"Your hands are not there. I have already eaten one." Karfhud reached into his back satchel and produced the elf's remaining hand. "And I fear your tiefling friend overcooked the other one."
Tessali stared at the charred hand for a full twenty heartbeats before uttering a sound. Then he let out such a shriek that it sounded as though he was dying of shock. At length, it became clear that he was actually screeching a question.
"You what?'
Karfhud shrugged. "It was a mistake – but I warn you, I will eat the other one if you do not quiet yourself."
Tessali fell silent, but made the mistake of reaching for the charred hand. Karfhud pushed the elf to the ground, then stuffed the appendage back into his satchel.
"I will keep this one, to insure your cooperation – and your silence." Without awaiting a reply, the fiend turned to Silverwind. "Bariaur, you will prepare your healing magic."
The fiend's command seemed to jolt Silverwind out of his confusion, at least for the moment. "Healing magic – for what?"
"We must change the Thrasson's brick foot for a flesh one." Karfhud removed his back satchel, then opened it and pulled an enormous wineskin from inside. This he held out to the Amnesian Hero. "You may drink your fill."
Jayk quickly intercepted the skin. "That idea, she is a very bad one. When he drinks-"
"I know what happens." Karfhud jerked the wineskin away, then thrust it into the Thrasson's hands. "Drink. I will clean your sword for you."
The Amnesian Hero accepted the skin and yielded his sword, which was still coated with Sheba's saplike blood. The Thrasson pulled the stopper from the wine sack and took a long swallow. The stuff tasted like stump water, but it was powerful, and it quenched his thirst. Without asking the fiend's permission, he poured a long draught into Tessali's mouth, then passed the sack to Jayk and Silverwind.
Karfhud made no comment on the Amnesian Hero's generosity. Instead, the fiend slashed open one of his own veins, then dribbled his blood over the Thrasson's star-forged sword. The foul-smelling stuff hissed and bubbled and instantly dissolved the sticky black gunk that Sheba's wound had left smeared over the blade.
"Tanar'ri blood: the best cleansing agent in the multiverse." Karfhud dried the star-forged blade, then took the wineskin from Jayk's hands and passed it back to the Amnesian Hero. "Drink; this will hurt."
"What?" The Thrasson demanded.
Karfhud ignored him, instead motioning Jayk to sit down in the middle of the passage. "Tiefling, you will hold the Thrasson – and no biting."
The Amnesian Hero was beginning to understand the fiend's plan. "Karfhud, I am not going to-"
The fiend whirled on him. "Did I not swear I would cause you no harm?"
"Yes, but-"
"I warn you, if you are lame when you enter Sheba's lair, you will not leave again." Karfhud let out a long breath, then calmed himself and stepped back. "But the choice is yours. I will not force you."
The Amnesian Hero thought for a moment, then lifted the wineskin and began to drink.
"Good." Karfhud turned to Silverwind. "Are you ready?"
The bariaur nodded, then kneeled close to Jayk and began to lay out the components of his healing spells.
"Is there anything I can do?" Tessali cast a glum look at his wrist stumps, then added, "I used to be a healer."
Karfhud studied the elf for a moment, then motioned him over. "Perhaps you would do me the honor of standing at my side. I may have need of advice."
The fiend spoke with such compassion that, had he not been a tanar'ri, the Amnesian Hero would have sworn he was trying to make Tessali feel better. As it was, Karfhud's kind words only puzzled-and worried-the Thrasson.
"Karfhud, I'm sure you know-"
"Drink up, Thrasson!" Karfhud's eyes flashed like forge flames. "And do not worry about Tessali. Helping will do him good."
"Indeed it will." The elf went to the fiend's side. "I am glad to offer what little I can."
The Amnesian Hero raised the skin and took another drink. The wine had already filled his head with sweet clouds, but not so thickly that it had befuddled him as much as the fiend's flattery seemed to befuddle the elf. Karfhud kneeled beside the Thrasson. Then, when Tessali had come over to stand at his side, he grabbed the brick foot and, without ceremony, brought the sword down.
The Amnesian Hero had not expected it to hurt – not really – but he had never been so wrong in his life. Even before his brick foot had clattered to the ground, a ferocious ache was shooting up his leg to his very heart, so paralyzingly painful he could not even scream. He noticed Jayk's fingernails digging into his shoulders, then felt his own fingernails clawing at the ground, then began to yell for more wine.
Silverwind picked up the skin and poured a long draught down his throat, and that was when Karfhud grabbed Tessali's ankle. With a quick yank, the fiend jerked the elf off his legs, then raised the Thrasson's star-forged sword to strike off a foot.
The Amnesian Hero pushed the wineskin aside. "No!"
Karfhud's head snapped around. "You must have a foot!"
"Not… not someone else's!" The Thrasson shook himself free of Jayk's grasp and sat up-then nearly blacked out when he saw the muddy slime oozing from his ankle stump. "Not… Tessali's!"
"But he will be no use in Sheba's lair!" Karfhud objected. "He cannot fight. He can cast no spells. He cannot even cany our weapons."
Tessali, lying on the ground very still, said nothing.
"I won't… have it!" The Thrasson turned his tattooed palm toward the fiend. "I… will… die first."
For once, Jayk did not inform the Amnesian Hero that he was already dead. Instead, she leaned forward and placed her lips upon the Thrasson's throat, then whispered, "We die together, Zoombee."
"That won't be necessary." Karfhud released his terrified captive, then pulled his back-satchel over and removed the elf's blackened hand from a side pocket. "We can make do with this."
"A hand?" gasped Silverwind.
"It seems to be all we have." Karfhud tossed the appendage to the bariaur. "I suppose you have a spell of enlargement?" Name
In the Thrasson's sleep, two disembodied hands-charred hands, with long black talons and black flakes peeling off to expose the mottled pink flesh beneath-brush along his naked body. They are cold against his skin, and scaly, and they leave a trail of moldering reek wherever they touch: his cheeks, his neck and shoulders, his armpits, down to his stomach, over his hips and back again to that area of dark tangles and darker cravings, along his thighs, past his knees to his feet, even to his toes; wherever they roam, he feels his flesh rising up in welts, swelling into thumb-shaped lumps that sprout tiny hooked spines and start to pulse. The blisters grow large as melons. They turn emerald and gold and ruby and jet, and ooze ichor, and throb like hearts, and so heavily do they weigh upon the Amnesian Hero that he cannot me. He cannot sit upright to look at his pod-palled body; he cannot lift so much as his finger to flick the fetid husks away.
It is the beauty of dreams to reveal what is true without betraying what is real-or so I have heard. In truth, unless this endless watching is a nightmare, I cannot say. It has been so long since I dared to sleep that I have forgotten what it is to dream, or even to rest. Always must I be on guard, lest some god think to storm my ramparts; always must I survey those who come and those who go, lest one is the spy who leaves open the gate. To slumber is to surrender, for then my enemies will surely come and prevail.
And it is the same for the Thrasson. As he slept away the wine and the pain. Ruin has come stealing along, to hold his head in her lap and tickle her soft touch over his body high and low; she has folded him gently in her arms and hugged him close, and it is her hands that he dreams of even now, each caress drawing forth another of the heaving pods that have been slowly ripening since first he entered Sigil.
In his dream, the disembodied black hands sprout a pair of ivory arms from their severed wrists; the arms begin to grow, slowly stretching up to connect with the shoulders and torso of a naked woman. This is all the Thrasson can see, for he remains pinned beneath the heavy, throbbing husks-but it is enough. The woman has the full figure of a goddess and the smooth skin of a statue, and her humming voice is as sweet as a trilling flute.
Slowly, it returns to him: the terrible shock of Karfhud lopping away his brick foot, the horrid searing of Silverwind melting the huge blackened hand onto his ankle, the dark sick tide rising up to swallow him, the shadowy fingers digging into his shoulders as Jayk struggles to hold him down.
"J-Jayk." He tries to crane his neck back to see her face, but the bloated throbbing husks hold him down. Still, through the lingering haze of wine and pain, it seems to him something is wrong with the color of her skin. "Jayk? It's me-Zoombee."
"Zombie? You mustn't say such things." The voice is female and familiar, but it does not belong to the tiefling. "You're far from dead, my love."
His wine woman!