One of the boulders moved. And blinked.
    Brawp.
    It hopped.
    "Well, that's something you don't see every day," I remarked.
    Uncurled form their sleeping balls, they were about ten feet long, five feet tall.
    "Excuse me, you're a toad?" Scott politely. Several more hopped, all of them exchanging loud croaks.
    "No sudden actions," Septimus murmured, maintaining eye contact.
    "What do you know about giant arctic toads?"
    "They're only a rumor, no one has ever encountered them before and lived."
    "We can write a book later," I sighed. We were surrounded by four of them now.
    Phoenix Talon jumped at one of them, making sharp, shooing motions to try to scare it off. "Go!"
    BRAP!!
    "Don't taunt the nice amphibian," Scott admonished, too late. The toad leaped at Phoenix Talon, bit him, knocked him over and sat on top of him radiating cold.
    Well. I pondered my remaining stock of spells. The other three toads were also giving off an intense chill as their agitation increased. Septimus was shivering.
    Brawp mwrap rawp. It croaked at Talon.
    "Excuse me, Mr. Toad..." Scott said, drawing its attention back to himself. He continued speaking in a low, melodious voice, going on in excellent extemporaneous verse about why biting the heads off monks was not a particularly good idea. The toad stopped blatting and listened closely. "Mr. Toad, if you just stand there and let me talk to you for a moment, while hopefully our monk just gets out from under you without making any threatening moves....." He gestured with a pseudopod.
    The other toads were looking from the first toad to us with some confusion.
    "This better work, I had him right where I wanted him," Talon grumbled, freeing himself.
    "Sure you did, Phoenix," I chuckled. "Never a dull moment with you people."
    Septimus had moved behind us. The toads certainly seemed to be talking to each other, and they had to have some kind of intelligence for Scott's fascination to work on it.
    Since they weren't attacking, I backed away slowly.
    "Septimus, you seem to know something about these guys, is there standard operating procedure?" Talon asked.
    "No one has ever lived through an encounter with them before. I've heard legends of them, but... they seem to be willing to let us go."
    "In that case, I think we're going to keep going," I suggested. We fell back, leaving Scott to carry on his one-sided conversation with the toad. One of the others was nudging the first one with his snout, as if trying to get him to pay attention. After giving us a few minutes to get clear, Scott went to mist form and sluiced away down the slope, leaving some very startled toads brawping at one another behind him. The first one hopped up and turned in mid-air; after a brief exchange all four of them hopped up onto the cliff and began shadowing us as we walked along in the dark.
    "I think we're going to have to kill them eventually, we may as well start now," Talon grumped.
    "They seemed particularly intelligent," Scott observed. "Anyone here speak toad?"
    "Not today," I sighed.
    "Will you tomorrow?"
    "Potentially."
    "Might be a good idea."
    "Where are we going to set up camp?" Septimus asked. He found a narrow fissure in the rock farther along the pass and there we set up for the night, listening to the voices of the toads in the night.
    "Get some sleep," Scott suggested. "Pray for 'speak toad.'"
    "This is a touch spell, so if the thing bites my head off I'm going to come back and kick your ass."
    "If you worked for a different person I might not take that as seriously."
    We scrounged the usual tiny fire, while the croaking voices grew more numerous over the course of the night. It was far colder than we had expected.
    When dawn arrived, the pass was strewn with what looked like gray boulders, more of them lining the cliffs, murmuring to one another, about fifty all told. The path was iced over from the cold they gave off.
    "I knew we should have killed the first one."
    "Phoenix Talon, cut it out," I snapped nervously. One bull toad, much larger than the others, sat in front of the rest. "I will walk out and say hello." I emerged from the cleft, carrying no weapons. Fifty pairs of toad eyes focused on me. This was going to be tricky. I walked toward the big toad, hands in plain sight. Several of them croaked; one of them hopped to within a foot of me. The bull toad belched a commanding croak. I raised a hand and brought it close to the slick grey hide, letting it make the decision for contact. After a moment it leaned a bit, closing the gap. Spells against cold or no my hands were already numb.
    "Who are you?" it demanded. "Who are you?"
    "You can't understand me, I can hear you." I tried to convey this through pantomime. Several more toads jumped down from the cliff; I could understand only the one I had touched.
    After much pointing at ears and mouths it said, "You understand, not speak?"
    I nodded vigorously. "Yes."
    It thought about that. "If yes," it clapped its jaws together; toads can't nod.
    I repeated the gesture promptly, still showing empty hands. Behind me, Talon had his fly ready and the carpet out in case this did not go well. "Friendly, peace, no attack...."
    "Do you intend harm?"
    I shook my head and wondered what a toad no was.
    It blinked. "You didn't click... of course, you would say that, since we have you outnumbered."
    I hoped it would realize that if we meant them harm we would have tried it last night. I pointed at the others, then down the pass, trying to ask if we could go peacefully, since we intended no harm.
    "This is sacred land," it told me in a low rumble. "None of your people are allowed to set foot here. For this, you should all die."
    I clicked comprehension.
    "Who do you serve?"
    This was going to be difficult again. Thank goodness for all that practice at charades. They seemed to be religious folk, though they probably wouldn't know what my holy symbol was all about.... I pointed at the sky and after a brief invocation was rewarded with a distant peal of thunder.
    There was a loud general murmur from the toads. I remained still, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. Not difficult under the circumstances, really.
    "Tell your allies to stay there."
    "Guys, don't move."
    It lunged forward, grabbed me in its mouth, and hopped away, followed by five toads. The others stayed there, watching the rest of our party.
    "Needle!" Talon yelled.
    "It's not biting me," I called back, considerably startled but uninjured. "If it hurts me I'll let you know." It carried me some distance and then spat me out. I got up and brushed off snow and toad spit. We were on top of the cliff. Beside us was the corpse of another large toad.
    "If you are connected with divinity, bring her back."
    I looked at the toad. It was hard to tell how long it had been dead; the cold had preserved it well, fortunately.
    "So, you radiate cold," Talon remarked to one of the remaining watchers. "How's that working out for you? We're hot-blooded ourselves."
    Septimus was shaking his head. "We're all going to die, aren't we? He's taken her off to eat her, and then we're all going to die."
    "Calm down."
    Scott started telling him about some of our more outrageous adventures to convince him that things could be worse. "So then we snuck into the treasury and replaced all the wolf icons with cats' heads..."
    "Why did you do this?!"
    "Pissed her off."
    "Trust me, if this is the worst thing that happens all day, count yourself lucky," Talon told the dwarf.
    Meanwhile, I knelt down next to the dead toad and prayed. Lightning cracked the sky, thunder rumbled.
    The toad's legs kicked, pushing it some distance along the ground, and then it blinked.
    "Can you make your way back down?" my conversational partner asked. "Or must I carry you?"
    I clicked my jaws to the former.
    The toad turned away and hopped to the edge of the cliff to speak loudly to those below. "The gods have spoken! The queen lives! They are free to pass! See nothing harms them on the trip down."
    The gathered toads below moved aside, leaving a clear if somewhat icy path.
    "I think this is a hint," Scott remarked.
    "I think it's an engraved invitation," Talon agreed.
    I flew down and joined the others, waving at the toads. "Bye. Nice meeting you. We won't come back, promise. If I don't ever have to do that again I'll be very happy. Granted, could have been worse." We hurried down from the mountain. "We need to remember to tell people not to ever come here."
    "We need to remember to tell our side not to ever come here," Scott corrected. "I don't care how many gnolls decide they want to climb this mountain."
    "This is the toads' sacred land. We're free to go, but we shouldn't make it a habit."
    "My opinion of toads has been completely turned around, " Talon announced.
    "Aren't you glad you didn't blast that one?" I asked.
    "We could have taken them."
    "They're intelligent, non-hostile creatures, and you want to kill them anyway?"
    "I'm glad we didn't, it was much less trouble this way, I'm just saying we could have taken them."
    "You're not a member of one of those monkly orders that has to do with peace and enlightenment, are you?" Scott sighed. Da'an doesn't really go in for that sort of thing.
    We descended onto the icy tundra into Maine. We were headed for Mt. Katahdin, under the very shadow of Fimbulwinter's palace. Our steps were dogged by a persistent light snowfall and heavy winds that made flight impossible.
    Four days passed without incident, though we passed the track of a frost giant patrol at one point and at another hid from a white dragon as it passed overhead.
    "Even for us, that would be a problem," Talon admitted to Septimus.
    "I'm glad to know that there are some things you would consider problems."
    We met one later that day, as it happened. We were in a flat spot; ahead was a ring of light brush near a frozen lake. From the north came a soft rumbling sound none of us could identify. We dashed toward the cover of the brush, such as it was.
    Looking back, the ground along a line was bulging up, then dropping downward, and then the remhorrazh erupted from the snow twenty feet from us.
    Ever see a twenty-five foot centipede with fangs longer than I am tall? It was coming faster now.
    "Mother," I said with great feeling. I tossed Septimus the carpet. "You might need this to get out of here."
    "Screw it, let's kill it!" Talon announced. A bit prematurely, as it happened; as the thing neared we were struck by a wave of intense heat. The spines on the creature's back glowed redly.
    
    

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