Baldur's Gate II Throne of Bhaal (9 page)

Imoen froze as a pair of lumbering oafs stumbled across her path less than a dozen feet away, leaning on each other for support. They paused, and Imoen felt a wave of fear sweep over her. Could they see her?

Slowly, she dropped her hand to her belt. Tucked inside was a scroll she had been given as a gift from the monks at Candlekeep. At least, that was the story she would tell if anyone ever asked. In truth, she had borrowed the enchanted parchment from the massive Candlekeep library, certain nobody would miss this one insignificant scroll.

Imoen had displayed a certain aptitude for the arcane arts while at Candlekeep. Her quick and agile mind easily mastered the few minor cantrips she had been taught, but she lacked the disciplined and studious nature to truly develop her magical talents. Still, she had learned enough to be able to use this particular scroll if the situation should arise.

The incantation was a simple one, but useful. It would render her—and anyone standing within a few yards of her—invisible. Imoen could have read the parchment before venturing into the soldier’s camp and walked right through the light of the brightest fire without fear, but she was loathe to waste the precious scroll. Once used, it was gone forever, and with the cover of darkness she had felt confident her natural abilities could keep her from being discovered.

Now, she realized, it was too late. Even if she did try to use the scroll, the men were close enough to grab her before she finished the incantation. Her hand silently slid from the scroll stashed in her belt to the dagger tucked in beside it.

But the shadowy figures made no move toward her. She heard one of them mumble something incoherent before doubling over and disgorging the contents of his stomach on the ground at his feet. The other laughed and slapped his friend on the back then they continued on, walking heedlessly through the steaming vomit in their path.

The young woman let her breath out in a long, silent sigh of relief. She hadn’t even been aware she was holding it, but she knew the terrible consequences of being discovered. She was young, but not so naive that she wasn’t aware of what would happen to an attractive female spy captured by an army of drunken soldiers at night.

Abdel would never do such a thing, Imoen was certain—not to her, not to any woman. Maybe it had something to do with the blood running through his veins. The more she thought about it, the more plausible that explanation seemed. Maybe it was Bhaal’s blood that set him apart from other men.

Sarevok was also a Child of Bhaal, and Imoen sensed he was also different from most men. When the armored warrior spoke to her or turned his visor in her direction Imoen knew he was not ogling her with lust in his eyes. The offensive animal heat most men gave off in her presence was absent. Sarevok was cold as death itself.

In fact, Sarevok had displayed none of the worldly appetites since joining their little group. Imoen suspected he wasn’t even truly alive—not in any real sense of the word. Maybe that was why he stayed with them. As Imoen understood it, Abdel had brought Sarevok back to the mortal world by sharing a minute part of his Bhaal essence with his half brother. Maybe the dark warrior was hoping he could eventually convince Abdel to share enough to restore him fully to life.

Imoen shook her head, trying to clear her mind. She needed to focus on the task at hand. A few minutes later she was silently approaching the walls of Saradush, the pathetic drunken lookouts of the army now far behind her, lost in the shadows of the night. She knew the Saradush guards atop the battlements would be more alert, watching for a clandestine invasion by the enemy beyond the gates. But Imoen was confident the night’s gloom would conceal a single slim figure clad in black garments as she glided along the base of the stone wall.

She let her eyes wander. Now that she was clear of the fires her eyesight was beginning to adjust to the darkness. The walls were well built and showed little evidence of crumbling decay. The walls of Candlekeep had been just as solid, and Imoen knew of at least half a dozen ways to get past them.

Perhaps, she mused, that was her gift from her immortal father. Abdel and Sarevok were violent warriors, harbingers of death and destruction as Bhaal himself had been. But wasn’t Bhaal also a god of secrets, cunning, deception, and stealth? Maybe what she lacked in brawn she made up for with her ability to become one with the darkness, to move without a sound, to slip unseen into private chambers and locked rooms.

Glancing up at the stars to get her bearings, Imoen realized she was on the south face of the walled town. She slowly made her way clockwise around the perimeter, her hand running along the stone surface feeling for changes in temperature or texture that might indicate a hidden entrance built into the rock.

Once she made her way around to the west wall it was her eyes, not her hands, that located the entrance she had been seeking. A few feet ahead of where she stood the uneven ground had been dug into a winding trench running parallel to the wall. The ditch was several feet deep and maybe a yard across.

Cautiously, Imoen stepped down into the culvert and felt the damp earth sink beneath her slight weight. She crouched down, and the thick stench of human waste flooded her nostrils.

She stood up, barely able to suppress a choking cough that might have given her position away. Stepping out of the muck she did her best to clean her boots off, then followed the path of the ditch back to its source. A large stone pipe extended several feet out from the stone wall, dripping its foul muck into the drainage ditch. The mouth of the pipe was several feet across, and from the stench emanating from the access point Imoen had no doubt it would lead into the main sewer system below the city streets.

She had used the sewage drain at Candlekeep on only one occasion. The monks there held themselves in great esteem, but after slogging through the filthy muck that night Imoen could have told them with confidence that their feces did, in fact, stink. She had vowed that night that she would never crawl on her hands and knees through excrement again.

But the first hours of night had already passed. If Imoen and her companions hoped to get inside Saradush before daybreak, she couldn’t afford to waste time seeking out a less distasteful route. Knowing she had no other choice, she turned and made her way back toward the distant fires of the army camped outside the walls of Saradush.

“I am not crawling through that filth.” Jaheira kept her voice to that of a whisper, but Abdel still recoiled from the adamant tone of her words.

“We don’t have time to find another way in,” Imoen whispered back. “I’ll go first.”

As the young woman’s body disappeared into the foul-smelling stone pipe at the base of the wall, Jaheira turned away in revulsion. Abdel said nothing. Jaheira had already sacrificed so much for him, he couldn’t bring himself to ask her this favor. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

The half-elf gave a weary sigh. “I suppose excrement is as much a part of nature as lilacs or roses.” She dropped to her knees and crawled into the sewage drain.

The stone pipe had been large enough for Imoen to fit through without any difficulty, and Jaheira was also able to slip her muscular but slender body through the small opening.

“The main tunnels of the sewer system are just up ahead.” Imoen’s voice sounded deep and hollow, emanating from the mouth of the stone tube. “I’m only a few yards beyond the wall and I already have enough room to stand up.”

Abdel tilted his head at Sarevok, and his half brother lowered himself to his hands and knees and crawled into the pipe without protest. There were two reasons Abdel wanted his half brother to go before him. Clad in his heavy plate armor, Sarevok’s body was larger and bulkier than even Abdel’s enormous frame. If Sarevok could fit, Abdel had no need to worry about becoming stuck himself.

And he still didn’t trust Sarevok enough to expose his back to him.

The fit was tight for the armored man. He had to drop flat onto his stomach and pull himself forward with his mighty gauntlets. Even so, the razor edges protruding from Sarevok’s shoulders and back grated harshly against the stone of the pipe as he inched his way along. Abdel cast a quick glance to see if there was any reaction to the sound, but he heard no cries of alarm, and no one materialized from the darkness.

“I am through, brother.” The acoustics of the pipe made Sarevok’s voice even more unnerving than usual.

Abdel removed his blade from the scabbard on his back and clenched it in his right fist as he clambered down into the pipe. The cold, oozing muck squeezed between his fingers and the knuckles of his fist as he crawled along. Like Sarevok, he had to lie almost flat, supporting his weight with his hands and knees so that his chest and face were mere inches above the foul sludge seeping slowly down the length of the drain.

The stench was all but unbearable, but Abdel steeled his stomach and forced himself to go forward. Within the pipe all was black, but ahead he could see a faint, familiar glow. Jaheira must have cast another spell of illumination.

Mercifully, the length of the pipe was less than a dozen feet, and soon Abdel found himself standing with the others in the main tunnels of the sewers beneath Saradush. The tip of Jaheira’s staff shone with a magical light, and in the soft brightness Abdel could clearly see the disgusting damp stains that had soaked into both Imoen’s and Jaheira’s clothes. The entire front of Sarevok’s body was covered in the brownish green slime from the pipe. It dripped from his armor with a steady plop, plop, plop. Abdel’s own arms and legs were similarly foul, but there was little he could do about it here.

Mercifully, the urge to retch was slowly fading as Abdel’s nose became accustomed to the stench of the sewers. There was now room to stand up—at least, room for Imoen and Jaheira to stand. Sarevok and Abdel had to hunch over to keep their heads from banging against the ceilings above them.

“Well done, young one,” Jaheira said to Imoen. “Though I cannot say I would readily venture on such a journey again in the near future.”

Imoen took the compliment in stride. “Well, I got us in. Now where?”

The tunnel ran both north and south from where they had entered. Abdel had no doubt they would find it branching off in countless directions no matter which way they went. Without a map, any choice they made in this labyrinth would be nothing but a guess.

“North,” he finally said, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt. Fortunately, nobody questioned him on his choice.

There was enough room for them to walk two abreast in the tunnels, so Abdel and Sarevok took the lead, splashing through the ankle-deep sludge that covered the stone floor. Rats scattered at the sound of their approach, and the beetles and roaches that covered the walls and ceilings scrambled away in terror as the light from Jaheira’s glowing quarter staff fell upon them. Occasionally Abdel felt something brush against his foot, a creature hidden beneath the slime they waded through. Fortunately none of the denizens of the Saradush sewers were curious enough, or hungry enough, to attack the strange invaders of their foul world.

They wandered for hours beneath the city, Abdel randomly choosing their path each time they came to a junction or fork in the path. They avoided the smaller side passages, sticking to the main sewer tunnel. Eventually, Abdel reasoned, it would have to lead them out.

Jaheira’s spell had worn off and been re-cast several times, and Abdel was beginning to doubt his leadership ability. His back and neck ached from the perpetual hunch the low roof forced on him, and he could feel himself becoming ill from prolonged exposure to the diseased waste they were trudging through. Did that pile of dung in the corner look familiar? Had they passed this way once already?

He was just about to admit defeat when Imoen piped, “There, up ahead… there’s a gate!”

Rushing forward, Abdel discovered Imoen had not been entirely correct. It was not a gate her sharp eyes had seen but a grate—an iron grate blocking their path, each of its round bars as thick as the sellsword’s massive wrist. The bars showed no evidence of corrosion or rust. Just beyond the grate was a set of stairs leading up toward the city surface.

Abdel pulled on the bars, but the grate didn’t budge.

“Can you call upon the powers of Mielikki to get us past this?” he asked his half-elf lover.

The druid shook her head. “Here in the city my magic is weak,” Jaheira explained, “I can barely feel the touch of nature. She recoils from these man-made cities.”

“If there was a lock of some kind I could pick it,” Imoen offered, “but I don’t see anything like that.”

The big man sighed. “All right, we do this the hard way.”

Without being asked, Sarevok stepped up beside his half brother and seized hold of the bars with his mailed fists. Abdel secured his own grip.

“On three. One … two … three.”

The two giants heaved on the heavy grate with the strength of their half-immortal blood. Abdel’s jaw clenched, the muscles in his back knotted up, his arms quivered and shook with the strain. His massive shoulders bulged as he tried to wrench the iron bars loose from

their very settings. From the corner of his eye Abdel could see Sarevok’s armor quaking from the force of the mailed warrior’s own exertions.

The grate moved. Barely, but it moved. Abdel collapsed against the iron bars, gasping for breath. Sarevok slouched against the sewer wall. Though the armored warrior made no sound, his breastplate heaved in and out as if he was panting.

While the two men recovered, Jaheira came over to inspect the results of their work. “There are faint cracks in the stone,” she informed them. “A few more hard tugs, and the settings will crumble away like dust.”

In fact, it took nearly a dozen more long, exhausting pulls from the two men before the grate was dislodged. Had it not been for Abdel’s godlike recuperative powers— powers Sarevok seemed to share—the two men would have collapsed trembling from their efforts long before achieving their goal.

As it was, however, the grate wrenched free so suddenly that both Sarevok and Abdel were thrown off balance, stumbling back to land unceremoniously on their rumps in the foul liquid covering the sewer floor.