Critical Failures VI (Caverns and Creatures Book 6)

by Robert Bevan

  “I'll go behind this rock. You go over there.”

  Julian nodded, then eyed the water. “Just give me a heads-up if you're going to pee in the stream. I'll probably want to take a drink.” His thoughtful expression suggested that he was considering the awkward phrasing of what he'd just said. “And I'd prefer there not be pee in it.”

  “Okay, that's what I figured you meant.”

  “Doesn't hurt to clarify.”

  “Of course.”

  Stacy had no real desire to pee in the stream, and squatted as far from it as she could to avoid it being an issue. The pee had other plans, though. She watched as one line darkened the otherwise dry stone in a meandering course toward the flowing water. If it reached the stream, it would only be a couple of drops' worth. Comparatively speaking in terms of parts per million, there was likely to be more animal pee in there from farther up the mountain. Did this tiny trickle warrant the awkwardness of warning Julian about it? If the tables were turned, would she want him to tell her? She sighed. Yeah, probably.

  “Hey, Julian. There might be just a wee bit of... well, wee, in the –”

  Terrified horse screams relieved her of the obligation of finishing her sentence.

  “Cassidy!” cried Julian, running out from behind his rock while hastily pulling his pants up under his serape. Stacy wasn't as well-hidden as she'd thought she was, but he didn't even glance her way as he ran toward the horse she hadn't realized had a name.

  Stacy pulled up her own pants and readied her bloody hatchet while she jogged up to meet Julian.

  Cassidy reared up on her hind legs, trying to throw off the skinny young dwarf woman who had one arm firmly locked around her neck and a slim-bladed dagger stuck deep in her throat.

  “Magra!” said Julian. “What are you doing to my horse?”

  “So... hungry...” she responded, holding on for her life while trying to end the horse's. Again and again, she plunged the stiletto blade into the wild-eyed horse's throat.

  “That's not going to do you any good! As soon as it dies, it's just going to – dammit!”

  Magra picked herself up after what looked like a painful fall. She was bleeding from her nose and from a rough abrasion on the side of her face. Her expression was more bewildered than pained, though, as she looked up at Stacy and Julian.

  “What happened?”

  “It wasn't a real horse,” Julian explained. “Or maybe it was. I'm not really sure how it works. I summoned it with magic. When you kill it, it disappears.”

  Magra licked off as much horse blood from the dagger's blade as she could, then suppressed a gag as she swallowed it down. She took a step back and pointed the dagger at Julian.

  “You tricked me!”

  “What?” said Julian. “What motive could I possibly have to trick you into stabbing my horse to death?”

  She narrowed her eyes and nodded, like she was putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “Just like the Tamarian dwarves, you seek to drive me mad until I give in to your demands.” She looked at her hand wielding the dagger, then back at Julian. “That's it. You want the ring back, don't you? That's why you followed me.”

  “We didn't follow you. We just –”

  “Well you can forget it! The ring belongs to me now.” Her wary gaze darting back and forth between Stacy and Julian, she slipped the Ring of Invisibility off and back on, then vanished.

  “Hey now,” said Stacy, raising her hands as non-threateningly as is possible to do while holding a bloody hatchet. “We've all had a rough morning, but we're all on the same side, right? Let's not do anything we'll regret.”

  “You should have thought about that before you decided to double-cross me.”

  Julian, hands also raised in the air, whirled around to face Magra's voice, which was now coming from the opposite side of him. “I don't want the ring, I swear! Just leave us alone!”

  Hoping that Julian had Magra's full attention, Stacy pulled her hood up over her head and dropped as silently as she could into a prone position. She knew she wasn't exactly invisible, but she should at least be more difficult to spot as she blended into the rocky ground. She focused her eyes and ears where she thought Magra was most likely standing, looking and listening for some clue to pinpoint her exact location. A crunch of rock, a tiny puff of dust disturbed by a heavy footfall, anything.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” said Julian. “I'm not comfortable being the only one visible here. There's still time for everyone to calm down and talk this out.”

  Stacy wished Julian would shut up. As long as he talked, Magra would have a much easier time moving without being heard, widening the statistically probable area of where she might be.

  When it finally happened, it wasn't Magra's feet that gave her position away, but rather her head.

  The dry withered tip of a tree branch bent back and snapped off. Stacy sprung like a cobra and lunged at the empty air beneath the tree, letting go of her hatchet. She was confident that she could disarm and subdue a starving dwarf girl without resorting to lethal violence.

  Magra was kind enough to help her out by trying to stab her, flickering into view just in time for Stacy to dodge the attack, grab her dagger arm by the wrist, and punch her in the face.

  The dagger fell out of Magra's hand, and she dropped to her knees, sobbing as blood flowed freely out of her nose.

  Stacy kicked the dagger toward Julian. “I'm sorry it had to come to that, but you were losing your shit.”

  “Please,” Magra said between sobs. She slipped the Ring of Invisibility off her finger. “Take the ring. But please leave me the dagger. I need it to hunt, and to defend myself if the Tamarians catch up to me.” She tossed the ring to Julian, who caught it with his left hand, then picked up her dagger with his right.

  Stacy looked down at Magra, attempting to look intimidating, if not necessarily threatening. “We need to get to Cardinia. Can you point us in the right direction?”

  Magra nodded and pointed at a gap between two large boulders. “Go that way. Half a day's walk will take you to a road heading east and west. You'll want to turn east.” She looked pleadingly at Julian, her mustache glistening with blood and snot.

  Julian walked up to her. Holding the dagger by the blade, he offered her the pommel.

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting the dagger with both hands. “I'm sorry for everything I –” Her teary eyes focused on the ring Julian had slipped onto the blade before handing it to her. She looked up at him. “Is this...” She choked back a sob.

  “I'm a man of my word,” said Julian. “And I appreciate everything you've done for us.” He pointed at the ground next to her. “Horse.”

  Magra gazed at the horse with hunger in her eyes.

  Julian gave her a warning look. “You already know what will happen if you try to eat it. But I thought that maybe you could ride it and try to find your people or, I don't know, maybe chase down a goat to eat or something. It will only be around for a few hours, so try to use your time wisely.”

  “Thank you,” Magra said again.

  Julian shrugged. “I wish there was more I could do.” He pointed at the ground between himself and Stacy. “Horse.”

  “As long as you're in such a generous mood, do you mind if I take the reins this time?” asked Stacy. “My bottom's still a little tender from that last ride.” She appreciated Julian's desire to help this girl in need, but thought he might be going a little overboard in giving so much of their available resources to someone who'd been on the fence about murdering them just a few minutes ago. At least he hadn't invited her to tag along with them.

  Julian gestured up at the saddle. “Be my guest.”

  Stacy climbed up onto the horse and positioned herself as comfortably as she could in the saddle. Julian climbed on behind her.

  “Good luck, Magra,” said Stacy. “I hope you find your family.” She guided the horse in the direction Magra had pointed them in.

  “Wait!” said Magra.

 
Don't ask to come with us. Don't ask to come with us. Don't ask to come with us.

  Stacy smiled. “Yes?”

  “Don't go that way.” Magra pointed about thirty degrees to the right of where she'd previously indicated they should travel. “The road back to Cardinia is that way.”

  “Then what's over there?” asked Stacy, pointing back at the gap she'd been about to lead the horse through.

  Magra shrugged. “I don't know. I saw some cave troll tracks. I thought they might kill you.”

  Not knowing what to say in response to that, Stacy corrected the horse's direction and slapped the reins.

  “What a sweet girl,” she said when she judged they were out of earshot. “I'm so glad we helped her out.”

  Chapter 47

  “I'm f-f-f-freezing my f-f-f-fuckin' tits off out here,” said Denise. “Can't this thing move any faster?”

  “Basil ain't used to this kind of terrain,” Randy explained. The soles of his bare feet stung on the ice. Poor Basil must have been feeling that four times over.

  Katherine pulled her big black robe more tightly around her. “Get your fat lazy ass down off Basil and walk. That'll warm you up.”

  “In case you ain't noticed, I'm with child. What if my knees go all post partum? You ever think of that? Maybe instead of bein' a selfish whore, you could do me the kindness of lending me that warm-looking robe you got on.”

  “Maybe you can go fuck yourself.” Katherine pulled down her hood and made the action of wiping sweat off her brow, though Randy hadn't seen any on there. She was most likely just messing with Denise. “Phew, that feels better. It sure can get stuffy in here.”

  “Oh, that's real nice. Just rub it in, why don't – The fuck?”

  Randy peered ahead but didn't see anything out of the ordinary, or at least any more out of the ordinary than what had already been established. He glanced up at Denise to get a hint at what she might be referring to.

  “Oh my God, I can't believe it!” said Katherine, sounding inexplicably happy while staring at what seemed to be absolutely nothing.

  Then he saw the first flake. Then another. Then another. Within a few minutes, they were trudging through a blizzard.

  The further they traveled on the ice sheet toward Nazere, the more effectively the ice chilled what should have been warm tropical air. Randy was no fan of cold weather to begin with, but he sensed something unnatural about this coldness that bothered him much more. It felt like evil, and the feeling grew stronger as the air got colder.

  “I reckon we're gettin' close to something bad,” said Randy. “Something ain't right about this place.”

  Denise threw a snowball at him with snow he'd scraped off Basil's back. “No f-f-f-fuckin' sh-sh-sh-sher, Sh-Sh-Sh-Shitlock!”

  Randy felt his heart quicken. What he was feeling wasn't fear, which it probably should have been. It was more like rage. He was getting pissed off about something, and it wasn't that Denise had just thrown a snowball at him.

  “I've never seen this much snow in my life,” said Katherine. She followed Denise's lead and scooped up some snow, then packed it into a ball. She turned to Denise, arm cocked back and ready to launch, then her jaw dropped as she stared into the heavily falling snow. “What the fuck is that?”

  Two small whirlwinds sucked snowflakes into their swirls as they swayed and meandered toward them like a couple of drunken sailors on shore leave.

  Randy drew his sword. He didn't understand why, but he was overwhelmed with the urge to destroy them.

  “Take it easy, Randy,” said Katherine. “You can't cut air with a sword.”

  “Aw, shit!” cried Denise. “There's three more comin' from the other side. This place has some fucked up weather.”

  Katherine took a step back to squint past Basil, then nodded at Randy. “She's right.”

  “They ain't weather,” said Randy. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he was sure of it. “Them's some kind of creatures, and they're coming for us.”

  “They do seem to be moving deliberately this way,” Katherine admitted. She threw the snowball she'd intended for Denise at the nearest approaching whirlwind. The whirlwind stopped advancing, and the snowball went round and round inside it, spiraling upward in the funnel, then launched out of the top at an impressive speed, hitting Katherine square in the face, dropping her on her ass.

  Randy cringed, because that looked crazy painful.

  “You son of a bitch!” Katherine honked as she staggered back to her feet. She sounded like her nose might have been broken, and her right eye was shut. She reached into her Bag of Holding. “Scythe!” When she pulled out her weapon, it became obvious that she'd been going for a Grim Reaper ensemble. It would have been more convincing if she didn't currently sound like an angry duck.

  The other whirlwinds halted their advance, but Randy couldn't bring himself to believe it had anything to do with their perceived threat of him and Katherine.

  A smaller funnel of swirling wind and snow branched out from the whirlwind at Randy's ten o'clock, like it was sprouting an arm. The arm, in turn, sprouted fingers at the end, four of which curled inward, leaving one pointing toward the island. A mouth-like gap opened in the front of it.

  “Go.” Its voice sounded like an echo of someone else speaking from the other end of a tunnel.

  Katherine brandished her scythe at it. “We're not going anywhere, motherfucker!” She sounded ridiculous.

  In spite of not knowing what kind of creatures these things were, or if they were vulnerable to attacks by swords, Randy's every instinct was to charge up and start hacking at them. He had absolutely no fear, which was refreshing in a way after having spent the bulk of his life in a perpetual state of fear. But he also recognized that fear was a valuable self-preservation instinct, and that his life wasn't the only one currently on the line. He took a small sidestep toward Katherine and whispered out the corner of his mouth, “Then what are we gonna do?”

  Her good eye fiery with rage and indignation, Katherine hesitated for a moment, then finally said, “Fine. We'll go. But not because you said so. We were going that way anyway.”

  “That's right!” said Randy in a show of solidarity.

  Denise sighed. “Y'all sure put them in their place.”

  As they continued to walk, two whirlwinds flanked them on either side. The largest of them led the way, clearing a path through the snow and spraying it out through its top like the smokestack of an old-timey steam engine. If he hadn't known in his heart that they were evil at their core, and leading him and his friends to an even greater evil, he would have thought the gestures to be exceedingly hospitable.

  With all the snow flying around, both from the heavy snowfall and from the mini-tornado clearing the path in front of them, visibility was extremely limited. Randy's first indication that they'd reached the island proper was the grit of sand raining down on him. Their guide was doing such a thorough job with the snow that it was carving a small trench into the beach as well.

  Katherine spat a few times. “Hey, would you mind easing up on the sand? That could get in someone's eyes.”

  The sandstorm didn't last long anyway, soon replaced by falling shards of ice being stripped off long-dead but well-preserved vegetation and vomited up into the air.

  “Ow!” said Denise. “That stings, you fuckin'... living fart!”

  The whirlwinds ignored her, continuing as they were, all of them shooting ice shards into the air. Katherine was protected enough with her thick cloak, and while Randy didn't particularly enjoy the sensation of ice raining down on his skin, he wouldn't give these evil creatures the satisfaction of a complaint.

  After about twenty minutes of being pelted with ice, they'd made their way out of the vegetation and the snowstorm seemed to be letting up. The sun had just set, but there was still enough light in the sky for Randy to make out the shapes of buildings, or in many cases the collapsed remains of buildings, on either side of the path they were walking along.

  “
This must be what's left of the once-thriving port town Attal was telling me about,” said Katherine. “What's the point of ruling over this? It looks like shit.”

  “That looks a little nicer,” said Denise. She was gawking straight ahead, and slightly upward.

  When Randy turned to follow her gaze, a gust of wind swept enough snow out of his field of vision to unveil the magnificent entrance to a massive structure which appeared to have been build entirely from blocks of solid ice.

  Two of the whirlwinds broke formation to mingle with two carved-ice statues of large deer which stood on either side of the entrance, facing each other so their great antlers came just shy of touching to form an archway for visitors to pass under. They swept the collected snow from the statues, revealing the ice from which they were made to be much purer and clearer than that which made up the bricks of the wall behind them. As the whirlwinds swirled their way up the antlers, Randy had the feeling that the artist's purpose was to show off just how intricate and delicate he or she could make them.

  Once the maintenance was finished, the two whirlwinds took their flanking positions again, and the procession moved inside the building.

  Inside was no warmer, but there was no wind. Also, it was nice to be able to see clearly again, especially since the place was so beautifully decorated. Everything was made of ice. Chairs, tables, display cases to show off tiny ice sculptures of people, animals, and an assortment of fantasy creatures, all of it. Even the braziers along the walls, despite clearly being big bowls of fire, were made of ice. Not one of them appeared warped or melted in the slightest, nor did the murals behind them, pictures formed in negative space from ice shaved perhaps a millimeter deep into the walls. Rather than melt them, the flickering flames only enhanced their beauty.

  The lead whirlwind, still visible but a little more difficult to see without all the snow, sand, ice and random debris swirling around inside it, ascended a staircase which curved around the right side of the room. The other four escorts moved in closer from behind, a clear suggestion that they should follow.