Murder in Halruaa

by Richard Meyers

  Then all was black, and blacker still, until he fell into the blackest pit of all.

  Pryce Covington knew he wasn’t dead when his brain started lecturing him.

  Apparently it was its way of dealing with the shock of the attack, once it had determined that the assault was not fatal. Seemingly, from what Pryce was distantly hearing, his subconscious was stunned, both physically and mentally, by the blow to the back of his head.

  In a land where magic was extolled, the need to strike someone on the back, side, top, or front of the head seemed so unnecessary—even barbaric—that Pryce’s brain couldn’t decide whether it was more perplexed than hurt.

  Later Pryce would call it a draw. Actually, he would have loved to have been more perplexed than hurt, but a blow to the skull in any form had unavoidable consequences of a physical nature. In a word, pain.

  As usual, when self-pity wrestled with purpose, the former almost always won out. As soon as he was conscious enough, Pryce found himself thinking, What did I do to deserve this? through a needle-pricking haze. He was so thankful the light seemed to be turned back on again that his relief nearly forced the pain away … but only for a second. Then his mind sent out a series of lightning bolts of renewed pain.

  He had once seen a magical crystal ball with a storm inside it. Through its transparent shell, he could see a small cloud from which many dozens of lightning bolts arced out, dancing all over the inside surface of the orb. Now he could well imagine what that ball would have felt like if it had been lined with nerve endings.

  He tried opening one eye. The view wasn’t promising. It seemed dark and craggy and hairy. It was also still painful. He squeezed his eye shut again.

  Wait a minute, he thought Hairy? It seemed to be making disconcertingly rabid noises as well.

  Pryce’s eyes snapped open. Something was bobbing in his vision. It was black and red and orange and furry. There were two fuzzy half-cones on either side of a hairy half-dome, moving up and down and slavering. Covington dimly remembered seeing that somewhere before.…

  “Cunningham!” he bellowed. “Get off me, you beast!”

  The jackalwere leapt back as Pryce tried to jump up, but the creature knew his surroundings better than the man did. Pryce’s head slammed into a low, rocky ledge that laid him back down hard.

  Getting hit on the head was bad enough, but hitting himself on the head was even worse. Pryce felt as if he were sinking into the bay beyond the Lalloreef, but he sensed a jackal turtle waiting for him beneath the surface, its slavering maw opening and closing in eager anticipation. Covington clawed back toward the surface, ignoring the millions of mental lightning bolts that danced around him.

  “Cunningham!” he cried. “Don’t you dare gorge on me!” The sharp yellow teeth of the jackalwere filled his vision like a horizon of tombstones. Pryce cried out in spite of himself, making the creature leap back once more into the surrounding gloom. Covington’s cry of surprise turned into a groan of suffering as pain pushed everything else aside. “I—I don’t feel well,” he managed to understate.

  “I have seen you looking better,” Cunningham informed him, “if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Pryce hoped that by concentrating on the jackalwere he could crawl out of the thicket of agony inside his head. “You were going to take a bite out of me, weren’t you?”

  “Oh, my good sir, no!” The jackalwere sounded mortally offended.

  “Yes, you were, and then you were planning on drinking my blood. Right?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You’re hungry, and you’ve got a brood to feed.”

  “I’ll have you know, sir, that we are subsisting quite well on your kindness.”

  That reminded Pryce of how he had complicated his own situation in the disposition of the dead bodies, which pained his spirit as well. He groaned again, gripping the sides of his head to keep it from cracking open like an egg. Moving very carefully, he started to get up.

  “Be careful, my good man,” Cunningham warned, stepping forward to assist him.

  “You keep your distance,” Covington said sharply.

  The jackalwere, now fully returned to his human state, placed a limp hand against his chest. “You injure me, sir.”

  “Better I injure you verbally than you injure me physically,” Pryce countered. “Where am I, anyway?”

  Cunningham took the chance of leaning over conspiratorially. “We are beneath the city, sir, in a series of tunnels I’ve found quite useful.”

  Pryce glanced around, careful not to move too quickly. It was so dark that he couldn’t see much. Cunningham, being part jackal, could probably see as clear as day. “You haven’t been using this lair to claim new, uh … meals, have you?”

  “Pardon my familiarity, sir,” the jackalwere replied haughtily, “but have you lost your senses? You especially should know that a creature of my kind on the streets of Lallor would last about as long as a shard of ice in Zzuntal. I am taking a certain risk just by traveling beneath the streets.”

  “So why are you?” Pryce asked, hoping to gather enough of his senses to really think by the time the creature finished answering.

  “You truly are addled, good sir,” the jackal-man decided. “Do you not recall the words you left me with on the evening of our initial meeting? No, I have not forgotten your mercy, sir. Imagine, the great Darlington Blade, wasting compassion on the accursed likes of myself and my progeny!” He seemed positively giddy. Such was the fame of the great Darlington Blade.

  “If you are truly grateful,” Pryce moaned, massaging his temples, “call me something other than ‘great.’ Please? Why can’t I be the decent Darlington Blade, or the fine Darlington Blade, or the fairly convincing Darlington Blade? Why must I always be ‘great’?”

  Cunningham shook his head sadly. He answered Pryce’s miserable acrimony with honesty. “You brought it upon yourself, sir,” he informed him. “Even in the short time that I have been privy to your actions, you have more than lived up to your reputation.” He stopped to seriously consider Pryce’s declaration. “Perhaps you would consider not being so great all the time,” he decided. “I’m sure the populace at large would eventually offer you a more fitting sobriquet.”

  Pryce stopped rubbing his head long enough to look at the jackalwere out of the corner of his eye. “That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?”

  The jackalwere merely stood there in his somewhat shabby attire, looking for all the world like a butler who had seen better times. “You have truly great insight, sir, but, no. I am being completely forthcoming in my appreciation.”

  “Thank you,” Pryce said, finally able to sit up. He looked askance at the jackalwere, realizing that a full belly gave the beast a much greater control over his animal nature. Then Pryce attempted to peer into the darkness again. “How long have I been unconscious?”

  “I honestly don’t know, sir. All I know for sure was when I found you.”

  Pryce looked at him patiently. “And when was that?”

  “Quite some time ago, sir. At least the time it takes for the moon to travel an eighth of the way across the night sky.”

  Pryce touched his head gingerly, carefully trying to find the wound. “You’d think that being out that long would at least give me some night vision,” he complained, then sucked in his breath when his finger found the lump. “Or maybe brain damage.”

  “Are you all right now, sir?”

  Pryce carefully outlined the damage on his head. “Thankfully the philosopher Santé was also something of a healer,” he said. “According to him, a blow to the front of the head stuns a person. A blow to the back of the head renders one unconscious. A blow to the side means death.” Pryce cautiously noted that his wound was between the back and the side of his cranium. “Apparently my assailant couldn’t make up his mind.”

  Cunningham sighed. “As fascinating as all this is, sir, might I suggest a cessation of examination and an introduction of action? The longer I stay here, the greater
chance that someone above will detect my presence.”

  “Of course, of course.” Pryce looked around carefully, but could still see little farther than his hands. “Where are the little ones?”

  “With any luck,” said the jackalwere, “still safe in their thickets.”

  “This tunnel goes all the way to the outside of the city wall?” Pryce asked, incredulous.

  “It emerges near the Mark of the Question, in fact. From there you have to be quick and cautious to reach cover, but it is a far sight more safe than strolling in view of the gate eye.”

  “I should think so.”

  “Come,” Cunningham pressed, offering his hand. “I’ll take you back to where I found you.”

  This item of news was even more surprising to Pryce than the offer of a jackalwere’s hand. “You mean you didn’t find me here?”

  “Why, no, of course not. You were far closer to harm’s way, I’m told.”

  “You were told? By whom?”

  “Not whom,” said the Jackalwere solemnly. “By what.”

  Then he stepped back, and looming into Covington’s view were the two most shocking faces he had ever laid eyes on.

  The broken one was named Devolawk. “He was named after the creatures he was mingled from,” Cunningham said sadly. Pryce, never one to be particularly squeamish about the workings of his planet, studied the unclothed animal man closely. It was still dark in the tunnel, and the great Darlington Blade wouldn’t have gasped, grimaced, or scrambled away at the mere sight of a few monsters. Pathetic monsters to be sure, but monsters nonetheless.

  Where the “vol” part of his name came from was clear enough. One side of his snout was constantly quivering and had pine-needle-like whiskers. The eye on the same side was small, round, and dark, but could see clearly in the gloom. At least part of this beast was descended … or stolen … from a vole. The “awk” aspect of his name could be seen in the left side. His snout was actually a beak, and the left eye was large, bluish white, and surrounded by feathers. The thing was also part hawk.

  “Devolawk,” Pryce mused aloud. “What does the ‘De’ part stand for?”

  The jackalwere seemed about to answer, then slowly closed his mouth and stepped back. The broken one leaned close, and his snout-beak opened. Inside, Pryce could see teeth … broken, rotting, chipped human teeth. “De-e-ead man,” came the careful, tortured voice, ending in what sounded like a vole’s squeak and a bird’s whistle.

  “Dead man,” Covington breathed, unable to completely cover his distaste. Even so, he leaned closer to survey the poor thing’s body. It wasn’t even as lucky as the head, which seemed to share its three pieces relatively equally. The body, however, was a riotous mix of the person, animal, and bird it was combined from. Flesh mingled with hide mixed with feathers, sometimes in the space of a finger.

  Devolawk was painfully hunched over. The top of his human spine was obviously joined by the bones of a vole. One leg was mostly hawk, while the other was mostly vole and painfully shorter, ending in an incongruous human foot.

  Pryce leaned to the right and looked at the jackalwere. “He was made from a vole, a hawk, and a corpse?”

  Before Cunningham could answer, Pryce felt claws and feathers on his arm. The broken one was leaning down, a human cornea gleaming in the bird’s eye. “A reeeee-sus-ci-tated corpse,” Devolawk wheezed. “I eeeeeven hafffff mem-mor-eeeees, sometiiiimes,” it said with unmistakable wistfulness and pain, “but I do not know whooooo from!”

  Pryce laid his hand on the mutated arm. Speaking was obviously torture for the thing, and understanding his words wasn’t all that pleasurable either. But despite the odd place Pryce found himself in, and the odd companions he was meeting, he recognized the possibility that he might be able to discover more leads and clues from this unusual source. Covington looked deep into the sad, tormented, mangled eyes and wondered how he looked to the animal man.

  Animal men … their very existence screamed of magic gone mad. Back in Merrickarta, Pryce had used what he had heard about these victims as just one more reason magic, and magicians, should not be trusted. Broken ones were once human, but they had been used as living subjects of sorcerous experiments that were disapproved of at best, or openly forbidden at worst. The rumor that many were the result of reincarnation spells seemed validated by Devolawk’s strange heredity.

  The adventurer and the jackalwere now turned their attention to the other poor monster. If the five-foot-tall Devolawk was a tragedy of magic, the seven-foot-tall mongrelman was a tragedy of nature. No sorcerer had created this misshapen beast. Only powers beyond life could have perpetrated this abomination. He was a combination of more than a dozen genetic types, from bugbears and bullywugs to ogres and orcs … with just enough human hormones spooned in to make him rational.

  His huge head was part hair, part hide, part scales, part flesh, and part fur. He looked vaguely like an unfinished wall of mortar, wood, and tile. His two eyes were wildly mismatched and accompanied by a stout, animal-like nose and a wide maw made up of at least three dozen different sizes and shapes of teeth.

  “Geeeee,” he whistled. “Offfff,” he grunted. “Freeeee!” he shrieked, the rags that partially covered his flesh shaking. Or at least that’s what Pryce thought it said. His animal sounds left much leeway for interpretation and made both Pryce and Cunningham cringe with discomfort.

  “He keeps repeating that,” Cunningham told Pryce. “I think that is what he wants to be called.”

  “Gee, off, free?” Pryce echoed. The mongrelman nodded vigorously, reminding Covington of a horse. “Geeoffree,” Pryce said again. “Geoffrey! Of course!”

  Cunningham smiled in recognition. “You must be correct, sir. He must have seen the name Geoffrey and thought it was pronounced gee, off, free.”

  Pryce looked back at the rag-covered monster, which loomed large in the relatively cramped space of the cave. “Well, if it’s Geoffrey you want, Geoffrey it shall be.” The mongrelman lowered his head, shaking, and then, much to Pryce’s surprise, his eyes began to tear. “There, there, my fine fellow,” Pryce soothed, putting his hand on the thing’s shoulder. “There’s no need for that.” The mongrelman started, but when Pryce didn’t remove his hand, he finally grew still.

  Cunningham shook his head. “Mongrelmen are seldom welcomed by humans. Often they are enslaved by scoundrels. Geoffrey must be overcome that you would accept his company so readily.” Pryce noted the jackalwere looking off into the darkness. No doubt he was thinking of all the human hatred he must have faced throughout his miserable life.

  “Cunningham,” Pryce snapped, bringing back the jackalwere’s attention. “I’m sure that if you didn’t have an inhuman need to kill people, drink their blood, and eat them, you would have more friends, too.”

  The human beast blinked, then nodded curtly. “I don’t know what it is, sir. Your presence, power, and wisdom must be having—dare I say it?—a civilizing effect on me.”

  Pryce shook his head in wonder. He was certain that if these three knew he was not who they thought he was, a third of him would already be residing in each of their stomachs. “Be that as it may, or may not, be,” he said to the jackalwere, “I need to know where they found me and what they saw. Perhaps we can elicit some sort of translation from their brethren.”

  “They have no brethren.”

  “No brethren?” Pryce said incredulously, leaning toward Cunningham. “How is that possible? I’ve heard that broken ones reside in groups of up to five dozen creatures. The mongrelmen who manage to avoid enslavement even create their own villages and communities.”

  “But, sir,” the jackalwere retorted, “he is enslaved.”

  “He is?” Pryce marveled. “By whom?”

  “The same force that enslaves me,” Cunningham declared bitterly. “It lured me here with promises that would fill my heart’s desire, then sorely used me for my basest, most antisocial skills.”

  At least one part of that statement sounded ominousl
y familiar to Covington. He remembered that he himself had been lured to Lallor. “Cunningham!” he barked. “I couldn’t ask you this when we last met because of your bloodlust. You said that a misshapen one first enticed you here. Was that Devolawk?”

  The jackalwere nodded shamefully, and Pryce’s eyes had finally adjusted well enough to the dark to see the affirmation. “Devolawk,” he asked the broken one, “who had you lure the jackalwere here?”

  The broken one answered painfully and slowly through his rotting human teeth, but it was clear enough for Pryce to understand, despite the vole’s hisses and hawk’s cries. “Don’t … knowwww. Woke … from death … with orders allllready … in myyyyy mind!”

  Pryce pursed his lips. The poor thing had been created as a slave, with instructions already implanted in its polymorphed brain. But what was the mongrelman’s part in all this?

  “Cunningham,” he continued, “I think I know now who actually enticed you here. But I need to know why. What did you have to do to get this so-called limitless supply of fresh, high-quality human meat?”

  The jackalwere hung his head. “I was told … by the faceless wind … to find a mongrelman skilled in concealment.”

  “Ah,” Pryce said. Mongrelmen were known for their skills in pickpocketing, mimicry, camouflage, and all the variations thereof.

  “It’s obvious to me now,” Cunningham confessed, “that Geoffrey was brought here to guard these tunnels.”

  “Why?” Pryce asked the mongrelman. “What is hidden down here, Geoffrey?”

  The mongrelman shook his head vigorously, waving his part hand, part claw, part hoof in a warding-off gesture.

  “Geoffrey,” Pryce pressed, “are you the one who saved me? Are you the one who found me unconscious?” The mongrelman stared at him, his head and hand movement slowing, then finally stopping. “You can trust me, Geoffrey,” Pryce stressed. “I swear on my … name … I won’t let your enslaver hurt you.” He blushed, hoping his quandary wouldn’t be too obvious in the darkness, night vision or no night vision.