Sea of Death: Blade of the Flame - Book 3 (21 page)

“The gas has dispersed enough!” Kirai shouted. “You can open your eyes!”

Ghaji did so, taking in a deep breath of air at the same time. The wisps of yellowish gas that filled the air stung his eyes and
made them water. He stopped spinning and focused his attention on the nearest zombie. The creature stood near the broken shards of the clay pot Kirai had thrown, its normally brown-leather skin now the color of sun-blasted stone, and its movements significantly slower. The zombie still moved, but with obvious effort, as if trying to fight while deep underwater.

Ghaji grinned. Kirai had done something to reverse the effects of the unguent she used to prevent the zombies’ flesh from drying out in the heat of the Talenta Plains. The zombies’ skin and muscles had hardened, rendering them nearly immobile. As slowly as they now moved, Ghaji would have no trouble destroying the lot of them. But even if the zombies were no longer a threat, the clawfoot riders—and especially their shaman—still would be.

Ghaji stepped out of the way of a torturously slow scimitar strike and sought out the halfling shaman among the gathered riders. Ghaji picked out the shaman right away, sitting on his red-marked clawfoot mount at the forefront of the hunting party, rune-carved bone staff held high, still chanting in a lilting foreign tongue. The half-orc warrior took careful aim and, though his arm and shoulder muscles ached from fighting the zombies, he put every bit of his remaining strength into hurling his axe at the shaman.

The weapon spun through the air, hit the bone staff, and broke it in two. The top half tumbled to the ground and the bottom joined it an instant later, as the impact of the striking axe knocked it out of the shaman’s grip.

The shaman stopped chanting and cradled his injured hand to his chest. The zombies, whether because Kirai’s potion had dried their muscles completely or because the shaman’s spell was broken, froze where they stood, now little more than undead statues. Ghaji bent down to pick up a scimitar dropped by one of the zombies he’d managed to dismember. If the halflings planned to attack, he would be ready for them.

The shaman glared at Ghaji with a mixture of fury and respect, then with his good hand he took hold of his clawfoot’s reins, urged the giant lizard to turn, and the beast bore him away from the tower at a quick trot. The rest of the hunting party followed, and soon the
halflings and their clawfoot steeds were nothing more than a distant cloud of dust moving toward the horizon.

Ghaji dropped the scimitar with a weary sigh before turning to check on Kirai. The alchemist rushed to him, threw her arms around him, and hugged him with a fierce strength that he wouldn’t have thought her slender body capable of.

“We did it!” she cried. “We stopped them! Just the two of us!”

Tentatively, Ghaji raised his arms and hugged Kirai back.

“I guess we did.”

The sun had almost set for the night, and the temperature on the Talenta Plains had become nearly bearable, though evening did bring out clouds of gnat-like pests that seemed to find Ghaji’s skin particularly tasty. Kirai knelt next a small fire across which she’d erected an iron spit. A trio of metal pots hung from the cross-rod, their foul-smelling contents bubbling as the chemicals they held simmered.

Ghaji—his wounds smeared with healing ointment and bandaged by Kirai—approached the fire, carrying a clay bowl filled with stew. He crouched next to the alchemist and held out the bowl to her.

“I figured you weren’t cooking dinner for yourself out here, so I brought you something to eat. I have to warn you, though: don’t ask where the meat in the stew came from.”

Kirai laughed. “I don’t have to ask. It’s plains rat. What else would it be?” Still, she took the bowl and the wooden spoon Ghaji had brought and gave the half-orc a grateful smile.

Ghaji was silent while she ate, and he gazed up at the twilight sky. A palette of colors spread above them—pink, red, orange, blue, purple, and more—all swirled together as if the gods were in an artistic mood and had decided to use the sky as their canvas this evening. He looked at Kirai’s face, and though she might be plain by human standards, he found her every bit as beautiful as the gods’ sky-painting. He’d been trying all day to think of a way to tell her how he felt about her, but he still had no idea how to express his feelings without sounding like an idiot. Maybe if they started talking
about something else first, the words he truly wanted to speak would come to him.

“Any luck with the zombies?” he asked.

Kirai swallowed a mouthful of plains-rat stew before answering. “Not yet. It’s possible that their musculature has desiccated to the point that they cannot be made to function again. It’s too early to tell for sure, though. I still have a few more tricks that I can try. That’s why I’m brewing more of my ‘foul-smelling glop.’” She gave him a wink, and Ghaji felt his heart lurch in his chest.

Tell her now …

He cleared his throat, not that he had any real need to. “Kirai … there’s something I want to tell you. Or maybe ask you.” He scowled, irritated at himself. “Something like that.”

Kirai paused, another spoonful of stew halfway to her mouth. She raised a curious eyebrow. “From the tone of your voice, whatever it is must be serious. Is the commander angry about the zombies? Did you explain that we didn’t have any choice but to immobilize them?”

In truth, the Karrnathi commander
was
less than thrilled, but that wasn’t what Ghaji wanted to talk about right now. “It’s not that, it’s … about earlier. After we stopped the zombies.”

Kirai frowned and laid her stew bowl on the ground. “I don’t understand.”

“The way you hugged me, it …” Ghaji gazed upon the fire, unable to look Kirai in the eyes. “No one ever hugged me like that before.”

“I was just so relieved that we’d won. I couldn’t believe it!” A teasing tone crept into her voice. “Don’t tell me that I hugged you too tight! Did I bruise the big strong warrior?”

He smiled but still didn’t look at her. “I think I’ll survive. I liked how hard you hugged me. It was … nice.”

Kirai didn’t respond right away, and for several moments the only sound was the bubbling of her chemicals in their pots. And then Kirai began to laugh.

“I’m sorry, Ghaji, really! I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it’s just
too
funny! I mean, you know … I’m human and you’re an
ore!”

Ghaji stiffened and his heart turned to a cold lump in his chest.
Though it was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life—harder by far than fighting a horde of blood-thirsty zombies—he forced out a hollow laugh.

“I was just joking. Enjoy the rest of your stew.” Before Kirai could say anything else, Ghaji rose to his feet and walked away from the fire, heading north as night continued its descent upon the Talenta Plains.

Come sunrise, he was still walking.

Ghaji was just about to suggest that they give up on the
Turnabout
’s captain and seek passage elsewhere when the tavern door burst open and a tall, broad-shouldered man walked in, followed by a dwarf wearing a heavy cloak.

All eyes turned toward the newcomers. The dwarf stood with a taciturn expression on his face, while the tall man met the patron’s curious gazes with a broad grin. “Good evening to you all! Word has reached me that there are good people present in this establishment who seek to hire a vessel swift and true!” His voice was a warm, honeyed baritone, and he sounded as if he had come for a reunion with old friends rather than a meeting with potential passengers.

The man was in mid-fifties, with sea-weathered skin, a hook nose, and a bushy black beard. A gold earring hung from his left ear, and he wore his hair in a small pony-tail tied with a tiny red ribbon. He wore an overlarge black tricorner hat with gold trim and a large red feather sticking up from the back. His red long coat was unbuttoned over a green tunic with a white ruffled collar and a purple sash around his waist. The coat had large black gauntlet-like cuffs, past which his ruffled white shirt sleeve collars were visible. He had thick-fingered, calloused hands, and wore gaudy jeweled rings on all ten of his fingers. Black trousers, brown boots, and a cutlass sheathed at his waist completed his outfit.

Ghaji took one look at the man and burst out laughing.

“You have
got
to be joking!”

Diran stared at the blackened arrowhead shape seared onto the flesh of Leontis’s palm.

“I assume you have a good reason for asking me to kill you.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Leontis closed his fingers and made a fist to hide the scorch mark, as if he were ashamed of it. “I’ve been cursed.”

Diran didn’t reply. He knew his old friend would speak when he was ready. After several moments, Leontis took a deep breath and began.

“Six months ago I was traveling in the Principalities near Tantamar, at the behest of a village priest who’d contacted the cathedral. Livestock in the area were being slaughtered by some kind of animal, and there were rumors of a strange beast prowling the hills at night. The priest feared that a lycanthrope might be active in the area, and he asked that a priest with battle experience be sent to investigate. The Order of Templars chose me, and I was dispatched immediately. The Templars didn’t expect me to discover anything more than some rogue beast or another—quite possibly nothing more sinister than a normal wolf—that had found an easy source of food to fill its belly. You know as well as I that lycanthropes of all kinds have been extinct in Khorvaire since the days of the Purge … or nearly so.”

“But it’s that
nearly so
that caused the Templars to send you,” Diran said.

Leontis nodded. “In the years since you last saw me, I’ve made something of a specialty of investigating reports of lycanthropy. I’d always been fascinated by tales of the Purge—the heroics and the atrocities the Purified committed in the name of the Silver Flame. It sounds foolish now, but I thought that I could help balance the scales for the Flame, help redeem the Purified that were involved in the Purge by investigating lycanthropy now with a clear head and a pure heart … fighting evil with strength, determination, but also with compassion.” Leontis smiled at Diran. “Just as you taught me by the banks of the Thrane River so many years ago.”

“It doesn’t sound foolish to me at all,” Diran said. “And I know Tusya would agree.”

Leontis shrugged. “Perhaps. At any rate, during my investigations over the years I’d discovered and fought any number of creatures, both mystic and mundane, but not once had I encountered a true lycanthrope.”

“Until you went to the village near Tantamar.”

Leontis nodded. “Despite the rarity of true lycanthropic outbreaks, the Templars take no chances when a report comes in. They dispatched me to the region by airship, and within a few days of the village priest making his report, I was scouring the woods near his village for signs of lycanthrope activity. For two weeks, I roamed those woods, hiking by day, camping at night, my senses ever alert for even the merest hint of supernatural evil. I didn’t find any, nor did I find any physical signs. I found no tracks, and no animals were killed during my time there. Then one night—my last night in the area, I’d already decided—as I was about to drift off to sleep in my bedroll I finally felt it: the presence of true evil. I grabbed my bow and strung it, then slipped the quiver of silver-tipped arrows I’d brought over my shoulder. Then I walked off in into the night to begin the hunt.”