said. 'As soon as these men are identified by the other priests,' Vorahl said, 'their bodies will have to be destroyed.' 'Why?' Chansin asked. 'If they are not, they will rise again.' Vorahl's voice lowered. 'All killed by Borran Kiosk stand a good chance of rising once more as a mindless beast bent on the savaging of all living things. If they don't follow Borran Kiosk's leadership, they will kill on their own. A roaring fire is the only way to insure that they don't return-a fire to burn them first then a sledge to shatter their charred bones. Even burned skeletons have been known to walk.' A sudden light flared south of the graveyard, climbing over the top of the stone wall. The nimbus of yellow light warred against the night and the storm. 'That's a fire,' Chansin said. 'It has begun,' Vorahl said in a solemn voice. 'May the gods preserve us.'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Morning light woke Druz Talimsir. She rose with slow deliberation, keeping her back to the cave wall. The druid and the bear were gone. Though she knew that neither Haarn nor his animal companion would have thought twice before abandoning her, the druid shouldn't have been able to move so quickly. Her legs tingled with weakness from all the climbing the day before, and the smell of cooking meat filled her nostrils and caused hunger pangs to erupt in her stomach. She turned to the mouth of the cave and started out. Pausing at the entrance, she took up a defensive position and lifted her sword in front of her, ready to strike. Straining her ears for any noises outside the cave, she peered around the entrance. A campfire nestled in a ring of stones on the ground in front of the cave. A brace of coneys hung from a spit over the fire. The slender rabbits' bodies dripped grease, sending flames leaping up at them. Haarn knelt at the disturbed grave, a curious look on his face. 'What made this?' he asked without lifting his eyes from the hole in the ground. Druz didn't answer, her irritation growing at the druid's uncanny ability to know she was up and about. She'd made no noise. 'Did you hear me?' he asked, facing her. 'Yes,' she replied. 'I heard you.' 'Do you know what made this?' 'A skeleton.' Druz sheathed her sword, wondering if the druid intended to eat all the coneys or if there would be any left over. Her stomach rumbled again. 'Did you summon it?' 'How would I do that?' Druz said. 'I wouldn't even have known it was down there.' Haarn turned his gaze back to the deep hole. 'Where's the bear?' Druz asked. 'Foraging.' Haarn examined the muddy ground around the hole, but Druz was sure he'd done that once before at least. For the first time she also noticed he was still nude save for herbal poultices that clung to his wounds. 'How are you?' she asked. 'I'm fine,' replied the druid. 'Your wounds-' 'Are only inconveniences.' Haarn stood and gazed down the mountainside into the forest. He peeled the poultices from his body to reveal wounds that had already knitted together and were well on their way to healing. 'The skeleton left a good set of tracks,' he added. Following Haarn's gaze in the direction of the rising sun, Druz said, 'It's headed east.' 'For now,' Haarn agreed. 'I was surprised when it didn't try to kill us,' Druz said. 'Why would it just leave?' 'That's something I'd like to know too.' Haarn glanced at her then walked to where his clothing hung on a branch. 'You'd have been better off getting out of those clothes before sleeping last night,' he said. 'They would have been dry by now.' Druz didn't say anything. As a mercenary, she was used to nudity. Living in the field was a hardship that didn't differentiate between genders. The druid was different, though, but she didn't know why. She looked at the coneys steaming on the spit and said, 'I thought you didn't like to kill animals.' Haarn dressed, showing only a little stiffness in his movements. 'The rabbit population is rising too quickly here,' Haarn said, settling his scimitar around his lean hips. 'We need the meat after the way we've been pushing ourselves.' He padded barefoot through the mud, hardly leaving an impression despite the looseness of the ground. Druz watched him in wonder. The wolf had savaged him the night before, but Haarn hardly showed any sign of injury. Haarn took one of the spitted coneys and handed it to Druz. 'Thank you,' she said. She sat, a dull headache throbbing at the base of her skull and spreading up through her temples. She pinched meat from the coney and dropped it into her mouth. The meat was almost too hot, but the flavor was amazing. 'It's very good.' Haarn nodded, but he seemed a little uncomfortable with the compliment. His eyes kept drifting to the hole in the earth. 'Where are the wolf pups?' Druz asked, remembering them for the first time that morning. 'I gave them to the pack,' Haarn answered. 'They made it through the night and seemed strong enough to survive.' Druz looked around and asked, 'What of the pack?' 'They've gone.' 'With no more trouble?' Haarn shrugged. 'They tried to hide Stonefur's body,' he said, 'but I found it.' He pointed at a hide-covered lump back by the mouth of the cave. 'I took Stonefur's head so you would have it as proof.' Druz pulled more strips of meat from the coney and continued eating. 'Are we heading back today?' she asked. A hot bath followed by a night in a feather bed seemed too good to be true. She promised to treat herself to both those things when she got back to Alagh?n. 'I'm not,' Haarn said, making a neat pile of bones in front of him, each one broken where he had sucked the marrow from it. 'What are you going to do?' Haarn looked east and said, 'I'm going to follow the skeleton.'
Terror filled Alagh?n as news of Borran Kiosk's return spread through the community. During the night, the stories had circulated through the sailors' bars and been taken with them back to their ships. By morning, the stories flowed to the townspeople buying bread and meat for their tables, washing back from the merchant ships to land like the tide, by way of cargo handlers and merchants. In each telling the stories of the watch's encounter with the mohrg and the violent deaths of the priests of Eldath grew fiercer and uglier.
High in one of the older buildings on the west side of Alagh?n, not far removed from the gate that allowed entrance in from the western trade routes, Borran Kiosk gazed down from between the slats of a boarded-over window. From there the mohrg watched people gather fearfully in the streets and along the docks.
'You take pride in your accomplishment,' Allis said.
For a moment, Borran Kiosk did not answer. After whisking him away to this hiding place, traveling swiftly across the rooftops of the city for a time, then dropping down to the street level and managing all the twists and turns there, the werespider woman had disappeared. No longer of the flesh, the mohrg needed no sleep. He'd passed the long, slow night aching for revenge against the living who still called Alagh?n home. It had been everything he could do to stay hidden, and only his fear of Malar's retribution had stayed his hand.
Sails lifted on one of the ships in the harbor. Slowly, the great Sembian merchant ship turned and headed east, bound for other ports.
They escaped, Borran Kiosk couldn't help thinking.
The idea rankled him, but he consoled himself with the thought that though the ship's crew had escaped his physical wrath, his arrival had given them stories they would never forget and never forget to pass on.
Borran Kiosk turned toward his visitor, momentarily putting aside his anger at her for not having come earlier. His great purple tongue slid through his jaws and tasted the air, licking the woman's scent from it.
'Yes,' he said, 'I do take pride in the fear they have of me. I have expended great effort to acquire that fear.'
Allis regarded him from the doorway at the other end of the room. She was holding a woven basket that was covered by a dingy scrap of cloth. She looked like she was just returned from washing laundry.
She said, 'You are everything I was told to expect.'
'Who told you what to expect?' Borran Kiosk asked.
Ignoring him, she crossed the room and deposited the basket on a slanted, three-legged table.
The rooms had been vacant for years. Spider webs filled the corners and created fragile latticework bridges between piles of rubbish. Judging from the amount of refuse in the building, for a time after being vacated it had become a dumping ground for the businesses and homes around it.
Unleashing the rage that filled him, Borran Kiosk reached for Allis, closing his skeletal hand around her upper arm and pulling her around.
The woman turned easily, coming around almost like a lover acknowledging the favored attentions of her suitor, but even as that thought filled Borran Kiosk, he saw her change. She wasn't afraid of his grim, fleshless face as he'd thought she would be.
Her head erupted, becoming bigger and rounder, sprouting eyes and fangs. Venom dripped from the slash of mouth that no longer fit a human face. The arm Borran Kiosk held turned rough and covered over with spiky hair. Her simple green dress dropped to the floor, pooling around misshapen spider feet as she soared above him in height.
