"Tavish says it's a tar pit, though how she knows that, I'm sure I can't tell you!" The dragon darted across the flat surface before them, pausing in midair to sniff at a bubble. He flew back to them and lighted upon the stuff.
"No!" cried Tavish, too late. The dragon's four feet touched the sticky surface, and though he tried to spring back into the air, he found himself stuck fast.
Tristan laughed, in spite of himself, and drew the Sword of Cymrych Hugh with a flourish. "To the rescue, wyrm!" he announced, leaning forward to slip the blade, flat side up.
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under Newt's belly. He lifted with a smooth motion, and the dragon popped free of the tar. Newt flew off in a huff to rest upon a tree limb and try to clean his sticky paws.
"There was never anything like this in Myrloch Vale before," observed Robyn solemnly. Tristan sensed that this was yet another example of the blasphemy that had fallen upon this sacred ground.
Suddenly he heard Canthus bark from the shore of the pit, and he saw the halfling, still mounted, galloping toward the dog. Just then, Yazilliclick popped into sight. "Over th-there! It's a firbolg梐 firbolg!"
"A firbolg!" cried Tavish. "Now, that's more like it. At least there's a monster I can understand!"
Tristan and Robyn ran along the shore of the tar pit, with Tavish close behind. The king still held his sword and Robyn her staff. The bard brandished her lute, keeping the borrowed shortsword in its scabbard at her waist. In moments, they reached Pawldo's side. The halfling stood with an arrow nocked in his shortbow, but he didn't shoot. Canthus stood before him, growling at something lying on the very shore of the tar pit.
The creature was indeed of the race of misshapen, hunchbacked giants known as firbolgs. His black, beady eyes glittered at them over a great bulbous nose, and his face split into a gap-toothed snarl that revealed only a few yellowed, crooked teeth. He lunged suddenly at them but fell short, and Tristan saw why the creature's attack had been frustrated.
"Why, he's stuck in the tar!" said the bard in amazement. "I've always wanted to see one of these things up close. What an opportunity!"
"Be careful," warned the king. Suddenly he grabbed Tavish and pulled the bard backward as the firbolg lunged a second time, a bit farther than he had at first. "He's shrewd enough to fake us into coming closer."
They saw that the firbolg had somehow embedded both feet, to midcalf, in the edge of the tar pit. He had managed to fall backward onto solid ground, but his feet were firmly anchored and he could not break free. Instead, he snarled
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and snapped at them, then jabbered something in his crude, brutish tongue.
"I feel sorry for the poor thing," said Robyn. Tristan, to his great surprise, found himself in full agreement梡erhaps only because the firbolg represented a familiar thing. Though an enemy, the firbolg was a natural element of the vale, the first such they had encountered in this bleak place.
He leaned forward to get a closer look at the firbolg's plight, and was rewarded with a swinging club of a fist that would have crushed his skull had he not skipped out of the way. "I'd be inclined to help him," he declared ruefully, "but I dont think he'll let us."
"Maybe I can help." In a swift motion, the bard lifted her lute from her shoulder and strummed a pleasant chord. She followed it with a trill of light notes, then several more rich and gentle chords. Tristan saw the firbolg look at her in amazement, and the belligerent look on his face faded to an almost trancelike glaze.
The king moved closer, and the creature started to turn toward him, but lavish strummed vigorously and the firbolg turned back to the music. "We'll have to use one of the horses to get him out," whispered Tristan.
He whistled to Avalon. The firbolg turned suddenly at the note of dissonance, but the thing had been pacified again by the time the stallion trotted over. Tristan unwound coils of his long rope and approached the giant, while Robyn lashed the other end to his saddle.
Keep playing! Tristan thought, concentrating on the music as he reached around the waist of the monster and looped the rope as far up on his chest as he could. The firbolg remained entranced by the music, a look of utter plac-idness on his face, as the king backed away and fastened the other end of the rope to the stallion.
"We're taking an awful chance," whispered the concerned halfling, a nervous observer of the preparations. "What if he gets free and suddenly changes his taste in music!"
Smiling with more confidence than he felt, Tristan turned to the stallion. "Go!" he cried, slapping the steed on the rump. In an instant, Avalon sprang forward, the rope came
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taut around the firbolg, and the monster gave a thunderous bellow of surprise. Scarcely pausing, the stallion lunged farther, and the giant toppled to the ground. With an additional grunt, Avalon pulled him free of the clutching tar.
The monster leaped to his feet with an even louder bellow and turned toward Tavish, the nearest of the companions. The bard smiled broadly and stroked the lute, a softer, slower rhythm than she had played before.
The rage fell from the creature's face as the music again held him in thrall. The firbolg cocked his head to the side, as if to hear better. When Tavish stepped away from the tar pit, the firbolg followed mutely. "What do I do now?" asked the bard, slowly growing concerned.
And then the horror exploded from the woods.
Kamerynn loped tirelessly along the spoor of evil that lay like a broad stripe across the land. He followed it for a day and a night, never resting.
A sense of urgency gripped him, as if he knew that here, among all the evil and corruption around him, was the focus for his vengeance. Here was an enemy he could fight.
The unicorn came upon a scene of battle, where the beast had attacked a man. Kamerynn paused in surprise, for the spoor of the man was unusual in the dead vale. He saw that the man had been driven to a cliff by the approach of the monster, and that he had suffered a bloody wound as he had climbed away from the danger.
Then the unicorn followed the spoor once more, to where the creature had raced along the base of the cliff to a gap where the slope was more gradual. Here it had bounded easily to the top, though the climb was still precipitous. It was only with great difficulty that Kamerynn struggled up the same slope.
And then he came upon the scene of blood and death. The man had died, and other humans had come.., .
Kamerynn froze, his nostrils widely dilated, as he sniffed at the footsteps of these other humans. His heart quivered with hope, but the scent was so faint! He found the place
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where they had buried the man, and here his hopes were confirmed, where the one he hoped for had knelt beside the grave and left a strong scent for his nose.
The druid had returned! She was in the vale! Eagerly he explored the area, finding with a chill that the great beast had lurked in the woods close by while the humans had buried their dead companion.
The unicorn's chill turned to black terror as he saw that the creature had come out of hiding to follow the path of his beloved friend, stalking her and her companions as surely as the cat stalks the mouse.
A great sigh arose from the land as the Earthmother's spirit fled the drained corpse. Bhaal leered hungrily over her flesh, and all of Nature paused a moment to sense the historic passing.
Across the land, raging storms died. Windy skies became still, and the rolling swells of the seas flattened into utter calm. The lands themselves did not look so very different. Crops still thrived, animals bred, and the Ffolk and the northmen went about their business with scant notice of the change.
But to those of keen eye and sensitive soul, the change was apparent. The land had lost a certain luster, a quality of aliveness that was unique to these insignificant isles.
Thus ended the long reign of the goddess Earthmother.
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Hobarth watched the attack on Codscove with rapt fascination, once his own part of the mission had been accomplished. He had felt the priestess's response to Bhaal's command, and he knew that the legions were ready. Now the fat cleric had naught to do but enjoy the carnage.
Of carnage there was plenty. The ogre corpses lumbered through the town, smashing doors, attacking the few humans who tried to oppose them. Hobarth chortled at the sight of a brawny northman who lurched from an inn, wielding a massive axe. The warrior bellowed in berserker frenzy, striking the arm from one of the ogre corpses, but another undead stepped in and crushed the man's skull with a blow from a heavy club. The armless one stepped over the body and smashed in the door of the inn, lumbering inside. From his hilltop, the cleric observed other patrons leap from windows or bolt from the back door.
He saw the dead of the sea shuffling in the wake of the ogres, seizing fiery brands and flinging them atop the thatched buildings. These dead moved slowly, but occasionally a victim fell into their clutches梥uch as one woman who hurried back to retrieve her toddling child. The cleric saw the zombies fall upon the pair, seizing the babe and tearing it from the screaming mother's arms. More and more of the monsters joined the slaughter, forming a lurching, frenzied mob that completely buried the doomed humans.
The final wave of the attack struck with the most savagery, for though the undead killed unhesitatingly upon
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command, they did so without emotion. The sahuagin, coming on the heels of the animated corpses, slayed with relish. Hobarth saw the fish-men search through the rubble for survivors. Dragging these unfortunates from concealment, the monsters dispatched them with carefully placed stabs of their tridents or cruel, deliberate slashes with sahuagin claws. Always the death was lingering and painful.
Finally the pace of battle slackened, and the huge cleric rose from his rocky vantage to lumber down the hill. The undead had shambled inland, in pursuit of the fleeing populace, and the sahuagin were left in control of the town. Before he entered the ruined settlement, Hobarth mumbled a quick spell, one that enabled him to speak to these monsters and be understood. He had no doubt that his message would guarantee him free passage.
A trio of sahuagin spotted him as he stepped between the ruins of two buildings. Hissing, they turned their tridents toward him and advanced.
"Take me to your mistress, the high priestess Ysalla!" commanded the cleric, his voice a booming human command. But the words registered clearly in their dim brains. They paused in surprise, hissing among themselves, clearly taken aback by the appearance of this human who could speak their tongue.
"We will do as you say," announced one, finally stepping forward. His sibilant speech was clearly understandable by Hobarth.
"You are wise." The thing led Hobarth to a gory scene at the shore, where torn human bodies formed a massive pile. Hundreds of the sahuagin were gathered around, reveling in a feeding frenzy. Many of them turned and hissed or started toward the cleric, only to be turned away by a command from Hobarth's escort.
A huge sahuagin suddenly reared before him. It bristled with a headdress of sharp spines, its color bright yellow, in contrast to the green of most of its companions. Hobarth sensed immediately that this was Ysalla.
"Greetings in the name of Bhaal. You have won a mighty victory," he began.
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"You are the human cleric." The creature looked at him with pale eyes, devoid of emotion. Suppressing a shudder, he sensed that the high priestess would as soon eat him as speak with him. Only their obeisance to a shared master restrained her. "What are the commands of our lord?"
"We are to await his order here. He will send us either against the Iron Keep or Caer Corwell. When he does, the might of Bhaal will be revealed to the humans in all their fol-ly?
Ysalla's sibilant voice did nothing to quell Hobarth's unease. He felt as though he spoke with a snake. The sahuagin cleric loomed over him, her sleek body displaying lines of tough, wiry sinew. Her yellow scales glistened, streaked as they were with red human blood.
"Why are there two targets?"
"The Iron Keep is close by and sits astride your route from Kressilacc to Gwynneth. Corwell is more significant, as it rests upon Gwynneth itself."
"I know this Iron Keep. Many of the longships rest there or return there after they cross the sea. It is a good target. The humans there have displeased our god?"
"They are ... in the way." Hobarth found the concept of the attack difficult to explain. He himself had doubts about assaulting a target not directly useful to the defense of Gwynneth, but his god had commanded the attack. He explained to Ysafla the words of Bhaal: "The humans will then have no place to flee to when we complete the destruction of this island, Gwynneth. Bhaal will claim as his domain the lands in the heart of the isle. You and your king are free to claim the coast."
Ysalla hissed, which Hobarth understood was an expression of eagerness or perhaps bloodlust. "And you will swim with us to Iron Keep?"
"I shall walk my own paths," said the cleric, looking at the water with a shudder. How he hated the sea! "But fear not, I shall be there when you arrive."
"What is fear?" asked the high priestess, puzzled. And then she turned back to her bloody feast, and the cleric slipped quietly away.
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Thorax the owlbear grew more and more angry with the passing of each day. Though it stalked the vale tirelessly, pressing ever outward, away from the Darkwell, it could find no trace of prey. Like Shantu, Thorax desired blood for the joy of the kill, not for any need for sustenance. But the owlbear lacked the displacer beast's cold cunning and shrewd sense of stealth. Thorax was a creature of stupid nature and brute strength.
And so the malformed brute lumbered along. It turned its feathered head around on its broad shoulders, looking behind itself like an owl. The owlbear walked sometimes on all four of its massive paws, and other times it walked upright, but it remained always hungry, always seeking prey.
Finally its search was rewarded.
A cracking in the dried brush provided the first alarm, though Tristan didn't hear it. He stood still, warily watching the firbolg as the creature gazed blissfully at lavish and her lute.
