Author's Note: I'm not sure why, but the first part of this chapter was a pain and a half to write. After about half a dozen false starts, I decided to keep it simple and have a bit of fun with the Xanos/Mischa dynamic. Remember, boys and girls: love stinks.
Chapter 8- A Giant Suprise
Since their deal with Szaren required the students to return to Hilltop and speak to Haniah, Xanos and Aurora decided to spend the night at the school. Sleeping in his warm, familiar bed was much nicer than making camp out in the snow would have been, and Xanos awoke quite refreshed.
When he reached the foot of the stairs, Aurora was standing in front of the fire, shaking the snow from her boots.
"Good morning," she said, and then, "Haniah agreed to let Szaren stay."
Xanos joined her by the fire, savoring its warmth while he could. "Good. Xanos was doubtful that the she-demon would listen to reason. How did you do it?"
"I convinced her that the enclave would be good for Hilltop's economy. Between looking after the townspeople and trying to sober up the mayor, she was too busy to argue much." She eyed him critically. "You have the . . . thing?"
From the poorly disguised loathing in her tone, Xanos knew she was talking of Belpheron's hand. Ayala had been highly pleased with the news of the first artifact's recovery, moreso with its ability to point the way to the other three. Over Aurora's protests, the Harper had insisted they take the hand along with them when they leave.
"I do," he said, patting the slight bulge in his pack where the hand lay, wrapped in a length of cloth. "You were right to trust such a powerful artifact to Xanos' keeping, you know."
His words gave her pause. Xanos could see that her mistrust of his intentions was warring with her revulsion for the artifact. "Maybe I should hold onto it aft er all," she said uncertainly.
"Oh yes," Xanos said with forced mildness. He removed the hand and unwrapped it, holding it out to Aurora. "Surely he would prefer it, after all."
The desiccated fingers dipped and raised in a slow wave. Aurora gasped and hurriedly crossed her arms across her chest. "Just keep the cursed thing away from me!"
Grinning, Xanos advanced on her, holding the hand in front of him. "Are you absolutely certain?" he asked. "Hasty decisions are hastily regretted, after all." The artifact twitched in his hand, the fingers making grasping motions in the air.
Aurora dropped low into a defensive stance. "One more step and I'll break your fingers," she said fiercely. "All fifteen of them."
The door to the kitchen swung open, and the acrid scent emanating from within made Xanos' nostril's burn. "Tyr's bleeding stump, what is that foul stench?" He pulled his cloak across his nose to protect it from the malodorous onslaught. " Did someone set the compost heap on fire?"
Mischa waltzed out of the kitchen, oblivious to the reek that surrounded her. There was a lidded container in her hands, around which she was tying a flowered handkerchief. When she saw her fellow students, her fingers tangled in the knot. "Oh my," she said. "Are you two fighting again?"
There was disappointment in her wide blue eyes. There was a churning in Xanos's stomach, one that could be only partly attributed to the terrible stench of whatever she was holding.
"Come now," he said, "do not be ridiculous! What would Aurora and I have to fight about?" Breathing through his mouth, Xanos let go of his nose and placed his arm around Aurora's shoulders. She went rigid, and he sensed that she was fighting the urge to twist away.
"I hope for Drogan's sake that you aren't joking," Mischa went on in a softer voice. "Your quest is more important than some childish rivalry."
Somewhat sheepishly, Xanos let his arm drop back to his side. His attempts to fool Mischa were only making it worse.
"What Xanos told you is quite correct," Aurora said evenly. "I was merely showing him the proper way to invoke the power of the artifact."
Xanos could not conceal his surprise at Aurora's boldfaced lie. Mischa might be young and foolish, but she was still Drogan's student and capable of recognizing a fighting stance when she saw one. Still, she seemed reluctant to outright contradict the older girl's words.
"Go on, then, Xanos," the rogue prompted. "We're wasting daylight."
Nodding briskly, Xanos held forth the hand and concentrated on a single questions: where was the nearest artifact? The hand creaked, extending an ancient pointer finger east and slightly north.
Mischa's apprehension turned to fascination as she witnessed the workings of the artifact. She leaned forward for a better look, and Xanos could not help but notice that this made certain parts of her anatomy strain against certain articles of clothing. His breath caught in his throat, his eyes bulged in their sockets, and it was only when Aurora elbowed him roughly in the side that he realized Belperhon's hand was twitching in Mischa's direction. Before it could escape from his grasp, Xanos quickly muffled it in its cloth and returned it to his pack.
"I think it was pointing at the foothills," Aurora said, "which means we have a bit of hiking ahead of us. Let's be on our way."
"Wait!" Mischa raised the container she was holding and removed the lid. The stench increased tenfold, making Xanos' eyes sting. For the first time, he noticed that there were scorch marks on her apron, alongside a viscous green substance. "I made lunch for the two of you."
"You shouldn't have," Aurora said, shying away from the package and wrinkling her nose.
"Oh, it was no trouble," Mischa answered demurely, gazing up at them from beneath a lush fringe of blonde lashes. Before he could stop himself, Xanos had taken the offered container and handkerchief. Mischa beamed at him, and he felt the heat creep up his throat and across his cheeks.
Therefore, he was relieved when Aurora bid a swift farewell to Mischa and made a break for the cool, wintry air out of doors. Once they had put a decent amount of distance between themselves and the house, Aurora rounded on him.
Xanos was staring down into the container Mischa had given him, disturbed equally by the mucus-like black liquid and the shapeless hunks of matter that floated in it.
"Hells below, I've picked more appetizing things out of the corners of my eyes." Aurora's words were not without reverence. "You are going to throw it away, aren't you?"
Without answering, Xanos replaced the lid and tied the handkerchief securely in place. Somehow, he could not find the heart to get rid of it. With the bundle muffled inside his pack, the smell was hardly noticeable, anyway.
"What do you think you're doing? That stuff has to be poisonous."
"What does it matter to you?" he snapped.
For a moment, Aurora seemed as though she would push his patience further. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the mettlesome gleam in her eyes faded.
"Mischa is right, you know," she said quietly. "We have to start getting along if we're going to have half a chance at succeeding."
Xanos snorted. "We have never been friends, you and I. Do you now propose we link arms and skip off gaily into the snow?"
"Why don't we do away with the outright hostility, at least?" she asked. "We don't have to like each other, and there certainly doesn't need to be any skipping, but we can make the attempt to be civil."
He mulled this over as they passed through Hilltop and reached the wilds beyond. True, much about Aurora simply rubbed him the wrong way, but was his exasperation with her worth jeopardizing the entire quest?
"Oh, very well," he said. "From now on, Xanos shall make an effort to play nice. I will continue to loathe you privately, of course."
"Of course." Her wide mouth curved into a smile. Xanos watched her surreptitiously as they walked, taking note of the sharp features, the pale, upturned eyes that were so difficult to read. Not for the first time, he wondered at her parentage.
"You agreed with Mischa," he said, "yet you lied to her. Why?"
"Correct or not, I don't think it was her place to rebuke us that way." She spoke slowly, almost reluctantly. "I liked Mischa better before she took paladinhood so seriously."
The tentative way she parted with the information pricked Xanos' curiosity. He thought again of the warning Szaren had given him in the tomb of Ascalhorn, and of the cryptic exchange with Aurora that had followed.
"So, you dislike paladins as well as Red Wizards?" He kept his tone as neutral as possible. "Despite my hawklike powers of observation, that is something Xanos would not have guessed about you."
She chuckled. "A single item in a very long list, I suspect."
"Fine, then," he said. "Enlighten me. How did you come to be Drogan's pupil?"
Aurora scanned the jagged line of the foothills in the distance. They were glazed pure white by the snow that had fallen during the night. "It's really not that interesting of a story."
"Whenever someone says that, it means the opposite is true. So, what is the big secret? Did you set your house on fire? Seduce a local magistrate?"
"Sorry, no seduction. I was barely out of childhood by the time I met master Drogan." Xanos' eyes lit up, but Aurora noticed and cut him off. "No fire, either. Listen, I'm willing to share, but only if you return the favor."
"Fine, fine. Out with it." Curiosity was gnawing at him, and telling his own tale in exchange was not so high a price to have it satisfied.
"My father and I were never on the best of terms," Aurora began. Her voice was tinged with uncertainty, and Xanos could tell she had little experience speaking of her past. "I was far too much like my mother for his liking, and then there was a prophecy – " she visibly caught herself, and shook her head. "Never mind that. Suffice it to say that we did not get along."
Her words picked up a steady rhythm as they traveled, pausing now and then to consult Belpheron's hand. She painted her childhood in broad strokes, but Xanos gleaned that she had not lived the life of a peasant. The relationship between Aurora and her father had eventually reached some sort of breaking point, the nature of which she did not describe, and she had decided to risk a life on the streets rather than spend another night beneath her father's roof.
Some time later, she had fallen in with a loosely organized band of cutpurses and thugs. She was young, but she was quicker and stronger than she looked, and she knew her way among the shadows from years of keeping out of her father's sight. She gained enough renown to take minor roles in the heists they pulled, including a plan to rob a certain well-known dwarven adventurer who was traveling through the city.
The plan had failed, of course, and Aurora had been caught red-handed by Drogan himself as her compatriots fled. But instead of turning her over to the guards as she had expected, the dwarf offered to help her hone her skills.
"And here I am," she said with a shrug. The story was not what Xanos had expected – he had always assumed that she was merely the superfluous daughter of some local farmer– but she had said nothing to explain Szaren's warnings.
They took a break from speaking to negotiate a bit of tricky climbing. The rough path they followed zigged and zagged, sometimes disappearing altogether at the foot of a boulder. They took the sharp turns and climbs as quickly as they dared, though the snow made good footing tricky to find.
Eventually, the path evened out, and Aurora gave Xanos a nudge.
"Your turn," she said.
"Very well. Remember my words, Aurora. You will want to repeat them to your children, some day." He cleared his throat, thinking back to the tiny village with its rickety, slipshod houses. Built in the wake of the orc raid that had resulted in Xanos' birth, the buildings were hastily built and unattractive.
"The village where Xanos grew up was full of nothing but ignorant bigots, my own family included," he said. "They resented me for my superior intelligence and mixed blood, and feared me for my physical prowess. You can guess how thrilled they were when I became an adolescent and my sorcery began to manifest."
Her gaze was curious and not unsympathetic. "Why? What sort of things happened?"
"Shaking furniture, uncanny light and noises." He smirked. "For a time, my mother was convinced our house was haunted. Unfortunately, Xanos had not reached his present level of control." For a moment, Thisden Nightmark's cruelly handsome face flashed before his mind's eye. "There was a group of cowheaded youths that found their fun in bothering me as often as possible. Their ringleader was a particular thorn in my side. One day, he pushed Xanos too far."
His tone was dark, and Aurora's brow furrowed with concern.
"You didn't kill him, did you?"
Xanos smiled grimly. "No, more's the pity. A rogue ball of flames did burn away his entire luxurious head of hair, however."
Aurora chuckled. "Good. I hate bullies. I suppose he gave you a wide berth after that?"
"Guess again. By midnight, he had raised a pitchfork-waving mob to drive me out of town. I barely escaped with my life."
"Oh." Aurora chewed her lip thoughtfully. "I know the story from there, I think. Funny how much a child can be hated because of who their parents were, isn't it?"
Something in her tone told Xanos she wasn't just referring to him. Again, he scrutinized her features. Her ears were no more pointed than a human's, but there was her thin frame, and her aloof personality . . .
"You say your father hated you because you were too much like your mother," he said. "Was she an elf of some sort?"
"More like a soul-sucking she-wolf."
Xanos laughed heartily. "Something we have in common, then."
Aurora grinned, and Xanos was struck by the oddity of sharing a joke with the girl instead of making one at her expense. It was actually rather enjoyable. Perhaps there was something to be said for civility after all . . .
All at once, a terrible roaring din rose around them. It sounded like the death-scream of a moose mixed with the screech of hundreds of fingernails scraping across a wall of slate. Then, Xanos realized that the horrific noise was actually comprised of words, howled in the common tongue.
"Rumgut be so happy with wife who can cook.! Me not really care at all how she look! She may be small, but me no have fit: when she be cooking it no smell like . . ."
"Who would be singing way out here?" Aurora shouted over the noise, drowning out the last word of the couplet.
"Ha! If that is singing, Xanos is the Lady Mage of Waterdeep!"
"Whatever it is, it's coming from in there." She pointed ahead, where a large shelf of rock overhung the dark mouth of a cave. "Right along the path we need to take."
"Then we find another way around, and do not end up in the gullet of whatever nightmare creature could produce such a racket." Xanos surveyed the jagged bluffs before them. Their surfaces were slick with ice and unusually uniform, offering few handholds. Other than the steep path they had been following, there was nowhere to go but straight up the sheer face of a cliff.
"There isn't another way." Aurora's voice was grim. "We're going to have to sneak past."
"No," Xanos said immediately. "'Xanos' and 'sneaking' should never be used in the same sentence."
She inclined her head. "But you just – "
"Details!" he snapped. "Xanos is not accustomed to slinking about in silence the way you do. I am not tip-toeing past that thing's lair. No way, no how."
Moments later, Xanos was tip-toeing through the snow. Aurora was just ahead, her movements self-assured and completely soundless. He assumed they were, at least; with the abysmal singing continuing to blare from the cave, it was impossible to tell.
"This is a bad idea," he hissed. "It's going to get us killed!"
"Hush," she said over her shoulder. "Think stealthy thoughts."
Xanos did as she bid him, imagining being wrapped in a black cloak and wearing boots muffled with fleece, stealing across a lightless room with floors made entirely of sea sponges. In fact, he concentrated rather too hard on his imaginary scene, and failed to notice a sizeable stone protruding from the powdery snow.
His toe caught the tip of the stone, and his arms wheeled in the air for a terrified instant before he tumbled headlong into a drift. His pack catapulted over his head, landing at the very mouth of the cave.
Xanos froze, listening for a sign that he had been heard. The song continued on as though nothing had happened, and Xanos felt his heart start beating again. Then, all at once, there was silence, followed by a great snuffling sound.
"Get up!" Aurora whispered urgently.
Xanos struggled to his feet, but a massive, uneven shape filled the mouth of the cave before he'd fully regained his balance. A pair of huge, watery eyes peered into his own.
"Hey, what you doin' here?" The hill giant's voice held no real menace, but Xanos cringed nonetheless. "And what you got that smells so good?"
Xanos' eyes darted to his overturned pack. Only now did he notice the pungent odor wafting from it, where Mischa's lunch must have lost its lid in the fall. The stench was so strong it was almost visible in the frosted air.
He pointed a shaking finger at the pack. "Take it, if that's what you mean," he said.
The giant smiled, his crooked mouth splitting his face like a crack in a boulder. "That be nice of you, tiny man. It smell almost as good as stew me wifey cooks." He hooked the strap of the pack around a single finger. "Come into me cave, nice tiny man. Rumgut not take stew for nothing."
Rumgut's head swung heavily on his neck, and he blinked at Aurora, who had been standing motionless at the far side of the cave. "Your friend come too," he announced.
Worldlessly, Xanos and Aurora followed Rumgut into the cave.
Xanos' eyes had no trouble piercing the gloom within, but from Aurora could no doubt see nothing but the single brightly lit item in the lair: a cast-iron pot the size of a bathtub, bubbling away over a roiling fire. In a way, she was lucky. Xanos could have done without the sight of the skinless corpses of half a dozen kobolds that littered the floor.
Aurora leaned close to whisper in his ear. "Is that a stewpot?"
"Obviously," he snapped. "And big enough to hold you and Xanos both, if we don't think of something quickly."
Rumgut took a seat on a handy boulder, and swallowed back Mischa's stew in one gulp. When he was finished, he belched loudly enough to shake the cave walls, then dabbed daintily at the corners of his mouth with the tiny handkerchief.
The giant yawned. "Ah," he said happily. "Nothing make Rumgut sleepy like tasty meal, 'cept maybe a good drink."
Xanos felt someone staring at him and looked to his right. There, built into one wall of the cave was a makeshift cage. A dwarven girl sat within, peering desperately at him from between the bars. "Help," she mouthed.
Xanos knew what he had to do.
"Giant," he called boldly. "If you already have a nice, tasty dwarf to eat, surely you will not have room for Aurora and I."
"What?" came an outraged cry from the cage.
"Dwarf?" Rumgut scratched his bald, lumpy pate. "Oh . . . You mean wifey? Why would me eat her?"
"There's someone else trapped here?" Again, Aurora's whisper reached his ears. "Xanos, we can't just leave them."
"Wait, wait . . ." Xanos waved her away, still trying to process what the giant had said. "Your wife is a dwarf?"
Rumgut smiled proudly. "She be small now, but soon she be big, like Rumgut. Then we knock heads together and throw rocks and make little giants, just like mom and dad."
Xanos couldn't stifle his laughter. "So, dwarves grow into hill giants, do they? I wonder if anyone told Dorna."
The smile vanished, and Rumgut leaned forward on his boulder. "You laughing at Rumgut, tiny man?"
"No, no, of course he isn't," Aurora cried. "He's just, uh, thinking of a joke I told him right before you came outside."
"Oh, okay." The giant sat back on his haunches. "Me loves a good joke, skinny bigmouth woman. You tell Rumgut, now."
"Uh . . . sure." She swallowed audibly. "A one-eyed tiefling, a wolverine, and a Tormite priest walk into a bar– "
"Tiefa-huh-wha?" Rumgut interrupted. "What be that? It be good for eating?"
"No, no. A tiefling is the offspring of a– "
"Spring be when the pretty flowers grow." Rumgut's chest swelled with pride at this display of knowledge. "Then me go and pick bunches for wifey, so she be happy and not try to run when Rumgut opens cage."
Aurora's shoulders slumped. "Let's just forget about the joke, shall we?"
Slapping his knees, Rumgut burst into booming laughter. "Good joke, good joke! Me remember that one for sure!"
Aurora raked her hand through her hair in an irritated motion.
"Xanos, work on finding a way to release that dwarf. I think I know a way to keep this idiot busy."
Before Xanos could question her, she had turned back to the laughing giant. "So, Rumgut. You like a good drink, do you?"
The giant bobbed his head twice in the affirmative. "Rumgut love rum!"
Aurora put her hand to her chest in exaggerated surprise."Why, what a coincidence. Rum is my favorite, too."
"Oooh, you drink lots? Think you can drink more than Rumgut? Me like contests almost as much as me like rum!"
No, Xanos wanted to shout. Not that! Surely Aurora was not that stupid. Surely she did not think she could outdrink a giant. . .
Aurora's teeth gleamed in the firelight as she bared them in a wide grin.
"I'd like nothing better."
A.N.² Hoo, boy. Sadhow Xanos isoften the more sensible one of the pair. I'd like to thank my friend for suggesting this chapter'stitle- it continues the abysmal pun trend of the last few. Oh yes, and I have to confess thatI think Rumgut is completely adorable.