InterWorld (InterWorld 1)

The cauldron began to tip.

The toad thing, who had been feeding the various salts into the flames so carefully, dropped the whole tray of powders into the flames as it sprang back out of the way, straight into the nearest guard, who cursed and stumbled backward into the mantid.

I threw myself over to the side of the cauldron as the powders in the flame erupted like a tiny fireworks display. . . .

And slowly, majestically and unstoppably, the cauldron tipped over.

I will never forget the guard raising his hand, as if to keep the cauldron from falling onto him, and the way it just kept falling. I will never forget the molten stuff in the cauldron splashing and pouring out, nor the screams of the creatures as it touched them. That stuff burned, and it kept on burning. Even through bone.

I was choking. I could hardly breathe. The world was swimming around me, and I could feel the tears running down my cheeks. But I kept going.

I picked up what looked like a boning knife from the floor, and I started to cut my teammates’ ropes. I picked Jo first, cutting the ropes that bound her wings, then slitting her gag.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Wings,” I gasped. “Air. Fan us. Air.” I moved on to Jakon.

Jo nodded, then stretched her wings and began to flap them, blowing the choking smoke away from us. There was fresh air coming up through the grill—to feed the fire, I guess—and I gulped it, and wiped my eyes, and kept sawing away at the ropes with the knife. Jakon seemed the liveliest of the team, wriggling and moving in her bonds, and she sprang out, snapping the last of the ropes before I’d even finished.

Then she bared her teeth, growled deeply and sprang at me.

I ducked.

Over my head went the wolf girl, tearing into the mantid, which had been coming for me with a cleaver.

With one angry blow she tore its head off, and the body stumbled about, cleaver waving, blind and angry.

I freed Josef next. The ropes that bound him were thick as ship’s cables. I loosed his hands, then handed him a knife and told him to do the ones around his feet himself. He rubbed his hands and grimaced, and then cut through his ropes twice as fast as I had done.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Jakon guarding us like a wolf guarding her cubs, every hair on her head standing straight up, her teeth bared, and Jo, who was still fanning the air, and who had also grabbed a pike from the wall and was jabbing it at any of the nasties who dared to approach her. Not that many of them did. Most of them were huddling in the corner and trying to keep away from the flaming molten river between us and them.

I freed Jai.

He rolled uncomfortably on the ground. “I’m paresthetic,” he said, “all pins and needles. Also, I am deeply, utterly beholden to you.”

“No problem,” I said.

I slit J/O’s gag. “Typical,” he said. “Leave me to last. Just because I’m the smallest. I suppose you think that’s fair. Mmmph, mmph mph mmmmmmph.” He said that last because I’d put the gag back into his mouth.

“Actually,” I said, “what you mean is, ‘Thank you.’ And if you don’t say it, I’m going to forget about cutting you loose and leave you here, accidentally on purpose.”

I took the gag out. His eyes looked very big and very round.

“Thank you,” he said in a small voice, “for coming back. For setting me loose. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I told him. “Don’t mention it.” And I cut his feet loose and then his hands.

The smoke was beginning to thin now, and the fire was behaving more like a fire and less like Vesuvius. My teammates and I gathered together. I guessed there must be strong fireproofing spells on the rendering room—the flames weren’t spreading to the walls or to the ceiling or floor. And they were starting to go down.

“We must perforce perambulate with all possible dispatch,” Jai said. “No doubt our sudden revolutionary upheaval has activated numerous alarm cantrips.”

“We won’t be able to fight our way through the entire ship,” Jo said, “but dying in battle is better than dying in a pot of boiling blood.”

“We are not dying in battle or in blood,” I told her. “It’s not going to happen. But the only door is on the other side of the fire.”

“Actually,” said J/O with a certain smug joy at the edge of his voice, “there’s a concealed door just down there. I saw one of the squirmy things come out of it when they brought us in.”

“Good eye,” I said. “But how do we open it? It’ll be protected by spells or something like that, won’t it?”