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gone fer two days!”
Nathak just nodded and took a deep breath.
“What’re ye fer?” the third goblin asked. “Did ye finded the gnolls?”
Nathak’s face blanched, and no amount of deep breathing could relieve the fit that came over the goblin. “Ulgulu in there?” he asked squeamishly.
The two goblin guards looked curiously at each other, then back to Nathak. “He finded the gnolls,” one of them remarked, guessing the problem. “Dead gnolls.”
“Ulgulu won’ts be glad,” the other piped in, and they moved apart, one of them lifting the heavy curtain that separated the entry room from the audience chamber.
Nathak hesitated and started to look back, as though reconsidering this whole course. Perhaps roughly shoved him into the audience chamber, crossing their spears behind Nathak to prevent any flight would be preferable, he thought. The goblin guards grabbed their spindly companion and retreat.
Nathak managed to find a measure of composure when he saw that it was Kempfana, not Ulgulu, sitting in the huge chair across the room. Kempfana had earned a reputation among the goblin ranks as the calmer of the ruling brothers, though Kempfana, too, had impulsively devoured enough of his minions to earn their healthy respect. Kempfana hardly took note of the goblin’s entrance, instead busily conversing with Lagerbottoms, the fat hill giant that formerly claimed the cave complex as his own.
Nathak shuffled across the room, drawing the gazes of both the hill giant and the huge–nearly as large as the hill giant–scarlet-skinned goblinoid.
“Yes, Nathak,” Kempfana prompted, silencing the hill giant’s forthcoming protest with a simple wave of the hand. “What have you to report?”
“Me… me,” Nathak stuttered.
Kempfana’s large eyes suddenly glowed orange, a clear sign of dangerous excitement.
“Me finded the gnolls!” Nathak blurted. “Dead. Killded.” Lagerbottoms issued a low and threatening growl, but Kempfana clutched the hill giant’s arm tightly, reminding him of who was in charge.
“Dead?” the scarlet-skinned goblin asked quietly.
Nathak nodded.
Kempfana lamented the loss of such reliable slaves, but the barghest whelp’s thoughts at that moment were more centered on his brother’s inevitably volatile reaction to the news. Kempfana didn’t have long to wait.
“Dead!” came a roar that nearly split the stone. All three monsters in the room instinctively ducked and turned to the side, just in time to see a huge boulder, the crude door to another room, hurst out and go skipping off to the side. “Ulgulu!” Nathak squealed, and the little goblin fell facedown to the floor, not daring to look.
The huge, purple-skinned goblinlike creature stormed into the audience chamber, his eyes seething in orange-glowing rage. Three great strides took Ulgulu right up beside the hill giant, and Lagerbottoms suddenly seemed very small and vulnerable.
“Dead!” Ulgulu roared again in rage. As his goblin tribe had diminished, killed either by the humans of the village or by other monsters–or eaten by Ulgulu during his customary fits of anger–the small gnoll band had become the primary capturing force for the lair.
Kempfana cast an ugly glare at his larger sibling. They had come to the Material Plane together, two barghest whelps, to eat and grow. Ulgulu had promptly claimed dominance, devouring the strongest of their victims and, thus, growing larger and stronger. By the color of Ulgulu’s skin, and by his sheer size and strength, it was apparent that the whelp would soon be able to return to the reeking valley rifts of Gehenna.
Kempfana hoped that day was near. When Ulgulu was gone, he would rule; he would eat and grow stronger. Then Kempfana, too, could escape his interminable weaning period on this cursed plane, could return to compete among the barghests on their rightful plane of existence.
“Dead,” Ulgulu growled again. “Get up, wretched goblin, and tell me how! What did this to
15
my gnolls?”
Nathak groveled a minute longer, then managed to rise to his knees. “Me no know,” the goblin whimpered. “Gnolls dead, slashed and ripped.”
Ulgulu rocked back on the heels of his floppy, oversized feet. The gnolls had gone off to raid a farmhouse, with orders to return with the farmer and his oldest son. Those two hardy human meals would have strengthened the great barghest considerably, perhaps even bringing Ulgulu to the level of maturation he needed to return to Gehenna.
Now, in light of Nathak’s report, Ulgulu would have to send Lagerbottoms, or perhaps even go himself, and the sight of either the giant or the purple-skinned monstrosity could prompt the human settlement to dangerous, organized action. “Tephanis!” Ulgulu roared suddenly.
pebble dislodged and fell. The drop was only a few feet, but by the time the pebble hit the floor, a Over on the far wall, across from where Ulgulu had made his crashing entrance, a small slender sprite had zipped out of the small cubby he used as a bedroom, crossed the twenty feet of the audience hall, and run right up Ulgulu’s side to sit comfortably atop the barghest’s immense shoulder.
“You-called-for-me, yes-you-did, my-master,” Tephanis buzzed, too quickly. The others hadn’t even realized that the two-foot-tall sprite had entered the room. Kempfana turned away, shaking his head in amazement.
Ulgulu roared with laughter; he so loved to witness the spectacle of Tephanis, his most prized servant. Tephanis was a quickling, a diminutive sprite that moved in a dimension that transcended the normal concept of time. Possessing boundless energy and an agility that would shame the most proficient halfling thief, quicklings could perform many tasks that no other race could even attempt. Ulgulu had befriended Tephanis early in his tenure on the Material Plane–Tephanis was the only member of the lair’s diverse tenants that the barghest did not claim rulership over–and that bond had given the young whelp a distinct advantage over his sibling. With Tephanis scouting out and knew exactly how to win against those adventurers more powerful than he. potential victims, Ulgulu knew exactly which ones to devour and which ones to leave to Kempfana,
“Dear Tephanis,” Ulgulu purred in an odd sort of grating sound. “Nathak, poor Nathak,”–The goblin didn’t miss the implications of that reference–”has informed me that my gnolls have met with disaster.”
“And-you-want-me-to-go-and-see-what-happened-to-them, my-master,” Tephanis replied. Ulgulu took a moment to decipher the nearly unintelligible string of words, then nodded eagerly.
“Right-away, my-master. Be-back-soon.”
Ulgulu felt a slight shiver on his shoulder, but by the time he, or any of the others, realized what Tephanis had said, the heavy drape separating the chamber from the entry room was floating back to its hanging position. One of the goblins poked its head in for just a moment, to see if Kempfana or Ulgulu had summoned it, then returned to its station, thinking the drape’s movement a trick of the wind.
Ulgulu roared in laughter again; Kempfana cast him a disgusted glare. Kempfana hated the sprite and would have killed it long ago, except that he couldn’t ignore the potential benefits, assuming that Tephanis would work for him once Ulgulu had returned to Gehenna.
Nathak slipped one foot behind the other, meaning to silently retreat from the room. Ulgulu stopped the goblin with a look.
“Your report served me well,” the barghest started.
goblin by the throat, and lift Nathak from the floor. Nathak relaxed, but only for the moment it took Ulgulu’s great hand to shoot out, catch the
“But it would have served me better if you had taken the time to find out what happened to my gnolls!”
Nathak swooned and nearly fainted, and by the time half of his body had been stuffed into Ulgulu’s eager mouth, the spindle-armed goblin wished he had.