The Jewel of Turmish

by Odom, Mel

  He had yet to see even Alaghôn, the so-called Jewel of Turmish, and it lay within three days’ travel of Morningstar Hollows where he spent much of his time. The idea of being in a place that housed so many people was at once exciting and terrifying.

  Still, his father’s descriptions of the Throne of Turmish, as the city was also known, held fascination, especially when Ettrian Brightoak waxed eloquently—an art Haarn had never acquired—about the history of the city that included stories of Anaglathos, the blue dragon that had ruled the city for a time, or of the Time of Troubles when Malar himself—also called the Stalker and the Beastlord—entered the Gulthmere Forest to destroy the Emerald Enclave.

  “Gakhos, the shepherd,” Tethys continued, “is a rich man, and he’s drawn to vengeance. In my experience, a man drawn to avenge—even by proxy, which is what he hired us for—will pay until there is nothing left of his gold or his anger. We can kill a lot of wolves for the gold he’s paying and not have to worry about taking one of those damned overland trips to the Sword Coast.”

  “Or maybe you’re wanting to begin a new career as a sellsword aboard one of those new ships that are being outfitted for the Sea of Fallen Stars,” another of the young hunters said. “Since the Serôsian War and the destruction of the Whamite Isles—not to mention the unleashing of the sahuagin throughout the Inner Sea—there’s plenty of call for sailors that don’t mind getting bloody.”

  “Mayhap you can even sign up to join the forces guarding the trade negotiations of Myth Nantar,” another of the young hunters said. He was one of the two largest men in the group. If they weren’t twins, they were at least brothers. “I hear that after pulling a tour of duty down in Myth Nantar, you can breathe the ocean waters just like the air itself.”

  “Standing here talking,” Ennalt grumbled, “isn’t going to put us any closer to our beds for the evening, or to hunting wolves, if that’s what we’re going to do.”

  The reminder pulled Haarn from his inclination to watch the hunting party rather than deal with it. Broadfoot shifted restlessly in the forest to Haarn’s left, but the noise he made wasn’t something the hunters in the group below would have noticed.

  Haarn laid his scimitar across his knees, the flat of the blade resting easily, then cupped his hands before his mouth. He blew gently, making the sound of a bloodybeak, one of the small birds in the forest that fed on the mosquitoes that lived around Evenstar Lake. He hit all four notes perfectly, and a chorus of responses came from the darkness as nearby birds answered him, but Haarn knew Broadfoot would recognize his call and be alerted.

  Whisper-quiet, Haarn stood and walked down the hillside toward the hunting party. His arrival startled them, stepping as he did from the trees into the circumference of light from the lanterns.

  “Tymora watch over me,” one of the men snarled as he turned to face Haarn. “What the hell is that?”

  All of the men and the woman reached for their weapons, baring blades in a heartbeat. Two of the men lifted heavy crossbows and turned them toward Haarn.

  “Leave these lands,” Haarn ordered. He stood unafraid before them, certain that he could move even more quickly than the crossbowmen could pull the triggers on their weapons. The trick was to recognize when they were going to fire. “There will be no more wolf hunting.”

  “Says who?” one of the two big men demanded.

  “If you continue hunting,” Haarn promised emotionlessly, not thinking of the mother wolf he’d seen killed earlier, “I will hunt you, and I will slay you all before the sun rises again.”

  “Like hell you will,” Tethys said. He pointed the long sword he wielded. “Shoot him!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Druz Talimsir stared at the wraith that had stepped from the dark forest around the party of wolf hunters. She gripped her long sword tightly in her fist as the men around her moved, thronging out in a semicircle to confront the man. At least she thought the forest warrior was a man.

  An elf, she corrected herself, spotting one pointed ear a moment later.

  The elf stood a few inches short of six feet and possessed a slender build. Still, his wide shoulders and deep chest promised strength, though he didn’t pack a lot of weight. Most professional sellswords would have looked at the slender figure standing before them with never a qualm about a physical confrontation.

  Druz had experienced several combat situations during her years as a mercenary. Though she was only twenty-five, she’d battled orc hordes and bugbears that had tried to take merchant convoys she’d signed on to protect. During the last year, before an injury in Alaghôn had separated her from the mercenary group she’d signed on with for the previous three years, she’d fought in the Serôsian War.

  That war was a year past, but employment for mercenaries willing to battle the pirates, the shark-worshiping sahuagin now freed throughout the sea, and the nations that battled each other for shipping lanes, salvage from the battles above and below the sea, and trading rights with the newly re-discovered city of Myth Nantar burgeoned. It was one of those battles between shipping guilds that had drawn Druz to Alaghôn.

  Studying the slim elf before her, Druz felt certain that her luck had completely soured. That man, dressed as he was in hide armor, his wild black hair pulled back to lay on his shoulders and festooned with sprigs of wood and blossoms of a half-dozen plants, might look like a vagabond or a madman, but the mercenary felt certain she knew what the man was. Trying to kill him would amount to a death wish.

  “Feather the damn dandelion-sipper and be done with it,” Tethys growled again. “I won’t have any man threatening to kill me.”

  But that won’t stop you from threatening to kill another man, will it? Druz mused.

  The crossbowmen stood on either side of Druz. One of them was Ennalt and the other was Kord—brothers who had signed on with the ragtag outfit. Both of them held their weapons pointed at the forest warrior.

  “Don’t,” Druz commanded.

  In her days she’d sometimes served as a unit commander. She’d learned how to pitch her voice so that it garnered instant respect and attention. Kord hesitated and raised the crossbow to aim into the star-filled sky.

  “To hell with that,” Tethys growled. “Feather that bastard, Ennalt.”

  Ennalt’s trigger knuckle whitened as the man took up the crossbow’s slack.

  Without hesitation, Druz swung around, bringing her arm up in a powerful sweep that knocked the crossbow up. The catgut string slid across the stock with a short hiss, and the stubby quarrel took flight.

  Arvis, Kord’s younger brother by a year, and more impulsive than his older brother who was known for his steadfast pace and unwavering commitment, closed on the forest warrior. Arvis stood head and shoulders taller than the forest warrior and normally brimmed with over-confidence anyway. Facing the much smaller man, Arvis showed no hesitation at all as he whirled his battle-axe effortlessly before him.

  “Don’t fret over this one,” Arvis boomed in his deep voice. “I have him.” He stepped forward, his grin lighted by the flickering lanterns in the hands of the men around him.

  The forest warrior’s attention never seemed to break from the men in front of him. His dark green eyes, glimmering in the lantern light somewhat like a cat’s, regarded Druz curiously. His head cocked slightly, as if he didn’t notice the way the bigger man closed on him. The forest warrior’s scimitar stayed mostly out of sight beside his back leg.

  “Don’t kill him,” Druz pleaded. “He’s little more than a boy.”

  Arvis, she knew, would resent her deeply for the comment, but if it would help save his life, she didn’t care. Arvis and Kord, though both blooded in skirmishes around Alaghôn and some of the cities along the western coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars, hadn’t yet seen twenty.

  “Don’t kill him?” Forras repeated, shifting on his bad leg. “Why, Arvis will break this little upstart in half.”

  Druz watched, feeling a chill like icy cat’s paws kneading between her sh
oulders. She liked Arvis, though his aggressive nature made him somewhat hard to take.

  Arvis made his situation even worse by not taking the threat the smaller man offered more seriously. He stepped in and casually feinted with the battle-axe.

  Before he could pull back, the smaller man stepped in quickly, going to Arvis’s left. Anticipating the big warrior’s attempt to block with the battle-axe haft, the small man backhanded his opponent in the nose with his empty fist.

  Yelping in pain, Arvis tried to swing around. Instead of keeping his feet planted and merely shifting, Arvis lifted his left foot. The small man kicked the raised foot from under the bigger man as if the feat were nothing.

  Off-balance, trying desperately to recover, Arvis fell to the ground, miraculously managing to land on his knee. His opponent walked to his side without apparent haste, but the effort was amazingly quick. Before Arvis could move, the warrior in hide armor kicked the bigger man’s back foot, causing the younger man to sprawl out. Arvis toppled onto his outstretched hands, trapping his battle-axe against the ground under his own weight.

  In a few seemingly effortless moves, the forest warrior had Arvis stretched out and the scimitar’s blade against the young mercenary’s throat like he was a pig awaiting the butcher’s bloodletting. Coldly, the forest warrior glared at the other members of the wolf-hunting party, letting them all know that Arvis’s life was forfeit if they made any sudden moves.

  “Don’t kill him,” Druz repeated.

  Kord started forward.

  “If you value your brother’s life, Kord,” Druz said in a low, anxious voice as she glanced at the big man, “you’ll stay back.”

  Kord hesitated.

  “If you force him to deal with you,” Druz went on, “he’ll kill Arvis without blinking an eye. He’ll have one less enemy to face.”

  Kord plucked the heavy quarrel from the crossbow and tossed it to the ground. He dropped the bow next and showed his empty hands.

  “That’s my brother,” he croaked in a voice that broke. “If you’ll allow it, I’ll have him back in one piece. If you harm him in any way, know that I won’t rest until one of us is dead. I swear that by Helm the Vigilant, god of protectors and guardians.”

  Arvis trembled, evidently trying to figure out a way to rescue himself.

  “Stay,” the forest warrior commanded. He pressed the scimitar against the younger man’s throat meaningfully.

  “If he’s meaning to kill us,” Tethys grated, “then we’re better off working together. He can’t get us all.”

  The forest warrior turned his dark green eyes on the mercenary leader. “Count up after the dust has settled.”

  No one moved.

  Tethys swore black oaths, but he stayed where he was.

  For all his mercenary experience, Druz knew that Tethys wasn’t an overly courageous man. He was smart on a battlefield, and that made him a successful sellsword.

  Making a decision, knowing no one else in the party knew for sure what the forest warrior was or whom he represented, Druz sheathed her sword then unbuckled the belt. She dropped it on the ground, then stepped forward with her empty hands held up before her.

  The forest warrior watched her approach but said nothing.

  “Clear a path to him, girl,” Forras said. “You’re blocking whatever chance one of us might have to get to him should it come to that.”

  Druz ignored the command. Part of the reason the forest warrior allowed her to move in was because she would serve as a human shield.

  “Who are you?” Druz asked.

  The forest warrior regarded her silently.

  “What do you want?” Druz tried again.

  “No more wolf hunting,” the forest warrior replied, “and I want the scalps you’ve collected so far. Those that died will not be desecrated further.”

  “No,” Tethys disagreed, placing a hand on the bag at his waist where the wolf scalps were stored. “We’re keeping the scalps.”

  Druz spoke to the mercenaries without turning around or taking her eyes from the forest warrior. “You’re going to have to give him the scalps.”

  “Are you insane?” Forras demanded. “Without those scalps we won’t be able to collect our bounty.”

  “If you don’t give him the scalps,” Druz said in a measured voice, “he’ll kill us, and you won’t be able to collect your bounty.”

  “Why would he kill us?” Ennalt demanded, exasperated. “We don’t even know this man.” He paused. “Do you know him, Druz?”

  “No,” Druz answered. “I don’t know him … but I know what he is.”

  She met the forest warrior’s gaze boldly. Despite her fear of him, and the respect she had for what she guessed he was capable of, she wasn’t going to flinch away from him. She wouldn’t give him that; she gave no man that.

  “He’s one man,” Tethys objected. “Even if he slays Arvis, there are eight of us.”

  “I don’t want my brother killed,” Kord said. “If you do something stupid to get him slain, I’ll kill you, Tethys.”

  “Eight of us isn’t enough,” Druz said, “and he’s not alone.”

  Warily, the men carrying lanterns moved them so the bull’s-eye beams swept the trees around the glen. A wolf bayed in the distance, yipping at the moon that was high in the sky.

  “I don’t see anyone,” Tethys replied.

  “You won’t see anyone until it’s too late,” Druz said.

  She recalled the tales her blacksmith father had told her of men like the one standing so coolly in front of her with his scimitar at Arvis’s throat.

  “Who are you?” Tethys demanded of the forest warrior.

  “This night,” the man said quietly, “I’m a protector of the wolves you people would slay to line your palms with gold.”

  “He’s a druid,” Druz said. “One of the Emerald Enclave.”

  Her announcement started a quick chorus of conversation between the other mercenaries. Arvis, eyes straining in their sockets, looked at the man holding him captive with new—and perhaps fear-filled—respect.

  Everyone in Turmish knew of the Emerald Enclave and the druids who filled the organization’s ranks. Despite the power that the various cities wielded along the Turmish coastline fronting the Sea of Fallen Stars as well as the Vilhon Reach, no one did anything involving the land without the consent of the Emerald Enclave. The druids’ first order of business was to preserve nature, and if that meant no civilization could invade pristine, sylvan glens or wooded areas that could be harvested by loggers, that was what it meant.

  Tethys spat and growled a curse that offended even Druz, as hardened as she was to the ways of mercenary men and battle.

  “Is that right?” he asked the forest warrior. “Are you a druid?”

  “I won’t allow the killing of any more wolves,” the man replied.

  “You can’t stop us,” Forras said.

  The forest warrior turned his deep green eyes on the man. The moonlight threw emerald sparks from them.

  Druz acted immediately, seeing the druid’s left hand twitch. She shoved Forras away. The man stumbled when he had to unexpectedly shift all his weight to his weak leg. He turned to Druz, lifting his sword threateningly.

  “You damned fool!” Druz snapped.

  “Are you siding with him, then …?” Forras’s voice trailed off when he spotted the long, thin wooden dart quivering in the trunk of the tree he’d been standing in front of only a moment before.

  “He would have killed you,” Druz said, glancing over her shoulder at the forest warrior. “He still might.” She studied the elf’s hand, looking for a telltale sign that he had another dart ready.

  Tethys took affront at the druid’s action. “You’d kill a man over a wolf?” he demanded in disbelief.

  “Yes,” the druid replied. “The balance of nature must be kept. Your actions here unsettle that balance.”

  Forras regained his composure but stayed within reaching distance of Druz. “The wolves are fee
ding on the herd stock nearby.”

  “The cattle and sheep being raised here by the stockmen living in these lands have become—by rights—part of the wolves’ prey,” the elf druid said. “Those creatures, brought in by farmers, unsettle the balance of these lands by grazing. The wolves only make the sharing of the land more equal.”

  Druz didn’t agree, but she didn’t offer her opinion either. Since the recent war, many countries and nations around the Sea of Fallen Stars had suffered. With so many ships lost to the sahuagin and pirates, trade had been bad. When countries didn’t have goods for sale, they seldom brought in goods either.

  What the farmers and shepherds brought in had become increasingly important to the well-being of the area. Now that Myth Nantar had been opened from its hiding place, many things were being rethought considering the Sea of Fallen Stars. Even fishermen struggled to feed their families, and those territories they traded with were constantly redrawn by the nations above water as well as those below.

  “The cattle and sheep are more important than the wolves,” Forras insisted.

  The druid’s eyes partially closed in anger then opened again. “You’re a fool. Without the wolves to cut down the numbers of deer in the forests and through these lands, there would be little grass for the sheep and cattle. The deer would overpopulate this area in a matter of years.”

  “There are men who would bring the deer down if they ever reached such plentiful numbers,” Tethys said. “They would be glad for the opportunity to fill their larders.”

  “Are there?” The druid cocked his head and his tone bordered on sarcasm. “I’ve often noticed that when a city man has to make a choice between hunting, killing, cleaning, and cooking his own meal, he’d rather sit in a tavern and order it already prepared on a plate.”

  “You’ve been to many civilized places, then?” Tethys asked.

  “More than I care to remember,” the druid replied. His blade never wavered from Arvis’s throat. “I will give you until morning to get out of this forest. After that, I will track you down and kill you as you have tracked down and killed the wolves.”