The City of Splendors Read online

  The Cities

  The City of Splendors: A Waterdeep Novel

  ©2005 Wizards of the Coast LLC

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. FORGOTTEN REALMS, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. Hasbro SA, Represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Cover art by J.P. Targete

  First Paperback Printing: May 2006

  Original Hardcover Edition: August 2005

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004116877

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6022-4

  U.S., Canada, Asia, Pacific, & Latin America, Wizards of the Coast LLC, P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057-0707, +1-800-324-6496, www.wizards.com/customerservice

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  Visit our web site at www.wizards.com

  v3.1

  THE CITIES

  The City of Ravens

  Richard Baker

  Temple Hill

  Drew Karpyshyn

  The Jewel of Turmish

  Mel Odom

  The City of Splendors: A Waterdeep Novel

  Ed Greenwood & Elaine Cunningham

  Dedication

  To the sages and scribes of Candlekeep, and to

  The Hooded One for gracing the loreseekers of

  cyberspace with her tireless efforts

  and effortless charm.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Authors

  PROLOGUE

  30 Ches, the Year of the Tankard (1370 DR)

  Sharp gusts of wind buffeted Laeral Silverhand as she strode along the ramparts of Waterdeep’s Westgate, dodging among archers and the wizards and sorcerers hurling fire at the besieging host below. Her beautiful face was grim, and her lithe body glowed slightly through her well-worn battle leathers. That glow was the only outward sign of the great power being drawn steadily out of her by the man she loved.

  All about her, wizards were dropping with exhaustion. Two mages, their minds scorched by overuse of Mystra’s fire, cowered behind merlons, gibbering like the madmen they might forevermore be. Laeral passed by without breaking stride. Later she’d weep, but nothing could be done for them now. Waterdeep was very far from being saved.

  The wind off the sea blew cold and strong, too capricious and cruel even for early spring. Fell magic was at work. Sudden gusts snuffed the archers’ flaming arrows and made small fire-spells to guttering like empty lamps. The Weave around her was aboil, stinging her skin like thousands of ceaseless needle-piercings. Laeral had not expected such magic from the seas.

  Alas for Waterdeep, none of its defenders had, not even the mighty wizard who commanded the guard over the Westgate.

  Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun, Archmage of Waterdeep, stood atop the gigantic stone gate-lintel. In the throes of spellcasting, he let slip the face and form he’d worn for many a year. Briefly, all eyes could see him as Laeral did: tall, ageless, elf-blooded, feral as a rampant dragon, barely recognizable as a mortal being. The building power of a mighty spell sent his somber robes and raven-black hair swirling, and motes of silvery light coursed around him like moths drawn to flame. In both hands he held his long black staff high overhead, and in an awful voice like a chorus of all his mortal lives combined, declaimed a ringing chant.

  The tiny lights began to multiply and grow, each swiftly taking the shape of an enormous silvery fish. A vast school of these flying creations spun briefly above Khelben and then swept out to sea, drawing the winds in their wake. Laeral’s windblown tresses settled around her shoulders as the invaders’ wizard-wind faded.

  As he lowered the Blackstaff, Khelben seemed to sink back into himself, becoming once more a pepper-and-salt-bearded man in his later middle years, cloaked in black robes and imperious dignity, strongly built but no taller than Laeral’s own slender height.

  She slid a steadying arm around his waist. “And now, love?”

  For a moment Khelben was silent, glaring along the city walls. Laeral followed his gaze.

  Magic burst into the twilit sky beyond Mount Waterdeep like fireworks celebrating a festival of death. To the south, the harbor flamed. A strong stench of burning pitch was drifting from the docks, where the oily smoke of burning spars and sails was billowing up into the sky. Low tide was approaching—but if the sea was retreating, its minions were not.

  The sands below the Westgate were littered with blackened, smoking sahuagin bodies, yet fish-men beyond number were still storming the gate furiously, undeterred by the carnage. To Laeral it looked like all the devils of the Nine Hells had come to host a fish-fry.

  Their strivings had taken a heavy toll of the city’s defenders. Many mages slumped in utter exhaustion, and several hung out over the walls, retching helplessly in the foul smoke. A few stood muttering together, casting dark glances at the Archmage of Waterdeep. It was widely—and correctly—rumored that enough magic blazed in Khelben’s staff to melt all the rock and sand along Waterdeep’s shores into glass and turn the entire harbor into a simmering saltwater cauldron in which the sahuagin would boil alive.

  Therein lay the problem, Laeral knew well: The Art always had its price. The more powerful a magic, the greater its cost. She didn’t need to glance at her beloved’s face to feel his anguish and frustration. Waterdeep was his city, his home, and—perhaps even more than Laeral herself—his deepest love. The Lord Mage of Waterdeep had power enough to protect the City of Splendors … but only at the risk of destroying it.

  Khelben turned his head as sharply as a hunting hawk. “I dare not call down the ward-wall, not with the Weave so strained. ’Tis small magics and force-of-arms we need now.”

  With a snarl he gestured at the nearest merlon. It exploded outward like a great tumbling fist, to topple down onto the crowded sands below.

  They watched its fragments roll, raking red crushed ruin through the sahuagin. Before the great stones stopped, fresh sahuagin were surging forward, rising out of the blood-dark waves where so many bodies of their brethren already bobbed, filling the beach once more wi
th unbroken fish-men.

  “Ahghairon’s enchantments weigh on me like yon mountain,” Khelben growled. “I’m holding them from crashing down on all our heads right now. If I wasn’t calling so much power out of you, I’d be crawling-helpless.”

  Guardsmen were trudging along the walls toward the Lord and Lady Mage of Waterdeep, faces grim and eyes full of questions.

  Khelben watched their approach and sighed. “I need you to return to Blackstaff Tower and summon all aid-of-Art you can, right down to the last tremble-fingered novice. Use the Tower magics to send your plea afar.”

  Laeral looked down at the roiling sea, where sahuagin were still rising out of the blood-red waves to splash ashore, crowding against their fellows. “You’re saying we can’t hold them?”

  The Lord Mage shook his head. “A few might scale the walls and fight through, but the gate will hold.”

  She shrugged, not seeing his reasoning.

  “They’ve got that far.” Khelben waved grimly at the harbor and then back at countless staring eyes and wet scales below. “You know the merfolk would die before they let these sea-scum into the inner harbor.”

  Sorrow thinned Laeral’s lips. In the fury of the fray she’d forgotten what the bold advance of the fish-men must mean. Some of the harbor merfolk were dear friends.

  Had been dear friends.

  “Without them,” she murmured, “the storm drains are undefended. Each is well warded, but whoever sends the sahuagin against us is no stranger to the Art.”

  “Aye,” Khelben agreed, clasping her shoulders briefly as she turned to go. “For all we know, there could already be sahuagin in every sewer in Waterdeep—and once they’re down there, there’s no place in the city they can’t go.”

  Laeral nodded grimly. “I’ll send for everyone who can hurl a spell or swing a sword.”

  “We’ve not much time,” the Blackstaff warned, “and many of our friends may be busy elsewhere. This strike from the sea isn’t limited to Waterdeep.”

  “I’ll contact Candlekeep first.” Laeral, never much of a scholar, gave her lord a swift, ironic smile. “Surely the monks have nothing more pressing to attend to.”

  A small snake, a bright garden slitherer banded in tropical turquoise and green, wound a soundless way through room after dim room full of books. With sure instinct it made its way to a certain dusty alcove deep in Candlekeep and spiraled gracefully up one leg of a study table.

  The young man seated there greeted his familiar with an absent-minded nod and returned his full attention to the book open before him: a thick history of fabled Waterdeep. Mrelder had always been fascinated by the City of Splendors, his hunger for its lore almost stronger than his ache to master sorcery. Almost.

  The sorcerer seemed an ill match for the bright little snake. Lean, fit, and intense, he was pale from many hours spent with books. His once-dark hair had already gone gray, and his narrow face was seamed with thin, pale scars and dominated by fierce dark brows over mismatched eyes. One was a muddy gray, and the other (an old glass eye he’d bought in a manygoods shop) an odd pale green hue. Mrelder wasn’t vain, but hoped to have coin enough someday to have a glass orb made to exactly match his surviving eye. It would be one less constant reminder of the horror known as Golskyn.

  Light footfalls whispered on stone, approaching his corner. Mrelder paid little heed. Candlekeep was a quietly busy place, where many came to learn or, like him, to hide. The little snake, however, took alarm, darting into its master’s sleeve and coiling about his forearm.

  Thus alerted, Mrelder swept up his books and rose—just as a red-bearded giant of a man rounded the nearest shelf. Though one of Candlekeep’s Great Readers, Belloch looked more like a warcaptain than a scholar. Just now, his face wore a dark expression better suited to a battlefield than a library.

  “Come,” Belloch rumbled, dropping a massive hand onto Mrelder’s shoulder. Without pause he wheeled, jerking the young sorcerer along so sharply that books tumbled. Mrelder stooped to retrieve them, but Belloch’s grip tightened. “Leave them.”

  Mrelder stiffened. To treat precious tomes so was unprecedented in Candlekeep! In a sudden flood of wild speculations, he fetched up chillingly against a dire prospect: perhaps a certain priest by the name of Golskyn had recovered from his latest “improvement,” somehow found Mrelder’s trail, and come here.

  No escape, even here …

  Striding hard, Belloch marched the young sorcerer out of the chamber and down hall after hall Mrelder had never walked before. Some short time after he’d become thoroughly lost, they descended a winding stair and crossed several darkened rooms to emerge in a large circular chamber.

  Mrelder’s heart sank. Several senior Readers were gathered, and with them his favorite lore-guide, the visiting monk Arkhaedun. Six of his fellow scholars were also in attendance, looking frightened and confused. Armored guards—and where had they come from?—ringed the walls, faces impassive and long spears held ready.

  It looked as if a court had convened to condemn Mrelder for his part in Golskyn’s crimes—or perhaps, a small voice whispered deep in his mind, for his own inability to duplicate them.

  “Arkhaedun informed us of your training,” Belloch said curtly, stepping away from Mrelder only to turn back and glare. “He says you possess considerable fighting skills—not just small, untutored magics.”

  The Reader’s dismissive tone wasn’t lost on Mrelder. Belloch had been a battle mage; many wizards scorned the inborn—and to their minds, unearned—powers of sorcery. Long used to far worse treatment, Mrelder was years beyond taking offense.

  “I’ve learned much in my time here, lords,” he replied, trying to sound calm. “May I ask what this meeting concerns?”

  “We’ve received an urgent summons for every willing warrior and magic-wielder we can spare. A great battle rages, spawning small fires that can best be stamped out by such as you.” Belloch grew a mirthless grin. “Your fascination with the city of Waterdeep has been noted; it should serve you well.”

  “Waterdeep? You want me to go to Waterdeep?”

  Something in Belloch’s face changed at Mrelder’s awed tone. “I’ll not lie to you, lad: this task may be your last. Monks’ sparring is poor preparation for bloody war—and Binder forgive me, even all our books and scrolls leave many of that city’s secrets untold.”

  “I’ll go,” Mrelder said eagerly. “Of course I’ll go.”

  The Master Reader nodded and turned to the other scholars. “Choice made? Well, then: When ’tis time to return, say ‘arranath’ aloud, and so hear the way.”

  As he silently mouthed that word to fix it in memory, Mrelder’s thoughts were of Waterdeep. To see the City of Splendors with his own eyes!

  How often he’d dreamed this dream without really expecting it to become truth! Yet what crisis could threaten mighty Waterdeep that his small skills were needed? Had the great wizards of the city somehow … fallen?

  Wilder thoughts whirled through Mrelder as he watched Arkhaedun step onto a circular mosaic in the middle of the chamber floor, an intricate rune outlined in flecks of colored crystal. A fractured rainbow of light shot up from the crystal shards—and the monk disappeared.

  When the soft shafts of light faded, a sturdy, fair-haired lass Mrelder had seen frowning over high-piled tomes of battle magic stepped onto the rune. She was followed by a tall, silent scholar from the Inner Sea lands. When the soft glow of his journeying faded, a scholar of Tethyr was waved forward.

  Then Belloch nodded, and it was Mrelder’s turn. The young sorcerer hastened into the circle.

  A searing flash of white light was his prompt greeting, as painful as falling into a hearthfire. Groaning, Mrelder fell to his knees, hands clapped to his burning eye.

  When his mistily swimming vision returned, he saw spearpoints. The circle of guards had closed around him with deadly intent.

  Belloch pushed through them and dragged Mrelder roughly to his feet. “Are you a traitor or a fool?” he thu
ndered. “Only one living thing at a time may pass the gate! What secret are you hiding?”

  Belatedly, Mrelder remembered what he bore coiled about his arm. “My familiar,” he gasped, plucking back his sleeve. What had been his snake fell limply to the floor like a bit of severed rope.

  Chagrin twisted the Great Reader’s face. “I—it did not occur to me you might have a familiar. It appears your sorcery hasn’t been … sufficiently regarded.”

  “I seldom speak of my Art,” Mrelder murmured. “If there’s fault, it’s my own.”

  He should have anticipated something like this. Of course any magical portal in this most precious of strongholds would be carefully warded. Allowing but one living thing to pass at a time was a wise safeguard, given the worth-beyond-price of Candlekeep’s irreplaceable treasures.

  He gazed down at the little snake, the latest of many creatures to die in his service, and allowed himself a sigh. Then he looked at Belloch. “I’m ready to go.”

  The Great Reader shook his head. “No. You’ll be a staggering weak-wits until morn, no use in battle.”

  Mrelder held out rock-steady hands. “I’ve … learned to withstand worse pain. I’m ready, and I am needed. Send me.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the burly monk nodded and thrust Mrelder into the circle.

  The crystal mosaic blazed up and seemed to give way at the same time, and Mrelder found himself falling through a void of soft colors and eerie silence. In the utter absence of sound, the faint but constant ringing in his ears—another reminder of Golskyn—seemed deafening. It was almost a relief when he jolted to a stop on solid cobblestones amid the clanging cacophony of battle.

  Mrelder glanced quickly around. He stood in a reeking, rat-scurrying alley between two old, large, rather crumbling stone buildings—warehouses by their look. Over the stench of rotting refuse and a heavy smell of smoke, the stink of fish was strong in the air. Mount Waterdeep loomed up behind him, its first rising rocks only paces beyond an alley-blocking mound of rotting crates, barrels, and garbage. The other end of the alley opened into a larger cross-street filled with a hurrying crowd.