Jeff Crook - The Thieves’ Guild

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.

Let’s have another look at your map,” Cael whispered. They had followed the sound of Mulciber’s footsteps for some time, and the passage had gone on straight as a swordblade through the solid rock for many more steps than either thief remembered seeing on the map. A quick glance at the floor plan confirmed their suspicions. They were now in some new construction, one that probably began at that staircase they had passed a minute ago, one that wasn’t covered on the map. Mulciber’s footsteps led this way, and they were determined to follow.

As Alynthia folded up the map and stowed it in a pouch, Cael asked, “What would Mulciber be doing here?”

His beautiful companion shrugged, her dark eyes filled with worry, but she did not voice her thoughts. Instead, she hurried onward, her soft boots making little sound as she walked. Cael followed.

Eventually, the passage brought them to a crossroads. Directly ahead, the passage sloped upward, illuminated at regular intervals by torches set into the walls. To the left, a stairway descended steeply into darkness. To the right, another passage joined this one. They paused, listening, but were unable to determine the direction of the echoing footsteps. Alynthia swore softly in indecision.

“I don’t like the feel of those stairs,” Cael said as he peered into the darkness. “There’s a lion’s den smell about them.”

“Straight ahead, then,” Alynthia said. “That way, at least, is lit by torches.”

They hurried up the slope. Cael, the taller of the two and likely to be the first to spot anything ahead, now took the lead. The slope only took them a short distance, no more than a bowshot, before it leveled out again. In the distance, a brighter light shone between thick pillars. They slowed their steps, cautiously approaching the end of the passage and entering a cavernous chamber brightly lit from above.

They found themselves on a pillared balcony overlooking a wide circular arena. The floor was scattered with straw, and beside some of the pillars stood barrels of tools: long brooms and brushes, mops, and rakes. Numerous cedar buckets, most of them filled with water, were stacked near the balcony’s edge. Also near the edge stood a pair of fine, tooled-leather dragon-saddles.

Clearly, they were still underground, but this place could well have served as a coliseum, had there been seats for the spectators. Instead, there was only the one balcony, six pillars deep around its entire circumference. Twenty feet below the balcony was a sawdust floor ringed by a stone wall. Into the wall had been cut numerous tall archways, which, by their darkness, spoke of cavernous chambers beyond. Above, the stone arched in a great dome, the top of which was covered by a peaked wooden roof. Magical globes of light floated and hovered about the massive chamber, some meandering among the pillars of the balcony, others gliding mere inches from the floor. One or two bumped about the wooden roof as though trying to find an escape.