Descent into the Depths of the Earth Read online

  Going into a magnificent sulk, the faerie kicked at a dead woodlouse on the floor. “You’re mad about the hydra. I knew it. Why does it have to be my fault?”

  Unamused, Jus looked levelly at Escalla. “You swiped scrolls from its treasure horde, didn’t you?”

  “Only one!”

  “I thought we had decided not to go haring off on our own?” Jus’ words had the damning weight of common sense. “What did I tell you about wandering away where I can’t protect you?”

  Stung, Escalla proudly sat her little bottom on a broken stool.

  “I wasn’t wandering. There was a plan.” Sniffing, Escalla tried to weasel her way out of making an apology. “I’m a ruin exploration professional. Do I want my comrades to be burdened by useless side trips?” Escalla placed one hand loftily upon her breast. “I was merely attempting to add to party assets without slowing your travel time. The presence of the hydra was simply an unforeseen variable!”

  “You screwed up.”

  Escalla regarded her friend through leveled lashes. “I am a faerie. Faeries do not screw up. We just have occasional bouts of adverse results production.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, at least you got a spell scroll out of it.” Jus found a dried apricot in his pouch and gave the girl the bigger half. “Are the rest of the pixies in the forest just like you?”

  “Nah. I’m the cute one, one of a kind, and I’m sure as hell no pixie!” Escalla stood, turning to clench her rear. “See those lines?”

  “Pure thoroughbred.” Jus lifted one arm experimentally and gave a wince. “I think I hurt.”

  “You think?”

  “All right, I do hurt.” The man planted a hand beneath his sweaty tunic and shoved a healing spell into himself, the magic crackling like a pine cone in a fire. “That damned hydra almost killed me!”

  “He never laid a glove on you. This is just a trail sore.” Escalla whirred up into the air. “Hey! We found a tavern. I bet there’s a bathtub here!” The girl called out of a window. “Hey, Enid! Was there water in that well?”

  The sphinx was sitting in the tavern yard eating a freshly killed stirge. She guiltily hid her meal and cleared her throat. “Um, yes there was!”

  “Well, find a bucket! We’ve got work to do!” Escalla hung her head out of the window and frowned at the sphinx. “Are you snacking between meals again?”

  “No!”

  “Enid, stop it! How are we going to land you a nice androsphinx if you won’t listen to your fashion advisor?” The faerie leaned through the windowsill. “Check my bags on the wagon. Have we got any faerie cakes left?”

  “One.”

  “Hoopy! We can have it with dinner!”

  “Ah,” Enid peered into a leather bag. “It’s a bit green.”

  “I like ’em green!”

  “Ah, it’s a bit greener than you like it.” Enid tilted her head. “Actually, it’s really kind of furry.”

  Escalla opened up her arms. “It’s fungoid enriched! Just bring it in!” The faerie turned happily to Jus. “See J-man, you just relax. Auntie Escalla will take care of everything. A nice bath… and I kept a faerie cake! Enid can walk on your back. She’ll keep her claws in this time, I swear!”

  The Justicar expectantly raised one brow, waiting. Escalla turned, muttered beneath her breath, looked at him sourly, and finally sniffed in irritation. “All right, all right! I’m sorry about the hydra! Not that it was my fault!”

  * * *

  Evening in the abandoned village had a certain picturesque quality that soothed the soul. The quiet roofs and empty streets caught the light of sunset just so. The plaintive hoots of surges echoed through the trees. Woodsmoke drifted beautiful blue curls against the evening sky. Somewhere in the background, a delicious smell of cooking stole through the tavern, making mouths water and all thoughts turn to supper.

  In a stone room at the back of the kitchen, a giant wine barrel had been converted to a makeshift bath. Sitting like a ponderous leviathan, the Justicar let his shaven head jut over the barrel’s rim. Hot water steamed, heat soothed, and he seemed uncertain whether such luxuries really befitted his role as defender of the weak.

  Escalla sat in a copper pot, seething like meat in a stew. The faerie, who always read in the bath, was flipping through the scorched pages of a book rescued from the hydra’s lair. It hovered in midair, held by the effects of one of her spells. The book was ancient. Escalla became more and more fascinated by the pages and even managed to lose interest in the delicious smell of frying meat coming from the kitchen a few feet away. After several long minutes of relaxed reading, she set the book aside and used an old toothbrush to scrub at an itchy spot between her wings. With her foot drumming the bottom of her bath like a well scratched dog, she looked over to where the Justicar’s head floated amidst the steam. She gave a satisfied sigh and swam closer for a better look.

  “Hey, Jus! Do you have to shave your head a lot? I mean, is it just a once a week thing? Once a day?”

  “Whenever.” Jus moved and a vast swell of water spilled over the edge of the gigantic barrel. “It’s not important.”

  “You know, I could wax it for you—smoother finish than shaving.”

  “I just shave it to be practical.”

  “Yeah right, and in no way to project a monastic, ruthless appeal.” Escalla dipped her brush in her bath and scrubbed at something beneath the waterline. “But hey, there’s candles and stuff here. We can do wax.”

  “Escalla, there aren’t enough healing spells in all the Flanaess to let you wax my head.”

  Trying to get on with the business of his bath, Jus sniffed suspiciously at a piece of soap—flower scented and taken from Enid and Escalla’s private stores—then awkwardly began to scrub his feet.

  “Good book?” he asked.

  “It’s a spellbook,” she replied. “High level. There’s only one or two bits I can understand.” Escalla made a little sign with one finger, retrieved her book, and turned a page. Little flakes of burned parchment showered onto the floor. “I might be able to salvage something useful and get a few new spells out of it.”

  Jus raised one shaggy brow and said, “How do you get more spells? Will you have to go see your teacher?”

  The change in Escalla’s countenance was infinitely subtle. Only someone who knew her well would ever have noticed the pallid stiffness of her hands.

  “I don’t have teachers.” Pages closed with a cold snap. “I work alone.”

  The subject lay where it had fallen. Jus had hounded countess clues to ground before now, but he knew when to leave well enough alone. Escalla’s past was a line drawn across her soul. The period before she had taken up with Jus and Cinders was something she preferred to forget.

  Jus threw a wash cloth at her. It hit with a satisfactory splat.

  “Spell copying is expensive. Don’t you need gems to grind into ink?”

  “It’s no problem!” Escalla peeled the wet cloth away from her face and looked into the kitchen. “Hey, Polk! Do we have any gems?”

  Enid and Polk had just pulverized gems in a pestle to make Enid’s next stun symbol papyrus. Freezing guiltily, Enid covered the pestle with one paw and said, “Ah, no.”

  “Damn!” Escalla rested in her tub with her pretty pink feet steaming out in the open air. “Polk, go look in my bags, will you?”

  Indignant at being disturbed, Polk slammed pots and pans about the kitchen table, putting the powdered gems dangerously close to the seasonings for the night’s meal.

  “We spent ’em, girl!” shouted the teamster. “That’s what treasure’s for! Supplies! Essentials! Gifts to the needy and glory to the gods!”

  The faerie pursed her mouth. “You spent it on booze, didn’t you?”

  “Essential exploration assets!” Polk waved his hands. “An evening drink by the campfire is a prime piece of any adventure! Just read the literature!”

  “Polk, one of these days, you are going to get such a pinch.” Escalla irritably went back
to her book. “All right, I’ll use the burned version for now, but we need some gems—just little semi-precious ones.”

  Jus reached out with the point of his sword and tugged a hanging blanket back into place, sealing the bathroom off from the kitchen.

  “If I find any lying around, I’ll let you know.”

  With an expressive little sigh, the faerie slung her hair down the back of the cooking pot. She leaned her head against the rim of her bath and paddled with her toes.

  “My water’s getting cold. Can we get Cinders in here to warm it up?”

  “Near a bath? Remember last time?”

  The last time had been in the city of Trigol about two months before. The trouble of dunking a wailing hell hound skin into an unwanted bath had been amusing, to say the least. Escalla chuckled, then suddenly discovered that she was sitting on her scrubbing brush. “You know, for a refugee from the Abyss, that dog can be a real coward!” The girl lay in her bath and smiled. “Do you think they ever replaced that ceiling?”

  “Remember the noise he made?”

  “I remember.” Rolling her head, Escalla slyly regarded her shaven-headed friend. “Hey, J-man! That was the first time I saw you getting out of the bath.”

  Jus decided not to comment. He propped his sword within easy reach and reclined once again.

  Unperturbed, Escalla leaned over the rim of her pot and gave a feline little smile. “You have two cute little dimples in your rear.”

  Jus glowered. “That is called ‘muscle confirmation’.”

  “That just happen to be shaped like cute itty bitty dimples!”

  Jus nursed his pride with a sniff and rearranged his sword again.

  There was something odd about the village. Something disquieting. Jus knew Cinders had sensed it, though the hell hound had seen nothing invisible. There were no traps and apparently no creatures lurking underneath the floors, yet there was a sense of imminence, as though something dark and sinister had the place on its mind.

  For her part, Escalla had no suspicions. She seemed to have other troubles on her mind. Coming to the edge of her bath, she looked out of the cooking pot at the Justicar.

  “This is kind of a nice place though, huh?” The girl waved a nervous hand about the room. “It’s a convenient little stop. Did you see all the squirrels? Those things are really cute!”

  “Very.”

  “I like them. Too bad we can’t stop. We should get out of here first thing tomorrow.” Escalla sighed and sniffed the delicious smell of frying in the kitchen. “I thought we only had hard tack left. What’s for dinner?”

  “Just eat it. You’ll love it.”

  The faerie squirted water through her clasped hands. “So are we leaving at dawn?”

  “Maybe.” The Justicar heaved a sigh. “Polk’s gotten us lost. We’ll have to circle around, find a settlement, and figure out just where we are so we can plan a route.”

  “Will it take long?”

  The Justicar rose half out of his barrel, stretching and cracking his shoulders. His skin was pale where his armor always covered him, but his head and hands were tanned. “You’re very keen for us to keep heading for Hommlet.”

  “Yeah.” The faerie shrugged, sat up, and began to wring out her long blonde hair. “There’s something weird about these woods, something… I don’t know. It makes me feel creepy. I just want to get out of here.” The girl sighed. “I wanna go to Hommlet. We’ve got the deeds, man! Still, I want to make sure no one’s really unhappy about it or anything.”

  “No one’s unhappy.” Jus watched Escalla for a long moment, strangely pleased by the efficient way she wound her wet hair into a towel and tied it into a turban. “Most everything has good in it. You just have to know where to look.”

  With her slim, naked back to him, Escalla’s little wings gracefully fanned themselves dry. “I’ve never really been told that I have much good in me.”

  Jus knew when to listen. He rose out of his bath and sat with a towel wound about his middle, leaning forward onto his hairy knees and watching her in silence. Slim and strangely graceful, Escalla quietly wound herself inside a towel. She turned to look over at him, her face thin, her shape tiny and vulnerable.

  “I lived alone for a long time, Jus. A long, long time.” The girl turned away and pulled her towel tight. “Thanks. You know, just for… for stuff.”

  Jus studied the faerie for a long, quiet moment. She fidgeted with her towel, staring at a puddle of bath water on the floor. Jus had never gotten on particularly well with people. He did what he had to in order to follow clues, sift information, and feel the pulse of a town, but his days and nights were spent in the company of his own thoughts. First Cinders and then Escalla had come to knock on the doors of his citadel, and now his days of solitude were over.

  Trudging damply over to Escalla’s side, the man took her small hand into his fingers, squeezed softly—and then turned to wander off and find his clothes.

  “Dinner’s done.”

  Escalla looked down at her hand and gave a rueful little smile. Wavering up into the air, she flew off in search of Cinders, hoping he hadn’t eaten too much brown coal before blowing her hair dry. Polk ran past her through the kitchen holding plates of surprisingly glittery-looking meat. There was whiskey in the jug and a fire in the grate. All in all it seemed the village offered them a cheery night.

  * * *

  With the kitchen now deserted, an eerie quiet fell. Outside on the roofs, the stirges hooted plaintively for blood. Ashes hissed in the stove, and an old brown tea kettle leaked steam into the breeze. Above the stove, there was a subtle stir of motion. A wisp of smoke in the chimney swirled then crept out into the light to hover just above the floor. A single eye solidified in the smoke, and then a long trunk-like snout sniffed and snuffled at the table top. The smoke creature drifted carefully along the table then flowed down onto the floor. It sniffed at the giant wine barrel with its cloudy water.

  A scent caught the trunk’s attention. The eye swiveled, blinked, and the creature hovered above Escalla’s deserted bath. The trunk sniffed deeply at the water while the eye carefully examined the old rusty pot.

  A single golden hair lay floating in the water. The smoke creature carefully picked up its find, examined it carefully, staring at it inch by inch, then gripped the strand tight.

  A sudden noise came from the door. The smoke creature made a splash as it tore across the room and shot back up the chimney, fleeing into the night. Padding into the kitchen with an empty bucket hanging from her mouth, Enid blinked, then put down her bucket and frowned. She lumbered into the room, sniffing carefully and following a smoky trail that wound across the table and over toward the baths.

  Escalla’s voice pealed in from the taproom behind her. “Enid! Come on, hon! We have to rinse all this gem powder off the food before it sets!”

  Her freckled nose snuffling, Enid creased her pretty brows into a frown. “Wait! There’s something here!” The cat-woman peered suspiciously at the chimney. “Something’s up the chimney.”

  “It’s just a stirge. Don’t worry. I blocked the chimney with a metal grate.” Escalla, still resplendent in a pair of little towels, popped into the room. “Come on. Let’s clean off this fried rabbit or whatever it is, then we can beat Polk with a stick!”

  Reluctantly Enid filled a bucket from Jus’ bath then turned to go. With a last look behind her, she padded back to the taproom to join her dinner and her friends.

  Morning stole over the old, bleached giants’ bones and crept cat-footed through the tavern windows. Ashes cracked in the tavern fireplace. Huge and fuzzy, Enid slept beside the fire, flexing her huge talons in a feline dream. Polk snored like a sawmill, curled protectively about a big stone whiskey jug and muttering occasionally in his sleep.

  The Justicar opened his eyes slowly, carefully searching out the room. Curled against his ribs and bundled in an old beaver skin, Escalla slept happily. She made little chipmunk noises, unwilling to keep quiet eve
n in her sleep. Propped above them on the back of a chair, Cinders grinned his crocodile grin, keeping watch over the room. All seemed quiet. All seemed still.

  Something was wrong.

  Cinders’ ears stiffened. In perfect rapport, Jus and the hell hound listened to the air currents in the quiet room. Jus could sense no movement, no presence hovering in the room. Cinders had given no warning of illusions, invisible creatures, mysterious scents or noises, yet—

  There was a sudden sense of movement. In a blur, the Justicar’s sword hissed through the air above Escalla. The black steel clove emptiness, and the room seemed still once more.

  “Cinders?” Sitting in bed, his huge sword gleaming in his hand, the Justicar breathed slowly as he sensed something strange in the air.

  The hell hound sniffed at the air, his red eyes gleaming dangerously.

  Magic!

  “Where?”

  Gone.

  Jus rose and began jamming on his clothes. Beside him, Escalla rolled into the warm space of his abandoned bed. Jus slid into his black armor, the straps simple, well tended, and efficient.

  “You were asleep?”

  Cinders snooze. The hell hound cautiously searched the room, seeming annoyed at himself for sleeping. Magic soft. Didn’t smell.

  “That’s all right.”

  It might have been a scrying spell. Certainly there was no physical presence. No creature mortal, immortal, or undead could sneak past Cinders. Jus buckled his helmet into place, swept the pelt about his shoulders, and settled the hell hounds head atop his helmet.

  The big man nudged at Escalla with his foot and whispered, “Escalla?”

  “No one wears underwear with these, Dad! I swear!” The little faerie sat upright, a look of blank wonderment upon her face.

  With his attention on the windows, Jus moved carefully over to one wall. “Escalla, there’s something spying on us. I’m going to investigate. Wake the others and stay alert.”

  Silent and grim, he went hunting.