by Odom, Mel
Stonebottom’s was meager and small, cobbled together from ballast rocks brought over in merchant ships. A lit candle in a glass tube dangled from the sign, revealing the chipped and peeling paint that advertised the name. No candles burned in the two front windows that would have signified a vacancy. Stonebottom’s usually stayed full whenever ships were in port.
Knowing they had to take the man before he reached the inn, Cerril increased his pace. Hekkel’s shadow flitted along the other side of the street.
Two blocks before Stonebottom’s, Cerril signaled Hekkel.
Without hesitation, Hekkel ran out into the street. “Good sir! Good sir! Help me, please!”
The man stopped and turned, putting his back up against the building beside him. His hand darted for his waist sash, and Cerril would have bet anything that he was carrying a blade there. At least the man hadn’t turned Hekkel into a toad.
“What do you want, boy?” the man demanded in a thin, worn voice.
“It’s my mother!” Hekkel cried, coming to a stop in front of the man. “She fell down! I can’t wake her!”
The man remained quiet, his hand out of sight.
“You’ve got to help me!” Hekkel pleaded.
“I’m no healer.”
The man glanced warily around the dark street, but Stonebottom’s was located in one of the several old parts of the city. Little foot traffic ever went through that area so early. A few hours before cock’s crow, though, the seamen who rented rooms there would come stumbling through.
Cerril stayed within the shadow less than twenty feet away. He breathed shallowly. Thankfully the street was also devoid of lanterns and he remained hidden.
Hekkel was small for his size. Most people not used to children often thought he was a child of seven or eight years. At least, they did until they saw the hardness in his eyes. Still, the man almost hit Hekkel when the boy dropped to his knees and wrapped both arms around the man’s legs.
“Please!” Hekkel cried plaintively. “I think she’s dying!”
“Here now,” the man said. “Get up from there. You need to see someone who can do your mother some good. I’m just a traveler. I’ve no experience at healing. I’m a scribe.”
Carefully, Cerril reached for the window ledge of the cobbler’s shop beside him. Hundreds of years of masonry held Alaghôn together. Dozens of styles held sway in the city, and they created a rambling disorder to Alaghôn that provided any number of dead-end streets and orphaned blocks. The mortar of the older buildings was also in a state of disrepair, often crumbling when jostled.
Cerril raked a finger between the stones that made up the window ledge. The mortar broke up easily and he slipped a stone as big as both his fists from the ledge. A half-dozen others were already missing. He threw himself at the man, running quickly.
The man, distracted by Hekkel’s caterwauling, didn’t hear Cerril’s approach until it was too late. Cerril brought the stone around in a hard-knuckled right hand just as the man looked up at him.
The stone caught the man on the side of the head. His eyes turned glassy and he slumped.
Cerril caught the man by his shirt collar and struggled with his slight weight. He stumbled.
“Help me, damn you!” he swore at Hekkel.
“Did you kill him?”
Hekkel released the man’s legs and stood, gazing at their victim’s slack face.
“No,” Cerril said.
He glanced around the street, wanting to make sure no one had seen them. The guards around the docks were pretty lax. For one, the black market paid handsomely, funneled through the Thieves Guild. And for another, men desperate to turn a profit often had no hesitation about killing a guardsman.
“I’ve got him,” Two-Fingers said, joining Cerril.
Two-Fingers caught one of the man’s arms and draped it over his broad shoulders. He shifted most of the unconscious man’s weight onto him. Cerril grabbed the man’s other arm. Together they walked the man into the nearest alley.
The thoroughfare was long and narrow. The scant moonlight didn’t even penetrate. They laid the man on the ground. Cerril searched under the man’s blouse with practiced fingers and quickly found the small but heavy pouch at the man’s waist.
Gold! The thought flooded Cerril’s mind when he felt the heft of it. He opened the pouch and poured the coins into his waiting palm.
“Tymora’s smile,” Hekkel swore softly, voice filled with excitement. “We did all right for ourselves tonight.”
Even in the darkness, Cerril could see the dull glint of gold among the coins. His questing fingers found the biggest of them and drew it forth. It was solid, round, and heavy.
“Gold,” he whispered.
“I never seen anything like that,” Two-Fingers said.
Cerril scowled at him. “Alaghôn gets coins from all around the Sea of Fallen Stars. There’s probably lots of coins you haven’t seen.”
He flipped the coin over. The face held the image of a great, snarling, catlike beast with flattened ears and a mouthful of fangs. The obverse showed a taloned, bestial claw in bold relief. The image caused Cerril’s stomach to turn cold.
“Do you recognize it, boy?” a scratchy, weak voice asked.
“Damn it!” one of the other boys swore. “Cerril didn’t kill him after all.”
“Get a rock,” another boy suggested. “Smash his head in! I don’t want him identifying us for the guard.”
“No.” Cerril’s voice cut through their fear. He crept closer to the man, feeling something dark and powerful touching him through the cool gold. He held the coin up. “What is this?”
“Do you recognize it?” the man challenged.
Cerril didn’t answer. Sometimes it was better to let things go unanswered.
“Of course he does,” Hekkel snapped. “That coin represents Malar. The Stalker. Also called the Beastlord. He’s one of the Gods of Fury that serve Talos. What of it?”
The man gasped but no sound emerged. Blood trickled down the side of his head onto the ground. He made no move to get up.
The fact that the man didn’t try to cry out, and even looked a little relieved, made Cerril yet more uneasy.
“The coin is cursed,” the man said. “There’s a geas that’s been laid on it by Malar.”
“You lie!” Cerril exploded.
“Try to throw the coin away, boy,” the man challenged.
“That would be stupid,” Hekkel said.
Still, Cerril turned his hand upside down. The coin of Malar remained stuck to his flesh, denying the certain fall to the ground. Fearfully, he pulled the coin free of his palm with his other hand, then found it was stuck to that hand.
“Do you feel the power of the geas now, boy?” the man asked, smiling. Blood continued to pump from his wound.
Cerril shook his hand, trying to fling the coin away. His stomach knotted in fear, spilling bile against the back of his throat. Bad luck!
He turned to Hekkel, shoved his hand out, and said, “You want it—take it!”
Hekkel eyed the coin greedily, but fear made him back away. He shook his head slowly.
Totally panicked, Cerril turned back to the man. He found the knife at the man’s waist and drew it out. Without hesitation, he pressed it against the man’s throat.
“Take it back!”
The man returned his gaze and said, “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t. The coin has to be wanted. I had never even heard of Malar when it came into my position.”
Cerril pressed the knife blade harder. “Take the coin.”
Slowly, the man reached for the coin in Cerril’s hand. The man plucked at the coin but it refused to release Cerril’s hand. It lay there in the boy’s palm, attached as firmly as a blood leech.
“I can’t,” the man said, removing his hand. “It knows I don’t want it.”
Cerril groaned in fear and anger. He almost slit the man’s throat, then he realized that doing that mig
ht have doomed him.
“What kind of geas is on the coin?”
The man swallowed hard, his eyes narrowing in pain. “I don’t know,” he said. “The coin drew me here.”
“To Alaghôn?” Cerril asked.
“Yes. I’ve never been here before, but visions of this place came to me in dreams. Nightmares, actually. Gods, but the things I saw during the last few months I’ve had that thing.”
“What are you supposed to do?”
Cerril knew that the nature of any geas, for good or ill—and with Malar the Stalker involved he had no doubt that it would all be for ill—was the need to accomplish something.
“I don’t know,” the man answered.
“You’re here,” Cerril pointed out.
“Only because the nightmares ebbed a little when I made the decision to board a ship and come here.” The man’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, then reopened. “You’ll know what it wants you to do. You’ll have nightmares about it.”
Cerril glanced up and saw that Two-Fingers, Hekkel, and the others had stepped back from him.
They don’t want any of my bad luck rubbing off on them, he thought.
He looked back at the man.
“All I can tell you,” the man said, “is that the geas involves a graveyard somewhere in this city. I’ve seen it in my nightmares, but I haven’t had a chance to look for it yet.”
Cerril’s breath caught at the back of his throat. A graveyard? Alaghôn was filled with graveyards. The last thing he wanted to do—while under the effects of a geas or not—was go to any one of them.
He stared at the fat coin lying in his hand and cursed his own rotten luck.
CHAPTER FOUR
Did you hear that?”
Haarn kept walking through the forest, ignoring the woman trying to keep pace with him. Druz Talimsir’s efforts had become so noisy even across level ground that Haarn had finally given up in disgust and paced himself so that she could more easily walk with him. The other wolf hunters were little over an hour behind them.
Druz grabbed his shoulder.
Slipping out of her grasp, reaching for the inner calm that his father had taught him, Haarn stepped to one side. Instinctively, probably because of her training as a mercenary and probably from working in places where she’d had to control others, she tried to grip his shoulder again. She was already twisting sideways and fisting her sword, readying herself for an aggressive response. The druid blocked her grip with an open hand, curling his fingers over her wrist and pushing her hand away.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, drawing back into an automatic defensive posture.
“Don’t put your hands on me,” Haarn said.
Anger and embarrassment colored the woman’s face. “What the hell is wrong with you? I offered you no insult or injury.”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” Haarn replied. “I don’t like to be touched.”
The woman’s voice bared steel. “I don’t like to be ignored.”
“I haven’t been ignoring you,” Haarn replied. “If I had wanted to ignore you, I would have left you in the forest a long time before this. I have allowed you to accompany me as you wished.”
“You have allowed me?”
Haarn considered his words and found he’d said nothing incorrect. “Yes.”
She started to say something but words failed her. Perhaps the woman had a problem with the harsh truth of the matter. He didn’t care. What he’d said was true, even if it had been stated in a way that wasn’t agreeable with her. He gazed into her eyes until she looked away.
Less than forty feet distant, Haarn heard Broadfoot shifting restively in the brush. The brown bear weighed at least a dozen times as much as the young woman but made even less noise. Still, despite his own feelings about her woodcraft, Druz passed more quietly than the other group making their way through the dark forest no more than a hundred paces away.
A cry of pain echoed through the night.
Druz’s head snapped up. “That was a woman’s voice.”
Haarn made no response. He’d recognized the sound as being from a woman as well.
Without another word, Druz crept through the forest toward the noise of the woman’s pained scream as it was repeated. She slid her sword free of its sheath.
Gracefully, more silent than a stirring leaf, Haarn fell into step beside Druz. However, he made certain to give her the personal space she’d dared take from him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m going to see what’s wrong with that woman.”
“There are others with her,” Haarn stated.
“I know, but why is she crying out?”
The woman moaned again.
“Because she’s in pain,” Haarn said.
“That doesn’t make you curious?” Druz pushed through saplings and low tree branches.
Haarn gently stilled the quivering saplings and branches as he followed the woman. Where Druz left ripples in the forest, he quieted the wood, making sure, out of habit, that there was little sign of their passage.
The woman cried out again.
“If she’s with friends,” Druz said, “she wouldn’t be moaning like that.”
“I’ve found that city people don’t always treat each other well,” Haarn said.
“How do you know they’re from the city?”
Druz knelt at the edge of the forest. They stood on a small promontory overlooking a shallow valley basin.
Haarn favored this valley and often watched the sun come up over the crest of the high hills around it. The trail worn by hunters and regular traffic cut through the trees. There were some, the druid knew, who would see the trail as a road, a place of civilization and refinement. Haarn saw it as a scar, a place where those who would conquer it rather than learn to live with it had sundered nature.
A tight knot of lanterns wavered in the dark distance. The combined illumination created a hollow space beneath the canopy of the trees and the walls of brush. The nocturnal forest animals watched from discreet distances, all of them giving way to the invaders.
Druz reached into her backpack and took out a device.
Judging from the construction of the backpack and the time that had gone into the making of it, Haarn felt certain that sure-handed gnomes had crafted it. Their talent in the creation of things sometimes put discouraging thoughts into the druid’s head. If only the gnomes had learned to live with nature rather than create ways to challenge it. Besides a generous storage space and comfort, the backpack provided a number of pockets of differing sizes.
Moving with accustomed precision, Druz pulled on the thing she’d taken from her backpack. The device elongated in sections, forming a hollow tube. The mercenary placed the tube to her eye and stared through it. She was quiet only for a moment, then she lowered the device and looked back at him.
“They’re slavers,” she said.
“Yes,” Haarn replied.
He didn’t tell her that he could smell them from the valley’s ridge. The slaves exuded a spicy sweat from the foods they’d eaten and the fragrances they wore. Those unfortunate enough to be caught and held in chains carried a days’ old sour, sickly stench. The chain links had been padded so they didn’t make much noise.
Slavers occasionally came deep into Turmish from Nimpeth and other lands on the southern coastline of the Vilhon Reach. Nimpeth had long been known as a slave city. The manpower shortages and the damage wrought by the recent war had increased both the demand for and the availability of slaves.
“You knew that?” Druz accused.
“I know it now,” Haarn stated.
He returned his gaze to the stumbling progression making its way southeast to the Turmish coastline. They were days away from the Vilhon Reach and whatever vessel might be awaiting them.
“You let slavers raid these lands?” Druz asked, obviously angry. She put her device away.
Haarn didn’t even deign to answer the offensive ques
tion.
“What are you going to do?” Druz demanded.
“Hunt the wolf,” the druid replied, “as we agreed.”
“You can’t just let those slavers pass. Maybe we can do something.”
Haarn looked at her. “Do you know any of those people?”
“I couldn’t see them.”
“They could be strangers.”
“If we don’t do something, they’re going to be slaves.”
Haarn noted the urgency in the woman’s voice and knew that her attitude was going to be troublesome.
He said, “Those people could be slaves again in the next tenday.”
“You’re going to stand by and let that happen?”
“It’s none of my affair,” the druid said. He nodded toward the line of slaves and slavers. “What you see there is the work of man, of civilization. Animals don’t take slaves.”
“Some of those people could be druids.”
“No,” Haarn said quietly. “No one of my order would allow himself or herself to be taken as a slave.” They would die first. He was certain of that.
“If one of your order was down there,” Druz persisted, “would you do something then?”
“No one from my order is down there.”
A little irritated by Druz’s constant talk of things that weren’t happening and might never happen, Haarn turned and stepped back toward the sheltering forest.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“The sooner I kill the wolf we seek, the sooner I can take my leave of you.”
“Those people are being taken into slavery.”
“It’s not my concern.”
Haarn kept walking, his thoughts already turning from the slaves and the slavers.
Broadfoot snuffled in the distance, the sound lost amid the night’s other myriad noises. Haarn knew no one else would have heard it unless they were standing close to the brown bear. The druid cocked his head slightly, listening for what Broadfoot had sensed.
Furtive footsteps neared their position.
