Richard Baker: Easy Betrayals

Rings held his gaze a moment more, then nodded abruptly. "You talk too much, Belgin, but you're right. Come on-they're getting away from us." Fighting axe in one gnarled fist, the dwarven pirate loped down the passageway. Belgin straightened and ran after him. The hallway terminated in a series of twisting stairs and narrow guard chambers. They sprinted through mossy stone doorways and pelted across crooked arcades, the warriors ahead of them flitting in and out of the shadows like bright coins spinning down into a dark well.

In moments, Belgin lost all sense of direction. The paladins dashed from one room to the next as if they feared nothing, leaping headlong into each turn and twist of the chase. Consumed by their righteous rage, they had no thought for caution or subtlety, only justice.

Once Belgin saw Jacob turn his head to fix one eye on the following rogues, but then the noble warrior returned his attention to the chase. He thinks we don't matter, Belgin realized. He narrowed his eyes and redoubled his efforts.

Abruptly, the chase ended. Belgin turned a corner and found the paladin and the swordsman halted in front of him, facing a vast open gallery. They stood on a precarious balcony, glaring out at the nighted space ahead. Rings barreled into the sharper from behind, almost knocking him flat. Belgin staggered and went to one knee.

"What? What is it?" Rings barked, crouching in the entranceway.

"Trouble," answered Jacob. Belgin followed his eyes and gasped in horror. On the opposite balcony, a stone's throw away, stood a creature of nightmare. Tall as an ogre, with scaly skin and a barbed tail that twitched and slashed the air around it, its great leathery wings draped its shoulders like a cloak of despair. A whip of fire dangled from one clawed hand. The creature turned to a shadowed vulturelike shape at its side and pointed toward the paladins. "Slay them," it grated in a voice of stone. The vulture-thing launched itself into the air with a disheveled flurry of shabby, stinking feathers, joined a moment later by two more of its kind that dropped from the black recesses above.

"Beware the vrock!" shouted Miltiades, raising his hammer. The first of the fiends descended on him with clashing beak and grasping talons, crushing him to the ground. The paladin's hammer rose and fell, then rose again with dark gore wreathing its silver head. The vrock's companion stooped on Jacob, only to be driven back by the white razor of the warrior's flashing sword.

The third soared over the fighters in the front and dove at Belgin. "Another fiend. Great," he managed weakly, raising his cutlass in feeble protest. He slashed blindly as a storm of talon and and claw descended on him, ripping through the fancy leather jerkin to rake deep, foul furrows in the flesh beneath. Belgin screamed in pain and fear, ramming the point of his cutlass into the center of the vrock's chest.

The blade slid in without a mark. Belgin wrenched it free, but the vrock only laughed, its voice clashing like cymbals of brass. "Mundane steel holds no power over one of my kind, mortal," it hissed in delight. "You'll need a better weapon than that to draw my blood."

"How about this one?" From the creature's flank, Rings struck out with his wicked axe, shearing through its scabrous wing. Belgin gagged in disgust as the creature's black blood drenched and seared him. The dwarf hacked brutally at the fiend as it scrabbled away from him. "No one's ever called the steel of my fathers' axe mundane!" the dwarf shouted fiercely. "Take some of this back to the Abyss with you!"

Belgin regained his feet. In the corner of his eye he saw Miltiades standing, shouldering aside the corpse of the vrock that had assailed him, while Jacob slashed his foe to pieces with his great blade. At the edge of the balcony, the third vrock wheeled and lashed out with its talons, smashing Rings to the ground. With one quick step the sharper leaped into the air and planted his feet in the center of the fiend's torso, catapulting it from the stone shelf. The fiend shrieked horribly, trying to hold the air with its ruined pinions, and spiraled out of sight into the darkness below. Picking himself up, Belgin looked around for the next foe.

"Forget the vrock! 'Ware the balor!" Jacob shouted, holding his blade on guard against the fiery titan that stood on the opposite side of the hall.

For one tense moment, both paladins and pirates stood together, waiting for the powerful fiend to attack. It glared at them, its eyes burning. Then, in a motion so smooth and effortless it seemed impossible, it shrank and darkened into the form of a leather-clad human woman. Her teeth bared in a sharklike grin, Eidola laughed at them. "Not bad," she remarked. "I see that Piergeiron didn't waste his time with amateurs, excepting that boy Noph, anyway."

"Hold there!" shouted Miltiades, brandishing his hammer. "You've much to answer for, monster! Surrender now, and you'll live to see a fair trial in Tyr's hall."

"Forgive me if I decline," the woman sneered. "I have places to go, paladin, and I think I'll find my own way. Do yourself a favor and find some other damsel in distress to rescue."

"I came halfway across the world to punish those who stole you," the paladin grated. "Now your own lies have damned you. I don't care how many secret allies you have here or what kind of deceptions you've created to deter me from my mission, monster-you've leagued yourself with the wrong patrons." He paced forward to the edge of the balcony, eying the jump. "I'll bring Tyr's justice to you or die trying."

"Now I remember why I detest paladins," Eidola remarked. She turned to leave.

Moved by a flicker of intuition, Belgin stepped forward. "Eidola!" he cried. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know," she replied instantly. "I mean to find my way back to Waterdeep as quickly as possible, but I don't know where I am." Her face suddenly contorted in anger, and she reached up with one hand to tug at her collar. "What in the name of darkness?" she muttered. White hemp showed around the hollow of her throat.

Belgin grinned. He'd guessed right-Noph's magical lasso retained its power to compel its victim to truthfulness, even though no one held the doppelganger captive. "Why did Aetheric imprison you? You were doing his work, weren't you?"

On the opposite balcony, the woman gasped and fell to her knees, struggling with all her will to keep from answering. It wasn't enough. "He kidnapped me because he believed I was exactly what I pretended to be," she rasped. "Garkim said that Aetheric stole me to provoke Piergeiron into sending a rescue party. He hoped to turn you against the fiends who beset Doegan, since the blood-forge had sapped the strength from his own people."

"Belgin? What's going on?" demanded Jacob. The powerful warrior turned a glare of black suspicion on him, sword raised belligerently.

Rings moved to intercede, but Miltiades answered for him. "Noph's lasso," he said. "She's caught in it and can't lie to us." He looked back to Eidola. "What were you doing in Waterdeep? What evil ensorcellment did you work against Piergeiron, creature?"

The doppleganger's mouth opened, but in the blink of an eye she seemed to twist and shift. The great black mastiff stood in her place. It growled and fixed one last venomous glance on the battered adventurers, then turned and bounded into the dark passage behind her.

"Eidola!" howled Miltiades. "There is no place in this world distant enough, dark enough, foul enough to hide you from Tyr's justice! Answer me!"

"Forget it, paladin," said Rings. "She's gone. You might be able to make her speak truth, but if she chooses a form incapable of speech you can't compel her to obey you."

"I'm not done with her yet," Miltiades snapped. He stepped to the edge of the balcony, then the sides, studying the great gallery. "Come on. I think we can cross farther down."