Danilo smiled, relieved to be able to speak whole truth at least once. “On that, Uncle, you may depend.”
* * * * *
Ebenezer waited impatiently as Bronwyn held council with the aging human who kept the inn. The Yawning Portal, it was called. The yawning customer was more like it. He was beginning to nod off over his third mug of ale when the young woman strode over to his table, an expression of grim triumph on her face.
“Durnam will let us in,” she said softly. “This is not the only entrance to Skullport, but it’s the quickest. It’s like being a bucket in a well. He ties a rope around you and lowers you down.”
“A well, eh? A dry one, I’m hoping.”
“At first.” She grinned fleetingly, fiercely. “Skuilport is neither dull nor dry not by any measure.”
The dwarf perked up at this news. He’d been doing too much sitting around for his liking and was about ready for a rowdy hour or two. He hopped up from the chair. “Well then, let’s get to it.”
Ebenezer followed Bronwyn back to the locked room and watched as the old man slid the cover from a gaping hole in the floor. The dwarf insisted on going first, figuring he’d be the better one to look around for danger, seeing as he could see in the dark and she couldn’t. She agreed and told him briefly what to look for
It was a good thing he’d chosen to go first, for the ride down was far longer than Ebenezer had expected. If he had had to sit and twiddle his thumbs while they cranked Bronwyn down, he might have changed his mind and demanded they take another route. It was hard to rethink the matter in the middle of a dark, narrow well shaft.
Finally he caught sight of the opening Bronwyn had told him would be there. He swung back and forth on the rope a bit to get some momentum, then seized the first of several iron handholds set into the stone wall. He hauled himself into the side tunnel, then wriggled out of the leather harness and gave the rope a couple of good tugs.
Instinct prompted him not to holler up a got-here-just-fine. Darkness and silence surrounded him, but there was a watchful quality to the place. Ebenezer wasn’t keen to alert who-knows-what of his arrival.
The dwarf waited impatiently, hand never far from the handle of his hammer, until Bronwyn came into view. He grabbed her by the belt and hauled her into the tunnel. She touched down with a whisper of soft-soled leather. She shrugged off the harness and gestured to Ebenezer to follow her—a bold gesture, considering that she herself could not see in the utter blackness of the hole.
Ebenezer fell into step beside her, moving comfortably though the darkness. His eyes, like those of all dwarves, slipped easily past the range of light and color to perceive subtle patterns of heat. Humans had no such abilities, but Bronwyn moved along well enough, finding her way by running the fingertips of one hand along the wall.
They passed two passages before Bronwyn turned off into a side tunnel. This one sloped down swiftly in a tight, curving spiral, widening as it went. Slowly, the heat patterns faded from the dwarf’s vision to be replaced by a faint, phosphoric light. Glowing lichen clung to the damp stone walls, and globs of luminous, mobile fungi inched along the walkways.
Ebenezer booted one out of the way. It splatted against the wall in a smear of weirdly glowing green, then oozed down to meld with a passing fungus.
“Looks like a deep dragon sneezed in here,” he muttered darkly.
“It gets worse. Take care what you step in.”
This proved to be good advice. Some of the leavings were more disgusting than others, and more than once they skirted the rotting carcass of some poor critter who’d been ambushed and half eaten.
They walked for hours without talking, listening intently to the sounds of the tunnel—the hollow, echoing sound of their footsteps, the dripping of water, the squeak of rats and the distant roars of prowling monsters. In time the faint clamor of a settlement edged into the tunnels.
“Almost there,” Bronwyn murmured.
Ebenezer nodded and lifted one hand to cover his nose. The unmistakable stench of a seaport filled the air They turned down another passage and came out into a huge cavern, the floor of which was scattered with low, dark buildings
They made their way through a squalid marketplace crowded with more beings, hailing from more races than Ebenezer had ever seen in one place. It was almost a relief when Bronwyn veered off into a narrow side tunnel.
The tunnel ended abruptly, opening into a small cavern glowing with faint, flickering blue light. At the entrance stood two of the largest illithids Ebenezer had ever seen. They were hideous brutes—man-sized, bipedal creatures whose misshapen bodies were not recognizable as either male or female. Large, bald heads of a sickiy lavender hue rose above robes the color of dried blood. Their faces were utterly without expression—at least, none that the dwarf could read. fllithid eyes were large, white, and blank, and the lower half of their face comprised four writhing lavender tentacles. The guards clutched spears in their three-fingered purple hands, but their real weapon lay behind those impassive eyes.
“I need to talk to Istire,” Bronwyn told the guards, jerking her head toward Ebenezer “Got a dwarf for sale.” In response, the guards stepped aside, and a third illithid emerged from the shadows, beckoning them to follow.
Ebenezer threw his friend a derisive glare, which he kept firmly in place as he followed the woman into the cavern. The way he saw it, a scowl would look well matched with the swagger he threw into his walk. Maybe these purple critters could look into his mind and know what he thought of all this, but he’d be damned as a duergar if he’d look scared!
“Not a bad plan, I guess, but you couldn’t have warned me about it ahead of time?” complained Ebenezer in a low whisper as he and Bronwyn fell into step behind their guide.
“Hard to do, considering that I’m making this up as we go,” she countered.
“Hmmph! Just see that you don’t go selling me off to some two-legged squid,” the dwarf returned with more bravado than he felt.
When they emerged into another small cavern, their guide disappeared back into the thick shadows and yet another illithid, this one draped in expensive-looking silks and fine gold jewelry, glided forward. Apparently, the message had been relayed through the mysterious mind-speak the creatures employed. Since there was little point in lying to a creature who could pluck thoughts from another being’s mind, Bronwyn sensibly got right to the point. “Istire,” she said, nodding a greeting. “We’re trying to locate a shipment of dwarf slaves. I want the whole lot of them.”
That is not the message the guard relayed, responded the illithid Istire, its unearthly “voice” sounding in Ebenezer’s mind.
“I want an Arbiter,” Bronwyn said calmly, ignoring her own lie. ‘We are entitled to one, by Skullport’s laws of trade.”
A touch of emotion—irritation, frustration, and perhaps respect—emanated from the illithid. This way, it. said grudgingly.
The creature led them deeper into the cavern. As they went, the bluish glow intensified, until the gleam forced Ebenezer to shade his eyes. He just barely made out the source of the light—and promptly wished he hadn’t bothered.
A strange, malformed illithid sat on a pedestal on a square dais with steps leading up on all sides. Instead of four short tentacles, this one had nine or ten extremely long ones that branched out from all sides of an enormous, glowing head. These tentacles undulated softly through the air like a cave octopus feeling about for prey.
“An Arbiter,” Bronwyn explained softly. “You need to hold the tip of one of those tentacles. As long as you do, we’re all equal. The illithid can’t influence us, any more than we can control it.”