The Jewel of Turmish

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The Jewel of Turmish Page 19

by Odom, Mel


  Allis regarded him from the doorway at the other end of the room. She was holding a woven basket that was covered by a dingy scrap of cloth. She looked like she was just returned from washing laundry.

  She said, “You are everything I was told to expect.”

  “Who told you what to expect?” Borran Klosk asked.

  Ignoring him, she crossed the room and deposited the basket on a slanted, three-legged table.

  The rooms had been vacant for years. Spider webs filled the corners and created fragile latticework bridges between piles of rubbish. Judging from the amount of refuse in the building, for a time after being vacated it had become a dumping ground for the businesses and homes around it.

  Unleashing the rage that filled him, Borran Klosk reached for Allis, closing his skeletal hand around her upper arm and pulling her around.

  The woman turned easily, coming around almost like a lover acknowledging the favored attentions of her suitor, but even as that thought filled Borran Klosk, he saw her change. She wasn’t afraid of his grim, fleshless face as he’d thought she would be.

  Her head erupted, becoming bigger and rounder, sprouting eyes and fangs. Venom dripped from the slash of mouth that no longer fit a human face. The arm Borran Klosk held turned rough and covered over with spiky hair. Her simple green dress dropped to the floor, pooling around misshapen spider feet as she soared above him in height.

  “No!” she said, her voice filling the enclosed space. “Don’t you dare put your hands on me!”

  As a spider standing on six of her eight legs, the woman was taller than Borran Klosk, almost to the point of bumping her head on the ceiling rafters, and she was almost four times as large. She struck with her other forward leg, slamming into the mohrg’s chest and head with incredible strength.

  The impact lifted Borran Klosk from his feet, though if Borran Klosk chose not to be moved, not much could move him.

  He flew across the room, mind working with lightning speed, and slammed against the far wall. He broke through the thin boards that covered the bare bones of the wall and stopped against the inside of the outer wall without breaking through. The impact fractured his left femur in two places, the breaks quite apparent.

  Borran Klosk threw a hand out, a spell already on its way. He watched the giant spider bob and weave at the other end of the room. The realization that she was afraid of him soothed the mohrg’s nerves like a healer’s balm. He was more in control of the situation than he’d expected.

  His anger vanished, replaced by triumphant humor. In the past, his peers had pointed to those quicksilver mood changes as proof of his madness, but he knew he only looked on the world in a manner different from most. He closed his hand, stilling the destructive magical energies he’d almost unleashed.

  Borran Klosk grabbed the edges of the wall and extracted himself. Debris from the shattered wall rained around him, but he ignored it. His left leg moved awkwardly as the broken ends of the femur grated against each other. He reached down then spat his tongue out.

  Wrapping the broken bones in the thick purple tongue, he used the magic that was an inherent part of what he’d become. Pain flared through his leg for a moment, then was gone. When he removed his tongue, the femur had been healed and nothing remained of the breaks.

  Borran Klosk raised his fierce gaze to the werespider and said, “You’re afraid of me.”

  The huge spider shifted back and forth, scuttling on the tips of all eight legs, the fat body hanging ponderously between them.

  “You are evil,” Allis accused.

  “And what are you?” Borran Klosk advanced on her.

  “I am a servant of Malar.”

  “Then why fear me?” Borran Klosk asked, continuing to walk toward her. “I, too, walk in the Beastlord’s shadow and serve his wishes.”

  “I don’t fear you.”

  “You lie,” Borron Klosk said, letting his tongue whip through the air. “I can taste it.”

  The spider retreated, pressing up against the wall behind her. She was too large to attempt to go through the door or any of the windows, and returning to human size would weaken her.

  She said, “You live only to kill.”

  “As does Malar,” Borran Klosk said.

  “That is but one aspect of his nature,” Allis objected.

  “A very important aspect.”

  The spider reared up on her four back legs, flattening against the wall. She held her four front legs before her, raised to defend herself if necessary.

  “Malar called me here to help you,” she said.

  “Malar doesn’t speak directly to someone like you.”

  Borran Klosk stopped in front of her. He shook broken pieces of boards and splinters from his bloody priest’s cloak.

  “Who?” he asked.

  The spider didn’t hesitate. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “If I did, they would kill me.”

  Summoning a fireball, Borran Klosk held it dancing in his fleshless palm. The heat was intense. He heard leftover cartilage in his hand pop and crackle, surrendering to the heat. The fire couldn’t actually harm him, but the effect of the crackling sounds on Allis was immediate.

  The spider shivered and drew back, the flames of the fireball reflected in all of her eight eyes.

  “What do you think I will do?” Borran Klosk whispered.

  The cold, dispassionate words hung in the emptiness of the room. The spider shifted, and for a moment Borran Klosk thought she might try to escape from the building. The thought of a gigantic spider suddenly scuttling across the rooftops of Alaghôn amused him. Everyone in town would assume it was his handiwork, and in a way it would be.

  “It is a group of wizards,” Allis said. “They serve Malar, follow his bidding, and work to strike against the Emerald Enclave.”

  “Wizards?” The thought excited Borran Klosk. “Compatriots, then?”

  The promise of allies held a certain allure, but it might also mean having shackles. Since his return from the grave, Borran Klosk had known no master and recognized no peer save for Malar. Meeting other wizards who served the Beastlord was not something Borran Klosk looked forward to with any relish.

  “No,” the spider answered. “You’ll find no friends among them. The wizards serve Malar for their own desires, and the only company they want is their own.”

  Starting to feel pain from the magic flame, Borran Klosk put his other hand over the fireball, extinguishing it. He was certain the werespider didn’t know extinguishing the fireball showed greater power than creating it. Unleashing destruction was always much simpler than harnessing the same energies.

  “Return to your human form,” he commanded.

  Allis hesitated for a moment, then she quivered and slowly dwindled into herself. In only a short time, she stood naked before the mohrg.

  Even though much of the way of the flesh had deserted him, Borran Klosk still felt a hint of desire stir within him. The werespider was a beautiful woman, and standing before him as she did while totally defenseless made her even more desirable.

  “How did you come to be part of this group?” Borran Klosk asked.

  “They recruited me,” she answered.

  “How?”

  “By blackmailing me. And they made sure the Emerald Enclave knew of me.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That I am dual-natured,” she answered.

  “Why should the Emerald Enclave care?”

  “They think that lycanthropes who were turned rather than born are an abomination against nature and should be forced into one nature or the other or killed outright. Those born into the life naturally are tolerated as long as they remain true to themselves.”

  “The wizards are lycanthropes?”

  “No.” Allis kept her gaze directed over Borran Klosk’s shoulder, as if she were staring through him. “They all practice necromancy.”

  Borran Klosk laughed, and the harsh, bitter sound echoed in the room.

  He asked, “A lea
gue of undead wizards?”

  “They aren’t undead,” Allis said. “At least, not the wizards I’ve seen, but they are all evil. The Beastlord offers them power, just as Malar offered you power all those years ago.”

  “The power didn’t come soon enough,” Borran Klosk said. “I was unable to assemble the jewel in time to use it against the druids of the Emerald Enclave.”

  “Your task remains to assemble the jewel,” Allis said, and the sparkle in her eyes told Borran Klosk that she delighted in telling him that. Attempting it would surely draw the wrath of the Emerald Enclave down on him, though the fear never quite left her.

  “You are to call down the destruction,” Allis said, “that Taraketh’s Hive will open for you. Once you have done that, the druids will be driven from Turmish—perhaps even farther beyond before they are able to gain mastery over the jewel’s power.”

  Anger twisted inside Borran Klosk. He spat out the thick purple tongue, tired of tasting the bile that seemed to hang in the air. “I do not do their bidding.”

  Allis lifted her chin and rebellion fired anew in her eyes. “You will.”

  Unleashing his tongue, Borran Klosk splintered the wall to the side of her head.

  She flinched, but only little, and swallowed hard again. Her gaze met his boldly for a moment before sliding away.

  “The people who control you have no control over me,” Borran Klosk announced.

  “They control whomever they wish,” she told him. “You wanted Taraketh’s Hive, didn’t you?”

  Borran Klosk glared at her.

  “They can take that from you,” Allis said softly. “They raised the dead that you buried so long ago. They can just as easily return those cadaverous minions back into the ground somewhere short of Alaghôn, only this time the wizards will stop your minions in places that you won’t know of.”

  “Don’t threaten me, woman,” Borran Klosk warned.

  “I’m not,” Allis said. “I’m just stating a fact. Perhaps they’ll even see to it that the priests of Eldath lock you away once again.”

  “They want something from me,” Borran Klosk said, and he found himself needing to hear that statement as much as he needed to tell the woman. “They won’t let me fall so easily.”

  “If you prove difficult,” Allis said, “they will.”

  Borran Klosk turned from the woman, not wanting to believe her, but he did believe her. She was too calm, too complacent in her words, and she took a certain measured delight in passing them on.

  “If your damned wizards come for me,” he said, “they’ll do so at the peril of their own lives.”

  “They won’t come for you,” Allis told him. “They won’t have to. You’ll be hunted all over Alaghôn after last night, and though it might take them time to bring you down, they will. They will withhold the gifts they offer you today, and they’ll keep Taraketh’s Hive from you.”

  “Gifts?” Interested, Borran Klosk looked at the basket the werespider had placed on the slanted table.

  Allis picked up her dress, which had been ripped considerably as she’d changed forms. Still, she pulled herself into it as best as she could. Her eyes never met his while she dressed.

  Crossing to the table, Allis lifted the cloth from the basket and revealed the items inside. She took a small oval mirror from inside a black wooden chest that was filled with padding to protect the mirror. She waved a hand over the mirror, spoke words that Borran Klosk almost recognized, and placed the looking glass on the tabletop.

  “First,” she said, “I bring you proof that the five you buried with the pieces of Taraketh’s Hive have risen.”

  Borran Klosk didn’t need her mystic bauble to tell him that, but he remained silent. Even now he could feel them drawing steadily closer.

  Allis pointed to the mirror.

  Drawn by the sight of a figure moving within the glass, Borran Klosk came closer. He peered into the mirror and saw a scene as though through a hazy fog.

  A skeleton marched through swamplands with a long stride. Murky water came up to the skeleton’s shins. In the hollows of its chest, lodged behind the breastbone, a jeweled cube burned bright and hard. The skeleton carried a short sword in one fist, and divots of mud still filled its cavernous eyes.

  Allis waved her hand again, and the other four skeletons bearing pieces of Taraketh’s Hive came into view, each in turn.

  “You see,” she said, “all is as I have promised. They have no will of their own but to serve Malar—and you—in the best way they know how.”

  “And what of the other gifts you said you bore?”

  Reaching into the basket again, Allis took out a section of gray and pink coral almost as long as her forearm.

  She held it out and asked, “Do you sense the death on this?”

  “It’s coral,” Borran Klosk said. He tasted the salty scent of it with a flicking caress of his tongue. “It reeks of death.”

  Intrigue filled him. Even after everything he’d done, all the foul murders he’d committed, nothing had tasted so exquisite.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “From the Whamite Isles.”

  Borran Klosk’s tongue leaped out again, drawing closer to the coral. “I’ve never tasted death like this. Not even that wrought by my own hand.”

  “There has never been death like this before,” Allis said. “The islands are encircled by drowned ones and other undead. This was taken from the reefs that surround the Whamite Isles and was magically altered.”

  Borran Klosk’s tongue flicked out again, and he could sense the magic energies bound within the coral. It was the most powerful thing outside of Taraketh’s Hive that he’d ever encountered.

  Allis extended the coral to him and with some trepidation, Borran Klosk accepted it. As soon as his bony fingers touched the coral, it grew, shimmering as it changed. In a heartbeat, the coral had formed an elbow-length glove of white and pink streaks that perfectly encased his hand. A buzz of power filled the mohrg.

  “What is this?” Borran Klosk asked.

  “Power,” Allis answered. “The power to wake the dead of the Whamite Isles and call them to you.”

  Borran Klosk held the glove up before him, admiring it. For a moment, he worried that the mystic thing had ensorcelled him in some way, but he had safeguards—spells and magical items about him—that guaranteed such things could not easily affect him.

  The power was real. He felt it surging within the glove and within him.

  “Use it,” Allis urged, “and you will raise an army to follow you back here to Alaghôn. No one will be able to stand before them. All of Turmish, and perhaps even the Vilhon Reach, will fall under your power.”

  Borran Klosk flexed the glove upon his hand. It moved as supple as leather, far easier than even the flesh he could remember wearing all those years before.

  “And these wizards that you serve,” he said, “they want me to have such power?”

  “Serve your own dark desires, Borran Klosk,” Allis said, “and you will serve theirs.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Haarn ran, cutting through the overgrown grass that sprouted from the low valley’s marshy ground. Despite the speed at which he’d been moving for hours, he knew he could run for hours more. From the wheezing gasps of his companion, he likewise knew that Druz Talimsir could not.

  He grew irritated again at his own inability to leave the woman, as he knew he should have.

  I gave her Stonefur’s head, he thought in disgust. That’s all I owed her.

  Druz gasped for breath but in a controlled manner, showing training and stamina, but her abilities were nothing when compared to the druid’s. Her passage through the marshlands, punctuated with discordant splats of her boots slapping mud, echoed around them.

  Ahead, the valley sloped up again, leaving a thin trickle of stained brown water running through the heart of it. The long rain of the preceding day and night still wound through the land, and a tenday or more would pass
before the sun burned away what the ground couldn’t absorb.

  Haarn started up the slope, then stopped under a copse of trees. Scanning the ground for the trail he was certain he’d find, he waited for Druz.

  “Tymora’s blessing,” Druz gasped. “I thought we were never going to stop running. Have you lost the trail?”

  “No,” Haarn said, only just keeping the scorn from his voice.

  The skeleton’s trail was there for anyone to see. Over the last three miles, the stink of moldy, dead flesh had carried more strongly on the air. They were much closer than they had been, practically on the undead abomination’s heels.

  “Wait here,” he told her.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Haarn didn’t pause to answer her. It was surprising how many questions she asked, but he supposed it was because she was used to being in control.

  “Haarn,” she called after him, irritating him further because she must have known how far her voice would carry.

  “Wait,” he growled over his shoulder.

  He raced up the side of the valley, finding the firmest spots and rocky shelves at a glance. Running in zigzag fashion, he spotted the trail he was looking for.

  A dolodrium plant, one of those that sprang up when the rainy season started and turned the drylands to verdant marsh, lay broken and twisted on the ground. An imprint beneath it, the one that had broken the frail plant, showed three toes and the ball of a skeletal foot. The thing he pursued had come this way.

  Despite his pressing need to eradicate the undead thing, Haarn took a moment to harvest the dolodrium blossoms. The plant was hard to find even when someone was looking for it. When harvested properly—from within the third morning sun to the moon of the fourth night, only a small window of time—the dolodrium plant yielded medicinal flowers that could be crushed and boiled into a weak tea that helped cure infections and headaches.

  Broadfoot snuffled only a few feet away and stepped out of the trees. The bear stood on his rear legs and scented the air, snuffling again. The prey was near, and Broadfoot knew it.

  Silently agreeing, Haarn followed the trail across the uncertain foundation of too-wet ground. In three other places he spotted evidence of the skeleton’s passing, all of them marked by bare spots where the yellowed grass had been torn away.

 

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