by Odom, Mel
Allis stared at the rolling sea as well. Her hair lay plastered against her skull and her clothes, like Borran Klosk’s own cloak, were sodden. Her opal eyes glowed in the darkness.
The gale winds swept Mistress Talia’s decks and yet another bolt of lightning pierced the dark clouds.
“Sails!” a man shouted from above.
Borran Klosk looked up at the corpse manning the crow’s nest. He had stationed one of the dead men still able to speak up there to act as lookout.
“Where?”
“Off the starboard bow, cap’n,” the dead man cackled gleefully.
Unfortunately, though some of the dead men yet maintained enough experience to do their jobs, not all of them kept their sanity.
Even after days at sea, Borran Klosk could not keep straight which was port and which was starboard. None of that mattered in his plans. All he wanted was to get the ship back to Alaghôn with his promised undead army in tow.
“Where?” he growled to Allis, who understood such things.
“To the right,” she answered.
Borran Klosk walked in that direction, crossing the narrow flying bridge. Lightning flared again, and this time it reflected from sails.
“No fishermen come out here,” Allis said, “and they wouldn’t be here at this time of night anyway. They must be looking for someone. Occasionally, treasure hunters come out here, looking to lay claim to cargo lost by ships that were sunk in these waters, and to raid the drowned city itself.”
“They see us, cap’n,” the dead man occupying the crow’s nest said. “They’re turning and coming toward us.”
Borran Klosk saw that the ship had altered its direction and was now approaching them. Lights moved hurriedly along the ship’s deck, and more of them were lit.
“Someone is looking for us,” Borran Klosk said.
“No one knows we’re here,” Allis said.
Borran Klosk fisted the ratline running down to the flying deck and said, “Coming here wasn’t as clever as you thought it was.”
“There’s an army waiting here to be claimed,” Allis said.
“I can’t hide as easily on the open sea as I could have in the city,” Borran Klosk replied. “I know the warrens and alleys there. I could have stayed away from them.”
“They would have hunted you down. You didn’t stand a chance … especially not after the way you announced yourself to them.”
Rage filled Borran Klosk and he almost backhanded the werespider.
“I will not be taken again,” he said. “I will not be locked away, nor will I allow myself to be destroyed.”
“We can hold them off,” Allis said.
Borran Klosk wanted to scream and shout, to rail against Malar who had undoubtedly abandoned him yet again. Lightning flared and thunder pealed, sending highlights and a jagged reflection skittering across the sea’s surface.
The other ship sailed alongside Mistress Talia and matched her speed. Men stood along the other ship’s deck. Many of them held lanterns and the lights showed the bows, javelins, and swords the sailors wielded. Among the crew, though, were a number of men Borran Klosk recognized from their dress as druids. Some of them had animal companions with them, and an owl skimmed through the sky, shining silver-gray in a lightning flash.
“Ahoy the ship!” someone yelled from the other vessel. “Identify yourselves!”
None of the undead crew aboard Mistress Talia moved. All of them waited for orders from the mohrg. Borran Klosk flicked his tongue out. Even with the storm continuing unabated around them, he tasted the scent of human flesh and blood staining the winds. It was delicious.
“Ahoy the ship!” the same voice repeated, growing angry this time. “Answer up or you’ll be paying dearly for your reticence!”
The other ship sailed closer, and Borran Klosk knew that they were well within bowshot. The lanternlight played over Mistress Talia’s deck. His undead crewman stared at the flesh and blood crew of the other ship.
“Blessed Lady,” a man swore aboard the newly arrived ship, “all them there men are dead! That’s a crew of dead men aboard her, it is!”
The owl circled Mistress Talia, coming in closer.
Borran Klosk pointed at the owl. A green beam lanced from his finger and transfixed the bird. In less than a heartbeat, the owl roiled into a fluff of feathers that blew away on the storm winds.
The crew aboard the second ship drew back. Several holy symbols appeared and as many curses as prayers came from their lips.
The mohrg leaned on the flying deck’s railing and showed the men a confident pose.
“I am Borran Klosk!” he roared above the keening winds that whipped through the sails and rigging. “You know me.”
Instantly, several beams from bull’s-eye lanterns turned in his direction. They stripped the shadows away from him and revealed him for what he was.
“It is Borran Klosk!” someone yelled.
“Kill him!” another cried. “Get the wizards out here!”
Immediately afterward, dozens of arrows sprang from the bows of men on the second ship. The missiles leaped across the space between the ships and tore into Mistress Talia’s deck and sailcloth. Several of the arrows found homes in the undead crew as well. Some of the walking corpses stumbled back a pace or two, but none of them went down.
“Get oil up here!” a big warrior yelled. “Get oil up here and we’ll burn that damned ship to the waterline! Those undead bastards will go down with it!”
Borran Klosk unleashed a spell, sending an arc of fire streaming from his hand. The fireball deflected off course and shot up into the sky, warring with another brilliant flash of lightning for preeminence in the dark heavens.
A tall, gangly man in elegant robes covered in runes strode onto the second ship’s deck. He thrust out a hand. In response, the winds picked up strength and smashed into Mistress Talia. Several of the undead crew were blown down, and a handful of others were blown off the deck into the ocean. Overhead, a sail ripped free of its moorings and went fluttering away, disappearing into the darkness.
Borran Klosk clung defiantly to the railing.
“No matter what ill fate awaits me,” he told Allis, “I will not be taken. I will not be humbled. My vengeance, my bloodlust, will be slaked in the lives of these men and those alive in Alaghôn and all of Turmish. I will survive this.”
“You’ll do more than that,” the werespider said, touching his arm. “Look.”
Borran Klosk turned and looked in the direction she pointed. At first he saw only a few gleams amid the wall of water approaching them from the ruins of the Whamite Isles, and he assumed they were jellyfishes reflecting the lightning or perhaps debris, wood pieces with nails or other bits of metal driven into them, then he saw them change direction.
“It’s the drowned ones,” Allis said.
Doubt lingered in Borran Klosk, then he felt a fresh infusion of power through the coral glove.
“This is your moment, Borran Klosk,” Allis said. “Seize control of the power blessed Malar has put at your disposal.”
“Borran Klosk,” the wizard aboard the other ship yelled. “Surrender your vessel!”
Ignoring the challenge, Borran Klosk turned to Allis and asked, “Why did this league of wizards you say you work for choose to give this power to me?”
Allis hesitated. She glanced toward the other ship and the light from the blazing fire arrows reflected in her eyes.
“Kill the monster!” someone from the other ship shouted. “Kill him and be quick about it!”
“Why?” Borran Klosk asked again, moving closer to the werespider.
She looked back at Borran Klosk, defeat in her gaze.
“Because they can’t use it,” she said. “The glove was created by their magic, but only an undead can wear it. They chose you because of your hatred for Turmish, and because Malar instructed them to.”
“What is your answer, Borran Klosk?” the wizard on the other ship demanded.
&
nbsp; Allis glanced past the mohrg, toward the prow of the ship.
“You must act quickly, Borran Klosk,” she said, “else the drowned ones will take us down as well.”
Looking over his shoulder, Borran Klosk saw the gleam of white bone swimming beneath the black water now. He recognized the bodies of men, women, and children swimming in the sea. They were less than fifty yards from the ships. So intent was the focus of the men aboard the other ship that none of them noticed the arrival of the drowned ones.
Something butted into Mistress Talia.
Borran Klosk felt the echo of the impact through the ship’s deck. Gazing down into the water, he saw the heads of the drowned ones clustered by the ship. There must have been fifty or sixty of them, with more coming. Lightning seared the sky, and reflections dawned in the dead eyes or in the empty eye holes that gazed up at him. He felt the hunger that drove them, as insistent as his own.
“Borran Klosk!” the wizard on the other ship called out. “This is your last warning. I won’t hold these men back any longer.”
The drowned ones at the waterline began forming a pyramid of bodies. The ones on the bottom stayed motionless while the others started piling on, floating higher and higher as the waves rocked them. Already they were halfway up the side of the merchanter and no one had noticed them.
Looking across the water, Borran Klosk discovered that other drowned ones had started their assault on the other ship as well. The mohrg began the incantation as Allis had instructed. Power surged along the coral glove and Borran Klosk felt it down to the very center of his being.
The drowned ones continued clambering aboard each other, climbing still higher.
Men aboard the other ship began yelling. Someone had spotted the drowned ones. Others took up the hue and cry of warning.
“Hurry,” Allis pleaded.
The other ship tried to get underway, but the drowned ones had somehow trapped their anchor in the shallows. Before the sailors could cut or release the anchor chain, drowned ones formed a web of bodies and started clambering over the sides.
Borran Klosk listened to the screams and yells of panic and pain from the other ship’s crew as the drowned ones climbed aboard. The sea zombies took incredible punishment at the hands of the crew, but they kept on coming. A number of them advanced on the crew while bearing flaming arrows stuck in their blue-gray torsos.
In the light of the lanterns on the other ships, Borran Klosk got a better view of his proposed subjects. Most of them had been drowned and underwater for a year. All of them showed the blue-gray pallor of death, wore only tatters of clothing if they wore any at all, and had innumerable bloodless wounds that left craters in their dead flesh.
When he finished the spell, the shrieks aboard the other ship had reached a crescendo. The ship bucked at the end of its anchor chain like a fish at the end of a line. Lightning flashed across the sky, and in the bright light the blood staining the ship’s deck reflected indigo.
The head of a drowned one appeared over the railing of Mistress Talia’s flying deck. Water dripped from the torn flesh only halfway covering the ivory bone beneath. It opened its jaws just as Borran Klosk finished the incantation.
Allis screamed and backed away as the drowned ones started for her.
Borran Klosk felt the surge of power that filled the glove and himself. He gazed at the drowned ones before him, feeling the link that bound his mind to the animalistic impulses that still survived in them.
It was as though Borran Klosk’s mind had suddenly grown larger, expanding tens, hundreds, maybe a thousandfold. If he chose, he could see through their eyes. He joined some of the minds onboard the other ship and saw the frightened faces of men who went down before him. He almost felt their flesh tear as the teeth bit into them, as if those teeth were his own.
“Lord Klosk!”
Allis’s strained, frightened voice drew him back to his own body. He saw the ravaged features of the drowned one before him, mouth open as it prepared to bite him. A shrimp coiled inside one of its vacant eye sockets.
Other drowned ones closed on Allis, gripping her arms as they bore her down to the deck. She was already shifting, turning into a giant spider.
As if he’d been doing it for years instead of only having just learned it, Borran Klosk reached into the minds of the drowned ones that had boarded their ship.
“Stop,” he commanded.
And the drowned ones stopped.
Allis shrugged free of those that held her and stood by the mohrg.
“You have them,” she said, and there was a flicker of disbelief in her opal eyes.
Borran Klosk peered at the drowned one standing dripping in front of him. The mohrg reached out and caressed the dead blue-gray flesh.
“Not all of them,” he said, “but enough to destroy Alaghôn.”
He pushed the drowned one aside gently. The creature stepped out of the way and waited there.
Back at the railing, intimately aware of all the drowned ones floating in the water around Mistress Talia, Borran Klosk watched the unmerciful execution of the other ship’s crew. Some of the drowned ones were destroyed in the assault, but not nearly enough of them. In a short time, the drowned ones would have eliminated every living thing from the ship. The mohrg only hoped that something remained of the vessel when they finished.
He felt filled with wonder as he gazed out over the sea and the ship under attack. He wanted to scream with joy.
“They’re mine, Allis. I can feel them. I have an army.”
“As you were promised, Lord Klosk.”
Borran Klosk listened to the screams of the dying men. They sounded good, almost as if he was causing them himself. His bloodlust was fed, but it was nowhere near full.
“Alaghôn will be the first to fall, Allis,” Borran Klosk told the woman, “then all of Turmish. And when I have together again the five jewels that make up Taraketh’s Hive, I will destroy all the lands that the Emerald Enclave holds precious. I will be unmerciful in my vengeance for all they have done to me.”
He paused, watching as men died aboard the other ship.
“I will kill them all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As soon as Haarn entered Alaghôn, nearly a tenday after leaving the lean-to where they’d weathered out the storm and rested while Ettrian healed, he felt closed in. Even in the densest brush he’d never experienced the kind of claustrophobia that assailed him in the city. Broadfoot, fully recovered from the shambler’s attack, lumbered at his side, and thankfully, most of the townspeople stayed well away from Haarn because of him.
Druids assigned to identify them to the Alaghôn Watch met them at the gate, directing them to the docks where the Emerald Enclave had set up camp. Borran Klosk, the druids said, was expected at any time. The Elder Circle had scried the mohrg and knew he was headed back to Alaghôn, though few other details were available. Ettrian was passed through immediately, though a few of the druids knew Haarn as well.
Haarn mistrusted the feel of the cobblestone street beneath his moccasins. The hard surface of the street didn’t have the springy feel of true land. He felt tied down to it, held back instead of uplifted.
He looked up at the tall buildings until his neck hurt. Some of them were several stories tall, crafted from stone shaped by hammer and chisel, and many windows held stained glass in dozens of different colors.
Twilight deepened over the city, and the setting sun struck blazing colors from the stained glass. Windows fronting shops—something Haarn had never seen before though he’d heard merchants talk of such places—drew his attention time and again. On the other side of the glass were objects laid out for sale. Vast treasures of clothing, weapons, and food lay spread on sheets and colored blankets. Though he would never take things without paying for them, Haarn couldn’t believe others wouldn’t be tempted.
“Do you see something you like?” Druz asked.
Haarn came back to his senses, only then aware that he was standing wit
h his nose almost pressed to the window of a shop that sold herbs. He’d admired the pots and cups of leaves, branches, and powders that occupied the display window, and he wondered what the merchant might have that he would want. With the battle surely coming with Borran Klosk, he was aware that his own kit was sorely lacking.
“No,” Haarn answered, embarrassed at his own naiveté. “I don’t have anything to trade for those things.”
“You have the bounty offered for Stonefur’s head,” Druz replied. “I could advance you some against that, provided you repaid me.”
Haarn shook his head. “No. I’ll accept no bounty for killing the wolf.”
He stepped away from the window, aware that his father had turned and was waiting on him. Ettrian’s face showed displeasure, and every line in his body screamed impatience. Since his recovery, which had left him unscarred and in full health once more, he’d gone back to old habits and rarely spoke to Haarn. Most of their conversation had concerned Druz and whether or not they should have gotten rid of her.
Haarn gripped Broadfoot’s coat and urged the bear on again. Lamplighters climbed ladders they carried with them and lit the wicks of the street lamps as the night deepened and filled Alaghôn with shadows. The faces of townspeople peered out the windows of taverns and pubs, all of them watching the gathering of druids.
“They don’t care for the Emerald Enclave here much,” Druz said quietly as she looked around. Her hand never left the hilt of her long sword.
“No,” Haarn agreed. “They call us ‘Caretakers’ when we aid them during times of pestilence or crop failure. When we protect the forests, they call us ‘Nature’s Chosen,’ meant in a derogatory manner.”
“What does your father call me?”
Haarn, taken aback, briefly considered lying. “I think you remind him too much of what was lost,” he said.
“Do I remind you of your mother, Haarn?” Her voice was soft and her intensity surprising.
Since that day in the lean-to, they hadn’t talked of such things. He hadn’t dared bring it up and had prayed that she wouldn’t. The whole ordeal had been trying, and he didn’t know what he wanted to say or what he wanted to hear from her.
