Descent into the Depths of the Earth (26 page)

Escalla’s plans were detailed, concise, and foolproof. In
accordance with these directives, something went “chink” against the beholder’s
armored shell, rebounded, and fell rattling to the floor. Utterly unharmed, the
beholder swiveled around to look at the offending object. Lying on the floor,
the drugged crossbow bolt lay pointing back down the corridor like an accusing
finger.

Still frozen with his empty crossbow pointed at the beholder,
Private Henry crouched behind a pile of rubble. The boy squeaked, the beholder
roared, and a beam lashed out to blast a huge chunk from the rocks overhead.
Henry ducked and fled like a hare. The boy’s wail of panic brought the beholder
shooting out of its cave like a cork popping from a bottle.

Spells shot from the beholder’s upper eyestalks, blasting
rock as Henry wove madly through the caves. With a shuddering roar, the beholder
flew down the tunnels. As the monster flashed past, Escalla swung out of hiding.
The girl gave a nasty little grin and fired her very best charm monster spell
right into the beholder’s unprotected back.

The magic stabbed straight toward the beholder’s shell—a
shell no longer guarded by its anti-magic front eye. As the spell struck home,
Escalla hopped up and down and did a little dance of glee.

“Gotcha!”

The beholder screeched to a stop, whipped around, and gave a
violent roar. Escalla stared for one brief instant, then screamed like a peeled
weasel and flew madly up through the stalagmites. Death and disintegration beams
blasted rock right at her heels. Utterly unaffected by her spell, the beholder
barreled after her like a runaway wagon, smashing into stalagmites and
shattering them like glass.

Tunnels and caverns opened up at every side. Escalla blurred
inside a cave and rolled madly aside as a death beam stabbed half an inch below
her nose. She saw a side opening and made toward it to escape, only to have a
disintegration beam from the monster blast into the arch and bring the whole
cave mouth thundering down in an avalanche. Trapped, Escalla squealed and
wrenched aside. An instant later the beholder lunged into the cave after her,
its central eye open and all magic instantly dispelled.

Even without its magic eyes, the beholder was well adapted
for chewing faeries. With its jaws gaping, it charged straight at Escalla. The
girl planted her back onto the wall, coiled her legs beneath her and launched
herself away an instant before the beholder smashed against the wall. Finding
long tufts of ragged hair hanging beneath the beholder’s belly, Escalla latched
onto the hair and hung dangling like a puppet. Above her, the beholder roared
and bashed itself against the walls, angrily trying to shake the little faerie
free. It tried to blast her with its eyestalks, but was unable to see beneath
its own fat shell. Escalla wailed and held on for dear life as the beholder
began to buck wildly in an attempt to shake her loose.

A crossbow bolt flashed past a hair’s breadth beneath
Escalla’s bottom. Hanging on to the beholder, the girl managed to look back and
see Private Henry and his trusty crossbow.

“Are you crazy?”

“Sorry!”

Flung madly left and right, Escalla screeched and held on
tight. The beholder went on a wild ride to dislodge the hanging faerie.
Careering madly down the tunnels, it bashed against the walls, knocking the
breath from Escalla and making her see stars. Racing through caves, it smashed
its belly against the ground. Escalla flapped her wings in panic, towed along
just inches behind the bottom of the monstrous sphere.

The beholder dragged her painfully across rubble, through a
stream, and then ploughed her through a fresh dung pile. As Escalla emerged,
choked and spluttering, the beholder roared and burst through a pile of old dry
bones.

Jerked and flung madly about beneath the monster, Escalla
managed to wipe dung from her face and give a snarl of rage.

“You goggle eyed git! You’ll pay for that!”

The beholder had traveled full circuit through the caves. It
blundered into the cavern filled with dismembered ghouls and then tried to
bounce like a ball and squish Escalla into the filthy guts of its last prey.
Escalla flung herself left and right, swinging on the beholder’s dangling hairs,
felt herself land in something best left unidentified, then flailed out with one
hand and caught hold of a prize.

A crossbow bolt!

Frustrated at its inability to dislodge the troublesome
faerie, the beholder saw a long line of stalagmites down a side tunnel and
roared with glee as it raced toward the stone spikes. Escalla took one sharp
glance at the onrushing doom, hefted the drugged arrow, lined it up on a
bleeding claw gouge in the beholder’s carapace and rammed the weapon home.

“Take this!”

Above her, the beholder gave a scream of rage then quite
suddenly took on an odd expression. With eyes wide in shock, it went plunging
down to the ground. Escalla flew tumbling free an instant before the creature
hit the ground. The beholder bounced onward like a titanic ball straight down
the passageway.

Ten stalagmites stood in its way. Nine fell immediately with
the blast of impact. The tenth cracked at its base and wobbled uncertainly in a
spin. As Escalla climbed to her feet, the final stalagmite toppled and fell,
landing with a crash upon the motionless beholder.

“Yes!”

Escalla leaped into the air and gave a highly immodest scream
of victory. With one fist raised, she suddenly paused, sniffed, and made a
little face of dismay.

“Ewww!” Blood, bat dung, mildew, and beholder fluids had
wreaked havoc with her grooming. “We have to get that hell hound back and get me
a bath!”

Running dazedly in pursuit, Private Henry blundered toward
Escalla. Weighed down by chainmail and carrying his crossbow, the boy screeched
to a halt and folded over with a stitch, too crippled by exhaustion to make any
meaningful comment. He waved a hand at the beholder, wheezing something as he
tried to catch his breath. Bruised, battered, but triumphant, Escalla slapped
her hands, gave the boy a thumbs up and turned to view her prize.

“Knocked ’im out!”

The beholder had been paralyzed by drugs provided courtesy of
the drow. The monster lay with its eyestalks stiff and staring into blank space.
Escalla gave it a kick in what should have been its side, closed its upper eye
stalks for it, then pranced and posed up and down in front of the creature’s one
main eye. She slapped her backside in its torn silks for the monster’s
delectation.

“Ha! Here it is, faerie butt, primo, perfect, untouched
prime!” Escalla put her bottom almost between the monster’s jaws. “Oh all right,
you can eat me! Ooops! Paralyzed! What a shame!” The girl turned a pirouette and
ended up leaning casually on the huge carnivorous sphere. “I’m so hot! I may
have to start donating my old clothes to temple shrines!”

Peering over the top of the monster, Private Henry seemed a
tad confused.

“My lady?”

“Quiet, kid! I’m having a moment, here!”

Collapsing to sit on the stump of a shattered stalagmite,
Henry could only sit in a daze and stare at the monster.

“So this was part of the plan?”

“Part one of a beautiful plan!” Escalla lounged atop the
angry beholder. “Flawless execution, kid! It’s a joy to behold!”

“Are we ready to go yet?”

“Almost!” Escalla happily patted the paralyzed beholder. “I
guess we’ve got at least three hours before ol’ friendly here begins to wake up,
so let’s get this show on the road!” She patted the beholder’s armored hide.
“Grand Rescue Plan phase one: First, catch your beholder!”

* * *

Phase two was perhaps a tad less structured than phase one.
Still, it held a certain amount of promise. Escalla unshipped one of her magic
lights and left Private Henry watching nervously from afar as she drifted
carefully back into the cavern of dead ghouls.

The ghouls had been very concerned with tossing objects down
into the pit at the center of the cave. Escalla shined her light down into the
pit and saw a rough stone chimney shaft that dwindled hundreds of feet down into
the darkness below. The girl took a brief look about the cave making sure that
the ghouls were definitely dead, then jumped down the shaft.

The shaft was only two feet wide—too small for any normal
humanoid to scale. With her frost wand on guard, Escalla whirred carefully down
one hundred feet, then two, then three. Big orange fungi jutting from the walls
showed wounds where something falling from above had ploughed through the fleshy
plants. Finally the faerie saw her light shining on an open space below. She
stopped herself at the threshold, peering into a surprisingly attractive little
cave.

Huge toadstools fully ten feet tall stood beneath the shaft.
Beneath them, bones had been spread nicely about the place, thoroughly picked
clean. Bumbling around among the bones was a strange creature the size of a
large dog—a creature with long feelers and a tail tipped with a
paddlelike-blade.

Escalla felt quite pleased.

“Oooo! Rust monster!”

The monster in question was standing upon its hind legs and
trying to reach something caught atop one of the toadstools. Escalla looked
carefully below, saw a sheathed sword wrapped in rags lying half impaled into a
toadstool cap, and then fluttered into the cave.

The rust monster was friendly enough. Swooping down, Escalla
gave the rust monster a pat on its head. It craned upward and petted her with
its feelers, seeking a taste of metal. Disappointed, the rust monster abandoned
her and went back to clumsily trying to reach the toadstool top.

Escalla beat him to it. She flew up and landed beside the
sword, walking around and around it with a proprietal glee. It was long and
heavy—a sword of the kind the Justicar seemed to like. The sheath had been
painted bright colors, and the sword had been wrapped in the torn and bloodied
banner of a nobleman. Escalla tossed the rags aside, took a good look at her
prize, and rubbed her hands together in satisfaction.

Long rust monster feelers came probing over the edge of the
toadstool, and Escalla irritably kicked them away.

“Scram! Go on!”

Time was wasting. Escalla decided to free the sword and get
it back upstairs where it could be put to use, but in tugging the weapon free
from the toadstool, she almost gave herself a hernia. With a blade almost twice
as long as she was tall, the sword was heavy enough to crush Escalla flat.

“This thing weighs a ton!” The girl kicked petulantly at the
sword and hurt her foot. “Trust me to find a fat sword!”

I should hardly think anyone smeared in hat dung was in a
position to he insulting!

The voice had the prim, lofty tone of a school Ma’am. Escalla
whipped about, scratching her bottom with one hand while pointing her wand with
the other.

“All right, who’s the loud mouth with the death wish?”

It is I.
Words seemed to form in Escalla’s mind—a phenomenon familiar to
anyone who normally hung out with sentient hell hound skins.
And kindly
refrain from scratching yourself like that in public!

The sword was shivering slightly in Escalla’s grasp,
irritating her skin and making a slight humming noise. The faerie sighed and
turned a world-wise eye upon the blade.

“Oh
goody.
Talking cutlery with an etiquette fetish.”

It costs very little to keep up standards.
The sword
seemed to sniff in prim disdain.
You seem a tad young to be wandering on your
own. Does your father know you dress like that in public?

“Yeah! Dung stains and skin abrasions are all the rage this
year!” Escalla sat down and glared at the sword. “So Spiky, what’s your story!”

With enormous dignity, the sword cleared its throat. Had it
been a mortal, it would have placed spectacles upon its nose.
I am the sword
Benelux.

“Beni-what?” Escalla scratched between her antennae.

Benelux!
It is an onomatopoeic word from the old Flannic
tongue, derivative of
—The sword suddenly made an irritated noise.
It
doesn’t matter! In any case, I am an enchanted blade, lost here through the
worthless incompetence of my subordinates.

Escalla drolly rested her chin in her hand as she sat.
“Meaning your owner you lost a fight and got pasted.”

If you must put it so crudely… yes.

Annoyed by the sword, Escalla slipped into sarcasm as her
first, best defense against authority. “So who was your owner? Who pasted him,
and what’s
your
claim to fame?”

I don’t reveal my powers to just anyone who asks.
The
sword gave a superior little snort.
I am the weapon of champions! I am not
for the use of any scruffy, winged little vagabond who happens to go past.

“Well, that’s all right.” Escalla gave a shrug and began
hauling the weapon over to the edge of the toadstool. “We’re kinda encumbered
right now, anyway. I don’t think we have much room in the party for a sword who
failed at sword fighting.” As the rust monster pranced happily down below,
Escalla dragged the sword closer to the toadstool’s brim. “Can’t just leave you
to fret and die, though. Kindest to get it over quickly, I guess.”

No!
The sword squealed in fright.
I can be useful!

“Useful how?” Escalla propped the sword up and leaned on it.
“Come on. Tell Escalla!”

I’m more than just enchanted.
The sword went into an
awful sulk.
I cut things!

“Oh,
real
unusual power.”

I cut them really well!
The sword had become peevish.
I’m always sharp.

“A a real labor saver. What? There’s a whetstone built into
your sheath? I met a gnome with one of those once.” Escalla peered into the
sword sheath. “Hoopy!”