The Bloody Eye dad-5

by T. H. Lain

  As they entered the second opening, Calmet casually informed his minions that the fungi would mulch around and over the slave's corpse in a matter of weeks. He stared meaningfully into the eyes of both guards as though to underscore the fact that, should it serve his purpose, he would be willing to sacrifice them just as easily as he had sacrificed the unfortunate slave. He turned and led them forward once more.

  Once past the cavern, Calmet turned again. He hugged the left wall of the narrow passageway, paying no attention to whether the guards followed suit. They had served their purpose and he needn't worry about them triggering traps. He stepped through another natural opening and immediately voiced a gutteral syllable. The cavern was suddenly lit with torchlights placed in sconces throughout the cavern and a pair of braziers that flanked a small stone altar.

  The priest walked swiftly toward a writing table piled high with quills, pots of ink, and a mixture of fresh parchment and used vellum. He glanced briefly at an old, leather chest in one corner of the room and noted that it seemed undisturbed. Then he picked up a piece of vellum and squinted at it when he sensed movement out of the corner of his eye. Vurrgh had grabbed his axe and was advancing swiftly toward a table filled with jars, bowls, bottles, and casks.

  "Halt!" commanded the priest.

  "Master! Something's moving!" answered Vurrgh.

  "Stop, you fool!" responded Calmet. "The creature is mine!"

  Calmet waved Vurrgh off and called the small humanoid over to him. The one-eyed homunculus stopped grinding the black, moldy herb it had been smashing with a mortar and pestle and spread its small wingspan to full breadth. The wart-covered creature launched itself into the air and flew toward the priest, alighting on Calmet's shoulder.

  Having averted the unnecessary conflict, Calmet motioned for Vurrgh to approach the table. Calmet ordered him to take a seat. He passed his hand over a map spread upon the table. The priest always thought more clearly when he spoke aloud, so he took the opportunity to point out several geographical features between the mine and Scaun. He stretched a piece of vellum over the bottom half of the map and began explaining the plan in terms that even a troglodyte, much less a relatively intelligent orc like Vurrgh, could understand.

  The new piece of vellum represented a map of the mine as well as the underground passages either constructed or discovered in the course of the mining operation. Calmet explained how Laud had dowsed for gold and how rich the main vein had been. He briefly spoke of the tens of thousands of gold pieces worth of ore that had been mined, refined, and melted into the ceremonial vessels that would be used in hallowing the ancient shrine at Scaun.

  He pointed to a tunnel that diverged from the rich vein of gold ore and said, "Here is the key. If we attempt to excavate the shrine from the top of the mountain, the southerners will try to interfere and will cost us valuable time and resources. Instead, we will tunnel into the desecrated shrine and consecrate it anew before the southerners ever know that we've reopened it. By then, the avatar of Gruumsh will appear and it will be too late."

  When the priest saw Vurrgh nod in general understanding, he continued the lecture with all the fervency he had once shown in the pulpit.

  "We will unleash the full power of Gruumsh from within the mountains. The southerners and their weak, civilizing ways will face the full, ferocious power of Gruumsh for the first time. Gruumsh will empower a new army of orcs, troglodytes, and half-orcs and we will conquer all-even the southern lands."

  "Conquer all?" asked the guard.

  "Yes," answered the priest, "we will conquer all. Your people lost to the southerners because they wandered from the old ways, the true ways. Gruumsh removed his power from the weak leaders and the southerners took control. This time, there will be no weak leaders!"

  "Cull the weak!" responded Vurrgh with the ritual phrase, but the priest looked into his eyes with a hypnotic stare that instantly silenced him.

  Calmet leaned over the table and said to the orc in the most malevolent whisper imaginable, "We must finish this tunnel on time, if we do nothing else." He pointed to the passage on the map and looked back at Vurrgh. "If we don't finish this tunnel on time," he continued, "it will serve as your grave."

  Calmet didn't express the next thought to pierce his own mind: If the tunnel wasn't finished on time, it would be his grave, too.

  12

  Yddith needed to convince the three experienced warriors to let her join them. She didn't want to admit out loud that she simply felt safer near the half-orc since he had dramatically rescued them from the orc slavers. After the most recent attack on Pergue, she felt like the only safe place was within reach of Krusk's great axe.

  Close to tears, she listened as the experienced fighters, none of whom really approved of taking a non-fighter, much less an inexperienced girl, in tow, voiced a thousand and one objections to Yddith accompanying them. She swallowed the lump in her throat and managed to stare determinedly into each warrior's face. She looked deeply into Alhandra's eyes and realized that there was a softening in the paladin's resolve. She sensed Alhandra reading her intent as easily as one might read a tavern sign.

  "It'll be all right," Alhandra assured the serving girl. "I needed someone to trust once, too." Yet even as Yddith sensed that she had an ally in the paladin, the two men continued to raise their voices in objection. Then something strange happened. The paladin turned to the males and spat out her explanation. "In my case," stated the paladin, "he wasn't there when I needed him. I wouldn't want this woman to experience the same sense of loss." With a grateful smile, Yddith responded to the paladin's firm expression of resolve, "If she wants to go with us, she'll go with us!"

  The debate ended. None of the men wanted to take up the paladin's challenge. They were completely disarmed by the unspoken story combined with the determined glare shining from Alhandra's eyes.

  "Don't gawk!" she commanded, "I don't want to talk about it. At least, I don't want to talk about it yet."

  The men shrugged and started off into the forest, but Yddith couldn't help but wonder what the paladin's secret might be.

  Not being an experienced rider, Yddith was pleased when Krusk insisted that the group could make better time through the dense forest without their mounts. Alhandra hated to leave her horse behind, but even she agreed that they would be stealthier on foot. Yddith's solitary eye glistened with admiration as she watched Krusk follow the trail of paw prints, broken brush, wolf dung, and occasional pieces of hair torn by prickly thorns. She fairly gleamed with pride when Krusk announced that the druid had resumed human form near the edges of the swamp, and she listened with rapturous attention when Krusk indicated the signs of an orc encampment.

  The quartet stopped. In the eerie silence, even Yddith knew that a fight was inevitable. She fingered the sliced piece of curtain she had brought with her from the tavern and felt power building within her. She wondered if there was anything else the sorceress might have unwittingly taught her, and her mind began to wander through the catacombs of memory.

  Her meditation was disrupted when Krusk snorted. She saw the half-orc look into a deep stretch of swamp and bare his fangs like an angry dog. She was also acutely aware that Alhandra had drawn her sword from its scabbard so quietly and effortlessly that some observers might have taken it for a spiritual weapon, a sword conjured by divine power alone. Though it was spiritual in a sense, dedicated to Heironeous, Yddith suspected that there was nothing supernatural about the blade. She had seen it in the tavern, as finely crafted as its bearer's skills were honed. Then, as Jozan raised his mace in quiet defiance, Yddith side-stepped in order to be able to see the threat that the rest of the party was expecting to come into view.

  She glanced at Krusk and followed the line of his gaze. She didn't know what to think when the fins first broke the water's surface. Five sets of fins sliced ominously toward the edge of the putrid pond where the heroes stood.

  Before she could comprehend their significance, Yddith heard Krusk loudly p
roclaim, "Five heads!"

  Immediately she understood as she saw the monstrous creature breach the scum-filled water.

  Indeed, there were five heads on five long necks. Yddith had heard of hydras, as had the others, but hearing stories and seeing with your own eye were quite different.

  Yddith impulsively reached for the wool and wondered what ghost sound she might use against the beast. At first, she thought she might create an eagle's cry behind one of the heads. She felt inspired as she watched Jozan remove a candle from his pouch and immediately raise his voice in a psalm of Pelor. She heard his voice dance along the wind and it seemed as if the wind sang in harmony. She saw a small streak of alluvial lightning and, as it dissipated, a celestial eagle appeared.

  Yddith failed to act. She was mesmerized by the frenzy of battle around her. She watched Alhandra slash out with her sword, miss the writhing hydra head nearest to her, and hastily retreat. The leftmost head of the hydra sank its teeth into Alhandra's gauntleted left hand and tore the gauntlet off, scraping and slicing open the flesh with both the tortured metal from the gauntlet itself and the beast's knifelike incisors. A rivulet of blood flowed from Alhandra's wrist to her fingers, but it didn't deter the paladin from stepping up to the writhing heads once again.

  This time, as one of the heads plunged toward Alhandra in violent imitation of its fellow, it was intercepted by a bright flash of light that not only distracted the beast but astounded both it and the originator of the beam. Yddith was stunned. The flash had come from her. She realized with regret that her unexpected trick had failed to faze more than one head. Another fanged maw struck at Alhandra and its teeth raked the paladin's armor, sending a painful screech through the air like fingernails on hardened slate.

  Yddith couldn't help but wonder how it had happened. She had once seen the sorceress discourage a drunkard by blinding him with a flash of light. As the hydra lunged toward Alhandra, Yddith had wished she remembered the power word used by the sorceress to activate her flare. When the celestial word for "brilliance" entered her mind, she'd spoken it without thinking of its meaning. Energy swelled inside her and shot from her empty eye socket, focusing through the emerald and flaring near the monster's head.

  As astounding as the spell was to Yddith, she realized that that moment was no time to dwell on it. The hydra's center head snapped uselessly at Krusk, and its neighbor bit at Jozan without connecting. Another head, however, engulfed the body of the eagle. Feathers flew like a whirlwind from the bird before it shimmered and disappeared into the dimension from which Jozan had summoned it.

  Yddith quickly realized that there were too many heads, and her companions were not inflicting enough damage to make a difference. Alhandra was merely taking small chunks out of the necks when she struck them, and even Krusk's mightiest blows were barely making headway. Then Krusk sank his axe into the flesh behind the most central of the heads. The blade hewed cleanly through the monster's neck. Krusk roared in barbarian triumph.

  The triumph was minor, however, because Alhandra was swiping ineffectually and the monster's sharp teeth had snapped through a weak joint in Jozan's armor. The cleric tore himself free just before another head could grab him bodily as it had the eagle. Only Yddith was out of danger. She had to do something.

  Grabbing a rope from their supplies, Yddith threw it into the air. Her initial hope was that she would distract the head that was attacking Jozan, but she quickly discovered that hydras are not easily distracted. Nonetheless, Yddith prayed softly that she could work her innate magic once again.

  Krusk decapitated another opponent, transforming the long neck into a bloody stump with one powerful swing.

  Energy built within Yddith once again. She lost track of how many times Alhandra hacked at the hydra's neck and failed to penetrate the thick scales and muscular mass of flesh. She felt the force within her rising and building behind her empty eye socket.

  As a green glow emanated from her emerald eye, Yddith breathed soft words of confidence and moved her finger in a delicate dance. The fallen rope leaped into the air at her command. She conducted its dance as though it were attached to the very tip of her finger. As a snarling head descended upon Jozan, Yddith looped the rope around the extended neck. The hydra's mouth clamped on the cleric's shoulder tightly and threatened to rip the arm from the priest's body. The girl twisted the rope into a knot and kept twisting it ever tighter. As the beast tasted Jozan's blood, Yddith pulled mentally on the rope, trying to jerk the head toward Krusk and his bloody blade. She wasn't strong enough to force the head away from the cleric, but the hydra growled at the annoyance and forgot Jozan for a brief moment.

  Unfortunately for Jozan, another head had no such distraction. The teeth punched through armor and into the soft flesh of the man's neck. The cleric faltered, knees buckling, blood splashing down the bright metal. Even though he continued waving his mace at the beast, it was clear that his strength was gone. Mesmerized by the bright red rivulets streaming down from the severed joints of the cleric's armor, Yddith cried aloud to Pelor in despair.

  Yddith's cry of panic and desperation caused two things to happen. First, Alhandra sliced her blade through the air with a new confidence. Instead of small, rapid cuts that were having no effect, the paladin raised her sword and stood poised for a mighty stroke. She seemed to be reciting something as she hewed the blade through the hydra's neck.

  "Be smooth, not strong!" echoed across the muddy bank of the swamp.

  Alhandra's blade cut through the swamp beast's neck and nearly severed the attacking head so that it hung obscenely from the stump of its neck.

  But Alhandra wasn't finished with her deadly maneuver. The paladin had leaped forward into the attack, and she allowed the momentum of the blow to carry her past the other heads. The first to snap at her received a savage backhand slash that neatly sheared off its lower jaw, leaving it unable to bite and useless.

  Before Yddith could so much as cheer, however, the unthinkable happened. The hydra's remaining head clamped down on Krusk's right shoulder and began pulling the half-orc toward the water. Krusk chopped at the beast again and again, but his arms were pinioned such that his blows were weak and only glanced off the muscled neck.

  Not knowing what to do, Yddith yelled for Jozan and Alhandra to help the half-orc. The badly wounded cleric was staggering bravely toward the hydra's head before the words had left Yddith's hps. If matters hadn't been so serious, she might have laughed at the cleric's exaggerated, drunken movements. With his feet planted far apart, Jozan swung his mace unsteadily at the hydra's head with all of his remaining might. The beast shrugged off the puny blow and dragged Krusk toward the murky, bloodstained water.

  Foolishly, Yddith grabbed the kitchen knife at her belt and rushed toward the hydra. Fortunately, Alhandra stepped in front of her. The paladin's blade fairly sang as she sliced a third time through the monster's neck. With intense satisfaction, Yddith watched the hydra's last remaining head fly into the putrid, green water of the swamp.

  Then, before she could even join Jozan in a hymn of praise to Pelor, she looked up and realized that the battle wasn't over. A group of orcs was approaching through the underbrush, drawn by the sounds of battle. Krusk grunted that more orcs were coming. Alhandra's sword whistled down through the air, spattering hydra blood onto the ground. Jozan performed his healing ritual on himself as Yddith desperately hoped the troops weren't as tough as their monstrous sentinel had been.

  13

  Calmet slumped in his chair with his head on his writing table. The one-eyed heretic was surrounded by scroll cases of every description stacked haphazardly to either side. Some of the cases were carved from human bone, others were silver, and some merely wood. Some had arcane markings on them, others had carvings of horrifying rituals, and others mere words. They ranged from staggeringly ancient to new. Some Calmet had stolen from the Soldiers of the Sun, the military and monastic order dedicated to Pelor from which Calmet had split.

  The cleric
had been scrutinizing every scroll, tome, and artifact he could assemble in his search for a solution. Between the gold he had embezzled from his former sect and the gold they had mined during the past few years, he had been able to purchase or commission more sacred, arcane, and damned artifacts than he had ever dreamed possible. Yet, he still couldn't find the answer to his problem. He could find no plan, spell, source of power, or anything else that could help him meet the crushing deadline he faced.

  If he didn't figure out a way to finish tunneling into the sacred shrine by the solstice, he knew that the best he could hope for was that Laud would have him fed to the violet fungi and shrieker guarding his inner sanctum. He had walked by the disintegrating corpse of the last unfortunate sacrifice earlier in the day, and felt a flash of pity for the poor, dead slave. Laud could certainly think of more painful ways to express his displeasure if Calmet failed his unforgiving mentor.

  "Where there is power, there is Gruumsh!" asserted the heretic, even though he and the homunculus were the only beings in the cavern, and the homunculus communicated with his master by telepathy rather than speech. He sat up and grabbed a piece of stretched skin with faded brown uncials painted onto it and read aloud.

  The Eye that cannot see is the Eye that will comprehend.

  The Eye with no feeling is the Eye that will judge.

  The Eye that cannot move is the Eye that will rule.

  Until the Eye that cannot see shall fill with light

  And until the Eye that cannot move has been moved,

  There shall no Power be.

  He reflected on eyes, literal and figurative, of which he had known or heard. His troubled cogitation awakened memories of city gates, spies, narrow inlets, round openings, and gems. Calmet remembered when his own eye was sacrificed. Laud had pricked the eye with the silver dagger and said something like the first line. Perhaps, the ancient oracle referred to those who had given their left eyes, willingly or unwillingly, in Gruumsh' service? That was a possible interpretation. Indeed, it was Laud's preferred interpretation, but it didn't ring true with Calmet. Feeling may have been reduced in his empty eye socket, but if it was touched deeply enough, there was still feeling. He knew that from the times that the cold had penetrated his deformity and caused icy headaches to clamp around his brain like one of the screwlike devices Laud used to torture unwilling informants. Physical sight may have been bartered for spiritual insight, as Laud had claimed, but there was still feeling, and that meant the oracle was not referring only to the servants of Gruumsh.