Pryce laid his hand on the mutated arm. Speaking was obviously torture for the thing, and understanding his words wasn’t all that pleasurable either. But despite the odd place Pryce found himself in, and the odd companions he was meeting, he recognized the possibility that he might be able to discover more leads and clues from this unusual source. Covington looked deep into the sad, tormented, mangled eyes and wondered how he looked to the animal man.
Animal men… their very existence screamed of magic gone mad. Back in Merrickarta, Pryce had used what he had heard about these victims as just one more reason magic, and magicians, should not be trusted. Broken ones were once human, but they had been used as living subjects of sorcerous experiments that were disapproved of at best, or openly forbidden at worst. The rumor that many were the result of reincarnation spells seemed validated by Devolawk’s strange heredity.
The adventurer and the jackalwere now turned their attention to the other poor monster. If the five-foot-tall Devolawk was a tragedy of magic, the seven-foot-tall mongrelman was a tragedy of nature. No sorcerer had created this misshapen beast. Only powers beyond life could have perpetrated this abomination. He was a combination of more than a dozen genetic types, from bugbears and bullywugs to ogres and ores… with just enough human hormones spooned in to make him rational.
His huge head was part hair, part hide, part scales, part flesh, and part fur. He looked vaguely like an unfinished wall of mortar, wood, and tile. His two eyes were wildly mismatched and accompanied by a stout, animal-like nose and a wide maw made up of at least three dozen different sizes and shapes of teeth.
“Geeeee,” he whistled. “Offfff,” he grunted. “Freeeee!” he shrieked, the rags that partially covered his flesh shaking. Or at least that’s what Pryce thought it said. His animal sounds left much leeway for interpretation and made both Pryce and Cunningham cringe with discomfort.
“He keeps repeating that,” Cunningham told Pryce. “I think that is what he wants to be called.”
“Gee, off, free?” Pryce echoed. The mongrelman nodded vigorously, reminding Covington of a horse. “Geeoffree,” Pryce said again. “Geoffrey! Of course!”
Cunningham smiled in recognition. “You must be correct, sir. He must have seen the name Geoffrey and thought it was pronounced gee, off, free.”
Pryce looked back at the rag-covered monster, which loomed large in the relatively cramped space of the cave. “Well, if it’s Geoffrey you want, Geoffrey it shall be.” The mongrelman lowered his head, shaking, and then, much to Pryce’s surprise, his eyes began to tear. “There, there, my fine fellow,” Pryce soothed, putting his hand on the thing’s shoulder. ‘There’s no need for that.” The mongrelman started, but when Pryce didn’t remove his hand, he finally grew still.
Cunningham shook his head. “Mongrelmen are seldom welcomed by humans. Often they are enslaved by scoundrels. Geoffrey must be overcome that you would accept his company so readily.” Pryce noted the jackalwere looking off into the darkness. No doubt he was thinking of all the human hatred he must have faced throughout his miserable life.
“Cunningham,” Pryce snapped, bringing back the jackalwere’s attention. “I’m sure that if you didn’t have an inhuman need to kill people, drink their blood, and eat them, you would have more friends, too.”
The human beast blinked, then nodded curtly. “I don’t know what it is, sir. Your presence, power, and wisdom must be havingdare I say it? a civilizing effect on me.”
Pryce shook his head in wonder. He was certain that if these three knew he was not who they thought he was, a third of him would already be residing in each of their stomachs. “Be that as it may, or may not, be,” he said to the jackalwere, “I need to know where they found me and what they saw. Perhaps we can elicit some sort of translation from their brethren.”
“They have no brethren.”
“No brethren?” Pryce said incredulously, leaning toward Cunningham. “How is that possible? I’ve heard that broken ones reside in groups of up to five dozen creatures. The mongrelmen who manage to avoid enslavement even create their own villages and communities.”
“But, sir,” the jackalwere retorted, “he is enslaved.”
“He is?” Pryce marveled. “By whom?”
“The same force that enslaves me,” Cunningham declared bitterly. “It lured me here with promises that would fill my heart’s desire, then sorely used me for my basest, most antisocial skills.”
At least one part of that statement sounded ominously familiar to Covington. He remembered that he himself had been lured to Lallor. “Cunningham!” he barked. “I couldn’t ask you this when we last met because of your bloodlust. You said that a misshapen one first enticed you here. Was that Devolawk?”
The jackalwere nodded shamefully, and Pryce’s eyes had finally adjusted well enough to the dark to see the affirmation. “Devolawk,” he asked the broken one, “who had you lure the jackalwere here?”
The broken one answered painfully and slowly through his rotting human teeth, but it was clear enough for Pryce to understand, despite the vole’s hisses and hawk’s cries. “Don’t… knowwww. Woke… from death… with orders allllready… in myyyyy mind!”
Pryce pursed his lips. The poor thing had been created as a slave, with instructions already implanted in its polymorphed brain. But what was the mongrelman’s part in all this?
“Cunningham,” he continued, “I think I know now who actually enticed you here. But I need to know why. What did you have to do to get this so-called limitless supply of fresh, high-quality human meat?”
The jackalwere hung his head. “I was told… by the faceless wind… to find a mongrelman skilled in concealment.”
“Ah,” Pryce said. Mongrelmen were known for their skills in pickpocketing, mimicry, camouflage, and all the variations thereof.
“It’s obvious to me now,” Cunningham confessed, “that Geoffrey was brought here to guard these tunnels.”
“Why?” Pryce asked the mongrelman. ‘What is hidden down here, Geoffrey?”
The mongrelman shook his head vigorously, waving his part hand, part claw, part hoof in a warding-off gesture.
“Geoffrey,” Pryce pressed, “are you the one who saved me? Are you the one who found me unconscious?” The mongrelman stared at him, his head and hand movement slowing, then finally stopping. “You can trust me, Geoffrey,” Pryce stressed. “I swear on my… name… I won’t let your enslaver hurt you.” He blushed, hoping his quandary wouldn’t be too obvious in the darkness, night vision or no night vision.
The mongrelman finally nodded.
“Are you the one who dragged me here? Are you the one who carried me to safety?”
The mongrelman looked up with something approaching hope, then nodded more energetically.
Pryce looked toward the others. “He was concealing me as well. But why? What does he know that we don’t?”
Suddenly Devolawk started to speak. “Heeeee knewwwww you. Darliiiiington Blade! Only you… can heeeeelp us!” The mongrelman nodded again, even more vigorously.
Pryce felt a sudden pang of hopelessness. Now a trio of monsters were looking to him for help, a responsibility Pryce Covington from Merrickarta would have rejected as absurd and impossible from every standpoint.
“Pleeeease!” Devolawk screeched piteously. “I want to fly-yyyyy. I want to sleeeeep! I want to beeeee freeeee!”
Pryce moved quickly to his feet and put his hands on what served as the broken one’s shoulders. “Easy, Devolawk. Calm yourself.” He found himself standing in the middle of a monster triangle. They hemmed him in from every side.
“Devolawk sleeps in misery,” said Cunningham, “in various dark recesses of the tunnels. Geoffrey guards. What, I do not know.”
Covington’s mind reeled. “It must have been powerful magic indeed to create this poor broken one…” And what was the single most important magical consideration in Lallor at this moment? “Fullmer!” Pryce cried suddenly. His mind had finally cleared enough to remember who he had been supposed to meet when he was knocked out.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” Cunningham inquired. “Is that some sort of magical incantation?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Pryce replied. “He’s a captain of industry on the pirate seas, remember?”
