Pool of Radiance - James M. Ward [93]
"He can heal Anton?" Tarl asked hesitantly.
Ren wheeled to face his friend. "She'll see that he gets healed-in exchange for your soul! Think, Tarl!"
The woman's voice was like honey again. "Your friend exaggerates, Tarl. Service to the Lord of the Ruins is hardly the exchange of one's soul. The Lord of the Ruins is no god. He demands obedience, not worship. Look at me-I am a free woman."
"You are a free pig!" said Ren.
"That's enough!" Shal cried, standing to face Ren. "I've no more use for your bigotry than I do for her offer!" To Quarrel, she said, "I speak for the others. We've seen what obedience to the Lord of the Ruins means, and we want no part of your deal. Leave us!"
Fire blazed in Quarrel's black eyes for a moment. "The Lord of the Ruins gets what he wants," she said, "sooner or later." The half-orc stood, pivoted on her heel, and began to walk calmly toward the exit. The warriors rose as if to follow, but just as soon as she had opened the big door, Quarrel spun around and launched a tiny dagger from her hand.
"Down!" Ren shouted, and he leaped to try to deflect the dagger, but a big warrior rammed him from behind and sent him sprawling across the table.
Before Shal could duck or react with a spell, the dagger was buried deep in her collarbone, and green death began to spread through her body. She stood for a moment, a silent mental cry shrieking through her numbness, and then she flopped, twitching and jerking, to the ground.
In a lightninglike move, Ren rolled and disemboweled the man who had rammed him from behind. Tarl reacted with equal speed, bludgeoning the two warriors closest to him before they could pull their swords from their scabbards. But it was Cerulean who reacted with the greatest ferocity. Before Shal's silent cry was finished, he had burst forth from the cloth, trampling everything between his mistress and the assassin. The half-orc never stood a chance. The huge horse reared and stomped, reared and stomped, again and again, pulverizing her with his sharp hooves, smashing her piglike snout deep into her crushed face, so that not even the greatest mages of the Lord of the Ruins would stand a chance of fixing it.
But killing Quarrel did nothing for Shal, who continued to jerk and writhe from the spasms caused by the deadly green poison. Nor did it help Tarl with the last of the warriors, who had just sliced up under the cleric's ribs with his sword. It was Sot who finally clubbed the man to death with the cudgel he kept hidden behind the bar.
Ren ran immediately to Shal and cradled her head and shoulders in his arms. "No! No! Not again!"
"The temple…" Tarl clutched his side and spoke in desperation. "Get us to the temple!" He tried to work some healing on himself, but he passed out before he could finish the incantation.
Sot stuffed a bar rag against Tarl's wound and started shouting orders at the confused patrons still standing around in the inn. "What're ya gawkin' at? Get a wagon hitched up! Now! And, you, hand me a fresh cloth from behind the bar there! Move!"
Ren carved at Shal's wound and sucked and spit the poison as fast as he was able to, but he could see the vein of green pushing its way toward her heart, and he wept openly as he carried her to the waiting cart, where Sot had already laid Tarl. Cerulean whinnied and whickered and stamped furiously, and none but Ren dared to hitch him to the cart, but the moment the harnesses were secure and Ren had clambered aboard, the great horse bolted away and galloped with a speed no other horse could match.
"Make way! Make way!" Ren shouted at the top of his lungs as they reached the temple gates. "Wounded aboard!"
The clerics at the gates hurried to lift the latch as priests in their studies flocked outside to see