Untold Adventures: A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

TO CHAOS AND BACK AGAIN

Bab threw himself into the ditch just in time. The foul, gritty red dust went up his nose and sifted into his curly brown hair, but he held his breath until the urge to sneeze passed. Not that anyone could have heard it, of course. He gripped his hammer until his fingertips could have pierced through the thick leather wrappings on the handle. The solid metal gave him comfort. Passed down from his grandfather’s many-times grandfather, it was ingrained with virtues that helped him shape metal or slay enemies usually beyond the capability of a halfling.

His four companions stayed low as the file of chained orcs and goblins marched by, passing into the notorious Crossroads on the edge of the Chaos Scar. Whips cracked over their heads. The slave master in charge of the company shouted curses. Bab listened appreciatively to the language. Creative, he thought. A phrase or two like that would be useful to help keep the smithereens down while he was hammering metal on his forge in the middle of Wenly Halt. If he should ever see his forge or his home or the village again. A halfling like him should stay where it was safe, but he had no choice. All this was his own fault, sort of. He had been successful where others had failed, and that was the wrong thing to have done.

The tiny green thread tied around his wrist dimmed. He waited, counting to twenty before he raised his head.

The others sensed his movement rather than heard it. They were still within the hour affected by the silence charm given them by Priest Nock. Bab had three more of the precious blue beads still on the string around his neck. Besides costing a week’s wages, they were made from mystical ingredients including a precious stone and a hair from his sleeping baby daughter’s head, but he’d rather have them on hand than a hundred gems or an enchanted sword. While they were within the sphere of its magic, they could hear outside sounds, but no one could hear them. Three of his six had already been spent to get them past other perils in the wilderness. He guessed they would have no beads left to get them home again.

The lack of silencing spells would probably not matter. By the time they were through with their aim, he imagined, the question of getting home would be moot.

At least, if he didn’t go back, he wouldn’t have to paint the cottage again. Winter had been hard on the little house. The whitewash was definitely beginning to peel. But it was home. He imagined he could hear the swallows in the eaves chirping, his neighbor’s dog barking, his wife Nomi nagging… the fond, familiar sounds that kept him going. He could get a day’s worth of effort out of a good nag from Nomi. The woman had a gift.

Heartened by the memory, Bab gestured to the others. They scrambled out of the ditch one after the other: Adda, Scorri, Coran, and Legg. Legg’s mouth was moving, though no sound came out of it. Then the charm elapsed. The bead burst and sifted into powder down Bab’s chest. As it did, the old man’s sharp whisper cut through the twilight air like a claw.

“… I do not believe that I let you talk me into coming back here again! Not when we nearly died the first time. All of us! May your feet come apart between the toes! May your head…!”

“Shhh!” Bab hissed. “Don’t say those kinds of things here when we’re so close to the… You-Know-What! They might come true!”

Legg clapped a hand over his mouth. He was tall for a halfling, nearly a dwarf’s height. He had meant no harm. Bab knew it. They were all feeling the strain of gritting their teeth while doing something no sane man would ever do-nor insane man either-unless there was no other way. But there was no other way. The glowing blue-green chunk of rock in the pouch on Bab’s belt was a fact that gave them no choice.

Oh, the stone had sounded like a sending from the gods. The legend of the fallen star had been one that fathers told their little ones during the dark of the moon to make their hair stand up on the backs of their necks. Bab had loved those stories. He knew at least a few of them were true, since on a moonless night he could see the green fire in the skies to the west, over the cursed mountains beyond the king’s wall. There were also weird beasts that turned up on the outskirts from time to time, misshapen creatures that looked as if they’d been born of two species at once: spider-squirrels, owl-cats, and a piteous thing that was part halfling, but no one in the village dared guess what the other part had been. The priest had given it water and said a blessing over it, but it had died. Monsters and other horrors had come out of the deep valley, tearing up the countryside. Most of them had been turned away from Wenly Halt, by force of arms or by the blessed well at its heart.

But after so many incursions the village folk had come to be interested in the sacred rock at the center of the legend. It had fallen from the sky, undoubtedly, because there were still those living who had seen it happen. Magical it was, because odd things began to happen, all springing from the kingdom to the west. It didn’t take a scholar to put all the clues together. Power came from the sky, the realm of so many of the gods. It was there for the taking, as the legends said. Those who dared, won. And someone dearly wished, as fools will, that the people of Wenly Halt had some of the magic of their own-for the good of all, of course.

Bab rose from the edge of the road. Now that dawn had passed, they need not fear being jumped from behind. Instead, he and his companions could wreak fear in a few hearts. Halfling brigands were well known in the Crossroads, all brothers. He arranged a length of rag over one eye to masquerade as the eldest of the three chieftains and swaggered into the center of the throughway. The others scrambled to follow him. With their clothes dusty and torn they looked the part of the band of thieves. The deceit had worked the last time on the way in. Most of the humans and other things who lived in the Crossroads village were afraid of the halfling brothers-with good reason. Bab traded on the notion that people saw what they thought they saw. If they believed he and his men were those deadly, thieving brothers, then so be it. They certainly had stolen an item of value. Now they were sorry, and were desperate to put back what they had taken.

The elders of Wenly Halt had been the earliest to catch fire with the idea of having a piece of the fallen star. The village needed to defend itself against raids and attacks, and how better than to fight fire with fire? A rock had brought all that terror and evil to the cursed lands. What if they should secure a piece of it themselves? They’d have power, and to spare. Power in the hands of a halfling village? Sounded foolish when you said it out loud, but it had seemed like sense, a three-month ago.

Bab had thrown himself into the middle of the discussion. He hadn’t heard any of the warnings that, for example, Dame May had voiced. “The star stone is evil!” she had cried. “A thing of darkness and mayhem!” The boarder who occupied her garden shed, Coran Halfway, agreed with her. He wasn’t a halfling, but a half-elf, and a mage at that. He hardly spoke up in village meetings, so after the nine days’ wonder of having an exotic stranger living among them, they treated him like part of the landscape. But for the elegant pointed ears, he could almost have been a halfling. He was shorter than Legg, with black curls and bright black eyes like a bird’s.

No, Bab hadn’t listened to a word. After all, until only a month or so before, he’d been in the wars under the generalship of humans and elves, four weeks’ march from his home. Daring deeds were his daily responsibility. He’d crawled into orc dens and come out alive, with an advance in rank, a fearsome scar on his neck, and a trophy or two that he didn’t show the kiddies, to prove he was brave and deadly. He had let himself be talked into leading the incursion to steal a piece of the stone, not that he had needed much persuading. Coran agreed to go along, to help protect the party. They and five others were feted as heroes until the day they set out for the Chaos Scar.

Vanity! It was like to kill a being. And it had. Two died, in fact. Of the seven of them who had gone in, only five had returned, and none of those unscathed. They’d outwitted wizards and fought monstrous creatures. But they had the stone, a thing of beauty, a smooth, imperfect sphere of blue-green twice the size of a halfling’s fist. The village was jubilant.

For a while. Ah, well, they were so good at telling themselves what brave folks they were, to have snatched a piece of the sacred stone, that they ignored the signs. Dame May hadn’t. She told them it was a Chaos Shard, and was full of peril for them. They should have listened to the witch.

So they used it to invoke protections around Wenly Halt. The mayor, who fancied himself a bit of a wizard because he was good at household cantrips, had used the stone. He declared that nothing should pass through its borders without permission. Well, it kept out the goblins that had been making nighttime raids on the henhouses and barns. Traders who liked to sneak in without paying the toll-gate fee were forced to stump up or spend hours more on the road marching toward the next inn. The mayor was well pleased with his magic-making.

Then the wind died down. No one noticed the eerie calm or the stuffiness that followed, not when the river dammed up at the same time and flowed all the way around the village like it was in a glass bowl. You could see fish swimming up against the edge and turning back again. A stag chased a doe straight toward town. Both of them rammed into the nothing that was there, and fell over. The children were like to laugh themselves to pieces over it, but it alarmed Dame May and those who were coming around to her point of view. Illicit lovers with their tunics half undone chased out of town by angry husbands couldn’t get home again without help. One of them was the son of the mayor himself. In embarrassment, the mayor had to turn to Coran to undo that spell. Well, they made plenty more mistakes like that, not so easily remedied with a night in the stocks or a plate of meat scraps.

Halflings, as good, decent folk, never realized what kind of dark thoughts some of them had about the others. The last straw, or so the village saw it, was when on behalf of the Moot Court, the monthly call for judgment, the mayor declared with the stone’s power behind him, that “the truth shall come out, no matter what!”

So money palmed by a thief screamed to be put back in the purse of the victim. That led to a few beatings. The bruises on the ruffians’ flesh spoke out in gasping, breathless voices as to the manner of their infliction. Then the dead rose to speak out against their killers. The trauma of having to face deceased loved ones nearly drove families to their own end. Bab felt that was what drove Adda to the final edge of madness, not that he hadn’t been going there for a long time.

Bab glanced over his shoulder at the locksmith. Adda ought to have stayed behind in Wenly Halt, but the others felt he was a good luck charm. He was lucky, but lucky for himself, not for them, if you asked Bab, because things that happened to other people just missed him, almost every time.

Still, Adda had a knack with a lock, magical or otherwise. In fact, the bespelled pouch that held their unwanted treasure had been tied and retied more than once, Bab could tell. He hoped that it had not lost any of the charm that kept the smooth rock safe. It was just that Adda couldn’t resist looking. Priest Nock said it was a holy madness, though under the auspice of what god, no one knew. No amount of Nock praying and bothering his own patron deity had proved enough to reveal it. Bab guessed that He or She was one of the ones who had gone insane from power, the very sound of whose name would result in the ground being heaved asunder-well, wait, that had already happened. But Nock assured them Adda was preserved by a benevolent god, not an evil one, as that who reigned in the Scar.

In the meanwhile, Bab and the others needed supplies, and maybe a rest. He swaggered toward the rough-beamed trading post where the human with one silver eye held court. Everything cost too much in the Crossroads because it had to be carried in by cart or enforced labor. A halfling couldn’t trust any food grown in the polluted local soil. Water for the foul-tasting beer in the Poisoned Chalice pub had to be distilled three times, but there was plain water, drawn from a couple of decently deep wells. It cost a toll to fill waterskins at them, but it was necessary. Each of them carried enough journeybread in their backpacks for a month’s wandering, in case no other food was available, but Bab hated to live on those dry mouthfuls for more than a few days. Still, it paid to be prepared. The last time they’d come, they ran out of provisions. He wasn’t risking it again.

The Scar was full of perils. Not only thugs and thieves waiting for a chance to jump helpless travelers and deprive them of valuables, life, or both. On their first journey inward, they had come up on an underground temple that just oozed ill will and death, but Coran’s prognostications showed that a star stone was hidden there, and they hoped to secure it.

It had, indeed, held one of the Chaos Shards, but the stone was not unguarded. At the heart of an arena smelling of blood, Adda had caught sight of a halfling woman in mystic robes seated upon a throne surrounded by armed male halflings, and he had fallen for her at once. She was a bonny one, to be sure, but a whistle of appreciation from Adda brought the entire bodyguard racing for him. They had only managed to escape by swiftness of foot and Coran spilling all his magic out in illusions.

The silver-eyed man in the trading post had thought the story wildly funny when they had stopped for provisions on their way home. Morgana, that was the halfling’s name, took slaves and tore the guts out of living captives. She rarely traveled to the neck of the pass, but it was always bad news for someone. At least they’d gotten out alive that time. Bab kept his one uncovered eye roving to ensure that Morgana was nowhere in sight.

A fist-sized rock whizzed toward Bab. He jumped to one side, in plenty of time for it to pass. He drew his small sword and showed the most vicious face he could in the direction of the line of buildings.

“Who did that?” he demanded.

The answer was a rain of stones. Bab lowered his face so that the old army helmet took the brunt. He waited until the clattering stopped and looked up. A pebble bounced off his shoulder and hit him on the nose. His eyes watered with the pain. Mad cackling echoed in the air.

“Who’s doing that?”

Bab heard at least three voices tittering. They sounded like insane children.

“I don’t see anyone,” Scorri said. She was their scout, a thickset girl with a long brown braid hidden down the back of her heavy hogskin tunic and spiked leather anklets above her hairy, bare feet.

No one in the road seemed to be looking at them, but more missiles pelted them. Coran threw up a hand and pebbles fell at his feet. Legg, magicless, got hit right between the eyes.

“Brats! I’ll learn you to stone me!” Legg cried, shaking his fist. Sword in hand, he ran in the direction of the attack. The cackling receded ahead of him.

“No, Legg!” Bab shouted. The man was just too hot-headed. He could get them all killed!

He ran after Legg. The others fell in behind him. The laughter led them through the rough streets, on past the stinking heap of refuse behind the trading post, and into the narrow passage between The Poisoned Chalice inn and leaning, dilapidated hovels. They emerged in the rolling wasteland beyond the makeshift village’s environs. Bab spotted Legg dodging between stunted trees and bushes.

“Do you smell that?” Scorri asked.

Bab took in a breath, then gagged. A stench like rotting bodies flavored with hot ash and bitter metal stung his nose. “He’s here! Legg, Mordint’s here!”

The tall halfling racing ahead of them heard and turned around in mid stride. His face was pale with fear as he headed back to them. The earth wizard was one of two beings that none of them ever wanted to meet again. Bab cursed. Why didn’t they bring an army? Of course Mordint wanted to find them! The stone had been the center of his unholy labyrinth!

The rock-throwers had to be tempters, then. These malign little imps were a product of the roiling evil that came from the star stone. They harassed or lured hapless travelers into following them. Most were never found again. Those who returned told tales of having had to fight their way free of a dark maw full of tongues and teeth. Mordint used them to lure unwary travelers to use as gifts to the dark spirits. Bab had had a taste of being tied to a post as tentacles licked around his legs. That’d never happen again.

The stench grew stronger and stronger. The earth wizard had to be close by. Bab cast around.

“Where is he? Can we hold him off?” Bab asked.

“Touch me,” Coran commanded. “Everyone come close.”

The half-elf dipped a hand into the black satchel hanging on his hip and emerged with a bubble of green glass. It glowed and began to grow, casting its peculiar light on the scrub grass. Bab felt as if he were holding a great shield before him. Adda dived to the ground and wrapped his arms around Coran’s ankles like a snake. The sphere grew until they were all contained within it.

All but Legg. He hurtled toward them, knees pumping under his leather jerkin. Ten feet to safety. Five feet. Bab stretched out an arm to pull him inside. Legg reached for it.

And vanished into thin air. The wail of his protest died out like the tolling of a distant bell.

“Curse him!” Bab snarled. It was Mordint’s favorite trick. If not for Coran’s spell, the rest of them might have been scooped up, too. “Where have they gone?”

Coran lowered his hands and the bubble faded away. Scorri sniffed the air. She pointed toward the west. “That way.”

“We have to go after him,” Coran said.

Adda nodded. “He’ll be beyond the five doors and the eight traps.”

Adda meant Mordint’s lair. Five days’ hard walk to the northwest. Well, they were going there anyhow.

Bab groaned. He checked the pouch at his belt to make certain it was secured. “We’d better go get our supplies.”

“We’re going the wrong way,” Adda insisted again, as they turned toward the sunset. “We have to go back again.” He’d said that at least once a mile.

“We are not going near Morgana’s temple,” Bab said sourly. It was the second day since they’d left the Crossroads. “Not again, not ever!”

“She fancied me,” Adda said, his round face lit up beatifically. “Those eyes of hers-lovely, like shining chestnuts. And her hair! And that chest!”

“All I saw was the necklace of shriveled eyeballs hanging on it,” Scorri said sourly. “And none of those matched.”

They were retracing an unwelcome path. Chuuls lurked in the murky waterways and thick mud in the channel to the lower side of the narrow, irregular road. Bab kept the others well clear of it. He had had enough of tentacles to last him a lifetime.

Sunlight was a weird green-blue this close to the king’s wall, as if it had to filter its way through all the malignity of the star stones. They walked a thin ridge of land that rose like a lizard’s spine above the muddy valley to the left. They felt exposed on the road, but things in the half-shadowed hollows were worse.

The halflings’ footfalls were silent enough not to attract the attention of most creatures, though Bab worried about noise from Coran. He wore tall boots with thick leather soles that scraped and tonked against the gravel and stones underfoot. Bab had to restrain himself from turning around and hissing “Shh!” at the enchanter.

He spared a thought now and again for Legg. He hoped the older halfling was alive. What bad luck that Mordint had been in the Crossroads unknown to them and still angry! If they’d known, they could have returned the stone to him there. Now the advantage belonged to the earth wizard. They would have to meet him on his own ground. Bab feared the encounter, but it was more necessary than ever, to free his old friend.

Mordint’s stronghold was still a couple of days ahead of them. Instead of the month it had taken them wandering the rift to find a star stone exposed enough to reach, this time they knew just where they were going.

To be fair, they had thought at first the lair was abandoned. Coran’s fourth attempt at a finding charm said that a stone was to be found a hundred yards off the main path to the north, along a faint uphill trail in the sparse grass occupied mostly by clattering, bronze-shelled centipedes the length of a halfling’s body, and brown snails as large as Bab’s fist. The entrance was a U-shaped gap underneath spiny, blue-green undergrowth cascading down the north cliff face of the trench that the descending star stone had dug on its way from the heavens. The cavern smelled horrible enough that no one wanted to be the first to go in, but the urgency of the pointing spell said the stone was a powerful one. Their greed-yes, greed-made them brave the stench.

Bab wasn’t sure what he had expected, but what they saw was nowhere near his imaginings. The vast room in which they found themselves soared at least ten man-heights to a colorful dome filled with light. In the center of the room, a carved fountain played, its bowls overflowing onto the mucky floor. His halfling sense of what made a good home site told him it must have begun as a true cave, a bubble in stone, but it had been worked into a marvel by who-knew-how-many pairs of hands. The shining gray-and-black streaked walls had been slagged into glass by the passing meteor, but the craftsmen who had followed etched out pillars and statues ornamented with carved swags, vines, and leaves.

Between the wall’s decorations were mystic-looking emblems that none of them, not even Coran, could identify. Gems were set into the glass, but the pillars would have to have been demolished to remove them. It looked as though thieves had tried in the past, leaving scratches on the fine carvings but succeeding in dislodging not one stone.

The thick layers of green mold encrusting the walls and the ankle-thick mud on the floor showed that no one had likely inhabited the building for years except the animals they found there, like more of the giant centipedes that scuttled everywhere, including up the walls and along the ceiling, and enormous bull-headed frogs whose deep voices echoed off the mosaic vault above. Other things, including lost or forgotten treasures, may have been buried in the muck on the floor. Either way, it stank too much for any of them to want to root around and find them.

The charm indicated the stone they wanted was below them. Scorri scouted for a way, and led them to a place where the floor sloped precipitously downward. A marvelously ornate twisted post formed into the shape of a crouching man with a blocky head stood sentry at the top of the ramp. It had to be a staircase. Deep mud concealed the risers. Bab drew his sword and led the way, squelching through the slime.

When he touched the stair rail, the place came to life, literally.

Bab shook his head in disbelief at the memory. The manshaped newel post had risen up, creaking and shedding dust. Its eyes burst into red flame. They lit upon the halflings. The stone man came toward them, swinging its arms. Bab had jumped back. The creature’s fists slammed down on the stair where he had been standing only a second before. The companions ran down the flight, only to find the match of the stone man at the bottom, rising from the second post. Out of carvings along the walls came more men. Bab snatched the hammer off his back and pounded down on the nearest statue’s foot. It cracked. The creature teetered over, still grabbing for him as it fell.

Bab and the others ducked and leaped to stay out of their way. It wasn’t too hard; the stone men were clumsy and slow moving, but they were inexorable. Coran threw one enchantment after another trying to break the charm that gave them life, but it was just beyond his talents. Sometimes they paused, but always they came on. It was all Legg and Milner could do to keep them off the diminutive half-elf. They fled blindly into the darkness.

Slim, agile Dimon was a genius at lighting a lantern on the run. He had a flame going before they had gone a dozen yards. Bab almost wished he hadn’t. The yellow light picked out pairs of multi-faceted eyes by the score. He called for the party to get into formation around Coran. Putting all of his power into his huge hammer, he swung into the midst of the enormous spiders, sending bodies and limbs flying.

They fought hard, slamming doors behind them, but always found more beasts and perils beyond. Adda noticed a loose stone in the floor before anyone else, keeping them from plummeting into a hollow shaft that seemed to descend to the center of the earth. Each of them leaped across the gap in turn. That was when Dimon ran into a web stretched across the corridor. They were cutting him loose when the master of the house turned up.

Bab’s heart had almost stopped in his body. No mistaking a master wizard. The tall, austere man with the long, gray mustache arrived surrounded by a wreath of green light-and a stench that could kill a pig at a hundred paces. Bab didn’t think anything alive could smell so bad, not even an orc-especially not a human. Mordint-they didn’t find out his name until later-stank like a midden heap gone horribly bad. No wonder he lived as alone as possible, leagues away from civilization. He pointed his fingers, and lightning roared toward them. Coran got his wits together in time, though not fast enough to save Dimon. Bab still shuddered to recall his horrible death.

They fought in and out of doors that seemed to open on different rooms every time one ran through them. Bab remembered lots of shouting, especially by Coran trying to get them all back in one place. At last the half-elf got them together in a protective bubble, but not in safety.

The tall wizard had his beasts herd them toward the end of a long room lit by torches. Stone columns threw great shadows toward them like sinister fingers. Tied to one pillar by the wall was the remains of… Bab didn’t like to guess what, or who. The manic laughter that arose seemingly from the walls chilled his blood. Then came the slap of damp, narrow feelers against their bodies like a combination of wet vines and dog tongues. One wound around Bab’s neck, making him jump and shiver. He struck out at the thing he could not see, and felt the trailer slither downward and detach from his skin. The creatures could be killed! With a war cry, he rallied his companions to defend themselves.

He swung his grandfather’s hammer, feeling it connect with invisible flesh. No matter how many of the invisible beasts Bab slew, more were behind them. Coran’s magic was overwhelmed. The little enchanter went down and was held by things no one could see. Bab fought to help him.

Suddenly he was no longer in the midst of the beasts, but up against a pillar of stone. The evil wizard had swept him up by magic, and put him just where he didn’t want to be. Legg appeared beside him, his sword arm plastered across his body as if he had just delivered a blow.

Before they knew it, five of them were against the columns, and tied there by magical bonds. The wizard began to chant. Bab and the others were once again crowded by the unseen creatures, all laughing and hooting in their ears. The carved stone dug into his back as he recoiled from them. His feet were engulfed by wet creepers. More lapped at his face. He was overcome with trembling dread. The wizard’s chanting reached a crescendo.

In the midst of a thunderous pronouncement, Mordint went silent. Bab stopped struggling for a moment to look up in disbelief. The tall wizard’s eyes rolled up in his filthy face. He toppled backward.

The next thing Bab knew, a knife blade was sawing up through the bonds of his pinioned arms. The rush of blood returning to his hands was more painful than the binding. Scorri, the only one of their number not to have been captured by the wizard, had struck him down. It had been a lucky stone from her sling that shouldn’t have gotten through his defenses that hit Mordint square in the forehead. She cut them all free-all but Milner. The look on his still, dead face said that the fear had stopped his heart.

Without Mordint, the living defenders were more fearful, less organized. Bab used his military expertise to organize his people into a defensive position. Coran threw his most powerful enchantment on the prone wizard to keep him unconscious as long as possible. Moving forward behind each swing of Bab’s hammer, they fought their way out of the pillar room. They still felt terrible fear, but survival depended upon ignoring it.

Keeping the enemy behind them, they fled in the direction of the stone. Adda managed to close and lock numerous doors between them and the stone men. Coran, running ahead of them with Scorri, called out to them in triumph.

The Chaos Shard was embedded in the wall in a very small chamber sandwiched between a reeking closestool and a cupboard jammed with decayed vellum scrolls that were of curiosity only as firelighters. Bab was frantic to get the Shard free of its setting and be on their way home again.

With the stone guardians pounding on the last of the doors, Bab kept urging Adda to hurry. Suddenly, the door burst asunder. The stone men tramped in, swinging their arms. Legg went flying. Just as the halflings were about to have to fight for their lives, Adda had let out a cry of joy. The stone had popped free.

The moment he did it, the stone men all fell down lifelessly. Bab stared unbelievingly, then came to his senses. He wrapped the glowing rock in a pouch. The survivors ran as if their feet were on fire out of the stronghold and didn’t stop until it was a league or better behind them.

They returned to Wenly Halt heroes. The two lost halflings were remembered fondly, and the town thought it had a treasure for the ages.

With the odd-colored sunlight beating down on his head, Bab reminded himself that he was not trapped in that dark hellhole any longer. It had featured often in his nightmares. He thought he could feel those tentacles on his legs again, almost as if they were real, the clammy grip tightening on his ankle…

Wait a moment, that was real!

He looked down. A gray claw was just closing on his foot. He knew what it was. Revulsion and fear turned his stomach upside down.

“Chuul!” he bellowed.

The hideous creature, part serpent, part bug, and part crab, slithered up the bank toward him. He seized his dagger and struck out at the pincer. It tightened and tried to pull him toward the ravine. The others drew arms and rushed to help him.

Fleshy creepers surged up through the mud as another chuul reared up its serpentine head. It seized Scorri’s neck and pulled her off her feet, dragging her toward the edge of the path where the waving tentacles waited. Adda threw himself on it and chopped at it, spraying shiny gray blood around. Meanwhile, Bab hacked away at the claw holding his leg. The chuul hissed. It tried to latch on to his arm or throat with the other claw. He darted his blade around, stabbing at random, so it could not guess his attack. It managed to thump him in the side of the head. He gasped, seeing stars. The beast outweighed them by several hundredweight. If it dragged them into the murky water, they were done for. The tentacles stunned victims so that they could be popped into the creature’s maw without struggling.

“There’s only a couple of them,” Adda shouted, panting. He hacked at the beast with his dagger. Both he and Scorri kicked and struggled against the snapping claws.

Bab spared a glance to count limbs and realized he was right. But to say “only two chuuls” was like saying only two plagues. He dropped the dagger and brought his hammer around.

He smashed it down on the claw tugging him along the ground. Pieces of shell went flying. It was only a small chip compared to the size of the beast, but the chuul let out a high-pitched shriek. It darted for him with the other claw, dislodging Adda. Bab rolled as fast as he could, avoiding the hideous pincer. The claw nipped his ear and pulled a lock of his hair out. He bellowed in pain. It made another grab for him.

Adda jumped onto the other creature’s back and hacked at its head, putting himself in reach of those deadly tentacles. It reared, trying to dump the skinny halfling into the murky water. Adda kicked it in the back of the head and jumped free. It took him around the chest with its claw, but it was the wounded one. Bab smashed at it with his hammer. Adda jabbed his chuul in the face. It dropped him and darted the second claw for his neck. Bab connected with his chuul’s wrist. The claw loosened. He took the opportunity and kicked it the rest of the way open. He fell to the ground at its feet. It reared up, preparing to strike again.

“… spirits of winter, heed my plea!”

Bab heard Coran chanting. A white object flew over his head and struck the creature in its armored chest. It stopped in mid grab. A clear, shining film covered it all over. It teetered and fell backward into the water with a titanic splash. Mud splattered the halflings on the bank.

“Ice won’t hold it long, I fear,” Coran said. His cherubic face looked drawn.

“Well done,” Bab said, clambering to his feet. “Can you do it again to the other?”

“Not yet. Give me… time.” The half-elf stood with his hands propped on his knees, panting.

“There isn’t time! Scorri is nearly over the edge!” Bab ran to help Adda, with Coran stumbling along behind.

Swish! A gray tentacle made a pass at Bab’s head. He ducked. A mere edge of it touched his cheek. He lost all feeling in his face. His mouth hung open as he gasped in air. He pounded at the chuul’s shoulder as if he were beating a pot into shape. Scorri held onto the edge of the path, kicking to stay out of the water. Her face was turning purple. Adda clung to the claw arm. Gobbets of foul flesh flew, but he seemed not to be weakening the beast very much.

Tiny arrows of light peppered the creature’s ugly face. It turned its head to look at Coran. One of the tentacles whipped out and caught the half-elf around the thigh. It dropped Scorri and started to reel in the enchanter. Adda ran to help the scout to her feet.

Conscious of the danger of touching the gray flesh, Bab ran after the small wizard, jumping up to strike at the chuul. His hammer bounced off its muscular sides, but he kept at it. The chuul slithered over the edge of the path and kept going. Coran was going to drown if they couldn’t stop it.

Bab threw himself on his belly, grabbing for Coran’s arm. The half-elf locked wrists with him. The chuul bellowed and kept going. It became a ridiculous tug of war, but Bab was determined not to let the half-elf fall into the muddy water. He braced his heels in the bank and held on. The chuul slithered over the edge, still pulling. Coran’s face was pale. Bab thought his muscles were about to pull off his bones when the chuul gave a tremendous tug and submerged. Bab went flying backward on the churned-up bank.

He feared he had lost Coran, but the small enchanter dropped on top of him, knocking all his breath out. They lay nose to nose and gasped for a moment.

“Are you all right? Did it sting you?” Bab asked.

Coran rolled over and patted himself down. His robes were disheveled and stained, but largely intact. “All’s well and in place.” He displayed one stockinged foot. “It got my boot.”

And indeed it had. Bab looked over the edge. The chuuls were tossing the leather boot back and forth like a ball, probably checking to see if a tasty morsel like the half-elf’s foot was still inside.

“Come on!” Bab said, retrieving his hammer. “We need to get away before they decide that’s inedible and they want the rest of you.”

“No,” Coran said, pulling his pouch around and feeling in it. “I need that boot! I can’t walk barefoot like you halflings.”

Bab groaned and plumped down next to Coran. Scorri and Adda all but crawled up to join them. The small wizard came out with a twisted thread.

“What’s that for?” Adda asked.

“To snare my boot,” Coran said. He spread the thread out on his palm and ran his finger along it. A ghost of the thread rose above them and elongated into a glowing rope with a noose on the end. It sailed toward the chuuls. He stretched out on his stomach. Bab and Adda held on to each of his legs. Coran wiggled the rope to try and catch the bouncing boot.

Bab sniffed the air. “Does that spell always smell so bad?”

“Never,” Coran said, wrinkling his nose. Bab turned to the others.

“Did one of you fart?”

Scorri looked outraged. “No! There’s not enough devil’s wind in any halfling to make that smell.”

“Then…?”

A shadow fell over them. Bab flipped over.

Mordint leered down on them. Bab gawked at him. The lanky sorcerer raised his arms. Clouds of flies buzzed around his armpits.

With his elf reflexes, Coran was the first to act. He flung his hand toward the sorcerer. Tiny silver darts flew in a cloud. Mordint dashed them away from his face. Coran screwed up his face and launched a cloud of white mist from his open palm. That made the grimy human recoil and bat at his eyes. The halflings scrambled up and started running away.

The path was no longer unoccupied, though. Bodies, weirdly misshapen creatures, blocked their way with spears and polearms. Before Bab could stop, he ran straight into a filthy, wild-eyed form.

“It’s me!” Legg exclaimed, reaching out for him.

“No!” Bab shouted to the others, raising his hammer. “He made a zombie out of Legg!”

Legg moved in and knocked his arm upward.

“I’m not a zombie, you fool,” he said, grinning. His teeth gleamed ivory in his mud-splashed face. “He hasn’t hurt me. I told him why we’re here.”

Bab drew his hammer close to him and studied the other halfling. Under the layers of grime, Legg looked all right, but sorcery had deluded countless people before, and most of them were dead. He held the thread on his wrist close to Legg’s face. It didn’t glow. Bab tried it on the orc with the too-small helmet on his head standing beside his old friend, then on the hobgoblins and the who-knew-what-it-was snake-beast behind them. The thread burst into green light. Legg nodded encouragement.

“D’ye see? All he wants is his property back.”

Bab nodded slowly. He turned around. His eyes traveled straight up the looming figure of the wizard who was suddenly at his back. At this close a range, Mordint’s stench was near unbelievable. Bab breathed through his mouth. Very carefully, he reached into the pouch on his belt and removed the star stone. It felt smooth and cool, but hungry, as though it wanted to suck his soul out through his palm. Gingerly, he held it out to Mordint, who snatched it away and held it to his chest. The halflings stood trembling.

“Much better,” Mordint crooned. The stone burst into brilliant blue-green light, casting a sickly shadow on the wizard’s face. He raised the Shard over his head. “Kasin!” A beam of blinding white light lanced from the stone. Bab dropped to his knees. The beam passed over their heads and slammed into the nearby slope. Hot molten rock poured down the incline. Smithereens shot out in every direction. “Yes, good!”

He tucked it away in a pocket in his filthy sleeve. “Make ready!” he shouted. The ragtag force formed into an irregular square on the path.

Bab’s heart was in his throat, but he managed to get words out.

“So, er, master wizard, why are we still alive?”

Mordint turned back to him and smiled, showing a mouthful of large, square, yellow teeth.

“You shouldn’t be,” the earth wizard intoned, his voice sounding like the knell of doom. “You’re the cause of my present difficulty.”

“Difficulty, master?”

“Yes!” Mordint scowled down at him. Thunderclouds formed around his head, and miniature lightning struck at his shoulders. “It is all thanks to you that I have lost my castle!”

Bab blanched. “Uh, how’s that, master?”

For the first time, the mage looked discomfited. “When you removed the Chaos Shard from its setting, you caused my power to diminish. Without my stone minions I was too weak to defend it against the dwarf mage Hochster. How he heard of the theft, I don’t know.”

Bab blanched. Well, he and his companions hadn’t been any too subtle about bragging about their conquest in the trading post, he recalled, but he didn’t dare say so to Mordint. Word must have spread from there to this Hochster, whoever he was.

“No idea, master,” he said, crossing his fingers, hoping the gods would forgive him the fib.

“I fought for months to dislodge him, but to no avail. I realized I required a force of my own to take it back. I went to the Crossroads to enlist willing soldiers.” His eyes glowed like the Shard as he leaned over the halflings. “Welcome to my army.”

“Oh, but surely, now that you have the stone, you don’t need us,” Bab said hastily.

Mordint stretched out a hand. “Hoit!” Coran’s boot came flying and landed in the half-elf’s arms. The tentacles felt around for it, then subsided into the mire with a bloop. “Fall in,” he ordered them. “We have distance to cover. You know the way.”

“Never!” Scorri sneered.

Mordint shrugged. “Then you’ll die now.” He raised a finger and aimed it at the scout. She stood her ground, though her face went pale. Bab jumped between them.

“Hold on, hold on! We only came to return the stone, not fight, master.”

“And that you will do,” Mordint assured them. “The mystic force that placed it in the wall of my cavern should not have been broken by any force but mine. I want to see how you did it, so it cannot ever happen again. When my army rises again, you shall be free. You have my word,” he finished grandly.

Bab doubted that. The halflings all looked at one another. They knew. The moment the stone men came back to life, they were all dead. Though they wanted to repay the debt, they didn’t want to add their lives to the sum. But at that moment they had no choice. They fell in line. Bab had to think hard.

Mordint didn’t have any stone men along, but his powers and his mercenaries were fearsome enough. His gnoll master sergeant marched them hard upland toward the underground fortress, with a whip over their heads to hurry them along.

“We can’t work for him,” Scorri hissed as they were hustled along the ridge road. “He’s evil! You can smell it!”

“Can you think of an alternative?” Legg growled at them. “It’s help or die!”

Mordint wasn’t much for small talk. He didn’t stop them from discussing anything they wanted. It was futile, of course. In the midst of his makeshift army, they couldn’t get away.

Besides the soldiers they could see, including orcs, goblins, and hordes of slithering centipedes, were two enormous wagons driven by humans. One held food, and the other armaments and magical gear. Bab could feel the tempters around them, too. Once in a while an invisible tongue tasted his hand. Ugh.

It didn’t stop him from making plans to escape when they could. He calculated all the weapons with any magical virtue they had at their disposal: Legg’s bow, Scorri’s sling, his hammer, and whatever Coran kept in his pouch. None of it amounted to much. Still, a good general kept everything in mind. You never knew what would save your life.

Mordint left Thangrik, the orc with the ill-fitting helmet, guarding them under an overhang while he issued orders to the others at a planning session around a bonfire. Bab could hear only a little, but it sounded like Mordint had thought his plan well through. He split his force into three smaller squads under the command of two bigger orcs and the snake-thing. With a look over his shoulder at the halflings, Mordint lowered his voice.

“He’s talking about us,” Legg said, shivering in his cloak. An attempt by Coran to start a campfire had been stomped out by the orc. Their food, which came from the communal pot tended by one of the disreputable-looking humans, was always cold by the time it reached them, but there was plenty of it.

“Aye,” Bab said, trying to look at ease under the heavy-browed gaze of Thangrik and the worried eyes of his fellows. “Just thinking how he’s going to keep his promise to us.”

“Do you believe him?” Adda asked eagerly. Scorri looked up from her plate of stew with a scornful expression.

“As much as he deserves,” Bab said. He shared a glance with Coran. He didn’t want the locksmith going off on a crazy rant and drawing attention to them out of fear of death. Better to be gray shadows creeping in Mordint’s shadow.

Even the halflings’ sturdy feet were sanded smooth by the gritty roads by the time they heaved within half a league of the stronghold. The pathway looked different, notwithstanding the overcast sky showering it with misty raindrops. It had been straightened out and rid of its covering of rough grass. Grumbling, Mordint sent a couple of invisible tempters to spy out the scene. The rest of them waited out of sight of the cavern entrance.

Though no one could see them, everyone could tell when they returned by the soggy feeling in the air. Whispers went through the ranks as Mordint conferred. Thirty dwarves were below ground, with the lord and master, Hochster, in the grand hall.

Mordint strode over to loom above Bab and his companions. They sprang to their feet. He carried a pierced bronze pot on a chain that belched yellow smoke smelling of singed hair. He revolved the pot over their heads and chanted in a tongue that made the skin crawl. When they tried to escape from the foul fumes, Thangrik and a couple of the invisible tongues prodded them back into place. Coran, still in control of his own actions, held up a spiked silver charm, but it was batted out of his hand by Mordint’s next swing.

“I am not foolish enough to rely upon your word that you will do what I say,” Mordint said as the half-elf scrambled on the ground to retrieve his amulet. “So heed my words. You will return my stone to its setting and place it exactly as you found it.” He placed the blue-green rock in Bab’s palm.

Bab wanted to protest that he would have done that anyway, but it was hard to speak with the smoke filling his lungs. He swayed on his feet. Mordint held his gaze with his mud-colored eyes. When he broke off to stare at Scorri, Bab felt as if something had been wrapped around his head. The wizard withdrew the censer and stalked away.

“It’s a geas,” Coran said gloomily. “We’re fixed now.”

“At least he didn’t put a curse on us for after,” Legg said. “We can leave if we want after we’re through.”

“If we can,” Scorri said doubtfully.

“We will,” Bab assured them, hefting the smooth stone in his hand. It felt just as unwelcome as it did the first time. “I don’t know how yet, but we will.”

The orc held them back while Mordint blasted open the entrance to the cavern with a spell that tore the earth back as if it were made of leather. Flanked by his force of orcs and other minions, he strode inside. Bab heard shouts of challenge and yells of pain.

Thangrik urged them forward and inside as soon as the threshold, or what was left of it, was clear. Bab almost hesitated before stepping inside. The smell of burning flesh and leather made his throat sting, but he forgot all about it when he saw what was ahead.

The place was clean. Apart from the debris of the explosion that had opened the door, the cavern was spotless. No more mold, mud, or grime anywhere. No wonder Mordint was outraged!

The author of his distress was obvious to them all. The earth wizard stood facing a stocky dwarf with linen yellow hair and eyes to match, braids to his knees and a beard to his feet. His own minions shot arrows at the invading orcs from behind the prone bodies of the stone giants that lay all over the floor. The two enchanters paid no attention to anyone but one another. They chanted at the top of their voices and threw handfuls of power, each seeking to destroy the other. A burst of fire flung by Hochster exploded over the halflings’ heads. They hit the ground and took cover. Thangrik grabbed two of them by the scruffs and hauled them to their feet.

“Let’s go,” he said. “His magicness said you knew the way. Get moving!”

Coran had the presence of mind to put up a semblance of invisibility around them. Scorri led them around the walls as they dodged thrown furniture, severed heads, splashes of blood, and the edges of spells. Bab stayed at her shoulder, batting bodies out of the way with his hammer. Legg held his bow nocked in case anyone got in their way. Thangrik lurked behind them with his saw-edged sword, grinning like a fool. Bab sensed he was enjoying himself. He probably had orders to kill them all when they were done with their task.

The stairs were denuded of their newel posts, but Scorri was sure of herself as she went downward. The others followed cautiously on the immaculate stairs. Everything looked so different that Bab doubted his own memory of the place. He had to go by the ceilings to be certain they were even in the same building. The traps in the floor had been replaced by new paving stones, the cut marks still fresh on the surface. Scorri led them unerringly through the confusing maze.

They disturbed a dwarf with a long red beard putting a stack of clean white linens into the cupboard beside the stone’s empty socket. He drew the huge axe at his side and came toward them swinging. Legg loosed an arrow that lodged in the dwarf’s shoulder. It didn’t slow him down at all. Thangrik waded forward, swinging. Legg and Scorri lent their strength to the battle.

“Help me! Hochster’s men, help!” the dwarf yelled.

“Silence him!” Coran hissed.

Bab’s eyes went wide. He remembered the remaining two beads around his neck. He grabbed one and flung it into the dwarf’s beard.

“Hush!” he said.

The redhead’s mouth moved but no sound came from it. His eyes went wide with despair. Thangrik grinned and stalked his now soundless prey. The dwarf took to his heels with the orc in pursuit. Coran and the others took up guard positions around the cupboard.

Adda stood at the empty gray socket in the wall, staring blankly at the stone in his hand. He looked up at Bab.

“I can’t do it,” he said.

“Course you can,” Bab insisted. “Hurry it up.”

“No, you don’t see it,” the locksmith said. “There’s agony in there. Unbelievable agony.”

“There’s agony if you don’t do it,” Bab said. “We’ll all die! Mordint put a spell on us.”

Adda shook his head. “Death’d be less painful.”

His usual scatterbrained expression was gone. He looked sane as a judge. Bab knew that was more dangerous than flightiness. But it was Adda’s natural talent of undoing traps, puzzles, and enigmas that had made it possible to remove it. Was there any way to bring it back? Hating himself, he took the locksmith by his skinny shoulders.

“Adda… think how proud Morgana will be of you if… when you succeed.”

Adda blinked a couple of times. “She will?”

“Aye, old friend. That beauty, all aimed your way. Think of it! You can tell her all about it.”

Bab was both glad and dismayed, but the light went on in Adda’s eyes. He hefted the glowing stone, almost smiling, and fitted it into the setting. The smile didn’t leave his face even when terrifying blue sparks leaped out of the rock face and danced across his hands, leaving black streaks on his flesh. He turned the stone this way and that, as if it was a dial he had to set just right. The sparks went from blue to red to yellow. Adda’s knees buckled. Bab put his shoulder under his arm to support him. Pain lanced through his body wherever he touched Adda. He was horribly sorry for the locksmith.

“Can I finish that for you?” he asked.

“No… yes.”

“Leave it!” Legg said, over his shoulder. “You got the stone in place. That’s all we promised!”

“No,” Bab said. He could feel the yellow smoke rising in his lungs, but that wasn’t what made him stand his ground. “It’s not. If the stone men don’t move, Mordint will know we didn’t do what he asked. Besides,” he added, “I keep my promises. We all do. That’s why we’re here, spell or no spell.”

“I hate it when you’re logical!” the older halfling snapped. “But you’re right.”

“Turn it,” Adda said faintly. “Like the wards in a lock.”

Coran and Scorri took Adda and helped him to sit down. Bab put his hand to the stone. It felt as if lightning shot through his body. His hair stood up and crackled on his head. He had made his share of locks, but they were big, hefty ones for securing cattle fences and the like, not delicate ones like Adda made. As he turned the stone back and forth, he felt what Adda had, the rightness as the Shard settled into its old place.

“I can do it,” he said. “Get ready to run.”

And it hurt like blazes, like handling a piece of hot iron without his gloves, but he was used to that. Forcing himself to forget the pain, he shoved the stone hard over to the right and felt it settle in finally and for all.

“Look out!” Scorri shouted. Bab turned in time to see a stone giant rising from the floor. It came toward him, its arms swinging. He dodged it and pulled his hammer around. His fingers were scorched black, but they still moved.

The halflings made for the corridor. Scorri took the lead and began to count off doorways. All around them, the stone men stirred into action, seeking to pound anything they could reach. Bab was determined that it would be orcs or dwarves they attacked, not halflings or half-elves.

They scaled the last staircase just as the newel post men were picking themselves up from the floor. The second one caught Legg with a backhanded swipe that sent him flying into a pillar. Bab threw himself at the giant’s feet, hammering chips until the stone man toppled over.

In the great hall, Mordint and Hochster stood face to face. Stone guardians lurched around the room, taking vengeance on the dwarf warriors as well as orcs and hobgoblins. Bab signed toward the door.

Suddenly, he felt the mud-colored gaze upon him.

“Guardians!” Mordint yelled. “The prisoners!” He started to shout words in that harsh-sounding language.

“Curses be upon those halflings!” Hochster bellowed. He raised his hands and began to chant.

“I can’t forestall both of them,” Coran warned.

“Scorri!” Bab said. He yanked the last precious blue bead off the string at his neck. “Can you land this between those two?”

The scout was pale, but she unlimbered her sling. “I’ll try,” she said. She wound up and pitched it, just as the smoke of enchantment was beginning to rise around each wizard. The blue marble hit Mordint straight in the throat.

“Hush!” Bab bellowed.

And the center of the great room went suddenly silent. Mordint glared. He could shout no orders, nor chant spells. Bab didn’t let his companions linger. They fought their way out past orcs and stone guardians, but as soon as they were over the threshold, they could outdistance anything but a spell. They ran for their lives.

The sun passed overhead and headed for the horizon behind them, but Bab and the others didn’t stop until after they went past the place they had gone to ground the last time. They shared journeybread and a sip of brackish water in their skins, and just lay back on the spare grass to gasp.

“I’ve never been so grateful to be going home empty-handed,” Legg chuckled. He’d lost the last two fingers on his left hand and had a bruise the size of his head on his thigh. Coran clucked over him and readied healing remedies, but Legg waved him away. “Never mind. Hardly use them. Still have my bow fingers. And my life, thanks to you, my friends.”

“Bab did it at the last,” Adda said.

“I’m proud of us all,” Bab said. “Never again, no matter what foolish notions the elders have.” He toasted the five of them with his waterskin.

“Let’s get us a real meal at the Poisoned Chalice when we reach the Crossroads,” Legg said. “I’ll pay. Hang the cost! Couldn’t be worse than Mordint’s vittles.”

“Aye,” Bab said wearily. “I’ll be glad of a sit down. No more excitement.”

“No more,” Coran agreed.

“Shh!” Scorri said. “Do you hear that?”

Bab nodded. There was the sound of many feet on the road, not far away. They gathered up their packs and scrambled up the embankment and into what small cover was afforded by the scrawny brush and gathering twilight.

A torchlit procession of humans and halflings stalked by. Their clothes were dusty and worn, but each of them was armed to the teeth with sword, buckler, and enough daggers to make them clatter. On the shoulders of six of them was a litter draped with blood-red embroidered tapestries and cushions. On them reposed a figure that made Bab’s heart sink.

“Morgana!” Adda crowed, rising up from behind a bush. He held out his arms to the halfling woman. “Remember me? I love you!”

The parade turned as one being to stare. Screaming, Morgana sat up and jabbed a point-nailed forefinger toward the locksmith.

Bab grabbed Adda by the shoulder and hauled him up over the rise. Exhausted as he was, he found the strength somewhere to run into the gloom. The others fell into step behind him.

With any luck at all, they could lose the horde somewhere in the Crossroads.