The Jewel of Turmish - Mel Odom [80]
Allis pointed to the mirror.
Drawn by the sight of a figure moving within the glass, Borran Kiosk came closer. He peered into the mirror and saw a scene as though through a hazy fog.
A skeleton marched through swamplands with a long stride. Murky water came up to the skeleton's shins. In the hollows of its chest, lodged behind the breastbone, a jeweled cube burned bright and hard. The skeleton carried a short sword in one fist, and divots of mud still filled its cavernous eyes.
Allis waved her hand again, and the other four skeletons bearing pieces of Taraketh's Hive came into view, each in turn.
"You see," she said, "all is as I have promised. They have no will of their own but to serve Malar-and you- in the best way they know how."
"And what of the other gifts you said you bore?"
Reaching into the basket again, Allis took out a section of gray and pink coral almost as long as her forearm.
She held it out and asked, "Do you sense the death on this?"
"It's coral," Borran Kiosk said. He tasted the salty scent of it with a flicking caress of his tongue. Tt reeks of death."
Intrigue filled him. Even after everything he'd done, all the foul murders he'd committed, nothing had tasted so exquisite.
"Where did you get this?" he asked. "From the Whamite Isles."
Borran Kiosk's tongue leaped out again, drawing closer to the coral. "I've never tasted death like this. Not even that wrought by my own hand."
"There has never been death like this before," Allis said. "The islands are encircled by drowned ones and other undead. This was taken from the reefs that surround the Whamite Isles and was magically altered."
Borran Kiosk's tongue flicked out again, and he could sense the magic energies bound within the coral. It was the most powerful thing outside of Taraketh's Hive that he'd ever encountered.
Allis extended the coral to him and with some trepidation, Borran Kiosk accepted it. As soon as his bony fingers touched the coral, it grew, shimmering as it changed. In a heartbeat, the coral had formed an elbow-length glove of white and pink streaks that perfectly encased his hand. A buzz of power filled the mohrg.
"What is this?" Borran Kiosk asked.
"Power," Allis answered. "The power to wake the dead of the Whamite Isles and call them to you."
Borran Kiosk held the glove up before him, admiring it. For a moment, he worried that the mystic thing had en-sorcelled him in some way, but he had safeguards-spells and magical items about him-that guaranteed such things could not easily affect him.
The power was real. He felt it surging within the glove and within him.
"Use it," Allis urged, "and you will raise an army to follow you back here to Alaghфn. No one will be able to stand before them. All of Turmish, and perhaps even the Vilhon Reach, will fall under your power."
Borran Kiosk flexed the glove upon his hand. It moved as supple as leather, far easier than even the flesh he could remember wearing all those years before.
"And these wizards that you serve," he said, "they want me to have such power?"
"Serve your own dark desires, Borran Kiosk," Allis said, "and you will serve theirs."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Haarn ran, cutting through the overgrown grass that sprouted from the low valley's marshy ground. Despite the speed at which he'd been moving for hours, he knew he could run for hours more. From the wheezing gasps of his companion, he likewise knew that Druz Talimsir could not.
He grew irritated again at his own inability to leave the woman, as he knew he should have.
I gave her Stonefur's head, he thought in disgust. That's all I owed her.
Druz gasped for breath but in a controlled manner, showing training and stamina, but her abilities were nothing when compared to the druid's. Her passage through the marshlands, punctuated with discordant splats of her boots slapping mud, echoed around them.
Ahead, the valley sloped up again, leaving a thin trickle of stained brown water running through the heart of it. The long rain of the preceding day and night still wound through the land, and a