[Dungeons & Dragons 02] - The Living Dead Read online

  “I wouldn’t think of forcing liquor on someone with no taste for it,” said Devis, nimbly swapping the drinks. “Don’t see many elves around here,” the bard said over a gulp of ale.

  “I’m not surprised,” she said, pouring tea into a small, ceramic cup. The elf woman glanced at the man’s ears and added, “How do you stand the smell?”

  “You get used to it,” he laughed. “Besides, mother was human.”

  “Lucky,” Mialee said. “Mine was a lunatic.”

  She resigned herself to the conversation and sipped at the tea. To her surprise, it was quite good. Mialee grinned despite the unpleasant atmosphere. She had a weakness for musicians.

  “Mialee, you’ll pardon me for saying so, but you don’t fit in here.”

  “You’re right, Devis,” said Mialee, “I’m not looking to. I’m here to meet a friend.”

  Devis took another slug of his ale. “I can help. I know this town pretty well, maybe I can help you find your friend.”

  “I doubt it,” Mialee replied. “He’s not from around here, either. In fact, I have absolutely no idea why he wanted to meet me here.”

  Mialee, have you found Favrid? A voice reverberated in her temple.

  “No, Biksel, I haven’t, and I’m busy being prophetically wooed,” she blurted to the air. Normally, she would have communicated silently with her familiar, but the raven’s sudden, mental intrusion caught her off guard.

  “Pardon?” Devis asked.

  “Nothing,” said Mialee.

  You locked me in the bloody wardrobe, Mialee, the voice reverberated in her head. It smells, and there’s nothing to eat. And I can see what you’re doing.

  So what? You can always see what I’m doing. I’ve gotten over it. You’re locked in for your own safety, Biksel.

  Mialee had had it. She flashed a mental image to him of the previous night, when the little raven had very nearly been hacked to piece by the innkeeper’s wife after trying to make off with some food from the kitchen.

  If you’re really hungry, I can have Mrs. Gurgitt bring something up, she added as she swallowed a mouthful of tea.

  No, that’s all right, Biksel replied, and Mialee could have sworn she heard him sigh. But I’ll be keeping an eye on you.

  Fine, Mialee told her familiar. She saw the bard looking at her quizzically. Just keep quiet for a while, could you? I might have someone here who can help us find Favrid.

  Is that a musician?

  Shut up, Biksel.

  Her familiar did not reply, which Mialee took as compliance with her request. Sometimes, you just had to know how to think at the bird.

  Still, she knew Biksel would be using their connection to keep tabs on this conversation. He was getting impatient.

  “All right,” Mialee said, “Maybe you can do something for me.” She swiveled in conspiratorially. “I’m looking for a thousand year-old elf named Favrid. About five and a half feet tall, mostly bald. Talks to himself a lot. Terrible short-term memory. Likes garish robes. Probably has a raven on his shoulder.”

  Devis bit his lip in a show of concentration, but Mialee could see he didn’t recognize the name.

  “Sorry,” he explained, “doesn’t ring a bell. Do you think your friend might be in trouble?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Mialee said, and frustration overcame the pleasant effect of the tea. “It’s ridiculous! I received a message to meet him at this tavern. And it had to be this week.”

  “Is he a scholar?” asked Devis.

  “A wizard like me,” Mialee replied, the calming tea and charming bard making her abandon her usual reticence. “He was one of my teachers. But I haven’t seen him for ten years. last I’d heard he was researching some tomb he discovered in the southern desert.”

  “Maybe he was simply delayed,” Devis suggested.

  “He was only specific about one thing—the date I was to meet him here,” Mialee said, shaking her head. She took another sip of tea. “That part seemed important.”

  “So what will you do now?” the bard asked.

  “Keep waiting. I guess I can give him another day, then I’ll begin looking for him.” Mialee assessed the bard. “You know, you might be some help there, too. If I have to find Favrid… there’s a name he mentioned. I don’t know whether it’s a person or a place.”

  “You don’t know where to start looking,” Devis said. “I would be honored to help.”

  “I am certain you will be,” Mialee said. “There were two names, actually. They sounded familiar, but I can’t seem to find anyone who wants to talk to me about them. The words seem to spook a lot of people.”

  “Morkeryth?”

  “It’s Mork—” Mialee blinked. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s a ruin, not far from here. Maybe a couple of days’ foot travel on the road, then a day or so to get through the forest of Silath. I know a few trails,” Devis said.

  “Silath? The other place was called ‘Silatham’.”

  “Silatham!” the bard exclaimed. “Heard of it, but it’s a myth. Ancient elf village, supposed to be loaded with treasure and weapons. Every few weeks someone comes into Tent City—that’s a halfling camp on the Morkeryth ruins—and announces they’re going to find, or have just found, Silatham, ‘lost outpost of the elves’.”

  “What are you, some kind of ranger?” Mialee asked.

  “No, just a wandering bard with a half-empty ale glass, I’m afraid.” He signaled Gurgitt for another round. Mialee refused more of the tea.

  “So, tell me about this ruin.”

  Devis slapped a coin on the table and took a swallow from his refilled glass. “It’s a ruin, but it’s not uninhabited. Morkeryth spooks most people here in Dogmar, but that makes it a good place for people to—well, hide.”

  “What kind of people?” Mialee asked.

  “People who don’t want to be found,” the bard explained unhelpfully.

  The elf woman opened her mouth to ask another question as the wooden door slammed inward with a loud crack.

  A skeletal, purplish-gray, humanoid shape hunched in the low entryway to the Silver Goblet. Its leathery, gray skin was covered in the remnants of tattered traveling clothes so colorful they would not have looked out of place on a court jester had they not been caked with gore and mud. In one gnarled fist it clutched what looked like a small, hairy foot. Blood ran down onto its bare chest from its open, toothy mouth. The thing’s empty eye sockets flickered red as it flung its jaws wide and screeched. Lightning flashed, casting the skeletal figure in silhouette.

  “And those kind, I’m afraid,” Devis said softly over Mialee’s shoulder.

  2

  A cacophony erupted from every corner of the tavern. Mialee had to grip the bar to keep her balance as the current of sweaty, bellowing bodies trampled toward the back of the room, apparently hoping to escape through the kitchen whether Mrs. Gurgitt liked it or not. Heavy thumps told her Gurgitt was lumbering kitchen-ward at top speed to explain the situation to his wife personally.

  The fingers of Mialee’s right hand twirled in a short, complicated gesture, and she whispered a few words in Elvish. She raised her glowing fingertips to blast the monster with golden energy. At last, something interesting was happening.

  Unaware or uncaring of what Mialee was doing, Devis drew a long sword and leaped between her and the skeletal thing in the door. In passing, the bard knocked her hand aside. The golden fire sputtered and died on her fingers.

  Angrily she shouted at her would-be savior. Devis foolishly risked a glance back at the wizard.

  The screeching thing’s eyes flashed as it saw the opening. It leaped into the now-deserted tavern with animal speed and caught the bard across the jaw with one bone-knuckled fist. Devis flew backward and flopped onto the bar amid the clutter of glasses, cups, and half-eaten dinners littering the countertop.

  “Idiot,” Mialee repeated, but hoped the bard was all right. She concentrated on retrieving her aborted spell. Her finger
s brushed a tiny pearl in one pocket of her robe and she felt the power surge anew.

  The gray creature swiveled its wire-haired skull on a ropy neck. It hissed in wordless challenge.

  Mialee’s hand finished shaping the spell, and she chopped the air in front of her face. A ball of golden fire erupted from her splayed digits and drove at the speed of magic into the thing’s torso.

  The monster staggered back, smoke curling up from its charred clothing and blackened skin. The back of its skull struck the low archway and it stopped with a snarl.

  Mialee heard the clink of glasses and saw Devis roll off of the bar and land next to her in a crouch. He fumbled on the floor and retrieved his sword. Mialee searched her mind for another useful spell. She hadn’t expected to go into combat today, so most of the spells she’d memorized were aids to her studies—detection spells, light spells, and divinations. Was there nothing else?

  Well, she always had her wand of missiles. Failing that, a rapier hung from her waist, smacking against her leg. But first she slipped the polished wooden wand into her hand and prepared to meet the creature’s attack.

  The assault came, but not from the skeletal shape smoldering in the doorway. A ball of brown and white fur slammed into the intruder from behind, knocking the blood-caked thing face-first to the floor. Hound-Eye straddled the lanky monster and raised a heavy mining pick over his head. With a high-pitched yell of anguish and fury, the halfling plunged the pick into the back of the creature’s skull twice. Three times. Black gore, bits of yellowed bone sprouting wiry hair, and leathery chunks of flesh spattered into the air.

  After a half-minute, the creature finally stopped squirming around the pick that staked its head to the floor. Its skull was a ruin, its neck torn and broken. A viscous puddle bloomed around the whole affair and spread over the floorboards.

  Hound-Eye rolled off the creature and moaned at the ceiling. He clutched gingerly at a makeshift, sodden, red bandage covering the stump of his left ankle. Mialee looked at the dead thing’s knotted fist, still clutching the hairy little foot, and realized with sickening certainty where the creature had found its lucky charm.

  “Hound-Eye!” Devis shouted. He dropped his sword and ran to the agonized halfling. “Mialee, Gurgitt always keeps a stock of potions behind the bar,” he called over his shoulder.

  Mialee blinked and hesitated, then swept glasses from the countertop and clambered over to the bar. Her sharp eyes scanned the open shelves, looking for vials of healing magic. She saw several unlabeled wooden boxes that could have held anything from blasting powder to gnomish beer, for all she could tell.

  Hound-Eye screamed pitiably. Devis shouted, “Hurry, Mialee, he’s going into shock!”

  “Where are they?” said Mialee.

  “I don’t know, behind the bar!” Devis yelled, panic creeping into his voice. “In a wooden box, I think.” More quietly, the bard said, “look at me, Hound-Eye. Focus on my eyes, little guy. Come on. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Blue,” mumbled the halfling.

  Mialee flung several unlabeled crates from the shelves, shattering bottles of liquor and clay pots full of dried meat onto the floor with no sign of any medicine. Then her eyes fell on a stack of laundered towels. They would have to do. She grabbed the top few and an unbroken bottle of dark green liquid with Orcish script on the label. That had to be potent, she guessed.

  Magic, Mialee had found in her studies, was sometimes not the only solution to a problem. The wizard often traveled alone in dangerous country, and had gotten used to rationing any healing magic tightly and to treat minor injuries with non-magical methods whenever she could. Favrid had drummed the practice into her during their travels, and she’d never lost the basic skills.

  The elf woman sprang to the bartop and rolled over it sideways, bounced onto her booted feet, and stepped into the goo surrounding the remains of the gray monster’s head. Her feet flew forward beneath her and she slammed backward into the bar, then the floor. She stared up at the tobacco-stained ceiling of the Silver Goblet tavern through a red wash of pain. The orc liquor bottle seemed suspended in midair, slowly tumbling end over end above her. Bar towels fluttered down like wet leaves.

  A fingerless glove flashed into her vision and deftly clasped the neck of the spinning bottle inches above her temple.

  “Thanks,” Devis said.

  Mialee winced. “Don’t—ow—mention it. Couldn’t find the potions.”

  “Yeah, I guessed. This works for now,” Devis said, examining the Orcish label. “Drek grog. Good year.” The bard twisted the cork into his fingers and took a long draw from the bottle. He grimaced and gasped, eyes bulging. “Smooth,” he croaked.

  Mialee crawled on all floors and collected the bar towels, leaving those that had landed in monster-gore. She handed them to Devis, who upended the bottle of clear liquor and emptied half of the contents onto the handful of rags.

  “Hound-Eye, I’ve got to clean this, or you’re going to die,” Devis said loudly into the moaning halfling’s one-eyed face.

  “Gonna,” the halfling huffed, “kill you.”

  “I know, pal,” said Devis. “Sit up. This’ll help.”

  Mialee supported the halfling’s head as the bard poured clear liquor across Hound-Eye’s paling lips. The halfling swallowed weakly.

  “Better,” he croaked. “Still gonna kill you.”

  “Later, Hound-Eye. Mialee, take one of these rags and stuff it in his mouth.”

  “What?” the elf woman asked incredulously.

  “He needs something to bite on,” the bard explained. “This is going to sting a little.” Without another word, Devis jerked Hound-Eye’s blood-soaked bandage from the stump.

  Mialee’s ears rang as the halfling screamed through the alcohol-soaked rag stuffed between his lips. Blood oozed from the meaty end of the ankle around a jagged sliver of bone.

  “Hound-Eye, get ready!” Devis shouted. He upended the liquor bottle over Hound-Eye’s ankle and emptied it over the torn flesh and shattered bone.

  Mialee nodded as the bard gently packed the liquor-soaked bar rags around Hound-Eye’s wound. She hoped Devis knew what he was doing. The halfling’s screams would deafen her soon.

  A voice invaded her thoughts. Can’t a bird get a minute of sleep around here? What—? The rest of the message was an incomprehensible sensation of confusion in Mialee’s brain.

  Not now, Biksel. I’m fine.

  The halfling went limp and drew steady, wheezing breaths around the rag between his teeth.

  “Mialee, hold this.”

  Devis indicated the rags bunched around the stump, and Mialee rested the halfling’s head and shifted her hands to the bandages. Tiny red dots showed on the white towels where blood was already soaking through, but red was better than green, Mialee guessed. Devis produced a length of silk rope from a coil on his belt and wound it tightly several times around the entire bundle. He produced a jackknife from somewhere and cut the rope from the coil at his belt. His fingers flew as he tied the tourniquet off with a complicated knot, then sat back, breathing hard.

  Mialee heard heavy footsteps thumping the floorboards. Gurgitt was back. Mialee heard the man emit a low groan as he took in the damage.

  “Gurgitt,” she called as she climbed to her feet, careful not to slip in ghoul innards. “I’ll take that wine now.”

  3

  “That old man had better show up soon. You know—” Mialee waved a wobbly index finger in Devis’ face—“I’m going to kill him.”

  Mialee slumped over her wine glass. Two empty bottles of Gurgitt’s finest sat on the bar before her, next to four or five empty ale glasses. Devis was having trouble keeping track.

  The elf woman had claimed to have no head for wine, but the girl could drink.

  “Kill. Him. If he’s not dead,” she added with the glass-eyed emphasis of the truly holy or the truly drunk.

  Devis nodded dimly at her oath, but his eyes were on Gurgitt. The barkeeper was
pushing his considerable bulk through the crowd gathered around the fallen ghoul, clutching a smelly stable blanket in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other.

  The crowd stood back as Gurgitt grunted and snarled his way through the necessary deed of dismembering the creature. Though its head was all but gone, most people in Dogmar would never bury an intact ghoul corpse for fear of having to deal with it again.

  Hound-Eye would survive, thanks to the bard and the wizard.

  Devis was relieved. He’d never intended to get the little guy mutilated with his scheme. Not that Devis expected the halfling to run headfirst into a ghoul when he left the tavern. When the bard slipped him a gold piece to filch the wizard girl’s purse—so that he, Devis, could stop the crime, of course—he had every intention of buying Hound-Eye an ale or two to make up for it. They’d always gotten along well, and had helped each other out of tight spots.

  The burly barkeep knelt and rolled the ruined creature’s limbs and carcass onto the canvas with a look of disgust. Someone from the crowd told the big man not to let his wife get hold of the pieces, and Gurgitt stood abruptly, the messy bundle over one shoulder.

  “I know where everything is, and how much money’s in the cashbox, y’bastards,” he growled to the assembly. “Devis will tell me if any of you try anything.”

  With that, the big man marched out into the rainy night through the ruined entrance to his tavern. Every pair of eyes in the Silver Goblet fell on Devis, including Mialee’s.

  “You a security guard, now, Dewy-Boy?” a black-bearded gnome squeaked from the crowd. The gnome’s hand strayed to the hilt of a long knife.

  Devis gulped. He heard Mialee snigger.

  “You look like you could use some air,” Devis said, turning to her so quickly he nearly lost his balance and fell from his stool. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  Without waiting for her to reply, he slid to the floor and offered her his arm. He wobbled unsteadily and flashed a lopsided grin that no woman could resist—he hoped.