Philip Athans - Realms of Mystery

Halladon had been watching the hand in horrified fascination. Now he abruptly realized that unless he intervened, the barbarian had only seconds to live. He grabbed his scimitar, sprang up from behind the stone, and raced forward. “Kovost!” he shouted. “Help Moanda!”

At once the disembodied hand crouched down, concealing itself among the folds of Moanda’s blanket a split second before Kovost reflexively jerked around to peer at her. Obviously seeing nothing amiss, the dwarf surged to his feet, Halladon’s cloak falling away from his brawny shoulders. Teeth bared in a snarl, battle-axe at the ready, he darted to intercept the half-elf.

Halladon halted. It was either that or give his friend a chance to strike at him. “Look again!” he pleaded. “The creature, the true killer, is right there beside her!” But when he looked again himself, he saw that it wasn’t, not any longer.

“You were mad to think you could fool us a second time,” Kovost said, still advancing. At his back, Moanda and Gybik, who possessed two normal-looking hands again, threw off their covers and scrambled up from the ground.

“Listen to me,” Halladon said. Moanda and Gybik stalked up to stand beside Kovost, swords leveled. “I’ve been spying on the camp since just after dusk. I reasoned that the killer might not be as able to hide itself from someone whose presence it didn’t suspect, and I was correct. I saw it, and it has been among us all along. You, Kovost, were right about that much. Gybik-or rather, some shapeshifting creature that caught our friend alone, slaughtered him, and assumed his identity-is the murderer. I imagine we attracted its attention while we were exploring the fortress.”

The false Gybik goggled at him in perfect imitation of the original. “I… what are you talking about? I’m me!” He looked wildly about at Moanda and Kovost. “I promise I am!”

“We know that,” the barbarian said soothingly, or as close to soothingly as her acerbic nature would permit.

“Of course we do,” said Kovost. “You couldn’t move around the camp killing people without the sentries seeing you. Nor does Gybik begin with an ‘H.’”

“No, but ‘hand’ does,” Halladon said. “Our impostor is a kind of glorified leech. It insinuated itself into our company because it craves human blood, and it has a clever way of getting it without being detected. It can detach its hand to skitter about like a little animal. The hand slips a hollow needle of a talon into somebody’s neck, killing him so deftly the victim never wakes. The hand siphons its victim’s blood and carries it back to nourish its body. Our guards never saw the thing scuttling around because it’s too quick and small, and can darken itself to blend into the shadows. Perys never found tracks because it’s too light to leave any. The wounds didn’t shed as much blood as we would have expected because the shapeshifter took it. It only killed one of us at a time because that was all the sustenance it needed. And Osher didn’t try to write Gybik because he never saw Gybik attacking him, just a disembodied, inhuman hand. Don’t you see…”

“We see that it’s all preposterous,” Kovost said.

“Yes,” Moanda said, an unaccustomed hint of pity in her voice. “Halladon, you must be mad in truth, to imagine you could cozen us with such a tale. Perhaps it was your dark studies that deranged you. I’ll be sorry to slay you, but the shades of Osher, Silbastis, and Perys cry out for vengeance.”

“Besides,” said Kovost, raising his axe, “you’re too dangerous to live.”

“Wait!” said Halladon. “Let me prove he isn’t Gybik. Let me demonstrate that he doesn’t know things the genuine Gybik should know”-he looked the shapeshifter in the eye-”Where did we first meet?”

“The Crowing Cockatrice,” the creature said.

The half-elf felt a pang of dismay. “With what drink did we toast the founding of our company?”

“The cider. Jalanthar amber, it was called.”

“What did we fight in our first battle together?”

“Three ogres.”

Halladon realized he wouldn’t be able to trip the creature up. Either it had somehow assimilated the real Gybik’s memories when it had taken on his form, or else it had gleaned all it needed to know from conversations along the trail.

“That was your final ploy,” said Moanda, slinking forward. “We’ll give you a proper burial, in memory of the comrade you once were.”

Halladon knew he couldn’t defeat all three of them, but by Corellon, if he had to perish, he meant to take the shapeshifter with him. He shifted his weight as if preparing to retreat, then dived forward in an all out attack, swinging the orcish blade at the false Gybik’s skull.

The creature recoiled, and the scimitar merely gashed its shoulder. Moanda sprang at Halladon from the right, and Kovost, from the left. Off-balance, the half-elf struggled to flounder back on guard, knowing that he wouldn’t make it in time.

“Wait!” Kovost barked. “Look!” Moanda somehow halted her stroke an inch short of cleaving Halladon’s spine.

Surmising what Kovost must have seen, the half-elf turned back toward the shapeshifter. Sure enough, the pain of its wound had evidently disrupted its ability to maintain its borrowed form. Its flesh expanded and flowed, erasing all resemblance to Gybik, or to anything human. In a heartbeat, it grew half as tall as Halladon. Its body was dead black, its limbs coiled with the boneless fluidity of an octopus’s tentacles, and its surface bulged and hollowed as if new muscles and organs were constantly forming and dissolving inside it. Is head was hairless, and without ears, nose, or mouth, but from the center of a triangle of bulging white oval eyes extended a tapered prehensile proboscis as long and pointed as a spear.

“Kill it!” Moanda cried. She edged toward the creature, and it struck at her with Gybik’s short sword. She blocked the blow with her buckler, jabbing the spiked boss into the shapeshifter’s arm in the process. Pivoting, she swung her broadsword down and hacked the limb in two.

Had her opponent been human, such a maiming blow would almost certainly have ended the combat. But the raw stump of the shapeshifter’s arm instantly sprouted a tangle of chitinous pincers resembling lobster claws, and it struck at her again. Caught by surprise, she couldn’t quite bring the buckler up in time to deflect the blow completely. She reeled backward with a long gash in her temple.

Bellowing a war cry, Kovost darted forward, intent, like any dwarf facing such a huge creature, on getting inside its reach. The shapeshifter, which didn’t seem to be experiencing any particular difficulty keeping track of more than one opponent at a time, slashed at him with one of Gybik’s knives. Kovost ducked the stroke, then chopped at the monster’s knee, half severing its leg. The shapeshifter stumbled and, grinning, the dwarf ripped his weapon free for another attack. But then six new appendages, each terminating in a pointed shaft of bone like a scorpion’s stinger, erupted from the beast’s abdomen to stab at him. Driven backward, he dodged and parried frantically.

Meanwhile, Halladon circled behind the shapeshifter and drove the scimitar deep into its back. For a moment the creature froze, affording Moanda and Kovost a precious respite from its onslaught, and the half-elf dared to hope he’d hurt it badly. Then another blank, round eye opened in the nape of its neck, and a huge hand shot from the center of its back to snatch at Halladon’s head.

Halladon sidestepped and hacked at the thin, snaky arm to which the hand was attached. The shapeshifter’s flesh parted with surprising ease, and the severed member tumbled to the ground. Turning, Halladon lifted his blade to cut at the creature’s back.