hills_

the place is after looking 'ugly' to you, too. He'd not want to encourage folk to come right in on his . . . people."
"Then just how is it we're supposed to be getting at them?"
"Well, as to that, it's surprised I'll be if Kerry and I betwixt us can't convince that little bit of Sharnā to be moving aside," Bahzell replied, and bared his teeth in a vicious grin. "Old Demon Breath's scared to death of himself, and I'm thinking that when a pair of champions come calling all unannounced, and bring himself along with 'em when they knock on the door, that door will be after opening."
Hurthang looked less than totally convinced, but he nodded and waved his men into concealment to wait while Bahzell went back for Kaeritha and the rest of the party. Then the two champions, accompanied only by Vaijon, Brandark, and Hurthang, moved to the very edge of the woods and peered out into the foggy late morning light.
As Hurthang had said, the woods gave way to a narrow valley between brooding hills. The tracks they'd followed this far snaked out into that valley, looking somehow furtive and lost, and seemed to vanish straight into a rough, almost vertical hillside. But the scene didn't look quite the same to all of them, and Bahzell heard Kaeritha—and Vaijon—suck in sharp breaths even as the hillside began to waver like wind-struck water to his own vision. Details were hard to make out, but his jaw clenched as he caught the likeness of a huge scorpion carved out of the rock above an arched opening that was somehow . . . wrong. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what made that arch look subtly perverted and diseased. After all, how could a simple opening in the stone look "perverted"? The concept made no sense, and yet that was the only word which fitted that obscene, waiting mouth under the protective claws of the scorpion.
"What is it?" Hurthang asked quickly as he caught his cousin's expression.
"What we came for," Bahzell replied grimly. He u