Once Around the Realms

Chapter 23

Volo woke up with a splitting headache that he recognized as the type of borderline concussion you sometimes get from being bludgeoned upon entering someplace where you really aren't welcome.

He could feel that he was tied up but not blindfolded or gagged. He decided to act unconscious for a while until he got bin bearings.

"Hey, boss!" a gruff voice called. "I think he's coming around!"

"Hasten the process," another voice answered. "Now!"

Ooooooofffffff!

Volo felt a kick to his ribs from an exceptionally pointy shoe and opened his eyes with a grimace.

"Boss, he's awake."

The speaker of the gruff and tough tones was a lovely young lady attired in an elegant festhall lounging frock. She was carefully made up to accentuate her beauty, a creature of loveliness, a beauty to behold…

"Boss!"

… with the voice of a longshoreman.

"I'm coming," a remotely familiar voice responded, approaching Volo from behind.

"Nice outfit," the vision of loveliness commented to the one she called boss. "Kind of kinky, though, if you know what I mean."

"Leave," the voice ordered. "I can deal with him myself."

The lovely young lady of easy virtue stood up and headed for a set of stairs that apparently led up from the cellarlike chamber the master traveler was being held in.

"Party pooper," she barbed at her boss, and with a flirtatious toss of her finely coiffed locks, headed upstairs. As Volo followed her journey, he noticed that Shurleen was bound and gagged over in the other corner of the cellar.

The owner of the voice known as Boss stepped over Volo, who was still resting on the floor like a discarded piece of cordwood, and slowly came into view.

"At last we meet again," the voice boomed. "I trust you enjoyed your travels."

Volo's head jerked up in surprise to try to get a better look. He blinked twice and tried to focus. Boss was tall, about six foot or more, well muscled, and the light from the torch that he held seemed to reflect off the distinctive streak of gray that bisected his jet black goatee.

"Khelben!" Volo shouted in recognition.

The mage grimaced as if his ears were hurt from the loud noise.

"Don't shout," he ordered, "you might disturb the guests that are being entertained upstairs."

Volo blinked and shook his head, trying to clear away the fuzziness that still permeated his cranium.

"And you brought the map with you, how thoughtful," the mage commented, removing it from the pack that had been serving as a pillow for the master traveler's head. "I also like the cookie you traded your fat friend in for, though I am sure he is still in the area, given that the magical bond from the jewels is still in effect. I'm sure we'll find him shortly after all, we just have to follow the trail of red gems. It is only a matter of time. Your traveling days, on the other hand, have just about come to an end."

With a bit of a struggle, the master traveler managed to attain an upright sitting position.

Out of breath from the exertion, pain still cracking through his head, Volo only managed to get out one word. "Why?"

Khelben laughed. "I know," the mage replied jovially, walking back and forth. "I'll keep giving you clues until you tell me to stop. Then you get to guess." Khelben crouched down to eye level with the master traveler. "First," the mage said, "the building upstairs is a festhall."

"Go on," Volo instructed.

"Second, because of you it had to be shut down."

A festhall I gave a bad review to, Volo thought. Maybe I should have taken Passepout's concerns more seriously,… but what does this have to do with Khelben?

"You're thinking," the mage commented. "I like that. Here's two clues that should give it away. The festhall upstairs used to be called the Hanging Lantern…"

Doppelgangers! Volo thought.

"… and I usually look like this," the mage replied, throwing off his black cloak with a flourish.

The familiar, muscular form of the famous mage began to melt and shift, taking on a grayish aura that soon became the predominant color. Gone was the thick black hair, trademark beard, and manly figure, now all replaced by an almost featureless humanoid with a thick, hairless hide of gray.

"… and my real name is Hlaavin," the figure who formerly answered to the moniker of Khelben Arunsun concluded.

Hlaavin! the master traveler thought. I know that name from somewhere.

"You can talk out loud, you know," the doppelganger said. "I can read your thoughts easily enough, but I would much rather hear them from your own lips."

The doppelganger known as Hlaavin once again began to pace back and forth, as he provided Volo with the background he desired.

"Now, you were thinking that you've heard my name before," Hlaavin said. "Probably so. You might have heard that I was the head of a certain consortium of shapechangers, rogues, and assassins known as the Unseen. The Lords of Waterdeep would quake in my wake if they knew the actual extent of my influence. The Hanging Lantern was all a part of it, a really nice setup, actually. High society patrons of influence and wealth would come to our classy festhall to meet the girl of their, dreams. If they couldn't be co-opted to our cause, or corrupted in some other way, we just had them replaced by a doppelganger who was waiting in the wings. Easy as pie. That was, until you and your stupid little book came along!"

Hlaavin kicked out his knobby, taloned foot, assaulting the upright seated Volo in the stomach.

The doppelganger continued, his composure restored. "Where was I? Oh, right. We reestablished the festhall under new management and began to rework our power base back into position ever so slowly. I was experimenting with the viability of having a false Khelben working Suzail when I recognized you in the Dragon's Jaws Inn, and immediately formulated a plan for discrediting you, getting even with you, and getting rid of you all at the same time while also having you carry out the preparations for another plan I had in the offing."

"The necromancer's gems," Volo interjected.

"Exactly," Hlaavin confirmed. "Not only did they succeed in dampening your magical abilities and imposing wonderful restrictions on your travel, they also aided my first expansion of the Unseen's influence all over the world. With the wonderful map that you do generously brought with you I will be able to teleport my minions all over the Realms. Nothing will stop me now!"

The doppelganger kicked Volo in the chest again, this time toppling him over onto his side.

"You, on the other hand," Hlaavin resumed, his composure once again restored, "will disappear. Rumor will pervade Faerun and abroad that Volo was a fraud, that he lost a challenge or perhaps shied away from one after he had already given his word. Maybe he didn't deserve to he known as the master traveler of the Realms. Perhaps Marcus Wands was the 'real' Volo, the one who really deserves the title. You know how people gossip and speculate."

"Not wishing to sound trite," Volo said with a grimace, "but you'll never get away with this."

"I think I will," the doppelganger replied, reassuming the Khelben form right before Volo's eyes. "Tomorrow you and your friend will be taken to a waiting boat at Skullport, taken out to sea, and dumped. You'll drown, your bodies swept out to sea, and all that sort of stuff. Your fat friend will meet a similar fate. If we don't catch him first, the gems will exert their influence. He will find himself drawn to the sea with the new day, and then his life will be snuffed out at the exact same moment as you breathe your last breath. Bound in life, bound in death."

Hlaavin grabbed his cloak and, with a flourish, threw it over his shoulder. "But tonight," Hlaavin said, "I feel like doing the town, and as what better person than old Blackstaff himself?"

"Aren't you afraid of running into the real thing?" Volo queried. "This is his home stomping ground, after all."

"As the fates would have it," the doppelganger replied, "he's out of town. Do you know what the beauty of it is? He is in Suzail for a meeting with Vangerdahast. Isn't that wonderful? But don't worry. I'll be back in plenty of time to give you and your little friend a proper sendoff."

As he went up the cellar stairs, he called back down. "And don't even think of trying anything. I'm sending a guard down to baby-sit. Ta-ta."

In less time than it took for Volo to re-upright himself to a sitting position, he was rejoined by the 'young lady' who had been there when he first came around.

"Sorry to take you away from your fun," Volo commented.

"No problem," the tart/doppelganger replied. "I was about due for a break, anyway."

Within a few moments, Shurleen regained consciousness and made eye contact with Volo. He tried to reassure her nonverbally but feared that he was doing a poor job of it since he himself thought that they were very probably doomed.

The music and frivolity of upstairs was interrupted by a pair of raucous voices.

"This is that festhall I told you about! Ain't it great!"

"Wow! Look at all the good-looking girls!"

Passepout and Curtis! Volo thought, then quickly tried to clear his mind in case their guard was listening in on his thoughts.

She/it wasn't.

"I guess the fleet's in," she/it commented. "I hate it when they get rowdy."

A great commotion quickly commenced above, the sound of running feet and doors slamming.

"Fire! Fire!"

"What in the…" the guard asked out loud, climbing up the stairs to take a peek, whereupon she/it was immediately hit over the head and fell down the stairs, coming to an unconscious rest on the cellar floor between Volo and Shurleen, legs and frock all akimbo.

Her body was quickly followed by the heroic figures of Passepout and Curtis.

"We saw you being taken down the alley and decided to follow. We waited until Khelben left to make our move," the rescuers explained.

"That wasn't Khelben," Volo corrected. "It was a doppelganger, and this is all part of an insidious plot by the Unseen."

The thespian and beachcomber quickly undid the bonds of their friends and surveyed the cellar scene.

"We can't get out upstairs," Curtis announced. "The girls, uh, things were barring the door."

"How about there?" Passepout asked, pointing to a loose sewer grate in the corner.

Volo quickly surveyed the room and decided that no other options presented themselves.

"Sounds good to me," the master traveler replied.

Shurleen, her bonds undone and her gag removed, commented, "Well, I guess it isn't everyone who gets taken to a bards' club and given a tour of the Waterdeep sewer system by the master traveler of all Faerun."

The rapid approach of footsteps to the cellar entrance hastened their resolve, and the four travelers dropped themselves down the sewer pipe, Volo last, replacing the grate to cover their tracks.