Dawn of Night (14 page)

In the endless night of that oppressive realm, a quarter-league below the city of Waterdeep, Skullport squatted in an immense L-shaped cavern carved from the rock by the slow but inexorable flow of the dark waters of the Sargauth, the underground river that fed Skullport a steady diet of ships and fresh water. The unsupported vault of the cavern’s soaring but stalactite-dotted ceiling would have collapsed of its own weight long ago if not for the mantle magic that supported it.

Even in his current, vulgar form, Azriim could feel the subtle currents of magic moving through the still, dank air of the city. The mantle’s magic touched everything, and it remained powerful, even after the death of its creators many centuries before.

Millennia earlier, Azriim knew, the cavern in which Skullport stood had been part of a much larger complex of caverns used by Netherese arcanists for magical experimentation—Sargauth Enclave, it was called, or so the Sojourner had explained to Azriim. It was the Netherese who first crafted the magical mantle that blanketed the caverns, an attempt by the human arcanists to secure the safety of their new city and to mimic the highest achievement of elven high magic, the mythal. But when the most powerful of the Netherese archwizards, Karsus, temporarily unraveled the Weave in a failed bid to achieve godhood, the enclave’s mantle temporarily ceased to function. Those few heartbeats during which magic was dead in Faerűn were as catastrophic to Sargauth Enclave as they were to the rest of the Empire of Netheril. Most of the caverns in which the enclave had stood, no longer buttressed by the magic of the mantle, collapsed in a hail of stone, crushing hundreds.

But a few caverns, by sheer happenstance, suffered only partial collapses. Centuries later, in one such cavern, Skullport squirmed from the corpse of the ruined Netherese outpost like an infestation of maggots. There it crouched, flourisking in the darkness and damp, a great fungus hiding in the shadows.

Bordered on three sides by trade tunnels stretching away into the Underdark, and on one side by an underground bay formed by the dark, pooling waters of the Sargauth, Skullport gradually grew into an important trade link in the chain of the Underdark’s unsteady economy. Beings of all races came to the Port of Skulls to trade in wares and flesh.

With limited space in which to build, the city’s inhabitants filled the cavern’s L-shaped floor and grew upward. Dilapidated homes, shops, and vice-dens—most built of salvaged shipping lumber washed down to the Sargauth by the currents of the surface sea-hugged the walls and ceilings of the cavern like lichen, or lay stacked one upon another, layer after layer, like a human child’s blocks. The roof of a brothel might be the floor of the eatery built above it.

An intricate network of catwalks, recycled ships’ rigging, tightropes, swings, and unstable bridges connected the buildings that stood above floor level. Strung from structure to structure, or spiked to the stalactites that pointed down from the vaulted ceiling like spear tips, the “hemp highway” made for an effective, if precarious set of airborne streets.

To Azriim, looking up from the floor, the hemp highway resembled the web of an insane spider, vibrating with the movement of hundreds of struggling flies going about their business. With a frequency bordering on a clock—at least once every twelve hours or so-someone would fall to a screaming, splattering death on the streets below. Sometimes a bridge or catwalk gave out, but just as often it was a creditor’s or enforcer’s patience that finally came to a violent end.

Without fail, the moment the corpse hit the street Skullport’s residents stripped it of valuables as quickly and efficiently as a swarm of fire ants stripped the flesh from anything unfortunate enough to cross its path. Azriim found it amusing.

He and his brood-mates had been in the city long enough even to have learned the vernacular and the less than-sensible geography. Skullport’s natives—skulkers, they called themselves—conceptually divided the city into three distinct sections: the Port, which was nearest the bay; the Trade Lanes, which straddled the L-shaped center of the cavern; and the Heart, the darkest and most dangerous area of the city, which stood in the bulb-shaped terminus of the cavern. Each of those sections was further subdivided into subsections to reflect the vertical elevation: lower, middle, and upper. Over the past tenday or so, Azriim learned that the nomenclature was inexact, and that what one person might call the Upper Trade Lanes, another might call the Middle Port. No matter. The city was the same everywhere, whether walking a rickety bridge through a forest of stalactites in the Upper Heart, or elbowing through the crowd of illithids and drow in the Lower Trade Lanes. It was dark, lit only by torches, candles, lanterns, and dim glowballs. And it stank of decayed corpses, wet garbage, and rotting fish.

Every level, the narrow streets and walkways teemed with all manner of hard-eyed creatures: houseless drow mercenaries, white-eyed derro savants, inscrutable illithids, fierce orcs, chattering gnolls, and much worse. Violence was common and bloody, even in public streets, so weapons, wands, fangs, and claws were always bare.

Azriim loved the chaos.

Coffles of slaves, the true coin of Skullport’s realm, were as ubiquitous on the lower levels as the drug dens, prostitutes, and muggings. They stood in huddled groups, vacant-eyed and hopeless, awaiting their fates—humans, dwarves goblins, elves, and creatures Azriim did not recognize. Some would end up as laborers, some as test subjects for chirurgeons, some as food. And even after death, those who were not consumed would continue to work. Zombie laborers were commonplace, especially on the clocks. Shambling and stinking, they loaded and unloaded cargo from the many ships that called at the piers of the Port of Skulls.

Unable to help himself, Azriim grinned his mouthful of perfect teeth (even in his current form, he refused to adopt foul teeth or show any eyes other than his natural blue and brown orbs), reveling in the degeneracy of the place. He savored its barely controlled chaos the way he might a fine meal. His only complaint was the filth and the stink. Skullport was the boil on the arse of the world,

and it stank accordingly. He would never get his clothes clean. HP had not yet been able even to keep them dry. A slow but steady drip of brownish, mineral-laden water fell from the ceiling above, causing the whole city to swell with moisture, and giving the stifling air a mineral tang.

With so many creatures packed into so small a space, the tension was palpable, a temperamental beast that lurked behind every transaction, every word, face, and gesture, waiting to erupt. But for the presence of the Skulls, Azriim knew, the city would long before have devolved into a bloodbath.

Thinking of the Skulls erased his smile and brought a frown to the thick-lipped, doughy face he wore. Skullport’s ostensible rulers were almost comically absurd-flying, glowing skulls of all things—but they managed to keep the city under control and the flow of trade continuous. The Skulls kept the violence of the city manageable through the careful, but seemingly chaotic, application of power. Not enough to wreak mass destruction, but just enough to instill the fear of an ugly death. Their spellcraft was paltry compared to the Sojourner’s, of course, but still powerful enough to keep the populace from running amok.

To Skullport’s citizens, the Skulls were enigmatic, even mystical. To Azriim, they were nothing more than what they were.

When Sargauth Enclave collapsed, the mantle supporting the caverns had absorbed the consciousnesses of thirteen of the mightiest Netherese arcanists killed in the destruction. They later rose from the ruins as the Skulls, the creatures that had given the city its name. For Azriim, the Skulls held no awe. They were simply another obstacle to be overcome on his way to transformation into gray.

Since arriving via a portal in Waterdeep—innumerable portals in Faerűn ended in Skullport—Azriim, Dolgan, and Serrin had remained inconspicuous in the city by changing forms and lodgings frequently.

Throughout, they had painstakingly studied the movement and behavior of the Skulls. They noted the time it took the creatures to respond to street fights in various parts of the city, and the frequency with which they were seen in certain locations. From that, they had deduced the general direction of the Skulls’ hidden lair, not far up the winding western tunnels that led into the wilds of the Underdark. Azriim was confident that somewhere in a cavern off of those tunnels, hidden by time, fallen rock, and the Skull’s magic, unbeknownst to all but the Skulls themselves, stood another cavern that had survived the destruction of Sargauth Enclave. The Sojourner had assured him of as much, and that made it so.

It was in that hidden cavern, that second surviving remnant of Sargauth Enclave, that the Skulls laired. And it was there that Azriim would find the focus for Skullport’s mantle, there that he must plant the seed of the Weave Tap. Since their arrival in the city, Azriim had kept the seed in magical stasis, held within the small, invisible, extradimensional space created by the magical ring on his finger. He could release the seed with a shake of his hand and a mental command.

But first things first, he reminded himself. With practiced ease, he regained his smile. He suspected it looked like more of a grimace in his current form.

Azriim walked-plodded, really-the packed earth avenues of the Lower Port, threading his way through the crowds and trailing his mark: a thin, pot-bellied, tonsured human named Thyld, who walked with a limp and wore stained, threadbare brown robes. Azriim had been trailing Thyld for over a tenday, learning the human’s habits, his haunts, and his tastes. Azriim felt as though he’d learned as much about the human as there was to know. Thyld was a “collector” for the Kraken Society, an organization perceived by the factions in Skullport to be a legitimate broker of information. The human had contacts among most of the important power groups in the city, in places both high and low. In addition, Thyld ran a lucrative side business, unbeknownst to his Kraken Society superiors, selling some choice bits of information to interested parties in the city. That made him ideal for Azriim’s purposes, which was unfortunate for Thyld.

To further his plan, Azriim would “borrow” Thyld for a time, use his contacts, and trade on the Kraken Society’s legitimacy. Then, when all of the variables were in place, he and his brood-mates would locate the hidden chamber, lure the Skulls away, and plant the seed of the Weave Tap.

Ahead, the open plaza of the Slavers Market was thronged with an auction day crowd. Shouted bids rang loudly in the dank air. Dozens of torches on tall posts illuminated the plaza and sent smoke curling through the caliginous air toward the ceiling. Two chained ogres in filth, flab, and worn leather tunics stood on a raised wooden platform while a middle-aged human with an elaborate mustache, fat-puckered arms, and a bright red tunic stood before them and managed the shouted bids carrying from the crowd. Near the platform, a line of chained slaves—one of them an attractive human female—awaited their turn on the block. The irony of slavery in Skullport was that few of the slaves were actually put to work in the city. The great slave market simply provided the venue for purchasing and selling. The slaves themselves were typically shipped out into the darker corners of Faerűn and the Underdark.

Beyond the plaza stood the docks, and ships of all sorts lined the piers, from Calishite slave-schooners to Luskan clippers. Most arrived via the many gates that dotted various areas of the Sargauth’s channel. Some made the journey from the surface seas via an intricate, secret network of magical locks and hoists. Crates, bags, and urns of goods lay neatly stacked in piles along the docks. The calls of sailors and goblin dockhands occasionally penetrated through the noise of the auction to reach Azriim’s ears.

Azriim’s magic sense suddenly caused the back of his throat to tingle and drew his eye upward.

There, high above the plaza, watching the auction and wharves with its inscrutable, eyeless stare, floated one of the Skulls. A dim orange nimbus surrounded it, and its gaze moved slowly hither and yon, seeing all.

Azriim willed himself to be unobtrusive.

Without warning, the Skull swooped down from its high perch and whizzed low over the crowd, trailing a tail of orange light. A gasp went up, fingers pointed, eyes went wide, and the auctioneer fell quiet. Many people fled the plaza, hunched over and terrified. The Skull swooped out wide, turned a half circle, and sped back toward the crowd. Azriim feared he might have been discovered, but no. The Skull stopped directly in front of a thin human male dressed in an ill-fitting gray tunic and leather breeches. A sword hung from his belt but his hand stayed well clear of it. When the human stared into those empty eye sockets, he visibly shook. He licked his lips nervously. The people and creatures around him cleared away, leaving him alone with the Skull.

An anticipatory hush fell over the crowd. The auctioneer seemed frozen with his jiggling arm held aloft, about to accept a final bid for one of the ogres. Like Azriim, the audience knew what was coming-slaughter or slapstick. Either way, an amusing spectacle in Skullport.

The Skull’s jaw did not move when it spoke.

“You are a pilferer of trivial things,” it pronounced, loud enough to be heard throughout the plaza. The man shook his head and started to protest, but the Skull went on, “Thieves are not tolerated in the Market. Speak now the name of the favored hound of the third son of the fourth high arcanist to rule Iolaum or face immediate punishment.”

The accused thief’s face flushed red to his ears. Fear paralyzed him, though he looked like he wanted nothing more than to run.

“Wh-what do you mean?” he stammered. ‘I… I didn’t steal nothing. I don’t know any arcaners.”

“Incorrect,” said the Skull.

At that dire pronouncement, the thief must have sensed the fullness of his danger. He finally managed to break free of his fear-induced paralysis and turned to run. Even if there had been somewhere to go, he was too late. The Skull spoke a series of arcane words and a green beam fired from its eyes. It struck the man in the back, swallowed his scream, and instantly reduced him to a pile of fine dust. A handful of silver coins, scattered in the soot, was all that remained of the offender.