However, Finder said nothing immediately. Instead, he drew the horn of blasting from his belt and let it fall from the hole to the ground. Xaran and the other orcs spun around at the clattering of the brass instrument on the rocks. One of the orcs released his grip on Alias and rushed forward to grab the horn. The moment the creature came into view, Finder dropped down from the hole, using the ore’s body to break his fall. The orc fell to the ground, and Finder slit the creature’s throat with Olive’s sword.
The other orcs howled, ready to avenge their comrade, but Xaran shouted, “Don’t let go of the woman!” and the orcs obeyed. Thus Finder was given the opportunity to rise to his feet.
“No more false moves, nameless one,” the beholder said. “Remember, you still have your singer’s tongue to consider. Drop your weapon.”
Finder dropped Olive’s sword and stood motionless. He could see now that the orcs did indeed have Alias pinned to the floor. “Are you all right?” he asked the swordswoman.
“I’m just fine,” Alias growled through clenched teeth. “How in the Nine Hells do you manage to get us into messes like this?” she asked.
“Silence!” Xaran shouted, hovering nearer to the bard. Three of his eyes had been crushed in the cave-in, but tendrils tipped with fanged maws slithered from the damaged eye stalks. The mouths waved in Finder’s face, hissing like snakes. “How you resisted the seeds of possession I will never know,” the beholder said to Finder, “but you will not resist them a second time. If it weren’t for the master’s interest in you, bard, you’d be a dead man. Still, there is no reason you should not suffer as I have suffered.”
The bard gasped as Xaran focused his wound-giving eye on the bard’s right hand. Instantly an ugly gash appeared across the back of the bard’s hand and thumb, cutting through the flesh and muscles down to the bones. Blood oozed from the veins and dripped to the floor. The pain in his hand traveled up his arm like a fire through dry undergrowth, but Finder gritted his teeth and said nothing. He wrapped his hand in the hem of his cloak.
“You endure pain easily,” Xaran said. “How else can I make you suffer, bard? Hmm? Shall we see if your singer is as brave as you are?” The beholder turned slightly and focused its wounding eye on Alias. A long gash quickly spread along her sternum, and blood dripped into her chain mail shirt. She drew in a sharp breath, but she made no other noise.
“Leave her be, you fiend!” Finder shouted. “I’ll … I’ll do what you want.”
“That’s better. Now tell the halfling to come down,” the beholder ordered.
“It won’t do any good,” Finder said. “She has a mind of her own. She won’t obey me.”
That’s for sure, Olive thought vehemently.
“Then I’ll have to go up and get her,” the beholder said. “She can have a taste of pain as well.”
Olive tightened her grip on her dagger. The moment she saw Xaran hovering beneath the hole, she leaped down on top of the monster. She grabbed hold of an eyestalk and used it as a handle so she could remain perched on the beholder’s head. Xaran sank the mouths at the end of its tendrils into the arm Olive was using to hold onto its eyestalk.
The halfling screamed and slashed through one of the tendrils where it emerged from the eye stalk. The mouth at the end of the severed tendril released its grip on her flesh and dropped to the floor. Olive stabbed the eye at the end of the eyestalk she was using to hold onto the beholder.
Xaran shrieked with its own mouth and the two tendril mouths biting the halfling.
Alarmed by the noise made by the beholder, one of the orcs released Alias’s legs and aimed a crossbow at the halfling.
With her one free leg, Alias kicked savagely at the orc’s face and sent him sprawling backward. Using her other leg to gain leverage, the swordswoman pushed herself into a backward somersault and twisted her arms free from the grips of the other two orcs.
Finder grabbed Olive’s sword from the ground and ran to help Alias. He slammed into one of the orcs and stabbed at it furiously while the swordswoman fought with the other two.
Loaded down with the extra weight of the halfling, the beholder began sinking toward the ground. It retracted its tendril mouths from Olive’s arm and focused its eye of levitation on her. Olive felt herself slowly begin to float upward, but she kept her grip on Xaran’s eye stalk. “I’m not going anywhere without you, Xaran!” she snarled.
“Release me or I will use my death ray,” the beholder threatened her.
“I’m betting it was crushed in the cave-in,” Olive said, “or you would have used it by now.”
“There is something I have yet to use on you, halfling,” Xaran whined. The beholder’s tongue rolled out of its mouth and flipped a chestnut seed burr at the halfling. The burr stuck to Olive’s cloak.
Olive gave a shriek, dropped her dagger, and released the beholder’s eye stalk as she frantically groped at the strings of her cloak. Xaran turned its eye of levitation on the halfling and levitated her rapidly away from itself until she slammed against the ceiling.
Olive flung her cloak down on top of beholder’s head, covering all the creature’s eye stalks, including the one that held the levitation eye. The halfling screamed as she began falling, but to her amazement, something appeared suddenly and caught her before she hit the ground.
The halfling stared up into the blue eyes and green snout of Dragonbait’s saurial friend. “Grypht!” Olive cried. “It’s good to see you!”
Between the two of them, Alias and Finder quickly dispatched the three orcs who had been holding Alias. Alias reached down to retrieve her sword from the orc that had taken it from her, then turned her attention to the beholder.
“Let Grypht handle it,” Finder said, holding her back by her cloak. “It’s good to see you,” he said with a grin. “How have you been?”
Alias looked at the bard in astonishment at his nonchalance. “How have I been! I’ve been worried sick about you! What are you doing in this awful place?” she demanded, surveying the surroundings.
While Finder paused to consider his words before answering the angry swordswoman, Grypht bent over to set the halfling down gently and pat her on the head. Then the saurial wizard stood back up straight and turned his attention to Moander’s minion. Olive could smell the scent of fresh-mown hay, and Alias and Finder could hear him as he called out in saurial, “Firefingers!”
A fan of flame burst out of Grypht’s fingertips and ignited Olive’s cloak, which still hung over the beholder.
Xaran shrieked and rolled over, so that Olive’s burning cloak fell to the floor, but the beholder was already charred horribly and sinking downward.
Olive ran forward and snatched up her dagger. She pounced on Xaran as the creature reached the ground and stabbed the beholder with her dagger, twisting her weapon viciously before yanking it out.
The beholder lay still on the ground.
Just then Breck came crawling through the hole in the rubble, screaming a battle cry as he ran down the pile of rubble with his sword drawn. He stopped short just in front of the dead beholder and stared wordlessly at the slimy tendrils oozing out of the creature’s wounded eye.
A moment later, Dragonbait, Akabar, and Zhara came crawling through the rubble to join the others in the cul-de-sac.
“You missed all the excitement,” Olive said cheerfully. “I just finished off the beholder.”
15
The Reunion
While Akabar was convincing Breck to hold still so that Zhara could use her clerical powers to heal his injuries, Dragonbait hurried to Alias’s side. Through the soul link he shared with her, he could sense the pain the swordswoman felt from the wound Xaran had given her. The paladin laid his hands on Alias’s shoulders and began a prayer.