R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation (8 page)

A high priestess, from House Fey-Branche judging from the livery of her retainers, emerged from her curtained litter to inspect riding lizards with an eye as knowledgeable and a hand as steady as any groom’s. A somewhat seedy looking boy, perhaps a disfavored son from one of the lesser Houses, engaged a cobbler in conversation while a confederate opened his voluminous mantle to slip an expensive pair of snakeskin boots inside. Male commoners, obliged to lower their eyes to every female and step aside for every noble of either gender, compensated by sneering and swaggering their way among the creatures less exalted than any drow. These latter were a motley assortment of beings—gray dwarves, the goggle-eyed fish-men called kuo-toas, and even a huge, horned ogre mage from the World Above—bold enough to trade or even dwell in a dark elf city. Lowliest of all, at least as numerous as the free but in their utter insignificance far easier to overlook, were the slaves. Orc, gnoll, and bugbear warriors guarded their masters and mistresses, harried, starveling goblins fetched and carried for the merchants, and little reptilian kobolds collected litter and hauled it away.

Pharaun knew from occasional errands there that if this hub of commerce had existed in one of the lands that saw the sky, it would have been exceptionally noisy. But the Menzoberranyr, to keep their cavern from roaring with a constant echoing clamor, had laid subtle enchantments about the smooth stone floor. Sounds close at hand were as audible as was natural, but those farther away faded and blended to the faint drone he and Ryld had heard while sitting on the brink of Tier Breche.

In the Bazaar, several of the magical buffers operated in close proximity to one another. To newcomers, the effect could be a little disconcerting as a single step sufficed to carry them from whispering quiet to raucous noise, the full volume of an auctioneer’s shout or a piper’s skirling.

Happily, no such enchantments existed to suppress the smells of the marketplace, a glorious olfactory tapestry redolent of spice, exotic produce imported from the surface world and, alas, a little past its prime, mulled wine, leather, burned frying oil, rothé dung, freshly spilled blood, and a thousand other things. Pharaun closed his eyes and breathed in the scent.

“This is always grand, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” answered Ryld.

For his excursion away from Tier Breche, Ryld had tossed a

piwafwi
around his burly shoulders. The cloak covered his dwarfmade armor and short sword, and its cowl obscured his features, but no garment could have hidden the enormous weapon sheathed across his back. Ryld called the greatsword Splitter, and while Pharaun deplored the name as ugly and prosaic, he had to admit that it was apt. In his friend’s capable hands, the enchanted weapon could with a single swing cleave almost anything in two.

Ryld looked entirely relaxed, but the wizard knew the appearance was in one sense deceptive. The Master of Melee-Magthere was reflexively scrutinizing their surroundings for signs of danger with a facility that even Pharaun, who regarded himself as considerably more observant than most, could never match.

“You suppose,” Pharaun repeated. “Is that just your usual glumness speaking, or do you find something lacking?”

“I do,” said Ryld. He waved his hand in a gesture that took in the diverse throng, the stalls, and the maze of paths snaking among them. “I think the Bazaar could use some order.”

Pharaun grinned and said, “Careful, or I’ll have to report you for blasphemy. It’s chaos that made us, and made us what we are.”

“Right. Chaos is life. Chaos is creativity. Chaos makes us strong. I remember the creed, but as a practical matter, don’t you see that all this confusion could serve as a mask for the city’s enemies? They could use it to smuggle their spies and assassins in and to smuggle stolen secrets and treasure out.”

“I’m sure they do. That’s certainly the way our agents operate in marketplaces elsewhere in the Underdark.”

An orc female came scurrying through the crowd with her head down and a parchment clutched in her hand. Perhaps her master had threatened her with a whipping if she didn’t deliver a message quickly. She tried to dodge through the narrow space between Pharaun and another pedestrian, misstepped, and bumped into the wizard.

The pig-faced slave looked up and saw that she’d just jostled an elegantly and expensively dressed dark elf. Her mouth with its prominent lower canines fell open in terror. With a flick of his fingers, Pharaun bade her begone. She turned and ran.

“Then the Council should control the Bazaar properly,” said Ryld. “Don’t just send the occasional patrol marching through to discourage thievery. License the merchants. Conduct routine searches of their pack animals, tents, and kiosks.”

“From what I understand,” said Pharaun, “it’s been tried, and every time it was, the Bazaar became less profitable and wound up pouring fewer coins into the coffers of the matron mothers. I daresay the same thing would happen today. Regulation would also inconvenience all the Houses who are themselves running illicit operations hereabouts. I assure you, a goodly number of them do.”

Pharaun should know. Before his exile from his own family, he and Sabal had played a substantial role in House Mizzrym’s covert and highly illegal trade with the deep gnomes, or svirfneblin, arguably the deadliest of the dark elves’ many foes.

“If you say so,” said Ryld. “Not being a noble, I wouldn’t know about things like that.”

The wizard sighed. It was true, his friend was about as humbly born as a dark elf could be, but during his climb to his present eminence, he had perforce become fully acquainted with the ways of the aristocracy. It was just that at odd moments he took an obscure satisfaction in pretending to a peasantlike ignorance.

“Well, I rejoice that you remain so close to your roots,” Pharaun said. “I’m counting on your familiarity with the slums to see me safely through my encounters with the lower orders.”

“I’ve been wondering when that’s going to happen. Shouldn’t we have gone to Eastmyr or the Braeryn straightaway?”

“No point going there blind if we can acquire some intelligence first.”

Pharaun supposed that in fact, they’d better collect it quickly, but it was a pity. He could have used some idle time drifting through emporia like, for instance, Daelein Shimmerdark’s Decanter with its astonishing collection of wines, liquors, and, for those who knew how to ask, potions and poisons from all over the world. Perhaps it would clear his head.

Or maybe it would only give him another enigma to ponder, for though there was still plenty to buy, it seemed to him the Bazaar as a whole was offering fewer goods than usual. Why was that? Could it possibly have anything to do with the runaway males?

And what about the demon spider that had materialized above him and Ryld on the plateau and proceeded to break into ArachTinilith? Did that tie in, or was it simply a gambit in one of Menzoberranzan’s innumerable secret feuds that had nothing at all to do with his concerns?

He had to grin. He knew so little, and what little he had gleaned was scarcely a source of reassurance.

“There it is,” said Ryld.

“Indeed.”

Carved from a long, relatively low protrusion of stone, the Jewel Box sat just inches beyond what custom decreed to be the limits of the Bazaar, where all traders were required to shift their stalls to a different spot every sixty-six days. Despite its lack of a signboard or other external advertisement, the establishment had always attracted a steady trickle of shoppers and merchants, and when the two masters descended the stair that ran from street level to the limestone door, Pharaun could hear considerably more sounds of revelry that usual. There was laughter, animated conversation, and a longhorn, yarting, and hand-drum trio playing a lively tune. The third string of the yarting was a little flat.

Ryld knocked with the brass knocker, whereupon a little panel slid open in the center of the door. A pair of eyes peered out, then disappeared. The portal swung open.

Pharaun grinned. In all his visits there, he had never seen anyone turned away, and he suspected the business with the peephole was just an agreeable bit of nonsense intended to make a visit to the Jewel Box seem even more piquantly criminal. Perhaps the doorman actually would attempt to dissuade a female if one had sought admittance.

The low-ceilinged room beyond the threshold smelled of a sweet and mildly intoxicating incense. The three musicians had crowded themselves onto a tiny platform against the west wall. A few of the patrons were attending to the performance, but most had elected to focus on other pleasures. At one table, half a dozen disheveled fellows tossed back their liquor simultaneously in what appeared to be a drinking contest. Other males threw daggers at the target on the wall with a blithe disregard for the safety of those standing in the immediate vicinity of their mark. Dice clattered, cards rustled and slapped, and coins scraped across tabletops as the luckier gamblers raked in their winnings.

Ryld studied his surroundings with his customary unobtrusive vigilance, surreptitiously cataloging every potential threat. Still, Pharaun was amused to see that his friend’s eyes lingered on the web-shaped
sava
boards for an instant, which was likely all the time he required to analyze the four contests in progress.

Sava
was an intricate game representing a war between two noble Houses—at least that was what it currently represented. Pharaun had seen an antique set that recapitulated in miniature the drow’s eternal struggle with another race, but such pieces had gone out of fashion long before his birth, probably because no player had wanted to be the dwarves.

With its gridlike board regulating movement and its playing pieces of varying capacities,
sava
resembled games devised by many cultures, but celebrating the chaos in their blood the drow had found a way to introduce an element of randomness into what would otherwise unfold with a mechanical precision. Once per game, each player could forgo his normal move to throw the
sava
dice. If the spider came up on each, he could move one of his opponent’s pieces to eliminate any man of its own color within its normal reach, a rule that acknowledged the dark elves’ propensity for doing down their kin even in the face of a serious external threat.

Pharaun, who privately considered himself cleverer than Ryld, had always been a little chagrinned that he couldn’t defeat the weapons master at
sava
, but alas, his friend wielded mother, priestess, wizard, warrior, orc slave soldier, and dice as brilliantly as he did a sword. Indeed, he claimed that fighting and
sava
were the same thing, though Pharaun had never quite understood what the assertion meant.

The wizard clapped Ryld on the shoulder and said, “Play. Amuse yourself. Win their gold. Just remember to make conversation while you’re at it. See what you can learn. Meanwhile, I’ll try my luck in the cellar.”

Ryld nodded.

Pharaun navigated his way across the crowded room to the bar. Behind it on a stool sat wizened, one-legged Nym, an elderly male who for sheer surly, unwavering misanthropy rivaled any demon the Master of Sorcere had ever conjured. The old retired battle mage was happily engaged in snarling threats, obscenities, and orders at the goblin thralls pouring drinks, but he grudgingly suspended the harassment long enough to accept a handful of gold. In return, he tendered a worn, numbered leather tab with several keys attached.

Thus equipped, Pharaun walked through the arch beside the bar and down another flight of steps. At the bottom waited the real business of the Jewel Box and the reason Nym had not seen fit to hang a placard outside.

In Menzoberranzan, where a goddess and her priestesses reigned supreme, few female dark elves ever found it necessary to sell their bodies. Only a handful of the sick and infirm, dwelling in the most abject need, had ever stooped to such a degradation. Accordingly, one might assume that any male wishing to purchase intimate companionship would find his choice limited to these rare unappealing specimens or the females of one of the inferior species.

But that wasn’t quite the case, at least not if a male had a heavy purse. The reason was that, while they generally devoted their military efforts to fighting cloakers, svirfneblin, and other competing civilizations of the Underdark, drow cities on rare occasions waged war on one another. Once in a while, such conflicts yielded female prisoners.

The prudent, legitimate thing to do with such potentially dangerous captives was interrogate, torture, and kill them. That fact notwithstanding, Nym had on several occasions managed to bribe officers to give him their prisoners, whom he then smuggled into Menzoberranzan and down to the cellar of the Jewel Box.

Nym had gone to all this trouble based on the shrewd and wellproven assumption that a goodly number of Menzoberranyr males would pay handsomely for the privilege of dominating a female, and in his establishment, one could do anything one wanted with a captive. Nym would even provide a customer with a bastinado, a brazier of coals, thumbscrews . . . his only stipulation being that one must pay a surcharge if one left a permanent mark.

Since the brothel’s existence was an open secret, Pharaun wasn’t sure why the matron mothers hadn’t shut it down. On the face of it, it certainly seemed to encourage disrespect for the ruling gender. Perhaps they felt that if a male had a refuge in which to act out his resentments, it would make him all the more deferential to the females in his home. More likely, Nym was slipping them a substantial portion of the take.

At any rate, the Jewel Box seemed a reasonable place to seek information concerning rogue males, especially if one had a spy in place. Pharaun wasn’t confident that he did anymore, but one never knew.

The stairs emptied into a hallway of numbered doors. Moans of passions and grunts of pain sounded faintly from behind several of them. It was busier than usual.

The mage strolled down the passage until he found number fourteen. He hesitated for an instant, then scowled and turned the largest of his keys in the lock. The door swung open.