THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE TALL monsters had shaken all of us. Whereas before we had walked purposefully ahead with our eyes looking before us, now we walked with our heads turned over our shoulders, scurrying fearfully away from whatever monsters had passed us by. The more distance put between them and us the better.
Finally we reached a cavern half full with water. I knelt, testing to see if it was fresh, and was surprised by how frigid the water was. Although the temperature was an oddity, the area had but a single way in and out. It was safe enough to call for a halt. I beckoned Jedra over.
“Fix and set the traps here,” I said. “Conceal them in the water. Khavi will remain with you to protect you. Faala and I will press ahead to set up our camp for the night.”
“You don’t want the traps with us?” she asked, fidgeting with the pack that contained them. She was anxious to prove herself and probably thought that if I had no use for her trapping abilities, I might discard her.
I would do no such thing, of course. “No,” I said, “but they’re necessary. They’ll be hidden better if you set them in the water, and if the monsters come back, I want them delayed as much as possible. See if you can adjust the triggering mechanism to trigger on their heavier weight. If we can wound one here, its bellowing will alert us further up the tunnels.”
“The triggering wire’s snapped,” Jedra said, “but I might be able to scavenge one from the other and get one working trap. If I tie the two trigger wires together, they should be able to take the weight.”
The trappers in Atikala had trained her well. “Better than nothing. Do it.”
I let her get to work. Moving back down the tunnel with the cold water lapping at my feet, I stepped up to Faala.
“Ready to move out?”
She nodded resolutely, but there was something else in her eyes. Worry? Concern? Fear?
I tried to gauge what I was seeing. Kobolds felt fear, but not as humans did. Humans with their selfishness and their desire to live at all costs. Kobolds feared death because it subtracted from the community. The collective would lose our skills, our talents, our contributions. Pain is passing and death certain for us all, so while we did not enjoy suffering, we willingly marched to our ends when our duty demanded it.
At least, those who were not like me did. I resisted. I did not mate with Khavi when my duty to do so was clear. Was Faala, like me, different?
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Khavi and Jedra will take care of our rear. It should be safe up ahead.”
Faala seemed grateful. “Thank you,” she said, “but I’m not sure I’ll feel safe until we reach Ssarsdale. I’m a caretaker. I’m not a warrior or a trapper or a leader. I’m not brave.”
I reached out my hand, hooking it around hers, giving a tight squeeze. “To survive Atikala, you’re brave. We’re all brave.”
“Are we?”
I said nothing but squeezed her hand again.
Faala and I moved down the tunnel, the air getting colder and colder as we climbed. My scales rustled as my body tried to keep warm and the lower temperature affected my metabolism. Gnomes and other such creatures could survive without having a way to regulate their temperature, but we had only a limited ability to do so. I was tired.
“Why’s it so cold?” asked Faala, rubbing her arms for warmth. “It feels like I’m walking through the mist again.”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I know nothing of the world this high up. All I have is Tyermumtican’s map. I can only trust it leads us to Ssarsdale.”
She beamed at me. “I believe it does.”
I was glad to hear that. I exhaled out my nostrils. “You trust the word of a copper dragon?”
“No,” she said, “but I trust you. That’s enough for me.”
I was touched, and I gave her a long smile in return. “Thank you.”
“It’s just the truth.”
“It’s a welcome truth,” I answered as we rounded a bend in the tunnels. The passage opened into a depression, the bottom filled with two inches of water so clear and pure I could hardly see it. A rise to one side like a miniature island in a tiny lake looked big enough to house all four of us.
“Perhaps I should have brought Jedra with us. We could set the traps in the water here.”
“Your plan before was good,” said Faala. “It’s okay. Let’s set everything up here, so it’s ready when they catch up.”
I gingerly stepped into the water, the chill enveloping my feet up to my ankles. I sloshed my way to the island, and Jedra joined me moments later.
“I wonder where all this water is coming from,” she said. “It seems to be seeping in from the ceiling.”
I looked up. Faint moisture clung to the limestone above. “Seems so. Perhaps it’s condensation from the changes in temperature?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
I shrugged off my haversack and laid it down gently, then opened the flap at the top. Both eggs were still inside. I unwrapped the top one to make sure it was unharmed, testing it with my fingers.
“I’m not sure how they’ll cope with this cold,” Faala said. “How do they feel?”
“Strong and warm,” I answered. Her concern for the eggs was touching. “They’ll be fine.”
A shadow moved at the entrance to the tunnel. I straightened up. “That was fast,” I said.
A thwap was all I heard in reply, followed by a sting in my abdomen. I looked down. A thin tuft of feathers poked out of my jerkin below my shield. Without thinking, I tugged it out of my chest.
A miniature crossbow quarrel.
“Faala!” I shouted, drawing my weapon with claws that suddenly felt heavier, pulling my shield in close to my chest. “Faala, it’s not Khaaaaa—”
I froze in place, rapier held out before me, my muscles like iron. The burning pain of poison flowed through my veins, a river of fire that spread up my left side, over my forehead, then down my right.
“Ren?” said Faala, scrambling to my side, “What happened?”
I tried to answer, but my jaw wouldn’t move, stuck open, my tongue an immobile lump of muscle. It was all I could do to breathe through my nose; the entirety of my being focused on forcing my lungs to pump air. The pain became torturous. All I could move were my eyeballs, although they quickly watered. I couldn’t blink. The burning flowed down my leg, poison making its way through my circulatory system.
The shadow moved. A gnome, his hair smoothed back and neatly groomed, reloading a hand crossbow.
“My, my, my,” he said in perfectly accented draconic, a thick puff of mist coming from his mouth with every word. “Two kobolds this far up. And I thought this was going to be a boring trip into the underworld. What luck. Who says the Gods are dead, mmm?”
Faala inhaled sharply, reaching out for my shoulder. She shook me. “Ren! Ren, wake up!”
The gnome calmly shot her. She stopped, her hand on my shoulder, frozen in place as I was.
“Silly scaled rodent.” He hooked his weapon into his belt and clapped his hands together. “Well, now that I have your full attention, how about we have a little chat?”
I couldn’t speak, of course. The idea seemed infinitely amusing to him. “No? Oh, more’s the pity.” He drew a stiletto dagger, wickedly edged and well oiled. Despite its obviously keen point, his other hand slipped into a belt pouch and retrieved a whetstone, dragging the steel across it. “Your kind are always so despairingly inhospitable.”
He stepped into the water, his outerfeet made little sound as they moved through the liquid, leaving almost no ripples. He stopped in front of Faala, pointing the dagger’s tip at the left side of her face, the side I could not see. Judging by the length of the blade it must have been pressed right to her eye.
“Tell me, blackscale, how many more kobolds are there?”
Faala remained immobile. Her right eye, the one I could see, jerked around frantically. She looked straight at me, and me at her, and I struggled against the poison’s insidious burn.
The gnome slowly eased his dagger forward. She didn’t move, didn’t cry out, but I could smell blood.
It was not fair. Faala was good. Kind. Strong. Faala needed me to protect her. I was a warrior. It was my job. My duty. I was neglectful in so much of my life. I hadn’t bred with Khavi. I owned things. I knew this. I wanted to take it all back. I’d throw my eggshells away if the dead Gods would save Faala. I’d let Khavi do what he wanted. I just wanted her to live.
Faala’s eye jerked and spasmed, tears springing forth. I wanted to scream. I wanted to summon my magic, but my claws wouldn’t answer my call.
“Waste of a good eyeball if you ask me. Why, I don’t imagine that if I live a thousand years I’ll ever understand kobolds. You could have avoided this so easily by just giving me what I...”
His hand jerked forward. The blade sunk into Faala’s skull to the hilt. “Want.”
The light in her remaining eye died as the steel lodged itself in Faala’s brain.
“Such a shame.” The gnome kicked over Faala’s corpse. The body toppled over like a statue, her posture unchanging even in death, a black stain pouring out from her eye socket, the side of her face split in two.
The dragonfire burned and frothed in my heart, desperately begging to be unleashed, to burn this monster to ashes.
“Mercy me. I have gotten a little ahead of myself, haven’t I.” He chuckled, casually stepping over the body of my dead friend, his eyes fixed on me. “Golden scales. Fascinating. I’ve never seen one like you. I’m Pewdt.”
He introduced himself like I was a stranger who had done him a favour. I matched his gaze, boring into him and transmitting all of my hate and rage, picturing his head popping like a glowbug under my foot. The poison coursed back up my leg, then down the other, and I focused on that sensation. The pain. Like thousands of insects crawling through my bloodstream, biting and chewing at my veins. I needed the pain to force my frozen body into action.
Pewdt manoeuvred my limbs like they were soft clay, opening my grip, leaving the inside of my shield arm exposed. The dagger, slick with Faala’s blood, hovered near my forearm. “I wonder, dear creature, are you gold to the core? Bones and all? How deep does your colouration go?”
The edge of the dagger pressed to my scales. He began to cut, peeling off several of my scales, flicking each one over his shoulder with a jerk of his wrist. My golden blood trickled out, running down my arm, and onto the stone.
“Oh, ho, ho, she bleeds gold as well. Fascinating. Let’s explore together, shall we?”
Pewdt cut deeper into my flesh. The pain from the poison was now a secondary feeling; my arm was on fire. I thought he would dig to the bone, would open my arm up completely, but he stopped.
“But wait, what’s this?”
The tip slid out from my flesh and the agony abated. The gnome moved around and behind me, disappearing from my sight, and I heard him pick something up. I knew what it was.
My haversack.
“An egg? No, two. Two little kobold eggs.”
No. He couldn’t have them. They hadn’t done anything and had no part in the racial conflict between gnomes and kobolds.
He moved back into my vision, gaily tossing the eggs into the air, juggling them with one hand, dagger flawlessly balanced in his other. His coordination and grace were perfect; he didn’t even look as he caught one, returned it to flight, then caught the other.
“It looks freshly laid. Smells faintly of blood. Perhaps within a day, three at most. Yours?” Pewdt looked at me quizzically, then glanced down at the corpse of Faala, still frozen in the same position she was in when the dagger pierced her brain. “No, such pervasive gold would have coloured your eggs, too. The dark one is hers then, and the other…” His thin smile widened as his gaze wandered back up to meet mine. “Cannot be far away. Perhaps you can tell me more about them, yes?”
The same impossible request. The same horrid joke. He waited, genuinely expecting an answer. I tried as hard as I could to give it to him, in sword or spell, but my limbs wouldn’t answer my screaming mind. Blood continued to trickle down my arm to my elbow, dripping and forming a golden pool on the grey stone.
“Of course not. Not even a kobold with scales of pure gold could be so kind as to answer a simple question. That’s why I kill kobolds, you know. Because you’re all just so rude.”
He tossed the eggs a little higher, snatching open a flap on his belt pouch. The eggs disappeared inside, one by one.
At least they were safe. Faala may be dead, but her legacy would live on, assuming I could get them off him.
With casual nonchalance, Pewdt began reloading his crossbow. “See this?” He held it up, so I could see. “Wasp-Men manufacture. Flying bastards from the south. Their real name is impossible to pronounce with almost any tongue except their own—too many clicks—so everyone just calls them Wasp-Men. Savage bastards, they love stuff like this. Poison, that is. They have poisoned crossbows, poisoned spears, arrows, swords, daggers—everything. I heard they even poison their siege weaponry, just in case one strikes flesh instead.” He slowly twisted the crossbow around, so I could see every side of it. “They make the ammunition too, and sell all manner of poisons to go with them. Sleep poison, pain poison, fatal poison. Poisons to make you dumb, poisons to make you lose wit and kill anyone around you. Poisons to make you forget who you are. Me, well, I prefer a blend of the paralytic and agoniser. I like causing pain, you see, but I dislike the noise. I feel that sound should be an art.”
As much as I tried to shut out his words and focus on getting my limbs back, Pewdt’s voice was smooth and eloquent, soothing in a strange kind of way. His draconic was sophisticated and perfectly articulated. Had this gnome been raised in Atikala?
And then he began to sing. A beautiful haunting melody that reverberated in the stone cavern, giving his voice an ethereal, empty quality. I didn’t understand the words. I didn’t have to. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, and although I knew he was speaking the hated fey tongue I could sense the raw, pure emotion in his voice, an enchanting, soft tune that stole every ounce of my attention away from other trivial tasks.
He started cutting again.