The Wyvern's Spur - Kate Novak [69]
The finder's stone cast a bright beam to the shoreline, but its light had no effect on the undead monsters' behavior.
The undead began gurgling like the drowned men they were. From the way they raised their claws in unison, Giogi guessed they were making some sort of battle cry. They all leered at him with their tanged mouths. I'm finished, the nobleman thought.
From the top of the cascade behind Giogi came a great roar. Before Giogi's eyes, the lacedons' bodies ignited into cool, blue flames. The corpses slumped back into the pool. The water in the stream sparkled with the blue fire still consuming the undead. The pool turned murky with the disintegrated bodies. Then the murkiness washed downstream, and the pool's water was clear again.
Giogi saw that only two monsters remained in the water with him, both to his left. As the young noble splashed in the direction of the right-hand bank, praying the creatures would be unable to follow him on land, a dark, hulking shape plunged from the top of the cascade, over his head, and into the pool beyond. Giogi threw himself out of the water and landed with a thud on the rocky shore, knocking all the air out of himself.
More splashing and a second roar came from the pool behind him. It took a moment before Giogi could summon the energy to roll over to see what had joined the lacedons in the water.
The headless body of a lacedon floated past the near shore. The second lacedon lay on the opposite bank, pinned beneath the paws of a huge black bear. The monster struggled feebly before the bear ripped it, throat to belly, with a single swipe of its paw.
"Sweet Selune," Giogioni whispered.
The bear looked up at him when he spoke. Giogi froze. He'd never seen a bear so large in all of Cormyr. The creature's coat was as dark as the night, except for two silvery gray, crescent-shaped patches, one on its underbelly, the other on its forehead.
The bear stared at the nobleman for a moment with its head tilted to the side. It snuffled, and great clouds of steam rose from the bear's nostrils. Then it turned and bounded into the darkness of the woods.
Giogi pulled himself up the last cascade and left the dark woods behind him. Atop Spring Hill, a moonlit meadow surrounded the temple. Giogi collapsed on the grass beside the water, shivering and gasping for breath. His head was on fire, but the rest of him was freezing.
In all his years in Immersea, he'd never been attacked by undead. What were lacedons doing in a stream sacred to Selune? Did Mother Lleddew know about them? Giogi wondered. Is it possible she's getting too old to defend the hill from evil?
In the east, the sleet-filled clouds began to break up, as if evaporated by the full moon's light. Moonbeams shimmered across the Wyvernwater, along the Immer Stream, and up Selune's Stair. The moonbeams continued past Giogi, turning the stream, which meandered through the meadow, into a silver ribbon.
Giogi pulled himself to his feet and followed the stream to the temple, water squelching in his boots with his every step. Silvery, moonlit water flowed from inside the temple and down a channel cut into its steps. Giogi climbed the steps beside the channel and entered the House of the Lady.
The House of the Lady, the temple Mother Lleddew had built to Selune, was really not a house, but an open-air shrine. A circle of white stone pillars rose from the temple's floor and supported the domed roof. There were no walls. The rising moon's light shone past the pillars and silvered the spring-fed pool bubbling in the center of the temple.
A slender young girl in an acolyte's robes sat beside the pool, gazing into the spring's depths. The ends of her long tresses trailed along the surface of the water. By some trick of the light, her hair appeared as silver as the water, so it seemed that water flowed from her hair into the pool.
Giogi rang the silver bell hanging from one of the pillars beside the water channel.
The girl looked up without surprise. She had dark