The Thieves’ Guild

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Cael awoke to the taste of water sweetened with wine being poured over his parched lips. A strong hand cradled his head, lifting him to drink. He reached out to take the proffered wine skin in his own hands and sat up, gulping to try to assuage a burning thirst, but this only made the dizziness return. He collapsed back, feeling someone catch him. The wine skin was once again placed to his lips.

“You’re raging with fever,” Alynthia said as he sipped.

“I’ve seen fevers,” the gnome stated, “strike a man low in a matter of hours, it isn’t a pretty sight, but it’s a good sign that Cael lasted so long in that ghastly place…” He paused, shuddering, with a glance heavenward.

Refreshed by the water, Cael felt a modicum of strength returning. He managed to lift his head a bit and look around. He found himself lying on an access path in the sewers of Palanthas. His head was cradled in Alynthia’s lap. Gimzig stood nearby, his pack on the floor before him. The gnome nervously toyed with the gadgets contained within it, sometimes casting a wary eye over his shoulder into the darkness.

“How did we get here?” Cael asked.

“Him!” She pointed at the gnome. “He smells like a garbage heap, but I wish I had him in my circle of thieves. He has the most extraordinary gadgets! It was he who found you and led me to you.”

At this compliment, Gimzig smiled through his beard and bowed, sprinkling the floor with droplets of candle wax. Behind him, the sewer rushed and churned like a black river.

Cael nodded, feeling a great weariness stealing over him. He let his head sink into Alynthia’s gentle embrace, feeling her warmth and hearing the steady rhythm of her heart. “Do you two know each other? How did you two meet?” he mumbled wearily.

No answer to this question was forthcoming. Instead, Alynthia and Gimzig exchanged pained glances. When no one spoke, the elf’s eyes flickered open. The beautiful captain of thieves and the gnome quickly turned away, but not before he noticed their expressions of sorrow.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, trying to sit up again. The effort cost him, and he collapsed back into Alynthia’s arms.

“We have to get you someplace safe,” she said quickly.

“I’ve arranged a room, and there is a healer waiting. But we mustn’t delay. Gimzig,” she said, turning to the gnome, “lead us out of here.”

“Always giving orders,” Cael mumbled.

“Be quiet,” she said. “Save your strength. I can’t carry you. You are going to have to help.” However harsh her words, her actions were gentle. She hooked one arm around his waist and helped him to rise. He leaned heavily upon her shoulder, his neck so weak that he could hardly lift his head.

“Now I could use a staff,” he sighed. “It’s gone, lost.”

“Follow me!” Gimzig shouted as he led the way, his candle sending shadows leaping along the walls of the sewer. “It isn’t really that far, and you needn’t climb a ladder to the streets, Cael, the way I am taking is only a stair of two flights, I think you can make it with our assistance much easier than if we had to haul you up a ladder. Of course I have a remarkable pulley system, and there is always the self-extending ladder, but I doubt you have the strength to hold on to a ladder, so-”

The gnome froze, one foot lifted comically in mid-stride. His head slowly rotated until his long bulbous nose pointed at the swirling black waters racing by them.

“What is it?” Alynthia whispered.

“Shhhhhhh! Sewer monster. Big one. Right out there, watching us,” the gnome whispered.

“Where? I don’t see-”

“Get Cael back against the wall, and put something sharp between yourself and the water,” Gimzig ordered as he slowly inched the straps of his pack from his shoulders. He set it on the ground before him and removed a pair of curious weapons, if weapons they were. Cael recognized one of them as Gimzig’s mechanical spider. It was in its contracted position, all its legs stowed neatly around its body, forming a compact silver box. The other object was a short steel rod or pole, about as long as the gnome’s forearm. Its use was a mystery, for it was too short to be a staff. A cudgel, perhaps? There was little time to speculate.

The gnome set these things on the ground between his feet, then eased his pack onto his shoulders again, all the while prattling on in a low voice, “Keep a close watch on the water, she’ll rumble before she attacks, and you’ll see a stream of bubbles, of course, by then it’s too late, but if you are quick enough you can maybe get a jab in and turn her attack.”

Alynthia drew her dagger and faced the water. Cael slid to the floor, helpless.

“If we move she’ll attack, but if we wait here she is bound to get bored and move on to something else, it’s the movement that triggers her attack instinct, anything that she perceives as trying to flee, in fact, as long as you maintain eye contact, you’re probably safe-”

“But I can’t see her,” Alynthia broke in.

“Her eyesight isn’t good enough to tell exactly where you are looking, it is the direction you are facing more than anything, but as I was saying, as long as you maintain eye contact…” He continued talking, as he stooped to pick up his weapons.

At that moment, the water exploded. A long, dark missile, bristling at the fore end with rows of dagger-long teeth shining in gaping jaws, shot from the water as though launched by a catapult. Gimzig only had time to stand upright and raise one small fist in defiance. He disappeared in a spray of water and flailing black-scaled hide, hooked claws, and spined tail. In a flash, the monster was gone, the water boiling, and Gimzig still stood at the brink of the water, his fist raised in defiance, his eyes closed and head turned slightly aside. Again, the monster rose up, breaching the black water, its massive jaws pried firmly apart by a man-tall rod of steel, then was gone. A few large bubbles broke the surface, their ripples swept quickly away by the current.

Gimzig opened his eyes and grinned. “Crikey! I told you she was a big one! Caw! Did you see the size of her? She was beautiful!”

“What did you… how did you?” Alynthia was flabbergasted.

“Self-extending weakened-timber-bracer,” Gimzig explained. “I did a little work for the navy.” He shrugged. “It was supposed to be useful for bracing bulkheads stressed and leaking from ramming attacks, but it had an unfortunate tendency to poke holes in the bulkheads it was supposed to brace. I also developed this,” he said as he showed her the mechanical spider, “for opening salt-crusted portholes but of course it… look out!”

He flung the shining silver box at her head. For one horrifying moment she saw the thing’s legs unfolding in flight, and then a hand grasped her tunic and pulled her down.

Justin time. The spider completed its weird transformation a split second before it would have reached her face. Its long bar- or porthole-gripping fangs extended and made a rapid staccato noise as it flew over her head. She glared at the gnome as though he had gone mad and reversed her dagger to aim it at his throat before Cael pulled her closer and weakly grasped her wrist and pointed.

The spider continued its strange flight, landing atop the long, fangy snout of a second sewer monster creeping up silently on stubby legs behind the beautiful captain of thieves. As the spider’s metal fangs penetrated the hide and muscle and bone of its snout and the spring-powered legs began their awful business, the monster reared up fully half again as tall as the tallest man, its nose smashing into the stone ceiling. It dropped with an agonized roar into the sewer’s rushing stream, ivory-spined tail thrashing the surface into a froth.

Alynthia stared in horror at the place where it had vanished. Then she turned to the gnome. “Well, uh, thank you,” she said.

“Don’t mention it, my fault, really, I forgot that these beauties always travel in… threes,” Gimzig said with a smile. They were his last words.

Behind him, the water exploded once more. A beast rose, jaws gaping, behind the distracted gnome. He instinctively leaped to avoid harm, but he was not fast enough. The awful jaws clamped down on one leg, and in the blink of an eye, he was dragged backward into the water. Cael caught a last sight of Gimzig’s face twisted with terror, eyes starting out from beneath his bushy eyebrows as he was sucked beneath the current. He didn’t even have time to scream. A few yards down- stream, the current swept up a slick of papers covered with drawings and design ideas. They lingered on the water’s surface for a moment, then swirled away.

Alynthia knelt by Cael’s side and helped him to rise. He lay against her, nearly unconscious. She doubted her ability to carry him to safety, but there was no question of leaving him here to go for help now, not after what she had just witnessed. With one last terrified glance at the water, she led Cael away.