Saving Thanehaven

The Paradise Trap

N
oble stands on the fringes of Morwood, assessing the terrain. Spread out before him is a forest of dead trees. They look like antlers, ivory pale and twisted, their barbed limbs clawing at the sky. Beneath them the ground is as slick as a bog. It’s a strange color—the color of raw flesh—with clumps of coarse, snarled hair clogging up its clefts and hollows. There are fragments of armor strewn about.

The silence is eerie. No birds are twittering. No wind is blowing. Flashes of blue sheet lightning flicker across the lowering storm clouds, but there’s no thunder. The very shadows seem to throb with menace.

Smite squirms impatiently. She’s caught in Noble’s iron grasp, her shaft changing from gray to silver to a molten, eye-searing white as she slowly and irritably
begins to shape-shift. Her mace-head flattens and unfurls into an ax blade. Then it sprouts a spike to become a halberd. When he sees the spike widening into a double-edged sword, Noble reluctantly advances.

It’s no good trying to reason with Smite. She’s a Tritus—a dumb animal—and all the training in the world won’t tame her ravenous appetite. If Smite doesn’t slake her hunger very soon, she’ll start feeding on Noble. She’s done it before. He generally keeps his right hand clasped around her neck, so that her small, scaled head is nestled against his palm like a pommel. This means that, if she wants to bite him, he can only stop her by disarming himself.

And
that’s
not going to happen. Not until he’s conquered the fortress.

Though large and muscle-bound, Noble treads lightly. His hauberk is made of leather, not chain mail. His head is bare and he carries no shield. From his belt hang only a flask, a purse, and a knife. Even so, the land yields to his weight like blubber; his boots leave a faint depression with every step. They also shed the salt that he’s collected on his long and dangerous trek across the dried-up sea that rings Morwood. During this journey, he managed to fight his way through a crystalline labyrinth full of salt devils—leathery creatures that were frantic to suck every drop of moisture from his body. Now, as he moves from hummock to hummock, he scatters so much salt in his wake that the
ground sizzles like fat on a fire. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like anything about Morwood. There’s no shelter here, and his path oozes a reddish liquid whenever Noble applies any pressure to it. Once or twice, he slips and loses his footing.

That’s why he heads for the nearest crop of hair. Before he reaches it, however, a low rumble stops him in his tracks. He can feel the ground shake. As the vibration intensifies, the noise becomes louder.

Then—
whoomp!
Something is blown out of a distant trench on a jet of air and fluid. It’s like the eruption of a blowhole. The objects being expelled are silhouetted against the sky for an instant; they’re pieces of armor and fragments of bone. A human skull ricochets off a tree trunk.

Noble retreats a step. He does it instinctively, without checking behind him, and pays dearly for his error. Because there’s nothing solid back there to support his right foot. A hole opens up beneath it. And when he tries to fling himself forward again, he overbalances.

“Yaah!”
he bellows, swinging his weapon. Smite responds, morphing into a halberd, her ax blade biting deeply into the rim of the yawning mouth that’s trying to consume Noble.

Bloody water gushes from the wound that she’s inflicted.

Luckily, she’s made the right choice. A sword blade wouldn’t have worked—not from that angle. With a
sword in his hand, Noble would have found himself sliding down a wet, pulsing gullet toward a double set of subterranean teeth.

But he’s been saved, thanks to Smite. He’s hanging off her shaft, scrabbling for a foothold as she works her ax head more and more deeply into the lip of the hole. There’s a tuft of hair not far away, and Noble makes a desperate grab for it. He misses. When he tries again, stretching every ligament to snapping point, his fingers close around a mangy, fibrous clump that’s as strong as braided leather.

Miraculously, he doesn’t uproot the hair. Instead, he manages to shift his weight, hauling himself slowly out of the hole with one hand while relaxing his grip on Smite. It’s a tricky maneuver. But at last, with his belly braced against the edge of the precipice, he feels safe enough to retrieve his weapon.

He’s only just plucked her free when something coils around his ankle.

“Aagh!”
He chops wildly at the threat before he even knows what it is. Then he sees that an enormous tongue has shot out of the gaping maw below him. Its barbed surface hooks into his flesh, tugging him toward a ring of teeth and a rippling throat. If he doesn’t fight back, he could end up like that bundle of dancing bones he just saw, spat out of a crevice and dispersed across the landscape.

He needs an ax. An ax would do the job, but Smite has failed him. This time, she’s made a bad choice,
though not a fatal one. She’s become a sword when she should have stayed a halberd. So Noble finds himself slashing the tongue to pieces, slice by slice, instead of cutting it in half with a single blow.

The strain on his joints is immense. He’s losing his grip on the tuft of hair. As he’s dragged lower and lower, he sets his teeth and hacks away until the giant tongue snaps suddenly, like a frayed rope. By now he’s barely holding on by his fingernails. And though the severed tip of the tongue is lifeless, he can’t seem to kick it off. It’s still clinging to his leg with a thousand tiny barbs, weighing him down.

He swings his weapon above his head, hoping that Smite won’t make another bad choice. Luckily, she takes on her halberd form again, plunging deep into the side of the hole and giving Noble just enough purchase to climb out of it. He scrambles over the rim, then rolls clear. The hole slaps shut. Next thing he knows, he’s staring at Smite’s exposed hilt, which is trapped in the ground.

“Smite!” He reaches out and grabs her neck. He strains and heaves and nearly dislocates both arms. Finally, with one huge, muscular contraction, he liberates her.

When he climbs to his feet, he’s panting and glad of a break. Smite is no longer hot. She’s not even warm.

Her hunger must be satisfied.

“You know what? You don’t have to do that,” a voice behind him says.

Noble gasps. Then he whirls around, ready to face his next challenge.

He’s not expecting it to be a beardless, unarmed youth.

“Hey!” The youth shuffles backward, raising both hands. “Don’t point that thing at me. I’m harmless.”

“Who are you?” Noble exclaims. “What do you want?”

“I’m Rufus. And I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to do this.” Rufus peers up at Noble through a thick curtain of hair. “You can stop. Right now.”

Noble is highly suspicious. “What do you mean? Stop what?”

“This,” Rufus replies. “All this stupid stuff. The fighting. The heroics.”

“You want me to surrender? To
you
?” Noble’s lip curls as he studies the boy, who’s about half his size. Rufus is skinny and pale, with a spot on his chin and a hole in his shoe. His clothes, though exotic, are badly tended. A checked shirt droops from his narrow shoulders, flapping open to reveal a soiled undershirt. His hems are frayed. He slouches. His pants are almost sliding off his narrow hips.

“I’m not asking you to surrender,” Rufus says with a sigh. “I’m asking you to think. Just think about what you’re doing. Do you
like
doing it? Are you happy?”

Noble frowns. He doesn’t understand. Is the boy trying to lure him into an ambush?

“Just look at yourself,” Rufus continues. “You look
terrible—like you’ve crawled out of a goat’s stomach.” He jerks his chin at the piece of tongue still wrapped around Noble’s leg. “I mean, is this how you really want to spend your time? Walking around with a giant leech hanging off you?”

“It’s not a leech.” Noble pries the gray, twitching muscle off his leather boot. A quick scan of his surroundings tells him there’s no sign of imminent danger. No one’s trying to sneak up on him. The coast is clear.

“See?” Rufus has been watching him closely. “You can’t relax for a second. It’s just fight, fight, fight. And for what? Do you even
know
?”

“Of course I do. But I’m not stupid. What makes you think that I would discuss my quest with a stranger?”

Rufus rolls his eyes. His face is extremely mobile and expressive, though barely visible beneath all his woolly hair.

“Oh, right. Your quest,” he drawls. “You mean the quest to kill Lord Harrowmage and rescue Princess Lorellina from the Fortress of Bone?” As Noble gasps, Rufus shakes his head. “For God’s sake, that is
so lame
. Not to mention pointless.”

“How—how …?” Noble is horrified. He’s been betrayed! But by whom?

“Have you actually met this woman?” Rufus demands. “How do you know she even
wants
to be rescued?”

Noble can’t speak. Instead, he swallows. Smite is twisting with impatience in his grip.

“If I were you, I’d start looking at the bigger picture,” says Rufus, folding his arms. “I mean, what’s going to happen if you stop fighting? Is anyone going to be worse off? I don’t think so.”

Noble can’t suppress a short, bitter laugh. “
I’ll
be worse off,” he growls. “If I stop fighting, I’ll die.” He has no doubts on that score.

Rufus, however, isn’t persuaded. “How do you know?” he asks.

“I know.”

“How? Who told you?”

“Lord Harrowmage is as pitiless as he is cruel,” Noble insists. “He’ll not rest until I’m dead.”