by Ed Greenwood
Then their Nirmathi guide tossed his weapons to the dirt at their feet.
He drew a second, hidden dagger from somewhere down his back, and dropped it to join them.
"The truth, now," he said quietly, eyeing them both as he spread empty hands. "You're after the magics in the Tomb. Are you from Molthune?"
Silence fell.
Tantaerra and The Masked both looked at the man. She tried to show nothing at all on her face. Her partner's mask gave him an advantage in that regard.
Her partner. Well, that's what he was, wasn't it?
"Word came of three sent out from Braganza, who should be helped to reach the Tomb," Farstrel told them carefully. "Telcanor word."
The Masked and Tantaerra looked at each other, then back at the guide—and nodded.
Farstrel relaxed visibly. "This one who tried to slay us, was he the third?"
"He was," The Masked confirmed.
"So now you know. What will you do about that?" Tantaerra asked the guide pointedly. She had quietly gotten out her smallest knife and was holding it ready to throw.
The guide only smiled and began retrieving and sheathing his weapons. "Nothing. I work for the Telcanors. Raldon was a bright, perceptive Nirmathi who was all too suspicious of me. and stuck to me like my own shadow. Now that he's dead, I can go back to trying to carry out my work, here in what was Molthune and will be again."
Abruptly he darted away from them, behind what was left of a wall. From the far side of it, he told them, "Go straight on, the way you're facing now. What's left of Hurlandrun is right over the next hill. May you taste success. My guiding is done, and I must be elsewhere."
A brief scrabbling followed, then the sounds of dislodged stones clacking and rolling ...and then silence.
When they went up to peer around the ruined wall, there was no sign of Farstrel.
∗ ∗ ∗
Hurlandrun was right where their vanished guide had promised it would be.
Or at least its ruins were, stretching across the land below them. Fallen roofs, overgrown streets, and tall trees thrusting up through heaved and buckled stones here, there, and everywhere.
A domed building at the heart of it all caught the eye. It was far larger than anything else—almost certainly either a temple, or the Shattered Tomb. Perhaps it had been built as a temple, and later made over into the tomb of Mahalagris.
Its thick dome was cracked right across, with a huge gap between the two halves where they'd sagged apart over the years. It looked as if the walls that held up one half had started to lean, and so torn the dome asunder.
"Behold the Shattered Tomb," the halfling murmured. "Or shattered something, at least."
"Some proud herald you'd make," Tarram told her with a smile, and glanced up at the sun. It was late afternoon, and they had only the small, battered belt-lantern they'd taken from Nesker—a glorified oil lamp with a windshield cage, brim-full. "So, do we go down?"
Tantaerra nodded. "I suspect you've as little taste as I have for camping and awaiting morning. Given whatever beasts may prowl hereabouts—and Voyvik, who's certainly lurking near."
"Probably watching us right now," he agreed.
They headed cautiously down into the ruins, and soon saw bones. Lots of bones, gnawed and strewn widely. Cracked open and yellow-brown with age...and including more human skulls than either of them cared to count.
Then they saw the wolves.
A score or more, streaming down tumbled stones to lope quickly and fearlessly in their direction.
"Oh, dung," the halfling spat. "Too far to run."
"The wall," Tarram replied, scooping her up one-handed with more haste than regard for her dignity. "Perhaps ...just perhaps ..."
He ran, whooping for breath, the wolves bounding to meet them with jaws swinging wide and eyes gleaming with eager hunger ...
Then something huge, green-scaled, and winged surged up from between two roofless houses, for all the world like a shark leaping from the waves of the Inner Sea, and pounced, skidding across the ground in a cloud of churned-up dust, great fanged jaws agape. Startled and yipping wolves tumbled into that dark maw and were torn apart.
The immense beast ripped through the yelping, scattering pack, biting and gulping. Then batlike wings beat once, the forest drake's long serpentine body and tail undulated, and it plunged down a hole behind a tumbled building, into unseen depths below.
Tarram looked at Tantaerra, still cradled in his arms, and said a word much harsher and nastier than "dung."
Then his running feet tripped and stumbled, and he fought wildly for balance as human skulls rolled and crunched underfoot.
The wall he'd been running so desperately for loomed up, ahead, and they could see a trio of human skeletons rising from behind it like warriors staging an ambush, reaching out with rusted blades—
Tarram ran right through one of them, not slowing. Bones clattered and cartwheeled in the air.
He drew what had been Nesker's sword and hacked. Tantaerra, still under his other arm, hammered with her dagger-pommel at reaching, raking skeletal fingers—and then they were past the skeletons, with new skulls rolling on the ground in their wake.
They turned a corner, beyond the wall, to step at last into the streets of abandoned Hurlandrun.
Streets that suddenly filled with a new and larger pack, streaming toward them. Not wolves this time, but tiny blue tigers or panthers, each about a foot long, plus another foot of tail. Scores of gleaming golden eyes, with grinning fangs beneath, and long, swept-back ears. In the distance, prowling unhurriedly to join their smaller brethren, strode a few larger ones. And a handful of much larger ones.
"Hunters of magic," Tarram announced, a little wearily. "Dweomercats."
"Lots of dweomercats," Tantaerra agreed. "Jaws and fangs and no doubt a propensity to regard us as dinner. And keen noses that can sniff out anything magical." She sighed, then pointed at a particular large, low rectangular stone building. It had an impressively ornate arched doorway, but no windows at all—and far more importantly, climbing one outside wall ... "Stone stair, still a roof at the top!"
"I'm running," he told her tersely, sprinting for the squat square building she'd pointed out.
Jaws and claws raked at his legs and ankles. Small blue bodies crunched underfoot, only to bounce upright again, seemingly unhurt. What were these things?
Then he was pounding up the stone steps, seeing cracks and green mold all over them, and names, or rather writing he hadn't time to read but that was spaced like names, lone names and paired names, and—
The great stone slab of roof was cracked right across, with smaller cracks radiating star-like out from that main wound as if a giant's fist had come down on the building. Yet right here, where he'd just skidded to a halt, the roof felt solid under his feet.
Which would have to do. He spun around, set Tantaerra down, and slashed with his sword across the top of the stair in perfect time to sweep the first yowling rank of dweomercats off the roof.
The second rank sprang, the blurred and rushing third right behind them. Tarram cursed and hacked at the roof around him like an enraged thresher trying to hammer a rat flat—and then the stair was suddenly empty of leaping blue-furred bodies.
They'd all turned to stream toward something else, down in the street. Something glowing and therefore magical, that the swarming press of their bodies now hid from view.
Something that had been thrown there by a man who was all too familiar—and who was now stalking up the stair.
Orivin Voyvik.
He was wearing a cruel little smile.
"I'd planned to spare you," he told Tantaerra, "but no longer."
He sprang, stabbing at her. The halfling frog-leaped aside, to land facing him in a crouch, her own daggers ready.
"I see you've finally learned to quit throwing away your weapons," she taunted.
Not all of the dweomercats had taken the bait. Across the roof, Tarram smarted under the raking cla
ws and jaws of a dozen-some dweomercats, hacking ineffectually just to stay alive.
Voyvik sprang past Tantaerra, landing in a shoulder roll and coming up to his feet between them. The roof groaned—then suddenly, sickeningly, gave way, plunging Tarram and the vicious blue cats down into darkness below.
Tarram clawed desperately to catch hold of something—anything. At the last moment, his fingers finally found purchase, and he swung and swayed in the darkness, cats gnawing at his legs, the eyes of many more gleaming up at him from the room below.
Voyvik had flung himself at the stair to avoid going down with the roof, and landed on all fours on the stairhead. Now he launched himself at the halfling.
As Tarram struggled to climb back onto what was left of the crumbling roof, Tantaerra and the murderous Nirmathi fought.
Their dance was a flurry of frantic leaping, tumbling, and hacking, daggers against daggers. An agile slayer against a halfling a third his size, the roof cracking and sagging underfoot.
A fight that came to a sudden halt as Voyvik overbalanced in a leaning double-dagger slash. Tantaerra sprang over one of his arms to get inside his guard—and triumphantly stabbed Voyvik in the chest.
Only to have her blade scrape across the armor hidden beneath his shirt.
Voyvik shook his head and gave her a cold smile.
His return thrust was into her chest, right to the crossguards.
With a snarl, he lifted her up on his dagger, then flung her off the blood-drenched blade.
Spewing blood, Tantaerra Loroeva Klazra fell helplessly through the broken roof, into the darkness below.
Chapter Fourteen
Into the Tomb
Tantaerra had never hurt this much in all her life.
If she'd been human, she'd be dead already, drowned and choked on her own fountaining blood. Yet Tantaerra was small even for a halfling, so her heart wasn't quite where Voyvik thought it was.
Scant consolation, that, as she crashed helplessly down through a dry-rotten wooden lid and into the coffin beneath it, sobbing in helpless agony.
She landed on cold, hard bones amid spicy-smelling dust. One snapped under her, but the rest started to shift and heave, as she curled up and clutched her knees to her torn-open chest in an effort to keep from rupturing utterly.
The skeletal remains beneath Tantaerra shoved her aside as they rose up, spilling her onto a lot of small, hard, hissingly shifting things.
Ceramic vials, a heap of them, with rotten threads like a net of dark and seaweedy fingers among them. They'd been sewn onto a shroud or burial blanket laid over the skeleton, but whatever it had been was mere sighing black cobwebs now.
The skeleton rose and stretched a bony hand toward her.
Well, she was bleeding out anyway, so ...
Fighting hard not to sneeze, Tantaerra grabbed the nearest vial, bit away the crumbling dry wax that sealed it, and spat the stopper aside.
Red agony. Her chest was a sucking storm of pain, a drain she swirled down and out. Above her, the skeleton swayed, stooping now to regard her with empty eye sockets as its bony arms reached for her.
Tantaerra poured the contents of the vial down her throat.
And tasted that lovely clear, minty tingling. It slid into her, healing, the pain fading ...
Even as she gasped in satisfaction, skeletal fingers dug into her painfully, low on her uppermost flank and cruelly about the back of her neck, seeking to slide around to her throat.
Tantaerra hunched her head low to hamper any strangling attempt, jerked her body and arched it to try to shake the skeleton's grip on her, and kicked out hard. One of her feet struck a bony ankle, but the other found what she wanted: the thankfully still-solid inside wall of the coffin. Planting both feet against it, she wormed her way behind the ankle and shoved.
Fresh pain flared as her half-healed gutting opened anew. Yet few two-legged creatures on Golarion could have kept their balance against such a back-of-the-ankles shove. The skeleton swayed, arms flailing wildly, then toppled over backward, upflung feet kicking vials high as it crashed down out of sight, off the dais that held its coffin.
Amid the fountain of vials now tumbling in the air above Tantaerra was a still-handsome lacquered plaque. Writhing and moaning as she rolled across the now-vacated coffin, she had a seeming eternity to read its descending inscription.
Valorn the Prankster
Whose healing was matched by his humor.
He who saved so many could not save himself.
Then the plaque and all the vials crashed down on her in a bruising, bouncing rain. Tantaerra screamed and rolled, clutching to try to hold her ravaged innards together, aware of being covered in dark stickiness that was almost certainly her own blood. A lot of it.
She clawed up another vial, fought to bite it open, managed that with almost the last of her strength, drank again—and relaxed in the rapturous flow of cool-to-warm healing.
Something vast, dark, and heavy crashed down, obliterating the end of the coffin and shattering most of the potion vials in an ear-splitting instant. Whatever it was continued on, falling from the dais to slam down against the floor amid squalling, shrieking dweomercats.
A pointed piece of roof had fallen like a titan's dagger to destroy one end of the coffin, pinning Valorn's skeleton to the floor. All that could be seen were its bony arms clawing the air futilely, the great wedge of roof lying between them like a replacement coffin lid.
Tantaerra was hurled into the air, amid vials whole and broken. She crashed back down into what was left of the coffin, now a mess of vial shards and a thick, glowing, pulsing goo. Through this latter she slid helplessly, down one inner side of the coffin and up the other, getting a huge dollop of goo up her nose and down her throat during that slippery journey.
Tingling began within her, and the gloomy chamber around her went misty, dweomercat snarls fading to mere squeaks. The hollow clinks and rattles of the vials moving around her in the coffin were muted, and even the grating squeals of fingerbones on the coffin, as the skeleton scrabbled to climb back in, became brief and faint sounds.
What, by all the gods—?
The tingling was now a burning inside her. A warm rising pleasure, roiling through Tantaerra, making her very blood sing. Her body was stirring, arms and legs twitching, wordless song bursting out of her as she rose to stand, swaying like the skeleton had, reaching for she knew not what, but ...
Tantaerra fought to concentrate, to govern her exulting, dancing body. She tried to bend and snatch up a handy vial, but her hands went right through it—ghostly, translucent hands that thrust through the solid sides of the coffin as if nothing was there.
The skeleton could still see her, and so could several springing, snarling dweomercats, but their raking bones and fangs went right through her ...and Tantaerra's body went right through them. And through the vials, and the solid walls of the coffin, drifting wherever she thought about going.
Which in her initial startlement was through one side of the coffin to the floor of what was obviously a mausoleum.
She could see through herself as she thrashed about, trying to stand on a floor she was sinking through.
Up, she demanded fiercely, trying to shout but managing only gusty silence. Up.
And up she rose, drifting higher—but glowing now, too, as brightly as a good strong fire, flickering and writhing as she got higher.
And larger.
Tantaerra blinked down at herself. She was still a halfling—a ghostly halfling, her body like empty, glowing smoke—but she was now the biggest, tallest halfling she'd ever seen. Twice as tall as The Masked, and getting taller.
Though she could feel nothing at all, and apparently say nothing anyone could hear. Pouncing and leaping dweomercats sprang right through her, frightening and enraging their tail-switching, agitated fellows. They fled, first one or two and then all of them, rushing away as swiftly as they'd first swarmed into view when she and The Masked had arrived in overgrown Hurlandr
un.
Tantaerra watched them go as she continued to ascend, growing more slowly now, up ...up ...and past the roof.
As her head and shoulders rose through the hole where the roof had collapsed, Tantaerra flung up one ghostly hand.
Through her phantom fingers she saw The Masked and Voyvik fighting, rolling around together on what little was left of the rooftop, punching each other, grappling and clawing. Barehanded, their knives gone, their faces twisted with effort and anger, snarling as they rolled over, saw her—and gaped in astonishment.
Tantaerra gave The Masked a wide and embarrassed grin, and a little wave—and was pleased to see that Tarram recovered from his surprise a moment earlier than Voyvik, and managed to land a good, hard punch to the crazed Nirmathi's throat, driving Voyvik into self-clutching agony.
She willed herself to join her partner, and drifted closer to the two entwined men.
Tarram tried to kick himself free and reach for her—but those kicks made small chunks of roof break free of the edge, right under him, to crash down on the spires and catafalques below. He had to catch at the roof edge frantically and cling with all his white-knuckled might to keep from plunging headfirst after them. Voyvik, still lost in pain, launched a feeble kick at The Masked's backside.
"No!" Tantaerra shrieked at Tarram in warning, but nothing at all came out of her mouth. The tingling became almost a buzzing, between her ears, and suddenly she was—
Halfway across the nearest overgrown street of ruined Hurlandrun, just like that. And about the height of four or five tall men above the ground, gaping down at dweomercats who looked just as astonished to see her as she felt, finding herself in midair above them.
Then, just as abruptly, she was somewhere else, somewhere dark and dank and enclosed in moldy stone, a room in a building whose floor was studded with mushrooms and rivulets of lazily running water.
A room that went from dark to an eerie rosy and then a bright, pulsing, lurid pink glow in a flaring instant—a glow Tantaerra realized with some horror was coming from herself.
Her still-translucent, floating, insubstantial self.