Not surprisingly, there was no reply.
After a moment's pause, the cobweb shot forth an arm like the tentacle of a black octopus, and plunged it into the stone of the far wall-as if the tentacle were a mere shadow, able to freely drift through solid things. Then the entire cobweb shifted like a gigantic, ungainly spider and followed the tentacle, sliding into the stones of the crypt wall.
A breath later, the black tentacle emerged from a solid wall in Skullport, wriggled out across an alley, and turned to probe up and down the narrow, reeking way. A rat paused in its gnawings and scuttlings to watch this new, probably edible worm or snake-but sank back down behind a pile of refuse when the tentacle grew swiftly into a spiderlike growth that covered most of the wall. This spiderlike thing then became a flapping black cloak… from which grew the shuffling figure of a robed, cowled man, whose eyes gleamed in the darkness as brightly as the rat's own orbs.
The man's robe swished past the cowering rodent. He stepped out of the alley, looked out across a blackened, tumbled area of devastation where a building had burned or been blasted apart, and said clearly, "Hmmm."
A beholder was bobbing above a lone human, the magelight of carelessly crafted spells streaming around it, but was constrained from reaching its human by some invisible shield or other. The spellshatter, no doubt.
"Hmmm," the man said again, and stepped backward into the wall, sinking smoothly into the solid stone until only two dark, watchful patches remained to mark where his eyes must be.
Wisely, the rat scuttled silently away. With archwizards, one can never be sure. Halaster Blackcloak was known to be both one of the most powerful arch wizards of all, and more than a little… erratic in his behavior. He seemed to be settling into the wall to watch whatever was going on in the ruins, but-if one could ever be safe in Skullport-it was better to be safely away from him… far away from him.
Asper slid to a stop on a high catwalk and clutched its rail for a moment to catch her breath. It had been a long, hard run, and more than one foolish beast had tried to make her its supper along the way. The blade in her hand was still dark and wet from her last encounter. The leap from the end of a little-known tunnel-which wound down through the heart of Mount Waterdeep to end in a sheer drop, high in the ceiling of the cavern that held most of Skullport-down to the dark roofs below was always a throat-tightening thing.
Gasping for air, Mirt's lady tossed her head. Sweat streamed down her face despite her frequent wipes at it, plastering ash-blonde tresses to her forehead and dripping from the end of her nose. Asper sighed air deep into her lungs, shook her head to hurl away more sweat, clipped the ring on her sword-pommel to the matching one at her throat, spun the ribbon around so the still-gory blade would bounce along at her back as she traveled on, and peered out over Skullport, waiting for her breathing to slow.
The often-deadly place seemed somehow quiet tonight. The mysterious guardian skulls-or whatever they truly were-drifted here and there through the gloom high above the streets, where the stone fangs of the cavern ceiling made a silent forest close overhead. Asper loved this world of flitting bats, occasional screams, and muttered conspiracies. She enjoyed a leisurely prowl among the crumbling roof gargoyles, silently glowing wards, and wrought iron climb-nots, where crossbows waited for sneak thieves to trip their lines and folk seldom opened shutters covered with rusting crazy quilts of overlapping, battered old shields, whose owners no longer needed them-or anything.
But this journey had been anything but leisurely. Asper clung to the rail as if it were a lover, and peered north. There had been something… a flicker… there!
Spell light flashed in a place of darkness-some sort of ruin, it seemed, liberally endowed with rough heaps and pillars of blackened stone. In this second flash, Asper saw the unmistakable sphere of a beholder, eye-stalks writhing in pain or rage, quivering in the air low over some sort of foe… probably a man. It was the sort of trouble Durnan or her beloved were almost sure to be drawn into.
Asper vaulted lightly over the rail and fell through the cool air, ignoring the oath uttered by a startled face at a window as she passed. Her boots found a second catwalk, slipped for a moment on damp boards that danced back up under the weight of her landing, and then held firm. Asper crouched low as the catwalk's tremblings grew gentler, the fingertips of one hand just touching the boards in front of her, and looked again at the beholder. The problem was, Skullport was all too apt to be crawling with this sort of thing: the kind of strife Mirt and Durnan would get caught up in… but had they chosen this particular strife, or found amusement elsewhere?
Then her eyes fell on what she'd been searching for- far ahead of her, along the narrow alley that ran from beneath her catwalk to the ruins where the beholder danced. A familiar lurching form, portly where he wasn't burly, shambled and wheezed along with that bluff, fearless unconcern she loved so well. Mirt the Moneylender, the man whose heart drove and carried the Lords of Waterdeep, was lumbering like a hopping hippo over the heaped rubble where the alleyway emptied into the chaos of the ruin-trotting up to an enraged beholder to rescue his friend.
This was their fight, then. Asper frowned. She quickly undid her belt, plucked something from behind its buckle, and set it down carefully on the boards beside her. It would not do to be touched by the sort of magic a beholder's eyes could hurl while carrying that little bauble.
She buckled up her belt again, bit her lip in thought, turned smoothly, and ran a little way along the catwalk. There, someone bolder than most had strung a line of washing from the high, hanging way to a balcony. Though the cord was old and soft where glowmold had been washed away many times, it held one hurrying, catlike woman in leathers long enough for her to reach the balcony. Asper got one boot on the balcony rail and kicked hard, the aging iron squealed in protest as she leapt away into darkness, fingers straining for the lantern line she sought.
It was barbed to keep unscrupulous folk from winching down the iron basket of glowworms that served some fearful merchant as a back door lantern. The gloves Asper wore ended in middle-finger rings, leaving her fingers and most of her palms bare to grip things unhampered-but she shed only a little blood as she caught hold, swung, and let go again, heading feetfirst for another catwalk.
Her eyes were on the battle ahead. The eye tyrant seemed to be trying to bite Durnan, who was ducking and rolling among stubby fingers of stone wall. As Asper's feet found the boards of the catwalk, slid in something unpleasant, and shot her right across it into empty air beyond, she saw the beholder bite down. Blocks of stone crumbled, and Durnan dived away, a dagger flashing in his hand. Mirt was getting close now, and beyond them all-as she brought her feet together to crash down through the rotting roof of a bone-cart-Asper could see a few warily watching creatures. A minotaur and a kenku were among them, pointing at Mirt disgustedly and shouting to each other. Wagers were being changed, it seemed.
Then Asper's feet plunged through silk that was gray with age, and into brittle bones beyond. She shut her eyes against flying shards as she sank into a crouch, letting her legs take the force of her landing.
A rough male ore's voice snarled, "What, by all the brain-boring tentacles of dripping Ilsenine's sycophants, was that?"
"Special delivery," Asper told the unseen merchant, as her sword flashed out. Silk fell away like cobwebs, and she sprang past startled, furious eyes and gleaming tusks onto the street beyond.
"Grrrenarrr!" The ore's roar of rage echoed off the buildings around, and Asper dodged sharply toward one side of the alley, bringing her sword up and back behind her without looking or slowing. A heavy hand axe rang off its tip and rattled along an iron gate beside her. Asper ran on into the darkness, calling back, "Pleasant meeting, bloodtusks!"