Book VIII, Part 25
As soon as the four companions passed through the thick gate in the city walls, it was as if the full weight of Zelatar descended down upon them. Outside the walls they had only seen the tops of structures that rose above its forty-foot height; inside the saw that those towers only hinted at the crowded medley of structures that lay within. Beyond the gate lay a long avenue that penetrated deep into the city directly ahead of them, crossed by dozens of sidestreets, alleys, and alcoves even in the short distance that they could see. Buildings two, three, or more stories loomed over those streets, extending all the way to the wall.
The street was crowded with people and animals of all shapes and sizes, a dizzying variety of demons, cambions, alu-fiends, tieflings, and others that defied categorization. It was strange to see a robed figure that resembled an elf, only with huge bat-wings that sprouted from his back, in conversation with a vrock demon in front of a merchant’s stall manned by a humanoid figure that looked like a cross between a fish and a reptile. A few paces away a merchant with red skin and black horns drove a wagon pulled by a quartet of creatures that looked like fat, giant cats, only with scales and forked tongues that tasted the air as they pressed through the crowded street. Occasionally they could see people who might have been natives of any of a dozen races or nations from across Faerûn, with no clues as to how or why they had gotten to this place. There was no order to any of it, an overwhelming combination of sensations that slammed into the four travelers like a physical blow. They had been to many places, seen many things, but they had never seen anything like the streets of Zelatar.
Over it all hung a heady din, a blending of voices and other sounds that sounded normal at first, like the noise of any big city that they had visited. Only other things underlay that background, ruined that impression: the haunting, trilling cries of strange beasts; sudden screams of pain that echoed briefly in the distance and then vanished.
“Chaos,” Dana breathed. “Pure chaos...”
“Hey, hello, strangers! You’re new here, right?”
They turned as one to note the source of the voice, to face a small form half-hidden in the shadow of a building huddled up against the city wall near the gate. The speaker was a child, looking perhaps ten years old, clad in a ragged shift of thick gray cloth. His heritage was clear in the garish red tinge to his skin, and the twin rows of small gray horns, little more than nubs, that ran up his forehead and back along the curve of his skull. His arms seemed to flail loosely at his side, but as he came forward, the companions saw that they were not arms at all... but a pair of gray-scaled snakes that twisted as the boy moved, their forked tongues tasting the air...
“Um... greetings,” Cal replied, trying to cover for his companions’ surprise. Perhaps already overcome by the strange sights of the city, they seemed able to control their reactions to the terrible appearance of this youth. “Yes, we just arrived,” he added, as though they weren’t standing right in front of the gate, staring about them as if they’d never seen an Abyssal city before...
I’ll be we look like tourists, popped a thought into his mind, and he almost laughed at the ludicrousness of this, of the whole situation.
“Thought so,” the boy said. His voice sounded like any other child one might find in a city anywhere in the West, and Cal briefly wondered how they could understand each other, as he seriously doubted that this kid had been raised speaking the Common Speech of Faerûn.
“Name’s Jannis,” the youth continued. “For a few coins, I can show you to anywhere in the city, know all the festhalls, the gathering places, the markets, the pleasure dens... Few grown-ups know the city as well as I do, and I won’t steer you wrong, no sir.”
Benzan laughed, a short harsh sound that fit perfectly with the tone of the city. “Gotta respect the entrepreneurial spirit,” he muttered, digging a coin out from somewhere and tossing it to the child. One of the snake heads darted out and snapped on the coin, but just as quickly spat it out, right back at Benzan. The tiefling, caught off guard, was barely able to catch it.
The boy grimaced, and shook his head in a gesture of disapproval. “You won’t want to be showing silver here,” the boy said. “Well, like’n there’s some places you can spend that, but you’ll be wantin’ coins o’ fever-iron, or blackore, or platinum... but not silver. Some’ll take it real personal, like.”
“Noted,” Cal said, digging a fat platinum piece out of his pouch and holding it up for the boy to see before he handed it to him. His skin crawled as the snake's mouth brushed him, taking the coin and tucking into a fold in the boy's tunic. “Well then, I suppose our first goal is to find a nice inn in a quiet neighborhood, Jannis. We’ve walked a long way, and we’d like to rest before attending to our business.”
The boy nodded, “I know just such a place, sir.” He started down the street, but Dana grabbed Cal’s shoulder and leaned low to speak into his ear.
“So we’re just going to treat this like a visit to a normal city?”
The gnome shrugged. “What else can we do? Look around, Dana—I don’t like it any more than you do, but clearly we have to keep a low profile. If it comes to trouble, how many here do you think will take our side?”
Dana shook her head in frustration, but there was nothing she could say in the face of Cal’s inescapable logic. Jannis had turned to wait for them, clearly not minding the delay now that the promise of a reward had been met, and he smiled as Cal rejoined them and they continued down the street deeper into the city. They left the gate behind them and followed the avenue as it curved ahead up a gentle slope to the right, passing more side streets from which different noises, sounds, and smells arose. Every few blocks the architecture changed subtly, forming abrupt and jarring transitions into different “neighborhoods” that all swirled together into a confusing mess. At one point they were walking past leaning three-story buildings with walls of scarlet red wood with decorative trim in a pasty olive color, with roofs of black slate; upon crossing the street they found themselves in the shadow of expansive structures of faded white stone with tile roofs that glowed violet in the light of the blue sun. Through and around it all walked the city’s demonic inhabitants, but they appeared to give the companions little heed as they went about their own business.
At one point they passed an alleyway in which several slumped forms were lying in the shadows, wretched figures that emitted a constant chorus of low moans. Dana took a step in that direction, but Benzan grasped her arm and shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“Benzan...”
“Dana,” he said, his voice toned low so that it wouldn’t carry, “Remember what we’re doing here. Remember that were are outsiders here... I don’t trust anything to be as it seems, and you shouldn’t either. I know it’s not easy for you, but we have to be strong.”
She looked at him, then at Lok, who’d been bringing up the rear of their group and who’d stopped at their pause. She looked into his eyes—transformed into malevolent red orbs by Cal’s illusion—and saw the same confirmation there. She knew it had to be hard for him, too, as she understood Lok’s good heart and his intent to help those unable to help themselves. Nodding, she turned around and continued after Cal and Jannis, without a word, forcing Benzan to hurry to keep up.
Cal continued to chat up the boy, engaging in seemingly harmless chatter that nonetheless was revealing a lot of basic information about the city and its operations. While the companions had a general idea of what they were up against, in that Delem’s captor was a major Power among demonkind, the knowledge they had been able to draw from their own divinations and the lore of the Harpers had been spotty at best. From what they’d learned at the gate, and what Cal was drawing out of their guide, it was clear that the city’s ruler seemed willing to tolerate outside presences within his/her/its city, at least insofar as it drew trade and prosperity along with it.
“So, Jannis, what can you tell me about...” Cal was saying, when they turned a corner and they got a look at something dramatic that took the question right out of his mind.
It was a massive structure, a palace and castle combined, looming over the city and making the myriad buildings beneath it seem squalid by contrast. The palace was larger than any of the keeps of the lords of the Western Heartlands, with literally dozens of shining towers rising up hundreds of feet into the sky. The place seemed fashioned of white marble, which glowed with a blue sheen in the bright light of the sun.
“The Argent Palace,” Jannis said with a smug smile. “The Prince has some swell digs, eh?”
“Indeed,” Cal said. He glanced back at his companions, but they were caught up in the same spell that he had been on first looking at the place, too stunned to comment. A dozen more questions sprung to Cal’s mind, but before he could pose them to their companion, Jannis glanced down the street ahead and suddenly shifted to the side.
“Um... I think it would be better if we took the next street over. Come on, there’s an alley that cuts through here...”
He was already moving in that direction, clearly agitated, but Cal forestalled him. “Why? What’s the matter?”
But he and the others could see it themselves, now. A commotion was developing further down the street, and a group was approaching down the boulevard from that direction. The pedestrians that crowded the street were moving to get out of the way, and the drivers of the carts of wagons were likewise driving their vehicles to the side to allow someone or something to pass.
“What’s that?” Benzan asked.
“The Argent Guard,” Jannis hissed. “The Prince’s elite troops... c’mon, let’s go over to the next street.”
“I don’t understand,” Dana said. “We haven’t done anything—why should we be worried about the authorities?” But even through the words, her face had drawn noticeably white.
“Trust me, even when they’re not after you personally, you don’t want to mess with them! I once saw one of them take down a pair of hezrous in a market square once... nobody with any brains crosses them!”
The crowd down the street had parted enough for the companions to get their first look at the oncoming guards. There were a half-dozen of them or thereabouts, tall women clad in gleaming plate armor that somehow managed to hang together despite copious amount of flesh that it revealed. Even at a distance, it was evident that the woman were of a demonic origin, with skin the color of beaten copper and short black horns jutting from holes in their open-faced helms. Huge greatswords were naked in their hands, each blazing with an eager halo of flickering flames. One did not carry a blade, but rather held a thick length of chain... the far end of which was fastened to the collar of a great, two-headed hound, as large as a dire wolf with four beads of flame for eyes.
“Hm... perhaps the kid’s right,” Benzan commented, and they quickly followed Jannis into the alley. Their flight didn’t draw attention; half of the population of the street had already made a like choice to get out of the way of the Guard patrol.
The companions had barely entered the alley when it seemed to swallow them up, the busy bustle of the street behind them dropping away with unnatural swiftness. Tall, two-story buildings of unremarkable gray stone crowded to either side of the alley, drifting together until only a narrow sliver of open sky above remained. The sun had fallen far enough in the sky that the alley was plunged into deep shadows, leaving only enough light to hint at filth and the occasional hint of movements that might be rats.
That they hoped was rats, anyway.
Jannis was only a shadow, darting ahead down the alley. Cal called out for him to wait, but he ignored them, vanishing around a bend as the alley turned around a squat structure ahead.
“I don’t like this,” Benzan said.
“Let’s get back out into a major street,” Cal said, leading them quickly ahead. Soft things squished under their boots as they made their way forward. There were a few recessed doors in the sides of the alley as they passed, but all looked quite secure, and there were no windows. They quickly reached the turning where they’d seen Jannis disappear, and found that the alley split into two directions, with passages continuing straight ahead and veering sharply off to the right. Both were dark and quiet.
“Sounds like another avenue this way,” Cal said, pointing to the right fork.
They headed in that direction, wary of any signs of trouble. After about twenty paces, though, they could see that the alley did seem to open up into a wider area ahead, and they could all hear what Cal had heard; the familiar sounds of a busy thoroughfare.
“Ah, there it is...”
A scrape on the flagstones drew their attention back around, to the fork they’d just left. There, as they watched, a pair of creatures moved into view. To Dana they were just hulking shadows, but the others, with their superior vision, their identity was immediately evident. At first glance they seemed like huge, feral apes, with terrible visages punctuated with a huge set of jaws with sharp teeth that jutted outward in an eager ring. The companions knew better, however, having faced a bar-lgura demon once before, in the early days of their adventuring career.
And that encounter had left Cal dead.
“Um... maybe we’d better get out of here...” Benzan began, but even as he turned, he let out a groan, not surprised to see another pair of the creatures blocking the exit of the alley ahead of them.
“Watch it, they’re fast, and they have magic as well,” Lok said, calmly unlimbering his axe and shield. Dana and Cal were already preparing spells, and Benzan fitting a long shaft to his bow, he caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye, drawing his attention upward, where the roofs of the two buildings that fronted the alley drew close together across a narrow gap of blue sky.
“More above!” he cried in warning, but even as the words left his mouth, both groups of demons at the ends of the alley abruptly vanished, and the alley was filled with a cacophony of hoots and cries that could not drown out the sound of claws pounding on the greasy stone as the now-invisible demons charged toward the surrounded companions.
I should have known...
