City of Hawks

Chapter 4

The lightless temple, the place where vile and degenerate and wholly evil folk came to pay homage to Nerull, was still and dark that night. Since that condition was usual for the place, no passerby who dared to look would have noticed anything out of the ordinary. But no one passed by anyway-not after dark. This place was shunned by all who walked abroad after nightfall. Even the humans and humanoids who considered themselves among the “faithful” normally stayed well away after sundown, for they were afraid of being sacrificed to the evil deity they professed to venerate.

But every rule has an exception. Tonight there was a stream of traffic to and from the place. Rushlights flickered and cressets flamed deep within the cursed place. In the maze of passageways and rooms below the temple, there was certainly life and light.

Colvetis Pol eyed the two figures who stood before him. “That is the sum total of your report?” The maroon-robed cleric put the question forth as if he were disgusted at having to ask.

“Both apprentice and babe were blasted by the crazy old fart of a mage. Took care of our work, so to speak,” Alburt added with a conspiratorial wink. He didn’t fear this silly priest, and he was intent on letting Colvetis Pol know that.

“And you, Slono Spotless? Have you nothing to add?”

The smaller assassin wasn’t as cocky as his mate. After all, clerics were spell-weavers, too. They had unnatural powers, and their sort was never to be trusted-or taken lightly. Slono wrinkled his brow, thinking hard. “Nope,” he finally said. “Jus’ like Alby tol’ ya, we checked out everything real careful. Only took us a couple of minutes. Wanno was stone dead, that asshole apprentice of his gone to flinders, and the kid blasted too. We buggered outta there quick as ferrets and come right here to tell you.”

“And now we want our coin,” Alburt added to his comrade’s statement. “The job’s all done, and you owe us another fifty orbs.”

“Is that so…?” Colvetis Pol asked, allowing the query to trail off as if it weren’t really a question at all. “You saw the child blasted and came here right away to tell me, is that right?” The words were like little darts aimed at the two assassins.

“Well, we sort-”

“Shut yer yap, Spotty!” Alburt glared at the smaller man, then turned to face the priest with a belligerent expression plainly written on his flat, hard-lined face. “We did as we said, and that’s that. Both the mage and the kid are dead, as contracted for. Now hand over our gold, or else.”

The cleric’s robes rustled as he made a small gesture. An arras covering the far wall swayed, and several men emerged from the area that the hanging screened from view. Alburt and Slono Spotless were shaken at this, for among these arrivals was the master of their guild. “You heard their own words,” the great priest of Nerull said flatly. “Your servants are quite unreliable.”

The chief of all assassins in Greyhawk was pale. His pallor was partly due to rage, partly fear, and the combination was evident to any observer. “I heard, Lord Pol, and I will make amends.”

“Not to me,” the priest said with a sly smile.

The master of killers looked sideways at a cloaked figure beside him, involuntarily moving away from it as he did so. “No, Lord Pol…” he murmured.

Now Alburt was becoming more than uneasy. No longer belligerent, the big assassin was close to panic. “Wait! I was only covering for Spotty. It wuz him who futtered up things, and that’s so. The stupid little bastard blundered right into the geezer’s runes, and-”

“Rot yer tongue, you big bag o’ shit!” Slono was not going to go down without a fight. “You were the top dagger, Alby, an’ you tol’ me to go and orf the kid whilst you was checking things out. You took all the loot, too!” The last accusation was the most damning one the little assassin could think of.

A hollow, rasping voice came from the cloaked figure, cutting through the air inside the stone vault where the scene was transpiring. “How long was it after the infant vanished before you came back here?”

“Maybe a half hour,” Alburt stammered out, but almost at the same time Slono also spoke.

“About an hour or so,” the smaller man blurted.

The raspy voice sounded again. “Was it a half hour or more than that?”

“Longer… I guess,” the big assassin admitted, with a murderous look at Slono.

“So,” the strange voice choked out. The figure lurched suddenly, and then, without seeming to traverse the intervening distance, it was standing before the two assassins. Hands covered with rotting flesh shot out of enveloping sleeves and clamped firmly upon the two heads. Alburt was held by the forehead, Slono Spotless atop his pate. “For your actions I give you my special blessing,” the figure said. Then it seemed to convulse again and was suddenly standing back where it had been before. Both Alburt and Slono stood dumb. Then they began trembling as if with the ague.

“No… please…” Alburt whimpered. Then a fit of coughing wracked his big frame and he was unable to speak further.

“Had you reported at once, as you should have,” the sallow-skinned priest of evil said slowly, making certain each word got through to the two assassins, “none of this would have happened to you. I-we-could have known what device was used to remove the child from our ken, and the matter would be a simple one to correct.”

“Dispose of those two carefully, priest,” the hooded figure said in its sickness-tinged voice. “Their infestation is one which could be spread to many weakling humans.”

The maroon-gowned cleric shrugged in indifference. “What is a little disease to me? Still, there are some hereabouts who might be affected.” He stared at the slowly dying assassins thoughtfully for a moment and then said to them, “Remove yourselves to the tunnels and sewers below. You have but a little time left to live, and there is no sense in befouling this place.”

Alburt fell to the floor, blubbering and pleading for mercy. He knew that the priest could remove the plague that was slaying him as easily as the assassin himself could snuff out a life. Slono reacted in a different manner. Despite the terrible disease that was filling him with deadly weakness, the small murderer proved true to himself. Cursing all present, Slono managed to snatch out a handful of wickedly tipped darts and hurl them, broadcast, at those who were serving as the tribunal condemning him to death.

One struck the strange figure, the feathered butt of the dart alone visible, the remainder out of sight within the facial opening of the shadowing hood. The thing reached inside its hood, pulled out the missile, now lacking its metal point, and displayed the headless dart before the gaze of the dying Slono. “Fool! Poison is as honey to me,” the figure said with a laugh as it slowly chewed up the metal and swallowed it.

One struck the wall near the hooded creature and fell harmlessly to the floor. The thing bent down, picked up the dart by its tip, and with a deep chuckle casually flung it back the way it had come.

One sunk its length into the fleshy thigh of the wizard who served Nerull’s house in Greyhawk. That worthy shrieked in pain. “Neutralize this venom,” he called, seeing the reddish flush spreading from the puncture, “else I shall be felled and no use to you!”

One poisoned dart struck the arras and hung there.

One grazed the clean-shaven head of the priest, — leaving a bloody trail on Colvetis Pol’s shining, yellow-tinged scalp. “Be silent, Sigildark,” he called to the mage, “and I shall tend to you in due course.” Even as the priest spoke thus, he was preparing to treat the injury done to him by the missile. Above all, his own life was the most important concern.

One ricocheted off a stone pillar and buried its nose in a nearby chair.

And, scant seconds after he had initiated the attack, Slono Spotless became the only real victim of the outburst as the dart hurled by the otherworldly thing buried itself in the assassin’s chest. It was a cleaner death than that which he would have experienced soon anyway. In the end the small murderer proved to be a bigger and better man than his compatriot Alburt.

Within minutes Colvetis Pol treated the venom in his own system and that of the mage Sigildark so that its toxin was harmless. The corpse of Slono and the gibbering, near-corpse of Alburt were hauled off to a cistern and unceremoniously dumped therein, to be carried off into the labyrinthine system of ducts beneath the city. Rot and rats would soon leave nothing but bare bones. Of course their valuables were first removed. One of the guards found the chrysoberyl ring hidden in Slono’s boot. It was hidden in a hollow heel, so he didn’t see any reason to mention it to anyone.

“The guild will make amends for this, my lords,” promised the city’s chief assassin as his former minions were carted from the chamber.

“That I am certain of,” the priest replied dryly. “You will begin by sending two reliable men of utmost competence to this address late tonight,” he went on, handing the guildmaster a slip of parchment. “All they need do is watch a doorway for a woman coming out, with or without a babe. Both or either are to be slain should they emerge.”

“Consider it done, lord priest.”

“You may leave us now. See that your men go immediately to the place I have indicated.” When the man had departed, Colvetis Pol waved the guards out as well and spoke to the two who remained-the wizard Sigildark and the hooded thing from some other world than Oerth.

“Can we now be certain of success?” Pol asked.

The spell-binder took on a doubtful expression, cocked a thick eyebrow, and gave his head a small shake. The cloak-hidden figure spoke loudly in its hollow voice, however. “I will send one of my own trusted hounds to see that there are no further mistakes made. Mortals are bumbling and untrustworthy, while daemonkin are quite the opposite.”

At that the wizard seemed annoyed. “May I point out to you. Lord of the Pox, that it was I-a mere mortal-who discovered the whole web, who set his spies to work, and magically traced the skein of power which enabled the destination of the babe’s sending to be found!”

“We admire your work, Sigildark.” The voice of the priest was so sardonic that even the hooded creature from the nether planes gave voice to a ghastly chuckle. “The merit of your efforts is well known to Great Nerull… What more could you want?”

Sigildark, steeped in evil as he was, knew that the deity just named was but one of the avatars of the nether emperor, having a form somewhat less repugnant to humans than that of Infestix, for instance. “He knows, or will know, Pol, because you or Poxpanus there will so inform him. Honor to the Image, dedication to Tharizdun.”

Colvetis Pol made a hasty sign. “Be it graven.”

The daemon-thing too made a gesture of formal obeisance. “Each serves and will be measured by his Master,” he intoned In a dead voice. “But now let us deal with what matters remain.”

The priest nodded. “We need information, lord. We are reacting as you instruct, but we will prove more useful Instruments If we are told of things.”

“That is so,” the wizard agreed. “If you will share with us. Lord of All Pox, we can serve you, Nerull, and great Tharizdun better!”

“My liege has given me liberty In this matter, so I shall inform you as you request,” the nether-thing replied. “But for the sudden change of heart, the vile little sprat would be destroyed ere now. His own kith and kin it was who gave him and his parents over into our hands. Their reversal came too late to save the sire of the babe, and the dam too we found and expunged. They had not gone far from where they had left their cub for safekeeping, and our agents were hot on the trail. It was a petty dweomercraefter named Wanno who sought to confound the writ of Hades. You know him, Sigildark?”

“Yes. I knew him from our Society.” The mage said no more, for if anything, Wanno had been perhaps a more potent spell-worker than Sigildark himself.

“Please go on, lord,” Colvetis Pol urged.

“The sudden withdrawal of support from the cousins of the infant enabled his sire to elude our clutches for but a short time. It is passing odd, though,” and here the rotting, hollow voice and the bearing of the thing seemed all too human, “that no augury, no divination, not even of the lowest magnitude, could pierce the curtain which hedged the three.” The shadowed opening of the cowl swung to face the two, and priest and mage pulled back just a little. Yet the daemon spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone, imparting knowledge as if to equals. “Had we not been so close, all would have escaped. Much of the contest will be played out on the material plane, and some different, unknown force has aided those who oppose us…”

“I have detected nothing of the sort,” Sigildark stated flatly.

“Do be still,” Colvetis Pol admonished the spell-worker. “I have seen some slight change in certain castings,” the priest of evil said to Poxpanus. “When your hound has devoured the infant, will the interference dissipate? Or will it not?”

The daemon studied Pol. If ever was a mortal bound for lichdom, this one was. Ambitious, powerful, skilled, and dedicated to the malign might of Hades. Unlike the upstart Sigildark, a paltry factor, Pol had served on the highest councils of Nerull for decades. Poxpanus knew him to be two centuries old.

Although the man’s outward appearance had changed little in the last several decades, the daemon could see into the inner creature, and it knew that the spirit there glowed with unnatural light and black force. Pol drew upon the negative energies already, and soon enough the priest would pass from the status of a mortal human to that of an eternally undead lich-lord. All the better, for Colvetis Pol was a useful servant to Hades.

Poxpanus noted that the priest was studying him, even as he gazed upon the man. Pol had the power to see clearly in darkness, and no shadows or even dweomered darkness could prevent his vision from working. It made the daemon a little uneasy to realize that the assessment, the weighing, that was going on was mutual. “The interference will be weakened. That is certain. And what is weak can be made to disappear.”

“What if your hound should fail, lord?” The priest was not inclined to take Poxpanus at his word.

“That would be my failure, and such a condition is not possible,” the nether-thing said with hauteur.

The mage seemed satisfied at that, but Colvetis Pol slightly raised one of his thin, sharply arched brows. “You can predict the unpredictable, know the unknown. I am impressed, lord.” His tone was perhaps the tiniest bit sarcastic.

“You will see in a short time, priest!” Poxpanus spat the words out in his anger at being japed at by even so powerful a man as this priest, for Pol was still but a human. There could be no doubt that he was also one who was growing overly ambitious. He would be dealt with to stringent fashion, Poxpanus assured himself, soon… soon. “Now I grow weary of this puerile banter. I shall retire to my private chambers.”

“Virgin’s blood, lord-fresh and warm.” The servant set a flask on the table next to Poxpanus and backed out of the room hastily.

Now within the deep enclave that was the special guest chamber of the temple, the nether-being was preparing for what he must do next. He quaffed the satisfying refreshment quickly, for it gave him the energy and power he would need to execute the task before him.

The words of the priest had caused Poxpanus to consider. His queries were too pointed. The daemon had spoken hastily, and now it was time to make certain that what he had said was no mere boasting. First there would be a sending of sickness. Although the daemon did not know exactly those whom it would visit, their locale and general descriptions were sufficient, for he was near and full of vigor. Some of that strength, however, had to be saved for the second part of his effort.

The ritual of the sending was similar to the complex incantations and conjurations often practiced by mages. Sigildark would have seen much he recognized. So would Colvetis Pol have recognized certain ceremonial portions used by those who invoked clerical powers. Poxpanus worked with speed and deliberation, but he did not rush. Even a netherlord could make errors, and the daemon knew that well. Soon enough the sending was completed, and then he turned his attention to Rheachan.

Although that creature served as his hound, Rheachan was his own offspring, a thing sprung directly from Poxpanus. The beast was therefore controllable, loyal, and totally predictable. If it drew upon the daemon’s own strength, it also fed him when it fed. The relationship was complex, symbiotic in a sense, an unbreakable extension of the vilest portions of Poxpanus’ mind and body too. Rheachan had never failed. Still, something in the priest’s words had made the daemon uneasy. The unknown was, after all, just that Better to be too cautious now. Cautious, that is, in assuring the strength of his hound-offspring as it did its work.

There was no mystery involved in Poxpanus’ calling down sickness and disease upon an enemy. Pol and others steeped in the arcane knew well that such powers belonged to daemons of stature. Rheachan was an altogether different matter. Something that was strength could also be weakness if enemies were aware of the resource. To avoid any possible spying on what he planned next, Poxpanus set about cloaking this innermost cell of the temple. With drawn glyphs and murmured chants, the nether-being began to build layer upon layer of wardings. First was the shield against the mind, then the prying forces of magic, and finally came the guards that prevented priestly scrutiny of any sort-even that assisted by beings of other sort than humans.

When the triple protections were set, Poxpanus added to each, strengthening here, tightening there, until he was satisfied that each was sufficient to withstand even a major assault for the time he needed to do his work. To be even more sure, however, the daemon then wove the three wards together, meshing them so that each supported the other, and over all three he built a screen of such stuff as to make the whole invisible and undetectable except to the most exacting scrutiny. No sweeping search would discover his carefully built fortress of energies. To have it otherwise would invite the attention of all sorts of unwanted intruders, evil as well as those who fought against it. None could be trusted, none could know. The axiom of Hades, perhaps of all the lower planes, was a simple one: Strength is mastery: the weak are ruled.

In the web of energies, the complex tapestry of magic, and planar powers, there was yet an opening. The mesh allowed Poxpanus a place where his own particular psyche, those vibrations that were uniquely his own, could pass into and move out of the confinement of the fortress. It was but a small opening, a tiny weakness in the structure. In time a being of might would find and exploit such a tiny flaw, but time was not a factor. Poxpanus would use the protection for but a short duration-a few minutes, a few hours, a day at most. After that, It would be finished. With success, the daemon lord would return to the nether planes. Then there would be a reordering of the ranks, and only Infestix would be greater than he. Long had he contested with Anthraxus and the rest to assume the second position in Hades, Viceroy of Glooms as it were. Soon that struggle would come to an end.

“Rheachan!”

“I watch, and I wait, as you instruct”

The reply was crystal clear. Poxpanus sent his force out along the channel. “Good,” he thought, as he saw In his mind what the daemon-hound saw with its eyes.

“It is pleasurable to me that you find me suitable, Paterfamilias.” There was no lie in that, no deception. Rheachan was unsatisfied and incomplete without contact with Poxpanus.

That was true to a lesser extent for the daemon as well. When he brought his force into attunement with the force of the nether-hound, Poxpanus was not only whole but more than he had been without the procreation, his hound, Rheachan. “The one we will devour-where?”

“Not yet come. But now that we are conjoined I can sense that it will happen soon, soon…”

“Yes, that is so. The humans who are assigned to the one?”

“But two weak females, Paterfamilias. Even now the second has entered.”

“Wait! Something comes from another place.” Poxpanus felt the waves washing outward into the material plane as some force from elsewhere made its way through planes and dimensions. That force bore with it the unmistakable emanations of humanity, small but strong. The infant was being brought from its otherworldly hidey-hole to where the stupid mortals imagined it would be safe and secure. “Upward, hound-child. You must be ready.”

Of course Rheachan had anticipated the command. Even as the thought formed, the thing was well above the cobbled lane and heading toward the shuttered window that was its objective. “The two assassins charged with securing the escape way are arrived. Paterfamilias.”

“Unneeded, now!” The daemon was exhilarated by the prospect of the conclusion of his hunt, the kill and the feeding. The ether was torn just at that moment by the arrival of the force. “Now, my dear hound! Into that place, and we will have our sport!”

With the vital energy of its procreator filling its body and mind, Rheachan, hound and child, felt as if it could conquer the multiverse. How great and all-knowing the Paterfamilias was! Perhaps if it did well this night, that one would consent to mingle with Rheachan always, so that Rheachan would be as strong and smart as Poxpanus. It sent its desire to the Paterfamilias, along with its hound’s lust for savage killing and devouring of blood… and soul, too. This primordial urge swept through Rheachan and into Poxpanus, and both were one and glad.

“I have it now,” the daemon crooned mentally to its hound-child. “The life of the sprat, the vibrations of the bitch who was to care for it-so easy to read, to know, to find anywhere now.”

“No need to think of future hunts. Paterfamilias. I will rend them both for you now.”

Then the liquid stuff struck Rheachan, and the agony of its burning made Poxpanus writhe in his hidden cell as if the Netherlord himself had been subjected to the assault. In the confusion of the pain, the daemon allowed his hound free rein. The pain drove Rheachan into a murderous frenzy, of course, and the thing forgot all caution in its desire to avenge itself upon the miserable human female who had dared to so harm its corporeal form. Then the cylinder too went home, and the nether-hound and its father were suffused with even greater torment as the blessed silver struck, vaporized, and destroyed the eye of the hound.

“Revenge!” The mental scream shook Rheachan and infused it with new strength and purpose. So too the assurance that followed: “Slay, feed, and then I will bring you to me, hound-child. Your eye will grow again, your vision be better still, for I will suffuse your being with more of me!”

It was a fleeting communication, one that scarcely required any consideration. Rheachan reached forth, and the offending female human was no more. There was no reason for feeding, not on such a puny force as that one offered. Neither was the other female worthwhile… at least not immediately. A tiny human cub was there before Rheachan’s remaining eye, and its vitality belied its diminutive size. That one’s blood was ten times more desirable than the others’. The nether-hound reached greedily for the babe.

“Wait!”

The mental cry of warning reached the hound-thing too late-or perhaps Rheachan ignored the call. Rage and hunger had driven it beyond thought. This made it quite unaware of other forces that were suddenly impinging upon the space it was in. More than impinging. The forces were indeed in the room almost Instantly. They attacked Rheachan then, and it baffled the hound-thing. All it desired was to devour the infant, and there was something in its way, something that tore at the hound and prevented Rheachan from its evil desire. Then the nether-hound howled and ravened and died.

The very web that Poxpanus had woven to protect himself prevented the daemon from assisting his offspring. The netherlord could have been with Rheachan in a split-second, using his powers to prevent what occurred, but his own wards prevented that. Only the mental link was possible, and that was now unbreakable as well. When Poxpanus tried to disengage the bond he found that something interfered.

The umbilical connection between daemon and hound-child was affixed by some outside force that Poxpanus could not fight, locked just as the netherlord was kept tight within a fortress of his own construction. As Rheachan howled and ravened and was destroyed, a similar fate befell the daemon sire of the hound.

It wasn’t actually death to Poxpanus, of course. The netherlord suffered pain and loss, but at least here, on this plane, it could not be slain. Not so the hound-child. And when Rheachan shed its ichor and died, a portion of Poxpanus, progenitor of the monstrosity, was annihilated. The shock of the loss was traumatic in many ways. The daemon lord tried to see its tormentors through Rheachan’s dying eye. The glaring orb revealed nothing to him, and when it flickered into nothingness, something within the daemon snapped. Poxpanus raged round his carefully created fortress, destroying it as a maddened boar would tear the earth when wounded. With occult forces went wood and stone too, until the chamber was a gaping wreckage of rubble and slag.

Colvetis Pol’s personal servants found the place in this state the next day and reported the fact to their master. The priest pondered long on It thereafter, when servants of his master informed him that the daemon lord was now chained in Hades until his madness could work itself out and Poxpanus could assume some minor role in the hierarchy of the nether planes once again. Pol disappeared shortly after that. Some said he went to Hades to serve Nerull, but others whispered that the once-priest was now a hermit seeking holiness in the wilderness.