A death rattle escaped his red-smeared mouth, and the man sagged.
The four warrior women stood with bloodstained hands and dripping weapons, wondering what they'd done.
"I don't understand," mewed Simone the Siren. "He was the spuzzem?"
"An Old One." Magfire's voice rang hollow in the underground chamber. "Ancient people from legend who inhabited this forest when it was jungle. He lived a lifetime under the sun, it's plain, and went without clothes because it was hot. But that's thousands of generations."
"Cursed," Adira whispered. "By the crying god. To live forever as a spuzzem."
Groans broke their reverie as Jedit, Heath, and others roused. Slowly they shuffled up to stare at the time-lost warrior. Jedit Ojanen, not even human, gave the most profound lament.
"Imagine what he could have taught us."
Adira Strongheart mopped tears and sweat and cobwebs from her face with filthy hands. "So the wind blows. Magfire, your forest is rid of the spuzzem. Now let's hoist these crystals and take our fight to Shauku. And Johan."
Chapter 18
"Set them down here. Ugh!"
Adira Strongheart yanked off her headband and mopped sweat from a dirty face. She plunked down on an amber crystal and sighed, "I'd give ten years off my life for a hot bath!"
The explorers half-collapsed on broken shells and dusty stone. They wheezed and coughed in grimy smoke. Each of the twelve pinefolk and pirates had lugged one awkward and heavy crystal seeming miles up twisted slippery six-sided tunnels. They'd found the cavern the same, with the crazed cosmic horror still lashing its tongue and tentacles, and Sister Wilemina and two foresters guarding Johan in his golden prison. The air was still rank with sweat and wood smoke. The pixies had refused to descend any deeper and had departed, same as the fire sprites.
"What time is it?" asked Adira. "What part of the day? I've lost track."
"We entered these accursed caves as evening fell," said Magfire, eyes red as anyone's. "My warriors were to stage a sham attack to keep the legionnaires busy. Likely it's past dawn and mid-mom now."
"I hope they're still at it," said Murdoch. "I couldn't wrestle a kitten."
"I feel we've crawled through caves forever," said Simone. "Maybe we're dead in some pocket of hell."
"Hist!" warned Jasmine. "Such talk is jinxy!"
"Enough rest." Adira pushed herself erect. "Let's see if the kobolds lied or not. Give me your gourd, Murdoch. Mine is dry. And help me lug this thing."
The two hefted a golden crystal the size of a bushel basket and crab-walked toward the ring of fire. Under Adira's orders, the kobolds had ceased to stoke the fire. The trench was less than a pace wide, but heat from hot coals and stone was still withering.
Together, counting, Adira and Murdoch lobbed the crystal over the ring, so it thudded against the scarred gray trunk of the goggle-eyed tooth-gnashing terror. Clamping down her stomach, Adira skipped over the fire to stand beside the monster out of reach of whiplashing tentacles. The footing was all intertwined roots. Between smoke and the monster stinking like a rotting whale, Adira almost gagged but pressed on.
The crystal was full of translucent amber liquid. Deep inside hung a fist-sized knot like a tree root, which must be a young horror. Holding her breath, Adira pulled the stopper of the gourd and trickled water over the topmost joints.
Results were immediate.
Adira jumped as cracks raced around the facets of the crystal. The crystalline egg fell apart so quickly that her boots were splashed. Facets like panes of glass clanked. Sweet-smelling golden sap gushed and vanished amid a million cracks of the horror's roots.
Adira sipped air, as did her crew outside the circle of fire. Atop fallen facets lay the fist-sized knot. It quivered and curled and rolled. A single bulging eye flicked open, making Wilemina chirp. A tiny tongue lapped at spilled nectar.
"Kill it! Kill it!" shouted Murdoch, panicked all out of size by the minute menace.
"No!" yelled Jasmine. "It's a living thing!"
"It's evil!" said Kyenou, for once charged with emotion.
"We don't know that," countered Taurion. "Lady Shauku tormented this beast for years. It may be harmless as any other animal."
Adira Strongheart watched the tiny creature wriggle like a tadpole. It wedged its whiskery tail amid the roots of its gigantic parent, then curled upright. For a moment the pirate chief considering stamping on it like a cockroach, but she didn't have the heart.
She told her crew, "Hush. Let it be. Heft those other crystals."
"The spuzzem!" Taurion interrupted with a cry. "The ancient warrior who became the spuzzem! He warned not to eat the food of the gods! That must be this nectar! It smells sweet! Lapping it must have transformed him into a plant-beast, the spuzzem!"
"Oh!" Adira looked in dismay at her spattered boots, then quickly hopped across the ring of fire. Scooping ashes with her toes, she smeared her boots dry and crusty.
"Behold the monster!" breathed Jasmine.
Where they'd spilled the nectar, the monster's gray hide had flushed green. As if painted by invisible hands, color rose from the soil six feet or more. Where touched by life-giving green, the bulging eyes retracted, the tongues ceased to loll, and tentacles quit thrashing. Indeed, one tentacle sprouted a thousand roots like hair and elongated.
Adira hissed, "I'll be keelhauled! It works. The thing grows!" Despite earlier revulsion, the pirate queen felt a thrill to feed a starving creature, no matter how alien. Somehow, she knew in her bosom, this strange star-lost brute must feel gratitude.
Cheered, Adira turned to her soot-smeared comrades. "Shift those other crystals and crack them open! We'll see if the creature thanks us or eats us!"
Heartened by success, pirates and pine warriors grappled the eleven remaining crystals across the ring of fire, then splashed on handfuls of water. All the crystals split and the precious fluid soaked in. The monster looked healthy and happy as a summer cornstalk.
"Adira! Johan wishes to speak!" Wilemina, with her arm in a sling, stood guard.
Adira walked to Johan's side. Framed in golden glass, the triply horned red-black emperor looked like a djinn trapped in a bottle.
The emperor piped, "Will you renege your word and refuse to free me?"
Adira snorted and kicked the crystal. "I never promised to free you, Homhead. Dare not accuse me of crawfishing on a pledge. I can name two hundred Palmyrans who died because you were discontent in your rocky homeland. We'll lug you home in your box. For now, don't go away." Tapping a finger on the smooth top, the pirate queen turned to go.
But with the crystals sundered, Adira's pirates and Mag-fire's foresters gathered for the next step. Jedit Ojanen loomed over the amber trap like a primitive god.
Rumbling like distant thunder, the tiger said, "I've a question, Johan. What of the prophecy of None, One, and Two?"
"Here?" The devil-bedecked emperor glowered behind glass walls. "I know somewhat. Shauku blithered about her cleverness. The people of the pines were told by a gibbering seer the time of prophecy had come, were they not? That they must reclaim their ancestral lands and heritage?"
"Yes!" said Magfire. "The prophecy foretold-"
"A sham," interrupted Johan. "Shauku visited your seer with a vision, same as she gulled me in the Western Wastes with visions of her palace. Nonsense about history and ancestral pride was mere pap to lure you north within her grasp. You were herded here like cattle for slaughter."
While the foresters digested this shocking news, the pensive
Heath asked, "Why did Shauku imprison you? What was her intent?"
"I remember you." Johan's black eyes narrowed. "You shot an arrow into my breast on the lake at Palmyra."