Vhok realized that there was no day or night within the Plane of Fire. The sky remained that same roiling hue of orange mixed with gray and black, an endless stretch of smoky clouds churning overhead and reflecting the light of a million burning fires. He had no idea how long they had been traveling since extracting themselves from the dimensional mansion. He knew he was tired, though.
"We've got to halt," he announced at last. He stopped and propped himself against an outcropping of rock that jutted from a steep-sided slope running alongside the trail. "No more today," he added.
"There's no place to shelter us," Zasian argued. "Maybe the next bridge would suit us."
"Yes, an excellent idea," Vhok said, and he laughed, but he felt no mirth. "We can hide beneath it like trolls."
"You would prefer to just plop down here?" the priest demanded, his tone haughty. "Exposed? Visible? At the mercy of the endless, thrice-damned heat?" he shouted, visibly angry. He flung his pack down upon the ground, and when it began to smolder, he snatched it up again. "See?" he yelled, frantically patting the flames out on the scorched bundle. "There's no way we can set up a camp here! Everything will turn to ash in a matter of moments!"
Vhok sighed. He was too worn out to resent the priest's words. He knew Zasian was right, and he had only himself to blame. "I find it odd," he said at last, "that you do not point at me and shout blame, like so many of your kind. A follower of Bane who doesn't seize any opportunity to demean and accuse? How is it that you are so even-tempered?"
Zasian looked at Vhok with surprise. "What would be the point of that?" he asked. "I serve the Black Lord because I want to succeed. I've got better things to do than belittle quaking wretches afraid of their own shadows. Bane will judge me on my own merits, not on how much poorer I made another out to be."
"That sounds almost noble," Vhok said, a sly smile flashing across his face. "Are you sure that is what Bane requires of you?"
"It's true that many Banites seek every opportunity to tear down those around them in order to make themselves appear more powerful. I find that to be folly. They spend all their time circling the mountain, looking for others to push off, rather than making their way to the top of it."
The cambion grunted in appreciation of his counterpart's wisdom.
"That does not mean that I will not put an upstart underling in his place, if need be. I have little tolerance for those who merit punishment, but I see no sense in squashing genius. There is a difference between exerting one's authority and jealously trying to punish ambition."
"And so there's no sense of recrimination toward me?" Vhok asked. "No accusation of misdeeds on my part?"
"Why?" the priest asked in response. "Because you trusted that maggot of a half-dragon and his clan? I was there at the Everfire, too. Did I raise an objection? No. If I had thought your decision was folly, I would have told you."
"Would you now?" Vhok held some doubt that Zasian was being truthful with him.
"Just as I am telling you now that your growing frustration with our current predicament is folly," the priest said. "It does us no good to grow irate about it. We cannot stay here-we both know that. Our choices are simple. We either push on, or we give up and find a means to return to Sundabar."
Vhok sighed again. "I know," he said. "I'm just so damned tired. I-"
The cambion froze in the midst of his speech. He heard a noise, from just beyond the bend in the trail. He reached for Burnblood and took a halting step forward, unsure if his weary mind had played tricks on him.
At almost the same instant, Zasian's eyes grew wide as he stared at something over Vhok's shoulder. He jerked upright and fumbled for something within his tunic.
The cambion spun around. He saw nothing. "What is it?" he asked, pulling his sword free. "What do you see?"
"There," the priest said, pointing with one hand while extracting a scroll with the other. As Vhok turned to look again at what seemed to be an empty trail, Zasian blurted out an unintelligible phrase in rapid, clipped tones. As he finished, a horde of dwarves, their hair and beards flickering flame, materialized out of nothingness.
Dappled sunlight shone through the high boughs of the forest canopy overhead. Aliisza watched as a gray-haired woman tried to chop a log in half. Her arms quavered, and she had no real skill at the work. Her blows against the hardwood fell awkwardly or missed altogether. Once, she nearly took off her own toes.
Yet she persevered, righting the fallen log and hefting the axe again. Sweat beaded on her wrinkled brow and her breathing came in labored gasps. Finally, she succeeded in splitting the log, and sighed as the two halves fell away from her chopping block. The woman knelt down, clutching at her back, and collected the two pieces of wood. She hobbled to the front porch of her little cottage, a thatched-roof affair of coarse logs and mud chinking, and stacked the freshly split wood on the tiny pile she had started.
Aliisza watched her work for some time. It seemed to the alu that the woman intended to chop all day, even though she made very little headway. Her diligence was made all the more pitiful because of the other figure standing there, also watching.
An elderly man, similar in age to the woman, waited motionless in the trees nearby. Tears ran down his face as he studied her efforts. He wore a Sundabarian military tunic, but beneath it, he was clothed in a simple woodsman's outfit, and the bow and quiver on his back marked him as a hunter.
He had died that night in the canyon, too.
Aliisza couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene. The man, a ghost, could only stare mutely and cry as his wife labored to survive. They had shared the cottage for many years, the alu knew, on the fringe of civilization. The man had kept them both safe, hunting food in the forest while the woman baked and cleaned. They were happy together. When the man had been called into service by the Stone Shields, he had stoically fulfilled his duty, even though he was well past the age of obligation. He had promised his quaking wife that he would be back soon, that she should go to live with her sister nearer to the city until he could return.
Of course, she had refused.
It was her home, she had insisted, and it was where she would wait for him to come back to her, when his obligation was completed.
She was still waiting.
No word had ever come back to her, no message that her husband had disappeared one night while on patrol. Though he was long overdue, she suspected nothing, only worried that the military had need of his services for longer than expected.
It wasn't too bad, she thought, except for the chores. She wasn't as strong as she once had been, and keeping up the property was more difficult. But she trusted that her man, her true love since both had been barely more than children, would come back to her.
Aliisza did not want to care. People die, she insisted. They grow old, or they are injured, or they are killed in battle. It is the way the world works. It is not my affair. Not my problem!
The alu turned away, weary from watching the ghost grieve for his forgotten wife. She didn't want to be there when he witnessed the old woman's death at the hands of a marauding band of tanarukks later that night. Aliisza knew the script by heart, even though she had not witnessed it. Somehow, it had embedded itself in her mind.
Enough! she silently screamed, and the vision faded. No more! she thought, thankful that the garden and fountains reappeared. Every time, she feared that they would not, that she would find herself stuck in a vision for eternity.
It was nighttime again, the moon high in the sky. Somehow, whenever she returned, it was night. She liked the night, the darkness. It pleased her, let her feel safe within its shadows. So no one can see me, she thought. So no one can examine these foolish thoughts I can't get rid of.
The wind chimes tinkled softly in the darkness and the leaves of the great tree glowed silver in the moonlight as Aliisza strolled toward one of the benches. She was halfway there before she realized another figure sat upon it.
"Tauran," she said, secretly thankful that h
e had come, but unwilling to admit it out loud. "Why are you here?"
"To see how you fare," the angel replied, rising. "Because I know you wanted it."
"Do you do everything I want?" she asked coyly, afraid to ask aloud the question truly in her mind. How much do you know? Can you see what your horrid visions are doing to me?
"Not quite," the deva replied. "As much as is necessary, for both our sakes."
Aliisza tossed her head. "What does that mean?"
"It means," the angel said, moving toward the pool, "that it's time for me to show you this." He dipped his fingers in the water and swirled them for a moment.
Before the half-fiend reached the edge of the fountain, he removed them. There, just as she expected, was an image, rather than a reflection of the night sky. She saw herself, her body, like before. It had grown bulkier, fat. Bloated.
Aliisza gasped. "W-why?" she stammered. "Why am I like that?"
"You are due to deliver soon," the angel said softly.
"No!" Aliisza cried. "That cannot be! I have not been here more than a tenday, perhaps two at most! No child could grow that fast! What is happening?"
Tauran smiled, one of those sad smiles that Aliisza had come to dread. It was a smile that meant, "I am about to tell you that your world will come crashing down once more."
"Time moves differently there, and here," he explained. "Where your body lies, time flows much faster. It has been the full term of your pregnancy there. Soon, your child will be born."
"And here?" she asked, fearful of the answer.
"Here," he answered, "time moves much more slowly. Though it seems as though you have been here a tenday or more, beyond this place, only a single day has passed. You have completed but one day of your year-long sentence, Aliisza."
"No!" Aliisza sobbed. "You bastard!"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dwarves, Vhok thought in disgust. Here, as far away from Faerun as I can possibly be, there are damnable dwarves!
The stout ones looked in many ways like their normal kin. Strong, sinewy arms and legs sprouted from thick, stumpy torsos. Though made of fire, their hair and beards were thick and bushy. Both their skin and clothing seemed fashioned of brass or bronze.
And most importantly, thought Vhok wryly, they are all frowning.
Those in the front rank brandished copper-colored war-hammers, while those in the back held short spears aloft. All of them were trying to approach the duo in a stealthy manner.
Invisible, the half-fiend realized. He grew angry that he and the priest had become careless, had stopped paying attention. We are tired, he thought. Tired idiots.
Vhok turned to Zasian to gauge the priest's intentions and spied another group of the flaming dwarves coming from the opposite direction. They, too, had been invisible a moment earlier, until Zasian's spell had revealed them. Between the two lines, they held both ends of the trail. They had planned their ambush well, for there was nowhere for the two travelers to run.
The two groups of fiery dwarves, realizing they had been exposed, slowed a bit and held their weapons higher. They eyed Vhok and Zasian warily but did not rush forward to attack, as the cambion expected. Instead, one from the first group stepped forward, a staff thrust toward the duo. "You will surrender to us, outlanders," he said in thickly accented Common. "Or you will perish by flame and weapon."
Zasian only stared. He seemed a bit bemused at the turn of events. He gave Vhok a glance. "Well?" he asked. "What do you want to do? Perish or surrender?"
Vhok realized the priest was barely preventing himself from bursting out in laughter. The cambion wasn't quite sure what was so amusing to the man. "I hardly think this is funny," he growled, low so the others couldn't hear him. "More gods-forsaken dwarves, and we had to stumble into the middle of them. I never want to see another dwarf in my life!"
"Surrender now, or we will slay you!" the leader of the creatures called, a bit louder and more forcefully.
"A moment, please, my friend," Zasian said, motioning to the dwarf for patience. "We are discussing your terms." He turned to Vhok and almost started laughing. "It's funny because I know how put out you are!" Zasian said quietly, still smirking. The priest chuckled for a moment, then managed to straighten his face. "In all seriousness, though, they have called for our surrender. Do you wish to fight our way out of this, or perhaps see if we can negotiate with them? We might convince them to guide us to the City of Brass."
Vhok grimaced. "I hardly think dwarves, hair afire or no, are interested in helping us," he said. "I'd as soon eat them alive as speak with them, and the feeling is mutual, I'm sure."
"Not necessarily," Zasian said. "These beings dwell far away from Sundabar and the Silver Marches. There's no reason to assume that they are aware of your animosity toward their kin or your reputation back home."
The leader of the dwarves, apparently impatient over the travelers' refusal to respond, barked orders at his squads of soldiers. The dwarves on both sides closed in on Vhok and Zasian. From a back rank, one even lofted a short spear into the air. The weapon struck the ground near Vhok's feet and wobbled there for a moment.
"I'll kill them all," Vhok hissed, reaching for Burnblood. "Every last one of them."
"No," Zasian admonished, taking hold of the cambion's arm. "Restrain yourself."
Vhok was on the verge of yanking his arm free, but the tone of the priest's voice gave him pause. He turned to glare at the man instead, to warn him against ever laying an unwelcome hand upon himself again.
"I told you I would speak plainly when I thought your actions were folly," Zasian said as the dwarves closed in. "Well, this is one such time. You do nothing to further your own cause by fighting them. They are intelligent-we can reason with them. Give it a chance before you become berserk with bloodlust against them."
Vhok clenched his teeth in fury, unwilling to acknowledge that the priest had a point. He only wanted to wreak havoc among the flame-haired nemeses and be done with them. But he knew that Zasian was right. Both of them were exhausted from travel and battle, and what they really needed were allies rather than enemies. Once more, he was being forced to trust where trust did not come naturally.
"All right," he said, yanking his arm out of Zasian's grasp. "We'll try it your way first." He released his blade, letting it slide back into its sheath, and held up his hands in supplication. "We agree to your terms," he called to the dwarves. "We have no wish to fight you." Then he turned and whispered fiercely to the priest, "But if this doesn't work out well for us, I will flay you along with Myshik!"
Zasian's stare was cold and indignant, but he didn't say anything.
The dwarf leader insisted that the pair drop all their weapons. It took several moments for the two prisoners to explain that their goods would burn to a crisp should they let them go.
"You have our word that we shall not lift a finger against you," Zasian said, "but we cannot allow our belongings to leave our possession. However," he added, reaching into his tunic, "we can offer you this as a show of good faith."
The nearest dwarf drew up in alarm when the priest began pulling something out, and the others raised their weapons higher, ready for trouble.
Seeing their concern, Zasian paused and smiled. "It is nothing to harm you, I promise. It is merely a token of our trustworthiness." He withdrew his hand slowly, letting them see that he held only a simple pouch.
Vhok recognized it as one of the numerous packets of gems they had brought with them to aid in smoothing negotiations once they reached the City of Brass. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of Zasian revealing how wealthy they were, but it was too late to object. If those dwarves were as greedy for the bright, shiny things as the dwarves back home, they might be softened up by such a gift.
On the other hand, the cambion thought, they might try to tear us limb from limb to see if we have more.
Zasian carefully opened the pouch and sprinkled a few amethysts into his palm. He held the gemstones out for the leader to see. Th
e dwarf's bright, pupil-less yellow eyes burned brighter and he reached toward the stones with one hand. Very quickly, Zasian slipped the gems back into the small pouch and set the entire bag into the dwarf's palm.
"I would find something else to put those in," he suggested. "That bag is likely to turn to ash in a matter of moments."
The dwarf stared at the priest for several breaths, as if appraising him, then nodded and produced a small copper urn from within his belongings. He dropped the gems, pouch and all, into the urn and put it away.
"Your gift is most generous," he said, "though as our prisoners, everything you own belongs to us anyway. Do you have more?"
Zasian drew himself up and gave the dwarf leader a commanding stare. "We would prefer to think of ourselves as your guests," he said imperiously. "And consider carefully that you managed to get your hands on those without any sort of struggle. To obtain more, against our wishes, would be much more difficult. The loss of life would be tremendous, hardly worth the effort."
The dwarf's eyes grew wide again, though for a very different reason. He drew himself more upright, too. He was on the verge of challenging Zasian's threat. Then he appeared to think better of it.
"You will come with us," he announced. "We must take you before Lord Cripakolus, the azer clan chief. He will decide what must be done with you."
Vhok frowned. "We have traveled far and battled strange winged lizards in the sky. We are quite weary and must rest soon. Can this not wait?" He didn't relish the idea of being taken to some dwarven stronghold for questioning.
"No," the dwarf said. "But our camp is not far. Lord Cripakolus will want to meet you. We azer do not see such exotic travelers in our mountains very often. He will receive you as guests, not prisoners, if you give him more gems. As gifts, of course."
Vhok snorted in derision, but Zasian gave the cambion a warning look before nodding to the dwarf. "If your clan lord is willing to provide us with a guide to our destination, then we might be able to come to an arrangement that pleases him." Then, more softly, so that only Vhok could hear, he added, "What can it hurt? At the very least, they might be able to offer us more comfortable surroundings in which to rest. It can't be much worse than here."
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