The Seal of Karga Kul_ A Dungeons & Dragons Novel - Alex Irvine [9]
It was some time before anyone said anything to Remy, and when the words came he wished they hadn’t. He had just finished cleaning his sword and was oiling it and wiping it down, looking forward to a few hours’ sleep before the sun would come up and the wastes breed new monstrosities for them to face. He heard someone approach and stop. It was Lucan, fresh bandages showing through the holes in his tunic and jerkin.
“How come the cacklefiend wanted you so badly?” the elf asked him. “It fought its way through us to get to you. What is it you have there in your little box? Care to show us?”
“I told you I can’t.”
“Perhaps I can.” Lucan nudged Remy’s pack with the toe of his boot. “Come on. Let’s have a look.”
Remy knew bullying when he saw it, and he knew that if he didn’t put a stop to it now it would grow into something far worse. He stood. “We just fought together,” he said. “I don’t want to fight against you now.”
Lucan was taller than he was, but Remy was broader and had one other advantage. He was ready to fight, and he didn’t think Lucan was.
Biri-Daar stepped in before things could get any more tense. “Lucan,” she said. “Remy swore an oath. Would you have him break it?”
Lucan didn’t answer. His gaze remained on Remy, who looked back.
“Lucan,” Biri-Daar added. “Even if we wanted to open the box, would you do it without knowing what those charms on its lid might unleash?”
There was a pause. After a delay, the common sense approach appeared to work. Lucan looked away from Remy at the group’s dragonborn leader. “The cacklefiend was looking for him,” he said to her, pointing at Remy. “Because of what he carries. That endangers all of us.”
“Perhaps,” Biri-Daar said.
Remy was suddenly and uncomfortably conscious of the fact that the entire group was looking at him. Something permanent was being decided about his status within the party, and how it affected their mission.
“What endangers us is you breaking away from the group when the gnolls had us surrounded,” Remy said before he could stop himself. He was a stranger to the group, perhaps, but he was damned if he was going to be made a scapegoat.
“You dare,” Lucan growled. A dagger appeared in his hand, the motion too fast for Remy to follow.
“Hold,” Biri-Daar commanded. “Remy, you will not question Lucan’s stomach for a fight while I am here. He and I have faced down creatures the like of which you cannot imagine. And Lucan, the gods have brought Remy into our group. We will not cast him out while their reasons are still unclear to us.”
“If the creations of the Abyss are following him,” Keverel said quietly, “I’m inclined to think he’s on the right side.”
“Enemy of the enemy is my friend, is that it?” Iriani said.
“Something like that,” Keverel said. “Remy, would you mind if Iriani and I took a closer look at that box? The sigils might tell us something that we need to know the next time creatures come out of the dark looking for it.”
“If we just left him here, we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Lucan grumbled. His good-natured, jousting demeanor was utterly gone, as if the brief battle had killed off his sense of humor and left him with an inexplicable hostility toward Remy. For his part, Remy could only wonder whether Lucan was ashamed of how he had reacted in the fight or something else was happening that Remy couldn’t detect.
“True,” Kithri said from a little distance away. “But if he’s not around and horrible monstrosities stop following us, we are going to have a lot less of this.”
Everyone turned to look as she came back into the firelight. “I know they’re only gnolls,” she said, “but all of you need to sharpen up your looting instincts. Look what we have.”
On a flat rock near the campfire, she spilled a number of objects she