Chapter 13: Elm, Thief

Bartan stabbed down at a writhing body. It spasmed and died, pointed teeth bared in a rictus of death. He sprang clear, but there was no more need for his sword. Its chill blue radiance died, and once again it was only a finely crafted metal blade.

Elm watched as Baysil bent over Furdick's still form. There was nothing to be done. The little soldier's troubled spirit was fled.

"So he's dead," Kargh sneered. "Let him lay, and we'll see what we've found."

Bartan scowled, but held his tongue as Elm touched his sleeve. The Dwarf was too valuable to lose, and what the big soldier was thinking would have led to a fight they couldn't afford. Darrick pantomined a helpless shrug, and Elm grinned back wryly.

"Hah! Here's a better sword than mine." Anji picked up a long sword that lay by the outstretched hand of a Bugbear. "Whoops! This one's still alive."

She drove the sword through the Bugbear's neck, delighting in the feel of her new weapon. She tossed her short sword to Gwinny, who seized it eagerly. Furdick's spear replaced hers, and she picked up a dozen good crossbow bolts from another Bugbear's quiver.

"This mace is better than yours," Tarr told Darrick. "Stronger metal."

"Better balanced, too." He nodded thanks.

"This shield's better than mine," Elm grinned, letting his old one fall. Kletta said nothing, but quickly took up Furdick's shield to replace her own.

The rest of Furdick's belongings were soon parceled out. Laying the body out respectfully by a wall, its hands on its chest, they went on. Gwinny moved up to take his place in the column, marching by Darrick's side. Nothing more was said, since his spirit was beyond any words of theirs to help or hinder.

The door the Bugbears had come through was straight across from where they had come in. It swung open easily at Kargh's touch, but the diamond shaped room beyond was empty. The Bugbears couldn't have been using it for anything, unless they'd had no belongings but what they carried on their backs.

The room was dark, and their torches were burning low. With an oath, Kargh called his sword to flaming life, but even it only dripped a few trickles of orange flame and guttered low.

"What's the matter with the accursed thing?" He stepped back from the section of wall he'd been examining. At once the sword flamed high.

"Try that again!" Darrick ordered, his voice taut with excitement. "Move closer to the wall!"

"Huh?" Kargh looked puzzled, but did as he was told. As he neared the face of the wall his sword dimmed, its fire sinking to a reddish glow. He backed away hastily, and once more its flames roared up.

"We've found it!" Elm yelped. "Well, almost. It's got to be on the other side of that wall. That sword's magic, right? It won't work close to your jewel!"

"I hope you're right!" Darrick's voice was almost a whisper, choked with emotion. "I only hope you're right. But there are other spells that could dim his sword that way. There's only the one door out of this room. We'll go back the way we came, and search for a hidden panel that leads off in that direction."

They soon found it, and for one last time had to move Furdick's body. The panel was along the wall to the right of where they'd come in to face the Bugbears, and they had to move his body to the other side of the archway before they could open it. The panel swung open without a sound. The room they found on the other side was spacious, with a high arched ceiling. An archway and two doors led out in various directions. The nearest door was along the wall to their right, and Elm approached it warily.

"We're not going that way," he whispered, backing off in a hurry. "Sounds like a whole family of Ogres in there."

"But that's the way we've got to go!" Kargh stamped angrily. "I say, let's try it. We can take them!"

"No way," Bartan answered. "You're not going to get us into that kind of a brawl. You want to fight Ogres, you go it alone. After we leave."

"Take it easy," Darrick soothed. "I think I've found another secret panel in this wall."

The secret of the catch was an easy one for Elm to solve, and as though by magic a pair of broad doors opened in the center of the wall. A corridor stretched away, opening into an oddly shaped room. In one corner, where the walls came together at a sharp angle, a great stone statue of a tortoise stood on a low altar. Between the wall and the rear edge of its shell an ornately decorated coffer was wedged in solidly.

"That's straight through the wall from where Kargh's sword went out," Baysil told them, peering at his parchment map. "Try it again and see what happens."

The sword was only a length of discolored metal as long as the Dwarf held it within a few feet of the small chest. Elm tried to open it, but the statue held it too tightly and there was no way for the lid to move. He tried the point of his dagger on the metal, but it slid off without so much as marring the shiny surface.

"All right, now what?" he asked sourly of nobody in particular. "If I had a hammer I could try breaking it loose."

"I don't want to risk anything like that," Darrick objected. "The lid on that coffer looks like it's already slightly warped. If we bend it any more, we'd be exposed to the full force of the Gem's effects. We don't know how far reaching they would be, either."

"What we need is some kind of a spell to get it loose," Elm muttered softly, but even so Burdock caught his words.

"No spell would work so close to the Gem," he snapped. "And I have no spell that would affect this idol. Such spells call for a greater power than any here possess."

More words than he'd ever heard at one time from the dour Quarterling, Elm noted, and decided to push his luck a little farther. "What spells would those be?"

"Spells to quicken such as this to a semblance of life," he answered sourly, fingering his belt pouch of magical items. "Or else a spell which causes solid stone to flow like mud."

Burdock's last word seemed to echo from the walls, "Mud mud mud ud ud". Elm yelled a warning as the tortoise woke to life, shedding the last remnants of the tattered spell that bound it, eyes opening and jaws gaping wide.

"Back off!" he shouted. "Spread out! Take it from the sides."

Tarr skipped easily away as it moved ponderously toward her. Bartan plucked an arrow from his quiver, drawing his bow and loosing it in one easy motion. The arrow sank deep into the wattled neck. Elm's sling whistled as he cast a leaden bullet that partly closed one of the creature's eyes, even as bolts from Kargh's and Gwinny's crossbows drew blood. Beside him, the deadly cough of Burdock's wand sounded in his ear.

They surrounded the monster, heedless of its hissing screams of rage and pain. Elm danced in, slicing at a front leg and leaping away before the great head could swing his way. Bartan hacked at its other front leg, and as the tortoise snapped at him Anji's sword drove deep at the base of its neck. Then they were all over it, hacking and stabbing. The head swung blindly, jaws snapping in a last futile effort as its blood gushed forth.

"Kill! Kill! KILL!" Kargh shrieked, cleaving the still twitching flesh. By his feet a tiny vial rolled away, empty.

"Easy, it's dead!" Bartan shouted, and the Dwarf glared at him in mingled rage and suspicion.

"Then grab the Gem!" he shouted hoarsely. "Quick! They'll be after us. We've got to hide! Flee to the deep caves. They'll never find us there!"

"Go easy, I say," Bartan tried to soothe the maddened Dwarf, but it was no use. Elm scrambled aside as Kargh made a lunge for the coffer, but Baysil was there before him.

"Give that here!" Kargh raged, his very whiskers seeming to stand out with the energy that possessed him. "It's mine! You won't take it from me!"

"Put your sword away!" Bartan ordered. "Back off, or you're a dead Dwarf!"

Kargh glared in futile rage at the row of weapons that menaced him. The shaft of Bartan's arrow held steady on his heart, and the crossbows of Anji and Gwinny followed his every movement. For an instant Elm thought that the Dwarf's rage would spur him to a bloody death, but the moment passed. Kargh's twitching fingers slid his sword back into its sheath, and he took a faltering step backward.

"It's mine! You can't... I fought for..."He mouthed broken fragments of sentences, gnawing at the fringes of his beard as he backed away a step at a time.

"My treasure... The Caves! Safe down there. No sun... No sky... Dark!"

With a strangled sob of rage and fear he turned blindly and rushed from the room. A last cry of "Mine..." echoed as doors swung shut behind him.

"Well!" Bartan sighed gustily. "What bit him all of a sudden?"

"This, I'd guess." Elm held up the dropped vial for their inspection. "He drank it when the fight started."

"He was warned that it was dangerous," Darrick shrugged. "The potion was meant to give strength and courage, but it was old, and it worked upon his weaknesses. It called forth the hatreds and suspicions that already existed in his warped and tormented mind. Instead of courage it brought frenzy and madness."

"But what will happen to him?" Elm asked. "Can we do nothing for him?"

"Furdick's dead," Anji added. "Now Kargh is lost to us. We have far to go before we reach safety. We need his strength."

"There's nothing we can do for him." Darrick looked up from bandaging a gash that Baysil had taken in the final moments of the fight. "His mind is gone, there's no calling him back... Kletta! Don't open that..."

Too late! Baysil had set the coffer down as Darrick bandaged the cut on his good leg. Kletta had picked it up, probing at the latch with the tip of her dagger. Even as Darrick shouted, the lid opened. It was only the merest crack, but that was more than enough. Tarr and Burdock fell back, raising futile hands to ward off the effects of the Gem. Weapons and armor, so bright and gleaming the moment before, dulled to the look of common iron. Elm ducked instinctively as the very rock around them settled, groaning; the spells that upheld it weakened.

Kletta slammed the coffer shut, her face whiter than the finest parchment under its paint. Baysil caught it up from her lax hands, cradling it protectively.

"Leave it be!" he snapped. "Now we do need to hurry. No telling what evils have been roused. I'll carry the thing."

"Let me have it for a moment, first." Burdock laid it carefully on the stone floor, backing off a couple of steps. Taking a tiny mortar and pestle from his belt pouch, he ground a pinch of granular material to a fine powder. Adding a drop or two of water from his flask he kneaded it into a thick paste, adding a sprinkling of powdered lead from one of Elm's sling bullets. His deft fingers worked the paste into the crevice around the edge of the coffer's lid, and a binding of soft leather secured it against rough handling. "There, that should reduce its effects. Be sure to keep it well to the rear."

"That would be best," Darrick agreed. "It will cause the least harm there, the farthest from our strongest weapons."

Anji and Bartan led the way from the bloody chamber. Behind them the slashed bulk of the tortoise sprawled in the middle of the floor, lost in the gloom as their torches moved away. Gwinny's short steps pattered on the stones as she marched at Darrick's side. Behind them, Burdock and Tarr's soft boots made hardly more sound than Elm's, and by his side Kletta moved almost as silently. As always, Baysil's uneven footsteps brought up the rear, giving assurance that nothing could surprise them from that direction.

As they passed through the doors into the next room, Anji called out a warning. Heavy bodies dropped from the ceiling, landing squashily and scuttling toward them.