Spinner of Lies

CHAPTER FIVE

THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANUL

17 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Rain stung the water in the Bay of Airspur. Ships huddled close to their moorings, gray silhouettes half-visible through the downpour. Demascus strode the boardwalk, collar up and hands jammed in his jacket pockets. He was tired of being soaked to the skin. Unfortunately, winter along the coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars meant regular deluges.

He was looking for a ship to charter. But he’d paced up and down the docks a few times already like a sleepwalker, not really seeing anything as the cold seeped into his bones. Instead, the scene where a former version of him killed a woman named Madri kept cycling past his mind’s eye. Another circumstance created by another him that was now being visited on Demascus. How fair was that?

Madri had been a beauty, no denying it. So like Queen Arathane in height and posture … He shook his head. He couldn’t afford to notice similarities. Madri is your past, he thought. No. Not even your past. She’s got nothing to do with Arathane, for shadow’s sake! For that matter, the queen, while uncommonly approachable in his experience with royalty, had done nothing more than smile and chat with him. She was a monarch! Nothing more. Even if she were interested-

A boom of thunder brought him back to the moment. He looked around and realized he’d started on his fifth trip through the dock ward.

How much time had he wasted? Enough. Just pick a boat, already.

Demascus stopped walking and reviewed what he’d seen. Most of the ships had been too small or too large and work-a-day for his needs. Only a few seemed somewhat promising …

There! A caravel, triple-masted, with two square sails and one triangular. An elaborate figurehead hung at the ship’s stem-a half-painted, half-sculpted woman with shimmering green scales in place of clothing. She glared into the rain, her eyes unnaturally brilliant. And she apparently gave the ship her name: Green Siren II. Now why did that seem familiar?

Dodging some hurrying dockworkers who were shepherding a cart overloaded with sodden grain sacks, he boarded the ship. He asked the first person he saw, a woman wearing a red scarf over her hair, to fetch the captain.

“Why should I?” she said.

“Because I’m looking to charter this ship, and I’ve got coin burning a hole in my purse,” Demascus said. Then he ducked under the forecastle awning to get out of the rain. The crew person gave him the once-over, and left. In search of the captain, he hoped.

Less than a song later, a man clambered up from the hold. Demascus guessed he was the ship’s owner because of his ridiculously prodigious hat and his confident swagger as he approached. A gold-trimmed coat that swept the ship’s deck and a slender sword in a silver sheath completed the picture of a man unafraid of flamboyancy. Or at least someone who didn’t mind cutting a figure reminiscent of the pirates that once hunted the waters north of Akanul nearly a century earlier.

“My crew tells me you’re looking to hire Green Siren?” The man produced a pipe and miniature coal urn from a pocket in his great coat. He set about lighting it with an ember pot.

“Depending on how well the captain can keep confidences, yes.”

“They say Captain Thoster is a better secret-keeper than most. And Thoster, by the way, would be me.” The man held out a hand.

Demascus shook it. Thoster’s grip was cool, but strong.

“Demascus. I need a fast ship, and one that can defend itself if necessary.”

“Danger is just a reason to charge more coin. But seriously, you ain’t never heard of Green Siren? Fish piss, we once made the Sovereignty give up the Sea of Fallen Stars. ’Course we had a larger crew back then, and damn it if the city hasn’t come back … Still, this ship’s able enough. What’s the cargo?”

The scroll charm woven into Demascus’s hair, a token paid to his last incarnation by an avatar of the god Oghma, didn’t so much as twitch in response to the captain’s boast regarding the aboleth city. The man was telling something close to the truth, so he was more capable than he appeared. Green Siren might well be the ship.

“The cargo is me and a few associates. We’re headed for an island just off the coast, one not marked on any charts. And if I hire your craft, you’ll have to forget about it afterward. ”

“Ho, a place not on the charts? I like the sound of that. And to answer your question, lad, I can forget nearly anything, if coin is plentiful enough.” Thoster blew out a puff of smoke.

“My patron’s pockets are deep,” Demascus said. Arathane had told him to charter a ship, after all. It wasn’t like he had the coin to pull that off on his own.

“And as it turns out, I’ve got time on my hands,” said Thoster. “I’m waiting on a cargo of Chondalwood green-spice before I can ship back across the sea. So if we can do it in the next few days, Green Siren’s your ship.”

“How about later today?” said Demascus.

“Today? Umberlee’s creaking knees! Can’t you see what’s blowing in? This storm ain’t fit for any ship to sail in, not even mine. No one’s putting out for at least a day or two, until this blows over.”

Demascus peered up at the flashing clouds smothering Airspur like a damp blanket. The frothing waves rolling into the bay were alarming. If anything, the captain was underestimating the fury of the storm. Burning dominions, he thought. Arathane’s not going to be happy about a delay.

“When’s the soonest we can put out?”

Thoster squinted into the storm, sucked contemplatively on his pipe, then said, “You never can tell with the sea. ’Course, I’m a better judge than most. Tell you what, Demascus. Show up here in two days, and if this ain’t blown over, I’ll buy you an ale. What’d’ya say?”

Demascus nodded. “It’ll have to do. Assuming we can negotiate a price my patron is comfortable with.”

“Of course. But if this mysterious patron of yours has coin to burn, as you-”

The captain broke off and cocked his head, listening.

“What-” began Demascus, then he heard it, too. A thin cry echoing down the street from the edge of the warehouse district, where it abutted the wharf. It was like a wolf’s howl, but somehow more raw and threatening.

“Never heard anything like that before,” said Thoster.

“Sounded like something chasing down prey,” Demascus replied.

“Well, nothing to do with us, I expect,” said Thoster.

“Maybe not. But then again, someone needs help.”

Thoster raised his eyebrows as if the idea was wholly novel to him.

“I’ll see you in two days,” said Demascus. He flung himself down the rain-slick gangplank and onto the pier. The captain was probably right. The disturbing howl had nothing to do with him. But if some kind of creature was loose in the city, then it needed to be dealt with in case it took a while for peacemakers to arrive on the scene. And if nothing else, Demascus was good at “dealing” with things.

Besides, Arathane had identified a warehouse as a location of interest related to the sudden silence at the arambarium mine. Which Riltana had gone to investigate. Odds were miniscule the noise and Riltana were connected, but … Demascus increased his pace. The gray pall allowed him no easy shortcuts through shadow. And the bulk of his too-large sword, which he’d strapped onto his back and then forgotten about, was a hindrance as he ran. The scabbard rapped the backs of his calves every few steps, as if trying to trip him. Demascus slowed. Probably smart, anyway, given how slippery the street was with rainwater and runoff. Luckily he didn’t have far to go.

A scattered crowd of bemused warehouse workers were pointing at one building. He dashed over, taking a few more scabbard slaps for his trouble. A broken window gaped high in the exterior wall, and shattered panes glinted on the street. Muffled bangs and cries issued from inside the gray and brown structure. The warehouse address and the place Riltana had made for earlier in the day were one and the same. Of course.

Demascus pulled the sheath off his back and drew the blade. The sword snuggled into his grip as if it’d missed him. He dropped the scabbard and ran inside.

Genasi workers fought a pitched battle against a horde of spiders. Spiders?

Lords of light, he thought, was the swarm demon they’d burned in the pit below the motherhouse still alive? How could it be? We roasted everything in that damnable hole. Although … he’d seen a few smoke-scorched moths escape, but they’d certainly expired. Right? Regardless, he’d been certain the spiders, roaches, and other crawlers had all been destroyed.

A woman’s voice screamed something unintelligible. It issued from behind the door at the top of a short flight of stairs.

The deva swept his blade through a fat brown spider that was menacing a fallen earthsoul. Then he charged up the stairs. Something growled and moved behind the door, throwing a finger of darkness under the frame that brushed his boot. Just like that, he was through.

Demascus found himself in the shadow of a hulking humanoid with tangled black hair, horns, and a sword easily as long as Demascus’s own. A name swam up from the blackness of some previous life … Oni. The thing was an oni mage, wielding a weapon ideal for its size and strength. A fearsome opponent. Great.

Just beyond the oni flitted Riltana. She parried and ducked the creature’s frighteningly skillful sword strokes even as she stomped on and danced around another damnable swarm of spiders! A few were larger than any spider had a right to be. One especially bloated creature lay on its back, its hairy legs yet convulsing as ichor leaked from a dagger-shaped hole in its abdomen.

Demascus raised Exorcessum, intent on decapitating the oni with one perfect stroke-

“Pashra, behind you!” came a woman’s voice. Demascus flinched, because the voice came from just above and behind him.

The oni ducked beneath the deva’s swing and shuffled a quarter turn out from its original position. Instead of standing directly between Demascus and Riltana, the oni now formed one point of a triangle made up of Demascus, Riltana, and an oni apparently named Pashra. The oni was going to be trouble. Not to mention all the spiders trying to swarm over the windsoul. As well as whoever had warned the oni, someone he’d failed to-

He slapped at a burning sting on his neck. A spider fell away. No, not a spider; its tiny head wasn’t arachnid. It was a woman’s head with white hair!

“Gods!” Disgust pulled his face into a grimace.

Pashra laughed. The spider scuttled, but Demascus stomped on the tiny hybrid abomination. It popped under his boot like a rotten egg and squirted a messy green fluid everywhere. The tiny head spoke once more in a dying wheeze, “You’ve earned the enmity of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, subcreature …”

That’s probably not good, Demascus thought.

“Chenraya!” the oni exclaimed, his delight transmuted to consternation.

Demascus took the opportunity to draw a deep line of blood down the creature’s right arm with Exorcessum’s rune-carved edge.

The oni howled and retreated a halfstep, parrying Demascus’s follow-up swing with a clang of iron.

“What’s a Demonweb queen?” asked Riltana, who’d taken advantage of Demascus’s attack to slip up close to the oni. She planted a dagger into Pashra’s left kidney.

The oni howled.

A familiar joy infused the deva, as the rhythm of conflict beat in his blood.

Demascus closed with the oni … then stumbled. Uh oh. He couldn’t feel his feet. And his fingers were going numb. And why was everything suddenly all misty? He realized the Hells-spawned spider had poisoned him!

He dropped to his knees. Exorcessum was nearly jarred from his grip. Nausea wrenched his stomach with a gruesome green claw and pulled. His battle elan slipped away. It couldn’t compete with the urge to sickup all over the floor.

“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. The oni turned its back on the deva and tried to divide the windsoul in two with a swift downward stroke. She deflected the blade with her short sword. The stroke’s force sent her staggering back into the throng of spiders.

Merciful lords, he thought, give me the strength to ignore his insult. He gagged, and drooled a line of spittle. Breakfast was about to make an encore appearance-

A white rune on Exorcessum flared. When it washed across him his nausea vanished. Feeling returned to his hands and feet, and a little strength. The rune dimmed, becoming more a scar than a design. Still on his knees, he drew a gaping wound diagonally up the oni’s back with Exorcessum’s tip. Blood poured from the wound. It was the oni’s turn to collapse.

“Demascus!” yelled Riltana. “Get these things off me!” Spiders mobbed her entire lower body. The windsoul’s eyes were wide with terror as she swatted and rolled, but the insects continued to pile on.

He came to his feet and stepped around the motionless and bleeding oni. Riltana was hyperventilating. How was he going to extract her before they chewed her to the bone or poisoned her to death? Heartbeats counted!

He let Exorcessum clatter to the floor. He ripped the Veil from his neck and whipped the end so that it swirled around Riltana, spiders and all, wrapping them in an embrace of the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge.

The oni’s shadow beneath the door had given him entry into the office, a shadow forged by the wavering office lantern. That same light, and the shadow of a dead spider the size of a wheelbarrow, would provide his next stepping-stone. The question was, could he bring Riltana along but not the spiders?

He stepped, willing his friend to accompany him across the gap of nothingness that lay beneath the world’s facade and to leave mandibles and web-shrouds behind. He flashed into a fell echo of the room, where surfaces were uncertain and shadows writhed like centipedes up the walls.

A weight like a thousand-pound anchor yanked him up short. It tried to drag him down into the darkness from which there was no escape. Soul-draining cold sucked at his determination to retain his grip. His mind and body ached to let go of the weight and escape. But he didn’t let go, because the burden was Riltana, and to abandon her here would be the death of her. Or worse.

He screamed into the void of gloom, straining his entire spirit. He shuffled, bent-backed and head down, pulling on the stretching fabric of his scarf …

And stepped back into the warehouse office, only three paces from his origin, with Riltana in tow. Sans spiders. They’d made half the trip, though, but he’d shed them in the Shadowfell, where he’d nearly lost the windsoul, too.

“Shank me with a dull spoon,” she murmured. “Don’t ever do that again.” She sat down hard.

Demascus tugged the Veil from Riltana as he wheeled to face the wounded oni.

Pashra was gone. He’d left behind only a slick of spilled blood.

“The bastard got out while the getting was good,” muttered Riltana.

“What happened?” he asked. “Even for someone with your talent for angering the natives, I’d expect you would have thought better of mouthing off to an oni.” He helped Riltana to her feet.

The windsoul shook her head. “As if I know what the Hells an oni is. When Pashra caught me going through his desk, he looked like a watersoul. Then when I saw his shadow didn’t match his guise, I called him on it.”

“So he had no choice but to attack you?”

“Um … yeah. I know, I know. Sometimes I can be a little too, um … impulsive.” She rubbed at her eyes.

“That, or maybe you just have special needs. You know, like some nobles’ children?”

“Which nobles’ children?”

“The inbred ones they ship off to those special manors in the country …” He took a step back so when Riltana tried to swat him he was out of range. Or he tried to; he actually caught his foot on a dead spider and only just managed not to fall on his face.

It was Riltana’s turn to steady him. “You all right?”

“A spider bit me. One with a … a woman’s head.”

“Yeah, I saw that one. Pashra was talking to it earlier. It said something about, um, demonwebs? You know about those, too?”

“Demonwebs …” The phrase was familiar, but its meaning danced just out of reach. He shook his head and continued, “The spider’s bite was poison. I neutralized it, but a little venom is still in my blood. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that dragging you clear of those spiders really taxed me. I’m not sure I could do it again.”

Riltana said, her tone suddenly serious, “Thank you for that. I nearly lost my head when those things started crawling on me. If you hadn’t … anyhow, thanks.”

He nodded. “Happy to help. Let’s see what kinds of secrets Pashra and his little woman-headed spider were so desperate to keep.” Demascus retrieved his sword, then remembered he’d dropped Exorcessum’s scabbard just outside in the rain. He sighed, and leaned the blade against the desk.

“I was trying to be circumspect last time,” the windsoul said. “Trying to make it look like no one had been here. I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore.” She opened a drawer and pulled out sheafs of parchment. She scanned each one, then tossed them, one at a time, over her shoulder.

He joined her. Each parchment, tracking grain density, pay, and the fluctuating rates of exchange rates in Cormyr versus Impiltur, and so on, went fluttering behind him to land in a growing drift. Lone spiders occasionally crawled aimlessly across the desk, but they were squashed nicely with a swat. He’d developed a real hatred of crawling, many-legged things during his time in Akanul.

“Look,” Riltana said. She pointed down into an open drawer.

“What?” He leaned over.

“False bottom.”

Then he saw it-faint seams outlined the shape of a rectangle.

The windsoul reached into the cavity and pressed along one side. The panel popped out. Inside the narrow space rested a thin leather ledger and a tiny chest.

“Pashra, Pashra, Pashra,” said the windsoul as she retrieved the curio chest. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to hide your valuables in false-bottom drawers? It’s the first place any good thief looks!”

Demascus grabbed the ledger. It was a record of cargo originating from an island just off the coast referred to as “the burial site.” He was disappointed to find no mention of the name of the ship responsible for providing transport. Odd. He doubted the cargo was just floating down from the sky into the warehouse. He paged forward. The cargo started appearing only a tenday ago. Which was about how long ago communication with the mine had ceased. According to the ledger, the cargo had been routed through this warehouse, a stopover on its way to “the new nexus.” No address for the nexus, either. But it was someplace in Akanul, if not Airspur itself.

“I bet this is the real deal,” Riltana said, interrupting his perusal. She held the palm-sized chest in her hand, and the lid gaped open. It was mostly empty, except for a sprinkle of iron-hued grains.

“Arambarium?” he said.

“Gotta be.” She removed a glove, wet a finger, and carefully pressed down on a grain.

“Careful,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah.” She retracted her hand and held out her finger so they could both inspect the silvery grain adhered there.

“Doesn’t look particularly special,” he said.

“It … I can’t tell what temperature it is. One moment it’s warm, the next it’s cool as ice.” Her eyes were wide as she stared with rapt attention at the arambarium chip.

“Maybe you should research the effects of raw arambarium contamination before you hold that too much longer.”

She said, “This is research, Demascus. Why don’t you get back to the ledger?”

He snorted, but did as she suggested.

Paging forward, he discovered that the arambarium routing through the warehouse had stopped the day before. Apparently, new arrangements were going to be made for “the final excavation.” No clues were forthcoming on what that might mean. The document disgorged two final pieces of information. A name, penned into the margin of the first page, read “Master Raneger.” With the name was the note, “May prove amenable.” Another note, written in a different hand, said, “The Gatekeeper has been enticed to guard the new nexus.”

He didn’t know who the Gatekeeper was. But Raneger … he was the criminal who Chant had once described as the most successful malefactor in all of Airspur and owner of the infamous Den of Games. His power lay in the fact that the peacemakers had never traced anything back to him. And perhaps he’d made an ally of one of the Stewards, though which one was debatable. Chant once owed a debt to Raneger so steep that the pawnbroker’s life had been forfeit. But that was water under the bridge. Despite at least one serious attempt on his life by Raneger, Chant had paid off his debt. Then, in what seemed like a feat of idiocy, Chant had taken a position with his former enemy at the Den of Games. Working for Raneger. Demascus still couldn’t figure out how that had come about. Chant’s shop was only open now by special appointment, which was why Fable, the finicky cat, was Demascus’s house guest.

The deva snapped the ledger shut. Riltana flicked the arambarium grain from her finger into the chest, closed it, and replaced her glove. She closed her hand over the chest, and it vanished from her palm. “A down payment for services rendered,” she decreed.

Demascus doubted there was anything the woman wouldn’t steal. Part of her appeal, he supposed, was that brashness. Besides, it might be handy to have some arambarium of their own. He’d ask her not to dispose of the material in the chest to the highest bidder-maybe they could find a use for it. A discussion for later, though.

“Let’s get out here,” he said. “We’ve got an appointment.”

“Did you charter a ship?”

“Yeah. But the storm’s got them all stuck in the harbor. But that doesn’t mean we’ve got nothing to do.”

“What?”

He pointed to the ledger that contained Raneger’s name. “What say we pay a little visit to the Den of Games?”