Azure bonds - Kate Novak [68]
The kalmari's smoky body disintegrated into a dozen tiny motes of darkness, which in turn ruptured into smaller fractions, like a drop of oil shaken in water. The bits of darkness were blown away on the night breeze. The barbarian's sword clattered to the floor of the devastated inn.
Shards of light pricked at Alias's vision and then faded. Her head dropped to the floor, and she allowed the darkness of unconsciousness to take her.
Through it all Akabar had remained asleep, snoring softly.
*****
Alias awoke to the sound of Olive and Akabar arguing. By the sun's position, she could tell it was late morning. She felt a little hungover, and it took her a moment to remember the wine Nameless had helped her guzzle.
"Your story is most amusing, little one," the Turmishman was saying to Olive, "but just not probable. My dreams were pleasant and my sleep uninterrupted. I would have been awake in an instant if the events you described had truly occurred."
"I tell you, this thing was huge and black and had more fangs than you have hairs in your beard. Its mouth opened so wide-" Olive flung her arms out as far as they would stretch "-that it could have swallowed itself.
Akabar laughed. "It sounds to me as though perhaps my cooking was mer a lammer for you," the mage commented, using an expression in his native tongue. "Much and too much," he translated for the halfling.
Alias shook the last bits of sleep from her head. "Olive's telling you the truth, Akabar. Hard to credit, I'll admit, but she wasn't the only witness to the attack."
The grin disappeared from Akabar's face. "Why did it strike at me first, I wonder."
"Maybe you looked the tastiest," Olive suggested.
"The creature was a kalmari, impervious to normal attacks," Alias said. "It probably recognized you as a mage, and hence the greatest threat."
Then Alias remembered what Cassana had said in her dream. "I have reason to believe that it was waiting here for me," she added, "and that it belonged to one of the wizards who branded me. When I got close to it, the sigils began to glow again, something that also happened in the presence of the crystal elemental. Perhaps my foes have judged you too useful to me and have decided to have you removed. A demonstration to prove the futility of defiance."
"A kalmari," Akabar mused, no longer puzzled. "Yes, such things can hold a man in slumber. How did you defeat it?"
"Chopped it with a sword it had already swallowed."
"Ah, yes," the southerner nodded. "They cannot digest steel, so they spit it out. They can be poisoned by the very secretions that they've left on the blade.
"You've fought one before?" Alias asked.
"No," Akabar admitted. "I have read of them. They are a horror attributed to the Red Wizards of Thay, I believe."
Alias nodded.
"Even with a regorged weapon, it could not have been an easy battle. However did you manage?" he asked Olive.
Alias smiled. No doubt the bard had exaggerated her role in the destruction of the monster.
Olive looked down at her furry hands. "I got some help from Dragonbait."
"Where is Dragonbait, anyway?" Alias asked.
"I noticed him climbing that hill," Akabar said, pointing to the western slope looming over the top of the pass. "He was carrying a monstrous sword."
"Hmmm. You two start breaking camp," the adventureress ordered. "I'll fetch him, and we'll be off. I'm not inclined to hang around here."
Climbing toward the western slope, Alias heard Akabar chiding Olive. "Why didn't you tell me it was a kalmari instead of babbling on about a big, black, fang-toothed thing?"
Catching the sound of soft, whistling tones, Alias followed them to a spring-fed pool, where she found Dragonbait. The lizard had made a set of bird pipes, and the tune he twisted out of them, while sad and plaintive,