The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [18]
The man gasped but no sound emerged. Blood trickled down the side of his head onto the ground. He made no move to get up.
The fact that the man didn't try to cry out, and even looked a little relieved, made Cerril yet more uneasy.
"The coin is cursed," the man said. "There's a geas that's been laid on it by Malar."
"You he!" Cerril exploded.
Try to throw the coin away, boy," the man challenged.
That would be stupid," Hekkel said.
Still, Cerril turned his hand upside down. The coin of Malar remained stuck to his flesh, denying the certain fall to the ground. Fearfully, he pulled the coin free of his palm with his other hand, then found it was stuck to that hand.
"Do you feel the power of the geas now, boy?" the man asked, smiling. Blood continued to pump from his wound.
Cerril shook his hand, trying to fling the coin away. His stomach knotted in fear, spilling bile against the back of his throat. Bad luck!
He turned to Hekkel, shoved his hand out, and said, "You want i-take it!"
Hekkel eyed the coin greedily, but fear made him back away. He shook his head slowly.
Totally panicked, Cerril turned back to the man. He found the knife at the man's waist and drew it out. Without hesitation, he pressed it against the man's throat.
Take it back!"
The man returned his gaze and said, "I can't." "You can."
"I can't. The coin has to be wanted. I had never even heard of Malar when it came into my position."
Cerril pressed the knife blade harder. Take the coin."
Slowly, the man reached for the coin in Cerril's hand. The man plucked at the coin but it refused to release Cerril's hand. It lay there in the boy's palm, attached as firmly as a blood leech.
"I can't," the man said, removing his hand. "It knows I don't want it."
Cerril groaned in fear and anger. He almost slit the man's throat, then he realized that doing that might have doomed him.
"What kind of geas is on the coin?"
The man swallowed hard, his eyes narrowing in pain. "I don't know," he said. The coin drew me here."
To Alaghфn?" Cerril asked.
"Yes. I've never been here before, but visions of this place came to me in dreams. Nightmares, actually. Gods, but the things I saw during the last few months I've had that thing."
"What are you supposed to do?"
Cerril knew that the nature of any geas, for good or ill-and with Malar the Stalker involved he had no doubt that it would all be for ill-was the need to accomplish something.
"I don't know," the man answered.
"You're here," Cerril pointed out.
"Only because the nightmares ebbed a little when I made the decision to board a ship and come here." The man's eyes fluttered closed for a moment, then reopened. "You'll know what it wants you to do. You'll have nightmares about it."
Cerril glanced up and saw that Two-Fingers, Hekkel, and the others had stepped back from him.
They don't want any of my bad luck rubbing off on them, he thought.
He looked back at the man.
"All I can tell you," the man said, "is that the geas involves a graveyard somewhere in this city. I've seen it in my nightmares, but I haven't had a chance to look for it yet."
Cerril's breath caught at the back of his throat. A graveyard? Alaghфn was filled with graveyards. The last thing he wanted to do-while under the effects of a geas or not-was go to any one of them.
He stared at the fat coin lying in his hand and cursed his own rotten luck.
CHAPTER FOUR
Did you hear that?"
Haarn kept walking through the forest, ignoring the woman trying to keep pace with him. Druz Talimsir's efforts had become so noisy even across level ground that Haarn had finally given up in disgust and paced himself so that she could more easily walk with him. The other wolf hunters were little over an hour behind them.
Druz grabbed his shoulder.
Slipping out of her grasp, reaching for the inner calm that his father had taught him, Haarn stepped to one side. Instinctively, probably because of her training as a mercenary and probably from working in places where