“I’m not a zombie, you fool,” he said, grinning. His teeth gleamed ivory in his mud-splashed face. “He hasn’t hurt me. I told him why we’re here.”
Bab drew his hammer close to him and studied the other halfling. Under the layers of grime, Legg looked all right, but sorcery had deluded countless people before, and most of them were dead. He held the thread on his wrist close to Legg’s face. It didn’t glow. Bab tried it on the orc with the too-small helmet on his head standing beside his old friend, then on the hobgoblins and the who-knew-what-it-was snake-beast behind them. The thread burst into green light. Legg nodded encouragement.
“D’ye see? All he wants is his property back.”
Bab nodded slowly. He turned around. His eyes traveled straight up the looming figure of the wizard who was suddenly at his back. At this close a range, Mordint’s stench was near unbelievable. Bab breathed through his mouth. Very carefully, he reached into the pouch on his belt and removed the star stone. It felt smooth and cool, but hungry, as though it wanted to suck his soul out through his palm. Gingerly, he held it out to Mordint, who snatched it away and held it to his chest. The halflings stood trembling.
“Much better,” Mordint crooned. The stone burst into brilliant blue-green light, casting a sickly shadow on the wizard’s face. He raised the Shard over his head. “Kasin!” A beam of blinding white light lanced from the stone. Bab dropped to his knees. The beam passed over their heads and slammed into the nearby slope. Hot molten rock poured down the incline. Smithereens shot out in every direction. “Yes, good!”
He tucked it away in a pocket in his filthy sleeve. “Make ready!” he shouted. The ragtag force formed into an irregular square on the path.
Bab’s heart was in his throat, but he managed to get words out.
“So, er, master wizard, why are we still alive?”
Mordint turned back to him and smiled, showing a mouthful of large, square, yellow teeth.
“You shouldn’t be,” the earth wizard intoned, his voice sounding like the knell of doom. “You’re the cause of my present difficulty.”
“Difficulty, master?”
“Yes!” Mordint scowled down at him. Thunderclouds formed around his head, and miniature lightning struck at his shoulders. “It is all thanks to you that I have lost my castle!”
Bab blanched. “Uh, how’s that, master?”
For the first time, the mage looked discomfited. “When you removed the Chaos Shard from its setting, you caused my power to diminish. Without my stone minions I was too weak to defend it against the dwarf mage Hochster. How he heard of the theft, I don’t know.”
Bab blanched. Well, he and his companions hadn’t been any too subtle about bragging about their conquest in the trading post, he recalled, but he didn’t dare say so to Mordint. Word must have spread from there to this Hochster, whoever he was.
“No idea, master,” he said, crossing his fingers, hoping the gods would forgive him the fib.
“I fought for months to dislodge him, but to no avail. I realized I required a force of my own to take it back. I went to the Crossroads to enlist willing soldiers.” His eyes glowed like the Shard as he leaned over the halflings. “Welcome to my army.”
“Oh, but surely, now that you have the stone, you don’t need us,” Bab said hastily.
Mordint stretched out a hand. “Hoit!” Coran’s boot came flying and landed in the half-elf’s arms. The tentacles felt around for it, then subsided into the mire with a bloop. “Fall in,” he ordered them. “We have distance to cover. You know the way.”
“Never!” Scorri sneered.
Mordint shrugged. “Then you’ll die now.” He raised a finger and aimed it at the scout. She stood her ground, though her face went pale. Bab jumped between them.
“Hold on, hold on! We only came to return the stone, not fight, master.”
“And that you will do,” Mordint assured them. “The mystic force that placed it in the wall of my cavern should not have been broken by any force but mine. I want to see how you did it, so it cannot ever happen again. When my army rises again, you shall be free. You have my word,” he finished grandly.
Bab doubted that. The halflings all looked at one another. They knew. The moment the stone men came back to life, they were all dead. Though they wanted to repay the debt, they didn’t want to add their lives to the sum. But at that moment they had no choice. They fell in line. Bab had to think hard.
Mordint didn’t have any stone men along, but his powers and his mercenaries were fearsome enough. His gnoll master sergeant marched them hard upland toward the underground fortress, with a whip over their heads to hurry them along.
“We can’t work for him,” Scorri hissed as they were hustled along the ridge road. “He’s evil! You can smell it!”
“Can you think of an alternative?” Legg growled at them. “It’s help or die!”
Mordint wasn’t much for small talk. He didn’t stop them from discussing anything they wanted. It was futile, of course. In the midst of his makeshift army, they couldn’t get away.
Besides the soldiers they could see, including orcs, goblins, and hordes of slithering centipedes, were two enormous wagons driven by humans. One held food, and the other armaments and magical gear. Bab could feel the tempters around them, too. Once in a while an invisible tongue tasted his hand. Ugh.
It didn’t stop him from making plans to escape when they could. He calculated all the weapons with any magical virtue they had at their disposal: Legg’s bow, Scorri’s sling, his hammer, and whatever Coran kept in his pouch. None of it amounted to much. Still, a good general kept everything in mind. You never knew what would save your life.
Mordint left Thangrik, the orc with the ill-fitting helmet, guarding them under an overhang while he issued orders to the others at a planning session around a bonfire. Bab could hear only a little, but it sounded like Mordint had thought his plan well through. He split his force into three smaller squads under the command of two bigger orcs and the snake-thing. With a look over his shoulder at the halflings, Mordint lowered his voice.
“He’s talking about us,” Legg said, shivering in his cloak. An attempt by Coran to start a campfire had been stomped out by the orc. Their food, which came from the communal pot tended by one of the disreputable-looking humans, was always cold by the time it reached them, but there was plenty of it.
“Aye,” Bab said, trying to look at ease under the heavy-browed gaze of Thangrik and the worried eyes of his fellows. “Just thinking how he’s going to keep his promise to us.”
“Do you believe him?” Adda asked eagerly. Scorri looked up from her plate of stew with a scornful expression.
“As much as he deserves,” Bab said. He shared a glance with Coran. He didn’t want the locksmith going off on a crazy rant and drawing attention to them out of fear of death. Better to be gray shadows creeping in Mordint’s shadow.
Even the halflings’ sturdy feet were sanded smooth by the gritty roads by the time they heaved within half a league of the stronghold. The pathway looked different, notwithstanding the overcast sky showering it with misty raindrops. It had been straightened out and rid of its covering of rough grass. Grumbling, Mordint sent a couple of invisible tempters to spy out the scene. The rest of them waited out of sight of the cavern entrance.
Though no one could see them, everyone could tell when they returned by the soggy feeling in the air. Whispers went through the ranks as Mordint conferred. Thirty dwarves were below ground, with the lord and master, Hochster, in the grand hall.
Mordint strode over to loom above Bab and his companions. They sprang to their feet. He carried a pierced bronze pot on a chain that belched yellow smoke smelling of singed hair. He revolved the pot over their heads and chanted in a tongue that made the skin crawl. When they tried to escape from the foul fumes, Thangrik and a couple of the invisible tongues prodded them back into place. Coran, still in control of his own actions, held up a spiked silver charm, but it was batted out of his hand by Mordint’
s next swing.
“I am not foolish enough to rely upon your word that you will do what I say,” Mordint said as the half-elf scrambled on the ground to retrieve his amulet. “So heed my words. You will return my stone to its setting and place it exactly as you found it.” He placed the blue-green rock in Bab’s palm.
Bab wanted to protest that he would have done that anyway, but it was hard to speak with the smoke filling his lungs. He swayed on his feet. Mordint held his gaze with his mud-colored eyes. When he broke off to stare at Scorri, Bab felt as if something had been wrapped around his head. The wizard withdrew the censer and stalked away.
“It’s a geas,” Coran said gloomily. “We’re fixed now.”
“At least he didn’t put a curse on us for after,” Legg said. “We can leave if we want after we’re through.”
“If we can,” Scorri said doubtfully.
“We will,” Bab assured them, hefting the smooth stone in his hand. It felt just as unwelcome as it did the first time. “I don’t know how yet, but we will.”
The orc held them back while Mordint blasted open the entrance to the cavern with a spell that tore the earth back as if it were made of leather. Flanked by his force of orcs and other minions, he strode inside. Bab heard shouts of challenge and yells of pain.
Thangrik urged them forward and inside as soon as the threshold, or what was left of it, was clear. Bab almost hesitated before stepping inside. The smell of burning flesh and leather made his throat sting, but he forgot all about it when he saw what was ahead.
The place was clean. Apart from the debris of the explosion that had opened the door, the cavern was spotless. No more mold, mud, or grime anywhere. No wonder Mordint was outraged!
The author of his distress was obvious to them all. The earth wizard stood facing a stocky dwarf with linen yellow hair and eyes to match, braids to his knees and a beard to his feet. His own minions shot arrows at the invading orcs from behind the prone bodies of the stone giants that lay all over the floor. The two enchanters paid no attention to anyone but one another. They chanted at the top of their voices and threw handfuls of power, each seeking to destroy the other. A burst of fire flung by Hochster exploded over the halflings’ heads. They hit the ground and took cover. Thangrik grabbed two of them by the scruffs and hauled them to their feet.
“Let’s go,” he said. “His magicness said you knew the way. Get moving!”
Coran had the presence of mind to put up a semblance of invisibility around them. Scorri led them around the walls as they dodged thrown furniture, severed heads, splashes of blood, and the edges of spells. Bab stayed at her shoulder, batting bodies out of the way with his hammer. Legg held his bow nocked in case anyone got in their way. Thangrik lurked behind them with his saw-edged sword, grinning like a fool. Bab sensed he was enjoying himself. He probably had orders to kill them all when they were done with their task.
The stairs were denuded of their newel posts, but Scorri was sure of herself as she went downward. The others followed cautiously on the immaculate stairs. Everything looked so different that Bab doubted his own memory of the place. He had to go by the ceilings to be certain they were even in the same building. The traps in the floor had been replaced by new paving stones, the cut marks still fresh on the surface. Scorri led them unerringly through the confusing maze.
They disturbed a dwarf with a long red beard putting a stack of clean white linens into the cupboard beside the stone’s empty socket. He drew the huge axe at his side and came toward them swinging. Legg loosed an arrow that lodged in the dwarf’s shoulder. It didn’t slow him down at all. Thangrik waded forward, swinging. Legg and Scorri lent their strength to the battle.
“Help me! Hochster’s men, help!” the dwarf yelled.
“Silence him!” Coran hissed.
Bab’s eyes went wide. He remembered the remaining two beads around his neck. He grabbed one and flung it into the dwarf’s beard.
“Hush!” he said.
The redhead’s mouth moved but no sound came from it. His eyes went wide with despair. Thangrik grinned and stalked his now soundless prey. The dwarf took to his heels with the orc in pursuit. Coran and the others took up guard positions around the cupboard.
Adda stood at the empty gray socket in the wall, staring blankly at the stone in his hand. He looked up at Bab.
“I can’t do it,” he said.
“Course you can,” Bab insisted. “Hurry it up.”
“No, you don’t see it,” the locksmith said. “There’s agony in there. Unbelievable agony.”
“There’s agony if you don’t do it,” Bab said. “We’ll all die! Mordint put a spell on us.”
Adda shook his head. “Death’d be less painful.”
His usual scatterbrained expression was gone. He looked sane as a judge. Bab knew that was more dangerous than flightiness. But it was Adda’s natural talent of undoing traps, puzzles, and enigmas that had made it possible to remove it. Was there any way to bring it back? Hating himself, he took the locksmith by his skinny shoulders.
“Adda … think how proud Morgana will be of you if … when you succeed.”
Adda blinked a couple of times. “She will?”
“Aye, old friend. That beauty, all aimed your way. Think of it! You can tell her all about it.”
Bab was both glad and dismayed, but the light went on in Adda’s eyes. He hefted the glowing stone, almost smiling, and fitted it into the setting. The smile didn’t leave his face even when terrifying blue sparks leaped out of the rock face and danced across his hands, leaving black streaks on his flesh. He turned the stone this way and that, as if it was a dial he had to set just right. The sparks went from blue to red to yellow. Adda’s knees buckled. Bab put his shoulder under his arm to support him. Pain lanced through his body wherever he touched Adda. He was horribly sorry for the locksmith.
“Can I finish that for you?” he asked.
“No … yes.”
“Leave it!” Legg said, over his shoulder. “You got the stone in place. That’s all we promised!”
“No,” Bab said. He could feel the yellow smoke rising in his lungs, but that wasn’t what made him stand his ground. “It’s not. If the stone men don’t move, Mordint will know we didn’t do what he asked. Besides,” he added, “I keep my promises. We all do. That’s why we’re here, spell or no spell.”
“I hate it when you’re logical!” the older halfling snapped. “But you’re right.”
“Turn it,” Adda said faintly. “Like the wards in a lock.”
Coran and Scorri took Adda and helped him to sit down. Bab put his hand to the stone. It felt as if lightning shot through his body. His hair stood up and crackled on his head. He had made his share of locks, but they were big, hefty ones for securing cattle fences and the like, not delicate ones like Adda made. As he turned the stone back and forth, he felt what Adda had, the rightness as the Shard settled into its old place.
“I can do it,” he said. “Get ready to run.”
And it hurt like blazes, like handling a piece of hot iron without his gloves, but he was used to that. Forcing himself to forget the pain, he shoved the stone hard over to the right and felt it settle in finally and for all.
“Look out!” Scorri shouted. Bab turned in time to see a stone giant rising from the floor. It came toward him, its arms swinging. He dodged it and pulled his hammer around. His fingers were scorched black, but they still moved.
The halflings made for the corridor. Scorri took the lead and began to count off doorways. All around them, the stone men stirred into action, seeking to pound anything they could reach. Bab was determined that it would be orcs or dwarves they attacked, not halflings or half-elves.
They scaled the last staircase just as the newel post men were picking themselves up from the floor. The second one caught Legg with a backhanded swipe that sent him flying into a pillar. Bab threw himself at the giant’s feet, hammering chips until the stone man toppled over.
In the great hal
l, Mordint and Hochster stood face to face. Stone guardians lurched around the room, taking vengeance on the dwarf warriors as well as orcs and hobgoblins. Bab signed toward the door.
Suddenly, he felt the mud-colored gaze upon him.
“Guardians!” Mordint yelled. “The prisoners!” He started to shout words in that harsh-sounding language.
“Curses be upon those halflings!” Hochster bellowed. He raised his hands and began to chant.
“I can’t forestall both of them,” Coran warned.
“Scorri!” Bab said. He yanked the last precious blue bead off the string at his neck. “Can you land this between those two?”
The scout was pale, but she unlimbered her sling. “I’ll try,” she said. She wound up and pitched it, just as the smoke of enchantment was beginning to rise around each wizard. The blue marble hit Mordint straight in the throat.
“Hush!” Bab bellowed.
And the center of the great room went suddenly silent. Mordint glared. He could shout no orders, nor chant spells. Bab didn’t let his companions linger. They fought their way out past orcs and stone guardians, but as soon as they were over the threshold, they could outdistance anything but a spell. They ran for their lives.
The sun passed overhead and headed for the horizon behind them, but Bab and the others didn’t stop until after they went past the place they had gone to ground the last time. They shared journeybread and a sip of brackish water in their skins, and just lay back on the spare grass to gasp.
“I’ve never been so grateful to be going home empty-handed,” Legg chuckled. He’d lost the last two fingers on his left hand and had a bruise the size of his head on his thigh. Coran clucked over him and readied healing remedies, but Legg waved him away. “Never mind. Hardly use them. Still have my bow fingers. And my life, thanks to you, my friends.”
“Bab did it at the last,” Adda said.
“I’m proud of us all,” Bab said. “Never again, no matter what foolish notions the elders have.” He toasted the five of them with his waterskin.
“Let’s get us a real meal at the Poisoned Chalice when we reach the Crossroads,” Legg said. “I’ll pay. Hang the cost! Couldn’t be worse than Mordint’s vittles.”
Untold Adventures: A Dungeons & Dragons Anthology Page 31
