"A gnoll?" Jak hissed. "Are you mad? Tricksters hairy toes!"
Riven glared at the halfling and said, "You have a better idea, Fleet? He said he knows the forest."
Cale ignored them both and considered. Like Jak, he didn't like the thought of working with a gnoll. The powerful canine humanoids were notoriously ill-tempered and savage. Still, they had nothing else at the moment. He eyed Riven.
"This gnoll is legitimate?"
"I verified that independently," Riven said. "He's done guide work in the wilds around Starmantle since the Year of the Sword. I didn't mention any temple. Just that we wanted to get to a lake in the northern Gulthmere. He seemed to know the place I meant. I figure he gets us to the lake safely, then you and Fleet locate either the temple or Vraggen with spells."
Or with dreams, Cale thought, but didn't say.
Instead, he said simply, "Good."
"Wait a—" Jak began.
Cale cut him off with a look and said, "It's all we've got, little man. In two nights, Vraggen's going to have what he wants, unless we stop him."
To that, Jak said nothing, only took another pull on his pipe.
Cale looked to Riven and said, "I want to meet him before we commit."
"Now?"
Cale nodded. He wanted to take the gnoll's measure himself, and use a few divinations to ensure that he was no shapeshifter in disguise. It would have been easy enough for Vraggen or the half-drow to have paid off many of the bawds in the city. This could be a set-up just as easily as it could be legitimate.
Riven pushed back his chair and rose.
"Let's go," he said. "He's probably still in the Underworld."
"The Underworld?"
"You'll see," Riven replied. "Keep your steel loose in the scabbard. And don't worry about your appearance. Just draw up your cloak. No one's looking for a tall man with an elderly cripple."
Riven flashed his stained teeth, and Cale rose and looked down on Jak. Sephris's ghost had told them that the sphere denoted a time the very next night, at the point of deepest darkness. Cale took that last to mean midnight.
"Stay here, little man," he said. "Get our gear together. Guide or no guide, we're leaving tonight. We're out of time."
What was the Underworld once had been ... something else, and the something else had burned to the ground, along with several adjacent buildings. The stones of the burned building's foundation still demarcated its former borders. Blackened wood and loose rocks lay in piles around the large, otherwise vacant lot. A clear path through the charred debris led to a large hole in the earth—probably once a basement, or a large cellar. Smoke and the occasional snatch of conversation leaked out of the hole.
"That's it," Riven said, indicating the hole. "Down there. Caters to gnolls, orcs, and the like."
Cale gave a nod. He figured the current owners had bought the charred property cheap, expanded the cellar of the previous establishment, and held it out as a tavern. Shrewd, really. Something a Sembian might have thought of.
"Let's go," he said, and they did.
Twenty-five or so stone flagged stairs descended to a single large room dug out of the earth. Thick timbers lined the walls and stood at intervals throughout the room to prevent collapse. Some holes had been bored in the ceiling through to the outside to provide ventilation, but smoke still clouded the air and stairwell. The place had an animal stink, like a kennel.
A huge bugbear wearing a shirt of studded leather and a pair of spiked gauntlets sat on a stool to Cale's right. His hairy-knuckled hands rested on the leather wrapped hilt of a short, thick club. The bugbear's pugnacious jaw and the teeth that filled it looked fit to tear raw meat. The creature leaned forward and its bloodshot eyes fixed on Cale.
"Everyone drinks, manling," it grunted in Common. "Everyone pays. And no one fights."
Cale held its gaze for a moment before nodding.
"I hear you," he responded in the harsh goblin tongue, which he knew bugbears to understand.
The creature's eyes registered surprise. It leaned back, gave what Cale thought might have been a grin, and waved them in with the club.
There was no bar in the room, just some swollen, tapped hogsheads set on a table in one corner. The unkempt human "barkeep" slept in a chair beside the table, his hands folded over his ample belly and filthy burlap apron. Tallow candles burned wanly on the five or six thick-legged tables set around the room. Ten or fifteen half-orcs and gnolls populated the tables, each holding drinks in mismatched tankards. Some threw dice; others conversed with comrades in their guttural tongues. Conversation lulled for a moment as hard, bestial faces coldly eyed Cale and Riven, but quickly restarted with renewed vigor.
Mindful of the bugbear's words, they headed for the barkeep and the drink table. A few of the half-orcs glared challenges at Cale but he ignored them.
As they walked, Riven leaned on Cale as though for support and whispered, "How did you speak to that bugbear, Cale? How many languages do you know anyway?"
"Nine," Cale answered. "But not the gnolls'." He looked around the room at the many gnolls. "Are one of these Dreeve?"
Riven looked out from under his hood.
"There," he said. "Alone at the table to our left. Big bastard with the long mane, mail shirt, and piercings."
Cale saw him. Dreeve sat alone in the corner, eyeing them with feral black eyes while sipping—lapping, really—from a ceramic tankard. Even sitting, he looked big: a full two heads taller than Cale, probably. Dark, yellow-brown fur covered light green skin. Muscles and veins bulked under his mail shirt and green travelling cloak. Three iron rings hung from each ear and the fur around his canine muzzle was stained black, the telltale sign of a habitual mistleaf root chewer.
Cale took an immediate dislike to him, but reminded himself that they had little choice.
"Drinks first," he said to Riven.
When they reached the table with the tapped hogsheads atop it, the barkeep, without ever looking up or opening his eyes, said, "Three coppers a tankard. Serve yourself."
Cale laid a silver raven on the table—he had only Sembian coins—took two dirty tankards from the haphazard stack near the taps, and filled each with the watered-down swill.
Without another word, they turned and walked for Dreeve's table. As they did, Cale surreptitiously whispered the words to a divination spell that detected dweomers. Neither the gnoll nor any of his items showed as magical. Cale felt relieved. Unless the gnoll was warded, he was no shapeshifter.
Dreeve eyed them as they approached. When they got close, he chuffed the air, as though sniffing for spoor. His lips peeled back from yellowed fangs.
To Riven he said, "You return, old human." He put enough emphasis on the last word to suggest it was an insult. He looked at Cale and licked his lips. "And you bring another of your pack, eh? Dreeve's offer is good, not so?" he asked Cale. His voice was strangely high-pitched, but deep growls punctuated every third or fourth word. "Did you bring the coin? Three hundred gold?"
Cale ignored the question.
"You told this granther—" he nodded at Riven—"that you know the Gulthmere?"
Cale deliberately made himself sound skeptical.
The gnoll snarled at him, "You suggest that I lie, human? I know the forest." He growled, low and dangerous. "You leader of your pack?"
His fetid breath made Cale want to gag, but Cale merely stared at him. The gnoll leaned back in his chair, causing it to creak.
"You seek the Moonmere," the gnoll said, "the Lightless Lake. This I know from him."
Dreeve waved a huge hand at Riven. Cale held his tongue.
"No light in that water," the gnoll continued. "The sky cannot be seen. My pack not go to that place. I only show you where to go. You go alone."