“No, but ‘hand’ does,” Halladon said. “Our impostor is a kind of glorified leech. It insinuated itself into our company because it craves human blood, and it has a clever way of getting it without being detected. It can detach its hand to skitter about like a little animal. The hand slips a hollow needle of a talon into somebody’s neck, killing him so deftly the victim never wakes. The hand siphons its victim’s blood and carries it back to nourish its body. Our guards never saw the thing scuttling around because it’s too quick and small, and can darken itself to blend into the shadows. Perys never found tracks because it’s too light to leave any. The wounds didn’t shed as much blood as we would have expected because the shapeshifter took it. It only killed one of us at a time because that was all the sustenance it needed. And Osher didn’t try to write Gybik because he never saw Gybik attacking him, just a disembodied, inhuman hand. Don’t you see…”

“We see that it’s all preposterous,” Kovost said.

“Yes,” Moanda said, an unaccustomed hint of pity in her voice. “Halladon, you must be mad in truth, to imagine you could cozen us with such a tale. Perhaps it was your dark studies that deranged you. I’ll be sorry to slay you, but the shades of Osher, Silbastis, and Perys cry out for vengeance.”

“Besides,” said Kovost, raising his axe, “you’re too dangerous to live.”

“Wait!” said Halladon. “Let me prove he isn’t Gybik. Let me demonstrate that he doesn’t know things the genuine Gybik should know”-he looked the shapeshifter in the eye-”Where did we first meet?”

“The Crowing Cockatrice,” the creature said.

The half-elf felt a pang of dismay. “With what drink did we toast the founding of our company?”

“The cider. Jalanthar amber, it was called.”

“What did we fight in our first battle together?”

“Three ogres.”

Halladon realized he wouldn’t be able to trip the creature up. Either it had somehow assimilated the real Gybik’s memories when it had taken on his form, or else it had gleaned all it needed to know from conversations along the trail.

“That was your final ploy,” said Moanda, slinking forward. “We’ll give you a proper burial, in memory of the comrade you once were.”

Halladon knew he couldn’t defeat all three of them, but by Corellon, if he had to perish, he meant to take the shapeshifter with him. He shifted his weight as if preparing to retreat, then dived forward in an all out attack, swinging the orcish blade at the false Gybik’s skull.

The creature recoiled, and the scimitar merely gashed its shoulder. Moanda sprang at Halladon from the right, and Kovost, from the left. Off-balance, the half-elf struggled to flounder back on guard, knowing that he wouldn’t make it in time.

“Wait!” Kovost barked. “Look!” Moanda somehow halted her stroke an inch short of cleaving Halladon’s spine.

Surmising what Kovost must have seen, the half-elf turned back toward the shapeshifter. Sure enough, the pain of its wound had evidently disrupted its ability to maintain its borrowed form. Its flesh expanded and flowed, erasing all resemblance to Gybik, or to anything human. In a heartbeat, it grew half as tall as Halladon. Its body was dead black, its limbs coiled with the boneless fluidity of an octopus’s tentacles, and its surface bulged and hollowed as if new muscles and organs were constantly forming and dissolving inside it. Is head was hairless, and without ears, nose, or mouth, but from the center of a triangle of bulging white oval eyes extended a tapered prehensile proboscis as long and pointed as a spear.

“Kill it!” Moanda cried. She edged toward the creature, and it struck at her with Gybik’s short sword. She blocked the blow with her buckler, jabbing the spiked boss into the shapeshifter’s arm in the process. Pivoting, she swung her broadsword down and hacked the limb in two.

Had her opponent been human, such a maiming blow would almost certainly have ended the combat. But the raw stump of the shapeshifter’s arm instantly sprouted a tangle of chitinous pincers resembling lobster claws, and it struck at her again. Caught by surprise, she couldn’t quite bring the buckler up in time to deflect the blow completely. She reeled backward with a long gash in her temple.

Bellowing a war cry, Kovost darted forward, intent, like any dwarf facing such a huge creature, on getting inside its reach. The shapeshifter, which didn’t seem to be experiencing any particular difficulty keeping track of more than one opponent at a time, slashed at him with one of Gybik’s knives. Kovost ducked the stroke, then chopped at the monster’s knee, half severing its leg. The shapeshifter stumbled and, grinning, the dwarf ripped his weapon free for another attack. But then six new appendages, each terminating in a pointed shaft of bone like a scorpion’s stinger, erupted from the beast’s abdomen to stab at him. Driven backward, he dodged and parried frantically.

Meanwhile, Halladon circled behind the shapeshifter and drove the scimitar deep into its back. For a moment the creature froze, affording Moanda and Kovost a precious respite from its onslaught, and the half-elf dared to hope he’d hurt it badly. Then another blank, round eye opened in the nape of its neck, and a huge hand shot from the center of its back to snatch at Halladon’s head.

Halladon sidestepped and hacked at the thin, snaky arm to which the hand was attached. The shapeshifter’s flesh parted with surprising ease, and the severed member tumbled to the ground. Turning, Halladon lifted his blade to cut at the creature’s back.

Something struck the half-elf’s leg, hurting him and thrusting him off-balance. He fell heavily onto his side. A headless thing resembling an enormous black starfish, each of its arms tipped with a jagged talon and a fanged, slavering maw gnashing in the center of its body, scuttled up the length of Halladon’s body toward his head, jabbing at him as it came. He realized it was the severed hand, acting independently of the shape-shifter’s body.

He slashed at it awkwardly. The starfish pounced over his blade and onto his shoulder, plunging two of its claws into his flesh to anchor itself. The other three arms poised to stab at his head.

Dropping his saber, which was useless at such close quarters, he grabbed his attacker and pulled. In a flash of pain, the starfish tore free of his flesh. He tried to fling it away from him, but it instantly attached itself to his hand and started to bite him.

Halladon frantically drew his knife, then stabbed and sawed at the creature. After a few seconds, it stopped moving, and with a final flailing of his arm, he freed himself from its excruciating embrace.

The half-elf seized his scimitar, scrambled up, and surveyed the battle. His friends were hard-pressed. The left side of her face red with blood, warding herself with her buckler and boot knife, Moanda tried vainly to work her way back to the broadsword she’d lost, until one of the shapeshifter’s hands snatched it up to use against her. Gasping, Kovost lurched desperately back and forth, striking at the ropy limbs that lashed at him from every side.

But all the shapeshifter’s arms were currently deployed in front of its body, away from Halladon. Praying it would ignore him just long enough for one more sword stroke, the half-elf charged it.

Since his cut to the torso hadn’t slain it, he decided to attack the monster’s head. Scimitar raised, he leaped into the air, and at that instant the shapeshifter’s proboscis whipped all the way around its skull to hurtle at his face.

He was certain he was a dead man, but his sword hand knew better. It beat the proboscis to the side, then buried the scimitar in the creature’s skull.

The shapeshifter stiffened, let out a ghastly buzzing sound, then dropped. Within moments, it began to melt into a foul-smelling slime.