Night of Long Shadows

CHAPTER 15

The third day of long Shadows

Sar, the 28th day of Vult, 998

The way Cutter looked at life, the rich people landed at the top of the pile-the bankers, the businessmen, the politicians (the crooked ones, at least), and the higher echelons of the criminal world.

Directly underneath were the people who kept them in those positions-the badly-paid workers, the people who borrowed their money and had to pay interest, the people who voted them into power, and the people who supported crime in any number of ways.

At the bottom were the people who did everything else. The ones who cleaned up the messes everyone else made, and the ones who took an active role in the criminal lifestyle, working directly for the crime bosses at the top.

It was the same with the city. At the very top of the pack was Skyway, a part of the city that floated above Central and Menthis Plateau. Then there was the Upper City, where all the aforementioned bankers and politicians lived. Middle City housed the workers, the people who scraped and saved just to get by. Then there was the Lower City where Cutter lived. He considered it pretty much the bottom of the barrel, but the one thing Sharn had taught him was that someone was always worse off than yourself.

Below Lower City were the Depths. The Depths held the sewers of the city-huge, algae-covered aqueducts that once carried water but now shipped the city’s effluence to Khyber knew where. Beneath these sewers were ancient ruins and mold-ering buildings-all that remained of Sharn’s earlier ages.

And underneath that, underneath everything, were the Cogs.

The Cogs stretched underground the whole length and breadth of Sharn. Lakes of fire dotted the landscape of the Cogs. Channels of sluggish lava carved through the bedrock, powering the industrial heart of the city. The Cogs were home to the city’s foundries and forges, the slaughterhouses and tanneries. The stench of sulfur was ever present, and oily black smoke lurked around chimneys that were no more than uneven holes cut in ceilings, too small to handle the belching smoke. The walls were stained black, the slightest touch leaving hands covered in grime.

A short visit to the Cogs meant hacking up filth and soot from your lungs for a week.

This was where Khyber’s Gate lay. Khyber’s Gate was the only housing district in the Cogs, and its crumbling tenements were home to nearly all the goblins and bugbears who worked there.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Wren. They walked nervously through the all-but-deserted streets.

“Identify Anriel and find out what he knows.”

“What if he doesn’t tell you?” asked Torin, looking around and fingering one of the many knives he had armed himself with after learning where they were going.

“He’ll tell me.”

Wren stepped around something messy in the street. “I understand you need the shard to get inside the temple,” he said, pausing briefly to check the sole of his shoe, “but Cutter, you can’t let the shard get out of your sight. Do you understand that? Whatever they have planned for it, it can’t be good.”

“I’m not stupid,” said Cutter. “Host, you’re like an old woman, you know?”

Torin looked around uneasily. “Where is everyone? This place is like a ghost town.”

“Last night was the final night of Long Shadows,” said Wren. “I’ll bet everyone had a bit of a party.”

“Oh. So those weren’t dead bodies we passed a while back? They were just drunk?”

“Mmm … no. I think those were dead bodies. Those goblins are just passed out, though.” Wren pointed at three goblins and a bugbear lying on the pavement outside a tavern.

“I have to say I’m a bit confused as to how one gains entry into the headquarters of one of the most powerful criminal gangs in the city,” said Torin.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Cutter.

“And?”

“And I haven’t come up with anything.

I’ll play it by ear.” “I’ll lay odds you end up using your fists.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“There are more elegant ways of achieving one’s goals, Cutter,” said Wren.

“Like what?”

“Like using an invisibility potion.”

Cutter stopped in his tracks. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. I picked it up from my apartments before we went to the college. The thing is, the effects won’t last very long.”

“But it’ll get me inside?”

“Yes. And another one will get you out.”

“Then that’s all I need.”

They stopped at a side road that traveled to their left and seemed to end against a sheer rock face. Except it wasn’t a rock face. Cutter could see flickering light through small openings scattered all the way up to the stalactites of the distant roof. Two guttering torches framed an almost invisible doorway carved from the rock. That was it. The infamous Temple of the Six.

“Doesn’t look like much,” said Cutter.

“Maybe so,” said Wren, “but it has warrens that extend for miles below ground. As far as I know, it was built by some of the original inhabitants of this city, long before any of us showed up.”

“I’d better get moving,” said Cutter.

Wren handed him two small vials.

Cutter pocketed one and opened the other. “All of it?”

“Every drop,” said Wren.

Cutter emptied the contents down his throat. It tasted like the medicine his mother used to give him. He grimaced and smacked his lips, dropping the vial to the ground. He looked at his hands as they slowly faded from sight.

Cutter moved to the side, watching Wren and Torin to see if they could detect the movement. But their eyes remained fixed on the spot where he had been when he took the potion. He turned onto the road without a word and headed for the temple. He could hear his footsteps and his breathing. He should have asked Wren about that. Could other people hear him? Or were his sounds masked as well? He decided to play it safe and assume others could hear him. That way, there’d be no surprises.

The doors were closed, but as he pushed on them they slid smoothly inward. He quickly stepped to the side, in case someone was standing there. Nobody appeared, so he slipped through the door and into a long corridor. The walls were roughly carved from the rock, all angles and hard lines. Coldfire torches lit the way.

He pulled the doors closed and set off down the hall. At the bottom of the corridor was an anteroom with three passageways leading deeper into the temple.

Four priests of the Keeper stood at the far right passage. They were dressed in rags, their faces dirty and drawn. Cutter froze, but they hadn’t heard him. They were too busy looking at a parchment of some kind. Cutter slipped around the wall and took the corridor closest to the entrance.

It led to a staircase that wound up through the rock. He took the stairs and reached another long corridor, this one lit by real torches. The greasy flames guttered and spat oil onto the walls. Black smoke marks smeared the rock above the sconces.

It occurred to Cutter that he had no idea how to find Anriel. He knew that Daask had allowed the shrines to the Shadow and the Keeper to be rebuilt, but those shrines could be anywhere. And he had no idea how long the invisibility would last.

He moved cautiously down the corridor, pressing himself hard against the wall every time someone approached. It was happening more and more frequently. Goblins and bugbears and orcs roamed the corridors, shouting greetings or cursing each other as they passed.

He realized he must be in the Daask headquarters. None of the creatures he passed looked like priests. In fact, the last priests he saw were those back in the anteroom.

He’d taken the wrong corridor.

Cutter retraced his steps as fast as he could. The priests were gone from the anteroom, and he took one of the corridors to the right. It led to a staircase that cut sharply down through the rock.

At the bottom was a square room with a single door. No chance of getting lost this time. Cutter eased the door open and listened. He heard distant chanting. A good sign. Chanting usually meant priests. They liked the sounds of their own voices.

He slipped into the corridor and followed it as it cut a jagged and uneven path through the rock. Cutter reckoned that whoever carved the path simply turned in another direction every time they hit a seam of hard rock, coming back to the original direction whenever they could.

The path eventually spat him out into another hallway. This one was paved with heavy flagstones, the walls more smoothly cut. Doors were spaced evenly along the corridor, and between these doors, coldfire torches cast small blooms of blue light up the walls and onto the ceiling. Cutter heard the chanting clearly now. It came from his right.

So. What was his next move? He’d stumbled in blindly, not knowing how he would find Anriel, but now that he was here, he needed a plan. He couldn’t just wander around hoping to bump into him. That could take forever.

He tried one of the doors, and was surprised when it opened into an untidy room. Someone’s sleeping quarters, by the look of it. Cutter entered and closed the door behind him. A desk stood against the far wall, cluttered with old books and loose pieces of parchment. He picked up a book and checked the spine. It was called Giving Birth to the Light. He flicked through the pages, reading a passage here and there, and realized the book was a treatise on how the Shadow spawned Aureon, and not the other way around, as was the generally accepted belief.

Finally. A bit of luck. At least he knew he was in the correct temple.

He opened the door to step into the corridor. A goblin walked past the room. It had almost passed the doorway when Cutter pulled it open. Cutter saw the goblin slow and start to turn. The human quickly pushed the door closed but didn’t engage the latch. He took a few steps back. A moment later, the door opened and the goblin poked its head into the room. It took a quick look around, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and went back about its business. Cutter waited a few seconds before slipping into the hallway. The goblin was walking down the corridor, heading to the stairs.

Cutter turned and walked toward the chanting. A corridor branched to the left. He peered around the corner and saw a short hall that ended at a pair of double doors. Two priests stood guard. Cutter pulled back. The main corridor continued past the short passage and disappeared through an entrance with an iron gate barring the way. He could carry on that way, but the chanting priests were the first signs of life he’d seen down here. Would Anriel not be in there with the others? Should he wait for them to finish and try to pick him from the crowd?

He was still deciding when the chanting stopped. Cutter looked up in alarm as he heard the double doors open. He backed away, retracing his steps down the corridor.

He had just passed the room where he had found the book when a priest strode into the corridor and stopped. He was dressed in the black robes of the Shadow. His face was ancient and wrinkled, his skin so white as to be almost translucent.

The priest lifted his nose into the air, turning this way and that like an animal catching a scent.

Then he turned and looked in Cutter’s direction, his face cracking with a hideous smile that revealed a mouth full of diseased gums.

“I s-e-e you,” said the priest in a sing-song voice.

The two priests who stood guard at the door walked up to stand behind the newcomer. He pointed in Cutter’s direction. “He stands, watching us. Bring his body to me.”

In a single fluid movement, the priests whipped aside their robes and grabbed hold of crossbows, loosing bolts at Cutter. He dropped into a crouch and the bolts sailed above his head to clatter against the wall, raising sparks as they skittered against the stone.

Cutter turned and ran. The old priest shouted after him. “There’s nowhere you can hide! I can smell the magic.”

Cutter sprinted back to the square room, then leaped up the stairs two at a time. He heard the distant sounds of pursuit. He had an idea, but he had to hurry.

The goblin who had looked into the room was halfway up the stairs. Cutter slowed when he heard the scuff of the creature’s footsteps and made sure his own passage went unheard. He slipped the second vial of invisibility potion from his pocket and uncorked it. He rounded the next turn and saw the goblin’s back.

He had to judge his moment just right. Cutter approached the goblin. The ripe odor of sweat emanated from it. Cutter reached out with one hand, aiming for its scrawny neck.

The goblin whirled around and flung an elbow into Cutter’s face. He staggered into the wall, almost dropping the vial. The goblin’s eyes were wide as it looked frantically around the confined space for its attacker.

“Who’s there?” it demanded.

Cutter grimaced, tasting blood. He pushed himself up and jabbed the goblin in the throat. The creature dropped to its knees, its mouth wide open as it gasped for breath. Cutter leaned in, wincing at the stench of the goblin’s breath, and emptied the contents of the vial into its mouth. He snapped the goblin’s mouth shut, holding its jaws tight so it had no choice but to swallow the mixture.

The creature was trying to gasp for breath, making the task more difficult, but the liquid soon trickled down. The goblin faded away before Cutter’s eyes. He rammed the goblin’s head against the wall until it went limp in his arms.

Not much time. He dragged the goblin down the stairs, pausing every now and then to listen for the priests. He heard them, but they had not started to climb the stairs yet. They were being cautious in the face of an unknown enemy.

He arrived in the small room at the same time they did. Cutter hauled the goblin round in front of him as the old priest looked wildly around.

“He’s in here! I can smell him!”

The two priests spread out, leveling their crossbows. Cutter grimaced and moved directly in front of the nearest.

He heard the clack of the crossbows releasing, then felt the goblin jerk back against him as a bolt slammed into the creature’s chest.

Cutter dropped the goblin to the floor. All he could see was half a crossbow bolt hovering in the air close to the ground. He backed carefully away as the priests approached and nudged the body with their feet.

“Bring it,” said the older priest. “I want to see who it is when the potion wears off.”

The priests felt around until they found the goblin’s arms and dragged him out of the room. Cutter waited until they were gone and then breathed a small sigh of relief. He’d lost his way out, but he was still alive. Now all he needed was to wait for his own potion to wear off. Then nobody would be able to sense him. He hoped the old priest could only sense a generalized aura of magic and that the invisible goblin would fool him into thinking he had the intruder.

But in the meantime …

Cutter hurried back to the sleeping quarters. He needed something that would enable him to wander around the temple when the potion wore off-something that wouldn’t draw attention to himself. He found a small trunk at the bottom of the bed and rummaged through it, pulling out a priest’s black robe. Cutter pulled it over his head, trying hard not to notice the stale smell of unwashed laundry, then he sat on the bed and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. A few moments later, he saw his hands appear in his lap. He pulled up the sleeves of the robe and saw his arms were back where they should be.

Finally. He could get moving. He pulled the hood up over his head and hurried into the corridor, heading past the chamber where he’d heard the chanting. No guards stood outside.

He pulled open the gate and found another set of stairs leading down. He took them two at a time and emerged into another corridor identical to the one on the floor above.

Cutter paused. He was getting nowhere blundering around like this. If he expected to find Anriel any time soon, he needed to take a risk.

He walked down the passage and knocked on each door he came to. No one answered until the sixth door.

A young woman yanked it open and stared at him.

“What do you want?”

“I’ve been sent to find Anriel. Do you know where he is?”

The woman snorted. “Probably where he always is. In the dungeons.” As she said this, she gave a jerk of her head to indicate a door down the hall.

Cutter folded his hands into his sleeves and nodded his thanks. The woman slammed the door in his face.

The door she had indicated led into a narrow corridor that slanted steadily downward. Torches guttered every now and then, not really adding light, but at least giving something to judge the distance by. The temperature dropped as he descended. He eventually had to clench his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering.

The passage led him into a guard room. Three tables were pushed up against the walls, and pegs hammered into the stone held rusted rings of keys. A door with an iron grate about eye level led out of the room. He looked through the grate and saw a wide flagstoned corridor with cells to either side. Two drains had been set into the floor near the walls. Water trickled sluggishly through the mold that coated them.

At the end of the corridor directly opposite Cutter was another room. Dim light filtered through the grate and fell in bars across the floor. Cutter took a steadying breath and pulled open the door. It groaned and shrieked in protest, sticking on an uneven flagstone. He braced his back and yanked it open all the way. He stepped through and paused.

“Anriel,” he called.

Cutter heard the faint scuff of boots on cobbles, and before he could do anything, two points of cold steel touched the back of his neck. The owners of the blades must have been waiting on either side of the door. He froze, then slowly raised his hands in the air. “I’m here to see Anriel. I have something for him.”

“Who are you?” asked a low voice. Cutter thought it sounded like an orc.

“My name is Salkith.”

“He says his name is Salkith,” shouted the orc.

Cutter heard something drop, then the door at the end of the corridor flew open and a tall elf appeared, hurrying toward him.

The elf pushed his lanky blond hair behind his ears. “You’re Salkith?” he asked in a hopeful voice.

“I just said I was.”

“But what-” He stopped suddenly and glanced over Cutter’s shoulder. “Wait in the room,” he commanded something behind Cutter.

An orc and a bugbear appeared from behind Cutter and headed for the room Anriel had been in. Cutter stretched his neck, rolling it from side to side. He thought he could feel blood trickling down his back. Anriel waited until they were out of earshot.

“My apologies. They don’t get out much.”

“Understood. With what I’m carrying, it’s good to be careful.”

Anriel’s face lit up, his eyes dancing with excitement. “You have it, then? Truly?”

“I have it. And a message. Xavien said you’re to go ahead as planned.”

“Excellent. When you didn’t turn up, I feared the worst.”

“Problems. But they’re taken care of now.”

“May I … may I see it?”

Cutter hesitated, but he could never get Anriel to trust him without handing over the shard. Wren could complain all he wanted. He wasn’t here.

He took out the pouch and handed it to Anriel. The elf unwrapped it with shaking fingers and pulled the dragonshard out, holding it up to the light as he stared intently at the blue veins.

“To think that this little shard is going to change the world.”

Change the world? What did he mean by that?

“Xavien said he wants me to deliver it once you’re finished.”

Anriel frowned. “Why would he say that? That wasn’t part of the plan.”

Cutter shrugged. “I’m just telling you what he said.”

“Doesn’t he trust me?”

“I told you. I’m just passing on what he told me.”

Anriel shook his head. “No. That’s not possible.”

Cutter tensed. What was he supposed to do now? Just kill him and take it back? But then they’d be no closer to finding out what was going on or who was organizing all this. There had to be another way.

“Can I come with you? While you-” He nodded at the dragonshard, not saying anything that might give him away.

“Out of the question,” said Anriel. “Only worshipers of the Shadow can go through those doors.” The elf appeared to think for a second. “But you can come with me when I drop off the shard. I’d feel safer with backup, anyway.”

Cutter thought about it. “How long will it take?”

“Everything’s still set up from yesterday, so not long.”

“Fine. I’ll wait outside. Do you have transport?”

“A skycoach.”

“Pick me up at the end of the street outside the temple.”

Anriel nodded in a distracted manner and walked into the back room, fondling and stroking the dragonshard in a way Cutter found faintly obscene. Cutter stepped through the door into the guardroom and glanced back. He saw the orc standing in the door as Anriel approached. The elf looked up at the huge creature.

“Fetch me Diadus’s books. Quickly.”

The orc lumbered past Anriel and headed toward Cutter. He stepped aside for the orc and then followed at a slower pace.

He wondered how Wren was going to react. He knew he’d said he wouldn’t hand over the shard, but this was the only way they could find out what was going on. He’d just have to make sure he got it back before the delivery. Surely Wren would see that?

He stared at the walls as he walked, watching the faint glint of water as it trickled down the stone. He had to admit one thing. That comment about the shard changing the world had put a shiver down his spine.