Cards Reshuffled

Just because somebody is offering you advice doesn’t necessarily mean they have your best interests at heart. Then again, when you are desperate enough you are likely to grasp for every outstretched hand within reach, and all you can hope is that the hand in question won’t come off.

Excerpt from ‘Interview With An Assassin’

“So, are we gonna kill some really Big Bad Monsters soon?” Lilarcor asked. “You won’t have any problems now that I’m along, ya know. Hey, did I tell you that my brother’s a +12 Hackmaster?”

“Yes,” Jaheira said, in a rather strained voice. “About six times so far.”

“Oh, Minsc likes this clever sword that knows how to talk!” Minsc said. “The sword has just the right idea about kicking Evil Butt, or possibly stabbing it. Can Minsc keep it?”

“Of course,” Zaerini hastily said. “I think you’re the one who likes it best anyway, and who’ll make best use of it. Just make sure it keeps its mouth…or whatever it is that does the talking…shut whenever we need to be stealthy.” It’s a bit weird…that voice we heard before, the one that told the riddles, that one sounded more clever than Lilarcor does. Surely the sword itself couldn’t have brought Quallo down here to be its guardian? I’m sure it can’t cast spells, and it doesn’t seem bright enough. “Let’s go talk to Quallo again,” she suggested. “I want to see if he can tell us anything else.”

When they returned to the old hermit, they found him on the floor, feeding scraps of meat to his pet carrion crawler. Yet, when he looked up there was a new lucidity in his eyes that certainly hadn’t been there before. “You!” he said, smiling with his mostly toothless mouth. “We have met before, haven’t we?”

“We spoke with you only a short while ago,” Anomen said. “Do you not recall that?”

The old man hesitated. “I…am not sure. Everything seems so misty, like a dream…how long have I been down here? How did I get here?”

“I think you were charmed or dominated by something,” Rini said, trying to break the news as gently as she could. “Do you remember nothing about it?”

Quallo shook his head. “I don’t think so…except….”

“Yes?”

“There is this very odd scrap of memory…something involving a duck.” He shook his head. “I must get home. My family, they will be missing me…I hope they won’t mind me bringing my new friend here home.” He hobbled off down the corridor, the carrion crawler trailing after him.

“Poor man,” Jaheira said as she followed him with her eyes. “I hope his family is still alive. But I do wonder who this ‘The One’ is that we heard mentioned earlier.”

“You called for Ducky?” an unpleasantly familiar dry and dusty voice said from behind them. Rini recognized it well, much as she wished she hadn’t. Oh no…not him!

“Well hello there!” Nevaziah the Lich said, with what might possibly have been a pleasant smile on a face that didn’t look like a wizened old prune. He was still wearing that ridiculously ugly tall hat, though mercifully enough he had replaced his bath towel with a mage robe. The robe in question was a bright orange, and there were…yes indeed, there were yellow little ducks embroidered all along the hem and the sleeves. In one claw-like hand the lich held the yellow toy duck that had probably been the inspiration for the robes ‘decorations’. The cheerfully stupid expression on the animal’s face created a very disturbing contrast to the lich’s shriveled face and the red pinpoints deep within his dark eye sockets. In fact, Rini could almost swear that the duck was smirking at her.

“Er…hello?” she said, desperately trying to think of something better to say, preferably before….

“You!” Edwina said, pointing an accusing finger at the lich. “I have a bone to pick with you, and I’m in the mood to extricate it directly from your spine! Look what your thrice-accursed Nether Scroll did to me! (Perhaps the lich used it already…that would certainly explain the insanity.)”

“Oh, I recognize you now!” Nevaziah cheerfully said. “It’s the little thieves, isn’t it? The thieves who stole my Nether Scroll?”

Edwina’s mouth hung open, and her finger remained raised into the air. “Why…yes…I mean…that makes no difference! Turn me back this instant, or I will grind you down and use you for spell components! Lich dust is good for so many things…” Then she startled with surprise as Minsc patted her on the shoulder.

“The Evil Girl Wizard should not be so hasty,” the ranger said. “Minsc knows what it is like to get really mad and want to hit things really hard, and Boo says that that is all right for a big strong warrior like Minsc, but if you lose your head you can’t do your sparkly magic, and then you could get hurt.” He held Boo up, and Rini was relieved to notice that the hamster had returned to normal after its previous exposure to Edwina’s spell components. “See? Let Boo’s calm hamster presence soothe you, then you will feel lots better.”

Edwina’s eyes looked a little wild as she stared at the hamster. “I don’t want soothing! I want revenge! (I’m being lectured on restraint by a Rashemite berserker and his rabid hamster. It is probably a good thing that Teacher Dekaras isn’t here to see this…I’m not certain even my awesome intellectual powers could come up with a palatable explanation.)”

“I can’t turn you back anyway,” Nevaziah said, grinning widely. “I’ve forgotten how to use the Scroll, you see. All gone! Poof!” He giggled. “Give it a few hundred years though, you may figure it all out…or maybe not. Anyway, I see you’ve found the sword!”

“Lilarcor?” Zaerini asked, glancing at the sword. “It was you who hid Lilarcor down the sewer and charmed Quallo into guarding the clues?” I thought I recognized the style of those awful rhymes…not quite as bad as the one about the duck, but almost.

“One of my apprentices, really,” the lich said, scratching at his nose. A small bug fell out of it and skittered off across the floor. “What was his name again…Vallah…was that it? So hard to remember…I did help him by setting up those clever, clever rhymes for the wards though. Always wanted to be a poet…I wonder what happened to Vallah? Haven’t seen him around in a long time.”

“Oh, him!” Lilarcor piped up. “See, he wanted to live up to that rhyme ya wrote about the hand, so he asked me to chop his hand off and stick it down the drain for a clue…only then he died of blood poisoning right after finishing the wards, see? Boy, I’m glad to be out of that place, nobody to talk to except for rats, and rats are boring. Chopping their tails off was fun though. Is that a duck? Why is it looking at me funny? HEY DUCK! YOU WANNA PIECE OF ME? I CAN TAKE YOU, JUST COME ON!”

“Aha!” Nevaziah said. “Now I recall why Vallah was so desperate to hide that sword…but that’s not important right now, is it, Ducky?” He patted the toy duck on the head. Then he gave Edwina a meaningful look. “I don’t know how to use the Scroll to restore you…but I know of somebody who might.” By now he was rubbing his hands eagerly. “His name is…Kangaxx!” He giggled again. “You just go see him in his house down by the Docks…I’m sure he’ll be happy to help. Mind the death trap on the door though.” Still giggling he turned around and scuffled off along the corridor. “Just tell him ‘hello’ from me…yes Ducky, won’t that be lovely?” As he turned around the corner he started singing, a disturbingly cheerful little song.

Ducky Ducky, he’s the One!
A Ducky who is lots of fun!
Don’t annoy him or you’ll rue
The day when Ducky comes for you!

“You should be relieved he did not try to use any magic on you,” Jaheira told Edwina. “He is insane enough that he would most likely have turned you inside out.”

“A shame…” Anomen sighed. “Perhaps it is still possible to convince him? I could run after him.”

Edwina, surprisingly, ignored him. “Kangaxx…” she said, sounding thoughtful. “Kangaxx…now where have I heard that name before? (It must have been a long time ago, or my encyclopedic brain would already have supplied me with the proper answer.)”

Rini shook her head. “Whoever he may be, I don’t trust Nevaziah not to try to set us up. If he wants us to go see this Kangaxx, that’s an excellent reason not to, as far as I’m concerned.” Then she noticed the pleading look in the wizard’s eyes. “Oh, all right. I understand. If we can’t think of anything better, we’ll go see if we can find him, but I’d rather try the temples again first.”

“Probably a wise idea,” Jan agreed. “I wish my Auntie Ermengard had been as wise when she got cursed.”

“I am warning you…” Edwina said, scowling darkly.

“You see,” Jan went on, totally ignoring her, “Auntie Ermengard had this obsession about granting herself eternal youth, much like some other people who shall remain unnamed, seeing that I’m a tactful gnome with no wish to offend. She’d bought this Elixir of Eternal Youth from an old wizard, but unfortunately it didn’t work, despite it containing both Aqua, royal jelly, calf liver and pixie dust. She rubbed it onto her face every night, but all that happened was that she got a few pimples. So she went back to the wizard to complain, and demanded that he fix her up with the strongest youth spell he had or she’d give him a good whacking. Always had a nasty temper, Auntie Ermengard, it got her into trouble more than once.”

“Does anybody have a gag available?” Edwina asked. “Anybody? (I could tear one out of my robe I suppose, but it would be such a shame to destroy all the neat stitching.)”

“So,” Jan said, “naturally the wizard got a bit annoyed with Auntie. He put a spell on her all right, and since that day she started aging in reverse, getting younger and younger. It was all well and fine at first, but she was mighty peeved when she had to get back into nappies, and I won’t even go into the horrible thing that she eventually put poor Granny Jansen through…giving birth in the right direction is bad enough, or so Ma Jansen always told me when I was a naughty wee gnome.”

“Right now,” Edwina muttered, “the one and only thing keeping him from becoming a Roast Gnome is his previous efforts as Count Turnipsome…and if he keeps this up, I may just forget myself.”

After some more searching of the sewers, the party eventually came upon a ladder leading upwards, with a trapdoor on top. As Rini strained her ears, she could just barely make out muffled voices coming from above, though she couldn’t catch the words. She met Jaheira’s eyes, and the druid nodded. Clearly the other half-elf had heard the same.

“It is likely that the slavers hide above us,” Jaheira said in a low voice. “This is a dangerous situation – this is the only entrance available to us apart from the main one, but we can only go up the ladder one by one, and that will make us very vulnerable.”

“Yet we must proceed!” Anomen said, his face fervent as he looked at the trapdoor. “We cannot leave those poor people imprisoned and in the fetters of evil!”

“Lower your voice! Do you wish them to hear us?”

Zaerini was looking at the trapdoor too, thinking. Of course we can’t leave those people up there…but I don’t want any of us to get hurt either. I wonder if there’s any way of turning things to our advantage, so we won’t have to fight unless we’re ready for it. After a while, she came to a decision. Yes, that’s worth a try. It’s dangerous all right, but I think we can pull it off. Turning towards her friends, she quietly started explaining her plan.