The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [110]
The drowned ones continued clambering aboard each other, climbing still higher.
Men aboard the other ship began yelling. Someone had spotted the drowned ones. Others took up the hue and cry of warning.
"Hurry," Allis pleaded.
The other ship tried to get underway, but the drowned ones had somehow trapped their anchor in the shallows. Before the sailors could cut or release the anchor chain, drowned ones formed a web of bodies and started clambering over the sides.
Borran Kiosk listened to the screams and yells of panic and pain from the other ship's crew as the drowned ones climbed aboard. The sea zombies took incredible punishment at the hands of the crew, but they kept on coming. A number of them advanced on the crew while bearing flaming arrows stuck in their blue-gray torsos.
In the light of the lanterns on the other ships, Borran Kiosk got a better view of his proposed subjects. Most of them had been drowned and underwater for a year. All of them showed the blue-gray pallor of death, wore only tatters of clothing if they wore any at all, and had innumerable bloodless wounds that left craters in their dead flesh.
When he finished the spell, the shrieks aboard the other ship had reached a crescendo. The ship bucked at the end of its anchor chain like a fish at the end of a line. Lightning flashed across the sky, and in the bright light the blood staining the ship's deck reflected indigo.
The head of a drowned one appeared over the railing of Mistress Talia's flying deck. Water dripped from the torn flesh only halfway covering the ivory bone beneath. It opened its jaws just as Borran Kiosk finished the incantation.
Allis screamed and backed away as the drowned ones started for her.
Borran Kiosk felt the surge of power that filled the glove and himself. He gazed at the drowned ones before him, feeling the link that bound his mind to the animalistic impulses that still survived in them.
It was as though Borran Kiosk's mind had suddenly grown larger, expanding tens, hundreds, maybe a thousandfold. If he chose, he could see through their eyes. He joined some of the minds onboard the other ship and saw the frightened faces of men who went down before him. He almost felt their flesh tear as the teeth bit into them, as if those teeth were his own.
"Lord Kiosk!"
Allis's strained, frightened voice drew him back to his own body. He saw the ravaged features of the drowned one before him, mouth open as it prepared to bite him. A shrimp coiled inside one of its vacant eye sockets.
Other drowned ones closed on Allis, gripping her arms as they bore her down to the deck. She was already shifting, turning into a giant spider.
As if he'd been doing it for years instead of only having just learned it, Borran Kiosk reached into the minds of the drowned ones that had boarded their ship.
"Stop," he commanded.
And the drowned ones stopped.
Allis shrugged free of those that held her and stood by the mohrg.
"You have them," she said, and there was a flicker of disbelief in her opal eyes.
Borran Kiosk peered at the drowned one standing dripping in front of him. The mohrg reached out and caressed the dead blue-gray flesh.
"Not all of them," he said, "but enough to destroy Alaghфn."
He pushed the drowned one aside gently. The creature stepped out of the way and waited there.
Back at the railing, intimately aware of all the drowned ones floating in the water around Mistress Talia, Borran Kiosk watched the unmerciful execution of the other ship's crew. Some of the drowned ones were destroyed in the assault, but not nearly enough of them. In a short time, the drowned ones would have eliminated every living thing from the ship. The mohrg only hoped that something remained of the vessel when they finished.
He felt filled with wonder as he gazed out over the sea and the ship under attack. He wanted to scream