Douglas Niles - The Druid Queen

"Payment will be no problem," the High King was saying as the trio approached. "Of course, my treasury's in Callidyrr. If necessary, we can journey there beforehand…." His tone clearly indicated that he hoped it was not necessary.

"No need," said the patriarch graciously. He stood and turned to face Keane and the two women. "Incidentally, your young ambassador here did a splendid job of recruitment. I set aside my other affairs only by dint of his eloquent persuasion."

"He's a man I'd trust with my life-or my family's," Tristan agreed warmly. "Well done, Keane."

"Thank you, Sire."

"Now then, to this business." The king raised his arm, showing the cleric the wound at his wrist. The cut had healed cleanly, with skin fully grown over the rounded stub at the end of his arm. "Do you have to make a lot of preparations?"

"Very few, actually," said the cleric. He looked around the great hall, with its smoke-stained beams and wooden columns supporting the broad ceiling, the long stone walls, and the broad hearth. "Perhaps we could find a smaller chamber-a bedroom or private apartment would be best. You'll want to rest, I'm certain. As for me, I could use a bite to eat and a glass or two of wine-for my strength-and then we can get started."

"Splendid! We'll use my library upstairs. Alicia, will you have Gretta send up some nourishment for the patriarch? I'll show you the place. It should be perfect." The three men left the hall, ascending the wide stairs to the family's apartments on the second floor while Robyn accompanied Alicia to the kitchen.

"Do you think it'll work, Mother?" inquired the princess nervously after they had requested a tray and bottle for the priest.

"I don't see why not," Robyn said, without conviction. "After all, an Exalted Inquisitor, so I've heard, is a rank achieved by no more than a handful of clerics at any given time. He must be very knowledgeable of his god."

"I hope so!" Alicia declared with passion.

The two women joined the priest and the king in the library. Upon Hyath's instructions, they pulled the shutters and shades across the window, darkening the room, while Tristan made himself comfortable on a long, bedlike couch. Meanwhile the patriarch enjoyed some of the salt meats, bread, cheese, and wine of Corwell.

"If you three will wait in the next room, we'll get started," Hyath instructed them after he cleaned his plate and very nearly emptied the bottle.

Robyn rose with noticeable reluctance, following Keane and Alicia into the adjacent anteroom. The inquisitor closed the door firmly behind them, and they settled down impatiently to wait.

For a time, they heard nothing, and then Hyath's voice emerged from the room. The priest performed some kind of chant, his voice following a precise cadence, rising and falling in pitch as he drifted, almost singing, through phrases that none of them could identify. Then his voice dropped again, though the soft murmur of verbal rites still came from beyond the door. Then even that faded into silence.

For several more minutes, they listened but heard nothing, aching with curiosity, not daring to open the door. Robyn rose and began to pace, while Alicia clasped her hands before her and Keane sat in attentive silence, alert for any sound from the darkened library.

The quiet broke suddenly with a sound of gurgling shock growing quickly into a scream of terror. They heard a crash, like a boom of thunder, and Robyn cried out in alarm.

Keane reached the door in less than an instant, twisting the latch and throwing the portal open with a surprisingly powerful push of his shoulder. He stumbled into the room, waving his hands to clear thickening smoke from the air as the queen and princess rushed in behind him.

"What… what happened?" gasped Alicia, racing to her father's side.

Tristan lay on the bed, blinking and shaking his head. He groaned softly. At least they could see that he was still alive.

Only then did they notice the patriarch of Helm. The Exalted Inquisitor lay motionless on the floor, sprawled on his back as if he'd been knocked over by some shocking force. His eyebrows were singed, his face blackened, and his huge body displayed no sign of life.

Alicia turned back to the king as Tristan raised his left arm. They both saw that the limb still ended in the blunt stump of his wrist.

The dwarven community proved to have an exceptional number of well-stocked wine cellars-so many, in fact, that the hulking conquerors settled for plundering only a select few. Trolls, sinuous and flexible, searched the small houses while the giants waited outside. Several times trolls reported a solid door in the basement of one of the dwarven homes.

Quickly firbolgs wielding axes and hammers smashed a path to the cellar door, usually by knocking out a wall and then collapsing the floor above the wine cellar's hallway. The roof of the actual chamber, they quickly found, was generally sealed over with a heavy stone arch impervious even to firbolg strength.

Thus they entered the wine cellars by the simple expedient of bashing down their metal-banded, heavy oaken doors.

This was a sport where natural firbolg talent could excel, and thus it became a contest as one of the giants smashed his club, a foot, or perhaps a rock into the portal. If it didn't collapse-and it never did before the fifth blow-another would try, and so forth. The firbolg who actually smashed down the door then crawled inside and earned the honor of sampling the first keg.

Stars stood out in brilliant relief above Cambro as the chill of the night seemed to sap every bit of cloud and vapor from the air. The chieftain stood beyond the circle of buildings, near the impenetrable darkness beneath the forest canopy. He watched the pillage dispassionately, trying to dispel the worry that continued to nag at him. Where were the dwarves?

Thurgol pulled his cloak around him, grumbling about the unseasonal chill. More logs, as well as a few scraps of wooden furniture, added their fuel to the blaze in the center of town, and the bonfire surged higher and higher, challenging the darkness of the sky itself.

The firbolg heard increasingly raucous laughter, a gruff and bawdy song. Still discontent, Thurgol wandered around the village, peering anxiously into the shadows beneath the looming trees.

Harsh words barked above the din. A firbolg insulted the nose of a troll, calling it "short as a corncob." Immediately the chaotic festivities doubled in volume. Thurgol heard bets wagered, with odds going two to one in favor of the giant, and cheerful insults tossed in from the crowd. He returned to the circle of his comrades somewhat heartened by the prospective entertainment of a good brawl. Quickly seizing the keg from a small troll, the chieftain shouldered his way through the tightly packed throng of firbolgs and trolls to get a good look at the fight.

The firbolg participant was Hondor, a great brute of a giant-kin with tiny eyes and a perpetually confused expression on his drooping jowls. Though he couldn't be certain, it seemed to Thurgol that the troll was Essekki, a treacherous, gawking member of his clan who did in fact possess a very undistinguished proboscis. Now the two brutes, almost equal in height, though the firbolg weighed nearly double his opponent, circled each other menacingly. The first clasp had come to a draw, and they gasped for breath as they prepared to close again.

Essekki backed carefully away from the fire, which had temporarily died to a great mountain of glowing embers. Fire was the thing feared above all else by trolls, for the burning of their flesh was one type of wound that even their amazing regenerative powers could not heal. Thus the troll took great care not to leave himself vulnerable to the sizzling danger. Growling wolfdogs circled the fight, their eyes and fangs gleaming in the darkness. They wouldn't attack, Thurgol knew, but the fervor of combat agitated them just the same.