It was a warmth the ranger did not feel from where she stood in the bare earth between Vreesar's throne and the clustered gnolls. Since the occupation of the lodge, Vreesar had kept her near its crude throne. No more than three paces behind her, Krote squatted, waiting for the new chieftain's words.
Atop the ice-encrusted dais, Vreesar gave no heed to the suffering of its subjects. The fiend was in no discomfort, clearly relishing the frozen winds that blasted through the open doorway. Martine suspected that it enjoyed more than just the cold, for it seemed to deliberately prolong every action as a means to torment all those assembled with the freezing cold.
"Where iz my tribute? Did your chieftain have nothing? You!" Vreesar hummed as it jabbed a finger at Krote. 'You wait and wait like an ennchi waiting to tear the hope out of a carrioned soul."
Martine shivered in cold fear. She did not know what an ennchi was, or a carrioned soul, but together they did not sound good.
Krote must have thought so, too, for his answer was long in coming. "This is Hakk's longhouse. What he owned is here." The shaman guestured to the spread of goods on the dirt floor in front of Vreesar. Standing just behind the array of items, Martine felt as if she were being presented as property, too.
The Harper held her breath as Vreesar languidly drifted one clawed foot over the fine of Hakk's goods, pausing to touch a peculiar stone that rested among the dented breastplates, bone necklaces, and wooden carvings. Martine worried about what one sharp tap of the fiend's toe might do to Jazrac's seal. The wizard had warned her, after all, that the
stone was breakable. One hard rap, and all her efforts to close the rift could end in failure.
The fiend kicked a carving with one taloned toe. "Fah!° it hissed contemptuously. "These are mere toyz. No strength in toyz."
Martine trembled with relief. Thank Tymora for some small luck, she silently praised.
"Human, I meet you again," Vreesar droned in chilling tones. The elemental leaned toward her, never leaving its seat.
Like a small child expecting a thrashing, Martine barely nodded her head up and down. In truth, the woman held herself in rigid control to prevent her body from collapsing in a spasm of nerves. There was no point in denying anything so obvious. This creature was clever and perceptive, not like the little one she had slain. There was no hope of fooling it into believing she had not been on the glacier.
You killed Icy-White?
How should I answer? This thing knows I did. What will it do if I tell the truth? Or is it trying to trick me into a lie? Martine felt her blood surge with panic. With a deep breath, she forced her body, but not her mind, to be calm.
"It wanted to play rough." The Harper hoped her words sounded as tough and cynical as she thought they did. Barely suppressed fear made it impossible for her to accurately judge the tone of her own words.
The lodge filled with the fiend's quavering buzz.
Oh, gods, I hope that's laughter, or else I'm dead. The Harper could feel her nerves making her begin to tremble. The strain of the last few days made them diabolically hard to control.
Behind her, the gnolls milled in consternation, no more able to fathom the fiend's mood than she was.
At last the buzzing subsided. The fiend swiveled its glittering eyes, sparkling beneath its shadowed brow, on her.
"You close my gate?"
Despite her dry throat, Martine tried to swallow before she answered. "No. What gate?"
"Again you lie!" it thrummed, springing down from the dais. With a kick, it sent Hakk's possessions flying. Martine bit her lip and tried not to let her eyes betray her interest as Jazrac's stone tumbled across the floor and came to a stop against the lodge wall.
With jerking, angular steps, the creature stalked around her, each stride drawing it closer to her until Martine felt the crystals of icy breath on her neck. "I want gate open," Vreesar whispered, constantly circling her. "It iz cold and empty here-nice. Open the gate and I will make you my general. Open the gate and I will give you armiez of IcyWhitez. You will rule the warm landz for me. I will make you powerful, human."
Vreesar stopped behind her. Cold claws gently wrapped over the Harper's shoulders, the sharp click of its fangs sounding next to her ear. "How do I open the gate?"
I'm a Harper. I can't betray that trust. I must not betray that trust Martine seized on these thoughts, focusing her mind on her duty as she steeled her body for her death. It would surely follow, the minute she refused Vreesar. All she had to do was say, "You can't," and the fiend would fly into a rage, and she would be dead. She knew it instinctively. A few quick words, some pain, and then freedom from this terror. It would be a true Harper's death.
"I-I don't know." They were the wrong words, said before she even realized what she was saying. She wanted to refuse Vreesar, to deny the fiend all hope, but fear overpowered her. Her own death was too close for her to be brave. -
"It can be opened again! It must!" The fiendish creature hissed in frustration. "How?" Its claw tips pressed into her shoulders.
"I don't know," Martine gasped, her knees starting to buckle as the pain of unhealed wounds flared beneath the creature's talons.
With the flick of a clawed finger, Vreesar sliced a ribbon of red across her cheek. 'Tell me or I cut more."
The cut's burning sting made bitter tears well in her eyes. Were she uninjured, it would have been a small matter, but now the cut added far more than it should have to her ledger of pain. "I was never told." The ranger could barely gasp the words out.
"Uselezz!" Vreesar flung the shaken woman to the ground like a rag doll. Martine clutched the cold earth, relieved to still be alive, her body weak from the questioning.
Vreesar angrily turned to Krote. The shaman was still crouched at the very forefront of his people, intently watching the interrogation. His eyes took in every detail as his mind calculated the strengths and weaknesses of the tribe's new chieftain.
"Did she have anything when you found her, shaman?" "Only that" Krote pointed to Martine's leather backpack in the dirt "and a sword. It was of no value."
The hells it was, Martine thought in the midst of her fog of pain. Her sword was made of good magical steel. She had had to fight a pirate lord for it From where she lay, the Harper waited for the Word-Maker to point out the stone, but he never did. Perhaps he's forgotten about the rock, she thought hopefully. I can still get it back. Get the stone, escape, and get back to Jazrac that's all I have to do.
The fiend snatched up her backpack and shook it When nothing fell out, it tore at the leather bag with its claws and teeth, all the while growling with inarticulate rage. Bits of shredded leather rained on the bare ground. Metal buckles jangled as Vreesar hurled them across the lodge.
`There iz no key here. Where are her other thingz?" The barbed fiend strode back toward Krote, claws flexing convulsively. Seeing the icy body with the needlelike teeth advance toward them, the gnolls scrambled backward.
"What about the little ones? Maybe they have it," a trembling voice deep in the throng barked out. The suggestion was quickly taken up by other gnolls in the lodge. Belief or truth had little to do with their agreement; all that mattered was diverting the fiend.
"Little onez? Explain, shaman."
"'The gnomes, great chieftain. They live to the south, beyond our lands."
"Iz their land warm or cold?"
– : _ The question flabbergasted the gnoll. "It's snowy, the same as here, but their valley does not have the tall ice." "Warm, then," Vreesar calculated, its icy brows tinkling as they knitted. "And they helped the human?"