Black wizards - Douglas Niles [49]
Limply, Robyn stumbled to the bear and leaned against his broad flank, trying to draw strength from him. Her shock gradually gave way to uncomprehending terror. Finally, for the first time in many years, she sobbed uncontrollably.
* * * * *
Hobarth crouched among the branches of a thick bush, ignoring the thorns that pricked him. He dared not move for fear of alerting the druid across the stream.
He had watched her battle the zombie. Although disappointed with the outcome, he had other plans. He squeezed the black rock in excitement, his eyes never leaving the woman. The stone, like the heart of evil that it was, seemed to answer his pressure with a warm caress of its own. He watched Robyn stumble weakly from the clearing, leaning against the bear, until she disappeared from his sight.
The cleric remembered his surprise as he had cast the spell to animate the corpse. Such a spell normally called for the discipline of Hobarth's faith, coupled with the might of Bhaal. Once cast, the spell would vanish from Hobarth's memory until a suitable period of praying to his deity would restore it to him.
But somehow the black heart had changed that. The power to raise the corpse had arisen from the stone, not from Hobarth. The memory of the spell remained with him. He felt that he could immediately recruit another corpse from the dead – in fact, as many bodies as he could find.
Hobarth squirmed from his position in the bush, his mind alight with possibilities. Bodies – hundreds of them, raised into an army of undead! He needed bodies! The cleric was unaware of Bhaal feeding him these images. He knew only that he wanted such an army under his control.
Common sense told Hobarth to look for bodies at the site of a battlefield. He was not a historian, but he knew a little local history. A year earlier a battle had been fought not many day's march from here.
Quickly, eagerly, the great cleric turned his steps back toward the south. He would call upon the wisdom of his god to show him the exact route, but he knew that this was the general direction to Freeman's Down.
* * * * *
Genna opened her eyes and studied Robyn with a look of great tenderness and understanding that the pupil had not seen for many weeks. She rose to her feet, and the young woman saw again the sturdy muscle of the stout druid's body. Trying to banish her lingering sense of horror, she embraced Genna in relief. The cottage door was securely bolted behind her, and Grunt sat just outside. But even the cozy fire in the stove and the lace curtains filtering the afternoon sunlight could not entirely soothe her.
"What could it have been?" she asked Genna.
"A creature animated from death – a zombie," Genna explained. "But how it came to be here I cannot imagine."
"I felt so helpless," Robyn said. "My magic was useless!"
"The powers of the druid are the powers of life and growth. We have no power over death or death's creatures."
Genna looked warily across the grove, probing the waters of the pond and the flowers of the garden with her eyes. "Whatever the source of this abomination," she said, "we must take great care that it does not happen again. The results could be disastrous."
* * * * *
"And it's genuine crystal from the famed glasskims of Thay. Note the detail, the colors, and the shapes!"
The old sailor leaned in, burping discreetly, to examine the shining object. The diminutive salesman pressed his pitch. "This one has come thousands of miles by galley across the Sea of Fallen Stars, by camel across Anauroch, the Great Desert. It's passed through the hands of pirates and bandits and traders. Why, it's certain to be the only one in the Moonshaes – perhaps along the whole Sword Coast!"
"Crystal of Thay, huh?" mumbled the sailor, intrigued in spite of himself.