Dawn of Night (19 page)

Nothing. The light within the basin dimmed and died.

“Damn it,” he softly cursed.

Cale leaned back in the chair and took a breath to calm himself. He knew that a variety of factors could prevent the success of the spell, including magical protections or simple bad luck, so he was not alarmed. Since Azriim couldn’t know or suspect that Cale was looking for him, he believed that sooner or later his spell would take.

He cut his palm again and recast the spell. Again no success. He repeated the process again and again, growing more and more frustrated with each attempt, until the basin contained as much of his blood as it did water, and the harsh light leaking through the shutter slats had faded to evening’s twilight. Still nothing.

“I’ll find you,” he promised the slaad-promised himself. Distantly, Cale recognized the beginnings of obsession, but ignored it and cast the spell again.

Sometime later, hours perhaps, the door to the room opened and Jak entered, bathed, shaved, fed, and bedded. Light streamed in from a lantern in the hallway. Cale blinked in the sudden brightness but barely spared the halfling a glance.

“Cale?” Jak asked in a concerned voice, his silhouette framed in the door by the lantern. “Dark, man! It’s pitch in here. Did you even eat?”

“Yes,” Cale replied.

“Cale…”

“Not now, Jak,” Cale replied, focusing on the basin.

He put Jak out of his mind, concentrated, and cast again. The image of the slaad’s eyes was imprinted on his brain. He focused…

There!

In the depths of the basin, a light sparkled. He fixated on it, willed the spell to follow it.

“Cale?” Jak asked.

A wavering image took shape in the water. He saw a gray-skinned, grizzled dwarf walking a torch-lit street. Decrepit buildings made of scrap wood lined a packed earth road. At first, Cale thought the spell might have gone awry, but when the dwarf turned and Cale saw the perfect teeth and the eyes—one blue and one brown-he knew his spell had located Azriim. He tried to contain his exultation and keep the spell focused.

He couldn’t hear the sounds around Azriim, but he could see the surroundings. Shadowy buildings, creatures, and people moved in and out of the spell’s field of vision. Most of the people and creatures appeared to be running. Several were shouting and pointing.

“Where are Riven and Mags?” Cale asked the halfling. “Next door,” Jak answered.

“Get them. And all three of you get in here,” Cale said. “Right now. I’ve found them.”

Jak took Cale’s meaning right way. The halfling ran to the room next door and pounded on the door. Cale heard muffled voices and boot stomps. Magadon, Jak, and Riven piled into his room, shutting the door behind them.

“It’s pitch black in here,” Magadon said. “What are you doing, Cale?”

“Scrying for the slaadi,” Jak answered. “He’s got them.”

“You’ve got them?” Magadon asked, excitement in his voice.

Cale nodded and beckoned them over, saying, “Look for yourself.”

His three comrades gathered behind and around him, and stared into the bowl.

Azriim walked the dark street beside a gray haired, balding human with a giant pot belly.

“But…” Magadon started to protest, then the dwarfs eyes became clear.

“Dark and empty,” Riven breathed. “That’s him. That’s his eyes, Mags, and no mistaking. The bald one must be one of the other slaadi.”

“Where are they?” Jak asked, standing on tiptoes to see into the bowl.

Cale shook his head. From what they’d seen, Azriim could have been walking the nighttime streets of any city in Faerűn. He needed more information. He concentrated, working to expand the field of vision afforded him by the spell.

The vista spread out. People and creatures of all sorts—gnolls, orcs, even drow—crowded the streets around Azriim and the pot-bellied human. A coffle of nearly naked slaves stood in the background. A troll shambled by. They were all looking up at something.

“What in the name of the goddess… ?” said Magadon.

With an effort of will, Cale moved the scrying eye to view the object of attention. The spell dispelled the moment they focused on it, but in that single instant they all saw it well enough: a glowing skull floating amidst a backdrop of rope bridges and catwalks.

Riven’s sharp intake of breath rang loud in the quiet of the room. Cale sat back in the chair, his mind racing. “Burn me,” said Jak.

Magadon looked from one face to another. “What? What is it?”

“Skullport,” Cale said, turning to face his comrades. The guide’s face showed recognition.

“Skullport?” Magadon blew out a soft whistle, looked to Riven, then to Jak, and asked, “What I’ve heard… Is it as bad as that?”

“Likely worse,” Riven said. “Imagine Waterdeep is a sieve. The Lords of Waterdeep shake their city and the worst of the residents fall down to Skullport, there to join the worst the Underdark has to offer.”

“You’ve been there?” Magadon asked Riven.

The assassin nodded, his face thoughtful.

“Once, a long time ago,” the assassin said, his voice low. “Slaves… drugs… life is worth coppers. The worst things you can imagine, those things you can buy cheap. It’s the things you won’t even consider until you see them that cost the real coin.” He shared a glance with Cale then eyed Jak meaningfully. “If we’re going there, we need to understand that it ain’t nice. And we can’t try to fix it and make it so. Understood? Fleet? Cale?”

Jak pulled out his pipe, tamped, and lit. The tinder-twig gave their faces an eerie cast. The smell of pipeweed, rich and deep, filled the room.

“I hear you,” the halfling said.

“Is that new leaf?” Magadon asked absently.

Jak raised his eyebrows and looked impressed. “It is. Bought it today.”

“I purchased some new gear for us,” Magadon said, still in that same thoughtful tone. “New cloaks, boots, road tack…

Riven ignored all that and said, “You enter Skullport knowing what you want. You get it, then you leave. As fast as possible. And no one crosses the Skulls. I’ve seen what they can do.”

Jak blew a cloud of smoke up into Riven’s face and grumbled, “I said I understood.”

Riven inhaled Jak’s exhaled smoke and blew it back at the halfling.

“Good,” the assassin replied. “If things go ugly there because you can’t keep your conscience in your—”

“Enough,” Cale said, standing and interposing himself between Jak and Riven. “We know what we want in Skullport. We’re hunting slaadi. The question is, how do we get there?”

Cale knew that Skullport was somewhere below Waterdeep, Faerfin’s largest city, over half a continent away. Jak shrugged, drew in some smoke, then said, “Magic?”

Riven scoffed and took out his borrowed pipe.

“You have something better to offer?” the halfling asked.

Riven lit, inhaled, then replied, “No. The way we—the way
used before won’t be available. We need another way.”p>

Magadon used one of his own tinder-twigs to light the wick of the oil lamp on the table. Shadows sprung up on the walls. Cale realized then how cognizant he had become of the presence or absence of darkness and shadows. He also knew that in darkness he could use his own power to instantaneously transport himself, and possibly his comrades, from the shadows in Starmantle to the shadows in Skullport. Not shadow-stepping, but teleporting. Still, something caused him to hesitate. He remembered: Long ago, he had overheard something about the dangers of teleporting into and out of the Underdark. Stories of men materializing half in and half out of solid rock, screaming in agony for the last few heartbeats of their lives. He didn’t want to risk that with his comrades. If there was no other way, he could go alone…

“I know a way,” Magadon said. His pale eyes glowed in the lamplight. “But it’s four days away, even moving quickly.”

Cale barely acknowledged the relief he felt at Magadon’s pronouncement.

“Four days is too much time,” he said. “But I may be able to get us there sooner. What’s your way?”

Magadon looked at Cale with raised eyebrows and asked, “How can you get us there sooner?”

Cale indicated his skin, the shadows leaking from his fingertips, and said, “With this. I can teleport us there if you can describe the location to me.”

Magadon nodded and said, “I can do better.”

Before Cale could ask what he meant, Riven asked, “Then why not teleport us all the way to Skullport?”

“Something I heard once,” Cale replied. “I think teleporting that deep underground is dangerous.”

“I’ve heard that too,” Jak said, nodding and blowing a smoke ring.

Riven seemed to accept that. No doubt he’d heard something similar.

Magadon said, “The way I know is dangerous too.” Shaking his head, Cale replied, “Not as much.”

He said it as a statement, but there was enough of a

question in it that Magadon smiled.

“We’ll see,” the guide said. “The guardian can send us anywhere we want to go, provided there’s water at the destination.”

All of them knew that Skullport sat on the shore of an underground harbor.

“Guardian?” Jak said from around his pipe stem. “Describe your route, Mags,” Cale said.

“A Crossroads,” Magadon said, as though that explained it all.

Cale had no idea what the guide meant.

“Explain,” said Riven, echoing Cale’s thoughts.

The guide shrugged and frowned, seemingly surprised that none of his three comrades showed any recognition.

“Faerűn is crosshatched with secret ways,” he said. “Druids call them the Hidden Paths, but most know them as Crossroads and Backroads. They are not quite portals, they’re more like… folds in the world. A tunnel of one step that carries you through a space of a hundred leagues. Take a step onto a Backroad in Selgaunt and instantly find yourself outside of Arabel. Does that make sense?”

Riven’s narrowed eye and furrowed brow said, “No.” Cale wasn’t quite sure he understood either.

“So you’re saying these Crossroads are all over?” Jak asked. “Only, we can’t see them?”

Magadon smiled and said, “Not quite, Jak. The Backroads are everywhere, or at least most everywhere. The Crossroads are the access points, where the Backroads intersect our perception of the world. It is there that we can enter the Backroads. And no, most people don’t see them.”

Jak shook his head, obviously still confused.

Cale too was uncertain. He had never in all his travels heard of anything resembling the phenomenon Magadon was describing. Perhaps comprehending the nature of the Hidden Paths had something to do with Magadon’s psionic abilities. He suspected Magadon’s careful choice of the phrase, “our perception of the world,” went to the core of the issue.

“Where do they come from?” Cale asked.

The guide scratched his nose and shook his head.

“The Hidden Paths are part of the nature of creation, Erevis. They did not come from anything. They just are and have always been.”

Cale digested that.

“And one leads to Skullport?” he asked at last. Magadon nodded and said, “They lead everywhere.” Riven took a long draw on his pipe.

“How did you come to know about these things?” the assassin asked.

Magadon gave his best Drasek Riven sneer and tapped his temple.

“I looked for them, Drasek. And I’m willing to see.” His

voice grew colder when he said to the assassin, “It’s surprising the things you can see when you’re willing.” Riven offered his own sneer in return.

Cale doubted that it was that simple. Still, Magadon had not yet led them astray; he knew he could trust the guide and his judgment.

“You mentioned a guardian?” he said.

“Indeed. The fey keep the Crossroads, and each Crossroad has a single guardian. We’ll have to bargain our way past. Sometimes the guardians are… temperamental.”

“What in the Nine Hells does that mean?” Jak asked.

“You’ll see,” Magadon replied.

Cale took his cloak from the peg on which it hung and said, “I can only teleport us at night. Gather your gear. We leave as soon as we’re equipped.”

“Can you teleport with a boat too?” the guide asked

Cale. “We’ll need a boat. Big enough for the four of us.” Cale nodded.

“A boat?” Jak asked.

Magadon grinned, a feral smile, and said, “You’ll see.” “You say that a lot,” Jak said.

Cale looked to Jak and said, “Little man, can you get us a boat at this hour?”

Jak exhaled a cloud of smoke, snapped his fingers, and snuffed his pipe.

“Easy. You’ll see,” he said, smiling at Mags. “Meet me at the docks in a half hour.”

Even by night, Starmantle’s harbor bustled with activity. Laborers and ships’ crews-some composed of humans, some not—unloaded crates of cargo by torchlight and glowball and stacked them high. Cale could imagine the illicit contents of many of the crates. Starmantle traded in vice as much as legitimate goods, the same as any other city of the Inner Sea.

The shouts of the sailors carried along the shore through the salt-tinged night air. Laughter, smoke, torchlight, and shouts carried from the open windows of the many dockside taverns. Pedestrians walked the wharves in small groups: revelers, sailors, whores, pimps, and worse.

Cale felt at home there in the night, surrounded by sin.

He stood with Jak, Riven, and Magadon on

the rocky shore of an out-of-the-way inlet, down the shoreline and east of Starmantle’s main harbor. Small wooden piers and docks, large enough only for small fishing craft, dotted the shoreline there. Jak led them to one such pier, a rickety wooden construct that extended a long dagger toss into the bay. There, tethered with thick hemp rope, several small rowboats floated in the gently lapping water.

The breeze off the sea smelled fresh and clean. As he had when he’d been aboard Foamrider, Cale felt the water pull at his spirit.

“That’s it,” Jak said and gestured at one of the rowboats near them, “on the left side of the dock.”

Cale eyed the boat doubtfully. Even with his limited exposure to the sea, he could see it was a creaky tub, with rusty fittings, splintering oars, and no less than ten seasons of wear on its hull. Worn fishing nets lay piled aft. A coiled rope affixed to a rusty anchor lay fore. On the positive side, the boat was big enough that they could all fit in it. It also appeared to float… sort of.