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68. Getting Their Feet Wet


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#1 Guest_Oryx_*

Posted 09 October 2004 - 10:28 PM

68. Getting Their Feet Wet

Being that they were on foot, it was evening already, and still drizzling, when Jade and her chosen companions traversed Wyrm’s Crossing. They easily could have afforded horses by now, it wasn’t that the iron crisis had made them too expensive, but unavailable at all, with every traveler who could afford and ride an animal doing so to outrun highway bandits, and the Friendly Arm Inn’s stable hadn’t acquired any more for sell such her brother’s party bought the last on their way into the Cloakwood.

Montaron and Xzar tittered as they passed the kaleidoscopic dome that was Sorcerous Sundries. Jade scrutinized her childhood friend become a necromancer, and with a husky whisker that would either be out of earshot of the others or passed off as another muttered rambling, he squeaked, "I'm a...regular customer there." Montaron passed off a grin to Jade, with a nervous glance to make sure none of the others were paying attention. Jade took one more glance at the dome, and tabled her inquiry for now. As with her brother and Imoen, this was her first time in any city at all, and while Wyrm's Crossing and the city wall had presented an imposing, if not majestic, display of manmade architecture the wilderness, the interior of the city left her too disgusted to even remember she was unimpressed.

"Not that I fancy its better parts either," Kivan mentioned, after studying her for a moment with a concerned looked that seemed to politely guess at her surface thoughts, "But this is the lower city, the dregs, and some areas are...lesser dirty, at least...than others."

"Aye, longears," Kagain agreed, and he looked at Jade, "The financial district - and the Fist - be in the southwest, the Palace and frilly nobles north of the old wall, in the upper city." He nodded to their right, to the older wall that ran along after the Sorcerous Sundries. To their left, the uneven street sloped down towards the outer wall, and they knew the river would be just after that. Soon enough the wall gave way and the water could be seen, blowing the salty breeze of the sea up from the small delta beyond the city, and they had come to the docks which looked as destitute as the slum they'd come through, and smelled as bad albeit for brinier reasons. As they came around the concave harbor, Kagain made a superstitious gesture and Jade wasn't sure why until she realized that the waterfront warehouse ahead of them was no warehouse at all, but a temple. The temple of Umberlee, the WaterQueen's House as a wooden insignia with a painted and engraved emblem of two parting waves proclaimed.

"This is it?" Jade twisted the corner of her mouth. As they circled the building she became a little more impressed, a sheltered stone arcade with wooden railing snaked the perimeter, setting the temple back a little from the mundane docks, and the doors were on the far side of the small dock peninsula the temple occupied, facing nothing but the river, and leading into the temple only at the end of the bridge over a pool of cool, dark water that terminated the otherwise flat cobblestone surface of the city. With almost as much trepidation as a teetering dungeon bridge liable to be trapped, the party members stepped across one by one, and Jade grasped the gnarled riverbank-tree-root handle of one of the double doors, opening it outward, and passing in.

She was taken aback at once, not just by the ambient darkness the priesthood apparently took solace in, but that there was no proper floor within at all - only a network of intersecting wooden bridges like the one outside, and there were no interior walls either, merely thin and free vertical panels that hung over the pools, blocking sightlines, but walls by no measure more.

Jade was 'greeted' by a girl who scampered familiarly down the catwalks, clapping the end of a staff against the stone, and stopping at the first intersection to effectively cordon off Jade and now Kivan and Shar-Teel behind her from the rest of the temple behind her. A year or two younger than Jade, the priestess had washed out features, ash-blonde hair simply cut off at her shoulders, and wore a single aquamarine body sock, conforming and stretched over her slight frame almost to a gratuitous translucence. "For what purpose to you visit the Bitch Queen?" she demanded, thumping the butt of her staff down in punctuation.

"On behalf of Priestess Tenya," Jade stated, keeping her posture straight, neither aggressive nor passive, "We wish to see the high priestess."

The girl got a shifty look in her eyes, and scampered off once more, disappearing between a set of panel walls flanking a catwalk, a glimpse of her caught again in the opening between the left panel and the true walls of the building. She never returned, rather, Tenya herself greeted them coming back from the same direction. "Well..." she declared saucily, letting her lower jaw shift side to side, "I should say the mother and I expected to see you again at some point, though it was certainly not to be so soon. I suppose it's to collect some sort of payment for your actions outside Baldur's Gate...hmmm? High priestess Jalantha Mystmyr does not have time to see commoners, but prove your worth and perhaps you will earn more gift than an audience. Come..."

She turned and walked off at her own pace, and the party members followed one by one over the catwalks, through the makeshift door into another chamber like the first. A half dozen women, all in the same body socks as Tenya and the first girl, stood about the room, stirring the water with staves, their eyes lidded or outright shut, one murmured scripture running into the next. "Cults..." Kagain 'coughed' through his beard.

Tenya took a left at an intersection and passed through another doorway, into what seemed to be the sanctuary proper; a 'room' bordered on its three other sides by proper exterior walls, its far end with a wider platform above the water bearing an altar of pure opal, sculpted or more likely magically melded into the same Umberlaunt emblem of a pair of parting waves. The cleft between the waves was occupied by the butt of a semi-reclining middle aged woman whose hair was somehow deep sable blue, clinging to another simple body sock, although she wore jewelry, likely magical Jade guessed, and her pale stave was carved to a degree of detail usually reserved for enchanted things. Her mere gaze was aristocratic and demanding. Jade was happy to take the initiative in speaking, "You know the favor we have done you. What we desire is this. If your temple is the bastion of dark power that it is whispered, then you do things the way Umberlee does things, and someone in the city who needed a killing done would be unwise not to consider outsourcing to you. I told Tenya my name and I'm sure you know it. Does it mean anything to you, and if so who made it mean something to you."

Jalantha threw back her head, her throat pulsating as she laughed in delight, and rocked her head forward again, eyes twinkling darkly. "Refreshing. Yes, all of this is known to me, known to every two-copper bounty hunter in the right trade circles here, and one of our own, sadly, was no match for your brother or so we heard. Surely he told you of the cleric in Nashkel. You're either brave or foolish to come here, to place the ever-climbing bounty in our lap..."

"Even if you could kill us," Jade said with a tight face while the seven companions all stretched out behind her maintained a composure and exuded a bristling sense of readiness for violence, "There'd not be enough left of you to raise the others. It isn't cost effective for you, I promise."

"Certainly not if you're useful," Jalantha smiled with the sweetness of a nereid tempting a sailor to his death, "You're very lucky, Jade...it so happens we fancy your own commendable desire for answers and revenge. The one who approached us had the whiff of a cultist about him, and as you can imagine, and a cancerous rival religion in the city is the last thing Umberlee needs in this city. The general, public bounty had been outsourced from ogre magi at, you may assume, a small fraction of what they would have been getting. The ogres will likely by now be taking it upon themselves, however, to finish the job themselves. I admire that you wish to take the fight to them, and now you shall as an...exaltation...to Umberlee. As generous as I have been, you would be unwise not to share what you learn - that is, assuming we ever see you again after a house call on multiple ogre magi."

"Multiple ogre magi have been cleaned from the curve of my sword," Jade said flatly.

The priestess leaned to one side at her eyes cast suspiciously, not upon the part that past them, to the next room with the dull chanting echoing back. She herself murmured an address under her breath, "It's only a block east along the waterfront, blue and white mansion, former building of the Counting House actually and its front by day is a private vault." She cleared her throat and clapped her hands. "You would be equally unwise not to meditate on this blessing from Umberlee ere the night ends."

Jade snorted and turned around, nodding her head, and Edwina at the end of the single file party gladly turned and led them out. The building Jalantha named was one they had passed, coming from the east gate as they were, and Jade found it eerie just to think they had walked right past it. "I should buy a cloak and hook," she murmured.

"Yes, you should," Branwen agreed sternly. She grabbed Jade's shoulder, "Dealing with dark temples is even more dangerous than you think you know, Jade. Don't ever be swayed, not a step, I've seen you grow this last tenday and it oughtn't be thrown away. Do not turn so soon from the Lady of Strategy, for that you yourself must be."

"And so I'm doing what we have to," Jade insisted, and let out a sigh. "Trying them was a shot in the dark and we're extraordinarily lucky they knew anything at all."

Kagain grumbled "Aye, if'n she spoke sooth at all and isn't just setting us against her own enemies who've nae to do with you."

Jade pointed to Montaron then around the upcoming block. "Only one way to find out."

"Right now?" Montaron squawked. "Ye think this be the right time of day? Not the wee hours."

"I hope they'll be supping," Jade thought, "They probably use more ward and alarm spells in the middle of the night, when they sleep."

Montaron shrugged, and scampered ahead, charged once again with the unenviable task of being the scout. The mansion was at the end of the block, and the other seven hung back in the shadows cast by a townhouse under the dusk sky. Ten minutes later, Montaron returned, describing a two story building with its windows shuttered on the first floor, and an opulent but deserted first floor revealed when he sawed off a corner of a shutter to peek in, and how climbing up a drainpipe of the neighboring house had given him a shocking view into a second floor window - and five ogre mages ripping apart two full roast sheep around a scarred banquet table."

"Can you jimmy the doors?" Jade asked.

"Aye, all too well. I recognize the locksmith what did it, and he be one of our own," the halfling chuckled and elbowed Xzar in the thigh.

"Reminds me," Jade scrutinized the halfling, "They say every city has a thieves' guild or three..."

"A branch o' the Shadow Thieves," Montaron hissed, "They be based on Athkatla, and in turn answer to the Network.."

"And so they plant locksmiths in the cities too," Edwina segued, "How...deliciously vile."

"We thank ye," Montaron smiled. Jade shuddered once, then rattled off a plan that they set into action a moment later. Using the shutters for their own benefit, they leaned against the building while Montaron picked the lock of the double doors in only a few moments, true to word, and all raced through them. There were four side rooms off the main foyer of the first floor, and two of the adventurers ran and hid in each. Jade grabbed a nice, delicate-looking vase in the game room she now shared with Kagain. Stepping into the doorway back to the foyer, she hurled the vase at the insides of the front doors, then pulled back into the game room, controlling and quieting her breath which was fast and hard with anticipation. She had also to shrug off distracting, conscious attention to her pounding heart while the heavy noises echoed from upstairs, and within moments the top of the great stairwell was echoing with footsteps heavier than a horse's hooves. And then she saw the first one, with the garish, overly colorful clothing splashed over a turgid eight foot body of pale blue warty skin, the face bloated and hideous face adorned, ludicrous in its monstrous vanity, with a braided beard and polished horns, altogether just like the ogre mages they'd encountered in the Firewine riverbed and the labyrinth below.

Behind this falchion-toting behemoth the other four came in two pairs on the wide stairwell, and as soon as the first came down onto the checkered marble floor, sniffing the air with beady eyes accusing the closed door and the shards of fine pottery, he saw Jade and Edwina standing right there, a full body of bluish mithril chain links and a round face with scarlet bangs, and dusky sand-pink robes with the low neckline and high thigh slit, with her cascade of black locks.

"Little pink ones, you shall all die!" the ogre screamed. "The son of Murder offers 10000 gold for the head of Jade, and we shall have it!"

Edwina made a silent gesture at the ogre mage, who howled an arcane curse and threw his hand out, giving her a volley of magic missiles, which of course struck true, and the conjuress flickered.

And at the same moment, the progenitor of the silent image hurled an orange-red bead out of the library doorway far to the right of the stairwell. The faux Jade and Edwina he let vanish as the true Thayvian's concentration abandoned them, and a fireball blossomed through all five ogre magi, with a second launched by Xzar in the opposing library overlapping a moment after. Arrows and bolts and axes joined the crossfire, with Branwen evoking a glyph in the midst of the ogres with exploded in a shower of sparks and electric tendrils.

The much-burnt first ogre hurtled toward Jade's game room, one of the girl's arrows already sticking out of his thick neck while the second throwing axe buried itself in his chest. A second arrow whizzed over Kagain's head in the doorway and past the ogre's but struck one of his mates, and as he brought up falchion up in an underhand at the dwarf in the doorway and Jade behind him both backed up, forcing the ogre to stoop to pass into the game room of the human-built house. Jade had thrown down her bow, and drawn Icingdeath in her right hand while hurling a chessboard at the ogre's sword with her left. It didn't disarm him, but it delayed his first strike until after Kagain had buried his battleaxe so far into the left knee of the ogre that the leg gave out with an awful pop. The ogre's left arm bashed Kagain back into a chalkboard, and Jade stepped in with her scimitar pommel tucked to her chest and the blade thrust straight, slipping into the ogre's neck, and out again as she jumped back. The falchion hit her shoulder and sent her into a spin, she ended up on one knee facing backwards and pivoted again while backing up further, and watching as her fatal strike sent the ogre careening forward to the floor.

The last ogre on the right had simply crumpled over in the elemental blast, crashing into the one before him before the lower monster could clear the stairs, and they fell in a heap at their foot. Taking a moment to aim at the still target, Kivan, standing right before Edwina in the doorway of the library to the right, shot an arrow right through the ear of the ogre underneath, rendering him dead as the one on top.

The two ogres on the left side both made it alive and upright to the floor. The latter one plucked one of Montaron's bolts out of its shallow lodge in his skull, and turned with a roar towards the two Zhents sniping from the library, keeping a spellchant while he absorbed a magic missile trio from Xzar. He retaliated with a streaking flame arrow, which set the necromancer's gelled hair on fire and left him screaming and running around the library, setting books aflame. "Oopsie..." the ogre winced, then suddenly realized he didn't see the halfling. Suddenly there was a burden on his shoulders and a small sword protruding from the front of his throat, and he dropped. Montaron had circled under, around, and up the stairwell and left off, now completing the round trip by leaping back to the floor just in time to watch Shar-Teel clang swords with the last ogre mage. Noticing the halfling in the corner of her eye, the angry valkyrie simply parried the falchion's powerful swings blow for blow, feeling the force run through her body and out her feet into the floor, while Montaron switched back to his crossbow, aimed, and nailed a bolt into the back of the ogre's neck, dropping the warty abomination.

Branwen only allowed herself one breath of relief after Shar-Teel's opponent dropped, and stepping out of the room she'd occupied behind the woman, turned her attention to the smoke-belching library up the wall. She dashed into the doorway, and spellcast. There was a sound of a great deal of water splashing onto a marble floor, then the cleric backed away as voluminous, papery-smelling steam billowed out like a moor fog, along with an Xzar whose face was black as its tattoos, hair very short. "Don't lose your head next time..." Branwen admonished, healing the screeching necromancer.

"You're sure there were only five?" Jade panted, glancing from Montaron to the stairs. The halfling nodded. "That was kinda easy....I like it," Jade grinned then, looking at Branwen and nodding in thanks for Xzar's face. "Battle's valiant...and surprise hits are low stress."

Kagain stared with almost paternal concern at Jade. "10,000 gold...that's getting to be a lot."

Jade's eyes got thoughtful suddenly, and she studied Shar-Teel. "You said you worked with the foursome who declared they were hunting me on behalf of the Iron Throne. We heard this brute say it was the 'Son of Murder.' So who is that?"

Shar-Teel grunted under her breath, rolling her eyes around in their sockets and thinking. "We hadn't heard that. No idea." She cast her eyes suspiciously up the stairwell. "Let's loot the bastards and get our own dinner."

Edwina giggled smugly, "Hoping for the same inn as the rodent-loving berserker in dusky armor?"

Shar-Teel glared and grunted at Edwina, but then cracked a wistful smile and licked her lips. "Wouldn't you like to know."




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