The Thieves’ Guild

Chapter Thirteen

Cael pushed against the door. It swung open with an iron groan, revealing a stairway carved through solid rock. No torches lit the way. It descended into inky darkness. The stone walls were wet and dank and crusted with gray mold.

He turned back to Alynthia. “What’s down there?” he asked.

“Yours is not to question. I am ordering you to go there, so there you must go.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I will kill you here and now. You wouldn’t be the first to die at this door,” she added, as her hand strayed to the dagger strapped to her thigh. Glancing down, he noticed a number of large, brownish spots staining the stone floor.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“I thought so,” she answered with a smile.

Cael crossed the threshold onto the first step. Immediately, his feet flew out from beneath him, and he found himself sliding down a long dark slope. Alynthia’s voice seemed to follow after him, mockingly pleasant in its tones. “First lesson,” she called. “Never trust only what you see with your eyes. Go ahead-I’ll be watching you.”

The journey down was a swift one. Someone had gone to great care to prepare this passage so that the sliding was almost fun, despite the vile odor of the substance coating the stone. But it was really too brief a journey to be able to relax and enjoy the trip. Besides, Cael worried about what he might meet at the bottom.

His eyes didn’t have time to adjust to the darkness, or he might have been prepared for what awaited him. Suddenly, the slope was no longer there. His heart hammered in his throat. He was flying though empty space and total darkness. A rank stench rose up and slapped him in the face just before he landed hip deep in garbage. Luckily, the stuff broke his fall. He swore several of the more descriptive dwarven curses taught to him by Kharzog Hammerfell and struggled to climb atop the garbage heap before he sank any deeper.

A torch flared into life above him, and scornful laughter echoed around the chamber. He found himself at the bottom of a garbage pit. Twenty feet above him, a walk led along the edge of the pit. Ranged along this walk, six people stared down at him, some laughing, others working to uncoil a rope. These were people Cael knew-"all members of his supposed Inner Circle. Each wore an identical uniform of loose-fitting dark gray material, with tight hoods pulled snugly around the face.

“The smell kind of reminds you of home, don’t it, elf?” Hoag said with a laugh.

“Very funny,” Cael returned, while biting back the gorge rising in his throat. He began to struggle across the pit, where a series of iron rings set into the stone wall served as a ladder up to the walkway.

“Cael, no!” Pitch shouted. “Don’t move.”

“Why in the name of the Abyss not?” he asked angrily.

“Gulguthra,” she answered cryptically.

“What?”

“Gulguthra!” Ijus cackled gleefully.

“What the hell is a gulguthra?” Cael asked.

“It means ‘dung eater’ and you’re standing on it!” the little thief answered, then clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter.

Cael looked around but saw nothing unusual beyond an assortment of rotting vegetables, well-gnawed bones, shivering masses of congealed fat, discarded bits and tatters of clothing, the odd dead rat or two, and a thing that looked like a length of pig intestine still attached to a rotting, leprous stomach. Then the thing moved, and he nearly leaped out of his shirt. A dwarven oath escaped his lips.

The thing was a tentacle of some sort, ending in a muscular, flat leaf-shaped appendage. As it inched closer to his leg, hook-shaped spines lifted along the length of the tentacle arm.

“Hurry up!” he shouted.

“I thought you were freelance,” Hoag said mockingly, echoing the very words Cael had spoken to Oros earlier that evening. “You don’t work well with others, remember? You prefer your own company. Mayhap you’d like to share it with the gulguthra?”

Ignoring the taunts, Cael shouted, “I’m going for the ladder!”

“You’ll never make it,” Pitch answered, as she and Rull continued to struggle with the rope. Varia watched their progress with a pained expression, her fingers twitching as though she wished to help but didn’t want to get in the way. Mancred stood beside her, his arms folded, his face inscrutable, watching the elf as though he were watching a dog cross the street.

The tentacle inched nearer Cael’s leg. It seemed to be searching him out, slowly, tauntingly.

“I’ll get there quicker than you’ll untangle that rope!” he answered.

“You don’t know how big the monster is. It has more than one tentacle,” Ijus said with a laugh.

“What is this thing?” Cael screeched. “Throw me a sword or something so I can at least fight it.”

Hoag laughed and kicked a dead rat onto the garbage heap. The tentacle paused and seemed almost ready to turn towards the rat before continuing its torturous advance toward Cael’s thigh.

“To hell with you!” he shouted. “I’m not going to just stand here and let this thing get me.”

“Catch!”

A loop of rope unwound as it descended towards his head. He caught it, his heart in his throat lest he miss. Rull wrapped the other end around his waist and braced his massive legs. Cael clutched the rope as high as he could reach and lunged up out of the garbage. He lifted his legs and swung to the near wall, slamming into it sideways and driving the air from his lungs. Behind him, the garbage pile rose up leviathanlike, refuse and offal cascading off the huge monster like water off a breaching whale. Massive, toothy jaws snapped blindly at the place he had just been, while two tentacles whipped out, trying to encircle him.

He rose swiftly in a rapid series of jerks. Rull pulled madly at the rope, working it hand over hand while Pitch knelt at the edge and guided the elf’s ascent. The tentacles slapped the wall beneath him, the hooks raked along the stone as the gulguthra searched him out. In moments, he found himself clambering at the lip of the pit, six pairs of hands clutching at his clothes and pulling him to safety. He collapsed, trembling, at their feet, while the monster champed and raged below.

“It’s a good thing you’re an elf,” Pitch said laughing, as she pried the rope from his hands. “If you’d been as big as Rull, we’d be picking bits of you off our clothes.” The others laughed too, especially Rull, but by their blanched faces, Cael knew that it had been a near thing, much nearer than they had intended.

“Was that it?” he panted. “Was that the test?”

“Get up!” Hoag snarled. “We’re not even in the sewers yet.”

They called the place a safe room. It was above the level of the flood;high enough that, even when the sewers were backed up and filled to the brim with sewage, the stuff could not reach this place. A narrow hole in the ceiling allowed fresh air to enter from the street level.

Cael stripped off his reeking, garbage-encrusted clothes and slipped into the dark gray uniform of the Thieves’ Guild. His partners waited, speaking together in quiet tones. Ijus held a stub of a yellow candle while they consulted an ancient parchment map.

At first glance, the map appeared to depict the streets of Palanthas, but on closer inspection, it proved to be a map of the city’s sewers. It was quite sketchy, with many areas apparently left blank, and numerous dotted lines that probably indicated connections that had never been fully explored. But even with these incomplete areas, it was easy to see how the sewers of Palanthas exactly reflected the layout of the streets above. Concentric circles spread outward from the central point beneath the Great Plaza, connected by passages following the same lines as the roads and alleys. However, in some areas, there was an obvious dearth of drainage canals. These areas were marked off, and someone had written notes into the map in a language none of the thieves could understand.

“It’s dwarven,” Mancred said. “Very ancient. I doubt if even a dwarf could read these runes nowadays.”

“Well, we don’t need to read them,” Hoag said. “We know where we are going. If the elf will ever get through with his preening, he can lead the way.”

“I’m ready,” Cael announced as he stepped into the light of their candle. “How can I lead the way? I don’t even know where we are going.”

Varia stepped close and knelt beside the elf, helped him adjust the straps around his ankles so his cloth boots wouldn’t rub blisters on his heels. He’d never worn clothing quite like this before. Some of the strings and straps had seemed awkward and out of place. He’d done the best he could to tie them correctly, but Varia adjusted them.

While she checked him over, she said, “We are headed to the Guild’s test area. Only the very best Circles of thieves are sent there. Those who succeed receive the best assignments, the most lucrative contracts.”

“What about those who fail?”

“They are lucky to escape with their lives,” Hoag said.

Varia scowled at him and continued, “Mancred has failed the test twice, Hoag and I have been through it once, each without success. It’s true, we’ve all either seen or known people who have died in the attempt.”

“Seems like such a waste of life,” the elf said. “To die, and for what? Bragging rights among thieves.”

“Elves!” Hoag spat. “You can’t understand.”

“It’s true,” Cael said, “I don’t understand. Elves revere life and hate to see it wasted, but I wasn’t raised among elves. If I were going to die, I’d like it be while attempting something bold, something glorious, maybe even heroic. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice myself on some ridiculous obstacle course.”

“This is more than an obstacle course,” Varia warned. “First of all, the operation must be conducted in total darkness. We cannot bring along any light source, and we may only use such ambient light as we come across. Your elven sight should come in handy, for the sewers are treacherous enough even when you can see where you are going.”

“So I can see in the dark,” Cael remarked coldly. “I thought perhaps my skills were needed. What you want is a guide dog.”

“Don’t be such a child, Cael,” Pitch scolded, as she withdrew the blade at her belt and examined its edge. “We’re all in this together. We don’t have to succeed, but we do have to try.”

“I’d like to succeed,” Mancred muttered. “Just once, before I die.”

The others grew quiet at his words, and gazed reverently at the aged thief. Even Hoag showed his respect. Mancred had been in the Guild almost four years, longer than any of them. He was one of the first to be recruited by Mulciber in the days after the fall of the old Guild. He had spent his youth and middle years as a thief in cities and lands all over Krynn, from the Isle of Cristyne to the city of Flotsam. Now he was old, but his skills were not dulled. In fact, they were at their height. Though his joints had begun to creak, he knew how to mix magic with thievery to more than compensate for his age.

“Aye. If we fail, we have no one to blame but ourselves,” Rull said, breaking the silence at last.

“I can think of someone to blame if we fail,” said Hoag, looking at Cael.

“Well, it won’t come to that, now will it?” Varia responded angrily. “Cael is with us now. We help him, he helps us. After all, he bested Captain Alynthia.”

“That was luck!” Hoag said in defense of their leader.

“Good!” Varia countered, “We’ll need such luck once we reach the ruins.”

“What ruins?” Cael asked, his interest growing.

“Few people know this,” Varia said, her bright blue eyes twinkling conspiratorially. “The sewers of Palanthas aren’t sewers at all. They are an ancient dwarven city, carved into the bedrock centuries before the first humans sailed into the Bay of Branchala, even before the wizards raised the Tower of High Sorcery with their magic. The city was abandoned long ago. Those who first arrived here found it empty and desolate. Some say it was once part of the great dwarven empire of Kal-Thax, which vanished without a trace before Thorbardin was even a dream in the mind of Reorx.”

“You’re more an actress than a thief,” Pitch interjected as she elbowed her blonde counterpart aside. “The point is, the old Guild used to use the old road markers left by the dwarves to navigate around the sewers. When the Guild was destroyed, the Dark Knights also destroyed the ancient waymarkers, hoping to prevent any future use of what was once called the Thieves’ Low Road. Now we use maps, but these are incomplete or inaccurate for the most part. The sewers are too dangerous for a complete survey.”

“Dangerous how?” Cael asked. “More sewer monsters?”

“Sewer monsters are the least of your worries,” Hoag said with a laugh. “The gulguthra is one of the more tame denizens of this place. When Varia said they found the ruins empty, she didn’t quite tell you everything. They did find things down here, all right-things that had crept in during the centuries after the dwarves abandoned this place, things that had escaped down here from the Tower of High Sorcery.”

With a scowl at her fellow thieves, Varia resumed her story. “On the Night of Black Hammers, Captain Oros escaped into the sewers with old Petrovius, the lore-master. While fleeing a band of Knights who had pursued them, the Captain stumbled across an ancient secret passageway. He followed it, and it led him to the heart of the old dwarven city, to its deepest vault. But the way was lined with cunning traps and guarded by fearsome creatures, and they had no light to see the way. Only his superb thieving skills brought the captain and Petrovius through their ordeal alive.

“What he found was beyond the dreams of dwarven avarice. The treasure of the ancient builders of the city lay before him. With this, and with the aid of Mulciber, he began to rebuild the Guild not long after the old one was destroyed,” she finished.

“Now, the Guild uses the old dwarven vaults as a testing ground for its most promising thieves. Those who succeed are brought within the inner sanctum and made officers of the Guild,” the ex-knight Pitch explained, as she slapped the hilt of the sword at her side. “Officers! With Circles of their own to command.”

“Who is Mulciber?” Cael asked.

When none of his fellow thieves offered a response, he continued, “Have you seen him?”

“Her,” Varia corrected.

“Her, then. How do you know it’s a her?” he asked. “I’ve heard him… her speak, and I can’t tell one way or the other.”

“Captain Alynthia says Mulciber is a woman. That’s good enough for us,” she snapped. “Besides, I know lots of people who have seen Mulciber.”

“Name one,” Pitch countered.

The thin thief glared at her for a moment before answering vehemently, “Lots of people. You wouldn’t know them.”

“Mancred has seen her,” Ijus inserted.

Mancred shrugged. “I might have. I saw someone. It doesn’t matter. We have a job to do.”

Cael looked to Mancred, who stood gazing at his feet. “Old one,” he said. “You have been through this test twice?”

“Aye, and each time it was different,” the elder thief answered. “So there’s no use in counting on my experience.”

“Do I have a weapon, then?” the elf asked, looking around at the weapons of his companions. Pitch wore a long sword similar to the ones favored by Knights. Ijus had his daggers, Hoag a short sword and a sling. Varia wore a short bow over her shoulder. A pair of axes were tucked into Rull’s belt. Only Mancred bore no obvious weapons, though the bulges in his sleeves could very well have hidden throwing knives.

“Captain Alynthia said you favored the staff,” Pitch said, pointing to a tall smooth dowel of polished ash leaning against the wall. “It’s not much of a weapon for a thief.”

“I prefer the sword,” Cael said, shrugging as he walked over to examine the staff. He hefted it, testing its weight, and gave it a few practice twirls that hummed with speed. “But this will do.”