18 #3
“I’ve been terribly busy, darling. I’m on the prowl…”
“When aren’t you?”
“…for information.”
Light glinted off the steel caps of her horns. “You’ll have to narrow it down more than that.”
“I’m trying to find out more about a cult of undead that may be operating below the sewers.”
“Oh, them.” She rolled her eyes.
“You’ve heard of them?”
“Yeah, sure. Every now and then, one of their pet skeletons gets loose and goes wandering around making trouble.” She patted the two-handed maul on her back. “They smash nicely.”
“And you never mentioned them to me?”
“Honey, this is Baldur’s Gate. If there’s not a dozen cults operating out of attics and warehouses and holes in the ground, people start to wonder why they’re paying taxes.”
She made a thoughtful sideways champing motion with her jaw.
“Go talk to wossisname at the shop. I think he was studying up on them a while ago.”
Astarion took one of her enormous hands and kissed the back of it. “You are, as always, a treasure.”
“Flatterer. Get on with you.” She swatted lazily in his direction, which Astarion ducked, since even her playful swats would have knocked him into the wall. Yousen’s eyes were the size of saucers.
“Do you know if she’s single?” the gnome whispered as Astarion led him toward the Guild’s shop.
“She’s too much woman for you, Yousen.”
“Yes, but what a way to go.” He was staring so intently at the minotaur that he nearly walked into the wall. “Do you think she’d step on me? If I asked very respectfully?”
“Darling, I don’t even want to talk about my own fetishes, let alone yours.” He opened the shop door, which jingled with cheerful bells. Learning to open the door without setting off the bells was often a young thief’s first lesson in stealth.
The man behind the counter was a short, dark-haired moon elf with a voice like sand being poured directly onto the listener’s eardrums and a personality to match.
He glanced up from his book as Astarion approached, his nostrils flaring.
“Come to buy a potion? If it’s oil of slipperiness, I warn you, I’m not responsible if you attempt to use it in ways the manufacturer didn’t intend.”
“I’m actually looking for information about an undead cult.”
The moon elf gave a haughty sniff. “Which one? And don’t say the Arcane Brotherhood, because you don’t have enough money for that.”
Astarion lifted one sardonic eyebrow. The moon elf lifted one right back. Astarion reminded himself that he needed information and let the other man win the battle of eyebrows. “I’m curious about the one supposedly practicing under the sewers here in Baldur’s Gate.”
“Oh, them.”
Why does everyone say it like that? And how do they all know about it?
The moon elf reached under the counter and pulled out a book stuffed with bookmarks, then hunted through it for a page.
“Ah, here we are…Call themselves the Cult of the Undying Blood. Led by an undead priest who was originally a cleric of Mask and refused to die when his god did. He’s apparently convinced that if he keeps worshipping, eventually the god will have no choice but to return.
I’m fairly sure it doesn’t work like that, but far be it from me to judge other people’s religions. He worships a relic that supposedly contains the god’s blood and has a bunch of skeletons doing his bidding, along with some soap mummies.”
“I’m sorry, for a moment there, I thought you said soap mummies?”
“Saponification,” the moon elf said in a lecturing tone, “is a chemical process occurring after death whereby the fats in the body are transformed into a soap-like substance known as corpse wax. It can occur when the corpse is submerged for long periods in cold water,
which is one thing Baldur’s Gate isn’t lacking. The corpse wax preserves and desiccates the bodily tissues and prevents decomposition. If you perform the correct rites before submerging the corpse, you can eventually raise an extremely unpleasant-looking mummy.”
He shuddered theatrically. “And given what regular mummies look like, believe me when I say that is a very high bar.”
“Do you have any idea how many of them there are?”
“My informant was last in the area several years ago, so even if I had a number, it would likely be inaccurate by now. More than I’d care to encounter, anyway.”
“And they’re just living under the sewers?”
“If you can call that living.” The moon elf’s expression indicated that he didn’t.
“Presumably, they’re snatching the occasional body to make more skeletons, but honestly, they just don’t do very much. As undead cults go, they’re small potatoes.”
He tapped another bookmark. “Now, if you wanted to talk about followers of Bhaal…”
“Thank you, no.” Astarion fished out a coin and tossed it to the shopkeeper, who caught it, sniffed it, and stowed it away.
“If you end up trying to steal from them and learn anything new, do come back,” the moon elf called after them.
“I’m always glad to add to my research.”
And then, in an undertone almost too quiet for Astarion to hear: “And buy something next time, you bastards. These unguents aren’t going to sell themselves.”
* * *