The Jewel of Turmish

by Odom, Mel

  “Perhaps,” he answered finally.

  Druz looked away and took a small breath. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “You remind me,” Haarn went on, though he couldn’t imagine why he chose to speak other than the fact that the town must have been more unsettling than he’d at first believed, “of some of the best things about her.”

  Druz turned back to him and smiled.

  “Haarn!”

  Looking forward, Haarn saw that his father’s face had grown even more impatient.

  “The Elder Circle won’t wait forever, boy,” Ettrian said.

  Haarn lengthened his stride, leaving Druz behind. If they talked any more, he wanted to have more of his wits about him. Out in the forest, things between them had been different. He was very conscious that this was her territory.

  Even as he hurried, though, he glanced over his shoulder to make certain that she followed. She did, but she maintained a distance. Haarn was unsure which of them the distance was meant for.

  Even more overpowering than the sights of the city were the stench and the noise. Never, not even in bat-infested caves filled with centuries of excrement, had he smelled a stench like that which filled Alaghôn. He pinched his nostrils together as best as he could and breathed shallowly. Some of the scents in the miasma that assaulted him were food scents and probably would have made him hungry had it not been for the sickening odors mixed with them.

  The noise was another matter. Where it seemed at times that nature was incredibly raucous, there was no comparison to the noise a city generated. He already had a pounding headache from the din of voices, wheels clattering along the cobblestones, the constant pounding of iron-shod hooves, and tools used by professionals at their craft. Steel rang upon steel at a smithy just down the street from the public stables.

  Ettrian followed the twists and the turns of the curving streets as if he was following a clearly blazed trail. Haarn read the signs posted over the streets, recognizing the names of trees and herbs, but not how any of them went together. It was as if someone had written down all the names of plants, animals, and stones that they had known, tossed them in a hat, and drawn them back out. Several other street names were completely unknown to him.

  The street they were following took a final turn and headed straight down a steep grade, down toward the black ocean that lapped at the feet of the city. It wasn’t the ocean that took Haarn’s breath away and froze him in mid-step. He’d seen the ocean before, and he’d seen ships before, though he’d never been on any so huge as the freighters, cogs, and caravels that filled the harbor. The sheer immensity of the harbor slammed into him like a dwarf smith’s hammer.

  “Are you all right?” Druz stepped in front of him, taking him by the arm and shaking him slightly.

  “I didn’t know,” Haarn said, gazing in rapt wonder at all the ships, all the men scurrying about aboard them bawling at each other and carrying lanterns, all the men gathered down at the water’s edge.

  “Didn’t know what?” Druz asked.

  “That the world was so … big,” Haarn whispered.

  “Big?” Druz asked. “How big did you think Faerûn was? Or Toril for that matter?”

  Haarn shook his head as if dazed. “I don’t know. We aren’t taught about the world outside our corner of it. I’d heard stories from merchants and sellswords, but I thought some of them were merely fantasies.” He looked at Druz. “How big … how big is Turmish compared to the rest of the world?”

  “Compared only to Faerûn,” Druz said softly, “Turmish is small. There are a number of nations around the Sea of Fallen Stars that are much larger and more densely populated. When you get out to the west, to the Sword Coast, the cities are even bigger. The world goes there to study and trade.”

  Haarn tried to take it all in, but it was nearly too much. He gazed at the ships, knowing that what the woman said—as unbelievable as it sounded—had to be the truth.

  Townspeople passed by them, giving Broadfoot plenty of room. The bear growled occasionally, letting Haarn know he was uncomfortable with the city as well. The bear wanted to get back to the forest and the life he knew best. Haarn felt that way too, but there was something inside him, perhaps something left to him by his mother’s blood, that called him out toward the sea.

  The druid stared out into the deepening night creeping in from the east. The ocean seemed to lift and flow outward from Alaghôn, bending over the horizon. He was intensely curious about what lay out there.

  “The idea of seeing more of the world excites you, doesn’t it?” Druz asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  Haarn didn’t say anything.

  “That’s why your father never brought you to the city, and why he spoke so harshly against them. He knew you, with your curious mind, would be tempted to go.”

  Shaking his head, Haarn said, “I can’t.”

  It would be a dishonor to his father and there was all his work to consider—work Silvanus had given him to do.

  “Perhaps one day you’ll change your mind,” Druz suggested. “Come on. Ettrian is waiting for us again, and I don’t want him to get the idea that standing here gawking was my idea.”

  She started off at once, but Haarn hesitated, trying to work through everything he was seeing and everything that had been said. He wanted to tell her he wouldn’t be tempted, but he couldn’t.

  Broadfoot growled impatiently then nuzzled his wide head into Haarn’s side, butting him in a bored fashion that suggested they start moving or start eating. With nothing more than a handful of scraps in his pouch, Haarn wisely considered that stopping to eat would be a mistake. He followed, staying a safe distance back from Druz so she wouldn’t be asking any more questions and he could look at the city in relative peace.

  Bells pealed, a rancorous clanging that set Haarn’s teeth on edge.

  “A ship!” someone shouted. “I see a ship!”

  Glancing out toward the harbor, Haarn saw the tips of the sails come into view over the harbor. The ship sailed strongly, making good time.

  “It’s Borran Klosk!” another man yelled. “He’s brung a ship full of dead men with him! Hurry! Someone get the watch!”

  “The watch already knows, you damned fool!” someone else growled. “Who do you think is standing guard duty out there in them towers in the harbor?”

  Further down the street, Ettrian broke into a run, making for the docks. Dozens of other citizens did the same. Wagons thundered across the cobblestone streets as drivers cracked whips above the heads of the pulling teams.

  Haarn ran, urging Broadfoot to follow. The druid’s scimitar was already in hand.

  “There are two ships!” someone shouted. “Borran Klosk has done brought two ships back with him!”

  Borran Klosk stood on the flying deck of Mistress Talia as storm winds blew them into Alaghôn’s harbor. His rapacious tongue flicked out, tasting fear in the air.

  Hundreds of lanterns and torches lined the dockyards. Men armed with bows occupied positions on top of the buildings. The men ringing the bells kept up their awful racket.

  “It would have been better,” Allis said, “if you had not let them see you coming.”

  “Sneaking back to Alaghôn like some thief in the night is not how I wanted to return in my moment of glory and triumph,” Borran Klosk said, gazing at the sight of the frightened people taking a stance against him to save their city. He drank in their intoxicating fear. “All those years ago, they thought they had beaten me. They needed to know before I got back that they had failed.”

  The bells continued to ring, and the cacophony of harsh noise drew Borran Klosk’s ire. Using the powers granted to him by the Glove of Malar, as he’d come to think of the device, he reached into the minds of some of the men aboard Mistress Talia.

  Two dozen corpses leaped from the ship’s side and hit the dark water. They disappeared without a trace, swimming deep.

  The warning towers stood in the harbor, as they had when Borran Klosk preyed on
Alaghôn in his human life. Crafted of mortised stone, the three towers stood as narrow pinnacles with lookouts for the harbor patrol and the watch stationed atop them.

  With the military district so close by onshore, there was seldom any trouble in the harbor. Commerce was the primary interest in Alaghôn, and nothing was allowed to interfere with that.

  Allis stood at Borran Klosk’s side. Her features altered as she shifted into the half-human/half-spider shape. She wasn’t like the rest of the dark troops the mohrg had gathered—she still feared death.

  Borran Klosk enjoyed that savory tidbit from her, and it only whetted his appetite for what awaited him on shore and deeper into Alaghôn.

  One of the warning tower bells started ringing in a haphazard manner, no longer bonging sonorously.

  Turning his attention to the suddenly silent tower, Borran Klosk spied the drowned ones that had seized the two men manning the tower. The men screamed in terror, but it didn’t last long.

  The sea zombies easily overpowered both men. One of the drowned ones swung a man by his heels and smashed his head against the stone structure. Blood, the color of black bile, ran down the masonry. The drowned one tossed the dead man into the harbor. The two drowned ones, at Borran Klosk’s silent command, cut the rope securing the bell and shoved it off into the water as well.

  In short order, the other bells dropped into the harbor too, preceded by the men who stood guard there.

  It was a waste, Borran Klosk reflected as he watched first one dead man then the other plunge below the surface of the dark water, but then, once he’d destroyed all of Alaghôn he would be able to raise up the newly-fallen dead and build an even larger army to take over all of Turmish.

  Allis flinched as archers along the docks set fire to arrows and drew them back. When the archers unleashed their shafts, they leaped into the air like a hundred miniature comets. Some of the fire arrows went out before they reached the ships. Others missed the two vessels completely and extinguished in the harbor, but a number of the fiery projectiles found new homes in the sails, decks, and bodies of the undead.

  Savage hunger filled the mohrg as he reached into the mind of the undead sailor manning the wheel. He made certain the man was staying on course. All the sails were up, and the storm winds blew them toward the harbor at top speed.

  His long, purple tongue whipped the air before him, watching as the army standing along Alaghôn’s docks waited to die. “These fools only see two ships filled with undead bearing down on them,” Borran Klosk said. “Wait until they know the truth.”

  He plucked a flaming arrow from between his bare ribs and tossed it into the harbor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Hold the line, boys! Hold the line and drive those undead vermin back into the sea so the fish can choke on them!” a grizzled veteran of the Alaghôn Watch spat as he marched along the docks behind a contingent of his men only a short distance in front of Haarn.

  Haarn stood ready in the line of warriors that faced Alaghôn’s harbor. He couldn’t believe all the sailors and warriors had gathered there on the spindly wooden docks. It was no place to fight even if they did have arrows. Haarn wanted the solid footing of the ground beneath him and room to move as he needed to instead of being packed in like one lemming among many.

  Ettrian stood with the Elder Circle farther back from the line of piers. They conferred with watch commanders and other officials of the city. Haarn wasn’t surprised to note that Shinthala Deepcrest, Ashenford Torinbow, and an elf woman he had to suppose was Lady Shadowmoon Crystalembers—the third member of the Elder Circle—all seemed to know the people of Alaghôn. He was surprised to see that his father was on quite comfortable terms with some people of Alaghôn as well.

  Haarn glanced at Druz, who stood beside him. The warriors—men and women, humans and elves, with a few dwarves thrown in—all yelled threats at the approaching ships. It was a primitive defense, Haarn knew, one that was ingrained into every species: act louder and bigger than the opposition, hoping to scare them away.

  But how did they hope to scare dead men?

  “This is wrong,” Haarn said, loud enough to be heard over the crowd.

  Druz looked at him from beneath the armored helm she’d been given. “If it’s the crowd you don’t like.…”

  Haarn shook his head. The crowd made him claustrophobic, but that wasn’t the problem.

  “They’re forgetting that they’re not fighting flesh and blood men,” Haarn said, glancing around.

  The warriors had gathered with the druids, all of them figuring that a show of combined force would bring a swift end to Borran Klosk.

  “It’ll work,” Druz said.

  Haarn knew she was wrong. He looked over the heads of the warriors in front of him. The two small ships that had been hidden away at the sides of the inner harbor broke cover and raced to overtake the bigger ships. Only a handful of men crewed each of the small ships.

  The Elder Circle had conspired with members of the Assembly of Stars based in Alaghôn to put the plan into operation. Shinthala Deepcrest had scried a glimpse of Borran Klosk at the Whamite Isles. They knew from her sighting that the mohrg had recruited troops from the sea zombies dwelling in the waters surrounding the island ruins, but it was only two shiploads. The general consensus was that they were hardly a threat, even though the zombies were difficult to kill.

  A familiar scent stirred the air.

  Haarn identified it almost immediately as the scent of the skeleton that had almost killed him. They’d never found its trail again, but it would be no surprise that the creature had made its way to Alaghôn to be with its master.

  A rousing cheer went up through the crowd as the two small ships closed quickly on Borran Klosk’s pirated vessels.

  Putting his doubts aside for a moment, still curious about the scent of the skeleton, Haarn urged Broadfoot forward, breaking the line of warriors ahead of him so he had a better view.

  Only a few feet away from the zombie-filled ships, the crew of the two smaller craft set fire to the oil-soaked payloads of tinder and pitch that they carried. Flames raged from prow to stern on the two smaller craft, sweeping as high as the masts, catching the oil-drenched sails afire as well.

  As heavily laden as the two zombie ships were, they couldn’t have taken evasive action even if skilled human crews had been aboard. The two ships careened forward, driven by the wind and tide. The crews of the fireships abandoned their vessels just before impact, diving into the water.

  Smaller and lighter than the stolen frigates, the fireships struck and broke apart, smashing against the hulls of the bigger ships. The flames spread across the water, floating on the surface, and clung to the bigger ships.

  Another rousing cheer went up from the warriors gathered along the dockyards.

  “Haarn.”

  Turning, Haarn found his father standing behind him.

  “When this happens,” Ettrian said, his face grim, “stay close to me.”

  “Borran Klosk isn’t going to stop,” Haarn said, looking around at the cheering crowd.

  “All he wants to do is find the five skeletons that carry the jewels,” Ettrian said, “and he’s going to kill as many of these people as he can to do it.”

  “We need to warn them!” Haarn shouted over the bedlam.

  “There’s no way,” Ettrian said. “Not over this.”

  A thousand questions flooded Haarn’s mind, but there was no time to ask any of them. He scented the air again, realizing that he had the skeleton’s direction now, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the carnage about to be unleashed on Alaghôn’s dockyards.

  Borran Klosk stood prominently on the flying deck of his commandeered ship. A woman stood at his side, but she was no normal woman.

  All at once, the realization that Borran Klosk hadn’t ordered the burning sails lowered or the anchor dropped spread through the crowd of warriors. A mass exodus of the front line began, but they had to try to fight their way through
the people in back who hadn’t yet seen that the mohrg had no intention of turning back.

  Haarn was caught in the crowd, pushed and shoved as were Druz and Ettrian, moving but going nowhere.

  “Grab onto Broadfoot!” Ettrian shouted over the yells and screams of the scrambling warriors.

  Haarn knotted his fists in the bear’s pelt, pulling himself close. They clung to the bear while the rest of the warriors abandoned their posts and moved around them like a raging ocean.

  Broadfoot growled and swiped at people who came too close to him. His claws never broke skin, but Haarn knew there would be more than a few people with bruises in the morning—if they survived Borran Klosk’s attack.

  Haarn watched anxiously as the zombie ships bore down on the dockyards. Nearly all of Alaghôn’s piers stood on pilings buried deep in the harbor mud, but none of them were strong enough to withstand the tonnage of ships hurtling at them.

  The flaming sails of Borran Klosk’s craft highlighted the zombies standing on the deck. None of them moved, even up to the point of impact.

  The two ships struck the docks, reducing the piers to splinters, ripping through the pilings and shoving docks that weren’t torn to pieces at once back into the shoreside warehouses. The groaning, shearing, crumbling carnage filled the harbor with deafening noise. Other ships lying at anchor against the docks caught fire as well when flaming debris from the two zombie ships flew onto their decks and into their rigging. In the space of a drawn breath, a dozen ships had caught fire and a conflagration began that looked as though it might well burn the harbor down.

  Haarn fought to maintain his position at Broadfoot’s side. The stained glass windows of the tall buildings overlooking the harbor caught the red and orange glow of the burning ships.

  Borran Klosk’s ships came apart. Zombies tumbled and were thrown onto the ground when the vessels rammed into the land behind the piers and finally stopped. Not much was left of either of them.

  The shipwrecks put Haarn in the mind of anthills the way the zombies boiled from their holds. Borran Klosk must have stacked them on top of each other like sacks of grain in a merchant’s wagon.