The God Catcher

FIFTEEN

Dareun was beginning to question his judgment-a feeling he despised acutely. But the creature who called herself Clytemorrenestrix of the Calim wasn't giving anything up. No amount of threats, of cajoling, of searing pain seemed to break through her insistence that she could not tell him how to avoid the dragonward as she clearly could. She lay now, breathing heavily on the bottom of the cage, bruised and bloodied.

And grinning at him. He sneered back. The bitch was mocking him, and it made him want to unleash everything he had left, freeze her to the core with the horror of the void and let her beg for the Dragon Queen's cruel embrace.

The rules of xorvintaal required him to give up what magic he came by naturally-a sacrifice Dareun was not fond of. Wizards made obvious lovacs to combat the deficiency, but Dareun found them untrustworthy creatures, too keen to try and outsmart him and gain more than their fair share.

He still used them of course, in areas where he had a toehold but no hope of advancing-lands where his plans all seemed to come to ruin at the worst possible moment. All the older, better-equipped players made certain of that.

The dark voice whispering at the back of his thoughts made spells inch to the tips of his fingers. Patience, he reminded himself. It did him no good at all to kill her.

Unless, of course, he was wrong about all of it.

"What brought you to Waterdeep?"

She laughed, spitting blood as she did. "My feet."

"How droll," he said. "It helps neither of us, this disobedience."

"Disobedience." She chuckled again. "Funny, wyrmling. You are no master of mine. I have told you already-I have nothing you want. You are wasting your time."

Dareun wasn't ready to accept that she might be telling the truth. He cast again, filling her thoughts with the cold darkness of the void that lay between him and the mad being of the star. Her screams seemed to please it-though its pleasure or displeasure was never an easy thing to gauge.

No matter; it pleased him to hear her scream.

"Why did you come to Waterdeep?" he asked again. She reached up and grabbed hold of a bar, panting and unable to speak. "Why have you-"

He had gotten too close. She struck through the bars, one hand clenching shut on his windpipe. Dareun gagged and tried to pull away as her nails dug into either side of the prominence of his throat. Those blue eyes burned with disgust.

Not to be outdone, he returned the glare and took hold of her wrist. He squeezed the bones together, grinding one against the other as he twisted. The joint popped. Finally, with a small cry, she released him and pulled her arm back. He let go of her as well and rubbed his neck as she rubbed her wrist. He eyed her warily.

Footsteps behind him caught his attention, and he turned as Ferremo entered the chamber, carrying a sack in one hand.

"Back already?"

Ferremo's expression tightened. "It's done." He opened the sack, took out a silvery collar set with a lavender stone, and bowed his head. Dareun had never seen the stone's equal; even in the gloom of the sewer, it caught every scrap of light and sent it shimmering back out. A worthy addition.

"She's dead?" Dareun asked.

"Of course," Ferremo said. "Master."

"No!" Nestrix cried. He looked back over his shoulder, his opinion wavering again. What dragon cried over a lovac so useless as one who got caught? He narrowed his eyes at Ferremo.

"You'll avoid that tone with me. You're certain she's dead?"

"Certain as I can be. She's at the bottom of the river."

"No bloody cloth? No heart on a platter?"

Ferremo gritted his teeth. "You said to be quick, master. Flair like that takes time. And clothes I don't mind ruining."

"Then how do I know you took care of things?"

"Have I failed you before?" Ferremo asked.

"Recent events have been less than to my liking. How do you know she's dead?"

"I stood by the water and watched until her breath broke the surface. Then I waited another few songs-she didn't come up."

"Did you see the body?"

"She's at the bottom of the harbor, master, and it's cold water. We won't see a body for another few days."

Dareun glared at his lovac. The slow growth of his insolence had reached an intolerable point. Ferremo hadn't agreed with the decision to infiltrate Waterdeep. Dareun didn't care-it was not a lovacs place to agree or disagree, only to act. Ferremo had not failed him, not yet, but it was inevitable.

He would deal with the human once his plans were complete.

He held out a hand. "Give me the collar."

Nestrix watched, horrified, as Dareun donned the gorget. There was no light or shimmer or sound as it closed around Dareun's neck, but Nestrix could see the change in him as its affects took hold. His spine lengthened, straightening his body. The breath he drew was smooth and deep and without the rattle that had plagued him. His face smoothed, his eyes widened, and Andareunarthex began to laugh.

"By all the gods!" he crowed. He flexed his hands and they moved easily. "I could unmask a hundred lords tonight! There is no power on Toril that could bring me low!"

The anger coiling in Nestrix's heart came together with a purpose. She would be that power; she would bring him low or die trying. She thought of Tennora, poor Tennora, dead by that bastard lovac's hand, and the rage rose to fill her, ready for the first chance she had.

He turned to face her, eyes glowing, teeth sharp and white. "You're going to get some company. I hear you miss your offspring."

Nestrix stiffened. "Watch your tongue."

"Nothing of the sort," he said. "How would you like someone else's offspring to watch after?"

The leg of the God Catcher had been fitted with stairs, winding around its thigh for a few score feet before ending at a walled landing still a hundred feet above the Waterdhavian sewers.

The air thickened as Tennora and Veron descended, filling their mouths with a sour, fetid taste. The stairs grew slick with a thin layer of mold, and below the sound of water gurgled past.

At the landing, Veron leaned over to gauge the distance.

"We'll have to lower ourselves down one at a time," he said. "Though it might land us in the water."

"Try not to," Tennora said. The sewers of Waterdeep were not known for their purity.

Veron withdrew a coil of thin, sturdy rope from his haversack and secured it with pitons and a complicated knot to the wall. He looped the other end into a sort of noose, though when he tugged on it, it didn't tighten. He slipped it around Tennora so that the loop made a sort of seat, then tied a second loop at about chest height. She threaded her hand through it and held tight to the rope.

"I'll lower you down first," he said. "So you can carry the torch and have a look around. Let me know when you reach the bottom."

Tennora nodded, afraid to give voice to the nerves that were threatening to make her run back up the stairs, back to her cozy apartment and her books. Back-somehow-to her life as it was before carvestars and lockpicks and dragons. She took a deep breath to clear those thoughts from her mind, but they only scattered to a safe distance, like crows shooed from a garden.

She climbed over the wall and secured the rope around her seat. Veron handed her a torch to carry in her other hand, and he began to lower her down.

She would have liked to drop the torch and hold on with both hands. As soon as she started to descend, the rope began twisting so that she spun like a maple seed, the torch trailing a slow spiral of fire. Moreover, if the air above her had been thick, this was like trying to breathe through a wet rag. The close moistness carried scents so vile, Tennora's imagination ran wild with the possible sources. She gagged until she stopped trying to endure the fetid air and just held her breath. Her weak lungs protested, but it was better than the taste of the air.

As she neared the bottom, the torchlight caught the slow-moving water of the sewer channels, brown and thick. Tennora gagged again and was forced to take a deep breath of the noxious air.

"Stop!" she called, her voice echoing up the leg of the God Catcher. She had reached the spot where the statue had broken through the ancient sewers. The brick for twenty yards across was half a shade cleaner-though that wasn't saying much. Ahead of her, a narrow pathway ran along the wall, a hand span above the water, the access for the repair workers. She tossed the torch over onto the relatively dry pathway. It sputtered for a moment, but stayed lit.

She kicked her legs, like a child on a swing, gathering enough momentum to catch the lip of the ledge with her toes. She twisted and turned, straining to shift her weight over onto the ledge. If she could just turn over, she might be able to She managed to twist right out of her rope harness.

She yelped and landed in the water with a splash. It was shallow, but as foul as it had looked. Tennora quickly scrambled onto the safer pathway, where she vomited in earnest.

"All right?" Veron's voice echoed down from the ledge.

Tennora threw up a little more and spit, trying to clean her mouth. "More or less," she called back. "But you're pretty much certain to hit the water." She shook the filth from her hands.

The rope harness vanished up into the darkness, followed a few minutes later by Veron, lowering himself hand over hand. He came to a stop just inches above the water. He looked at the water as the rope slowly spun.

"I don't suppose there's some way you could…" He trailed off, as Tennora raised an eyebrow. He sighed, leaned back, and slid out of the harness.

Veron came up coughing and gagging, and Tennora felt a small, shallow comfort at seeing him vomit at least as much as she had.

"Oh gods," he gasped.

"These sewers flow out of the Field Ward," Tennora said. "It's pretty crowded. And it's been raining lately."

"Can't you?" He waved his hands in a vague way. "Clean us up?"

Tennora smiled. "We're just going to get dirtier."

They walked until the pathway narrowed into nothing but a half width of brick protruding from the walls, and edged along it on their heels until it too diminished into nothing much.

Tennora gave in and stepped into the flow, torch high and eyes sharp for shapes in the water. Stories of what lived in the sewer plagued the nightmares of Waterdeep's impressionable children-the blindfin, garbage-hungry otyughs, sentient slime. The dumped bodies of victims who returned from the grave, seeking vengeance on their killers. She had squealed to hear tales of basilisks that had grown gills and a construct made entirely of chamber pot refuse. She had promised to take her baths to stave off a visit from the giant crocodile who took dirty babes back down to the sewer where they belonged. They were nursery stories, embellished to keep her squealing or behaving. But such stories had a kernel of truth nestled at their core.

There wasn't a doubt in her mind they would find what did live in the Waterdhavian sewers sooner or later-but she didn't want it to find her first.

"How did you come to be a bounty hunter?" she said to stave off her nerves.

Veron shrugged. "I wanted to see the world. I…" He trailed off. "I wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me."

She glanced back at him. "That's a strange answer. What were you running from?"

"Nothing," he said quickly. "Nothing like that. I… I came of age in Silverymoon. I'm certainly not the only half-orc there, but

…" He sighed. "Look, it's complicated."

"They want you to be something you aren't?" Tennora said.

He stopped, the effluvia swirling around his calves. "Why would you say that?" he asked, and Tennora knew she was right.

"Let's say I'm familiar with the symptoms."

They walked on a little farther before Veron spoke. "Some people think my family is some sort of grand experiment, doomed to fail," he said. "It's bad enough everyone who doesn't know my past sees something monstrous-but at home, I have to stand for every Many-Arrows marriage. If I'm no good, well, the whole kingdom's no good. The very idea of orcs and humans marrying is no good." They both stopped. Veron rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. "I don't know why I'm telling you any of this."

Tennora shrugged. "Because I'm listening? You've definitely got me beat. I'm just supposed to be a proper lady, while everyone's waiting for me to be a thief."

"I thought you were a wizard."

"Apparently not."

The stream they slogged along opened into a large room. Five pipes, wide enough that either of them could stand upright and walk through them, branched off. Veron looked around at them.

"Which way?" Veron said.

"He'll have to be close to his other lair. The antiquary's shop on Jembril Street. That's… south and a little east of the God Catcher." She turned, aligning herself with the streets so many feet above. "That one," she said, pointing to a pipe.

"Are you sure?" Veron asked.

Tennora gave him a puzzled look. "Do you have a better idea?"

Veron looked a little flustered and shrugged. "We should be sure. We should know where we're going."

"Well, we don't," Tennora said, pulling herself up into the pipe she'd indicated. "So you can come along or give up. We know he's probably in this direction, and he's probably in an isolated area."

Veron climbed up beside her. "Why would you assume that?"

"The guard patrols the sewers, but they certainly don't bother with all parts of it. Places where there's no room to walk, places that flood regularly, and places that are hard to get to only get a pass occasionally."

Veron looked impressed. Tennora smiled. If she survived this, she'd have to thank the Marchenors's son.

The next chamber flickered with a strange, cool light-not bright enough to illumine the space or reveal the source, but bright enough to be certain it wasn't a trick of their eyes. Tennora climbed carefully into the room. There was a lip only a foot wide at the mouth of the tunnel. The rest of the room was tiered, ever so slightly, with four rows of rectangular pools, each set a hand span above the next.

"Settling pools," she said. "Something must have gotten into them." Veron raised his torch. The light glinted off the stonework walls separating a dozen pools of sewage, and Tennora clapped a hand over her mouth, willing herself not to vomit again.

The pools seethed with sleek, slimy bodies writhing over each other. One leaped over its brothers and sisters to hang on the edge of the pool near Tennora-sensing food or blood or the gods knew what else-its sucker mouth and tiny ring of teeth working feverishly at the air. Overhead, the domed ceiling danced with the luminescence of the fish.

Veron stepped back, nearly falling into the tunnel. "What are they?"

"Blindfin," Tennora said, and took a slow, deep breath. "Silverfin once, but they were changed by the Spellplague. They're scavengers. They keep the waterways clean."

Veron made a face. "Nasty-looking things. Although they sound useful."

"You'll rethink their use if you fall in. They prefer dead things, but they're not smart enough or picky enough to tell the difference right away." She shuddered. Like most children in Waterdeep, she'd feared the blindfin coming up out of the fountains and taps.

Veron swung the torch around, illuminating different parts of the chamber in turn. It was as large as the square of the God Catcher. The edges of the pools formed a path across the water, but otherwise there seemed no way out but the pipes and tunnels that flowed down from the surface.

"There," Veron said, pointing to the other side of the chamber. The tunnel there was a dark smear, but unlike with the others, Tennora couldn't discern brickwork that might indicate a rise. She glanced down at the pool walls.

Even in the meager light of the torch and the blindfin, the edge glistened with a heavy growth of algae as slimy as the blindfin themselves.

"Give me your hand," Tennora said. Taking it, she stepped carefully onto the wall.

The slime beneath her foot squelched. Her foot held, but when she lifted the other to step onto the wall fully, the shift of her weight made her slide. Veron gripped her hand hard and pulled her back, away from the seething blindfin, as she fell.

"Hells," Tennora said, coming to her feet and rubbing her backside. "We'll never make it across without help."

"We don't have much of a choice," Veron said. "Unless you want to go back and try a different pipe."

Tennora studied the rest of the room. There were four pipes like the one they had come through, sloping down toward the settling pools and the blindfin. On the far wall, the pipes weren't even passable-blocked by some sort of valve. The pipe at the opposite side of the pools was the only way deeper into the sewers.

"We'll never be able to balance on this," she said. She scraped the slime with the side of her boot. It was at least as thick as her little finger. "We need something to hold on to."

"I have a little rope left."

"You'll never be able to tie it off."

"Watch."

Veron studied the shadows and whipped his crossbow over his shoulder. He pulled a length of rope from his pack and tied it to the bolt. Taking careful aim, he fired the quarrel into the far wall. It sank into the ancient mortar and lodged, the rope whipping out behind it. Veron knotted the other end and hooked it between two cracked bricks.

Tennora grasped the rope, and it held tight. "Very nice."

"Go slow," Veron said.

Together they inched their way along the slick edge of the pool, clinging to the rope. The blindfin slid past their feet, dropping from one pool to the next and leaving a trail of slime behind as they went. Tennora didn't dare look down at them.

Which was how she managed to plant her foot squarely on one's back. Her foot shot out from beneath her, and though she tried to keep hold of the rope, her fall pulled her hand loose. She tumbled over the edge into the water.

Her feet hit the bottom. The blindfin squirmed all around her, their tiny teeth seizing the leather, as she broke the surface. She scrambled for her dagger.

"Tennora!" Veron shouted. He reached for her, but tumbled in too, letting the torch fall.

It hissed as it hit the water and went out.

Tennora slashed at the roiling waters. If she could figure out how to kill them all, she would. She heard Veron reemerge beside her. By the way he cried out, the blindfin were just as interested in him, and the water was blooming with a mixture of blood. Tennora reached back and grabbed hold of her staff, starting to cast a spell of electricity; it would hurt, but it would kill the damned blindfin Metal screeched against metal, echoing through the chamber, as piercing as an animal in pain. The valves were opening.

"The edge!" she shouted. "Swim to the edge!" But where the Hells was it?

Stormwater rushed out into the settling pools. The first wave swelled over Tennora's head, pushing her back down among the blindfin. As the valves creaked farther open, the waves became violent. Tennora swam toward the surface again, toward where she'd heard Veron last.

But suddenly the water had a current, a current that was dragging her toward the pipe that led down into the sewers.

Her lungs were screaming. She swam hard for the surface, but the current was stronger, and she was sucked away into the bowels of Waterdeep.

Tennora slammed into a rusting metal grate. The plunge of water hammered on her back as she lay there, stunned and aching. She gulped air as if she had never tasted anything so fine.

She hauled herself out of the waterfall and felt along the grating for a wall to lean on. Her staff was still strapped tightly to her back, and she worked it free of the harness.

A quick spell, and a globe of light appeared in the space before her. A tunnel-part of the original sewers by the look of the bricks-stretched off into the darkness ahead. Within the grate, a trapdoor led to a ladder that followed the fall of water down into the newer, deeper sewers transecting it.

She beckoned the light down and examined her legs and arms. In at least a dozen places, the blindfin had bitten through the leather and into her skin-a few score more had managed to gouge new patterns into the tooled leather. Behind her knee there was a rather deep bite. She touched her cheek and found a series of bites there too.

All in all, much worse than she'd have liked, much better than her childhood nightmares had suggested.

But now she was alone.

"Veron!" she shouted. "Veron!"

Nothing.

She waited to see if Veron would come down the same pipe, until the light went out and there was nothing but the rush of water and the occasional slap of a blindfin hitting the grating before sliding through it.

Tennora conjured another globe of light, though this one flickered and seemed ready to go out. She came to her feet, unsteady as her light, and looked around. The trapdoor had a lock on it with a rusty keyhole. If Dareun was coming and going from the sewers, he wasn't going that way. She looked over her shoulder.

The tunnel waited like a hungry maw.

Tennora took her staff out and stepped into the water. She kept her right hand on the mold-slick wall to keep her oriented and leaned on the staff to spare her bitten leg until it stopped stinging. The light followed, bobbing alongside her and illuminating the crumbling brickwork.

Here and there, Tennora noticed scrapes in the layer of slime that covered everything-just the right height to be made by a person with a scabbard passing too close. The guard? Or one of Dareun's minions?

She walked a little more slowly, listening for sounds of someone up ahead. She had to be close, if not to Dareun's lair, then at least to an exit where she could get her bearings.

The globe went out with a soft pop just as she got far enough from the waterfall to stop hearing it, and Tennora was very glad she had a hand on the wall. She muttered the words to conjure more light, but the spell slipped away. Trying not to think about what might be swimming around her ankles, Tennora continued down the tunnel until the wall ended. Another passage continued to the right. With a sweep of her staff, she found the other edges of a leftward turn. She stood, listening to the sound of dripping and her breath.

Then, far down the left-hand passage, voices.

"Eyes sharp, Arvinik!" a man's voice said. "Take your leave."

Tennora pressed herself up against the wall as the flicker of lanterns came down another corridor.

"Any trouble with this one?" the first man said.

"Not as yet," a second man said. "But the master's said to keep a close eye. Trouble, she is."

"The two of you quiet down," a third voice called back. "You'll stir up Master Clamps."

Tennora frowned. Master Clamps?

"You shut yourself!" the second man, Arvinik, shouted back. "You're loud enough to wake a whole nest of crockers."

Tennora slipped back around the comer as the two relieved guards made their way farther down the corridor. Dareun's lair, and Nestrix was-no doubt-the one they'd been warned to watch closely. With only two guards, she might actually stand a chance, presuming of course she The water beside her erupted as something long and heavy launched itself from beneath the surface. Too shocked to cry out, Tennora twisted, throwing her staff between her and the threat. The creature caught the staff in its jaws and bit down, twisting the weapon from her grip and knocking her onto her backside.

She conjured another globe of light-this one flared into being with urgency, illuminating a crocodile more than three times as long as she was tall, biting down on her staff with jaws big enough to snap her in half. It turned its head to one side to drop the staff, displaying one yellow, blind eye toward the light.

Before she could react, it lunged at her. The jaws snapped shut on her knee. Though the stiff leather kept the teeth from slicing through her, the bite crushed against her bone.

Then it rolled.

Tennora yelped as her leg pulled hard against its socket, but threw her body into the spin. The beast's motion yanked her through the fetid water, swirling her around and dizzying her. She reached out to slow herself, not thinking, and caught hold of her staff instead.

She stabbed the end of it toward the beast and felt it plunge in. The crocodile released her knee with a hissing snarl. The staff had sunk into its blind eye. Tennora crept slowly to her feet.

"Well met, Master Clamps," she panted.

When it lunged at her again, she was quick enough to stab the staff right down its throat. The crocodile hissed again and shook its head, trying to break the staff from her grip. Tennora edged closer, forcing the staff deeper. The crocodile slithered backward down the corridor.

"All right," Tennora said, pulling her staff out. "Back to your nest, beastie."

Master Clamps had other plans.

The crocodile leaped forward, jaws wide. Tennora darted to one side and dived onto its scaly back. The beast thrashed, but she clung tight, wrapping her arm around its snout. It started to roll again, and before it pulled her under, she drew her dagger.

She raked the blade over the soft throat, again and again, until Master Clamps stopped spinning and thick blood streamed from its throat.

Panting and dizzy, Tennora wriggled out from beneath the corpse. Her leg screamed with pain when she put her weight on it, but she'd manage. She looked down at the monstrous crocodile she'd killed all on her own then back up at the dark corridor.

If only Dareun would fall as easily.