by Jim C. Hines
Jig stared across the clearing, refusing to accept what he saw. “This is the right place. The ladder should be here.”
He glanced at his companions, hoping they might have a suggestion. Braf yanked his finger away from his nose and tried to look nonchalant. Grell passed gas, something she had done quite regularly since their fight with Sashi.
“Ogre meat disagrees with me,” she snapped. “You have a problem with that?”
Jig pulled off his spectacles and cleaned the lenses on his shirt. Given the condition of his shirt, it didn’t help much.
“If the ladder’s gone, how do we get back?” asked Braf.
Jig didn’t have the slightest idea. They were still looking to him for answers, as if he were supposed to conjure another ladder out of thin air. Or were they simply getting ready to kill him? With Walland dead, it could be argued that their little quest was at an end. Jig squinted at the sky, pretending to search for the ladder as he stepped away from the others.
“Maybe we could ask those ogres,” Braf said.
Jig tensed, one hand going for his sword before he spotted the ogres in question. They were marching through the trees on the far side of the clearing. Jig counted six, maybe seven. He had trouble distinguishing the shapes, even with the lantern the lead ogre carried.
“Don’t ogres usually use torches?” Grell asked. “I thought wood burned orange, not pink.”
The pink light coming from the lantern popped and sparked as the ogres made their way through the woods.
“They might be using muck,” Jig said. “Hobgoblins change the recipe a bit to get those blue flames.” He had always believed they did it on purpose, purely so they could have flames the color of goblin blood. But why would anyone want pink fire?
“Where are they going?” Grell asked.
Jig clenched his fists. How was he supposed to know these things?
“We should ambush them,” Braf said. “We can torture them until they show us the way out. There are three of us, and we have the element of surprise.”
Grell smacked the back of his head.
“Thanks,” muttered Jig.
Walland had acted nervous from the moment they arrived, glancing around and jumping at the slightest sound, like . . . well, like a goblin. These ogres could not have cared less who saw them, which meant they were probably controlled the same as Sashi had been. Hopefully, that meant they shared her lack of alertness as well. “We’ll follow them,” he said.
“Why?” asked Grell.
“Because I don’t know what else to do!”
Grell grunted. Braf looked disappointed.
“We can cut around the clearing. That light carries pretty far in the dark, so we should be able to keep them in sight.”
A noise in the woods made him jump. He turned, orienting his good ear toward the darkness as he peered into the trees. The branches had been creaking in the wind since he arrived, and occasionally the weight of the snow and ice would cause one to break. The first time it happened, Jig had yelped and drawn his sword. Braf had hidden behind a tree, proving himself smarter than Jig in at least this one thing. No doubt this was just another branch collapsing beneath the snow and ice.
Another crunching sound, like a footstep.
Braf was already looking for a place to hide, while Grell hobbled after him. The tightness in Jig’s stomach grew as he realized he was probably the most capable warrior in the group.
He drew his sword and pressed his back to the nearest tree. Smudge was still safe in his pouch. If he could have, Jig would have crawled in after him.
There were at least two sets of footsteps. Had it been only one, Jig might have been able to kill whoever it was without alerting the ogres. Any real battle would no doubt be loud enough to bring them running.
“Jig?”
For a moment, Jig stood frozen. Then he recognized the voice. “Veka?”
Veka crept out of the darkness, her staff rattling, and her cloak dragging through the snow. A hobgoblin trailed along behind her.
“Well met, Jig Dragonslayer!” she said.
Jig stared. “Huh?”
“A good thing I changed my mind about helping you,” Veka added, a huge grin on her face. “Beating those pixies is a job for a Hero.”
Pixies. Jig had encountered only one in his adventures. The Necromancer had been one of the fairy folk, a little blue-haired man with a nasty sense of humor. It was cosmically unfair that anything so small could be so frightening. The tiny dark wizard had nearly turned Jig and his companions into animated corpses. Pure luck had kept Jig alive.
“How many pixies?” he whispered. Ogres couldn’t hear as well as goblins, but he wanted to be safe.
“A lot,” Veka said cheerfully. “They’re holed up in Straum’s lair. I killed one, then we fell back to plan our next attack.”
Grell limped toward them. “These things enslaved the ogres, but you and your hobgoblin pet killed one and got away?”
The hobgoblin growled, pointing his spear toward her. Grell smacked his hand with her cane, and the spear dropped into the snow.
“We were sneaking through the tunnel toward the lair,” Veka said. “Slash here was—”
The hobgoblin snarled again, loud enough to make Jig cringe.
“He was distracted,” Veka said. “I picked up my staff and waited as the pixie came closer . . . closer . . .” She waved her staff, clearly enjoying the tale. “Suddenly he spotted me. His eyes widened with surprise. Surprise, and a little fear. He tried to cast a spell on us, but I was too fast. I leaped out and hit him with my staff, sending him flying into the far wall. He was stunned, but not out. He tried again, and the air tingled with the power of his evil magic. Another moment, and we would have been done for.”
“Did you win?” Braf asked.
Veka rolled her eyes. “Just as his hands began to burn with magic, I reached him, crushing his skull with my staff.” She showed them the end of the staff, then frowned. “I guess the snow washed the pixie blood away.”
“So you beat this all-powerful pixie by hitting him with a stick?” Jig asked.
“That sounds like fun,” Braf said. He hurried away, presumably to look for a pixie-hitting stick.
“How did you find us?” asked Grell.
“We didn’t.” Veka pointed to the ogres. “We were following that pink pixie.”
“That’s a pixie?” Jig asked.
“A lazy one,” Veka said. “She was making the ogres carry her so she wouldn’t have to fly.”
She walked to the edge of the clearing, ignoring the others as if she had nothing to fear and making Jig wonder what had really happened. Normally, putting a goblin and a hobgoblin together was a sure way to rid yourself of the goblin, but here was Veka, turning her back on Slash and the spear that could punch a bloody hole through the middle of her back with one thrust.
Smudge was squirming out of his belt pouch. Jig loosened the ties enough for Smudge to scurry up to his leather shoulder pad. Flakes of snow hissed as they landed on him. The fire-spider turned this way and that, trying to keep an eye on Veka and the hobgoblin both. Jig didn’t blame him. He had healed enough victims of hobgoblin traps to know how dangerous they could be, and as for Veka, what could be more dangerous than a goblin who wanted to be a Hero?
“Well?” Veka asked. She had already begun walking after the ogres. “Our way lies with those ogres, and I for one will not shirk away from the call of destiny.”
Jig glanced at the hobgoblin, his fear unexpectedly giving way to sympathy. “Has she been talking like that the whole time?”
“Ever since she fought that pixie.” Slash’s nails dug into the shaft of his spear. “When she wasn’t narrating her own little adventure, she was trying to compose a song about her triumph. I nearly ripped off my own ears.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to rip out her tongue?” Braf asked.
“Come on,” Jig said. He didn’t like the thoughtful look Slash was giving Veka. The pink ligh
t of the lantern—no, the pixie—was already fading with distance. They would have to hurry to keep up.
As he walked, he comforted himself with the thought that at least Slash didn’t have orders to kill him when this was all over. On the other hand, when had a hobgoblin ever needed orders to kill a goblin?
Light had begun to return to the sky when the ogres finally reached their destination. Jig’s legs felt like dead wood, and his socks and boots were soaked through. He would have blisters the size of his fist from all this walking.
The others seemed to be doing a little better. Jig didn’t know who surprised him more, Veka or Grell. Despite her weight, Veka hadn’t stopped once, nor had she shown any willingness to rest so the others could catch up. As for Grell, she hobbled along at a steady pace, never quite losing sight of the group. She didn’t even appear to be breathing hard.
“I work in the nursery,” she explained when she caught up. She waved one of her canes at Veka. “I spend every night chasing idiots. The only difference is, I don’t have to clean her arse after she squats.”
Jig hurried ahead to see what the ogres were doing, as much to drive that horrible image from his mind as anything else. They had come to the edge of the huge cavern. “Are we near Straum’s lair?”
As soon as he asked, he realized the stone wall ahead of him wasn’t the same as the one he had seen a year before. For one thing, the trees grew right up to the edge of the rock. The only exception was a small area of freshly cut stumps. The stone itself was covered in dying brown moss, and it sloped upward at a much gentler angle than he remembered.
He also realized something else. The snow and ice were thinner here by the edge of the cavern. The few flakes that blew onto the rock were white, not gray. The ogres’ skins started to lose their metallic hue as they gathered around the cliffside. Their coloration still wasn’t right, but it was closer to normal than anything Jig had seen since he arrived down here. Whatever was affecting the cavern, they seemed to be reaching the edge of its range.
One of the ogres dropped to his hands and knees to crawl into a dark hole in the cliff. Rock and dirt had been piled to either side of the hole, suggesting this was a new addition. Jig had always believed the hardened obsidian walls were indestructible, but he had believed the same thing about the ladder back at the clearing.
A high-pitched scream made Jig shrink back. The ogre’s feet reappeared. He backed out, both hands clutching a rope as thick as Jig’s wrist. The others crowded around, blocking Jig’s view.
An answering scream came from one side of the cleared area, where an enormous brown bundle flapped and struggled against a rope. Powerful wings knocked into the branches, spilling snow and sticks. Even Veka seemed a bit taken aback by the size and ferocity of the trapped bat.
Farther on, Jig realized that what he had first assumed to be a pile of rubble was actually the bodies of several more giant bats.
“Ugly things, aren’t they?” Braf asked.
Jig nodded. The ogres were dragging another trapped bat from the tunnel. The rope was looped around the bat’s neck, and the wings were folded and pressed tight against its body. Tiny black eyes bulged from a flat, pale face. The bats’ only redeeming feature was their oversize flopping ears, which reminded Jig a little of goblin ears.
Given how roughly the ogres grabbed and pulled, Jig wasn’t at all surprised by the number of bat corpses in the pile. What he couldn’t figure out was why they were collecting giant bats in the first place.
With a flash of pink, the pixie launched herself into the air. She waited until the struggling bat was clear, then darted into the tunnel. The ogres looped more rope around the bat, securing its wings to its body. Several ogres began to do the same to the other bat. The smell of guano grew stronger as the bat struggled, but it was no use. Soon the ogres had both bats tightly bound. A pair of ogres hoisted each bat onto their shoulders and set off into the woods.
Several more ogres were now crawling out of the tunnel. Brushing dirt and rocks from their bodies, they hurried to join their companions.
By the time the pixie returned, the ogres were already heading back the way they had come. Jig crouched behind a tree, holding his breath and praying Braf or Veka wouldn’t do something stupid like challenge the ogres to single combat.
The pixie looped through the air toward one of the ogres. She landed on what appeared to be a small hammock tied to a wooden handle. The ogre held the handle perfectly flat as the pixie settled into place. Her shimmering wings twitched slightly, folded to either side of the hammock.
All of this was accomplished without the pixie or anyone else ever speaking a word. Jig was still staring, trying to understand it all, when Veka strode past.
“Come on,” she said, stepping around a tree stump. “This is our chance.”
“Our chance to do what?” Jig asked. “The only thing we know about that tunnel is that wherever it goes, there are giant bats on the other side.”
“The Path will present itself to the True Hero,” Veka said. She was quoting that book again. She always tilted her head back the same way when she did that, with her eyes half closed and one corner of her mouth curled up. “But the Hero must have the strength and courage to follow where the Path leads.”
“What about the book’s last owner?” Jig asked. “His path led him straight into Straum’s stomach!”
Veka sniffed and turned away. “Then clearly he was no Hero, was he?” She reached into her cloak for her book, eliciting a pained groan from Slash. Ignoring him, Veka flipped through the pages and read, “Sa’il stared at the mountain of skulls leading to the temple of the black goddess, and his friends urged him to turn back.
“ ‘Do you not see the bones of those who have tried to reach the goddess?’ pleaded his faithful companion Tir.
“ ‘Without those bones, there would be no path to climb,’ replied Sa’il.”
Jig glanced at the others. Slash was using his finger to test the tip of his spear. Grell looked ready to fall asleep. Braf, on the other hand, was wide-eyed as he listened.
“I don’t understand,” said Braf. “There aren’t any bones here. And wouldn’t all those skulls roll away when you tried to walk on them?”
Veka slammed the book shut. “It means you can’t let the failure of others block you from the Path.” She walked to the hole in the cliff and peered inside. “Hurry, before they return.”
They looked at Jig, who shrugged. It wasn’t as though he had a better suggestion.
Veka had already stepped into the tunnel. Where the ogres had crawled on hands and knees, Veka merely had to duck her head a little. Jig started to follow, when a surge of heat seared his neck.
“Veka, wait!” Jig shouted. He leaped back, poking Smudge with his fingers to drive the fire-spider away from his neck. Smudge’s heat dissipated almost as quickly as it had begun. Jig searched for a source of light, a lantern, a bit of dry wood, anything that might burn. All the lanterns had either run out of muck or been broken during the fighting.
“If you’re afraid, you can wait here while I explore the tunnels,” Veka said.
It would serve her right to let her go on and get eaten or stabbed or killed by whatever Smudge had sensed. Jig ran to the dead bats and ripped tufts of fur from their brown bodies. They smelled faintly of mold. He rolled the fur between his palms, spinning it into a crude bit of rope. He held one end up to Smudge as he returned to the tunnel.
A smelly orange flame appeared on the end of the rope. Jig moved quickly to catch up with Veka. Already the rest of the fur was beginning to burn. He saw Veka’s shadow just ahead and tossed the fur to the ground beside her.
“What are you doing?” she snapped.
Jig pointed. “What’s that?”
Pairs of tiny yellow eyes hovered in the darkness. There were too many to count. Veka untied her robe and searched through her pockets, finally producing a small cloth packet. She unfolded the cloth and dropped a long, thick tube of brown fungus onto the fire.
Jig recognized it as a firestarting stick. The fungus would burn slowly and steadily, and was far safer than flint and steel for lighting fires in the distillery. The flames brightened, taking on a greenish tinge.
“That is another trial I must face,” Veka said.
“No, that is a multiheaded snake thing,” Jig snapped, grabbing her arm and pulling her back.
Jig counted at least fourteen heads on the tangle of snakes, all of which were watching him and Veka. This must have been what the pink pixie was doing when she flew into the tunnel. Even the ogres would have had trouble getting past it. The creature completely blocked the way. Looking at any one segment of the snake, it would appear to be a normal rock serpent. Reddish brown scales perfectly matched the obsidian tunnels. A whiplike black tongue flicked the air, sensing prey.
The pixie had apparently taken a group of rock serpents and joined them into a single creature. Their bodies merged into an irregular ball of scaly flesh at the center of the tangle. There were no tails. Every sinuous length of snake had sharp venomous fangs at the end.
Jig could see why Smudge had been afraid.
“Out of my way,” Veka said, pushing Jig back. Jig hopped out of the tunnel, Veka’s staff rapping the ground at his heels. She strode to Slash and said, “I need your spear.”
“The pixies left a snake creature to guard the tunnel,” Jig explained. Though what Veka planned to do with the hobgoblin’s spear was beyond him. He doubted it would be enough to kill one of the bodies. Killing a segment of a carrion-worm only made the rest of the worm angry. She would probably have to kill every piece before the thing would really die, and while she was going after one head, the rest would go after her. “Veka, if you try to fight that thing with a spear, you’re going to get killed.”