“It’s stupid,” Harp said, standing up. “The boys are more likely to stab me in the back of the head than anything.”
“What do you suggest?” Boult said.
“No time,” Kitto yelled as the animals rushed down the road in unison. Kitto sheathed his sword, pulled his crossbow off his shoulder, and loaded one of the small bolts.
“What the hell are you doing?” Harp asked, waving his dagger-sized blade at Kitto. “Get your sword out!”
But Kitto leaped onto one of the pillars, curled an arm around it, and momentarily braced his feet against the square base. He jumped from the pillar onto the back of one of the niferns. Firing the crossbow directly into the back of the creature’s skull, he killed it instantly. As the body of the nifern slumped on the ground, the rest of the hissing niferns surrounded them like a flood. Harp kicked one in the head, sending it reeling. Dazed briefly, the animal scurried back into the fray. As Boult stabbed one in the throat, another swung its tail and forced Boult to drop to the ground to avoid the stinger. Three niferns leaped onto his back, biting into him while Harp and Kitto rushed to pull Boult back to his feet.
“Verran, do something!” Harp called as he kicked another one in the jaw. Kitto sliced one across the back with his blade, but it rushed at him as if it didn’t notice the wound. Kitto nearly lost his balance as he scrambled backward, but Harp bent low and brought his sword up under the creature’s belly, slitting it open. He jumped back as the blood sloshed across the glass shards strewn across the ground.
“I can try, but it might just make them enormous and invulnerable,” Verran shouted.
“Try something!” Boult demanded.
Harp and the others flanked Verran to keep the niferns away from the boy as he pressed his palms to his forehead, chanting under his breath. The niferns formed a tight circle around them, ready to rip the men to shreds as soon as they ran out of fight. Verran dropped his hands, and a yellowish haze began rising from the ground.
“Verran!” Harp exclaimed, looking at the mist around his boots. “What is that?”
“I don’t know! It wasn’t what I was thinking about at all!”
The haze drifted across the ground and pooled around the niferns’ paws. As if the yellow clouds distracted them, the niferns stopped their assault and snapped at the wisps of yellow air. When the haze reached the height of the niferns’ faces, the animals began to wheeze. One by one they dropped to the ground as their sides labored up and down with shallow breaths. They shuddered and were still.
“It’s poison,” Verran said. “Fast poison. That’s good!”
“Except it’s not,” Kitto said, pointing to the crest of the causeway where more niferns were stalking back and forth aggressively, safely out of range of the lowlying poisoned air.
“If we run, we’ll get eaten by the reinforcements,” Harp said.
“And if we stay, we’ll choke on our own vomit,” Boult said, looking down at the haze that had reached his thighs.
“Up the pillars,” Kitto urged, climbing up to the top of the square base while the others followed. It got them off the ground, but the haze was still rising quickly.
“I told you it could go bad,” Verran said.
“It could be worse,” Harp said.
“At least we’ll be unconscious when they eat our bodies,” Boult said.
“Harp! Do you hear something?” Kitto asked, twisting his body around to look at the front of the palace.
“What?” Harp asked.
“I hear mewling, like a kitten,” Harp said.
“I don’t hear anything,” Boult said. “Except the sound of my upcoming death.”
Harp jumped off the pillar and waded through the haze to the palace door.
“What are you doing?” Boult shouted.
“Liel!” Harp yelled. “Liel, where are you!”
“Harp, there’s no one there,” Boult said.
“Liel!” Harp shouted again. Above him on the balcony, a cat with cream-colored fur and dark brown spots had appeared on the top of the stone railing. “It’s Harp! And Kitto!”
The cat jumped off the railing and disappeared from sight. Kitto jumped down and hurried through the haze after Harp.
“Are they both insane?” Boult asked Verran.
But then a figure appeared on the balcony above them. When she leaned out over the railing to look down at the crewmates, her coppery hair glinted in the sunlight, and her face was familiar to them all.
“Liel!” Harp said joyfully.
“Throw me a rope!” she called.
Kitto reached in his backpack and pulled out a coil of rope. With one skillful toss, he threw the rope up to her waiting hand. Quickly, Liel looped one end around one of the pillars, knotted it tightly, and threw it back down. Verran and Boult left their pillar and waded through the haze that nearly reached Boult’s chin.
“Go!” Harp told Boult. The dwarf scaled the rope quickly and hauled himself over the railing on the balcony. Kitto scampered up the rope after Boult as easily as if he were climbing a shroud rope on a sunny summer’s day.
“Your turn,” Harp said, pushing Verran to the rope. Verran pressed his feet against the stones, leaned back until he was almost perpendicular to the ground, and walked up the front of the palace. Harp followed him, enjoying the newfound strength in his arms and clearness of his-hings. Clearly Majida had healed more than his skin. Harp pulled himself onto the balcony, dusted himself off, and grinned at Liel. When he’d seen her in the cavern by the river, he’d hesitated, not knowing what to do with himself, wanting to touch her but too unsure to reach out. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
“Hey, you,” Harp said, putting his arms around her and looking down into her eyes.
“Hey, yourself,” she said, slipping her arms around his waist and tipping her head back to grin up at him.
“You still have a pointy little chin,” he said. “And pointy little ears.”
“And you still talk too much,” she told him. “Did I tell you I loved you?” he asked. “No, you never got around to it.” Harp shook his head ruefully. “My mistake.” And he kissed her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
3 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR) Chult
Boult cleared his throat. “I’m happy you kids are happy, but don’t we have things to do? People to see? Artifacts to steal… I mean, recover?”
Harp kissed Liel one last time before he reluctantly broke away. “You haven’t changed at all.”
“But you have,” Liel said. “Or rather, you changed back.”
“I hate to break up your reunion, but Verran’s haze of death is still rising,” Boult told them.
“Actually, it’s not,” Verran said defensively, looking over the railing at the dead niferns slumped on the ground. “It looks like it’s going away.”
“Liel, that is Verran,” Harp said. “You knew Kitto, of course.”
Liel embraced the boy. “Kitto, it’s been so long.”
“Good to see you, Liel,” Kitto mumbled shyly.
“And that is Boult, a friend of mine from Vankila.”
Boult and Liel shook hands. After spending time with the husk, Boult seemed a little disconcerted at meeting the real Liel, but Majida had vouched for the elf and that would be enough to convince Boult to trust her. Verran, however, wasn’t as understanding.
“We’ve already met you,” Verran said curtly. “We met your husk.”.
Liel turned white. “Oh no. What did it do?”
“Nothing,” Harp said quickly. “There was little contact, and we learned the truth soon enough.”
“We have to stop him,” Liel said angrily. “Stop him from making more husks and stealing the Torque, and whatever else the bastard is planning.”
