years, Cimber. That's an honor, you know. Up until recently, they all had orders to gather information, but leave you alive. Quite sporting, no?'
Phyrra straightened her white robes. Then, dusting sand from her hair, she came to Kaverin's side. 'You'll be better off dead, Artus,' she taunted. 'All your friends are waiting for you in Cyric's realm-Pontifax, Theron-'
Artus's facade slipped. 'Theron, too?'
'I had hoped to spare him that sadness, my dear,' Kaverin gently admonished. 'He'd have met up with the batty old fool soon enough.'
'I'll see you dead, you bastards,' Artus shouted. He struggled against the goblins' hold. 'If I have to come back from the grave to do it, I'll-'
Savagely, Kaverin backhanded Artus. A fist-sized bruise purpled on the explorer's cheek, and his ears rang from the pain. 'You'll do nothing, Cimber. This is the end.' Kaverin removed a small book bound in wyvern hide from his pocket. 'I know all your thoughts, all your petty desires, all your sordid little romances. The only thing Quiracus did right was steal this from you. It proved to me you weren't so worthy an opponent after all.'
'And you killed him, too,' Artus said.
'No, I killed him,' Phyrra gloated.
Artus turned to her. 'You're going to die at Kaverin's hands, sooner or later, no matter how loyal you are.'
Kaverin frowned. 'How predictable. Trying to set us against each other.' He ran a cold jet hand along Phyrra's cheek, and she smiled. 'Phyrra knows full well she's on her way to the afterlife the moment she fails me. She knows, too, I can offer her more power than she could obtain through more… legitimate allies. Right, my dear?'
'Of course,' she said. Taking a small stick of charcoal from her pocket, Phyrra moved close to Artus. 'Don't move, or I'll use your own dagger to cut your eyes out. You don't need to see to be sacrificed to Grumog.'
Carefully the sorceress lifted the medallion from Artus's chest. She studied the white casing that had so successfully trapped Skuld, then drew a Mulhorandi picture-glyph on it. The metal vibrated and hummed. Blue fire ran along the chain; Artus could feel it tingling on his neck.
'You don't know how much it galled me to save you from the dinosaurs,' Phyrra said coldly. 'If you had let me talk the bearers into camping at Kitcher's Folly, the goblin raiding party would have caught us there as planned. Instead, I had to cast a spell to mislead the dagger's compass and trudge through the jungle, pretending to be your trusted servant…'
'Why not just let the damned monsters kill me?' Artus asked. 'Better yet, why didn't you just send more assassins to the port?'
'Frost minions are too difficult to conjure here and terribly difficult to maintain,' Kaverin replied. 'Besides, I've decided I need to murder you myself, to stop your heart beating with the hands you forced upon me. I wouldn't trust anyone else to do it.' He tossed Artus's journal into the dirt. 'After the minions killed Pontifax, I knew I had beaten you. It was only a matter of sending someone trustworthy to fetch you for the slaughter.'
Phyrra lifted the chain from Artus's neck and handed the medallion to Kaverin. Tossing his hat aside, he slipped it over his shock of red hair. 'You won't be needing this, Cimber,' he said casually. 'I thought it a shame to waste such an interesting artifact.'
The tolling of a gong brought an appreciative murmur from the crowd of goblins that had gathered in front of the central building. Slowly they began to file toward the pit. The seven warriors who held Artus hefted him over their heads and followed. Kaverin walked close behind, as did Phyrra, once she had picked up Artus's journal.
The pit gaped like a ghastly open wound, mist seeping from it like blood, snaking in long, thin wisps over the ground. A huge gong stood at the widest point, next to a small wooden bridge. A bored young goblin leaned upon the gong's supports. He watched the procession with heavy-lidded eyes, then smacked his lips and raised a cloth-wrapped club. Again he struck the gong. The sound filled the air, echoing back in distorted tones from the pit.
'We ready to offer chow for Grumog?' came a voice from the throng.
The crowd parted and a female goblin sauntered forward. She had the same general features as the rest of her tribe-mottled red and orange skin, yellow eyes, and a broad, flat nose-but she also possessed a full head of flowing, golden hair, the likes of which would have made any lady in King Azoun's court jealous. In fact, despite her decidedly goblinlike physiognomy, she might have been considered quite attractive.
It was clear to Artus then how Kaverin had managed to win the Batiri to his cause. The queen wore a beautiful silk dress and sported a dozen brooches and necklaces. Her hands were heavy with rings.
'Queen M'bobo,' Kaverin said smoothly, in his most polished Goblin. He bowed to the monarch and held out a hand. She took it and gracefully came forward. 'This is the scoundrel I was telling you about.'
She raised a thin eyebrow. 'He not so much.' With her finely manicured claws, she pinched Artus's arm. 'Not much to eat anyway. OK. We throw him in.'
'Wait!' Kaverin exclaimed.
'What wrong?' M'bobo asked.
'You-you can't just drop him into the pit.'
The queen thought about it for a moment, then nodded. 'You right. Balt! Get Grumog's new stuff.'
The goblin warrior with dinosaur-hide armor limped forward. He used Artus's bow as a staff, and the quiver of arrows hung on his back. Without a word, he walked up to Phyrra and jammed a hand into her pocket. She tried to push him away, but he still came away with the dagger the centaurs had given to Artus. 'This all,' Balt grumbled, holding up the bow and the dagger. He limped to the foot of the bridge and tossed them into the pit, then dumped the quiver of arrows.
'The book, too,' Artus said. He gestured with his chin to his journal, still clutched in Phyrra's hand.
The sorceress started to object, but Kaverin silenced her with a look. 'It won't do him any good,' he said softly.
She handed the book to Balt, who unceremoniously heaved it into the pit. Then the queen gestured to the warriors holding Artus, and they started toward the bridge. Kaverin quickly blocked their path, drawing the ire of both M'bobo and Balt. 'What now?' the queen sighed.
Trying his best to maintain his calm, Kaverin spread his hands before him. 'Why don't we kill him before we send him to Grumog,' he suggested. 'I thought you'd allow me to prepare him for-'
M'bobo wrinkled her face in disgust. 'Grumog like us, not eat dead food.'
The warriors pushed past Kaverin, who suddenly found his carefully designed plan falling to pieces. No matter how dangerous Grumog might be, the creature might prove to be no match for Artus Cimber. He'd certainly shown himself adept at battling such strange creatures in the past. If the goblins tossed him into the pit alive, he might escape. And that just wouldn't be satisfactory, not at all.
Kaverin clubbed two of the warriors with his stone hands. Skulls crushed, they crumpled to the ground. Chaos broke out around the bridge. Goblins hefted spears and bows, but couldn't attack because of the press of bodies surrounding Kaverin. Phyrra lifted her arms to cast a spell. M'bobo, who'd seen enough magic in her time to recognize the threat, clobbered the sorceress with a spear shaft.
Artus broke free of the goblins and pushed to the center of the bridge. He grabbed a torch from the railing, then used it like a club to keep the Batiri at bay. No one dared attack him with spear or bow for fear of killing Grumog's sacrifice. The explorer locked eyes with Kaverin, who was being held by Balt and ten of his warriors. For an instant, Kaverin's cold, lifeless eyes showed a spark of something-anger, surprise, fear perhaps. Artus didn't stick around long enough to find out. Torch in hand, he vaulted over the railing and disappeared into the mist-filled pit.
He managed to slow his fall a little by grabbing an outcropping of rock. That maneuver probably saved Artus from breaking his neck, but the rough stone sheared the skin from the side of his hand and his wrist. His fingers slipped from the blood-slicked stone, and again he fell, rebounding painfully off the uneven wall. The torch was battered out of his hand just before he hit the ground, but fortunately it stayed lit.
The air exploded from his lungs when he landed, facedown atop a pile of clothes, wooden plates, and old bones. The latter cracked and splintered under his weight, slicing dozens of shallow cuts ail along his chest. For a moment, Artus gasped frantically, concerned only with breathing again.
