The Ring of Winter Read online

  The remaining goblins milled around the village. A few went from totem to totem, slapping the wooden sentinels to make them stop their shouting. A handful found a rope ladder and were in the process of rescuing Balt and the unconscious guard from the muddy pen. Most just lit torches outside their homes, jabbered, and pointed toward the ruined prison.

  As the commotion died down, Artus recognized another sound-a familiar voice pleading for mercy.

  Judar's screams filled the air, clear and chilling. Artus couldn't see the Tabaxi guide, but it sounded as if the noise was coming from inside the largest building in the village, an impressive two-story wooden structure with a peaked roof. A gaping pit yawned next to this building, and a white metal gong hung from a wooden stand at its edge. From Theron's story, Artus guessed this to be the lair of the Batiri's god, Grumog.

  They're going to sacrifice him, Artus realized. He pushed aside as much of his cover as he dared, trying to catch a glimpse of the unfortunate man. Indecision gripped him, and his conscience prodded him to try something, anything, to save Judar. He couldn't just sit by while they tortured him or tossed him to the creature in the pit.

  In the end, Artus didn't have to decide. From the tangle of branches and leaves above him came a high trill and the clack of mandibles. He looked up just in time to see a monstrous spider, his equal in size and as hairy as any wolf, As the creature lurched forward, Artus realized why the goblins hadn't given the trees much attention. He also lamented the fact that the Batiri had taken his dagger; for the first time in years he could have used the enchantment that allowed him to control spiders, and he didn't have the blasted thing.

  Still, Artus was armed, and his reflexes and years of fighting such lurking menaces saved him. He jabbed up with the goblin's scimitar, skewering the spider. The momentum of the creature's lunge impaled it farther upon the blade, but it also knocked Artus out of the tree. His fall, as luck would have it, was broken by several Batiri. There his good fortune ended, for the hunters were neither killed nor stunned, just bruised and enraged.

  He scuffled with them, breaking one goblin's arm and shattering another's knee, but they overwhelmed him by sheer strength of numbers. The only thing Artus felt fortunate about as they carried him back to the village was that no one had thought it necessary to hit him on the head again.

  All the while, Judar's screams rang out. The goblins paid this noise little mind as they brought Artus to the center of the village, to the steps of the two-story building he had seen from the tree. The screaming stopped and the doors to the wooden building opened. Shrouded in shadows, two figures emerged. "I'm glad that's done with," one of them said. "My throat is raw."

  The words were Judar's, save that the voice was even higher than normal, even more like a woman's. In the gloom. Artus could only make out dark shapes in the doorway. Then a half-dozen torches flared to life on either side of the stairs.

  Kaverin Ebonhand stepped from the doorway, his jet-black hands closed in tight fists before him. "This time, Cimber," he said slyly, "I'd say I have you."

  Eight

  "Kaverin!" Artus screamed. He pulled away from the goblins, even managed to get halfway to the stairs before seven Batiri warriors tackled him from behind.

  The red-haired man shook his head in mock sadness. Kaverin was dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt and white pants, with high black boots and a wide-brimmed hat. Above his head, the albino monkey hovered in the air, fanning him with its leathery wings.

  "Don't do this, Cimber," Kaverin said as he walked slowly down the stairs. The winged monkey followed his every move. "I've convinced the Batiri queen to sacrifice you to the great and powerful Grumog rather than serve you to her in-laws in a plantain sauce. Don't give her cause to change her mind."

  Judar laughed that coarse laugh of his. "May I let this dreadful disguise down now?" At a nod from Kaverin, he closed his eyes and murmured an incantation. At first Artus thought his vision was blurred by the tears of rage burning his eyes; Judar's features softened, then slid away like sand pouring through an hourglass. It was truly sand that fell from the person who had disguised herself as Judar, for such was the main component of the Mulhorandi sorcery Phyrra al-Quim knew best.

  The disguise gone, Phyrra rubbed her olive skin and stretched. She turned to Artus, and her round glasses caught the light of the torches, flashing like tiny suns. "Please, tell me they captured you because you were coming back to save me."

  Artus forced a calm facade to slam down over his fury. "Hardly," Artus murmured. "I was knocked out of the tree by a giant spider."

  "They're plentiful in this part of the jungle, from what the Batiri tell me," Kaverin noted. He knit his smooth stone fingers together. "The queen will be here in a moment to toss you into the pit. I hope you know how satisfying this is for me, to see you beaten when you're so close to the ring. You can go to the Realm of the Dead knowing you led me right to it-well, you and Theron."

  Artus kept his eyes masked. "So that's it. You were spying on Theron. That's how you knew to follow me here."

  Idly Kaverin waved the comment aside. His eyes, as always, showed no life, no emotion. "Theron Silvermace was beneath my notice. I've had agents of the Cult of Frost trailing you for years, Cimber. That's an honor, you know. Up until recently, they all had orders to gather information, but leave you alive. Quite sporting, no?"

  Phyrra straightened her white robes. Then, dusting sand from her hair, she came to Kaverin's side. "You'll be better off dead, Artus," she taunted. "All your friends are waiting for you in Cyric's realm-Pontifax, Theron-"

  Artus's facade slipped. "Theron, too?"

  "I had hoped to spare him that sadness, my dear," Kaverin gently admonished. "He'd have met up with the batty old fool soon enough."

  "I'll see you dead, you bastards," Artus shouted. He struggled against the goblins' hold. "If I have to come back from the grave to do it, I'll-"

  Savagely, Kaverin backhanded Artus. A fist-sized bruise purpled on the explorer's cheek, and his ears rang from the pain. "You'll do nothing, Cimber. This is the end." Kaverin removed a small book bound in wyvern hide from his pocket. "I know all your thoughts, all your petty desires, all your sordid little romances. The only thing Quiracus did right was steal this from you. It proved to me you weren't so worthy an opponent after all."

  "And you killed him, too," Artus said.

  "No, I killed him," Phyrra gloated.

  Artus turned to her. "You're going to die at Kaverin's hands, sooner or later, no matter how loyal you are."

  Kaverin frowned. "How predictable. Trying to set us against each other." He ran a cold jet hand along Phyrra's cheek, and she smiled. "Phyrra knows full well she's on her way to the afterlife the moment she fails me. She knows, too, I can offer her more power than she could obtain through more… legitimate allies. Right, my dear?"

  "Of course," she said. Taking a small stick of charcoal from her pocket, Phyrra moved close to Artus. "Don't move, or I'll use your own dagger to cut your eyes out. You don't need to see to be sacrificed to Grumog."

  Carefully the sorceress lifted the medallion from Artus's chest. She studied the white casing that had so successfully trapped Skuld, then drew a Mulhorandi picture-glyph on it. The metal vibrated and hummed. Blue fire ran along the chain; Artus could feel it tingling on his neck.

  "You don't know how much it galled me to save you from the dinosaurs," Phyrra said coldly. "If you had let me talk the bearers into camping at Kitcher's Folly, the goblin raiding party would have caught us there as planned. Instead, I had to cast a spell to mislead the dagger's compass and trudge through the jungle, pretending to be your trusted servant…"

  "Why not just let the damned monsters kill me?" Artus asked. "Better yet, why didn't you just send more assassins to the port?"

  "Frost minions are too difficult to conjure here and terribly difficult to maintain," Kaverin replied. "Besides, I've decided I need to murder you myself, to stop your heart beating with the hands you forced upon me
. I wouldn't trust anyone else to do it." He tossed Artus's journal into the dirt. "After the minions killed Pontifax, I knew I had beaten you. It was only a matter of sending someone trustworthy to fetch you for the slaughter."

  Phyrra lifted the chain from Artus's neck and handed the medallion to Kaverin. Tossing his hat aside, he slipped it over his shock of red hair. "You won't be needing this, Cimber," he said casually. "I thought it a shame to waste such an interesting artifact."

  The tolling of a gong brought an appreciative murmur from the crowd of goblins that had gathered in front of the central building. Slowly they began to file toward the pit. The seven warriors who held Artus hefted him over their heads and followed. Kaverin walked close behind, as did Phyrra, once she had picked up Artus's journal.

  The pit gaped like a ghastly open wound, mist seeping from it like blood, snaking in long, thin wisps over the ground. A huge gong stood at the widest point, next to a small wooden bridge. A bored young goblin leaned upon the gong's supports. He watched the procession with heavy-lidded eyes, then smacked his lips and raised a cloth-wrapped club. Again he struck the gong. The sound filled the air, echoing back in distorted tones from the pit.

  "We ready to offer chow for Grumog?" came a voice from the throng.

  The crowd parted and a female goblin sauntered forward. She had the same general features as the rest of her tribe-mottled red and orange skin, yellow eyes, and a broad, flat nose-but she also possessed a full head of flowing, golden hair, the likes of which would have made any lady in King Azoun's court jealous. In fact, despite her decidedly goblinlike physiognomy, she might have been considered quite attractive.

  It was clear to Artus then how Kaverin had managed to win the Batiri to his cause. The queen wore a beautiful silk dress and sported a dozen brooches and necklaces. Her hands were heavy with rings.

  "Queen M'bobo," Kaverin said smoothly, in his most polished Goblin. He bowed to the monarch and held out a hand. She took it and gracefully came forward. "This is the scoundrel I was telling you about."

  She raised a thin eyebrow. "He not so much." With her finely manicured claws, she pinched Artus's arm. "Not much to eat anyway. OK. We throw him in."

  "Wait!" Kaverin exclaimed.

  "What wrong?" M'bobo asked.

  "You-you can't just drop him into the pit."

  The queen thought about it for a moment, then nodded. "You right. Balt! Get Grumog's new stuff."

  The goblin warrior with dinosaur-hide armor limped forward. He used Artus's bow as a staff, and the quiver of arrows hung on his back. Without a word, he walked up to Phyrra and jammed a hand into her pocket. She tried to push him away, but he still came away with the dagger the centaurs had given to Artus. "This all," Balt grumbled, holding up the bow and the dagger. He limped to the foot of the bridge and tossed them into the pit, then dumped the quiver of arrows.

  "The book, too," Artus said. He gestured with his chin to his journal, still clutched in Phyrra's hand.

  The sorceress started to object, but Kaverin silenced her with a look. "It won't do him any good," he said softly.

  She handed the book to Balt, who unceremoniously heaved it into the pit. Then the queen gestured to the warriors holding Artus, and they started toward the bridge. Kaverin quickly blocked their path, drawing the ire of both M'bobo and Balt. "What now?" the queen sighed.

  Trying his best to maintain his calm, Kaverin spread his hands before him. "Why don't we kill him before we send him to Grumog," he suggested. "I thought you'd allow me to prepare him for-"

  M'bobo wrinkled her face in disgust. "Grumog like us, not eat dead food."

  The warriors pushed past Kaverin, who suddenly found his carefully designed plan falling to pieces. No matter how dangerous Grumog might be, the creature might prove to be no match for Artus Cimber. He'd certainly shown himself adept at battling such strange creatures in the past. If the goblins tossed him into the pit alive, he might escape. And that just wouldn't be satisfactory, not at all.

  Kaverin clubbed two of the warriors with his stone hands. Skulls crushed, they crumpled to the ground. Chaos broke out around the bridge. Goblins hefted spears and bows, but couldn't attack because of the press of bodies surrounding Kaverin. Phyrra lifted her arms to cast a spell. M'bobo, who'd seen enough magic in her time to recognize the threat, clobbered the sorceress with a spear shaft.

  Artus broke free of the goblins and pushed to the center of the bridge. He grabbed a torch from the railing, then used it like a club to keep the Batiri at bay. No one dared attack him with spear or bow for fear of killing Grumog's sacrifice. The explorer locked eyes with Kaverin, who was being held by Balt and ten of his warriors. For an instant, Kaverin's cold, lifeless eyes showed a spark of something-anger, surprise, fear perhaps. Artus didn't stick around long enough to find out. Torch in hand, he vaulted over the railing and disappeared into the mist-filled pit.

  He managed to slow his fall a little by grabbing an outcropping of rock. That maneuver probably saved Artus from breaking his neck, but the rough stone sheared the skin from the side of his hand and his wrist. His fingers slipped from the blood-slicked stone, and again he fell, rebounding painfully off the uneven wall. The torch was battered out of his hand just before he hit the ground, but fortunately it stayed lit.

  The air exploded from his lungs when he landed, facedown atop a pile of clothes, wooden plates, and old bones. The latter cracked and splintered under his weight, slicing dozens of shallow cuts ail along his chest. For a moment, Artus gasped frantically, concerned only with breathing again.

  Then he saw the glint of four beady eyes staring at him from the shadows.

  "Pardon us, old man," came a cheerful voice out of the darkness, "but could you be bothered to point the way to the exit from this drab place?"

  Artus grabbed his bow, which lay nearby. It had no string, but that didn't matter. The elf-crafted wood had served well enough as a club before. "Don't come any closer," the explorer warned.

  One set of eyes narrowed. "There's no need for that sort of rough stuff. We was only looking for a way out of this trench." This voice was deeper than the other, with a mournful tone that made Artus think of the huge cloister bells in the House of Oghma.

  Two dark figures detached themselves from the shadows and came warily forward. At first Artus took them for pygmy bears, for they walked on all fours, had stout bodies and coarse fur. As the two creatures moved fully into the torchlight, though, he saw that they were something else entirely. Short legs supported their chubby bodies, which were half as long as Artus was tall. Their heads seemed to grow right from their shoulders, with rounded ears, flat noses, and bristling whiskers.

  The larger of the pair was dark brown, with sad eyes. "I 'ate being stared at," he grumbled. "Better if 'e tried to club me than stare at me."

  "Now, now, Lugg," the smaller, gray-furred creature chided happily. He held up a thickly clawed front paw. "The gentleman has obviously never seen a wombat before." He turned vacant blue eyes to Artus, who could only stare at the duo, dumbfounded. "See," he continued. "Completely awed by our unheralded entrance."

  Artus shook his head, certain the lumps he'd gotten from the goblins and the blow from Kaverin's fist had rattled his brains somehow. First Pontifax's ghost, now talking wombats. He closed his eyes. That had dispelled the phantom Pontifax quickly enough.

  "That won't 'elp a bit," Lugg noted flatly.

  The creature was right. When Artus opened his eyes, both wombats still stood at the edge of the junkpile, staring up at him. "You're not Grumog, are you?" he asked.

  "Sorry," the gray wombat replied. "Don't know the chap. I'm Byrt, and this is Lugg. Who-"

  A bellowing roar echoed up from the lone tunnel sloping out of the pit. It rattled the loose stones in the walls and sent a shower of dirt cascading from the roof. Artus took a quick survey of his surroundings. Mist swirled all around, but he could easily see that the walls of the circular prison were too steep to climb, even if he did want to face Kaverin and
his goblin allies again.

  "Wait a minute," Artus said. "How did you two get in here?"

  Lugg shook his head. "We pushed through that 'ole over there. I don't think you'd fit in it, if that's what you're thinking."

  Artus cursed. After snatching up the quiver of arrows, he began to turn over the pile of bones, tattered clothes, old cookware, and broken pottery in search of his dagger-and any other weapons he could find. Byrt quickly joined in the hunt, digging into the possessions of those sacrificed to the goblins' god. "By the way," the gray wombat asked, "for what, may I ask, are we searching?"

  Artus spared him a withering look. "Go away," he said simply.

  "Good idea, that," Lugg murmured and trundled off toward the hole in the wall.

  "Just a moment," Byrt said. "If that was Grumog bellowing a moment ago, he sounded quite large and quite mean-rather like Nora, my kid sister. And if Grumog is indeed anything like her, this fellow may need our help."

  Lugg's response to that was a derisive snort. Nevertheless, he turned back around and sat down.

  Artus found his dagger inside a cracked goblin skull and his journal resting in a rib cage. Grateful to have them again, he slipped the blade into his boot and the book into his pocket. Whatever Grumog was, it was thorough in stripping the flesh from its victims. In fact, it had tried to eat most of the bones and rubbish, too. There was little in the pile that wasn't scored with teeth marks.

  "If it's weapons you seek, here's a spear, in relatively good condition," Byrt called. He bit down on the pole, dragged it to Artus, and spat it out. "Only one previous owner-a headhunter who used it to do in little old ladies on their way to the market. Yours for a song."

  Again Grumog's roar rang through the cavern, this time underscored by a rousing cheer from the goblins above. "Ah. That's just the song I had in mind," Byrt chirped and hurried off in search of more weaponry.

  "That's a bunch of them Batiri up there, ain't it?" Lugg asked mournfully. "Brrr. Those rotten twisters are a lot of-"