His ashen pallor making his black skin gray, Henry turned and placed the golden pin in the hands of the bugbear. The huge goblinoid took one look at the spider symbol upon the pin and instantly fell to its knees. Its companions clumsily followed suit, holding their bloodstained clubs against their chests in salute. Henry accepted the pin back from the guard, raised his hand in a vague attempt at benediction, then towed his rather awkward pack lizard past the guard-post and into the caves.
“There we are-simple!” Escalla, utterly invisible andtherefore not sweating in fear, waved to drow guards and merchants. “You see Jusover there?”
Carefully ignoring the pack lizard and Henry, Jus sat tied to a stalagmite near the lich’s cave. Polk had been tied to the opposite side ofthe same stone pillar, and the little man’s mouth was moving as he showered anunwanted soliloquy on empty air. Pulling his long, stark white locks from his face, the dark elf that was Private Henry peered over at his friends.
“Are they all right?”
“Pretty much. Polk just has to hope Jus doesn’t get one handfree.” Escalla nudged the boy with her battle wand. “All the trogs and bugbearsseem to be gathering at the warrens. Let’s get baby over there as innocently aspossible.”
The long canvas sausage, lumped and ugly, was covered by one of Escalla’s better illusion spells. Even so, the bobbing train of floatingshapes were a poor simulation of a giant pack lizard’s gait. Private Henry towedthe ungainly mass along through the air behind him.
Perhaps forty troglodytes snarled and fought over a vile, blood-filthy feast. Other troglodytes had gathered behind by the score, booming huge calls that shuddered through the air. Swarms of bugbears clustered nearby, glaring in naked hunger and envy at the feast.
Henry brought his lizard close to the flesh eating, blood spattered mob. Pale with fright, the boy fumbled, then tied the leash of his lizard to a stalactite only a few feet behind the snarling, jeering mobs of monsters. He breathed raggedly, his eyes bright with fright, and then felt an invisible kiss on his cheek.
“You all right, Hen?”
“Just fine.”
“Alrighty!” Escalla’s wings whirred like a dragonfly. “Juststroll over to Jus and wait for the fun!”
Henry tried to hold his loaded crossbow as innocently as possible. Wearing somewhat un-elven garments, he had already attracted side-wise glances from the drow. The magic sword Benelux gleamed gaudy and golden as it hung over his shoulder. The boy, trying to look nonchalant, began to make the long walk toward Jus and Polk.
A drow straightened his belt and began to make a determined course toward Henry. The deception could only last a few more seconds. Slapping her hands together, Escalla flew through the belly of her illusory lizard and began unplucking knots of hairy string. She whistled as she worked, the noise unheard over the roar and snarl of feeding troglodytes and the insults hurled by bugbear hordes.
The last knot untied, the tarpaulin jerked away and fell. As the paralyzed beholder thudded to the ground, Escalla tossed a magic floating disc beneath it and sent it scooting off to the north. Behind it, the canvas sausage suddenly disintegrated. Escalla turned and fled faster than any faerie had ever gone before.
The illusory pack lizard stretched, then came apart. In the packed central mob of feeders, food, audience, and jeering crowds, some heads turned-and then screamed in terror. Spreading up from the bursting body of thepack lizard came great bobbing, floating spheres-fleshy globes crowned with eyeson stalks and with fanged, snarling mouths.
The spheres began to scoot in all directions, propelled by internal gasses. The jammed hordes of bugbears and lizards froze in shock until a little voice pealed out across the cave.
“Hey, boys!” Thirty yards away, Escalla posed with aswarm of golden bees circling one fingertip. “Wanna see my party trick?”
Magic missiles flew out from Escalla’s fingertips and thuddedinto all eight floating gas spheres. The universe seemed to take a breath of shock. The troglodyte chieftain had time to swell his throat in the beginnings of a scream, and then one end of the cavern disappeared in a thunderous blast of light.
The gas spores detonated in an instant, each one exploding in a titanic fireball. Bugbears and lizards nearest to the spheres were atomized, while others flew backward as the flesh was blasted from their bones. The explosions rocked the cavern, shattering the ceiling of the warrens and bringing rock falls avalanching down. The ground shuddered. Ceilings collapsed. A few surviving monsters staggered, burned and screaming through the dust, to be crushed by rock falls cascading from above. The distant tribal warren dissolved as thousands of tons of rock collapsed in a massive cloud of debris.
Escalla gave a victory scream. With dust choking the air around her, she sat atop the paralyzed beholder, riding it like a juggernaut as it sped along on its floating disk. The girl fired a spell past Private Henry, turning cavern stone to bubbling mud and sinking drow to their deaths. Wide-eyed, the boy pelted toward the Justicar.
Drowning dark elves fired wild shots from their crossbows. Henry skidded to a halt beside Jus and Polk just as a crossbow bolt whizzed overhead to strike sparks from the cave wall. The boy dragged out a knife and hacked at the ropes binding Jus and Polk. Strands fell, and then suddenly Henry jerked in pain, a poisoned drow dart grazing the skin of his thigh. Escalla’sstoneskin spell had failed. Jus tore free and snatched the boy’s dagger from hisgrasp, hurling the knife straight into the archer’s groin.
Henry fell, alive but paralyzed. Jus reached for the sword at the boy’s belt, only to have a nasal female voice bellow at him from midair.
Not that one, fool!
The sword across Henry’s shoulders shot half out of itssheath. The handle was gaudy with jeweled unicorns, but the blade itself shone a brilliant white as though the blade were made from living light. Jus gripped the weapon and slid it free, feeling its pure, pleasurable weight singing in his hands.
Drow merchants leaped over their pack lizards, screaming in battle rage. Jus turned. In one split second he cut the legs from a drow in midair, decapitated another as it landed, and cut a swath in another that sprayed a fountain of blood. The last drow fired a crossbow. Jus angled the sword to send the crossbow bolt flickering off into the dark, saw the drow’seyes wince as the sword’s light flashed in its eyes, then an instant laterplunged the blade right through the creature’s guts. The drow folded, screamingout a spell. Its wound closed, the drow staggered back, only to be sheared in two by one massive, roaring swing of the pure white blade.
Body parts were still hitting the ground as Jus whirled and looked for targets. Echoing in his mind, the sword’s voice seemed a tad stunned.
You’ll be the Justicar. I, ah, I’m pleased to meet you.
Bugbears and troglodytes were staggering from the rubble. More drow guards were racing to the spot. Jus saw Escalla atop her strange floating mount, then the girl pointed behind him to the lich’s cave.
“Jus!”
A blast of ice-cold air swept forth, and the lich strode out of its lair. In one chilling glance the entity took in the disaster and destruction, then saw the Justicar standing in a ring of butchered drow. The monster gave a feral hiss, body crouching like a beast as it opened hands that streamed with magic spells.
From behind it, a raucous little voice screamed out across the cave. “Hey, handsome!”
The lich whirled. Two dozen yards away, a faerie in a ragged black silk dress sat astride a beholder. With a nasty laugh, Escalla wrenched open the lid of the beholder’s huge central eye, unveiling the monster’s angryglare.
A spell was already formed in the lich’s rotting mouth. Itscreamed the symbols of a death spell only to have the magic disappear. The beholder’s gaze shot out its ray of force, nullifying the lich’s magic andstripping it of its powers.