“Safe for about a kilometer in every direction.”
“Good!”
Chapter 7
“'Hey, howzabout you join me on an insane quest for a dragon hoard that probably doesn't exist, complete stranger!' 'Be glad too, crazy giant guy I just met! Thanks for saving my life!' 'Hey, mind if I don't tell you the plan is to dive straight into Taal'anquor without getting our visas stamped?' 'You know, that sounds like a gas, when do we start?' 'How about yesterday?' 'Sounds good to me!' Bastard.” Ven plunged his head furiously into the waist-deep water, then threw it back, the almost freezing liquid flying off his studded forehorns in a trailing spray of droplets. He’d already drenched the tall, limp grass that surrounded the lake with his acrimony; this latest deluge just added insult to injury. He cupped his talons and splashed more against his face, scrubbed at his eyes. His monologue had gone on like this, in some form or fashion, the entire walk to the riverside. It showed no signs of abating, even as he began his impromptu bath. He wished he'd thought to bring his flask with him. It was getting perilously low, but this seemed as a good a time as any to drain it.
This is why I never took a partner before, he grumbled to himself. Too unreliable. Never know what they're thinking. Molten hell, if the big jerk hadn't stepped up against the were-ogre a week ago, he'd be....
He'd be....
Well. He'd probably be dead.
On the other talon, he wasn't exactly out of the woods here, so to speak. He splashed chilly water into his armpits, scrubbed with his talons, and thought, It's not like I don't have the proper documentation. And even if he doesn't, I've got slots on my visa for a companion. It would be a pain in the arse, but it would have been legal. Why is he in such a big hurry? We seem to be making pretty good tiiiiii what smell like uncooked bacon?
Too late, he heard the click of a couple of automatic crossbows behind him, on the shore of the river. He closed his eyes in resignation; slowly, he raised his hands behind his head without bothering to turn around.
“Gargoyle. If you would please do us the honor of returning with us to our abode. We would question you.” It was a woman's voice, a voice that would have been gorgeous if it weren't grating sandpaper against his eardrums. Elvish glamour was like that, painting its master in a gaudy, tart perfection that ran past tasteless and into the intolerable.
“Someone wanna toss me my cloak?” he called back over his shoulder.
“This one may retrieve it before he is restrained. We are not heartless.” This one, Ven thought. I'm guessing that's me.
“I am gonna gut him crotch to sternum,” he muttered, wading up to the bank.
“We beg your pardon?” It was the Elvish woman again, this time punctuating her statement with a giant's crossbow bolt shining a hair's breadth from his left eye.
“Didn't say a thing, your highness.”
The bolt dropped from his line of sight. Ven's ass unclenched a little. “We doubt that,” she said, her entire form stiff and imposing.
He didn't recognize her, which was bad; he'd been counting on running into someone he'd done a job for, and would therefore have some pull with. She was tall, and thin to the point of horror. She had a hawkish nose and long, pointed ears the flew back from her skull. Her skin pallor was so white that it almost seemed translucent. The outfit that clung to her like a particularly flamboyant parasite was a form fitting riding dress of crushed purple velvet, because of course it was; even an Elf's actual clothes needed to be as ostentatious as possible. She smelled thin and white-blue, with an undercurrent of raw rosy pork. It was not a smell Ven had missed.
“Take him,” she commanded the two giants who flanked her. The moon was at Ven's back, casting their shadows behind them. That explained why they'd approached from this direction; the Elf hadn’t wanted to give him a visual warning. Probably cloaked their smell in glamour, too, which was why everything stunk of pork more than usual now.
“Hold on,” he said, then added “please” when a cross bolt once again took up the entirety of his vision. “I'm just going to reach into my cloak,” he said, putting a hand into the pocket to pull out his visa and maybe, if he was lucky, put an end to this before things got out of hand. His heart fell into his gut when he realized he'd left his paperwork in his pack. Which was at the campsite. Where he'd left it, along with his weapons, when he'd stormed off in a rage.
The Elf arched a razor sharp eyebrow at him when his talon came up empty.
“If this one thought to bribe us, this one will have to do far better than… lint,” she said, as her giant minions, all gray-white skin and a stench that he could finally pick out, fresh pink bacon and dark toasty muck, began binding his arms. He sighed.
Crotch to sternum, he thought as he was pushed along at bolt-point.
*
As it turned out, the two kilometer walk with a crossbow bolt between his shoulder blades to the Elf's castle was not the worst part of Ven's evening. No, that honor was saved for being hung by his talons from a chain that dangled from the ceiling of a foul, odorous little chamber in the bowels of that castle. It was a greasy, rusted bunch of links that stank of rotten, bog-emerald sweat, in a huge unlit brick cellar that took those odors and magnified them by a percentage he couldn't begin to calculate. Hanging there for most of an hour, his feet a few centimeters above the earthen floor, his forearms knotted sticks of dull fire strung to his torso by barbed copper wire, his body a living wind chime prey to whatever breeze might be passing, and pondering what, if anything, he would be charged with before he was executed, was, Ven decided, worse. A lot worse.
Just as he was wondering if his captors were just going to leave him until the morning (in which case were they in for a surprise) the woman he'd taken to be this area's newest baroness slipped in through a towering, rough-hewn wooden door on the far side of Ven's cell. She moved across the room toward him with a slow, gliding step. Behind her, at a respectful distance, two giants stooped into the room. One was carrying a bucket of water large enough to drown an orc; the other, some wadded cloth and what looked like metal rope.
Upon reaching Ven, the Elf slid a hand along his tunic, then tore the cloth from his chest.
“Hey!” he protested. “ I liked this shirt.”
“Shhhhh,” she held an impossibly long, crooked finger to his beak, though her finger never brushed his pebbled, purple skin. “This one does not speak until it is spoken to. Does this one understand?”
He nodded, then eyed the pair behind her. “Sure. So why bring the twins?”
The Elf licked her lips with a pink, feline tongue. “This one does not like rules. We can tell. We will ignore this one's insult, in a show of good faith. If this one is very, very lucky, this one will not need to know why we have brought our slaves with us. We have questions. Is this one prepared to answer them?”
Ven closed his eyes, breathed a deep and resigned sigh, then nodded again.
The Elf's smile was cruel delight. “We will start with the basics. Your name, gargoyle?”
“Off,” he muttered, his words meek.
“And your house?”
Ven opened his eyes and let a surreptitious grin roll across his face. “Fuck.”
The cruel smile fell. “This one thinks it is clever. Show this one how clever we think it is.”
The second giant, the one with the metal cords, pressed a sopping wet cloth to Ven's chest with a pair of heavy steel tongs.
“What, you can’t take a joke so you're gonna give me a baaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!” He screamed as searing, burning heat shot through his chest, up into his extremities, out of his fingers and toes and eyes. Even after the cloth was pulled away, his body tingled with shock and agony.
“Amazing, isn't it?” The Elf's voice was two hairs away from melodic. “A revelation, really. Our science wizards have managed to capture lightning in a jar.” Her voice went hard. “We will ask this one the question again. We will not bother to ask a third time. Your name, gargoyle?”
“V… Ven.�
� It hurt to speak; his lungs felt as though they'd been poached in his chest.
If it was a name she recognized, she didn't let it show. “And your house?”
“Last… last one on the left, hang a right at the big pinetreeEEEEEEEEHHH!!!” The giant hadn't waited for a command that time. He'd simply applied the device again. This time to Ven's crotch.
“Worth it,” he croaked out, once the device was pulled away.
The Elf turned, and began to pace the few square feet of his blurred vision. “Another question, then. Who was the one you travel with?”
Ven concentrated on uncrossing his eyes for a heartbeat, then slurred, “Don’… don't know who you're talking about… I was alo… alone… thought we were discussin' real estate?” He didn't even bother screaming when the rags were pressed against his throat. A dull moan escaped anyway.
“We have already arrested the other. This one must have known that. This one must know that there is no help coming. If this one would only answer the questions we ask, this one and his companion would be set free.”
Lying, he thought. And even if she wasn't, well. X'on was a bit of a twit, not to mention an optimist (in Ven's experience, the two went hand in hand) but the longer he stayed free, the better Ven's own chances of getting out with his skin intact. Besides, Ven didn't snitch on clients. That was bad business. “I guess… that's fair....” Ven finally gurgled.
“It is more than fair, Gargoyle Ven,” the Elf replied. Some of the overwrought sweetness was returning to her voice. “Is this one ready to answer our questions, then?”
Ven swallowed. “Depends....”
The Elf raised her eyebrows. “On?”
“Can I… get another hit… of the bottled lightning?”
The Elf turned her back while both giants pressed their tongs into the prisoner. Ven's back slammed back against the wall, his spasms violent, unsupressable. He could taste blood in the back of his throat from his empty, hollow screaming. After a full minute, the Elf turned to face him again, and her minions lowered their arms.
“This one must know his protest is pointless. We'll ferret out everything we need to know in time… Rahvin.”
Ven spat a thin, silvery slick of blood onto the straw below. “'A' for effort… but I'm calling… your bluff. Face it, babe… you're grasping at… straws.”
She slapped him then. Her open palm smashed against his beak, knocking his head sideways and blinding him with stars. Then she stared at her own hand, a look of shock and horror etching across her too-perfect face.
“Whoops,” Ven tried to chuckle, but it came out more of a gargled cough instead. “Thought you weren't supposed to… touch commoners.”
The Elf turned on her heel and walked… correction, Ven realized, she fled from the cell. Her oversized enforcers gathered their gear and loped after her, slow but solid, slamming the door behind them. The chain ground out a remonstrance as Ven swung lazily in the reverb.
“Wanker,” he muttered. Then he passed out.
*
The fact that he had no idea how long he'd been unconscious didn't really bother Ven upon waking. He was, unfortunately, quite accustomed to losing his facilities in unfamiliar surroundings. What surprised him was how badly his body still hurt. Pain meant that he hadn't gone dense while he was out.
Which meant that his captors had imprisoned him too far underground for him to heal.
Which meant he was screwed.
He was still trying to come to terms with this new development when he heard an unearthly roaring, far down the hall outside his cell. It was coming closer, and before long Ven could make out words:
“…ree to this you bastards give me back my BOOK!” The last words of that diatribe were bellowed out as the creaking hinges of Ven's cell swung open, flooding the room with torchlight, stinging Ven's unaccustomed eyes.. X'on Doth, a mess of purple bruises and caked in drying blood, was hurled into the room. He crashed shoulder-first into the stone wall inches from Ven's left flank, then spun on an unsteady heel and resumed shouting at his oversized tormentors, even as they shut the cell door, blacking all light from the room. “It's MINE, you bastards, its MY BOOK, give it BACK!” He lunged for the door, slipped, and fell into it instead. He collapsed, feet kicking out, trying to find purchase against the loose dirt and straw beneath him. From what Ven could tell, X'on's muscled arms had been secured behind his back. They hadn't even untied him. And that strange, empty space that was his unsmell was tinged dead orange and gray.
But none of that mattered at the moment. “You son of a bitch,” Ven growled, once he found his voice. It scratched and burned in his throat.
“Ven?” He heard X'on shift on the ground, trying to turn. “My friend, is that you?”
“You son of a bitch!” Ven screamed. 'My friend'. “This is your fault, your plan! I tried to warn you, I tried to, and you did nothing! You didn't listen, why didn't… your fault! All of this! And I swear to Lath'shia herself that if we survive this I will kill you!”
He paused, tried to catch his breath. He was still wounded, and getting air to his lungs was a chore in this position. In between broken gasps, he heard a gurgling whine coming from X'on. It took Ven a moment to realize… the big man was trying to cry.
“Say something,” he muttered.
X'on groaned. “I think… I think they took my eye, Ven.”
Silence. A pause. Then, finally: “What?”
“My eye. My good eye, I can't see… they hit me, they kept hitting me, and one of them… one of them reached out and… and I didn't think, I didn't have time to think until now that it had gotten so dark, they tore out my eye and it doesn't matter because they have my BOOK!” He barked the last word at the door again, as if he could open it by sheer force of anger.
Ven didn't know what to say. He, at least, still had every part of himself connected to every other part. Then again, he wasn't the reason the pair had been captured in the first place. “I told you before, I had papers,” he rumbled through gritted beak. “We could have gotten through. Legally. We could have avoided this.” He didn't elaborate. At this point, he decided, the finer details of torture were moot.
X'on sighed, struggling to get into a sitting position across the room from Ven. “I know,” he groaned. He was quiet, humbled. Contrite. “But I thought I was better than these… creatures. These false, luminous beings. I thought I could outsmart them. My contact in Espatenika had a very small window in which to meet us. Going through the proper legal channels would have taken days, and we didn't have the time. I thought I was unstoppable, that our quest was righteous. I guess I've just been lucky.”
“Contact.”
“Of course. Our transport to the Known Lands... ”
“Yeah, you mentioned that.”
“Was arranged through less than traditional means.”
Ven groaned again. “Why, X’on? Why all the secrecy? I understand, I get that a dra… that our end goal is not something you want to share with everyone. But no one has to know the specifics....”
“You think the Elves wouldn't question a gargoyle and a half-giant traveling through their homelands? On their way to a ship, no less?”
“We could have given it a shot! I had a slot on my visa, I could have written you in! Or I don't know, I could have passed you off as a bounty or something! I could have....”
He trailed off. There was another pause. Neither spoke; neither could decide what else to say. Finally, Ven coughed. “So… what now? We're alive. That means something, right?”
“It very well might,” X'on said. His tone was that of a creature half dead of exhaustion.
“Think we'll be alive tomorrow?” Ven asked.
“I would imagine so.” That same flat, ragged timbre, like he was giving up, even if he wasn't saying so. “So long as the Lords and Ladies don't know our mission in their territory, we'll live. At least until they decide we weren't doing anything of importance. Then they'll kill us.”
He's going into shock, t
he clinical part of Ven's mind realized. And I doubt I can handle a castle full of guards on my own. Not only that, but after a week of traveling with the big fellow, Ven felt a connection. Maybe even the friendship X'on had insisted was forming between them. Sure, he had a proclivity for droning on about the countryside, but he made a damn good cup of coffee, and he never pried where he wasn't welcome. And it had been a while since Ven had had a real friend, not just someone who felt they owed him something. Even if the last one hadn’t worked out so well, he had to give it a try. “Hey, talk to me,” he called out. “Tell me the plan.”
“The plan… Tanith Ven?”
“Yeah, put me in the know. If we survive this, I need to know where we're going.”
“If we survive this… you're going to kill me, remember?”
“Hey, plans change, pal. I can’t kill you now, it wouldn't be fair. I need you to see me coming.”
“Heh,” X'on wheezed. “Heh heh hehhahahahahahaha! Hahahahaha! Very good, Ven, very good indeed! Thank you… thank you, my friend. I needed that.”
“So talk to me. Do we have a plan to get out of here?”
X'on's cough was wet. “Working on it.” He paused. “Do you know how to pick a lock?”
“Of course I can pick a lock. I can pick locks faster than you can read a damn book.” He immediately regretted saying that, but kept talking. “But I need my tools. Which were confiscated along with your book, my journal, and the rest of our stuff when they took you, I imagine.” X'on gave a curt, tired nod. Ven was relieved to note that he could see that, which meant his night vision was once again readjusting. “But hell, let's say we get out of here,” he said. “What then?”
“Then we find my dwarven contact. I doubt he'll remain in Espatenika for long, but he stays in Qual'sanath, which is just a few kilometers east. For an embarrassing amount of silver, which I no longer have on my person, he was to ferry us to Jernot Mey.”
Another surprise, Ven thought darkly. But now wasn't the time to discuss it; his partner was on the cusp of dying. “Jernot Mey, huh?” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “Got a stake in the war, then?”
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