even now. I hoped not. Oh, well. If it's seen into my brain, it already knows I'm indecent. "Just…try to think calm thoughts, okay?" The advice went as well for me as for him.
Valen nodded – oblivious, or so I hoped, to what was really going on in my mind. "I shall try."
The city unspooled before us as we walked around the ring. There weren't many buildings, but there was an auction block. It was big, crowded, and unavoidable, placed as it was smack in the middle of the street. I made my way around the rear of the crowd, hunting for a way through. I didn't want to see this. Like Valen said. Just walk away.
An illithid hovered at the auctioneer's podium. Slaves of various races were shackled and lined up behind him. One was up on the block now – a woman, dwarven, with her golden braids a rat's nest, her face a mass of bruises and cuts, and her wrists shackled in front of her. She stared straight ahead without deigning to acknowledge the shackles, the mindflayer, or the crowd in front of her. There were drow there, and lizard men, and duergar, and even some folks who looked like orcs, although their skin was more gray than green.
The illithid tapped its gavel. Its voice filled my head. Up next, a fine thrall of dwarven stock, it announced, sounding bored. Robust and healthy, recently acquired from the deep mines. Equally suited to hard labor or the fighting pits. Bidding starts at one pound-weight of gold, in bars or coins of any denomination. Who will start the bidding? A duergar man, bulky and square-faced from what I could see of his face through the nose bar of his helmet, raised his hand high. The illithid pointed its gavel at him. One pound-weight to the duergar in the front. Do I have a bid for one and a half gold pound-weights? A drow woman, darkly robed and wearing a circlet not unlike mine, glanced over at the duergar and raised her hand. The illithid pointed at her. One and a half gold pound-weights from the drow. Do I have two? And the auction rolled on, with the dwarven slave's face getting more taut by the bid, and I wondered what Harry would do if he saw this, and suddenly I couldn't keep walking.
Valen stopped, too, when he saw what was happening. "Ah." There was a razor's edge to his voice. "And here we have the auction block."
He'd been a slave once, I remembered, and now it was my turn to put a hand on his shoulder, very slowly, and say, "Easy."
Valen's nostrils flared. "I am fine." His eyes were still faintly red-tinged. "But we should not linger here too long."
I nodded, but didn't move. Harry wouldn't have walked away. Drogan would have found some clever ruse to help these people. Shaundakul wouldn't want me to turn my back on someone who needed help – not if I could help it. And I thought that maybe I could help it. "Can you give me ten minutes? I'm not asking just for shits and giggles. I have an idea."
Valen's eyes cut to one side in thought, then came back to meet mine. He nodded and rolled his shoulders and straightened until he was standing at attention, blank-faced, a soldier in standby mode. "I can do that."
I wasted no time. "All right. Deeks?"
"Yeah, Boss?"
"How much money do we have left?"
The bard paused. When he spoke, his voice was evasive. "Ummm. Some?"
I gritted my teeth. "Don't be a dragon about this, Deeks. Not now. Do we have enough to buy her?"
Valen got really, really tense all of a sudden. "This is your idea?" he hissed.
I kept my eyes on the block and the crowd. "You say only a fool picks a fight with the illithid. Fine. I won't fight. I'll buy these people off of them, fair and square."
The tiefling's tail lashed. "Do we really need to push the ruse this far?"
He was a good person. He really was. "Just trust me on this one, Valen." He'd said he trusted me. How far did his trust go? "Please."
Valen paused. His eyes searched my face. Whatever he saw there, it seemed to convince him. He gave me a slow nod and stepped back a little, ceding ground to me. "Very well. But please tread carefully."
I breathed easier. "I'll try," I promised, and I would have said more, but then I saw the illithid raise its gavel and in my head I heard the unmistakable spiel of an auctioneer wrapping up a bid. Six, it announced. Six to the… Urgently, I stepped forward and stuck my hand high in the air. I was taller than most everybody else there except the lizard men, so I was hard to miss. The illithid's head turned to me. Its tentacles writhed in surprise. Six and a half. We have six and a half, to the human in the back.
Everybody turned to look. I kept on smiling.
The duergar man put up a brief fight, but his hand stayed down when that walking calamari up there called for seven and a half. The gavel banged down. The illithid announced that winners could make their payments to the Warden and collect their thralls at any time prior to leaving the city, but that departure without payment would cause them to forfeit not only all rights to the merchandise but also, from the tone of Squiddy McSquiderson's telepathic voice, our hosts' limited patience. A skinny goblin thrall stumbled up to me and handed me a claim ticket for the dwarf. I pocketed it and kept going.
The next "item" up for auction, as Cthulu's uglier younger brother put it, was a human teenager, a brown-haired boy who was all elbows and Adam's apple. He'd shit himself at some point. Not recently. No one had bothered to give him a change of clothes. He went for a pound of silver. Nobody wanted the scrawny little shitter. Nobody but me, anyway.
The drow trader tried to outbid me on a surface elf, a red-haired woman with a blue tattoo on her face and one eye missing. Her remaining eye went back and forth between me and the drow like she was trying to choose between death by strangling or death by drowning. I didn't let go of that one, even though she left me ten pounds of gold poorer. I'd heard what drow did to surface elves.
The third was a gnomish woman. She shook like a leaf and tried to pull what was left of her robe around her to protect her modesty until a couple of thralls came up and held her arms so the potential buyers could get a good look at her. Tentacle-face claimed she was a talented alchemist and had the thralls hold her hands up to show that they were intact and unbroken, since this increased her value. The lizard men and duergar and I got into a three-way bidding war. I got the gnome for five and a half.
My hand brushed the goblin thrall's as he gave me my chit for the gnome. I had to fight hard to keep myself from wiping my hand on my pants. The thrall's hand had been clammy, his motions jerky, like it wasn't really him doing the moving. I looked up to see the mindflayer auctioneer watching, but whatever he or she or it was thinking stayed hidden behind its blank black eyes.
Deekin psst'd at me. "That's it, Boss. That's all the money you got. Sorry."
Valen spoke up. "Use mine."
"You sure?"
"Yes." His red-tinged eyes were glued to the block, his jaw clenched so tight a vein stood out in his temple. "Take it. Use it. Then let us go. I cannot bear to watch this much longer."
"All right." Valen's stash got us an undernourished drow man, a badly beaten but still powerfully muscled human woman with auburn hair that was going white at the temples, and a young human girl with ash blonde hair and a face that looked like it'd be a stunner after a good wash and ten years – and I really didn't like the way that duergar eyed her.
Then my money and ten minutes were up, and I bowed out, taking my chits and my companions with me. "Thanks," I said to them, once I thought we were out of earshot of the rest of the scum. "Really."
Deekin looked a little glum. "Sure thing, Boss. But why we gotta do that?"
"Yes." Valen's voice was flat, and the red flicker in his eyes, not to mention the swift lash of his tail, spoke of a temper on the simmer. "I would like to know that, as well."
That didn't bode well, but I couldn't deal with it in the middle of the street. I looked around. "Not here," I warned. "Let's find somewhere quiet. Then we'll talk."
Valen was silent. Then he nodded grimly. "Lead on."
Some other auction-goers were drifting away from the block. I saw them heading up the street to a large building. Other people were going in and out of the doors of that building, too – people who moved with a purpose and awareness that the thralls here lacked. Better yet, I saw that the mindflayers were all giving that building a wide berth. It seemed like a place where visitors huddled and locals stayed out. Exactly what I'm looking for, in other words.
The space beyond the double-doors had the look of a tavern and meeting space, although it was barren in a way taverns never were – sparsely furnished, sparsely populated, and way too quiet for what was supposed to be a place of revelry. Everything was made of metal and stone, down to the chairs, and magelights shone from recesses in the ceiling and walls. We got a few looks as we entered. Some were curious, some weren't. None of them were particularly friendly. Valen returned their looks with glares and edged closer to me, hovering protectively.
I looked around. There was an empty bar with a golem behind it, a big silvery fellow with runes painted all over him. He didn't look much like a bartender, but then, Cupron didn't look like a chef, either, so I was willing to keep an open mind. Besides, in my experience the safest place in any bar was near the bartender. Nobody liked to piss off the person who was pouring their drinks. If we hung near him, maybe we'd get some peace and Valen could cool down.
I bellied up to the bar and slid onto a stool. Deekin climbed up onto the stool next to me. Valen remained standing. "Well met," I greeted the golem. "Are you the bartender around here?"
The golem looked down at me. He had a white towel slung over his shoulder. It was pristine. "Seven hundred and forty-nine years, seventeen days, three hours, and fourteen minutes ago, my creator thought this would be a good place to set up a bar," he intoned.
I looked up. I had to crane my neck. "And was it a good place to set up a bar?"
The golem's eye-lights turned on and off in a golem version of a slow blink. "No. You are the first one to ever ask me for service."
Deekin was scribbling busily. "Aw. That be so sad." He elbowed me without looking up from his notes. "Hey, Boss, maybe you could ask him for a drink. Cheer him up a little."
Valen was looking on with great skepticism. "Are you sure that is wise?"
I shrugged. "No, but the poor guy looks so sad, I'll do it anyway."
Valen looked at me as if I'd just shown him my first place ribbon from the 'Who's the Biggest Moron?' contest. "It is a golem."
"So?"
"So it is not capable of feeling sadness."
I smiled thinly. "Tell that to Ferron."
Valen didn't have an immediate answer for that, and after a moment, he shook his head. "Fine. They are your innards. Do as you see fit."
"Thank you, I will." I turned back to the bartender and slapped a hand briskly on the bar. "So. What's on tap?"
Without answering, the golem turned to the lone spigot on the bar, put a glass underneath it, and turned the spigot. There was a long pause. Then something brown came out of the spigot. It went gloop.
The glass scraped on the stone bar as the golem slid it across to me. "Enjoy," it rumbled morosely.
I stared down at the stuff in the glass. It had green streaks in it. "Thanks." I waited until he'd moved away, then spoke from the corner of my mouth. "I don't suppose either of you guys are willing to help me out here?"
Valen's voice was about as sympathetic as a hole in the head. "No, but if you have a potion of antidote, I can pour it down your throat once you have stopped convulsing."
First Quarra's commentary, and now this. I felt so loved. "Thanks, sunshine."
Valen had this way of quirking an eyebrow and cocking his head and smirking that could have charmed the pants off an ogress. "You are welcome, my lady."
I stared. That smirk was dangerous as hell, and the kicker was that he didn't even seem to know it. It made me prefer Imloth's smiles, in a way. Imloth knew the score. His flirtation was calculated, his charm practiced, and I could see it coming from a mile away, which gave me time to harden my heart against it. Valen, though –there was no defending against his kind of charm, because it was artless and sincere and a girl could never see it coming until it already had her flat on her back.
I realized that I was still staring. Good move, Rebecca. Stare at the man's lips. Brilliant move. I tore my eyes away. They fell on the golem. He, or maybe it, was wiping down the pristine bar with his pristine towel, but every so often he looked up at me. There was something hopeful yet dejected about him, like a puppy who was hoping that just this once he was going to get petted instead of kicked. I can't believe I'm doing this, I thought, and raised the glass.
The drink oozed down my throat. It was nothing I'd expected and everything I'd feared. My throat and stomach, quicker on the uptake than my brain, took one look, realized that I was consuming something not fit for human consumption, and rejected it, or tried to. I gagged, choked, and wheezed, all at once. Someone pounded my back. "Breathe," Valen's voice instructed. His tone tagged the statement with an unspoken, 'You idiot.'
I tried, but there was this slimy burning feeling all the way from my tongue to my stomach, like I'd just drunk bleach laced with garden slugs. Tears streamed down my face. Was it just me, or were the tears on fire? Maybe it was just me.
The bartender drifted over and mopped up an imaginary spill near my glass. "Did you enjoy your beverage?" he asked hopefully.
I coughed and sniffled and wiped my eyes and spoke in a croak. "'s good."
Fortunately for me, this golem was no better at spotting a lie than any other golem. He beamed. "It is my pleasure to serve." Then he went back to cleaning the spotless counter.
I waited until his back was turned, then pushed the glass away from me. "If either of you say 'I told you so', I'm making you drink the rest of that," I warned.
Deekin finished a sentence with a brisk jab of his quill. "Sure thing, Boss. Hey, could you describes the taste for Deekin? For posterity."
"No, I really can't."
"Awww. C'mon, Boss!"
"Use your imagination, Deeks." Me, I was going to try to forget ever drinking that, although the heaving in my stomach suggested that I had my work cut out for me there. I glanced at Valen. "Are you gonna sit?"
He stayed on his feet, one hand on his weapon. He'd long since graduated from the relaxed wrist-resting-on-the-hilt-of-his-flail stance, moved past the open grip that was his standard pose when he was just starting to get anxious, and was now in full on closed-grip, just-give-me-one-excuse-to-draw-this-thing mode. "No."
I sighed. "Fine. Suit yourself." I fished my claim tickets out of my pocket and put them on the counter to get a good look at them in this light. A good look made doubt creep in. The writing on them was just squiggles. For all I knew, all these tickets said was, "Up yours, human thrall!" Guess I'll find out. If all went well, though, I was now the proud owner of six people. This is so weird. I'd bought a lot of crazy things in my life, but people? That was a first.
A certain speaking silence tugged at my attention. I turned my head. Valen was standing next to me. He appeared to be stewing, and obviously had something to say. "All right. Spit it out, Valen."
The weapon master looked at me, his face grim. "Very well. Now that it is safer to speak, I would like to know what you intend to do with them."
No need to ask what he meant by 'them'. I looked around. No one was within earshot. I kept my voice low anyway. "Bring them with us, of course."
"Have you considered that, once free of their mindflayer masters, they may attempt to rebel – and that they outnumber us two to one?"
One of these days, I was going to be able to make a decision without him challenging me. Today, however, was obviously not that day. I sighed. "Okay. Three things."
Valen raised his eyebrows "Which are?"
I ticked the items off on my fingers. "One, you could probably kill them all in your sleep. Alone. Two, once we're out of here, we'll have Quarra. And three, once we leave here, we'll tell them the deal."
"And what is this deal?"
"The deal is, they're free." I had no intention of actually owning anybody. Buying them had just been the only way I could think of to get them out of here peacefully. "If they want, they can come with us to Lith My'athar for healing and food and rest, and from there…" I trailed off. I had no idea where to go from there. I rallied. "Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, I doubt they'll try to kill us once they understand they're not slaves anymore." Besides, they were so malnourished and traumatized that unless I treated them worse than the mindflayers had, they'd probably go along with anything, because anything was better than spending every day wondering whether today was the day your brains would get eaten.
Valen didn't give up. "And then what? If you bring them to Lith My'athar, they may very well die with the rest of us. Or be enslaved again."
I tightened my jaw mulishly. "Not if we win."
Valen's voice softened. "Not if we win," he agreed. Then he kept at me, because the man who'd survived Hell wasn't a man who knew how to quit. "But what do you plan to do with them in that case? The drow may be able to find a place for himself in the Underdark, but humans? An elf?"
Pain lanced through my head. "I'll bring them home."
"You? Alone?"
At that, I smiled. "I won't be alone."
Valen looked at my holy symbol and raised an eyebrow. His voice was flat. "I suppose you will say that your god will be with you."
My heart eased a little. "Shaundakul doesn't like cages. So, yeah, he'll be with me."
A scaly hand patted my arm. "So will Deekin." The bard gave me a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Boss."
Valen didn't touch me, but he did meet my eyes. His own eyes softened. "So shall I," he admitted. "If it comes down to that." He made a face. "You may have faith in your god, but I do not. Better to ensure that you have my sword arm. That, at least, I trust."
I turned to stare at him. One second he's telling me off, the next, he's volunteering to help me out. And he called me unpredictable. "I thought you disapproved of me doing this."
Valen shook his head. "Not so," he said softly. He cocked his head. "I think that you have not thought this through. But I cannot fault your compassion." His smile was faint, but reassuring. "I believe that your heart is in the right place."
His words stole mine right out of my throat, and all I could think of to say was, "Oh."
Valen plowed into my silence. "It is just that, sometimes, I wonder where your head is at."
I stared at him, then burst into laughter. "Don't hold back, Valen. Tell me what you really think."
He gave me a mocking little half-bow. "Thank you, I shall."
I shook my head, fighting a smile. "Well, first things first, we need to do what we came for and get out of here in one piece, or else the rest is moot." The golem was still hovering nearby. I eyed him speculatively. He was a golem, but he was also a bartender, and bartenders were always a good source of information. I turned to him. "Hey, uh..." I paused. "Say, do you have a name? I hate to keep calling you 'Hey, you'."
The golem turned his disconsolate stare on me. "My creator did not give me a name."
I was aware of Deekin's scratching quill. "Don't your customers call you something?"
If clinical depression could speak, it would sound like this golem. "I have no customers. Only you."
"All right. Well, I need to call you something. Can I call you Carl?"
The golem seemed to think. "If you wish," it conceded. Its eyes flickered. "New designation: Carl."
Valen was looking at me as if he was wondering where my head was at. Again. "Carl? You have decided to name that thing Carl?"
I shrugged and spoke sideways. "He looks like a Carl."
"No. He looks like a golem."
"No, he looks like a golem named Carl."
"That may be the most ridiculous statement I have heard from you yet, and I have heard quite a few of them by now."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Valen rolled his eyes. "Do as you please. Lady knows I cannot stop you."
I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him. "I will." I turned back to the golem. "So, Carl. Why aren't there any mindflayers in here? Don't they like your drinks?"
The golem stared at me blankly. "Error," he said. "Insufficient data. What is a mindflayer?"
I stared back. "You say you've been here for seven hundred years?"
"Seven hundred and forty-nine years, seventeen days, three hours, and twenty-one minutes," the golem corrected me.
"Right. And in all that time, have you ever left this building?"
The golem looked at the empty bar, then looked back at me. "No."
I'd passed a lot of time in bars, but seven hundred years were a little much, even for me. "Aren't you bored?"
The golem shrugged his massive adamantine shoulders. "I am a golem. I do not become bored." His pause was long, and gave me the impression that he was waiting for a thought that was coming from a very long way away. "Sometimes…sometimes I count the tiles."
"Does it help?"
"No. Not really."
Just behind my ear, I heard a pompous and slightly metallic 'ahem'. "If I may, I believe that I may be of some assistance at this juncture." There was a soft snort. "More so than this semi-sentient lump of metal, at any rate."
I craned my head around to eye Enserric's hilt. "You're saying you might know why there are no mindflayers in here?"
Enserric glittered, and I could have sworn I felt a smidgeon of smug pleasure, radiating from that little black glass sliver in the back of my head. "Quite." He affected a schoolteacherish tone. "This golem is a magical construct, you see. And magical constructs, like the undead, are either mindless or possessing of minds which are fundamentally unlike those of living beings. Thus, constructs and the undead are immune to the mindflayers' mental powers."
"Oh." That made more sense. "Well, that explains why everybody's sticking close to the golem."
Valen's eyebrow had lifted thoughtfully. "And you are both a magical construct and undead, if I understand your situation correctly," he mused, speaking to a point just over my left shoulder. "Thus making you well-nigh invisible to the illithid."
There was a long pause from Enserric. Then: "My, my, my. Brawn and brains. What an unusual combination." The sword lowered his voice, but not nearly enough. "Perhaps your luck is not so terrible as you thought, my wielder. Assuming you do not ruin it through your own idiocy, of course."
It was a shame Enserric was already dead, because if he hadn't been dead, I would have killed him. "I'm in an illithid city," I said, talking fast. I couldn't give Valen any time to think over the implications of what my blabbermouth sword had just, well, blabbered. "I wouldn't call myself lucky, and I'd say we need all brawn and brains we can get." Then I changed the subject. "Speaking of which, who is the brain of this whole operation? Do the illithid have an…overseer? A king? Somebody who tells them what to do?"
Deekin looked up from his notes. "That probably be the Elder Brain," he supplied. "Illithid pods always gots an Elder Brain. It know all the stuff they know, and it talk to other Elder Brains and they tell the other illithid what to do."
I had to work some spit back into my mouth before I could ask the next question. "Okay. Where is it?"
The bard eyed the lizard men at their table. "Dunno, but those guys over there was just complaining about it."
I didn't look. "You understood them?"
"Sure. They be speaking a kind of draconic." The kobold sniffed disapprovingly. "Not the right kind. They be messing it all up. But Deekin understands it, sure."
I should have known. The bard was an information sponge, and he picked words up especially fast. "What were they complaining about?"
"They was just complaining that they not be allowed in the inner ring, 'cause that where the Elder Brain's sanctum be." Deekin's eyes glittered, not in a friendly way. "They be greedy and stupid. They thinks the mindflayers maybe be hiding something, like the good slaves, or treasure."
My skin crawled. "Did they say anything else?"
"Not really. Just more complaining, mostly about the cold and how much they misses their stupid smelly swamp."
I chewed on my lip. "Does the Elder Brain ever have visitors?"
A thoughtful rumble came from behind the bar. It came from the golem, who spoke very slowly, as if working his way through a new and unfamiliar thought. "Yes. There…was one."
I spun on my barstool so fast that I almost whipped around in a full circle, and had to put my hands out to catch myself on the edge of the bar. "Wait? What? Who?"
A voice muttered in my left ear. "Whom."
This time, I didn't even bother to look around. "Shut up, Enserric."
Valen cleared his throat. "Does he do that often?"
"Do what?"
"Correct your grammar."
I sighed. "All the damn time."
"Ah? In that case, I admire your endurance."
"How so?"
Valen's voice was dust-dry. "If that were my sword, I would have fallen on it by now."
A grin sprang to my lips, unbidden. "The idea has crossed my mind."
Enserric harrumph'ed. "Very funny, you two."
I patted the sword's pommel condescendingly. "I thought so." I turned my attention back to the golem. "Sorry for the interruption, Carl. Who came to see the Elder Brain?"
The golem answered haltingly, still as if he was trying some unfamiliar thoughts on for size. "Unknown. They…did not offer…their designation. They merely…spoke. Of their intent."
I tried to find my patience. Unfortunately, it seemed to have gone off to wherever my good sense was hiding. "Fine. What did they look like?"
Carl thought about that for a while. "A drow," he said at last. He didn't sound entirely sure about that. "It came with…two? Two other drow." Another long pause. "I remember it…because it killed one of the other drow. That is how I remember." Something like disapproval colored the golem's toneless voice. "I remember because it took me one hour, thirty-two minutes, and eighteen seconds to remove all of the blood from the tiles."
I remembered the lady with the bloody whip, and swallowed hard. "Yeah. That sounds like someone we know, all right." Which meant that the Valsharess had been here, and she'd spoken to the Elder Brain, which meant that it was possible to get in if we made it interesting enough – maybe by offering better terms than the Valsharess could, though I still wasn't sure what those might be. I nodded at the golem. My bartender hadn't been very informative, but then, he wasn't much of a bartender. He was a hell of a sight nicer than anyone else I'd met here so far, though, so I gave him my best smile and said, "Thanks for the information. You've been very helpful."
The golem blinked again and looked down, almost shyly. "You are welcome." He polished the counter awkwardly, then asked, "Will you have another drink?"
My smile didn't budge, although the rest of my face did try to pull away from it. "I've been trying to cut back. Thanks."
Fortunately, the golem was as literal as his cousins, and took me at my word. He nodded. "It has been a pleasure to serve you," he intoned, and trudged away to do the dishes. One dish, anyway.
Valen watched him go, thoughtful. "I wonder…"
He didn't need to explain. I'd had the same thought. The similarities were a little too striking. "You think maybe he's one of the Maker's?"
Valen frowned and nodded. "Yes. A prototype, perhaps. It might explain why this golem is slightly more self-aware than most."
I shrugged. "Ferron said the Maker died about five hundred years ago." Dwarves and duergar could live two, three-hundred years. "If you figure it took the Maker most of his adult life to get these guys built, the timing works." I thought about that and grinned. "Could be fun to introduce him to the others, then. Think we could talk him into coming back with us?"
Valen's expression went into grumpy lockdown. "No."
"Aw, c'mon…"
"No."
Deekin's quill had long since stopped moving. Now it drooped from his fingers. "We gots to talk to the Elder Brain, don't we?"
My mood deflated. I forced my voice to stay steady. "No surprise there." The Valsharess had struck her deal high up. We were going to have to do the same. Petitioning Joe Illithid for an alliance would get us about as far as calling a customer service hotline. What we needed to do was to crash the CEO's yacht party and catch him right when he was so high he'd sign anything we stuck in front of him. "We want results, we're going to have go to the top."
"Yeah, but Deekin was kinda hoping there be another way."
"So was I." I touched my circlet. What if I do have to take this off? There were things in my mind I really didn't want these guys to see. Deekin had said that the mindflayers had once had an empire that spanned worlds, and every living soul on those worlds had been slaves to them. As far as I knew, my world had never been one of them. It had always been safe, tucked away in its little corner of the Prime, unnoticed and unaware. Would the Elder Brain see it? Would it care, or would it dismiss my world as too unimportant and too far away from everything to be worthy of its attention? "Deeks?"
"Yeah?"
"Can mindflayers read all of your thoughts?" I swallowed. "Like, even the ones you're not thinking?"
The bard scratched his snout pensively. "Ummm. It depends, Deekin be thinking."
"On what?"
Deekin shrugged. "On how hard they looks."
Valen spoke up. "I have heard that psionics can easily scan your surface thoughts, but it takes them time and focus to delve more deeply."
"How about Elder Brains?"
Valen hesitated. "Elder Brains are looked upon as gods by the illithid. No doubt they can see further than most. How far, I do not know."
I grimaced and lowered my voice to a mutter. "As long as they can't see clear to another world, that's all I'm saying."
Valen looked briefly startled. Then, slowly, he nodded. "Ah. I see your concern." His eyes met mine. They were penetrating. He knew. "We can always leave. The illithid are implacable foes. There is no shame in retreat, if you feel that the risks of this endeavor outweigh the potential rewards."
My mouth twisted. "Yeah, and then what?"
Valen shrugged. "Draw up battle plans that include strategies to counter psionic attacks. It will not be the first time, nor is it necessarily doomed to failure. The races of the Underdark are ever at war with one another, and I have fought alongside enough cerebreliths to know where their weaknesses lie."
I hesitated. Then I shook my head. "I'm not giving up that easy." I'd had enough of failure in my life. "I'm here. I'm going to try to get in there. Then..." I swallowed. I couldn't tell if the roiling in my stomach was fear or just my ill-advised drink mounting a counterattack. "…then we'll see what happens."
Valen went bolt upright. "You?" He'd obviously caught onto my use of the singular instead of the plural. His voice rose. "Alone?"
"Yes." If I said it quick, like ripping off a bandage, I could just about say it without losing my nerve. "All it really needs is one person." Quarra would be able to take them home. There was still time before the Valsharess came for us. Nathyrra could reach out to the other settlements. The Seer could find another savior. If nothing else, Valen could drill his forces until they were ready to storm the gates of Hell, if only to get away from him. And I wouldn't have to live with the guilt I'd feel if my hare-brained scheme got Valen and Deekin killed. "There's no reason for you two to risk your skins-"
Valen's eyes had gone wide. "Are you dancing with slaadi?" he burst out. His tail whapped into the rungs of a stool, almost getting entangled in the process. He didn't seem to notice. "What madness is this? There is no way I am leaving you to face an Elder Brain alone!"
I gritted my teeth. "Yes, you are."
"No, I am not."
"Are too."
"Not."
"Too."
Deekin's head whipped back and forth like he was watching a tennis match.
"Not."
"For fuck's sake, Valen, could you not argue with me, just this once?"
The tiefling folded his arms over his chest and glared at me. "No."
I fought back the urge – no, the need – to throw my head back and scream wordlessly at the sky. "Fine." My voice came out as a snarl. I leaned forward. "But you have to promise me that you'll get Deekin out of there, if I can't."
Deekin yelped. "Oh, hey, now, Boss, just wait a minute…"
Valen hesitated. Then he nodded. "Very well. I swear to you that if you fall, I will do my utmost to save him." His face tightened grimly. "But only if you are lost beyond all hope."
Little kobold teeth shone. "Oh, no you guys don't…"
I turned to the bard, pleading in my voice. "Please don't argue with me, Deeks. I promised myself I'd make sure you'd outlive ol' Tiktak. Don't make me break that promise."
The bard's black eyes narrowed to slits. "Deekin make promises too, you know. He promise he watch out for Boss. Or don't Deekin's promises count? Maybe they just be little kobold promises, so not important like big human promises, huh?"
I stared at him like he was a lap poodle who'd suddenly morphed into a hellhound. "It's not that…"
"Oh, it so is." The bard grabbed his book and quill and bag and hopped down, his little face set in determination. "Nope. Not this time, Boss. You not leaving Deekin behind again. Deekin coming with you. Whether you likes it or not."
I looked back and forth between the tiefling and the kobold. They both looked back, resolute and immovable as a pair of concrete pylons, and I didn't know whether to scream or cry or hug them or pour the golem's horrible drink on both their heads.
Eventually, and at a loss for anything else to say in response to this breathtaking display of barminess on both their parts, I settled on just one word - but I said it with feeling. "Shit."
The central dome of the city hovered over the inner ring like a blimp, and as I came closer, I saw that it wasn't even a dome at all. It was a sphere, but not a perfect one, more lumpy, and it was made of some gray substance with a pinkish sheen to it and veins of red running all through it. It looked, I thought, like an enormous brain. My skin crawled. I looked away.
There was a circular platform beneath the sphere, and another mindflayer hovering in the center of it. This one was different. It was taller, for starters, and its skin wasn't purplish-gray, but a purple so dark it was almost black. Its tentacles were longer, two, with the two longest reaching almost the entire length of its body. Those tentacles lifted as we approached, kind of like a hungry diner might lift his fork and knife as the waiter arrived with his food.
Deekin jabbed my leg. "That be an ulitharid," he squeaked. "Be very, very careful, Boss. They be seriously bad news."
No fucking shit? That thing had more bad news written all over it than the front page of the Times. My steps slowed, in spite of my best efforts. I really do not want to go over there.
Valen drew close enough to whisper in my ear. His voice was soft as silk, and I could feel his breath tickle the back of my neck. "Do not be afraid. I am right behind you."
My skin tingled, and my thoughts veered wildly to places they really shouldn't have gone. Whoa. Bad timing, Rebecca. Cut it out. On the bright side, now the pounding of my heart wasn't entirely from terror. Was that an improvement? I couldn't even tell anymore. The Underdark had warped my perspective until right was left, up was down, and everything I took for fixed and certain was flying off into the firmament like pop rockets.
Gritting my teeth – if I had any molars left by the time this was over, it'd be a miracle - I moved forward. Can't stop. Gotta keep moving. Come on. Don't chicken out, you dumb bitch. People are counting on you.
The ulitharid watched me approach. Before I could set foot on the platform, it held up a hand. Its fingers were long, webbed, and tipped with hooked black nails. That is far enough, thrall. Its voice rang in my head, imperious and cold. This is the entrance to the Elder Concord, the sanctum of the Elder Brain. You are not allowed here. Return to the outer ring with others of the thrall races.
I had to work some spit back into my mouth before I could speak. "I'm here to talk with the Elder Brain." I found a smile somewhere. "I've got an offer I think it might like to hear."
The ulitharid looked at me the way a scientist might look at a bacteria under a microscope – vaguely interested, but wondering if I might not be more interesting if it put me in a tube of something caustic. None of the thrall race can speak with the Elder Brain. Tell me your business, and I can relay your message for you.
There was really no point to concealing it. "I'm here to talk about the Valsharess."
The ulitharid made no sign of acknowledgment, but went still for a long moment. Then it gave a twitch, almost of surprise, and for the first time it actually looked at me. How interesting. The Elder Brain says you are to be given access to the Elder Concord. The mindflayer's hand turned with a slow, awful grace until one wicked finger was pointing to the crown on my head. But you cannot enter while you wear the item that shields your thoughts.
I stared back, trying to read that damn squid face. Just like that? Take your hat off and step right into my office? That was too easy. What the hell was going on? Were they just planning to lure me in and eat me, or was the Elder Brain really that interested in a chit-chat about a certain would-be queen?
Blood pounded in my ears. This wasn't the rush of adrenaline, but the clammy, shrinking flush of fear. This was madness. No. Not madness. The Valsharess had been here. She'd faced this. She'd come out alive. If I couldn't do the same, then what was I even doing here? No. If I was going down, I wanted to go down with a scream, not a whimper.
Besides, I had something the Valsharess didn't have.
I reached out and in, towards the sliver of ice lodged in my brain stem. Enserric. Even inside my own head, I sounded nervous. Are you awake?
The sword's response was immediate. Wide awake and soiling myself in terror. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
What do you have to be afraid of? They can't see into your mind, can they?
Mine, no. But, given our connection, I do not know what it will do to me if your brains get devoured, wielder – and I have no desire to find out.
Fine. Just stay sharp.
Enserric's voice was smug. Naturally.
Valen's voice was so much nicer to listen to it really wasn't fair. "Are you certain you wish to do this?"
Certainty was for the birds. All I had was a hope and a prayer. "Y-yeah." I wasn't sure, I was never sure, but if I was sure of anything, it was that it was better to risk everything on a bad hand than to fold and lose and wonder whether I might have eked out a win after all. "You?"
Valen had all the certainty I didn't. "Yes."
At least one of us was certain. "All right, then," I said, and reached up and removed my crown.
The ulitharid saw and nodded and stepped aside, beckoning with a spidery hand. You may enter.
I stared at the platform. Then I nodded and stepped up.
The world shifted.
There was something in my head.
The memories and knowledge of a thousand minds flooded mine. If I'd had any sense of having a body, I thought my body might have been driven to its knees.
Babble tore through my head. Images bombarded it, shifted, then wavered into focus.
I saw a gray-pink thing in a vat. It was pulsing. Men and women of every race surrounded it, kneeling, caressing it with slavish care.
Then a voice spoke, and a million voices echoed behind it, as if they were all speaking at once across some endless void. You have been given access to the inner sanctum - a rare privilege for a thrall.
I had a body. I knew I did. I tried to focus on it, felt skin and flesh and blood and pulse. There were other bodies by me, one small and one large. Deekin. Valen. A voice rasped from a throat I wasn't entirely sure was mine. "Who are you?"
A million voices answered as one. We are the overmind.
It was enormous. It was drowning me. This had been a very big mistake. "What do you want?"
All the voices were amused. To speak. Was that not what you wanted?
I didn't know what I'd wanted, but it sure as hell wasn't this. "Yes. No." There was a hand on my shoulder. Reflexively, I lifted to cover it with my own. It was warm, scar-roughened, and real. I focused on it like a dying woman on her regrets. "Yes. I wanted to talk. About the Valsharess."
We know. We can see your thoughts, thrall. We see you are an enemy of the Valsharess, and you know the illithid are her allies. You wish to renegotiate her terms.
I was outmatched. I could only answer honestly. "Yes."
Then we may speak. We must make you aware, however, that Zorvak'Mur is only a small part of a larger whole. Throughout the Underdark, the Overminds of many illithid pods have pledged allegiance to the Valsharess. We Overminds now act as one Elder Concorde. Only a consensus of all the Overminds linked through the Elder Concorde can end our alliance with the Valsharess.
There was no need to consider its words. They were seared straight into my understanding, not even bothering with the slow, dull passage from my ears through my nerves to my brain. "So what do I have to do to convince them?"
You? A million voices laughed. You? Nothing. A thrall could never convince the Elder Concorde of anything...but we of the Zorvak'Mur Overmind could sway the Concorde to abandon the Valsharess.
I was a speck in a vast and indifferent universe. I stood and asked the questions I had to, because I had to, because it was my place as a speck to ask the questions and hear the answers. "How?"
The explanation arrived in an instant. The illithid detest the drow; they are fit only to serve as thralls. Yet we have been forced to follow the Valsharess and her army of dark elves despite our hatred of them. We illithid only follow the Valsharess because many of our pods are not strong enough to stand against her. If you gave us the power to oppose her, we could withdraw our support.
I asked again. "How?"
We once captured a thrall from a strange village here in the Underdark. An image flashed in my mind – an elf, fine-boned and white-winged. I was standing over him, looking down. His face was disorted strangely, his eyes rolled up until the whites were all that were showing. Blood rimmed his lashes and spilled down his cheeks like tears. From the thrall's mind we learned of a powerful artifact - a magic mirror that the winged elves used to spy on their enemies. Such an artifact would give us the power to stand against the Valsharess.
Even washed in the waves of that voice, I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing. "You want me…to give you…the mirror?"
The nightmare chorus sounded almost reasonable. You must look at this logically. Your enemy is the Valsharess. By making us stronger, we can oppose her will. This will make her weaker.
Fingers tightened on the shoulder I was barely aware that I had. A voice rasped. "And once…you have that power…you will use it…to destroy this world. No. No deal, mind-hacker."
I held onto that voice like a lifeline. It was attached to the hand on my shoulder. I held onto that, too. "No deal," I agreed. Thoughts trickled through the voice – my own thoughts, seeping through the cracks the voice had opened in me. I thought of the dead woman with laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. "You're even worse than her." At least the Valsharess only killed people. She didn't destroy their minds. There wasn't much left of me, but what was left of me, the core that still stood after that voice blasted everything else away, stood firm. "I won't help you."
The voice caught me, held me. Yes. You will.
I tried to move and found that I couldn't. Distant rage flickered. "Let me go."
The voice ignored my demand. Instead, it stretched its tentacles towards my heart, where Shaundakul's gift shone like a tiny sun. You have power, thrall – power enough to span the Planes. There was a sensation of speed, of wind, of doors spinning open from nothing and vast distances being traversed in an instant. Such power is wasted on a thrall. You barely understand it. We do. We will put it to better use. It took on a wheedling tone. Give yourself to us. It will not hurt, we promise.
Something howled in my ears. It sounded like the wind. "No." That gift wasn't mine to give, nor theirs to take.
Something reached out towards my mind. The voice – the voices – rose like a tidal wave. Yes.
The waves rose.
I went under.
