Sea of Death (27 page)

That one will not trouble me now," Obmi said with a cruel smile. "I congratulate you, Bolt. It is fortunate for you that you succeeded." The ugly dwarf was suddenly in an exceptionally good mood, since he had vanquished his opposition and the object of his quest lay literally at his feet.

"My thanks, great dwarf. I am here to serve capably, not misperform," the wizard responded ingratiatingly.

"Very well," said Obmi in a magnanimous tone. "In light of what you have accomplished since, I will overlook the fact that you misperformed when you supposedly killed Eclavdra and her party those many weeks ago. I know not who you victimized that time, but I do know that it was the drow bitch herself who disappeared down that hallway a minute ago." The dwarf turned to a pair of the Yoli warriors who stood behind him. "Go find her – but do not kill her. Bring her to me, and I will reward you well!"

The two nomads bowed hurriedly and sped away.

THE VOICES CAME FROM FAR, far away. By listening intently, he could just make out what they were saying.

"Are you sure that is the right container?"

"Yes… Be careful there!"

"I think this is a waste of our precious- "

"Do your work and keep silent. Our lives might depend on this…"

Then there was a tingling all over the universe. The night sky changed. It had been lightless – no moons, no stars. A glow appeared, and then the whole canopy of darkness was suddenly peppered with tiny points of light. These motes twinkled, grew brighter, and then began to blaze and dance. Soon the velvety black sky was a mass of whizzing comets and little suns that seemed to spark and dance as the cosmos grew brighter and stranger with each passing moment. But as the comets streaked here and there, and the stars became larger and brighter, the tingling changed to sharp pain, and the whole universe shuddered.

"That's done it!"

"Ready with the draught, there."

"Must we add elixir to balm? It seems we expend the whole- "

"There would be no whole without this part."

Gord opened his eyes. He hurt all over, but the pain was fading even as it forced him into consciousness. Several faces swam into shape in the distance as he forced his eyes to focus. As his vision cleared, one of the faces came nearer and spoke to him.

"Drink this now, carefully. You mustn't spill a drop."

He was thirsty – parched, in fact – and did not need to be told twice. One hand supported the back of his head while another raised the cup to his lips. The liquid had a slightly effervescent quality, and it was sweet-tasting and felt soothing to his mouth, throat, and stomach as he drank. Gord was willing to drain every drop, no need to caution him about that! It was very tempting to try to gulp the stuff, but the young man repressed the urge and quaffed it slowly, allowing only a trickle at a time to pass his lips, wash over his tongue, and go down his gullet. He sighed with regret as the last drop was consumed. His outside still hurt, but his insides felt better than he could ever recall. The hand propping up his head lowered it gently back down to a pillow of rolled-up cloth.

"Can you speak?" It was the voice of the nearest face again.

Gord blinked his eyes and thought about that for a minute. The glow inside him was fading, moving outward. As it did so, the hurt that had pervaded him changed and shrank, squeezed out of existence between the cool tingling coming from the surface of his body and the wonderful warmth radiating out from his core. "Yes, and I can sit up too," he finally replied. Before anyone could speak or act, the young man pulled himself into a sitting position. The brisk movement made his head swim a bit, but he felt no more pain. "What is this?" he blurted out as he looked down at himself. Gord was stark naked, and his skin was a bright pink!

"We found you near death," a thin man with corded muscles and stubbled cheeks said. "I was not for it," the fellow explained, "but Smoker and the others insisted."

"What Post is trying to tell you, stranger, is that we used healing balm and an elixir of much potency to bring you back from the gate of death," the one called Smoker added.

Gord was impressed and grateful, but being alive was not the most important thing on his mind right now. "Can I have a shirt and hose, even a tunic or robe? I have many more questions, but I prefer to converse in a more dignified condition." Gord was neither shy nor prudish, but when all others around him were clothed, the young thief saw nakedness as an extreme disadvantage. He quickly surveyed the room. He was still in the temple, but the place was a total shambles. The walls and floor were scarred and broken. Dead bodies were scattered around the chamber – three male drow, two men in nomad garb, and one corpse dressed in the robes of a spell-worker.

After a moment, someone had stripped one of the dead nomads and tossed a burnous of Yoli sort to him. It was only slightly torn, and he put it on without hesitation despite its pungent odor. "I thank you," he said, meaning it sincerely. "Now, what the dancing devils happened to me?"

"Dohojar here," the one named Smoker spoke up, "thinks you were hit by a bolt of lightning. That dead spell-binder over there was tossing all sorts of them around."

Gord looked at Dohojar, a small, brown-skinned fellow with blue-black hair and very white teeth that he showed as he smiled at the young adventurer. "I was studying magic, stranger, when the Death Pygmies took me as a slave," he said. "I was young then… had I only studied harder, perhaps I could have taught those little blasters a lesson or two."

The brown man didn't look very old now, scarcely into adulthood, except that his body was worn and his eyes looked very old and very hard. "So that's why I'm so pink. You healed my burns?"

"That is right, Zehaab," Dohojar chimed in again.

"We found a small store of medicines in the barracks of the pygmy chiefs and kept it with us for any great emergency. I thought you needed such help if you were to survive."

"Why did you bother with me? Your revolt appears to have succeeded. You – all of you – should be getting clear of this miniature version of the hells as quickly as you can. I don't want to see my work go to waste, after all," he finished with a thin smile.

Smoker looked hard at Post. "Didn't I tell you? He is the one!" Then, turning to Gord, the big, scar-faced man related more of his tale. "I was with the group that you and that drow female freed, stranger. How you managed to get to this city, and to bring those others from the outside to join in the attack, is a miracle. I am grateful, and all the rest of us are too. I – we – want you to be our leader as we fight our way out."

Instead of acknowledging the request, Gord sought more information. "Where are the others – the ones who began attacking when you men were freeing yourselves and finding weapons?"

Smoker turned to a thin ex-slave with the telltale signs of mixed elvish and human blood – pointed ears, slight stature, fine features with slanting eyes, fair and flawless complexion. "Shade, you know that answer best. Tell him."

The half-elf brushed back his long, black hair from his forehead. "I didn't see it all, but Mullen and Cockleburr did – both caught it, or I'd have them speak too… Anyway, stranger, we'd all have been in it deep except for the others who were fighting the pygmy folk. We only had to contend with their baboons, mostly, and a few squads of their warriors. Most of the little white vermin were busy trying to stop the dwarf and his bunch coming at them from the north, and that little group of drow sliding up from the opposite direction. That took all of their spell-casters away, mostly, you know,…"

The young man nodded, still not sure what had happened In this place. "Call me Gord – or Farzeel, as the nomads have taken to naming me, if you like. It doesn't matter to me either way. What I need to know now, though, is what happened to the others when they got to the temple, here – especially the drow female and the… the… thing that was in the crystalline sphere."

"Sure thing, Gord – that's a good name," Shade continued. "There were groups of escapers all over the center of the city, most of them sticking to the areas around the red lights so the men could see to fight. Anyway, Mullen said that he and a group of three or four dozen were arming themselves from an arsenal the pygmies kept when the dwarf and his henchmen came on the scene. They had a spell-user with them who was tossing magic left and right, while the dwarf was cleaning up on those little white midgets like a fox goes after chickens."

"What other things did this Mullen tell you?" Gord prompted.

"That's about it," Shade replied, brushing away his long bangs again. "When the dwarf kept moving, he and his company followed, taking advantage of the confusion to wipe up pygmies. I met Mullen near here, and that's when he told me what he'd seen."

"What about the drow?" Gord asked.

"That wasn't Mullen, that came from Cockleburr – he was from the other side of the Crystalmists, you know, some sort of grugach, pure-blooded, he was. The sight of dark elves made him mad – he didn't know that a drow actually helped to set us all free. He and a handful of others thought these birds were fair game, and wanted to go after them instead of the pygmy bastards. Then they saw that the drow were really giving it to the little albinos, knocking the blasters off with all sorts of magic, and those nasty little crossbows of theirs, too – you know, the ones which are small enough to hold in your hand and-"

"Yes, Shade! But what happened?"

"Sony, Gord… Cockleburr and his friends gathered up a company along the way, just like we were all doing. They stripped dead pygmies and found arms wherever they could, all the while trailing the drow. Our group got here from another direction, coming up behind the dwarf with Mullen's group. We figured him for an ally, and wanted to Join up with him, so we waited for him and his spell-worker to come out. That's when I met Cockleburr, and he told us about the dark elves. Then we figured we'd have lots of help when the dwarf and the drow came out. Problem was, the damned albinos decided to rally here, right outside this temple. We got in big trouble, because all of those little bastards tried to kill us to get at who was inside. Before it was over, the runts managed to get most of us – that's when Cockleburr and Mullen went down – but we got most of them at the same time, and the others scattered. Then I heard a big commotion inside here, so I took a few of the boys and came in to see what was going on. It was one hell of a sight, let me tell you."

At last this garrulous fellow was going to get to the point. "What was going on?" Gord asked impatiently, tempted to grab Shade and give him a shake to make the half-elf speak more quickly.

"Well, the dwarf was about to toss his hammer at a ball of glass or whatever it was that was sitting on the floor. We'd just come in, and he and the rest didn't even notice us, but we saw plenty. I guess he'd already thrown it once – that was the noise I heard from outside – 'cause this time he hollered 'It will not withstand another blow!' just before he let the thing go. The hammer hit the globe, and the thing rang, making a big sound just like earlier, but it didn't break – and the hammer came flying right back to him! The dwarfs magic-worker tried to say something, but the dwarf was cursing a streak, and I never heard so many demons' names as that one knew. That's when all of us got into the best cover we could find.

Then big-shoulders shoved the mage off, and he really chucked the hammer this time. When it banged into the globe, the damned thing flew into fragments, and bits of steel buzzed in all directions, I'll tell you. The globe broke into pieces at the same time, exploding with a bang. Could be that was what busted the hammer. I saw pieces of chains go sailing off in all directions. The glass stuff just sort of disintegrated after it broke, and then I got a glimpse of this thing on the floor – a cone-shaped black thing, sitting right where the glass ball had been.

The dwarf was dancing up and down. I think he was madder than a wet fire elemental about losing the hammer and pleased to have shattered the sphere, all at the same time. Before you could tell for sure, though, and before he or any of his pals made a move for where the black cone lay, three male drow appeared in the room as if by magic – and magic they began tossing! The guy with the dwarf was no slouch at the game, either. He sent some vicious stuff and took a Tot in the process. The dwarf cleared out of the line of casting between the dark elves and his henchman – I'll bet he wanted that throwing hammer then! A whole storm of stuff came out of those spell-binders, and then it went as black as pitch in the temple. Even I was blind."

"It's plenty bright in here now," Gord said. "How did the light return?"

Shade bit his lip, pondering that. "I just don't know. We started crawling up toward the center when there was no more noise, only the pitch dark. Then these gold-light globes started to appear – almost like fireflies at first, real dim and faint. Then they popped back to full brightness, and I had to blink a couple of times to be able to see. I think I saw one drow standing off alone over that way," the half-elf told Gord, pointing to the way the young thief had first come into the temple with Leda. "And there were two others still in the room, a male and a female. The male was carrying a sack with something in it, and the black cone wasn't on the floor where it used to be any more. These two black elves were moving pretty quick already, but when the lights came full on they took off together as fast as they could run.

There were three dead drow in the room – the ones over there – and the human spell-binder was a goner, too. The dwarf was on his feet, but didn't seem to know where he was for a minute. Then when he spotted the dark elves running away, he let out a bellow that made my ears hurt. There were a couple of his nomad warriors nearby, I know, because they came out from hiding at big-shoulders' roar and tried to catch up with their master. The dwarf had wings on his heels – magic boots for sure, Gord. He ran after the drow like a courser in full charge, this awful-looking weapon held over his head with one hand, and the two men dressed in Yoli garments were left way behind. That was a good thing for them, too! I peeked around to see what was going to happen, and just as the dwarf gets to the doorway over there that the dark elves ran through, I heard a pop and a fizzing sound. From where I was I could see only partly, because the dwarf was between me and whatever it was."

"I saw a little of it, too," the one named Edge interjected. "Shade's getting around to saying something appeared in the air."

"That's so," the half-elf affirmed. "I've never seen black fire before, and I don't hope to ever again. What suddenly appeared with the pop, and burned with a fizzing sound, looked like black fire done so as to create some sort of awful sign. The instant it started, the dwarf dropped his weapon and began howling and beating at himself, as if he were on fire. I thought he'd gone crazy because of the thing, but then I see that the fellow's beard is on fire – real flames, though, not the black stuff. Big-shoulders was in real trouble, because he couldn't seem to put out the flames. All he could do was howl and whack himself uselessly. Then the pair of nomads saved his ass. One knocked the dwarf down, the other flung something over him. Both had their backs to the black fire, and as soon as the dwarf went down I was careful not to look at it. When I did look again, one was carrying the awful weapon and the other was dragging the dwarf away, still not looking back, of course. We let them clear out, and then we came out from hiding and discovered you," Shade finished.