Chapter 31
“You count me out too soon,” came a weak croak from the other side of the demon’s form.
Chert rose to his feet and took a couple of steps in the direction of the voice as Gord came around the cataboligne’s body to look. Chert peered into the dimness, having trouble seeing in the faint glow shed by the rapidly fading luminescence from the expiring spell. Gord could see well, however, since the magical sword remained in his ichor-stained hand-and he beamed at the sight before his eyes.
“Greenleaf!” he cried. “Are you indestructible?” The rotund druid was lying several paces away from the demon, propped on one arm, blood dripping from his wounds, part of his face nearly torn off.
“Quickly, Chert! We must help Curley!” Gord said, taking the barbarian by the arm and leading him toward where the druid lay.
“How do you know where to go in this darkness?” asked Chert.
“My sword,” said the thief. “So long as I keep hold of it, I can see.”
“But I am blinded,” said Chert. “You cannot bind Curley’s wounds with one hand, and I cannot do it without eyes!”
“We must do something, man! He’s bleeding to death!” Gord shouted in despair. “I’ll tell you what I see, and guide you to perform the work-but hurry! Already he goes!” The druid had fallen back even as Gord spoke, lapsing into unconsciousness. In a few more minutes, Gord feared, he would certainly expire.
Chert worked his best, directed by Gord’s eyes and voice. It was a clumsy and fumbling process, consuming more time than either of the dying druid’s companions meant to take, but it was all they could do.
Finally, Chert finished. He had managed to close the torn cheek and staunch the flow of blood from that wound and the worst of the others covering his friend’s body. Both young men were themselves wounded and bleeding, Chert worse than Gord, but both ignored their own pain and bleeding to save Greenleaf. Then, suddenly, Gord remembered something.
“He has healing salve!” Not bothering to waste further breath, Gord tore the pouch from the druid’s belt with his free hand. Then, moving sword from right to left, he managed to get the jar out of the bag and held it tightly. “Use your hand to work the top open,” he commanded the barbarian. After a bit of groping, Chert managed to get the thing open.
“Put a bit on your finger and then I’ll guide it to a bleeding wound,” he instructed his companion. “If this doesn’t work, then it is all over for him.”
Carefully, using his free hand, Gord used the barbarian’s outstretched arm, hand, and finger as an instrument for applying the ointment. The stuff had an odd, pearlescent sheen to Gord’s dweomered eyes, but this disappeared as the thick salve was spread on the torn face of the comatose druid. As the salve’s brightness and color faded, the flesh upon which it was spread joined at the edges, closing cuts and gouges. In another moment, blood no longer flowed from the ghastly wound!
“It serves him well, Chert! Now we must have more for his other wounds!”
The process of groping and smearing continued until the small pot of ointment was utterly empty. The druid was still in critical shape, covered with small, untreated wounds and blood-smeared, but blood was no longer coursing from him, and Gord thought he might yet survive. The two young men sat back in the underground place, exhausted. Now they must wait.
Using some of their water, both men cleaned their own wounds as well as they could under the circumstances. They also drank some, to quench the thirst of battle and clear their mouths and throats of the horrid taste left by combat with the demon. Gord sat down close to Greenleaf, still clutching the sword so that he could keep a vigil for the unconscious druid. Chert stretched out beside Gord on the stone floor, intending to keep his friend company while he started to recuperate. But weakness and fatigue got the best of him, and shortly he began to snore. Gord was dozing lightly himself when, some time later, a welcome sound brought him alert.
“Gord! Gord!”
The thief came close to Greenleaf’s head, for the druid could barely manage a whisper. “What is it, Curley, dear friend?” he said.
“Silence that blaster over there,” the fellow managed to say with a bit of spirit. “He’s keeping me awake!”
Gord was flabbergasted at this attempted humor, and for a moment lost track of what else Curley was saying.
“I said, hold me in a sitting position, you idiot!” the druid groused. “Seeing that you two have somehow brought me back from death’s door, I have to do this quickly, or that bony bastard will get his fingers on me and pull me back inside again!”
Gord was afraid to move the druid, who was still not well off, but his demeanor left no choice but to comply. The druid managed to get a sprig of vegetation from inside his robe, and he muttered some chant under his breath as he waved the stuff slowly back and forth over his body. After three such passes, the druid relaxed.
“That’s better, much better,” he said in a stronger voice. “Many thanks to you, Gord. And now I must close my eyes.” Gord started to protest, not understanding his meaning, but the druid reassured him. “I am all right, I tell you! Not well and whole, but I will live if you’ll only allow me to sleep a bit, dammit. Why don’t you imitate that great hulk over there,” he concluded, “and allow me to do the same?”
With that, the fellow lay back and fell asleep almost instantly. Gord had nothing better to do, so he also allowed slumber to take him. How long he rested thus, chilled and aching on the cold stone of the cavern’s floor, he knew not. He was roused by the sound of Greenleaf talking to Chert.
“Now sit there,” the druid instructed the big adventurer, “and I’ll see to sleeping beauty over there.”
“I’m awake,” Gord informed the approaching druid.
Curley, who appeared to have never been wounded, said, “I can see well enough, thank you, to detect your awakened state. How badly are you hurt?”
Gord allowed that he had felt better, but that besides the claw-wounds on his arm, there was nothing but scrapes and bruises troubling him.
“Can you move freely and well?” Greenleaf asked.
“Yes, and without much pain, save for the arm.”
“The arm will have to wait, then, Gord,” the druid told him. “Chert was sorely hurt by the demon, and how he managed to stay conscious and assist you in saving my life is a wonder for a bard’s song. My work has brought him round to fair state, but if I can aid him yet further, we can leave this place to serve as the sepulcher of demon and bear-bless Yurgh’s brave heart-and seek our prize.”
This was most agreeable to Gord, and as soon as the druid had gone through his ritual of healing over the barbarian, the three went from the place. They were tattered, sore, and still stunk of foulness from the cataboligne, but they went with pride and gladness in their hearts. A demon was defeated and dead behind them, and somewhere within the maze before them was a great treasure.
With Gord and Curley taking turns leading Chert through the blackness, they made their way back to the grotto and picked up the torches they had seen there earlier. Then, in several hours of casual wandering, they investigated the whole place.
The central grotto had three exits, as they already knew. Each exit led to a curving passageway, and each of these in turn had three adits. The connecting corridors tied three such circular ways together, but the passages that did so were offset and asymmetrical, rather than being like the spokes of a wheel. They covered all the curves and corridors systematically, concluding with a second trip around the outer rim of the third wheel-shaped passageway, which took them back to the tunnel leading to the chamber where the cataboligne’s corpse lay.
After going some distance farther, they came upon another tunnel that led them to a somewhat smaller cavern. The place contained no treasure, but there they found a deep, cold pool of water, and all three had a chance to bathe and clean themselves of the reeking remnants of their terrible encounter. Refreshed and feeling far better than they had in some time, the three adventurers moved on. Going on to their right, they passed the position where a third opening would have been, had such a thing been there. But the wall was unbroken, and they eventually came round to the area of the tomb of demon and bear again. Something was wrong-either they could not find the treasure, or else, as Gord speculated at this point, someone had added the relic to the tale of the cairn to enliven it.
“That is most unlikely,” Curley stated flatly. “The tablet I translated said that there was a most powerful item here, and the whole place seems made to contain it. What madness caused the servants of this place to ward it with a demon, I can’t say, or even hazard a guess at, but the dead bandits carried nothing forth, and their surviving fellows claimed nothing either-why else tell stories for your supper? If bandits fled demon, then demon guarded treasure. Thus,” the druid reasoned, “we have missed its hiding place somehow.”
“How?” Chert demanded in an impatient tone.
“He’s right, Curley,” Gord said. “If the story-teller said they saw wealth here, any treasure would have to be in plain sight, or else taken away… or hidden by the demon!”
Spirits lifted by this sudden inspiration, they returned to the demon’s cavern-the only place they had not searched thoroughly-and looked it over carefully, but besides the dead, there was nothing in sight. They rested a few minutes and pondered.
“The cataboligne used illusion,” the druid said.
“Then must we assume that an illusion hides the relic?”
“No, not necessarily, Gord, but it is a good start.”
“When I held my sword fast, the demon’s spell affected me not,” the young thief pointed out. “Yet I saw through no illusory cover to a treasure beyond as we searched this maze!”
“You weren’t holding your sword,” Chert informed his friend.
“I wasn’t?… I wasn’t!” Gord exclaimed in reply. He had grown so accustomed to having the sword in his grasp that he failed to immediately realize that he had sheathed the weapon and used normal sight in their explorations after the torches were acquired.
Gord felt foolish, but neither of the others blamed him for the oversight-after all, they had not thought of it either.
Greenleaf stood erect. “Let us do it all again, friends,” he said, “and this time Gord will employ the dweomer vested in him by his blade to see if we have been duped.”
The circuit seemed longer and more tedious than they recalled from their first passage, but they went round again, up and down passages, from core to outer circle. Finally, back at the spot where they thought a tunnel should have been, Gord’s magical vision revealed to him that a loosely piled stack of blocks closed an opening in the wall.