As the afternoon slowlyprogressed Aquitain decided that the best thing to do on a fullstomach was to sleep while Kami meditated, and Rori dutifully keptaway the inquisitive villagers explaining that the bear and theshaman were gaining mental strength for a big spiritual fight soonto come. He might have been just making up a story that soundedreasonable, but he couldn’t have been more correct.
About an hour beforedark Kami woke Aquitain with news from the spirits. Miranda hadvisited the Crin city and talked to the Crin queen and discoveredthat the druid Alin Amber had visited the city the previous nightand stolen a powerful magical weapon that had been left in QueenBeatrix’s care by Snowbelle.
Queen Beatrix had areport from one of her scouts of some type of activity at anancient ruined temple in the jungle just outside her territory, andhad dispatched a platoon of Crin in the morning to check it out, asAlin Amber had been seen heading in that direction. This afternoonthe Queen had suddenly lost contact with her platoon, and wasdeeply concerned that something had happened to them. Mirandasuggested that they check out the temple tomorrow, as it might bewhere the mask was hiding.
Aquitain wasimmediately worried. All his mental alarms were going off. It wasjust too much of a coincidence that Alin Amber would even be in thearea, let alone steal a dangerous weapon from the Crin and leadthem to an ancient ruin. He was involved somehow. Was he trying topoint out where the mask was hiding? Maybe the mask had dominatedhim and sent him to get the weapon. What sort of weapon were theyup against? Why had Snowbelle given it to the Crin to keep safe?Some strong mischief was afoot.
The situation wasdeteriorating quickly. He had to find and stop the mask before itgathered too many powerful creatures around itself. Otherwise,chaos really would reign. He suspected that the mask had only oneteleport ring and was limited to the teleport markers that thegnome could recall. However, once the mask accumulated moreteleport rings and learned more marker codes the damn thing wouldmove all over the place and it would be really difficult to catchit.
He was also concernedabout the platoon of Crin warriors. They would be a formidablefighting force but he learnt from his brief stay with the Crin thatthey had a weakness. They could easily be taken out of action ifthe leader of the group was dominated. If the mask had dominatedthe taskmaster controlling the troop, then the warriors would befighting for the mask, which was not a good prospect.
He asked Kami how longit would take to get to the temple on foot, and the old shamanreplied that it would take two days walking for little people, butperhaps only one day for newmans as they had bigger legs, and maybehalf a day for Crin as they had more legs. That meant that if themask had dominated the Crin platoon, then the earliest they couldarrive would be a little after midnight.
The mask had alreadyshown that it was impatient to cause trouble. It had attacked TwinTowers within a day of getting loose, and then the Barra villagetwo days later. The question was whether it would get more fun outof attacking the Crin city with Crin fighters, or attacking theJeti with Crin fighters. The Jeti was the logical answer, as theywould be unprepared for an attack and they would blame QueenBeatrix, in the same way that the mask hoped that the Barra wouldblame the Jeti for being attacked by cats.
Aquitain sat forseveral minutes thinking about the situation and finally came tothe conclusion that an attack on the Jeti village was highlylikely, and asked Kami to get Miranda to teleport here with Zephiraand Goth. The others should stay on alert and send a messagethrough Alpha if any problem occurred.
Kami went into a trancesinging powerful magical words of praise to the spirits, and tenminutes later Miranda, Zephira and Goth arrived near Kami’s hutwith weapons drawn and ready to fight.
‘Where’s the trouble?’asked Zephira.
‘There’s none yet. Ithink it will be some time after midnight in the early hours of themorning,’ replied Aquitain.
‘How do you know that?’asked Zephira.
‘It’s a hunch,’Aquitain said.
‘A hunch! You had usscared to death. We expected to walk into a fight and you’re lyingaround here stuffing your face,’ Zephira stormed. The noiseattracted several Jeti villagers, who bolted for the headman’s hutwhen they saw Goth, Miranda and Zephira standing in front of thebear with weapons drawn.
‘Quickly, put thoseweapons away and sit Goth down. There is a little tension betweenthe village elders and Kami. I think the elders are worried thatKami might be getting too much kudos out of me being here, anddon’t fully understand the threat,’ said Aquitain.
Five minutes later thevillage headman, the elders and about a hundred adults turned up toface Kami. They were scared, worried and angry. The chief andelders demanded that Aquitain and the others leave immediately, asthey didn’t want any trouble. Kami was not intimidated in theleast. He stood and faced the lot of them with Rori one-step behindhim looking rather pale, and began singing a song of courage.
Quickly it was taken upby a dozen people in the crowd, and half a minute later everyonewas singing. After a couple of minutes he stopped, and the crowd,feeling much better, listened. He explained in no uncertain termsthat they could not avoid trouble. It was coming, and they couldjoin together and fight it, or be wiped out like the Jeti villageon the coast or the Barra two days earlier. Miranda was here tohonour the Druid’s Council pledge to help in times of trouble. Thebear and the others were not obligated in any way, but hadvolunteered to help.
When the situation wasstated in the simple terms of fight or die, the Jeti
