Skein of Shadows (13 page)

Take, for instance, your average Stormreach Flamer. They saw nothing wrong with raising a fallen comrade from the dead, calling them back from their rightful place within the Flame to continue the battle against evil. On Khorvaire, though, Flamers would consider such an act to be the vilest form of sacrilege.

Sabira wasn’t a Flamer, but having grown up in Karrnath, where the honored dead were often brought back to a semblance of life to continue to protect and defend
the homeland, she thought she’d probably side with the Stormreach faction on this one.

“Hail, brave wanderer. I am Inamil Mattor, and in the name of the Silver Flame, I welcome you to this place,” the elf woman said as she approached, giving her a wide, friendly smile.

“I understand my friend spoke to you before leaving the enclave,” Sabira replied, by way of introduction. “Any idea where he went? We’re sort of on a tight schedule here.”

“I speak to many lost souls here in Stormreach,” Inamil responded, her smile losing none of its shine at Sabira’s terseness. “And any who call evil an enemy is one whom I would call friend.”

Sabira sighed. What was it with the people in this enclave, anyway? She really didn’t have time for yet another philosophical debate.

She held her hand up at shoulder height.

“Dwarf. About this tall. Not much in the way of a beard, and he was probably asking if you knew of any taverns in the area that serve tea.”

“Ah. Master Gared. Yes, we did speak. And no, he was not interested in tea. Though, now that you mention it, they do serve a.…”

Gared? Really? If the dwarf was going to continue using fake names wherever he went, Sabira was going to have to insist that they at least be a little more original.
And
he was going to have to give her note cards so she could keep them all straight.

“Yes, that’s wonderful; I’ll be sure to pass it on,” Sabira said, trying to hurry the woman up. “Now, where did you say he went?”

“I didn’t,” Inamil replied, her infuriating smile not slipping an inch, “because I don’t know. But Gared did ask me if the Church maintained a library in Stormreach. I of course mentioned the Sanctuary, which does have an extensive archival collection.…”

The Sanctuary was, in theory, an asylum for worshipers of the Silver Flame whose struggles against evil had driven them past the brink of sanity. Better known to locals as “the Catacombs,” the asylum was an imposing domed structure crowned and flanked by great bowls of flickering argent fire. Sabira had been there a time or two to help out a Flamer friar with his wayward niece. But despite its orderly appearance and religious cast, the so-called Sanctuary wasn’t any different from a dozen other similar institutions throughout Khorvaire—it was a place to get rid of the inconvenient and incriminating without actually killing them; nothing more.

Which didn’t explain why Greddark had decided to pay the place a last-minute visit on their way out of Stormreach. But considering that the first of the four bells that marked the hour were beginning to echo throughout the enclave, it wasn’t an answer she was going to get right now.

Sabira thanked the elf woman for her time and then gestured for the others to follow her. Skraad had rejoined the group and Sabira outlined the basics of the expedition to the three of them as they headed through the Maker’s Gate and back out into the Marketplace. She kept it simple; there would be time enough for details when they were in the air.

The Sanctuary was just to the north of the Maker’s Gate in a small, oddly-shaped courtyard that housed only the asylum and a central fountain. The flagstone plaza
had three obvious exits: The Maker’s Gate in the southeast and two other openings in the high walls that surrounded the courtyard, one in the west and one in the northwest. The western exit led to the ramshackle district known as Soulgate and the northwestern one opened up into the area of the Marketplace that housed the entrances to both the Kundarak and Jorasco enclaves.

Of course, in Stormreach, you’d be a fool to ignore the less obvious exits—namely, the ladders. For just as Stormreach was a city of many eras, cultures, and races, it was also a city of many layers.

There was the city proper, the only one that most people ever saw, where the more civilized races held sway—humans, elves, halflings, and dwarves. Sabira didn’t consider the half-orcs to be civilized, and after today, the idea of warforged holding anything resembling “sway” was clearly laughable, but Stormreach did have a sizeable population of both of those races, as well.

Then there was the city below. Consisting primarily of the sewers formed from remnants of the giants’ ancient plumbing system, this underground world housed tribes of kobolds and troglodytes, gang hideouts, and all manner of wandering creatures.

Finally, there was the city above, a series of rooftops, balconies, and wooden bridges accessed by the ladders that clung tenaciously to the sides of buildings and walls in every district of Stormreach. The domain of cutpurses and petty thieves who knew the Stormreach Guard was too lazy to follow them up into the heights, the city above also offered a way to cross most of any given district without ever touching the ground—as long as you were nimble
of foot and immune to random attacks of vertigo, that was. Since Sabira was neither, she tended to steer clear of that part of the city almost as much as she did the sewers, and the Deneith and Kundarak enclaves. And the House Cannith enclave now too.

Though give her another week here and she’d probably find herself forced to travel the heights just to avoid all the people out for her blood. Good thing she wasn’t staying even another hour.

Since she wanted to avoid the Kundarak enclave, Sabira headed toward the Soulgate exit. As she led the group past the fountain, she spied Friar Renau on the other side. She paused, debating whether or not to ask the old man if he’d seen Greddark when the dwarf saved her the trouble by hurrying through the asylum gates, tucking something into his shirt. When he caught sight of Sabira, he jogged over to her. The last of the four bells was just beginning to ring.

“What are you standing around for? We’re going to be late!”

Sabira opened her mouth to respond and then thought better of it. He was right—even if his jaunt into the Catacombs
was
part of the reason they were behind schedule. It was just one more thing she would deal with once they were aboard the airship and headed out to the Menechtarun.

If they ever actually made it that far. As they headed out of the courtyard toward Falconer’s Spire, Sabira heard a shout behind them.

“Stop that dwarf!”

Greddark cursed.

“I think that’s our cue to run.”

Sabira didn’t even bother to ask why; the crossbow bolt that whizzed past her ear told her all she really needed to know.

“This way!” she cried, sprinting toward the western exit. They were halfway there when a group of men in silver armor walked into the courtyard in a group, laughing and chatting.

Wonderful. She’d forgotten that the fourth bell was shift change.

As the Silver Flame guards behind them started yelling at the guards in front of them, Sabira changed direction, making for the northwestern exit instead. She offered up a quick prayer to Olladra that Arach wouldn’t choose that precise moment to walk out of the Kundarak enclave with a dozen of his own guards in tow, but Sabira wasn’t sure the goddess of luck could hear her over the indignant cries of the Flamers—or that the Sovereign would answer Sabira’s supplications even if she could hear them.

But it seemed her luck hadn’t completely run out, for the walled area outside the courtyard was empty, save for a dwarf panhandler who shouted dire warnings at them as they passed by.

She led her motley group past the stump of a massive giantish pillar that separated the gates to the neighboring Kundarak and Jorasco enclaves. Magewrought notice boards floated at the base of the stone edifice, offering jobs for those either in need of coin or in want of fame. As the first of the Silver Flame guards entered the grassy enclosure behind them, Sabira had an idea. She stopped near the closest board and grabbed one of the metal dragon wings that formed its edge.

“Guisarme, Jester! Help me with this. Gred—er, whatever—you and Skraad grab that one!”

She tried to pull it around, but even with the help of the two warforged, it wouldn’t budge.

“No, like this!”

She looked over to see Greddark cutting off the ballast bag that hung from the stylized dragon tail on one side of his notice board. As the heavy sack hit the ground, the board canted at an angle and he and Skraad were able to move it. Working together, the duo forced it out onto the pathway, where it would hamper their pursuers. Then they quickly began dismantling another notice board.

She and the warforged followed suit and they soon had six listing notice boards strung out across the small enclosure, forming a bobbing blockade that would provide some protection from the crossbows the guards carried and would slow down their pursuit for a few moments, at least. Hopefully, that would be all the time they needed.

With Sabira back in the lead, they sprinted for the exit in the western wall. She almost thought they were going to make it out, but then she caught a glint of silver through the arch and realized that some of the Flamers had circled back through Soulgate to cut them off.

Greddark saw them at the same time and slowed to a stop.

“What so we do now? We’re trapped!”

Sabira cast about frantically for a way out and her eyes fell on the ladders on either side of the archway.

“Up!” she said, heading for the ladder to the left. As she scrambled up the rungs as fast as she could, she felt a rush of wind. A crossbow bolt with silver and white fletching
buried itself into the stone mere inches from her face, but Sabira ignored it and kept going.

There was a cry below her as one of the bolts struck home. A quick glance showed Skraad just behind her, breaking the bolt in his arm off with his teeth while he fired his own crossbow with his other hand. His aim was truer, and one of the Flamers on the other side of the notice boards went down with a quarrel in his shoulder.

That left only one crossbowman to worry about; all the rest of the Silver Flame guards carried melee weapons.

She reached the top of the wall and leaped over a low railing while the others clambered up behind her. Greddark was last, and once he was clear of the ladder, he primed his alchemy blade and struck the top rung, setting the wood aflame. Nobody would be following them up.

Unfortunately, it also left them with no way to get down. Unlike most of the city above, the section of the wall they stood on didn’t readily connect with any other structure. There was only another ladder attached to the side of a pillar, leading farther up.

Greddark, realizing their predicament, looked over at her, and she shrugged.

“Might as well go as far as we can,” she said, and headed up the second ladder.

From the top of the pillar, they could just see the argent fire that topped the Sanctuary over to their right, and the draped awnings of the Marketplace’s Remembrance Plaza behind them, to the left. The iconic red tent was too far away to jump to, and wouldn’t have done much to break their landing in any case.

To the north stood their goal, rising up over the
Marketplace, glowing blue in the late afternoon sun—Falconer’s Spire. So close and yet so utterly out of reach.

A red-winged airship that must be Kupper-Nickel’s was just taking off from the docking tower.

“That our ride?”

Sabira nodded to the orc.

“It was.”

As the blue elemental ring encircling the airship hummed to life, Sabira could just make out the tiny figures moving about the deck. She wondered if any of them could see her—if any of them were even looking.

“Onatar’s cold forge, but I wish I had a spyglass,” she muttered.

Something passed in front of her face, hovering a hair’s breadth from the tip of her nose. She pulled her head back to focus and saw it was the requested spyglass, being offered to her by the red-armored warforged.

“My lady commands,” he said with a bow.

Sabira took the proffered glass and held it up to her eye. Suddenly it was if she were standing on the deck of the Wayfinder’s airship, not on top of a pillar over more than a hundred feet away. She could see Kupper-Nickel standing near the wheelhouse, talking to the Lyrandar pilot. If only there were some way to get his attention.…

“Gred—” Damn it, what
was
she supposed to call him? “Make your sword flame up again!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” the dwarf protested, drawing the blade to show her. “See, first I have to prime it, like this, then I have to hit some—”

Sabira tossed the spyglass back to Jester and yanked the hilt from Greddark’s surprised grasp. Then she whirled,
slamming the flat of the blade up against Guisarme’s back with an echoing clang. The short sword erupted in flames, and Sabira pulled it back before it could harm the warforged. Then she began waving it back and forth over her head.

“Jester, the spyglass! Do they see us?”

The red warforged put the glass up to his rubylike eye and peered toward the tower.

“I don’t believe—no! I mean, yes! The warforged sees us! He’s pointing and yelling at someone!”

The airship turned and began heading toward them.

Sabira thumbed the same button Greddark had used to prime the alchemy blade to extinguish the flame and handed the sword back to him with a satisfied smile. Then she turned to Guisarme.

“Sorry ’bout that,” she said with a small, apologetic shrug. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I have no doubt.” The warforged’s tone was noncommittal, but Sabira thought she detected a trace of sarcasm.

“Glad we’re all still friends,” Skraad interrupted, “but do you think we could see about something a little more important, like getting the rest of this crossbow bolt out of my arm?”

As Greddark sheathed his blade and moved over to examine the wound, the orc looked at Sabira.

“Oh, and by the way—that fee we talked about? You’re gonna need to double it.”