The Balladeer hovered nearby, in front of a dense wall of vegetation and foliage. “Help is coming,” the ghost said.
Vanderjack found his footing. The eyes of the girallons were locked on his, their fangs and teeth slick with their own ravening. Vanderjack could smell their rancid breath from where he stood. It smelled like rotting meat.
“You need to jump,” said the new voice of the Cook, right beside him.
In that last second, the girallons pounced, Gredchen finally succumbed to a scream, and the leaves and trees and thick, twisting vines all around them flew apart as if released from years of wound-up tension. Something even larger than the girallons tore through the wall of leaves behind the Balladeer. It flew straight through the ghost as if he weren’t there; a huge brass cat with wings furled close to its body, tiger-striped all over where the scales did not reach. On its back rode a gnome, clutching a familiar polearm under one arm like a lance, the other arm holding tightly to the fur at the back of the creature’s neck.
“You got it, fella,” Vanderjack responded to Etharion’s ghost and threw himself sideways, toward the gnome and his scaly mount. The girallons landed right where he had been, smashing through the foliage. More leaves filled the air. Gredchen lunged and grabbed the cat from the other side as the gnome cried, “Go, Star, go!”
Another heartbeat later and the green hell that was the Sahket Jungle exploded in sound and noise, the tiger roaring a pure and triumphant note, carrying its passengers high above the highest canopy and skyward.
The Sword Chorus faded again from sight, but Vanderjack, lying across the back of the dragon-tiger, didn’t care. He was blissfully, finally, unconscious.
Highmaster Rivven Cairn stood nose to belly with an ogre, but onlookers would have sworn later that they were the same height.
The fully armored and helmed half-elf, sword on her back and gauntlets firmly pressed against her hips, was always an intimidating sight. The ogres, half-ogres, and ogre kin presently dominating Willik weren’t smart, and they weren’t accustomed to seeing their spiritual leader challenged. In the case of a high-ranking dragonarmy officer, however, they were smart enough and wise enough to know that creating trouble for the highmaster was like poking a stick into a basilisk’s nest. That was doubly true in the case of Highmaster Cairn, for Rivven had been there many times before. It was Rivven who had overthrown the large town for the spiritual leader she was presently holding her own against, a fact she never let him forget. At the moment, though, she needed him out of there.
Cheron Skerish was a veritable giant. He was nine feet tall and thick around the shoulders and arms, though stooped and bent with age. The ogre must have been in whatever passed for middle age in an ogre, with a mane of greasy, gray hair surrounding a shiny bald pate covered in age spots and warts. Some ogres couldn’t grow beards, but Skerish sported a long, droopy mustache and a forest of spiky hair at his chin, making him look wizened. As a shaman, Skerish affected numerous trinkets, talismans, and grisly amulets crafted from the body parts of animals and worse. Tattoos and scarification covered his bare arms, symbols of his dedication to his mighty god, Sargonnas.
“Yes, you heard me correctly, Skerish,” Rivven said in a clear and ringing alto voice. “I’m temporarily relieving you of command. Go. Go now.”
“You have idea how long I work to make town right?” Skerish grunted in response.
“I do,” Rivven said. “I know that you and your god are very popular here. It’s done wonders. The highlord is very impressed, all the way back in Kern, and he wonders if at some point you might care to visit him there. I was thinking now would be an excellent time.”
“Gonnas speak not to I,” said Skerish, using the ogre name for the god of vengeance and spite. “Last I know, Gonnas want I stay here. Highlord or no highlord.”
Rivven looked aside. The other ogres and all of their human slaves stood in a huge group around the shaman and the highmaster. Skerish’s confidence must be at a very high level, Rivven thought. Or maybe it was just his stupidity.
“We get our orders from Her Dark Majesty,” said Rivven, lying. She’d never been given direct instructions from Takhisis, of course, but the shaman claimed all kinds of things from Sargonnas, so perhaps he’d allow her that little exaggeration without examining it closely. “I assume you-and your god-are not so proud as to countermand a request from the Queen of Darkness.”
The shaman frowned, looking around him at his followers, some of them several degrees human as well as ogre, one of them a trusted lieutenant willing to risk death fighting the highmaster for Skerish if he was asked. None of them looked happy or pleasant. “Gonnas no like I leave Willik. Gonnas want proof highmaster make speak with Darklady.”
Now who’s making things up, thought Rivven. She was convinced that Sargonnas didn’t give a gully dwarf’s nose what she or Cheron Skerish wanted. She had to make the ogres believe her, however; she needed a little demonstration.
“You can tell your god that his mistress, the Queen of Darkness, speaks through dragons, and her dragons speak to me. I have a red dragon just outside the town walls waiting to burn this place down if you won’t relinquish control immediately.”
That caused a number of frightened and angry grunts and growls from the ogres and ogre kin. Rivven knew Skerish didn’t have any dragons of his own, despite being the shaman of Sargonnas. Skerish wasn’t an officer in the dragonarmies, merely an infamous ogre shaman with good connections. If Black Dragon Highlord Lucien of Takar were there, or even that Green Dragon Highlord Hullek Skullsmasher in the south, both of whom were half ogre and half human, that might be a problem. Rivven was half-elf, and they wouldn’t overlook that. But, of course, she had Cear at the ready, and the black and green highlords weren’t there.
“Gonnas say highmaster do his worst,” said the mule-headed Skerish, apparently assuming Rivven was male. Or maybe that was how ogres spoke of all high-masters. “Gonnas is fire god. Gonnas is vengeance god. Highmaster try burn down Willik, maybe find Willik no burn so good.”
The shaman was irritating Rivven, calling the highmaster out like that before his loyal ogre lackeys. It was the sneering that really got to her. She poked the shaman hard in the chest with one gauntleted finger.
“Listen up, Skerish,” she snapped. “I’m not going to stand here all day arguing with you. Either you go on a short vacation to Kern with all of your friends, or you’re going on a very long and extended vacation in the Abyss with your god.”
That was clearly the wrong thing to say.
Cheron Skerish drew back his big, meaty hand and brought it forward, catching Rivven full on the side of her helm, knocking her sideways with a blow that would have stunned an ox. She staggered, feeling a concussion blossom like an angry purple flower within her head.
“Nobody threaten I without back up threats!” yelled Skerish, his voice echoing around the dirt streets and wattle-and-daub houses of Willik. His followers muttered approvingly. “Gonnas! Bring wrath on heathen who speak for Darklady! If heathen speak true, Dark-lady protect!
Rivven spoke only a little Ogre, and his last statement wasn’t part of her vocabulary. Her magical training told her that it was probably an incantation or evocation of the shaman’s god, however, so she didn’t want to stand around and see what was going to happen. Pride-fully shaking off the ogre’s blow, she fell back two steps and swiftly whispered the words of her own magic in response.
Wizards did not wear armor, typically, nor carry weapons. The gods of magic were said to allow the use of a dagger in honor of the wizard Magius, who had reportedly died doing something noble involving a big knife. But Rivven spared little thought for magic’s history or its traditions. Emperor Ariakas had taught her to eschew those petty restrictions, to walk the Left Hand Path that he followed, the one that Takhisis offered him and he had, in turn, offered her. With training, therefore, armor had become no hindrance.
Skerish’s invocation manifested itself moments later as a column of roaring, twisting, black flames, thundering upward from around Rivven like a fountain of incandescent darkness. Rivven had spoken the words to a protection spell, however, which deflected some of the shaman’s fiery magic; she laughed aloud at the irony of using fire on a red dragonarmy highmaster. Rivven’s armor was magically enhanced with protections against fire and heat, in part because the red dragons the Red Wing made use of were prone to turning on their masters. With her magic and her armor combined, all Rivven felt was a light scalding around her legs. Skerish had done his best.
