The Company went past the shouting dwarf, through the nondescript door behind him.
The first thing that struck Lidia about this place was the guards, bearing no livery and standing nearly perfectly still. One of them gave a respectful nod and a watchful eye towards the four of them.
The second thing was the darkness. Maybe it was a function of being built into the wall, but the place had no windows and was lit only by a few magical floating balls of light, of the same kind that illuminated the better streets in Athkatla when the sun went down. These were always burning, and most of the time, this place was open. The dimness served an additional function: it was useful for showing off the magical items, which gleamed with a faint aura of light.
And the place was stuffed to the brim with everything magical and mundane that an adventurer could need, so much that the shelves and racks were overflowing: a vast array of weapons and armor, all kinds of camping gadgets (the strangest one by far was a small flint claimed to be a magical fire starter), a shelf of curious tinctures in every color, bins of slinging stones, barrels of arrows, robes and cloaks and boots and rings from far-flung and forgotten places. Overseeing it all were the guards, and a man behind a worn wooden counter on the bottom floor.
The exact age of Ribald Barterman, owner and proprietor of the Adventurer's Mart, was hard to pin down. His pointed ears and the deftness in his movements pointed to elvish blood, but gray streaked his brown hair, the sides of his eyes crinkled, and he was much less slight than elves typically were. A half-elf, Lidia guessed, and one that had seen and done plenty. He was looking over his books and writing something down. Keeping accounts, presumably.
He came out from behind his station and bowed in greeting to Jaheira.
They exchanged pleasantries and small talk. "I trust all is well?" Jaheira said.
"Well enough, Miss Jaheira. Ye'll not bring Harper trouble to me doorstep, good lady. Might I remind ye that me days of involvement with yer kin are long over?"
"For the time being, so are mine. There is no need to fear, suspicious one."
He bowed. "I should mind me manners, please excuse me. Anything I can do ye for?"
They spent an hour or two perusing the shop, wondering at the curiosities and finding the more mundane items to be surprisingly useful. After picking out some inexpensive mail, greaves, and vambraces, Lidia made her way up a small stairway and towards the back, along a long row of shelves, where a wyvern was flitting from top to top. Some of the shelves were filled with books, and some seemed to slightly shimmer from a distance, the same way the archives in Candlekeep did. She found herself drawn to the latter, wondering if they were what she thought.
Her eyes did not deceive her. She carefully leafed her way through some of the scrolls. Every one of them seemed to be a spell scroll of some kind, and an exhaustive collection, too.
"Greetings. I am Lady Yuth. Are you a practitioner of the Art?" a voice behind her said. The voice belonged to a human woman, about fifty or so, wearing a bright blue dress and navy surcoat, a cloth-of-gold turban upon her head and shining in the dim light against her dark-brown skin. Her voice was pleasant, but her glance was sharp and questioning as she touched the cricket upon her shoulder.
"I'm not, but a friend of mine is." Lidia noted, with a tinge of regret, how much Imoen would have liked this spot. "These seem to be all spell scrolls. Have you no fear of the Cowled Wizards?"
She waved off the question with her hand. "Those pompous fools? You can buy their permission, if you know who to talk to. Would you like to see my wares?"
Lidia stared at shelves for a moment. Most of them were an array of parchments until she came to a row of what appeared, at first glance, to be a row of leather-bound books. They were in fact spell cases, each carefully made and bound with a fine leather lace; they were meant to keep scrolls organized and to keep their magic where it was supposed to be, curbing its tendency to leak.
There was one in particular that stood out to her. Its main distinguishing feature was its color, a dusty pink. She pulled it out and examined it. Imoen would like the color, certainly, and most of the time, her friend kept her scrolls inside the front cover of her spellbook. She'd kept complaining that they got loose in her pack.
Lidia considered the dent that this would put in her armor fund. Still, having a place to keep scrolls would come in handy. And she hoped against hope that someday, Imoen would come to possess it.
"What can you tell me about this one?" Lidia asked.
"Oh, this? It's well-sealed against the damp and if you were to throw it in the fire, it would go for a full minute without burning. Would you like it?"
"How much?" Lidia asked.
"Three hundred gold pieces."
Lidia was about to protest, but then remembered what Yoshimo said about making purchases here. "You'd have to fill it up with scrolls for me to take that. Seventy-five."
"Two hundred fifty, but you're getting a bargain as it is."
"A hundred. I can always go up to the next row of shops."
"Two hundred, but I'm starving my children for it." The gleam in her eye told Lidia that her story wasn't entirely serious.
"Hundred seventy-five. I fell out of the crack in the Promenade last tenday."
Lady Yuth furrowed her brow, saying nothing but clearly guessing something. The fear of saying too much flashed through Lidia's mind.
But the other laughed, mostly to herself. "Your accent tells me that you're a visitor, but your negotiating says otherwise. Very well. Yours for a hundred seventy-five."
Lidia accepted the deal. The transparent attempt at flattery notwithstanding, she thought she did all right for the first time.
After paying Lady Yuth and wishing her farewell, she went back down the stairs.
"There you are!" Jaheira seemed agitated. "Minsc and Yoshimo are gone."
"What happened?" Lidia asked.
Ribald spoke up. "The big fella said something about what Dynaheir would have done, and just up and left."
"They went to that tent," Jaheira said.
They left in a moment.
The sun had climbed higher, so Lidia and Jaheira wound their way through an increasingly large crush of people and animals and goods, completely shutting out anything that wasn't their destination.
They returned to the marquee tent. The Helmite guard was still there, renewing the ward he'd placed over the entrance. The crowd was gone, now that they were deprived of a show. A number of guards in black livery stood around him, halberds at the ready. They put on a good show of alertness, but some seemed to be annoyed at the prospect of nothing happening - and nothing continuing to happen - for hours.
Jaheira and Lidia drew closer. Just before they encountered the ring of guards, they passed a carefully hand-lettered sign:
"QUAYLE QUINAPALUS'S
THREE-RING CIRCUS
The Finest Show in Athkatla
DARING DEEDS • GAMES OF CHANCE • FANTASTIC BEASTS
Starring
KALAH THE GREAT
And his lovely assistant
AERIE, MISTRESS OF MAGIC."
Two guards blocked their path, crossing their halberds. "The circus is closed. Go about your business."
"Did they figure out what happened?"
"No, they didn't. The Cowled Wizards cast some kind of spell over a guard platoon and sent them in. They haven't returned," one of them said.
The other one grumbled, "Ah, what's it matter if nosy civilians are going to barge in anyway?"
The most telling detail, Lidia thought, was the word "barge." She asked, "This may be a long shot, but...you wouldn't have happened to see a large, heavily-armed man carrying a hamster, then?"
"Strangely enough, I did. He had another fellow with him, too. I told him the circus is closed, but he claimed to have 'swords and braveness to the brim of the tall glass of goodness' and went inside anyway."
She said, "You know we need to follow them in, right? They're friends of mine and I'd rather have them back in one piece."
"If you must," the guard said with a resigned sigh. "We've already lost an entire garrison squad inside this tent, and that with the Cowls putting some kind of magery on 'em. I doubt you'll do any better."
He turned back to the Helmite guard, who gave a silent nod, and the other two guards uncrossed their weapons and stood aside.
"So the Wizards won't help further?" Jaheira asked them as they passed.
"So the Wizards won't help further?" Jaheira asked them as they passed.
"They'll be back eventually, but they didn't make it a priority." The guard sighed in resignation. "We lost good people, too. Not that they care."
So much for trusting the experts, Lidia thought. "Give me two hours," she said to the Helmite guard.
He gave them the once-over, stepping aside from the entrance of the tent. With a muttered incantation, he removed the ward, then stood aside.
"Thanks," Lidia said.
"Don't say we didn't warn you." He moved forward, resuming his place with the others.
Lidia examined the entrance to the tent. Between the parted curtains, the entrance looked as though someone had taken the surface of a black lake and turned it sideways, a curtain rippling like water.
"What do you make of this?" she asked Jaheira.
"Your guess is as good as mine," the other said.
With her left hand on the hilt of her shortsword, Lidia slid her right hand into the curtain. It passed through like water, but without the coolness or wetness.
She gasped in surprise.
On the other side of the membrane, her hand had changed. In an instant, it was massive, muscular, and green-tinged, like the hand of an ogre.
She withdrew her hand in an instant, eyeing it suspiciously. It was now the same hand she'd put in: pale skin, short fingers, covered in freckles, and flecked with a few fine red-gold hairs above three of the knuckles.
"Well, that was strange," Jaheira said. "I've no idea -"
"I'm immune to charms, so it's not altering my perception," Lidia said, slowly at first. "It didn't feel any different either going out or coming in - that was the part that surprised me the most - so I don't think it's an alteration spell. I think...it's some kind of illusion. A really big one."
"And yet you cannot cast a single cantrip," Jaheira said with a faint smile.
"Not because the monks didn't try to teach me, certainly. Still, you don't spend twenty years in Candlekeep without picking up a few things here and there." But not nearly enough, Lidia thought, for something like this.
But this was the only chance they - or anyone else in the tent, for that matter - really had.
Lidia turned back to her friend with a determined nod. One close behind the other, they plunged into the darkness.