“Hardly an appealing prospect,” muttered Pharaun. “Still, I suppose it’s better than a rock on a cavern floor.”
Valas conferred briefly with Coalhewer, then turned to the rest of the dark elves and said quietly, “Coalhewer and I will arrange safe passage out of the city and look into provisioning. It’ll likely involve some bribes to obtain proper licenses and such, which will take time. We should plan on staying here for at least a full day, perhaps two.”
“Can we spare the time?” Ryld asked.
“That would be up to Mistress Quenthel,” Valas said, “but we may be many days on the next leg of our journey. We accomplish nothing by starving to death after a tenday or two in the wilds of the Underdark.”
Quenthel studied the cheerless duergar inn, and made her decision.
“We will stay two nights, and leave early on the day after tomorrow,” she said.
“I would stay longer, but I am hesitant to trust our fortunes to the continued hospitality of the duergar. Events are moving too quickly for us to tarry long.”
She looked at the scout, and at Coalhewer, who stood a short distance off, watching the street with arms folded and pointedly not listening in on the dark elves’ conversation.
Is this place safe? she signed. Will the dwarf betray us?
Safe enough, the scout replied. Keep Jeggred out of sight. The rest of you should be fine, as long as you avoid confrontations. He flicked his eyes at Coalhewer and added, The dwarf understands that we will pay well for his services, but if he should come to believe that we might kill him rather than pay him, he will undoubtedly find a way to have us all arrested. He knows we’re something more than merchants, but he doesn’t care what errand brings us here as long as he’s paid.
A loose end to be tied up? Ryld asked.
Too dangerous now, Valas signed. I will keep a close eye on him as long as we’re here.
“Take Ryld with you, just in case,” Quenthel said.
Ryld nodded and tugged at his pack, adjusting it to ride better between his shoulder blades.
“Ready when you are,” he said.
“I can’t say I won’t welcome the company, if trouble comes,” Valas replied.
“Well, let’s not keep Master Coalhewer waiting. If you don’t hear back from us by midday tomorrow, presume the worst and get out of the city by the quickest means at hand.”
The scout hurried off with Ryld striding along a step behind him. They collected Coalhewer and made their way deeper into the city.
“It’s that boundless good cheer we find endearing in you, Valas,” Pharaun remarked to the scout’s back. “Well, I too have errands to run. I must find what passes for a dealer in arcane reagents in this grim place, and replenish my spell components.”
“Don’t take too long,” Quenthel said. She glanced over at Halisstra and Danifae.
“Well, aren’t you coming?”
“Not yet,” Halisstra said. “As long as we’re here, I think I will see to providing Danifae with weapons and armor. We’ll be back when she is suitably equipped.”
“I thought you didn’t care to allow your battle captive to fight for you,”
Quenthel said, her eyes narrowing in calculation.
“I have decided that Danifae is something of a liability as long as she’s unarmed and unarmored. I don’t want my property damaged for no good reason.”
Halisstra could almost feel the depth of Quenthel’s suspicion, and the Baenre silently stroked the hilt of her whip as she studied the Ched Nasadan and her handmaid thoughtfully.
Good, thought Halisstra. Let her wonder what hold I have over Danifae that I feel confident arming her. A little uncertainty might improve her assessment of our usefulness.
“Don’t wander far or get yourselves into trouble,” Quenthel said. “I won’t hesitate to set out without either of you if the circumstances so dictate.”
She motioned to Jeggred and marched into the Cold Foundry, apparently dismissing both the Ched Nasadan and the Eryndlyn from her thoughts.
Halisstra couldn’t repress a smile of satisfaction as Quenthel disappeared from view, Jeggred slinking behind her. She exchanged looks with Danifae, and the two set off into the duergar city.
Though Coalhewer had insisted that the city was open to folk of all races, provided they brought gold, Halisstra could not convince herself that a pair of dark elves were truly safe in Gracklstugh. The short, stocky gray dwarves crowding the streets went about their business with a sullen purposefulness that Halisstra didn’t like at all. They didn’t laugh, or primp and preen, or even trade veiled threats with one another. Instead, they glared angrily at passersby of any race, including their own, and stomped along beneath heavy shirts of mail, fists gripped tightly on the hafts of axes and hammers thrust through their broad belts. Only after Halisstra and Danifae had passed half a dozen folk of other races in the streets did she begin to relax.
Halisstra paused in a spot between two towering smelters and looked around.
“There. I know little Dwarvish, but I think those signs advertise weaponsmiths.”
They turned down the street, which was little more than a winding footpath rounding the castle-like stalagmites. Past the great stone pillars, they came to something resembling a town square of sorts, an open place surrounded by low, fortlike buildings of mortared stone. Here they found a large storefront displaying dozens of weapons and suits of armor beneath a merchants sign.
“This seems promising,” Halisstra said. She ducked through the low door and stepped inside, Danifae behind her.
The place was filled with martial accoutrements of all sorts, much of it dwarven, but a number of pieces from other races—heavy iron blades of orog-work, kuo-toan armor made from the scales of some great pale fish, and black mithral mail of drow-make. Two well-armed duergar busied themselves with assembling a suit of half-plate armor at a workbench to one side of the door. They fixed suspicious stares on Halisstra and Danifae when the dark elves walked in, and kept a wary eye on them as the priestess and her handmaid examined the merchandise.
“Mistress Melarn,” Danifae called.
Halisstra turned to find the girl gazing up at a well-made suit of drow chain mail, worked with the emblem of a minor House she did not know. A matching buckler hung near the mail, with a morningstar of black steel alongside it. The head of the weapon was fashioned in the shape of a demonic face with twisting, spikelike horns. Halisstra carefully muttered the words of a spell of detection, and smiled at the result. The arms were magical—not overwhelmingly so, but certainly as good as or better than anything she’d hoped to find in the city.
“What can you tell us of these drow arms?” she asked of the shopkeepers. The duergar halted their work. The two might have been twins; Halisstra could hardly tell them apart.
“Trophy,” one of them rasped. “A captain in the service of Laird Thrazgad sold ’em a couple of months ago. Don’t know where he got ’em.”
“They’re enchanted,” said the other dwarf. “Won’t be cheap. Not at all cheap.”
Halisstra moved over to the counter, and fished a small pouch from inside her hauberk. She pored through its contents, and picked out several fine emeralds to set on the counter.
“Do we have a deal?”
The gray dwarf stood and approached to study the emeralds.
He scowled and said, “More than that. A lot more.”