The Rod of Seven Parts

by Douglas Niles

  "Hello, warrior," she said in a voice of melodious perfection. "I am grateful that you have come."

  "So—so am I," I stammered, taken aback by her appearance. She fastened a look upon me that all but caused my knees to buckle. Certainly I had never seen a person of such consuming, immaculate perfection. I felt a growing desire and a certain knowledge: This woman would indulge my every desire, would please me as no other female ever had. She was the perfect complement to a champion of law!

  "Kip! Beware!" The words, barked by Parnish Fegher, had no effect upon me. My sword clattered to the floor, unnoticed, and I took a step forward.

  "Who are you?" I asked, certain that I had found the love, the perfect beauty, who would complete my life.

  "I am yours, warrior." She raised her arms to embrace me, and I stumbled senselessly toward those perfect features, reaching, driven by a desire so strong that everything else was forgotten.

  Badswell hit me from behind, his bulky form smashing me to the side, both of us crashing into the wall with a force that drove the air from my lungs. I drove my elbow backward furiously, resentful of every second's delay before I could enjoy that anticipated embrace. My friend grunted as I hit him hard and low, drawing a deep and ragged breath, but Badswell's strapping arms and beefy fists still held me tightly imprisoned.

  "Wait!" I croaked, reaching, straining to touch the gorgeous creature who had recoiled a step or two after Badswell's sudden attack. Her eyes were no longer upon me, and the sight of her looking past me, down the corridor toward my companions, filled me with blinding, jealous rage.

  The streak of lightning flashed past me before I knew that Parnish had cast a spell. With explosive force, the bolt struck that vision of fabulous beauty between her perfect breasts, an assault of cruelty that sent outrage shivering upward through my body.

  With a roar of animal rage, I bounded to my feet, casting Badswell aside, reaching for the gold-bladed sword I had earlier dropped.

  "Kip, look!" screamed Saysi, pointing past me, her eyes wide with awe and horror.

  I shook off the warning, blinking through my rage, seizing the Vaati Blade and seeking the wizard who had stricken my newly discovered love.

  "Warrior... help me...."

  That melodious voice, full of pain and inhuman suffering, drove me to a frenzy. I rushed at Parnish, who, like Saysi, seemed more concerned with staring at the woman behind me. My sword was raised, ready to slash through the wizard's immaculate vest.

  "Kill him! Avenge me!"

  In my fury, I didn't notice that the woman's voice had taken on a harder edge, cruelty rising through the sounds that had been so gentle a moment before. Blindly I raised the weapon, forcing Parnish to step backward as he realized I wasn't about to turn away.

  Then Saysi was standing there, blocking my path to the hateful wizard. Beside myself with fury, I almost brought the blade down on her copper-curled head. Only some inner reserve of sanity brought me up short.

  "Move!" I snarled. "Move, and let the wizard die!"

  "Look!" she repeated again, her tone strangely calm in the midst of my storm of fury.

  Something, some lingering memory of who she was, of who I was, stayed my hand. The blade remained level, suspended in the air over her head; her chocolate eyes pleaded with me, strained to penetrate my madness. Slowly, deliberately, I turned my head and followed the direction of her pointing finger.

  "Warrior, please... avenge me... save me."

  But the woman was gone. In her place was a scuttling, crablike horror, a thing that I knew was a spyder-fiend, though a type I had never before encountered. There were the eight legs, the wolfish head with drooling jaws. Unlike the kakkuu, however, the fur on this monster's lupine portion was sleek and clean, bluish black in color. The back was covered in a shiny carapace of the same color, and three parallel rows of spines ran along the body, extending backward from the leering head. Two human arms emerged from beneath the shell, reaching, beseeching from either side of that awful head.

  "Warrior..." Again came the alluring word, the melodious voice; the sound was like an angel singing or the breathy endearment of a lover.

  But it emerged from those black, carnivorous lips.

  Seeing her ruse shattered, the monster—a raklupis, I now knew—darted at Badswell, driving its cruel fangs toward the half-ogre's arm. Bads chopped with his axe, forcing the creature's charge to the side—but not far enough. Teeth scraped his skin, and he howled with pain as he staggered back against the wall.

  Now, cursing my lateness, I responded. Head down, I charged, flailing with my mighty blade. The spyder-fiend tried to block my blow with one of those humanlike arms, and I lopped it off at the wrist. Screeching in pain and rage, it cowered backward, moving with the scuttling quickness of its kind.

  But my vengeance would not be denied. I leapt after it, chopping savagely, cutting through the skull and drawing a spill of black liquid that gushed to the floor. My sword raised, I stepped in for the kill, bringing the weapon down with crushing force against a wounded and, I thought, helpless target.

  My weapon clanged to the floor with hand-numbing force, and I pitched forward, skidding through the black ooze and barely retaining my balance. Only then did I perceive that my enemy was no longer there.

  "Teleportation," Parnish muttered, stepping past Saysi to look down the two adjoining corridors. "The battle was lost, so the monster escaped to fight again."

  "Teleported?" I demanded, panting, furious with myself as much as with the treacherous enemy. "To where?"

  "There's no way to know, unless you can follow tracks through the ether," the wizard declared dryly. "The next time we try to tell you something, I suggest you pay closer attention."

  "How... what happened?" I asked dizzily, shaking my head against the confusion. "She was so..."

  My words trailed off in shame. Surely she had been beautiful, but since when was mere beauty enough to drive away my sanity? I looked at Saysi, realizing the risk she had taken in stepping in front of the wizard, and my guilt brought a choking shame to the surface.

  "Don't," she said gently, seeing the agony on my face. "This was a thing of chaos, of potent magic. There's no shame in failing to realize it immediately."

  "No brains in that failure, either," declared Rathentweed tartly. The gnome had crept forward and now joined the rest of us.

  "How badly are you hurt?" asked Saysi, kneeling beside the panting form of Badswell.

  "Not hurt... I guess... kind of... sleepy," grunted the half-ogre. He looked at me from beneath hooded lids, and I sensed him straining to cling to consciousness.

  "Poison!" she whispered, bending to examine the wound. Though the monster's fangs had barely grazed Badswell's wrist, the wound was angry and inflamed. The scratch had already raised a large welt, and I could imagine the potent venom creeping up his arm toward his heart.

  Taking a tiny hand and wrapping it around her jade amulet, placing her other hand over the sinister wound, Saysi murmured a quiet prayer. The rest of us stood silently, watching, except for Rathentweed, whose eyes darted back and forth around the intersecting corridors. No doubt he expected a rank of raklupis to charge into view at any moment.

  "Patrikon grant me this power, the touch of your benign hand...." Her words trailed off as the prayer of healing took hold.

  The little priestess winced suddenly, then wrapped her tiny fingers even more tightly around the half-ogre's big wrist. I sensed her magic flowing, perceived the magical touch of Patrikon through the vast distances of the planes.

  Abruptly Badswell snorted and blinked, smacking his heavy lips as his eyes flickered open. "Wakin' up now," he acknowledged, though he winced when he put his weight on the wounded limb in an effort to rise.

  "The staff!" Saysi said insistently, turning to Parnish. "My spell halted the spread of the poison, but the power of the staff is needed to cure the wound."

  The wizard stepped to the half-ogre's side. Impatiently Saysi tugged the narrow end of the
rod, the part that had once been my lone stub of ebony, toward the wound. At the touch, the swelling subsided visibly, the skin closing over the angry-looking gash. All that remained was a scar of red flesh. Saysi wrapped a clean cloth around his wrist, and finally Badswell stood, strong and steady and once more ready to move.

  Rathentweed turned back from looking up and down the adjoining corridors, addressing Parnish. "Can you tell, my lord, where we are to go from here?"

  With both hands on the nearly assembled staff, the wizard closed his eyes behind the wire spectacles. I could sense his concentration as he sought the subtle emanations of the seventh and final segment. "My feeling leads me upward," replied Parnish Fegher after a few moments' reflection. He indicated the divided hallway. "Either direction might be as good as the other."

  Wordlessly I stepped into the lead again, determined that my mistake in judgment would not be repeated. Choosing the left corridor, perhaps because that was the direction from which the raklupis had approached, I proceeded along the passageway. Badswell held his axe easily in one hand and came along closely behind.

  Once again we made our way through the fortress prison of the wolf-spider. I lost track of how long we spent wandering the halls, taking guesses at each intersection, climbing marbled stairways wherever we found them. Sometimes the walls around us were the same pure blue as those that had flanked our initial entry; on other occasions, we walked between panels of black or white, and once we found ourselves in a stretch of the maze where our surroundings were blood red.

  In many places, rubble was strewn throughout the passages, great pieces of rock ripped from the walls with blows of singular violence. Boulders bigger than Badswell's head appeared to have been hurled into corners, chipping away massive wedges from the walls. I could only imagine at the fury of the confined wolf-spider that would drive him to tearing at the foundation of his fortress during his long eons of captivity.

  We reached a steep, narrow stairway and found that many of the steps had been bashed away, battered by a barrage of rubble. Here we were forced to scramble up with the aid of our hands, like scaling a small stretch of cliff. With me at the top and Badswell hoisting at the bottom, we easily passed the other companions to safety. Then, grunting from exertion, the half-ogre himself scaled the sheer barrier.

  There was no discernible pattern to the layout of hallways and floors—nor, I realized after an interminable amount of time, did there seem to be any actual rooms. Perhaps they were concealed behind the walls, accessed by secret doors. There must have been something other than the corridors, for these halls were long, the intersections infrequent. Yet as far as we could tell, the rest of the fortress might have been solid rock. Several times Rath paused to tap against the walls, which invariably resulted in a thud as solid and free of resonance as any mountainous bedrock. Of course, that would have also been the case if the walls were merely very thick, so we couldn't draw any real conclusions from this experiment.

  The only encouraging feature of our exploration was that we did seem to be able to work our way, very gradually, into the higher reaches of the keep. The stairways were generally no wider than the halls, and they varied in length from about a dozen steps to one long, spiraling circuit of no less than one hundred. Finally one of these flights—it must have been the fifth or sixth that we encountered—seemed wider, more grand, than the steps that had led us to this point, and as we embarked upon this climb, I allowed myself to hope that we were drawing nearer to our goal.

  The walls in this part of the fortress were of a green as pure as the most beautiful emerald, and the floors matched this color in a darker, more opaque hue. The ceiling remained concealed by misty vapor—naturally, here it was a viridescent green in color—and likewise the upper reaches of the wide, straight staircase were masked by the brightly colored mist. Perhaps because this time it blocked our view of what lay ahead, I began to see that mist as a sinister thing, a concealment for ambushers or a seething cloud of poisonous mist that might float forward to enwrap us all in a shroud of death.

  The steps were at least thirty feet wide, and we all climbed abreast. Saysi took the left flank, I noticed with a pang; since I was beside Parnish, near the right, this left Badswell and Rathentweed between us, and I feared that her distancing was intentional. Still, I focused on the climb and tried to see through the cloaking mist that screened the upper reaches of the steps.

  That obfuscation seemed to actually rise before us. At least, it seemed that it remained a constant distance away, even as we made steady progress upward. After uncountable minutes of climbing, we paused to catch our breath, still in the midst of this eternal stairway.

  "Look—can't see the bottom anymore," Badswell observed, turning to look behind.

  The half-ogre was right. Green vapor had seeped into the lower reaches of the stairs, masking the flight about fifty or sixty steps below—the same distance, approximately, that we could see above us.

  "Do you still feel the lure of the seventh piece?" Rathentweed asked Parnish, and the wizard nodded curtly in reply.

  Having caught our breath, we once again resumed the ascent, plodding through the seemingly endless series of steps, approaching the upper reaches of the keep.

  "Listen... hear that?" It was Badswell who spoke, raising a hamlike fist to halt our ascent.

  "No," I replied as the sounds of our walking faded away, leaving the great fortress in a well of silence as deep and all-encompassing as death itself.

  "What is it? What do you hear?" Saysi asked worriedly.

  Without replying, Badswell sprang ahead, all but sprinting forward, leaping up the steps as fast as his treetrunk legs could carry him.

  "Wait!" I cried, bounding after him. The others followed, but couldn't keep up with me—and I couldn't catch Badswell, who ran with a grace and speed that I had never before observed in the big fellow.

  Finally the mist dissolved, parting around Badswell's lumbering form like seawater breaking around the prow of a fast ship. I saw the upper terminus of the stairs, a wide landing with passages extending straight ahead and to either side. Bounding up the last steps, the half-ogre didn't pause before he veered to the left, skidding on the slick floor, and charged into the hallway.

  His turn carried him out of my sight, and I renewed my efforts, leaping up the last dozen steps, darting after my friend. Desperately fearing for his safety and sanity, I caught a glimpse of him once more, well ahead of me. Badswell lumbered steadily, showing no signs of tiring as he lowered his head and charged along. Now, at least, I was able to close the distance. The half-ogre planted his boots and darted around another corner, but by this time, I was right at his heels. I darted around the corner, crashing into Badswell's back as he abruptly halted.

  Finally I heard the singing, and I knew that this was the sound that had drawn my friend into his impetuous advance. Two female creatures stood there, eyes closed, voices raised in a faintly musical song—more of a chant, actually, but then that was fitting, given the grotesque appearance of the singers.

  Both were huge, nearly seven feet tall, massively muscular. They were humanlike, but not quite human. I realized, with a grimace of dismay, that they, like Badswell, were crossbreeds of ogre and human! The nearest, her head surrounded by a thick cascade of dark black hair, opened her eyes to meet Badswell's adoring gaze. The tip of a dark tongue slid between her meaty lips, tickling between two dainty, blunt tusks. She smiled, and my friend took a faltering step, reaching out, falling toward the arms extended to embrace him.

  I reacted without stopping to think, shouldering Bads aside and driving my sword into the creature. The golden blade stabbed home, drawing a shriek of unworldly pain from the monster I had instinctively pierced. She staggered back, pulling free of the blade, and I chopped once more with a vicious sideswipe, lopping the head from those brawny shoulders.

  "Kip—no!" Badswell's voice was a wail of grief and fury, emotions I remembered all too well from my own confused encounter with the deceit
ful raklupis.

  The heavy body fell to the floor, flailing reflexively, as the head thumped nearby. Already the tusked feminine features were changing, the jaws extending, the head sprouting smooth black fur as it transformed into the horrific lupine image of a raklupis. Twisting and writhing, the body ripped under internal pressure, legs sprouting to right and left. The two humanoid arms remained, clutching at air, while the heavy ogre legs became bent and arachnoid. Six more legs, three from each side, tore free, and as the corpse finally grew still, it was the body of a giant spider that lay, stiff and rigid, on its back.

  Hoping the half-ogre would retain enough of his sanity not to stab me in the back, I turned toward the other half-ogre female. This one had pulled a long dagger and used the weapon to deflect my first crushing attack. Instead of striking at me, however, she darted past, driving the blade toward Badswell's broad chest.

  "Wait... what...?"

  The big fellow gaped stupidly, making no move to raise his axe. Desperately I spun, bringing the Vaati Blade around to chop the female half-ogre in the back of her neck. She went down, twitching and flexing, and I stabbed her again, then stepped back as the transformation distorted the already grotesque features, pulling them into the gruesome image of a lifeless raklupis.

  Badswell blinked back his tears, looking at me without comprehension, "She was so beautiful.... Why did you kill her?"

  "Look at her!" I demanded. "It was a trick, just like they tried to trick me!"

  Shaking his head, snuffling loudly, Bads made a cursory glance at the two corpses, then turned about with a wounded expression. Irritated with his stubbornness, I sheathed my still-immaculate blade, then stepped out of the alcove to rejoin him. Saysi and Parnish had arrived by this time, and I briefly explained the situation.

  Still blinking, Badswell looked at the bodies and scratched his head. I got the feeling he was beginning to piece together the events that had drawn him here and the fact that I had saved his life.