“He is?” Pryce marveled. “By whom?”
“The same force that enslaves me,” Cunningham declared bitterly. “It lured me here with promises that would fill my heart’s desire, then sorely used me for my basest, most antisocial skills.”
At least one part of that statement sounded ominously familiar to Covington. He remembered that he himself had been lured to Lallor. “Cunningham!” he barked. “I couldn’t ask you this when we last met because of your bloodlust. You said that a misshapen one first enticed you here. Was that Devolawk?”
The jackalwere nodded shamefully, and Pryce’s eyes had finally adjusted well enough to the dark to see the affirmation. “Devolawk,” he asked the broken one, “who had you lure the jackalwere here?”
The broken one answered painfully and slowly through his rotting human teeth, but it was clear enough for Pryce to understand, despite the vole’s hisses and hawk’s cries. “Don’t… knowwww. Woke… from death… with orders allllready… in myyyyy mind!”
Pryce pursed his lips. The poor thing had been created as a slave, with instructions already implanted in its polymorphed brain. But what was the mongrelman’s part in all this?
“Cunningham,” he continued, “I think I know now who actually enticed you here. But I need to know why. What did you have to do to get this so-called limitless supply of fresh, high-quality human meat?”
The jackalwere hung his head. “I was told… by the faceless wind… to find a mongrelman skilled in concealment.”
“Ah,” Pryce said. Mongrelmen were known for their skills in pickpocketing, mimicry, camouflage, and all the variations thereof.
“It’s obvious to me now,” Cunningham confessed, “that Geoffrey was brought here to guard these tunnels.”
“Why?” Pryce asked the mongrelman. ‘What is hidden down here, Geoffrey?”
The mongrelman shook his head vigorously, waving his part hand, part claw, part hoof in a warding-off gesture.
“Geoffrey,” Pryce pressed, “are you the one who saved me? Are you the one who found me unconscious?” The mongrelman stared at him, his head and hand movement slowing, then finally stopping. “You can trust me, Geoffrey,” Pryce stressed. “I swear on my… name… I won’t let your enslaver hurt you.” He blushed, hoping his quandary wouldn’t be too obvious in the darkness, night vision or no night vision.
The mongrelman finally nodded.
“Are you the one who dragged me here? Are you the one who carried me to safety?”
The mongrelman looked up with something approaching hope, then nodded more energetically.
Pryce looked toward the others. “He was concealing me as well. But why? What does he know that we don’t?”
Suddenly Devolawk started to speak. “Heeeee knewwwww you. Darliiiiington Blade! Only you… can heeeeelp us!” The mongrelman nodded again, even more vigorously.
Pryce felt a sudden pang of hopelessness. Now a trio of monsters were looking to him for help, a responsibility Pryce Covington from Merrickarta would have rejected as absurd and impossible from every standpoint.
“Pleeeease!” Devolawk screeched piteously. “I want to fly-yyyyy. I want to sleeeeep! I want to beeeee freeeee!”
Pryce moved quickly to his feet and put his hands on what served as the broken one’s shoulders. “Easy, Devolawk. Calm yourself.” He found himself standing in the middle of a monster triangle. They hemmed him in from every side.
“Devolawk sleeps in misery,” said Cunningham, “in various dark recesses of the tunnels. Geoffrey guards. What, I do not know.”
Covington’s mind reeled. “It must have been powerful magic indeed to create this poor broken one…” And what was the single most important magical consideration in Lallor at this moment? “Fullmer!” Pryce cried suddenly. His mind had finally cleared enough to remember who he had been supposed to meet when he was knocked out.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” Cunningham inquired. “Is that some sort of magical incantation?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Pryce replied. “He’s a captain of industry on the pirate seas, remember?”
“The chin-spiked one? But what does he have to do with”
“Just enough, apparently. He’s looking for what everyone around here seems to be looking for.”
Cunningham shrugged. “And what would that be, sir?”
Pryce’s pointed at the mongrelman. “Unless I miss my guess, it’s what he’s guarding.” The other two monsters looked at the master of concealment.
“Geeeee-off-freeeee!” Devolawk whistled. “Show usssss!”
“Show us what the humans are after,” Cunningham repeated urgently. “Now!”
The section of wall the mongrelman led them to was not very impressive in and of itself. In fact, it looked just like any other part of the cave until Pryce noticed a bulge near the floor and another just below the stone ceiling. Covington looked at the mongrelman, who was jabbing his finger repeatedly at a place high on the wall. Cunningham and Devolawk looked at each other in confusion, then looked to Pryce expectantly. The human had no intention of disappointing them.
He stepped up onto the bottom protuberance, which was effectively a cleverly sculpted step designed to appear as a natural part of the rock. Pryce grabbed the top protrusion, which had been chiseled into a seemingly natural rock shape, but was actually a rung that could be held onto easily.
Slowly and carefully Pryce pulled himself up the length of the wall until he found himself looking down a cunningly camouflaged hole cut through the rock. Looking up from the cave floor, it would have been invisible, because its lower lip was carved upward, like a tankard set high in the wall. Until someone looked down at it, there was no hint that the opening was even there. Pryce stared down into the hole until he could see no farther.
He looked down at the mongrelman. “Is this your doing?” The beast shook its hoary head from side to side in reply. Pryce turned to look back down the tube-shaped hole. It couldn’t have been more than three inches in circumference and had to be at least three feet deep. Pryce placed his eye directly against the opening.
Pryce could just make out the other side of the tube. It ended inside a larger enclosure, one that did not have a rock floor, but Pryce couldn’t tell for sure what it was. He couldn’t make out the details because something was obscuring his vision partway down the rock pipe. There was some sort of grating in the way.
“Cunningham?” Pryce said, lowering himself carefully down to the rock floor. “I wonder if you would do me a small favor.”
“Yes, sir, of course. How can I be of service?”
Pryce smiled tightly. “I need you to use your full jackal night vision, but without developing an overwhelming urge to open any of my arteries. Do you think you could do that?”
Cunningham found himself staring at Pryce’s neck much the same way he would look at a succulent roast. He grew noticeably pale. Then he swallowed. He looked to the other monsters for support. “I shall endeavor to do my utmost,” he promised shakily.
Pryce was fascinated by the change that came over the man-beast after he had lifted himself up to the hole in the wall. Suddenly his skin sprouted red, orange, and black hair, which mingled into a mat of fur from his upper lip to his forehead. His left eye changed with it, turning from a human sphere to an animal’s black orb. Its center seemed to glow yellow, and he… it… snarled menacingly.
Pryce stepped back nervously, but when the jackalwere dropped lightly to his feet and turned to face him, his face had transformed back to the innocuous features of the impoverished but cultured traveler. “Most unusual,” he commented.
‘Yes?”
“There is indeed a chamber of some sort on the other side of the rock tube.” ‘Yes?”
“But there is also a grating of some sort.”
“So far we’re in perfect agreement,” Pryce said impatiently, “but I thought it was worth risking unleashing your animal side for corroboration.” Cunningham looked at him with one eyebrow raised before Pryce exclaimed, “Details, man, details! What does the grating look like?”