In The Cards

There is something about the number three. Good things or bad, they usually come three at a time, whether it's three little pigs eaten by a hungry wolf, three wishes granted by a genie, or three people romantically obsessed with you at the same time. The last is a seriously bad thing, no matter what you might think.

Excerpt from 'Ruminations Of A Master Bard'

The first thing Zaerini saw as she stepped into the warm light of the first floor was the dining table. A regular dining table, with a pristine white tablecloth, set with plates and crystal glasses that didn't have a single speck of dust between them. A bowl of fresh fruit was on the table, as well as a vase of lovely flowers. "Do we really want to know who set that table?" she said out loud.

"More importantly," Edwin said, his dark eyes grim, "do we want to know who intends to eat at it? (Or just what they intend to eat?)"

"I r-r-really wish you hadn't said that," Khalid said, glancing nervously about the room. Apart from the dining table there wasn't much to be seen. Several doorways led off in different directions, and the staircase continued upwards.

"Let us go take a look around," Jaheira suggested. As she moved towards the north-western door she suddenly halted at the sound of a chorus of horrible wailing and moaning. Then a group of ghasts came charging towards the adventurers, gray skin flaking and dead eyes glittering milky white.

"Clangeddin's might, be with us!" Yeslick roared and swung his warhammer in the air as he set course for the undead beings. Then he suddenly looked very surprised as a green cloud of horribly smelling smoke erupted around him, and he collapsed to the floor with a blissful smile on his face.

"It's a trap!" Rini shouted. "Fight them from a distance! Try to draw them off Yeslick!" She started firing arrows as fast as she could at the ghasts, wishing she'd had some more of the fiery ones from the Firewine Ruins. Fire was good against undead. Imoen and Khalid followed her example, and one of Jaheira's sling bullets punched a big hole through the forehead of a ghast bending over the unconscious Yeslick. Edwin's voice rose and fell as he hastily chanted the words of a spell, and a group of hobgoblin archers materialized and started peppering the ghasts with missiles of their own, while the Red Wizard followed up with a few Magic Missiles. It took some time, but eventually the ghasts had all died a second death. Dragging Yeslick off the trap he was lying on while keeping her nose covered, Jaheira started examining the stricken dwarf.

"Eh?" Yeslick said as he coughed violently and sat up. "What happened?"

"Some sort of poison trap," Imoen explained. The pink-haired girl was lying flat on her stomach, fiddling with something close to the floor. "Aha! Here we are. Very tricky." There was a small * snip * as she cut through an almost invisible trip wire.

Zaerini looked from the trap to Yeslick. Jaheira was starting to heal what she had declared was a broken leg, but there was a limit on how many healing spells they had available at any given time. "Immy, while we're in here I'd like you to be constantly alert," she told her friend. "You'll have to go first and check for traps. This was bad enough, but another one may be dangerous enough to kill us all in an instant. We'll all be counting on you to avoid that."

Imoen drew herself up proudly. "Don't worry," she said. "I can handle it, you'll see."

"And if you can't, we'll likely not be alive long enough to blame you for getting us all killed," Edwin muttered.

Through the door where the ghasts had appeared lay a kitchen, unusually neat and tidy considering that the group of undead had apparently been in the midst of fixing themselves some dinner there. Some bread lay on a tabletop, and on the stove a pot of soup was simmering. It smelled good, actually. However, as Jaheira carefully stirred it with the wooden spoon standing inside the pot, she fished out something small and white.

"Is…is that…," Imoen stammered, her eyes wide.

"Yes," the druid answered solemnly. "It is a human tooth. I think we may not be the first adventurers who have come here." She took the pot off the stove and placed it on the floor, then put out the fire.

Imoen kept staring in horror at the pot. "Shouldn't we…do something about it?" she asked. "It feels wrong to just leave it like this."

"What are we supposed to do?" Edwin asked. "Hold a ceremonial burial for a pot of soup? I suppose I could fetch those flowers from outside and drop them in, but we have no idea who's in there, so we can't really do anything personal. It may even be several people mixed together. (An interesting idea. I wonder what would happen if one tried to raise them? Would they merge together as some kind of goulash man?)"

Rini was just about to ask him to stop disgusting her when she heard a loud thump behind her back. As she turned around she saw Khalid lying on the floor in a dead faint, an anxious Jaheira bending over him. "Oh dear," she said. "Thanks a lot, Edwin. You're a real morale booster, you know that?"

"Hmpf," the Red Wizard said, looking slightly insulted. "Can I help it if some people are overly sensitive and cannot appreciate the complex workings of an analytical and scientific mind? (Some of these monkeys wouldn't know an experiment if it jumped up and bit their nose. Come to think of it, some of mine tend to do just that…)"

"Whatever. Let's just say I don't think soup is a good topic for conversation right now, so could you please try to restrain yourself before you make somebody else pass out? It's time to move on anyway."

The rest of the floor didn't really hold anything interesting. Past the kitchen a dark corridor wound itself around and back to the central chamber, past a trapped chest of drawers that held a bunch of fire arrows which Rini gratefully picked up. A small suite of bedroom and sitting room hid a few semi-precious gems, and a couple of Haste potions. And then they found a small staircase, and they could feel a draft of fresh air coming down it.

The adventurers followed the narrow stairs upwards, and eventually emerged onto the flat top of the tower. It was cold up here, and the wind was blowing strongly, whistling around their ears, almost pushing them over the edge. This however, was the least of their problems. Three large beasts came crawling towards them, their jaws half-open to display rows and rows of glistening teeth, their pale green eyes shining with a cold light.

Oh no, Rini had the time to think. Not these things again… Trying their best to avoid looking into the eyes of the three basilisks, the adventurers had no choice but to defend themselves blindly. Jaheira called down more lightning from the sky, and it hissed and sizzled as it hit one of the great beasts, making the basilisk roar with agony. Then the druid charged the nearest monster, Khalid and Yeslick close behind. Edwin used his wand to summon forth more monsters, gnolls this time. Before the battle was over Durlag's Tower had a lovely group of six gnoll statues to decorate its roof, all of them very lifelike.

"What in the Nine Hells," Edwin swore, "are a group of basilisks doing on top of the roof? How did they even manage to crawl up that steep staircase? (If it didn't sound so paranoid I could swear somebody deposited them there simply in order to harass us.)"

"Oh, I agree," Zaerini said, rubbing her arm where a basilisk had just managed to draw blood. "That Durlag is starting to seriously annoy me. I mean, most people settle for a guard dog or three. But no, not him. I wonder what's next on the daily list of freak occurrences? Rain of cows? A little trip to the Abyss and back? Meeting up with an assassin who doesn't chatter like a magpie before he tries to kill me? A divine intervention?" She paused. "The last one I can do without, by the way."

"Hey, guys!" Imoen called out. "Look what I found!" She brandished a finely crafted scimitar in the air, something that made the blade glitter with a faint green sheen. "It was hidden in this trapped container over that way, it nearly took my hand off!" She handed the sword to Jaheira. "Here, you use it. I've already got one of those we stole from Dri…er…the one we found lying about in the forest. Yep. That's the one. The shiny, pretty, twinkly one."

Jaheira frowned at this comment, but she gratefully accepted the sword. "Thank you, child," she said. "I am certain it will be most useful."

The top of the tower turned out to be otherwise empty, with no other way inside than the one they had come. Retracing their steps, the adventurers returned to the central chamber and continued on up the stairs towards the next floor. The room they entered into looked a bit like a large, round living-room. There was a big fireplace at one end, currently cold and empty, with an enormous red couch and a few armchairs in front of it. Rini didn't have the time to see much more before she heard a very annoyed voice addressing her.

"All right," it said. "All of you hold right there if you want to keep on living. And if you don't give me a damn good reason for being here I may just kill you anyway."

Zaerini turned her head to see that she being menaced by a very short man holding a very large crossbow, almost as large as himself. On his jacket some words had been sewn with red thread, and they read 'Riggolo Rotten, Tomb Excavator Extraordinare.' Right, the bard thought to herself. First the cooking ghasts, then the misplaced basilisks. And now this. Why do freaks and weird things always come in threes?