Jastom and Grimm exchanged glances of alarm. "Er, begging your pardon, milord," Jastom said hesitantly, "but what exactly do you mean by that?"
Skaahzak whirled about to face Jastom, his eyes burning with the consuming fire of the goblin's gruel. "I mean that Lieutenant Durm here will show you to your new quarters," the draconian said, displaying his countless jagged teeth in a terrible smile. "You will be remaining here in this camp with me. Permanently. You are my healers, now."
Jastom could only nod dumbly, feeling suddenly ill. Impossible as it seemed, it looked as if this time his elixir had worked too well for his own good.
"How many soldiers are standing guard out there?" Jastom whispered.
"Two," Grimm whispered back, peering through a narrow opening beside the canvas flap that covered the tent's entrance. "Both are draconians."
Jastom tugged at his hair as he paced the length of the cramped, stuffy tent. The air was musty with the smell of the sour, rotten hay strewn across the floor. The only light came from a wan, golden beam of sun spilling through a small hole in the tent's canvas roof.
"There must be a way to get past them," Jastom said in agitation, clenching his hands into fists.
"Too bad we can't get them drunk," Grimm noted dryly.
Jastom shot the dwarf an exasperated look. "There's always a way out, Grimm. We've been in enough dungeons before to know that. All we need is time to come up with the answer."
Grimm shook his head, his shaggy eyebrows drawn down in a scowl. "Even now, the goblin's gruel will be burning Skaahzak from the inside out, as sure as if it was liquid fire he'd drunk. He'll be dead by morning." The dwarf paused ominously. "And I suppose we will be, too, for that matter."
Jastom groaned, barely resisting the urge to throttle the glum-faced dwarf. His energy would be better directed toward finding a way to escape, he reminded himself. Once they were free, then he would have all the time he wanted to throttle the dwarf.
With a sigh of frustration, Jastom sat down hard on the musty straw, resting his chin in his hands. Grimm's doom-and-gloom was catching.
The tent's entrance flap was thrown back. The two draconian guards stood against the brilliant square of afternoon sunlight, their forked tongues flickering through their jagged yellow teeth.
"It's mealtime," one of the draconians hissed, glaring at Jastom with its disturbing yellow eyes.
For a startled moment Jastom didn't know whose mealtime the draconian meant: Jastom's or its own. With a rush of relief, he saw the bowls that the creature carried in its clawed hands. The draconian set the two clay bowls down, their foul-smelling contents slopping over the sides. The other draconian threw a greasy-looking wineskin down with them.
"The commander ordered that you be given the finest fare in the camp," the other draconian croaked, a note of envy in its voice. "Skaahzak must hold you in high esteem, indeed. Consider yourselves fortunate."
After the two draconians left them alone, Jastom eyed the bowls of food warily. The lumpy, colorless liquid in one of them began to stir. A big black beetle crawled out of the gray ooze and over the rim of the bowl. Jastom let out a strangled yelp. The insect scuttled away through the straw.
"Paugh!" Grimm spat, tossing down the rancid-smelling wineskin. "What do these beasts brew their wine out of? Stale onions?"
Jastom felt his gorge rising in his throat and barely managed to choke it back down. "If this is the finest fare the camp has to offer, I really don't want to think about what the common soldiers are eating." He began to push the clay bowls carefully away with the toe of his boot, but then he paused. A thought had suddenly struck him.
Quickly he rummaged about his cape until he found the secret pocket where he had slipped the empty potion bottle after pouring its contents down Skaahzak's gullet. He pulled out the cork and then knelt beside the bowl. Carefully, so as not to spill any of the putrid substance on himself, he tipped the bowl and filled the bottle partway with the slop. Then he took the wineskin and added a good measure of the acridsmelling wine to the bottle. On an afterthought he scraped up a handful of dirt from the tent's floor and added that as well. He stoppered the bottle tightly and then shook it vigorously to mix the strange concoction within.
"What in the name of Reorx do you think you're doing, Jastom?" Grimm demanded, his gray eyes flashing. "Have you gone utterly mad? I suppose I should have known the strain of all this would be too much for you."
"No, Grimm, I haven't gone mad," Jastom said annoyediy, and then he grinned despite himself, tossing the bottle and deftly snatching it again from the air. "Get 'em drunk, you said."
"But you never listen to me," Grimm protested. "And I don't think now is a good time to start!"
"Just go along," said Jastom.
It was sunset when the two draconians threw back the tent's flap again and stepped inside to retrieve the dishes.
"Thank you, friends," Jastom said cheerily as the draconians picked up the empty bowls and wineskin. "It was truly a remarkable repast." In truth, he and Grimm had buried the revolting food in a shallow hole in the comer of the tent, but the draconians need not know that. The two creatures glared at Jastom, the envy glowing wickedly in their reptilian eyes.
"You're right, Jastom," the dwarf said thoughtfully, gazing at the two draconians. "They DO look a little gray."
The first draconian's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What does the nasty little dwarf mean?"
Jastom nodded, a serious look crossing his honest face. "I see it, too, Grimm," he said gravely. "There's only one thing it can be. Scale rot."
" 'Scale rot?'" The second draconian spat. "What is this foolishness you babble about?"
Jastom sighed, as if he were reluctant to speak. "I've seen it before," he said, shaking his head sadly. "It's a scourge that's wiped out whole legions of draconians to the far south, in Abanasinia. I didn't think it had traveled across the Newsea, but it seems I was wrong."
"Aye, I saw a draconian who had the scale rot once," Grimm said gloomily. "All we buried was a pile of black, spongy mold. He didn't die until the very end. I didn't think a creature could scream as loud as that."
"I've never heard of this!" the first draconian hissed.
Jastom donned his most utterly believable face. The gods themselves wouldn't know he was lying. "You don't have to believe me," he said with a shrug. "Judge for yourself. The first symptoms are so small you'd hardly notice them if you didn't know what to look for: a pouchy grayness around the eyes, a faint ache in the teeth and claws, and then.. " Jastom let his last words fade into an unintelligible mumble.
"What did you say?" the second draconian barked.
"I said, 'and then the hearing begins to fade in and out,'" Jastom said blithely. The draconians' eyes widened. They exchanged fearful glances.
"What can we do?" the first demanded.
"You are a healer, you must help us!" the second rasped.
Jastom smiled reassuringly. "Of course, of course. Fear not, friends. I have a potion right here." He waved a hand, and the small purple bottle filled with the noxious concoction appeared in his hand. The draconians stared at it greedily. "Mosswine's Miraculous Elixir cures all. Even scale rot." "Aren't you forgetting something?" Grimm grumbled. Jastom's face fell. "Oh, dear," he said worriedly. "What is it?" The first draconian positively shrieked, clenching its talon-tipped fingers and beating its leathery wings in agitation.