Despite his wounds, Ettrian had thrown with accuracy. The four small pellets all landed within the vicinity of the
skeleton, and Druz was sure that at least two of them had struck the undead creature.
The four objects exploded, throwing out huge gouts of fire. The concussion blasted hot air over Druz and knocked her from her feet. She rolled to her side, her head spinning from the exertion and the lack of air as her lungs ached and burned from the acrid smoke.
Staring through the smoke, she saw Haarn pushing himself back to his feet only a few feet away. Soot stained the half-elfs face and arms, broken by splashes of yellow and orange mud.
"Silvanus' mercy," Haarn whispered, "will this dead thing not return to the grave?"
Looking through the billowing smoke, Druz stared in disbelief at the skeleton. One of its arms had been blown off by the series of explosions and one foot was missing, but still it stood on the stump and reached out again for the jewel.
"Haarn," Ettrian called, "don't let it take the jewel."
The elf hobbled toward the skeleton, a look of dark intent on his soot-stained face.
The skeleton hobbled away from him, stumbling on one good foot through the craters that had been left by the explosive spell. It folded the jewel up under its remaining arm and bared its fangs, showing spaces where even more teeth had been knocked out. As it continued moving, the skeleton's lower jaw dropped away, giving a clearer view of the fragile spine holding the cracked skull in place.
Haarn, still limping, rushed forward, his scimitar bared in his fists. Closing on the skeleton, the half-elf raised his blade and drew back to swing. Instead of slicing through the spine as he'd obviously intended, Haarn swung through open air. The jewel glowed fiercely, and the ground opened up and sucked the skeleton down. Only a small mound remained to mark the skeleton's passage.
Reversing his blade, Haarn drove it deeply into the ground. It stopped when only half the length of the blade had sunk into the mud, but Druz knew the skeleton wasn't there. Whatever magic had flared from the jewel had taken it away.
"Haarn?" the elf asked.
Looking up, his eyes looking haunted in his scorched and soot-stained face, Haarn shook his head.
"We've let it escape," the elf said. "We had our hands on it and could have prevented some of this madness, but we let it escape. There's only one place that thing would be headed."
Ettrian swayed drunkenly as he balanced on his quarter-staff. Glancing to the east, he pointed with his chin.
"It could only have been called forth by Borran Kiosk," Ettrian said, his voice growing weaker.
The name stirred more fear inside Druz. Even before the horror stories of the Taker spread over the Vilhon Reach there were stories of Borran Kiosk. The legend of the evil mohrg rang through every alehouse and tavern. When men gathered to tell stories of what might have been and what might be, Borran Kiosk's name was never far from their hps.
"Borran Kiosk is dead," Druz said.
"Yes," Ettrian agreed, "and returned yet again. I was given word from the Elder Circle only this morning. Every druid who can answer has been called to Alaghôn to stand against the evil." He paused. "It looks like you might yet live to see a city as you've desired, Haarn."
Druz listened to the exchange, noting the resentment in the elf druid's words despite his weakness and pain.
"No," Haarn said. "I told you I never wanted to see a city, never wanted to be—"
"There's a part of you that belongs to your mother, isn't there?" Ettrian challenged, then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell.
Haarn raced to the elf druid's side.
Druz joined him and watched as Haarn pried at the burned armor covering Ettrian's mid-section. She was surprised at the anxiety flashing in Haarn's eyes.
Fresh blood spilled from the cracked and open blisters that had mottled the elf s lean frame. The stink of burned meat clogged Druz's nostrils. She put a hand over her mouth and nose.
Gently, Haarn moved the elf aside and reached for the cloak. The garment's magical nature was further revealed by the fact that it had taken little damage from the mystic bolt. Haarn reached into one of the pockets sewn into the inside of the cloak.
Even though she knew the cloak was magical, it still amazed Druz at the way the druid sank his arm into it up to his elbow. He searched frantically, and pulled a potion from the pocket. He held the glass bottle up and surveyed the pale blue liquid contained within.
"A healing potion?" Druz asked.
She marveled at the bottle. Had it been kept in a regular pouch, it would surely have been shattered.
Haarn broke the seal then reached down and cradled the elf. Tilting Ettrian's head back, Haarn struggled to pour the liquid into him.
"Open his mouth."
Grimly, Druz placed her hands on the wounded elf s face. Skin and flesh tore under even the slight pressure she put on him. She almost drew her hands back.
"I'm afraid I'm going to hurt him."
Haarn looked up at her and said, "He's dying."
Druz had held men who'd died on battlefields, but none of them had been cooked the way the elf had. The exposed flesh on his arms cracked open in places. She couldn't help thinking that if she pulled at the meat it would fall off the bone. Steeling herself, she took shallow breaths and held the elf s head.
Working cautiously and tenderly, Haarn pushed a finger against the elf s lower lip. The flesh split and bright red blood beaded over Ettrian's mouth and chin.
"Do it," Druz said.
Haarn pulled the Up farther down, causing flesh to tear at the corner and reveal the elf s crimson-stained teeth. Uncorking the potion bottle with his teeth, Haarn poured the blue-tinged liquid slowly into the elf s throat.
For a moment, the healing potion only pooled in the elf s mouth. Then, with a convulsive swallow, Ettrian drank the liquid. Haarn waited patiently then poured
more liquid into the elf s mouth. This time, the elf swallowed more quickly, showing signs of regaining strength. Though Druz hadn't believed it was possible, Ettrian drained the contents of the bottle. "What now?" Druz asked.
"We wait," Haarn answered in a hoarse voice. His eyes never left the unconscious elf. "Is he a friend?
Haarn hesitated then shook his head slowly and said, "Ettrian is my father."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the shadows of Mistress Talia's cargo hold, Barnaby waited to die. At least, he wanted to die a quicker death than the monsters that prowled the merchanter promised. The huge spider-shaped woman was the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen, but it was the dead man with the purple tongue that was the most lethal. Never in his twelve years of life had Barnaby ever given much thought to dying.
Another scream echoed through the hold and Barnaby cringed even tighter into the narrow space. He was small for his age, and often the butt of jokes for it, but this night he was glad of his small stature. If he hadn't been so small he Would never have been able to fit between the crates.
The screaming man stopped with an abruptness that left no doubt in Barnaby's mind that he was dead.
The merchanter was only a day out from Alaghôn, headed south across the mouth of the Vilhon Reach. At least four men, two of whom had been on watch, had been lost during the first night. The captain had blamed the uncommonly rough seas and the storm winds that still racked the coast of Turmish.
"Hand me that damn lantern, I tell you!"
Barnaby recognized Ridnow's voice, but not the fear that echoed within it. Ridnow was a seasoned
sailor, a man who'd sailed the length and breadth of the Sea of Fallen Stars dozens of times, and he didn't scare easily.
"I said, give me that gods' damned lantern, boy, and ye had damn well best be quick about it."
"Ye're gonna set fire to the ship," a younger voice shrilled.
"Ain't ye got it through that thick knob of yers, boy? That there's Borran Kiosk an' he ain't here to take none of us back alive. It's yer choice whether ye dies like a man or ye end up spitted on that foul tongue of his."
Gathering his courage, knowing Ridnow and the younger man were close by, Barnaby peered around the corner of the crate. He stayed so close to the crate that the effort earned him a new splinter in his cheek.
Lantern light threw dancing shadows against the walls of the cargo hold. Ridnow stood near a stand of wine barrels. He was a man of normal height but deep-chested and broad-shouldered. Clutching the lantern in one fist, Ridnow held a bloody, double-bitted dwarven battle-axe in the other. The younger man was Deich, a sailor Barnaby knew but not well.
To see the fear so clearly etched on the sailor's face was disheartening. Tears came to Barnabya eyes and he wiped them away with the back of one arm.
"There's going to be more of them, you know," the young man said. "Every one of us he slays rises up against the rest."
A crooked grin twisted Ridnow's lips. "Well, that damned corpse ain't killed us yet, Deich. Ye an' me, we still got a chance to be heroes."
"I don't want to be a hero," Deich said. "I just want to get off this ship alive."
Thunder rumbled outside the ship and Mistress Talia heeled over hard to port. Deich stumbled and almost fell but caught himself against the line of crates that Barnaby hid behind.
Another man screamed, this one closer.
"They're coming for us now," Deich said.
He shifted, taking up a position to the left and behind Ridnow. The younger sailor's only weapon was a skinning knife.
"Aye," Ridnow growled, "won't be long now an' well see if them damned monsters bleed, too."
As Deich tried to stand firm and Ridnow made his preparations, Barnaby realized that an unaccustomed silence had descended inside the ship's hold. The roaring noise of the storm hadn't quieted, of course, nor the creaking protests of the merchanter as she still managed to dive and glide between the hills and valleys of the raging sea.
There were no more screams.
"C'mon then, ye great gout o' black air an' pestilence!" Ridnow challenged. "C'mon an' see if n ye got the guts what's needed to take the life of a true fightin' man!"
Barnaby glanced around the crate. There, at the other end of the cargo hold, stood Borron Kiosk. The light from Ridnow's waving lantern illuminated the skeletal figure, highlighting the naked bone.
"I killed your captain, your ship's mage, and the rest of your crew," Borran Kiosk said.
The purple tongue flipped out of the grinning jaws and flicked the air.
Tears leaked down Barnaby's face, but he didn't know how he could be crying without knowing it. Pain knotted his guts.
"Mayhap ye have," Ridnow acknowledged, "but ye ain't finished with ol' Talia yet, an' she ain't proper finished with ye."
Borran Kiosk started forward. Barnaby saw no undue haste in the monster's movements, but his thoughts were immediately drawn to the unseen spider-woman. Where was she?
Borran Kiosk came on as if unconcerned about the dwarven battle-axe the sailor held.
Movement high above the cargo, trapped for a moment in the dulled glow of the lantern Ridnow held, captured Barnaby's attention. He glanced up just in time to spot the
spider-woman scuttling across the beams above. She had an insect's head with only vaguely human features. He didn't know how he'd ever thought her beautiful when he'd first laid eyes on her.
He thought only briefly of calling out a warning to Ridnow and Deich, but he knew it wouldn't be enough to save them. Ridnow and Deich were going to die. It was better not to die with them.
The spider-woman dropped, sliding along a length of gossamer. Her fat body fell over Deich and her eight legs wrapped tight around him. Deich screamed but only once.
Horrified, Barnaby watched as the spider-woman bent down and seemed to kiss Deich's neck. When she brought her ugly head away, crimson stained her mouth and dribbled down her misshapen chin. Barnaby clapped both hands over his mouth and tried not to scream. He hoped the muffled noise that escaped him would be lost in the sounds of the storm and the creaking ship.
"Deich!" Ridnow called helplessly.
"You lost him," Borran Kiosk said. "Now you stand nearly alone." His purple tongue flicked the air. "Only one more remains after you."
He knows! He knows! The panicked thought filled Barnaby's mind.
He was scarcely able to restrain himself from hurling out of the hiding place he'd found and—and—
Only the fact that he had nowhere to go stopped him.
"Aye, monster," Ridnow said fiercely. "Mayhap I have lost me captain and me crew, but I ain't a-gonna let ye have leave o' this ship. In case ye ain't been proper piped aboard, welcome to yer own death!"
Whirling, he turned and smashed his axe through the end of a barrel. The astringent smell of alcohol laced the cargo hold and burned Barnaby's nose.
Ridnow swung the battle-axe again, completely destroying the keg. Amber liquid spilled out across the cargo hold deck, running first in one direction, then another as the ship shifted.
Watching the reflection of the lantern in the pale amber liquid soaking into the wood, Barnaby realized what Ridnow intended to do. The alcohol would burn hotter and faster than whale oil.
Something sloshed against Barnaby's thin shoes, soaking them. At first he thought it was brine, that Mistress Talia had sprung a leak somewhere and the sea was getting in, but the liquid reeked of alcohol. He cursed, drawing the attention of the spider-woman. Her opal eyes shone as she smiled at him.
Barnaby was chilled to the bone.
The spider-woman dropped Deich's lifeless body, but her middle legs still worked busily weaving a web around her prey.
Without another word, Ridnow slammed the lantern against the deck. The wick inside the lantern dimmed and nearly went out, then the flames licked across the spilling alcohol, filling the cargo hold with blue and gold light as they ignited the amber liquid with a rushing whoosh!
Knowing he would be dead if the flames caught up to him, Barnaby sprinted out of hiding. He ran past the spider-woman, keeping a line of crates between himself and her. Wide-bodied as she was, she couldn't get through the hold nearly as fast as he could. He streaked for the back of the hold, toward the small ladder.
He slipped under another stack of crates, feeling the heated air catching up to him as the flaming alcohol poured across the shifting deck, then vaulted over a line of barrels. The spider-woman jostled and bumped cargo in her wake as she tried to catch him.
Blood thundered in Barnaby's ears as he caught hold of the ladder and started up. Permitting himself one frightened glance over his shoulder, he saw Ridnow wreathed in the yellow and blue flames. Even as he was burned alive, the sailor screamed out in defiant song and ran at Borran Kiosk.
The mohrg's long purple tongue leaped free of its housing and smacked into Ridnow's head. Barnaby saw the
old sailor's brain's break through the back of his skull, propelled by the monstrous tongue.
The ladder shivered. Glancing down, Barnaby saw that the spider-woman had made her way to it and was even now shifting her terrible body again, changing to something more womanlike but maintaining the horrible head.
Barnaby climbed, hands and feet moving so rapidly it seemed as though he was swimming up the ladder. At the top, he flung back the hatch then pulled himself up and out into the lashing rain sluicing the merchanter's decks.
He slipped on the wet deck, going deaf from the howling winds of the storm, and pulled himself back to the hatch and peered down. Flames spread throughout the cargo hold, filling it with reddish-orange light. He only had a moment to think about how very far away from shore he was, and how many sharks might be in these waters—or sahuagin that had been released in the Taker's War— before a wild gale rose up from below.
As fierce as the winds were above deck, they were dwarfed by the cyclone that filled the hold. Barnaby squinted against it, his face burning from the blast of heat that rushed out at him. He watched as Ridnow's flaming corpse flew through the air and thudded against the back wall of the cargo hold. Even as the big sailor's body started to fall, the winds blew out all the flames and darkness filled the hold.
From within that darkness that reeked of smoke and death, the mocking tone of insane laughter cascaded out. The obscene noise warred with the thunder that shook the black heavens above the soaked white sails of the mer-chanter.
Gathering his courage, feeding on fear, Barnaby slammed the hatch closed. He turned and thought he was going to be sick when he saw the undead sailors crewing the ship. A wall of black water rose off starboard bow and rushed for the ship. Silver-white lightning split the sky in a startling blast of incandescence that turned the foam riding the curler of the wave silver-white as well.
The undead crew moved slowly, as if they'd forgotten that a ship in a storm had to be waited on hand and foot. The wave of black water slammed into the ship, breaking over the side and washing across the deck. Some of the ship's crew washed overboard, and it was terrifying to watch the men go without screaming. Normal men who knew they were about to die always screamed, and a man falling into the black sea so many miles from shore was surely going to die.
The massive cold that came from the brine surprised Barnaby and took his breath away. He clung to the closed hatch while the ship rode out the worst of it then pushed himself away, pausing only to latch down the hatch. He slipped and slid across the wet deck, bumping into one of the undead sailors.
The thing had half of its face torn away and was no longer recognizable. Barnaby didn't know if he'd known the man or not. The boy ducked as the dead man reached for him, its torn, ragged mouth open hungrily. They ate flesh. At least, one of the sailors who'd talked about the undead crewmen among them said they ate flesh.
Barnaby pushed off the port railing as Mistress Talia caught another bad wave. He caught the rigging just as the ship got caught in the next trough, wallowing and corkscrewing like a fat pig settling into a favorite mud pit. The rope ate at his callused hands as he clung there, breath rasping between clenched teeth.
Lightning flared again, ripping most of the shadows away from the ship's pitching deck. The hatch shattered and exploded outward. The spider-woman's gruesome head and shoulders appeared. The opal eyes reflected the hghtning haze as they gazed around at the deck. They rested squarely on Barnaby.
Heart hammering in his chest, Barnaby started up the rigging. There was nowhere else to go. Even if he could get to one of the freighter's three longboats and manage to get it cast off the ship, he could never hope to keep it afloat without more crew. He climbed, hands and feet moving rapidly, not minding that the rigging and ratlines were
dripping water and the rain falling into his eyes was blinding.
Fear made him glance back over his shoulder, and things only got worse when he did. He made himself look back up at the lightning-laced heavens and into the teeth of the blinding rain. On and on he climbed, daring to think that the spider-woman wouldn't climb after him.
But she did. He felt her moving in the rigging below him even though he didn't look to make sure she was there. At the very top of the rigging, Barnaby stopped.
There was nowhere else to go. The sails billowed and cracked around him, and at times they obscured sight of the spider-woman easily climbing the rigging.
He looked up from her and at the storm above and the black walls of rolling water around him. Mistress Talia rode deep in a trough and if the undead crew didn't get control of her, she'd founder and possibly break and go down.
Barnaby gazed around at the threatening expanse of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The spider-woman was only a few feet below him and closing fast. A great sadness filled the boy, overcoming even the fear that had trembled within him for the last handful of hours as the crew was hunted down and killed.
Gathering the last of his courage, aided in his decision by his own flagging strength, Barnaby timed the pitch and yaw of the ship, waiting until it gave him the greatest motion, then he released his hold on the rigging, letting the arc of the ship throw him far out to sea. He spun in the air, watching Mistress Talia, dangerously close to becoming lost herself, and he plummeted into the Sea of Fallen Stars.
The cold, black brine closed over Barnaby, and it seemed he could still hear Borran Kiosk's mocking laughter in his ears.
CHAPTER TWENTY
H aarn came awake with a start, knowing a nightmare had roused him but not able to make any sense whatsoever of what the dream had been about. His body ached all over. Sleeping on the ground under a meager shelter hadn't been as good to his injured body as he'd hoped.
Wood smoke tainted the air. The smell would make a few animals curious, but it would scare the majority of them away. Fire generally meant humans, and the animals had learned to be afraid of men. Some would come in the hopes of getting table leavings, and some would come only to watch from afar.
He lay silent for a moment and prayed, then he meditated and made sure his body was loose and ready to deal with whatever the day offered. The rain that streamed down outside the overhang where he'd fashioned a serviceable lean-to spattered against the ground, creating a lull of background noise. The overhang was on slightly higher ground, so there was no worry about water soaking their sleeping area.
Haarn rose, feeling twinges and aches that bit bone-deep. He'd used his healing powers to aid his father and had tended to his own wounds as best he could with what herbs he had or could find.
His father lay at the back of the overhang near the fire, draped in his own cloak and Haarn's.
Druz had volunteered the blanket from her own kit, recovered after the battle in the marshy glade, but Haarn had known she wouldn't be comfortable in the night without it. The storm had brought considerable chill to the evening hours.
"You're awake," Druz said from her place sitting beside his father.
She had her strung bow across her knees and her long sword standing against the back of the overhang beside her.
Haarn crossed the shelter to his father's side. "He's slept well," Druz said.
Tenderly, Haarn lifted the poultices from bis father's wounds and examined them. Blackened, crusty scabs covered all of the burned areas, and with the extra healing Haarn provided through his magic there probably wouldn't even be any scars left. The healing potion had done remarkable work on Ettrian, possibly even saving his i life, though Haarn believed Silvanus was more responsible for that.
After getting Ettrian settled as comfortably as possible I a day and a half before, satisfied that his father's life wasn't in any immediate danger, Haarn had seen to arranging the shelter. Druz had helped, and she'd tried to get him to rest, but he couldn't. Borran Kiosk's name kept echoing through bis head.
Satisfied with the progress Ettrian was making, Haarn sat down beside him. He gazed at his father's stern face and felt the old confusion gnaw his empty stomach. There were pleasant memories from when he'd been small, from those times his mother had stayed with them deep in the forest, but those had quickly passed when his mother rode away. Haarn had been no older than four or five. After that, his mother's visits had come less and less frequently, lasting only days instead of tendays, then finally—the last time nearly fifteen years past—only hours. His father had grown sadder and angrier, and with his mother's absence Haarn had grown aware of his father's turning away from him as well, as if he was to blame for her leaving.
Haarn reached out and slapped Broadfoot on the haunch. Covered in herbal poultices that made the animal stench even stronger in the lean-to's enclosed space, the bear snuffled irritably, raised his wide head for a moment, then put his head back down and slept.
Sleep would be best, Haarn knew, but nervous energy and the need to be up and moving around filled him. He'd always felt that way around his father as a young man, and even more so since he'd become increasingly independent.
"Borran Kiosk is a fable," Druz said. "Why is your father here really?"
Haarn looked at her and said, "After you saw that skeleton claw up from the ground, after you saw that red jewel in its chest and the damage it did to all of us, you want to believe that Borran Kiosk is some kind of old wives' tale?"
A thoughtful expression filled Druz's face. She sucked in one cheek as she regarded him.
"My father," Haarn said, glancing at him, "is not a man to pass on gossip. He sought me out to bring me the news the Emerald Enclave had sent him."
"From Ilighdn? That's a long way to send a message."
"My father is an important man," Haarn said. "He's not one of the Elder Circle but his voice carries weight in the Enclave."
"Is ... is he going to be all right?"
The pounding rain outside the lean-to echoed in the silence that hung between them. Ettrian chose that moment to take a sonorous breath that lifted his chest beneath the traveling cloaks that served as blankets.
"In time," Haarn answered, feeling proud of his father, proud of the way he fought to get better in spite of the injuries that plagued him. There had always, in spite of the other confusing feelings, been a respect between them. "I've seen my father recover from far worse than this."
A moment of silence passed between them, broken only by the crackling sputter of the campfire.
"There's a sadness in your voice when you speak of him," Druz said.
Haarn said nothing, wanting his private feelings to be his own. People who dwelt in cities, especially humans, seemed to think it a crime for a person to possess a private thought. Still, he'd gotten to know her at least a little over the few days they'd been traveling together. He looked at her, feeling the hot smoke sting his eyes, and wondered what his father must think about him traveling with a human woman obviously of mating age. It had to have reminded him of the woman who'd left them.
"I don't mean to pry," Druz said.
He knew that was false. Whatever other shortcomings she had in the wilderness, Druz Talimsir had certain gifts regarding the paths and trails men's minds took.
Ettrian stirred within the pile of cloaks.
"Haarn," he whispered.
The elf turned his head and gazed about with fevered eyes.
"I'm here, Father," Haarn said.
Stretching out his hand, Ettrian said, "I'm cold and ... I'm thirsty."
With the rain falling in great abundance, acquiring fresh water was no problem. Haarn started to push himself up.
"I'll get it," Druz offered. She got to her feet and went to the lean-to's edge to retrieve a waterskin. "I just filled this."
She handed the waterskin to Haarn.
Cupping his father's head, Haarn lifted him up and helped him drink, taking his time and not quitting until his father had slaked his thirst.
Ettrian glared up at him with his fevered eyes and said, "I've been dreaming of your mother again, Haarn, remembering how she left us."
Maybe, Haarn thought, they'd been sharing nightmares.
"Do you remember how she left us, Haarn?" "Yes, Father."
"She was wrong, and she was selfish," Ettrian croaked, trying to make his voice fierce.
Looking at his father, Haarn remembered how strong he'd thought the man had been. He was a skilled druid, master of the quarterstaff and learned in his spells. The Elder Circle of the Emerald Enclave respected his opinion and sometimes sought his advice regarding events going on in lands under or near his custodianship, but there was a weakness in him. Haarn had seen that, too.
"Yes, Father," Haarn whispered, feeling the hot flash of tears claw at the back of his eyes.
He wished he thought better of the woman who'd birthed him. If she had only betrayed him, Haarn didn't think he'd have held her actions so much against her—if it hadn't been for the way it all but robbed him of a father as well.
"She was so pretty," the elf whispered.
Haarn took his father's hot hand and squeezed gently. He wished Druz wasn't there to see his father in this moment of weakness.
Ettrian held his hand weakly, but the grip was still there, stronger than the day before. A moment passed, and the rhythm of Ettrian's breathing told Haarn that his father slept. He released his father's hand then used the waterskin to make a poultice for Ettrian's forehead.
Haarn prayed to Silvanus, put his hands on his father's body, and released the magic. The power flowed from his heart, through his arms, and out bis palms. An incandescent blue light flowed along his father's body, though Haarn was sure no one else could see it. His magic was for his eyes alone, and so the experience had been but for things that affected the physical world, but anyone could see how Ettrian's wounds healed so much in just that brief contact, how the scabs dried and started to turn loose of their moorings in his father's flesh.
Haarn sat back against the rock wall and took deep breaths. His body shook, but he gave thanks to Silvanus for providing him the power to heal. When he opened his eyes, Druz was looking at him.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
Haarn resented the question. She always seemed to be prying, trying to find the weak and uncertain parts of him.
"Why would I not be all right?"
A hard look flashed through her eyes and she said, "Gods, but you're a stubborn man, Haarn Brightoak. I was only asking because I'm worried about you. You were injured as well, and you've spent every waking moment taking care of us—your father, Broadfoot, and me—though I can take care of myself."
Anger flickered in Haarn's stomach and he considered reminding her how he'd had to show her where to find nuts, berries, and edible mushrooms. He refrained through a supreme effort of will.
"There's no reason to worry about me," he said.
She wanted to object—he saw that in her face—but she didn't. Instead, she drew her knees up higher and wrapped her arms around them.
"I know that," she said. "I guess what bothers me most is that I feel like a burden."
The sudden change in her thinking caught Haarn off-balance. He didn't know what to say.
"I'm not used to feeling like that," Druz went on. "Fm a good sellsword. No one has ever said they didn't get what they paid for."
She stopped herself and shrugged.
"Well, hardly anyone," she continued, "and that was through no fault of my own. I fought for those people and bled for those people, but winning what they wanted wasn't possible."
Haarn leaned forward and fed the campfire from a small pile of sticks and broken branches they'd gathered the day before.
"You're not a burden."
She looked up at him. Haarn felt uncomfortable. "If it weren't for you," he explained, "I wouldn't have been able to rest while tending to my father." "You've rested very little."
"I wouldn't have rested at all if you hadn't been here."
Druz nodded and said, Thank you."
Haarn watched her for a while, expecting more questions. Broadfoot's and Ettrian's breathing filled the overhang over the snap and crackle of the campfire. After a time, the sound lulled Haarn. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He couldn't have had them closed for very long at all before the woman spoke again.
"What happened to your mother?" she asked.
Slowly, Haarn opened his eyes and looked at her. An uncomfortable expression filled her face.
"I mean, if you don't mind saying. It's just that your conversation with your father made me curious. Staying quiet all the time ... I'm used to having someplace to go, people to talk with, but I've just been sitting here for the last day and a half."
Haarn tried to think of what to say, whether to answer her question or to tell her it was none of her business.
"I'm sorry," Druz said. "Obviously I've stepped over a line here. You go on back to sleep and I'll watch the fire."
Irritation filled Haarn. He wanted nothing more than for the woman to be quiet. Problems already danced in his head regarding his father's health and what the return of Borran Kiosk might herald. He didn't need to rake over the coals of past hurts, but he didn't like the fact that she sat there feeling alone. He knew how to keep the peace within himself, but she was out of her element and not necessarily among friends.
"My mother," Haarn said, "deserted us."
"Why?"
Haarn hesitated.
"Maybe that wasn't a good question," she said quickly.
Haarn knew she wanted to know, and he wanted her to know. He looked at her, realizing she was more like his mother than he wanted to admit.
"I don't know," he said.
Druz nodded.
Haarn drew in a deep breath and assembled his thoughts. He'd never talked to anyone about bis feelings
regarding his mother, and he'd never had the opportunity to talk to someone so like her.
"My mother was a warrior. I don't even know where she hailed from."
His father never told him and he couldn't remember his mother ever saying. A twinge of guilt shot through him, but he walled it away with other thoughts and feelings of her that he couldn't bear to think of.
"When she left us, she said only that she had to return to where she'd come from, that there were things she'd left undone."
"And she never returned?"
"A few times," Haarn said. "She stayed away longer and longer each time, until finally one day she didn't come back at all."
"How did your father and mother meet?"
"She was pursued into the forest by a band of men. My father chose to aid her."
"Why?"
Haarn shrugged. "He never said. I never asked. What was done was done. Silvanus teaches acceptance of things past and a knowledge of things to do now with hopes for a balanced future."
"She might have been an outlaw."
Haarn nodded, frowning.
"I apologize. I shouldn't have said that."
"It may well have been true. It's not as though I haven't thought that myself. Most civilized people who end up here come because they've been chased from the cities by their own kind or because they're searching for gold or treasure."
"Your mother might not have been able to return after her last visit," Druz said. "Her absence might not have been totally by choice."
"I thought she might have been killed, perhaps jailed."
Haarn was surprised at how much the old pain and confusion returned to him.
"If she was a warrior," Druz said, "she may have signed on to fight somewhere. There've been any number
of disputes that have drawn mercenaries to Turmish or the Reach."
Some, Haarn knew, had pitted mercenaries against the druids of the Emerald Enclave. The possibilities twisted his guts. For his mother to have loved Ettrian and fallen to another druid in battle would have been the cruelest of fates.
"She might have come from some place on the far side of the sea," Druz said, as if guessing the twisted tangle of his thoughts. "Maybe she intends to return one day."
"It's been years."
That stopped her only for a moment. "Maybe she has returned and was unable to find you or your father."
"There are ways for her to get in touch with my father," Haarn replied, "places she could have left messages. She never has." He blew out his breath. "There is no excuse for her behavior."
Druz eyed him. "Is that you speaking, Haarn, or your father?"
Anger ran deeply in him then, and he had trouble containing it.
"Grant me Silvanus's patience, woman, but you are arrogant."
"Not arrogant, Haarn. It doesn't take a sage to see you're conflicted in this. Gods' blood, but you'd have to be if you had any kind of heart—and I know you do—but I also heard your father's accusation about you finally getting to see a city. I have nothing against your father, but you didn't deserve that."
"You know nothing about what comes between my father and me."
T know enough to make some assumptions. Your father is bitter about loving and losing your mother, but he was brave enough and strong enough to raise you by himself." Druz eyed him. "Do you want to see a city?"
Haarn hesitated, wondering if she knew him well enough after the past few days to know a he from him if she heard it. He started to speak, caught himself, then said, T don't know."
"You don't know if you want to see one, or you don't know if you want to deal with your father's feelings when he finds out you want to see one?"
Haarn didn't answer.
Druz sighed and wrapped her arms more tightly around her legs.
"I grew up in Suzail," she said.
The name meant nothing to Haarn. He didn't suppose he'd ever met anyone from there before, or perhaps they hadn't cared for anyone to know.
"It's the capital city of Cormyr on the Lake of Dragons," she explained.
"Fve heard of Cormyr." Actually, Haarn had heard very little.
"I grew up in a small house," Druz said. "My father was a blacksmith, a man good with armor and arms, which is a craft that will keep a man hale and hearty in Cormyr, but there are enough skilled craftsmen there that he was never going to get rich. Still, he provided for all nine children and his wife."
She gazed into the fire, and Haarn sensed that she had hurts of her own.
"I was the fourth in the line of children," she continued, "and the first girl. My three older brothers all worked with my father. My mother thought I would provide help in caring for the children and keeping house, but I had my own interests."
Haarn sat and listened to her, amazed at how soothing her voice could be after thinking for days only about how she could drone on and on.
"When it became apparent that I wasn't going to be the housekeeper my mother wanted and that Josile, the girl next to me, absolutely loved those things, she was given the chores and I got the opportunity to work with my father in the smithy."
"You found that work preferable?" Haarn asked.
"For a time," Druz admitted. "I was a fair hand at repairing armor and hammering out horseshoes, but I came in contact with men and women who'd traveled around all
of Faerûn. Suzail, as large as it had seemed to me, was only a stopping place for them, a waystation while they rested to continue their travels to far-away destinations. One day, after I was grown, or at least thought I was, I decided I wanted to travel. Over the years, Fd been learning swordcraft from anyone who'd teach me. I learned well, and some said I had a talent for it."
Haarn agreed, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
"One night I left Cormyr, caught the first ship that would hire me on as a sellsword," Druz said, "and I began making my way as a mercenary."
"Have you been back to see your family?" Haarn asked.
"Several times."
"What did your mother and father think about the life you'd chosen?"
"They didn't like it," Druz said. "They still don't, but they know I'm happy. I'm getting to travel, and the things I fight for—" She wrinkled her nose."—usually, the things I fight for are of my own choosing and causes I believe in. It's not a life for everyone, but it's the life I chose. That's why I'm telling you this, Haarn.
"Maybe the cities aren't to your father's liking, and maybe they won't be to yours, but you shouldn't have to feel guilty about wanting to see them and explore those ties to your mother. I mean no disrespect for your father. Please understand that."
Some of Haarn's anger and resistance went away, and he thought perhaps he did understand, though he wasn't certain why Druz would be so adamant about telling him.
"If you ever did get curious about cities and wanted to see one," Druz said, "and if I were available to show you one, I... I think I'd like that very much."
She glanced away from him, as if unable to any longer hold his gaze.
Haarn looked at his father's sleeping form. Normally elves didn't sleep, just went into a meditative trance for four hours or so every day. He could never recall his father sleeping.
"He loved her very much, didn't he?" Druz asked some time later.
"Yes," Haarn whispered. "Losing her almost killed him." "He'd never known that kind of love before? I know elves are long-lived."
"If he has, he's never mentioned it." "And he's never loved like that again?" "No."
Haarn fed more wood to the fire, basking in the warm radiance.
"Not many people are fortunate to know a love like that," Druz said.
"Love like that," Haarn said, meaning it, "is a terrible thing."
"Do you really think so?"
He gazed at her, surprised by the intensity in her eyes.
"I've seen what it can do to people."
"You've only seen what it did to your father. Love like that is special, not something easily found."
The tone in her voice suggested that she'd had more than a passing interest in the subject.
"Love like that is a death trap. Better to find someone you like, share time together, then be on about your business."
"And you practice that, Haarn?"
Druz's voice carried a biting chill to it that was worse than anything outside the protection of the lean-to.
Haarn looked at her, seeing the challenge there and not totally understanding it. He let his breath out when his lungs started to ache, not even knowing he'd been holding his breath.
"No," he answered. "That's not what I practice."
A smile, partly coy and partly relieved, played on Druz's hps and she asked, "Have you ever been with a woman, Haarn?"
Haarn's face burned and he couldn't believe his concern for his father and their forced encampment in the lean-to had led them to this subject.
"Now you're stepping over boundaries."
A triumphant gleam showed in Druz's eyes and Haarn couldn't understand it at all.
"I withdraw the question," she said, "and offer my apologies."
Haarn nodded, feeling only a little relieved.
"Love like your father and mother had isn't necessarily a bad thing," Druz said. "Wolves mate for life."
"Stonefur mated for life," Haarn said coldly, "and his mate attacked you. You killed her without a second's thought."
His words visibly stung Druz. Her face pinched shut. Glancing down, she pulled her blanket up and turned away from him.
"Since you're awake," she said, "I'm going to sleep now."
Haarn watched her do exactly that, and he was irritated at her for raising so many questions in his mind and leaving him with them. He glanced at his father, knowing Ettrian's presence had triggered some of those questions as well.
Haarn settled back against the stone wall of the overhang. Never in the past two days had he been so aware of how uncomfortable it was. He gazed at Druz, sleeping so childlike beneath her blanket—except for the naked dagger in her fist—and tried not to think about any of the questions she'd raised within him. It didn't work, not even when he directed his mind to prayers to Silvanus.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Borran Kiosk stood on Mistress Talia'a flying deck, scanning the dark ruins of the Whamite Isles. Lightning seared the sky as light rain continued to fall. At least the sea had quieted.
The ship had been taken over days before, perhaps even as much as a tenday—Borran Kiosk was not sure. Only corpses revived by the mohrg's magic crewed the ship.
The change from living to dead had not been without problems. Alive, the crew had been adept at manning Mistress Talia, but rising from the dead had cost them something of their skill. Only every now and again was Borran Kiosk able to raise one of his kills nearly whole in ability.
The five he'd created to carry the pieces of Taraketh's Hive had been very special. One of them, Borran Kiosk knew, had almost been destroyed by druids. He'd managed the skeleton's escape only with the help of the league of wizards Allis served.
Lightning burned the heavens again, but nothing disturbed the surface of the sea. Footsteps sounded on the deck behind him. There was only one person who moved freely about the ship.
Without looking around at Allis, Borran Kiosk asked, "Where are the drowned ones?"
"Under the sea," she replied. "They're probably on their way here now. They hunt anything. From what I'm told, even the fish no longer come here."
"We need to go in closer."
"If we do," she said, coming up to the railing where he stood, "we run the risk of being overrun by their numbers before you're able to control them."
Borran Kiosk raised his arm and regarded the pink and white coral shell that encased his arm. It looked so simple, so powerless. If he hadn't felt the magic in it, he wouldn't have believed it could do what she promised. He looked back out to sea, trying to discern some movement in the rolling troughs of water, but there was none.
Allis stared at the rolling sea as well. Her hair lay plastered against her skull and her clothes, like Borran Kiosk'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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk said.
"No one knows we're here," Allis said.
Borran Kiosk 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.
T can't hide as easily on the open sea as I could have in the city," Borran Kiosk replied. T 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 Kiosk and he almost backhanded the werespider.
T 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 hps.
The mohrg leaned on the flying deck's railing and showed the men a confident pose.
"I am Borran Kiosk!" 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 Kiosk!" 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 well burn that damned ship to the waterline! Those undead bastards will go down with it!"
Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk clung defiantly to the railing.
"No matter what ill fate awaits me," he told Allis, T 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk, then he felt a fresh infusion of power through the coral glove.
"This is your moment, Borran Kiosk," Allis said. "Seize control of the power blessed Malar has put at your disposal."
"Borran Kiosk," the wizard aboard the other ship yelled. "Surrender your vessel!"
Ignoring the challenge, Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk asked again, moving closer to the werespider.
She looked back at Borran Kiosk, 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 Kiosk?" the wizard on the other ship demanded.
Allis glanced past the mohrg, toward the prow of the ship.
"You must act quickly, Borran Kiosk," she said, "else the drowned ones will take us down as well."
Looking over his shoulder, Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk!" 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk finished the incantation.
Allis screamed and backed away as the drowned ones started for her.
Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk!"
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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk."
Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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.
T 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 Kiosk, 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 with 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 Kiosk, he was aware that his own kit was sorely lacking.
"No," Haarn answered, embarrassed at his own naivete. "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. Ill 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 un-scarred 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.
"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 bis 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 youll 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. T 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 Kiosk!" 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 Kiosk has done brought two ships back with him!"
Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk's side. Her features altered as she shifted into the half-humanIhalf-spider shape. She wasn't like the rest of the dark troops the mohrg had gathered—she still feared death.
Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Shadow-moon 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. Tf 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 Kiosk.
"Itll 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk'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 pay-loads 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 fire-ships 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk'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 Kiosk must have stacked them on top of each other like sacks of grain in a merchant's wagon.
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 Kiosk's undead forces.
"Where is Borran Kiosk?" 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 Kiosk'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 ele-mentals 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 Kiosk?" 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 voice.
"To win the battle," Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk's direction. Without hesitation, the water elemental started for the mohrg.
Harnessing the power of Malar's Glove, Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk, aided by the magic in Malar's Glove, was too strong. In the next moment, the elemental was completely gone.
Borran Kiosk turned and retreated under the pilings again. Deep under the wreckage that remained of the pier, Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 afoot.
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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 five for: the wild lands of Turmish."
"How?"
Borran Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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 Kiosk 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.
T would be a fool if I hadn't learned something during my incarceration," Borran Kiosk 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 die and—I will liver
S
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.
She turned and found the druid behind her. Blood
covered his face, and more ran down his arm, which dangled at his side and looked barely strong enough to hold his sword.
"Come on," the druid said again. "Fall back to the second position with the others."
Druz followed him. She stumbled wearily up the incline leading down to the docks, following Haarn as they leaned on each other.
At least they were still faster than the zombies, but that blessing would be short-lived if the way her legs felt was any indication. The zombies never fatigued, and they never got weak from blood loss or hunger.
She glanced around at the warriors and druids retreating from the harbor. All of them wore horror-filled faces and bore wounds. The knowledge that the dead would rise up again at Borran Kiosk's hand chilled her to the bone.
She gazed at Haarn, watching the scratches heal on his face under the layer of blood. His wounded shoulder knitted itself, rebinding muscle and tissue until only pink skin remained.
Haarn shook his head and spoke in a voice that sounded stronger than the hoarse one he'd addressed her with earlier.
"It's not my doing." He looked around at the crowd of warriors and druids running with them. "It's a druid. A mass healing."
The warriors and druids retreated into the alleys fronting Dockside, the street that ran roughly parallel to the harbor. The zombies came after them, and when they did, crews posted on the rooftops on either side of the alleys poured oil over them.
"Fire!" a watch officer yelled.
Flaming arrows sped from archers' bows and lit the oil. The twisting flames sucked at what flesh the zombies had left to them, drawing the cartilage tight as the moisture burned from their bodies.
Still, more zombies came on. There was no doubt that the second line of defense wouldn't hold either.
"Over there!" Haarn shouted, pushing Druz to the left as they cleared the alley.
Druz stared through the running figures and spotted Ettrian. The elf was retreating with a group of other men, helping load wounded onto wagons that had been commandeered to evacuate warriors too wounded to fend for themselves. The wagons were nearly full and still they kept piling wounded on while the horses stamped nervously.
"Father!" Haarn yelled, urging Druz to greater speed.
Ettrian looked up at his son. The elf was covered in blood and gore, and the left side of his face held blistered burns.
"You're still alive," the elf said. "Thank Silvanus, but Fd almost given up hope for you."
"And I you," Haarn said, hugging his father.
Ettrian shook his head. "We're not going to be able to hold the city. The Elder Circle has decided, along with the Alaghôn Watch, to abandon this place."
"What of Borran Kiosk?" Haarn asked.
"No one has seen him since the ships crashed into the harbor."
Haarn's face hardened. "Borran Kiosk wasn't destroyed."
"No one thinks that," Ettrian agreed, "but we can't fight him here."
"There's more to it," Haarn said.
Druz knew he was right. "Borran Kiosk wouldn't have just disappeared during this fight," she said. "He has another agenda. Otherwise he'd be visible here, leading his damned zombies."
"What about the skeleton with the jewel?" Haarn asked.
"It's never been seen."
Haarn looked up, scenting the air like an animal. The wind swooping in off the harbor ruffled his hair, making it look feathery.
"I can track the skeleton. I have its scent." He glanced back at his father and added, "It will go to Borran Kiosk. If I can follow it, I can find him."
Ettrian hesitated. "Haarn, I shifted earlier to avoid an attack. I can't shift again. Not this soon."
"Then FU find a way to guide you there," Haarn promised. His form compressed and shifted, becoming that of an owl in the blink of an eye. The predatory bird beat his wings and flew into the sky, climbing over the rooftops and heading south.
"Ettrian!" Druz shouted over the confusion of the wounded and those trying to help them onto the wagons. "You can't let Haarn go alone. It's too dangerous."
The elf s face grew stern and he said, "He's my son, woman, and I won't suffer him to be lost without a fight."
He turned and called out names. Three nearby druids shifted into avian shapes—another owl, a hawk, and a falcon—and flung themselves into the sky. All of them winged after Haarn, who was already growing small in the dark sky, gone before Druz had time to realize it.
"One of them will come back," Ettrian said when he finished ordering another contingent of men to come to him. "If there's something that can be done then, we'll do it."
"If?" Druz screamed. "Damn it! There's no if! Haarn is already out there looking for Borran Kiosk!"
"We have to marshal our forces, woman!" Ettrian shouted back. "This is no longer just a battle; this is a war, and a war needs careful—"
Broadfoot's growl broke Druz's attention, drawing her eyes to the bear loping through the crowd. She didn't bother to stay and hear the rest of Ettrian's speech.
She knew the elf was right, but after everything she'd been through with Haarn, and with the feelings he had so unknowingly stirred within her, she knew that her place— if she could find a way—was with him.
Druz went racing through the crowd in the bear's wake. Broadfoot had a connection to Haarn and they always seemed to know where the other was. She hoped it was still true. Pushing herself, she drew even with the bear as people scattered before them, then she knotted a fist in
Broadfoot's pelt, leaped, and pulled herself aboard the animal.
Broadfoot growled and turned back to face her.
Druz thought the bear was going to try to bite her face off, but Broadfoot turned and continued forward, moving into a run when the street cleared ahead.
Druz leaned over the bear, holding on tight, locking her legs around his barrel chest. His fur scraped her skin and the wind pushed into her face.
Glancing up, she thought she got a glimpse of the owl that was Haarn, but it was gone so quickly she couldn't be sure. She clung to the bear, feeling the huge muscles bunch beneath her.
Please, Tymora, she prayed silently. Please let me arrive in time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Haarn flapped his owl wings and stayed in a low glide above the tops of the buildings lining Alaghôn's southern section. The scent of the skeleton kept fading in and out, and he had to fly above some areas three times to pick up the trail again. His sense of smell wasn't as keen in owl form, but better vision offset that loss. The city spread out below him came through in sharp focus and he could see through most shadows.
The fire was still spreading along the harbor, and as Haarn glided across the rooftops he saw one of the warehouses collapse in on itself and smash to the ground. It was so far away and there was so much noise from the battle that it didn't seem to make a sound. Flames roiled up from the tumbling mass, chased by fiery embers that climbed into the sky like a meteor shower in reverse.
Farther out in the harbor, a fishing boat burned down to the waterline, the masts wreathed with fire and still stabbing into the dark, smoke-filled sky. The black sea sloshed over the boat's side and the harbor drank it down. The last things that disappeared were the flaming masts, looking like burning tapers until the water finally extinguished them.
The skeleton's scent drew Haarn's attention again. He stared down, gauging the wind, sur-
prised to find that he could sort out the scent at all with the amount of smoke in the air. He banked in the air, dropping lower over the rooftops.
Motion caught Haarn's eye. Flying closer, below the level of the rooftops, Haarn saw a one-armed skeleton with a block of wood tied in place of a missing foot.
Light from the burning harbor reached the jewel the skeleton carried in its hand. The gem glowed red like fresh-spilled blood.
Hypnotized by his find, aware of the skeleton's odor deep in his nostrils, Haarn flew closer. He held his wings steady, knowing his approach was soundless as long as he didn't flap.
Something warned the skeleton, though, some inexplicable primitive instinct reserved for those who hunted and yet were hunted. The foul creature turned, keeping the jewel wrapped tightly against its broken rib cage. It lunged with its jaws. The gruesome mouth slammed shut less than an inch from Haarn's face.
Unable to stop, Haarn flapped his wings to gain speed and altitude. The cityscape, filled with unaccustomed hazards, threw him off. He crashed against a window with bruising force. Grateful that he hadn't broken a wing, he just managed to keep himself from smashing into the ground. Flapping again, Haarn drove himself up. As he came around, he spotted three other birds in the air. He girded himself for battle.
"Haarn," the falcon called. "Ettrian sent us to help you find Borran Kiosk."
"The creature we seek is down there," Haarn said.
He banked again, turning all the way over this time, then swooped back toward the skeleton, marked by the jewel's distinctive red glow. He bore down on the creature, ready to shift back to his normal form and fight.
A ruby ray shot from the jewel.
Haarn twisted and maintained the owl form. The hot ruby beam shot past him and struck the owl that had come with the falcon and the hawk
When the ruby beam touched the owl, it exploded into
a puff of feathers. Misshapen chunks of burned meat, neither owl nor man, hit the cobblestone street below.
Haarn led the other two birds away from the skeleton, planning to get a safe distance away and resume his form. He banked and came around, preparing to undo the spell. One of the other two birds became an elf female by the time she touched the cobblestones.
Thin and dark-haired, looking like little more than a waif, the elf gazed back at the skeleton and threw her hands out. Her voice rolled the words of a spell in a sharp, clear voice.
A pale green fire shimmered into being around the skeleton. The druid's spell highlighted the skeleton, making it stand out from the shadows that filled the street, and prevented any possible attempt to hide and make its escape using the cover of night.
The skeleton stood for a moment as if confused.
Holding his owl shape for the time, Haarn flew toward the skeleton.
The creature's head turned toward him, and the single hand remained like an eagle's claw gripping the red jewel as it pulsed with unholy light.
Anticipating the strike but not knowing if he could dodge the magic, Haarn dropped a wingtip to the right and dropped and banked. Light strobed from the jewel, but it struck the corner of a building instead of him. Brick and mortar blasted loose in a deafening explosion. Haarn felt several small pieces batter his feathers and strike his body hard enough to bruise.
He banked again, reclaiming control of his headlong flight. Glancing back at the skeleton, he saw it holding up the jewel, either by way of taunting him or to use its terrible powers, Haarn wasn't sure. He flapped his wings again, gaining altitude and skimming over a rooftop just as another beam flew from the jewel.
The beam smashed into the edge of the rooftop, blowing out a cloud of debris and smoke that took shape just behind Haarn. Counting on the amount of time it took for the jewel to ready itself for another blast, he flew over the edge
of the building again and aimed himself at the skeleton.
The skeleton turned, bringing the jewel up in one hand.
As unflinching as an arrow driven from a bow, Haarn stayed on course. Silvanus willing, the jewel would not be ready to discharge again just long enough—
Haarn shifted, regaining his original form and weight, slamming into the skeleton feet first like a catapult load. He heard bone crack, saw the red jewel go spinning away, bouncing across the cobblestones, then he and the skeleton hit the street with blinding force.
Breath driven from him, aching all over, Haarn commanded himself to get up. Mud that had seeped between the cobblestones stained his face, tasted grainy inside his mouth, and salty. He'd split his lip when he hit the street. Raising his head, he searched for the skeleton.
The undead creature lay stretched out a few feet away. The red jewel, still pulsing with power, lay still farther away.
Haarn stood on trembling legs, his lungs burning, but the burn eased and his head cleared with every rapid breath.
The hawk dropped to the street, wings outspread and becoming human by the time he touched down. The druid was an older warrior, shaggy headed and bearded and human. He took a sickle from his side and advanced on the fallen skeleton.
"You've done your duty, lad," the druid said. "Lay there and leave off for a time. I'll finish the foul thing, then we'll see about doing for Borran Kiosk as well."
Haarn gasped and stood on his weak knees. The druid maid remained on the other side of the street, a quarter-staff in her hands. A look of fear filled her face when she stared at the skeleton.
The human druid drew his hand back and swung the sickle. The keen blade rasped against the skeleton's spine but didn't quite cut through. Before the man could deliver another blow, the skeleton pulled one of its broken ribs free, rolled to its foot and wooden block, and brought the
jagged bone in its fist around in a hard, tight arc that ended up under the druid's chin.
Pained surprise showed on the druid's face as he died with the bone shard driven deep up through his throat and curving into his brain.
"No!'' Haarn shouted, moving toward the skeleton, but he knew he was too late to save the man.
The skeleton held the dead man at the end of its arm, then cast the corpse away and pulled another broken bone from its rib cage. It turned to face Haarn.
Haarn whipped his scimitar forward, slapping the skeleton's hand away and kicking the foul thing in the side of the head. Bound by the narrow spinal column and whatever magic had brought it to life, the skull rocked precariously but didn't snap off.
A new and eerie purple light filled the skeleton's eye hollows, warring with the green fire the druid maid had ensorcelled him with. Its mouth opened, dropping broken teeth out, and it spoke in a dry, hoarse voice.
"Don't fight. Run."
At first, Haarn thought that it was talking to him, trying to scare him, then he realized that the voice was someone else's. Someone else had entered the skeleton's skull through a magical link, and the instructions were for the undead thing.
The skeleton turned and ran away from Haarn, streaking for the jewel lying a short distance away on the cobblestones.
Body protesting, pain screaming in every joint, Haarn pursued the skeleton, overtaking it in five long strides even as it reached down for the jewel.
Haarn smashed into the skeleton with his shoulder, knocking it from its foot and wooden block. Landing on the ground, it seemed to bounce then turned over and flailed at him with its fist. The cracked knucklebones skidded across Haarn's face, opening cuts that stung like he'd brushed up against fire weed. Face aflame with pain, Haarn drew back his scimitar and brought it down, crushing the skeleton's skull and extinguishing the purple light in its eye hollows.
Gasping for breath and wary, struggling for control, Haarn crossed to the jewel.
"Be careful," the druid maid called from her position across the street.
Senses alive for the slightest danger, praying to Silvanus to guide his hands, Haarn dropped the scimitar and fell to his knees. Anxiety filling him, he cupped the jewel in his hands, finding to his surprise that it was cool to the touch for something that blazed so hot.
Concentrating on the task before him, he prayed to Silvanus and invoked a spell designed to seal the magic inside the jewel. With Silvanus's blessing, his own meager magical seal would hold the jewel dormant until he was able to turn it over to Ashenford Torinbow or one of the other members of the Elder Circle. Perhaps there was even a wizard in Alaghôn who could more properly deal with the device.
"Do you know what it is that you're holding, boy?" a harsh voice demanded.
Haarn looked up, and his blood ran cold.
Borran Kiosk stood on the other side of the street. Naked to the world except for a sash and pouch girding his bony hips, the mohrg held the young druid maid against him like a shield. One of the skeletal hands was cupped under the girl's chin and the other pressed against the side of her head.
Four skeletons stood at Borran Kiosk's side, flanking him. One of them held a large ruby jewel that looked like the piece Haarn held, but was four times as large.
Holding the jewel in one hand, Haarn reached for his scimitar with the other.
"No," Borran Kiosk growled. He shook the young druid maid, making her yelp in pain.
"Fm sorry," the young druid said. T didn't hear him. I should have been watching."
Haarn stayed his hand, his mind wrapping around all the possibilities left open to him. They were precious few. If he'd been in a forest or even a marsh, he would have had more options. The city was dead to him. Nothing lived
that he could touch and use, and nothing lent itself to him for cover.
Moving with slow precision, Haarn stood, not wanting to face the foul undead thing before him on his knees. How many druids had died at Borran Kiosk's hands this day alone? How many more would die if he surrendered the jewel?
Haarn said, "We're at an impasse.''
"No," the mohrg replied. He moved his hands again, making the girl cry out. "If you make the wrong decision, half-breed, she dies." The creature set his teeth like he was grinning. "You hold her life, like that jewel, in your hands."
Haarn said nothing. The four skeletons at Borran Kiosk's flank stepped forward. Matching them, giving no doubt as to what he would do, Haarn took a step back toward the only alley open to him. The alley led back to the harbor, but he was prepared to take his chances there.
"Wrong," Haarn said, "you hold her life in your hands." He raised the jewel in one hand. "While I am certain I hold the lives of several others in mine."
Borran Kiosk seemed surprised, and if he'd had a face, Haarn felt certain that would have shown as well.
"You would run?" the mohrg asked in disbelief.
"Yes," Haarn replied without hesitation. "Sometimes, Borran Kiosk, the few must be sacrificed so that the many may survive. That is nature."
"And have you no feelings for this poor child, boy?" Borran Kiosk demanded.
"I will mourn her," Haarn said. He glanced at the druid maid as he spoke, offering his words to her. "And I will remember her to Silvanus."
"I understand," the girl said, struggling to get the declaration out through the skeletal hands that held her.
She straightened herself as best she could, but tears gleamed in her frightened eyes. The way Borran Kiosk gripped her, she was helpless.
It was almost too much for Haarn to bear. Still, he'd
slit the throats of fawns that had ended up bereft of mothers in the dead of winter because there was no way to keep them alive, and he'd eaten their meat so they wouldn't go to waste and so the balance that Silvanus stood for would be maintained. Nature was hard and demanded such sacrifices so that only the fittest could survive. Those laws didn't go by the emotions of civilized men. Grief was still mixed in there, but above all was the balance.
"Malar's fangs, boy," Borran Kiosk roared in inarticulate rage, T don't understand. I don't understand at all how you could turn your back on her. By Malar, I despise you damned druids and your stupid ways!"
He snapped the girl's neck and let her fall, lifeless, to his feet.
"Now," the monster continued, "give me that damned jewel or I promise you 111 make your death much harder than the kindness I showed her!"
Steeling himself against the pained confusion that filled him at the sight of the girl's death, Haarn turned and fled as fast as he could toward the alley.
The shadows in the alley were off, all angles and lines that wouldn't have been found in nature, and as a result, he didn't see the spider web broaching the narrow throat of the alley until he was almost into it. He stopped just short of it, avoiding the sticky strands by perhaps another layer of skin.
Then he noticed the way the web quivered, the silken gossamer reflecting the orange flames of the ships and buildings burning in the harbor district.
Haarn looked up, knowing what he would see.
The giant spider, opal eyes blazing without pity as it slid down a single strand, dropped toward him, closing on him before he could run.
Broadfoot had arrived seconds before, so silent on his great padded paws that no one knew he was there. Druz
had slid from the bear's broad back and crept as close to Haarn as she'd been able to. She'd seen the spider web a moment before Borran Kiosk had murdered the young girl.
Broadfoot raced from the shadows, snarling and roaring, raising himself to walk on his hind legs, wobbling from side to side in a manner that would have been comical if the whole situation wasn't so filled with the threat of death.
Throwing herself the last few feet as Haarn stopped short of the spider web, Druz caught the druid around the waist with one arm and pulled him away. They hit the ground hard.
She was up before he was. Shaking off the effects of the harsh landing, she gripped her long sword and faced the spider, aware that her move might have saved Haarn from the arachnid but it had left them both open to attack from Borran Kiosk.
The spider approached on all eight legs, standing taller than Druz. Her mandibles moved and dripped green ichor.
Broadfoot slammed into the skeletons, scattering them. The bear's undead foes jumped to their feet and fought again, protecting their master. Their bony fists sounded like mallets as they struck the bear, but Broadfoot gave as good as he got, smashing the skeletons and breaking pieces off of them with each swipe.
Haarn struggled to his feet while Druz slapped away the leg the spider-woman stretched toward them.
"Get up," Druz said to Haarn. "We've got to get out of here."
The spider-woman laughed, using both her front legs now to test Druz's defenses.
"You shouldn't have come," Haarn said.
"What was I going to do?" Druz asked.
She freed a dagger from her boot, blocking every attempt the spider made to reach her, but she couldn't maintain her position. The spider-woman kept forcing her back, and there was only the wall behind her.
Across the street, Borran Kiosk turned and spoke a
word to Broadfoot. The bear had broken free of the skeletons, leaving at least two of them in broken shambles behind him. Before Broadfoot reached Borran Kiosk, the mohrg flicked out a hand. Violet fire sparked from the skeletal hand touching the bear's broad head. Borran Kiosk dodged away as Broadfoot became an inanimate lump that looked like a taxidermist's project. Without a sound, the bear smacked onto the cobblestones and lay there limp.
Carrion stench, the odor of dead things, filled the street, and Druz knew it came from the bear's body. Borran Kiosk had slain the mighty ursine with just a touch. The cold realization of what she faced daunted her. She backed away from the spider-woman, but nausea welled up in her guts.
"Catch her," Borran Kiosk commanded. "I want her alive."
Unable to compose herself against the carrion stench coming from the bear, Druz was no match at all against the spider-woman. Before Druz could move, the giant spider had her trapped in two strong, hairy legs. She tried to break free, but the nausea kept welling up in her and doubling her over. She tried to tell Haarn to run, but she couldn't even get that out.
Calculating and cold, Borran Kiosk crossed the street.
We lost, Druz thought as her stomach tried to empty. She gazed at Haarn, who stood with his back against the wall. He held the jewel they'd come for in one hand. His scimitar was in the other. She knew he wouldn't give it up.
Borran Kiosk stopped ten feet away. His thick purple tongue darted out from between his jaws, the length of it coiling in restless abandon in his hollowed-out stomach.
"If you give me the jewel," he suggested, T might let you live."
Haarn shook his head. He stepped forward and threw his scimitar.
The blade whipped end over end, flying straight at Borran Kiosk. The mohrg flicked out a hand and knocked
the scimitar aside. The weapon clanged against the cobblestones.
Haarn steadied himself with his free hand on the stone wall behind him.
"I don't suppose you'd give me the jewel if I told you I'd spare the life of the woman?'' Borran Kiosk said.
Druz wanted to tell Haarn not to agree. The mohrg was lying; he had to be. She didn't dare hope that he would let her go. The single possibility that remained was that Ettrian would arrive with help in time to save them, but the street remained empty at both ends and the spider web blocked the nearest alley.
"No," Haarn said in a flat voice.
Druz chose not to hold the answer against the druid. She might have answered the same way had their positions been reversed. Borran Kiosk wanted the jewel, and maybe Haarn could destroy it. Maybe that was why the mohrg was hesitating.
"Then you can die," Borran Kiosk said, gesturing and speaking words Druz didn't understand.
The mohrg opened his hand and a fireball formed there. He threw it at the druid and it swelled, growing larger and larger as it flew. It was almost as big as Haarn when it reached him.
Druz couldn't believe the druid made no move to flee. Maybe the carrion stench had made him sick as well, too sick to move with any real speed—or to move at all. It looked like the fireball drove him back against the stone wall.
It exploded, detonating in a sulfurous haze that threw heated air over Druz. At least the sudden blast of hot wind cleared the carrion stench from the street for a moment.
When the smoke dissipated, there was nothing left of Haarn Brightoak. He was gone. Only the red jewel, gleaming and unmarked on the cobblestones in front of the wall, remained.
Druz stared at the ground where Haarn had been, not believing he was gone. She had seen him fight slavers and
Stonefur, zombies and skeletons, and he'd survived. How could he not survive this? She felt cold and empty inside, and it wasn't just from the sickness that still twisted through her.
¦©¦
Excitement flared through Borran Kiosk as he crossed the short distance to the fifth and final piece of Taraketh's Hive. He'd already assembled the other four jewels, but the magical device wouldn't work unless all of them were together.
He knelt and picked the jewel up then fitted it into place with the other four. He started the incantation, watching as the jewels glowed in an alternating pattern and dimmed as Taraketh's Hive fed on its five pieces.
He glanced up at the woman who remained in Allis's spidery grasp and said, "You're going to live, by the way." She looked like she didn't believe him, and he found that amusing. "I want someone to inform the Emerald Enclave that their doom is coming."
She swore an oath that surprised him.
"It isn't often that I pass up the chance to slay a woman," he said, "especially one as pretty as yourself, but I want the Emerald Enclave to know they and all of the Vilhon Reach are going to lose more than this city. I am going to take the life from this place, and—Malar willing—move on from here."
"They stopped you last time, Borran Kiosk," the woman said, "and they'll stop you this time. This time they'll destroy you. There will be no mercy from Eldath or any other."
Borran Kiosk ignored her. Instead, he watched the jeweled pieces cycle faster, blazing with color.
"With this device, Taraketh imported bees, which are the most important creature in the ecology of any land. Without bees, nothing gets pollinated. Without pollination, nothing grows. Without growth, everything dies."
His purple tongue flicked out toward her face to make sure he had her undivided attention.
The woman turned away in fear and disgust.
Appreciating both emotions, the mohrg pulled his tongue back and continued.
"I learned about my enemies. I found their weakness. If I found a way to destroy all the bees in these lands, the lands would die, and the people living here would be forced to move or die as well. So I tracked down Taraketh's Hive, and I found out how to call forth vangdumonders."
Her lack of comprehension showed on her face.
"Vangdumonders are parasitic creatures from another plane," Borran Kiosk said. "They prey on bees and other pollinators, but they do not spread pollen themselves. Once I introduce the vangdumonders into this ecology, they will kill the bees and replace them, but they won't be taking care of the pollination. Everything—everything— will be unable to reproduce. There will be no fruit, no vegetables. In short order, no plant life at all."
"That can't happen," the woman argued, struggling against Allis's spider's legs.
"It can," Borran Kiosk crowed in triumph, "and it will. You get to be the first to watch as I bring the vangdumonders into this world. Be sure to tell those damned druids what you see here."
The woman made another effort to free herself, but it was useless against Allis's greater strength.
Borran Kiosk returned his attention to the incantation, mouthing the words he'd learned all those years before.
The lights flaring inside the jewel sped faster and faster, but instead of producing the first of the vangdumonders, they continued to gather speed. A humming noise flared to life, driving pain deep into Borran Kiosk's bones.
Something was wrong. He could feel it. The connections that were supposed to be made weren't being made. It came to him in a rush. The damned druid had used magic to seal the fifth piece of the jewel.
Borran Kiosk cursed. The druid's spell would have in no way withstood the powers he could bring to bear. Desperate, the mohrg tried to put a halt to the process his incantation had started, but it was too late.
Once initiated, the spell had to run its course, and it would fail. It would—
The explosion knocked Borran Kiosk from his feet, driving him backward and blowing him end over end. His senses reeled, and he almost blacked out. Staggered, he forced himself up, peering through the smoky haze at the five pieces of Taraketh's Hive. The five jewels lay scattered across the cobblestone street, all of them inert and dark. He couldn't reach them with his mind.
A tingle made its way up his arm. He glanced down and saw that Malar's Glove lay in tiny coral pieces across the street from where he and the five jewels lay. The glove had somehow protected him from the full power of the spell's misfire.
Joy washed through Borran Kiosk, then he saw the druid—the damned druid that he thought he'd already killed—step from the soot-blasted wall where the fireball had exploded.
§¦
Haarn ended the spell that had kept him safe from harm inside the solid stone wall and went into motion at once, flicking a pair of throwing knives at the giant spider's head. The blades whirled through the air and embedded in the werespider, one of them sinking through an opal eye.
The spider screamed in a woman's voice and drew back. Druz took advantage of the spider's painful distraction and freed herself. Before the werespider could react, Druz hacked off two of the legs on her left side, causing it to fall. While the spider scuttled, trying to get back to its remaining feet, Druz stepped in and hacked off its head.
Haarn was in motion, diving for the scimitar and dodging Borran Kiosk's tongue as the spider's head bounced
across the cobblestones and became a woman's head. The head wore a shocked expression.
As fast as he'd moved, even after healing himself while he was inside the stone wall, Haarn couldn't completely avoid Borran Kiosk's barbed tongue. It ripped along his left shoulder, tearing and searing into the flesh. The druid came up in a roll, putting the pain out of his mind, focusing on the mohrg.
Borran Kiosk succeeded in pushing himself to his feet, and the purple tongue darted out like a rapier, striking over and over again.
Haarn was hard-pressed to keep the tongue from piercing his throat or stabbing into his face. The blows he blocked brought fiery pain to his arms as he struggled to compensate against the undead thing's incredible strength. He had to keep the fight going; he couldn't allow Borran Kiosk one moment's respite for the mohrg to use his magic.
Every time he swung his scimitar to block one of the mohrg's attacks, Haarn took a step forward, chasing his opponent back against the building on the other side of the street. The druid's advance was relentless, his swordplay the best it had ever been. He fought with memory of all those who had been ripped from their mortal coils that night, for those who had stood against Borran Kiosk all those years before, and for the girl who had died only moments before.
And he fought for the preservation of all that Silvanus had entrusted him with. If Borran Kiosk escaped, Haarn had no doubt the mohrg would take Taraketh's Hive and summon the vangdumonders. Borran Kiosk had been right about that: if the bees died in a place, so did that place. A creature that any civilized person would take for granted was the basic ingredient of the chain of life Silvanus had taught his followers to so revere.
"Stand away, boy," Borran Kiosk said, even though his tongue never once stopped flicking. The barbed end tore into Haarn's left thigh. "I've no wish to fight you. You can live."
"And you can die," Haarn growled, swinging the scimitar again.
His arms felt like lead and his breath came hard, burning the back of his throat and deep into his lungs.
Pressing his advantage, Haarn took two quick steps forward, slamming blow after blow at the mohrg, almost reaching him. Druz remained back, unable to get any closer. Haarn had to move so fast and so broadly there was no room for her to join the battle.
Blood dripped from Haarn's wounded shoulder, running down the length of his arm in crimson threads that made their way down to his hands and dripped on the cobblestones. His foot hit a patch of his own blood and he slipped. It wasn't much of a slip, but it was enough for Borran Kiosk to try to seize the advantage.
Quick as a darting hummingbird, lethal as a striking viper, the mohrg's tongue leaped for Haarn's face. The druid knew he had no defense. He couldn't get the scimitar up at an angle to deflect the tongue, and he couldn't dodge, and sticking an arm in front of his face would only add one more layer of flesh and bone for the tongue to go through before it pierced his head.
Instead, Haarn lifted the scimitar and held it edge-out, concentrating on the tongue, making himself one with his weapon, keeping the balance between fear and hope as Sil-vanus's teachings instructed.
The tongue slammed into the scimitar, then split into halves. The horrendous wound spilled no blood, but Borran Kiosk shrilled in surprised pain. Grabbing the retreating tongue with one hand, Haarn let the dreadful appendage pull him toward his opponent. Borran Kiosk didn't see him coming until it was too late.
Putting his weight into the blow, Haarn drew the scimitar from under his wounded arm in a backhanded slash that caught Borran Kiosk beneath the chin. The scimitar sliced through the long, purple tongue and it flopped to the ground like a dying snake. The heavy blade caught halfway through the mohrg's spine at the base of the skull.
No mercy in him, Haarn gripped the back edge of the scimitar blade, stepped forward, and twisted the sword as hard as he could.
Borran Kiosk's head snapped free of the spine and sailed through the air. It bounced against the wall behind him then came to a rest at Haarn's feet.
Striding forward, Haarn shoved the rest of Borran Kiosk's body down. He knelt beside the skull, looking into the lighted eye hollows, knowing that the evil entity that was the mohrg still dwelt somewhere inside. Using his scimitar as a prying instrument, Haarn pulled one of the big cobblestones from the street. He lifted it in both hands then smashed it into Borran Kiosk's skull.
"Noooooo—"
The scream died midway through.
Bony splinters were all that remained of the skull.
That won't get rid of him, you know."
Breathing hard, still bleeding a copious amount from his wounded shoulder, Haarn glanced up at Druz Talimsir.
"I know," he said, "but there was a certain satisfaction in breaking his head." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "My father and the others will know what to do with Borran Kiosk's remains so that he can never return."
He opened the magical bag of holding at his waist and shoved the mohrg's skeleton into it. At least there—if Borran Kiosk found a way to return to life in the next few minutes—the mohrg would be stuck in the neverwhere that the bag of holding gave access to.
Druz's gaze turned tender, and it was surprising to see how she could pull it off wearing a layer of soot and bloodstains.
T thought you were dead," she said. "Almost," he replied.
A few feet away, Broadfoot woke and gave an angry snuffle. The bear pawed with grave suspicion at the pile of skeletons he was lying on. When none of them moved, he pushed himself to his feet and stood swaying. He bawled,
shook his head, and approached Haarn, butting his head into the druid.
Haarn scratched the bear's head, then he gazed up at Alaghôn. Gray smoke stained the black sky.
"Let's go," he said, pushing himself up. "There's still a battle to be won here."
EPILOGUE
The sun came up early in the eastern sky, turning it pink and purple. Haarn sat atop one of the buildings that had survived the night's fires and looked out over the Sea of Fallen Stars.
A growl echoed up the side of the building, but Haarn refused the call. Restless and irritable, Broadfoot padded at the base of the building. The great bear wanted to eat and sleep, but more than anything he wanted to get out of Alaghôn.
The excited yaps and growls of wild dogs and wolves filled the streets. After Borran Kiosk's defeat, the sea zombies had abandoned the battle, withdrawing back to the sea. Whatever magic bound them to the ruins of the Whamite Isles still called them.
Letting out a deep breath to relax tired muscles that hurt all over, Haarn turned his face up to the sun. He took solace in the basking heat, which eased his troubled thoughts.
Ettrian and the Elder Circle had taken the bag of holding containing Borran Kiosk's remains. Shinthala Deepcrest went back to the House of Silvanus in Ilighdn, saying that when she was finished with the mohrg's body, he would never come back again. Even the priests of Eldath remained quiet about her decision.
Priests sang in the streets below, joined by the townspeople. Their voices lifted with hope buoyed with sorrow. Wagons still gathered the dead.
Boats plied the harbor, salvaging what they could of the ships that had gone down.
The experience was different from anything Haarn had ever imagined when he thought about cities and the people who lived in them. He closed his eyes and let the sunrise play on the backs of his eyelids.
Footsteps sounded on the split wooden shingles that covered the rooftop.
Images of Borran Kiosk's skeletons and sea zombies filled Haarn's head. He fisted his scimitar's hilt and came to his feet, taking one small step to the side.
Druz Talimsir stopped. She was dressed in the same smoke- and battle-damaged clothing she'd worn the night before, but her hair showed signs of an attempt to put it back into place. Her face was clean, but scratches showed on one cheek. She carried a small, covered basket in one hand.
"I thought you were asleep," she said.
Haarn put the scimitar away and felt a little foolish. The woman had a way of making him feel that way, and when they'd helped rout the last of the sea zombies and aided in putting out the various fires, that feeling had become even stronger.
"I knew you'd be up here," Druz said. "This was the only building with a bear under it."
Broadfoot growled, bemoaning his hunger and boredom.
Haarn nodded, not sure at all what to say.
Druz raised the basket and said, "I brought you something to eat. It's not much. You have to scramble for food down there."
Haarn waited.
"I mean, if you've already eaten," Druz said, "I'll take it away."
"No," Haarn said. "I haven't eaten."
Druz let out a deep breath. "Good. I'd have hated climbing up here for nothing."
She crossed the rooftop and sat on his side of it, on the side that slanted out toward the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Sitting cross-legged, she whisked the covering off the basket and revealed fresh fruit, salted meat, half a loaf of bread, and wedges of cheese.
Haarn joined her, sitting on the other side of the basket.
Druz chose a dark purple plum and bit into it with her clean white teeth. She wrapped her arms around her knees and looked out at the sea.
"So the world is much bigger than you thought," she said. "Does it scare you?"
"No." Haarn chewed on a piece of cheese and swallowed. "It just means the threat of civilization is much larger than Td thought."
With the danger of Borran Kiosk passed, the divisions between the druids and the citizens of Alaghôn started to become apparent again. Haarn had heard some of the brewing arguments about where the trees would be harvested to replace the burned buildings.
"They will rebuild here, you know," Druz said.
"I know."
"So where will you go?"
"Home," Haarn answered without hesitation. "There is still a lot of work I must do in the lands Silvanus and the Elder Circle have entrusted to me. I will want to check on Stonefur's cubs and make sure they're doing all right."
They ate in silence for a time as ship's bells rang over the harbor.
"Do you think," Druz asked in a quiet voice, "youll ever come back this way?" "Perhaps," Haarn said.
"If you do," Druz said, "and if I'm available, I'd like to show you more of this city, and perhaps even Suzail. Suzail puts this place to shame."
She looked at him and fell silent.
Prompted by a desire he didn't yet fully understand but was willing to explore, Haarn leaned across the food basket and took her face in his hand. He kissed her, just a tender caress of his hps against hers, and he used his power to heal the cuts on her face. When he pulled back from her, some of the pain and fatigue had dropped from her eyes.
"Well," she said in a husky voice. Her face flushed even beneath the layer of soot. "That was unexpected."
The feeling that swept through Haarn was unexpected as well. It started in his stomach and went throughout his body.
Tes," he agreed, "it was."
He took a plum from the basket and tossed it over the side, calling out to Broadfoot.
"Should you ever find yourself in the wilderness again," he said, "I would like to see you."
She looked at him, hugging her knees. "We're from two different worlds, Haarn. This could be hard."
"Nothing worth doing," Haarn said, "is ever easy."
She leaned in to kiss him, bearing him down to the sun-warmed wooden shingles, and he didn't resist.