Эд Гринвуд - Crown of Fire

Water dripped, echoing somewhere in the dim distance. The archways overhead were old and cracked and covered with slimy growths. Here and there, the ends of pipes dripped filth down into the thick, oily brown waters they toiled through. The muck was chest high.

Mirt ducked under a sagging pipe and muttered, “No sneezing, now.”

Belarla struggled along at his elbow, helping to keep Shandril’s face out of the grime. “Could this be the world-famous Mirt the Moneylender I see? Lord of Waterdeep? Harper Lord? Scourge of the Sea of Swords? Mirt the Merciless, Old Wolf of the North? This same old man, plastered with excrement?”

“I’m in disguise,” Mirt growled, squeezing under another pipe. The smell was indescribable; as far as he could tell, the sewers here never drained out except during snowmelt. This would be a great place for a gulguthra lair … and as soon as that thought occurred to him, he wished it hadn’t.

He peered around in the gloom; light drifted down from street-gratings high overhead—sometimes accompanied by brief deluges as citadel folk dumped chamber pots or washtubs.

“Are we heading anywhere in particular—” he asked “—besides toward our graves, I mean?”

“You mentioned Myrintara, earlier,” Belarla answered carefully, keeping her chin up as she walked over an uneven spot and the filth rose to her lower lip. Bubbles broke on the dark brown surface all around her, and she gagged.

“Not in my direction, thank you,” Oelaerone told her, edging away. “Ah, we’re getting into the older part.”

Ahead, a noisome waterfall carried the waters they were sloshing through down a short cascade to plunge into the blacker waters of a larger channel. A mist hung in the air. As they went down the falls Mirt exclaimed; the darker water, at the bottom, was noticeably colder. Much colder, in fact.

On his arm, Shandril stirred. “Not now , lass,” Mirt growled at her. “If you make us fall in this filth, I swear I’ll take my hand to your bottom.”

“Uhmm?” her sleepy voice responded. “Is that you, dear?”

The Harper ladies giggled; Mirt snorted, and shook the weight in his arms. A moment later, Shandril’s eyes fluttered, opened—and met his. Then she looked around.

“Where are we?” she asked and frowned. “And what happened?” Then—the Old Wolf could tell by her face—the smell hit her.

“We’re with friends,” Mirt said, “in the sewers of the citadel.”

“I’d worked that much out already,” Shandril replied, wrinkling her nose.

“We’re trying to get to the house of Myrintara of the Masks.”

“Who’s she?”

“A noted perfumer,” Mirt panted, as they turned through an arch and into an unexpectedly strong flow of effluent, heading in the other direction. “And an old friend.”

“A perfumer would come in very handy about now,” Shandril observed faintly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Over my shoulder, lass,” Mirt grunted, as they struggled on. “Just keep it over my shoulder.”

After a moment, Shandril said in a small voice, “I burned one of you ladies; I’m sorry.”

Belarla flashed a smile at Shandril and held up one hand to wiggle dung-covered fingers cheerfully at her. “All better, lass—no lasting harm done.”

“If we can ever scrub this stuff off us, that is,” Oelaerone said ruefully. “The last time we traveled the sewers, we had a boat.”

Mirt looked around. “Folk have boats down here?”

“Yes—and rafts, and mushroom beds, and lots of little caches where they hide things, too.”

“Treasure?”

“Aye, and the bodies of rivals or rich older relatives, and suchlike.”

A sudden outflow from above drenched them all. They gasped and sputtered and swore; the Harper ladies proved they knew expressions every bit as colorful as Mirt did.

“If we ever get out of here, Shandril-my-lass,” Mirt said through clenched teeth, “I’m going to give ye a few choice words about what it means to be a Harper—notably, of considering consequences before ye act.”

Shandril leaned against the comforting bulk of his shoulder as he forged on through the stinking muck, and she said in a small voice, “I guess you mean I shouldn’t have come here at all.”

Mirt shrugged. “Well, not so fast, lass—’twas high time someone gave the Zhentarim something to think about. And ye’ve certainly found the knack of giving everyone around a wild time, indeed.”

Shandril grinned, a little lopsidedly—and then Delg’s agonized, dying face swam into her mind, and she burst into sudden tears.

Mirt rolled his eyes and wrapped his excrement-smeared arms more tightly around her, murmuring soothingly.

Oelaerone turned and reproved him mildly. “You’ve certainly cultivated an expert boudoir manner, Mirt of Waterdeep.”

“Only a little way, now,” Belarla added, turning into a side channel. It was shallower; as she went along it, her body rose out of the water as far as her waist. Her robes, plastered to her, glistened brown and yellow.

Shandril looked at Belarla, down at her own body hidden under the roiling brown sludge, and involuntarily glanced back at the pleasure-queen’s robes. She gagged.

Mirt threw her expertly over his shoulder, but she struggled free and glared at him. “I’m not a little girl!”

“Aye,” he said dryly. “I’d noticed. Little girls are never this much trouble.”

Belarla came to a stop, waters swirling around her, and looked up at the vaulted stone ceiling just above her. “This is the one,” she announced, pointing at a rune burned into a dark wooden hatch overhead.

Dripping, she and Oelaerone reached up and hauled on its heavy bolt together, their hair plastered down their backs and matted with filth. The door fell open, suddenly, and they splashed and staggered in the water, struggling for balance.

Mirt blinked sewer water from his eyes, thanked the two Harpers gravely, and then heaved himself like an angry whale up out of the water and through the hatch. Grunting, he caught hold of the lowest rung of an old, massive iron ladder. “This must have been used as a well, long ago,” his voice echoed back to them.

“No wonder they all died of fevers back then,” Oelaerone said disgustedly to Belarla.

“No doubt folk an age from now will wonder at all the barbaric things we do, too,” Belarla replied.

“Going through the sewers ranks right up there,” Oelaerone agreed, as they boosted Shandril up the ladder.

“Hmmm,” Belarla responded, “ ‘rank’ is the right word, yes.”

After a short, unpleasant climb, the three ladies found themselves facing a closed door in a small, round room crowded with old buckets. Mirt’s arrival had evidently awakened some magic here: a faint, yellow-white glow was emanating from the door and growing steadily brighter.

Mirt rapped on the glowing door with his fist, snatched his hand back, and shook his fingers to clear away the tingling pain. “Strong wards,” he commented, eyeing it and wondering if he’d have to knock again.

A breath or two later, the center of the door began to glow brightly, and then something swam out of that radiance, spun together, thickened like rising smoke, and suddenly coalesced into a floating, glowing eye.

The orb regarded them all, bobbing slightly as it turned. Mirt held up his Harper pendant in front of it. The eye blinked, peered at it for a moment, and then drew back to look around at them all again. Then it abruptly swooped back to the door, vanishing into the radiance once more.

Almost immediately, they heard bars fall and chains rattle, and then the door grated open. A young lady in a dark court dress with full skirts, a low bodice, and high shoulders stood looking at them. A wand was held ready in her hand, and her eyes were dark with fear. “Who are you, and why have you come here?” she asked.