Ричард Бейкер - Condemnation

Mantol-Derith was comparatively silent and forbidding. Here and there throughout the caverns winding length, small groups of merchants sat or squatted, their wares secured in coffers and casks behind them instead of rolled out on display. No one shouted, or haggled, or laughed. What business transpired there seemed best conducted in whispers and shadows.

Creatures from many different races gathered at Mantol-Derith. More than a few drow merchants held various corners of the cavern, most from Menzoberranzan if Halisstra read the blazons on their goods correctly. Mind flayers glided smoothly from place to place, mauve skin glistening damply, tentacles writhing beneath their cephalopod faces. A handful of sullen svirfneblin huddled together in one spot, eyeing the drow with unalloyed resentment. Of course the duergar were present in numbers, too. Short and broad-shouldered, the gaunt gray dwarves gathered together in secretive cabals, conversing with each softly in their guttural tongue.

Halisstra trailed close behind Pharaun, studying each group as they passed. She noticed that the wizard was trading discreet signs with Valas as they wound deeper into the marketplace.

Not many merchants here today, the wizard observed. Where are they all?

Valas glanced over his shoulder to make sure Quenthel wasn’t looking, and answered, Chaos in Menzoberranzan means few buyers. Few buyers means few sellers. Anarchy seems to be bad for business.

The scout turned to eye a band of duergar nearby, and said over his shoulder to the rest of the company, “Go on ahead. You’ll find an inn of sorts a little farther on. I will meet you there soon.”

He quietly approached the gray dwarves, making a strange gesture of greeting with his hands folded before him, and engaged the duergar merchants in whispered conversation. The rest of the party moved on.

They found the “inn” to which the scout referred in a dank warren of caves near the southern end of Mantol-Derith. There, a surly duergar woman terrorized a handful of goblin slaves, driving them mercilessly from one task to another. Several small cookfires smoldered haphazardly in the area, warming iron pots of thick stew tended by the harried cooks. Other slaves scrambled to tap casks of mushroom ale or stolen surface lagers, serving silent customers who simply gathered around the fires, sitting on flat boulders arranged like chairs. Sturdy doors of petrified mushroom fiber or rusted iron plate sealed off crevices in the walls nearby. Halisstra presumed that these led to the guest rooms of the gray dwarf’s inn. The chambers were most likely secure behind the strong doors, but she couldn’t imagine that they were at all comfortable.

“How . . . rustic,” Halisstra said.

She wondered for one terrible moment if it would be her fate to live out the rest of her expatriate existence crouched in some similar hovel.

“It’s even more charming than the last time I was here,” Pharaun said with a forced smile. “The dwarf there is Dinnka. You’ll find that this nameless wayside inn of hers constitutes the finest lodgings available in Mantol-Derith. You’ll get food, fire, and shelter—three things that are hard to come by in the wilds of the Underdark—and pay a small fortune for it.”

“It will be better than resting in a monster-haunted surface ruin, I suppose,”

Quenthel said.

She led the way as the party approached one of the cookfires. A trio of bugbears occupied the seats there, apparently mercenaries of some skill, judging by the quality of the armor they wore. The hairy creatures brooded over big leather jacks of mushroom ale, and gnawed at haunches of rothe meat. One by one the hulking warriors looked up as the five drow and Jeggred approached. Quenthel folded her arms and looked at the creatures with contempt.

“Well?” she said.

The bugbears growled, setting down ale and meat as their great fists dropped down to rest on axe-hafts thrust through their belts. The motion caught Halisstra’s eye. Bugbears with any lick of sense would have vacated their places immediately, almost anywhere in the Underdark. They might not have been drow slaves—clearly they weren’t, if they were in Mantol-Derith—but she’d ventured out into similar places near Ched Nasad enough times to understand that creatures like bugbears learned quickly to give way to the truly dangerous denizens of the Lands Below, such as noble dark elves.

“Well, what?” snarled the largest of the three. “It’ll take more’n a drow sneer t’make us give up our seats.”

“Think y’can just push us aroun’?” the second bugbear added. “You elfies ain’t as scary as y’was, y’know. Maybe yous’ll have t’start showin’ off why we’s oughtta do what y’says.”

Quenthel waited for a moment, then said one word: “Jeggred.”

The draegloth bounded forward and seized the first bugbear. With his two smaller arms he clamped down over the bugbear’s hands, preventing him from drawing any of the weapons at his side. He locked one fighting talon around the creature’s head, holding him tightly, and with his other fighting hand he plunged his powerful talons into the bugbear’s face. The mercenary screamed something in his uncouth language and struggled against the draegloth. Jeggred grinned, knotted his claws deep in the shrieking monster’s head, and yanked back hard, ripping off the front of the bugbear’s skull. Blood and brain matter splattered the bugbears companions, who scrambled to their feet, drawing swords and axes. Jeggred lowered the twitching body a bit and looked over it at the other two.

“Next?” he purred.

The two remaining bugbears stumbled back, and fled in abject terror. Jeggred shook his white-furred head and tossed the corpse aside, taking a seat at the fire. He helped himself to a hunk of roast dropped by a bugbear, and raised one of their jacks in another hand.

“Bugbears. . . .” he muttered.

“Hey, you!”

The surly duergar innkeeper—Dinnka—scuttled forward, anger plain on her face.

“Those three hadn’t settled their tab yet,” she complained. “Now how in all the screaming hells am I going to get my gold from them?”

Ryld stooped and removed the bugbear’s belt pouch. He tossed it to Dinnka.

“Settle up with this,” the weapons master said, “and start our tab with what’s left. We’ll want good wine, and more food.”

The duergar woman caught the purse, but she did not move.

“I don’t appreciate your scaring off paying customers, drow. Nor killing them, neither. Next time do your murdering at home, where it belongs.”

She marched off, already barking orders at the goblin slaves underfoot.

Halisstra watched her go, then she looked back to the others and flashed, That was odd. Did you hear what the bugbear said?

“What he said about the drow not being as scary as they used to be?” Ryld said, then he switched to sign. Has word of Ched Nasad’s fall reached this place so quickly? It was only a couple of days ago, and Mantol-Derith is many days’ travel from the City of Shimmering Webs.

It’s possible that magical scrying or spells of communication might have spread the word already, Halisstra said. Or . . . perhaps he meant something else. Perhaps something of our unusual difficulties is known here.

That, thought Halisstra, was a very disturbing scenario. Gray dwarves and mind flayers were competent foes, creatures who knew many secrets of sorcery. If they had discerned the drow’s weakness, it would not be unduly surprising, but if common bugbear mercenaries were aware of matters in Ched Nasad or Menzoberranzan, it must be widely known indeed.

Goblin slaves returned to their fire, laden with somewhat better fare than the bugbears had enjoyed, and flagons of cool wine from some surface vineyard. The small slaves gathered up the hulking body of the fallen bugbear and dragged it off into the darkness. The dark elves paid them scant attention. Goblin slaves were so far beneath their notice that they might as well have not existed. The party ate and drank in silence, occupied with their own thoughts.