Realms of Mystery

H

The stars shone brightly through the thin, cold mountain air. Basking in their beauty, lulled by the crackling of the campfire and the drone of his comrades’ snoring, Halladon Moonglade reflected that this adventuring life was passing tolerable, even when a fellow pulled watch duty in the middle of the night.

Behind him, something thumped and rustled.

Halladon turned. Osher of Torm, the company’s priest, lay feebly flailing and writhing, while all around him, the other five members of the band slumbered on, oblivious.

It looked as if Osher was having a nightmare. Rising nimbly, Halladon moved to wake him. After two paces, the young, slender, platinum-haired half-elf saw the wetness darkly gleaming on the cleric’s chest, and caught the coppery smell of it. He flung himself down at Osher’s side.

Even as Halladon applied pressure to his friend’s wounds, he was horribly certain that the effort was in vain. Something had torn Osher’s throat to shreds. Only the bald, beak-nosed priest’s own healing magic might have served to preserve his life, and his injuries manifestly rendered him incapable of reciting a spell.

Osher fumbled at Halladon’s wrists. “Don’t!” said the half-elf. “I’m trying to help you!” But the cleric wouldn’t relent. Somehow finding a strength that should have been beyond the capacity of any man so gravely wounded, he caught hold of Halladon’s forearms and forced his hands away.

Halladon would have continued striving to minister to him, but Osher gave him an imploring stare. A look full of desperation, yet entirely lucid. Overawed by the maimed man’s resolution, the half-elf hovered helplessly beside him and allowed him to do as he would.

Osher dabbed his fingertip in the terrible inkwell of his own blood, and, his hand shaking violently, began to write on the ground. He managed only an H before his eyes rolled up in his head and he gave a long, mournful sigh and was still.

“What’s wrong?” rumbled Kovost of Mithril Hall. Halladon looked around. Bushy black beard, upturned mustache, and eyebrows bristling, the dwarf stood with his battle-axe clasped in his callused hands. Stray tufts of hair protruded from beneath his hastily donned steel-and-leather helmet like the petals of a withered flower. Behind him, the other members of the company were hastily but belatedly stirring themselves.

“Something killed Osher,” Halladon said. He strode back to the place where he’d been sitting, picked up his longbow, nocked an arrow, and peered about.

“Make more light,” said Perys, a lanky, soft-spoken ranger and former scout for the Elders of Everlund, taking up his broadsword and shield.

Halladon opened his small pouch of spell components, fingered a wisp of phosphorescent moss, and murmured an incantation. A silvery glow flowered from the top of his bow. Everyone gazed tensely into the darkness, weapons at the ready.

“I think it’s gone,” the half-elf said at last.

“What was it?” demanded Moanda the Spike, a javelin in one hand and a buckler with a wickedly pointed boss- the source of her epithet-in the other.

“I don’t know,” Halladon said, feeling, whether it was warranted or not, a pang of shame.

The pale-eyed barbarian, who’d grown to womanhood in the trackless reaches of the frozen north, glared at him. “You were on watch. How could something sneak into camp, kill someone, and slip away without you ever seeing it?”

“Unless you fell asleep,” said Silbastis, a stocky, tattooed former sailor from the Sword Coast. His cutlass and golden hoop earring glimmered in the magical glow.

Halladon bit back an angry retort, knowing that, in their place, he might well have suspected the same. “I swear I didn’t. I just…didn’t see it.”

Stooping, studying the ground, Perys walked slowly back to Osher’s body. “Whatever it was, it didn’t leave any sign. Which is curious. The soil isn’t that hard.”

“Osher tried to tell us what it was,” Halladon said. “Since he couldn’t speak, he was going to write it. But he only managed the first rune-H-before his heart stopped.”

“Hobgoblin!” cried Gybik, the company’s thief. An apple-cheeked, snub-nosed little man who, though middle-aged, looked as if he were still a stripling. He possessed a positive genius for picking locks and finding hidden booty, which was offset by a certain obtuseness in other matters.

Kovost rolled his eyes. “A hobgoblin couldn’t slip in and out of camp without being seen, Lightfingers. It likely couldn’t avoid leaving tracks, either.”

“Mielikki only knows what Osher meant to write,” Perys said, returning his sword to its scabbard. The blade went in with a soft metallic hiss. “I’m afraid there are simply too many possibilities for us to puzzle it out. What we can do is set double watches for the remainder of the night.”

Moanda nodded grimly, a motion, which set her grizzled braids bobbing on her breast. “Wise idea. Somebody help me carry Osher to the edge of camp.”

“I will,” Halladon said. “But first, everyone…“ His comrades gazed at him. “If this is my fault, if I wasn’t vigilant enough, I’m sorry.”

For a moment, no one replied, and he wondered if henceforth they all were going to despise him. Then Kovost said, “Don’t blame yourself, lad. We’re deep in the Nether Mountains. Things happen here. Shift the body, then try to get some sleep.”

Dawn revealed the wilderness in all its splendor. Mountains rose in every direction as far as the eye could see. Their pristine caps of perpetual snow reflected the ruddy sunlight, while gloom still veiled the gorges and valleys below. Nowhere could one discern so much as a hut, a road, a thread of smoke rising against the vast blue sky, or any other hint of civilization. On many a morning, the desolate beauty of such vistas had lifted Halladon’s heart. But not today. Not when he and his fellow adventurers faced the melancholy task of sorting through the belongings of a dead friend.

They kept the valuable items-the rubies, fire opals, and sapphires that had been Osher’s share of the treasure-and those that were personal, like the leather headband his sister had braided for him, the slide whistle he’d played at idle moments, and the steel amulet, cast in the form of a gauntlet, which was the emblem of his faith. These they would deliver to his temple. The rest, including his heavy steel breastplate emblazoned with the gauntlet of Torm, they buried with him.

After a cheerless breakfast, they set out on their way, trekking westward. Perhaps in tribute to Osher’s memory, Halladon found himself recalling all that had happened since the company formed.

They’d met by chance, in a dilapidated fieldstone inn in Jalanthar. At the end of a night of carousing, Kovost had grandly proposed that they all go treasure-hunting in the craggy wasteland to the east. Everyone knew the ancient wizards of Netheril had left sacks of gold and diamonds stashed in every cave and hollow tree, and they were just the clever fellows to retrieve them.

Less drunk than most of his companions, Halladon had accepted the proposition with equal enthusiasm. Why else had he roused his Moon elf father’s ire and his human mother’s worry by refusing to live the safe, sensible life of a wood carver like everyone else in the family? Or trained with his master of arms and, a shade less diligently, with his magic teacher, until crotchety old Hlint had declared him a crude, bumptious warrior at heart and terminated his lessons? Why else but to join a fellowship of adventurers and sally forth on bold expeditions like this?

Although, had he known what lay in store, he might have thought twice, for it soon became apparent just what an ill-matched and contentious lot they actually were. Sober, Kovost remembered the usual dwarf prejudice against elf and half-elf alike. Moanda, like any right-thinking barbarian, distrusted mages and was inclined to scorn all her companions as prime exemplars of everything that ailed effete, decadent civilization. Silbastis vexed the others by shirking his share of the chores, Gybik by pilfering, and Perys by his phlegmatic imperturbability.

The way they bickered, it was a marvel they lasted a week in the Nethers, and in fact, one of them didn’t. While they were still in the foothills, an ogre had slain Bax, the company’s only genuine wizard, with a well thrown rock. But the rest survived by learning to work together, and eventually, they even started to like one another. Prejudices faded, or at least ceased to apply to the fellow tramping along at one’s side, while reprehensible character flaws and odious personal habits softened into endearing foibles.

Finally, weeks after the chilly autumn winds began to whine out of the north, the company found a ruined keep and the crypts beneath. Much to their frustration, they’d nearly run out of time to explore the place. They had to set out for Sundabar before the first blizzards sealed the passes. But on the last afternoon before the morning on which they’d agreed to depart, Gybik discovered a fortune in gems concealed behind a stag-headed bas-relief of some long-forgotten beast.

The adventurers could have lived comfortably on such a prize for the rest of their lives, but as they swaggered, jesting and crowing along the ridges and through the vales, not a one of them had any patience for a tame, timid notion like that. They’d spend the winter roistering like lords, then return for more treasure in the spring. Nobody doubted it was there for the taking, just as no one felt daunted by the prospect of a second expedition.

In the wake of Osher’s death their cockiness had flown. They trudged along silently, dull-eyed or peering nervously into the pines clinging to the steep, rocky slope above the trail. Around midmorning, when the sun finally rose above the lofty peaks at their backs, Perys pushed back his green woolen hood to uncover his tousled chestnut curls and turned to regard his comrades.

“Enough of this moping,” he said. “We’ll miss Osher, but he served Torm well. The god has surely given him a high place at his table. We should be happy for him.”

Striving to cast off their melancholy, the others nodded, smiled wanly, or murmured their agreement. “And whatever killed him,” Kovost said, “it’s far behind us now, and won’t trouble us again.”

Halladon woke to a hard nudging in his ribs. From prior experience, he knew it was the steel toe of Kovost’s boot. “Get up, sluggard,” boomed the dwarf.

“It’s good that a season of living rough hasn’t spoiled those exquisite manners of yours,” Halladon replied. When he pushed his covers aside, the cold pierced him like a blade. He hastily clambered to his feet and wrapped himself in his bearskin mantle, which he’d been employing as an extra blanket. “Evidently we came through the night all right.”

“Of course,” Kovost said. “Didn’t I tell you…”

Someone gasped.

The half-elf turned. His face ashen, Gybik was squatting beside Silbastis. Gybik had no doubt attempted to rouse him, but Silbastis wasn’t moving.

The other adventurers hurriedly gathered around the corpse. This time, the throat wasn’t shredded. There was only a single neat, round puncture.

“Whatever killed Osher,” Gybik said shakily, “it followed us.”

“And this time it apparently slew its victim in his sleep,” said Halladon, queasy with grief and dismay. “Stealthy as it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it usually kills. It was likely only a fluke that Osher awoke.”

“Poor man,” said Moanda, gazing down at the body. “I enjoyed his tales of the sea. Even if I was sure he lied with every other word.”

“Poor him and poor us!” said Gybik. “If the killer came twice, it’ll come again.”

“I’m afraid you may well be correct,” Perys said, crouching. “Hmmm. Once again, the creature didn’t leave any tracks.”

“There isn’t much blood on the ground, either,” Halladon said. “That’s odd, too, don’t you think?”

“Everything about this is ‘odd!’ “ Gybik snapped. “Blessed Tymora, what terrible thing is stalking us?”

“Perhaps we roused something in the catacombs,” Perys said somberly. “Some sort of guardian the mages of Netheril left behind to ward their treasure.”

Halladon shrugged. “We didn’t notice any signs of such a thing while we were there, but you could be right.”

“Whatever it is,” Perys mused, “how can it come, kill, and depart at will? Unseen… without leaving a trace? In my experience, even invisible creatures generally give some sign of their presence. Why did it only slay one of us, when others lay sleeping and thus at its mercy as well? And most importantly, how do we protect ourselves from such a thing?”

“It attacks in the dark,” Kovost said. “We could travel by night and sleep by day.”

The long-legged scout shook his head. “Not in this country. I understand that you and Halladon see better at night than we humans, but there’s still an excellent chance we’d take the wrong path or blunder over the edge of a precipice.”

“Now that we know the killer’s tracking us,” Moanda said, “let’s lie in wait for it.”

“That’s worth a try,” Perys said. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll simply have to try to shake the creature off our trail, set up camps that are more difficult to sneak into, and maintain the double watches with especial wariness.”- he looked at Halladon-”Unless you can do something more with your sorcery.”

Feeling useless, the half-elf shook his head. “As I’ve told you, I’ve only mastered a few spells, and I don’t see how any of them could help.”

Moanda made a spitting sound.

“H,” muttered Kovost, his brow furrowed. “Damn it, what was Osher trying to tell us?”

“I’m afraid that what Perys said still holds,” Halladon said sympathetically. “I don’t see how you can possibly guess it.”

“The Soulforger smite you!” snarled the dwarf. “At least I’m trying to help!” Shocked by his comrade’s outburst, Halladon stepped backward.

“No!” Kovost bellowed.

After burying Silbastis, the adventurers had marched about two leagues, then wasted precious hours lying in ambush for a foe that never came. Afterward, they pushed themselves hard to cover as much ground as possible. Despite the weariness their pace engendered, Halladon had at first been too apprehensive to sleep well. But the next two nights had passed without incident, inspiring the brittle hope that the company had outdistanced its nemesis, and this evening exhaustion had finally dragged him down into a profound slumber.

Still, when Kovost’s shout jolted him awake, he comprehended instantly that someone else was dead. Groggily, he disentangled himself from his covers and stumbled over to where the dwarf and Moanda were standing. Gybik joined them a moment later.

The companions regarded the inert form at their feet. To all appearances, Perys, like Silbastis, had perished without ever waking. Once again, there was little blood on the ground.

His boyish face contorted with anger, Gybik rounded on Kovost and Moanda. “What’s the matter with you? You knew this fiend was skulking about. You were supposed to check on us!”

“We did,” Moanda said. “Again and again. I… I don’t know how it got to him without us spotting it.”

“‘H,’” said Kovost, gazing at his feet. His fist clenched on the haft of his axe as though he thought he could pound the solution into his skull.

Shivering, wishing he’d had the presence of mind to pick up his mantle, Halladon crouched beside the body. As he’d expected, he didn’t find any tracks.

“None of us will reach Sundabar,” said Gybik in a fey voice. “We’re all going to die in these awful mountains. Unless…“ He dashed to his pack, tore it open, scooped out a handful of gems, and brandished them at the night. “Take them back! We don’t want them anymore!”

The darkness didn’t answer. “Be a man,” said Moanda in disgust.

“‘H!’“ roared Kovost suddenly, no longer perplexed but inspired. “‘H,’ by all the gods!”

Halladon felt a thrill of hope. “Do you actually know what Osher meant?”

The dwarf gave him a savage grin. “Oh, I believe so, Elf-get. I should have figured it out before, but I was overlooking the obvious. No one ever saw the killer sneaking into or out of camp because he was here all the time, using magic to murder his comrades silently from a distance. He made sure to butcher Osher first lest the priest divine the evil in his heart, then did his level best to persuade the rest of us to ignore the clue our poor friend left us. ‘H’ stands for Halladon!”

The half-elf gaped at him. “That’s insane! You’ve seen my magic, paltry thing that it is. You know I can’t cast a spell that could kill someone without the sentries noticing.”

“We’ve only seen what you’ve chosen to show us,” Moanda said. “Who knows what other filthy sorceries you command?” Her broadsword with its eagle-head pommel whispered out of its scabbard.

“But why would I kill Perys and the others?”

“That’s an easy one,” Kovost said. “You want all the gems for yourself.” Behind him, Gybik was approaching. He looked less angry, less certain of Halladon’s guilt than the others, but he had his short sword in one hand and a throwing knife in the other.

Loath as he would be to strike at his friends, their demeanor was so menacing that Halladon could only wish he’d buckled on his own sword. But like his bow, quiver, and pack, it still lay next to his cloak and blankets. All he had were the dirk and pouch which never left his belt. “You’re wrong,” he said. “Think about it. I reached Osher’s body ahead of everyone else. Were I the killer, I would have wiped the ‘H’ away.”

“Maybe you didn’t notice it in time,” Moanda said. “At any rate, we see the truth at last, and your serpent’s tongue won’t convince us otherwise. Take him!” She and Kovost surged at him, with Gybik bringing up the rear. Scrambling backward, the half-elf rattled off a spell.

A quartet of Halladons, identical to the original in every respect, flickered into existence around him. Wheeling, he broke for the trees, his illusory twins aping his motions as swiftly and precisely as reflections in a mirror.

His comrades gave chase. Gybik’s knife whizzed through one of phantasms, bursting it like a soap bubble. A slash of Moanda’s sword dispersed a second illusion, and she snarled in frustration.

Halladon plunged into the pines. Kovost’s axe spun past him and for an instant, the half-elf grinned. The weapon wasn’t balanced for throwing, and the short-legged dwarf wouldn’t have hurled it if he hadn’t fallen behind.

Moanda and Gybik began to collide with the branches and trip over the gnarled roots which Halladon, with his superior night vision, was avoiding. By the time the remaining illusions winked out of existence, he’d lost himself in the night.

The wind howled and snow flurried down from the sky. A rampart of towering storm clouds, like a second tier of mountains stacked atop the first, veiled the midday sun. As he trudged along shaking, hugging himself for warmth, Halladon strained to listen. He didn’t think his erstwhile companions would attempt another ambush, but then, he hadn’t thought they’d mistake him for a murdering traitor either, and in any case, it wouldn’t do to catch up with them before dark.

After his escape, he’d felt a bitter rage at the way his friends had turned on him, but the emotion hadn’t lasted. He knew that Moanda, Kovost, and Gybik hadn’t wanted to believe him a murderer. With the company dying one by one, it was imperative that they figure out how it was happening, and the dwarf’s accusation had had a superficial air of plausibility. It should have come as no surprise that Halladon had failed to persuade the others of his innocence, especially since he had no alternative explanation of his own to offer, just as it was only natural that they’d taken up arms against the supposed author of their misfortunes with such dispatch. He understood why they’d behaved as they had, and he forgave them.

Which was just as well, because it was vital that he reunite himself with them. No doubt with malice aforethought, they’d taken his gear with them when they moved on, and, inadequately clad and armed, bereft of his grimoire, rations, and water bottle, he had virtually no chance of making it out of the Nether Mountains. Even if properly equipped he likely couldn’t survive the trek alone. The rugged, predator-infested country was simply too dangerous.

Obviously, he could only regain his comrades’ trust by revealing the true killer, and it occurred to him that he might now be in a better position to do precisely that. The foe was adept at concealing itself from whatever guards the adventurers posted. But perhaps a hidden observer, lurking just outside the camp, someone of whose presence it was unaware, would be able to spot it.

It seemed a promising plan. To try it, all he had to do was make it through the day.

His extremities grew numb, and his breath crackled in his nose. Occasionally he trudged past a hollow in the ground or in the escarpment beside the trail. He’d feel sorely tempted to huddle there to escape the freezing wind, but he didn’t dare let his friends get too far ahead. Instead, he imagined dancing hearth fires, steamy saunas, drafts of mulled red wine searing his throat and kindling a glow in his belly, and a feather bed heaped with eiderdowns with a warming pan tucked underneath.

It didn’t seem to help much. He promised himself that if by some miracle he survived this nightmare, he’d flee to sunny Chessenta where winter was a myth, and never wander north again.

By mid afternoon, the cold had reduced him to a miserable, shambling somnolence, his consciousness wavering in and out of focus. Once he roused to find himself plodding down the wrong side of the path, a mere inch from a prodigious drop. The danger jolted him back to full awareness, and that was when he heard the guttural orcish voices whispering from somewhere back up the trail. Thank Corellon he had sharp ears, and that sound carried well in the mountains.

It would be suicide to confront the creatures here, where there was no room to maneuver. Halladon ran, and though he tried to do so quietly, he heard the orcs immediately break into a run as well. They were hunting him.

After a switchback turn the way widened out into a promontory supporting a stand of stunted spruces. Panting, his heart pounding, Halladon hid behind one of the trees and prepared to cast one of the two spells left in his memory.

Three ores trotted into view. They wore ragged garments crudely dyed with ugly, clashing colors-muddy mauves, garish oranges, and mustard yellows. Deep cowls shadowed their swinish faces, protecting their bloodshot eyes against the hated daylight; had the sun been shining, they likely wouldn’t have ventured from their lair at all. Even from across the bluff, Halladon caught the sour stink of their blemishedolive flesh. Grateful that he hadn’t attracted the notice of a full-sized war party, he let them trot as close as he dared, then took hold of his piece of moss and whispered the incantation.

On the far side of the ores, white light flowered amid the branches of an evergreen. On a brighter day, they might not even have noticed, but on this gray, overcast afternoon the shimmer caught their eyes. Exclaiming in surprise, they pivoted toward the glow.

Halladon rattled off his final spell. Two slivers of azure radiance streaked from his fingertips and buried themselves in the closest ore’s back. The creature collapsed. Halladon sprang to his feet and charged. The remaining orcs began to blunder back around. The nearer one, a pot-bellied specimen with a necklace of mummified ears, caught sight of the half-elf rushing at it and its piggy eyes widened. It tried to swing its spear point into line, but was an instant too slow. Halladon thrust his dirk into the creature’s chest.

Knowing he had no chance of taking the last orc by surprise, the adventurer yanked his weapon free and whirled to face it. The creature, a hulking brute with delicately wrought bands of gold-perhaps plunder from some massacred caravan-gleaming on its corded, simian arms, threw its spear. Halladon dodged it by a hair. The orc whipped out a scimitar and rushed him.

The half-elf had to overcome the advantage of his foe’s longer, heavier blade, and he knew he’d only get one chance to do it. He retreated several steps while the scimitar, whizzing through the air, missed him by inches. When he’d taken the measure of the orc’s attacks-the creature favored a high, horizontal, potentially beheading cut-he faked another step backward, crouched suddenly below the arc of his adversary’s stroke, and drove his dirk into its belly.

With a grunt, the orc doubled over. Halladon stabbed it again, this time in the heart. The brute dropped.

Halladon could scarcely believe he’d single-handedly bested all three of his attackers. Corellon grant that no other creature wanted to pick a fight.

In any case, there was no time to stand and savor his victory, not when Moanda, Kovost, and Gybik were getting farther away by the second. Halladon bent over the third orc, then hesitated. In normal circumstances, he would have deemed it a shabby, churlish deed to rob the dead, but it would be even more dishonorable to allow himself to freeze to death when his friends needed his help to escape a killer. Hoping it wasn’t verminous, he appropriated the orc’s malodorous but warm-looking fleece-lined leather cloak, and then the creature’s curved, brass-hilted scimitar.

Shivering, envying his friends their little fire, Halladon surveyed the camp from behind a granite boulder. Gybik and Moanda lay shrouded in their blankets, with only Kovost-who’d wrapped himself in Halladon’s bearskin mantle-standing guard. Perhaps the adventurers believed that now that they’d chased their companion away, they were no longer in any extraordinary danger. Or perhaps they’d decided that with only three of them remaining, double watches simply weren’t feasible anymore.

The sun had set several hours ago, and by now Halladon had begun to suspect that the killer intended to stay away tonight. The half-elf’s stomach was already hollow and achy with hunger, and he wondered grimly how he’d feel after another day without food. Perhaps he should have searched the orc corpses for provender, although the notion of eating the kind of rations such creatures typically carried was almost enough to quell his appetite for the nonce.

Gybik shifted beneath his covers, and the motion drew Halladon’s eye. No shadowy ghost or assassin was crouching over the thief, and the half-elf was already looking away again, into the darkness beyond the wavering yellow firelight, when it struck him that there was something subtly wrong about the way Gybik had moved. When he peered at the thief more closely, he realized what it was. The small man hadn’t just rolled over, changing position in his sleep. He’d raised his head ever so slightly, as if looking about.

It almost certainly meant nothing. Why shouldn’t Gybik wake for a moment, glance around to make sure nothing was amiss, and then drift off again? But the motion had seemed sly, stealthy, as if the thief was peeking at his companions, making sure that Moanda was unconscious and Kovost’s back was turned. And thus Halladon continued to watch him.

Even so, in the darkness, he almost missed what happened next. A shape crawled from under Gybik’s blankets. At first the half-elf thought it was a rat, and then, from the length and number of its limbs, some sort of enormous insect. Only when it scuttled away across the ground did he discern that it was a human hand, Gybik’s hand, apparently, detached from his wrist.

I finally understand you, Osher, thought Halladon in amazement.

As the hand scurried noiselessly along, it changed. The skin darkened, and the fingers lengthened until they resembled a spider’s legs. Kovost glanced casually around, and the hand instantly flattened itself against the ground. When the dwarf turned away again, it scuttled on to Moanda and crouched by her neck. Its nails lengthened into claws. The one on the index finger was particularly long and narrow, like a knitting needle, or a mosquito’s proboscis.

Halladon had been watching the hand in horrified fascination. Now he abruptly realized that unless he intervened, the barbarian had only seconds to live. He grabbed his scimitar, sprang up from behind the stone, and raced forward. “Kovost!” he shouted. “Help Moanda!”

At once the disembodied hand crouched down, concealing itself among the folds of Moanda’s blanket a split second before Kovost reflexively jerked around to peer at her. Obviously seeing nothing amiss, the dwarf surged to his feet, Halladon’s cloak falling away from his brawny shoulders. Teeth bared in a snarl, battle-axe at the ready, he darted to intercept the half-elf.

Halladon halted. It was either that or give his friend a chance to strike at him. “Look again!” he pleaded. “The creature, the true killer, is right there beside her!” But when he looked again himself, he saw that it wasn’t, not any longer.

“You were mad to think you could fool us a second time,” Kovost said, still advancing. At his back, Moanda and Gybik, who possessed two normal-looking hands again, threw off their covers and scrambled up from the ground.

“Listen to me,” Halladon said. Moanda and Gybik stalked up to stand beside Kovost, swords leveled. “I’ve been spying on the camp since just after dusk. I reasoned that the killer might not be as able to hide itself from someone whose presence it didn’t suspect, and I was correct. I saw it, and it has been among us all along. You, Kovost, were right about that much. Gybik-or rather, some shapeshifting creature that caught our friend alone, slaughtered him, and assumed his identity-is the murderer. I imagine we attracted its attention while we were exploring the fortress.”

The false Gybik goggled at him in perfect imitation of the original. “I… what are you talking about? I’m me!” He looked wildly about at Moanda and Kovost. “I promise I am!”

“We know that,” the barbarian said soothingly, or as close to soothingly as her acerbic nature would permit.

“Of course we do,” said Kovost. “You couldn’t move around the camp killing people without the sentries seeing you. Nor does Gybik begin with an ‘H.’”

“No, but ‘hand’ does,” Halladon said. “Our impostor is a kind of glorified leech. It insinuated itself into our company because it craves human blood, and it has a clever way of getting it without being detected. It can detach its hand to skitter about like a little animal. The hand slips a hollow needle of a talon into somebody’s neck, killing him so deftly the victim never wakes. The hand siphons its victim’s blood and carries it back to nourish its body. Our guards never saw the thing scuttling around because it’s too quick and small, and can darken itself to blend into the shadows. Perys never found tracks because it’s too light to leave any. The wounds didn’t shed as much blood as we would have expected because the shapeshifter took it. It only killed one of us at a time because that was all the sustenance it needed. And Osher didn’t try to write Gybik because he never saw Gybik attacking him, just a disembodied, inhuman hand. Don’t you see…”

“We see that it’s all preposterous,” Kovost said.

“Yes,” Moanda said, an unaccustomed hint of pity in her voice. “Halladon, you must be mad in truth, to imagine you could cozen us with such a tale. Perhaps it was your dark studies that deranged you. I’ll be sorry to slay you, but the shades of Osher, Silbastis, and Perys cry out for vengeance.”

“Besides,” said Kovost, raising his axe, “you’re too dangerous to live.”

“Wait!” said Halladon. “Let me prove he isn’t Gybik. Let me demonstrate that he doesn’t know things the genuine Gybik should know”-he looked the shapeshifter in the eye-”Where did we first meet?”

“The Crowing Cockatrice,” the creature said.

The half-elf felt a pang of dismay. “With what drink did we toast the founding of our company?”

“The cider. Jalanthar amber, it was called.”

“What did we fight in our first battle together?”

“Three ogres.”

Halladon realized he wouldn’t be able to trip the creature up. Either it had somehow assimilated the real Gybik’s memories when it had taken on his form, or else it had gleaned all it needed to know from conversations along the trail.

“That was your final ploy,” said Moanda, slinking forward. “We’ll give you a proper burial, in memory of the comrade you once were.”

Halladon knew he couldn’t defeat all three of them, but by Corellon, if he had to perish, he meant to take the shapeshifter with him. He shifted his weight as if preparing to retreat, then dived forward in an all out attack, swinging the orcish blade at the false Gybik’s skull.

The creature recoiled, and the scimitar merely gashed its shoulder. Moanda sprang at Halladon from the right, and Kovost, from the left. Off-balance, the half-elf struggled to flounder back on guard, knowing that he wouldn’t make it in time.

“Wait!” Kovost barked. “Look!” Moanda somehow halted her stroke an inch short of cleaving Halladon’s spine.

Surmising what Kovost must have seen, the half-elf turned back toward the shapeshifter. Sure enough, the pain of its wound had evidently disrupted its ability to maintain its borrowed form. Its flesh expanded and flowed, erasing all resemblance to Gybik, or to anything human. In a heartbeat, it grew half as tall as Halladon. Its body was dead black, its limbs coiled with the boneless fluidity of an octopus’s tentacles, and its surface bulged and hollowed as if new muscles and organs were constantly forming and dissolving inside it. Is head was hairless, and without ears, nose, or mouth, but from the center of a triangle of bulging white oval eyes extended a tapered prehensile proboscis as long and pointed as a spear.

“Kill it!” Moanda cried. She edged toward the creature, and it struck at her with Gybik’s short sword. She blocked the blow with her buckler, jabbing the spiked boss into the shapeshifter’s arm in the process. Pivoting, she swung her broadsword down and hacked the limb in two.

Had her opponent been human, such a maiming blow would almost certainly have ended the combat. But the raw stump of the shapeshifter’s arm instantly sprouted a tangle of chitinous pincers resembling lobster claws, and it struck at her again. Caught by surprise, she couldn’t quite bring the buckler up in time to deflect the blow completely. She reeled backward with a long gash in her temple.

Bellowing a war cry, Kovost darted forward, intent, like any dwarf facing such a huge creature, on getting inside its reach. The shapeshifter, which didn’t seem to be experiencing any particular difficulty keeping track of more than one opponent at a time, slashed at him with one of Gybik’s knives. Kovost ducked the stroke, then chopped at the monster’s knee, half severing its leg. The shapeshifter stumbled and, grinning, the dwarf ripped his weapon free for another attack. But then six new appendages, each terminating in a pointed shaft of bone like a scorpion’s stinger, erupted from the beast’s abdomen to stab at him. Driven backward, he dodged and parried frantically.

Meanwhile, Halladon circled behind the shapeshifter and drove the scimitar deep into its back. For a moment the creature froze, affording Moanda and Kovost a precious respite from its onslaught, and the half-elf dared to hope he’d hurt it badly. Then another blank, round eye opened in the nape of its neck, and a huge hand shot from the center of its back to snatch at Halladon’s head.

Halladon sidestepped and hacked at the thin, snaky arm to which the hand was attached. The shapeshifter’s flesh parted with surprising ease, and the severed member tumbled to the ground. Turning, Halladon lifted his blade to cut at the creature’s back.

Something struck the half-elf’s leg, hurting him and thrusting him off-balance. He fell heavily onto his side. A headless thing resembling an enormous black starfish, each of its arms tipped with a jagged talon and a fanged, slavering maw gnashing in the center of its body, scuttled up the length of Halladon’s body toward his head, jabbing at him as it came. He realized it was the severed hand, acting independently of the shape-shifter’s body.

He slashed at it awkwardly. The starfish pounced over his blade and onto his shoulder, plunging two of its claws into his flesh to anchor itself. The other three arms poised to stab at his head.

Dropping his saber, which was useless at such close quarters, he grabbed his attacker and pulled. In a flash of pain, the starfish tore free of his flesh. He tried to fling it away from him, but it instantly attached itself to his hand and started to bite him.

Halladon frantically drew his knife, then stabbed and sawed at the creature. After a few seconds, it stopped moving, and with a final flailing of his arm, he freed himself from its excruciating embrace.

The half-elf seized his scimitar, scrambled up, and surveyed the battle. His friends were hard-pressed. The left side of her face red with blood, warding herself with her buckler and boot knife, Moanda tried vainly to work her way back to the broadsword she’d lost, until one of the shapeshifter’s hands snatched it up to use against her. Gasping, Kovost lurched desperately back and forth, striking at the ropy limbs that lashed at him from every side.

But all the shapeshifter’s arms were currently deployed in front of its body, away from Halladon. Praying it would ignore him just long enough for one more sword stroke, the half-elf charged it.

Since his cut to the torso hadn’t slain it, he decided to attack the monster’s head. Scimitar raised, he leaped into the air, and at that instant the shapeshifter’s proboscis whipped all the way around its skull to hurtle at his face.

He was certain he was a dead man, but his sword hand knew better. It beat the proboscis to the side, then buried the scimitar in the creature’s skull.

The shapeshifter stiffened, let out a ghastly buzzing sound, then dropped. Within moments, it began to melt into a foul-smelling slime.

Dead as it looked, Moanda and Kovost approached it warily.

“Are you all right?” the dwarf asked Halladon.

At first, too winded to speak, Halladon merely nodded. “It stuck me a few times,” he wheezed at last, “but not too deeply. What about you two?”

“The same,” said the barbarian, hand pressed to the cut on her brow.

Kovost peered down at the rapidly dissolving carcass. “What in the name of the Keeper’s beard was this thing?”

Moanda snorted, her usual response to anything she considered a foolish question. “It was unpleasant, and now it’s dead. What more do you need to know?” She turned to Halladon, inclined her head, and grumbled a phrase in her native language three times over. Then, when he peered at her in puzzlement, she gave him an exasperated scowl. “That’s how my people apologize. Don’t you cityfolk know anything?”

“I’m sorry, too, lad,” Kovost said. “We should never have doubted you. I’ll carry the shame of it to my dying day. Tell me how to make it up to you.”

Halladon grinned. “Depend on it, it will be a long, arduous process. But after we tend to one another’s wounds, you can make a start by building up the fire and cooking me a gigantic supper.”