City of Torment (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO Ten Years After the Spellplague The Year of Silent Death (1395 DR) The Depths of the Sea of Fallen Stars The sea coach veered toward the wall, and then sawed away just as abruptly. The gargantuan nautilus shell shuddered and nearly collided with stone. Braided kelp reins strained as the beast pulling the conveyance through the inky water attempted to shake free of its harness. Nogah was lightly tethered to the sea coach’s deck at the open mouth of the nautilus. To the eyes of a surface dweller she seemed bloated, but no more so than any other member of her amphibious race. Nogah’s finely scaled, webbed hands pulled sharply on the reins that stretched down into the murk. Some of the cords were attached to the whisker-like barbels of the beast pulling the sea coach: a catfish the size of a small whale. With the reins so attached, Nogah could steer the great fish up, down, left, right, or in any combination of directions. Now she pulled back on all the reins at once, sharply enough to inflict pain. The creature’s great flukes ceased their agitated movement. The fish drifted in the center of the vertical vent, waiting for either food or the next tweak on the reins. In the absolute darkness of the water-filled shaft, Nogah could only dimly make out the outline of the great beast, even with her keen, water-adapted sight. They were already far deeper than her kind were ever meant to descend. The titanic catfish was rapidly becoming a troublesome liability for her expedition. The fish was not happy about being directed to swim so deep, so far past the bottom of the Sea of fallen Stars, straight down a drowned earth vent whose depth was unfathomed. But the beast would serve. It had to. Failure was not an option for Nogah. If she failed, her status as a senior whip of the Queen of the Depths and Sea Mother would come into question, and the few kuo-toa who still followed her would reject her aberrant teaching and return to the traditional dogma of the majority. Nogah would become a wanderer, declared heretic by the other whips. She would likely be hunted for sport and possibly vengeance. Nogah had her enemies. They worked even now toward her undoing back in the shallow city of Olleth. With one hand still grasping the reins, she pulled her pincer-staff from its holster and rapped sharply on the nautilus shell behind her tether post. The mammoth shell’s winding interior was large enough to hold pockets of air, capable of serving as living space for six additional kuo-toa, though only she and one junior whip inhabited it. The few who retained enough respect to have accompanied Nogah on her journey of discovery remained in Olleth. She had set them to propagandize the expedition, lest her enemies sink her reputation while she was absent. Curampah, her junior whip, slithered out of the opening, his bulging, silver-black eyes blinking a question. She had sponsored his study and apprenticeship to the Sea Mother’s worship, and he owed her direct service, regardless of his opinion of the expedition’s worthiness. This close, the tingle of electric affinity all whips shared danced on her scales. “Curampah, what ails this beast?” she asked, tiny bubbles escaping upward with each word. “It fed according to its usual schedule, yet it continues to balk.” “Daughter of the Sea,” he replied, using the honorific due her, “if I may, you have urged it downward past its span of strength. It grows weary. Even with the protective prayers enclosing us, some hint of the growing pressure beyond leaks inward. Can’t you feel it, Nogah? I can, and it wearies me. My dreams are troubled.” Nogah allowed her translucent, inner lids to half close, blurring Curampah’s image. It was her conscious look of calculation, useful for cowing subordinates. It made them wonder if she would respond civilly or curse them to a literal, painful death. The junior whip trod precariously close to disrespect. She knew to what he referred, and to lecture her about it was insolence, should she choose to view it as such. Even with the fortitude provided her by her connection to the Sea Mother, a fortitude that Curampah’s fledgling association couldn’t hope to match, she sensed the unrelenting grip of the sea. Beyond her magical barrier, it obstinately tried to crush them� catfish, nautilus shell, and scales�in one final spasm. But she would not sing poison into his blood or cause his heart to explode, which he also knew. She had too few resources to throw away subordinates without greater cause than simply reminding her of unpleasant truths. Under such conditions, any other senior kuo-toa whip would turn back or find another way downward. But her tenacity was born of divine decree, or so she chose to believe. True, no direct communication had occurred between her and the Sea Mother or any of the Sea Mother’s exarchs… but what of her dreams? She knew the Sea Mother wanted something of her, something the divine being was somehow unable to articulate directly. A frightening thought! If something prevented the Sea Mother’s clear communication, it must be a dire threat indeed! At least, so Nogah interpreted the signs. Others, untroubled by dreams, declared Nogah unstable. Despite the risk of being outcast, she persisted in her claims, describing how her visions revealed a taint welling up from a near-bottomless trench, a hole in the earth where none had been before. And hadn’t she been vindicated with the discovery of a newborn vent’s existence? And how else could she have predicted its location in the dim, uncharted depths? Despite her successful predictions, or perhaps because of them, Nogah remained alone in her conviction that the Sea Mother had revealed the cavity for a reason. She was convinced the newly opened vent must be plumbed, and no argument could sway her. The other whips of the Sea Mother told her the cavity was just one more altered feature of the landscape left in the Spellplague’s wake a decade earlier. By every estimation, this particular seafloor vent numbered among the least remarkable of the changes wrought by the Weave’s collapse. When compared to whole kingdoms erased, continents rearranged, plaguechanged monstrosities, floating motes of water and land, renewed contact with Abeir, and the real threat that the Sea of Fallen Stars would drain completely into the Underdark… yes, this particular vent seemed a minor issue. The kuo-toa were more concerned that even the celestial and infernal realms themselves still fluctuated. The Spellplague had chewed through earth, stone, magic, and planar boundaries as readily as through fallible flesh. Empty, drowned crevices that apparently led nowhere were judged a waste of attention. Thus, the senior whips decreed Nogah’s plan would divert resources that could be better used elsewhere. Threats to the people were always gathering. The Weave’s failure, combined with the ongoing realignment of the celestial dominions, put even the Sea Mother at risk! Nogah growled. As if her current task were not meant to stem just such a threat! Hadn’t the Sea Mother directed her on this venture through her strange silences, as if urging Nogah to investigate the mystery? The other whips were blind. Always decisive, Nogah committed to the exploratory dive despite the consensus building against her, and before that consensus solidified into official directive. She used up the last of her favors to gain the use of this fabulous sea coach, its harnessed beast, and a leave from her duties in the city of Olleth. Now here she was, miles below the seafloor in the vent she’d first glimpsed in dreams. The strange flavor of the water all around her seemed to promise grim consequences to those who failed to heed its warning. The odd scent seemed to go hand in fin with the interference that made communion with the Sea Mother difficult. Nogah took it as further evidence the Sea Mother wanted her here, to investigate that which lay at the shaft’s nadir. Nogah’s translucent, third eyelids snapped open. She decreed, “No, we shall push on. Time grows short. The… taint? The… hindrance grows stronger each day we fail to discover its source!” Curampah merely nodded. Perhaps her junior whip did not share Nogah’s sense of urgency. She guessed Curampah preferred the majority opinion in the kuo-toa ruled city of Olleth. Not that what he thought mattered. The beliefs junior whips harbored in their secret hearts were unimportant. Their duty was only to obey. Curampah would do as she commanded. Nogah twitched the reins, and the great catfish surged straight downward once more, jolting the coach. The immense nautilus shell descended through a sudden rush of silvery bubbles born in the thrashing wake of the fish’s wide tail. ***** Nogah woke to her name voiced in air. Splinters of the dream faded, the same dream she always had, of the Sea Mother beckoning to her from across a vast gulf of sea-fine particulates and rushing water, warning her, warning… She lay in her creche within the inmost chamber of the spiral nautilus. A voice, Curampah’s, said again, “Nogah, Daughter of the Sea, wake!” Blinking toward full awareness, but not yet stirring her limbs, she said, “I am awake. I…” She could still hear the groaning water from her dream. The walls of the shell moaned and vibrated, as if being squeezed. Had they struck the vent wall? Nogah mentally checked the status of all the divine rituals she’d applied to the sea coach. The subsidiary rituals of maintenance and protection lacing the nautilus’s shell were intact. The bubble of air trapped within the coiled corridors of the shell was stable and fresh. The magic that maintained the equilibrium between air and water was firm. She mentally expanded her examination of the ritual prayers underlying the sea coach and was relieved to find the enchantments holding the catfish also remained active. The protective prayers warding off crushing pressure seemed intact, but… “Mother preserve!” The linchpin charm was half unraveled! The groaning noise was precursor to the nautilus shell’s collapse. She lurched upright, her webbed hands already tracing the runes necessary to renew the prayer. She worked quickly, invigorating the lines of divine force required. A heartbeat later, the frayed linchpin was repaired. But how could it have failed so precipitously? She looked at Curampah. “Explain,” she commanded. “Daughter of the Sea,” he said, “I found a side cavity in the vent. As I slowed the coach to study the hollow space, the nautilus began to buckle and shudder. So I woke you.” “What lies within this cavity?” “Crumbled and blasted dwellings, Daughter. Ruins of structures unable to withstand the crushing weight of water this deep.” “A drow city caught in the backlash of Mystra’s demise?” Nogah half smiled to think of a city of their old tormentors so overcome. Curampah’s silver-black eyes blinked rapidly. “No. It is illithid.” Nogah grabbed her staff and arrowed past Curampah. ***** The cavity was riddled with half-exposed, winding passages striated with the cryptic textures of illithid text carved in stone. The crust’s split that created the vent a decade ago broke this deep dwelling mind flayer cyst wide open. The illithids likely hadn’t even picked themselves up from where the quaking earth had thrown them before a weight of seawater had smashed through the breach, a quantity too great for even the wizened entity at the community’s hub to deal with. The elder brain’s basin was split asunder. All that remained of this illithid community’s nascent proto-deity were fragments of flash-petrified cerebral tissue. Dried husks of larval illithids floated here and there throughout the ruin. Remnants of mind flayer garb, implements, and unidentifiable trash were everywhere, but of the adult illithids themselves, no sign remained. “Did any survive?” wondered Curampah, as he stared over the side. Nogah had maneuvered the sea coach into the side cavity. She replied, “The Spellplague’s hunger did not spare those who derive their power from mind. Of course, it seems this community was destroyed as an indirect consequence of the catastrophe. We would have been attacked already, if any mind flayers remained in this drowned cyst.” Curampah inclined his head. Despite her words, an irrational fear tightened her scales. She was a competent whip, but she couldn’t hope to stand before a mind flayer’s vicious brain blast. She didn’t want to end up a meal, or worse, a mind-dead thrall. But she was being foolish, of course; how could that happen? The cyst was obviously long bereft of its former dwellers. The senior whip urged the catfish deeper into the demolished community. It could be that which drew her into the depths below Faer�uld be found in this very space! The far wall of the hollow remained obscured in haze, and she wanted to be sure of the cavity’s bounds. The sea coach was drawn inward. It passed only feet over crumbling edges of unspecified structures without roofs, now only unmarked crypts where many monstrosities had met a sudden, moist end. A new structure began to resolve from the swirling water. Its architectural style was different from the foregoing ruins. It retained most of its walls and many of its roofs. It was several stories high, unlike any of the other structures in the cyst, and it had no windows. Something about the new structure reminded Nogah of how the linchpin prayer had almost failed. Was it coincidence the divine ritual most vital to their foray would show instability just as they descended to the depths of the dead illithid community? Perhaps the charm’s collapse and the ruined cyst’s proximity were no accident. Nogah pulled back on the reins. “Curampah�” The catfish screamed, a scale-shivering sound so intense Nogah dropped the reins. A region of free-floating detritus whirled in on itself, becoming a tight column of spinning water. Nogah scrambled for the reins. A moment later the whirling column expanded into a humanoid shape. Violet slime glistened over its rubbery skin. It�s awful head riveted Nogah’s attention. Four long tendrils writhed there, muscular tentacles with bloodstained tips. Its eyes were darkened hollows, empty save for seawater. “It’s undead!” croaked Curampah, bubbles escaping his mouth in two exclamatory clusters. His pincer staff quivered in his unsteady grasp. “Mind flayer undead!” Nogah forgot the reins. She yelled, “Curampah! Think!” If Curampah would stop panicking, they could� Malign influence burst upon Nogah’s brain, trying to insinuate alien desires into her core awareness. The catfish’s scream burbled away. Curampah gasped and let his pincer staff float free. The vacant-eyed mind flayer drifted toward them, making no movement yet accelerating. It had gained a facility in the water in
undeath that its kind did not possess in life. What hoary god empowered this husk? It should have rotted to nothing like all its compatriots. The very fact she could still formulate questions meant she had avoided the brunt of the blast that had left Curampah drooling. But without her fellow whip, she couldn’t co-generate an answering stroke strong enough to offer salvation. She tried to think through the terror. Curampah wasn’t dead. It should still be possible… She slapped Curampah’s limp shoulder with her empty palm. Instantly, the tingle that alerted fellow whips to each other’s presence intensified into a full-fledged connection. An electric spark burned between them, an eel of chaotic, fluctuating light. The contact literally jolted Curampah from his mind-numbed haze. The junior whip blinked witlessness from his eyes. Thank the Sea Mother! In the Spellplague’s wake, many whips had lost the ability to co-generate the storm’s sword. But not her, and not Curampah. Its call to destruction burned away the aftereffects of the mind flayer’s blast. The illithid undead slowed its approach, its tentacles suddenly writhing in some new configuration. Nogah drew back her hand, and the lightning bridged the two whips. The crackling arc widened, then began to curve, bowing out toward the approaching illithid. The creature’s tentacles writhed so fast now, the water began to froth. The hollows of its empty eyes glimmered with red light. The connecting spark widened, grew into a ravening bolt that seared the water, creating a shroud of twinkling bubbles. Jittering shadows danced madly across the cavity’s walls. Nogah released the bolt. The stroke discharged the full brunt of her and Curampah’s redoubled strength into the mind flayer’s necrotic flesh. Its left arm, half its torso, and its left leg flashed away into ash. Another mental assault blossomed from the illithid, but its aim was off. Only the merest edge of the psionic cacophony brushed her awareness. “Finish it,” she commanded. But what could they do? They couldn’t produce another lightning stroke immediately. They would have to call on ranged battle prayers� Curampah tensed to launch himself from the sea coach’s deck. Nogah snagged his harness with her free hand, restraining him. She hissed, “Fool! Don’t stray from the coach or the sea’s heavy foot will smash you!” The illithid squealed something, a warning, Nogah thought, then melted into a column of spinning water. The column widened and dispersed, leaving nothing behind but drifting silt and sediment. “That was more than a corpse reanimated by chance,” breathed Curampah. “It was dead, yet could still call upon the mental abilities it possessed in life. I think it may have been partially vampiric. Yet we defeated it!” “We chased it away�but we failed to destroy it,” interrupted Nogah. “Because of your incompetence.” She pointed at the junior whip with her staff. “If I were less merciful, I would slay you here and now and offer your unworthy hide as a sacrifice to the Sea Mother.” The junior whip froze, uncertain. He knew she didn’t make threats lightly. Nogah considered ramming the pincer tip through his throat, despite her talk about being merciful. No�but it wasn’t mercy that stayed her hand. It was practicality. Despite nearly killing himself, and allowing the undead illithid to slip away, she still needed him. If Curampah hadn’t been present, the illithid would likely even now be supping on the contents of her skull. “Bah,” she said. “We wounded the thing, nearly tore it apart. It won’t seek us out again soon, at least until it has regained its strength and form. We have some time. Let’s investigate what it guarded all alone down here in the depths.” The structure was nestled into the great cavity’s rear wall. Though some of its outer rooms had crumbled, an inner core structure of greenish stone remained intact. A jade dome emerged from the rougher surrounding stone. Tools were scattered everywhere: shovels, picks, buckets, and a variety of more arcane equipment apparently useful for digging. Most had almost rusted away. Nogah also finally recognized the strange mounds arranged around the greenish outcrop. They were tailing piles, the refuse of a mining operation. She saw no open mine tunnel. The mine mouth must be under the dome. “The illithids thought they were digging up something special here,” she murmured. “Special enough to protect the mine mouth with this building. Not that it offered much protection when the water broke in.” “The dome reminds me of a temple, almost,” volunteered Curampah. He gestured. “It even has a ceremonial entrance.” A six-sided extension protruded from the side of the smooth green rock like a tumor. Nogah guided the sea coach to rest next to the extension and saw Curampah was correct. Within the protrusion was a dull black metal door, also six-sided. It was apparently still sealed against the surrounding water. She leaned over and touched the door’s matte black iron. A familiar feeling thrilled up her arm and into her heart. The strange influence of her dreams lived behind the door! The Sea Mother had guided her truly. “We must enter,” she directed. “How, Daughter of the Sea? If we stray from the nautilus…” Curampah finished by squeezing his hands together. “Do you think I am so ill-prepared?” Curampah looked at her with half-lidded eyes, waiting. “Bring me my chest. Be quick!” The junior whip soon returned from the nautilus’s interior with a delicate chest fashioned of polished mother-of-pearl plates and placed it at her feet. Nogah whispered the pass phrase that bypassed the magical trap, and popped the lid. Amid the clutter of needful things lay several vials. She selected a few and closed the chest before Curampah was able to see and understand the nature of all her treasures. “These,” explained Nogah, “are magical draughts brewed in Sembia. I got them from Captain Thoster. You remember Thoster? His birth was an unlooked-for complication, but it has proved useful. In any event, if imbibed, this liquid allows humanoids to breathe water.” Curampah merely blinked, but Nogah recognized the confusion that tightened his scales. “You wonder what use these are to us; after all, as a superior breed, we can already breathe air and water both. However, another effect of the elixir renders the imbiber immune to the crushing weight of extreme watery depths. It shall work for us as well as for any humanoid.” She handed the junior whip one of the vials. He carefully removed the wax-sealed stopper and sucked its contents down without mixing too much of it with the surrounding water. She did the same with her own elixir. It tasted of salt and kelp. Curampah examined his hands and scaled forearms. He said, “I feel no different.” “We shall see,” she replied. Nogah gave a slight tug on the reins, enough that the nautilus shell moved several body lengths away from the green stone and the black six-sided door. “Now, Curampah�open that metallic door. Let us discover what these mind flayers worked so feverishly to uncover.” She gestured to the entrance with her staff. The junior whip pushed away from the coach deck and swam toward the door embedded in the green mantle stone. To his credit, he merely hesitated, saying nothing, when he realized he swam alone while she remained behind, watching. She judged the protective effect surrounding the coach ended somewhere halfway between the nautilus and the door. When he made it all the way to the six-sided valve without ill effect, Nogah joined him. Unsealing the valve was a lengthy process. Having no other way to force it, the two whips were finally reduced to directing co-generated strokes of lightning against the dull metal. Again. And again. They rested between each blast just long enough to rekindle their capacity to produce the next electrical discharge. Each subsequent blast showed some effect, just enough to hint that persistence would eventually sear the metal through. The only question was, how many bolts? Nogah fretted. The effects of the elixir were temporary. Worse, the undead mind flayer was likely regenerating its own strength while they spent theirs against the stubborn entranceway. Finally, the valve seared through. Inrushing water snatched both her and Curampah, wrenching them through the irregular, red-hot puncture. Agonizing heat seared her flank. A mesh of madly spinning bubbles blinded her. The inrushing water dredged her forward, down an irregularly dug tunnel. She tumbled wildly, end over end. She flailed, trying to get a hold on something, anything. A muffled scream sounded somewhere within the roar of rushing water. Was it Curam� A jutting rock smashed her temple, and she screamed too. She was hurtled along, her voice lost in the boil of crushing water. Nogah’s mind whirled as she tried to gain her bearings. She was able to do so only when the inrushing water finally filled the space beyond the door. Though remnants of turbulence still spiraled around the narrow tunnel, Nogah managed to halt her forward momentum. Bruised and burnt, the whip praised the Sea Mother for her survival. She floated in cold darkness. A figure drifted past her, limp and slowly revolving. It was Curampah. His arms were broken, and his head bore a terrible puncture from which dark fluid thickly jetted into the water, spiraling around his drifting body. She hissed, a loss assaulting her like a physical blow. Poor Curampah; his faith had proved too weak. Then she saw what the illithids had delved so deeply to unearth. The merest edges of something. Something horrible. The mere act of trying to comprehend it was like scraping her naked brain with a trowel. Surely it was an abomination. She turned to swim free, flexing her legs for the first mighty escape stroke… Nogah blinked, and in that instant, her perception shifted. Curiosity rekindled. Instead of swimming away as if her sanity depended upon it, she drifted closer through the swirling blood and sediment, hardly realizing she did so. She still couldn’t grasp the magnitude of the image. She tried to wrap some mote of comprehension around the object, partly chiseled from stone… from stone whose age dwarfed the mountains above. Which meant the enigma, the massive thing that refused to clearly reveal itself to her understanding, was older than continents. Blinking, Nogah shuddered. Had the Sea Mother sent her to unbury this artifact, to finish what the mind flayers had started? A head-size stone lay near the greater object yet bound in its stone matrix. It seemed the illithids had broken away a sample from the far more gargantuan object still frozen in the wall, before their dig outside the seal had drowned. She said a quick prayer to the Sea Mother, asking for guidance. Her inquiry fell into a void of silence. Her hand moved to trace the spherical artifact. If she couldn’t grasp the whole, perhaps the tiny piece would yield up clues. She picked it up. What was it? A stone bauble? A tiny portion of a… what? A petrified remnant of some long-dead sea beast? Something like that, a strange certainty informed her, though even that notion was, somehow, a failure of imagination. If she grasped a piece of something far larger, that which was in turn only the merest tip of something… monstrous. The elixir’s duration was almost complete. Without giving herself time to weigh the decision, she retained her grip on the loose piece, rough from where the illithids had cut it away from its parent. Her first impression had been correct�it was essentially round but already seemed lighter in her hands. Though the object was about the size of her head, she was able to carry it without difficulty. As she kicked back toward the nautilus, past the drifting corpse of her junior whip, her fingers began to tingle, then her arms. Odd notions suggested themselves, like worms insinuating themselves through Nogah’s consciousness. Odd, even disquieting. But so fascinating…