by Kate Novak
“Alias,” muttered Akabar, trying to rise against the pressure of the halfling’s hands. “She’s still prisoner!”
“Reign in your horses,” the halfling ordered. “You’ve been out for about eight hours. Another few won’t make that much difference in catching up to that slithering compost heap, but it will make us all stronger. Dragonbait needs his beauty sleep so he can finish healing you and Misty. She snapped some wing bones when she fell, and she needs to restoke her furnaces before going into battle again. You need to study your spells. Drink more.”
Akabar took another swig of the drink Olive offered and made a face. “Is this a healing draught?”
Olive shook the flask and giggled. “Some call it that. It’s spiked honey mead. Last of my stock, too.”
Akabar felt his empty stomach rise, then settle. So much for the halfling’s skill as a nurse. “You say Dragonbait healed us. He did that before, when we were running from the Abomination in Yulash.”
Olive nodded. “Yes. Turns out the little sneak’s a paladin among his own people. He’s been keeping it secret, but healing us when we weren’t looking. Seems I can’t trust anyone these days.”
“A paladin?” Akabar murmured. “How do you know?”
“He told me,” Olive said. She dropped her voice to a whisper before going on. “Not only did he keep his profession secret all this time, but he can communicate. He doesn’t use real words like you or me. He puts out scents, like a perfume shop. We can’t understand him because our little noses aren’t refined enough, but Mist can. He talks to her and she translates, and then he confirms what she’s said by nodding his head. So you see, he does understand everything we’ve been saying.”
Akabar shook his head to clear it. The halfling sounded angry, but the mage could not understand what had upset her. “So?” he asked.
“So!” Olive exclaimed, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “We have a lizard paladin who’s too haughty to try communicating with us until an evil dragon comes along. This paladin has been traveling with us and spying on us for two rides. Doesn’t that make you the least bit angry?”
“Saurial,” Akabar mumbled suddenly, letting the word linger in his memory. A dark shadow hovered there, the residue of the Abomination’s visit to his mind. “Moander said Dragonbait was a saurial.”
“Moander—that’s the creeping crud?” Olive asked.
Akabar hesitated like a swimmer hovering at the edge of cold water. He wanted to forget the evil that had been inside him and used him so vilely. But he needed the information Moander had inadvertently left in his mind. He plunged in.
“Moander is a god. Or a piece of god. An old piece, kept in storage beneath Yulash, until Alias let him out. He’s taking her to Westgate, via Myth Drannor.”
Akabar’s body began to shake violently.
“What is it?” Olive demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“Gods, it was like … like having some disease that rots everything but your mind and leaves your body shambling around. I was conscious, but I had no control. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see. I could hear things in my head, Moander’s thoughts, and Alias speaking, but I was tied and gagged in the darkness. And … and …” He looked up at the halfling. “I stabbed Dragonbait, didn’t I? You said I did. I remember. I was trying to kill him.”
“Apparently, he doesn’t hold it against you. He carried you back here and used the shirt off his back to bandage you.”
Akabar felt along the bandage on his head, glancing at the lizard lying on the dragon’s snout.
“I wounded the dragon, too, didn’t I?” he whispered.
“Less said about that the better,” Olive suggested. “It took all my eloquence to convince Mist you were included in the bargain for our protection until Alias was freed. She only relented because we need all the firepower we can muster.
“So Its Ooziness is a god, eh? Another thing our lizard friend neglected to mention.”
“Saurial,” Akabar corrected again. “Why are you suddenly so annoyed with him? He’s saved our lives.”
“No. He’s saved your life. I can take care of myself.” Olive did not bother to mention that she’d be digesting in Mist’s stomach now if not for the lizard. “I don’t need a sneaky, spying, goody-two-shoes wheedling his way into my trust.”
“What makes you so sure he’s a spy?”
“Use your brain, greengrocer,” Olive snorted. “What else would a paladin be doing traveling with us? You’re a merchant, and I’m halfling scum. And Alias—think! She tried to murder a priest and someone she thought was the king of Cormyr and then she let loose an evil god. Dragonbait sneaked off just when we were in the most trouble, and now he’s dragging us along on a suicide mission. He says it’s to rescue Alias, but suppose he’s really just interested in killing Moander? His type doesn’t really care about our problems.”
“I suppose,” Akabar replied. His eyes were looking a little glazed, and Olive could see that he wasn’t really concentrating on her words.
“Akash, what is wrong with you? You aren’t listening to me at all.”
Akabar shook his head and spat. “Some mage I turn out to be. I can’t get us the information we need, I don’t even notice that a member of our party can heal, and I’m at my fighting best when I’m controlled by an insane abomination. You shouldn’t have bothered to rescue me.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Olive chided. “You have your health, your mind, and your money—all the blessings, as we halflings say. You can’t blame yourself for what happened. It’s not as though you were trained to fight old gods.”
“Or anything else, for that matter,” Akabar added. “You and Alias are right, I’m a greengrocer. This has been my first real adventure not tied to the logical, reasonable flow of trade and money and safe, secure routes, and I’ve botched everything. I thought that with all my learning I could take on the world, but I’ve failed. I’m useless.”
“Look, Akash, adventuring isn’t as logical as columns in an account ledger. You can’t learn about it from books. You have to experience it to know what to do. You’ll get the hang of it eventually. And you haven’t been completely useless. If it weren’t for you, Dimswart would not have known to send Alias after me, and she never would have met Mist, and then we’d be fighting this Moander alone.”
“That is a rather tenuous recommendation of my talents.”
“Well, then, consider the fact that you saved us all from being poisoned.”
“What?”
Olive grinned slyly. “If I had to do the cooking, we all would have died from indigestion.”
Akabar did not respond to her little joke, so the halfling rambled on. “Look, what I’m trying to say is that eventually you’ll learn to think like an adventurer. Then you’ll really be a force to be reckoned with. Who knows, you may even teach us a thing or two. Reason may make all the difference between our success or failure, and nobody else in this group has as much of it as you do.”
Akabar remained silent, and Olive worried that the mead might have been too strong for him. “Anyway,” she said with a shrug, “I sort of like having you around. I sort of like you.”
A tiny smile played across the Turmishman’s lips. He sighed deeply. “I sort of like you, too,” he replied. “Do you have any more of that mead?”
While Akabar took a long pull on the flask, Olive asked, “So, what about him?” Ruskettle jerked her head in the direction of the sleeping reptiles. “Dragonbait the Cereal.”
“Saurial,” Akabar corrected, yet understanding how Olive felt. Guilty, no doubt. It was one thing for Alias and himself to recognize the halfling’s pettiness, selfishness, and thievery, and overlook it in the interest of party unity. But it was quite another thing to have one’s actions silently watched and, no doubt, judged by the likes of a paladin. Akabar himself wondered with acute embarrassment what the lizard thought of him and his constant failures.
“Saurial,” Olive said, finally getting the pronunciation corr
ect. “He’s kept a couple of major secrets from us. He could be hiding a lot more.”
Akabar caught the blue glimmer of the runes shining on Dragonbait’s chest. Unbeknownst to Olive, she was late trying to raise Akabar’s suspicions against the lizard. Since yesterday, the mage reflected, I’ve battled him twice, lost both times, and then discovered that he was trying to save my miserable hide. Something he’s rather in the habit of doing. And though the halfling was right when she pointed out it was highly unusual for a paladin to travel with an adventuring group with their … character, the Turmishman found it impossible to believe that the saurial meant them any harm.
“After he helps us get Alias back,” Olive said, ignoring Akabar’s pensive look, “I think we should find a way to ditch him. Alias won’t like it, but it’ll be for her own good.”
“No,” the mage said. “If he keeps his own counsel, that’s his business. If my account balances, then so does his.”
In Olive’s eyes Akabar saw the look of a merchant who had decided it would be in her best interest not to drive too hard a bargain. She shrugged. “You’re probably right. There’s nothing to worry about. You rest. We’ll be moving out in the morning, and this time we’ll squash Its Ooziness. I’ll be tending the fire, not that difficult a job considering all the deadfall Big Mo left in its wake. Been a dry summer, too—wood catches easy.”
“Ruskettle?”
“Yes, Akash?”
“Would you please hand me my books? I think I’d better start studying. Like you said, we’ll need all the power we can get. Even mine.”
* * * * *
Alias woke in a dim chamber deep beneath Moander’s surface. All around her, patches of slime gave off a sickly green light. The glow from her sigils was brighter and purer, and to study her prison she held her arm out as a lantern, for she was no longer bound by mossy shackles.
The chamber was round and lined mostly with moss, except where moisture ran down its surface, nourishing the patches of luminous slime. She dug into the side of the wall with her fingers, but beneath the spongy moss she discovered an impenetrable mesh of thick roots and tree branches. She tried pulling the moss away in other spots, but found no weaknesses in her cage. The air was close and heavy with the smell of rotting leaves but quite breathable.
She still wore her armor and her leather breeches, but her cloak had begun to disintegrate so badly that it could no longer be tied on. She had lost her sword somewhere in Yulash, and her shield and daggers were missing, probably stripped from her person by the tendrils while she slept—knocked unconscious by Moander’s sponge mosses.
Trapped like an alchemist’s mouse, she thought. Then she decided, no, more like a broken machine crated in a cushioned box for the journey back home. She remembered all that Moander had threatened would be done to her in Westgate. Her memories would be wiped out again, her spirit smothered somehow. She shuddered.
Then she snarled in defiance. But what could one do to a god? Spit in its eye before it crushed you?
The wall across from her rippled. Chunks of moss dropped away, and a huge hand, palm upward, thrust into the chamber. It was woven, like wicker, of tree limbs. In the center of the palm a ball of light glowed with a swirl of gray and white. Alias thought it was some sort of eye, and she wanted to back away and hide from it.
Then the ball spoke. Two voices blended, one the highest alto, the other the lowest bass, with no middle range between the two. The essence of Moander’s voice.
Alias remembered the swirling gray and white that had covered Akabar’s eyes when the god had possessed him. She wondered if this ball was the true face of Moander.
“Hungry?” asked the voice. “Eat.”
The wall moss peeled in another spot, and a pair of tendrils thrust in her shield covered with half a dozen high-summer apples and a dead, uncooked yearling boar.
Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Alias walked over to the shield. The hole it had been pushed through was already rewoven shut. Her stomach rumbled, but she waited until the tendrils retracted through the wall before she reached for the apples. She backed away from the boar. It looked like it had been throttled to death.
She strolled back over to the palm and crunched into an apple. Without really expecting an answer, she asked the glowing ball, “How long have I been asleep?”
“A day,” the ball replied, pulsing in rhythm with its words. “Going slow. Woods thicker than once were.”
“That’s a problem? Some god you are!” she mocked it.
“Only so much life energy. Must husband carefully. Could fly or teleport, but would hurt. Find more power Myth Drannor. Move slow till then.”
“You’re not as fluent,” Alias noted aloud, “without Akabar. Where is he?”
“Dead. See?”
A hole opened by her shield, and a pile of bones was thrust into the chamber. Alias dropped her apple. The bones sank into the floor again.
“And the others?” the swordswoman whispered.
“All dead.”
“Oh, gods.” Alias dropped to her knees.
“Just one. Me,” Moander’s light reminded her. “Have offer.”
Alias hugged her arms about her shoulders.
“If you slay other masters,” the voice said, “their sigils will erode and you will work for me alone.”
“Then I’ll have to kill you all,” Alias growled defiantly.
“Without me, no purpose, no life. Besides, cannot slay me. Have tried and failed. Think, I will help.”
“Go to hell.”
“Abode not hell—Abyss. Prefer it here.”
Alias laughed at the creature’s transparent bid for power. “Why should I help you get a monopoly on my … services?”
“You are now puppet of many. Can be servant of one. Serve me, greater rewards—wealth, freedom.”
Alias held her hands over her ears to block out the Abomination’s voice. The tips of her fingers touched the eagle-shaped barrette in her hair. Though muck-encrusted, the silver pin unsnapped without crumbling.
“Think. More freedom yours than others enjoy. Be my high priestess. Be my—” The voice stopped, and the chamber swayed, and the walls vibrated. “Will return,” the voice promised. Again the chamber swayed. “Think about offer.”
The woven wood palm began to retract into the wall.
Something’s attacking it, Alias realized. For a brief moment, she considered Moander’s claim that without her “masters” she could not exist. It didn’t matter, she decided. Despite the Abomination’s promise, she knew she would never be free while it lived, and her freedom was all she wanted. Better to be dead than its servant, and this could be my only chance to escape, she thought.
It was an outside chance, but having been held helpless and frustrated all through the last battle, she could not let the opportunity to injure the Abomination slip by. She plunged the pin of the barrette into the sphere.
The ball was as hot as a bonfire and singed Alias’s fingers. She yanked her hand back, but Moander’s “hand” lay still on the floor.
A high-pitched wail filled the chamber, followed by a deep rumbling. The swaying motion of the room turned to a severe rocking, like a ship in a storm. Alias, her shield, the apples, and the dead boar were tumbled from one side to the other. The swordswoman curled into a ball and wedged herself in tightly between the floor and the hand.
Spit in the god’s eye, she thought, sucking on her fingers, for all the good it will do you. The sickly glow of the slime grew dimmer until it was finally extinguished. She was left alone in the glittering sapphire light of her cursed brands.
* * * * *
“I think it knows we’re here,” Akabar declared.
The lizard, seated in front of the mage on the back of the great wyrm, growled in agreement. Pressed close beside him, Akabar caught a whiff of fresh-baked bread. Now that Dragonbait’s means of communication had been rubbed in his face, so to speak, the mage realized that he could catch the saurial’s more
excited outbursts. The lizard had to, in effect, shout with his scent glands for a human to notice the smells. Akabar was beginning to piece together some sort of pattern between scents and sense. He berated himself for not having figured it out before—but then he hadn’t figured out anything else correctly either, so far.
Dragonbait had awakened them all before dawn. Previously clownish and servile, the saurial had been transformed by the crisis into a sergeant major. First he healed all the wounds about Akabar’s head. The mage noticed the woodsmoke scent that had surrounded them the last time Dragonbait had cured him.
“That’s the smell of your healing prayers, isn’t it?” the Turmishman had asked.
The lizard had nodded and given him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. With a stern look he prompted Akabar to study his spells by jabbing his fingers at the mage’s tomes. He patted and pushed Olive into packing their meager gear, while he used his skill to reknit the cluster of bones that held Mist’s wing splayed out in flight. Lastly, he’d closed the gash Akabar’s dagger had put in his own leg.
Akabar watched guiltily as the saurial performed this last task—guilty both for having caused the damage, and for taking his concentration from his assigned task to watch it repaired. Dragonbait worked in the glow of the finder’s stone Alias had dropped. It was hard to see the glow of his hands as he healed his flesh, but now that Akabar knew what to expect, he would never miss it again.
Now, as they rode the dragon toward battle, Dragonbait held the finder’s stone in his lap, although the sun had already risen. He still wore a kilt of sorts about his loins and one of Alias’s cloaks wrapped around to keep out the wind, but he no longer bothered with a shirt. He left the runes on his chest exposed for the world to see.
