19
The path through the Undercity was winding and tedious and had nothing much to recommend it, unless you liked the smell of raw sewage.
Yousen caught a rat and drained it, then caught a second one and offered it politely to Astarion.
Astarion wiped the creature’s neck clean with his pocket handkerchief before biting its throat out.
“Have you ever noticed that the rats have a different flavor depending on where you catch them?”
Yousen asked as they scrambled over rubble where ancient walls had collapsed.
(Well, Yousen scrambled. Astarion refused to do anything so undignified and preferred to think that he glided lightly over the broken stone.)
“The ones you catch in the Lower City are gamier than the ones in the palace pantry, and the ones in Wyrm’s Rest are sweeter. The ones by the docks have a fishy taste.”
“Terroir,” Astarion said absently, picking his way across a rivulet of sewage.
“Beg pardon?”
“Terroir, my uncultured friend, is a term used in winemaking to denote the flavor imparted by the soil in which the grapes are grown. You are describing the terroir of the rats, based on their diet. The Lower City rats eat garbage, the dock rats eat fish,
and the Wyrm’s Rest rats eat from the grainfields.”
“Oh.” Yousen considered this. “So the reason the rats down here in the sewers taste like sh—”
“Fascinating as this discussion is, are we near your tunnel?”
The gnome frowned and peered in both directions, then scrabbled up to the top of the nearest pile of rubble.
“This might be it. This rockfall wasn’t here the last time I was. Let me see…”
He ducked into the ragged opening and laid his hands on the stone, bowing his head as if in prayer.
After a moment, he reached down, selected a rock, examined it from all angles, then licked it.
Astarion gazed at the ceiling and wondered, if he left right this minute, if he had enough time to find a virgin and hunt down a unicorn. Alas, probably not. It’s a nearly impossible quest, the sort of thing that makes or breaks great heroes, and then you’d still have to find the damned unicorn.
“This is it,” Yousen said, dropping the licked rock. “The rubble threw me a bit. I’ve only been here once before.”
“Only once?”
“A few years ago. Dalyria asked me to see if the blood was easily accessible.” The gnome went into the opening, past the scarred remains of the rockfall, then ducked into a narrow, nearly invisible tunnel coming off the remains of the main passage. Astarion had to bend down to follow him.
“And is it easily accessible?”
“Ha.”
“…I see.”
“I didn’t get any farther than your friend at the Guild did. Looking down into a sea of skeletons was enough for me.”
“Lovely.” Astarion felt the back of his head scrape the ceiling and hunched lower.
He hated enclosed spaces. He had never been claustrophobic as a boy, but between waking in a coffin and spending a year in the mausoleum…
But he certainly wasn’t going to show weakness in front of Yousen, of all people, so he kept his voice deliberately light.
“You’re the one who can speak to rocks. Is this ceiling talking about coming down and squashing us into spawn carpaccio?”
“Hrm? No, no.” Ahead of him, the gnome paused for a moment, one hand on the wall. “No, it’s happy where it is. It would find an earthquake very upsetting.”
“You may tell the rock that it is a scholar and a gentlemineral.”
The tunnel ceiling stayed where it was. The floor, however, began to buckle and rise the farther they went, a phenomenon that Yousen cheerfully informed him was called a squeeze. Astarion would have liked to squeeze the gnome’s throat, but his corpse would block the tunnel.
“I don’t suppose this opens up soon? I am in danger of doing irreparable damage to this jacket.”
“Just ahead.”
Just ahead, in this case, was at least another hundred yards, but at last the tunnel opened into a narrow stone corridor that appeared to have been carved from living rock. Astarion leaned against the wall to give his legs and lower back time to recuperate.
“This is old,” he said, his eyes roving over the walls.
Yousen nodded excitedly. “It is! You can tell by the tool marks that they cut it with iron tools, not steel, which dates it to no later than—”
“Maybe you can tell by the tool marks. I’m going by the graffiti over there that says, ‘Sable was here, 691 DR.’ And look, they drew a little penis next to it.”
It was amazing that so much sigh could fit into someone as small as Yousen.
Astarion admired the graffiti for a few more minutes, which covered the last seven hundred years of Baldur’s Gate’s history and a wide range of opinions on whom you could call upon for a good time. Finally, he pushed himself away from the wall. “All right, let’s keep moving.”
For a moment, he thought he heard something back the way they had come, a sound like a rock knocked loose from the rubble pile. Probably just a rat. Probably.
He kept an ear cocked as Yousen led him through a maze of passageways. The gnome had been right: Astarion couldn’t possibly have found his way there alone. At least, not without a map. And given how frequently we’ve ended up backtracking, I don’t think I’d trust any map he’d be able to draw.
“Are you certain you know where you’re going?”
“It’s been a while,” Yousen said, shoulders hunching defensively. “We’ll get there.”
“How ever did you find it in the first place?”
“I asked an old halfling treasure diver where the skeletons were in this part of the Undercity. He told me what to avoid, and I did the exact opposite.”
“So why hasn’t some other clever gnome done this before,” Astarion asked, watching Yousen plaster himself flat against the rough-hewn wall, “if this maze of tunnels is such common knowledge?”
“Those gnomes haven’t been undead.”
“It makes a difference?”
“There are wards set to keep out the living. Would you mind not talking? I’m trying to feel the vibrations in the stone.”
Astarion rolled his eyes but held his peace. The gnome worked his way down the wall, tapping and stopping, tapping and stopping, then finally murmured something inaudible and set his palm against a particular stone. It shifted soundlessly aside, revealing another passageway.
Fine, I admit it. That was impressive…and was that a footstep behind us, or an echo? He listened carefully but couldn’t be sure.
“Something wrong?”
If they were being followed, Astarion would prefer that their shadow didn’t know they’d been spotted. “Whatever could be wrong in this delightfully skeleton-infested sewer?” he asked, and followed the gnome into the shadows.
* * *
—
The corridor split and split again, but Yousen seemed to know where he was now, or perhaps the rocks were being more cooperative.
Astarion had no idea if Yousen’s claims were true or a pathetic attempt to make himself seem mysterious.
Then again, if you were a rock gnome, maybe other rock gnomes found an air of mineral mysticism to be irresistible.
This led Astarion perilously close to contemplating Yousen’s sex life, a line of thought he murdered with extreme prejudice.
So far as he knew, the gnome didn’t have one, and that was fine by Astarion.
He’d certainly never been tempted. Yousen seemed like the type who would cry afterward.
Or apologize. I’m not sure which is worse—wait, what was that?
He was careful not to let his stride change as he listened. Did the echo of their steps conceal someone else’s muffled footfalls? Had someone followed them from the Guild? Was one of the cult’s tame corpses slinking after them? Or was it someone else entirely?
“Ward,” Yousen said, coming to a halt.
It was indeed a ward. Tiny runes were carved into the stone, anchoring it permanently. It didn’t glow, exactly, but if you turned your head just right, you could see a very faint shimmer, like air rising from a hot road. The graffiti stopped abruptly, too.
“And this keeps the living out?”
“Yes. I tested it with a mouse the first time. It couldn’t pass through, but I could.” Yousen stepped through confidently. When he failed to fall over, explode, or turn into a weasel, Astarion followed. The ward passed over his skin like a sigh, leaving a vague queasy feeling in its wake.
And that should take care of anyone from the Guild following us.
So far as I know, I’m the only undead on the rolls.
Granted, he would have been surprised if no one in the Guild had guessed that the very pale elven rogue was not an albino but something rather more predatory.
Still, the code of silence held—you paid your dues and you didn’t pry, and other people extended the same courtesy.
Astarion was very careful to stay current on his dues.
Their path changed repeatedly, sometimes running along ancient roadways, sometimes cutting directly through stone.
Few of the denizens of Baldur’s Gate realized that it was built atop the ruins of its former self.
The city had sunk over the centuries, two-story buildings gradually becoming one-story buildings with a basement, then basements with a storm drain, and likely a couple more stories built on top.
Streets were elevated so that runoff might be managed more effectively, and old structures in the depths of the Undercity were walled up like anchorites.
Astarion was old enough to have seen one such cycle.
From what Cazador had said, he had seen many.
The vast underground holdings of Szarr Palace had once been mostly aboveground, but time had sunk them deeper into the grave.
Which is safer for us than having big picture windows everywhere, I imagine.
All it takes is one careless servant, and we’d be vampire spawn charcoal.
There were two more wards placed at intervals throughout the tunnels. Astarion wondered how the Guild elf’s informant had gotten into the place, but perhaps they, too, had been undead. Or perhaps there are more entrances. Once you hit the ruins of the old city, all bets are off.
Then Yousen stopped before a particular bend and held up his hand. He inched forward, peered around the corner, then pulled back and nodded to Astarion.
Astarion also peered around the corner. His eyes widened slightly at the sight.