* * * * *
"Look!" Kitiara cried suddenly. "Did you see that, mage?"
The spell-caster looked where Kitiara was pointing. "I don't see anything," the mage said. "Nothing but the eyes of the und—" Kitiara poked her in the ribs, and the mage broke off.
The ettin followed Kitiara's pointing finger, too. Until now, he'd walked behind them with both clubs ready to help keep them on the path, which opened before them and then closed just as suddenly as soon as the two-headed creature passed. "The hand of Janusz," Kitiara had muttered when she'd first observed the phenomenon.
"What see?" Res-Lacua cried now. "What see?"
"A pig!" Kitiara pretended to spy it off to the right. "There—a tender piglet!"
"Yes!" Kai-lid chimed in. "I see it now."
"Food!" The ettin rejoiced. He darted toward the underbrush, where Kitiara knew nothing waited but the hungry undead. The ettin paused and looked back at the women. He gestured and shouted, "You stay here!" Kitiara and Kai-lid nodded as he plunged out of sight.
"The undead should finish him off in no time," Kitiara said quietly to Kai-lid. "Then you can call your owl to come get us."
The mage looked dubious. Several times since the ettin had dragged them off, Kitiara had whispered to Kai-lid to unleash her magic and free them from the ettin's influence, but Kai-lid had only shaken her head. "I can't," she finally said. "I already tried a spell. Nothing happened."
"Why not?" Kitiara demanded. "Is it the woods?" But the mage only shrugged. Worry lines wrinkled her forehead.
Now Kitiara, having taken matters into her own hands, waited for the screaming that would tell her that the undead were pressing around the ettin, feeding off his fear, heightening his terror, slaying him—and freeing the women.
Then she, with this useless mage in tow, would go back to the clearing. She'd go back for her pack. She'd retrieve the ice jewels that had caused all this. She wondered if Tanis and Caven would still be at the clearing. If they'd left, would they have had the sense to take her belongings with them? Or would they have left the irreplaceable pack behind for the un-dead? Kitiara listened to the ettin crashing through the underbrush and waited for Res-Lacua's lingering death.
But there were no sounds other than those of the ettin uprooting saplings in his search for a pork dinner. The two women exchanged grim looks. "Well?" Kai-lid asked. Kitiara lifted her shoulders and let them drop.
The ettin appeared before them on the trail. Both of his faces were long. The right head appeared near tears; the left head looked merely baffled. "Pig got away," Lacua complained. He motioned them on with one club.
"I don't get it," Kitiara whispered as they resumed walking. "If you can't count on the undead to kill something, who can you count on?"
Kai-lid blinked, seeming to hide a smile. "The undead feed off fear?" she asked. Kitiara nodded, and Kai-lid ventured, "Perhaps Res-Lacua is too stupid to know he's supposed to be afraid of them."
Kitiara stopped in her tracks and swore until Res-Lacua poked her with the club. Kai-lid grabbed the swordswoman's arm and hauled her along, but the mercenary continued spewing oaths for several minutes before she finally ran down.
"It's all right," the mage said. "Women in your condition are often emotional."
"What are you talking about?" Kitiara snapped. "I'm in fine condition!" She even picked up the pace, hiking along at a speed that ate up the distance. While the ettin merely lengthened his strides, Kai-lid practically had to run to keep up with her. Thus Kitiara was moving at rapid speed when the mage calmly mentioned her pregnancy.
This time Kai-lid found herself staring at Kitiara s fist. "Not funny, mage," the swordswoman hissed.
Kai-lid's hood slipped back from her face. "You mean you don't know?"
"And how would you know if I were with child, which I assure you I am not?"
"Are you so certain?"
Kitiara's hand wobbled as she reviewed the past few days and weeks. "By Takhisis!" she finally breathed, horror flickering across her face. Then reason reasserted itself, and she glared at the mage. "You say you're a mage, not a healer, and every so-called healer I've met has been a charlatan, anyway. So I repeat: How would you know?"
Kitiara pointed behind an oak. "I just saw that young pig again, ettin!" Kai-lid nodded vigorously at the creature, who scrambled toward the tree. "How would you know?" Kitiara reiterated to Kai-lid, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.
Kai-lid shrugged out of Kit's grasp. "I can look within people sometimes. I cannot heal, and I cannot diagnose, but I can sense things. Xanthar showed me how. He cannot do magic, but he has other powers, some of which you've seen. He sensed your condition as well, back at the clearing."
"Damn!" Kitiara said, then looked hopefully at the mage. "Can you do anything about it?"
"Do?"
"Get rid of it."
The mage's dark face flushed. "I said I am a mage, and a mage only. That is beyond my talents—and my inclinations."
Kitiara had endured trials in her life—the desertion of her adored soldier father when she was young, the remarriage of her mother, the birth of her half-brothers, the death of her mother and stepfather, and her decision to leave home and become a mercenary at an age when other girls in Solace were occupied chiefly with dreaming of marriage. But this . . .
All thought that the mage might be lying had flown from her mind. Her own body told her Lida must be speaking the truth. "Blast it to the Abyss!" Kitiara breathed softly. "Now what?"
The ettin returned to the path. "Dumb pig fast," he complained.
* * * * *
"What is it, Lida?" Kitiara finally snapped.
"Fever Mountain," the mage said, pointing to the near-treeless escarpment. "Xanthar said the sla-mori is in its shadow."
"So?" Kitiara had heard of sla-moris, but the significance of this particular secret
