by Kate Novak
“What’s wrong?” he shouted crossly.
“There’s something,” Alias cried, her features distorted with terror. She gulped air far too quickly. “Something on the other side. It’s got my arm.”
What could terrorize a woman who’s stood up to dragons, earthly titans, and man-eating kalmari? Akabar wondered as he peered at the wall. The blue light had dimmed considerably. All the mage could make out beyond the translucent bricks was a vast shadow.
As he watched, the warrior woman’s body lurched forward, dragged deeper into the wall by her arm. Now she was embedded to her right shoulder plate.
“Oh, gods,” Alias whined. “Gods, gods, gods, gods,” she moaned over and over, as though she were pleading with heaven.
“Hold her tight, Dragonbait,” Akabar barked. “I’m going to try to dispel now.”
Akabar resumed his stance and began to intone his spell. The rise and fall of his voice became an eerie melody superimposed over the warrior’s panicked, repetitious rhythm.
Dragonbait strained between the trapped warrior and the wall. Even if his restored strength proved sufficient to counter the slow, steady force that sucked her through the barrier, Alias feared they might only end up tearing her in half. Equally bad was the possibility she would end up the instrument that crushed the life from the lizard before he was willing to sacrifice her.
Akabar finished his disenchantment spell by unlacing his fingers with a flourish to scatter the magical energies across the surface of the wall. Sun-yellow motes sparkled toward the wall, which was now the dark blue shade of a sky about to rain.
The motes struck the wall and hissed like sparks falling into water. The blue light grew even dimmer as the bricks grew opaque. Alias managed to pull her leg completely free and her arm came out up to her elbow. The half with sigils still remained buried.
Dragonbait, unprepared for the success of Akabar’s spell, was dislodged from his position between Alias’s trapped foot and arm, and he stumbled to the floor. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing her about the knees, but the entity on the other side gained the advantage with a sudden tug.
Alias gave one last inhuman scream before her boots slid from the lizard’s grasp and she fell through the wall like sand in an hourglass.
The wall went completely opaque, and the sigils on Dragonbait’s chest ceased radiating light. The lizard and mage were left alone, bathed in the now-feeble, yellow glow of the finder’s stone.
Dragonbait picked up the glowing crystal and struggled to his feet. Tears streamed down the lizard’s cheeks.
Akabar stared at the wall in disbelief. He ran up to it and pounded on it with his fists. “Give her back!” he screamed. The string of curses he began issuing rang down the corridors and echoed back, drowning out the ones he finished with. The wall remained smooth and hard. If Dragonbait’s sword had only managed to scratch its surface, Akabar’s bare hands weren’t going to bring it down.
“You!” the mage growled, turning to the lizard. “This is your fault.” He hurled his words like a mad monk throwing shurikens. They spun with poisonous, deadly precision, unconcerned whether or not they caused harm. “She came here after you. You should have held on to her. You lost her. We could have saved her, and you lost her. What kind of accursed beast are you? Who pulls your strings?”
With each accusation, the mage took a step toward the exhausted, grieving lizard until he had backed him against the wall and was standing over him nose to muzzle. Akabar screeched at the top of his lungs, “Answer me or, I swear, I’ll wear your hide as sandals!” He reached down to grab the creature by the shoulders.
He never got the chance. Dragonbait used the finder’s stone to smack the mage on the side of the head. The Turmishman staggered back and stumbled over the lizard’s sword.
Dragonbait walked up to the mage and bent over him to retrieve his sword. Standing, he snarled down on him. His unblinking lizard eyes narrowed as the mage began to intone a short, deadly spell.
The Turmishman’s spell and the lizard’s leap to attack him were both interrupted when the ground shifted beneath them. Akabar forgot his spell and Dragonbait sprawled across the floor. They both looked back at the wall. The blue glazing from the bricks began to crack and flake away.
The lizard rolled away from the cascading shards of brickwork while the mage crab-crawled backward, keeping his eyes on the destruction. The glazing sloughed completely off, the brick beneath crumbled to dust. The red-colored mortar remained suspended in air for a moment and then crashed to the floor in a cloud of dust.
In the light of the finder’s stone, it looked to Akabar as if a second wall stood just beyond the first, only this wall was composed of garbage, rotted plants, and turned earth. And bound in the center of the wall was Alias, her eyes closed, her body still. Her arms and legs were pinioned beneath coverings of moss and moist plant roots. Beneath the wet lichen covering her right arm, the runes pulsed like an evil, blue heart.
Akabar cried out, but Alias did not stir. She was unconscious. Just above the warrior woman’s head, in the garbage wall, a human eye opened. Then, to the left of Alias’s head, a feline eye opened, followed by a third eye above that, as large, milky, and deep as a dragon’s. A fanged mouth opened to the right of Alias’s right hand. A sharp hyena bark filled the room.
Tendrils shot out from the base of the wall-thing, and with these it began to drag itself forward, a rotting juggernaut. More tendrils oozed from slime-dripping pores, wet and thick tendrils, ending in mouths filled with sharp fangs.
The mage scrambled through the spells he had memorized. All he could think to try was another magic missile. He was struggling to calm himself so that he could begin chanting when a scaly arm grabbed the collar of his robe and dragged him down the passage and around the bend.
Akabar jerked away from the lizard’s claws and knocked his arm away. “Was this your plan, beast,” he spat, “to sacrifice her to that thing?”
Dragonbait’s face twisted into a deep scowl, and Akabar thought the lizard was going to hit him again. Instead, he pointed around the corner, back toward the living wall.
It had become a wave of pungent rot. Fresh green shoots sprouted over it, and it moved with surprising speed, already having lumbered over the spot where Akabar had been standing only a moment before. New taproots shot out every second, and brownish slime oozed from beneath its flowing bottom. Alias remained asleep, entranced, trapped against its leading edge.
“So, you’ve saved me,” Akabar shrugged. “How do we get Alias back?”
Dragonbait scowled again and pointed up.
Akabar had no better plan, so he allowed himself to be tugged back through the passages, looking behind every few yards to see if the wall of slime was still following them.
It was. The wall lumbered along like a mastodon, its bulk filling the corridor, oozing into different shapes to fit the narrower corridors. Its multiple mouths were babbling now, each inhuman throat finding its voice, wheezing through rotted pipes too long ignored.
The mage and the lizard finally reached the secret door from the stairs into the garbage midden. The stench of human waste was strong, but fresher and more alive than the dead-rot that followed them. The door had resumed whining, trying to overcome the rocks Alias had jammed in its path.
Dragonbait began kicking the stones away.
“No!” Akabar shouted, trying to push him away. “You can’t do that! She’ll be trapped in there with that thing!”
The lizard shoved him across the platform toward the stairs and kicked the last stone from the door’s path.
The mossy barrier slammed shut.
“What have you done?” Akabar screamed.
Suddenly, Akabar gasped, breathless. Sharp pains laced through his chest like needles running beneath his skin. His lungs labored for air.
Dragonbait pointed upward and began climbing the stairs.
“Damn you!” the mage shouted up the steps from the platform. “I may be a greengrocer,
but I know better than to abandon a friend! I’ll die before I abandon her to that thing, you coward.”
Directly behind him, the wall with the secret door exploded and the great, oozing mass surged into the pit. The stone platform began to collapse under its great weight, but the corruption cascaded downward still babbling from innumerable mouths. Now, the squealing cries were chanting in chorus.
In voices ranging from frog piping to deep, resonant tongues as ancient as the great elven forests, the word repeated over and over was Moander.
The Turmish mage blanched and fled up the stairs.
Moander’s Resurrection and Mist’s Return
Dragonbait was waiting for Akabar halfway up the stairs. The lizard’s breathing was fast, but nowhere near as labored as the mage’s. Akabar staggered up the stairs with his hands clutching his chest. The pain there had changed from sharp needle pricks to a deep, crushing sensation. His face was drenched with sweat. His shoulder and back ached.
“Why?” he gasped, his furor burned out by the fire in his lungs, “why did you let her die?”
Dragonbait made a quick dismissive shake of his head such as an adult might use to warn an overbearing child. Then, noticing the perspiration dripping down the Turmishman’s anguished face, the lizard reached out to take his shoulder.
Akabar retreated from his grasp. “No,” he insisted. “You go ahead. I can’t run. Muscle cramp,” he lied. “If it climbs up the walls, maybe I can slow it, maybe have a chance still to free her. Go!”
The mage collapsed in a heap on the stairs.
Dragonbait slipped past Akabar a few steps lower and knelt to get a better look at him. He put the finder’s stone down beside him and reached out with both clawed hands. He laid his palms and fingers over the slime-spattered robe covering Akabar’s chest.
The smell of woodsmoke enveloped them. A small aura of light flared around the reptile’s claws. Nowhere but in the blackness of this pit would Akabar have been able to see the light the lizard generated. A feeling of warmth and relief spread out from Akabar’s torso.
Akabar stood and the pain in his chest, back, and shoulder was gone. He stared at the lizard in confusion.
“Who in Gehenna are you? What are you?”
But Dragonbait’s attention was fixed on the pit. He stared over the edge of the staircase into the earth’s depths. Akabar tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness to see what held the lizard’s gaze. A bright, blue light shimmered in the depths. At first, Akabar thought it might be the moon reflected in water, but the sky above the pit was dark.
“Alias!” he whispered excitedly. “She might still be alive. Look, the light’s coming closer.”
The light was indeed approaching them, the blue light shed by the sigils on the warrior woman’s arm, but it was not Alias propelling herself upward. The bottom of the pit, a mass of rot and oozing garbage, was rising up the shaft. Alias was just a tiny human figure pinned to the muck.
Dragonbait pointed up the stairs and nudged Akabar to climb in front of him. The mage nodded and ascended without further argument or complaint. When he reached the top, he was only mildly winded. The pain had not reasserted itself with the exertion of the climb. He turned around to check on the lizard’s progress up the stairs.
Having judged the speed of the monster to be less than their own, Dragonbait now took his time, turning back often to study it. Is he some sort of tribal shaman? Akabar wondered. What other secrets has he kept hidden?
Akabar peered back down the pit. Far below, the oozing mass that had kidnapped Alias was still crawling up the sides of the midden. It rose like lava in a volcano and had already regained the height of the ruined platform. The titanic effort of hauling its vast bulk did not seem to tire it. If anything, it seemed to be moving faster now.
“Don’t move, mooncalf,” a strange, rough voice ordered. Then it shouted, “Captain!”
Akabar looked up from the pit. Ten feet away, a single soldier was sitting on the pile of rubble about the midden. He was wrapped in a faded red robe, and a red-plumed helmet lay beside him, next to an overful bucket of kitchen waste. He held a loaded crossbow aimed at Akabar’s chest.
Dragonbait’s head rose over the rim of the pit. He ducked back quickly, but it was already too late.
“No good, pigeon,” the soldier barked toward the pit. “Bring your carcass over the side, or we’ll push your buddy in.”
Akabar watched Dragonbait shove the finder’s stone into his shirt and sheathe his sword across his back, though the soldier did not have his line of sight and could not have noticed. The lizard scrambled over the edge with both his hands held out before him. He positioned his body between Akabar and the crossbow.
The mage had always assumed that in the event of Alias’s inability to take charge, he would be the next leader. Obviously, Dragonbait did not agree. He took responsibility for their safety and put himself at the greatest risk.
The captain and four more fighters strode through the ruins toward the midden. Two carried lanterns and handheld crossbows. The rest were armed with short swords, drawn and ready.
“I got me some looters,” their captor announced. “Or maybe spies,” he added. By the brightening of his face, Akabar could see that this thought had just entered the man’s head. The glee it brought him indicated that there was a bounty paid on spies.
Akabar looked to Dragonbait. Leader or not, he would need an interpreter. He stepped forward to stand beside the lizard as the captain approached. Dragonbait stood motionless, but Akabar could sense the lizard’s tension. The fragrance of violets wafted from his body. The mage could smell his own sweat. Dragonbait glanced meaningfully at the pit and back at Akabar, raising his scaly brows. If he could stall the soldiers, they would soon be too busy dealing with an ancient god to bother with two stray adventurers.
“I am no looter, but a mage of no small water,” Akabar announced to the captain. “I have important information for the commander of your unit.”
“No small water,” mimicked the crossbowman who’d discovered them.
“Sounds like a southerner,” one of the other soldiers said.
“Don’t like southerners,” the first one said. “They lie and stink.”
The Red Plumes captain held up his hand, silencing everyone. “Who are you, and what is your information?” he asked Akabar.
Akabar could not keep from glancing at the pit. Using the lumbering garbage pile of a god as a diversion would not work if Moander engulfed them before engaging the Red Plumes. “Let us go to your camp, where I will tell you,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“You’ll tell me here and now,” replied the captain, “or your bodies will be lying at the bottom of the pit.”
The bottom of the pit may be here any minute, the mage thought nervously. Aloud he said, “There is something very dangerous in this pit. A threat to you and everyone else in this city. It climbs out even as we speak. You must fetch fire, oil, and powerful mages, quickly. We might still repel it.”
The captain chuckled. “Our mages are asleep, southerner, resting after a powerful contention with the forces of Zhentil Keep. It would not be worth your life or mine to roust them. Your story sounds to me like a looter’s tale, but it will not help you escape the noose. We have firm laws against looters. But I’m sure you know that.”
“No,” Akabar replied. “I do not.” He looked around at the ruined city. “I wasn’t even aware there was anything worth looting in this pile of rubble.”
“I’ll bet,” the captain said, smiling with amusement at Akabar’s cool denial. “However, ignorance of the law is no excuse. The Hillsfar Red Plumes are here at the request of the Yulash government in Hillsfar. On their behalf, we are authorized to hang all looters. No exceptions.”
“I can understand that,” Akabar said. “Please,” he pleaded, “let us move away from the edge of this pit.”
The captain surveyed the mage and the lizard. For the first time that evening, Akabar missed the p
resence of the glib-tongued Ruskettle. By now, the dratted halfling could probably have convinced the captain to organize a full alert, the mage mused, were she here and not snoring away at camp. He wondered if he would ever have another chance to scold her for her laziness.
Finally, the captain made up his mind. He motioned permission for Dragonbait and Akabar to move away from the pit. The crossbowmen kept their weapons leveled on the prisoners. The captain, having apparently sensed and caught Akabar’s and Dragonbait’s nervousness, moved away from the pit first, though he tried to appear calm and unperturbed as he leaned on his weapon. The other two men rested their swords on their shoulders.
The two adventurers moved cautiously through the rubble, away from the edge of the pit, until they stood with their backs against a half-toppled wall.
“Try again, looter,” the captain ordered. “I’m sure you can come up with a better story than a pit fiend.”
Why is it one’s friends will believe one’s lies, but one’s enemies are incapable of recognizing the truth when one speaks it? Akabar pondered. He knew better than to backtrack. “Sir,” he said urgently, “as one civilized man to another, I assure you, there is indeed a horrible creature in that pit, no mere fiend, but an ancient god.”
“I’ve heard of you ‘civilized Southerners’,” their discoverer said, “you’re baby-killers, every man-jack of you. Worship gods darker than those who squat at the Keep.”
Either bards are spreading the tales about baby-killers in every society, Akabar thought, or they’re neglecting their duty to disabuse people of these absurd notions.
The captain, not quite as obtuse and single-minded as his subordinates, gave an order to a crossbowman. “Soldier, take a look down the pit. The rest of you, watch this pair. If they so much as sneeze, skewer them.”
The crossbowman climbed over the rubble to peer down into the pit. “Looks fine to me,” he insisted, holding the lantern over his head. “Kinda full. We’re going to have to find another dump soon. Hey, there’s a body in there, a wo—”