The Thieves’ Guild

Chapter Thirty-One

Footsteps receded down the hall, leaving the passage in quiet shadows. Alynthia peered out from a curtained alcove, making certain that everyone had gone, before stepping out from the hiding place where she and Cael had just spent the better part of five hours waiting for Arach Jannon to leave his study. The door leading to the Thorn Knight’s chambers was visible from the alcove, and Sir Arach had just hurried down the hall, called away to some important late night meeting by a palace page. Alynthia and Cael had wondered if he would ever leave, and they were becoming concerned that the mage might sleep in his underground study and laboratory, deep beneath the lord mayor’s palace, rather than in the upper chambers indicated on Alynthia’s detailed floor plan as the bedchamber of the lord high justice.

Their acquisition of the map had neither come easily nor quickly. They had spent an interminable eight days waiting while Claret scoured the markets of Palanthas, finally finding a copy in a bibliophile’s shop on Windsong Street. During those eight days, Cael had nearly climbed the walls with impatience.

Sir Arach’s laboratory lay deep beneath the Lord’s Palace. The chambers and passages leading to them were discovered during the construction of the first Lord’s Palace. As the passages connected directly to the sewers, the lord at that time ordered these entrances blocked. Not long afterward, the Thieves’ Guild had cleared it, replacing the wall with one of their own devising, one with a door only they could find. Their entrance into this hallway came by/way of that ancient, not-so-blocked-up passage connecting to the sewers. Alynthia knew about the door, of course, and she knew how to spot it and open it. She had been taught this by her husband, Oros uth Jakar, but she had never actually been here. Still, after only a half dozen attempts, she had managed to open the door.

Now, as she stepped out from the alcove and motioned for Cael to follow, she once more removed the parchment document from her pouch and, by the light of a nearby torch, examined the layout of the lord’s palace. The level of detail of the document was impressive, for it showed not only the visible rooms, but the hidden ones as well. In addition, all exits and doorways, both mundane and secret were also described.

Cael stepped out from the alcove and joined her in studying the floor plan. “Here is Sir Arach’s laboratory,” she said, indicating it first on the map and then by pointing to a door a short distance down the hall.

“Let’s go then,” Cael said.

“Wait! We dare not try the door. It’s probably warded. Remember what happened at Mistress Jenna’s? We have no magic to dispel the wards,” Alynthia said.

“How will we get in?”

“There is a secret door here,” she said, tracing the symbol on the paper with her finger. “I doubt even he knows about it. If we are lucky, it won’t even be locked. But if it is…” She smiled beneath her mask and patted the pouch at her belt.

She continued. “From there, a short hall and another secret door. This lets directly into the laboratory. Let’s hope it isn’t blocked by a stone table or fixed cabinet.”

“Or guarded,” Cael added.

Alynthia pouched her map and then slipped down the passage, moving by habit from torch’s shadow to torch’s shadow, while the elf paced noiselessly behind her. They passed one door that stood ajar, open onto empty darkness, a storeroom perhaps. Next they passed the door through which Sir Arach had exited moments before. Now Alynthia slowed and allowed her fingertips to gently brush the stone wall. This passage was deep underground, one of the many secret vaults and treasuries beneath the lord’s palace. The wall was cut from the limestone bedrock that underlay the entire city, carved by patient dwarven hands more than twenty-five centuries ago. Here and there a crack marred the otherwise polished surface, evidence of the destruction of the first Cataclysm, when the gods hurled a fiery mountain upon Krynn, destroying the gleaming city of Istar, creating new seas and draining old ones. Not even Palanthas, beloved of Paladine, City of Seven Circles, was left unmarred, though it faired better than most. The dwarves have a saying-heroes live and die, trees grow tall and wither, and all are soon enough forgotten, but stone never forgets. Palanthas the fair might forget the Cataclysm, her bards might no longer sing of its horror and tragedy, but the stone on which she was built still bore the scars of that day.

Cael paused to look at the marred stone, wondering at its age. Once more, as on that morning of the Spring Dawning festival, he felt a great love for this city surge through him, and he found himself loath to leave it despite the dangers. Palanthas the Ancient was perhaps the city’s best epithet, he thought. Few other works of human hands had endured so long or so gloriously.

Alynthia tugged at his sleeve. “What are you doing?” she asked. “The secret door is over here!”

“I forgot about the secret door,” he answered dreamily.

“What is wrong with you?” she hissed.

“Nothing,” he answered, pulling himself together. “Have you found it?”

“Yes. Now come on.”

He allowed himself to be drawn another ten yards down the hall, to a place where the wall was breached by a small portal hardly tall enough for a kender to pass.

Alynthia ducked through without explaining how she had found the door. By the look of it, when closed it was probably indistinguishable from the wall. Such was often the case with dwarven construction. Cael followed her into the low passage beyond, pausing only to close the secret door behind him.

The passage was filled with such darkness as is only known in the deep places of the earth. The walls of the tunnel felt close, the air stale as though it had not been stirred in a thousand years. A little dust of the ages, raised by their shuffling passage, made them cough. Before long, the passage turned right, and after a dozen feet ended. Alynthia felt along the wall until she found the release. With a quiet snap, the tunnel’s end opened a crack. Alynthia pushed against it, and it swung open with hardly a sound. They crept into the room beyond.

Not even the treasure chamber of Mistress Jenna could compare to the magical laboratory and study of Arach Jannon, Knight of the Thorn. Along the further wall and flanking an iron door that looked heavy enough to defy the stoutest battering ram, stood bookshelves sagging under the weight of magical tomes, encyclopedias, and spellbooks. No doubt, the Thorn Knight had been confiscating them from travelers and visitors to Palanthas for years. In their presence, one felt a strange uneasiness, for although magic was gone from Krynn, many of the books still contained hidden power.

Along the wall to the left stood a complete alchemical laboratory, replete with beakers, jars, urns, crocks, braziers, kettles, chafing dishes, retorts, crucibles, and alembics, all atop a large flat marble table whose entire surface was scored by acids of varying strengths. On a smaller table behind it stood a rack of mortars, pestles, probes, tubes, straws, spoons, spatulas, droppers, sifters, grinders, and various other implements for the measuring and preparing of reagents. Beside the marble table, a large, black rendering caldron dangled from a chain that was suspended over a fire-blackened pit in the floor. In this pot stood Cael’s staff, its lower third soaking in a roiling, viscous liquid that glowed a sickly shade of green and boiled even though no fire heated it.

With a little cry of dismay, Cael leaped across the room and snatched his staff from the caldron. Droplets of the weird green fluid fell hissing on the floor, but the staff appeared undamaged. Cael carefully wiped it clean with a rag he found on the conjuring table, then tossed the rag into a corner. It began to smoke, and a strange stink filled the air.

“I wonder what that stuff is!” Alynthia pondered aloud as she peered into the caldron. The green liquid had ceased boiling. Now only an occasional large slow bubble burst to the surface.

“I wonder what was on that rag,” Cael coughed. “Gods, what a smell! Let’s get out of here.”

As they ducked through the secret door and closed it behind them, the smoldering rag erupted into purplish flame.

Alynthia and Cael hurried silently along the passageway, back toward the sewer entrance. As they neared the doorway, Cael grabbed his companion and pulled her back down the hall. The ancient door was ajar. They ducked into the curtained alcove just as the door swung wide. They dared not even look out to see who approached.

They had no need. The voice that echoed down the passage was one both thieves knew well. It was a voice neither masculine nor feminine, a voice as harsh and cold as the black void between the stars.

“Wait here for my return,” Mulciber growled.

A pair of voices assented in whispers. The door closed with a muffled click. Brisk footsteps quickly approached, passing outside the curtain behind which the two thieves hid, and continued down the passage in the direction Sir Arach had taken.

Slapping back Alynthia’s attempts to stop him, Cael parted the curtain and peered out. What he saw made him start, and brought a soft gasp from his companion as she, unable to resist, ducked in front of the elf to have a look for herself.

This was no wizened archmage creeping along bent over a cane and with breath rattling like someone dragging a coffin from a tomb. The person beneath those long black robes and hood was huge, a veritable bear, with a brisk stride and vigorous swing of the arms. It wasn’t a “she,” it was a “he” who disappeared into the darkness of distance, his footsteps echoing.

“Mulciber is no more a woman than I am a dwarf,” Cael whispered.

“I think you are right,” Alynthia agreed, with frowning eyes. “Let’s follow her… him,” she said.