INDULGING THE GODS
Well, now we're knowing why the last fool died," Athrogate said when he and his two companions entered the house that had been offered to them in the southwestern quarter of Memnon.
They had come into the city earlier that morning, and on Entreri's insistence - at least for himself - had eschewed the better sections of the port, where all the taverns were located, and had gone straight to a ramshackle district where the houses were no more than flimsy walls and floors of stone and dirt - and that was for the people fortunate enough to even have a shelter at all. Many of their neighbors, the poorest citizens by far in the city, slept on the side of the sandy avenues, often without even lean-tos to protect them from the occasional rains. A flash of gold from Jarlaxle had spared the trio that fate, at least, and the man, one of the clerks from the Protector's House, the temple of Selune, had told them of their good fortune, for the owner of the house had recently departed the mortal world, leaving it open for the taking.
Jarlaxle groaned when he entered behind the dwarf, and knew he had greatly over-bribed the clerk. The place was no more than four walls, a roof that showed as much sky as reed, a floor of dirt, and a single table of piled stones so covered by crawling bugs - evil-looking reddish-brown critters with long pincers and an upward-curling tail - that it seemed obvious to the drow that the creatures had called the place home for a long, long time.
Athrogate walked over to the table and snorted, seeming amused. "Back home, we had a name for this," he said, and he extended one fat thumb and squished a crawler flat with a crunching sound. "Buffet."
"Do not dare eat that," said Jarlaxle, and Athrogate gave one of his characteristic "bwahahas" in reply.
Entreri walked in last. He glanced around and gave it all hardly a thought.
"Seemin' a bit too familiar to ye, by me own thinkin'," Athrogate teased.
Entreri looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but just shook his head and turned away. "They have midday services in the square overlooking the docks," he said to Jarlaxle. "I will be there, south side of the Protector's House." He turned and started back out the ill-fitting door.
"You are leaving us?" the drow asked.
"I never invited you here to begin with," Entreri reminded him as he walked away.
"Bwahaha!" roared Athrogate.
"Enough, good dwarf," Jarlaxle said, though he never took his eyes off the door. "This is difficult for our friend."
"Place didn't seem to bother him all that much," said Athrogate.
Jarlaxle turned to face him. "This?" he asked. "I suspect that Artemis Entreri is well acquainted with similar accommodations. But returning to this city, the place of his birth and early life, brings with it some painful memories, I would expect, which is why he needed to come here."
To Jarlaxle's surprise, Athrogate winced at that, and nodded but didn't otherwise reply, a very uncharacteristic response that revealed quite a bit to the perceptive, worldly drow.
"So are ye thinking the time's come to do some drinking?" the dwarf blurted. "I a'weighin' to go hear the prayin', or to make me a treat with these critters to eat! Bwahaha!"
"Is that all there is to Athrogate?" Jarlaxle asked in all seriousness, cutting short the dwarf's outburst. Athrogate stared at him hard, suddenly sobered.
"You are free of all feelings, it seems, other than your own humor," Jarlaxle pressed, and Athrogate's face tightened with every word. "Such as it is. Is there nothing but your pleasure?"
"I might be saying the same to yerself."
"You might, but my answer would involve a long history of explanation."
"Or ye might be telling me to mind me own business."
"Indeed, and which will you do, my hairy friend?"
"Ye're going to a place where ye don't belong."
"Your level of carefree is not attained without cause," said the drow. "Something to drink, something to hit, and a joke to make them groan - is that all there is to Athrogate?"
"Ye don't know nothing."
Indeed, Jarlaxle thought and smirked and decided to keep the irony of that double negative to himself. "So tell me."
Athrogate ground his teeth and slowly shook his head.
"Should I fill you with potent drink before I ask such things?" Jarlaxle asked.
"Ye do and ye'll find the ball end of a morningstar crunched into the side o' yer head."
Jarlaxle took the threat with a laugh, and let it drop. In discussion, at least, for in his thoughts he played it through over and over again. Something had created Athrogate as he was; something had broken the dwarf to that base level, where he had no emotional defense other than a wall of ridicule and self-ridicule, fastened by the occasional rap of a mighty morningstar and hidden by the more-than-occasional drink.
Jarlaxle nodded, thinking that he had just found something interesting, something he meant to explore, despite the dwarf's very serious threat.
The scene was all too familiar to Artemis Entreri and sent his thoughts careening back across the years. Before him, in the wide square that fronted the gigantic Protector's House, by far the largest structure in that part of the city, stood, sat, and lay the rabble of southwestern Memnon. They were the dispossessed, the poorest of the poor in the city, nearly all of them suffering the maladies so common among those who could not find enough to eat or drink, who could not keep clean, who could not find shelter from the rain.
But they were not hopeless. No, the men on the eastern side of the square, richly dressed and bejeweled, would not allow for such a state of despair. They called out in melodic voices of the glories of Selune and of the wonders that awaited her servants. Their pages went among the crowd, offering good news and good cheer, speaking of salvation and promises of an eternity free of all pain.
But there was more to this than cheerleading, Entreri knew all too well. There were promises of immediate relief from ailments, and even suggestions - normally reserved for grieving parents - that the afterlife for their dearly departed could be made even more accommodating than the promises of their god.
"Would you have your child suffer on the Fugue Plane a moment longer than he must?" one young acolyte said to a tearful woman not far from Entreri. "Of course not! Come along, good woman. Every moment we tarry is another moment your dear Toyjo will suffer."
It wasn't the first time the acolyte had pulled that same woman forward, Entreri could tell, and he watched as the pair shuffled through the crowd, the acolyte tugging her along.
"By Moradin, but yerselfs are calling me kin heartless," Athrogate muttered as he and Jarlaxle walked up beside Entreri. "Such a brotherhood ye got here. Makes me want to be findin' a wizard that'd polymorph me into a human." He ended with a fake sniffle, and wiped his eye.
Entreri flashed him a sour look, but as he was no more enamored with his fellow humans than was Athrogate, he really had no practical response. He looked to Jarlaxle instead - and did a double-take, still not used to seeing the drow with golden hair and tanned skin.
"You know this scene?" Jarlaxle asked.
"They are selling indulgences," Entreri explained.
"Selling?" Athrogate snorted. "These dirty fools got coin for spending?"
"What little they have, they spend."
Athrogate snorted as one particularly skinny man ambled by. "Ye might be better off in buying a cookie, if ye're asking me."
"The priests will heal their wounds for a fee?" Jarlaxle asked.
"Minor healing, and temporary at best," said Entreri. "Most who wish for physical heals are wasting their time. They are selling the indulgence of the god Selune. For a few silver pieces, a grieving mother can spare her dead child a tenday in the Fugue, or can facilitate her own way when she dies, if that is her choice."
"They are paying for a priest's promise of such a thing?"
Entreri looked at him and shrugged.
Jarlaxle looked back over the throng - and it was indeed a throng of poor souls - then focused on the activity near the temple doors. Lines of dirty peasants waited their turn at the desks that had been set up. One by one, they walked forward and handed over a pittance, and one of the two men at the desk scribbled down a name.
"What a marvelous business," the drow said. "For a few comforting words and a line of text..." He gave an envious laugh, but to the side, Athrogate spat.
Both Entreri and Jarlaxle regarded the dwarf.
"They're telling them women that turning over their coins'll help dead kids?"
"Some," said Entreri.
"Orcs," muttered the dwarf. "Worse than orcs." He spat again and stormed off.
Entreri and Jarlaxle exchanged a confused glance, and Jarlaxle set off after the dwarf. Entreri watched them go, but didn't follow.
He remained at the square for quite a while, and every so often found his eyes drawn to a street entrance across the way, an avenue that wound down toward the docks.
A place he knew well.
"The Fugue Plane is a place of torment," Devout Gositek assured the nervous little man who stood before his desk. The man's hands worked feverishly about a tiny coin purse, rolling the dirty bag incessantly.
"I've not much," he said through his two remaining teeth, crooked and yellow.
"The charity given by the poor is more greatly appreciated, of course," Gositek recited, and the devout brothers standing guard behind him both smirked. One even winked at the other, for Gositek had done nothing but complain to them all morning, as soon as the listing had been pegged in the foyer, naming Gositek as one of the indulgence agents every day for the next tenday. He would spend his mornings, collecting coin, and his afternoons offering prayers for the paupers at the smelly graveyard. It was not an envied duty at the Protector's House.
"It is not the amount of coin," Gositek lied, "but rather the amount of sacrifice that is important for Selune. So the poor are blessed, don't you see? Your opportunities for freeing your loved ones from the Fugue, and shortening your own visit, are far greater than those of the rich man."
The dirty old peasant rolled his tiny purse yet again. He licked his lips repeatedly as he fumbled about and extracted a single coin. Then, with a nearly toothless grin that spoke of lechery and deceit, he handed the coin to Devout Gositek's assistant, who sat beside him to watch over the heavy metal box, a slot in the top to accept the donations.
The peasant seemed quite pleased with himself, of course, but Gositek's glare was uncompromising. "You hold a purse," the devout said. "It bulges with coin, and you offer a single piece?"
"My only silver," the old peasant wheezed. "The rest're but copper, and just a score."
Gositek just stared at him.
"But my belly's growling bad," the man whined.
"For food or for drink?"
The peasant stammered and sputtered, but couldn't quite seem to find the words to deny the charge - and indeed, the stench that wafted from him would have made any such denial seem rather foolish.
Gositek sat back in his wooden chair and folded his arms in front of him. "I am disappointed," he said.
"But my belly..."
"I am not disappointed in your lack of charity, good brother," Gositek interrupted. "But in your continuing lack of common sense."
The peasant stared at him blankly.
"Twice the chance!" Gositek derided him. "Twice the opportunity to impress your devotion upon sacred Selune! You can sacrifice greatly, for a pittance, and at the same time better your earthly standing by controlling your impure thoughts. Forsake your coin to Selune, and forego your drink for yourself. Do you not understand?"
The man stuttered and shook his head.
"Each coin buys you double the indulgence and more," said Gositek, extending his hand.
The peasant slapped the purse into it.
Gositek smiled at the man, but it was a cold grin indeed, the smug grin of the cat dominating the mouse before feasting. Slowly and deliberately, Gositek pulled open the purse and dumped the meager contents into his free hand. His eyes flashed as he noted a silver piece among the two dozen coppers, and he looked up from it to the lying peasant, who squirmed and withered under that gaze.
"Record the name," Gositek instructed his assistant.
"Bullium," the peasant said, and he bobbed his head in a pathetic attempt to bow, and started away. He paused, though, and licked his lips again, staring at the pile of coins in Gositek's hand.
Devout Gositek pulled a few coppers from the pile, staring at the man all the while. He handed the rest to his assistant for the collection box, and started to put the others in the purse. He paused again, however, still staring at the man, and gave half of that pile to his assistant as well. Three coppers went into the purse, which Gositek handed back to the man.
But when the peasant grabbed it, Gositek didn't immediately let go.
"These are a loan, Bullium," he said, his tone grave and even. "Your indulgences are bought - a full year removed from your time on the Fugue Plane. But they are bought for the full contents of your purse, due to your reluctance and your lie about the second piece of silver. You have back three. I expect five returned to Selune to complete the purchase of the indulgence."
Still stupidly bobbing his head, the peasant grabbed the purse and shuffled away.
Beside the wooden chair, Gositek's assistant chuckled.
"You believe that Knellict and his band haven't done worse?" Jarlaxle asked when he at last caught up to the dwarf. They were almost back at their bug-filled shack by then.
"Knellict's a fool, and an ugly one, too," Athrogate grumbled. "Not much I'm liking there."
"But you served him, and the Citadel of Assassins."
"Better that than fight the dogs."
"So it is all pragmatism with you."
"If I knew what the word meant, I'd agree or not," said the dwarf. "What's that, a religion?"
"Practicality," Jarlaxle explained. "You do what serves your needs as you see fit."
"Don't everyone?"
Jarlaxle laughed at that. "To a degree, I expect. But few use that as the guiding principle of their lives."
"Maybe that's all I got left."
"Again you speak in riddles," said the drow, and when Athrogate scowled at him, Jarlaxle held up his hands defensively. "I know, I know. You do not wish to speak of it."
Athrogate snorted. "Ye ever hear o' Felbarr, elf?"
"Was he a dwarf?"
"Not a he, but a place. Citadel Felbarr."
Jarlaxle considered the name for a bit, then nodded. "Dwarven stronghold... east of Mithral Hall."
"South o' Adbar," Athrogate confirmed with a nod of his own. "Was me home and me place, and ne'er did me thoughts expect I'd ever be living anywhere but."
"But...?"
"An orc clan," Athrogate explained. "They come in hard and fast - I'm not even knowin' how many years ago it's been. Not enough and too many, if ye get me meaning."
"So the orcs sacked your home and now you cannot but wander?" asked Jarlaxle. "Surely your clan is about. Scattered perhaps, but..."
"Nah, me kin're back in Felbarr. Drove them orcs out, and none too long ago."
Athrogate's face grew tight as he said that, Jarlaxle noted, and he decided to pause there and let Athrogate digest it all. He had started the dwarf down a painful road, he knew, but he did not want to press Athrogate too much.
To his surprise, and his delight, the dwarf went on without prodding, running his mouth as if he were a river and the drow had just crashed through the beaver dam.
"Ye got young ones?" Athrogate asked.
"Children?" Jarlaxle chuckled. "None that I am aware of."
"Bah, but ye're missing, then," said the dwarf.
To Jarlaxle's surprise, there was moistness about Athrogate's eyes - something he never thought he'd see.
"You had children," Jarlaxle surmised, gauging Athrogate's reaction to his every word before speaking the next. "They were slain when the orcs invaded."
"Good sprites, one and all," Athrogate said, and he looked away, past Jarlaxle, as if his eyes were staring into a distant place and distant time. "And me Gerthalie - what dwarf could ever be thinking he'd be so blessed by Sharindlar to find himself a woman o' such charms?"
He paused and closed his eyes, and Jarlaxle swallowed hard and wondered if he had been wise in leading Athrogate back to that place.
"Yep, ye got it," the dwarf said, eyes popping wide. All hint of tears were gone, replaced by the wildness Jarlaxle had grown used to. "Orcs took 'em all. Watched me littlest one, Drenthro, die. In me arms, he went. Bah, but curse Moradin and all the rest for letting that happen!
"So we were chased out, but them orcs was too stupid to hold the place, and soon enough, they started fighting betwixt themselves. Me king called for a fight, and a fight he got, but meself didn't go. Surprised them all, don't ye doubt."
"Athrogate doesn't seem one to shy from a fight."
"And never's he been one. But not that time, elf. Couldn't go back there." He stood with his hands on hips, shaking his head. "Nothing there for me. They got their Felbarr back, but Felbarr's not me home no more."
"Perhaps now, after all these years...."
"Nah! Ain't one o' them who was alive when the orcs come is still alive now. I'm old, elf, older than ye'd believe, but a dwarf's memory is older than the dwarf himself. Them boys in Felbarr now wouldn't have me, and I wouldn't be wanting them to have me. Dolts. In the first try on getting the place back, more than three hunnerd years ago, Athrogate said no. They called me a coward, elf. Yep, can ye be believing that? Me own kin. Thinkin' me afraid o' orcs. I ain't afraid o' undead dragons! But to them, Athrogate's the coward."
"Because you would not partake of the retribution?" Not wanting to break the dwarf's momentum, Jarlaxle didn't speak the other part of his question, regarding Athrogate's recounting of time. Few dwarves lived three centuries, and none, to Jarlaxle's knowledge, could survive for so long and still retain the vigor and power of one such as Athrogate. Either he was confused with his dates, or there was even more to the creature than Jarlaxle had assumed.
"Because I wouldn't be going back into that cursed hole," Athrogate answered. "Seen too much o' me dead kin in every corner and every shadow."
"Athrogate died that day the orcs came," said Jarlaxle, and the dwarf's look was one of appreciation, telling the drow that he had spoken the truth. "But if that was centuries ago, perhaps now...."
"No!" the dwarf blurted. "Ain't nothing there for me. Ain't been nothing there for me in a dwarf's lifetime and more."
"So you set out to the east?"
"East, west, south - didn't much matter to meself," explained Athrogate. "Just anywhere but there."
"You have heard of Mithral Hall, then?"
"Sure, them Battlehammer boys. Good enough folk. They lost their place a hunnerd years after we lost Felbarr, but I'm hearing they got it back."
"Good enough folk?" asked Jarlaxle, and he filed away the confirmation of the timeline in his thoughts, for indeed, Mithral Hall had been lost to the duergar and the shadow dragon some two centuries before. "Or too good for Athrogate? Does Athrogate think himself unworthy? Were the barbs of your kin striking true?"
"Bah!" the dwarf snorted convincingly. "But what's good and what's bad? And what's mattering, elf? It's all a game with them gods laughing at us, ye're knowing as well as meself's knowing!"
"And so you laugh at everything, and hit whatever appears to need a hit."
"Hitting it good, too, but ain't I?"
"Better than almost any I've ever seen."
Athrogate snorted again. "Better'n any."
Jarlaxle received more than a few curious stares as he walked through the streets of the human-dominated city. They were not like the suspicious glares to which he had grown accustomed when he had walked as a drow, however, for there was no hatred, just curiosity, and more than a passing interest in his garments, which appeared far too rich for that poor section of Memnon.
In truth, the sum value of Jarlaxle's garments, just those he wore as he walked across the city, would have made a Waterdhavian lady of court jealous.
The drow shook all the distractions from his thoughts, reminding himself that the man he secretly followed was no novice to the ways of the thief. He knew that in all likelihood, Artemis Entreri had already detected the covert pursuit, but the man didn't show it.
Which of course meant nothing.
Entreri crossed the square before the temple with determined strides, making a beeline for an avenue on the southern side, a dusty way that sloped down and overlooked the southern harbor. With no cover available, Jarlaxle skirted the edge, and he feared that he'd lose the swift-moving Entreri because of his longer route. As he came around the southern edge of the square, though, he found that Entreri had slowed considerably. As the assassin made his way, Jarlaxle paralleled him, moving with all speed behind the row of shacks.
Within a few yards onto the avenue, Jarlaxle noted the visible change that had come over his friend, and never had he seen the sure and confident Entreri looking such. He seemed as if he could barely muster the strength to put one foot in front of the other. The blood had drained from his face, giving him a chalky visage, and made his lips seem even thinner.
With hardly an effort, the graceful drow climbed up to the roof of a shack, and shimmied across on his belly to overlook the avenue.
A few feet down the road, Entreri had stopped, and stood staring. His hands were by his sides, but they weren't at the ready near his weapon hilts.
Jarlaxle knew it beyond any doubt: Artemis Entreri, as he stood there, was helpless. A novice assassin could have walked up behind him and dispatched him easily.
That unsettling thought made Jarlaxle glance around, though he had no reason to suspect that any killers might be nearby.
He silently laughed at himself and his irrational fit of nerves, and when he looked back at Entreri, he only then fathomed the absolute strangeness of it all. He rolled over the edge of the roof, dropped lightly to his feet and walked over to stand beside Entreri - who didn't notice him until the very last moment.
Even then, Entreri never bothered to cast a glance Jarlaxle's way. His eyes remained fixed on a shack down the way, an unremarkable structure of clay and wood, and with the skeleton of a long-rotted awning jutting out in front. Beneath that, a ruined wicker chair was nestled against the shack, beside the open entrance.
"You know this place?"
Entreri didn't look at him and didn't answer. His breathing became more labored, however, telling Jarlaxle the truth of it.
This had been Entreri's home, the place of his earliest days.