Chapter 1. The Cage

The githzerai people are humanoid, with pale yellowish skin and pointed ears. Githzerai eyes are usually yellow or grey, and hair color is almost always black. Unusually tall and thin, githzerai often tend to be a bit more fragile than other races; however, they often live to be over 300 years old. Githzerai clothing tends to be drab, but practical.

Humorless and almost as unfriendly as the githyanki, the githzerai live in specially-constructed cities within the soupy mass of Limbo. Individuals known as Anarchs (not to be confused with the Anarchists) have the gift of being able to shape the formless matter of the plane into landscapes and even buildings; without the Anarchs, the githzerai cities would simply dissolve away into Limbo. Currently, their largest city, Shra'kt'lor, holds over two million people, a gigantic stronghold ...

Elsewhere, they're found usually as societal outcasts, hunters, or merely explorers.

- Selected Records of Lady's Cage Mush1

Black clouds rushed above Rahk's head. Sometimes, when the veil broke, colored dots of light twinkled almost merrily in the openings. On the rare days when the breeze would blow the smog away, the sky above would be covered with lights, and every time one would look up, one would behold a different sight. These lights were those of the houses on the opposite side of the City of Sigil since, as all inhabitants of the Outer Planes knew, Sigil was shaped as a ring, with the city occupying its inner walls. It was a layout that defied logic, and so was the fact that Sigil was floating over the tip of the infinite Spire of the Outlands. Nevertheless, both statements were true. The laws of Nature were too restrictive for Sigil, so Sigil chose to ignore them. The city-ring expanded and contracted at will, just like houses were destroyed and built at will and the boundaries between the city's Wards shifted. In Sigil, whether one looked up or down one saw only Sigil – the impossible city that had an infinite number of faces and an infinite number of portals to every place in the Multiverse. Some called Sigil The Cage, and some – the City of Doors. Until recently, Rahk thought it a contradiction. He knew better now. He did not look up, waiting to catch a glimpse of the lights.

Instead, Rahk's eyes were fixed on his feet, or, more correctly, on a murky puddle that grew larger and larger around them. The water pooled in a depression cleverly and purposefully made around a sewer drain. The raindrops hurriedly shot through the thick fog and dispersed in it with mournful ploops or bloomps. Apart from the concentric ripples breaking the puddle's surface after it consumed each acidic tear, the water did not flow. It only expanded outwards, flooding but not running. A small ring made of cheap alloy gleamed dimly between Rahk's feet. Already it was almost obscured by the soot floating on the dark water - the soot that covered everything and everyone in the Lower Ward of Sigil - and that apparently clogged the drain.

Rahk considered plucking the ring out of the water, but changed his mind. It was worse than useless now, this cheap ring, that only a child would consider wearing and for which Rahk had given nearly every piece of jink in his pockets. The worthless piece of metal was a key, only the portal that used to be here for two hundred years, according to a very well informed tsoi2, was closed as well as the drain that framed it.For one mad moment, he thought of returning the ring to tso for a refund, but the contract said that the tso sold him the key and the map to where the portal had been on a certain day of a certain year. It did not specify that the portal would still be in existence when Rahk arrived, and no tso would ever be bound by something that was not stated in the contract. In fact, even if it were in the contract, a tso would find a loophole and be very proud of fooling a berk. So the ring could stay where it was, to be buried in soot or found by a street urchin.

Rahk the Githzerai hunched his shoulders against the sour-tasting rain. There could be no mistake - if he persisted in trying to find a working portal, The Lady3 would simply close every gateway to Limbo, his native plane, and he would never get home. With sophisticated carelessness she had picked the githzerai for this particular task and now she was letting him know that he was to do it, whether he wanted it or not. There were probably dozens of desperate people just like him, wandering the streets of Sigil, pondering the same assignment. Or he might have been the only one. When The Lady had appeared before him to utter her command, he was more concerned with trying to run away from the looming ten-foot figure than with asking questions about her orders.

Under his breath, Rahk cursed the day he asked the village elders for a quest to earn his silver sword. There had been a time when he had thought it the most important thing in his life.

He had failed in his first attempt to obtain it, after he had come just a hairbreadth short of negotiating the truth with a band of slaadi – an accursed frog-like race that shared Limbo with the githzerai - that had harassed and raided Rahk's settlement for years. Unfortunately, when Rahk was reading out the treaty to the slaadi who spoke for his people, the frog-faced bandit's mind wandered and he tried to devour Rahk, instead of signing the papers. Slaadi had notorious appetite, and Rahk had had a warrior's temper then. He fought the envoy, and hostilities between the githzerai's village and the slaadi band resumed. Hence, the silver sword, the ultimate token of respect and admiration given to a githzerai by his people, eluded him. Well, there was no helping it; not then, and not now. After a year in Sigil, the young githzerai had seen and learned so much, that the promised reward had lost almost all of its appeal to him. Of course, if somebody had offered him the silver sword as a gift, he would not refuse it, but to escape this accursed city where The Lady of Pain was omnipresent and omnipotent, Rahk was ready to forsake his dream forever and admit defeat for the second and last time.

Rahk had neither the will, nor indeed the desire to face the githyanki exile. The chant was that the githyanki still owned a githzerai's relic – a pin from the hero Zerthimon's own cloak, stolen from Rahk's village. Rahk's thirst for the pin (and the silver sword, he had been promised for the return of the pin) had dried out the day he had learned that the githyanki was not a haunted wretch and that the Fated not only had taken the outlaw into their fold long before the ill-fated raid, but it seemed that he had been a factotum, and a step away from being promoted to a factor. Once one of the fifteen Factions of Sigil had allowed a berk in, it put its weight behind him. Rahk had no desire to fight a Faction. He had no desire to fight anyone, save saaldi. He wanted to get home, to Limbo, where rules were few, the ruler's grip was feeble or nonexistent and even the cities were held together only by the magic of Anarchs, and not permanently, at that.

Unfortunately, standing in a puddle in the middle of the Lower Ward was helping Rahk to get back as much as the locked portal did, so he started slowly away, recalling solemnly that the Lower Ward was so named because it was the closest place to the Hells in the City of Doors.

Window shutters opened right above him, almost hitting his head and a blast of hot air came out. The gust carried a weeping sound. Piteously, Rahk caught the blackened windowsill, pulled himself up and looked into the opened window. Red pulsing inferno breathed into his face; Rahk shuddered despite the warmth he would have welcomed a minute ago, and let go of his handhold. It was no coincidence that The Lady of Pain showed him a portal to the Abyss. Rahk shook himself and quickened his steps. If he was to please The Lady of Pain and earn his passage, he had to be in the Finite Difference Cafe an hour before the anti-peak. And before that he had to talk to a tiefling named Haer'Dalis.

Rahk spotted Haer'Dalis, who was amusing himself by scowling at the light-boys, most of whom were, actually, girls. The children, whose work was to escort Sigilians after dark, glowed with magic light and only one or two shied away from the blue-haired tiefling. These were the toughest of the street urchins, and they had long forgotten moms' tales of the tieflings who would snatch the naughty ones in the dark hours before anti-peak; for them the dark hours were when they would make the most money off those lost or too drunk to get to their homes or inns unaccompanied. "They are not afraid of me," Haer'Dalis said instead of a greeting. "Why would they?" Rahk rejoined, delicately looking away, "You have little enough in your appearance to alert an observant adult, let alone those unfortunates, whose attention is all on either potential clients or their rivals." Haer'Dalis shuffled his feet. "Hooves?" Rahk wondered, "Or worse?" No tiefling ever seemed to know or care which of his ancestors passed on a tail, claws, hoof, tusk, or any other deformity that was a trademark of this strange race. No tiefling was pleased to talk about his years in the Lower Planes before coming to Sigil. This suited Rahk's reclusive nature just fine.

The githzerai had only befriended Haer'Dalis because he had first met him on Limbo, and because Haer'Dalis had persistently sought him out again and again. Finally Rahk had understood why: Haer'Dalis was enchanted by the theatre, something that Rahk could not comprehend. He was an actor, alright, but only because Miss Realis Shai employed him knowing that he did not belong to any of the Sigil's Factions. Rahk was a slim, unremarkable man, without beauty or strength. That very ambivalence gave him certain smoothness and allowed to slip into different roles with remarkable ease. It was a simple way to get jink. Haer'Dalis wanted to act as hotly as Rahk himself wanted to return home. Somehow, the young fiendblood had put it into his stubborn head that it was how he would prove himself to Sigil, and more importantly, to Miss Raelis Shai. Rahk saw little ability in the man, but the tiefling's enthusiasm and hard work corrected some mistakes and his handsomeness masked the others. Rahk had guided Haer'Dalis carefully to select the pieces that made weaknesses appear as strengths, and were not spoiled by the youth's eagerness to act.

"Why did you want to see me tonight, berk?" Haer'Dalis asked after they had chatted for a bit. Rahk cringed a little. He did not like Sigil lingo, he did not want to learn it, for he felt that it would be a surrender of sorts, an agreement to stay in The Cage. But he did not berate Haer'Dalis – just as he did not berate his friend for allowing a clever factotum to sway him into one of the Factions (Rahk suspected that it was Doomguard) – Haer'Dalis was making Sigil his home, and Rahk could not bring himself to blame a denizen of the Lower Plains for liking the City of Doors.

"My friend," Rahk said, "I think you are ready to be presented at the Beakon. There will be an audition for the next season, and –"

"When?" Haer'Dalis face shone with excitement. "Tomorrow," Rahk replied. Haer'Dalis was immediately sent in a frenzy: he had to select his reading; wash his hear; find a nicer shirt… Rahk smiled despite himself. But when Haer'Dalis left running, the githzerai's gaunt face grew even thinner with sadness. It pained Rahk that when he had finally arranged the audition for the tiefling at the Beakon, it was not for the sake of their friendship that he did it, but as a part of a complex seduction game. Rahk smoothed back his slick black hair and sighed. He had lingered over the locked portal too long, and now he had no time to change. He would have to go to the Finite Difference Café in his brown tunic and leggings, and a sodden woolen cloak of an undistinguishable color. So be it. The woman who waited him there might find it fascinating. Or not. She was a woman of changing moods.

1 The text is quoted from http/ A mysterious race of eel-spider hybrids, with little honor and fewer scruples. Tso follow a convoluted set of principles, but are generally considered immoral and slippery. For more information please see: http/ Rahk speaks of The Lady of Pain – the all-powerful entity that rules Sigil

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