The Jewel of Turmish

by Odom, Mel

  The zombies stumbled from the wrecks and from the sea, coming into the shore like a tidal wave of dead flesh. Warriors stood their ground where they could.

  The battle, thought a certain victory by the living army of warriors and druids only moments before, swiftly became a bloodbath. Haarn watched in helpless frustration as the front line of Alaghôn’s defenders went down under the hands and fangs of Borran Klosk’s undead forces.

  “Where is Borran Klosk?” Ettrian demanded, yelling to be heard above the sounds of the one-sided battle.

  “I don’t know!” Haarn shouted back. “I lost sight of him when the ships struck the docks.”

  He urged Broadfoot up and forward. The bear was more than equal to the task, shoving aside the warriors who didn’t move readily enough for him.

  When news of Borran Klosk’s impending return had spread throughout Alaghôn, most of the populace had been of a mind to pack up and leave. Some of them had, but there were a number of others who rallied to the cause. The volunteer army had swiftly grown beyond the ability of the Assembly of Stars to control. When the flaming ships hit the docks, that volunteer army was the first, and least orderly, to beat a hasty retreat.

  “A line is forming in front!” Ettrian cried over the roaring chaos.

  “I see them!” Haarn shouted back.

  His senses whirled, confused by the press of people around him, by the alien landscape of the city, and by sight of the zombies crawling out of the harbor and starting toward the city.

  A ragged line of warriors made up of members of the Alaghôn city watch and the Emerald Enclave formed at the retreating backs of the last of the volunteers to escape the approaching zombies.

  Haarn’s heart swelled with pride as he watched the druids attack their undead foes. In the face of overwhelming odds, the druids stood their ground.

  Broadfoot burst through the final ranks of the retreating would-be city champions and rose to his hind legs. Towering over the zombies, the bear laid waste to them. Massive blows from his front paws scattered the zombies in broken heaps of bone and torn flesh.

  Haarn clutched his scimitar tightly and cut at a zombie to his left. The heavy blade connected and the zombie’s head leaped from its shoulders.

  Broadfoot roared again, dropping to all fours for an instant to regain his balance, then he surged up once more like a flesh and blood mountain and knocked a dozen zombies backward into each other. The first few were only bags of bones that were never going to be able to move again.

  Magic shimmered through the air.

  Great tentacles formed from thin air, and multi-colored rays touched zombies and reduced them to dust. Haarn grabbed the hand of another zombie as he drew the scimitar back, unable to get it into play quickly. Yanking on the zombie’s hand, he pulled the foul thing off-balance then chopped the scimitar across its back, ripping through dead flesh and biting through its spine.

  Black seawater boiled from the zombie’s guts as its stomach opened and small crabs scuttled out.

  Fighting revulsion, Haarn drew back his scimitar and cleaved the skull of another zombie. The creature continued to stare at the druid with hatred in its dead eyes, and it reached for him. Haarn slapped the creature’s hand away with his free arm then stepped forward and to the side. He stamped and shattered the zombie’s knee, driving it to the tilted wooden pier.

  Only a short distance away, Druz Talimsir fought for her life. Her sword flew, gleaming as it reflected the flames that still burned in the ships, and zombie body parts dropped to the ground around her. Blood spattered her face and arms, and since the zombies didn’t bleed, Haarn knew it was hers, though there were dead humans and elves at her feet as well.

  A female druid came sprawling back out of the melee ahead of Haarn. He caught her and barely blocked a knife thrust in time that would have opened his throat for him.

  “Sorry,” she said then lunged back into the fray.

  By the time she reached the line of undead staggering out of the water, she’d shifted into the form of a leopard. Her claws and fangs flicked into the zombies, slicing them to ribbons.

  Haarn raced to aid Druz, getting there just in time to watch the mercenary skewer the last zombie in front of her with her long sword, then rip its throat out with her knife, decapitating it. She whirled on him, bringing her weapons to the ready.

  “Are you all right?” Haarn asked.

  Druz wiped the blood from her face. Only a few scratches showed and none of them looked serious.

  “I’m fine,” she said as she sheathed her dagger and leaned down, scooping up a round shield from a dead soldier.

  Another lurch of zombies drew Haarn’s attention back to survival. He fought with every trick and skill he knew. Anything mortal would have fallen before his blades a long time before. He thanked Silvanus that the zombies were so slow. He was tiring, but he was still faster than they were.

  A whirlwind took shape near the water’s edge, and Haarn knew that one of the elder druids had summoned it. The shrieking column of air danced through the zombies, picking them up and shooting them high into the air. The undead things fell back down onto the burning wrecks.

  Farther out beyond the water’s edge, four water elementals surged up from the roiling surface. They rose from the sea like storm-tossed waves, each with two deep green orbs that served as eyes. When the elementals encountered zombies, they wrapped their watery arms around them and dragged them under the sea. The water churned, then zombie pieces—no longer in any shape to be animated—floated to the top.

  Broadfoot continued fighting, snapping off hands, arms, and the occasional leg as chance permitted. His huge basso growls flooded the air, but the noise didn’t bother the advancing zombies.

  “Have you seen Borran Klosk?” someone shouted above the din.

  “Not since the shipwreck,” someone else answered.

  Haarn cut the legs from under a zombie and looked out to sea. The water elementals continued attacking the zombies coming out of the ocean, but they worked between floating pools of burning oil.

  “Eldath preserve us!” a cleric wearing the Quiet One’s colors on a blood-spattered robe said from only a short distance away. “There are more of them!”

  Haarn watched in disbelief as the flickering lights of the burning ships and the flaming oil pools revealed the secret that Borran Klosk had kept even after the attack. Zombies marched from the harbor pulling huge fishing nets that were filled with even more zombies.

  As Haarn battled, trying desperately to get to the nets and slay the zombies that pulled them to shore, the zombies inside the net began to stir. They opened their jaws and chewed at the nets. The ones that had teeth parted the strands and began crawling out.

  “Fall back! Fall back!” a watch officer yelled. “We can’t hold this position against the reinforcements. We’ll hold them at the second line of defense!”

  Haarn grabbed Broadfoot’s fur and yanked the bear backward. Growling and snapping his fangs, Broadfoot dropped to all fours and grudgingly gave ground.

  “Haarn!” Druz called. “Look out!”

  Spinning, Haarn tried to focus in the direction she’d indicated. He lifted his scimitar, but it was too late. A zombie hit him with a fist and the black talons opened a cut along the top of his shoulder. Blood covered his arm. Reeling from the impact, hardly aware of the pain, the druid stumbled back and tried to get his knife up to defend himself.

  The zombie drew its fist back again, focusing its dead gaze on Haarn.

  The druid knew he would never get the knife up in time and watched helplessly as the zombie’s fist came crashing down.

  Hip-deep in Alaghôn’s harbor, surrounded by fire and the screams of dying men, Borran Klosk marched under the shattered remnants of the docks, praying to Malar that the sewer drains yet remained intact after the ships had torn the docks apart.

  Allis splashed along after him, still in half-spider form.

  “Where are we going?” she asked in her sibilant vo
ice.

  “To win the battle,” Borran Klosk replied.

  “We’ve gathered the zombies and loosed them on the city. They are winning the battle,” Allis protested. “They need a leader with them.”

  “They need a leader who has possession of Taraketh’s Hive,” Borran Klosk argued, “not someone who would be destroyed with them. Don’t forget that they are merely things. They are nothing like me.”

  He glanced under the sagging timbers of the pier, looking for an opening on the inclined land beneath the docks. Giving up, he seized an oil-soaked piece of timber that floated on top of the water and still maintained a flickering flame. When he lifted the timber from the water, the flame caught hold more strongly.

  The flame also attracted the attention of one of the water elementals busy destroying the zombies he’d brought in from the Whamite Isles. Great green orbs turned in Borran Klosk’s direction. Without hesitation, the water elemental started for the mohrg.

  Harnessing the power of Malar’s Glove, Borran Klosk spoke a spell to dismiss the elemental. He pointed at the creature and a bright orange light pulsed from his hand. When the light struck the elemental, the creature froze in place then became transparent, showing the burning ship only a short distance behind it. The elemental fought the power of the spell, roaring in rage and sounding like a crashing wave, but Borran Klosk, aided by the magic in Malar’s Glove, was too strong. In the next moment, the elemental was completely gone.

  Borran Klosk turned and retreated under the pilings again. Deep under the wreckage that remained of the pier, Borran Klosk paused and closed his eyes. The power he’d placed within each of the five skeletons allowed him to peer through their eyes. All of the skeletons had taken up positions around the docks and were watching the battle, and all of them were filled with the lust to join in the massacre.

  Borran Klosk denied them their urges just has he had forced them to remain in seclusion inside Alaghôn. Most of them had been there for days, hiding in abandoned buildings, tool sheds, and cellars awaiting his return. One of them was severely damaged, though, missing an arm and a foot.

  It had replaced the missing foot with a block of wood, and it stood perched on a rooftop, staring down at the warriors and druids retreating from the advancing lines of sea zombies. Somewhere in the dim recesses of emotion that its limited intellect clung to, the skeleton wanted vengeance for the injuries that had been dealt it.

  Clamping down on the skeleton’s dark desires, bending it more thoroughly to his will, Borran Klosk ordered it into motion again, heading it for the rendezvous point. The view through the skeleton’s eyes shifted from the dockside battle to the jewel it clutched in its remaining hand. The crimson facets held a wet gleam. The skeleton’s gaze swept on to the next rooftop. Even with one foot missing, it had enough power to jump between the buildings. The wooden block made landing difficult, but it was underway.

  Borran Klosk opened his eyes and found Allis staring at him. Behind her, limned in the fire of the burning ships, the battle raged on as more of the zombies made their way to shore. He laughed at his own cleverness and knew the city’s defenders had to have been shocked and dismayed to see still more troops coming up from the depths.

  Turning, the mohrg plunged deeper under the dark recesses of the piers. The makeshift torch in his hand lit the way, bringing the mouth of the sewer at the end of it into sharp relief. The sewer was almost ten feet wide, big enough to get small boats down into it in order to clean the drains.

  Crimson-eyed rats peered out at him from behind the rusting iron grate across the sewer’s mouth. Green sewer water spewed into the harbor

  “Here,” Borran Klosk said, passing the torch back to Allis.

  She took it grudgingly. “What are we doing here?”

  The timbers supporting the pier overhead creaked and groaned as if it might give way. Being underneath the structure obviously made her nervous.

  Borran Klosk growled as he seized the sewer grate. The rats squealed and plunged back into the dark throat of the sewer.

  “We are going to destroy the Emerald Enclave by taking away the one thing they live for: the wild lands of Turmish.”

  “How?”

  Borran Klosk grabbed the iron grate and yanked. The bolts set into the stone foundation him for the moment, but he heard the shrill of rusty metal turning loose. He bent to the task again.

  “With Taraketh’s Hive,” he answered.

  Allis shook her head, her many opal eyes glittering from the burning ships out in the harbor.

  “I have read about the device,” she said. “It was crafted by Taraketh Greenglimmer, an elf druid, who lived hundreds of years ago.”

  “More than a thousand,” Borran Klosk corrected.

  He yanked on the metal grate again, and this time it came free, giving them access to the sewer. He threw the grate into the water, then took the torch again from her hand.

  “Taraketh Greenglimmer helped stock the insect population around the Sea of Fallen Stars,” he said. “After the stars fell from the heavens and destroyed so much of the lands that had been here, and water filled in the depths left behind, nature was out of balance here. Taraketh corrected most of that imbalance and helped make these lands more hospitable to elves. Of course, the humans promptly moved in once the regions were arable and more comfortable.”

  “But Taraketh’s Hive only summons insects,” Allis protested, “and only a few of them at a time.”

  Borran Klosk stepped up into the sewer, noticing that his cloak dragged through the fouled water. He reached back and tore the cloak off. There was no longer any need for disguises. He plunged down the sewer, taking great strides that sent rats scattering in all directions.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Allis followed. Before she took more than a handful of steps into the sewer, the section of the piers they’d been standing under collapsed with a thunderous crash of splintering wood.

  Borran Klosk only glanced back for a moment to make sure they weren’t pursued. He didn’t hesitate in his forward momentum. His future and the destruction of every living thing on the Turmish coastline and perhaps the Vilhon Reach itself lay ahead of him.

  “What can you do with insects?” Allis asked. “You should be leading the army you brought back from the Whamite Isles. That’s why Malar had the glove made.”

  Borran Klosk wheeled around on her, giving vent to the anger that raged within him. His long, thick, purple tongue slid free of his jaws before he knew it. He almost sent it spiking into her face, stopping himself only at the last moment.

  “I sought long and hard for my victory against the damned Emerald Enclave,” he growled. “The cities along the Turmish coast were going to be mine. Mine! I had them all in the palm of my hand, but then the Emerald Enclave had to step in and ruin it.”

  Allis stepped back from him, drawing up to her full height.

  The mohrg continued, “Now the Emerald Enclave will have to sit and watch as everything they have fought to build and preserve slowly dies and withers to ash. My vengeance will be complete, and it will be years in the making—not some invasion of Alaghôn that will bring about return attacks from the rest of Turmish. I learned that last time. You can’t destroy living things. They have a tendency to unite, even when they are from disparate causes and normally hate each other. I taught them to hate me even more and to fear me. Give them something larger than themselves and they will rise to conquer it. Together.”

  Allis said nothing, and a moment passed before her footsteps started splashing in the muck after him.

  “I would be a fool if I hadn’t learned something during my incarceration,” Borran Klosk said, reminding himself more than he was telling her. “Once I have assembled Taraketh’s Hive and used its powers, all of these lands are doomed. I can hide and wait, though it may take a hundred years. As long as they do not destroy me, I can live forever. And I will.” He thrust the torch ahead of him and continued on defiantly. “By all that is dark and unholy, they will di
e and—I will live!”

  When she saw Haarn get hit by the zombie facing him then stumble back with blood gushing from his shoulder, Druz stepped in, praying to Tymora that she would be in time. She slid her shield under the zombie’s blow. The creature’s fist would probably have cracked Haarn’s skull, but the shield protected him. The shock dislocated Druz’s elbow.

  Biting back a yelp of pain, she stepped in again, still managing to hold the zombie’s hand back. She shoved a hip into Haarn, knocking him out of the way. Reversing her sword, grabbing it so that it jutted down from the heel of her hand instead of up, she swept the blade across the front of the zombie. The practiced cuts sliced open the dead thing’s unprotected stomach and spilled its guts in twisting coils to the pier. She pushed the shield up, crying out from the pain of the dislocated elbow, and brought the sword across the zombie’s throat.

  The thing’s head flopped backward, blinding it to anything in front of it.

  Druz raised a leg and kicked the zombie backward. Her opponent took three stumbling steps and fell, sprawling over two dead men in Alaghôn watch uniforms.

  Even as the zombie fell, three more lurched in to take its place.

  Druz’s spirits fell. She hadn’t hoped to hold the dockyards after the arrival of the zombie reinforcements. Her experience as a mercenary had made that plain, but she had hoped to live. Gritting her teeth, lifting her shield with her injured arm as best as she was able, she reversed her sword.

  “All right then, you dried-up, diseased bastards,” she growled, “come on and taste good Cormyrean steel. My father made this blade, and he made it to last.”

  Before the zombies could reach her, Broadfoot rushed in. The bear bled from a dozen wounds but was not slowed in the slightest. He snapped and swiped the zombies, breaking them into pieces, then growled in triumph, drawing cheers from the men struggling on either side of him.

  “Come on,” Haarn said.