Halladon could scarcely believe he’d single-handedly bested all three of his attackers. Corellon grant that no other creature wanted to pick a fight.
In any case, there was no time to stand and savor his victory, not when Moanda, Kovost, and Gybik were getting farther away by the second. Halladon bent over the third orc, then hesitated. In normal circumstances, he would have deemed it a shabby, churlish deed to rob the dead, but it would be even more dishonorable to allow himself to freeze to death when his friends needed his help to escape a killer. Hoping it wasn’t verminous, he appropriated the orc’s malodorous but warm-looking fleece-lined leather cloak, and then the creature’s curved, brass-hilted scimitar.
Shivering, envying his friends their little fire, Halladon surveyed the camp from behind a granite boulder. Gybik and Moanda lay shrouded in their blankets, with only Kovost-who’d wrapped himself in Halladon’s bearskin mantle- standing guard. Perhaps the adventurers believed that now that they’d chased their companion away, they were no longer in any extraordinary danger. Or perhaps they’d decided that with only three of them remaining, double watches simply weren’t feasible anymore.
The sun had set several hours ago, and by now Halladon had begun to suspect that the killer intended to stay away tonight. The half-elf’s stomach was already hollow and achy with hunger, and he wondered grimly how he’d feel after another day without food. Perhaps he should have searched the orc corpses for provender, although the notion of eating the kind of rations such creatures typically carried was almost enough to quell his appetite for the nonce.
Gybik shifted beneath his covers, and the motion drew Halladon’s eye. No shadowy ghost or assassin was crouching over the thief, and the half-elf was already looking away again, into the darkness beyond the wavering yellow firelight, when it struck him that there was something subtly wrong about the way Gybik had moved. When he peered at the thief more closely, he realized what it was. The small man hadn’t just rolled over, changing position in his sleep. He’d raised his head ever so slightly, as if looking about.
It almost certainly meant nothing. Why shouldn’t Gybik wake for a moment, glance around to make sure nothing was amiss, and then drift off again? But the motion had seemed sly, stealthy, as if the thief was peeking at his companions, making sure that Moanda was unconscious and Kovost’s back was turned. And thus Halladon continued to watch him.
Even so, in the darkness, he almost missed what happened next. A shape crawled from under Gybik’s blankets. At first the half-elf thought it was a rat, and then, from the length and number of its limbs, some sort of enormous insect. Only when it scuttled away across the ground did he discern that it was a human hand, Gybik’s hand, apparently, detached from his wrist.
I finally understand you, Osher, thought Halladon in amazement.
As the hand scurried noiselessly along, it changed. The skin darkened, and the fingers lengthened until they resembled a spider’s legs. Kovost glanced casually around, and the hand instantly flattened itself against the ground. When the dwarf turned away again, it scuttled on to Moanda and crouched by her neck. Its nails lengthened into claws. The one on the index finger was particularly long and narrow, like a knitting needle, or a mosquito’s proboscis.
Halladon had been watching the hand in horrified fascination. Now he abruptly realized that unless he intervened, the barbarian had only seconds to live. He grabbed his scimitar, sprang up from behind the stone, and raced forward. “Kovost!” he shouted. “Help Moanda!”
At once the disembodied hand crouched down, concealing itself among the folds of Moanda’s blanket a split second before Kovost reflexively jerked around to peer at her. Obviously seeing nothing amiss, the dwarf surged to his feet, Halladon’s cloak falling away from his brawny shoulders. Teeth bared in a snarl, battle-axe at the ready, he darted to intercept the half-elf.
Halladon halted. It was either that or give his friend a chance to strike at him. “Look again!” he pleaded. “The creature, the true killer, is right there beside her!” But when he looked again himself, he saw that it wasn’t, not any longer.
“You were mad to think you could fool us a second time,” Kovost said, still advancing. At his back, Moanda and Gybik, who possessed two normal-looking hands again, threw off their covers and scrambled up from the ground.
“Listen to me,” Halladon said. Moanda and Gybik stalked up to stand beside Kovost, swords leveled. “I’ve been spying on the camp since just after dusk. I reasoned that the killer might not be as able to hide itself from someone whose presence it didn’t suspect, and I was correct. I saw it, and it has been among us all along. You, Kovost, were right about that much. Gybik-or rather, some shapeshifting creature that caught our friend alone, slaughtered him, and assumed his identity-is the murderer. I imagine we attracted its attention while we were exploring the fortress.”
The false Gybik goggled at him in perfect imitation of the original. “I… what are you talking about? I’m me!” He looked wildly about at Moanda and Kovost. “I promise I am!”
“We know that,” the barbarian said soothingly, or as close to soothingly as her acerbic nature would permit.
“Of course we do,” said Kovost. “You couldn’t move around the camp killing people without the sentries seeing you. Nor does Gybik begin with an ‘H.’”
“No, but ‘hand’ does,” Halladon said. “Our impostor is a kind of glorified leech. It insinuated itself into our company because it craves human blood, and it has a clever way of getting it without being detected. It can detach its hand to skitter about like a little animal. The hand slips a hollow needle of a talon into somebody’s neck, killing him so deftly the victim never wakes. The hand siphons its victim’s blood and carries it back to nourish its body. Our guards never saw the thing scuttling around because it’s too quick and small, and can darken itself to blend into the shadows. Perys never found tracks because it’s too light to leave any. The wounds didn’t shed as much blood as we would have expected because the shapeshifter took it. It only killed one of us at a time because that was all the sustenance it needed. And Osher didn’t try to write Gybik because he never saw Gybik attacking him, just a disembodied, inhuman hand. Don’t you see…”
“We see that it’s all preposterous,” Kovost said.
“Yes,” Moanda said, an unaccustomed hint of pity in her voice. “Halladon, you must be mad in truth, to imagine you could cozen us with such a tale. Perhaps it was your dark studies that deranged you. I’ll be sorry to slay you, but the shades of Osher, Silbastis, and Perys cry out for vengeance.”
“Besides,” said Kovost, raising his axe, “you’re too dangerous to live.”
“Wait!” said Halladon. “Let me prove he isn’t Gybik. Let me demonstrate that he doesn’t know things the genuine Gybik should know”-he looked the shapeshifter in the eye-”Where did we first meet?”
“The Crowing Cockatrice,” the creature said.
The half-elf felt a pang of dismay. “With what drink did we toast the founding of our company?”
“The cider. Jalanthar amber, it was called.”
“What did we fight in our first battle together?”
“Three ogres.”
Halladon realized he wouldn’t be able to trip the creature up. Either it had somehow assimilated the real Gybik’s memories when it had taken on his form, or else it had gleaned all it needed to know from conversations along the trail.
“That was your final ploy,” said Moanda, slinking forward. “We’ll give you a proper burial, in memory of the comrade you once were.”
Halladon knew he couldn’t defeat all three of them, but by Corellon, if he had to perish, he meant to take the shapeshifter with him. He shifted his weight as if preparing to retreat, then dived forward in an all out attack, swinging the orcish blade at the false Gybik’s skull.
The creature recoiled, and the scimitar merely gashed its shoulder. Moanda sprang at Halladon from the right, and Kovost, from the left. Off-balance, the half-elf struggled to flounder back on guard, knowing that he wouldn’t make it in time.
“Wait!” Kovost barked. “Look!” Moanda somehow halted her stroke an inch short of cleaving Halladon’s spine.
Surmising what Kovost must have seen, the half-elf turned back toward the shapeshifter. Sure enough, the pain of its wound had evidently disrupted its ability to maintain its borrowed form. Its flesh expanded and flowed, erasing all resemblance to Gybik, or to anything human. In a heartbeat, it grew half as tall as Halladon. Its body
