The Companions

by Tina Daniel

  In the center of the room stood its single item of interest, a huge, gilded, oval piece of glass, shiny and suggestive of a mirror but not a mirror. The oval sat on a wooden base propped up at a sharp angle. At its widest point, the oval’s reflective surface curved into a wide indentation, broken in the middle by a needle-thin slit.

  Wearing the black gem the Ogress had given him, Raistlin approached the oval, gripping the amulet tightly. He murmured an obscure incantation, followed by a simple command: “Close gate.”

  The surface moved almost imperceptibly, like the blink of an eye, and the needle-thin slash disappeared. Raistlin removed the amulet from around his neck, wrapped it in some cloth, and stuffed it in one of the folds of his cloak.

  “Naturally I’m grateful that we didn’t get smashed to bits on those rocks,” said Flint, “but where are we?”

  Raistlin, occupied with concealing the amulet, said nothing. By the door, Tanis had pulled himself to his feet and was giving the steel handle a fruitless tug.

  “It’s locked,” said Tanis.

  “I expected as much,” said Raistlin.

  “Sealed tight,” Tanis continued, squatting to peer through the keyhole. “There’s no draft. I can’t see much other than a dark hallway and several other doors.”

  “Outside or inside?” asked Flint, coming over.

  “What?” asked Tanis.

  “Is the door locked from the outside or inside?”

  “Why, it has to be locked from the outside, doesn’t it?” Tanis asked, puzzled.

  “Don’t be too sure,” Raistlin cautioned, coming over to inspect the door. He braced himself against the wall, shaking his head as if to clear it. Flint and Tanis exchanged looks. “It seems I am a little wobbly still,” explained the young mage.

  “It’s locked from the inside,” declared Flint authoritatively after giving the mechanism of the lock a once-over.

  “How can it be locked from the inside? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  But Flint was no longer paying any attention to Tanis. He had taken out one of his long, thin knives and a stitching needle and was poking inside the lock. The diminutive dwarf didn’t have to bend over far in order to bring his eyes level with his work. Several minutes passed in silence while he fideled with his makeshift lockpick.

  “Too bad Tasslehoff isn’t with us,” Tanis said. He smiled at the realization that he actually missed the kender. “He’d make short work of that lock.”

  Flint paused to glare at the half-elf. “That doorknob of a kender would take so long telling you about the time his Uncle Trapspringer was in a similar predicament that he’d totally forget what he was supposed to be doing.” The dwarf turned back to his task.

  Flint grunted with satisfaction as he heard the click that he was straining to hear. He gave the stitching needle an upward thrust. The door cracked open just a hairsbreadth. “Not to mention the fact that Tas is the reason we’ve portaled ourselves into this room in the first place!” Flint added righteously.

  Raistlin stood up, recovered. “Careful,” the young mage warned before sliding open the door and slipping out.

  Tanis followed quickly.

  “Wait for me!!” cried Flint, hurrying to tuck away his tools and follow.

  While the light in the locked room had been dim, the hallway plunged them into nearly total darkness. From one end of the hall, a square of light beckoned—a window. Raistlin rushed over to look out.

  Tanis and Flint were right behind the young mage, crowding to gaze over his shoulder.

  What they saw was a limitless blue-black sea of wild, choppy waters. The shore was irregular, with sandy beaches in some areas. In others, the water crashed against jagged rocks and awesome cliffs.

  Their vantage point was the highest tower of a keep perched on top of a steep hill. A dusty road twisted out of sight. They couldn’t help but notice that the road was lined with bodies and skeletons impaled on pikes. On the cracked, withered ground nearby grew mangy scrub bushes and a few gnarled trees.

  Directly below the tower, a gatehouse with a spiked portcullis guarded one side of a bridge that spanned a deep gully. Tanis and the others saw that giant bears roamed the gully. Guards manned the gates. Not human guards either, Tanis observed.

  Large and animal-like, ridged with hard muscles, the creatures had blunt noses, pointed ears, and beady red eyes. Long, matted hair draped their shoulders. They wore beast skins and fur capes and carried scimitars and spears.

  Ogres.

  One of the ogre guards turned idly and looked up in their direction.

  Quickly they ducked down out of sight.

  “The Oracle was right,” Raistlin hissed to his companions in a low voice, although they were well out of the ogre guards’ hearing. “That is the shore of the Blood Sea. We are inside Ogrebond, in a tower at the top of the keep. Somehow we must get out of here, but to do so means we must fight or evade a small army of ogres, their minions, and evil spirits.”

  “Great,” muttered Flint.

  “Let me lead,” said Tanis quickly, rising and heading back down the hallway. He turned and gestured. “Let’s find a way down.”

  “I’ll go next,” said Raistlin, following.

  “Happy to go last,” muttered Flint.

  As Raistlin passed the room from which they had emerged, he took a moment to close the door firmly and try the handle. Satisfied, he waited a moment for his eyes to adjust, then moved on.

  Ahead of them, narrow steps curved downward. Feeling the cold, musty wall with one hand as a guide—his other hand was on the hilt of his dagger, just in case—Tanis slowly started down the stairs. Raistlin placed his hand on Tanis’s shoulder and followed. Flint did likewise with Raistlin.

  They descended for several minutes until they reached a large landing from which led three corridors, each apparently leading to a number of rooms, or at least a series of doors. Vague noises and voices filtered up to the companions from farther below, but they didn’t hear anything nearby. Daylight lit the corridors, which seemed, for the moment, uninhabited.

  Flint pushed a door open cautiously, revealing a large room barren of decor. The room held a plain bed, a table, a chest, and a cabinet. The bed showed signs of having been slept in recently—probably the night before—but the room was empty. Judging by the silence that reigned, so were the other rooms.

  “My guess,” said Raistlin, leading them back out into the corridor, “is that these are visitors’ quarters. I estimate it to be late afternoon. If there are any visitors, they are busy elsewhere, and we are safe until they return.”

  “Great,” huffed Flint. “All we have to do is wait for nightfall and then pick an ogre to share our bed with.”

  “Or fight our way out,” said Tanis rashly.

  At that moment, all three heard a scuffling sound at the far end of the hall. Before any of them could react, they saw a figure emerge from one of the rooms and set something down. Crowding back against each other, the three companions dashed back into the empty guest room.

  “Shh!” Tanis said to Flint as they stumbled over one another. Raistlin pulled the door closed behind them.

  “What now?” whispered Flint.

  Raistlin edged over to the window, taking care not to be spotted. To the west, he saw a broken land dotted with withering grass and dying flora. Far in the distance rose steep hills covered with dark forests.

  The keep clung to the side of a jagged, rocky incline. Ogre guards patrolled along the inner and outer walls below.

  “That person down the hall was just a cleaning woman,” said Tanis to Flint ruefully, rubbing his foot, which Flint had inadvertently stepped on in the rush.

  “How do you know?” snapped Flint. He sat down on the bed.

  Tas pointed to his eyes and, with the glimmer of a smile, said, “Elfvision.”

  Flint let loose a string of oaths.

  Before he was through, the door swung open. A small, bulky figure loomed on the threshold, backlit by bright
daylight. Instantly Tanis lunged toward the figure, only to be struck hard in the chin by a mop handle. Flint, a step behind the half-elf, wrapped his arms around the head of the intruder. He was bitten on the hand and hurled backward. Raistlin moved away from the window, stepping into the middle of the room.

  The newcomer swept into the room, waving a mop and glaring at them.

  Both Tanis and Flint retreated a couple more steps. Flint sank back down on the bed. Suddenly struck by the absurdity of the situation, Raistlin chuckled. Indeed the intruder was a cleaning woman—one with thickly corded muscles, a snout like a pig, and long, straggly brown hair. Yet her voice was sharp and intelligent.

  “Now tell me who you be and what you’re doing here and be quick about it. If your story isn’t convincing, you’ll be decorating an ogre spear by morning!”

  Tanis fingered his sword. Flint rubbed his hand. Both were taken aback at being confronted by a half-ogre, a female of a mixed race that neither of them, in all their long travels, had ever seen. Unquestionably fierce-looking, the woman nonetheless had a merry light in her eyes. Although ugly and bestial by civilized standards, she was dressed neatly in a leather smock and appeared to be reasonably well groomed.

  When Tanis shifted his glance over his shoulder at Raistlin, the female half-ogre got a better look at Flint. She squealed with joy and pushed past the astonished half-elf.

  The half-ogre thrust her face into Flint’s. He leaned away from her, startled and, if truth be told, a little scared. Her breath blew over him like a hot wind. “Garsh! A dwarf! I ain’t never seen one—alive, I mean! ’Course, I see all kinds of dwarf skeletons and bones, but it ain’t the same as seeing a live one.”

  The female half-ogre reached out her stubby hands and touched the dwarf’s long, full beard. “Garsh, what a pretty beard!”

  Flint scowled. His eyes rolled pleadingly toward Tanis and Raistlin.

  The half-ogre spun around and faced the other two companions, putting a thick finger to her fleshy lips. “It wouldn’t do to let the chief know. He’d kill the dwarf right off and then make me clean this room ten, twenty times to get rid of the stench”—she nodded politely to Flint—“pardon my saying so. And then he’d eat his heart for breakfast.”

  She thought for a moment. “He’d probably give his innards to the others, but the heart would be his, f’sure. The head, of course, would sit in a position of importance on a spear.” She shook her head and made a clucking sound.

  Flint blanched.

  “Such a pretty dwarf,” she peered at him again, batting her eyes. “I don’t know but that I have a hankering for ’im.” Her face darkened, and she looked conspiratorially at Tanis and Raistlin. “But we must make sure he isn’t spotted, or it’s death f’sure.”

  Flint opened his mouth, but Raistlin stepped forward and put his arm around the cleaning woman’s shoulders. “Then can you help him … us … escape from Ogrebond?”

  The female half-ogre’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose I could … and I suppose I would. I don’t like these ogres very much, you know. I’ve been their slave ever since they kilt my father, a poor farmer, and spared me only so’s I could clean for them. And let me tell you, for such a loutish lot, these ogres are surprisingly picky about cleaning.

  “I’m not one of them, of course. I’m only a half-ogre. My name is Kirsig. What’re yours?”

  Raistlin made introductions all around, although Kirsig seemed most interested in Flint. “Flint Fireforge,” she mused, her eyes shining.

  For one of the few times in his life, Flint felt helpless. He looked to Tanis for aid, but the half-elf only shrugged.

  “And could you help us arrange to hire a boat to take us across the Blood Sea?” asked Raistlin.

  Kirsig clapped her knobby hands girlishly. “The Blood Sea! Garsh, you are a daring band, I can see that! Why d’you want to cross the Blood Sea? It’s a terribly risky voyage. You have to skirt the Maelstrom and know your seamanship. Your captain must be bold and skilled, and he’ll be sure to demand a pretty purse.”

  “We’ll pay as much as we can,” answered Tanis warily, “Do you know such a captain?”

  “If he can be found,” replied Kirsig coyly, her face dark with secrecy, “but”—she paused—“I cannot leave the keep until after midnight, when my duties are done. You can stay here, but you’ll have to be careful. The chief, his band, the legion that guards the keep … any of them might appear outside this door. They get confused easy, y’know,” she said, winking conspiratorially, “and sometimes wander about the keep, looking for their weapons or shoes.

  “Tonight the chief’s entertaining a tribal delegation from the Vale of Vipers. They’ll be staying just above you, on the top floor. You dare not make a move until everyone inside the keep is asleep. If you escape”—she corrected herself—“when you escape, you’ll have to lie in hiding until I can locate the captain and make the arrangements.”

  “Are you certain …?” asked Raistlin tentatively.

  Kirsig laughed lustily. “Oh, don’t worry. He’s a capable one, more than capable.”

  “How—how will we escape?” stammered Flint. He was reluctant to draw attention to himself, yet the question loomed in his mind. Kirsig turned to regard him solicitously. As Flint stared, she reached out a hand and touched his beard, stroking it.

  “Escape, yes!” she said excitedly. “That is the problem, and we shall solve it. We’ll teach those dumb ogres a lesson.” She lowered her voice, motioning Raistlin and Tanis to draw closer. “But there’s only two ways out of Ogrebond. One is if you’re dead—that’s the sure way—and the other—” She hesitated.

  She blabbers more than Tasslehoff, thought Flint.

  “Yes?” prompted Tanis.

  “The other,” Kirsig whispered, “is worse.”

  They had to confer quickly, for time was wasting and Kirsig would be missed if she stayed away from her housekeeping chores too long.

  Raistlin told Kirsig about their quest. The young mage explained about his brother, Sturm, and Tasslehoff being missing, and even the portal they had used to get here. Kirsig’s eyes bulged at the mention of the minotaur isles. She had never been across the Blood Sea, which she knew all about from folk tales, and indeed had never been anywhere except the Ogrelands. But recently, she told Raistlin, some bull-men had visited Ogrebond and parleyed with the chief.

  “What about?” Raistlin wanted to know, keenly interested.

  “How should I know?” Kirsig said. “I’m not custodian of the secrets around here. All I can tell you is that those minotaurs smell terrible and leave their quarters in disgusting condition. Filthy cows!” She spat. The spittle landed near Tanis’s feet. The half-elf took a diplomatic step backward.

  According to Kirsig, the only way out of Ogrebond, without fighting your way through the front gate, was through the sewage channel. If they were lucky, said Kirsig, their visit and escape would remain a secret. Nobody would even suspect that outsiders had been in the keep.

  Tanis made a face at the thought of the sewage channel.

  “Go on,” urged Raistlin, sensing that Kirsig had more to say.

  “I pour all the slops and dregs down there, and worse—if you know what I mean. I know where the tunnel comes out, down near the bay, a place where the guards can’t see you. The only thing is—” Again she hesitated.

  “What?” demanded Tanis.

  “The sewer is haunted with the spirits of the dead. Ghosts and ghoulies. Everybody says so. It will be dangerous to pass through. You could die.”

  “We’ll take that chance,” Raistlin said quickly.

  “Then stay in this room and keep quiet,” Kirsig said, giving each of them, in turn, a stern look. “I’ll be back after the stroke of midnight. By then most of ’em inside the keep are drunk on grog or in dreamland. You’ll be safe here, but don’t stick your noses out of this room.”

  She took a last, fond look at Flint, letting her fingers slip slowly and reluctantly away from his gray-flecked
beard. His eyes remained frozen. “Such a pretty dwarf,” Kirsig said before picking up her bucket and mop. She opened the door a crack, peered outside, then slipped through it without another word.

  After the door closed behind her, Tanis waited several moments before whispering to Raistlin. “Do you think we can trust her?”

  The young mage slumped on a chair. He nodded.

  Tanis seemed satisfied.

  “But—” began Flint feebly.

  His two companions cast him an amused glance. “Surely she wouldn’t betray her special new friend,” Tanis said.

  Flint scowled, flushed beet red, and fell silent.

  At dusk, the three companions heard loud noises from the lower floors, harsh voices raised in laughter and shouting, a volley of oaths building to a tumult, then joined in an ogre chorus:

  “Steel peg, ice pick, fire thong, ho!

  Sliver the heart of friend or foe!

  Blood in the eye—yo!

  Ogres one and all!”

  Such carrying-ons continued until long after the moons rose, causing Tanis to worry that the revelry might last through the night.

  Finally heavy-footed clomping echoed in the hallways, followed by the sounds of shoving and arguing, armor and heavy garb dropping to the floor; and then, at last, relative stillness, punctuated by guttural snoring. From the room’s lone window, Tanis saw the battlement guards change shift.

  At last the trio heard a quiet shuffling. The door slid open, and there stood Kirsig.

  “Follow me!” the female half-ogre grunted, beckoning.

  Keeping to the shadows, they followed her down the stairs, hearing the groans and breathing of sleeping ogres on all sides as they descended three flights. Through half-open doorways, they could see feet propped up on bedposts and an occasional glint of metal hanging from wall hooks. But no one challenged them. Just in case, Flint and Tanis held onto their weapons tightly.

  On the main floor, the three companions had to pass through a huge, high-ceilinged room where the remains of the evening’s banquet—goblets and animal bones and the like—lay where they had spilled on the huge oaken table and tiled floor. The walls were hung with vivid tapestries of gory battles. The fire had nearly sputtered out. Only embers remained.