Darkwell - Douglas Niles [4]
The Great Druid.
Hobarth understood the command instantly and stopped beside the Great Druid – or rather, the statue that had been Genna Moonsinger, the mistress of Myrtoch Vale and Great Druid of the isles. Now she stood frozen as a white stone sculpture, lifelike in every detail. Many times had Hobarth stood before her and cursed her defiant expression.
He saw the challenge still lurking in her eyes, and in the firm set of her jaw. Her wrinkled skin and tightly wrapped hair might have given her a grandmotherly look, but instead she looked more like a warrior.
The Heart.
This command brought a glimmer of defiance, for just a brief moment, to the cleric. Hobarth kept the Heart of Kazgoroth in a pouch at his side, and he was most reluctant to remove it for anyone or anything. The stone was black, shaped more like a lump of coal than a heart, but it was a talisman of great evil. In the cleric's hands, the Heart of Kazgoroth had brought death and decay to the formerly pastoral vale.
But Hobarth overcame his reluctance instantly and hastened to obey the word of his god. He removed the stone from its pouch and held it out before him. It seemed to absorb the rays of the sun, already dimmed by the pale haze. In its own shadow, the cleric reached forward to touch the heart against the cold stone of the statue.
Bhaal must be very near, Hobarth thought, for it seemed to the cleric that the god leered over his shoulder. Hobarth acted as if by instinct, performing a ritual he had never seen, yet one that he knew without question or doubt. He sensed that Bhaal was pleased, and his god's pleasure was a thrill unlike any the cleric had ever known.
The black surface of the heart touched the white stone of Genna's breast. Yellow smoke hissed at contact, and trickles of clear liquid ran down the statue's stony robe. Where the stone was wet, it became a bright red, like freshly spilled blood.
Hobarth stared into the statue's eyes, and he saw the defiance that had been etched there begin to fade. He pressed his hand against her and was gratified to feel the Heart of Kazgoroth sink into the stone. More smoke spewed, nearly blinding him, but he kept his gaze fastened upon the statue's eyes.
His own eyes watered. The statue grew soft, and Hobarth's hand, together with the black stone, passed directly into the cold body. Quickly he drew forth his hand, empty, and the surface of the statue closed behind it. He looked again into those stone eyes.
Only it was no longer a statue, and the eyes burned with a far from stonelike fire.
* * * * *
The low green mass of Corwell loomed to starboard. To port, invisible in the gray haze of sea-miles, lay the island of Moray. And below the keel of the sleek longship rolled the gray swells of the Strait of the Leviathan.
But Grunnarch the Red knew that the Leviathan was dead. Had not the Red King played a role in its demise only a short year earlier? He found the memory vaguely disquieting.
Now the ruler of the northmen stood boldly on the deck of his ship, the Northwind, and stared into the distance. Not north, toward Norland and home, but east, toward Corwell.
Why did that land hold such fascination for him? The Red King himself did not know, though certainly the roots of the answer lay in the disastrous invasion and his army's subsequent defeat. Grunnarch had been fortunate to escape with half of his ships and men, while many of his allies had suffered worse. The men of Oman's Isle, of the kingdom of Ironhand, had been virtually annihilated.
Now the Northwind, accompanied by the slightly smaller longship Redfin, sailed past that land after a long summer of raiding shores far from the Moonshaes. In less than a week, they would be home, but even the prospective homecoming could not lighten the Red King's brooding sense of foreboding.
True, the raiding had been highly successful. They had sailed south along the Sword Coast, plundering the towns of Amn, and even northern