City of Torment

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Xxiphu, Lower Capital

Raidon advanced down a rounded tunnel, Angul naked in one hand. His Cerulean Sign insulated his mind against the sword's overweening ego. Mostly.

Silvery grass filled the corridor, growing on the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling. It was like grass in shape only, the blades seemed slightly metallic. When a peculiar wind gusted down the corridor every few spans, the rustling blades made a sound like the ringing of thousands of tiny bells.

Seren and Thoster walked abreast a few feet behind the monk's lead. Four crew brought up the rear.

Thoster absentmindedly clutched at the amulet hanging over his coat.

Seren's fist was tight around her wand. Instead of the white sari and sandals she normally wore, the wizard was dressed in a heavy red robe and black boots.

Raidon had noted the wardrobe change, but made no comment.

When they came to an intersection, Raidon paused. He turned and said, "Let's take a moment before we continue."

"Sounds good," said Thoster. The man requested a pack from one of the crew and opened it. He produced biscuits and watered wine and shared them around.

"Hey, Seren," said the captain as everyone nibbled on their small repast, "I was meaning to ask you before… what's with the red?"

Everyone turned to watch the wizard.

Seren said, "My regular clothes are too light for trudging into who knows what we'll find in here. This old robe is much better suited for tunnel crawling."

"Really? Because if I just ran into you on the street and didn't know any better, I'd think you were a Red Wizard."

Raidon realized Thoster was right. She was accoutred just like one of that feared arcane order.

Seren frowned. "Don't worry about it. I happen to like the color red."

Thoster chuckled. "Oh, that's rich."

Seren said, "Don't make me regret helping you earlier, Captain."

Thoster raised a hand in surrender.

"Anyway" Seren said, "I am a Red Wizard, even if Thay wants me dead and the others won't have me. I didn't choose to leave the fold, they left me! So… get used to it, Thoster. And you too, Raidon. I'm not going to hide who I am any longer."

The captain said, "Yeah, but a Red-"

Seren interrupted, "Maybe you should consider following my lead, Captain."

Thoster's face colored. He suddenly seemed very interested in his biscuit.

Raidon knew he was seeing the surface of some secret the wizard and the captain shared. And he supposed the wizard was suffering from some sort of personal trial, probably brought to a head by their run-in with the bounty hunter. He considered digging deeper to find out what it all portended. It bothered him that he wasn't more interested.

It is unimportant, sent Angul. Our quest takes precedence.

Raidon agreed. He swallowed the last of his small meal and stood, brushing his hands on his coat. "Let's go."

*****

The vegetation thickened as they moved deeper into Xxiphu, becoming denser and higher. Finally Raidon was wading through growth that reached his waist. Each step was something of a struggle.

It reminded him of a time, back before the Spellplague, when he'd taken little Ailyn out to the country to enjoy the day. How she'd loved running through the long grass in the meadow. She would get lost in it, but jump every so often just high enough-

"This route you've selected for us, my Shou friend," said Thoster, "puts me in mind of a three-legged cat on deck during high seas."

"I don't even know what that means," muttered Seren.

Raidon paused, allowing the wisps of his past to evaporate. He said over his shoulder, "It looks as if the grass thins out ahead. Regardless, I sense this is the quickest way to the Eldest. This is the way we proceed."

The captain swept off his hat and executed a mock bow, his face just avoiding the top of the grass. "After you." Raidon didn't waste breath telling the captain he could return to his ship if he was unhappy with their route. He resumed trudging down the vegetated corridor.

The Cerulean Sign reacted strongly to the grass-but it reacted nearly as strongly to the stone walls of the corridor and even the air. In Xxiphu, few things were not tainted.

As the half-elf promised, the grass thinned out, coinciding with a widening in the corridor. A silver bulb sprouted in the center of the area from a particularly thick piece of grass… actually more like a stem than a blade. The pod was just larger than a man, though its exact dimensions were not fixed, it gradually thickened and thinned, contorting like quicksilver in slow motion. Raidon saw his features distorted in the bulb's undulating body. He concentrated on it to the exclusion of everything else, and the Cerulean Sign cooled.

"Stay clear of the bulb," Raidon said. "It's possibly dangerous."

"Hells, do you really think so?" said Thoster. "I thought it was just a boil on a halfling's ass."

Raidon's back muscles twitched, a movement too small for anyone else to notice. The captain's constant wiseacre comments were beginning to wear on him. He knew the privateer was being willfully facetious, but he replied anyway, "If you value your life, stay clear. I sense this growth is set here as a sentry-it's not a random weed."

So saying, Raidon began to edge around the expanded space in the corridor, giving the bulb as wide a berth as he could.

Seren moved to emulate him. "At least the grass is shorter here," she said.

Thoster chuckled to himself a moment, then followed. The crew member "volunteers" brought up the rear.

Halfway around the chamber, the Sign's temperature dropped more precipitously.

The monk had the distinct sense through the spellscar that something abominable approached from the direction they were headed. Raidon held up his hand, calling a halt. He looked back to make eye contact with the others and put a finger of his other hand to his lips. He hoped the captain would refrain from his mocking comments, if just this once.

A scraping, belling cacophony issued down the tunnel. It sounded like silvery grass being shoved aside in a wide swathe.

Raidon could just make out a shape lumbering toward them, but the reflective vegetation still hid its exact nature.

Seren began to chant arcane syllables. He heard the captain draw his golemwork blade. Raidon readied himself to slay whatever threatened their progress with the eager length of Angul.

The shape crested the last of the high, silvery blades. It was an aboleth the size of a chariot.

Thoster said, "Blood!"

The aboleth's five scattered, red eyes rotated in their sockets to focus on the invaders. A mucous haze engulfed Raidon. The smell was overwhelming. He heard Seren gag and cough, losing her spell before she could release it.

Angul flared. The thin coating of slime that had misted across the sword and Raidon burned away in a puff of steam. The words "Aberrations shall be purged*dropped from Raidon's lips before he realized the sword had got its hooks into him again.

Not that it mattered. The aboleth would be purged.

Raidon leaped. Rather, he tried to. Instead, he fell onto his elbows when his feet failed to leave the ground.

Several dozen silvery blades had wrapped around his calves without his notice.

Thoster called, "The grass is alive!"

A sharp tug around the monk's ankles pulled him closer to the center of the tunnel, where the mirrorlike pod undulated. He saw that besides himself, Thoster and two of the crew were similarly ensnared. Even as he watched, the sinuous grass transferred one of the screaming crew members to the globe. The pod languidly nodded down on it s stem as if to deliver a blank-faced kiss to the flailing figure being dragged tait.

The moment one of the man's thrashing arms touched the pod, a shiny tide rushed to cover the crew member's entire body, cutting off his screams. Not even a boot or grasping hand protruded a heartbeat later. The pod lazily resumed its former upright position at the end of its stalk, still thickening and thinning, though perhaps slightly larger than it had been. Other than that, there was no evidence that a man's life had just been snuffed out. Raidon used the Blade Cerulean to cut the strands tangling his legs. He snapped to his feet.

"Cut the stalk," Seren yelled, pointing at the bulb.

Kill the aboleth, Angul urged, pulling him around to face the malevolent watcher.

Raidon charged the aboleth.

It vomited a fist of slime that whined past his head.

His advance was slowed by the rippling grass, which kept tripping him. He managed to avoid most of the blades, but not all. His attack failed several paces short of punching the blade through the aboleth's belly.

Instead, he was forced to use Angul to cut away the sea of entangling, angry blades that writhed around him like a nest of headless hydras.

The aboleth's eyes tracked him. He felt their malign power attempting to burrow into his brain and overwrite it with new thoughts and new goals.

Raidon shook off the influence. His mind was too well schooled to be suborned. Or perhaps it was the Blade Cerulean, who didn't like competitors.

Fending off a tentacle slap with a savage cut from Angul, he advanced once more. He managed to pare away one of the aboleth's tentacles. The creature didn't seem to care that one of its four limbs lay severed and squirming in the grass. It was as if the aboleth had no fear for its own safety.

Not that Angul cared either, for considerations of defense or even caution. By extension, neither did Raidon.

The haze surrounding the creature pulsed, becoming momentarily thick as mud. Then it sleeted everything in glistening slime the color of bilge water and no less smelly. He heard the shouts of his compatriots, caught in the same ooze burst.

Raidon found himself slimed under a layer of hardening muck that sought to immobilize him, making him once again easy prey for the silvery grass.

The monk put his free hand to his chest and summoned energy from the Cerulean Sign. A blaze of pure blue light burst from it. The illumination shattered the hardening shell of slime.

Even as the aboleth tried to blink the afterimage of the cerulean light from its five eyes, Raidon crossed the final distance between them. He slid the entire length of Angul into the aboleth's brain.

The aboleth's death gurgle rattled down the corridor. Raidon pulled Angul free. The blade burned the creature's nasty blood from its length with a sheet of fire.

"Hey, Raidon, some help, eh?"

He turned.

Thoster remained caught in the entangling grass. The privateer was half again as close to the pod as he'd started.

A coating of hardened slime resisted the man's every move. The captain slashed his clicking sword to sever strands of grass, but for every strand he cut, two more twined around him.

Seren had enshrouded herself in a translucent globe of protective spell light. The defensive magic had apparently shielded her from the ooze burst and-so far, at least- resisted the increasingly frantic attempts of the silvery blades to penetrate it. He could hear her chanting the arcane precursors to another spell.

Of the crew, only a single struggling woman remained. Raidon saw it was Mharsan, Thoster's newest first mate.

Blood streaked her legs where the cruel blades cut deep in their attempt to pull her toward a quicksilver embrace.

The bulb now measured more than twice its original diameter. The slow waves washing across its surface continued unabated.

Raidon moved to destroy the pod, but lurched to a stop. The grass had caught him again when he'd stopped to kill the aboleth. He bent, once again bringing Angul to bear.

Seren finished her spell. She lobbed a tiny sphere of pulsating white light through the golden glow of her ward.

The ball traced a perfect arc through the air to meet the pod. As with the crew members, the silvery mass absorbed the light the moment contact was made.

The bulb stopped undulating. It emitted a gasp of intestinal distress from an orifice Raidon couldn't discern.

Then it exploded, bathing the tunnel in a rain of silvery fluid.

"Oh goody, more goo," said Thoster. The blades of grass holding Raidon fell limp. The silvery vegetation lining the passage wilted in a widening ripple. The tinkling of bells ceased, leaving only the sound of the captain's ongoing litany of sarcastic curses and the surviving crew member's hoarse breathing to fill the air.

"The sentry is dead," Raidon said, "as is the aboleth. We should go, before others come to investigate."

Thoster pulled himself to his feet using his sword as a crutch. Drooping filaments of grass loosed their hold on his legs. Then the captain yelped in alarm. A glob of the silvery fluid smoldered on his jacket. The man ripped off the fancy black coat and threw it to the ground. In hardly any time, the entire jacket was consumed by the acidic residue.

Everyone spent a moment looking at their own clothing and skin to make certain no other spatters from the bulb had found them.

Raidon noticed many of the bandages beneath Thoster's torn shirt had been ripped loose in his struggle with the voracious vegetation. What he could see of the man's abdomen and chest, and even upper arms, was covered in grayish green scales. Scales that reminded him of something he'd normally see at the end of a fishing line.

"What is wrong with your skin, Thoster?" said Raidon.

The captain's eyes went wide. He glanced at the wizard and then back at the monk.

Seren said, "He suffers from… a curse. It's something I've been helping him deal with. I'm surprised this is the moment you've chosen to notice our captain's distress. Perhaps you should reconsider your priorities. We just lost three of Green Siren's crew!"

They are unimportant, said Angul.

The half-elf gritted his teeth and waited for a twinge of guilt, but none came. He sheathed his sword. He felt as hollow as ever.

Raidon shook his head and said, "I'm sorry."

Seren's face was tight, as if she wanted to make an issue of Raidon's lack of empathy, but she remained silent.

He turned back to Thoster. "I am sorry, Captain, for the loss of even more of your crew."

The captain grimaced and said, "They'll be missed, aye."

"But," continued Raidon, "why do you have kuo-toa scales covering you? My Sign is tingling ever so slightly at your presence. Why?"

"I… I have a condition," the man finally said. "Seren's stopped its progression, though." The captain lifted his amulet and showed the monk.

Raidon reached out with his mind through the Cerulean Sign.

As before, the overwhelming influence of the surrounding city made it difficult to discern fine details. Still, he was able to see Thoster was lightly touched with an aberrant taint. It wasn't especially strong, but it bore watching. His skill with the Sign wasn't sufficient for him to tell if the amulet in the man's hand was indeed holding the condition in check.

He turned to Seren and said, "Is it a curse? Can't you just remove it?"

The wizard shrugged. She said, "Most times, a curse will melt your skin or make it diseased, or something else vile. Thoster's 'curse' wasn't one he gained recently. It is bred into him, but only recently triggered. It is slowly transforming him into a marine creature."

"A kuo-toa," said Raidon.

Seren said, "Could be. I don't really know the specifics. Nor does he."

The half-elf regarded Thoster. "How do you feel? Any urge to fall in with these aboleths?"

The captain chuckled and shook his head. "No, 'fraid not. Though I do feel a sort of… current? Like a tide coming in."

"A tide you can resist?"

The captain nodded. "My mind is my own, even if my body seems stuck between human and fish." He held out his amulet. "Seren's amulet is my anchor. I haven't grown a single new scale since she fashioned this for me back on the ship."

Raidon studied the man's face. He judged Thoster believed he spoke the truth.

"The world is a wide place," the captain continued. Thoster had regained his equilibrium. "There's room in it for all sorts. Even someone like me. Hells, I might prove more useful in this quest-I got an inside perspective on what fish folk think."

"Perhaps so," said Raidon. "At least I saved my hat," said Thoster. He reached up and adjusted the great black thing still stuck on his head.

"We'll revisit this topic later, once I've slain the Eldest," Raidon decided. He drew Angul and faced down the tunnel.

"Sure, unless we're all dead," Seren said.

*****

They moved deeper into the city, angling inward and upward at every opportunity. On more than one occasion they detoured around encrustations of translucent ice. Seren said she could see people inside.

"People?" inquired Thoster.

"More like images of people…" Seren trailed off as her eyes widened. She ran a finger across the ice slab that roughly coated one side of the tunnel. She shook her head. "It's more like frozen dew."

"Dew? Condensed from what?"

"From the memories of a sleeping god perhaps. The, um, Eldest. These images are memories that have settled out of its petrified consciousness and, in the process, caught up any creature whose nightmares swerved too close."

Thoster whistled. He said, "So, we should avoid sleeping in Xxiphu."

Seren blinked as if the idea hadn't occurred to her. Then she nodded emphatically.

Raidon motioned for the others to follow him. There was no time to study the phenomenon and determine whether Seren was right about the ice. He and Angul were in agreement- events were too close to disaster to waste time sightseeing.

Still, Raidon worried he was forgetting something. The enthusiasm of the Blade Cerulean seemed ideal for this stage of their attack on the Eldest, but part of him wondered if he wasn't being too hasty. Shouldn't he have been more suspicious of Thoster's unsettling skin condition?

In any other circumstance, Angul would have happily obliged such a request. Thoster engaged in just the sort of seemingly inconsequential, petty crime that used to drive the weapon to feats of righteous vindictiveness. But Thoster, no matter the source of his strange curse, couldn't hold a candle to the burning forest Xxiphu represented.

Nothing else really mattered to Angul save finding and ending one of greatest banes ever to threaten Faerun.

Not that Angul cared a fig for the world.

Raidon was aware the sword influenced him more than he'd normally allow. The clarity, warmth, and comfort streaming from the hilt was his first clue. The half-elf was disciplined enough to disentangle himself from those emotions and keep them separate from his core self. But to say AnguPs persuasion was having no effect would be a lie.

On the other hand, like the soul-forged weapon, Raidon himself was a servitor of the Cerulean Sign that blazoned his chest. With the Sign's energies enlivening the monk's mind and body, he and Angul were far more aligned in philosophy than he cared to admit.

It was the Cerulean Sign that pulled him forward now, not Angul, for all its sky-burning bluster. In a sense, he had become a living manifestation of the Sign.

The corridor opened into a larger space.

Raidon continued forward without taking the time to reconnoiter. He found himself on the periphery of a circular grotto that smelled unpleasantly of herb and copper. Several other corridors fed into the same chamber.

Thin yellow vines grew across the naked stone of the curved walls. The tangled vines resembled arteries bulging just beneath skin. Indeed, they slowly pulsed with dark fluid. Here and there along each vine, red leathery fruits sprouted. Most were the size of fists, but a few were ripe and heavy with growth. These were closer in size to a man curled in a fetal position. Raidon didn't let that last comparison go unmarked, but the central features of the grotto claimed his attention.

A perfectly circular pool occupied about two-thirds of the chamber's floor space. Stone obelisks clustered around the pool, each burning with a purplish flame. Mucus trails coated the floor of the chamber around the pool in thin streaks, emerging from one tunnel, circling the pool, then leading out into one of the other tunnels.

Raidon stepped up to the water and peered in. Or perhaps it wasn't water-a crystal clear liquid lapped slowly against the edges of its containment, more like gel than anything else. But whether it was water or slime, phosphorescent images played out in the pool's depths. Images that didn't seem dissimilar to the visions his Sign had given him on occasion. Seren and Thoster joined the monk at the pool's edge. Both studied the confusing welter of lines and shapes of dull green and orange light visible in the fluid. Mharsan, the first mate, remained in the tunnel entrance.

"I can't make any sense of it," said Thoster. He turned away to look at one of the larger vine fruits. A worried frown grew on his face.

Seren wrinkled her brow but continued to watch the pool. "Do these glowing lights hold any meaning for you?" she asked the half-elf.

"Yes," admitted Raidon. Against Angul's stern insistence, he sheathed the blade. The moment the hilt left his grip, the monk sighed.

"What?" said Seren.

Instead of explaining, he pointed into the pool with one hand and lay the palm of his other hand flat across the Sign.

"This is some sort of meeting chamber. Were Xxiphu completely awake, this grotto would be swimming in aboleths."

"Auspicious that everyone is still asleep," said Seren.

"Or otherwise occupied," said Raidon. "Ah yes. I can sort order from this chaos with the Cerulean Sign, enough so you can see too."

He concentrated. The jumble of mismatched lines came together, creating a stylized image of a broad pillar.

Within the pillar were packed lines, tubes, and spaces of all sizes.

"I see it! Is it an image of the city?" said Seren.

"Yes. Xxiphu. See there?" He pointed to the base of the wavering picture. A large space filled the entire lower fifth of the column. A convoluted series of spheres rotated around still larger spheres. One massive globe appeared to hover within the very center of the cavity.

"What is it? It looks like an orrery without the arms."

"I don't know what it looks like in reality," said Raidon, "but by this simplified depiction and a sense I get from the Cerulean Sign, it is some kind of font of arcane magic."

Thoster walked back up and gazed at the reconstructed image revealed in the pool. He asked, "What are those tiny little colored things flying around the spheres?"

Raidon concentrated his attention on one of the points the captain indicated. They came in all colors, though there were more red and blue points than any other.

The half-elf s eyes widened.

"Aboleths!"

Seren sucked in her breath. "Are they really flying?"

Raidon slowly nodded. "The spheres apparently grant that power-at least the smallest ones. The largest orbs… could lift something far larger than even a very big aboleth."

"Like a kraken maybe?" volunteered Thoster.

Raidon nodded, remembering Gethshemeth. But he suspected the black sphere around which all the smaller ones ultimately rotated could achieve something even grander… assuming conferring flight was its true function.

The monk wondered if, from this… council chamber, he could affect the connection of a given aboleth with the arcane power source and perhaps sever its ability to keep to the air. It seemed as if the functions were there, if he could devote enough time to its study.

"What's most important at the moment," he said aloud, "is that we can use this pool to track aboleths." Raidon focused his attention higher in the column. The tumbling spheres were impressive, but not relevant to their purpose.

"Where are we on this schematic?" said Seren. "We docked fairly high up, right? Though we don't know how tall the city really is since the top was punched into solid stone…"

Raidon didn't answer directly, but slowly traced a finger up the side of the glowing map, his fingertip only inches above the pool. Doing so seemed to aid his concentration. As his finger moved, the area on the diagram near it came into better focus, while areas beyond blurred into far less detail. He was searching for the Eldest.

He discovered more and more points of abolethic light as he tracked upward through Xxiphu's lower and central foundations. He found a particularly dense concentration of smaller, pale lights in a tangled maze of narrow tunnels about halfway up Xxiphu. Within the tangle, a couple of points pulsed with particularly fell light that outshone all the aboleths he'd so far detected. The two were clearly powerful entities… but they didn't seem to be aboleths. When he tried to focus his attention even closer, he was unable to get a positive fix on them. But neither was the Eldest. He moved on.

Above the maze, and moving steadily higher, he found another odd point of light. It seemed to pulse between great power and near extinction with heartbeat regularity. Raidon concentrated, then said, "Xiang's Seven Principles, that's Japheth!"

Seren's mouth dropped open.

The monk turned to regard Thoster. "You were right!"

The captain raised his hands in an elaborate shrug. He said, "You don't get to captain a ship like Green Siren if you can't make a few lucky guesses."

Raidon frowned. "This is a complication we do not need. Especially if he carries the Dreamheart with him on his ill-considered foray."

"Is he close to us?" said Seren.

Raidon resumed his study of the pool's schematic. He found where Japheth's soul light glimmered again, then carefully continued his search up the length of the great city.

"Yes," the monk said a moment later, pointing to a small chamber.

"We are here."

"No more than a few hand spans from where you detected the warlock," mused the captain. His voice held a tentative note.

Raidon said, "Yes. And see how many of the tunnels below converge here? If he continues his current heading, Japheth will come to this room eventually, perhaps in less than an hour. I sense no aboleths between him and us.

In fact, this whole upper area seems remarkably clear of the monsters…"

The half-elf raised his attention to the final fifth of the great spire-shaped city of Xxiphu. He sucked in his breath.

The empty cavity that crowned the city nearly matched the one at its base, at least in size. Within it, dozens of abolethic lights burned, several of them far brighter than the ones he'd spied lower down. Probably old and potent aboleths who'd wakened early. The disturbing thing was how they were arranged in a great circle, a shape whose arcane significance was not lost on the monk. The circle of aboleths slowly rotated, hovering some distance over the great chamber's floor.

"They're performing some sort of ritual," Seren murmured.

The magical reproduction in the pool showed how each aboleth brightened in turn, then dimmed as its fellow brightened, as if passing along some sort of charged object or concept. The pulse continued around the circle until a full revolution was achieved. The last creature in the ring directed the gathered energy to the roof of the chamber. Then the strangely regular dance of light began anew.

By process of elimination, Raidon knew what he would find when he concentrated his attention on the diagram's apex.

Upon Xxiphu's crown brooded the very absence of light. A dark, yawning emptiness there ate everything the creatures below were able to throw at it, leaving it hungry for more.

The Sign on his chest was so cold he lost feeling in his body. The vacuity could be none other than the Eldest, his foe, who sat the entire city as if it were no more than a throne.