by Tina Daniel
Kit knew that, behind his back, Nellthis was mocked for his temper tantrums, his gluttony, and his habit of drinking too much, falling asleep early, and staying in bed most days until early afternoon. Nellthis was wealthy enough to be able to afford anything he wanted, not only the best food and drink and a vast retinue, but also a routine of comfort and indulgence.
No admirer of sloth, Kit still respected her uncle’s power and ability to exercise his slightest whim. Even more, she prized Nellthis as a link to her father, even though he wasn’t a blood relation. Nellthis was the husband of Gregor Uth Matar’s sister. Kit had never known her aunt, who had died in childbirth along with the baby. But she knew Nellthis had maintained loyal contact with Gregor while he was in Solace, and she suspected that her uncle was one of the few family members Gregor had been able to call on for “temporary loans” on behalf of his wife and young daughter.
After Gregor disappeared, Nellthis had kept in touch with Kit through the years. And now, bored with Solace and disenchanted with Tanis, Kitiara had come to stay with him for the time being.
As Uncle Nellthis edged cautiously ahead, flattened against the wall of the gorge, Kit marveled at his skill as a marksman and master hunter despite his profligate lifestyle.
A crackling sound put them both on alert. Waving one arm, Nellthis gestured to Kit. Like him, she notched her bow. Slowly, moving on opposite sides of the gorge, they edged around a zigzag bend that opened into a broader section of the canyon marked on Kit’s side by a large needlebush.
Almost simultaneously, both saw the deep cut in the ochre-colored rock that formed a cave. From the shallow depths, two feral red eyes bored out at them. Nellthis, on the same side as the dark opening, froze. Kitiara crouched low to the ground.
The two watched, half in awe, as a giant creature stepped out into the daylight, seeming to dare them. The leucrotta stood over eight feet tall and nine feet in length, its body similar to that of a great stag, its head like that of a monstrous badger. The head was as black as tar, while the rest of its body was a deep tan. Its hooves were cloven. Its tufted tail was like a lion’s.
Its jaw hung open, drooling slime and revealing bony ridges of pointed teeth. Even from a distance, Kitiara could smell its fetid breath. The breath of a leucrotta was as notoriously foul as its appearance was ugly, perhaps one of the reasons why it lived a solitary life, preferring desolate places.
As the leucrotta stood there, watching them ominously, Nellthis beckoned the two men behind them to move forward on Kitiara’s side. One of the men stayed near Kit, holding swords and various hunting paraphernalia at the ready. The other had the perilous task of crawling forward on his stomach, clutching a large, thick net that could be thrown over the creature to ensnare it.
The leucrotta appeared to take note of all four of its adversaries, but surprisingly it didn’t make a move to charge. With its overwhelming size, it probably could have bounded past them in either direction and escaped. But instead it just stood there, waiting for the human predators to make the first move.
In one swift, liquid motion, Nellthis rose, nocked an arrow, aimed, and loosed it at the leucrotta. As he did so, Kit rose also, nocking one of her arrows, while the man with the net started to rush forward to toss it over the dangerous beast.
Everyone was a half second later than the leucrotta, which had already chosen its first prey. With a startlingly sudden movement, the beast leaped forward and caught the man with the net as he threw it and turned to retreat. With the net half-draped over its head, the leucrotta loomed over the man, opened its huge, powerful jaws, bit through the net, and severed the man’s head with one brutal snap. The body gushed blood, spattering Kit and Nellthis, as the leucrotta shook its victim wildly and tossed the body like a rag doll against the wall of the gorge.
Nellthis’s arrow stuck out of the creature’s left flank, looking puny and inconsequential. Kitiara’s shot had missed. Both of them had nocked second arrows by the time the leucrotta ducked behind the needlebush, partly protecting itself from attack.
Nellthis and Kit hesitated, warily watching the huge animal, whose eyes bore down on them.
Suddenly the creature opened its maw and made a loud, chittering, high-pitched noise that blocked out all other sound and was almost painful to Kit’s ears. Working its jaws rapidly, the leucrotta continued the shrill sound for several long moments without budging from its sheltered position.
“What is it doing?” Kit hissed to Nellthis, across the canyon.
“It’s taunting us,” Nellthis replied in a low voice. “Bragging about its victims.” Crouched low, Nellthis spoke without a trace of fear.
“You understand its tongue?” asked Kit, startled.
A merry light danced in Nellthis’s round eyes. “No,” he admitted, chuckling. “Just guessing.”
The leucrotta worked its jaws again, emitting another long blast of high-pitched, unintelligible sounds. High above, Kit could see Nellthis’s archers, drawn by the sound, taking up positions on the ridges of the gorge. Although they took aim with their weapons, they knew better than to shoot unless absolutely necessary. This was to be Nellthis’s kill.
“I think it said, ‘I’ll eat the fat man first, then the tasty female,’ ” Kit hissed to Nellthis, wrinkling her face into a crooked smile. Nellthis grinned back.
Suddenly, from the top of the ridge, a stream of screeches sounded, echoing the leucrotta’s.
Eyes wide, Kit scanned the ridge, certain a companion beast had appeared on the scene. Nellthis, too, his concentration thrown, started up. The leucrotta itself paused in its tirade and raised its head, sniffing the air for the scent of an intruder.
Kit’s gaze finally latched on to Ladin Elferturm, grinning proudly at his imitation and motioning Kit and her uncle to move in for the kill while their quarry was distracted.
Unfortunately, the beast had already shifted its focus back to the hunters. And before Kit or her uncle could collect their wits, the leucrotta leaped from its hiding place.
Nellthis knew his timing was off when he pivoted to shoot an arrow up into the huge, shadowy form that was crashing over him. He aimed upward, rolled under and forward, surprisingly quick for such a chunky man, and felt the shock of the leucrotta’s claw as it smote him heavily on the back. Momentarily confused, Nellthis struggled to his knees, lurched against the canyon wall, and nocked another arrow.
Scrambling to his feet, he saw the leucrotta lying on its side several feet away, twitching and spasming, slime and odorous blood gushing from its thrashing head. An arrow—his arrow—stuck in the creature’s belly, while another, Kit’s, protruded from the leucrotta’s neck. Kit slumped against the opposite wall, obviously dazed but unhurt. With some effort, she gave him a nod of assurance.
Nellthis walked over to the beast. Pain seared his back, yet with it came the exhilaration of the kill. He stood for a moment, lording it over his fallen prey, then shot an arrow into its brain. Almost instantly the leucrotta expelled its final breath and lay still.
Kit came over to stare down at the monstrous creature, every bit as formidable and ugly in death as in life. The surviving retainer hastened to their side. He raised his peaked cap, a signal to those above to raise a raucous cheer.
“I suppose I should thank you for saving my life,” said Nellthis almost wistfully.
“Are you disappointed, Uncle?” asked Kit. “I don’t think my arrow killed him. I think it was both at once … yours and mine.”
He looked at his young niece, with her dark eyes and solemn expression, and knew that she wouldn’t be saying so if she didn’t believe it to be true. “Yes, both,” he said, with a glow of satisfaction.
Elferturm scrambled down the side of the gorge, the first of the hunting band to join them. His chest puffed out importantly. “A good kill,” he offered.
Nellthis’s glow disappeared. He turned on his chief tracker with a snarl. “No thanks to you. The next time you think you’ve come up with a useful bit of strategy, ma
ke certain I know about it first, or it will be the last hunting you ever do in Lemish.”
Elferturm flushed an angry red, as Kit and her uncle turned their backs on him and walked away.
Hours later, after hauling the heavy creature out of the gorge, tying it on a travois behind the horses, and burying the luckless man who had lost his life to the leucrotta, Nellthis, Kit, and the band of hunters rode triumphantly into the castle courtyard.
All of Nellthis’s servants and workers gathered ’round to congratulate their master, who ordered a celebration feast for that evening. He stood there, comically squat and bristling with pride, shrugging off concerns for the bruises on his back. To all who listened, he gave his niece equal credit for the trophy.
On the sidelines, Kit observed him with a mixture of affection and amusement. She was about to return to her room when she saw Nellthis take notice of a shadowy figure behind a curtain in one of the windows above signal down to him. Kit couldn’t make out who it was, but Nellthis briskly gave orders for the preservation of the trophy and excused himself from Kit and the others. Quickly he walked toward the nearby kitchen entrance of the castle and disappeared behind the oaken door.
This wasn’t the first time Kit had noticed such behavior on the part of her uncle. Nellthis seemed to be full of mysterious doings these days. Kitiara tried to figure out what he did with most of his time, where he disappeared to, sometimes for days on end. She had attempted to wheedle the information out of him, but to no avail. That was one of the things she liked about her uncle, his perpetual air of conspiracy. And if he chose to be secretive, that was his business, even if Kit thought that at some point she might try in earnest to make it hers.
“It was your arrow that done it, Kitiara Uth Matar,” said Ladin Elferturm, coming up behind her and touching her arm awkwardly. The hunter searched Kit’s eyes for some encouragement.
“It was both arrows,” Kit said tersely, shaking his arm off. “And even if Nellthis weren’t my uncle, I would vow that it is disloyal of you to say that behind his back when you know the trophy is so important to him.” She started to stride away.
Elferturm grabbed her strongly by the wrist, holding her back. “What’s come over you, Kitiara?” he tried to whisper, knowing his voice was clumsily loud and his words all wrong for this high-spirited woman. “I thought … I thought there was, uh”— his tongue was all in knots—“something between us.”
Kitiara was about to reply witheringly when someone grabbed Elferturm from behind, whirling him around. Kurth, the castle smithy, stood there glowering at the hunter. The tall, broadly muscled smithy clenched his fists nervously at his side as he spoke. Having come directly from the forge, he still wore his apron.
“I warned you to stop pestering Kitiara, Ladin,” said Kurth forcefully. “She’s mine and couldn’t care a whit about the likes of you.”
“I’m sick of your interfering,” said Elferturm, thrusting his chest up against Kurth’s, their gazes locked murderously.
Elferturm had abandoned his grip on Kitiara. She inched backward. They had all but forgotten her, pushing and shoving and threatening each other.
Let them have it out, she thought. She was tired of both of them. They were as dumb as cheese, shouting her name and proclaiming their love. Kitiara glided away and was just vanishing behind kitchen doors when Kurth took his first swing, missing, and Elferturm reacted, landing a roundhouse to the smithy’s outthrust chin.
Deep in the bowels of Nellthis’s castle, in a small basement room where the most expensive wines were stored, a room bolted from the inside although it was off limits to the castle help, Nellthis of Lemish was holding a parley. Nellthis sat at a wooden table in the room, illuminated by a single candle that burned with a blue flame. The room was dank, and the candle sputtered as if gasping for air. Spiders crawled over the racks of bottles.
Nellthis was joined at the parley by three companions, or it might be more accurate to say three murky figures. Their humanity remained in question, since they were swaddled in clothing and kept to the shadows even in the dim illumination cast by the candle.
One, tall and lean, wore a cowl that drooped over his forehead and around his face so that little but his eyes, mere slivers of green, could be discerned. It was this one, a male by the sound of his sonorous voice, who took the lead in discussions with Nellthis and who seemed to have authority over the other two.
One of these, a stooped, almost hunchbacked figure, stood next to the cowled one but said nothing other than an occasional sharp word in a northern dialect that Nellthis himself could not interpret.
The third was the most peculiar, and the one that, judging by the watchful movements of the others, was the object of both curiosity and fear. This one stuck to a corner of the small room, a corner that was darkened and cobwebbed. Nellthis knew he ought not to stare, so instead he stole unobtrusive glances at this third member of the trio, who wore long dark robes, a hood, and a mask.
The back of his robes fluttered with evidence of some appendage whenever he moved or shifted position. Oddly, when the robes shifted to reveal glimpses of his body underneath, he seemed to give off fissures of light, like mottled scales reflecting the candlelight. Despite the darkness, this one’s eyes shone blood red. Nellthis couldn’t make out the face, but he couldn’t help flinching every time he heard the telltale sizzle, followed by the sulfurous smell, occasioned by the acidic drool from the evil being.
Nellthis took his time studying the messages and reports spread out on the table in front of him. Carefully he read each of the directives, and then reread them to be certain of the contents. The others had to be patient with his fussy caution, although after almost half an hour of waiting, the figure in the corner stirred and rumbled ominously. More of the spittle pitted the floor, sending acrid fumes into the moldy basement air.
Nellthis finally seemed satisfied and, with a theatrical flourish, put his signature to each of the documents in turn. When he was finished, he picked them up, rolled them together, and handed them over to the tall, cowled figure.
“Our mistress will be pleased,” the cowled figure said without emotion, “and you will be rewarded.”
“My reward,” said Nellthis grandly, “is to serve.”
The three, even the sinister one in the corner, bowed respectfully. Nellthis went over to one of the wine racks, and tugged at two bottles on an upper shelf. The rack slid forward soundlessly. Behind it, the wall opened, revealing a narrow passageway that led under the castle courtyard and came up several miles away in an isolated patch of forest. The three ducked under the archway and headed down the dark stairway. The one from the corner was the last to leave. As he passed, Nellthis, noting the creature’s fangs and spiny tail, couldn’t stifle a shudder.
But the moment passed. Minutes later, Nellthis had closed the wine room and was rubbing his hands together cheerily while trotting up flights of stone steps to his quarters.
Kitiara lay on her back on a huge bed in the plush room Nellthis had set aside for her at the top of the north tower. Idly she surveyed the finely etched grillwork of the ceiling.
For the nearly three months she had been visiting Uncle Nellthis, Kit had been uncharacteristically inactive, though she had fought one duel and taken three or four lovers. She had also taken the time to hone her skills at archery and with the bullwhip. But Kit hadn’t ventured outside of Nellthis’s domain and had put off her customary mercenary activity.
She was discontented. At moments like this, despite herself, she wondered what Tanis was doing. Damn the self-righteous half-elf! Yet somehow he often managed to worm his way into her thoughts.
Kit wondered about Uncle Nellthis, too, and this concern was more immediate. Although Nellthis had neither seen nor heard from Gregor in years, he still benefited from that connection, to Kit’s way of thinking. The two men hadn’t known each other especially well, but Nellthis liked to hint that they had been involved together in at least one extralegal escapade. At one time,
the two families had lived side by side. Decades ago, Uncle Nellthis, brash and independent, had broken the family bonds and settled his own estate on the outskirts of Lemish.
There was something about Nellthis, something slippery and intriguing. He had rich furnishings and many servants, yet he did little work, and his fields produced only a modest harvest of corn and seed. Kit couldn’t discern how he supported his luxurious lifestyle.
Lately, she knew, Nellthis had been traveling a good deal, making many short trips to nearby villages and towns. When he returned, Kit noticed, inevitably he brought back a sturdy peasant or two whom he added to his growing household staff. By now there were dozens of them—Kitiara had lost count—and they seemed to have very little to do in the way of actual work during the daylight hours.
Sometimes Nellthis would all but vanish inside his own castle. It was a rambling old structure, with several small buildings attached, including a barn and a stable. Yet there were times when Kitiara would roam the place by the hour in a futile search for Nellthis, until suddenly, turning a corner, she would burst upon him, standing there as if he had been waiting for her and grinning mockingly.
Kit knew better than to pry. She bided her time, watching and waiting. Nellthis had always been good to her. He had always extended generous hospitality whenever, without warning, she dropped in for a visit. Kit had found his home a comfortable refuge when it suited her.
A knock sounded at the door, startling Kitiara out of her reverie. She jumped up and opened it, her attitude brusque. She half-expected to be pestered by one of her rival suitors, the victor of the shoving match, his face smudged and clothing heroically torn.
Instead, a kender stood there, and in the background, watching the kender nervously, hovered one of Nellthis’s servants, the beetle-browed Odilon. The kender’s topknot was worn on the side of his head and dangled down to his knees; he was fair-haired, shorter and older than Tasslehoff Burrfoot. She didn’t recognize him.