City of Hawks (15 page)

“Happily agreed, good priest!” Gord said heartily.

The tall man smiled. “And gladly done, Gord. May all be well with you.”

The boy waved farewell. “In two days I’ll be back to see you. You are truly a fine man to understand this matter so well!”

The cleric smiled wryly at that. He doubted that his decision would meet with approval from on high, but he was subject to mortal weaknesses too. The lad had him caught up in adventurous nonsense.

As promised, Gord appeared in two days, and the lightstone was ready.

He entered the sewers from the Moat Stream Canal, where a narrow strip of warehouses and shops existed between the waterway and the wall that separated Old City from New Town.

Gord chose a place where he would come under the beggars’ section of the ancient portion of Grey-hawk, rather than farther south where the passages would take him under the Thieves Quarter. The reasoning was simple. The more southerly sewers would be heavily trafficked by thieves, while those to the north, where the beggars held sway, would be virtually unused-particularly now that the business of stealing was the sole province of the thieves. Because of his training, Gord was able to detect the secret signs of both thiggers and thieves. Any concealed adits would be marked, and Gord needed to find some means of getting lower in the subterranean maze.

He had used his mechanical skills, those gained at locksmithing principally, to fashion a small case for the enspelled stone. It was a tight cube of sheet tin, each of its six faces only a few inches square. The lightstone was tightly wedged between the top and bottom of the box so that it would not move or even rattle. One of the side faces was solidly and permanently fastened to the top and bottom for added rigidity, and a handle affixed to it, so that half of the sides of the cube were set. Each of the other three faces was flanged at the top and fasteners were placed there to allow locking. Along the bottom each side had a hinge. Flip the hook, shove the flange with thumb or finger, and the face would drop away to allow light to spill out.

The face opposite the handle was, by definition, the front of the lantern-the gadget, for all its distinctiveness, was actually nothing more than that, all in all. Gord had made a small hole there and added a flat piece of tin that could be slid aside to uncover the aperture. That allowed the light-box to send forth a thin, bright beam of light without illuminating all the space ahead or nearly around him, as was the case when all three sides of the device were allowed to drop open.

He was pleased with his work, even though he had been unable to keep the cube from emitting any light at all when he closed it. Try as he might, Gord could not stop the bright light from being visible along the cracks where the moving faces met the frame. Finally he decided to use the side-face openings only in an emergency and plugged the light leaks there with beeswax blackened with soot. Because there was no help for the other glimmerings, from where the front face met its four neighbors, Gord carried the box inside a baggy jacket where he could easily conceal its illumination by the cloaking effect of the dark, thick cloth.

He wore a long cloak over his other garments as he walked northward to arrive at the place where he planned to enter the sewers. Having set out just as the sun was sinking, Gord timed his arrival so it was just fully dark when he came to his destination. The boy was small enough to be able to slip through the side opening in the grate that covered the entrance, and being familiar with such places enabled him to find the iron rungs of the ladder leading down without using any illumination.

At the bottom of this first shaft, some fifteen feet below street level, Gord blinked and looked around. His eyesight was excellent, his night vision superb according to those who knew about such things. The faint light from above was sufficient to enable Gord to discern the walls and the places where the vaulted drains ran from the conjoining point of the shaft. After orienting himself, Gord chose the one going north and carefully proceeded up the tunnel for several yards. Then he took out his magical lantern and allowed a little light to spill out from the hole in the front face.

“Just a trickle,” he said aloud, satisfaction evident in his tone, as he viewed what was before him. The old drain had a concave bed in which a small stream of waste ran. The stuff was mostly water, and it was flowing in the same direction the boy was headed. Gord stood on a narrow ledge some three feet above the channel. The stones were enslimed and worn, dangerous unless one was careful. The odor was nauseating, but not so horrible as to make breathing painful.

“It could be worse,” Gord said as he slipped a wrapping of black cloth up from around his neck to mask his nose and mouth. At the last minute he had thought of this added bit of gear, as well as a small flask of vinegar to douse it with, but that would be used only if the air got really foul. Off came the cloak, and in a trice he had it rolled, slung, and tied over his right shoulder.

Pacing carefully ahead, Gord found no secret sign to indicate that there was any concealed means of egress from the sewer. Coming to another junction point, he decided to turn right, into the system that ran under the center of the Beggars Quarter. This tunnel was about a foot above the north-south one, so he had to step up. The concave drain on the floor in this conduit was absolutely dry. There were heavy webs and a few scurrying beetles, but nothing else. The existence of the webs confirmed his judgment. The sewer he had been in was not one that had been used by anyone coming from Old City, else these webs would have been mangled and torn down before now.

Using his sword to clear away the webs, and being careful to avoid the spiders that hid within them, Gord walked quickly along his route, covering ground at a good pace because the ledge was dry and easy. Soon thereafter that changed.

Several openings here released effluent into the main tunnel. Those that opened onto his side made going difficult, and Gord had to use his athletic ability a few times to avoid being drenched by the noisome outpouring of one pipe or another. There were glitterings ahead, and nasty chitterings and squeakings that told the boy that there were rats here.

Just as he was becoming discouraged, Gord saw a series of marks on the opposite wall. They were barely discernible and to the untrained eye would have appeared as nothing more than worn places in the stone blocks. Gord read a sign that alerted the initiated to the fact that there was a means of leaving the sewers just ahead.

“Damn!” he said under his breath. The exit led upward, not below. Where there was a means of leaving the maze, however, there might also be a way deeper as well. Gord forged ahead.

About half an hour later he came to a place where several sewer tunnels met. The effluents formed a deep pool in the circular chamber where the various drains converged, and there were flying bridges built to span the noxious pond. Gord flashed his light atop one of the spans, and when Gord’s light struck its greenish-black body a reptile shot off its perch to land with a splash in the pool below. The tail of a huge rat was hanging from the side of its mouth. Gord saw that clearly before the thing vanished under the scummy surface.

Shuddering involuntarily, the boy paused a minute to make certain than some even bigger monster wasn’t lurking about. The stench here was practically unbearable, so while he was pausing, Gord decided to douse his scarf with vinegar. Again he changed directions, going right to parallel his initial route. After carefully traversing the flying bridge that led in the desired direction, he was again prowling along a passage, this time walking southward.

He saw a narrow opening about a hundred paces from the pool. It didn’t seem promising, but something urged Gord to investigate it Just in case. The corridor was not more than twenty feet long and terminated in a flight of steep stairs… upward. He turned away in disgust, using that emotion to fight off his despair, when something caught his eye. It was another marking on the wall, one he had overlooked at first because of the narrowness of the passage and his rush to find out where it led. The sign indicated access to a lower pathway!

With a sigh of relief, Gord began searching along the wall opposite the marking. He knew from experience that such signs were often used to mark location as well as give information. Thanks to his sharp eyes and with the help of his light, Gord was able to discover the hidden door in just minutes. It took much longer for him to discover how the mechanism worked that enabled the doorway in the stone blocks to open. Eventually he found the place where a knife blade could be inserted to release a catch, and a low section of the wall swung inward to reveal another passageway going off at a right angle to the narrow passage he was in. Gord entered the place without hesitation, pushed the door shut, and smiled to himself in triumph.

The low tunnel led to more stairs, but these spiraled down. It was impossible to discover if this was an oft-traveled route, because the damp stones would not leave traces of passage-at least not to one who was not an expert at tracking. Gord was many things, but no expert at discovering such signs, He merely looked as he progressed, checked to see if he could notice his own trail behind himself, and shrugged. Whether or not there were other users, Gord meant to go downward now and take his chances.

The circling steps took him down and down. By counting Gord was able to estimate that he was at least another twenty feet deeper when the staircase ended in the corner of a small room with four passages leading from it at right angles to one another. All well and good, but thanks to his spiraling path Gord now had no idea of direction. There was only one way to get his bearings, and that required that he go back up the stairway and mark the wall on the way down using his chalk, noting every time he had made enough of a turn to leave him pointing in a different direction. Eventually Gord determined that the little room at the base of the stairs was hewn eastward from where the steps ended. That meant that the narrow, arched exits from the room led off in the cardinal directions. Excellent!

Gord stopped to catch his breath and to take a sip of the brandy he had. This was exciting stuff! As he rested, the enormity of what he was doing, where he was, suddenly struck the boy. Even though he had been in the sewers previously, this excursion was more than a bit frightening now that he stopped to think about it. When he had pondered this mission during the planning of it, the thought of risk had simply added zest to his undertaking. This was ah altogether different situation. Now Gord was actually in the totally unknown, where great dangers probably lurked, seeking a place he was uncertain of, and as alone as any boy could be. Despite his best efforts, Gord’s rate of breathing increased until he was panting, and his heart raced. Fear was getting hold of him.

“Calm down, or else they’ll be calling you ‘Gutless’ again,” he said aloud. The sound of his voice helped to reassure him, and the epithet he hated so much was sufficient to do the rest. Unknown monsters were one thing, but the fear of being thought of as a coward was stronger than the apprehension of facing hidden perils here. Gord slowed his breathing with conscious effort, took a pull from the little flask of brandy, and spoke aloud again.

“That’s better now, isn’t it? High time we showed everyone that there is no more little boy to shove around!” The fiery liquor spread outward in him, and he reassured himself further by touching his hand briefly to the sheath of his dagger and the hilt of his sword. Then, getting back to business, he took out his waterproof case and flipped it open. He checked his three sketch maps carefully, trying to locate his position on the second one by guessing where he had been on the first when he found the spiral steps that led to this second tier of ducts beneath Old City.

“Then I must be about here,” he muttered to himself as he made a small mark on the second map. “South will take me to the place where the canal runs below, and then I’ll need to head west, so it’s a right turn at that point… Anyway, the flow will be east, toward the great basin of the reservoir, so it’ll be easy to know direction.”

Despite his returned confidence and bravery, the boy stopped to listen, his lantern dark and sword at the ready, at each of the room’s other exits before he ducked through the one that went to the south. He was now in the system of tunnels and passageways that the assassins and thieves held as their own secret highway. Gord had no desire to disillusion the likes of them, or to stumble unwittingly into some creature who dwelled in this labyrinth, and caution was not cowardice! There was a faint dripping sound from the shaft he had just come down, but otherwise the stillness was absolute. Gord held his breath, quieted himself as completely as he could. Nothing. Carefully moving the slide on his light-box to allow a tiny shaft of illumination to spring ahead, Gord set off once more on his quest.

He came across side openings at regular intervals. Gord’s light showed that there were empty chambers beyond. He couldn’t guess why these had been chiseled out. Possibly to store food or weapons or both, possibly for some reason that could not be guessed at now. The passage was dry, and there were no living things along its way. Both of those facts changed, however, as he went farther.

The air went from cold and chilly to actually damp, and Gord noticed thick webs stretched across an opening on the right-hand wall. He paused and looked carefully at the walls ahead and to the rear. They had not been immediately obvious, but there were certainly wisps and small fragments of web clinging to the walls. This passage had been used by someone, and not very long ago! Whoever had come along its length had cleared the way of most of the webbing, but traces remained.

As he took this in with his eyes, Gord also used his ears. The sound of trickling water came first, then he heard voices somewhere ahead, their words indistinguishable in the echoing tunnel.

Dimming his lantern to its lowest illumination, the boy sank down to the stone floor and used his sword to make as small an opening as he could in the curtain of silken strands that covered the archway on the west wall. He then slithered through the hole and tried to replace the strands of web he had sliced away, to partially hide the space he had passed through. The effort was clumsy at best, but it was the best he could manage. Then he crept quickly along to where this entrance tunnel opened up into a chamber beyond, slipped around the corner, and tucked the light-box into his jacket. All of this was done in utmost haste, and he didn’t stop to consider what might be in this place with him. Gord simply sat very still, his back pressed against the slimy stone of the wall, and waited. Something scuttled across his hand. Gord nearly shrieked, then bit his lip, huddled tightly to make himself even smaller, and held his breath.