She was able to move again, a little, and the walls of the alley seemed to move, around her, straightening and shifting.
Desperately, Narnra stared at where the wizard had vanished through the wall, marking just which heap of refuse was at that spot. She could move her other hand now, as slowly as a feather falling on a windless day. She reached up, took the coins, and was almost surprised to find them every bit as solid and heavy as they'd seemed. She put them into a pouch, her movements still slow but quickening with every breath, and saw that the alley around was once more long and narrow, coming to a blind end here and curving slightly as it stretched back out to the street there.
She went to the place where the wizard had vanished and cautiously extended her knife at the wall. It plunged into the stone as if through empty air. Wonderingly she leaned forward, her arm following it.
This could be the worst sort of death if the stone closed around her. Suspicious, insulted—who was this old wizard to lecture her and pity her and give her a beggar-offering of coins?—and yet, yes, fascinated, Narnra Shalace stepped forward into darkness.
Two
A FINE NIGHT FOR REVELRY
Those who hope to survive adventures are advised to pick their own forays, rather than striding blindly into someone else's schemes—and another someone's trouble. For trouble thus found has an almost inevitable way of being freely shared.
Seldreene Ammath of Suzail
Married to a Merchant
Year of the Serpent
It was dark, and smelled of damp stone, old earth, and the faint reek of garbage receding behind her. The Silken Shadow went forward cautiously, keeping low, as careful of her balance in this unseen footing as if she'd been on a crumbling roof.
There was a singing in the air in front of her, a singing that built swiftly into a shrieking as she advanced—a tumult she somehow knew she heard more than the world around her would. A sickening, shuddering feeling was growing inside her, too. It faltered when she drew back but surged anew when she stepped forward again.
Narnra kept the knife ready in her hand, wondering what sort of fool she was being, and peered ahead, seeking any glimmer of light.
Obligingly, radiance suddenly flowered before her, quite close, blossoming as swiftly as the flaring of any new-lit torch. It was a deep, rich blue light, a glow of magic mightier than anything she'd ever seen before. As she watched, it raced along in straight paths, outlining an archway where the white-bearded wizard stood.
Narnra promptly went to fingertips and knees on the stones then slid forward onto her belly as quietly as she could—and was barely down and motionless when the mage turned and peered in her direction.
Nodding as if satisfied—had he seen her or not?—he turned and stepped through the glowing arch—and the singing and shuddering within her ceased, as sharply as if severed by an axe-blow.
Narnra lifted her head, listening intently, but all was dark and silent except for the archway. As she stared at it, the radiance pulsed, flickered, and started to fade.
In a trice she was on her feet and running to it, swerving aside at the last moment to keep out of sight of anyone looking out of the arch. Its center was dark, and the Silken Shadow crawled the last few feet like a lizard in a purposeful hurry and peered around its edge, chin almost brushing the floor—to find herself looking at more dark nothingness.
The light was definitely dimmer than before. Narnra bit her lip then rose and stepped forward through the archway. If the wizard had a hidden lair right under Trades Ward, she had to know about it. All about it.
Another step into silent darkness, then another. At her third stride, the darkness vanished, and she was standing in more deep blue radiance, blueness swirling like mist on all sides and falling endlessly past. Narnra fell with it, yet stood upright and unmoving on an unseen floor, pausing uncertainly. Whirling around, she could see no hint of whence she'd come, only a blue void that. . . that. . .
She was suddenly drenched with sweat, more afraid than she'd ever been in her life. Where was she? Which way was forward? With great care she pivoted back until she was facing, she hoped, in exactly the direction she'd been facing while advancing . . . and went on.
Two steps later, darkness returned, and the damp. Yet the smell was different, somehow. The tang of the sea was strong, but there was also old rotting, like a swamp—a smell her nose had known in Waterdeep only when the harbor was being dragged. She stood in another narrow stone passage, and there were distant echoes ahead. Someone—no, a lot of someones— were talking. Chattering and laughing, like a merchants' revel. She was somewhere large, with unseen stone chambers opening out from her passage.
Under the City of the Dead? Deep beneath the drovers' streets nigh the River Gate? Or—somewhere else entirely, far from Waterdeep?
Another step brought her into blue light once more—a faint, fading glow. Narnra spun around and beheld an archway like the one she'd stepped through to get here. She stepped back into it, walked freely for a few strides then shrugged, turned around, and went back to the arch.
This time its glow was almost gone. She peered at the radiance narrowly and positioned herself exactly in the center of the arch. When the glow failed utterly, Narnra stepped forward—slamming her knee hard into what was now a solid stone wall.
She was trapped here, wherever here was, and suddenly enraged at herself for being so easily lured. She slapped the unseen wall in front of her, beat her fist on it with a snarl, drew a deep, tremulous breath, and spun again. She had no choice now but to go on.
Towards the revelry. In the wake of the wizard who'd so casually defeated her.
He knew how to make this magic of archways work, so she'd either have to find her own way out or find him and . . . and what? Beg?
Growling soundlessly, Narnra hefted her knife in her hand and prowled forward. Old, worn stone blocks were under her soft boots, sea-breezes ghosted around her ankles, and the first glimmers of light could be seen ahead.
This was looking less and less like Waterdeep.
Oh Mask and Tymora, aid me now.
* * * * *
Elminster cast three illusory disguises, one atop the next, saving his shapechange in case it became necessary to fly or swim out of this gathering in haste. The company he'd be keeping in a moment would be neither savory nor safe.
He was taller, now, in his outermost seeming, and scarred, with the jet-black hair of the older branch of the Cormaerils. He selected a tiny token from a belt-pouch, murmured a word over it—and was suddenly holding a scabbarded sword in his hands. A needle-slender blade of the sort favored by many at court in Suzail, mirror-bright, its ornately swept and curved basket hilt studded with small, glossy-smooth sapphires like so many ever-curious eyes.
Strapping it on, he strode across a dark, pillared hall, where rotten barrels moldered and rats scurried in the dimness, and up an old, worn flight of steps. The Marsemban harbor-stink grew stronger with the faint light ahead. Quite suddenly, he was in a better-lit yet still gloom-shadowed room where grim guards stood watching a throng of laughing, drinking, loudly talking people, who were sporting under lamplight in a much larger chamber beyond.
Elminster sighed inwardly. Revelry was the same everywhere, and he'd managed to enjoy it for the first thousand years or so ... but no more. Too much noise, too much pretence and sneering and nasty rumors—and too many wonderstruck lovely young things, all hope and excitement and bright laughter, who lived now only in his memory, gone in their countless legions to graves. He'd even helped to put a few of them there.
Yet he strode on, not hesitating for a moment. Meddling and stepping into distasteful danger was, after all, what Elminsters did.