“That will be our last bargain, Aserica Rime,”
The devil hissed through a dark grin that was entirely too large for his little slimy head. He went to cast the spell that would consummate the deal, but before he could finish, Clytun’s bellowing roar came echoing up from the dungeons.
Panic-stricken, for the minotaur’s yell had sounded more of a cry of pain and surprise than a battle call, Aserica shooed Pwca to the side and made to shift the scene on the surface of the pool to her favorite.
Pwca snorted and dove into the liquid’s shimmering surface, leaving only the slightest of ripples. The image was frozen except for the little devil that swam down to the rat mount with a little grin. Suddenly the image jerked back into motion.
He would protect the changeling girl for Aserica, but not deliver her. The deal hadn’t been struck. The spell had been left incomplete.
Aserica Rime cursed the little devil as she shifted the images on the surface of the pool to show what was happening with Clytun below. Pwca’s rat lashed its tail up to stir the water as it turned away. Now the well-illuminated image of Sissy bearing down on the warlock with her wicked stinger while Clytun dived wildly toward him was fractured and distorted and almost impossible to make out. Why had Clytun cried out so? Why was he diving to save the warlock if Sissy already had him in her grips? The Hoar Witch let out an angry hiss and willed the pool’s surface to still its wavering, but by the time it had, the cavern had gone dark.
Chapter Eighteen
It’s nights like these that make me feel
like I’m the king of this whole world.
You could be my queen and I would
cover you in diamonds, gold, and pearls.
– A Zythian bard’s song
The stinger thumped hard into Vanx’s sternum and he knew he was done. He heaved for a breath that wasn’t coming while he waited to feel the hot poison pulsing into his chest. He rolled his head to the side in hopes of seeing that Thorn and Poops had gotten away. In that brief glimpse, what he saw instead was defeat. Poops was nowhere to be seen, and the hulking bovine fighter had his heavy, steel-shod boot on Thorn’s chest and one of his black blades was coming swiftly down to end it.
Vanx also saw a pair of glittering demon eyes, low to the floor and jostling up and down. Whatever they belonged to was charging out of the tunnel behind the monitor, but before he could see what it was the lack of air caused him to fade from consciousness.
Thorn jabbed relentlessly at the minotaur’s lower leg, but the heavy monster refused to lift his boot. The elven general saw his death blow coming then, and said a quick prayer to Babd, the fairy god of battle and war.
Even in defeat, Thorn appreciated the chance to die valiantly fighting against evil. As his eyes clenched shut and the minotaur’s sword came arcing toward his neck, he heard Babd laugh back at his death prayer.
A savage growl and a heavy crash of snapping teeth and clanging armor caused Thorn to open an eye. The blade that should have cleaved his skull from his body made a shower of sparks as it impacted just a hand’s breadth beyond him. The weight lifted from his chest when the minotaur was knocked forward into a stumbling sprawl.
It took Thorn a moment to realize his savior was Sir Poopsalot Maximus. Vanx’s magical orb was losing its power, but when Thorn heard the minotaur’s anguished roar and turned, he could clearly see that the dog had done more than just save his skin. He’d saved Vanx’s skin as well.
The stinger should have punched right through Vanx’s chest, but its point hit directly on the gleaming charm he wore on his necklace. The creature pushed harder, trying to break through it, but only managed to keep him from gasping in a breath. His strength ebbed and his magical light started to fade away.
As soon as Vanx stopped struggling, it brought up its tail spike and sent it stabbing down a bit lower.
The minotaur stumbled. The weight of his heavy armor and great horned head carried him into a headlong sprawl. He landed hard on Vanx’s body, nearly crushing his rib cage under all the substantial weight. It was then, in the near darkness Vanx’s fading orb was leaving behind, that he saw the terrible stinger come down again. It must have punched right into the struggling minotaur because the huge, horn-headed thing suddenly arched back and rolled away.
The minotaur’s roar was horrendous, but the other creature didn’t pull its stinger away. It was far too late for that. It unhooked its tentacles from Vanx’s legs and wrapped them around the minotaur. Then as quickly as it had come, it scurried back up into the heights of the web, hauling its struggling new food supply with it.
As soon as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Thorn found Vanx’s side. Poops was already there, licking his familiar’s face with frantic urgency.
“What?”
Vanx heaved in a huge breath, and then another. His head slowly began to clear. “What happened?” he finally asked.
A glance down at the charm his Goddess had given him told him half the story. It was dented in the middle as if someone had slammed a dirk into it with extreme force, but it was otherwise intact. Thorn filled him in on the rest as he helped him to his feet and got them all moving into the rough-hewn passageway from which the minotaur had come. Vanx cursed himself for being stupid. He assumed the medallion on his neck would somehow create some magical force field or transform into a shield to protect him, or maybe even give him extra strength, or inject some insight into his brain at the right moment, but it hadn’t.
His Goddess had said, “It will protect you in your time of greatest need.”
He’d discounted its value when the glow had subsided earlier and now he felt a fool for it. It had truly saved him at a time when he had imagined no need greater than a barrier between his guts and that venom-dripping spike. The white gold-dipped leaf, or silva tree cutting, or whatever it was, had saved him, plain and simple. Vanx vowed to give thanks to the Goddess and beg for her forgiveness for his doubt just as soon as he had the chance.
The passage began ramping upward and arced into a crudely carved stairway that turned a slow radius as it corkscrewed upward. They passed several barred gates that opened away from the passage. But the huffing, chittering, grunting, and in one case, the unnatural silence, behind the cell doors dissuaded them from trying to unlock them. Farther up, the glow of wavering torchlight filtered down to dance and flare along the cold, lichen-covered walls.
As they crept as silently as possible up into the light, a shadow, or maybe two, eclipsed the torchlight. Then came the creak of unoiled hinges and the sound of shuffling feet.
“Come on, Vanx,” a kindly old woman’s voice said.
“Come to Grandmamma and let’s have a look-see at you.”
Vanx gave Thorn the finger-across-his-lips signal for silence and motioned for the elf to hold on to Poops. He then eased up around the curve of the stair. There was a small landing in front of an iron-banded wooden door with a hissing torch burning in a sconce beside it. The door was half open and a wrinkly, old, wart-faced, gray-maned witch peeked her head out and gave him a creepy, gap-toothed grin.
“Come in, Vanxy,” she chuckled kindly. “Come see what’s become of Chelda Flar and the persistent little changeling girl we all thought had fallen to her death.”
The loud bang of the iron-bound door slamming shut told Thorn that Vanx had entered the chamber. He rushed to the latch, Poops growling and prancing frantically at his shoulder. The slide mechanism was higher than the little elf’s head, but he could reach it. Try as he might, though, it wouldn’t budge.
Poops suddenly whirled, his hackles springing to life along his back. The tone of his aggression went from frantic to savage. Thorn turned as well and saw a man-sized, leathery-winged, trollish beast. Its fanged ivory teeth and the bright pink of its flickering tongue contrasted wildly with its pitch-dark scales. The long shadow it cast on the curving wall, thrown from the next torch up the stairway, lent the feral creature a substantial amount of menace, but Thorn found he wasn’t afraid. Babd had already grac
ed him once this night. It was clear he was meant to fight.
With little regard for his ruined arm, he stepped up besides Poops and drew forth the Glaive of Gladiolus.
The thing stepped down toward them, lowering its body into an anticipatory crouch. Casually it reached out one of its hands and dragged it along the stone wall. It licked its lips and flickered its tongue and made what might have been a smirking grin, or possibly a snarl. Then it dove at them.
“Babd be with us,” Thorn said under his breath as he stepped forward.
Poops took two powerful lunges up the stairs, then leapt to meet the monster middive. His teeth missed the thing’s neck, but clamped down on a well-muscled shoulder. Filthy claws raked his fur deeply as the two half-spun and began tumbling down toward the elf. Thorn judged the roll, sidestepped to avoid gigging Poops by mistake, then sank his blade into the first scale-covered flesh he saw. There was a marrow-jarring jolt as the blade struck bone. When the momentum of the falling combatants threatened to tear the weapon from Thorn’s grip, he refused to let go and was yanked into the flailing tangle. The trio crashed violently into the wooden door, across the landing, and continued down the stairs in a limb-shattering cartwheel. When the knot of fur, skin and scales finally came to a halt, not one of the three was moving.
Chapter Nineteen
My Molly said she loved me.
She said her heart was mine.
But I went I tried to go again,
she made me get back in line.
– Parydon Cobbles
“Have a look, Vanxy,” the Hoar Witch indicated the surface of the raised pool that dominated the cluttered chamber. The air was oily and had a moldy musk scent that was undercut by the faint stench of decay. Two torches added to the acrid mixture while throwing harsh yellow light in wavering pulses. The scene showing on the surface of the liquid was cloudy, but immediately recognizable. It stole Vanx’s attention.
Several of the Hoar Witch’s wolfen beasts were surrounding Chelda, who was on her back writhing and crying. Her neck and shoulder were covered in some dark, sticky-looking goo. A foot-tall bearded woman and a slightly taller gnomish girl looked to be tending the injury. The presence of the toothy beasts seemed to have unnerved them. They were now crouched and trembling against the fallen gargan woman’s side.
“Here,” the Hoar Witch dipped a finger in her drawstring bag and tossed it to Vanx. “Just a taste on your tongue and you’ll see it all so much more clearly.”
“What is it?” His contempt for her roiled his stomach. Only his worry for Chelda kept him from running her through with the sword he still held in his hand.
“Eyes and guts,” she cackled, probably at his distress. “Frog eyes, hawk eyes, fox livers, maybe even parts and pieces of a fairy or two. The taste is bad, but it does the trick.”
Vanx didn’t want to find out how the stuff tasted, but she had just dipped her own finger in and licked it, so he doubted it was poison.
Reluctantly he dipped his finger in the bag and touched it to his tongue.
She was right. The taste was so horrid that he gagged once from it. But also, as she said, the scene in her reflecting pool took on a surreal clarity. It was as if he was sitting in the trees himself watching Chelda from just a few dozen paces away.
The sound became clearer as well. What he’d thought was Chelda crying was actually her snarling and cursing. Vanx was glad to see that her spirit was still strong, and that her old sword was lying beside her on the gore-soaked turf. Its blade wasn’t alight, for the hilt wasn’t in her hand, but it was close enough that she could reach it if the attackers got any closer.
“Watch,” the Hoar Witch said, and as if she and Vanx had leapt into flight, the scene in the pool shimmered and drew closer to them. Vanx noticed that she was grasping tightly to the crystal dangling at her throat. He remembered the Zythian hawkers of his homeland had mounted crystals in their finger rings to help them control the birds. He figured that she had just commanded whatever winged creature, whose eyes they were seeing through, to leap from its perch and glide closer to Chelda.
Beyond where his gargan friend lay, he saw battle raging. Tiny arrows streaked by and the clashing and clanking of heated aggression sounded plainly. The squeaking calls of embattled fae, and gibbering, snarling animal calls came to his ears.
It was hard to say if it was day or night in the Shadowmane. The creature whose eyes they were seeing through took it all in as if it were dusk or dawn. Vanx could see the world in a similar fashion, in full darkness, so he could tell that it wasn’t broad daylight, for no distinct shadows were cast. Since he’d been underground so long, he had no idea.
At the peripheral edge of the image, smaller branches and tufts of heart-shaped leaves came crashing and swirling to the ground. The Heart Tree was being mauled, and by the amount of carnage spread about, it didn’t appear that the fairy folk would be able to do much other than slow the process with their lives.
Vanx was certain he could get his blade around quickly enough to remove Aserica Rime’s ugly head, but he didn’t want to sacrifice his friends by acting hastily. He could see that the wolfen beasts were not attacking Chelda, but they were itching to kill. The salivating hunger, the blood-lusting look of a feeding frenzy about to commence, showed plainly in their feral eyes. Vanx was sure that only Aserica Rime’s controlling power stood between them and their meal.
“You said something about Galla… Uh, the changeling girl?” Vanx corrected himself, and did his best to mask the anger that was burning inside him. It was all he could do to hold onto the slight tendril of hope that Gallarael was still alive somewhere, and only an eggshell-thin layer of restraint was keeping him from losing all control and attacking.
She must have sensed something.
“Let us have a look at the other one, shall we?”
She spoke quickly and with menace.
Outside the iron-bound witchwood door, the muffled sound of Poops’ aggression, then a heavy, bone-jarring crash jolted both Vanx and the Hoar Witch to the edge of defensive intensity. The sound sent the fires of Vanx’s emotion into an ember-fountaining rage. Only now, the image showing on the pool was of Princess Gallarael in her changeling form, gliding stiffly on her back across a sea of writhing rats. She was so rigid that Vanx had to assume the rigor mortis of death had long set in.
“She’s dead, then?” he asked.
“She’s very alive, only she is spellbound.”
Aserica’s glee faltered substantially when she saw a slimy tadpole-looking creature riding proudly on Gallarael’s chest as his rats shouldered her.
“The problem is, Pwca’s got her and I’ll have to free the little devil from my service to get her back.”
Vanx was boiling over now. He had no way of knowing if the Hoar Witch was lying to him or not. Gallarael looked to be dead and stiff, and she very well could be. Furthermore, he could feel that Poops was barely conscious and feeling a great, searing pain, in long strips, across his underbelly. And now the disgusting little turd of a thing riding atop Gallarael was grinning triumphantly up at them and exuding a thick, nauseating aura that threatened to loosen Vanx’s bowels.
“At the moment, killing me would be the most foolish thing, Vanxy,” said the Hoar Witch, stealing the thought from his brain.
Vanx glared at her and back at Gallarael’s image in the pool.
Worry for the immediate pain of his closest companion overtook his anger and he turned and strode toward the door.
“Go tend your familiar, young warlock,” Aserica Rime spoke as if it was a command, and then the door opened before him.
“I know you came to kill me, but even so, I will make a deal with a devil for the changeling’s life. I still hold hers and the barbarian’s fate in my hands. You’d be wise to keep yourself and that elf in check, lest I let my wolfen breed tear them apart.”
And all the while the rest of your horde is tearing the Heart Tree apart.
A grim weight was suddenly pre
ssing down on his shoulders. If he killed the Hoar Witch and let Chelda and possibly Gallarael both die, then most likely the Hoar Witch’s beasts would abandon the greater destruction of the tree. Even if they didn’t, he could possibly use the crystal she wore to command them away. The uncertainty made the risk too great to accept. But the cold fact was that if he were sure it would guarantee the continued existence of an entire valley full of fairy life, he wouldn’t hesitate to give up the lives of the two women he cared deeply for.
It was a chilling revelation and in his heart and a darker aspect of his existence began to manifest itself. He and the fae were long-lived, but Gallarael and Chelda were mortal. Their fleeting lives were but a flash in the stream of existence. Of course he should be willing to trade them for the lives of hundreds of fae folk. Knowing this allowed a mantle of blackened resolve to settle over him. Only then did the course of action he needed to take become clear to him.
He turned and went back to kill her, but a faint, suggestive presence from deep within his heart stopped him before he took two steps.
“You’d sacrifice me?” The question wasn’t asked in clear words, but with thoughts formed of panicky animalistic simplicity.
“I am a part of you, yet I am a mortal creature even shorter-lived than the humans. Would you leave me down here to bleed to death while you discount your own ability and abandon all hope?”
The voice he heard speaking in his head was his own, but he knew it was Poops sending those suggestive thoughts to him. Or was the dog just evoking his own thoughts?
Without further hesitation, he charged down to his familiar with a singular purpose consuming his heart and mind.
He had almost stepped into the realm of darkness. He’d almost killed two of his closest friends and left a growing part of himself to die in a pool of blood and guts on a cold, stone floor.
Twice over, this day, he owed his life to Sir Poopsalot.
His assessment of his situation wasn’t far from the reality of it. Poops’ belly was open wide and though his intestines weren’t spread across the floor, they were bulging out of the long, bloody, clawed furrows along his belly. He doubted he could save him. The damage was just too bad.
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