Beyond the plaza stood the docks, and ships of all sorts lined the piers, from Calishite slave-schooners to Luskan clippers. Most arrived via the many gates that dotted various areas of the Sargauth's channel. Some made the journey from the surface seas via an intricate, secret network of magical locks and hoists. Crates, bags, and urns of goods lay neatly stacked in piles along the docks. The calls of sailors and goblin dockhands occasionally penetrated through the noise of the auction to reach Azriim's ears.
Azriim's magic sense suddenly caused the back of his throat to tingle and drew his eye upward.
There, high above the plaza, watching the auction and wharves with its inscrutable, eyeless stare, floated one of the Skulls. A dim orange nimbus surrounded it, and its gaze moved slowly hither and yon, seeing all.
Azriim willed himself to be unobtrusive.
Without warning, the Skull swooped down from its high perch and whizzed low over the crowd, trailing a tail of orange light. A gasp went up, fingers pointed, eyes went wide, and the auctioneer fell quiet. Many people fled the plaza, hunched over and terrified. The Skull swooped out wide, turned a half circle, and sped back toward the crowd. Azriim feared he might have been discovered, but no. The Skull stopped directly in front of a thin human male dressed in an ill-fitting gray tunic and leather breeches. A sword hung from his belt but his hand stayed well clear of it. When the human stared into those empty eye sockets, he visibly shook. He licked his lips nervously. The people and creatures around him cleared away, leaving him alone with the Skull.
An anticipatory hush fell over the crowd. The auctioneer seemed frozen with his jiggling arm held aloft, about to accept a final bid for one of the ogres. Like Azriim, the audience knew what was coming-slaughter or slapstick. Either way, an amusing spectacle in Skullport.
The Skull's jaw did not move when it spoke.
"You are a pilferer of trivial things," it pronounced, loud enough to be heard throughout the plaza. The man shook his head and started to protest, but the Skull went on, "Thieves are not tolerated in the Market. Speak now the name of the favored hound of the third son of the fourth high arcanist to rule Iolaum or face immediate punishment."
The accused thief's face flushed red to his ears. Fear paralyzed him, though he looked like he wanted nothing more than to run.
"Wh-what do you mean?" he stammered. "I... I didn't steal nothing. I don't know any arcaners."
"Incorrect," said the Skull.
At that dire pronouncement, the thief must have sensed the fullness of his danger. He finally managed to break free of his fear-induced paralysis and turned to run. Even if there had been somewhere to go, he was too late. The Skull spoke a series of arcane words and a green beam fired from its eyes. It struck the man in the back, swallowed his scream, and instantly reduced him to a pile of fine dust. A handful of silver coins, scattered in the soot, was all that remained of the offender.
"Retrieve your stolen property," the Skull announced to no one in particular, and began to fly off. As it rose back toward the top of the cavern, it gave its pronouncement. "Thievery shall not be tolerated at auction, nor time with eggs, lest they be hatched. Heed well."
For a moment, no one moved and all was silent. Then a laugh sounded, and another, followed at last by the low murmur of a satisfied audience discussing the show. A mad scramble ensued, with several skulkers grabbing for the silver. Within moments, the voice of the fat auctioneer rose, the auction resumed, and the first of the ogres went into bondage.
Disintegrated for a handful of silver, Azriim thought. That was the power of the Skulls, the studied but unpredictable application of discipline that kept the populace respectful and the chaos manageable. Smiling, Azriim relocated Thyld amidst the crowd and continued to follow him through the plaza.
At first, Azriim thought Thyld was heading for the Murkspan, a somber stone arch bridge that reached across Sargauth Bay to set its far footings in the dark earth of Skull Island where stood the crenellated walls and fortress tower of the Iron Ring, the master slavers of Skullport. All slave ships docked at Skull Island to brand and inventory their cargo in the fortress before it could be sold in the plaza. The Ring took its cut of all trade in flesh.
But Thyld turned left and knifed through the crowd, steering wide of a group of illithids, and headed for the fish market.
Azriim followed at a distance, weaving his way through the coffles of slaves for whom buyers would soon bid. Whips cracked; slaves moaned and cried. Would-be buyers poked and prodded the merchandise.
Though Azriim had no sympathy, as such, for the humans and other fodder destined to toil and die in the dark of Skullport, he could imagine few fates for himself worse than a life spent in bondage. Even the relatively moderate boundaries put on his existence by the Sojourner drove him to near madness. While it was true that the Sojourner treated Azriim and his broodmates well, that only made them well-treated servants. Thinking such thoughts boiled up the strange emotional dichotomy he always felt when he considered his "father"-an admixture of love and hate, fear and respect.
He controlled his emotions by reminding himself that he would have his freedom, and be transformed into a gray, when he had assisted the Sojourner in obtaining the Crown of Flame. Azriim didn't know what the Crown of Flame was, nor what the Sojourner intended to do with it, but he knew it must be a mighty artifact indeed to be so desired by his father.
Thyld made a straight path through the fish market and headed down a narrow street lined with rickety taverns and shops. The smell of bad food and the shouts and laughter of patrons boiled from the shutterless windows.
Ignoring the fishermen who lined the street hawking the long, pale fish of the Sargauth, Azriim followed Thyld. The fishermen ignored him too. Azriim took the form of a muscular duergar slaver, complete with a whipblade, a scarred face, and a hard scowl. No one seemed to find him worth more than a first glance. Though he missed the grace of his preferred half-drow form, he deemed the duergar shape less obtrusive. Drow, he had learned, were obsessed with House affiliations, especially recently, when rumors in Skullport told of a drow civil war. Azriim had no time to waste with explanations to every passing drow of his seeming "Houselessness." He did miss the comfort of his usual fine attire, though. The coarse tunic and trousers he wore in his duergar guise made even his dwarven flesh chafe.
He eyed a passing illithid with two troll thralls in tow. The flayer's face tentacles twitched. No doubt he had just received some psionic contact. The towering trolls-green-skinned walls of teeth, claws, and muscle-eyed him with the slack expression of the psionically dominated.
Azriim feigned fear as he passed, though were he in his natural form, his own claws and teeth could have torn apart both trolls and illithid alike. He found himself wondering what illithid brain might taste like if the tide was turned on the brain-eating creature. The temptation to make psionic contact with the mind flayer almost overcame him, but he resisted it. The Sojourner would not be pleased if he took unnecessary risks. His task was to locate the source of the mantle. He kept his focus on Thyld.
The human made a right and turned down a narrow alley. Having learned the man's habits, Azriim knew that Thyld was heading to Aryn's House, a brothel and hostelry, to "seed the soil," as Thyld called it, by paying his informants. Thyld had three spies among the girls at Aryn's. After paying the doxies their tenday stipend, and providing bonuses for any especially useful information they may have gleaned from their patrons, he would move on to the next location. Azriim knew them all.