Song of the Saurials

by Kate Novak

  “I’ve smelled them many times before,” the ranger answered. “How do you think I got the name Orcsbane?” Breck moved to the front of the party and drew his sword. Anticipation gleamed in his eyes.

  Alias held the ranger back. “Let Dragonbait look with his shen sight first,” she said.

  “His what?” Breck asked.

  “His shen sight,” Alias explained. “He can detect evil like a paladin in the Realms can, only he can detect more detail about what sort of evil.”

  Dragonbait summoned his shen sight and concentrated on the passageway ahead of them. “There’s something else up there,” Dragonbait said to Alias after several moments. “Something even more evil than orcs.”

  The swordswoman translated the paladin’s words for the others.

  “There must be some other kind of creature leading them,” Breck said, stepping into the cleft. “Probably ogres.” He hurried down the passage.

  “It is not ogres,” Dragonbait said in Saurial. “It is something much, much worse.”

  Alias eyed the ranger’s hastily disappearing form. “Then we’d better hurry before whatever it is gets to Nameless,” she said, following the ranger. Akabar and Zhara hurried after her, leaving the two saurials behind momentarily.

  “What is it, Champion?” Grypht asked the smaller saurial as he moved up beside him.

  “I think—” Dragonbait hesitated.

  Grypht stood patiently while the paladin reached out with his shen sight to try to determine what sort of evil he sensed. “It’s too far off to see clearly, but it’s so powerful and dark that I think it must be a minion of Moander’s,” the saurial said.

  “Not surprising,” the wizard said. “Let us hope it is not the bard whom you see.”

  Dragonbait nodded in agreement. He didn’t even want to think about how terrible it would be to try to convince Alias they couldn’t trust Nameless, that they may even have to destroy him.

  The paladin stepped into the cleft between the rocks. The wizard squeezed in behind him, and together they hurried after the others.

  The stench of the orc warren soon grew strong enough for even Alias, Akabar, and Zhara to detect. They proceeded with more caution. Even Breck, who could have followed his nose directly to their lair, remained close to the light of the Finder’s stone.

  “They hate sunlight,” the ranger offered, “and they can sometimes be frightened off with a very bright magical light.”

  “Like a light stone?” Zhara said, pulling one from the robe of her pocket. The damp walls around them glittered in the bright light.

  “Yes,” Breck nodded. “Keep it hidden for now, though, and spring it on them suddenly. The surprise will add to their fear.”

  Zhara pocketed the light stone.

  The party finally reached the entry way to a cave that reeked of burnt flesh and smoke. Tiny pricks of red light indicated coals still burning in the dark room ahead. Alias held up the finder’s stone to see into the room.

  It looked as if the center of the ceiling had crashed into the room, and it appeared to have happened very recently. Several dead orcs lay about the floor under piles of rock. Others lay on the ground, felled by some mysterious magic that left no mark. Dead animals lay smoldering over dying charcoal fires.

  “If this is the work of the Nameless Bard,” Breck said, “I’m impressed.”

  Alias said nothing. She had done her share of killing, but it was impossible not to notice how young some of the dead orcs were. If causing such destruction was the only way to save his life, she could understand. What she couldn’t understand was how Nameless could have been so foolish as to come this close to an orc warren to begin with.

  Breck leaned over and yanked a leather thong off the neck of a dead orc. He held it out for Alias to examine. On the end was an ear—an elven ear. “This is the orc tribe of the Torn Ear,” the ranger said. “They’ve been preying on small caravans in the dales for twenty years now. The Dalesmen have tried sending out caravans full of adventurers disguised as merchants, but the Torn Ear always seem to know if a caravan is authentic. Once they’ve cut off their victims’ ears, they loot only the most precious treasures, leaving the rest with the corpses for the crows to pick over. They’re expert at covering their trail, too. No one has ever been able to track them to their lair. This season they’ve attacked nearly three times as many caravans as in any other year. Lord Mourngrym has sent out two parties to search for their warren. Neither group came back.”

  The ranger laid the thong with the elven ear back down on the chest of the fallen orc. “Well, let’s find your Nameless Bard. I’d like to meet him,” Breck said.

  The beacon light from the finder’s stone led them around the collapsed ceiling. They had to stoop now to pass through the edges of the room where the ceiling remained intact. Grypht remained behind, waiting for Dragonbait to return with a report of how far it was to an area that was open enough for the larger saurial to move through comfortably.

  They came to another tunnel about fifteen feet wide, leading away from the main room of the orc warren. The voices of orcs drifted down the tunnel to their ears. Knowing danger lay in that direction made no difference. The finder’s stone indicated that Nameless was in the same direction, so they couldn’t avoid it.

  The tunnel’s ceiling was higher here, so Dragonbait returned to tell Grypht. Breck paced impatiently until Dragonbait reappeared. “Well, where’s that lumbering wizard friend of yours?” he asked the paladin in a whisper.

  A giant finger tapped Breck on the head. Grypht had stepped through his dimension door directly behind the ranger and crept up on him in the darkness.

  “Uh … let’s go,” Breck said sheepishly.

  Grypht held the ranger back by the collar of his leather armor and addressed Alias for a moment.

  Alias rolled her eyes with annoyance, but she translated the wizard’s words faithfully. “Grypht says we should wait for Zhara to grant us Tymora’s blessing.”

  Breck and the others stood by while Zhara pulled out a vial of holy water and began chanting for the goddess of luck to grant them her favors. As the priestess poured the water on the ground, Alias sighed. The swordswoman had seen priests heal people and cure curses, but when it came to bestowing blessings on people, there was no visible proof to convince her it actually did any good. Still, as Dragonbait constantly reminded her, it wouldn’t hurt her to give the priestess’s blessing the benefit of the doubt.

  Grypht turned to Alias again. This time the swordswoman agreed wholeheartedly with the saurial wizard’s suggestion.

  “Stay behind Grypht,” Alias told Zhara, repeating the saurial wizard’s message.

  The priestess glared at Alias. “I will not! I will fight at my husband’s side. I do not need additional protection. I am wearing your old plate mail beneath my robe,” she argued.

  “You swing a mean flail,” Alias said, “but we’ll need your skill as a healer again before the battle is over. Besides, Grypht is vulnerable when he’s casting spells. He needs someone to cover his back. That’s you.”

  Akabar addressed a few words to Zhara in Turmish. Zhara sighed and nodded.

  Breck and Alias took the lead, creeping up the passage, and Dragonbait and Akabar followed closely behind. Grypht hung back some distance, saving his magic to deal with whatever sort of evil minion of Moander ruled this place. He kept Zhara behind him, hoping to hide and shield her from anything that might rush toward them.

  A hundred feet up the passage, Alias and Breck halted. Another thirty feet ahead of them were a dozen large orcs clearing away a pile of rubble. It appeared that the ceiling had collapsed in the tunnel just as it had in the main room. As they watched, a set of orc legs disappeared down a hole in the rubble, and another orc prepared to follow.

  “Greater evil lies beyond the wall,” Dragonbait said softly to Alias.

  “So does Nameless,” Alias replied in saurial, pointing out how the beacon emanating from the finder’s stone was striking the pile
of rubble.

  Breck, who couldn’t hear their conversation, asked, “What are we waiting for? Torn Ear!” he shouted loudly. “Prepare to die!”

  The dozen orcs at the cave-in whirled around with drawn battle-axes or loaded crossbows. Breck leaped forward with his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other. He beheaded one orc with a single swing of his sword and sent another one stumbling backward to avoid being jabbed by the ranger’s flashing dagger.

  Two crossbow bolts whizzed past Breck’s head, missing him narrowly, but a third buried itself in his chest. Three orcs with axes surrounded the ranger and began hacking at him. Alias sliced down one orc who had foolishly turned his own back on her to position himself at the ranger’s back. Then she and Dragonbait took position on either side of Breck. Having reestablished a defensive line, the swordswoman and the paladin were careful to hold the line across the width of the corridor so that no orcs could break through and engage Akabar as he cast his spells.

  From behind her, Alias could hear the southern mage raise his voice in a Turmish chant. In a moment, two pairs of magic missiles whizzed past her shoulders, burying themselves in the chests of two orcs armed with crossbows. The orcs’ crossbows fired wildly, hitting the ceiling, and the orcs fell to the ground, dead.

  Another orc positioned himself in front of Alias. He leered at her and aimed his battle-axe over the part of her sternum that her chain mail did not protect. The field of enchantment surrounding her armored shirt deflected the axe’s edge before it could cleave her chest open. Taken off guard by the way his blade had skittered across the woman’s chest, the orc lost his balance and fell toward Alias. With a backhanded swing, the swordswoman skewered the ore’s midsection. She lost a few moments pulling her weapon free, but she had it readied before another orc, intent on destroying the female fighter, stepped over his dead compatriot.

  Dragonbait called out in saurial, “Toast!” and his sword began glowing, then burst into flame. The two orcs before him cried out in fear. One dropped his axe and fell back, but the other held his position, only to lose an arm and have his clothing set alight by the paladin’s weapon.

  Breck was hit by two more crossbow bolts, one in his shoulder and another in his leg. Since he was the biggest member of the party, and the only human male fighter, the orcs no doubt perceived him as the greatest threat, but the Torn Ear’s attempts to fell him first came to naught. He ignored the pain from his injuries and separated another orc head from its neck.

  Back behind Grypht, Zhara watched all the bloodshed with horror. This was the first battle she’d ever witnessed, and she realized now that she really didn’t want to see a second. Even so, it took all her willpower to turn her eyes from the gory scene and fix her sight on the dark tunnel behind her. It was fortunate she did, for she turned in time to spy four pairs of red eyes glittering in the dark—orcs creeping up on her and Grypht.

  The priestess drew the light stone out of her pocket and held it up with a shout. The orcs fell back in fear just as Breck had said they would. Zhara shuddered and moved closer to Grypht. The saurial wizard scooped up a stone from the floor of the passage and heaved it at the retreating orcs. It caught one of them in the head, and he collapsed to the ground, still and silent. Noting the size of the beast that had just felled their companion, the other three orcs turned and fled.

  Meanwhile, the battle farther down the tunnel was in full swing. The second orc to close on Alias swung at the swordswoman’s head with his axe. Alias ducked his first blow and parried the second with her blade. A crossbow bolt grazed Alias’s head, and the orc with the axe hit her shield arm. She lost her grip on the finder’s stone, and the crystal bounced behind the orcs. Alias retreated a step, and before the orc could follow, she lunged back at him, stabbing right through his leather armor, between his ribs and into his heart.

  While Breck and Dragonbait engaged the remaining orcs, Alias crawled over the corpses after the precious finder’s stone. Just as she reached for it, a heavy green vine batted her hand away. At the end of the vine was a fanged mouth, which swallowed half the stone and pulled it away. Alias looked up and gasped.

  Hovering overhead was a creature out of nightmares—a huge beholder from whose three broken eyestalks and empty central eye socket grew slimy vines, as mobile as arms, with mouths growing from the ends. A second vine shot out at Alias and started to whip about her throat, but the swordswoman slashed it from the beholder’s body with her sword.

  The beholder turned ever so slightly, focusing one of its deadly eyes on Alias. “Servant,” the beholder whispered. “Come!”

  Alias felt a sudden warmth for the beholder, as if it, not Dragonbait or Finder or Akabar, could offer her all the friendship she would ever need. The finder’s stone flared brightly in the beholder’s vine mouth, and the beholder was forced to close its eye of charm, breaking its spell before Alias was completely besotted.

  Akabar, who had just fired a pair of magic missiles at an orc retreating into the hole in the rubble, had already noted the vine-ridden beholder as it pushed an orc from its path and emerged from the hole. The southern mage hurried back to where Grypht stood with Zhara, watching the orcs who had tried to sneak up on them retreat. Akabar tugged on the saurial wizard’s sleeve and pointed at the beholder.

  Grypht hissed at the sight of the monster, then grinned with satisfaction at the sight of the beholder’s central eye socket, empty but for the dagger hilt sticking out of it. This is one eye tyrant who will learn to respect the power of a wizard, Grypht thought. The great saurial moved closer to the battle line, pulling a clear cone-shaped crystal from his robe pocket. When he could aim his spell safely without hitting Breck or Dragonbait, the wizard spoke the word “Deathfrost” in saurial and triggered the spell.

  Blinded by the finder’s stone light, the beholder failed to see Grypht’s enchantment heading toward it. A blast of frigid air hit the beholder dead on, freezing the vines so they snapped off from the beholder’s body like icicles. The finder’s stone fell to the ground, still encased in the beholder’s vine mouth. The stone glowed more softly once again, but the beholder had had enough. It retreated into the hole in the rubble and disappeared from view.

  Alias cut the vine mouth away from Nameless’s glowing yellow crystal and took it up in her hand. She thought of Nameless, and the stone still indicated he was beyond the pile of rubble. Alias climbed up to the hole the beholder had escaped through and followed.

  Grypht watched with horror as Dragonbait’s soul sister chased after the beholder without a thought for what lay in wait on the other side. She’s just like Dragonbait—headstrong and foolhardy, the saurial wizard thought. Dragonbait and Breck were still busy battling the remaining orcs, bigger orcs than the others and better fighters, probably a chieftain and his three bodyguards.

  There’s no getting around it, Grypht thought. He had to follow Alias. Shoving Zhara toward Akabar, the great saurial moved toward the battle, drawing a bit of gauzy fabric from his pocket.

  Grypht tapped his foot impatiently as he surveyed the ground for the remaining component that he needed to fuel his spell. Spying an orc that Dragonbait had felled with his flaming sword, the wizard snatched up a bit of the dead creature’s flaming clothing. He blew on the flame until a mere wisp of smoke rose from the clothing. Grypht held the gauze in the smoke as he uttered in saurial, “Wraithform.”

  Akabar and Zhara watched as the saurial wizard’s body faded into insubstantiality. Like a wisp of smoke drawn by a funnel of air, the saurial’s ethereal body drifted into the hole in the rubble after Alias and the beholder.

  On the other side of the rubble, the passage was flooded with sunshine pouring in from the well shaft overhead. Alias blinked in the bright light. Before she was able to see clearly or stand to defend herself with her weapon, she was grabbed by several pairs of strong, hairy orc hands. Thinking rapidly, she dropped the finder’s stone, and it fell back into the hole, unnoticed. The orcs pulled her away from the pile of rubble, laid
her on the floor, and held her pinned down by her legs and arms.

  A grating, high-pitched voice shouted, “I have your singer, nameless one. She will be a servant of Moander’s yet, but you can still share her. If you don’t show yourself immediately, however, I’ll have these orcs slice out her tongue, Moander doesn’t need her voice—only her skill as an assassin.”

  One of the orcs kicked Alias in the ribs, and she cried out in spite of herself.

  Hiding with Olive in the ceiling hole he’d dug out the night before, Finder stiffened.

  Olive bit her lip. Could it really be Alias? she wondered. How in the Nine Hells had she gotten here? Why in Tymora’s name had she allowed herself to be captured? That girl is nothing but trouble, the halfling thought with annoyance. Now Finder would give away their hiding place, and they’d end up compost for Moander’s vines.

  However, Finder said nothing immediately. Instead, he drew the horn of blasting from his belt and let it fall from the hole to the ground. Xaran and the other orcs spun around at the clattering of the brass instrument on the rocks. One of the orcs released his grip on Alias and rushed forward to grab the horn. The moment the creature came into view, Finder dropped down from the hole, using the ore’s body to break his fall. The orc fell to the ground, and Finder slit the creature’s throat with Olive’s sword.

  The other orcs howled, ready to avenge their comrade, but Xaran shouted, “Don’t let go of the woman!” and the orcs obeyed. Thus Finder was given the opportunity to rise to his feet.

  “No more false moves, nameless one,” the beholder said. “Remember, you still have your singer’s tongue to consider. Drop your weapon.”

  Finder dropped Olive’s sword and stood motionless. He could see now that the orcs did indeed have Alias pinned to the floor. “Are you all right?” he asked the swordswoman.

  “I’m just fine,” Alias growled through clenched teeth. “How in the Nine Hells do you manage to get us into messes like this?” she asked.