The Justicar squatted beside her, ready to intervene at the first hint of trouble.
“Where are they hiding?”
“Don’t know. In the fires? If they’re flame proof, I guess that’s their best bet.” Escalla’s slug body stiffened in sudden suspicion. “Ah, now there’s something. Anyone here know about tanar’ri?”
The Justicar raised one brow. “I thought you knew all about tanar’ri?”
“Hey, so some days I paid less than total attention!” Escalla pulled her head out from under the door.
Stiff and hurt by a demons claws, Henry rubbed his eyes and looked at the closed door. “Um, Escalla? Why did you ask about tanar’ri?”
“Just wondering if they can change shape.” The faerie sniffed at the edge of the portable hole, smelling the stink of fish. “Has anyone noticed any vermin around here? I mean, in this whole place—apart from giant spiders—has there been a fly, a rat, a cockroach… anything?”
There was a general moment of thinking and murmuring. No, no one had seen anything. The paths and rooms were so clean as to be sterile. The Justicar pondered it and shook his head.
“Empty. Why do you ask?”
“Because there’s a bunch of mice sitting over in the far corner of that room.”
Everyone gathered around. Cinders was eating the last of their supply of charcoaled troll, making noises of total rapture as he did so. The Justicar tried to borrow a piece of it to draw a map, and Cinders petulantly closed his snout over the treat.
Yummy troll! Cinders keep!
“We’ll get you something better in a minute.”
Escalla leaned close to whisper in Jus’ ear. “Don’t worry. You hold his M-O-U-T-H, and I’ll make the G-R-A-B.”
Cinders thrashed his tail. G-R-A-B spells grab! The hell hound chewed and swallowed as fast as he could. No flakes! Troll all gone, see?
“You and your damned spelling lessons.” The Justicar settled on a piece of scorched fish from their rations to serve him as a pencil. “Right. So the room has a path, like this—fire trenches. No other doors?”
“Nah. None I could see.” Back in faerie form again, Escalla hitched her horrible makeshift dress about herself. “Mice are over in this corner. They’re probably some kind of tanar’ri, shapeshifted to try to fool us.”
“Not the smartest disguise.” Looking at the map, Jus rubbed his tired face. “Right So we need to eliminate the tanar’ri. That seems to activate the teleport.”
The company leaned over the crude map in thought. Her nose wrinkling prettily, Enid tapped at the map with one long claw and said, “We could have Escalla attack them with a spell. Even if they’re resistant, one or two of them might drop dead.”
“I’m out, hon. You wanna know what spells I’ve got left?” The faerie always became didactic when tired and bothered. “I can do you a grease, vampire touch, a fire shield, a cloud kill, my invulnerability globe, and a web spell. Real tanar’ri-shattering stuff.”
“I was only asking!”
Holding up a hand, the Justicar imposed peace. He looked up at the mists overhead and stared at the half-seen shapes of a pathway overhead. Lolth’s maze was doing its job, paring away their spells and magic, weakening them steadily before they could confront the Spider Queen herself.
Always take the unexpected path. Always attack with surprise. The Justicar looked up at the pathways overhead then rose up to his feet.
“We avoid this room.”
The others all looked inquiringly at him, but the Justicar never spoke until his facts were all in place. He turned from the map to the mists then folded the chart away.
“If we skip one guard room, Lolth and Recca will have no way of knowing which level of the maze we are on. We will jump up one level, then find a place to rest. We need Escalla with her spells. We need Henry healed.”
Enid switched her scorched tail from side to side.
“The other paths are forty feet above us. How do we reach that high?”
“Giant growth potions. Enid, Henry, and I take the potions, Enid and I make a ladder up to the next level. Henry carries Escalla and Polk up, then gives Enid and I a hand up after him.”
The mere mention of drinking giant growth potions instantly threw Escalla into a fit of panic. She fluttered about like a mad moth in a bottle.
“No! No! Look—we can get past the mice! You know—talk our way out of it or something!” Everyone was looking at the map, trying to find the best overpass to climb. “Hey! Is anyone looking at me? Hello? Hey! I can get us past mice! Mice are my speciality, I swear! I could turn into a cat or something!”
Trying to be patient, the Justicar inclined his head toward her and said, “Escalla, tanar’ri are not going to be scared of a cat.”
“Jus! Those potions are for our honeymoon!” Escalla tried to whisper, painfully aware that Cinders, Enid, and Benelux were all listening. “I’ve got about a hundred years of theory I wanna put into practice!”
“Escalla, we need the potions.”
The faerie waved her hands. “Can’t we just throw a rope or something? Why hasn’t Polk got rope and grappling hooks and ten-foot poles anymore?”
“Because we used to give him so much grief about it.”
“Well, when did he start listening to us?” Escalla gave in with poor grace. “All right! All right! Drink the damned potions!” She kicked the potion bag over to her friends. “You know, if I didn’t have Lolth to blame for all of this, you people would get me in such a huff!”
It was a brief walk to the needed overpass. Paths crossed over and under each other like a puzzle knot, but the map showed every twist and turn with total accuracy. Potions were drunk, and the giant adventurers formed an awkward human ladder through the mists.
The fog tugged and shoved at them like a living force as they climbed. Faces screamed in the mists—horrific skeletal figures were blown apart in the currents, only to reform into horrible weeping shapes. The Justicar grimly ignored it all, getting on with the job at hand.
Enid proved to be the major obstacle. They managed to boost her up onto the overhead path with some very indelicate shoving and tugging that left Henry blushing and speechless. The giants collapsed in a heap, panting and exhausted. Clambering out of the portable hole, Escalla and Polk walked over Jus’ heaving chest. Polk looked about the empty pathways and gave an irritated scowl.
“Son! Are we there yet?”
“Not yet.” Big as a titan, the Justicar raised his head to look at Polk. “Soon.”
“Well, come on, son! We have to move. Keep the opposition off balance! Haven’t you absorbed any of my tactical training?” Polk leaped to the ground. “The boy procrastinates. Hard thing to say, but the boy just lacks any get-up-and-go.”
Surveying the panting wreck of her friends, Escalla frowned as she dragged Cinders from the portable hole and unrolled him on the floor.
“What’s wrong with you guys?”
The Justicar sat up, towering vast and grim above the path, and replied, “Enid is bigger than we thought.”
“Enid, lay off the stirges for a while, hon.” Escalla hopped over to the blushing sphinx. “We have to keep you sleek.”
There was a warning flash, the giants all looked up as the potions wore off, and suddenly everyone was back to their own natural sizes.
They unfolded the map, looking carefully up and down the new paths. According to the diagrams, this was the final, topmost level of the maze. Unfortunately, the area seemed identical to a dozen others. The Justicar carefully checked the floors for the slightest sign of use, then waved the others forward as he led the way.
As they walked down the screaming pathway, they drew nearer and nearer to an incongruous marble doorway. This time the door was ornately inscribed, jet black, and gleaming new. A wide, clear window at shoulder height gave a view of the room beyond.
The party ducked down out of sight of the window. In a drill honed carefully over their adventures, Jus and Cinders crept close and exa
mined the area for traps. Cinders sniffed the door, and Escalla listened carefully against the wood with one pointed ear. Hearing nothing, Escalla threw off her clothes, lay on her belly and began to shimmer, changing into a slug so that she could peek beneath the door.
The shimmer of magic went jarringly off-color. Escalla changed shape into a bizarre multicolored slug with something shaped like a flower planted on her behind. Her eyestalks wrenched around to stare at herself in shock.
“I’m a nudibrach!”
Benelux cleared her throat. A what?
“A type of sea slug with exposed gills and a brightly colored venomous integument.” Escalla waggled her floral backside, making her anemone-like gills wave. “I didn’t plan this! Why am I a nudibrach?”
Henry slithered closer, trying to keep his voice to a whisper. “It isn’t what you were trying to be?”
“No!” Escalla tried to move. “Damn it! I look ridiculous. Hang on and I’ll change back.”
There was a glow of light, a jangling note of discord, and Escalla changed shape. Where once there had been a slug, there was now a short, gnomish creature with a huge pickle-shaped nose. The creature reached for its clothes, then cast a patient glance at the rest of the party.
“What? What are you all gaping at? If you don’t like the view, then quit steaming up the window!” The creature muttered as it wrapped itself in Escalla’s little dress. “Faerie butt. Does it every time.”
The Justicar reached into his pouch and came out with the small mirror on a stick he used for peering about corners. Escalla took the mirror, gazed levelly into it and immediately had a fit.
“All right! Who’s trying to be funny?” The girl frantically tugged at her nose. “Ouch! I’m a brownie! This is not funny!” Escalla suddenly jerked her hand away from her new nose. “Ick! I touched a brownie! I am a brownie! Ewww!”
She began to change shape again, but the Justicar leaped in to stop her. “Wait! Something’s wrong.”
“Jus, I’m a brownie! A lovable icon of childhood fun!” The bulbous-nosed creature did a jig of wild anger. “I have to change back before I puke!”
“Just wait.” The Justicar let Cinders sniff at the air. “There might be something strange about this room or this level. Let us check it out first.”
The Justicar carefully edged up to peek through the window in the door. Seething, Escalla sat down, one hand propped up her chin and the other propped up her huge nose.
“This is so unfashionable!”
Sitting beside her, Enid frowned. “Are brownies unfashionable?”
“Ha!” Escalla clicked her fingers. “Have you got any idea how many parties brownies get invited to?”
“Millions?”
“None!”
“Oh.” The sphinx shrugged. “Well, I knew you would only have asked if it were really big or really small.”
The Justicar stood peering through the window in the door. He examined the view very carefully, then signaled Henry to join him. They both looked through the window, staring into a slice of an alien world.
The window looked out onto a gloomy twilight. Ruined walls surrounded a castle courtyard littered with drifts of old, dry leaves. An empty fountain filled with sculpted hippocampi stood at the center of the open square. The sky held an eerie blood-red moon that stained the stones with a horrible venous purple light. Henry took a searching look at the scene, then ducked down to consult in whispers with the Justicar.
“Sir, do you know where that is?”
“No.” The Justicar glowered, scratching the stubble of his chin. “But it’s a gate into another world. That much is obvious.”
Benelux made self-important throat clearing noises at Jus’ side. If I might he permitted a glance? As you know, I am a multi-planar artifact. My erudition is clearly one of the party’s strongest assets.
Jus drew the sword and lifted the edge of the blade over the window. He moved the sword slowly so that Benelux might see the view. The blade mused, brim full of wisdom and experience.
Yes… yes, yes… clearly not Oerth. Benelux mulled her thoughts. A double moon, characteristic blood-red sky. Did you note the architecture? Extremely distinct.
The Justicar kept the sword held high. “Do you recognize the place?”
Hmm. No.
Deeply annoyed at the waste of time, the Justicar shoved at the door. It swung open upon an alcove that ended in a clear, slightly reflective wall. The Justicar carefully touched the surface—pushed—and saw his hand penetrate as though piercing clear water. He withdrew his hand, sniffed his fingers, and then waved the other party members through.
“Come on. Escalla, sweep the path behind us. Henry, close the door.”
Guarded by the ever-watchful Justicar, one by one the party stepped through into another world. They breathed alien air, trod alien stones, and crossed swiftly into cover. Polk waddled through a drift of leaves, his footfalls the only sound in the breathless gloom.
The scent of the Demonweb had gone, and with it, a strange, bleak sense of depression lifted from their souls. Each of them stood a little straighter. Escalla looked at her hand, then shimmered and changed—this time flickering back into her usual faerie shape. She heaved a huge sigh of relief. Vain as a cat, she inspected her naked self, front and behind, with Jus’ mirror, suspiciously searching for the slightest hint of brownie lingering on her skin. She tried her wings, found she could fly, and then joyously turned invisible and whirred away into the sky.
The Justicar looked up at the row of grim, blank windows that faced the courtyard. Nothing stirred, and yet the castle was filled with a sense of dread presence. He carefully examined the fallen leaves, the dust and dirt, kneeling in the shadows of a crumbled hall.
“Cinders?”
Cinders smells undead.
Jus held up a hand to keep his friends still and motionless in the gloom. He went flat and slithered through the long weeds that grew throughout the courtyard, moving under brambles with scarcely a whisper of sound. The Justicar found old, gnawed bones—human bones. A long-dead body lay nearby, the skin waxen and drained of blood. Eviscerated and gnawed, the body still held a vile pallor. The Justicar rolled the corpse over. No blood had pooled at its back. The body had been drained of blood before it died.
Jus crept back to his friends, and Escalla popped into place beside him.
“Hey, Jus?” she whispered. “What do you think lives here?”
“Vampire.”
“Oh. Whacko.”
They both took it so matter-of fact that Henry and Enid could only stare. Polk scribbled in his chronicles. Benelux muttered to herself. The Justicar gathered the party in the shadows of a tower—well out of sight of the castle windows.
“We can stay here and rest. We just have to be careful. A vampire is not a problem if it never knows we’re here.” The Justicar said it as if he’d just told them to fetch water or cut wood—all part of the job. “Escalla will go see if the vampire is near. We’ll find a secure room. We need to rest and replenish our magic. Then we go straight for Lolth’s palace and hit it hard.”
“Vampire scout away! See you in ten!” The faerie saluted Jus and flew away, turning invisible as she went. While they awaited her return, Henry knelt beside the Justicar and looked at the dark spaces around the castle yard.
“Sir? Is it dawn or twilight?”
“It probably stays like this. Perfect for undead.” The Justicar moved stealthily over to a set of stairs. “Watch the others. Don’t let Polk wander off.”
He knelt above a tiny smear on a flagstone, then followed the trace to the base of a tower. There were slight marks in the dust that filmed the stair—long, broad smears. The Justicar touched the marks, lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed, then lifted the scent up to Cinders.
Snake smell.
Escalla reappeared with a soft pop, turning visible, combing out her hair with her fingers. Clearly, she was thrilled to be flying once again. She settled down with Jus and Henry, keepin
g her voice low.
“Found something?” she asked.
“Snake tracks. Tanar’ri.” Jus traced the tracks for her so that she could see. “Might be our six-armed friend again.”
“Oh, if you liked that, you’re gonna love this!” Keeping low, the faerie beckoned the group upstairs. “Come check it out!”
She led the way into the tower, staying visible and peeking cautiously about each corner as she went. The door swung open to reveal a room with a drab wooden table. On the table stood a bottle of wine, a jug of water, a cob of bread, and lengths of hard sausage. A bag of dried fruit lay beside a bleeding haunch of mutton—raggedly torn from a carcass and inexpertly skinned. No flies had come to the meat, and the blood was still fresh.
Escalla signaled everyone to ignore the food, and then she opened another door.
In a huge hall hung with moldering old banners, a vampire lay sprawled on the floor. The creature had been utterly demolished—sliced, decapitated, and a stake driven through its heart. The stake, made from the leg of a chair, had been driven through the vampire’s torso with enough force to penetrate the floorboards beneath. Escalla ushered her friends over, waving her hands toward the corpse.
“This is seriously icky! Have you guys met Count Bisecto, Master of Homicide Hall?”
Moving swiftly to the vampire, Jus knelt to examine the damage. Polk trundled over to a fallen jug, sniffing eagerly as he caught the scent of crab-apple brandy. Mincing over the floor and avoiding extravagant pools of black sticky stuff, Escalla made her way to Jus’ side. The Justicar was carefully examining the wounds on the vampire’s body, while Cinders grinned away, his big teeth gleaming.
“So what did him in?” Escalla asked.
“Curved blades.” Using the tip of his hunting knife, the Justicar opened up a wound. “A cut from a very sharp blade. Body weight behind the blow, pushing forward. Good technique.”
“Hoopy!” Escalla drew the man away. “You think it was the snake lady?”
Queen of the Demonweb Pits Page 21