Kurzen followed after him, raising his shield and guarding the big fighter’s back. Halamar conjured up a great curtain of fire that momentarily stopped the wave of troglodytes from simply overrunning the company; Jack decided to stick by to the sorcerer and defend him from any close attack. In a matter of moments Jack was hard-pressed by a pair of the degenerate monsters, fending them off with thrust after thrust of his rapier. Despite the company’s aggressive defense, the sheer weight of numbers forced the adventurers back toward the hallway outside the temple narthex.
“These fellows are the same tribe as the others.” Arlith called. “Look at their eyes!”
The halfling was right, Jack noted; the troglodytes he fought wore ragged eye patches like their comrades upstairs, and were likewise painted with eye-like symbols. Ragged volleys of trog javelins flew through the air, clattering all around the company. “Fall back!” he shouted to Narm and Kurzen. “We can hold them off on the stairs outside!”
The dwarf and the half-orc gave ground grudgingly, retreating back to the narthex entrance. A blast of green fire suddenly roared in the opposite archway, incinerating a number of the troglodyte dart-throwers that were hanging back from the press. The trogs pressing in against Narm and Kurzen hesitated, risking quick glances over the shoulders and hissing at each other in their thick, rasping voices. Then another party of adventurers appeared, bursting out of the smoking opening as their own battle spilled over into the temple’s great narthex. Two of the newcomers-an elf armed with sword and wand and an armored human wearing the robes of a cleric of Tempus-instantly turned to face whatever followed them out of the opposite tunnel, while a tattooed human swordsman and a tiefling wielding a scimitar of black fire simply cut into the back ranks of the troglodytes facing Jack and his companions without even breaking stride. Silhouetted by emerald fires smoldering in the doorway, a trio of umber hulks shambled into fray, pursuing the other heroes … only to be momentarily checked as a black-haired woman in dark mail appeared and took a stand against them, her katana flashing in the greenish light.
“Jelan? No!” Jack exclaimed. “What is she doing here?” The question was rhetorical, of course: Myrkyssa Jelan was seeking the Sarkonagael after all, or she wouldn’t be on the doorstep of the Temple of the Soulforger. And that meant that either the resting place of the tome was not quite as secure as he’d believed or the Warlord had been keeping her eye on him. Jelan glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes met Jack’s for an instant before she turned back to the monsters pressing her.
Jack started to shout a warning to his comrades or to simply protest this unfair turn of events, but the troglodyte battering at him redoubled its assault, feeling the threat approaching from behind it. Jack ducked a wild swing of its spiked club, which shattered the face of one of the figures shown in the ancient dwarven carvings that covered the walls, and riposted with a clean thrust into the troglodyte’s chest. The monster hissed in agony and staggered, but as soon as Jack drew back his point, it raised its club and came on again.
“Not fair!” Jack cried. “You are supposed to fall. Can’t you see that I’ve killed you?”
The trog lumbered ahead and swung again; Jack had no room to backpedal, so he leaped inside its swing and found himself breast-to-breast with the stinking creature. It dropped its club and seized Jack’s throat with one big, scaly claw, opening its mouth impossibly wide to reveal rows of sharp, serrated teeth. Blood spumed in its throat, but the creature held Jack fast as it prepared to take his face in its jaws. In desperation Jack dropped his rapier to the floor, drawing the dagger from his belt and plunging the blade into the trog’s neck just under its ear-hole. The monster shuddered and collapsed; Jack shouldered aside its body and scooped up his sword again.
The battle was absolute chaos. Troglodytes seethed back and forth between the two companies of adventurers, filling the air with their awful reek. The umber hulks chasing Jelan’s group waded into the middle of it all, lashing out with their mammoth claws and scissoring their horrible mandibles with an awful clacking sound. Adventurers and troglodytes both staggered about or stood struck senseless by the mind-whelming power of the umber hulks’ quadruple eyes. Others flew into blind berserk fury, lashing out at whatever was near, friend or foe.
“No amount of coin is worth this,” Jack muttered. “I hereby forswear dungeon-delving forever. There must be easier ways to throw away one’s life.”
Kurzen went down cursing, his leg yanked out from under him by a sweep of an umber hulk’s talons. The monster’s next strike crumpled the dwarf’s shield like tin, and the monster opened its mandibles wide to slice the dwarf in half-but it suddenly buckled in agony as Myrkyssa Jelan slashed it across its chitin-covered back. Arlith, overcome by the power of the umber hulks’ eyes, dropped her crossbow and fled the room, running off in blind panic. Half a dozen of the surviving troglodytes scattered and ran with her, some likewise confused and some simply abandoning the fight. Narm pressed forward to hack at another one of the hulks, while Halamar slung fire left and right and Jelan’s mage-the elf with sword and wand-hammered darts of magical force at the umber hulk Jelan had wounded.
Jack reversed the dagger with which he’d killed the troglodyte and took aim at the umber hulk fighting Narm. His throw took the creature in one of its large, multifaceted eyes. The hulk howled with a high screech of pain until the half-orc ducked under its fumbling grasp to drive his sword through a chink in its armor. The last umber hulk abruptly wheeled and fled, trampling over a couple of troglodytes who were milling about in their confusion. Jack wheeled, looking for another foe, but the troglodytes were all dead or in retreat, as were the umber hulks. Only the two parties of adventurers still faced each other.
“Who in the Nine Hells are you fellows?” Narm demanded, facing Jelan’s tiefling and his sword of ebony flames.
“The Moon Dagger Company,” the tiefling snarled. “And who are you?”
“Jack Ravenwild,” said Myrkyssa Jelan. She drew a small cloth from her belt to wipe the black gore from her katana, but kept her sword ready to hand as she cleaned it. “You have the infuriating habit of turning up when least expected.”
“Who is this, Jack?” Kurzen asked. He was limping, but he seemed like he could still fight.
“Myrkyssa Jelan, once the Warlord of the Vast,” Jack answered. He did not take his eyes off her. “And I fail to see how my presence here interferes with any business of yours, because I am simply following a design of my own. In fact, I might ask exactly what your purpose here is, Elana. What are you up to?”
“I am here for the Sarkonagael, of course,” Jelan replied.
“We were here first. The book is ours.”
“That remains to be seen.” She coolly surveyed Jack’s companions, taking their measure.
Jack fumed, glancing at the open archway leading to the temple. The situation was simply intolerable. Even if they agreed to retrieve the book together and split the reward, he was suddenly short half the purse he’d hoped to win with this little expedition. Or, worse yet, Jelan might have no intention of turning in the Sarkonagael for any kind of reward. She’d gotten her hands on that book once before and proceeded to employ its dark powers to create all sorts of mayhem in the city. If she still had an interest in it, Jack was certain it could be for no good reason.
To buy himself a moment to regain his composure, he met Jelan’s gaze and demanded, “How did you know it was here?”
“I arranged for the book’s location to be divined, of course.”
“Not so fast,” Jack shot back. “I am well acquainted with your peculiar condition, Elana. You are completely unaffected by magic. A diviner could do nothing to help you find the tome.”
Jelan allowed herself a small smile. “Well, in that you are correct. However, two people learn the result of a divination, do they not?”
Jack spluttered in outrage. “Why, that is unheard of! Diviners are supposed to adhere to a strict code of professional ethics respecting their clients
’ confidentiality.”
“It would appear that I made Aderbleen Krestner a more convincing offer than you did,” Jelan answered. She turned and said something to the elf standing behind her … and the elf abruptly raised his wand at Jack and his companions, speaking a spell in his own language.
“On your guard!” Narm shouted, and surged forward-but at that instant a roaring wall of green fire sprang into life around Jack and his friends, ringing them where they stood. The half-orc jerked back from the searing flames with an oath; Kurzen and Arlith raised their weapons, ready to defend themselves, but Jelan and her mercenaries simply left Jack’s party trapped within the ring of flames.
“Forgive me, Jack, but I have a book to retrieve!” Jelan shouted through the roaring of the fire. “Stay where you are, and you shouldn’t be harmed. My mage Kilarnan-” the elf gave a small smile, and bowed at the mention of his name-“informs me that the flames will abate in a quarter-hour or so. I caution you not to follow me; if I have to discourage pursuit more forcefully, I’ll do so without a moment’s hesitation.”
Jelan raised her mailed hand to her brow in a mocking salute, then motioned to her mercenaries. As Jack and his comrades watched through the flames, the Warlord wheeled and strode boldly through the gate leading to the inner temple. Her mercenaries followed after her.
“They’re going to beat us to the prize,” Narm snarled. “Now what?”
Jack thought quickly. His instinct was to pursue at once, wall of fire or not … but if any more monsters waited in the temple proper, perhaps it would be better to let Jelan and her followers take their measure first. “Halamar, do you have a way to protect us against the flames?”
Halamar, the fire-sorcerer, gave a low laugh. “Trust me, fire is the least of my concerns. We can exit whenever we like.”
“And Arlith is still outside,” Kurzen observed. “If Halamar can protect us against the elf’s magic, then what are we waiting for? Let’s get out of this infernal trap. I mean to have a word or two with that so-called warlord.”
Jack raised his hand, motioning for patience. “Not yet, friend Kurzen,” he said. “Let Jelan find out what dangers wait in the temple. When she returns this way, it will seem that we are caught perfectly in her wizard’s cage … but we’ll simply be waiting to ambush her and take back our book.”
Kurzen ran his hand over his short-cropped hair and nodded. “I like it,” he decided. “Do we kill them, or just teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget?”
“I want the book, but I am not sure that I’m prepared to murder for it,” Jack replied. “Spare them if you can.” He was trying to become respectable, after all, and while the authorities might not make much of rival companies brawling in the dungeons below the city, deaths tended to invite official interest of the sort Jack didn’t want. He sheathed his rapier and dropped his pack from his shoulders to the flagstones, seating himself on the ground. He was rapidly becoming aware of a dozen small aches, pains, and injuries that he hadn’t noticed in the heat of the fighting; a brief respite seemed in order. “Rest now. They’ll be out soon enough.”
Jack drank deeply from his waterflask, then bandaged a nasty gouge just above his left boot where the spike of a troglodyte’s club had missed crushing his shinbone by a whisker. The emerald flames continued to dance and crackle around the small company; inside the circle it was growing uncomfortably warm, and perspiration gleamed on each face. Narm and Kurzen talked quietly as they drank from their own flasks, weighing the best strategy for taking down the Moon Daggers quickly. The minutes dragged on, and still Jelan’s party did not appear; Jack hoped that meant they were busy sorting through an immense pile of loot and hadn’t simply found the book and made their exit through some other passageway on the far side of the temple.
The mage Halamar came and sat down beside Jack, bringing his pipe out of his robes. “Is this truly the Myrkyssa Jelan of legend that we are facing?” he asked.
“That is the very Myrkyssa Jelan you have just met,” Jack said. “She, and I, were magically imprisoned for the last century, and released only a few tendays ago.”
“Astonishing. I thought she was only a myth, a legend. No one could do the things she is said to have done.”
“You don’t know her as well as I do,” Jack said glumly. He liked their chances of catching Jelan off guard … but that woman was damnably competent. He didn’t care for the idea of crossing swords with her again. “Listen, my friend: When we move against the Warlord’s company, deal with her wizard if you can. No spell of yours will have any affect at all on Jelan herself. She is completely immune to magic.”
“So that much of the legend is true,” Halamar mused. He fell silent for a moment, frowning in thought.
At that moment Kurzen suddenly scrambled upright and pointed back at the doorway leading from the hall into the narthex. “Gods have mercy!” he cried. “It’s a beholder!”
Jack leaped to his feet and whirled to look back the way they had come. A great, spherical shape easily eight or nine feet across floated slowly into the temple narthex. Writhing eyestalks crowned its upper surface, and its single central eye glared at the ring of emerald flames and the explorers waiting inside. Behind the monster more troglodytes slunk along, cringing and hissing to the eye-tyrant.
“Ahhh,” the beholder gurgled in its thick voice. “Here are the cruel ones who killed our servants and defiled our lair. We are not pleased with them. Do they think to hide from us within their magic? They are mistaken. Which of the ten dooms at our command do they deserve, we wonder?”
“Now I understand-the troglodytes maim themselves to show devotion to their master,” Narm remarked. He sighed and raised his sword into a guard position. “Eye tyrant, indeed. Well, with luck we will die quickly.”
That seemed like a poor aspiration to Jack. He wasn’t sure exactly what the beholder’s ten eye-rays did, but he didn’t care to find out. He glanced about the room, searching for a way out, then sudden inspiration struck him. “Wait!” he cried to the monster. “Wait, oh magnificent master. We are only lost travelers. The true defilers-your enemies and ours-have passed into the temple proper. We have no quarrel with you!” Behind him he felt Kurzen and the others exchanging wary glances, but they were clever enough to keep silent.
The beholder paused, studying Jack with several of its eyes. “Our servants are certain that your pitiful company slaughtered them with abandon.”
“A terrible misunderstanding, your spherical majesty,” Jack answered. “Ask your servants if there were not others besides our company who caused you even greater injury.” He pointed to the archway leading into the temple. “While we bandy words in this antechamber, they are already pillaging your treasures.”
The creature diverted several of its eyes to its troglodyte minions and rumbled a question in their language. Most of its eyes remained firmly trained on Jack and his company. The troglodytes seemed agitated to Jack, and he thought he caught a whiff of their horrible stink even from across the room. What manner of monster willingly accepted troglodytes into its service, he wondered. Clearly one that possessed little or no sense of smell.
“Do you really believe this will work?” Kurzen asked in a low voice.
“We will persuade the beholder that its true enemy is Jelan and her company, and wait while the creature chases them off or is destroyed in the attempt to remove them from the temple,” said Jack. He could sense the possibilities realigning even as he spoke, and had to hide a grin of satisfaction at the turn of events. “Regardless of whether Jelan and her sellswords or the beholder and its minions triumph, the winning side will doubtless be weakened, and our position correspondingly improved.”
“And if the creature is not dissuaded from attacking us?” the dwarf continued.
“Confidence, friend Kurzen, confidence. This is the oldest ploy in the book.” Jack nodded at the beholder. “See, the creature concludes its deliberations.”
The beholder drifted a little closer, having fi
nished its discussion with its minions. “The issue is decided,” it rumbled. “There is no egress from the temple. We will destroy you first, and then deal with the intruders within.”
“Ah, damn it,” Narm muttered.
The beholder fixed its great central eye on Jack and his companions. There was a strange silvery flash around its huge red iris … and on the instant the wall of dancing green fire surrounding the company vanished, snuffed out by the antimagic of the monster’s gaze. “Go, loyal minions,” it burbled to its troglodytes. “Slay them all, but do not spoil the eyes.”
“New plan!” Jack cried. “Follow me! We’ll lead them to Jelan and make this her fight, too.” He spun on his heel and ran with all his speed for the archway leading into the temple proper.
Narm, Kurzen, and Halamar cursed and swore, but they ran after Jack as the trogs’ javelins hissed through the air around them. Arlith darted out of the shadows at the far end of the hall and joined them as they fled. Without a word the beholder’s servants surged forward, charging after the company, while the monster suddenly shut its central eye and lashed out with a half dozen ravening beams of magical energy from its twisting eyestalks. A green ray smote Kurzen on his shield, spreading a crackling verdant field over the wood and metal. With a curse, the dwarf flung away his warboard, which disintegrated before it reached the ground. A thin bluish ray intended for Narm was intercepted by a hapless troglodyte who ran into its path; the creature took three more steps before its skin grayed and it petrified in mid-stride.
Jack felt himself seized by an unseen force and lifted off his feet. A golden ray held him transfixed in some sort of telekinetic grip. He kicked and struggled to no avail before the beholder contemptuously flung him across the room. Jack hit the wall with enough force to knock him senseless for a moment, sliding to the floor with his back and skull aching and his ears ringing. He came back to himself just as a troglodyte reached him and raised its club to dash out his brains. In sheer panic Jack scrambled backward on his posterior, the troglodyte bounding and hissing after him, before he found his feet and dashed into the great temple beyond the arch.
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