White Plume Mountain

climbed doggedly up the hillock to confront the two warriors.

“Where are you going?” The Geshtai priestess puffed hard fromher climb. As priestess to a river god, she wore an armor of scales that seemed to get heavier and heavier with every step. “What have you both been hiding?”

Sir Olthwaite gave the priestess a droll glance and said, “Wehide nothing, madam. We merely discuss the whereabouts of the faerie.”

Bleredd’s priest leaned on his warhammer and narrowed hiseyes. He was clearly considering the likelihood that the faerie had flown to White Plume Mountain, stolen the lost weapons, and absconded with the goods. Simple common sense finally won over suspicion. A two-foot-tall faerie could hardly be expected to fly off with a magic hammer and a two-yard-long fishing spear.

“Why is she missing?” Bleredd’s priest looked subtly left andright as though trying to divine whether the faerie was spying on his every move. “Why isn’t she here?”

Ignoring paladins and priests, the Justicar simply turned to go. “She flew on ahead. I’m going to collect her.”

“We will accompany you”-the Bleredd priest swung his hammerin his hands-“to make sure that you receive all the support you need.”

Watching silently and coldly from a distance, the archer and sorcerer elected to join the group. Polk ambled after them, one of his interminable monologues echoing across the deserted wastes. Ignoring his volunteer help, the Justicar turned his back upon the party and set a hard pace as he jogged toward the mountain.

The landscape still held small signs of life. Dull blooms hung in the grass, and strange skeletal black bees visited the blossoms. The markings on the insects’ backs looked disturbingly like human skulls. The droneof insect wings only made the land seem more desolate with their hollow counterpoint to the endless rustle of the grass.

There were few signs of Escalla’s passing. Cinders sniffedthe faintest of magic trails left by her whirring wings, but even this soon became lost as a chill, stinking breeze stirred through the grass. Finally slowing to a walk, Jus gazed across the emptiness and cursed the girl for risking her little pink hide.

The landscape seemed totally empty. It asked the question: Where would an idiotic busybody go to find trouble in the middle of an open plain?

The Justicar came to a halt, stared off into the grass, and said, “Polk, do you see anything interesting?”

“Interesting? Son, none of it’s interesting.” The little joghad winded the man-much to Jus’ satisfaction. Polk glared at the ranger asthough a treasured son had just stung him. “You’re going about all this wrong,son. The hired help is dumping their armor, and there’s no pack mule. How canyou carry your loot away from a dungeon without a pack mule?” The teamster waveda chunk of bread in the air. “And you packed iron rations. How are we supposedto feast around the campfire on dry bread and jerky? The damned pixie ate the only pot of jam I had.”

Jam… feeling an intuition filtering through hisskull, the Justicar stared off across the seed grass. Here and there, one of the eerie bees drifted through the weeds as it took a last few loads of pollen home. Watching a bee slowly climb past his nose, Jus hunted for a hillock, found one, and raced to the crest so that he could stare across the plain.

Trees were scattered here and there, some alone and some in copses. He spied a clump of trees some way off their path and watched a bee go weaving off toward the thicket.

“Honey. The little git went looking for honey.”

Sweet! Cinders pricked up his ears. Honey good!

Expecting that the girl had been stung to death or possibly eaten herself sick, Jus signaled the rest of the party. Crouching low, he led the way over to a thicket of dry trees. As he neared the small copse he could hear a female voice amidst a swirl and hum of bees.

Under the trees, all was not well in Escalla’s world. Trappedin a near-invisible sticky web, she swung beneath a pole borne by two shambling, rotting skeletons. More of the reeking monstrosities loped to either side, led by a tall, cadaverous figure with a face like jagged bone.

Determinedly cheerful, Escalla’s voice bubbled brightly tofall upon seemingly deaf ears. “Did I say three wishes?” The faerie kepther voice at the high end of the bright and cheerful scale. “Hey, you guys setme free, and I’ll grant you four wishes!”

With no immediate response, Escalla wriggled about to try to draw the attention of a walking corpse.

“All right, so you don’t like wishes. Hey, I’m one-thirdleprechaun on my mother’s side! Monsters like treasure, right? Would you believeI can lead you to a magic pot of gold?”

Writhing with maggots and worms, the monsters threw Escalla to the ground. She was inside some kind of campsite. Cadaverous horses made of rotten flesh stood about a tent. Gagging as one of her captors leaned too close, Escalla tried to wiggle back from the creature’s grasp.

It was time for a different approach.

“All right, you guys are undead. I can respect that! Beatingthe odds! Unconquered by death! Force of will, now that’s what beingundead says to me! And force of will means you’ve gotta have self-respect.That’s what I like about you guys-you’re straight, you’re forceful, you’re trueblue.”

Beating her points out one by one, the girl tried to keep the undead leader in range of her banter. “Now I know what you’re all thinking. Aguy with real self-respect would never go around picking on a helpless little faerie with a cute butt, and you’d be right!” The faerie affably slittedup her eyes. “Hey, we all have momentary lapses! I don’t mind. So you just setme free, and we’ll simply forget any of this happened. It’s fine by me!”

The tent flaps swept aside and a tall, lethally thin figure appeared: a one-handed man with skin the texture of bubbling tar. The creature took a long, cold look at the captive faerie and bared its fangs with a hiss of evil joy. Escalla tried to meet the creature with a happy smile and gave a timid little wave.

“Boy, am I glad to see you!” A big bead of sweat traveleddown Escalla’s neck. “There’s been a wee bit of a mix-up. Your gang here hasmistaken me for someone else, but it’s all cleared up now, so I was just aboutto go.”

The black-skinned monster rubbed at the stump of its arm, then sidled silkily closer to the girl.

The faerie duly cleared her throat and said, “Ah, you’re acambion, right?” Escalla tried to shrink away. “That’s fine! I can see whereyou’re coming from. Now look, you’re a demon, I’m a faerie. One’s good, one’sbad-but both are simply different sides of the same coin, right? I mean, youcan’t have good without evil! So if you kill me, you’re just making life thatmuch more difficult for yourself!”

The cambion slid a knife out of its belt and slowly began to advance toward the girl. Caught like a fly in a spider web, Escalla began to fight frenziedly against her bonds. She changed to a snake and was still stuck fast, then turned into a spiny urchin, a winged piranha, and a slimy slug. She found no way to escape but did manage to lose most of her clothes. The girl popped back into faerie form and gave a frightened squeal.

“No! Look, I’m really little! You don’t wanna eat afaerie. You guys want to eat an elf! Just plant my feet in soil and water me for a few years and I’ll grow… honest!” The girl tried to lift a handand shape a deadly spell. “Look out! There’s a psychopathic ranger standingbehind you!” Her enemy refused to turn around. “Jus! Jus, time to cue the rescueparty! Jmuuuuuuus!”

Instead of the Justicar, a heavyset man wielding a hammer gave a great shout from the brush nearby. He held up a holy symbol, screaming an invocation to Bleredd, and a blast of light thundered toward the skeletons. Shambling corpses were suddenly blasted apart, pieces of bone crashing down at Escalla’s feet.

The white-faced cadaver withstood the storm, drew a sword, and ran toward the priest with an ululating cry. As it passed the man, the Justicar rose from the grass, pivoted, and sliced into the monster from behind. The creature stumbled forward with half of its torso severed from its trunk. Staggering, it tried to turn and attack with its sword, only to have the Justicar’s black sword hack it in two.

The Justicar felt power surge through him in a mad rush ofbattle rage as he rammed his blade into his foe. He whirled and saw the one-handed demon standing over Escalla. It was the same cambion he had fought beside the wagon trail a few days before.

The monster drew a dagger and stabbed straight for Escalla’sheart. Jus bellowed a spell and the air