Akabar shook his head at the bard’s wandering fantasy. He was reaching for another log to throw on the fire when a strong wind suddenly rushed down from the hilltop. The pines danced with alarming energy, and sparks from the campfire scattered across the ground. The ground shook, and over the howl of the wind came a malicious laugh that brought both mage and halfling to their feet.
“Alias!” Akabar shouted, dashing toward the clearing.
Olive Ruskettle grabbed a brand from the campfire and rushed after him. If Alias had some wealth, the halfling realized, she could prove profitable to have in one’s debt.
While Ruskettle was trying to persuade Akabar Bel Akash to tell her about Alias, the swordswoman was searching for Dragonbait. She’d assumed he had gone off to collect more firewood. If that were the case, Alias thought, he would have returned by now. He kept eyeing the hilltop. I’ll bet he’s gone to investigate that stone circle.
With a sigh Alias began climbing the hill.
A shadow at the edge of the clearing moved, accompanied by a scrabbling sound. The lightning-blue beams emanating from the sigils had died away, but the cursed patterns still gave off light enough to rival the moon. Alias drew her arm from her cloak and held it up. A large shape by the base of a pine tree, startled by the second light source, scampered down the hill into the darkness. Only a porcupine, peeling tree bark for dinner, O great warrior, Alias mocked herself. But don’t worry, you scared it off.
Chuckling, she doubled her pace until she reached the center of the stone circle. The half moon hung overhead like a gold lion coin split apart by looting pirates. In the moonlight, the red stones appeared black and their edges and corners, dulled by the wind and rain, blurred into the darkness. She wondered why more enduring and brighter rock had not been used in the circle’s construction. All the druid temples she’d ever visited before had been built of granite, not sandstone, and placed among oaks, not pines.
She jumped on a rock and surveyed the landscape. The tops of the encircling pines stood out against the moonlit sky like triangular crenelations of a castle wall. The original path to the temple was overgrown with brambles which reflected the moonlight. Of Dragonbait there was no sign.
Some parts of the hill dropped away in miniature canyons, and Alias began to worry that perhaps he had slipped or fallen down one of these. She shivered in the cold air. She’d suddenly felt very vulnerable. Like a fool, she’d forgotten her sword. She jumped from the rock and headed down the slope toward the campsite.
A glint of metal on the ground caught her eye. She veered from her intended path and moved toward it. At the foot of a larger than man-sized boulder lay Dragonbait’s oddly shaped sword. Alias leaped forward and lifted the gleaming blade off the ground. The weapon’s weight astonished her. It felt no heavier than a fencing foil, and its balance was not awkward in the least. It also felt warm to the touch—not just the grip, but the blade as well.
A shadow stirred on the boulder. Alias spun about with Dragonbait’s sword raised, keeping the stone to her back, but there was no one there. Slowly, Alias turned back toward the boulder. Then she saw that, unlike all the other rock about the hilltop, this one was clear, like a huge hunk of quartz, and the shadow she’d thought moved across it had really moved in it. She pressed her face to the stone.
Thrashing at the heart of the rock, like a fly caught in pinesap, was the lizard’s twisting form. “Dragonbait!”
Suddenly, something heavy struck the back of her legs below the knees and she toppled backward, crying out in surprise. A violent wind sprang from nowhere, slapping the pines about the clearing.
She tried to roll away from whatever enemy had felled her, but something held her ankles fast. She stared at her feet in horror. They were bound in crystalline manacles, and her horror grew into panic as the rock crept farther up her legs in a twisting motion, like a vine climbing a pole.
Using Dragonbait’s sword, Alias beat on the stone bonds with fury, not considering what damage she might do to the weapon or even to herself. The blade did not shatter, but cut through the engulfing stone as though it were liquid. Like sap, or syrup, the clear stone oozed back over the hack marks and continued growing faster than she could chop. Soon the stone oozed beneath her legging plates where she could not reach it, miring her tightly in place.
The ground trembled. With a squelching thulk a dome of earth rose before her, carrying with it the crystal boulder that imprisoned Dragonbait. Alias looked up in horror and realized that the rounded eruption was a huge, monstrous rock head. Dragonbait’s prison rested on top of the head, a lump above its temple. Farther down, two eye-disks glowed a sickening yellow. Below these was a gaping maw smelling of sulfur.
The sound that issued from the mouth sent an ice dagger slicing down Alias’s spine. The head laughed, a familiar, hoarse, wheezing laugh. Familiar, she was sure, to her old self, the self whose memory was missing, lost in whatever darkness this monster had sprung from.
A moment later, a great stone arm rose from beneath the earth. The creature’s chest rose from its mossy bed as well, dark red earth set with a glowing blue symbol of interlocking rings—just like the set on her arm.
With a sickening lurch, Alias felt herself hoisted above the ground. The stone about her legs proved to be part of the amorphous fist attached to the arm of the monster. The monster held her up to its face. As she swung upside down in the hellish yellow glare of its eyes, she felt her sigils jump and writhe and flare as brightly as they had when Winefiddle had tried to dispel them, until an aura of near blinding blue shone all about her, the monster’s head, and the crystal prison holding Dragonbait.
The creature laughed again. Its chortle unnerved her, and she hacked at its fist, its face, its eyes, anything she could reach with Dragonbait’s blade. The sword passed through the creature’s body; its “flesh” was the consistency of peat, but neither the creature’s eyes or voice registered any pain. The hoarse laughter brought a lost memory fluttering across her inner vision, but like a bat in the darkness, she felt it but could not grasp it.
The monster raised her up to its temple and held her against its head so that she stood next to Dragonbait’s crystal cell. The lizard gestured to himself, a motion that caught her attention. She took a deep breath in an effort to calm herself while she watched him miming the same motions over and over. First he would raise his hands together over his head, then pound them against the transparent wall of his trap, then slap himself on the forehead.
Huh?
Raise, pound, slap. Raise, pound, slap.
The creature of earth tugged its other arm from the soil. The newly freed fist held a gemlike twin of Dragonbait’s prison. The earthen giant brought this second crystal up to where it caught the blue rays from Alias’s sigils and scattered them into the dark night. Then the great stone cracked and split along its center. The blue light of her cursed runes revealed a clear, rippling slime within the crystal’s open heart. Any moment she would become another bug in amber.
Raise, pound, slap.
Why does Dragonbait keep slapping himself on the head? she wondered.
Dragonbait pointed at her. She slapped herself on the head. He shook his head furiously and pointed at the crystal over his head.
“Not my head!” she yelled excitedly, finally understanding. “The creature’s head!”
Clenching both her fists about the hilt of Dragonbait’s weapon and twisting her body, Alias smashed Dragonbait’s sword against the lizard’s crystal prison.
Steel screeched on rock, and the force of the blow traveled up Alias’s arm, leaving it numb. The crystal split like an eggshell, and Dragonbait spilled out of the jagged hole, followed by a mucky ooze that poured down the monster’s face.