by Paul Kidd
Down in the hollow behind them, the party had taken yet another rest. Unable to endure the sheer heat caused by walking in armor, the Bleredd priest had finally stripped off his arm and leg harness and loaded them upon his back. Unnecessary equipment had begun to disappear. After only half a day, the pace was beginning to beat them. Only the ever-resplendent paladin and the garrison archer, a silent professional, seemed able to keep up with the march.
Escalla had only checked in twice. However, it was now time for lunch, and even the thought of food had failed to make the faerie appear.
The little wretch still had a faerie cake hidden in Jus’backpack. Surely her sweet tooth would have called her back for a snack before now. Sitting up, the Justicar slowly turned to scan the grass, his face frozen in a frown.
“Where is she? What do you smell, old hound?”
Magic. Evil. The hell hound lifted up its ears. Nofaerie girl.
Jus sighed, sensing trouble in the wind, and took a swig of warm beer from his canteen. Checking his sword, he stood up and began to run swiftly ahead to sort out his partner’s problems.
The clank of metal sounded from behind him and Cinders instantly gave a growl. The Justicar whirled, his hand on his sword and ready for a lightning-fast draw.
Frozen by the threat of the sword, Sir Olthwaite the paladin stood a few yards away.
Paladins were supposedly the ultimate embodiment of good, the white knights whose swords wielded justice. In the Justicar’s experience, suchmen had far more interest in law than in actual justice. The Justicar had killed more than one lawman for just such cause, and he had few compunctions about adding another to his list. In Cinders’ case, the hell hound simply resentedhaving been made into a hearth rug.
With his hand still at his sword, the Justicar retained his fighting stance. Drifting through the wind around him came the ghostly sound of Cinders’ growl.
“You move quietly.”
“The breeze is blowing against you, but one can hardly playat being sneak thieves when dressed in steel.” The paladin took a sniff at hisperfumed kerchief as though offended by the scent of hell hound. “You have neverasked my name. In some circles that might be considered rude. I am Sir Olthwaite, Knight Commander of the Dragon Star.”
“I know. You’re from Saint Cuthbert’s temple.”
Sir Olthwaite made a military bow. “Indeed! And you, sir, doyou have a name?”
“I do.”
If Olthwaite wanted anything more, the man could go get it from the faerie. Jus turned aside, indicating that the conversation was at an end, yet still the paladin persevered.
Sir Olthwaite took a breath of fresh air and said, “I met aman who saw you fighting in the market riots.” The paladin smoothed hismoustache as though pleased at sharing such knowledge. “You know a littlepriestly magic, it would seem.”
“I get the job done.” The Justicar took a last hard look intothe sky, saw none of Iuz’s scouts, and let his hand relax slightly on his sword.“My skills are my business. Stay here.”
“Where are you going, sir? Surely this is a rest break.”
“The faerie’s missing. I’m going to find her.”
Jus turned to go, taking a pace back out of sword reach before beginning to walk. Behind him, Sir Olthwaite moved forward in a clank of steel.
“You might need another sword. I shall accompany you.”
Down in the hollow, the two priests had noticed the conversation above. Suspicious of conspiracies, they now climbed doggedly up the hillock to confront the two warriors.
“Where are you going?” The Geshtai priestess puffed hard fromher climb. As priestess to a river god, she wore an armor of scales that seemed to get heavier and heavier with every step. “What have you both been hiding?”
Sir Olthwaite gave the priestess a droll glance and said, “Wehide nothing, madam. We merely discuss the whereabouts of the faerie.”
Bleredd’s priest leaned on his warhammer and narrowed hiseyes. He was clearly considering the likelihood that the faerie had flown to White Plume Mountain, stolen the lost weapons, and absconded with the goods. Simple common sense finally won over suspicion. A two-foot-tall faerie could hardly be expected to fly off with a magic hammer and a two-yard-long fishing spear.
“Why is she missing?” Bleredd’s priest looked subtly left andright as though trying to divine whether the faerie was spying on his every move. “Why isn’t she here?”
Ignoring paladins and priests, the Justicar simply turned to go. “She flew on ahead. I’m going to collect her.”
“We will accompany you”-the Bleredd priest swung his hammerin his hands-“to make sure that you receive all the support you need.”
Watching silently and coldly from a distance, the archer and sorcerer elected to join the group. Polk ambled after them, one of his interminable monologues echoing across the deserted wastes. Ignoring his volunteer help, the Justicar turned his back upon the party and set a hard pace as he jogged toward the mountain.
The landscape still held small signs of life. Dull blooms hung in the grass, and strange skeletal black bees visited the blossoms. The markings on the insects’ backs looked disturbingly like human skulls. The droneof insect wings only made the land seem more desolate with their hollow counterpoint to the endless rustle of the grass.
There were few signs of Escalla’s passing. Cinders sniffedthe faintest of magic trails left by her whirring wings, but even this soon became lost as a chill, stinking breeze stirred through the grass. Finally slowing to a walk, Jus gazed across the emptiness and cursed the girl for risking her little pink hide.
The landscape seemed totally empty. It asked the question: Where would an idiotic busybody go to find trouble in the middle of an open plain?
The Justicar came to a halt, stared off into the grass, and said, “Polk, do you see anything interesting?”
“Interesting? Son, none of it’s interesting.” The little joghad winded the man-much to Jus’ satisfaction. Polk glared at the ranger asthough a treasured son had just stung him. “You’re going about all this wrong,son. The hired help is dumping their armor, and there’s no pack mule. How canyou carry your loot away from a dungeon without a pack mule?” The teamster waveda chunk of bread in the air. “And you packed iron rations. How are we supposedto feast around the campfire on dry bread and jerky? The damned pixie ate the only pot of jam I had.”
Jam… feeling an intuition filtering through hisskull, the Justicar stared off across the seed grass. Here and there, one of the eerie bees drifted through the weeds as it took a last few loads of pollen home. Watching a bee slowly climb past his nose, Jus hunted for a hillock, found one, and raced to the crest so that he could stare across the plain.
Trees were scattered here and there, some alone and some in copses. He spied a clump of trees some way off their path and watched a bee go weaving off toward the thicket.
“Honey. The little git went looking for honey.”
Sweet! Cinders pricked up his ears. Honey good!
Expecting that the girl had been stung to death or possibly eaten herself sick, Jus signaled the rest of the party. Crouching low, he led the way over to a thicket of dry trees. As he neared the small copse he could hear a female voice amidst a swirl and hum of bees.
Under the trees, all was not well in Escalla’s world. Trappedin a near-invisible sticky web, she swung beneath a pole borne by two shambling, rotting skeletons. More of the reeking monstrosities loped to either side, led by a tall, cadaverous figure with a face like jagged bone.
Determinedly cheerful, Escalla’s voice bubbled brightly tofall upon seemingly deaf ears. “Did I say three wishes?” The faerie kepther voice at the high end of the bright and cheerful scale. “Hey, you guys setme free, and I’ll grant you four wishes!”
With no immediate response, Escalla wriggled about to try to draw the attention of a walking corpse.
“All right, so you don’t like wishes. Hey, I’m one-thirdleprechaun on my mother’s side! Monster
s like treasure, right? Would you believeI can lead you to a magic pot of gold?”
Writhing with maggots and worms, the monsters threw Escalla to the ground. She was inside some kind of campsite. Cadaverous horses made of rotten flesh stood about a tent. Gagging as one of her captors leaned too close, Escalla tried to wiggle back from the creature’s grasp.
It was time for a different approach.
“All right, you guys are undead. I can respect that! Beatingthe odds! Unconquered by death! Force of will, now that’s what beingundead says to me! And force of will means you’ve gotta have self-respect.That’s what I like about you guys-you’re straight, you’re forceful, you’re trueblue.”
Beating her points out one by one, the girl tried to keep the undead leader in range of her banter. “Now I know what you’re all thinking. Aguy with real self-respect would never go around picking on a helpless little faerie with a cute butt, and you’d be right!” The faerie affably slittedup her eyes. “Hey, we all have momentary lapses! I don’t mind. So you just setme free, and we’ll simply forget any of this happened. It’s fine by me!”
The tent flaps swept aside and a tall, lethally thin figure appeared: a one-handed man with skin the texture of bubbling tar. The creature took a long, cold look at the captive faerie and bared its fangs with a hiss of evil joy. Escalla tried to meet the creature with a happy smile and gave a timid little wave.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” A big bead of sweat traveleddown Escalla’s neck. “There’s been a wee bit of a mix-up. Your gang here hasmistaken me for someone else, but it’s all cleared up now, so I was just aboutto go.”
The black-skinned monster rubbed at the stump of its arm, then sidled silkily closer to the girl.
The faerie duly cleared her throat and said, “Ah, you’re acambion, right?” Escalla tried to shrink away. “That’s fine! I can see whereyou’re coming from. Now look, you’re a demon, I’m a faerie. One’s good, one’sbad-but both are simply different sides of the same coin, right? I mean, youcan’t have good without evil! So if you kill me, you’re just making life thatmuch more difficult for yourself!”
The cambion slid a knife out of its belt and slowly began to advance toward the girl. Caught like a fly in a spider web, Escalla began to fight frenziedly against her bonds. She changed to a snake and was still stuck fast, then turned into a spiny urchin, a winged piranha, and a slimy slug. She found no way to escape but did manage to lose most of her clothes. The girl popped back into faerie form and gave a frightened squeal.
“No! Look, I’m really little! You don’t wanna eat afaerie. You guys want to eat an elf! Just plant my feet in soil and water me for a few years and I’ll grow… honest!” The girl tried to lift a handand shape a deadly spell. “Look out! There’s a psychopathic ranger standingbehind you!” Her enemy refused to turn around. “Jus! Jus, time to cue the rescueparty! Jmuuuuuuus!”
Instead of the Justicar, a heavyset man wielding a hammer gave a great shout from the brush nearby. He held up a holy symbol, screaming an invocation to Bleredd, and a blast of light thundered toward the skeletons. Shambling corpses were suddenly blasted apart, pieces of bone crashing down at Escalla’s feet.
The white-faced cadaver withstood the storm, drew a sword, and ran toward the priest with an ululating cry. As it passed the man, the Justicar rose from the grass, pivoted, and sliced into the monster from behind. The creature stumbled forward with half of its torso severed from its trunk. Staggering, it tried to turn and attack with its sword, only to have the Justicar’s black sword hack it in two.
The Justicar felt power surge through him in a mad rush ofbattle rage as he rammed his blade into his foe. He whirled and saw the one-handed demon standing over Escalla. It was the same cambion he had fought beside the wagon trail a few days before.
The monster drew a dagger and stabbed straight for Escalla’sheart. Jus bellowed a spell and the air wrenched with energies. Frozen in place, the demons muscles bulged as it fought against the magic. The creature broke free and hurled itself backward an instant before the black sword could sever its head. The cambion dodged aside and cast a spell that struck and lifted the Justicar off his feet, throwing him a dozen feet through the air.
Huge with rage, the ranger surged back onto his feet. The ribs along his right side had broken. His enemy drew out a sword and ran to the attack, moving with the same blurring speed it had shown in the Razor Wood during their last battle. Jus whipped his blade downward and parried a lightning fast slash to his knee, ripped upward with his sword, and sliced into the teak-hard flesh of the demon’s inner thigh. The monster staggered backward, tookan arrow fired by the archer straight through its throat, yet still kept his feet to run screaming at the Justicar with weapon raised.
A lightning bolt whip-cracked across the grass from the sorcerer. With power grounding out through its flesh, the demon utterly ignored the spell and hacked down with its sword. The Justicar blurred his own weapon upward in a parry, deflected the demon’s blade, then drove the creature backwith a sharp stab.
“Allow me.”
A silver blade smacked into the cambion and sent it spinning to the ground. The demon turned, looked up at the paladin, and its eyes widened with hate. An instant later, Sir Olthwaite rammed his sword two-handed down the creature’s throat, twisting the weapon viciously to drill the monster to thesand.
Black blood spurted as the sword ripped free. With a flick of his blade, the paladin took a backward pace and let his target fall.
Breathing hard with exertion, Jus leaned on his sword and held a hand against his broken ribs.
“You know what that was?”
“Cambion, a type of lesser demon.” The paladin sheathed hissword. “Rather nasty.”
“And not used to being attacked from behind.” Shaking hishead to throw off his pain, Jus stooped over Escalla in her sticky web. “Did hemark you?”
The faerie swallowed, still seeing the cambion’s daggerstreaking for her heart. “No. What did you do-the magic, I mean?”
“Holding spell.” Jus reeled, then forced himself tostraighten. He drew in a deep, sharp breath, fought the pain, and then flicked a glance at Sir Olthwaite.
“Broken ribs. Can you heal it?”
Paladins had the healing touch, yet when Sir Olthwaite stretched his hands out to touch the wound, he frowned and slowly shook his head.
“Alas.” Sir Olthwaite’s voice rang with regret. “Such hellishmagic radiates pure evil. I cannot heal you.”
The Justicar held up his own hand, shaped a ball of light, and then stretched his ribs tight. As the magic hit them, his bones set with an audible crack.
It seemed… simple. The Justicar looked at Sir Olthwaite,then stooped to sweep Escalla up into his arms.
The web yielded to alcohol siphoned from Polk’s whiskey jar.Reeking like a brewery, Escalla stood and unhappily allowed Jus to peel her carefully free. She still hovered halfway between gratitude, annoyance, and aftershock.
“All I wanted was some damned honey!”
“I wouldn’t try it.” Working doggedly, Jus untangled stickyweb-strands from Escalla’s hair. “These bees give you the mummy rot when theysting.”
“Oh, great.” Dazed, Escalla accepted it all. “Those damnedcorpses had a web strung between the trees for me.”
“That cambion worked for our friend the librarian. I met himonce before on the wagon trail.” Jus tried to untangle gluey strands fromEscalla’s wings. “They know we’re coming.”
“Great.” Somewhat chilled and sobered, Escalla sat herselfupon a stump. “Hey, thanks. You know-for getting here on time.”
“You’re welcome.” The Justicar pulled a last gummy strandfree from the faerie’s backside. “I liked that ‘self-respect’ line, by the way.”
“Oh, really? It was pretty nice.” The girl held out her hairand grimaced at the damage. “Too bad they were just zombies and let it ride overthem. Damn, but I need a bath!”
Cinders instantly perked up. Heat water? Mak
e fire?
“No!” Jus clapped a hand over the hell hound’s nose. Escallawas still drenched in whiskey. “We’ll stop by one of the streams running fromthe mountain. They’re hot enough to make a decent bath.”
From the bushes nearby, the Geshtai priestess quietly emerged. During the whole battle, she had been conspicuously absent. With a suspicious sideways glance, Escalla watched the woman go, feeling the hair prickle on the back of her neck.
“That woman gives me the creeps.”
“Yes.” The ranger watched her go. “Cinders says he smells badmagic in the party, but the priests won’t let me close enough to try any scryingspells.”
Escalla flew up to the hell hound and scratched him between the ears. “Cinders, you keep right on sniffing.”
Polk wandered over, sniffed whiskey on the breeze, and reclaimed the last sad remnants of his whiskey store. The man glared at Jus, then wrinkled his moustache, and finally let his criticisms out into the open air.
“Son, you’re just an uphill climb for me. I try, but I justcan’t reach you!” The man swirled his jug, decided to hoard his last few swigs,and slung the jug across his shoulders. “Backstabbing? It’s just notheroic, son, a bad habit. A hero can’t have bad habits.”
Polk irritably pulled a strip of sticky spider web away from his heel and announced, “Now, come on. I have to get you into White PlumeMountain before you foul up again.”
15
Over two more long days, the group moved from a landscape ofwithered grass into a folded desolation of lava plains. Molten rock had rippled as it cooled, and little jets of steam made the rock slippery with algae-laden slime. The cancerous stone gleamed a dull gray-black while the algae shimmered a slick, foul green. The only brightness came from streaks of rust and sulphur salts that crusted the edges of thermal pools.