Jedit

Chapter 18

"Set them down here. Ugh!"

Adira Strongheart yanked off her headband and mopped sweat from a dirty face. She plunked down on an amber crystal and sighed, "I'd give ten years off my life for a hot bath!"

The explorers half-collapsed on broken shells and dusty stone. They wheezed and coughed in grimy smoke. Each of the twelve pinefolk and pirates had lugged one awkward and heavy crystal seeming miles up twisted slippery six-sided tunnels. They'd found the cavern the same, with the crazed cosmic horror still lashing its tongue and tentacles, and Sister Wilemina and two foresters guarding Johan in his golden prison. The air was still rank with sweat and wood smoke. The pixies had refused to descend any deeper and had departed, same as the fire sprites.

"What time is it?" asked Adira. "What part of the day? I've lost track."

"We entered these accursed caves as evening fell," said Magfire, eyes red as anyone's. "My warriors were to stage a sham attack to keep the legionnaires busy. Likely it's past dawn and mid-mom now."

"I hope they're still at it," said Murdoch. "I couldn't wrestle a kitten."

"I feel we've crawled through caves forever," said Simone. "Maybe we're dead in some pocket of hell."

"Hist!" warned Jasmine. "Such talk is jinxy!"

"Enough rest." Adira pushed herself erect. "Let's see if the kobolds lied or not. Give me your gourd, Murdoch. Mine is dry. And help me lug this thing."

The two hefted a golden crystal the size of a bushel basket and crab-walked toward the ring of fire. Under Adira's orders, the kobolds had ceased to stoke the fire. The trench was less than a pace wide, but heat from hot coals and stone was still withering.

Together, counting, Adira and Murdoch lobbed the crystal over the ring, so it thudded against the scarred gray trunk of the goggle-eyed tooth-gnashing terror. Clamping down her stomach, Adira skipped over the fire to stand beside the monster out of reach of whiplashing tentacles. The footing was all intertwined roots. Between smoke and the monster stinking like a rotting whale, Adira almost gagged but pressed on.

The crystal was full of translucent amber liquid. Deep inside hung a fist-sized knot like a tree root, which must be a young horror. Holding her breath, Adira pulled the stopper of the gourd and trickled water over the topmost joints.

Results were immediate.

Adira jumped as cracks raced around the facets of the crystal. The crystalline egg fell apart so quickly that her boots were splashed. Facets like panes of glass clanked. Sweet-smelling golden sap gushed and vanished amid a million cracks of the horror's roots.

Adira sipped air, as did her crew outside the circle of fire. Atop fallen facets lay the fist-sized knot. It quivered and curled and rolled. A single bulging eye flicked open, making Wilemina chirp. A tiny tongue lapped at spilled nectar.

"Kill it! Kill it!" shouted Murdoch, panicked all out of size by the minute menace.

"No!" yelled Jasmine. "It's a living thing!"

"It's evil!" said Kyenou, for once charged with emotion.

"We don't know that," countered Taurion. "Lady Shauku tormented this beast for years. It may be harmless as any other animal."

Adira Strongheart watched the tiny creature wriggle like a tadpole. It wedged its whiskery tail amid the roots of its gigantic parent, then curled upright. For a moment the pirate chief considering stamping on it like a cockroach, but she didn't have the heart.

She told her crew, "Hush. Let it be. Heft those other crystals."

"The spuzzem!" Taurion interrupted with a cry. "The ancient warrior who became the spuzzem! He warned not to eat the food of the gods! That must be this nectar! It smells sweet! Lapping it must have transformed him into a plant-beast, the spuzzem!"

"Oh!" Adira looked in dismay at her spattered boots, then quickly hopped across the ring of fire. Scooping ashes with her toes, she smeared her boots dry and crusty.

"Behold the monster!" breathed Jasmine.

Where they'd spilled the nectar, the monster's gray hide had flushed green. As if painted by invisible hands, color rose from the soil six feet or more. Where touched by life-giving green, the bulging eyes retracted, the tongues ceased to loll, and tentacles quit thrashing. Indeed, one tentacle sprouted a thousand roots like hair and elongated.

Adira hissed, "I'll be keelhauled! It works. The thing grows!" Despite earlier revulsion, the pirate queen felt a thrill to feed a starving creature, no matter how alien. Somehow, she knew in her bosom, this strange star-lost brute must feel gratitude.

Cheered, Adira turned to her soot-smeared comrades. "Shift those other crystals and crack them open! We'll see if the creature thanks us or eats us!"

Heartened by success, pirates and pine warriors grappled the eleven remaining crystals across the ring of fire, then splashed on handfuls of water. All the crystals split and the precious fluid soaked in. The monster looked healthy and happy as a summer cornstalk.

"Adira! Johan wishes to speak!" Wilemina, with her arm in a sling, stood guard.

Adira walked to Johan's side. Framed in golden glass, the triply horned red-black emperor looked like a djinn trapped in a bottle.

The emperor piped, "Will you renege your word and refuse to free me?"

Adira snorted and kicked the crystal. "I never promised to free you, Homhead. Dare not accuse me of crawfishing on a pledge. I can name two hundred Palmyrans who died because you were discontent in your rocky homeland. We'll lug you home in your box. For now, don't go away." Tapping a finger on the smooth top, the pirate queen turned to go.

But with the crystals sundered, Adira's pirates and Mag-fire's foresters gathered for the next step. Jedit Ojanen loomed over the amber trap like a primitive god.

Rumbling like distant thunder, the tiger said, "I've a question, Johan. What of the prophecy of None, One, and Two?"

"Here?" The devil-bedecked emperor glowered behind glass walls. "I know somewhat. Shauku blithered about her cleverness. The people of the pines were told by a gibbering seer the time of prophecy had come, were they not? That they must reclaim their ancestral lands and heritage?"

"Yes!" said Magfire. "The prophecy foretold-"

"A sham," interrupted Johan. "Shauku visited your seer with a vision, same as she gulled me in the Western Wastes with visions of her palace. Nonsense about history and ancestral pride was mere pap to lure you north within her grasp. You were herded here like cattle for slaughter."

While the foresters digested this shocking news, the pensive

Heath asked, "Why did Shauku imprison you? What was her intent?"

"I remember you." Johan's black eyes narrowed. "You shot an arrow into my breast on the lake at Palmyra."

"Had I known it would prove ineffectual," said the archer coldly, "I would have poisoned it with venom of pit scorpions."

"You'll regret… regret…" Suddenly distracted, Johan shook his horned head. The heroes of Palmyra and Arboria stared, for never before had the tyrant shown befuddlement or hesitation. Johan mashed his hands against his eyes. Clearly his skull throbbed. Adira wondered if the emperor had run out of fresh air. If so, was she obligated to liberate him now and punish him later?

A piercing whistle cut the smoky air. Down a murky passage raced one of Magfire's pickets. "Shauku comes with legionnaires! Not a hundred yards behind!"

Pandemonium.

Adira Strongheart bawled, "Stick together! Heath, find us two boltholes where we can fight clear! Any direction will do! Jedit, scoot Johan's prison behind those boulders! Partner up!" Between tunnels and the littered cavern floor, a thousand hiding places beckoned, but they would give advantage to legionnaires as much as pirates. As Adira orchestrated a line of defense, teams of black-clad terrors charged from the haze. Battle was on.

Eschewing any partner, Jedit Ojanen leaped to meet black-hiked swords with wicked black claws. Leaping at a pair of Akron Legionnaires, Jedit swiped left and right to force one or the other back, lest one gut him while the other was distracted. The soldiers were trained to stand their ground and work in pairs, yet the quick ferocity of the man-killing tiger knocked one man against a boulder, so he skidded and fell. Immediately, Jedit Ojanen whirled to kill the other.

Looming like a behemoth, Jedit shot both paws like clusters of knives. The soldier's back slammed a boulder, but he kept his feet. Perhaps too well. Claws punctured leather and ripped long tears that half-undressed the man and raked his skin with stripes of blood. Still the soldier gamely rammed gloved fists and sword hilt to crash under Jedit's jaw. The tiger's teeth clacked, and he bit his tongue. Another brutal slam actually shoved Jedit back, so he momentarily lost track of his foe. He paid a double price as a painful jolt crashed on one eye and an ice-cold slice behind slashed his upper thigh.

Enraged, Jedit scooched and leaped to escape the returning sword swipe. As he landed, he didn't hesitate, for that invited attack. Squatting like a bullfrog, Jedit lunged and tackled the wounded man before him. The legionnaire hammered his sword's diamond-shaped skull-popper on Jedit's head with both hands. The blows stung so hard Jedit saw stars. Still, straddling him, Jedit Ojanen knew where every squirming limb must be. Opening a jaw full of razor fangs, the tiger bit savagely into the soldier's left biceps, slapped one paw on the man's chest for leverage, then humped his powerful neck and wrenched backward. With a gruesome grinding and snapping, the tiger ripped the man's arm from the shoulder.

Again Jedit paid a price for his single-minded attack. From his left, the surviving legionnaire whacked him across fur and skin and muscle, and almost creased his spine. Spitting out the arm, Jedit ducked, whipped a half-circle, and cannoned into the legionnaire. The soldier was bashed so hard against another boulder he lost his breath and almost his sword. The tiger warrior gave him no chance to recover. Scooping both hands under the man's crotch, Jedit slammed him headfirst into the rock so hard his neck and spine snapped in a dozen places.

Similar fights boiled all around. Salted amid the brawl ran a perpetual argument.

"We must pull out!" hissed Magfire, swinging her spike left. "I told you these caverns are unlucky!"

"We can't retreat with a job half done!" snarled Adira Strongheart, slashing right. "Johan's still alive!"

"Legionnaires know each other's whereabouts!" reminded Magfire in her husky whisper. "Killing one will fetch down all fifty! We'll be massacred!"

"Shut up and fight the enemy!"

Completely forgotten, the cosmic horror bubbled with new life. Freshened and strengthened by luscious nectar, the monster fought for its own freedom in its alien, half-mad fashion.

Nearby, Johan suffered inside his crystalline prison. Having once read the dreams of the star-lost beast, Johan now found his skull throbbing and reeling as the alien marshaled its thoughts. Other-worldly ideas and laments and pleas and phrases surged through his mind like seawater through a sinking ship. An apt analogy, for Johan felt his sanity ebbing as a thousand incomprehensible images blared in his brain.

Then, one stark truth shone like a beacon.

A shooting star.

Johan fixated on the picture. A rock. Falling through an infinite black void. With nothing to compare against, the wizard could not guess its size. It might have been a pebble, or a boulder, or larger. Straining to understand, Johan watched the pebble glow from dark dusky gray to a warm orange. Then a fiery red. Then white-blue. Then pure white, so bright and sparkling it was painful to see.

White hot?

Trapped in the crystal with the throbbing thoughts of the cosmic horror, Johan fought to think. How could a rock become hot? Ah! The rock had become a falling star!

Falling where? wondered Johan. And in the same instant he knew the answer. The monster was trapped and could never win free. Overwhelming despair wracked Johan. This landing place had proven hostile. The monster was imprisoned by painful fire. It would rather die than be a prisoner. So, with a tiny reserve of strength, it sought oblivion.

By reaching for a star. A shooting star.

With a jolt, Johan threw back his head and stared through amber glass at the cavern ceiling.

The clang of sword on sword rang throughout the cavern with an earsplitting clatter. Pirates and pinefolk defended a jumble of boulders as a makeshift fort while legionnaires swarmed from all sides. Hacking furiously, Adira Strongheart felt her belly grow cold as ice. Very bad, thought she. Her pirates were canny swordsmen who could board or brawl, but these legionnaires were diehard professionals, and she couldn't even lift her head to count their numbers. The only outcome was slaughter.

Heath and Taurion and a woodswoman tried in vain to kill a single swordsman who met all their thrusts and hacks and paid them back. Taurion was felled with a slashed arm and the woodswoman was clipped above the hip. Before Taurion could defend, the same sword whacked him alongside the neck, and he fell.

Behind Adira, Magfire jabbed at two soldiers while a forester and Murdoch ganged another and Jedit grappled still more.

"We don't have luck in caves!" With one broken arm, Sister Wilemina had to hang back and feebly jab with her bow. "The last time we ventured underground merfolk drowned Treetop and nearly ate us hoof and hide!"

Adira cast back and forth, trying to decide who needed aid, and spotted Simone the Siren, who suffered attacks from two men. Her cutlass flashed wildly just to fend the blades aside, never mind return a thrust. Trapped in the midst of a scrap with no way to help, Adira shouted for her lieutenant to watch her footing, for the floor was lumpy.

A fatal misstep. Simone ducked a thrust that was actually a feint. While she lurched off-balance, the assassin dipped his shoulder and lunged. Two feet of red-smeared steel jutted out Simone's back. Not wasting a motion, the killer twisted the blade and ripped in another direction. Adira screamed as Simone was gutted like a fish.

"Simone! No!" Too late, the pirate queen drove to kill. Furious, but keeping a clear head, she lashed straight and hard in an overhand arc that split a legionnaire's throat. Blood spouted in a crimson fountain that painted the ceiling. "Heath, help me reach Simone!"

Heath was busy. Lamed, he skittered between a legionnaire's legs, dumping him backward. Heath aimed his sword like a dagger and rammed steel in the man's belly. The part-elf twisted the blade as if to pry the man's soul from his bowels. It took Jedit Ojanen to clear the way by killing a half-dozen foes with bare, blood-soaked paws.

Combat rang like temple bells, yet Adira heard none of it. Scuttling on hands and knees, she dragged Simone to her bosom, soaking herself in blood. Even clamping both hands front and back couldn't stanch the grievous wound.

"Simone! Simone! Please, don't go! Not you! I couldn't bear it!"

Simone's face waxed gray. Her black curls hung limp as petals on a dying flower. Blood trickled from her mouth. Weakly she tried to focus.

"Di-ra? I can't-Scarzam's Dragon, it hurts."

"Potion!" Magfire scrambled over rocks to reach Adira. Dropping her bloody war club, she yanked at the wooden stopper sealed with beeswax in a stoneware crock. "Alabaster potion'll save anyone! Pour it down her-"

"Magfire!" Kyenou, the scout in deer hide and ermine tails, snagged her leader's arm. "Taurion's neck is split open!"

"Brother!" Cramped amid rocks and corpses, Magfire crabbed back around. Everyone shouted, calling, scrabbling, moving. She called to Kyenou, "Wind of the West, help us! Is he alive?"

"He's dying!" The cool-headed Kyenou was crying.

"Give it here!" Adira slapped at Magfire's sleeve, bloodying her silver fox mantle, groping down her arm in the dim light to grab the crock without spilling its precious contents. "Give me some potion! Simone dies too! Then you can dose Taurton."

"No!" Magfire hugged the potion to her chest. "It's only potent in one dose! It can't be shared!"

"Give it to me!" Still with Simone's head cradled in her lap, Adira Strongheart grabbed the war chief by the mantle, flipped her bodily over her dying comrade, and slammed a fist into her jaw twice.

Iron-handed from a lifetime of warfare, Magfire refused to surrender the bottle. Spittle made bloody froth on her battered lips, and fire blazed in her eyes. Her free hand shot at Adira's face, four fingers spread, and would have blinded the pirate queen if she hadn't ducked. Snagging Adira's chestnut locks, Magfire twisted and almost popped her foe's neck.

The forester hissed, "One of mine or one of yours is no choice, outlander!"

"By the Sea-King's Crook!" Grabbing Magfire's wrist to stall the wrenching of her hair, Adira groped wildly for her black sword. "I'll gut you and every one of your benighted woods rats."

"No!"

Adira jumped as a cold hand clutched hers. Simone dragged down her friend's fingers as if disciplining a child. Her beautiful dulcet voice, that once had caroled from the crow's nest and carried miles across the sea, was faint as a whisper through a winter cave.

"I'm too far gone… Tom up… Give it away. Oh, kiss me, Adira… It's dark."

"Simone! Oh, Simone!" Shaking off Magfire's slackening grip, Adira held her friend's dark head and sobbed and sobbed as killing raged around her.

Confusion reigned as Magfire jumped over living and dead to reach her fallen brother. Tilting back his lolling head, she poured the alabaster potion between her fingers into his mouth. So potent was the mana-charged fluid that a pale white glow washed over Taurion's skin. The gaping wound at his neck sealed from both ends as if pinched by invisible hands. Flesh knit into a nasty white scar wide as a finger. Within a minute the near-dead man flushed pink and healthy.

Opening his eyes, he gasped, "Why aren't I dead?"

"Because a strong heart breeds strong friends." Magfire couldn't explain to her confused sibling, for she broke down crying.

"Listen!" called Heath.

Orders barked in a foreign tongue. The nearest legionnaires dropped back in the haze.

New to combat, Jasmine croaked, "Did we win?"

"Reinforcements must've arrived," explained Murdoch. "They'll switch and come at us again with fresh troops."

In the odd lull, pirates and foresters saw only glimpses of the enemy through the pall of smoke and dust. Veterans checked their blades, straightened tackle, sipped water, awaited orders, and talked of small things to banish fear. For soon they would die.

Murdoch bobbed his looted black sword in the air. "I wish I had my shield. That's how we trained in Yerkoy's Royal Army, sword and shield together, attack and defend. This one-handed steel-slinging is for high-faluting mercenaries or fog-headed fools."

"You're a mercenary yourself," said Sister Wilemina. Even with one arm in a sling, she checked her bowstring for frays. "Thanks to me. I recommended Adira adopt you back in Palmyra. I wish I were there now."

"I wish I had my own arrows. Pheasant feathers don't compare to good goose quills." Heath bound up his bleeding knee, his bow and quiver near at hand. "I can sink a shaft in a crow's eye at a mile with my own handwork. These arrows are sticks glued with eiderdown. Still, it was kind of Magfire's people to give us them. I wish I'd thanked them all properly."

"I wish I knew a spell so frightening it would scare even me." Jasmine Boreal fidgeted with her antique bronze knife. "But without my oddments this far underground, who knows what works? May the Virgin, Mother, and Crone pity me. I wish I'd paid them more fealty."

"Wishes are regrets glimpsed in yesterday's mirror," quoted Heath obscurely. "One of you women rouse Adira, will you? Time speeds."

Whistledove Kithkin was as tall standing as was Adira kneeling over her dead lieutenant. The brownie touched her chief's shoulder gently.

"Adira? We're sorry about Simone, but we need you. The legionnaires regroup. We've got to gird and break through their line, or we'll never leave this cavern alive."

"Aye, aye." Hovering over dead Simone, Adira tried to think of a benediction, but failed. As leader, she could only succor the living. Planting a final kiss on Simone's cold brow, Adira swabbed blood off her black blade with her sash.

Ducking low among boulders, treading yellow-clad corpses strewn mostly by Jedit, Adira positioned her mercenaries and Magfire's foresters, then summoned Jedit. Measuring the odds and comparing her resources, Adira fell into old patterns as if Simone had never existed.

In less than a minute Adira formed a loose phalanx with right- and left-handed swordbearers spaced apart and spear- wielders ranged behind. It gave her a bitter satisfaction that this two-tier rank had been used by Johan to raid Bryce and Palmyra. Such a formation just might break through the legionnaires' line and escape into the tunnels. Once in the twisting corridors, they could run hell-for-leather while guarding their rear. They didn't have to destroy the legionnaires, after all, only outrun them.

She finished, "Jedit, you take point."

"Yes, captain." The tiger looked a nightmare. Blood and dust matted his fur in clumps. His broad breast was more red than white. One ear was slit, his whiskers were splintered, gore dripped from lacerations on his long arms, and he listed to port from a ferocious leg wound hastily bound with rags. Yet, Adira noted, when she needed unquestioning loyalty, he gave it. Much like Simone.

For a second Adira felt her throat seize up, then nodded. "When you're ready, go."

Without a word Jedit Ojanen spun in place, tail flying like a bullwhip, and bounded over a boulder toward the still-forming enemy. Pirates and pine warriors ran just to keep up.

Ahead through haze and dust waited a long yellow-black line of Akron Legionnaires, as if Jedit charged a hornet's nest. This suicidal charge into slaughter would make a fine heroic saga, thought the cat warrior. Hoxv sad no tigers would ever sing it. Briefly, in the never-ending seconds hanging before combat, Jedit thought of his homeland Efrava, of his mother Musata, of Hestia and her affectionate teasing, of his doughty opponent Ruko, of all the tigers he'd abandoned for a life of adventure and a desire to follow in his father's footsteps. And of his father, Jaeger, who'd pursued Johan and never been seen again. Despite his predicament, the battle-mad brute grinned so fangs winked below his striped muzzle.

Jedit murmured aloud, "Promises to keep, hurts to mend, wounds to avenge. Best I not be killed so far from home. Too many people need harassing."

There was no sign of the vampire Shauku, but her bodyguards were ready. Time to strike. Sucking wind into his belly, Jedit extended claws on all four limbs, gave a bloodcurdling roar like a volcano exploding, and entered the fight of his life.

Twin claws snagged two black leather hoods and raked faces to bone. Blinded, spitting and drowning in blood, the legionnaires barely blubbered and screamed before they crashed to earth and died. With waspy blades whisking all around, Jedit's huge head butted three men flat. His claws slashed from high to low to cripple the greatest number the quickest. The tiger bit a man in the belly, shearing through his yellow tunic and leather armor, disemboweling the victim with a wrench of his thick neck. To the right he clawed a man's neck so bright frothy blood geysered, then slashed another's arm, so his sword clanged on stone, then ripped a third across the kidneys, so he spun against his comrades. And on and on, an orgy of destruction.

Shouting vile oaths and die names of gods, Adira and Magfire's troops charged in Jedit's wake like a school of sharks.

Heath shot away all his and Wilemina's arrows, then threw his bow to his left hand, so fast did he need his sword. Stabbing straight, he tunked a wooden shield, then flipped his blade sideways to harass the enemy's face. But two legionnaires tackled him as a team. Even as one shied from Heath's scything blade, the other knocked it high. The archer tried to block the partner's jab, but his ebony bow only skidded down keen steel. Heath gasped as his side was pierced, but rather than give ground and invite attack, he bit down on pain and hacked. Quick reflexes and an archer's iron forearms saved his life, for he beat back the legionnaire who'd pinked him and swatted the other off-stride. Still, the two soldiers bounced back and lunged, twin blades flickering like adders' tongues.

Scenting death on the wind, Heath caroled, "Ye dryads and naiads, prepare your bowers!"

Murdoch slung his borrowed blade against scaly black leather backed by wood, for some legionnaires plied shields. The ex-sergeant sidestepped to avoid being impaled and to make a smaller target, then he actually crowded behind the thrusting legionnaire's shield, so the man was temporarily blockaded. Slinging his left elbow, Murdoch slammed the man's jaw and hacked small. His slim blade slashed the legionnaire's elbow to sever tendons and grate on bone. As the arm fell slack, Murdoch stripped the leather straps from the man's forearm and stole his shield.

Spitting at his enemies, Murdoch crowed, "Step up to the sergeant, you slackarse sluggards! I'll teach you how to spell slaughter!"

Wilemina, Jasmine, and Whistledove clung together, hoping their collective strength would offset weaknesses. Falling rump to rump to shoulder, they were instantly bracketed by legionnaires bearing naked steel.

Holding her bow and sword in her good left hand, Sister Wilemina shrieked, "For Lady Caleria!" and stabbed straight. Her sword was clipped by a shield, knocked upward and away. But the archer's bow functioned like a part of her arm. Heedless of his blade, Wilemina banged the ornate bow atop of the man's shield and jabbed at the leather hood's eye slit with the horn tip. The legionnaire hooked his head back to save his eyes. In that second, Whistledove scooted low as a cockroach and stabbed high. Her dagger point slid under the man's kneecap. Writhing, he jerked the leg and kicked the brownie, but Wilemina sent her bow singing in a long arc that whacked his temple and laid him out cold.

The other swordsman stamped and pranced to pin Jasmine. The druid skipped back, then clapped both hands. A blue cloud flashed in the man's face and set him sneezing uncontrollably. Whistledove flitted like a hummingbird, circled, and sliced. Steel bit the legionnaire's inner thigh, sliced leather and flesh, and spilled blood in a torrent.

One-armed, Wilemina grappled with the second attacker, clinging close to spoil his aim even as she prayed aloud to Lady Caleria. Jasmine hammered the man's head with a rock, then dropped it as a sword creased her back. Only by pitching forward past the toppling man did she save her life, but more swordsmen trotted up, and death sang seconds away.

The toughest veteran of them all, Adira Strongheart jumped into battle with little regard for safety, as if life had lost its meaning. Even as she was overrun by diehard killers, her thoughts were of her friends and companions. This fracas, she marveled, might be the last stand of the Circle of Seven. Oddly enough, what pained her was the idea that her ex-husband Hazezon Tamar, whom she professed to loathe, would never learn their fate, but would wonder what befell them the rest of his days.

She shouted at the yellow-black horde, "Brace up, you jackstaff backsliders! Mark on your tally sheet t'was Adira Strongheart sent you to hell!"

A whirlwind swept past Adira's red-misted battle fury. Orange, black, and white filled her vision as yellow and black were scattered. A helping hand strong as an ox pull steered her across boulders and pools of blood. As quickly as battle was joined, it was stopped. Adira and her Circle, every "one wounded, cast about. The Akron Legionnaires had withdrawn to a side tunnel. Jedit Ojanen stood tall, drenched in blood, awaiting orders.

"Tiger," puffed Heath, nursing a bleeding side, "you saved… our lives… again!"

"No." Even the tiger's chest heaved from exertion. "The legionnaires pulled back. I don't know why."

"They fear us!" croaked Murdoch, trying to joke.

"Who knows?" panted Adira. "We might get out of this mess with our guts intact. But we can't leave Johan alive! Shauku would find him too handy a tool!"

Slashed on a buttock and thigh and forearm, Adira gasped as she tottered to Johan's golden prison. Her sword dripped blood.

"Make ready, Whistledove! You splash water on the crystal, and I'll drive home my blade before he can escape."

"Stand fast, mortals!" Like an echo from a tomb, the voice came from nowhere. Then a clammy mist swirled in Adira's face like the breath of a frost giant. The pirate queen couldn't shift her feet, and her arms stiffened as if frozen. Equally rooted, Whistledove chirped in fright.

From within the amber crystal, Johan blurted, "Beware Shauku!"

Like a face escaping pea-soup fog, a sallow visage took shape. The vampire formed from the scalp down, so her shriveled yellow head with pointed ears and needle fangs hung suspended a moment, then were joined by her ragged robe and small clawed feet.

Yet Adira was not nicknamed "Strongheart" for nothing. The petrifying spell had yet to seize up her good sword arm. With a grunt of effort, the Sovereign of the Sea of Serenity rammed her wasp-sting blade straight and true. Black steel split Shauku's bitter heart before the misty body had fully formed.

Alas, to no effect. Once Shauku ceased to shimmer, she glanced down at the blade stuck in her chest, curled a clawed hand around Adira's clenched fist and, easily as disarming a child, withdrew the blade. The withered hand was corpse-cold but inhumanly strong. Shauku cocked Adira's wrist and almost splintered the pirate's arm, forcing her to drop her steel. Shauku smiled, the most frightening sight Adira had ever beheld. Behind, she knew her Circle of Seven must likewise be frozen, else they'd have already attacked. At least they knew why the legionnaires fell back.

The rusty-hinge voice croaked, "A worthy fight your cohorts give, but it ends now, for other plans run apace."

Adira tried to answer but only squeaked. Her mind screamed with terror, more for her crew than herself. Vaguely she supposed the vampire smothered them with some scare spell, for Adira's guts felt watery, her heart raced fit to burst, her hair prickled, and sweat coursed in rivers. Paralyzed, the pirate queen tried to stare the vampire down, but her bravado failed. The undead eyes were black and blank as a shark's.

"Adira!" Johan's trapped voice rang tinny inside the amber shell. "Free me! I can fight Shauku! Match her spell for spell!"

With a dry chuckle, Shauku reeled in Adira as a python might constrict a mouse in its coils. The vampire's free hand touched Adira's wrist with black claws, then slowly pressed. Adira watched her blood ooze from twin punctures that burned and itched. To her everlasting horror, she watched the vampire bring lips to wrist and begin to suck her blood.

Drained, thought the paralyzed pirate. I'll be sucked dry and left a husk, or else rendered a night fiend myself. And I can't move a muscle. Hazezon, where are you?

"Release her!" hissed a tiny voice.

Barely able to avert her eyes, Adira saw Whistledove Kithkin draw her borrowed dagger. Somehow, perhaps because of her small size, or her mystic heritage, the brownie had escaped the petrifying spell. Fast and feisty as a rat-killing terrier, Whistledove's rapier sang, slashing Shauku from neck to elbow, white steel furrowing sallow skin.

The attack netted nothing. Though slit to bone, the undead fiend couldn't bleed. From lips dripping ruby droplets, Shauku commanded, "Die!"

Without a word, Whistledove rolled up brown eyes and pitched face-first on the stone floor with a sickening clonk.

We're finished, thought Adira. All my fault.

Yet they were not, entirely.

Frozen and forgotten was Jasmine Boreal, a witch of nature, who plied not a sword or bow but the essences of the earth, so held a knife not of steel but of bronze, an alloy of brass and tin. The druid in sky-blue knew she was lost, out of her element, not in a cozy forest rich with magically charged greenery, but rather in a dingy cave where even the air was eye-smarting and foul. Still, many forces of nature awaited her beck and call, and a vast friendly forest lay almost overhead. Improvising as best she could while paralyzed, Jasmine Boreal pictured soaring timber, lush pine-scented foliage, and the unending carpet of intertwined roots. Wishing she might sprinkle iron filings and pine shavings, the druid pried open her hand to let fall the bronze knife.

Druidical magic usually brought small results, but with earth elements a little charming went a long way. Swollen by magic, the knife's ping on the cavern floor was amplified a hundred times, then a thousand. In an eye blink, the floor of the chamber jumped less than an inch. Yet that minor groundquake bucked the earth as if snatching a rug from under everyone's feet.

Adira, straining backward from Shauku, was flipped head over heels to whang her skull so hard she saw fiery spots. Shauku shivered into misty droplets, temporarily ethereal. Jedit Ojanen was jolted and dumped to all fours, where he clutched stone with battle-blunted claws. Murdoch was pitched forward onto his stolen shield. Heath, Sister Wilemina, and Magfire's foresters spilled like nine pins. Even Jasmine Boreal jiggled like a jelly, amazed at the ruckus she'd caused. The groundquake flung dust and ashes in the air that set many sneezing and weeping.

Adira Strongheart had crashed alongside Johan's crystal cage. Temporarily stunned, or still partly paralyzed by the vampire's curse, Adira fumbled to roll over and gain her feet. All the time Johan shouted from two feet away, though his voice was as muffled as if buried alive.

"Loose me, Adira! I can fight Shauku! I have the magical prowess! Get me free, and I swear on my sacred honor I'll combat her! Adira! Can you hear? Let me loose!"

Groggy, the pirate queen gazed at Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, not seeming to recognize the red-black face framed by horns. Of more concern was the vampire Shauku reforming from fog. Close by lay Whistledove Kithkin, like a child overcome by sleep, except her eyes bore the thousand-league stare only the dead achieve.

"Dead." Adira struggled to think. "We'll all be dead. Unless… What?"

"Let me out!" bellowed Johan through a glass wall.

"Never!" Groggy as a hammered ox, Adira levered against Johan's crystalline prison to rise. Her left hand dripped blood from the vampire's punctures. "Nay tyrant! You're bad as-"

Blood, of course, is made of water.

Adira lurched as, in a wink, the seams of Johan's prison opened. Amber plates like glass clattered on stone. Free, Johan surged to his feet. For a second or two, again dumped on her rump, Adira goggled at the looming monarch. With his purple robes and red-black tattoos and double devils' horns, he looked like a master of men. Yet the illusion shattered as Johan lifted his skirts and scampered away on bare feet.

"Like a rat." The pirate queen didn't even rage, only lay in dust and blood, infinitely tired. She'd made so many mistakes, caused so many deaths. Virgil. Peregrine. Whistledove, valiant as a wildcat. Simone, her boon companion and faithful lieutenant, always jolly and never complaining. Adira missed her friends as if her heart had been cut out. All gone for nothing.

No. Dimly Adira corrected herself. Her comrades gave their lives to stop the depredations of Johan and Shauku. To give up the fight was to sully their sacrifices. Shaking her aching head, the woman called Strongheart groped for her fallen sword.

"Very well. I'll not die. I'll kill this bloodsucker myself, if only to get Johan's throat between my fingers to strangle him slowly."

The Circle of Seven and the woodsfolk likewise struggled to their feet. Bruised and shaken, some watched the misty form of Shauku regain shape. Others staggered to aid their leader, who crawled aimless as a baby. The unkillable Jedit Ojanen reached her side first, as always.

"Dira," rumbled the tiger. "Let me help."

"Don't call me Dira, damn you," gasped the pirate chief. Awkwardly she rose. "Only Simone could call me that! And Hazezon, damn his white whiskers. And most especially I damn Johan."

Even addled, Adira blinked. Johan had never run away before. Always he stole opportunities from the crisis at hand. What secret knowledge sent him pelting helter-skelter for the upper air?

"Haahhh!" A cobras hiss startled everyone. Like a ghost from the mist, or smoke issuing from a fissure in the ground, Shauku rematerialized. The vampire grinned with needle teeth and peered with black eyes like burn holes in her yellow parchment skull. Withered hands crooked in the air. "Stand fast, ye humans!"

Indeed, pirates and pinefolk again felt their limbs stiffen, and this time Adira knew they wouldn't escape. Nothing could save them.

In one long stride, Jedit Ojanen slung a balled paw far behind his shoulder, wound up with all his massive weight, and punched the vampire square in the brisket. Shauku was plucked off her feet as if hurled from a catapult. She struck a stone wall thirty feet away with a bone-breaking crunch, then flopped on her shriveled face out of sight amid boulders.

Adira grunted. "How did you do that? That curse petrifies people in their tracks!"

"This time she commanded humans, not mortals." Jedit grinned so long white fangs winked below his muzzle. "Nor tigers."

"The legionnaires?" Magfire peered through a haze of smoke and dust. The tattered soldiers fell into a ragged encircling rank as an officer rapped orders in a foreign tongue. "They ring us still."

With the vampire temporarily out of the way, Adira had bigger worries. Not far off, the green-flushed cosmic horror peered upward with bulging eyes. Even the hideous tongues and tentacles were turned upward as if awaiting deliverance from the sky. And Johan, Adira recalled dimly, had quit this chamber running.

"Never mind the legionnaires! They're not the threat! Grab Whistledove." Adira squatted where the brownie lay as if asleep, hoping against sense for a breath of life. But one clasp of a cold hand made Adira let go. "Oh, for pity and cruelty! Leave her! Make ready to run!"

"Run how?" asked someone. "Adira, wait!"

Adira Strongheart pushed past her crew and Magfire's to stand not twenty feet from the nearest legionnaires.

Pointing with her sword, she called, "Hear me! The cosmic horror wakes and works celestial magic! The mage we fought read the beast's dreams and now flees as if his skirts were afire! I don't know what portends, but best we all flee without further foolishness!"

Legionnaires turned hooded heads to hear orders. Some officer, in garb indistinguishable from the rest, hesitated a moment. Not seeing Shauku, he decided. With a curt bark in a foreign tongue, the legionnaires faced left and double-timed in two ranks to the nearest tunnel.

"Who'd believe that?" marveled Magfire.

Adira jolted her with a smart shove. "Run! All of you! Just run!"

Her crew and some foresters called questions. The pirate only shouted to keep running, pushing shoulders and prodding kidneys. Johan's desertion and Adira's panic proved infectious. Soon everyone saved their breath to run.

"Keep up!" called Adira. She scooped the wounded Heath under the armpit to hurry him along. "All of you! Don't dally! Whatever set Johan running must be bigger than any threat of vampire or soldiers!"

Racing into a dark tunnel, far ahead they heard a hollow boom.

Panting, Wilemina asked, "Whatever can that be?"

"At a guess," gasped Adira Strongheart, "it's the entire mountain crashing down on our heads! Run!"