For the second time this tenday, Jaheira found herself underground again. She was getting much more familiar with Athkatla's underbelly — literally and metaphorically — than she would like.
Her route ran past the rushing waters in the storm drain near the Coronet, further down to where rainwater eddied and stagnated, growing a thin green layer along the raised edges as it slowly tumbled towards a catchbasin. The air was foul and smelled of waste and rock, but at least here, it was breathable, and she could straighten her back as she walked.
There were signs that the outcast and the desperate lived here: bundles raised on sticks and strings above the water, an empty bedroll here, a spent torch there. Jaheira ran into no one else, and she thought it just as well.
Her job, handed down to her from Mae'Var through one of his lackeys, was simple: escort a key contact through a perilous path beneath the earth, where a previous messenger had disappeared. This contact had to reach his destination for reasons she was not to know.
Along with criminal dealings, she was getting mightily sick of taking on seemingly trivial tasks and not being allowed to know where they fit in the larger picture.
Perhaps aware that she had her own agenda, Mae'Var's representative had tried to sweeten the deal when pressed. He claimed that this contact would know better than anyone where Jaheira's missing sword might have gone.
This had better be worth it, she thought.
Finding the contact was proving to be a lengthy task as she descended further and further, following the slow-moving water until it diverted towards a tunnel that emptied into the Sea of Swords. She turned aside and followed a side tunnel deeper, taking every step carefully.
She knew she was near her destination when she encountered a series of hand-scrawled signs near a tall tunnel. They said, in nearly every language known to folk of all kinds:
TURN BACK
BEWARE THE UNSEEING EYE
DEATH TO THE FALSE GODS AND UNBELIEVERS
And another sign, seemingly less official in nature, scrawled onto a nearby wall with charcoal: THIS WILL BE THE LAST THING YOU SEE. The words were underlined with several obscene symbols.
At the end of this tunnel was a plain, round wooden door framed by two torches. In front of this door stood two people. One was a young gnome about three feet high, with a pair of goggles on his head and a knapsack on his back with a crossbow attached; over his clothes, he wore a light orange cloak that seemed to glow in the dim light. The other was a lean man clad in dirty grey rags, leaning on a wooden staff smoothed with age and use. The man's face, which almost seemed desiccated, had no eyes, the empty sockets ringed with long thin scars and opening to a void.
She uncertainly looked to one person, then the other. Neither of them seemed inclined to attack, so she approached them, saying: "Hail. Jaheira is my name. I come on Mae'Var's behalf. I was to meet someone here, I believe."
The gnome said, "You know, I was just telling my friend about my cousin."
"We were discussing no such thing," his companion replied, a weary look on his face.
"You would have liked him," the gnome continued. "He was a very serious gnome called Gilfried Deadeyes."
The other tilted his head, a quizzical expression forming around his empty eyesockets. He said, "He was named such because he was one of the faithless ones who refused to deprive themselves of the useless orbs in their head. Is that it?"
"No, the opposite. Served your god faithfully, in fact, for many, many years. But he was embarrassed to walk around on the street with no eyes. Who could blame him when people didn't know where to look when they talked to him? Besides, they kept telling him 'watch out,' 'see you around,' 'looking forward to it,' things like that."
The more the gnome talked, the more annoyed the man grew. "And I expect that as a faithful follower of the Unseeing Eye, he endured such travails as part of the holy burden he must carry, knowing that the unbelievers will pay for their false sight in the next world?"
"No, he stole a couple of pickled beholder stalk eyes and put them in his head. That's how he got the name."
"For shame!" the man exclaimed. "If not for your usefulness to Gaal, I would throw you down the Pit of the Faithless for such an affront to the Unseeing Eye."
"Oh, look at the time," the gnome said, pointing to a complicated mechanical contraption on his wrist and taking several strategic steps away from his irate guardian.
He turned to Jaheira and bowed. "Well, Jaheira, I suppose you are the one I was to meet. Jan Jansen — inventor, businessman, demolitions expert, and turnip farmer — at your service."
Almost immediately, the man rapped on the wooden door with his staff. The door opened, and he retreated behind it with a sigh of relief.
The wooden door shut, causing the torchlight to flicker, and for a moment, the only wound was the steady drip of water echoing through the tunnel.
"Have you any idea where we're supposed to go?" she asked Jan.
"Afraid not," Jan said, adjusting the goggles on his head. "But let me tell you, that lot is about as cheerful as an army of mud slaadi."
Though she hadn't encountered any trouble yet, Jaheira knew that down here, getting into some scuffle was never off the table.
She sized up her companion: he was about three feet tall with a messy, salt-and-pepper head of hair with a short beard, taking advantage of their pause to check the string on his crossbow. Above all else, Jaheira hoped that weapon wasn't merely for show.
She said, "So, Jan, you called yourself a 'demolitions expert' — I am curious what you mean by that."
"What I mean, oh-so-friendly one, is that I have expertise in demolitions, that I exchange for coin when I'm not farming turnips between occasional stints as an adventurer."
"What are you getting at, and what do you mean by demolitions?"
"Sorry, trade secret. But here's one of my fine products" — he held out a palm-sized clay skull, seemingly pulled out of nowhere — "called Jan Jansen's (that's me) Flasher Master Bruiser Mate. Chuck it at average Joe Orc, close your eyes real tight and WHOOSH — you've got him running and screaming and yelling like Uncle Sven after three days on a turnip beer bender.
"But sometimes, you need to go bigger. Maybe the cult wants another Pit of the Faithless, a holding pen for their elder orbs, or just a nice recreation room for Gaal's favorite cultists. After the incident with Gaal's cousin Smiley the Legless One, they've asked others to help carve out spaces from the rock here and there. And, as Golodon the Unmanned once said to me…"
As he went on yet another tangent, Jaheira lost the tale's thread as she started moving and leading the way back to the surface, keeping a weather eye for danger.