The Ring of Winter (24 page)

“Wouldn’t it be easier to go after the Batiri with an army?” Artus asked.

Sanda shook her head emphatically. “The goblins are spread out, but there are many more of them than there are Mezroan soldiers. Besides, we disbanded the army years ago. There was really no need for us to maintain one. People like Kwalu keep the military arts alive, of course, but mostly on a theoretical battlefield.” She scanned the plaza, impatient for the negus’s return. “That’s why we’re going to ask for T’fima’s help,” Sanda added absently. “His magic is worth more than a thousand soldiers.”

Artus ran a hand through his hair, which was damp with sweat from walking to the plaza. “T’fima must be some sorcerer to whip up a blizzard in this type of heat,” he said. “Wait. Let me guess. He’s a bara, right? Two thousand years old?”

“Fifteen hundred years,” Sanda said, smiling at Artus’s exasperation. “The same as King Osaw, though T’fima was younger than the king when he was chosen by Ubtao.”

A slight twinge of disappointment crept into Artus’s thoughts; secretly he had hoped to find T’fima had used the Ring of Winter to make it snow, “Yes, well, King Osaw did look like he’d lived through a rainy season or two,” Artus noted archly. “How old was Osaw when he became a bara?”

Sanda lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Eighty-five, but don’t let that fool you. He’s had a gaggle of children over the years—Kwalu was bom not much more than one hundred years ago. The negus still acts like a spoiled child sometimes, but he’s really—”

The conversation ended abruptly when Kwalu arrived. Not only did the negus carry his own weapons—a broad-bladed spear, dinosaur-hide shield, and vicious-looking war club—but Artus’s bow, quiver, and dagger, too. He unceremoniously dumped the explorer’s weapons into his arms, then produced another large knife and handed it to Sanda. As Artus struggled to keep the quiver from up-ending, Kwalu started out of the plaza at a loping run,

“We’d better hurry,” Sanda said. She stepped to Artus’s side and held out a silver triangle. “This may hurt a little.” Swiftly she touched the triangle to Artus’s right ear, and it fused to the lobe.

“Hey! That really smarts!” Artus shouted. He tried to pull the earring off, but it wouldn’t budge. “Look, I’m not sure I want to attach any magic jewelry to myself just now,” he said. “I had this medallion stuck around my neck and—”

Sanda turned to follow Kwalu. “It’s the only way for you to pass through the city wall without being affected by the magic,” she shouted over her shoulder. “We can take it off after we rescue my father.”

Artus gave the silver triangle one last tug, cursed long and loud in Cormyrian—after all, no one could understand him, so restraint was unnecessary—then started after Sanda and Kwalu. They were making good time through the streets, and the explorer had to run at top speed to catch them. He was puffing even before they reached the outer edge of the Scholars’ Quarter. There the streets trailed off into rubble, the finely tended parks into tangles of wild vegetation.

“When will we pass through the wall?” Artus asked between gasps.

Sanda wasn’t even winded. “We already have,” she said, taking stock of the explorer with obvious concern. “Artus, you really need to pace your running. Set a stride that will match ours, but won’t tire you so. We have a few miles to go yet.”

The explorer was in good shape, but running in this sort of heat was something to which he was just not accustomed. Still, Artus did his best to work into a longer, more relaxed stride. Though he couldn’t hope to match Kwalu’s exhausting pace, he managed to keep Sanda and the negus in sight. That the Mezroans trusted Artus to do so was illustrated clearly by the fact that they never looked back to see if he was still with them.

When vines and bushes began to obscure the trail, Kwalu slowed a little. A short time later, the negus stopped. Without explaining why, he began a careful search of the brush to either side of the path.

Artus didn’t particularly care why Negus Kwalu had called a halt. He collapsed onto the ground, arms straight out from his sides. After a moment, he mustered enough strength to pull his hood over his face to block the sun.

“You’d better get up,” Sanda said. Even from her voice, Artus could picture the sympathetic look in her green eyes. “Your muscles will cramp up if you stop moving, and we’ll be running again in a moment. Kwalu spotted some signs of the Batiri. He wanted to look around and get an idea of the number of warriors in the raiding party.”

Groaning, Artus tried to sit up. He groaned louder when he realized he was lying on top of his bow. “Why don’t you just bury me here. I’ll come back as a zombie or a ghoul. Then I can chase Kaverin back to Cormyr on foot without ever getting tired.”

A firm hand grabbed Artus by the arm and pulled him to his knees. “Don’t joke about such things,” Sanda hissed.

Artus thought to reply, but Kwalu had started off again toward Ras T’fima’s camp. Sanda quickly fell in behind the negus, and Artus started slowly after them. He found out within a few steps that Sanda had been right; the muscles in his legs throbbed with cramps.

It wasn’t long before the jungle thinned again, and the trail cleared. Artus assumed they were nearing the camp of the Tabaxi sorcerer, but before he saw any signs of habitation, he heard frantic shouting. It drowned out even the incessant cries of the monkeys and birds in the canopy. At first Artus thought T’fima might be under attack by the goblins. Sanda and Kwalu didn’t react to the screams and moans, though. They pressed on through the clutching vines and saw-leafed bushes as if they heard nothing unusual.

T’fima’s camp was small—little more than a sprawling hut and a garden situated on the bank of a peaceful, slow-moving river. Part stone, part sod, the hut leaned drunkenly against a tall, thick tree. Its roof was equally haphazard, composed of palm fronds, tin plates, and air. The garden was quite a sight, too; at first glance Artus couldn’t tell if there was a single planned crop in amongst the weeds.

The piles of broken stone littering the clearing were the strangest thing about the camp. Heaps of granite and limestone, slate and shale all ran together. They were highest near the hut itself, forming a narrow, waist-high valley that ended at the front door. And at the highest point of these mock canyon walls sat a night-black cat with sharp fangs and exceedingly large claws.

Sanda scratched the animal as she passed, and it arched its back gratefully to accept the attention. It mewed as Kwalu went by, more like a duck quacking than a cat’s cry. Even the stone-faced negus paused to pat the guardian absently. As Artus got close, however, the cat hunched its back and hissed. The explorer held out a hand in a show of friendship, but the cat would have none of it. With a lightning-fast swipe, it slashed at the proffered hand, drawing four thin lines of blood along the palm.

“Don’t try to get past Neyobu,” Sanda called from inside the hut. “Until T’fima invites you in, he’ll do everything he can to keep you on that side of the door. And that’s more than you might think.”

Neyobu eyed Artus malevolently. Then the explorer noticed the three small pearls set in a triangle atop the cat’s head. Blue-white sparks flicked from one stone to another as the guardian stared, unmoving, at the stranger. Not to be intimidated, Artus sat down in the valley and returned the cat’s unfriendly gaze.

The shouting from the hut never ceased, but it changed tone and intensity when Sanda and Kwalu went inside. Soon the guests were bellowing, too, trying to be heard over the sorcerer’s exclamations. Artus could see little of the dim interior, but what he could see was as cluttered as the campsite. Piles of stone and larger hunks of rock seemed to be the hut’s main furnishings.

A particularly loud exchange ended with a crash of stone scattering across a tabletop. Then all was quiet. At last Sanda came outside, a smile on her lips and a gem the size of a small bird’s egg in her hand. “Open your mouth” she said, holding the red stone out to Artus.

He stared at the gem. “I have to eat a stone before T’fima will let me in? Thanks, but I’ll just wait here.”

“T’fima doesn’t speak Cormyrian or Common or any other language you do,” Sanda replied. “Put this on your tongue and you’ll be able to speak Tabaxi for three days. It’s a carnelian, I think.”

The red gem had myriad runes curved into its smooth surface. Artus turned it over in his hand twice, then popped it into his mouth. Like the most delicate of elven candies, the gem melted instantly. However, it tasted more like exceedingly foul orcish goulash or the sole of a soldier’s old boot. Since some claimed orcs used discarded shoes in their cooking, the difference might be purely academic.

Artus spit out what was left of the carnelian, which wasn’t much. “Gods,” he sputtered, “I’ll be lucky if I don’t get sick. Was that really necessary?”

“He’s right. You speak Tabaxi like a native,” Sanda said. “Can you understand me?”

Astonished, Artus nodded. “Perfectly.”

Grandly, Sanda gestured toward the doorway. “T’fima has a few questions for you.”

Artus steered a wide path around the black-furred guardian. The cat watched him go by, then clawed at him playfully as he crossed the threshold. The explorer jumped away from the halfhearted swipe. “I think someone pounded those pearls into his head too hard,” he said facetiously.

“Quiet down or I’ll pound something into your head,” someone shouted from the other side of the huge boulder that stood in the center of the hut. “I put those pearls on that cat four hundred years ago, and he hasn’t complained once!”

Artus’s initial impression of the hut’s decor had been quite accurate. Almost everything in the place was made of stone, or was used to prop up a stone, or was part of some intricate experiment focused, unsurprisingly, on a stone. Glass tubing wound around chunks of crystalline feldspar. Uncut rubies and emeralds churned in beakers full of bubbling liquid. Large rocks served as tables and chairs, though one thick wooden slab was laid across a rock near the door. On it were strewn tools for delicate engraving and dozens of gems, much like the ensorceled carnelian.

And in the center of the hut, as Artus had first noted, stood a monstrous chunk of some sort of indeterminate stone. In a few places, T’fima had carved runes into this central boulder. Mostly, though, it was simply massive and untouched.

A short, fat man waddled around the boulder, as flabby as his furnishings were hard. His eyes were full of barely restrained anger, his mouth gasping open and closed like a beached fish. From the mass of tightly curled hair atop his head to the clenched toes of his bare feet, the man radiated a violent challenge. When he got close to Artus, he stopped and planted his hands on his hips. He trembled like a volcano preparing to erupt before he said, “Well? Why were those fellows spying on me—the goblins and that human?”

The words burst out like magma, full of ready condemnation. Artus was taken aback for a moment. When he gathered his wits, though, his reply was cool and precise.

“The human—whose name is Kaverin Ebonhand—obviously heard from the Batiri you are an important man,” Artus said flatly. T’fima’s title of Ras meant his prestige rivaled that of a duke in the North. “He must have been watching your camp to see who came and went. Lord Rayburton happened to visit at the wrong time.”

“But why take Rayburton?” Ras T’fima asked.

“Kaverin followed me to Chult. He’s looking for Lord Rayburton, mostly because of this artifact he was supposed to have—the Ring of Winter.”

That comment made T’fima pause. “Never heard of it,” he blared, then narrowed his eyes. “Then you’re to blame for those goblins lurking around here, tramping through my garden?”

From a darkened corner near the door, Kwalu said, “The stranger may have brought trouble on his heels, but any problems you have with the Batiri are your own doing. You can come back inside the walls of the city any time you wish. After all, you are still a bara, even if you don’t act like one.”

Artus expected that comment to draw a bitter outburst from T’fima. It didn’t. Instead the sorcerer cocked his head and listened for something on the roof.

The explorer looked up. “What’s—”

Neyobu dashed into the hut. Artus watched, amazed, as the cat leaped from stone table to stone chair without disturbing anything, then scrambled up the large boulder. Before the explorer could finish his question, Neyobu disappeared through a hole onto the roof, a black blur against the bright sky. The commotion that broke out on the tin part of the roof was loud, but brief. An instant later, the cat dropped through the hole again. He held the corpse of a leather-winged albino monkey firmly in his fangs.

Kwalu detached himself from the shadows to examine the strange catch. “It’s not one of Ubtao’s beasts,” he said, taking the monkey from Neyobu.

“It belonged to Kaverin,” Artus said. “He bought the thing from a mage in Tantras. He uses—er, used—it to spy on people.” He lifted the monkey’s head. “I think he could see through its eyes.”

“Lay the thing out on the floor,” T’fima ordered. “Spread it out flat on its back.”

As Kwalu and Artus arranged the winged monkey, the sorcerer went to the wooden-topped table and snatched up a carving pick and two small pieces of colored quartz with a waxy tinge. He scratched a few runes into each of the stones. “The beast is recently enough dead that it will still be linked to its master,” the sorcerer said. “Let us see where he is.”

T’fima placed a piece of quartz over each of the monkey’s pink eyes. A swirl of color appeared in the air over the corpse. It coalesced into a ghostly image of a two-story wooden building, cold torches lining the stairs to its front door.

“That’s the Batiri camp,” Artus exclaimed.

“Just as this Kaverin is seeing it now,” T’fima added.

The image flowed and changed as Kaverin hurried up the stairs, into the goblin queen’s home. Two guards, armed with spears, backed into the shadows of the main hall as the daylight streamed in. Kaverin barely gave them a glance as he rushed toward a door at the end of the hall. A carved human skull grinned from its center.

Skulls lined the room beyond, as well. They covered the walls and rested upon every flat surface, every piece of furniture. In a chair graced with only one such trophy sat Lord Rayburton. The bruises on his face and blood on his tobe told of abuse, but he was alive. A sigh of relief went up from Sanda and Artus.