The Bloody Eye dad-5 Page 5

  But the old woman hadn't finished. "Pergue is the key," proclaimed the woman. "That is all I know," she concluded. "I can tell you no more." She fell silent and backed toward the wagon in the middle of the caravan.

  "Do you trust her?" whispered Jozan.

  "I don't know. What does she gain by lying to us?" responded the paladin sotto voce. "She doesn't even know us. Just a moment." The paladin faced the retreating woman and lifted her eyes toward the heavens. She spread her hands with palms upward and meditated, just as she had done when she first met Jozan. In a moment, she turned to the cleric. "By Heironeous's strength, I sense no evil auras here."

  "Then," whispered Jozan, "I see no reason not to trust her. Pelor…and Heironeous, of course, work in strange ways." When the paladin nodded in agreement, the cleric spoke up. "Well, if Pergue is the key, I'm more than ready to open this lock."

  His words stopped the old soothsayer in her slow retreat. She turned back to face Jozan and walked back toward him as though she were compelled by something inside her. She looked up from the orb and her gray eyes shone with the radiance of Pelor himself.

  "One warning more. He who opens this lock must face the darkness in his own heart, as well." Before she resumed her trek back toward her wagon, she added, "If we have served you well, remember us in the future."

  "Then, we'll meet again?" queried the cleric.

  "Your god knows," responded the old woman, "but our own future is as murky to us as yours is clear. The one you seek is the source."

  The cleric thanked the soothsayer and the paladin dropped a gold piece in the old woman's hand. Then the two warriors sidestepped their horses toward the road. Once out of sight and sound of the caravan, Jozan laughed robustly with a feeling of considerable relief.

  "I should have studied harder on those ancient texts and languages. Everywhere I turn, I have to interpret prophecy."

  The paladin nodded, but said nothing. She kept running the prophecy over and over in her mind. Jozan interrupted her speculation by speaking aloud.

  "I suppose you realize," he chuckled, "this encounter leaves my supernatural theory in play."

  "It does at that," admitted Alhandra with a trace of a smirk at the corner of her mouth, "at least until we get to Pergue."

  8

  Augustin Calmet was not pleased. His one-eyed shadow mastiff growled menacingly from the mine entrance behind him, a vocal, lethal symbol of the displeasure felt by the apostate cleric himself. Today's measure of gold orc retrieved was far below the quota, and the more important construction of the main shaft was suffering after last night's unfortunate cave-in. To make Calmet even unhappier, his expected delivery of new slaves was late. He visualized Archprelate Laud's reaction to both arrow points of bad news and his resentment of Laud boiled like a cauldron in the pit of his stomach. The shadow mastiff howled as if to punctuate Calmet's feelings, sending a chill wind of fear along the chain of one-eyed slaves in front of the mine.

  "That's right, Balor," spoke the one-eyed cleric softly and affectionately to the shadow mastiff, "such a failure deserves to be mourned. I don't know what artifices his potency is planning with all this gold, but I know he'll punish all of us if this tunnel isn't finished before the solstice." The apostate's tone of voice with the monster was in surprising contrast to the scowl on his face.

  The angry priest wandered down the chain of slaves and examined every cut and bruise to be found upon them, never showing the least compassion but reaching down to scratch the ears of his demonic dog with devoted regularity. As the vile cleric ambled along the line for his inspection, the slaves themselves watched with eyes wide in terror and dissipated the foul scent of fear, desperately trying to avoid the impulse of fleeing for their lives or falling on their knees in supplication. All of them had been at the mine long enough to know that either action would be in vain. They also knew that someone would pay for the cleric's displeasure. That was certain.

  Calmet focused on a thin slave with a bleeding calf. Dirt, grime, and dried blood intermingled on the man's leg and drew Calmet's attention as surely as the wound was drawing flies. The cleric who formerly brought goodness and healing stepped closer to the slave. Then, in vile contradiction of his early training, he stomped his booted foot onto the center of the cut. Weakened, the slave stumbled and fell to one knee. Swiftly, Calmet's flail bashed the back of the misfortunate's head and knocked him forward onto his face, pulling the next slave downward with him.

  Calmet's backhand smashed the second slave and his second forehand liberated some of the brain matter from the fallen one. With frightening speed, the cleric's scowl changed to a smile.

  He looked up and shouted with near insane devotion, "Honored are the weak. Early shall they find Gruumsh." He opened his arms in that universal gesture common to clerics when they call for conversion and asked, "Who shall be honored next?"

  No one dared to move, but the shadow mastiff leaped from the side of his master and pounced upon the body of the unfortunate slave. His ferocious incisors sliced through the man's ankle, freeing the corpse from the chains of the other workers in a matter of moments, and pulled the bloody prize back into the shadows of the cave. There, the huge, black hound disappeared into the recesses of the mine, far from human sight.

  "So be it, Balor!" Calmet called after his infernal pet. "Carry him away. Perhaps, Gruumsh may fill his weakness with power."

  Calmet turned again to the line of slaves. He sized up their fatigue and laughed. He watched overworked muscles shaking from fatigue. He sneered at dried blood and held his breath to avoid the foul odor of unwashed bodies and untreated infections. Then, he turned from the slaves and spat. He faced the taskmaster waiting alongside the slaves and pronounced the death sentence for others on the chain.

  "Weakness is not real. Only power counts. Make them dig longer!" He accentuated his command with a flail blow across the shoulders of the unfortunate slave closest to him.

  Fortunately for the slaves, Calmet's attention was immediately diverted to a group of mounted riders coming up the hill toward the mine. Instinctively, the priest checked the sentry posts for his archers. He glimpsed two silhouettes in the trees to the right of the mine entrance and one with a longbow in the rocks atop the main entry. The heretic backed up a pace or two and sat on a rock in the shade near the mine's main entrance. He called loudly for Balor and smiled menacingly as he observed the monster curl up in the cave entrance, still chewing on the fresh kill provided by his master.

  Calmet waited while the forms of the mounted riders took shape. He recognized Narggh, an orc chieftain riding on a huge war boar, flanked by two guards on their own boars. He shook his head at the careless way they wore their armor and how they had allowed some of the chain mail to rust.

  Leave it to orcs to take pride in disarray, thought Calmet.

  Calmet wasn't surprised to see the orcs. He was surprised that they appeared with no slaves. As the priest waited, the rightmost guard hailed him. Calmet waved the trio forward.

  "Where are my slaves?" demanded the priest.

  Narrgh looked at the guard to his right. The guard responded. "Not good," answered the guard with typical Orcish understatement. "Jaagh late," he continued in the gruff patois used by the northern orcs when they attempted to speak the humans' language.

  Calmet's response was a glare and a reiteration of the question about his missing slaves. Narrgh looked back at the guard.

  "Hassq find," assured the guard. Calmet stood, his body language expressing his annoyance. "Jaagh strong," the guard continued, vainly hoping to reassure the cleric.

  "Do you realize the power expended by the archprelate and myself to summon the Black Carnival?" complained Calmet. The priest knew that the orcs couldn't comprehend anything about magical rituals and the expenditure of supernatural power, but he had to vent his frustration somehow, and lecturing these imbeciles was the easiest way to unload some of the fear within his bowels. "Do you understand the price that must be paid to beings fr
om another plane?" Calmet knew they didn't understand the price, but he shuddered within as he considered the potential cost of his failure. "Do you comprehend the magnitude of what they will exact if we do not finish restoring Gruumsh's shrine?"

  The blank stares from the orcs indicated that they understood nothing except for the fact that this evil priest, their employer and a man to be feared, was displeased.

  "Not good!" suggested the guard in answer to Calmet's rhetorical questions. The poor orc didn't even understand that Calmet had expected no answer. When the priest looked at him disgustedly, he blurted out a few more syllables in his defense. "Jaagh come. Hassq find. Slaves here!" the orc guardsman protested.

  "Fools!" lectured Calmet. "This isn't just a matter of insufficient slave labor. Your incompetence, your indifference, and your indolence is putting us all at risk with the most powerful god-a god who doesn't tolerate weakness."

  Calmet's angry, cruel demeanor subsided for a moment as a brief memory of Pelor and teachings of grace flickered across his troubled mind. For a split-second, he wished he were still in Pelor's service. Then, he remembered how the good god had allowed him to suffer.

  No, he thought, I would rather serve a powerful god than a god who doesn't pay attention.

  "Imbeciles!" he continued aloud. "This is a precisely timed effort. Yet you have failed to bring a slave train even close to on time." He spat in their direction to punctuate his position. "It has now been over a week since the full moon and I still have no slave train. My planar allies capture your slaves and weaken them for you, but you still fail to deliver them. I ought to destroy you for the glory of Gruumsh and revel in it."

  The orcs waited until Calmet's thunderstorm of angry bile had passed over them. They knew Calmet was likely to be unhappy, but this went far beyond their expectations. They knew that Calmet was using the slaves to mine gold, but they didn't care what he was doing with the gold-other than paying them. He was talking about Gruumsh, and they knew from experience that whenever Gruumsh was displeased-nearly anytime he came up in conversation, for that matter-bad things happened.

  "Hassq find," reiterated the guard in a last attempt to placate the angry priest.

  "I know Hassq," responded Calmet, almost spitting the words. "I know your pet druid. I know he's supposed to be able to find anything in the known world. I know you have great confidence in your mighty druid, but that doesn't provide me with any slaves, does it? I also know that Jaagh has the archprelate's stone of summoning. If you don't bring us that necklace and more slaves in a matter of days, Laud will unleash monsters on you like you've never seen before. If you can't find the slaves we've given you on a spit, you'll have to find others."

  The orcs failed to move, and the cleric prompted them, "Go! Get me slaves or face the wrath of Gruumsh." He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

  Narrgh growled and, speaking for the first time, demanded gold.

  Calmet was exasperated. Not only had these arrogant orcs failed to bring the slaves, but they were clumsily negotiating for an advance. His patience exhausted, Calmet managed to spin in place and speak two words- "Oculis captusl"

  A bright flash illumined Narrgh's face and the orc shouted, "Scum! Cheat! Trick!"

  The enraged orc drew his urgrosh, as did his bodyguards, but his allies had yet to discover that the vile cleric had blinded the warlord. Calmet's archers fired from the copse of trees on the right. One arrow nicked the shoulder of the rightmost guard and the other sped by his ear. The guard above the tunnel entrance managed to bury his shaft deeply in Narrgh's chest, and the orc warlord shouted once more in fury.

  Despite his blindness, Narrgh charged Calmet, counting on the scent-driven fury of his mount as well as his own ability to hear Calmet's infernal incantations to bring him to his target. Hearing his leftmost guard charging beside him, Narrgh had no doubt that he would skewer Calmet before the evil cleric could bring him down.

  He failed to consider Balor. The hound, black as obsidian, leaped from the cave mouth and interposed itself between the two orcs and their target. The monstrous dog sunk its canines into the boar's snout. The boar shook its head ferociously as it tried to dislodge Balor's hold. Unaware of his position, Narrgh whipped his urgrosh around wildly, but he was too far away from Calmet to reach him with the weapon.

  With amusement, Calmet watched the rightmost guard charge the copse of trees. As the boar ran uphill, it couldn't maintain its initial speed and the well-hidden archers had plenty of time to fire and fire again. The finely fletched arrows penetrated the guard's rusting chain mail and added a crimson spray to the tarnished brown armor. The guard cried out an obscenity in his native tongue and bravely spurred bis dire boar onward. Calmet watched another onslaught of arrows pepper the orc with lethal wounds, then he turned his attention back to Narrgh.

  Calmet faced Narrgh, invoked the name of Gruumsh, and flashed his hand in an obscene gesture. Palpable waves pulsed outward from the cleric's twisting hands and Narrgh's war boar stood suddenly still. After a moment's pause, the boar went berserk, forcing Narrgh to hang on fiercely.

  Calmet laughed cruelly as he watched the boar react and observed Narrgh's plight. His spell was designed to enlarge any of the vermin with which the boar might be infested. The lice grew from too small to see to the size of a human hand and glowed with a sickening green aura as though they were empowered by a force siphoned from every foul infection in the universe. The stylets of the lice were as large as arrowheads and each louse thrust them into the skin of orc and boar alike in order to draw blood. The claws and hooks of their legs were like fishhooks, gripping their victims fiercely as they bit, gnawed, and sucked their hosts' blood. The boar squealed; Narrgh howled; Calmet guffawed.

  Narrgh's guard sinister charged toward Calmet's right flank, determined to bury his urgrosh in the evil priest's neck. Calmet reached for his flail just as the charging guard halted unexpectedly, then slowly tilted from the back of the war boar. One of the hidden archers had placed an arrow perfectly in the orc's left ear, drilling straight through to the brain. As dead weight, the mighty orc warrior toppled in mid-swing and fell beneath the sharp, cloven feet of his own angry boar.

  Narrgh's plight slipped from critical to fatal in a matter of moments. His boar twisted wildly, trying to shake off the giant lice, but it succeeded only in depositing the orc at Calmet's feet. Blinded, wildly shaking, and screaming from the ferocity of the lice, Narrgh received the only kind of grace Calmet dispensed-a death that ended his pain.

  In less than a minute, the three orcs had fallen. Calmet motioned for the archers to loot the bodies and took a moment to cast a healing spell upon Balor. Only then did the cleric realize that Archprelate Laud was observing him without approval from inside the tunnel entrance. Calmet watched his master turn and walk away, realizing that if Hassq didn't show up with more slaves and the stone of summoning very soon, he was damned as assuredly as the slave he'd petulantly killed earlier in the day.

  9

  The woods seemed as quiet as though a blanket of snow was muffling the natural symphony. The only sound to be heard was the harmony of hooves composed by the counterpoint between the disjointed gait of Jozan's mule and the precise rhythm of the paladin's stallion.

  "Have you noticed how isolated this road is?" asked Alhandra. "We're really too close to town for it to be this deserted."

  Jozan was worrying about precisely that fact as Alhandra spoke aloud. "And did you notice how quiet it is?" he responded with a question. "It's almost too quiet."

  In spite of the seriousness of the moment and in spite of the implied danger of which the warriors were wary, Alhandra burst out laughing. Seeing Jozan's confused expression, she pulled up her horse and offered an explanation for her behavior.

  "I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself. At least half of the bard's tales I've ever heard began like that. When you said it was too quiet, I found myself starting to look for some unspeakable danger pouncing suddenly out of the trees. I was overreacting. W
hen I realized what I was doing, I couldn't help but laugh."

  Jozan might have joined the paladin in her laughter except for one thing. As the paladin explained her risibility, he spotted a shadow moving alongside the road near Alhandra. He tried to reach for his light crossbow inconspicuously, but before his hand could close on it, a voice rang out, "Reach for your weapons and you're dead!"

  Alhandra would have laughed again at the cliche phrase if it had not been uttered in all seriousness. Jozan sat up in the saddle without grabbing his crossbow and Alhandra turned her destrier to face the roadside where she thought the speaker might be.

  A cowled human stepped into view, garbed in greenery to match the woods. A well-crafted longbow made out of animal horn was pulled taut and a brightly fletched arrow was pointed directly at Alhandra.

  "Pergue wants no strangers. Turn back. We've had enough trouble."

  Alhandra wished she could spread her arms and detect evil, but she didn't think she could make any gesture without forcing the archer to let the arrow fly. She also worried that her compatriot might accomplish the same result by charging the woodsman in his verdant garb. Before she could think of what to say, she was surprised by the articulate words uttered by her companion.

  "Pelor's blessings upon you," intoned the priest. "We have no wish to bring trouble. Indeed, we were sent here by the gods."

  "We've had enough supernatural infestations," grumbled the archer. "We need no more."

  "Perhaps," responded the cleric, "you don't know what you need. Pelor's providence oft exceeds our comprehension. His magnanimous provision oft exceeds our knowledge of our own danger."

  "Tell that to your dead brothers," asserted the stranger in green.

  Alhandra listened with amazement as the young cleric who seemed so tongue-tied in their debates along the trail was suddenly transformed into a font of eloquence.