As the colossus passed through the Elemental Chaos, it exploded, its head and chest and arms flying asunder. Gnarl and Rorik and Miriam, within the skull, were spinning through white light. Miriam fell into Gnarl’s arms.
The gigantic skull, carrying them with it, spun through space-and crashed into darkness.
7.
They did not expect to awaken. But they did. It must have been several hours later. Their noses were bloodied; they were battered and worn. But they were intact.
They got to their feet-and found that the back of the metal skull had cracked open, and they tottered through it, Gnarl leading the way.
They emerged onto a dawn-lit beach in an unknown land. The body of the colossus was gone. Glorysade’s head was there, skewed, stuck in the sand-a devilish face, glaring lifelessly up at the gray-blue sky, the fading stars.
Gnarl and Miriam and Rorik walked up to the edge of the sea. It hissed its mysterious mantra. “What sea is this?” Rorik asked, tugging his beard.
Miriam shook her head. “I don’t know. I am not sure if we are in our own world-or another.”
Rorik turned angrily to Gnarl. “I should take you apart for what you’ve put us through!”
“We are alive,” Gnarl pointed out. “And we averted the worst. Also-by now, Sernos is dead, crushed by Ermlock’s Grip! When we saved Fallcrest we saved Kraik-and saving Kraik destroys Sernos.”
“That’s something, anyway,” Miriam said, combing her hair in place with her fingers.
Gnarl nodded. “I would suggest that if we are to find out where we are-and how to get home-we’d better set off up the beach. I see a crystalline tower in the distance. We might go that way. And I would further like to point out, if I might, before you rashly dismember me with your bare hands, Rorik, that our chances of surviving and returning home are better…” he turned to look at Miriam, catching her gaze, “if we put aside our quarrel. If we…”
She smiled wryly and nodded. “If we stay together.”
Rorik groaned and shook his shaggy head in exasperation. “Oh, come on. Let’s get started.”
And they headed for the crystalline tower, far away along the unknown shore.
THE STEEL PRINCESS
The well-dressed, powerfully built stranger was tired, hungry, and angry. It was not necessary for him to hold up a sign attesting to these facts. They were plain enough to see in his hunched-over posture as he sat at the heavy wooden table, and in his face as he glared in the direction of the back bar.
The bartender and temporary innkeeper, a heavy-set dwarf like much of the population of Hammerfast, dutifully continued to polish a gilded wide-mouthed goblet he held in his thick fingers. The fact that it gleamed like a gold mirror from having undergone this process nonstop for the previous ten minutes in no way induced him to put it down. It was a useful way for his hands to keep busy when they were not engaged in stroking his beard. Besides, if trouble was brewing, it would double as an excellent missile.
And trouble, like the fine local Crackkeg Ale, was brewing aplenty.
It took the form of Kot, Grerg, and Mulk, the three ogres who were making their way toward the stranger’s table. They had been drinking too much-never a good situation. Norgen, the bartender, had continued to serve them because they had continued to overpay, and in gold. Each time he had suggested to them that they’d had enough, they doubled his tip. The fact that they might tear up the place if they became sufficiently inebriated didn’t bother him. His second cousin’s elder sister was getting married in Fallcrest next week, and Norgen was perfectly prepared to quit his job anyway.
But there was the matter of a severance bonus, and the possibility that he might want to return to work at Fiveleague House some day. Plus he considered the not incidental fact that if he simply stood back and watched while destruction ensued, his boss might kill him, which would complicate his attendance at the wedding. But what could one dwarf do against three ogres, except stand and watch and goblet-polish? For that matter, what could the stranger do?
As the ogres confronted the newcomer, an increasingly edgy Norgen became increasingly convinced that, willing or not, he was about to find out.
“Hoy, traveler!” Kot grunted. “What are you doing here, anyway? This be the Nentir Vale. We don’t see your kind here.” He grinned, showing ragged, sharp teeth. One massive hand suggestively fingered the mace slung at his belt.
The stranger looked up. Norgen gazed into pale, watery blue slitted eyes that peered out from the wholly feline face, but it was difficult for the dwarf to tell if the stranger was more angry or bored. Dark spots marked his white fur where it was visible on his face. He had backward facing clawed hands and broad feet, not to mention an unusually long and large blackspotted white tail. He wore a single-button black singlet shot through with gold thread over loose-fitting black pants. From his shoulders hung a cape that seemed fashioned of woven silver.
“Really?” His voice was a muted growl. “What kind that you don’t see would I be?”
“You’re a rakshasa,” Grerg replied. As the ogre pronounced it, it emerged sounding like an obscenity. “We’re honest folk here. No mind-twisters.” He was holding a huge club in front of him. “When we fight, ’tis honest and straightforward, and no shifty magic.”
“Get gone, demon-spawn.” The third ogre, Mulk, clutched a spiked ball and chain. “This be a clean establishment.”
The stranger looked past them, toward the bar. “How about that, innkeeper? Should I leave?”
“Eh, what’s that?” Reaching up with one hand, Norgen stuck a sausagelike finger deep into his oversized left ear. “Bit hard of hearing, I am.” He returned to his increasingly frantic polishing, though by then the goblet shone so as to take a place of pride in a dragon’s hoard. As he continued to mine unpleasant detritus from one ear, the barkeep surreptitiously took small steps in the direction of the exit.
He didn’t quite make it before all the hells broke loose.
“We’ll help you on your way!” Kot bellowed as he swung his mace out, up, and down.
Intended to split the seated rakshasa, the forceful blow splintered only the innocent table. Other patrons scrambled for cover, diving under tables, bolting for the door, and in the case of one especially prescient elf, springing out the nearest open window.
“Fast-but not fast enough!” roared the third ogre as he swung the heavy spiked iron ball on the end of its chain. It struck the stranger square in the midsection-only to pass completely through him. Reeling from the absence of any resistance, Mulk took a wary step backward.
“Phantom image! ’Ware your selves, brothers!”
“ ’Ware indeed,” a warning voice growled.
All three ogres whirled. Having drawn a longsword, their opponent stood behind them. Each time the weapon moved through the air, it seemed to emit a soft but audible snarl, and when the diffuse light of the inn caught the blade, the metal seemed to change color-from silver to gold to bronze, and back again. Its hilt twisted slightly in its owner’s grasp. It was as if the stranger was gripping the tail of a live thing instead of a shaft of mere metal. Engraved in the metal hilt guard, two cats’ faces glared at one another around the shaft of the sword. The more the owner moved it around, the more animated the hilt’s faces became.
“I am Ruhan Bijendra, a rakshasa Dhanesh. I have come to the Nentir Vale from my homeland in search of a legend. There are many such here, but the tale of the one I seek was spun to me from an early age by a voluble mage, and I have vowed not to return home until I have ascertained the truth or the lie of it and made it do my bidding.”
