The Ring of Winter (16 page)

Artus could see only two Batiri, and they were quite close.

“Leave be, Balt,” one of the warriors snorted. He sat at the base of a massive tree, not ten feet from the prison. A spear leaned against the trunk, well out of the goblin’s reach. “Prisoner no get away. I club on head again if he try to run.”

The Batiri with the dinosaur-hide breastplate loomed over the guard, fury dancing across his features. His grimace revealed a small pair of fangs. “I club you,” he snarled. “You march or you go to Grumog.”

The guard was slow to his feet, but he heeded Balt’s warning. Taking up the spear, he marched toward the prison. This was the chance Artus needed. He ducked beneath the cover of the roof and tensed, waiting for the goblin to get close. The shuffling of flat feet got nearer … nearer.

Artus burst through the fronds and grabbed the guard by the ankle. Raising his spear, the goblin shouted in surprise, but he couldn’t strike before Artus yanked his foot from beneath him. With a shriek, the guard toppled onto the roof. The bamboo supports cracked, then broke under his weight. The warrior crashed to the floor of the prison amidst a rain of bamboo splinters and torn fronds.

Balt rushed forward, drawing a wickedly curved scimitar. He lashed out just as Artus pulled himself up from the hole, but the explorer somehow managed to roll out of the way. The blade bit into the ground next to Artus’s head, and a dollop of mud slapped into the explorer’s face. Blinded in one eye by the muck, he tried to kick Balt. The goblin used the flat of his blade to easily divert the awkward attack.

“Escape!” a deep voice bellowed. Then another joined in. “Capture Grumog’s bounty!”

These weren’t goblin voices shattering the silence, but the gravelly cries of the totems before each hut. The leering, twisted faces on each wooden pole shouted warnings to their masters, calling the Batiri to arms. Balt smiled at the cacophony, certain the village would rouse itself in time to recapture the human … if he didn’t subdue the man first himself.

Artus saw that confidence in the goblin’s yellow eyes. He’ll expect me to run now, the explorer realized. Better not disappoint him.

With speed born of exhilaration and more than a touch of fear, Artus rolled away from Balt and jumped to his feet. He took one step toward the jungle, just as the goblin expected, then wheeled around. Balt’s guard was down, and he was nowhere near quick enough to block the vicious right hook Artus threw. The punch landed squarely on the warrior’s lantern jaw, sending him reeling to the very brink of the pit. Balt dropped his scimitar and windmilled his arms in an attempt to save himself, but it was futile. Artus snatched up the sword and struck the goblin in the chest with one fluid stroke. The dinosaur-hide armor protected Balt from the blade, but not the push backward. He tumbled into the pit, cursing and shouting.

Batiri warriors began to stream out of their dark little huts, spears and small bows in their hands. Arrows buzzed around Artus like angry bees as he pushed into the jungle. He could hear the goblins swarming around their village, shouting orders that could be heard even over the wailing of their totems.

It’s pointless to try to outrun them, Artus decided, especially with night coming on fast. Maybe I can hide out until dawn, then make a break for it. That plan in mind, the explorer stealthily scrambled up the neatest tall tree. Shielded by the thick foliage, he observed the goblins without being seen.

To Artus’s surprise, only a few scattered groups of Batiri combed the bush looking for him. These hunting parties, made up of ten or more warriors each, beat the bushes and checked behind each boulder in the jungle immediately surrounding the village. A few even scanned the trees, though they acted as if they didn’t think it likely the human would hide there.

The remaining goblins milled around the village. A few went from totem to totem, slapping the wooden sentinels to make them stop their shouting. A handful found a rope ladder and were in the process of rescuing Balt and the unconscious guard from the muddy pen. Most just lit torches outside their homes, jabbered, and pointed toward the ruined prison.

As the commotion died down, Artus recognized another sound—a familiar voice pleading for mercy.

Judar’s screams filled the air, clear and chilling. Artus couldn’t see the Tabaxi guide, but it sounded as if the noise was coming from inside the largest building in the village, an impressive two-story wooden structure with a peaked roof. A gaping pit yawned next to this building, and a white metal gong hung from a wooden stand at its edge. From Theron’s story, Artus guessed this to be the lair of the Batiri’s god, Grumog.

They’re going to sacrifice him, Artus realized. He pushed aside as much of his cover as he dared, trying to catch a glimpse of the unfortunate man. Indecision gripped him, and his conscience prodded him to try something, anything, to save Judar. He couldn’t just sit by while they tortured him or tossed him to the creature in the pit.

In the end, Artus didn’t have to decide. From the tangle of branches and leaves above him came a high trill and the clack of mandibles. He looked up just in time to see a monstrous spider, his equal in size and as hairy as any wolf, As the creature lurched forward, Artus realized why the goblins hadn’t given the trees much attention. He also lamented the fact that the Batiri had taken his dagger; for the first time in years he could have used the enchantment that allowed him to control spiders, and he didn’t have the blasted thing.

Still, Artus was armed, and his reflexes and years of fighting such lurking menaces saved him. He jabbed up with the goblin’s scimitar, skewering the spider. The momentum of the creature’s lunge impaled it farther upon the blade, but it also knocked Artus out of the tree. His fall, as luck would have it, was broken by several Batiri. There his good fortune ended, for the hunters were neither killed nor stunned, just bruised and enraged.

He scuffled with them, breaking one goblin’s arm and shattering another’s knee, but they overwhelmed him by sheer strength of numbers. The only thing Artus felt fortunate about as they carried him back to the village was that no one had thought it necessary to hit him on the head again.

All the while, Judar’s screams rang out. The goblins paid this noise little mind as they brought Artus to the center of the village, to the steps of the two-story building he had seen from the tree. The screaming stopped and the doors to the wooden building opened. Shrouded in shadows, two figures emerged. “I’m glad that’s done with,” one of them said. “My throat is raw.”

The words were Judar’s, save that the voice was even higher than normal, even more like a woman’s. In the gloom. Artus could only make out dark shapes in the doorway. Then a half-dozen torches flared to life on either side of the stairs.

Kaverin Ebonhand stepped from the doorway, his jet-black hands closed in tight fists before him. “This time, Cimber,” he said slyly, “I’d say I have you.”

Eight

“Kaverin!” Artus screamed. He pulled away from the goblins, even managed to get halfway to the stairs before seven Batiri warriors tackled him from behind.

The red-haired man shook his head in mock sadness. Kaverin was dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt and white pants, with high black boots and a wide-brimmed hat. Above his head, the albino monkey hovered in the air, fanning him with its leathery wings.

“Don’t do this, Cimber,” Kaverin said as he walked slowly down the stairs. The winged monkey followed his every move. “I’ve convinced the Batiri queen to sacrifice you to the great and powerful Grumog rather than serve you to her in-laws in a plantain sauce. Don’t give her cause to change her mind.”

Judar laughed that coarse laugh of his. “May I let this dreadful disguise down now?” At a nod from Kaverin, he closed his eyes and murmured an incantation. At first Artus thought his vision was blurred by the tears of rage burning his eyes; Judar’s features softened, then slid away like sand pouring through an hourglass. It was truly sand that fell from the person who had disguised herself as Judar, for such was the main component of the Mulhorandi sorcery Phyrra al-Quim knew best.

The disguise gone, Phyrra rubbed her olive skin and stretched. She turned to Artus, and her round glasses caught the light of the torches, flashing like tiny suns. “Please, tell me they captured you because you were coming back to save me.”

Artus forced a calm facade to slam down over his fury. “Hardly,” Artus murmured. “I was knocked out of the tree by a giant spider.”

“They’re plentiful in this part of the jungle, from what the Batiri tell me,” Kaverin noted. He knit his smooth stone fingers together. “The queen will be here in a moment to toss you into the pit. I hope you know how satisfying this is for me, to see you beaten when you’re so close to the ring. You can go to the Realm of the Dead knowing you led me right to it—well, you and Theron.”

Artus kept his eyes masked. “So that’s it. You were spying on Theron. That’s how you knew to follow me here.”

Idly Kaverin waved the comment aside. His eyes, as always, showed no life, no emotion. “Theron Silvermace was beneath my notice. I’ve had agents of the Cult of Frost trailing you for years, Cimber. That’s an honor, you know. Up until recently, they all had orders to gather information, but leave you alive. Quite sporting, no?”

Phyrra straightened her white robes. Then, dusting sand from her hair, she came to Kaverin’s side. “You’ll be better off dead, Artus,” she taunted. “All your friends are waiting for you in Cyric’s realm—Pontifax, Theron—”

Artus’s facade slipped. “Theron, too?”

“I had hoped to spare him that sadness, my dear,” Kaverin gently admonished. “He’d have met up with the batty old fool soon enough.”

“I’ll see you dead, you bastards,” Artus shouted. He struggled against the goblins’ hold. “If I have to come back from the grave to do it, I’ll—”

Savagely, Kaverin backhanded Artus. A fist-sized bruise purpled on the explorer’s cheek, and his ears rang from the pain. “You’ll do nothing, Cimber. This is the end.” Kaverin removed a small book bound in wyvern hide from his pocket. “I know all your thoughts, all your petty desires, all your sordid little romances. The only thing Quiracus did right was steal this from you. It proved to me you weren’t so worthy an opponent after all.”

“And you killed him, too,” Artus said.

“No, I killed him,” Phyrra gloated.

Artus turned to her. “You’re going to die at Kaverin’s hands, sooner or later, no matter how loyal you are.”

Kaverin frowned. “How predictable. Trying to set us against each other.” He ran a cold jet hand along Phyrra’s cheek, and she smiled. “Phyrra knows full well she’s on her way to the afterlife the moment she fails me. She knows, too, I can offer her more power than she could obtain through more … legitimate allies. Right, my dear?”

“Of course,” she said. Taking a small stick of charcoal from her pocket, Phyrra moved close to Artus. “Don’t move, or I’ll use your own dagger to cut your eyes out. You don’t need to see to be sacrificed to Grumog.”

Carefully the sorceress lifted the medallion from Artus’s chest. She studied the white casing that had so successfully trapped Skuld, then drew a Mulhorandi picture-glyph on it. The metal vibrated and hummed. Blue fire ran along the chain; Artus could feel it tingling on his neck.

“You don’t know how much it galled me to save you from the dinosaurs,” Phyrra said coldly. “If you had let me talk the bearers into camping at Kitcher’s Folly, the goblin raiding party would have caught us there as planned. Instead, I had to cast a spell to mislead the dagger’s compass and trudge through the jungle, pretending to be your trusted servant… .”

“Why not just let the damned monsters kill me?” Artus asked. “Better yet, why didn’t you just send more assassins to the port?”

“Frost minions are too difficult to conjure here and terribly difficult to maintain,” Kaverin replied. “Besides, I’ve decided I need to murder you myself, to stop your heart beating with the hands you forced upon me. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it.” He tossed Artus’s journal into the dirt. “After the minions killed Pontifax, I knew I had beaten you. It was only a matter of sending someone trustworthy to fetch you for the slaughter.”

Phyrra lifted the chain from Artus’s neck and handed the medallion to Kaverin. Tossing his hat aside, he slipped it over his shock of red hair. “You won’t be needing this, Cimber,” he said casually. “I thought it a shame to waste such an interesting artifact.”

The tolling of a gong brought an appreciative murmur from the crowd of goblins that had gathered in front of the central building. Slowly they began to file toward the pit. The seven warriors who held Artus hefted him over their heads and followed. Kaverin walked close behind, as did Phyrra, once she had picked up Artus’s journal.

The pit gaped like a ghastly open wound, mist seeping from it like blood, snaking in long, thin wisps over the ground. A huge gong stood at the widest point, next to a small wooden bridge. A bored young goblin leaned upon the gong’s supports. He watched the procession with heavy-lidded eyes, then smacked his lips and raised a cloth-wrapped club. Again he struck the gong. The sound filled the air, echoing back in distorted tones from the pit.

“We ready to offer chow for Grumog?” came a voice from the throng.

The crowd parted and a female goblin sauntered forward. She had the same general features as the rest of her tribe—mottled red and orange skin, yellow eyes, and a broad, flat nose—but she also possessed a full head of flowing, golden hair, the likes of which would have made any lady in King Azoun’s court jealous. In fact, despite her decidedly goblinlike physiognomy, she might have been considered quite attractive.

It was clear to Artus then how Kaverin had managed to win the Batiri to his cause. The queen wore a beautiful silk dress and sported a dozen brooches and necklaces. Her hands were heavy with rings.

“Queen M’bobo,” Kaverin said smoothly, in his most polished Goblin. He bowed to the monarch and held out a hand. She took it and gracefully came forward. “This is the scoundrel I was telling you about.”