She was able to perceive, however, that Fia wasn’t standing still for her secondhand smoke. She grunted and charged Yör with an implacable expression on her face, sword ready to strike. Yör hit her with the spell before she could get in range, and her charge abruptly ended as a small boy with dark brown skin like hers filled the space between her and the white-furred wizard, dead eyes staring at her and a hatchet buried in his left temple. Grinda couldn’t be sure because Argabella’s dad was loudly haranguing her about getting a real job as a wench down at the bar, but she was fairly certain she heard the mighty Fia say “Beef?” or something similar in a tiny voice. Grinda focused on the warrior. The small boy calmly wrested the hatchet out of his skull, switched it to his right hand, and threw it at Fia, who flinched away at the last possible second. The axe sank into her unprotected left shoulder instead of her face. Any hope Grinda had cherished that Yör’s magic was limited to illusions shattered—that axe was very, very real. Fia cried out and dropped her sword as the boy advanced on her with slow, plodding steps.
“Yes! Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Yör said, his voice triumphant. He grinned nastily and said, “Might as well,” shooting another stream of black mist past Grinda. She wondered for a moment who he was targeting until she heard a despairing bleat and realized she’d forgotten the goat. No—the Chosen Goat! Perhaps his aura would deny Yör’s magic, and even if it didn’t, she reasoned, what possible fear could a kid goat have that would do them any damage? Grinda felt a spark of hope for an entire second before it was utterly crushed.
Gustave did have a kid fear, and when it manifested, Grinda would have screamed if she hadn’t been frozen in place. For it was her nephew Worstley, alive and unharmed and smiling a merciless smile at the goat as he brandished a knife in his hand and said, “Sorry, Gus, but my mom’s ready to try out some new recipes, and you’re the main ingredient.” Unlike Fia’s adversary, this Worstley didn’t maintain his focus on his target: he looked about him, utterly confused by his surroundings, realizing that he was not on his farm in Borix. His eyes fell first on a sobbing Poltro, trying to escape the llamataur that had latched on to her cape and was trying to reel her in, but then they slid past, and he said, “Aunt Grinda?” an instant before the llamataur gave up on Poltro and lashed out its long neck to take a mortal bite out of the innocent and somewhat stupid boy staring at her, dumbfounded. The razor teeth scissored into Worstley’s flesh and pulled away, blood fountaining out of the boy’s throat as strands of muscle clung to the sides of the beast’s mouth. Grinda’s nephew gurgled and fell backward in a shower of his own blood, and Grinda felt the strangest sensation, something she hadn’t known in many years: grief.
“That was a surprising resurrection,” Gustave said, almost as if nothing had happened. Grinda could hear him trotting up beside her on the stone floor as the llamataur hunched over its kill and took another bite of her nephew’s raw flesh. “I mean obviously more so for Pooboy than for me, but wow, you know?”
Grinda was an old witch, and she had seen many things, and she knew that this version of Worstley wasn’t real. It was some sort of golem or seeming called to life by Yör’s magic. Yet deep within her frozen form, her heart felt heavy and cold.
The others, however, seemed to feel nothing.
“Cor, that was a close one!” Poltro said, scrambling over to them with tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Miss Grinda, for what you did, or else that would’ve been me getting all chewed on.”
“I don’t think she can talk right now,” Gustave said.
“Well, we should help her, then! We’ll get out of this together!”
The goat snorted. “Help? When have any of you ever helped me?”
“Just now! My llamataur ate your farm boy.”
“But that wasn’t you. Or him either, because his body is in Borix. None of this is real.”
“The llamataur wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me, so I reckon I did help, and I reckon it is real, as I’m covered in blood and viscera and whatnot.”
The billy goat spat directly at the rogue’s face, but he then turned his head to assess the remaining threats. “Fine. The llamataur is busy eating my pooboy, so I’ll take down the mean dad and you take care of the boy with the gaping head wound. Grinda, you stand there and do absolutely nothing, as per usual.”
“That’s a solid plan, that is,” Poltro agreed, and slunk off to the left, where Grinda could just make out Fia backing away at the advance of the smallish boy she should have had no trouble cutting down. Or she would have had no trouble if she were armed at this point with anything beyond pruning shears, though Grinda supposed Fia could at least remove the hatchet from her own shoulder. Perhaps, like her, the mighty warrior was fighting a bigger battle on the inside.
Argabella was likewise backing away from her father, who was loudly explaining that if Argabella would have just listened and practiced more with her lute, then maybe her mother wouldn’t have left her father for a slimy CPA and they could all make tie-dyed shirts and go on tour with a band called Phische. The bard screamed at him to shut up, and the father’s grip on the maraca became a bit more serious and, as Argabella would’ve said, Smackful. Gustave lowered his head and charged, thudding his head into Argabella’s father’s flanks and sending the man staggering to the left, where he stumbled and hit his head against the base of a marble statue, lapsing into unconsciousness and mumbling about royalties.
Argabella shouted for joy and praised Gustave as the goatiest goat who ever goated, leaving Grinda to wonder at what tender age Argabella must have run away from home or started hiding who she really was from her father. But that celebration roused the attention of the llamataur, who looked up from its meal and realized that there was even fresher meat walking around than the farm boy it had just killed. It rose with a bloody muzzle, bugled a yodel-gargle, and lunged after Gustave. By that point, Grinda was actually rooting for the llamataur.
A glow from the back of the chamber drew her attention for a brief moment: Yör had closed his eyes, and his lips rippled in an ecstatic curl at the edges. He was taking delight—even nourishment—from their fear, and his skin radiated a soft light that hadn’t been there before, his sagging flesh a bit filled out and his wrinkled features smoothed to the chiseled planes of youth.
Movement drew Grinda’s eyes to the left; her eyeballs were beginning to ache and dry out. Poltro leapt onto the back of the shambling boy plaguing Fia, reached around, and plunged her dagger repeatedly into his chest, all to no avail except to affect the boy’s posture somewhat. He did not even jerk in response to the stabbings but kept on moving toward Fia, who continued to back away. Poltro eventually gave up, slipped off the boy’s back, and looked curiously at her knife, which was bloodless.
“Cor,” she said. “Cutter led me to believe knives would work a whole lot better than that. Maybe I should have paid the smith for that Extended Warranty of Functionality and Efficaciousness. People say their knives always stop working and go bad right after the two-year Limited Warranty you get with the blade, but I didn’t believe them until now.”
But Gustave didn’t have time for warranties; he was running for his life.
“Fia!” he bleated as he galloped around the cavern, the slobbery llamataur giving chase. They were behind Grinda now, and she couldn’t see them, though she could hear the goat’s trotters clopping and the heavy footfalls of the llamataur punctuating its demented bugling. “A little help?”
It occurred to Grinda that the goat could lead the llamataur to her and she’d be devoured easily, unable to dodge or even flinch as the teeth closed around her throat. She felt panic rising and interpreted every new sound as potentially the last she’d hear, and she had never known such perfect helplessness. Not even in the leech acid, not since she was a little girl, long before she’d mastered magic, and—
“Fia, help Gustave!” Argabella said, rushing ov
er to where Poltro stood, bemused by her knife. “We’ll take care of the boy.”
It sounded so simple. But the boy, who’d been content to shamble forward slowly, became quite animated once Argabella tackled him to the ground. Any interruption of his progress toward Fia aroused a spirited defense. Argabella’s inexpert attempts to subdue him only resulted in her getting punched in the nose and throat until she rolled off with a cry. Poltro fell upon him again, having decided to give her malfunctioning knife one more try. She stabbed him in the throat, and that produced no blood or even wasted breath, for Fia’s fear was not anything alive but rather something dead. Grinda guessed the boy was something conjured by the power of the Dread Necromancer Steve, though Fia’s meeting with him hadn’t been during her childhood. That was what you got for confiding in someone on a third date, she supposed.
“Go for the brain!” Argabella cried. “Mess with its brain!” A flying fist punched her again, and she gave a tiny yip before falling still.
“Oh! Right!” Poltro said, and plunged her knife down through the boy’s eye even as he clocked her upside the temple. His struggles ceased, and he lay still while Poltro moaned and clutched her head. Argabella didn’t move at all.
Fia inched forward into Grinda’s view as the warrior pivoted to face the llamataur. She finally wrenched the hatchet out of her shoulder with her right hand, grunting in pain but looking determined and murderous. Blood poured from the wound, but her eyes blazed as she found her target. She threw the axe at the llamataur, and it at least hit him, though it wasn’t with any part of the blade. The haft thunked off its chest, and the creature grunted and roared, fully aware of what the intent was. Or maybe, Grinda thought, it was roaring in response to Fia lunging to retrieve her dropped sword. Whatever the impulse, the llamataur was already running full speed while Fia was starting from a dead stop. Gustave rocketed past and looped back to where Grinda was frozen, and Fia and the llamataur crashed together to the ground, fighting over her sword. She hammered a fist into its jaw, and the fuzzy head slid away from her on the long neck like a yo-yo on a string, its body rolling over slightly so that its front was exposed. Fia took advantage and levered up a knee into its groin. It ceased grasping for the sword and instead rolled over completely onto its back and grasped at its bruised nads. That allowed Fia to retrieve her sword, regain her feet, and plunge the blade into the llamataur’s chest.
It died with ululations and a torrent of diarrhea.
Yör clapped three times and grinned in appreciation. Grinda thought he looked a bit taller and had filled out to the point where his kilt strained to contain him. “After a slow start, those were some fantastic fears. And delicious, by the way. That meal will last me a while. And congratulations on surviving your fears, because most people perish by them. You are free to go.” He waved at the wall nearest the mound of moths and bread under which Toby had fallen and under which he remained, inert. A door that had not been there before appeared between two sconces and opened, revealing a hallway bereft of corpses and well lit by torches. “That will lead you out. Belladonna the healer is just outside the catacombs should you make it past the tongues.” He cast a doubtful gaze at them, ending with a look at the mound of moths and bread chunks burying Lord Toby. “I don’t think you’ll make it. But maybe you could pay her with some of those golden croutons if you do.”
Yör chuckled at his own joke as he scooped up his copper goblet and sauntered toward the door behind the throne from which he’d originally emerged. “Respect the umlaut, kids,” he said.
Fia yanked her sword out of the llamataur’s chest and bloody goo fountained out of the wound, splashing noisily onto the floor. She roared and charged after the emotional vampire, but Yör shut the door in her face, and its outline immediately disappeared as if it had been a solid wall all along. She hurled some choice eastern slang terms for anatomy at the wall, hoping he’d be able to hear them.
“Oooh, what’s that last one mean?” Gustave asked, his trotters shifting next to Grinda. When the sand witch didn’t answer, he cocked his head at her. “Still can’t move or speak? Guess he exaggerated about your freedom to go.” Gustave clopped around until he was standing uncomfortably close to Grinda’s flashy new hiking boots, with his tail facing her knees. He swung his head to look at her over his bony shoulder. “I just nearly got eaten by a llamataur. Not really different from any other day, though. Being a goat among humans means I could be on the menu whenever you guys get hungry. Every time your nephew appeared in the barnyard, I wondered whether it was to feed me or to feed his family. Remember when Lord Toby and Poltro were trying to turn me into curry and you did absolutely nothing to help me? Well, I’ve whipped up a little something to pay you back for that.”
The billy goat’s tail lifted, and Grinda felt hot little plops landing on the tops of her feet and the bottoms of her shins. “I call those cocoa pebbles. Or chocolate soil. Gourmet butt dumplings, if you prefer. Cooked to order just for you at my body temperature. That’s what I feel like all the time living in your world. Helpless and crapped upon. You get to feel it for a few minutes. Please enjoy this tiny serving of justice.”
Grinda’s first instinct was to internally rage and swear vengeance on the goat, but she just couldn’t get up the energy. Something about being defenseless for the first time since her youth made her realize that for all her haughtiness, she couldn’t survive alone. Whether it was Milieu Goobersnootch’s loving care, the adoration of her sparklecrabs, the aid of the goblin beauticians, or Fia and Argabella bravely storming through acid to help her, she couldn’t get by without a little help from her friends. And now she knew: Gustave’s greatest fear was being betrayed and eaten by his so-called compatriots. No wonder he pooped on everyone—he expected that everyone, sooner or later, would poop on him.
Ignoring the warmth on her feet, Grinda watched events unfold, still out of her control. Fia turned from the wall and surveyed the room, and her broad shoulders slumped for a few seconds. Then she sniffed, flicked her sword to sling away the gore adhering to it, and stomped over to where Argabella lay curled up next to the twice-dead corpse of that stubbornly undead kid. Poltro moaned and rubbed at her temples but otherwise didn’t move.
“Honey bunny,” Fia whispered tenderly, kneeling down and stroking long fingers through soft fur. “Are you okay?”
Grinda noted that Fia was not okay despite walking around as if she were. That hatchet wound looked nasty, and it was still bleeding. Fia shook the bard’s shoulder. “Hey. Wake up, girl. We have to go.”
The bard did not respond.
“Argabella?”
Even Grinda’s cold heart ached.
The rabbit girl wasn’t moving.
Fia could feel the tears welling in her eyes and didn’t care. She was just about to shout Argabella’s name when the rabbit woman coughed, wheezed, spat blood, and made a tiny mewling noise.
“Everything hurts. My nose especially. Is my lute broken? I need to sing ‘The Ouchie Song.’ ”
Fia laugh-cried in relief. Suddenly everything was fine again. “Your lute’s okay, I think. And you’ll be fine, too. But we’ve got to get you to the healer.”
Argabella’s eyes went wide, and she almost touched Fia’s shoulder. “You, too, though.”
Gustave pranced over to Lord Toby’s moth mound and festively kicked him in the ribs.
“Oof!”
“Good news! You’re not dead yet!” the goat told the hedge wizard. “Get up so we can get out of here.”
“Pfaughh!” A spray of crispy bread and insects at one end revealed where Toby’s mouth was, and soon the entire pile shifted as Toby struggled to his feet, flailing and squeaking a tiny bit when he realized there were moth corpses on him. “What! No! Get off! Bah! This is an outrage! No one treats the Dark Lord like this!”
Fia noticed that he had a dead moth stuck in his beard extensions and failed to mention the
fact. Added to the glowing algae and crouton muck, it looked rather hardcore.
“Pasty dude treated you pretty well, considering,” Gustave said. “Most everyone else wound up getting zapped somehow. All you got were ineffectual butterflies.”
“That was my fault,” Fia said, because she felt it to be true even if it wasn’t. It was why she wanted nothing but to tend roses and hide from all the trouble the world kept bringing to her door. Even here, trying simply to pass through, she’d endangered everyone with that horrible reminder of her past—and with the way she’d been so busy dealing with it that she’d neglected the llamataur. At least she hadn’t gotten Worstley killed again. Or had that really been him? “Hey, Grinda, was that really your nephew, or some kind of weird copy, or…?”
“She’s frozen. Can’t talk or even avoid being pooped on,” Gustave explained as he trotted over to commiserate. “And I don’t think this was your fault. I mean, that umlaut guy came after everyone. Speaking of which, who or what was that kid?”
Poltro groaned and sat up, holding her head. “Cor, I’d like to know that, too, because he rung my bell good, he did.”
Fia shook her head and clutched at her wound, putting pressure on it. “I really don’t want to talk about that. I mean, obviously that was a traumatic thing from my childhood, but…I don’t think I can share it with you. I’m sorry.”