Conspiracy

Chapter 7

Night was stealing into the palace as Noph crowded with Shar and the others behind the drapes of the great hall. They had arrived here by way of the kitchen garbage chute, and so had slithered through mounds of fish tails, shucked clamshells, greasy cuttlebones, and jellyfish heads.

They stank like the mage-king, himself.

Noph felt especially bad for Ingrar, who had the keenest nose among them. Of late, he could tell what was in a locked room merely by sniffing beneath the door. Just now, Ingrar couldn't smell anything but the remains of the mage-king's lunch.

"The emperor will keep the bloodforge well guarded and near him," Entreri said. "If Noph's memory of the palace serves, beyond the great hall is a wide, crescent-shaped corridor that connects all the ceremonial spaces. The high double doors at the center of the crescent give into the audience chamber. Beyond it lies the mage-king's personal quarters-his tank. The bloodforge must be there."

"But I told you," Noph said, "there's no way to get at the mage-king through the audience chamber. The tank takes up one whole wall. The glass is impervious to all attacks, magical or mundane. The water is poisonous. And even if the glass could be broken and the water were safe, you'd still be swept away and drowned."

"Impervious is an overrated word. The bloodforge is in there with him; I'm sure of it. If we have to drain the tank and beach the big fish, then we have to. Besides, I have ways of breaching the unbreachable wall and surviving the flood and the poison. I have this." Entreri twirled a flat silver plate in his fingertips.

"What is it?" Shar asked, leaning close against him.

"A little thieving device-the fellow selling them came from a place call Sigil. Stick this on a wall or window, and it creates a gate to the other side. The thief can stick a hand through and snatch whatever he can reach. Of course an assassin such as myself might be more likely to throw a dagger through-"

"You're going to throw a dagger at a fifty-foot-tall squid-man?" Noph interrupted.

"Something a little more subtle," Entreri assured him.

"First we have to reach the chamber-have to get past an army of guards between here and there," Belgin groused. The sharper's face was looking more drawn and sickly than usual. "There's probably two outside the great hall, four outside the audience chamber, eight outside the mage-king's tank, and between sixteen and thirty-two guarding the bloodforge."

"Perhaps now, but not in a few moments from now," Entreri said. "I've planned a diversion." He nodded toward the doors of the great hall. As if on cue, shouts rose outside.

"Fire! Fire in the treasury!"

The pirates and Noph cast unbelieving glances at Entreri. He shrugged. "It isn't really the treasury, but the gift room beside the treasury. And it isn't really a fire, but a certain present from Neverwinter, one that emits a sleep-inducing smoke. The guards will rush to the treasury only to lie down and nap."

A murmur of mirth passed among the crew as they listened to the growing sounds of mayhem. The shouts and stamping feet died away to silence.

"Follow me. Swords out."

They did, their steps confident behind their ingenious leader. He had thought of everything.

Noph reached his free hand toward Shar, but she moved away, approaching Entreri. Her own free hand grasped the assassin's, and his fingers squeezed.

Congratulations, Entreri, you damned skunk, Noph thought.

Behind him, Ingrar tripped on a chair leg. Noph glanced back at the blind young man: he looked white-faced and shaky.

"Let me guide you along," Noph suggested, hand grasping his.

Ingrar nodded and gripped Noph's hand tightly.

"Bring him up here," Entreri hissed. He and Shar stood at the two grand double doors-white, with gold leaf on a filigree trim.

"The master summons," Noph told Ingrar, though the blind man was already hurrying toward the voice. In a panting moment more, the two reached the double doors.

"Give it a sniff," Entreri said. "Is anybody out there?" Ingrar drew a deep breath through the door space.

Conflicting emotions crossed his face. At last, he released the air in a whisper. "One guard remaining. He's young. He's standing against the wall to the right side."

"Good enough for me," Entreri said noncommittally, kicking the right door outward.

Wood and iron thumped against a soft bulk. It groaned once and slid. A young guard slumped from behind the door. His face was ringed with the downy curls of an early beard.

Entreri glanced at the blind man. "You couldn't smell the beard?"

Without further comment, he and Shar shoved past the half-open door and the unconscious guard and stalked down the curving hallway. A wave of Shar's hand hastened Noph and Ingrar forward.

"Anyone up here?" Entreri asked.

Panting as he and Noph caught up, Ingrar replied, "Used to be. The smell is cold, stale. They're gone. Wait. There's one at the head of the audience chamber. On the right. Just ahead, around the bend."

"Young? A beard?" teased Shar.

Ingrar shrugged. "I'd say, yes."

Entreri drew a dagger from his belt and skulked forward. "Lucky for him you did." He slightly modified his grip on the dagger before hurling it.

The blade flashed through the air, slipped past the white belly of the wall, and struck the young guard in the head. He convulsed once before collapsing, bloodless, to the ground.

"Excellent aim," Shar commented.

"I didn't have to hit him with the handle, you know," Entreri said coldly. "Noph, keep the Seer close at hand."

Following the assassin's lead, the pirates dashed to the gilded double doors of the audience chamber. Entreri shoved the unconscious man out of the way, retrieved his dagger, and threw back the doors. Cold, humid air rolled over the group.

Ingrar gasped a breath. "Not in there, Master Entreri. Not in there. We're not going in there." "What? What is it?"

"Death," said Ingrar. "Our deaths. All of our deaths. The deaths of every creature on this cursed coast."

Entreri looked at the rest of his party, their faces white and wary. "See? I told you the bloodforge was in here," he said flatly. With that, the assassin strode into the audience chamber of King Aetheric III.

Noph tugged a reluctant Ingrar. "Let's go. We've signed on this far." Stepping past the fallen guard, they entered the chamber.

We should have heeded their presence. We should have known this assassin could slay even us. But with fiends flooding the city, bloodforge armies appearing against them, and the smell of death so strong in our gills… with the apocalypse descending around us, Artemis Entreri and his band were no more than cuttlefish splashing in tidal pools.

We should have known they could slay even us. But we could not have stopped them, anyway-not and fought the fiends.

The audience chamber of the mage-king was dank, cavernous, and black. The air was heavy. At the far end of the lightless chamber hung thick ebony curtains. The empty darkness in front of the drapes seemed to be swimming with phantasms-tiny crayfish and sea sprites and spineless creatures floating in air. A deep, quiet rumble filled the chamber, and minute water sounds-eddies, waves, vague liquid voices.

…

Entreri wasted no time. He rushed with Shar to the curtain and drew back one small edge of it to reveal a triangle of thick glass beyond. He stuck his silvered plate to the glass.

Within the tank, something enormous stirred. It moved with silent, slippery ease. A broad circle of deeper darkness appeared at the top of the triangle of glass. It descended within the tank and hovered beside the curtain's edge.

"What is it?" Shar asked, gazing at the circle of night.

Digging in one of his many pockets, the assassin said, "It doesn't matter. The mage-king can't reach through. His poison can't come through. I placed the portal, and I command it."

"It's an eye," Shar whispered in realization. She stared at the huge spot. "That's what it is. A wide-open eye."

Noph led a trembling Ingrar up beside them. "I hope you've got something superterrific up your sleeve, boss."

Entreri nodded. He extended a clenched hand, and then opened his fingers to reveal a palmful of white pills. "One's enough to purify a lake. Twenty-five will make this tank taste like a mountain spring."

The others looked confused.

The assassin tossed the handful of pills into the silver plate. They soundlessly disappeared into it. On the far side of the thick glass, the white tablets emerged and slowly sank, bubbling, toward the unseeable bottom.

Entreri turned, took Shar's hand, and said, "Let's go."

"That's it?" Rings asked as he and the others dogged the assassin's heels.

Entreri herded them toward the double doors. "We'll probably want to be a good distance away when the mage-king shatters his tank."

"Shatters his tank?" Noph echoed.

"From what you've told us, he needs salt water and the poisons of his own skin to survive. What sustains him would kill us, and vice versa. What do you think pure water will do to him? It'll burn like acid. It'll make him break out. It'll leave the bloodforge undefended."

Another voice spoke, a deep, wounded, angry voice.

"Why have you done this? Why?"

The mage-king.

Entreri didn't answer. He headed with a little more speed toward the doorway.

The voice grew louder. Sounds of boiling came from the tank.

"We keep the fiends at bay. Kill us, and you kill yourselves, you kill this whole land."

As the pirates passed through the double doors, Entreri muttered calmly, "The water is completely pure by now."

The mage-king roared:

"You, Artemis Entreri, you and yours, are our eternal enemies! You have slain us, and all of Doegan!"

"Head for high ground," the assassin quietly advised.

Trandon raised his staff to receive the next fiend. But it was not merely one: a whole wall of the villains rushed toward him. A retreat? Still, by sheer force of numbers, they would sweep all the defenders under.

"Brace for it!" shouted Trandon to his companions.

The others looked, and chorused a groan. One by one, they finished off their current adversaries and braced for the new onslaught.

Trandon stood, staff lifted high to crack the first head that came. "It has been an honor to battle beside you three!"

"Aye!" came Jacob's reply through bloody teeth. "Let the bards sing Tyr's praises!" Kern added.

"Aye!" joined Miltiades.

The demon tidal wave crested as it approached. Fiends tumbled over each other, trampling comrades in their haste. There came a moment of shrieks and blood and flailing.

Trandon split one head with the tip of his staff and another with the butt; Jacob's sword hewed the back of a skeletal warrior; Kern pounded the bleating foes into messy piles of flesh and bone; and Miltiades stood above them all, eyes gleaming with righteous fury as his hammer slew four, five, six fiends.

The wave swept onward.

Behind that sanguine line of fleeing fiends came another wave, mightier than the first.

Black-armored warriors.

Black-robed war wizards.

The conjured defenders of Doegan.

They advanced relentlessly, chopping into the backs of the fleeing monsters. This line, too, passed the wounded paladins, leaving them to stand and gape after the retreating battle.

"What was that?" Kern wondered aloud.

Miltiades's voice was a growl of condemnation. "A bloodforge army, no doubt. Wicked defenders of a wicked regime."

"Still," Jacob said, patting the dust from his clothes, "they saved us from the fiends."

Miltiades nodded grimly. "You need healing, Kern."

The golden warrior looked at his shoulder. "I suppose I do."

Miltiades drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, placed his hands on the wound, and offered a silent prayer to Tyr. Even as the holy power moved through him, stitching together sinews and muscles and mending cracked bones, Kern glanced at Jacob.

"I was sure at one point I saw you stuck on the end of a trident," the golden paladin said.

Jacob blinked back at him and shook his head. "Not me." He gestured at his clothes, dusty but bloodless. "Maybe it was Trandon."

As Miltiades lifted his hands from the healed shoulder of his comrade, Kern said, "Was it you, then, Trandon?" They turned to see the tall warrior gazing down at his chest.

Trandon's voice was hesitant, filled with awe. "No blood, here, but something else." The pendant glowed brilliantly. "Eidola is here. She is nearby."

Kern's eyes grew wide. "My antimagic must have worn off!"

"Or perhaps the warding magic around Eidola was compromised when the fiends attacked," Trandon offered.

"Conjuring that army must have taken its toll," Miltiades said. "The mage-king must have diverted power from cloaking his captive."

"Are you saying-?" Kern began.

"The only way to find out is to head for the palace, and watch the pendant," Miltiades said.

Trandon was already rushing up the road toward the abode of the mage-king.

Though the four paladins ran for the palace, they could not outrun the descending night. Deep darkness had fallen by the time they reached the stair bridge in front of the palace. They paused, panting, and gazed out over the city.

The distant thunder of battle filled the air. From this high vantage, the warriors could make out the line of defenders, holding fast in most places. Fire and smoke rose in a thick curtain around the city.

"There," Miltiades said, pointing to a spot a mere quarter mile distant. "They've broken through." The others then saw it, a company of fiends charging past a quickly closing breech. "They'll be here in mere moments."

"But the pendant is nearly blinding, now," Kern said, holding hands up before his face. "She must be here, in the palace. We must proceed."

Miltiades's face was a mask of soot and scars. "I would, but for those fiends. They are after one thing- the bloodforge. For the good of all Toril, we cannot let them have it." He unslung his warhammer and marched grimly up the steps of the stair bridge. "The only way for land-bound creatures to cross the moat is to climb here." He reached a small landing just ahead of the palace facade. "We hold them here, as long as we can. The fiends will pay a dear toll in blood to pass."

Kern marched up beside him, hammer flashing. "I will take the vanguard and draw them in, slaying with my antimagic."

Trandon said, "I will be at your one hand, and Jacob at your other. No claw will touch you."

Even as they arrayed themselves and kicked footholds, the fiends converged on the stairway and charged upward.

In moments, the villainous horde crashed against them. Kern and Miltiades flung them back with killing blows, alternating like a pair of men driving stakes into the ground. Jacob hacked and hewed. Trandon hurled attackers into the moat. Shorn claws and cracked skulls tumbled bloodily down to stick on the spikes below. The defenders held.

The fiends bunched up along the stairs and began slaying each other to get by. Those that could fly took to the air, but other defenders in the palace beyond sent whispering shafts into them. They dropped among the other dead in the moat.

In the air or on the stair, the fight was furious. Some fiends were unmade by the convulsing limbs and acidic blood of their slain comrades. Others merely crowded themselves from the causeway and dropped onto impaling spikes. But many, if not most, fell to the powerful blows of the paladins.

"We are holding them," Miltiades grunted as his war-hammer pulped the pod-shaped head of a greater fiend. "We are holding back the armies of hell!"

Then one fiend slipped past-a great anaconda with the head of a boar. Miltiades pounded its slithering side, but couldn't stop it. A second got by, and a third. In time, the tide of fiends flowed once more. For the defenders, all that remained was the grim, bloody work of slaying those they could.

Miltiades shouted, "May Tyr bless the palace defenders!"