by Ed Greenwood
Come now, the blade chided him aloud. Slaying with me should be simple. Bloodletting is what we do together.
Watching the sword, Tantaerra caught sight of her stump. It was dribbling blood rather wearily, like a half-opened cask spigot, but as the healing she'd drunk stole through her, it stopped. The burning pain ebbed, but the blue healing glow that momentarily flared around her arm darkened as a reddish-purple radiance also blossomed, and wrestled with the blueness. That reddish-purple was the same hue that blazed around the Whispering Blade in a now-sullen aura.
She still couldn't quite believe her hand was gone. Her stump was healed, the dark blood that had been wet mere moments ago now dry and falling off in tattered flakes. Healed, but still a stump, no new hand sprouting, no new fingers reaching for the ceiling as she wriggled them.
Her hand was gone forever.
She stumbled over something on the blood-slick floor that might have been her hand as The Masked came closer. She fled from him, throwing her empty vial in his face and feeling for another.
If he slashed open her throat, could the potion get through the welling blood to heal her?
She'd backed most of the way around the room now, slipping once or twice in blood that was probably her own.
Suddenly-she didn't know how-she was caught in a corner, with The Masked looming up in front of her. No longer glaring, but shaking his head and muttering grimly, looking down, the curved sword wavering in his hand.
And even if he collapsed at her feet, what then? She'd be alone at the heart of this murderous maze, one-handed and weak …a two-bite meal for most of those dweomercats waiting outside. Doomed.
The Masked raised his head and the sword in his hand in one slow, grim movement.
"Tarram!" she screamed. "It's me! Your halfling princess!"
His mouth crooked through the dripping blood, his one eye fixed on her-and then he turned and flung the Whispering Blade across the room.
It hit the wall with an almost musical crash, bounced off, clattered to the black marble floor, and slid lazily across the room.
It came to rest touching-very gently, almost caressingly-something that looked like a dark, oversized arachnid.
Something that rose on legs to scuttle like a spider. Five legs, two of them shorter than the others. Her severed hand. It scuttled away across the room.
"Sorry," The Masked growled, whirling away from her to run raggedly across the room again, scoop up the sword, and hack at the dodging, scampering hand. He chopped at it as savagely and thoroughly as he'd served Mahalagris, not stopping until it was diced to tiny fragments on the bloody marble.
Then he flung down the sword again and came back to her.
"Tantaerra," he gasped, "I'm sorry. I …that blade was clawing at my mind." He put his arms around her, lifted her to his breast, and leaned against the wall with his forehead, just holding her. "Your poor hand."
Tantaerra burst into tears. And found herself clutching at him and sobbing, all control fallen and fled, while he stammered out incoherent, useless apologies.
It was a long time before her weeping was done, and she could choke out words again. "Drink one of your vials," she hissed at him, when she could. "That eye of yours …"
He set her down again, got out a vial, drained it-and slowly went pink.
His resigned, lopsided grin made her burst out laughing, broken laughter that soon died. The next vial made him smile in earnest-and his ruined eye glowed faintly blue and was an orb once again, though a deep gash still creased his ruined forehead above and cheek below it. It took another vial before he could see out of it again. The gash stayed just as it was.
When two eyes gazed on Tantaerra out of a mask of drying blood, she asked softly, "You didn't chop up the gauntlet, did you?"
The unmasked man shook his head.
"Then get it, and let's get the hell out of here," she told him fiercely. "Before anything worse happens. Like that wizard rising again."
Armistrade turned, crossed the room, and took up the Fearsome Gauntlet from where it had fallen when he'd chopped the arm that wore it to pieces. Then he bent and plucked up a ring from among the gore. Then another.
"May not be magical," he muttered without looking up, "but they're gold. Oh. Nice gems on this third one."
He turned, took two steps back toward Tantaerra-then stopped in mid-stride, looked over his shoulder, hesitated …and went back for his mask.
"I don't dare leave it here," he murmured. "Not still linked to Karm, and Mahalagris, and this place …and me. I just wish I knew more as to how."
Its glow had faded. As he held it up, Tantaerra could see that its entanglement with the Whispering Blade had left it scarred, a large cut crossing brow and cheek and cutting across one eye. In just the same way her partner was now disfigured.
Tarram gazed down at the mask. Then, slowly, he thrust it into the breast of his tattered garments, shook his head, and sighed. He turned to her. "Now, we flee."
Together they ducked through the open door Mahalagris had appeared from, into dimly lit rooms beyond crammed with chairs, tables, and shelves of books.
"If we had more time, and less of a nightmare journey home …" Armistrade murmured, as they wistfully eyed the tomes they were passing.
"Ifs are horses you can't trust," Tantaerra whispered back at him. She was about to say more, as they headed through an open doorway on into the next room, but heard something behind her-the faintest of boot-scrapes-and whirled around.
In time to see Orivin Voyvik, on his feet again, stalking after them.
The Nirmathi was limping slightly, his head and neck at an odd angle. The Whispering Blade was glowing a cheerful reddish-purple in his hand.
"Tarram!" Tantaerra shrieked. She saw her partner's unmasked face working with effort as the Fearsome Gauntlet on his hand started to glow emerald green. He raised his arm, fingers spread, and aimed it at Voyvik.
The magical gage pulsed once, and something unseen rushed through the air and smote the Nirmathi, hurling him backward.
Voyvik grunted in pain, almost dropping the Whispering Blade as it shrieked its way along one wall and fell, skidding back. Ruby magical radiance awakened on Voyvik's breast and raced briefly up and down his limbs, washing over his face as he rolled up to his feet and started to advance again.
Was he …taller? Stronger?
His head and neck were no longer askew, and he was indeed taller, Tantaerra decided, backing hastily away but taking care to keep to one side, so The Masked could blast Voyvik unimpeded.
Dung.
The Masked unleashed the blasting of the gauntlet again, a ramming blow that staggered the Nirmathi and made him snarl in pain-yet left him looking even taller as he advanced, moving more decisively now, the Whispering Blade raised and glowing an eager, brighter reddish-purple.
He'd staggered but not fallen. Double dung.
Behind her, The Masked muttered something less than pleased and called on the gauntlet again, a different sort of power this time-louder and more visible, a solid blow that drove Voyvik a few paces back.
And left him trembling and growing. Bulkier, more burly, and striding forward again. Smiling more widely, too.
Frantically, The Masked blasted him again-and again.
Overstretched cloth groaned as Voyvik's body bulged, bulking farther. Then a seam split with a long ripping sound, and the Nirmathi's clothes started to fall away in tatters, revealing not a man beneath, but rippling muscles clad in silvery scales.
Voyvik cried out in pain, howls that swiftly became screams-but the agony was from his transformation, not the relentless blastings of the Fearsome Gauntlet. As Tantaerra and her partner watched, backing away steadily, Voyvik's arms lengthened and split into at least four tentacles, his legs seemed to undulate like eels and then fuse into a long, slithering snakelike body and tail. He flopped forward onto his belly, then rose upright like the bowsprit of a ship, propelled by his now-coiling serpentine body, as his screams gargled an
d twisted into cold, hissing laughter.
Laughter that sounded very much like the cold mirth of Mahalagris.
Tantaerra shivered. "It's-it's not natural."
"I'm used to that," The Masked snapped, "and you should be getting used to such things by now! It's the wizard's magic working on him, out of the sword! Come on!" He shot out the hand that wasn't wearing the gauntlet, and pulled her around and into a run. They fled together.
The next door led them out of the dim light, books, and luxuries Mahalagris surrounded himself with, and back into the colder gray stone passages of the deadly tomb.
Now something slithering and tentacled but able to rear up like a man, Voyvik came after them, slicing the air gleefully with the Whispering Blade.
The Masked slowed to peer ahead suspiciously. "That," he muttered, looking at the ceiling ahead, "is almost certainly another falling-blocks trap."
"I'm thinking the wizard brought Voyvik back to life and protected him somehow," Tantaerra told him. "Taking all the power of your blastings and using them to make him into that snake-thing. I'll bet Mahalagris is in his head, now-which means he knows where all the traps, their triggers, and the ways around them are."
"I won't take that bet," The Masked growled. "Let's just get out of this place as quickly as we can-before our gliding friend back there can use what he knows of it against us."
"So …?"
"So let me try something," he said thoughtfully, raising the gauntlet again. What emerged from it this time was a giant, disembodied man's hand that flew ahead of them in ponderous silence.
Blocks on chains hurtled down, to sway harmlessly inches above the floor, letting loose swirling dust. The hand shoved them aside as they started to rise again. A little way beyond them, a vertical row of spears thrust out of one wall, followed an instant later by another row out of the facing wall. The giant hand thrust against them, and they squealed as they started to retract.
The hand descended to the floor under The Masked's mental bidding, and bumped along, seeking flagstone triggers it could set off.
There were surprisingly few of them, and Tantaerra and her partner were soon sprinting along farther and faster than either of them had ever run before, both mindful that the gliding tentacled thing pursuing them could use rafters and crossbeams to avoid steps and the like that would slow the two of them.
They ran for a long time but faced far fewer traps ere they emerged through a sliding wall into the first room of the tomb-the one with the relief carving of the dragon all across the ceiling-and burst out into the ruins of Hurlandrun, just as the last rays of the setting sun painted its tallest remnants golden.
Only to find the dweomercats charging them, a vast and furry flood.
The Masked did something with the gauntlet that sent a line of lightning crackling into them-yet rather than scorching fur and boiling blood, it made the blue cats disappear entirely, reappearing instantaneously at his feet. Then they were upon him in an avid tide, pulling him under.
"Tarram! Tarram!" Tantaerra shrieked, struggling through sleek rushing bodies to try to reach where he'd gone down, picturing hundreds of fanged jaws biting and sharp claws raking-
Her partner staggered up into view again, red-faced and breathless.
"They're swarming me," he panted, "or rather-" He tugged, fighting to lift one arm by pulling on it with the other. "-they're swarming the gauntlet!"
Dweomercats had fallen from his elbows, and were now leaping like trained beasts to try to bite the Fearsome Gauntlet, their jaws snapping in midair.
"Swarming?" Tantaerra asked, eyeing it.
"Clutching at it, trying to rub up against it." He waded a step farther and almost fell as he trod on unseen wriggling dweomercats. Others rose in a leaping, snapping wave right in front of him. "Using magic on them just brings them to you faster! The gods know how we're going to get anywhere, with all of these …"
He staggered, almost fell, then lurched into a turn that brought him around to face Tantaerra directly.
"Get over there," he shouted, "to that plinth or block or whatever it is, and get up on it."
She started toward it, through streams of rushing dweomercats who ignored her completely in their haste to get to The Masked.
"Why?" she flung back over her shoulder, when she was halfway there.
"I'm going to throw the gauntlet to you. Don't drop it."
"So I can get smothered in dweomercats?"
"Just long enough for me to get to that ruined wall, yonder. You throw it back to me, and take yourself up that street to where that tree is-the one with the low bough, there? I'll throw it back to you, and move on and shout at you to throw it back. And so on."
"Sometimes," she called, clambering up onto the plinth, "I wonder why I hired you, I really do!"
"Sometimes," he called back, "I wonder why I let myself be hired. Catch!"
Tantaerra spat out a rude word, watched the glowing gage come hurtling at her, and concentrated on making the catch. If she dropped it, with all of these dweomercats raging around her …
She didn't.
The next few moments were a whirlwind of leaping furry bodies, opened jaws coming at her, reaching paws…she slid the Fearsome Gauntlet on and hugged it to her, and the world promptly darkened and swam into muted, muffled excitement, as she felt the magic of the glove surging through her, spreading out its glories like an unfolding array of shining stars …it could do this, and this, and that, and-
"Tantaerra!" The Masked shouted, from atop a ruined wall that he was sharing with a dozen-some dweomercats, all trying to rub up against his front, for some rea-oh, yes. She saw a faint glimmer of blue light through the leaping furry bodies. He had the mask tucked down his front.
"Yes?" she called back.
"The gauntlet!" he bellowed. "Remember?"
She didn't want to yield it up. This was wonderful, more power than she'd ever felt before. Stars before her, stars at her command, stars in the-
A bolder dweomercat than the rest slammed into her face and drove her staggering back against rough stone, that broken end of wall behind the plinth that she hadn't liked the look of at her first glimpse of it. It was every bit as sharp and hard as she'd thought it would be, and the dweomercats were thudding against her now in a ceaseless flood that threatened to crush her or drive her down and bury her, the strong reek of their musk tickling in her nose and throat, their eager fury a frightening-
Tantaerra spat out the rudest words she knew as she struggled to stand, struggled to climb the wall. She slipped twice, dweomercats climbing up her back and arms and dragging her down.
The Masked was watching her anxiously. She drew off the gauntlet and held it carefully in both hands, swung underarm once or twice to gain momentum, and threw.
End over end the glowing gage flashed, over the heads of countless dweomercats-and fell short.
The Masked sprang down off his wall, snatched it from under the very paws of jostling and yowling dweomercats, then turned and fought his way through a sudden surge of them, up the rising street.
"Run!" he yelled. "Head back the way we came!" He pointed ahead up the street, in the direction of the distant border with Molthune.
Tantaerra jumped down off the plinth and ran, utterly ignored by every dweomercat around her.
She made it into thick trees, where almost all traces of Hurlandrun were buried in forest, before she heard him shout again.
When she turned, he was hidden under a surging mound of dweomercats-and the Fearsome Gauntlet was hurtling toward her, end over end in the air.
It was a bad throw, and she had to sprint back toward the ruins to field it, dweomercats racing eagerly to beat her, but field it she did. She slid it on and ran, hugging it to her breast and just trying to get up into the trees again before the weight of rushing, leaping cats bore her to the ground.
There was a gully of sorts to her left, and she headed for it, to try to keep a throwing area relatively free of trees, so her retur
n throw might have some small chance of reaching her partner. Provided he was smart enough to head up the other side of the little gulley. He-
The freedom to ponder things was snatched away from her in a leaping wall of musky, mewling bodies that slammed her to the ground, rolled her over, and almost dragged the gauntlet off her arm.
Spitting out curses she couldn't even hear through the squalling din, Tantaerra fought her way around a tree, dashed dweomercats away from her face and front for an instant with a vicious swipe of her arm, and shouted, "Tarram! Tarram!"
Then she spun around and slammed herself against the tree trunk, pinning several squirming dweomercats against it and scraping more off her as she slid along it, leaning into it hard.
There he was. She drew back the gauntlet, holding it firmly with her free hand, kicked out viciously to dislodge any cat trying to leap aboard it, and hurled it.
High and not far. Her turn for a lousy throw.
He sprang across the gully to meet it, punched the air with such deft aim that the great warglove hurtled right onto his hand. He landed hard, pivoted, and was gone up the gulley like a storm wind.
He made such headway that the suddenly abandoned Tantaerra held her tongue about what she'd just seen, back down behind them in the ruins of Hurlandrun. She wanted him to get a good long way up into the forest before saying anything that might slow him.
The slithering tentacled thing Voyvik had become was following them, gliding along the street. It was passing the plinth where she'd caught the gauntlet, and rising up to watch them, waving the Whispering Blade in one tentacle like some flamboyant duelist.
"Dung," she whispered. Then she turned and ran.
She reached the first wooded ridge before she was out of breath. Off to her left, amid trees too thick for any thrown gauntlet to travel far, The Masked was trudging along amid a carpet of dweomercats-well, more like a long bridal gown, with a dragging train of swarming cats that extended far back behind him. But he was still on his feet, still forging ahead. Slowly.