Darkness & Light

by Paul B. Thompson

  "The dragonmen had a rich proposition: that we carry a shipment of weapons and money for them from Nordmaar to Coastlund, there to rendezvous with other dragonmen arriving from the northern seas. Drott accepted their commission and their money, thus damning us all." The ghost made a horrible rasping sound. "I am so weary..." The dead man's left arm came loose from his shoulder and fell silently to the floor. Kitiara flinched at the sight, more from surprise than disgust. She bent to pick up the gently glowing limb, but her hand passed right through it.

  "We loaded sixty hundredweight of arms, and weighed anchor for Coastlund. We had a fair wind and made a swift passage. On the way, Drott schemed and plotted. He drew me into his plan, which was this: Since the dragonmen were barbarians and invaders, why should we not hold them up for as much gold as we could? They would pay doubly or triply for their swords, and we would have nothing to fear.

  Who could they complain to? Their purpose was even more illicit than ours.

  "I fell in with Drott's scheme. In truth, I despised the scaly killers and feared them greatly. To cheat them seemed both just and profitable."

  The ghost paused and the silence grew long. Sturm finally said, "What happened when you reached Coastlund?"

  Rasp. "A dragonship was there, waiting. The leader of the dragonmen came aboard to accept transfer of the weapons. Drott laid out his demand for more money. The leader must have expected such a ploy, for he readily offered to pay half again the original price. Drott insisted on double the amount. The lizard resisted for a time, then conceded.

  He departed for his ship and returned with a second chest of treasure. This time a human came with him, a dark cleric wearing a metal mask that mimicked a dragon's face. This one frightened me very much. He stood by, watching and saying nothing. Drott laughed and joked as the second box of money came on board. He was drunk with success, and when I ordered the crew to begin transferring the cargo to the dragonship, he drew me aside and whispered another wicked design in my ear. 'Shall we not keep some part of the cargo ourselves?' he said. 'Could we not wring a bit more silver from these flush pigeons?"'

  "That was pretty stupid," Kitiara said, "with a boatload of draconians alongside."

  "We did not fear their force, for our crew was numerous and skilled in the use of saber and pike. We did not sail the pirate-infested seas unprepared."

  "But the dark cleric - that was someone you weren't able to counter," said Sturm.

  "Indeed, mortal man." The ghost's right arm dropped off.

  Part of the unreal flesh touched Sturm's booted foot. He withdrew it hastily and shivered. The ghost's touch was more frigid than the wind off the Ice Wall.

  "We held back five hundredweight of arms. The dragonmen's leader discovered the shortage and complained. Drott jeered at him from the rail, saying there was a tax on illegal weapons and the dragonfolk had yet to pay. The dragon-man threatened to storm the Werival and slaughter us all.

  The crew manned the rail with bare blades and taunted them to try. The dragonmen, less than a third our number, began to arm. I wanted to weigh anchor and be off, but Drott said we should stay and fight. After we killed the scaly folk, he said, we could take back all the weapons we'd sold them and sell them again.

  "There was no battle. The dark cleric came from his place on the stern of the dragonship and threw his arms wide.

  'Go, greedy vermin, and take away your dishonored gold. I curse you and yours forever! Those who lust for gold shall lust for the flesh of their fellows, those who jeer at the minions of the Dark Queen shall know her wrath! They shall hear her mocking laughter forever! ' he said.

  "It was a terrible curse, and the full weight of it did not fall on us for some weeks. We left the shores of Coastlund for Sancrist, but never saw land again. Strange, circular winds blew us farther and farther from land. The crew began to hear voices - a woman laughing - and they slowly went mad. The few healthy sailors that remained chained the mad ones below decks. Food and water dwindled, but try as we might, we could not bring the Werival to shore.

  "Drott changed. He had always been a vain man, proud of his quick mind and good looks. Now he ceased to care for himself, allowing his beard to grow and his clothes to fall to tatters. The meat shrank on his bones and his skin whitened to a ghastly color. As the days passed, my first mate and friend perished as the hideous curse worked upon his wretched body. Drott prowled below, snaring rats in his hands and eating them alive. Soon rats were not enough for him. He had become a Gharm, a ravenous ghoul that feeds on the flesh of men."

  "Why didn't you kill him?" Kitiara said sharply. The drumming of feet had stopped, but they could still hear the Gharm's cackle as the monster capered madly in the rigging.

  "I could not, for as much as his new form disgusted me, I pitied my lost friend. The crew, poor wretches, learned to keep him at bay by giving him those who died of madness and starvation. When there were only five sound men left, they decided to try to put an end to the Gharm. Our young cleric, Novantumus, wove a temporary protective spell.

  The sailors armed themselves and drove the Gharm to the fore end of the ship with fire and sword. Novantumus meant to imprison the fiend in the anchor locker, and he fashioned a magic seal to keep it in. The Gharm attacked the men savagely and killed them one by one. With his life's blood spilling on the deck, the brave Novantumus succeeded in compelling the Gharm into the locker. I alone lived, and here at my table I died of hunger, thirst, and despair."

  The ghost had shrunk throughout his telling, and the cold glare that it cast had diminished to a firefly's sparkle. Sturm was deeply sorry for the captain.

  "One question," said Kitiara. She picked up the skull that had been set between the captain's feet. "Who is this?"

  "That was Drott's head. One of the sailors cut it off before the Gharm killed him."

  "But that thing out there has a head!"

  "A new one it grew afterward."

  Sturm said, "Can the Gharm be killed?"

  The ghost shriveled to a slender coil of white mist. "Not by steel, iron, or bronze," it said, a tiny, far-off voice. "Only purifying fire will make this ship clean." With those final words, the ghost vanished.

  "This is wonderful," Kitiara said bitterly. "A monster we can't kill unless we burn up the ship that's keeping us out of the water!"

  "What we must do is stay alive until the storm ends,"

  Sturm said. "The gnomes will be looking for us and we'll be able to leave this cursed ship -" A splintering sound halted Sturm in midsentence. The Gharm had rammed one bony, clawed arm through the thin, louvered panel of the cabin door.

  "Something tells me our moment of immunity is over!"

  Kitiara said. Sturm leaped up from the table, drawing his sword in one smooth motion. He brought the keen blade down hard on the grasping talons. The Gharm roared in pain and withdrew the stump of its left arm.

  "Suffering gods!" Kitiara kicked the severed arm away.

  The limb rapidly decayed to bone, and then to dust. The Gharm put one of its baleful eyes to the hole that it had made and glared at them. Sturm raised his sword again and the monster backpedaled.

  Kitiara went to the cabin's rear and started tearing through the captain's bunk.

  "Kit, what are you doing?" he called.

  "Don't worry, just keep that damned thing away a minute longer!" He heard wood being split behind him, then felt heat on the back of his neck.

  Sturm turned and saw that Kitiara had made a torch from a bunk slat and a strip of ticking. Doused with oil from the captain's lamp and ignited by flint, it blazed furiously.

  "Ha! Try this, ghoul!" she shouted, brandishing the flame before the door. The Gharm howled and hissed, its fangs dripping saliva. "I'll give you something to chew on." Kitiara kicked the smashed door frame open. The rain had almost stopped, but a fierce wind still raged across the open deck. Kitiara dashed out, whipping the torch to and fro like a fencing blade. The Gharm crouched back on its rail-thin haunches, spitting and hissing.
r />   "Kit, be careful!"

  "It's my fault this thing is out. I intend to kill it!"

  She moved on the ghoul again, forcing it to retreat up the rigging. It hung twenty feet above the deck, giggling in an obscene parody of humanity. Kitiara paced below it, waving the torch to keep it bright and hot.

  Sturm closed behind her. "Don't let it drop down on you,"

  he counseled.

  "If it does, it'll go back up a lot faster than it came down."

  The ceiling of black clouds scattered into streams of dirty white as the blue of clear sky shone through. The wind had died down but did not cease. They were in the eye of the cyclone, the calm center of a miles-wide storm.

  The Gharm swung over to the port side rigging. Kitiara followed across the deck. She was so intent on keeping the fiend in view that she missed the end of the mainsail Sturm had cut free. The heavy, flapping canvas was soaked with rain, and one corner of it whipped around and slapped Kitiara between the eyes. She fell backward and lost the torch.

  As the sail struck her, the Gharm pounced.

  "No!" Sturm cried. He was on the fiend's back in a flash, slashing at its pale, leathery hide. The ghoul had one set of talons deep in Kitiara's shoulder, but Sturm's attack made it let go. He inflicted wounds that would have killed a mortal foe, but the Gharm wasn't slowed. A detached part of Sturm's mind noted that the ghoul already had grown back the arm that he'd chopped off.

  Kitiara pushed herself away from the duel between Sturm and the Gharm. Her shoulder wound burned like Bellcrank's vitriol. She crawled to where the torch lay charring the deck. In her pants' pocket she still had the tin can of oil from the captain's storm lamp. At the right moment, when Sturm gave ground to the monster, she flung the oil over the Gharm, and with it the torch.

  It was scarcely a cupful of oil, but it burned rapidly, and the Gharm yowled in unimaginable pain. It threw itself on the deck and rolled to put out the flames. Failing that, it leaped up and ran forward, burning as it went, and tore off the hatch cover. The Gharm disappeared below, trailing a thin plume of putrid smoke.

  Sturm knelt and put an arm around Kitiara. Her teeth chattered. She had been poisoned by the ghoul's vile talons.

  "Kitl Kit!" Her eyes were almost completely white, they had rolled so far back in her head. "Kit, listen to me! Don't give up! Fight it! Fight it!"

  Her hand came trembling to her throat. There, under the thin fabric of her blouse was the amethyst arrowhead pendant that Tirolan Ambrodel had given her so many weeks before. Drained of color before they met the gnomes, the crystal's magic had been restored by the days they'd spent on Lunitari for it now was a rich, royal purple. The stone had not surrendered its power upon its return to Krynn.

  Kitiara's fingers would not grasp the amethyst. They were already stiff and cold. Sturm gently lifted the magic crystal.

  Was there enough power in it to save Kit's life? Did he, a sworn opponent of magic, dare use it to heal her?

  Her breath came short, in hard, ragged gasps. Death had Kitiara in its grasp. There was no time to debate. Sturm closed the amethyst in his fist and placed his other hand on Kitiara's injured shoulder.

  "Forgive me, father," he whispered. "This is for her life."

  The stone was hot for the merest second, but not enough to burn him. Kitiara gave a sharp cry and then went limp in his arms. He thought he was too late, that she was dead.

  Sturm opened his fingers, to see that the amethyst was clear again. He peeled back the bloody cloth over Kit's wound and saw that it was healed.

  Smoke from the hatch was getting thicker. Sturm put an arm under Kitiara's legs and staggered to his feet. Muffled screams filtering through the open hatch proved that the Gharm hadn't yet overcome the fire.

  The smoke got so bad that Sturm retreated to the poop deck, carrying Kitiara. The wind switched from port to starboard, never allowing the ship to drive clear of the fumes.

  When the first tongues of flame licked out of the hold, Sturm felt real fear. How could they escape if the ship was on fire? The Werival's longboat was missing.

  At that moment, the wall of rain off the starboard bow parted, and out came the brown hull of the Cloudmaster.

  The flying ship was skimming over the waves so low that a few high swells lapped the bottom of her hull. Sturm saw the gnomes at the bow, waving white handkerchiefs.

  A great shout of triumph escaped his throat. "Kit, wake up!" he cried. "Kit, the gnomes are coming! We're saved!"

  Fire blasted out of the fore hatch, and with it, the figure of the Gharm. Blazing from head to toe, the hideous ghoul bounced from bulwark to bulwark, shrieking its cursed life away. Unable to bear the burning any longer, the ghoul finally dived into the churning waves.

  The bows were burning now, and the foremast was beginning to smolder. The Cloudmaster drifted past the stern.

  Sturm left Kitiara lying on the deck and grabbed a boat hook from the rail. As the gnome ship coasted slowly along the port side, Sturm hooked it and drew it tightly to the caravel.

  The gnomes clutched the Werival's sides as Sturm lifted the limp Kitiara over his shoulder. He sprinted for the rail and leaped, one foot kicking the rail top as he went. The gnomes let go, and the Cloudmaster sank toward the sea.

  "Too much weight!" Wingover cried. "Out ballast!'

  Amidships, Sighter, Cutwood, and Birdcall threw doors, window glass, and other loose objects over the side. The ship rose again into the low clouds.

  "W-welcome aboard!" Stutts said heartily.

  "Glad to be here," Sturm said with genuine relief. He lay sprawled on the deck.

  "What happened down there? asked Wingover.

  "It's a long story."

  "Is the lady well? She seems unconscious," said Sighter.

  He lifted one of her arms and let it fall.

  "She'll be all right," Sturm said. The Cloudmaster broke through the top of the clouds. Below, the cyclone's whirling mass spread out in all its glory. The gnomes set the sails and put the setting sun to their backs.

  "It was very clever of you to start a signal fire," Wingover said. "But it got out of hand, didn't it? I mean, you might have destroyed the whole ship before we ever arrived."

  Sturm felt a crazy desire to laugh. Instead, he said,

  "That's not the way things went." He paused to yawn prodigiously.

  "Did you find anything useful on that vessel?" Sighter asked. But by then Sturm was already fast asleep.

  Chapter 35

  The Road to Garnet

  Sturm smelled land: wet soil and flowers and fresh-ly turned fields. The sun was in his eyes. He sat up. He was in the wheelhouse, alone. The windows and doors were gone, as was most of the roof. He went out on deck. At the bow was Sighter, surveying the ground below with his telescope. Aft, by the former tail post, sat Kitiara, Stutts, Fitter, and Rainspot. Kitiara was talking rapidly and making wild gestures with her hands.

  "- and then Sturm stepped in and chopped the monster's arm off!" The gnomes all went Ohh, and Kitiara described how the arm had withered before their very eyes.

  Stutts saw Sturm approach. "Ah, Master B-Brightblade!

  You're awake. We are just hearing about your t-tremendous adventure on board the cursed c-caravel."

  Sturm grunted something noncommittal and looked at Kitiara. "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "Fit as can be. How're you7"

  "Rested," he said. "How long have I been asleep?"

  "T-two nights and a day," said Stutts.

  "Two nights!"

  "And a day," added Fitter.

  "I came to about an hour ago," Kitiara said."I slept like a dead woman, but now I feel better than I have in ten summers."

  "You almost were a dead woman." Sturm explained how the Gharm had poisoned her and told her that the elven pendant had saved her once again. Kitiara brought the amethyst out of her blouse. Not only was it clear once more, but it was seamed with hundreds of tiny cracks.

  "I don't remember using it," she said, puzzl
ed.

  "You didn't. I did," said Sturm. Kitiara's eyes widened in surprise.

  He turned and went into the dining room. There the water barrel sat, almost empty. Sturm downed a dipper of tepid water.

  Outside, Wingover said, "I thought men of his order would not use magic under any circumstance."

  "They're not supposed to," Kitiara said. She began to tuck the pendant back under her blouse, but as she did, it crumbled into dust. She stared sadly at the flakes on her tunic; Tirolan Ambrodel's gift was no more. Then, brushing them away, she rose and said to the gnomes, "Excuse me, fellows.

  I need to have a word with Sturm."

  Kitiara found Sturm standing by the port rail, staring at the green land below.

  "Northern Ergoth," she said." Wingover spotted a flock of terns and followed them. The birds led them to land."

  Sturm stared on, saying nothing. "Not very scientific, I thought, but Wingover says, 'Anything that yields good results is scientific."'

  "I am tainted," Sturm said quietly.

  "In what way?"

  "I used magic. Such a thing is forbidden. How am I ever going to become a knight?"

  "That's ridiculous! You used magic on Lunitari when you had those visions," she said.

  "Those were inflicted on me; I had no choice. On the ship, I used the power of the pendant to heal your wound."

  "I call that a right proper thing to do! Are you sorry you didn't let me die?" she asked sarcastically.

  "Of course not."

  "But you're 'tainted' nevertheless?"

  "I am."

  "Then you are a fool, Sturm Brightblade, a hidebound fool! Do you honestly believe that an ancient set of rules for knightly conduct is more important than a comrade's life?

  My life? He did not answer. "There's something twisted about such thinking, Sturm."

  Sturm shook his head vigorously. "No, Kit. I would have given my life to save yours, but it is a cruel turning of fate that made me break the Measure."

  Her jaw clenched in anger and she said stiffly, "I never realized how little value you place on friendship. You want me to believe in your dusty old code. Just like Tanis. He tried to make me into something I wasn't. He couldn't control me, and neither can you!" She stamped the deck, barely containing her fury.