Troy Denning - The Verdant Passage

Without explaining further, he pointed a hand to each side of the trail and closed his eyes. Opening an energy path from his nexus to both of his arms, the noble imagined an invisible cord that ran from deep inside him to his fingers. An instant later, his hands tingled with psionic power.

Remembering the halfling taste for giant spiders, Agis decided to use a pair of mental constructs to seek vengeance in Singer’s name. He visualized each of his hands changing into a huge spider, but not the chirping kind Anezka and her fellows liked to eat. These were black and shiny, with great bulbous bodies and carapaces as hard as rock.

The spiders had no physical existence, for they lived only in the noble’s thoughts. After the halflings turned their attention on Agis, however, the spiders would seem as real to the little warriors as anything else in the forest.

Assuming that the warriors were watching him by now, Agis visualized the illusionary spiders leaping off the ends of his arms. When they landed, each was as large as Rikus. They scurried into the forest on eight sturdy legs equipped with claws as sharp as a rock leopard’s nails and as long as a dagger.

By fixing their attention on Agis, the halflings created a faint mental contact between themselves and the noble. The enormous spiders located two of these tenuous threads and followed them like silky strands of web back to their sources. Through his spiders’ eyes, the noble saw the two halflings who were watching lift their bows. They each nocked a black-tipped arrow into the bowstring.

As the halflings took aim, Agis’s hunters entered their minds. Both halflings screamed and released their bowstrings, shooting their tiny arrows into the ground. They dropped their weapons and reached for their daggers, totally convinced that the psionic creatures were real. Agis visualized the spiders’ fangs dripping black poison, then the two beasts struck. The astonished halflings cried out and clutched the enormous fangs they believed to be piercing their bodies. They struggled briefly, arms flailing wildly as they tried to free themselves. Finally the warriors grew lethargic and fell silent, convinced that they had been killed.

That belief would not last, Agis knew, for he had not penetrated his targets’ minds deeply enough to persuade them that they were truly dead. Doing so would have taken valuable time and energy. Besides, killing the small warriors hardly seemed wise, considering that the halflings were the ones who possessed the spear he and his friends needed.

After the two halflings stopped struggling, the noble allowed his hunters to roam the forest a little longer, waiting for more ambushers to focus their thoughts on him. After a moment, he felt reasonably sure that he had eliminated the remaining ambushers.

Agis cut off the flow of energy to his spiders, then placed his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. The attack had been one of the most powerful he knew, and it had placed a considerable strain on his body. “We’re safe-for now,” he huffed.

Sadira looked doubtful. “What do you mean?”

“The Way,” Agis explained simply. “What of Neeva and Rikus?”

“They’re still breathing,” Sadira replied. “They seem to be in no danger of dying.”

“Can you wake them?”

Sadira tried shaking, slapping, and yelling at them. Nothing worked. “We’ll just have to wait until they’re conscious.”

“We can’t,” Agis said, shaking his head. “The halflings will recover within an hour or so.”

Sadira looked at the two gladiators. “Why couldn’t this have happened to us instead of them?” she complained. “We’ll never move them.”

“Can’t you do something?” Agis asked, finally bringing his breath under control.

Sadira shook her head. “I don’t know any spells for carrying people.”

“What good is magic?” Agis sighed, stepping toward Rikus’s inert form. “See if you can find Anezka.”

“There’s no use trying,” Sadira answered. “I saw her running down the trail after Rikus fell.”

Agis closed his eyes and let out a long breath of disappointment. “Now what are we going to do?”

Sadira shrugged and gestured toward the pathway.

“This must lead somewhere. There’s as good a chance that we’ll find Nok there as anyplace.”

With Sadira’s help, Agis rolled the unconscious gladiators onto their backs and laid them side by side, securing their weapons beneath their belts. He grasped them each by the wrist and closed his eyes, then opened a pathway from his power core into their bodies. He pictured them becoming clouds and rising off the ground of their own accord.

Once the two gladiators began to float, Agis stood. Being careful not to lose contact with their bodies, he looked down the trail and said, “Let’s go, and fast. I don’t think I’m going to last more than a few hours. Besides, we should be as far away from here as possible when the halflings wake.”

With Sadira in the lead, they walked until midafternoon without incident. At last, the valley broadened into a wide basin and the trail left the edge of the roaring river.

The half-elf suddenly stopped and stared at her feet.

“It’s about time we rest,” Agis gasped thankfully. “I’m so tired I can hardly tell the trail from the forest any more.”

“I didn’t stop to rest,” Sadira said, pointing at a small strand of brown string stretched across the trail. “Our friends have set up a surprise.”

She started to step over the string, but Agis called, “Wait!” He nodded to Neeva’s trikal. “Probe the ground on the other side,” he said. “That tripwire is too obvious.”

The half-elf raised an eyebrow. “My, aren’t you the cautious one?”

Nevertheless, she took the trikal and did as Agis suggested. A mat of woven fronds, covered by a thin layer of dirt, collapsed and dropped into a deep pit with a muffled crash.

Sadira swallowed, then faced Agis. “It doesn’t look safe to walk the path any longer.”

Agis was about to answer when a halfling stepped onto the trail behind Sadira. “Look out!” he cried. The noble dropped the two gladiators’ wrists and grabbed Sadira. As he pulled her aside, he heard the twang of a bowstring. Something sharp bit into his neck.

In the same instant, the astonished sorceress stumbled over the tripwire. A loud crack sounded overhead, then a log crashed down out of the trees and swooped toward them.

The noble stepped forward, intending to shove Sadira to safety. Instead, his knees buckled. As he fell, he spun around in time to see the log strike the young slave girl in the head. He reached out, but found himself falling slowly backward, almost as if the air itself had grown thick. Agis realized that the poison had taken hold of his mind and that he was dropping into the pit they’d uncovered. The last thing he saw before he disappeared into the earth was Sadira’s limp body collapsing into the underbrush.

Sadira’s head pounded as though it contained a dozen drummers, all beating the same primitive rhythm. Her ears ached, her temples throbbed, even her teeth hurt. Her eyes were too sore to open, and she felt sick to her stomach. She was so dizzy that she didn’t think she should be standing, yet, to her surprise, that was exactly what it felt like she was doing.

The sorceress tried to lift a hand to her aching head and found it an impossible task. For some reason she did not understand, she could not move her right arm. She tried with her left and discovered that it, too, was immobilized. There was a terrible, sharp pain in both wrists.

Fearing that she was paralyzed, Sadira opened her eyes. As her vision began to clear, she saw that the sound of the drums came from outside her head, not inside. Ahead of her lay a small meadow covered by soft moss, tinted pink by the light of the afternoon sun. At the edges of the clearing stood a dozen halfling men dressed in breechcloths, their eyes round and glazed as they beat a feral cadence on tall drums.