The Paladins tddts-2 Page 6

  A hulking, brutish creature, with reddish-brown fur covering most of its body and gray flaps of skin along the sides of its face stood with its knuckles resting on the floor, looking into a mirror. It grinned wickedly into the glass, baring its long fangs, and lifted one forehand to flex its six digits in a grotesque wave at itself. Noph choked back a gasp.

  The mirror began to glow brilliantly, and the beast covered its eyes with a hairy paw. A low hum swelled, followed by the shrill snap of lightning sparks. Before the boy's amazed eyes, a red-furred, six-toed foot stepped from the mirror's smooth surface. A second later a duplicate monster fully emerged, paused a moment while it checked its footing, and then drew itself up before the other. The new arrival snarled and raised its hackles at its twin, and they began to slowly circle one another.

  Noph took advantage of the moment to slip back toward Able and Trandon.

  Something against the wall next to him shifted…

  Noph caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and froze. He tensed his muscles for a spring and dug his fingernails into the soft sandstone, then raised his buttocks as he shifted to his knees, finding purchase for his toes. His eyes and nostrils flared wide. With a final deep breath, he leaped up and forward, grunting with the effort. His hands left the ground as he shifted his weight to his feet and pushed off for all he was worth. A cool breeze slid through his hair as he accelerated.

  In a flash, a massive claw shot out from the cave wall and snatched the boy by the collar. His feet swung out in front of him with a jerk as his forward momentum came to a sudden stop. Another one of the creatures, somehow camouflaged against the cave until now, lifted him by the back of his shirt and grinned cruelly into his eyes. Noph gawked back at the thing and opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

  "Stop!" shouted Able, who stood two paces away. The creature looked his way with a start. "Filthy Abyssal bar-lgura! You shall not have him!"

  Trandon came to the cleric's side and twirled his quarterstaff threateningly. "You shall know and fear the power of Tyr!" he cried, pointing at Able. "This priest carries the god of justice within him!"

  At Trandon's words, Able started and froze. He held forth his warhammer with Tyr's scales of justice emblazoned on its head, but no words came to him. Trandon looked at him with a frown of concern, and both the bar-lgura and Noph paused in dread, watching him-yet nothing happened. Five more bar-lgura stepped away from the walls. They were joined by the two from the room beyond.

  "We feel nothing!'' sneered voices in Abie's head. "No power of Tyr. All we sense from you is… fear."

  "Able, call upon Tyr!" urged Trandon, taking a step back

  "Feel the power of the Abyss!" whispered the telepathic voices. The bar-lgura released their aura of terror and Noph screamed. Able and Trandon fell to the floor as though they'd been run over by a war wagon, crying out in horror themselves. "Tyr-slime, unloved by Tyr," the bar-lgura sneered. "We shall eat you alive and take this man-boy back to the Abyss, where he will be turned into a larva!" Macabre laughter rang through their heads.

  "No!" shrieked Able. "Tyr, why have you forsaken me?" He looked at the wretched tanar'ri leering at the boy, who dangled helpless before them. Suddenly, his fear turned into fury, and he climbed to his feet. The bar-lgura looked at him, surprised.

  "No, I say!" declared the warrior-cleric. "You shall not have him! If there is justice in this or any world, I shall have it, wherever I stand!" He looked at the fiends before him with a wild glint in his eyes. "Your evil power is nothing before justice! Nothing!"

  The symbol on Abie's warhammer caught the dim light of the chamber and flared to brilliance. A wave of screeches passed through the fiends. The one holding Noph dropped him to the ground. The symbol burned brighter still, bathing the entire cavern in holy white light

  "My god!" uttered Trandon, somewhere beside him, amazed at the sudden burst of power. "Noph, come to me! Come to me! Come now!"

  Pure energy such as he had never felt filled Able, surging through his body and flowing into his hammer. He dropped to one knee and held his blazing holy symbol high. "Justice!'' His voice resonated through the cavern. "Justice is Tyr, and He is Justice. So long as it lies within me, so does my god!"

  With an ear-piercing howl, the nearest bar-lgura exploded! The one beside it threw back its head and shrieked in agony, then shattered into ichorous shreds while the rest began to wail and stumble toward Able, claws raised.

  "Noph, run!" cried Trandon. The boy turned at the sound of his name and blinked uncomprehendingly at the cleric, then burst to life. He scrambled in the sticky mess splattering down from above, dropping his dagger. The screaming bar-lgura began to move with him, pressing toward his friends, so Noph grabbed at a furry leg and used it to catapult himself by, sliding toward his comrades and tripping the fiend in the process. It went down with a thud and ruptured, spraying flesh everywhere. Trandon leaped forward and seized the boy. Together they rolled away from the carnage and made their way behind Able.

  "Run!" ordered Able. "Run for the others!"

  "We won't leave without you!" Noph yelled.

  "Go! For the quest!" He turned back to look at Noph for an instant, his eyes beaming with surety and light. "For justice!"

  A bar-lgura seized Able by the neck and lifted him in the air. "Run!" he screamed. Then the fiend swept its massive claw with a snarl, ripping his head from his shoulders. Trandon and Noph bolted down the corridor, the slap of heavy paws on the stone at their heels.

  As Trandon ran, he seized a ring upon his left forefinger and turned it; a blue glow rose on its surface.

  "What are you doing?" panted Noph. At that mo- ment, a hairy hand caught his ankle and tripped him. Trandon ground to a sudden halt, spun about, and threw out his pointing finger in the face of the two remaining fiends. A streak of jagged, radiant blue lightning shot forth, catching them both in its electrical fork with a peal of thunder. They bellowed in pain, fell over Noph, and disappeared!

  "Noph?" cried Trandon. "Noph!" He dropped to his knees and searched the ground with his hands, refusing to believe his eyes. "Noph!"

  At the sound of approaching footsteps, he looked up. The rest of the party stormed into the corridor and skidded to a halt.

  "What's happened?" demanded Miltiades. "Where are Able and Freeman Kastonoph?"

  "Dead," said Trandon.

  "What happened?"

  "We came upon fiends-tanar'ri, bar-lgura in a room with some sort of magical mirror in it. They caught Noph, but Able-"

  Trandon's eyes brimmed and spilled over. "Able called upon Tyr, and it was glorious! I've never seen such power! He saved us, but they got him, and then they got Noph. I killed the last ones, but it was too late, too late!" He bowed his head and wept. Tve never seen anything like it!" he insisted through his sobs.

  Kern and Miltiades looked at one another; the latter smiled with brimming eyes. "May Able be sitting by Tyr's side even as we speak," he intoned. "I knew he'd make it."

  Somewhere in the distant complex, a fearsome cry went up. The screams of a hundred evil things filled the corridors, followed by the sound of a stampede.

  "Whatever it is, it's coming this way!" shouted Jacob.

  "Tyr's blessings on us all!" declared Miltiades.

  Interlude 5

  No one succeeds without a little bit of good fortune, and the luckier you are, the smarter your stupid plans look.

  Kastonoph lay on his side before the gate to the Utter East. His wrists were bound to his ankles behind him, and his body was racked with agony from arching backward so sharply. So much for his service to Khelben and Piegeiron. So much for his heroism. Shaakat and Rejik had trussed him up and tossed him upon the platform and were laboring to reestablish control over the remaining manes and bar-lgura around them. When the wailing of the troops finally subsided, the vrocks turned their attention to their human captive, helpless and useless.

  "How is this gate activated?" boomed Shaakat's voice within Noph's head.
>
  "Get out of my mind, fiend! I won't tell you!" snarled the young man.

  "Then you do know," said Rejik, aloud. "Open your mind, human. Open it to us…"

  A wave of bitter magic washed over Noph, scrambling his mind, obliterating thoughts of his predicament. Through the nauseating jumble in his mind, it occurred to him that he should cooperate with the fiends and tell them what they wanted to know.

  "Bid the gate to open in the name of the past and present Lords of Waterdeep," he told them. "That will activate it."

  "Well done, slave," thought Shaakat to the magically charmed prisoner. "Now tell us, what manner of creatures are your friends in shining armor who vexed us?"

  "Paladins of Tyr."

  "Tyr!" shrieked both fiends as though they'd been slapped.

  "A greater power of Mount Celestial" squealed Rejik.

  "They seek this gate as well," offered Noph. "They'll be here soon, too. Perhaps we can all work together."

  The vrocks looked down at Noph, then up at each other, and burst into fits of laughter. Around them, the manes chittered and slapped at each other playfully, and the bar-lgura shifted to the walls of the chamber. Using their chameleonlike ability, they blended with their surroundings.

  "Here's the plan," thought Shaakat to Rejik. "We'll lay down a warding circle against creatures of law and goodness. You maintain it while the troops attack and I cast deadly magic until they're all dead!"

  "Agreed, agreed! They can't survive that!"

  In hedonistic anticipation of slaughter, they bent their wills upon the lesser tanar'ri once more and began to organize them for the ambush.

  Chapter 6

  Even if you want the job done right, have someone else do it. That way, you'll never get the blame.

  "Khelben was right when he said there was a great force of evil at work here," whispered Miltiades.

  The group lurked down the hall from the gate chamber, listening to the riot of fiends within. Miltiades handed Khelben's map to Aleena, who tucked it into a pocket. "The gate to the Utter East is just ahead, and it sounds as if the fiends are massing there. They must be involved in the kidnapping plot. They've probably been stationed there to intercept us!"

  "So much the better," hissed Kern, hefting his hammer and gazing toward the noise with a glint in his eye. "Save a princess and destroy fiends! Tyr blesses us this day!"

  “For the last time, she's not a princess!" moaned Aleena, rolling her eyes and shaking her head in exasperation.

  "Whatever."

  "We can't simply rush in there and start swinging," protested Trandon. "We have no idea of how many fiends we're up against."

  Kern frowned at the warrior. "We know they stand between us and our quest, and we know the longer we wait, the more of them there will be to destroy. What more does a champion of Tyr need to know?"

  "Nothing," agreed Jacob.

  "All right," said Miltiades, ending the discussion with the tone of his voice. "The enemy is before us and our course is clear. Prepare for battle."

  "Wait!" Aleena cried in a hushed voice. "Trandon's got a point. That sounds like an army of fiends in there."

  Kern and Jacob groaned impatiently. Miltiades looked at her with an expression that reminded her that he used to be undead.

  "Stop!" she hissed. "Look here. I've got a spell that'll let me look in that room and see what we're up against."

  "I don't want to know the odds," whispered Kern.

  "But intelligence can help us win the battle, or at least win it more quickly, with less casualties! That helps secure our mission. Remember? To save the princess?" She spat the last word with scorn.

  "Shh!" cautioned Miltiades. "We waste time. Aleena cast your spell quickly and conduct your espionage. The rest of you prepare for the charge."

  "And," added Kern, "she's not a princess."

  Aleena took a deep breath to quell her rising irritation. As she released the air from her lungs, she reached into a narrow pocket at her hip and withdrew a bit of bat fur, which she ripped in half and placed into each palm. She rolled back her eyes and shut them, clenched her fists and touched the knuckles of her thumbs together, then pressed them against her full lips. She bowed her head and whispered into her closed hands. They began to glow red from the inside, as though each held a brilliantly illuminated pearl.

  Without opening her eyes, Aleena looked down the corridor, toward the gate chamber. She briefly glanced down at her companions, who gazed at her face intently, unaware that she now looked upon them from above, with an invisible magical eye. Her sight turned back toward the rough, slightly curving corridor ahead and moved that way.

  Aleena's eye paused at the entrance of the room, as she mentally gasped. The area would be dark but for the kaleidoscopic glow of the gate itself, at the far end of the chamber, which threw eerie light upon a room filled to the corners with fiends. She looked over a stormy sea of mindless, murderous manes. They crowded within the confines of the chamber, pushing, shoving and biting. Curiously, the manes refused to spill into the corridor, though no door or gate stood between them and her party. Obviously, some greater fiend kept them from stampeding into every available space.

  Aleena turned her attention toward the gate and spied dark figures atop the pyramid, beside glowing tusks. A pair of tall silhouettes stood over a third creature, who lay at their feet. Slowly, she drifted closer, over the heads of the turbulent manes, penetrating the gloom, focusing upon the creatures by the gate. Her magical eye drifted higher and closer to them. At last she could make out the oily feathers, the scaly heads, the cruel beaks.

  "Vrocks!" her lips pronounced, back in the corridor. "True tanar'ri! Some of the most powerful of fiends!"

  "You flatter us, human scum-wizard," boomed Rejik's voice in her head, and both of the vulturelike fiends looked directly at her magical eye! "Except you should've said, The most powerful of fiends!'"

  "Tell the worms of Tyr to come out of hiding and face us, if they dare!" cried Shaakat. Across the room, the manes began to chatter and churn with escalating blood lust.

  As Aleena looked past the vrocks, at the third figure on the floor of the pyramid's flat top, one of the vrocks extended its pair of shriveled humanoid arms and gestured toward her invisible eye. Her enchantment shattered and dissolved with a shimmering rain of sparks. Back in the corridor, she unclasped her fists and slapped her hands over eyes, throwing back her head in pain. Miltiades caught her as she reeled. She drew her hands from her eyes and blinked until she could see normally again.

  "They know we're here," she said. "There's a mass of manes just a few feet away, and two vrocks atop the pyramid, next to the gate."

  "Then it's time for justice!" cried Jacob.

  "Battle positions!" ordered Kern.

  "Hold," countered Miltiades. He squinted down the hallway, toward the enemy, so close yet not coming any closer. "They're waiting for us, aren't they?"

  "Yes," said Aleena. "And there's more."

  The men turned and looked at her expectantly.

  "Kastonoph's in there! They've got him tied up at the top of the pyramid, by the gate."

  The men gasped. "I thought you said Noph was dead," said Miltiades, looking at Trandon.

  "They're probably creating an illusion of him to fool us," suggested Jacob.

  "Maybe I was wrong," sputtered Trandon. "Maybe they teleported him here to use against us." Miltiades stared hard at him. "Fiends teleport, don't they?"

  "If Noph's in there, then there's no time to waste!" said Kern.

  "Kern, if we launch a frontal assault, Noph won't live long," cautioned Aleena.

  "If we don't destroy them immediately, Noph will die much too slowly," replied Miltiades evenly, turning to her. "But there's a trap awaiting us in there. I know fiends, and I know how they think. If they're just waiting for us when their hordes are only thirty feet away, with nothing physical to keep them from charging us, then it's obvious that they want us to enter and fight them there."

  "Wh
at other choice do we have, Miltiades?" asked Kern. "The way is clear!"

  "What about Noph?" asked Trandon.

  "What about the ambush?" asked Aleena.

  "Noph is their ambush," submitted Jacob. "They think we're vulnerable if they have a hostage, but Noph knew the risks when he came along. The quest is the only important thing."

  Kern looked to Miltiades. "What'U we do?"

  The elder paladin looked toward the gate chamber, teeming with fiends, then back toward the corridors from which they'd come. "One way or another, we've got to enter that chamber and take on those fiends. I think the only way to overcome the ambush, given the circumstances, is to charge straight through it."

  "Yes!" cried Jacob. Kern moved to take the lead.

  Miltiades reached out and caught his fellow paladin's muscular arm. "Not so fast…"

  "Where are they?" whined Rejik. "I never met a Tyr-leech who could resist a challenge!"

  "They're smart," answered Shaakat. "They're trying to come up with a plan to save our little human slave, here, but they'll soon realize the only option they have is to come in swinging. Just be ready with the warding circle."

  Shaakat extended his wrinkled hands and whispered in his mind, "I call on ggatzshrHegk." Instantly, a shining obsidian javelin, covered from tip to tail with jagged scales, pierced the planar boundaries of the Abyss and flew to him, sizzling through the astral flow to the Prime Material, faster than time. With a black flash it appeared in his outstretched hands.

  "The wizard is my first target," he thought, hefting the weapon for a throw. "The others will have to fight their way to us." The vrock mentally touched upon each of the bar-lgura, commanding them to wait upon his orders, while Rejik restrained the manes.

  Another few minutes passed without the heroes' attack, and the fiendish troops again grew restless.