As Jaheira and Jan walked, they didn't see much except for endless stretches of rushing water faintly glowing by the magelight Jan had summoned. The small light was the only refuge in a darkness that tasted bitter and salty on the tongue and was offensive to smell. They moved slowly, placing their feet carefully on the storm drain as they passed through.
It was a slog and no mistake; Jaheira thought they must have crossed halfway across the city. But there was no sign of danger; Jan knew this path well, all the ways that the Thieves and the creatures below avoided. To hear him tell it, so did an endless litany of distant relations to the third cousin twice removed; he whiled away the hours in a near-constant stream of chatter, much of which Jaheira suspected was entirely made up.
She gave up early on trying to sift the truth from the fanciful tales and let the words wash over her as the water in the storm drain flowed over her wet feet.
Finally, after several hours, they came to the final turn, down a small stone tunnel dimly lit with a single magelight. This tunnel, which Jan said was on the way to the Coronet, opened on the right to a broader space full of still water, with brown muck lining the walls and air so foul that Jaheira's eyes began to water.
"I must admit, you are well acquainted with this place," Jaheira said, blinking and resisting the urge to rub her eyes. "I have to wonder what danger along this path warranted an escort."
"First, you can never be too careful, as my aunt Lobelia always used to say. Second, this is the dangerous part. Stop here — the air gets hard to breathe unless I start the pump."
He leaped up, finding footholds in the thin gaps between the bricks, and climbed eight feet on the side, touching one overhead stone. It briefly glowed green, then faded.
Beneath their feet, a great behemoth seemed to heave as a brick slid aside to reveal a sluice. The tainted water stirred, flowing downwards and pouring in, feeding machinery that breathed as deeply as a dragon, exhaling through either end of the tunnel. As the breaths grew more profound, the wind in the tunnel picked up, blowing down either side until they converged in the intersection and gusting down the mucky tunnel to the right, practically shearing through Jaheira and Jan's wet clothes.
"Give it some time to work, and then we'll need to make it fast," Jan said. "The pump doesn't work long, and the residents don't like being bothered."
"What residents?" Jaheira said.
"Well, I don't mean to startle you," Jan said, pointing a finger, "but there's one of them."
Jaheira turned towards where he was pointing, holding her staff into a guard.
In the dim light, lurching into view, was a chuul.
It was a great, four-legged beast shaped like an overgrown lobster, easily looming over Jaheira and snapping its pincers in warning, boasting an armor of mottled green-brown chitin. But its tentacles, dripping with paralyzing venom, were much too small for its overgrown body, more like tiny fingers that grew from the base of scabbed-over stumps.
Though it didn't open its mouth, it moaned creakily. The sound pierced like a lance into Jaheira's mind, tearing into her brain as soon as she laid eyes upon the thing. She steadied herself with her staff, then tried to recover, readying herself for a strike that would slip between its armor plates —
The chuul's pincer took hold of her, picking her up as quickly as a person might a doll, and lowered itself towards the tentacles streaming from its mouth.
The jagged edges of the pincers squeezed her horribly, but Jaheira's hands remained tightened around her spear. She held it, pointed down towards the thing's eyes and mouth, and tried to focus. If she could change shape, she'd easily be out of this mess —
The creature brought her down. She aimed her spear towards its eye and just missed, the tip of her spear bouncing off the carapace on its head. She held onto it tightly, but just barely.
An illusory image of Jan detached itself from his body and was barraging the chuul with a colorful array of spells as it lightly skipped to and fro.
The creature moaned again, shredding any mental walls Jaheira had in place. It lurched to one side, trying to capture the false image in its other pincers, and she cried out in pain as she swung inside the chuul's pincers.
Another alien intelligence spoke inside her mind, but she had little power to resist it. It said one word, low, growling: "Enough."
The chuul brought Jaheira down until she was suspended just above the water.
Approaching the three of them was an illithid, dressed in worn black robes with gold trimmings. It floated above the water, not skimming the surface, looking down on Jaheira and Jan.
The illusory image of Jan disappeared, and he said, "Look, I can try to explain — "
The illithid looked down upon Jaheira, its four mottled mauve tentacles squirming hungrily. Its voice echoed inside her mind: "The gnome has safe conduct, but I made no such pledge to you, half-elf. Tell me why my companion and I should not feast upon your brains and body."
Jaheira said, between gasps: "I am here on behalf of the Enlightened Ones."
"What was the sign you were given?"
The chuul's grip relaxed a little, and Jaheira recalled the password spoken at the painting of Elminster in the Jysstev estate: "No more stinging insects and slithering vipers; the pyre is nigh."
The claw fully unlocked, and Jaheira rolled off, falling nearly face-down into the muck.
"You have been invited into their counsels, then." The mind flayer's voice echoed in her mind again, its tone both puzzled and amused. "I am troubled that you know of my connection to them, but since you have an aura of usefulness, I will let it stand."
"Just as well, Hidden One," Jan said. "We'll pass through and be on our way — mostly, we'd like to know what happened to Kring."
"He displeased me," the Hidden One said. The illithid's tentacles twitched again. "The incessant noise he gave wore upon my nerves, even after I asked him to cease. That is all I will say on the matter."
Jan waded over to Jaheira and offered her a hand. "Come on."
She took it, painfully getting to her feet. She ran her hand over where the chuul's claws had held her — it'd put a good dent in her leather armor, but she wasn't injured. Perhaps this was its idea of gentle handling, though she somehow doubted this creature was capable of such a thing.
As they made their way down the tunnel, away from the stench and the muck and towards harder ground and running water, Jan started the thread of conversation again: "You said there was this cursed sword you're looking for. Kring had it. Sounds like it wouldn't stop talking, to the point it got him killed. Just like what happened with Cousin Bealoo back in '52 — "
"Wait," Jaheira said. "You said this sword was cursed but also talked nonstop?"
"Aye, that was the curse. I fished the thing out from where Mae'Var dumps his castaways, down in that sewer where the kobolds live," he said. "But, Gond only knows why Kring wanted it, said it'd be a good 'companion' or some such. I don't see how, as the sword only talked about killing things, but Kring wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer if you get my drift.
"I haven't heard its voice anywhere in this tunnel; someone must have moved it. But I don't see how anyone could have stumbled upon the sword by accident — Kring never made it to the Coronet, and if anyone picked it up here, they'd have to know how to use the back entrance and the pump."
Or simply be able to live and move in the foul air, Jaheira thought. As for the sword itself, she knew of only one that matched that description.
"That should be enough for me to go on," she said. "Shall you need further assistance from here?"
"No, that should be all. I'll be on my way," Jan said with a bow. "And incidentally, friend, if you know of anyone who needs a bit 'o merchandise — especially the exploding kind — send them my way. I live in the gnomish neighborhood not too far from here. Ask around for the turnip stand. Goodbye!"
And with that, he turned right down the pathway towards the Copper Coronet, passing nimbly through the rushing water and disappearing down a long tunnel into the darkness.
She took the same path he followed, somewhat absorbed in thought but taking care not to slip in the patches of algae that lined the storm drain. She'd seen no sign of sewer snakes or other creatures — no doubt the chuul startled nearly everything else away from this part of the city's bowels.
Of course, the Enlightened Ones hadn't been able to track Larry — the sword had been outside Athkatla for the better part of the last month. And if Larry, or Lilarcor as its proper name was, had been hanging on Mae'Var's wall without any precautions, they had reason to be concerned.
They thought the sword knew something, but what? And if she had divined the sword's true nature from the little guidance, she was given, what would happen once she delivered it into their hands?
She wanted to know the answer to the first question, but she was beginning to have doubts about the second.