Pool of Radiance_ Ruins of Myth Drannor - Carrie Bebris [68]
Still no response.
Kestrel thought they needed to get to the point. “How can we free you?” There would be enough time for other questions once the spirit could talk easily.
“P… u… mp.”
“What did he say?” Ghleanna asked. His answer had coincided with the thumping noise again.
“It sounded like pump.” Kestrel looked around the room. “But I don’t see anything in here that looks like a-”
“Maybe he said thump,” Corran said. “Perhaps that thumping sound has something to do with this.”
Kestrel knew she’d heard a “p” sound, not a “th,” but pointing that out to the paladin would require actually speaking to him. Still nursing her anger over Corran’s pigheaded endangerment of Durwyn, she let his suggestion pass without comment. Besides, she had no better idea to offer.
Corran tried the southwest door and found it unlocked. When he opened it the heartbeat sound repeated, the strongest they’d heard it yet. “This way.”
The door exited onto a small balcony with a narrow stairway leading up to the rooftop. They trotted along the fortress’s battlements, following the rhythmic thumping noise, until they reached a similar staircase heading down. The steps deposited them in the stronghold’s pumphouse, where the mechanical pump struggled to perform its duty. The slow pa-pum was the sound of the device fighting to draw water from the Onaglym’s ancient cistern, which lay in a courtyard beyond.
“I knew he said pump,” Kestrel muttered under her breath.
Ghleanna wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?” A putrid odor filled the air, as of rotting garbage. Or decaying flesh.
Kestrel raised her guard, remembering the zombies that seemed to appear whenever they’d previously detected such a stench. She heard no telltale shuffling of animated corpses, only the slow, laborious sound of the pump.
Faeril walked to the arched doorway that opened into the courtyard. “It seems to be emanating from-Oh, Lady of Mysteries, preserve us!”
The others rushed over. On the far side of the courtyard, the desiccated body of a human female hung impaled on a spiked pole. The former fighter had been disemboweled. In place of her organs nested a large membranous sac that pulsed and squirmed.
Kestrel’s gorge rose. Anorrweyn’s missing skull had seemed bad, but this… Was it the fate of all women in this city to have their remains defiled? She had to turn her head away from the sight. It was then that she noticed the unnatural color of the water in the cistern. The reservoir, which should have held clear rainwater, instead bubbled with murky brownish liquid. The water must have become polluted somehow through the centuries.
Or corrupted recently. Kestrel noted an amber cast to the fluid and closed her eyes against the realization dawning on her. They had found another spawn pool.
When she opened her eyes, despite her fervent wishes the abomination remained. “Uh, guys-”
“I just noticed it, too,” Ghleanna said.
Corran and Faeril, meanwhile, had approached the corpse. Faeril gestured toward an insignia on the remains of the body’s tattered clothing. “Sisters of the Silver Fire,” she said. “This woman was a holy warrior dedicated to Mystra.”
“Of your sect?” Corran asked.
“No, another, but I feel the loss as keenly.” She studied the writhing sac in the fallen warrior’s body cavity. “She appears to be infested by the eggs of some loathsome creature-and I suspect they are hatching. Jarial? Ghleanna?”
The sorcerers joined them. Kestrel and Durwyn followed a little behind. They heard Faeril say sadly, “I’d prefer a nobler death rite, but we haven’t time.”
The group stood back. Faeril raised her voice in prayer as Jarial hurled a ball of fire at the corpse. The blast incinerated both the fighter and the vile, squirming egg sac. When the last flames sputtered out, the sorcerer waved his hand over the ashes. A light breeze swirled them into a funnel, dispersing the ashes into the wind.
Kestrel watched the dust blow away, then turned her attention back to the pool.