Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [139]
"Wh-what?" Sweetleaf said, opening his eyes suddenly.
"You've been under the Darkbringer's power. Cure your disease quickly. We have a lot of work to do."
"I-I remember now. I was possessed," Sweetleaf muttered.
"Fortunately, since you were a stranger in the tribe, none of the others knew you were a cleric, or you would have been possessed sooner and in no shape to help us now," Grypht said. "Now cure yourself so we can be sure no more of Moander's spores taint your body. Then we can begin to rescue the rest of our unfortunate brothers."
Akabar had done a good job, the saurial wizard noted privately, looking up the hill at the number of saurials the mage had felled with the wand. Grypht was too busy worrying about his own people, though, to wonder where the mage was at the moment.
*****
Akabar lay on the very top of the pile of dead vegetation that Moander intended to make its new body. He could hear Alias screaming and struggling with the saurial mages who had captured her. She was only a few yards away from him, but magically held as he was, he was powerless to help her. He knew he was frightened, but he had his faith to support him. Alias, on the other hand, must be terrified, he realized. She had tried to convince him to flee to avoid exactly this situation. To be honest, he had hoped to avoid it, but fleeing was not an honorable option.
Zhara had told him that he would be responsible for the god's death forever, and he had accepted the honor with pride. His priestess wife had been unable to tell him, however, if he would live through the experience. At the moment, he suspected he would not. His blood, from the wounds in his side and his arm, hissed and sparkled as it dripped onto the greenery beneath him. That certainly wasn't a good sign, but if Moander had to be resurrected to be destroyed, so be it, he thought.
In the moonlight, he could see a white saurial moving toward him. It was Coral, Moander's high priestess. She knelt beside him. A potpourri of conflicting emotional scents poured from her. Moander could force her to feel its evil pleasure, but the god did not, or could not, prevent her from expressing her own grief and fear.
Coral held up a large, luminous mushroom, which she shoved into Akabar's mouth.
The acrid taste made the mage feel violently ill, but he was unable to spit it out. He felt his mouth grow numb. Next Coral drew out a dagger carved from a giant thorn and pressed the tip of it against the artery in his neck. Akabar closed his eyes, certain he was about to die, but he felt no more than a prick in his neck. He opened his eyes again. Coral held the dagger up to the moonlight. There was a single drop of his blood on its tip, and before Akabar's eyes, the blood crystallized into a brilliant, rounded gem. Coral plucked the gem from the dagger, spat on it, and pushed it into the pile of greenery beneath them.
Just as Akabar was beginning to hope he might not actually be killed, the mage felt the pile shift beneath him, and he began to sink into it. His skin began to sparkle everywhere the greenery touched him. The red and white robe he wore began to rot away from his body, exposing more of his flesh to the magic of the pile. Since he could do nothing else, the Turmish mage began to pray.
19
The Weapon
Held by four saurial mages, Alias could do nothing but shriek and cry as Coral chanted foul prayers over Akabar, declaring his blood the seed of Moander's resurrection. As the Turmish mage was sucked into the rotting mess the saurials had built for Moander, the swordswoman began to shake uncontrollably. This was her worst nightmare-the one she forced herself to forget whenever she woke from it. In it, she inevitably watched her friend being absorbed by the Darkbringer just as she had been. Now, though, there was no waking up.
Akabar should have gone back to the cave as soon as they found out that he was the seed, she thought. She should have knocked him out and dragged him away. And Zhara never should have let him come north. There had to have been some