He set to work saddling and bridling the horse. Cyric must have sensed the jordain’s urgency and found it to his liking. For once the stallion stood docile, and even opened his mouth to accept the bit and bridle. Matteo had barely settled into the saddle when Cyric shot out of the stable like a ballista bolt, thundering toward the gate and whatever misadventure waited beyond.
CHAPTER THREE
In his watery lair, Akhlaur bent over his table, scrawling with feverish haste as he etched runes into delicate, faintly blue parchment. After much experimentation, he’d found that a triton’s hide yielded the finest parchment for his current purposes—long lasting and water resistant, not to mention its pleasing azure hue.
A trio of magic-dazed tritons, for the moment still wearing their blue skins, huddled in one of the cages that lined the vast coral chamber. Akhlaur favored these creatures and considered them nearly the equivalent of elves in terms of usefulness. Except for their coloring, their astonishing beauty, and their seal-like flippers, they resembled humans and were thus excellent test subjects. Their innate magic, however, provided some unexpected and interesting possibilities.
Akhlaur did not limit his studies to tritons. Each cage housed creatures whose lives and deaths contributed to the necromancer’s art. Their moans and cries provided a counterpoint to Akhlaur’s frenzied thoughts.
“An interesting spell, this,” he muttered as he scrawled. “Wouldn’t have thought an elf could manage it. Can’t be necromancers, elves. Bah! Whoever said that obviously hadn’t met my little Kiva.”
A note of pride had crept into the wizard’s musings concerning the elf woman. He shrugged aside Kiva’s years of captivity and torment, choosing to regard her as his “apprentice.”
“Apprentices challenge their masters. That is the way of things. You’ve done well, little elf—” he broke off to concentrate on shaping a particularly clever and lethal rune—“but you’re not ready to face Akhlaur in battle.”
The wizard finished the spell with a flourish. He rose and stroked his scaled chin as he stalked past a row of cages.
He paused before the bone and coral dungeon that housed the laraken. The monster instinctively lunged toward the life-giving magic surrounding Akhlaur, then cringed away when it realized the source.
Akhlaur considered his pet for a long moment. He needed a subject upon which to test the difficult spell he’d just transcribed. The laraken had survived this spell once, but Akhlaur could not be entirely certain that it would do so again. Most of the wizardly enchantments drained from Kiva passed through the laraken whole and with full detail; this one came to Akhlaur as the mere shadow of a spell. The laraken had absorbed the general shape and form during the casting, and passed this imperfect report along to its necromancer master. Akhlaur had filled in some gaps. Most likely he had improved the spell, but with elven magic, who knew?
“Too risky,” he decided. “Let us send another beast first, and see how it fares.”
The necromancer strolled past his collection of monsters. One, a fierce, four-armed fishman that reminded him of a mutant sahuagin, caught his eye. These creatures were common enough in the Elemental Plane. Should the experiment fail, it would be a simple matter to acquire another.
With a nod, Akhlaur shook out the parchment roll and began to read aloud. The spell he’d taken from the laraken—which in turn the laraken had taken from Kiva—rang through the living water. Bubbles rifted from the necromancer’s lips and drifted off to encircle the caged beast They spun and dipped and glowed, bringing to mind elves dancing beneath a starlit sky. Akhlaur ignored the elven flavor of Kiva’s spell and concentrated on the sheer ingenuity of it.
As the chant continued, the bubbles began to merge, growing in size as they united. When Akhlaur pronounced the final, keening word of power, the bubbles converged into a single sphere that surrounded the monster.
For a moment the necromancer merely stood and watched as the creature threw itself from one side of its prison to the other, gasping in the thin and unfamiliar air. The scent of its terror was as intoxicating as a greenwitch’s herb garden. Akhlaur drew in long draughts, taking time to savor its pungency. When at last he felt pleasantly sated, he took a small coral circlet from a spell bag and placed it between him and the entrapped monster. It hung like a round, empty frame on an invisible wall, or perhaps a peephole such as the powerless and suspicious often carved into their doors.
Again Akhlaur began to chant. A wall of power began to leech from the edges of the coral circle, gleaming with weird greenish light. When the wall spanned the vast chamber, the wizard took a tiny metal token and hurled it at the coral frame, shouting a single word.
The token disappeared with a burst of light and sound. The bubble lurched toward the coral circlet It clung, and the air it contained rushed through the hole in a whirling spill of bubbles. The monster, too, was sucked toward the opening. Its form elongated weirdly and flowed through the opening like a genie emerging from a narrow-necked bottle.
In moments the giant bubble was gone, and the monster stood but three paces from Akhlaur. The wizard dispelled the wall of force with a single gesture and smiled into his captive’s hideous face. The monster bared its fangs and snarled like a cornered wolf.
“Attack me,” Akhlaur invited. “This day has been lacking in diversion.”
For a moment instinct warred against instinct as the creature weighed certain death against continued captivity. A tormented roar ripped from its throat.
Akhlaur shrugged. “Indecision is its own choice,” he observed. He nodded, and the bone gate of the monster’s cage yawned open. A flick of the necromancer’s fingers created a miniature vortex that sucked the beast back into its prison and slammed the door behind it.
Not giving the monster another thought, the necromancer set to work affixing the coral frame to one of the cage’s bars, securing it with wards and trigger spells.
“A gift for you, little Kiva,” he said, gazing toward another tiny opening—the imperfect gate, a leak that spilled water and magic into Halruaa. “You sent me the laraken. When you touch the waters of the spring, I shall respond with a messenger of my own. Given the trouble you’ve taken on my behalf, it would be rude to ignore you. The proprieties, after all, must be observed.”
The necromancer chuckled, envisioning the elf woman’s surprise when the four-armed beast leaped from the gate. It was a small ploy, a mere feint in the opening moments of battle. But oh, how marvelous was the prospect of a worthy opponent!
Akhlaur let himself drift into pleasant dreams of vengeance. His thoughts dwelt not upon the little elf woman, but on his oldest friends—his most hated foes.
The Nath, the northeastern corner of Halruaa, was among the wildest and most desolate places in all the land. A few trade roads transversed it, but they were narrow and lightly traveled. Barren, rock-strewn valleys twisted among foothills honeycombed with caves, and often covered with dense forest. Monsters and bandits laired in these hidden places, but more dangerous still were the slim gray figures that moved like shadows through the smoking ruins of a trade caravan.
All were female Crinti, an elf-descended race who were gray of hair and skin and soul. Their leader kept over to the side, mounted on a dusky horse and directing the activity with an occasional gesture of her slim, gray hands. More infrequently, she snarled out a command in a language that once, long ago, had been that of the drow. Shanair, a chieftain among the Crinti raiders, took much pride in her dark heritage.
The Halruaans called her kind “shadow amazons.” Thanks to the human barbarians in her ancestry, Shanair was tall for an elfblood, and powerfully built. Her limbs were long and lean, her curves generous over a tightly muscled frame. A mass of iron-colored hair tumbled over her shoulders like a mountain stream, framing a face that was all planes and sharp angles. Although her ears were only slightly pointed, she emphasized her elf heritage with silver ear cuffs that extended up into exaggerated, barbed points. Her boots and leathers and cloa
k were all gray. Other than her eyes, which were an unexpectedly vivid shade of blue, the only slash of color about her was the jagged red tattoo encircling her upper arm and the red paint that turned her fingernails into bloody talons.
A distant scream floated over the hills. Shanair’s head came up in sharp recognition.
“Rekatra!”
She slapped her heels into her horse’s sides.
Two of Shanair’s aids leaped onto their steeds and fell in behind as she thundered toward the doomed scout—doomed by her own voice, for no true Crinti cried out in fear or pain.
They found Rekatra sprawled beside a swift little creek, clutching at the four deep, widely spaced wounds that sheared through leather armor to plow deep furrows through belly and bowels. The Crinti scout was drained nearly dry. The eyes she lifted to Shanair’s face were already glazed and dull.
“Mother,” she said faintly. Her voice held hope and supplication, the plea of a wounded child.
Shanair leaped from her horse and stalked over to the fallen scout. She drew two curved swords in a single, fluid sweep. They flashed down, crossed over the young warrior’s throat, and came back blooded.
The Crinti chieftain sheathed the stained blades and stooped over the carrion that had been her scout and her daughter. The other two women dismounted and drew near. Their faces held no hint of revulsion at their leader’s actions and no surprise.
“Look at these marks.” Shanair trailed her fingers along the edge of one deep gash.
The others crouched down to look. The cuts alone were deep enough to kill, but within each slash was another tear, slanting up at a sharp angle to the main cut
“Whatever cut her was not only sharp, but barbed,” observed Whizzra, Shanair’s second in command.
“And big,” put in the third Crinti. Xibryl, a fleshy warrior nearly Shanair’s height and strength, placed her hand on the dead scout’s belly and spread her thick fingers as wide as they would go. Her hands were long-fingered and strong, and like Shanair she wore her nails in blood-red talons. “If these marks came from claws, the hand was four times the size of mine. What creature in these hills could have done this?”
Shanair rocked back on her heels and rose in a smooth, swift motion. “Something new. Something we’ve not seen before.”
Her gaze swept the dismal terrain, searching for clues. No tracks were visible to her keen eyes, no trail sign. Rekatra’s attacker had fled through the stream.
Shanair’s blue eyes narrowed as she considered the bubbling stream. Snow still crowned the highest peaks of the mountain ranges encircling Halruaa, but the spring thaw had come and gone. Summer was upon them, but the heavy rains of the monsoon season were still two or three moons away. The water should not be running so swiftly.
“We follow the stream to its source,” she announced. She vaulted onto her horse’s back and set a brisk pace north, sparing no glance or thought for the dead girl.
The terrain grew steeper and more inhospitable with each step. Soon the rocky pass gave way to forest, which thinned to scrub pine as they climbed higher into the mountains. With each step, the song of the stream grew stronger and more urgent.
The Crinti warriors rode until the sun had set, and they pressed on through the lengthening shadows of twilight The sounds of gathering night echoed through the trees—the screech of raptors, the snarl of wild cats, the sharp sudden squeal of prey. When it grew too dark to ride, they dismounted and led their horses, trusting the keen night vision inherited from distant drow ancestors.
Dawn was near when they came to a small clearing. In the center of it, the stream flowed out of a small and apparently shallow pool. There was no sign of the creature that had shredded Rekatra.
Shanair left her horse at the edge of the clearing and crept cautiously nearer. She circled the stream’s mouth, peering keenly at the moss-covered ground. “Bring me a stout stick,” she ordered.
Xibryl complied at once, dragging a six-foot length of deadfall wood over and hacking off the side limbs with a hand axe. Shanair took the rough staff and jabbed tentatively at the water. Try as she might, she could not find the spring’s source. The bed beneath was solid ground.
“Impossible,” she muttered. Raising the stick high overhead, she plunged it hard into the water.
The staff dived so deep and so easily that Shanair nearly lost her footing. She leaped back, staring in amazement at the two-foot length of wood in her hands.
An enormous green hand shot out of the spring and fisted over the empty air where Shanair had just been standing. The hand was the size of a small battle shield. Webbing connected the four fingers, each of which was as long as her forearm and tipped with talons as barbed as fishhooks. As suddenly as it came, the hand disappeared, slapping back into the incomprehensible spring.
Shanair quickly conquered her surprise and drew her swords. Steel hissed free of Whizzra’s baldric. The creak of whirling chain announced the lethal dance of Xibryl’s spiked flail. The three Crinti moved quickly, silently into triangle formation around the spring.
Suddenly the clearing seemed to explode. The monster leaped out of the water like a geyser, and its voice was the roar of a waterfall.
The massive creature was twice Shanair’s height. Roughly humanoid in shape, it crouched on two froglike legs. Four arms, thickly muscled and armored with dull green scales, lifted into a wrestler’s ready stance. The creature’s head was enormous, crested with a barbed standing fin and nearly split in two by a fanged mouth. Dagger-sized teeth clacked with anticipation.
The Crinti warriors eyed their foe, sizing up its potential strengths and weaknesses.
“Sahuagin?” guessed Xibryl.
“Worse,” Shanair said with a fierce smile. This monster, she suspected, was no creature known to this world. Battle lust burned wild and hot in the Crinti chieftain as she began an ancient death-dance.
The others moved with her, dodging from side to side, dipping tauntingly forward, then leaping back. There was magic in their movements, a lure as potent as siren song. The Crinti did not weaken their enemies. They enticed them.
The creature came on with a rush, taking a mighty swing at the nearest Crinti. Whizzra nimbly dropped and rolled away, and Shanair dived in before the beast could recover its balance. Her left-hand sword thrust hard at the juncture of arm and chest—and slid harmlessly off the scaly armor.
Shanair ducked as another massive arm whistled over her head. In a lightning-flash decision, she measured the power of that swing and decided she could not absorb the impact She relaxed her grip on her sword and allowed the blow to send it flying. She barked out a one-word command, naming a much-practiced battle maneuver.
The other Crinti moved out wide on either side of the creature, their weapons flashing as they kept all four of the monster’s arms engaged. In came Shanair, ducking under the flailing arms. She gripped her sword with both hands, and launched herself into a powerful upward lunge. Her scale mail hissed against the massive green torso as she rose.
Her blade dived into the lizardlike folds under the creature’s chin. It grated against tooth and jaw, slammed hard into the bony palate that roofed the massive mouth. The creature’s shriek was liquid with blood, but Shanair instinctively knew she had not struck a killing blow.
Xibryl’s axe slashed in, knocking aside the taloned hand pawing at the imbedded weapon. Shanair let go of her blade to avoid the sweeping axe, whipped her head to one side so that she was not blinded by the shower of sparks as steel hit steel, then seized the hilt again. She leaped up, planted both feet on the creature’s chest, and pushed herself off as she tugged the sword free.
The Crinti dropped into a backward roll and came up on her feet. She backed away and whistled for her horse. The battle-trained steed trotted up, seemingly oblivious to the monster and its frenzied attempts to fight free of its tormenters.
Shanair untied a bundle of javelins and thrust them point-down into the mossy ground. She snatched up one, took aim, and let
fly.
The weapon streaked toward the creature, tearing through one of Xibryl’s flying gray tresses. Trailing a wavy strand of hair like a banner, it dived into one of the creature’s black eyes.
Shanair’s yell of triumph came to an abrupt stop as her javelin bounced back and fell free. Her aim was true, yet the spear did not pierce the skull!
Still, the creature was half blinded. Shanair threw another javelin and completed the task. The monster fought on, its swings and parries as accurate as before.
The Crinti woman’s keen ears caught the faint clicking sound that hummed through the air like distant cicada song. Under water, the sound probably carried for leagues. Shanair figured that the creature’s sound-sight, even in air, was probably as keen as a bat’s.
Shanair smacked her mare’s flank and sent her running. The other horses fell into pace behind their leader. The trio thundered in tight circles around the clearing, leaping over the stream again and again. The echoing hoof beats blended into a reverberating rumble, like the war drums of jungle elves. Even Shanair’s battle shriek was swallowed by the sound as she closed in on the confused and wounded beast
Now truly blinded, the creature tried to bolt, but it could not even hear the spring and took a fatal pace in the wrong direction. The Crinti warriors closed ranks.
They worked their quarry for a long time, and not just for the joy of a slow kill. They played the creature until it was exhausted, then tried prying up several scales, inquiring with sharp, deep jabs as they studied which wounds bled, which ones brought the sharpest pain, and finally, which killed. If this were not the only creature of its kind, such information could decide the next battle.
Finally the Crinti stood over their kill, drenched with exertion and blood, not all of it the monster’s. All three wore fierce, sated smiles.
“Take the trophy,” commanded Shanair.
Her warriors set to work, wresting off the head and stripping it clean of flesh and hide. Shanair broke off several dagger-shaped teeth and gave them to her warriors. The skull was too awkward for one horse to carry, so they fixed a cloak between two mounts like a sling. That accomplished, they mounted and set off to rejoin their comrades.
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