Kelly McCullough
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The Next Swine Prince Bonus Chapter
🕑 Added 2023-11-15 11:59:00 +0000 UTC#Underpriest under foot#
The guardroom held all the things one would expect to find in any dungeon guardroom—keys, whips, shackles, decks of cards, etc. It also held some things more specific to this particular dungeon. To whit, a number of large kegs full of resin or salt and a bucket for mixing the two. Really, the only thing missing from the picture was the guards.
Rather than spending a lot of time worrying about the guard dog that didn't bite in the night Tasha sent up a small thank you to the powers that protect thieves and beckoned for the others to follow as she headed for the far door. Beyond were rather a lot of steps of the going up sort.
"Who wants to go first?" asked Truffles.
"I've got the rear," Tasha replied quickly.
She had developed a nasty feeling they were being followed by something…something with hooves. But her growing suspicions on that front seemed simply too unlikely to even admit them fully to herself, and she wanted more proof before she shared her concerns. She till the other were a good twenty steps in front of her before she started to climb so she'd better be able to hear any clop-clop-clopping that might be trailing along behind them. But, after ten minutes of climbing the longest and steepest flight of stairs she'd ever seen, she decided that maybe she was wrong, and even if she wasn't she had better things to think about, like trying to breathe.
She caught up to the others a few minutes later when the climb ended at the entrance to what might best be described as a huge labyrinth of interconnected chambers and hallways—all tunneled through the living rock.
After half an hour of wandering through a endless series empty stone-cut rooms. Truffles finally found the the breath to ask, "What is it with evil cults and giant underground citadels built to house a zillion more people than they're ever going to see?"
"Maybe they're planning on turning it into an amusement park for the faithful," Tasha mused sourly. "Human Sacrifice World, or something like that."
Before anyone could respond, they turned a corner and found themselves face to face with a priest, his aide, and a whole squad of temple guards. There was no time for clever ploys or doing anything as sensible as running away, just an instant free for all.
The priest opened his mouth, possibly to begin a summoning or other spell but didn't get very far because Truffles tackled him. The two hit the floor together and started rolling wildly across the stone. They scratched and bit, elbowed and kneed, pulled hair and ears and generally went at each other in the manner of people who have had absolutely no physical combat training but who still desperately want to do as much damage to each other as possible.
Tasha, who had grown very tired of dealing with threats she couldn't simply stab, let out a whoop, drew her sword, and threw herself at the guards. Hal was right behind her.
That left only Bogvar and the underpriest without dance partners. The pair took one look at each other and simultaneously bolted. Normally, such an entirely sensible reaction would have been the end of the fight, but by pure chance they each ran for the same doorway, arriving at the same time and hopelessly tangling their robes in the process. Mutual and complete panic plus an entanglement that precluded the flight half of the fight or flight reflex soon had them bashing at each other with as much frantic enthusiasm as everyone else.
Tasha finished with her opponents first. As the melee involved quite a lot of hacking, slashing, stabbing, cursing, and generalized mayhem, she had managed to work though many of the aggression issues her experiences in the dungeons below had generated. When the dust and the bodies finally settled, she was feeling much better. Hal was only a few seconds behind her and likewise feeling somewhat better for having gotten some of his aggressions out.
While he went to help their companions, she made sure that everyone they thought they'd killed was actually dead. She'd read far too many stories wherein a villain staggered to his feet after everyone was sure he was good and dead—two conditions generally considered synonymous when it came to storybook villains—and attempted to plunge a dagger into the protagonist's back.
Of course, a real villain who has nearly died in a fight isn't going to do that. They're much more likely to wait till everyone has gone, sneak away, tend their wounds, and wait for another day. That way, they can have a go at killing a protagonist whose reflexes aren't hyped on adrenaline—ideally one who is looking the other way and has completely forgotten their existence. But as far as Tasha was concerned the best answer to both common sense and narrative compulsion on the part of down villains was a quick dagger between the ribs.
For his part, Hal found that neither Truffles or Bogvar looked to be in danger of losing their respective struggles. Truffles, who had gotten the upper hand quite early on, had settled on the tactic of holding onto the priest's ears and using them to bash his head against the stone floor. He looked quite pleased about it too, which just goes to show that from time to time even wizards need to exorcise their tendencies toward physical aggression.
In Bogvar's case, the path to victory was a bit less clear cut. The camel drover and his clerical antagonist looked rather like two cats who had been given quite a lot of stimulants, stuffed into a bag together, and rolled down a long flight of stairs. While Bogvar appeared to be the cat that had landed on top most frequently, it was only a matter of degree.
Once he separated the pair, Hal bashed the underpriest on the head and tossed him aside. Then, after he'd managed to pry Truffles' grip loose from the priest, he got the wizard to have a look at Bogvar. A few quick wiggles of the nose and a half a dozen mystical phrases later Bogvar looked like he might just live, though he still sported a half dozen fairly minor cuts and scrapes and a really beautiful black eye.
As Truffles finished up Hal said, "It might be time to come up with a plan instead of just wandering aimlessly through the maze"
"How about this for a plan?" said Tasha. "First, we figure out if there's anything here that we need. Then, if we do want to pinch anything, we grab it and nip out quick like. Which means it's time to question the priest. He'll know where all the treasure is. Hang on a second while I go grab him."
"Won't work," said Truffles in tone halfway between sheepish and proud.
"Why not?" asked Tasha.
The wizard looked at his feet. "I kind of broke him."
"Oh," said Tasha. "I should have expected of that."
Hal intervened. "No worries. I was pretty gentle with the one I peeled off Bogvar. We can just bring him around and threaten him. If that hog won't holler, I'm no judge of swine."
Hal recovered the priest's aide and delivered him to Truffles. He was still unconscious. Apparently deciding that would slow down the questioning process, Truffles sighed and reached for his ingredients pouch. Placing a small bit of some herb under the man's tongue, he spoke a couple of words that sounded not unlike the noises one might expect to hear from a monitor lizard being drowned in thick cream. Moments later the underpriest started to revive.
Truffles rubbed his throat. "Oooh, but that smarts sometimes. I hope whatever primal wizard decided spells should use forgotten languages not meant to be spoken by human tongues is having a really unpleasant afterlife. Ideally one that involves gargling with cactus needles.
Just then their captive made a sort of gargling noise himself. This was followed by series of oddly happy expressions flitting across his face. Finally, he let out a nasty scream and sat bolt upright.
"What was that he said?" asked Hal.
"Alara akul ni cauf ni ahudi, I think," said Bogvar.
"Which means?"
Well, the accent is kind of archaic, but I think you could best translate it as, 'Mommy, please make the scorpions get out of my nose.' And, no it doesn't make any more sense to me than it does to you."
That was because the underpriest wasn't entirely in their time when he spoke. He'd been reliving a moment from the life of one of his great to the eighty-seventh degree ancestors. The last moment. The late proto-Oktor had been an explorer and would-be conqueror, who had had the great misfortune to encounter the matriarchal tribal society of Kee Woo Mno. There he had been captured and, as the valuable bearer of some much needed fresh genetic material, been sold to the highest bidder. This had placed him in the household of the chieftess, Kali O'Lilith—a particularly successful example of what a violent society could produce in the way of leadership.
Chieftess Kali was everything that the leader of any society with warlike neighbors should be—smart, vicious, of flexible moral character, able to backstab with the best of them, capable of completely dominating a household, and generally handy with a blunt object. About a week after he arrived, Oktor had just finished enjoying the intimate attentions of his new mistress when he had made the mistake of treating her the way he would have treated one of his wives back home in the Himun.
When she casually ordered him to get her a post-coital glass of wine, he had refused and called her a number of nasty names to boot. Quicker than you could say, "maybe that wasn't the best idea I've ever had," or even, "oops," she stuffed a funnel in his nose and emptied a jar of scorpions into it. She kept the jar and funnel on the bedside table for just such occasions.
All of that is neither here nor there, but rather somewhere in between, and relevant to the current situation only in that it put the underpriest in quite a good frame of mind for politely agreeing to requests carrying an undertone of violence, particularly when made by an armed woman. When Tasha, knife in hand, casually suggested the priest should make nice and answer all of their questions smartly or else, he vociferously reassured her he would cooperate while simultaneously quivering himself into the margins of unconsciousness.
Tasha turned to Truffles. "What do you want to ask him?"
"You have information we require," Truffles told the captive. "We're on our way to kill a very powerful sorcerer who does not want to be killed and is quite likely to resist our attentions. We are seeking weapons to aid us in our quest. We have reason to believe that your priesthood may possess such a weapon, one that would be especially effective against our adversary. If you tell us where said object can be found and how best to leave this place from that point, we will spare you any further inconvenience. Do you understand?"
"No," the priest whispered, his eyes fixed on Tasha.
She was picking the dirt out from under her fingernails with her knife. It seemed cliche even to her, but what else could you do when you were playing bad cop? She had stereotypes to live up to.
"Am I going to have to do something you'll regret?" she asked, pitching her voice low and growly.
"I sure hope not." The underpriest swallowed visibly. "I really don't understand what you want. But if someone was willing to ask the question again using short simple words I'll give it my best shot."
"Oh," said Hal. "I've had the same problem from time to time. What he said was, 'Where's the loot?" And, 'What's the quickest way from there to the exit?'"
"Ah! Thank you!" The priest looked relieved. "The treasury is one floor below us and a few hundred yards to the south. If you will spare my life, I will take you there."
"That's the spirit." Hal smiled. "Are there any particularly special weapons down there?"
"Yes. There is a rather drab and ugly sword made of a green metal. It is said to be completely invulnerable to magic."
A gleam of avarice came into Truffle's eye at that. "Did you say green?"
The underpriest nodded.
"About so long." Truffles held his hands a yard apart. "Blade the color of badly tarnished copper? Bedraggled sheath? Yellow leather? With hideous pictures on it?" The priest nodded again and again.
Truffles whistled then and a touch of fear-yellow bled into the greedy green gleam in his eyes. "Not my first choice exactly, but if that sword is what I think it is, it could be just what we need."
"Truffles would you mind telling the rest of us what you're thinking?" asked Hal. Then he thought about the consequences of asking the wizard an open-ended question about…well, anything, and hastily added, "About the sword, I mean."
The wizard nodded, though more to himself than in response to Hal. "It's Shagreen. It has to be." He paused then. "But it was supposed to have been destroyed."
"I don't mean to sound less than thrilled about legendary weapons with dubious names," said Hal, "but a tarnished green sword? Aren't magic swords supposed to be silver, or black, or some other dramatic color? I could even see invisible…well figuratively anyway. But green? Whose idea was that?"
"Shagreen was forged by the legendary smith Faril, in G. R. 128."
"G.R.?" Tasha was confused. "I've never heard a date like that before."
"You wouldn't have," said Truffles. "It refers to the years since the ascension of the Great Rat. The great Rat was the celestial patron of a small tribe of Glorovian aborigines whose only notable contribution to history was the invention of a particularly strong and completely unnatural metal called grusp. Nobody knows how they did it—the whole tribe died out in G.R. 160—but they somehow managed to get iron to bond with a sort of metallic wood harvested from the garup tree."
"And this, Shagreen thing is made of grusp?" asked Hal.
"Yes," answered Truffles. "The stuff is virtually unbreakable and highly enchantable, but only when it's fresh from the forge. After it's cooled, any magic that touches it is annihilated. Faril is believed to have made about forty blades over the twenty years he worked with the stuff, but most of them were destroyed rather soon after they were made."
"I thought you said these swords were impossible to break," said Tasha.
"Break yes, burn no."
"Burn?" asked Hal.
"Yes," said Truffle. The garupwood had to be fresh and green for the steeling process to work. But after two or three years the wooden part of the metal would dry out and become quite flammable. A few of the owners managed to preserve their swords for as long as ten years by storing them in amphorae full of oil. But even that was only a temporary solution, and those oil soaked blades all eventually spontaneously combusted.
"Shagreen alone of its brethren survived because of a happy accident. As he was finishing Shagreen, Faril was attacked by a seal demon, a real nasty one. It almost got him too, since he was unprepared. But Faril was a damn good sorcerer—he couldn't have made enchanted swords otherwise—and when it looked like he was going to die anyway, he took a terrible risk. He cast most of a spell, a demonic imprisonment, but didn't have enough time to finish it and specify a container. It should have killed him and the demon both. But since they happened to be in contact with the newly forged Shagreen at the instant Faril cast the spell, the demon was forced into the sword.
"Once he had it trapped there, Faril saw no reason, and really no way, to remove it. Instead, he put the usual enchantments on the blade, mounted a hilt to it, and sold it to the next foreigner who came to town looking for a magic sword. He later regretted the decision, but that's another story. The important thing for our purposes is that the watery nature of the seal demon keeps Shagreen from drying out. Since drying out is the only way to destroy a grusp blade, the sword is virtually indestructible."
"All right," said Hal. "So Shagreen is an indestructible magical sword inhabited by a demon. What's the big deal about that? There must be ten thousand indestructible demonically possessed magical swords wandering around this old world. Everybody's heard a million and one stories of demon-haunted swords and the doomed heroes who carry them. They're practically a cliche. Someone's bound to have tried one on Grendal before. Seeing as he's not dead, we can guess how well that worked out. What's so special about this one?"
"Grusp," said Truffles in his most schoolmasterish tone, "which is untouchable by magic once it's cool. Like reallyuntouchable, poisonous to it in fact. No spell can be cast on it or stand against it. And any mage who so much as touches it loses all power of magic. It's the perfect weapon against Grendal. I personally would prefer not to get within a thousand feet of the thing, ever, but there's nothing to keep you from using it. In fact, I see you as the perfect wielder for the world's most unmagical sword. So, let's go find the damned thing and get out of here."
Tasha nodded. "Listen carefully little priest. You're going to take us to the treasure trove now and help us get past the guards. After that, you'll lead us out and we'll let you go. But before we move an inch, you're going to draw me a map of the route we'll take. This is going to serve two purposes. First, it will keep you from getting an inflated sense of your own value to us as a living guide. Second, as we walk, I'm going to compare your map with where you lead us. If at any time the two diverge, I'm going to take you apart. Do you understand?"
"Oh yes, scary lady, I will guide you loyally and in return you will not cut me to bits. Seems like a very straightforward deal to me."
Less then ten minutes later, they had a map and were on the move again. Tasha took up rear guard again, her suspicions about being followed having been reawakened by the faint and distant sound of something with very hard feet tip-toeing across stone.
Hal, with took the lead with his sword pressed firmly against the priest's back. Truffles and Bogvar jockeyed for the position farthest away from any potential threats. Since they weren't certain whether the next attack was more likely to come from the back or front, this involved considerable fore and aft shuffling and peering about.
