Descent into the Depths of the Earth (28 page)

As the solitary drow trader approached, a bugbear halted him
with an upraised hand and spoke in its guttural, snarling tongue. The drow
looked at the floor stiffly and gave a grunt, shrugging his shoulders. The
bugbear nodded as if in agreement, then presented its hand toward the drow, palm
upward.

The drow hesitated, looked confused, and then put a platinum
coin into the bugbear’s hand. The gigantic goblinoid blinked at the coin, looked
pleased, pocketed the trinket, then presented its hand once again.

The creature jiggled its hand and snarled out a few words,
then pointed to the drow’s cloak pin. Alarmed, the drow began to pat its pockets
in confusion. It turned to face the pack lizard, careful not to touch the thing,
since it was only a flimsy illusion spell case over a floating, misshapen string
of shapes tied up in an old tarpaulin. Pretending to search its own robes, the
drow hissed a whisper into empty air.

“Why does it want to look at my cloak pin?”

“Cloak pin?” Invisible and sitting astride the floating
canvas sausage, Escalla felt a flash of inspiration. “Oh! I think he wants your
identification!”

“Identification?” Transformed into drow shape by one of
Escalla’s spells, Private Henry quailed. “I don’t have any identification!”

“Lessee… we found some weird stuff.” Escalla remembered
the gold hairpin filched from the drow sorceress who had turned into a manta
ray. The faerie extracted the pin and slipped it into Henry’s hands. “There you
go! Give this a try.”

His ashen pallor making his black skin gray, Henry turned and
placed the golden pin in the hands of the bugbear. The huge goblinoid took one
look at the spider symbol upon the pin and instantly fell to its knees. Its
companions clumsily followed suit, holding their bloodstained clubs against
their chests in salute. Henry accepted the pin back from the guard, raised his
hand in a vague attempt at benediction, then towed his rather awkward pack
lizard past the guard-post and into the caves.

“There we are—simple!” Escalla, utterly invisible and
therefore not sweating in fear, waved to drow guards and merchants. “You see Jus
over there?”

Carefully ignoring the pack lizard and Henry, Jus sat tied to
a stalagmite near the lich’s cave. Polk had been tied to the opposite side of
the same stone pillar, and the little man’s mouth was moving as he showered an
unwanted soliloquy on empty air. Pulling his long, stark white locks from his
face, the dark elf that was Private Henry peered over at his friends.

“Are they all right?”

“Pretty much. Polk just has to hope Jus doesn’t get one hand
free.” Escalla nudged the boy with her battle wand. “All the trogs and bugbears
seem to be gathering at the warrens. Let’s get baby over there as innocently as
possible.”

The long canvas sausage, lumped and ugly, was covered by one
of Escalla’s better illusion spells. Even so, the bobbing train of floating
shapes were a poor simulation of a giant pack lizard’s gait. Private Henry towed
the ungainly mass along through the air behind him.

Perhaps forty troglodytes snarled and fought over a vile,
blood-filthy feast. Other troglodytes had gathered behind by the score, booming
huge calls that shuddered through the air. Swarms of bugbears clustered nearby,
glaring in naked hunger and envy at the feast.

Henry brought his lizard close to the flesh eating, blood
spattered mob. Pale with fright, the boy fumbled, then tied the leash of his
lizard to a stalactite only a few feet behind the snarling, jeering mobs of
monsters. He breathed raggedly, his eyes bright with fright, and then felt an
invisible kiss on his cheek.

“You all right, Hen?”

“Just fine.”

“Alrighty!” Escalla’s wings whirred like a dragonfly. “Just
stroll over to Jus and wait for the fun!”

Henry tried to hold his loaded crossbow as innocently as
possible. Wearing somewhat un-elven garments, he had already attracted side-wise
glances from the drow. The magic sword Benelux gleamed gaudy and golden as it
hung over his shoulder. The boy, trying to look nonchalant, began to make the
long walk toward Jus and Polk.

A drow straightened his belt and began to make a determined
course toward Henry. The deception could only last a few more seconds. Slapping
her hands together, Escalla flew through the belly of her illusory lizard and
began unplucking knots of hairy string. She whistled as she worked, the noise
unheard over the roar and snarl of feeding troglodytes and the insults hurled by
bugbear hordes.

The last knot untied, the tarpaulin jerked away and fell. As
the paralyzed beholder thudded to the ground, Escalla tossed a magic floating
disc beneath it and sent it scooting off to the north. Behind it, the canvas
sausage suddenly disintegrated. Escalla turned and fled faster than any faerie
had ever gone before.

The illusory pack lizard stretched, then came apart. In the
packed central mob of feeders, food, audience, and jeering crowds, some heads
turned—and then screamed in terror. Spreading up from the bursting body of the
pack lizard came great bobbing, floating spheres—fleshy globes crowned with eyes
on stalks and with fanged, snarling mouths.

The spheres began to scoot in all directions, propelled by
internal gasses. The jammed hordes of bugbears and lizards froze in shock until
a little voice pealed out across the cave.

“Hey, boys!”
Thirty yards away, Escalla posed with a
swarm of golden bees circling one fingertip. “Wanna see my party trick?”

Magic missiles flew out from Escalla’s fingertips and thudded
into all eight floating gas spheres. The universe seemed to take a breath of
shock. The troglodyte chieftain had time to swell his throat in the beginnings
of a scream, and then one end of the cavern disappeared in a thunderous blast of
light.

The gas spores detonated in an instant, each one exploding in
a titanic fireball. Bugbears and lizards nearest to the spheres were atomized,
while others flew backward as the flesh was blasted from their bones. The
explosions rocked the cavern, shattering the ceiling of the warrens and bringing
rock falls avalanching down. The ground shuddered. Ceilings collapsed. A few
surviving monsters staggered, burned and screaming through the dust, to be
crushed by rock falls cascading from above. The distant tribal warren dissolved
as thousands of tons of rock collapsed in a massive cloud of debris.

Escalla gave a victory scream. With dust choking the air
around her, she sat atop the paralyzed beholder, riding it like a juggernaut as
it sped along on its floating disk. The girl fired a spell past Private Henry,
turning cavern stone to bubbling mud and sinking drow to their deaths.
Wide-eyed, the boy pelted toward the Justicar.

Drowning dark elves fired wild shots from their crossbows.
Henry skidded to a halt beside Jus and Polk just as a crossbow bolt whizzed
overhead to strike sparks from the cave wall. The boy dragged out a knife and
hacked at the ropes binding Jus and Polk. Strands fell, and then suddenly Henry
jerked in pain, a poisoned drow dart grazing the skin of his thigh. Escalla’s
stoneskin spell had failed. Jus tore free and snatched the boy’s dagger from his
grasp, hurling the knife straight into the archer’s groin.

Henry fell, alive but paralyzed. Jus reached for the sword at
the boy’s belt, only to have a nasal female voice bellow at him from midair.

Not that one, fool!

The sword across Henry’s shoulders shot half out of its
sheath. The handle was gaudy with jeweled unicorns, but the blade itself shone a
brilliant white as though the blade were made from living light. Jus gripped the
weapon and slid it free, feeling its pure, pleasurable weight singing in his
hands.

Drow merchants leaped over their pack lizards, screaming in
battle rage. Jus turned. In one split second he cut the legs from a drow in
midair, decapitated another as it landed, and cut a swath in another that
sprayed a fountain of blood. The last drow fired a crossbow. Jus angled the
sword to send the crossbow bolt flickering off into the dark, saw the drow’s
eyes wince as the sword’s light flashed in its eyes, then an instant later
plunged the blade right through the creature’s guts. The drow folded, screaming
out a spell. Its wound closed, the drow staggered back, only to be sheared in
two by one massive, roaring swing of the pure white blade.

Body parts were still hitting the ground as Jus whirled and
looked for targets. Echoing in his mind, the sword’s voice seemed a tad stunned.

You’ll be the Justicar. I, ah, I’m pleased to meet you.

Bugbears and troglodytes were staggering from the rubble.
More drow guards were racing to the spot. Jus saw Escalla atop her strange
floating mount, then the girl pointed behind him to the lich’s cave.

“Jus!”

A blast of ice-cold air swept forth, and the lich strode out
of its lair. In one chilling glance the entity took in the disaster and
destruction, then saw the Justicar standing in a ring of butchered drow. The
monster gave a feral hiss, body crouching like a beast as it opened hands that
streamed with magic spells.

From behind it, a raucous little voice screamed out across
the cave. “Hey, handsome!”

The lich whirled. Two dozen yards away, a faerie in a ragged
black silk dress sat astride a beholder. With a nasty laugh, Escalla wrenched
open the lid of the beholder’s huge central eye, unveiling the monster’s angry
glare.

A spell was already formed in the lich’s rotting mouth. It
screamed the symbols of a death spell only to have the magic disappear. The
beholder’s gaze shot out its ray of force, nullifying the lich’s magic and
stripping it of its powers.

Jus raged forward, the white sword streaming with light, and
the lich turned and ripped a small rod from the sleeve of its robe. Jus streaked
his sword blade down, and the lich whipped up its hand, the rod shooting out to
become a staff smothered in blood red runes. The sword blow was parried, but the
sheer force of it blasted the lich back against the cavern wall. Screaming in
fury, the undead sorcerer threw itself at Jus, the runestaff lunging for the
ranger’s eyes.

The white blade flashed, sparks spitting as it hit the staff.
Inhumanly fast, demonically strong, the lich fought with its staff, blurring
blow after blow at Jus, each stroke met instantly by the human’s sword.

The lich leaped and lunged.

Jus parried the blow.

As the staff tip hit the floor, energy exploded outward,
blasting chunks of rock apart. Light flashed and an insane scream of anger
echoed through the halls. The lich staggered, a wound cut into its side, its
flesh seeming to explode as its own substance began to disintegrate.

With the sword cut still spreading destruction into its
mummified flesh, the monster roared and launched a series of mad attacks. It
whirled, the staff striking, rock exploding and sparks flying as Jus fell back
toward Escalla. Huge and solid, the ranger retreated, his sword moving in sharp,
short motions, never once making an attack. Even so, the man began to slip his
parries.

Seeing a sudden opening, the lich roared and lunged its staff
forward at Jus’ heart, power raging along the runes and ready to blow living
flesh apart. Already moving, his bait taken, Jus spun on his axis, brushed the
staff with his sword and sent it skimming a hair’s breath past his chest. In a
white blur, the sword swiped the lich’s head from its neck.

The sword screamed in triumph, utterly amazed.
Well
struck! Well struck!
The weapon crowed in delight.
Sir, I believe we
shall get along famously!

The lich’s body staggered forward, whirled, and then latched
a hand onto Jus’ arm. Flesh smoked as the freezing grasp took hold. Jus snarled
and hacked the hand from its arm, leaving the claws locked in his tunic. Its
flesh burned, boiling with little explosions where the white blade had cut. Jus
roared and smashed his sword down through the headless body, cleaving it to the
pelvis. He kept the blade twisting inside the body, the undead flesh burning. A
scream shattered the air, and a wraith-like swirl of energy punched into the
air. Abandoning its body, the soul of the lich fled to sanctuary.

Leaping down from the beholder, Escalla shouted, “Hey, Jus!
Great rescue, huh?” She waved a hand proudly at the beholder. “And look! It
followed me home. Can I keep him?” She grinned, then heard the beholder on its
floating disk give a groggy growl. “Oh crap!”

The girl whirled, spread her hands and sent the beholder,
disk and all, spinning off toward the collapsing warrens. Flying toward Jus, the
girl gave a panicked little yell. “Jus, we’re in trouble!”

“Where’s Cinders?”

“I’ll get him!” The girl fired her wand and sealed side
caverns with walls of ice. “Get Henry and Polk, then run northwest!”

Jus obeyed, lumbering off to heave Henry over one shoulder
and drag Polk to his feet. He shoved Polk ahead and ran into the tunnels.

Escalla fired a last blast from her wand, swore as she saw
the charge counter drooping dangerously low, then swooped low over the cavern
floor.

The lich’s body had stopped disintegrating. The undead corpse
lay hacked and twisted, half dissolved and still smoldering. Escalla took one
look at the creature’s rune staff, touched a control and it snapped back to the
size of a toothpick. The faerie gleefully jammed it through the belt of her
robe. Whirling, she sped into the lich’s lair and stared about in confusion at a
cave entirely wallpapered with living mouths.

“Cinders?”

Here.

The hell hound skin lay bundled uncomfortably near a pile of
loot. Polk’s backpack, bits of drowish cloth… it all lay there in a heap.
Escalla sped over to the lich’s secret hiding place and dug her hand into the
crevice. She pulled out a carefully folded piece of black cloth and began to
shake it open.