The Jewel of Turmish

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Morning light woke Druz Talimsir. She rose with slow deliberation, keeping her back to the cave wall. The druid and the bear were gone. Though she knew that neither Haarn nor his animal companion would have thought twice before abandoning her, the druid shouldn't have been able to move so quickly. Her legs tingled with weakness from all the climbing the day before, and the smell of cooking meat filled her nostrils and caused hunger pangs to erupt in her stomach. She turned to the mouth of the cave and started out. Pausing at the entrance, she took up a defensive position and lifted her sword in front of her, ready to strike. Straining her ears for any noises outside the cave, she peered around the entrance. A campfire nestled in a ring of stones on the ground in front of the cave. A brace of coneys hung from a spit over the fire. The slender rabbits' bodies dripped grease, sending flames leaping up at them. Haarn knelt at the disturbed grave, a curious look on his face. "What made this?" he asked without lifting his eyes from the hole in the ground. Druz didn't answer, her irritation growing at the druid's uncanny ability to know she was up and about. She'd made no noise. "Did you hear me?" he asked, facing her. "Yes," she replied. "I heard you." "Do you know what made this?" "A skeleton." Druz sheathed her sword, wondering if the druid intended to eat all the coneys or if there would be any left over. Her stomach rumbled again. "Did you summon it?" "How would I do that?" Druz said. "I wouldn't even have known it was down there." Haarn turned his gaze back to the deep hole. "Where's the bear?" Druz asked. "Foraging." Haarn examined the muddy ground around the hole, but Druz was sure he'd done that once before at least. For the first time she also noticed he was still nude save for herbal poultices that clung to his wounds. "How are you?" she asked. "I'm fine," replied the druid. "Your wounds-" "Are only inconveniences." Haarn stood and gazed down the mountainside into the forest. He peeled the poultices from his body to reveal wounds that had already knitted together and were well on their way to healing. "The skeleton left a good set of tracks," he added. Following Haarn's gaze in the direction of the rising sun, Druz said, "It's headed east." "For now," Haarn agreed. "I was surprised when it didn't try to kill us," Druz said. "Why would it just leave?" "That's something I'd like to know too." Haarn glanced at her then walked to where his clothing hung on a branch. "You'd have been better off getting out of those clothes before sleeping last night," he said. "They would have been dry by now." Druz didn't say anything. As a mercenary, she was used to nudity. Living in the field was a hardship that didn't differentiate between genders. The druid was different, though, but she didn't know why. She looked at the coneys steaming on the spit and said, "I thought you didn't like to kill animals." Haarn dressed, showing only a little stiffness in his movements. "The rabbit population is rising too quickly here," Haarn said, settling his scimitar around his lean hips. "We need the meat after the way we've been pushing ourselves." He padded barefoot through the mud, hardly leaving an impression despite the looseness of the ground. Druz watched him in wonder. The wolf had savaged him the night before, but Haarn hardly showed any sign of injury. Haarn took one of the spitted coneys and handed it to Druz. "Thank you," she said. She sat, a dull headache throbbing at the base of her skull and spreading up through her temples. She pinched meat from the coney and dropped it into her mouth. The meat was almost too hot, but the flavor was amazing. "It's very good." Haarn nodded, but he seemed a little uncomfortable with the compliment. His eyes kept drifting to the hole in the earth. "Where are the wolf pups?" Druz asked, remembering them for the first time that morning. "I gave them to the pack," Haarn answered. "They made it through the night and seemed strong enough to survive." Druz looked around and asked, "What of the pack?" "They've gone." "With no more trouble?" Haarn shrugged. "They tried to hide Stonefur's body," he said, "but I found it." He pointed at a hide-covered lump back by the mouth of the cave. "I took Stonefur's head so you would have it as proof." Druz pulled more strips of meat from the coney and continued eating. "Are we heading back today?" she asked. A hot bath followed by a night in a feather bed seemed too good to be true. She promised to treat herself to both those things when she got back to Alagh?n. "I'm not," Haarn said, making a neat pile of bones in front of him, each one broken where he had sucked the marrow from it. "What are you going to do?" Haarn looked east and said, "I'm going to follow the skeleton."

Terror filled Alagh?n as news of Borran Kiosk's return spread through the community. During the night, the stories had circulated through the sailors' bars and been taken with them back to their ships. By morning, the stories flowed to the townspeople buying bread and meat for their tables, washing back from the merchant ships to land like the tide, by way of cargo handlers and merchants. In each telling the stories of the watch's encounter with the mohrg and the violent deaths of the priests of Eldath grew fiercer and uglier.

High in one of the older buildings on the west side of Alagh?n, not far removed from the gate that allowed entrance in from the western trade routes, Borran Kiosk gazed down from between the slats of a boarded-over window. From there the mohrg watched people gather fearfully in the streets and along the docks.

"You take pride in your accomplishment," Allis said.

For a moment, Borran Kiosk did not answer. After whisking him away to this hiding place, traveling swiftly across the rooftops of the city for a time, then dropping down to the street level and managing all the twists and turns there, the werespider woman had disappeared. No longer of the flesh, the mohrg needed no sleep. He'd passed the long, slow night aching for revenge against the living who still called Alagh?n home. It had been everything he could do to stay hidden, and only his fear of Malar's retribution had stayed his hand.

Sails lifted on one of the ships in the harbor. Slowly, the great Sembian merchant ship turned and headed east, bound for other ports.

They escaped, Borran Kiosk couldn't help thinking.

The idea rankled him, but he consoled himself with the thought that though the ship's crew had escaped his physical wrath, his arrival had given them stories they would never forget and never forget to pass on.

Borran Kiosk turned toward his visitor, momentarily putting aside his anger at her for not having come earlier. His great purple tongue slid through his jaws and tasted the air, licking the woman's scent from it.

"Yes," he said, "I do take pride in the fear they have of me. I have expended great effort to acquire that fear."

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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk, 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk, 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 Kiosk from his feet, though if Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk advanced on her.

"I am a servant of Malar."

"Then why fear me?" Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk whispered.

The cold, dispassionate words hung in the emptiness of the room. The spider shifted, and for a moment Borran Kiosk thought she might try to escape from the building. The thought of a gigantic spider suddenly scuttling across the rooftops of Alagh?n 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 Kiosk. "Compatriots, then?"

The promise of allies held a certain allure, but it might also mean having shackles. Since his return from the grave, Borran Kiosk had known no master and recognized no peer save for Malar. Meeting other wizards who served the Beastlord was not something Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk's shoulder, as if she were staring through him. "They all practice necromancy."

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

He asked, "A league 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk. 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk announced.

"They control whomever they wish," she told him. "You wanted Taraketh's Hive, didn't you?"

Borran Kiosk 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 Alagh?n, only this time the wizards will stop your minions in places that you won't know of."

"Don't threaten me, woman," Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Alagh?n 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk asked.

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

Borran Kiosk 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 Alagh?n. No one will be able to stand before them. All of Turmish, and perhaps even the Vilhon Reach, will fall under your power."

Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk," Allis said, "and you will serve theirs."