Finder's Stone - Song Of The Saurials Part 15

"But I'm the evil tyrant who holds your life in his hands, so to speak."

"True enough. Is that all you want?"

"No. There is one other little thing. You must bring me Akabar Bel Akash. I believe you are acquainted with the gentleman."

"Akabar?" Finder asked with surprise, echoing Olive's own thoughts. "What do you want with him?"

"He has in his possession something I desire. You must convince him to visit you here."

"I haven't seen Akabar in over a year," Finder argued. "He returned to Turmish."

"He is near Shadowdale now," Xaran corrected him.

"I see," Finder said.

"Well, nameless one?" Xaran prompted.

Olive stood poised at the door, holding a fistful of the magical light stones in one hand and Finder's dagger in the other. This might be my last chance for a surprise attack, she thought.

She reached up and traced the treble clef carved in the doorframe. The door swung open a foot, and with a banshee shriek, the halfling burst out of the workshop and hurled the light stones down the hallway. The orcs screamed in terror at the brilliant light and covered their eyes with their arms. While they were temporarily blinded, Olive lunged out with Finder's dagger to the right, where she'd heard Xaran's voice coming from, but there was no one there. Olive whirled about and pushed Finder through the workshop doorway.

As she turned around again to close the door, she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder, and blood began oozing into the fabric of her tunic. Olive's eyes widened at the sight of what had just attacked her. There, five feet above the ground, just outside the door, floated Xarana"a hideous ball of flesh with a monstrous maw of fangs, one great central bloodshot eye, and a crown of ten eye stalks waving like serpents. Xaran was a beholder!

The halfling realized with a jolt that when she had tried to attack Xaran with the dagger, she'd lunged just beneath it, ironically in the only place it could not harm her with any of its magical eye rays. When she'd pulled back into the supposed safety of the workshop, she'd stepped into its line of vision, and it had hit her with a look from an eye that caused magical wounds.

Olive slammed the door shut before the monster could turn an even deadlier eye in her direction.

"What are you doing?" Finder shouted, squinting in the brightly lit room .

"What am I doing?" Olive squeaked with astonishment. "I'm saving your life! In case you hadn't noticed, there was a beholder out there!"

"I was in the middle of negotiating a deal with it," Finder said angrily.

"Are you nuts? Beholders are incredibly evil!" Olive shrieked.

"So? They are also honorable ... in their own fashion."

"They're also vicious," Olive argued. "As soon as you refused to bring Akabar to it, it would have killed you."

"What makes you think I was going to refuse?" Finder asked.

Olive stared up at the bard in horror, but Finder just glared back at her, offering no further explanation.

She thought she'd shut all the monsters out of the workshop. Now she wasn't certain.

10.

The Hunt

Alias watched with relief as Breck Orcsbane urged his horse down the left-hand fork of the trail they followed in order to scout ahead. The ranger was in a foul mood, and a respite from his company was more than welcome. He scowled constantly at the ground and hardly spoke to her at all, except to complain about Dragonbait. Alias could understand how Breck felt, but silent, uncritical sympathy did not come easily to her. They'd been on the road for three hours now, and at first the ranger's prediction that it would be easy to track Grypht had proven true. They'd begun their search atop Oakwood Knoll and had no trouble finding the creature's path leading down from the knoll. Grypht was large and heavy; his feet sank deep into the wet soil, and his great tail knocked down large swaths of vegetation like a scythe.

Grypht, however, was not a beast, but a creature with intelligence and cunning. He knew enough to travel paths that were rocky whenever possible, where he would leave no prints, or to cut through areas heavily strewn with fallen leaves, where he could use his tail to brush the leaves around to cover his pa.s.sage. Following Grypht proved to be a challenge to the Harper ranger, despite his keen eye and years of tracking experience. He had put himself under so much pressure to avenge Kyre that Alias didn't like to think what would happen if they lost Grypht's trail.

The ranger would have been happier, Alias realized, tracking alone. Then he could grieve for the half-elf in private. They couldn't risk having him find Akabar and Grypht without the presence of others, though. In the state Breck was in, he'd end up attacking Grypht or Akabar or both and end up dead himself. Since Mourngrym had forced Breck to travel with two relative strangers, the ranger repressed his grief behind a wall of hostility.

As for Breck's complaints about Dragonbait, though. Alias was on the verge of agreeing with the ranger's desire to leave the saurial behind. She'd begun the hunt arguing with Breck in Dragonbait's defense. The ranger didn't want to travel with Dragonbait unless he was mounted, as they were. Breck kept insisting that the creature would slow them down, but Alias had explained that Dragonbait could keep up with a trotting horse for hours. Since then, the saurial paladin had proceeded to make a liar out of her so often that even she was growing annoyed with him. He fell behind again and again for no appar. ent reason, as if he had no interest in their hunt. Once when the swordswoman had turned around to urge him to keep up, Alias had found him gathering nuts. Several times he seemed to know the path Grypht was taking but would not reveal it until Breck had discovered it for himself.

Alias had first noticed the saurial sniffing the air when they were on Oakwood Knoll. When the party had reached the first stony path, he'd sniffed the air again. Once Breck had disappeared down the path to check the trail to the north, the saurial had taken a few steps down the path to the south and sat down with a sigh. He did the same thing at a second fork, and again at a creek bed. He'd waited a quarter of an hour while Breck rode around searching for the trail beneath a thick carpet of leaves, until it seemed as if the ranger might explode. Then the paladin had casually plodded through the leaves in a direction which Brock, following behind, later found to be correct.

Finally guessing that the saurial's sense of smell might be as sharp as any hunting hound's, Breck had asked Alias to ask Dragonbait to lead the way, but at the next choice of intersections, Dragonbait scratched his head and acted confused. Breck, completely frustrated with the paladin, had resumed the lead.

Alias, familiar with her companion's phony "dumb animal" routine, had glared at the saurial and whispered, "What is wrong with you? Why won't you help him?"

The ranger is beyond my help, Dragonbait had signed.

Alias had ridden off after the ranger in a huff. She didn't know what had gotten into the paladin, but she knew they couldn't afford to alienate Breck completely. Aside from worrying about keeping the ranger from starting a battle with Akabar and Grypht, in the back of Alias's mind was the realization that if they ever did locate Nameless, Breck was one of the bard's judges.

Now, as Breck disappeared down the fork in the road, Alias dismounted to stretch her legs. Dragonbait was nowhere to be seen. The swordswoman walked back down the path to see what he was up to. She spotted him tying a strip of blue cloth to a tree branch just above his head. She crept up behind him until she was a mere three feet away.

"What are you doing?" she asked suddenly.

Dragonbait jumped and whirled around, obviously startled.

"You're marking the trail," she exclaimed in surprise. "Why?"

Mourngrym might come, Dragonbait signed.

"Mourngrym is not coming," Alias retorted. She reached up to yank the strip of cloth from the tree and nearly lost her balance when she tripped on a heap of walnuts piled on the trail just below the branch.

"Why are you leaving nuts out on the trail?" she demanded.

An offering to Tymora, the saurial signed.

"Nuts?" Alias cried. "Since when does Lady Luck demand offerings of nuts? Dragonbait, what has gotten into you? Why are you slowing us down?"

Breck's too angry, Dragonbait signed as he had at the tower. He's not getting any calmer.

"But you're only making him angrier. And you still haven't told me why you're marking the trail," Alias said. "What are the nuts for, anyway?"

Dragonbait pointed down the trail. Breck had returned. The saurial loped up to the ranger's horse.

Alias growled to herself. Dragonbait was keeping something from her, she was certain of it. She followed her companion back down the trail. "Did you find anything?" she asked Breck as she mounted her horse.

Breck nodded wordlessly and led the way back down the fork of the trail he'd just examined.

Dragonbait slapped at Alias's horse so it trotted down the trail ahead of him. It took the swordswoman a moment to slow her mount and turn to be sure the paladin was following. Dragonbait trotted past her. Alias turned her horse again and followed him. She'd spotted another strip of cloth hanging from a branch to mark the fork they now rode on. It wouldn't do to confront the saurial in front of Breck, but eventually she'd find out what he was up to if she had to shake it out of the paladin.

Akabar watched with fascination as Grypht studied the teleport spell carved into his staff. The carvings didn't look the least bit like any writing Akabar had ever seen. They appeared to be nothing but notches and lines carved at irregular intervals. The Turmish scholar longed to pester the saurial wizard into translating for him, but Grypht's tongues spell had worn off. Besides, they had both agreed that the most important thing was for them to return as soon as possible to Shadowdale, so Akabar remained silent.

In the back of the Turmishman's mind, he was anxious about Zhara. He had a blurry memory of Kyre speaking some spell that included his wife's name. Dragonbait had promised to look after her, though, which a.s.suaged the southern mage's fears considerably. Still, he'd be glad to get back to Zhara.

He'd also be relieved to get out of the forest wilderness all around them. The slender oak saplings that surrounded them were lovely, but there were three especially large maples off to one side whose appearance the mage found disturbing. By their size, Akabar judged them to be hundreds of years old, but he didn't expect they could live much longer. Their trunks were riddled with insect bore holes. Sucker vines covered many of their branches. While some of their leaves were an autumnal gold, most were brown and dry far too early in the season. He hadn't noticed the trees when he first regained consciousness, but now he couldn't get them out of his mind, even when he turned his eyes away from them. As the sun sank lower in the sky and the shadows lengthened and deepened, the sickly trees and even the young oak saplings seemed to close in on the forest clearing where they sat.

Akabar started and gave a shout. The trees were closing in on them. The oak saplings surrounded them in a neat ring, twenty feet across, standing so close together that their trunks resembled the bars of a prison. There was no s.p.a.ce wide enough to pa.s.s between them; the two mages were trapped inside the circle of saplings with the three great maple trees. At Akabar's shout, Grypht looked up from his staff with a look of annoyance that his study had been interrupted. The moment the saurial spotted the maples, he leaped to his feet and roared.

Just then Akabar noticed the features of a face on one of the older maples. He also noticed that the tree's trunk split into two great, bark-covered legs. The maples weren't trees at all, Akabar realized. They were treants, good creatures who protected the forest. All three treants closed in on Grypht. The saurial wizard growled threateningly and held out his hand to cast a spell.

"Wait!" Akabar warned, stepping between the saurial and the treant he was pointing at. "These trees are treants," the Turmishman said. "They won't harm us."

Grypht growled again, shoving Akabar aside. Akabar remembered then that the saurial could no longer understand him. Somehow he had to figure out a way to keep the wizard from injuring the treants. The smell of fresh-mown hay began to fill the meadow as Grypht began sprinkling a tiny white ball with yellow powder.

"No!" Akabar shouted. He rushed toward the saurial wizard and yanked at the sleeve of his robe, jerking his arm to one side, so that the fireball Grypht had summoned exploded off to one side of the treants instead of in their midst. Immediately several of the oak saplings surrounding them crackled into flame.

Suddenly Akabar felt himself being lifted off the ground by the sash around his robe. Akabar strained around and looked up. A huge treant held him in one of its woody hands and glared down at him.

"Please," Akabar said in common, "don't harm the saurial. He's a visitor from another world. He doesn't understand about treants."

The treant cackled wickedly and pointed at Grypht with its free leafy hand. "Kill him!" it ordered the other two treants in a booming voice.

"No!" Akabar shouted, struggling fiercely and beating ineffectively at the wooden hand holding him nearly ten feet off the ground.

Unable to cast a spell before the treants were upon him, Grypht grabbed the arm of the nearest one and swung his feet from the ground like a child swinging from a tree branch. Unable to bear the weight of the giant lizard, the treant's arm broke away from its body with the dull sound of a rotting log when it crumbles beneath a woodsman's axe. Dust rose from the decayed wooden arm as it crashed to the ground.

The injured treant's face formed a scowl, but it gave no indication that it felt any pain.

Akabar's eyes widened in horror. From the hollow depression where the treant's arm had broken away from the trunk, a slimy green tendril shot out and whipped about Grypht's throat. Akabar realized he'd made a terrible mistake. These creatures might once have been treants, but like Kyre, they'd been infested somehow with a rotting parasite that made them servants of the Darkbringer.

The tendril wrapped about Grypht's throat began to constrict, choking the saurial and pulling him closer to the treant's other arm. With both hands, Gryphyt grabbed a section of the tendril between his throat and the treant and gave a sharp, powerful tug. The tendril snapped in two like a piece of rotten twine, but before Grypht could move away to try another spell, a second treant came up behind him and smashed one of its arms down heavily on the saurial's head.

Grypht fell to the ground, stunned, and both treants began kicking at him with their ma.s.sive wooden legs.

The treant that held Akabar remained motionless. Akabar slid his dagger out of his sleeve and slashed through the sash at his waist. He fell to the ground, landing on his knees, sending needles of pain lancing through them. Quickly he rolled away from the treant, and gritting his teeth against the pain, he staggered to his feet.

Pulling out a piece of red phosphorus from a pocket of his robe, Akabar began to chant in Turmish. The moment before the phosphorus ignited, the mage tossed it into the air and imagined a circle.

A curtain of flame surged up around the treant, trapping it. The wounded treant attacking Grypht was caught in the perimeter of the blazing wall. The creature bellowed, and its dead leaves ignited with a great whoosh, though the bark of its skin smoldered and would not burn.

The remaining treant backed away from the fire, and Grypht seized the opportunity to roll away from the monster's feet toward Akabar. The southern mage spat out another spell and rushed forward to distract the treant so the saurial could escape. Instantly six images of Akabar, magical illusions, rushed forward beside him.

The treant wavered with confusion. It reached out to grab the mage, but its wooden hand closed on empty air, and the image before it blinked out of existence. The treant turned to grab another image.

Behind him, Akabar could smell the scent of Grypht's spellcasting. Two flaming bolts shot between Akabar and his images. The fiery magical weaponry pierced the hide of the treant, setting its leaves alight, but its bark burnt little better than that of its companion.

Grypht picked up the Turmish mage by the waist, slung him over his shoulder, and made a run for the wall of saplings that surrounded them. The small trees were no match for nearly a quarter ton of angry saurial. The scaly wizard crashed through the oak saplings as if they were stalks of gra.s.s. It was several minutes before he stopped running and set Akabar down on the ground. By the light of the saurial's staff, Akabar could see that the creature was badly injured. His breathing was labored, there was a gash in his armor frill, and his scaly face was lacerated and bruised.

Grypht handed Akabar his staff, and from the sleeves of his robe, he pulled out a strip of parchment, some white powder, and a ten-foot length of silken rope. He twisted the parchment strip once before moistening the ends and fastening them together with a dab of the white powder. Then he slipped one end of the rope through the twisted loop of paper, sprinkled it with the rest of the white powder, and tossed it into the air. The rope caught on something unseen and dangled before the saurial's face, suspended from nowhere. Grypht continued to concentrate on the rope for another minutea"extending the length of the spell, Akabar suspecteda"before motioning for the Turmishman to climb it.

Akabar handed Grypht's staff back to him, spat on his hands, and pulled himself up the rope into the extradimensional s.p.a.ce created by the saurial wizard's spell. Grypht tossed him his staff, and then Akabar watched anxiously as the scaly lizard hauled his great bulk up the rope with his muscular arms. Once the wizard had reached the top and collapsed beside him, Akabar pulled the rope up behind them.

The s.p.a.ce they found themselves in was white and empty. The two spell-casters, Grypht's staff, and the rope were the only occupants of the dimension. It was a dull place, but safea" for as long as it lasted. Considering the power Akabar had seen the saurial wizard wield, the Turmishman estimated this dimension spell would last several hours. He turned to ask Grypht what they would do next, but the saurial was unconscious, gasping for air as if he'd been poisoned.

Akabar pulled away the treant vines that remained around the creature's throat, carefully removing the suckers that appeared to be burrowing into the scales and plate protecting Grypht's neck. Almost immediately Grypht began to breathe more easily, though he was still badly injured. One side of his body was scorched from being too close to Akabar's wall of fire. The Turmish mage felt a twinge of guilt at having endangered the wizard, but he'd really had no choice. Mostly, Akabar suspected, Grypht was hurt from the beating he'd taken by the twisted treants.

The only thing to be done now, Akabar realized, was to let the creature rest and heal naturally. He hoped the saurial wizard would awaken before the extradimensional s.p.a.ce dissolved, so they could return to Shadowdale without further incident.

Breck scowled across the ravine and cursed under his breath.

"What is it?" Alias asked, pulling her horse up beside the ranger's mount.

"d.a.m.n magic trick!" the ranger growled. "The creature's taken a dimensional doorway across. We've got to climb down the ravine and back up and pick up the search for the trail again on the other side."

"Oh," Alias replied softly.

Breck glanced at the sun, which lay low near the horizon. "There's just enough light to make it to the other side before dark."

"It's an awfully steep slope for the horses," Alias ventured.

"There's a trail leading down. We pa.s.sed it a few minutes back," Breck said, turning his horse and urging the animal south, along the edge of the ravine.

Alias turned her own horse to follow the ranger. Dragonbait was nowhere in sight, but when she and Breck reached the trail leading down into the ravine, they discovered the saurial seated beside it, munching an apple.

Ignoring Dragonbait, the ranger scratched his horse's neck and spoke some encouraging words into its ear. The horse started down the steep trail without the slightest balk. Alias's mount followed the example set by the lead horse. Dragonbait stood up as they pa.s.sed and followed along behind, tossing his apple core into the brush.

In the ravine, it grew dark before the sun had set, and Dragonbait took the lead. The saurial paladin commanded his magical sword to flame and carried it high, like a torch. The river at the bottom of the ravine was deep and swift, but fortunately the trail led to a rough wooden bridge across the water. They filled their water bottles and continued on. By the time they'd reached the top of the ravine again, the sun had set.

Breck pa.s.sed the saurial and turned his horse back to the north.

"You're not going to try tracking in the dark, are you?" Alias asked.

"There'll be twilight for at least an hour yet," Breck replied, "and the moon is full tonight." He nudged his horse onward.

Dragonbait stood aside so Alias could follow the ranger. The swordswoman checked often to be sure Dragonbait kept up now that it was growing dark. Occasionally she looked down into the ravine, and on one such occasion, she spotted a light moving across the bridge.

Alias halted her horse and waited until Breck had moved out of earshot. Then she dismounted and grabbed Dragonbait's shirt before he could pa.s.s her by.

"Who's following us?" she demanded in an urgent whisper.

The saurial paladin shrugged.