Seemed ye couldn't so much as trip over a gravestone in Athkatla boneyard without whining paladins too sad to detect ye nicking their purses, fool young nobles buried alive, murdered hin ghosts asking for lost teddy bears, funerals for orphan brats with useless Lathanderians, Netherese liches the mad mage kept asking for tea, and the vampire guild that bitch Lairilow'd wanted eyes kept on.
Harper situation'd improved; on the streets they said there'd been a second fight at the estate, red-robed wizard and some Order-bootlicking Helmite flinging spells, and then they'd carried out bodies. The Bhaalspawn was in Athkatla, just like the Harper bitch told it.
"Let's not trouble to seek him out," Viconia said. "He was always an empty-headed fool. Why should he have eyes for the spoilt ugly human child? It would have been less insulting for him to favour some fair vapid do-gooding darthiir or some crusading Harper half-breed mongrel when he travelled with me."
"Red robes," Xzar said, "that could mean a colleague of mine...the Thayvian Red Conjurer. No respect for the school of divination at all. I suppose in other ways we're natural foes. He'd rather read scrolls than write them, but he's rather good at reading."
"I do remember that jaluk," Viconia said, spreading her legs and arching her back. "The legendary prowess of Thayvian males...or so he liked to boast." Had she made time for the whining lout? Hard to tell with her.
The Copper Coronet'd changed since the last time in the city: for the worse, since Madame Nin's brothel and the fighting pits had disappeared as if they'd never been there, and for the better, since stout longlimb complaining squires of the Order weren't standing in the corner making nuisances of themselves. Montaron had stabbed the Night Knife in the second room to the right with some prejudice, and slipped a bloodied teddy bear into the mad wizard's pack, for Xzar would be one to carry such a thing. The necromancer knew ghosts; he'd figure it out.
"You can see it quite well from here." The necromancer slid his gnome's seeing-gadget back into his sleeve and turned back from the edge of the Coronet's rooftop, overgrown with mouldy plants and strewn with rough planking. "It's too bad about the sealing. But there's a part in the Weave surrounding the structure that's inescapably designated as an ingress point."
"It bores me," Viconia announced, her back rounded against a selection of winding vines. "A dirty establishment; I have no doubt that its entertainments were not worth the partaking when they existed."
"Mad-mage, we're not in the business of gratifying your curiosity over what's no matter to the Keep," Montaron said. Guards surrounded the sphere of the slums; he'd no doubt that he could get in past them—especially in some night, with human sight blind as it was—but he wasn't working free.
"I've taken care of that," Xzar said, and glanced back and forth. "We have an appointment."
The air crackled behind him. Montaron's sword was in his hand the next moment, and he lunged toward the wizard from thin air and hoped he'd have split her before a spell came out of her mouth. He stopped short; she was human, and dressed like a Cowlie.
"Adventurers," she said, giving the drow a nervous look that made her seem younger than her pockmarked face gave out. "Master Tolgerias... You were indeed upon his records. His personal records."
"And he's the one who went and vanished in that edifice," Xzar said, nodding and smiling. "For in some bureaucratic nonsense over licences we were hired to recover Lord Corthala the mage-slayer." Bureaucratic nonsense over a Zhent-forged licence that the mad mage had the bright idea could be linked up to the other ones and check all the magic in the city at once—as fool as it was mad. Yet somehow he'd figured that Tolgerias was the Cowlie in that place. If the work involved bloodying his blade to the hilt on a few cocky magelings Montaron thought he'd do it for a few gold.
"I have tried to open it myself," the woman said. "If you cannot I'll have you taken in by the Cowled Wizards for your crimes in Trademeet. Jermien was enlightening enough on that point." An amateur's hand at threats. Montaron kept his hand around the hilt of his blade and smiled up at her.
This would be bloodthirsty.
—
"—Demon hearts," Viconia said, still limping beside him, "and that is what we must measure up to."
Demon hearts Tolgerias had dragged up and stuck dripping in the machine, where the other mad necromancer was fool enough to design six giant golems on a raised platform miles above adamant floor below. Prayer and finger-wiggling couldn't pierce their hides; a bit of well-placed grease could set the heavy iron ones crushing the stone and clay even before the whole mess smashed to the ground. He'd congratulate himself for it right enough.
"Sleep spell, mad mage," Montaron said; the drow could command those that outlasted. Were he alone, he'd get past again by simpler methods. The guards fell. Tolgerias' animated body walked past the mad wizard. Xzar's face was hidden below the faintly glowing parts of the sphere he carried, some component of its engine that he'd made to keep buzzing. In Tolgerias' hands Corthala's shrivelled head sizzled and flickered into dry dust in the doorway, and so did the vial of blood Xzar had squeezed out of the lining of Montaron's pack.
"You murdered my master," the Cowlie girl snarled. Snapping blue fire danced around her feet, and it was after they'd already gone to the trouble of setting the guards asleep.
"He died from his own overarrogance, female, do not repeat his mistakes," the drow told her.
That had her hesitating—but it were better to close off loose ends. These pair of Cowlies had their own little private project; theirs to blame. Montaron slipped into the darkness while the drow and the wizard made their distractions.
"I'm afraid—I really don't believe you," she said. The fireball bloomed over the mage and the priestess. Too bad Viconia'd already conjured up some ointment that salved against mageburns. The shield dancing around the mageling would feel like plunging into ice spears, Montaron knew; but without a dispelment he'd have to. The Cowlie took a decent move for her second and started her eyes blazing with the white that found folk rushing at her: trouble was, it didn't stop folk rushing at her. Montaron stabbed, and below her robes her flesh was softer than Viconia's. She froze his legs stiff then went for a potion on her belt, trying to hold her guts together. Then the drow aimed good with a crossbow to the eye. Around 'em, not like there wouldn't be folk come to eyeball the Cowlie's fireballing, traces that'd lead the mages to avenge a death—
Xzar dropped Tolgerias' body and a piece of golem by it like they'd fought over the Sphere, hit the apprentice's wounds with magefire, and they headed off fast under the drow's cloud of darkness.
"Shar grants me the powers of darkness I lost," she said. "Great Shar, my prayers for your loss to reign..."
...And that could, or not, explain what in all the Nine Hells the two of them were doing with boots sinking into a fleshy, sewer-tainted mass in the depths below Athkatla, listening to sacrificial screams from the dark pit not far from the blind beholder.
"I have to show my faith in Shar," Viconia whispered down at him. They'd found out what it was: no longlimb hustler but an eye tyrant floating in the air with jagged teeth and stalks growing out of its fat skin. A milky-white central eye: and the stalks drooped like there was something off with them too. He'd been bold enough to test the floating groinfruit with a series of Athkatlan hand-gestures; and not one of it or its minions noticed them. "She will guide me."
"Helps those who help themselves," Montaron said. He jerked a dirty thumb at the acolytes milling about seeing hide nor hair of them. Mostly human; one or two hin, which suited him fine to blend in, and a few half-breeds. "They're the same as the peeping-cullion. Easy rigging."
"Oh, very well," she told him. "Do what you must. Shar favours that they have a special captive this day."
Some paladin meddling where he shouldn't, chained up and hauled in and questioned, took five of them to keep him down even as he was. Never said a word, to give him credit: only calls to his deity, pleas for the cultists to repent, cryings-out to some biddy called Maria.
"The likes of him would watch me burn," Viconia said harshly; and the likes of the paladin would watch him and Xzar hang. Montaron did his work. The eye tyrant had the eyes plucked out over a fancy bottomless magepit, seething darkness where noises down at the bottom weren't easy to hear. There were the like of the creature supposed to be with the Zhent higher-ups, but he'd nothing to do with them; and there were the like in the Underdark, but he suspected Lady Muck of the noble drow tended to send out her humble servants for ridding herself of them. Here he'd carried out their setup and got together their killing for Talosian gold.
The paladin saw him coming out of the shadows and to the lip above that bottomless pit where the pair of priests held him. They hadn't blinded him in both eyes like themselves; one open black eye gave out that holy fool's stare that made you feel turned inside-out. Behind him Viconia breathed softly out, as if it hurt her worse. The beholder's tendrils crept across the longlimb's skin. They'd throw him, and that always put off balance. And in that holy fool's glare came something as if he wanted the eye-'nad gone the same, trying to move broken limbs. He'd the pair of priests halfway falling over with him.
Easy as nicking barleysugar from a blind baby.
Spring at the priests from their blindness; knock 'em over where they leaned—and let the paladin drag them down, for he knew the do-gooder's type and didn't trouble to give the knight a last glance to let him fall. Montaron straightened up and went to his thief's trap before the other longlimbs had time to help their floating bollock. Then came oil, feathers, and in a dive upward to the shocked beholder's bobbing, a rotten egg up the noseslits. Then take up the crossbow and shoot a bolt to smash it open and pin it there. The bright lights skimmed past him, the beams from the eyes that stunned and stone-froze and burned. Blind critters got to use their other senses: and in burning heat and stinking smoke it'd not an idea where to aim. One of its own followers froze mid-yell into stone and another, struck by green, was there one moment and not the next. He'd have strangled Xzar's skinny neck for dragging him into a magefight with that kind of spell going on.
The drow got up and made a noise across the pit. "Water to douse your flames, master!" she cried, while Montaron sought the cover of some good rocks. The followers moved like they were one, praying and heading to the master calling them. "Sweet ointment to soothe the smells!" Viconia beckoned, and stuck a command's voice in there. The Unseeing Bollock started to her, wobbling side to side like it'd suddenly got drunk. Exactly as they needed it. Viconia called again like she was some enchantress, and it was levitating near the lip of that magic-dead cliff while a beam from its eyes struck the edge of the rock Montaron hid behind. He loaded his second bolt; still time for the plan. A bit of cold iron were only inconvenience to the like of the creatures, but this one was good right for the eyes. The weighted crossbow bolt thrummed across the gap to the milky space of the blind eye in the dark; and what it didn't do was kill.
The beholder shifted backward enough above the pit: and that gave away the levitation. Fell like a stone, and Montaron grinned in satisfaction until a spell hit him and sent him half-stunned to his knees, and the ground started shaking like a stone troll's death-throes somewhere deep below.
The blind priests marched on with their prayers gathered around them as strong as the drow's, for all their flying prick-gem was dead. Plan's second part: string-pulling and plate-smashing as good as any Viconia could make sound out in one of her worst tantrums, and while his hands were shaking the sound rang out and got them to the other part of the room. Viconia ran around the pit like a hunting-cur on two legs, and instead of her plan of praying to Shar to soak up all the spell-flaring they ignored her for long enough. She'd leave him behind if he couldn't get his legs to work fast enough. He cut his way through one that stood in his way with a long stab to the gut.
Out the doors, two blind guards there with raised spears; and the drow pulled a hold spell while he shouldered the iron doors into place. Wait for their prayers to die down and hope the wedge held them. Longlimb brains and blood fell when she crushed the skull of the first. Best way to do it while they were out of it.
Then the drow forced the other to the wall, drew out a dagger, and showed that for all she couldn't handle the follow-through of a battle she was easy when it came to not killing with a single stab.
"You feel pain, jaluk. You feel such terrible pain...and yet a little pleasure." She lowered a hand, then raised it again for a shallow cut. "You lost your eyes and your sight is dead." They'd started to beat on the doors, and to sob out for the heretics blaspheming their Blind Danglyeye. Viconia stroked a hand over her man's ear. "I have come to show you the way to your true mistress. She is—lady of loss and darkness; and she knows of you already. Take her for your night." Then her small nailpicker's blade sunk lightly into the man's cheek for another line of blood. Ye had to appreciate her work in leaving him a sobbing mass saying his first prayers to the drow's goddess and promising her faith to everyone else.
"—Yer new temple? Going to be High Priestess the way ye fancied in Imnesvale?" Montaron said, clambering first on a sewage-draped ladder back to the surface.
"No; I plan to leave them entirely alone. It is not my business to give charity to the weak. My lady Shar accepts them as worshippers—but the way of their loss makes them pathetic fools." She climbed up behind him. Opposite-way'd been an eyeful.
"Blind ye stand a worse chance of not seeing into shadow. Went down easier than a Calimite whore's drawers on a ship's homecoming. Or like your own," Montaron said.
"You surfacers always say such foolish things," the drow said. "You use words for the female as if meant to degrade. We would say, as lacking in endurance as a male in his first century, for the unsatisfactory who are therefore impotent; or wa'luk, the abbreviation for male and fool alike; or nauil'uk, no mother's son, for one so pathetic as to be unclaimed. Wench and whore and bitch."
"Slave and male and surfacer. Men ain't deadlier; women ain't nobler." Athkatla's sunlight rose above them. "What's your point, lady?"
"Never mind. It is plainly far above your short little head." The drow pulled herself to the last rung of the ladder and drew her cloak over her head. The smell of blood overlaid the sewer stench. "A victory," she said, breathing in Athkatla temple district's air. She squeezed damp blood from her cloak, leaving blood on her hands. Her nostrils were widened, her teeth very white. "If you stank only of blood I could take you now, male. The bloodshed of enemies rouses the instincts. —Or you could always take me to a brothel," she went on quickly. He knew well enough she liked it rough, if more so for giving it. "But the sort you would know probably have rotting diseases."
"And the sort with men don't exactly do a rousing trade to ladies, if ye understand my meaning," Montaron said. "Not turning ye down here."
"Of course you wouldn't, slave. Ask me when you are clean if I am bored." Could take that to mean—never easy to tell from her. Watch what she did.
Athkatla graveyard was dull and overgrown by struggling dark plants and sharp grass; stones tended to white slate, washed to grey sluglike trails by rain and wind. Gravedigger was a halfwitted sot who kept himself away from anything; and all sorts of things lurked in his shadow. The mad mage had picked the inside of a crow-cleared pyramid tomb on the grounds of some muttered myths of longevity and disease-curing—then why didn't the damned Netherese live in 'em instead of bury the dead there?—and at least it kept the rain off. The ground seemed still while they walked in and trailed sewage over the grass. None of the usual potion fumes and mad laughter escaping from their hideout.
Montaron shoved open the door; and reached for his weapons, kicking the drow back into the sun. Leading-vamp was short and pale and half-allergic to wearing clothes, and she moved fast as a leopard. Second vampire was robed like a mage, heavy jewellery over her head, hands raised for a caster. Third and fourth stood by the mad necromancer. Xzar's arms were spread out and still, like a hold spell, and Montaron's ever-present question of if the Zhents would mind that much if he reported the mad wizard's unfortunate self-caused death rose again in him. The wooden crossbow bolt he'd had blessed by a rogue Tymoran thudded into the chief vampire's large chest. Because nobody said ye shouldn't prepare for vamps.
She stopped for a moment and tried to pluck it out of her fleshy bosom. Her eyes were brighter red than Viconia's in a mood, drawing and forcing, and the sick-sweet smell of decay came from her like a perfume.
"Little mice," she said in a foul high breathy little-girl voice like Amauna the priestess, "Welcome home. I've decided it's time for you to pay rent."
—