DiVarro said nothing, frowning at his hands.
Gethrey laughed. “There is no one in all of this world who will bother trying to help Myreon Alafarr.”
CHAPTER 1
THERE’S ALWAYS THREE
“I’m telling you there has got to be another trap.” Tyvian’s legs ached as he crouched in the shadowy entrance of the old temple’s holy sanctuary. The place reeked of rotting vegetation, which, predictably enough, was due to the massive piles of rotting vegetation scattered all over the place. The Forest Children took their religion seriously enough to dump all their best fruits and vegetables into a dark hole for their false god to feast upon, but the god, as it happened, wasn’t much of an eater.
Artus held his nose against the sickly sweet stench. When he spoke, it was in a nasally whisper. “Where the heck would they put a trap in here? Why would you booby-trap a church anyway?”
“It’s not a church, Artus, it’s a pagan temple. And since we’ve already evaded two such booby traps, I’m telling you there’s a third, and it’s somewhere between us and that enormous statue.” Tyvian pointed at their target.
The holy sanctuary room was circular, perhaps fifty yards across, and the floor was convex, its carefully carved flagstones forming a perfect dome. At the apex of this dome, and at the center of the chamber, was a massive statue of some kind of polished white rock. It was roughly humanoid, but instead of arms it had branches and instead of hair it had leaves. Its head was thrown back, looking up through a circular chimney that rose twenty feet up to the forest floor above them. Vibrant green moss grew over the statue’s shoulders and up its sides, and from its open mouth poured a pure white light that shot up the chimney and into the open sky above. It was this statue that Tyvian was pointing at—the great idol of Isra, the false god of the Forest Children, and the Ja’Naieen, the Heart of Flowing Sunlight, the Source of Life.
Or, as Tyvian liked to think of it, the Five Pound Enchanted Diamond.
Artus pulled a small stone out of his pocket and skipped it across the flagstones between them and the statue of Isra. It bounced at a wild angle and skittered off into the shadows. “Well I don’t see no traps. What makes you so sure there’s three and not just two?”
Tyvian shifted position, causing his muddy clothing to creak. “Artus, these are superstitious people. They like patterns, and patterns are most often dictated by the disposition of the five energies, whether we know it or not. Now, the Fey’s number is one and the Dweomer’s number is three. The chances of them going about making just two traps to protect their god would be slim.”
Artus frowned. “Well, why wouldn’t there be five traps or seven or thirteen? Those are magic numbers, too.”
Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Artus, where on earth would they hide eleven other booby traps in one room? They’re superstitious savages, not paranoid civil engineers.”
Artus sighed. “Fine, then—where is it, smarty-pants? My rock didn’t trip nothing, and I don’t see no touch plates or trip wires or trap doors or anything. Is your magic whats-a-madoo doing anything?”
Tyvian looked down at the magecompass he’d placed on the threshold of the sanctuary. He had it tuned to the Astral currently, as that would give him the best reading regarding the overall sorcerous energy trapped or flowing through the place, but the orbs were spinning slowly and the needle was indecisive as to direction. He swapped out the granite orbs for ones of iron and then hardwood and then bone and then glass, running through all the energies. The only ones that spun with any urgency were the bones (the Ether) and the wood (the Lumen), which was exactly what he expected from a chamber full of rotting vegetables and a statue enchanted with a Lumenal spell of some kind. He sighed. “I don’t see one, honestly. The room seems clean.”
Artus shrugged. “Well, okay then—let’s nab the thing before those priests come back.”
Tyvian nodded. “You first.” The ring gave him a pinch, but he barely winced. He’d gotten accustomed to many of its lesser jabs over the eighteen months or so he’d been forced to wear it, and it didn’t approve when he put his fifteen-year-old apprentice in harm’s way.
Artus shouldered his pack, drew out his machete, and walked slowly across the curved floor toward the idol. When the floor didn’t fall away and no rocks fell on him, Tyvian followed, folding up the magecompass and stuffing it into his coat pocket. He kept his hands free and his eyes open.
The curved flagstones were slick with the accumulated gunk and slime of years of rotting vegetable matter. Green-and-white mushrooms grew in big clumps here and there and the buzz of flies was ever-present. Artus slipped once, his hand sinking through the hide of a greenish-yellow pumpkin and emerging covered with slimy, moldy filth. “Uhhh . . . gross . . .”
“Focus, Artus,” Tyvian cautioned, and stepped past him. Tyvian couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched but he knew that was essentially impossible. They had staked out the temple for weeks before actually going inside, and they knew the comings and goings of the priests perfectly. Right now the two men and three women who were dedicated to the temple were indulging in their weekly bath, which involved a lot of praying and, oddly enough, an enormous amount of sexual intercourse. Artus had been noticeably keen to observe that particular ritualistic habit. Tyvian guessed it was the most attentive Artus had ever been during a stakeout.
In any event, the priests wouldn’t be back for another hour at least, and given the intricacy of the deadfall traps and dart trip wires both he and Artus had evaded to get this far, Tyvian didn’t think the priests would be able to rush in and stop them without falling on a bed of dung-encrusted spikes or being injected with some kind of unpleasant poison.
Tyvian reached the base of the statue of Isra, where he could see up the chimney to the sky above—it was just after midday and the sky was clear of any rain clouds. Good. He was about as filthy and damp as he was willing to get, no matter how big a diamond this was. He wondered how likely it was that he’d be able to clean all the mud and dirt out of his breeches without having to resort to sorcerous means when this affair was over and done with.
Artus was beside him. “Great, now how do we get it out?”
Tyvian climbed Isra’s tree-bough arms so he could look inside the statue’s mouth. The Heart of Flowing Sunlight was there, set into the gullet of the Forest God’s statue. It was just as enormous as the rumors had claimed—a raw, uncut diamond the size of his two fists pressed together.
Having judged the size of the statue’s mouth and the diameter of the diamond, Tyvian looked back at Artus. “Hammer, please. If we’re going to commit sacrilege, why settle for half measures?” He took the hammer from Artus, tested its weight, and then broke Isra’s jaw apart with one good swing.
The Heart of Flowing Sunlight tumbled out of the idol’s half-destroyed head, glowing like a piece of starlight, and bounced off the curved floor. Artus flailed his arms to catch it but missed, the jewel skittering away into the field of rotting plants.
Tyvian groaned. “Dammit, Artus! Get it!”
Artus nodded and slid across the floor toward the massive jewel, trying not to fall into the muck again. Tyvian watched him go, shaking his head. Typical Artus. The last year had seen the boy shoot up five inches in height, but nothing appreciably in weight. Artus was now a jumble of arms, legs, sharp elbows, and bony shoulders who ate as much as five men and topped Tyvian by a full inch and a half. He could scarcely walk down a corridor without bumping into something, tripping, or making noise. It was like partnering with an animated, three-legged hat rack.
Artus slipped one last time, just in front of the jewel. “It’s okay!” he yelled, his voice echoing through the chamber. “I got it!”
Then the nearest pile of rotting plants picked itself up and threw itself at him. Artus vanished into its slimy, smelly innards with a half-startled yelp. The Heart of Flowing Sunlight likewise s
ank into the confines of the green-black, oily mass, winking out as both it and Artus were engulfed.
Tyvian blinked, barely believing what he had just seen. “Kroth.”
Glancing around him, he noted that several of the rotting piles of sacrificial vegetables were performing a kind of flopping, oozing locomotion, and mostly in his direction. “Kroth’s teeth!”
Tyvian set his pack down and began to rummage. “Rope, rope, need the rope . . . ouch!” The ring bit down on his hand as hard as if Tyvian had slammed it in a door. He glared at it. “I know! I’ll get him in a second!”
A wet, brownish-green tendril of something wrapped itself around Tyvian’s ankle. Before it could pull, though, he drew a knife and cut himself loose, then went back to the pack. “Dammit, where the hell is the damn thing?”
“Tyvian!” Artus’s voice was breathless and panicked. “Help! Hel-mphhfhhfhhh.” Tyvian looked up for a moment to see Artus’s head emerging from the pile of animate vegetable matter only for it to vanish again as another pile of partially gelatinous muck hurled itself on top of him.
Tyvian’s own situation was not improving. There were three big oozing masses of glop closing in on him from three separate directions, waving their half-solid tendrils at him. Standing with his back to the statue of Isra, he hauled out a coil of rope and looped it over the vandalized head.
A tendril grabbed Tyvian around the waist. He cut it with the knife, but a second tendril seized his weapon by the hilt and dragged it away, consuming it within the mushy confines of a hungry plant-matter blob. Tyvian skipped between two of the encroaching things, only to now find himself surrounded by four of them. Rummaging frantically in his pack, his fingers suddenly closed around something thin, hard, and uneven. “Ah-ha!”
He pulled out the wand and spun to see the green-black bulk of a trash-thing looming over him, ready to pounce. He pointed at the center of the beast and pronounced the activation word, “Ghrall!” A ball of ruby-red flame burst from the tip of the wand and consumed the plant creature in an unnatural fire of pure Fey energy. The tip of the wand glowed like a coal in a furnace. “There! How do you like the taste of that, eh?”
The rotting piles of plant matter, evidently, had no opinion one way or the other. They continued to shamble toward him, reaching out with thin tentacles of rotting vine or ivy. Tyvian blasted three more, buying himself a little breathing space, and then looked for Artus. He couldn’t see the boy, per se, but he did spot a particularly enormous patch of seething plant matter that seemed to have swallowed something very displeased to be ingested.
Tyvian ran, almost slipping on the uneven floor, and skipped past another two plant monsters before reaching the pile under which Artus struggled. He turned and blasted the two things he’d passed and guessed, judging by the speed of the creatures, he had about seven seconds to get Artus out of there before being consumed himself. He glanced at the wand—immolating Artus was probably not the best solution. Hmmm . . . what then?
Artus’s foot thrust out of the pile, sans boot. Tyvian reflexively grabbed him by the ankle and tried to pull, but the boy’s skin was coated in slippery, smelly ooze and he was engulfed anew by his captors. If he was going to drag Artus out, Tyvian knew he would need a much better grip, ideally around the lad’s waist.
That meant getting dirty. Really, really dirty.
Tyvian took a deep breath. “Kroth’s bloody teeth, it’s come to this, has it?” He looked at the rope and snapped his fingers. “Here!”
The rope’s Lumenal and Dweomeric enchantments blazed to life; it tied itself around the waist of the Isra statue, and then its free end flew through the air and into Tyvian’s hand. Securing the rope around his own waist, Tyvian took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and dove in.
The experience of wading through an animated mass of rotting vegetables was one that he did his very best not to record. He could feel the slimy ooze soaking through his shirt, he could hear it squishing and sloshing in his ear canals, and he was certain it was trying to crawl up his nose. Tyvian pretended he was receiving a mud bath in a Verisi spa, which helped diminish his inherent sense of disgust right up until Artus accidentally kicked him in the chin. This caused Tyvian’s mouth to open, and the whole illusion was ruined forever.
He roared silently and groped until he found Artus. It wasn’t difficult—the plant-things were piling on top of them, crushing them together, seeking to drown them in a seething morass of moldy fruit rinds and deliquescent lettuce. Tyvian grabbed Artus around the waist with one arm and began to pull on the rope with the other. In any other situation this would have been a physical impossibility for Tyvian or even for a man three times Tyvian’s size and strength, but he had the ring, and the ring liked it when he rushed to the rescue.
The sun-bright power of the iron ring pulsed on Tyvian’s right hand, sending waves of superhuman strength through his arms and legs. Artus wrapped his arms around Tyvian, which freed the smuggler to pull the rope bit by bit, hand over hand. The plant-things tried to stop him, they threw all their weight over him, but they couldn’t prevent Tyvian’s inexorable escape. Suddenly, as quickly as he had gone in, Tyvian found himself emerging from the rotting depths of the creatures. He and Artus broke free with a pop.
Artus fell to the ground, coughing and gasping for air, but Tyvian grabbed him by the belt and pulled him to his feet before the plant-things could swallow him up again. Tyvian pushed him toward the statue. “The chimney! Climb out!”
Artus snatched up Tyvian’s pack as he ran to the center of the room; he was still wearing his own. Tyvian cast about for the blasting wand but didn’t know what became of it—probably somewhere in the depths of those things. The whole chamber seemed awash in them now, all of them oozing and shambling and crawling slowly toward the two thieves. Tyvian darted to Artus’s side and, freeing the rope around himself, ordered it to the top of the chimney, where it dutifully flew and secured itself to an exposed root. Tyvian pointed up. “Go! Quickly!”
Artus climbed with both packs as fast as Tyvian did with none—something to be said for the power of terror—and soon both of them were on their hands and knees at the top of the chimney, coughing, wheezing, vomiting out the disgusting remnants of their would-be killers.
Tyvian wiped a film of green slime off his face and gasped in the clean, fresh forest air. “I . . . I told you there was a third trap.”
Artus rolled over on his back. “Saints . . . I thought I was a goner . . . I thought I was dead . . .”
Tyvian shook his head to try and get the gunk out of his ears. “Would have been, were it not for my heroic efforts. I hope you appreciate the lengths I go to.” Slowly, he got to his feet, letting his eyes adjust to the midday sunlight.
Artus opened his pack and pulled out the Heart of Flowing Sunlight. “We got it.”
Tyvian, though, didn’t react. “Artus,” he said calmly, “You know how you thought you were dead a few moments ago?”
Artus sat up. “Yeah?”
Tyvian put his hands up slowly. “You might still be right.”
“What?” Artus rubbed the goop out of his eyes and looked around.
The only thing he saw were the arrowheads of a score of drawn bows and the angry, filthy faces of the Forest Children surrounding them.
CHAPTER 2
A LOW-DOWN DIRTY GETAWAY
The Forest Children, also known as the woodkin to those of a more Galaspiner bent, or the Vel’jahai, if you happened to be one of them, were barbarous savages who lived within the vast confines of Isra’Nyil, or, more simply, the Great Forest. Tyvian had heard an awful lot of rumors about them over the years, and none of them had been flattering. His observations of their movements during the last few weeks had confirmed more rumors than they dispelled. They were superstitious, violently territorial vegetarians who “lived in harmony with nature,” which evidently meant sleeping
in burrows like human badgers, bathing infrequently, and rutting like wild animals in open daylight, where any passing fifteen-year-old farmboy might gawk at them and ask his partner/mentor extremely inappropriate questions about human anatomy.
Tyvian prepared to be shot with at least a dozen arrows immediately. When it didn’t happen, he found himself talking. Talking, he had found, usually got him out of a lot of sticky situations. “Greetings, friends! I have wonderful news!”
Tyvian’s smile and cheery tone took the savages temporarily aback. They muttered among themselves in their slippery, silvery language. It sounded like pigeons trying to coo at each other with polysyllabic words.
Tyvian kicked Artus out of his open-mouthed shock. “Bow-wards!” he hissed, and then kept turning on the charm. “My partner and I have performed an in-depth investigation, and we have discovered that your god is false!”
Artus slowly took off his pack and began to rummage around.
Tyvian shot him a withering look. “My pack, fool! In my pack!”
The arrows quavered in their bows as the petite, wiry builds of the Forest Children struggled to hold them. They looked confused, perhaps even afraid. Tyvian just kept smiling. “Now, I know this comes as a shock to you all—I understand. However, consider the advantages! No longer must you pitch your hard-earned fruits and vegetables down a dark hole in the midst of a forest—Isra isn’t eating them, believe me—and you can now devote that time to more productive pursuits such as, for instance, the knitting of pants. I mean, let’s face it, gentlemen—some of you fellows are one misguided falcon’s dive away from compulsory celibacy!”
Artus was elbow deep in Tyvian’s pack. “I don’t see them anywhere.”
The Forest Children had stopped muttering among themselves. Their faces were now grave. Tyvian kept smiling, but growled out the side of this mouth, “Artus, bow-wards now, please.”
All That Glitters Page 2
