The Jewel of Turmish (8 page)

“Those taxes you speak out against help make the city safe,” Druz insisted.

In the back of her mind, she knew she should be more concerned about escaping, but there was something about the druid that challenged her and made her want to make him see cities the way they really were—as homes and havens. Maybe it was the dismissive way he treated her, and maybe it was because she’d never been around a man so arrogant and confident as the druid. Even here in the midst of the slavers he spoke as if he’d trapped them instead of it being the other way around.

Haarn smiled and said, “So Herengar heads up a new mercenary band and demands tribute for his services— one that pays much better.”

“Most people in the city wouldn’t know how to fight to defend themselves,” Druz argued.

“And they lose themselves because they are not taught to do that,” Haarn said bluntly. Take away a person’s ability to protect himself, to know enough to survive on his own, and you only have a slave. A privileged slave, perhaps, but a slave nonetheless.” He took up the padded

chain. “Maybe you can’t see the chains on those ‘citizens,’ Druz Talimsir, but they are there.”

“Cities allow people to raise their children in peace.” Druz disliked the way the druid seemed to look down on eveithing about her. “I’ve fought, defending towns and cities during time of war.”

“Against others who felt certain that whatever it was they were after from the places you defended rightly belonged to them,” Haarn stated angrily, “because they decided to own one section of a land or another.”

“Territorial wars are the most common—” Druz started to go on, but the druid cut her off.

“The land isn’t meant to be owned,” Haarn said. “It’s meant to be treasured and tended. The land will provide sustenance to creatures that understand its needs and its gifts. Cities are spawning grounds for maggots that reap what they will of the land and leave only a decaying husk behind.”

The vehemence in the druid’s voice surprised Druz enough that she stilled her tongue.

“Loggers fell trees from forests,” Haarn continued, “and they never give thought to replenishing those trees. Miners dig in the land and create holes that fill with rainwater that become contaminated and poison other areas. Animal species are hunted nearly to extinction and cause other problems with overpopulation. The sheepherders overgraze the land and render it useless for years. Still other places have been polluted by magical fallout. What happened to the Whamite Isles is a clear example of that.” He looked at Druz. “Your cities are toxic in other ways as well. They provide a means and an area for eaters to live and reproduce.”

“Eaters?” The term was unfamiliar to Druz.

“Eaters,” Haarn repeated. “Civilized man simply eats nature’s bounty and puts nothing back into the land. If they had to live off the land, struggle through the four seasons and keep themselves healthy, most of them wouldn’t be able to.”

“I could live off the land. I’ve done it before,” Druz argued hotly, feeling certain that the druid had lumped

her in with the Eaters he spoke of.

“But you’ve never learned to be happy living with what nature has to offer,” the druid accused. “Otherwise you’d never go back to those cities and its laws and its taxes.”

“I like the idea of a home,” Druz said. The thought occupied her mind a lot. Her parents hadn’t had much, but they’d been generous with what they had. For the past nine years, Druz had lived a mercenary’s life: traveling from engagement to engagement, praying to the gods that she didn’t get killed or maimed, and living in a crude barracks. “I like taverns and eating a meal someone else has prepared. I like the marketplaces, and I like seeing things from other lands.”

“We’re not intended to have all the world. You should learn to live where you are,” Haarn said, raking his dark gaze over the slavers.

A small group of men sitting at a cookfire still talked and drank from a bottle they passed around. They’d arrived back in the camp a while ago. No one else had shown up, nor did any more bands seem expected.

“You’ve never had a… wanderlust?” Druz asked.

“Of course I have,” Haarn said, barely paying attention. “Fve wandered all over Turmish.”

“Did you ever go to a city?”

“No.”

Druz couldn’t believe that. “How can you talk so badly of Alaghôn and other cities if you’ve never seen one?”

Haarn looked at her. “Have you ever been bitten by a poisonous viper?”

“Yes.”

“You know the poison will kill you if left untreated.” “Of course,” Druz agreed as she worked at her own bonds.

She found no looseness in the leather ties. Her aggravation at the druid increased, but she knew it was a byproduct of her own helplessness. Railing at their slaver captors wouldn’t be safe or satisfying, and the druid’s chain of logic eluded her.

“If you didn’t see the viper that bit you,” Haarn asked,

“do you believe that the poison would kill you just as cer-tainlyT “Yes.”

“That’s how I feel about the people I’ve met who come from cities. I don’t have to see their cities to know that they’re unacceptable.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“I don’t have to be fair,” Haarn said, then he started chanting.

The guttural words sounded incredibly old and harsh to Druz, but she felt the magic in them. During her sojourn as a sellsword she’d had several occasions to work around combat mages. Once at a fair in Westgate a seer had told Druz that she carried a hint of magic about her. Druz had chosen not to pursue that possibility—she didn’t much care for magic, and mage schools were expensive—but she’d always known when magic was working around her, if it was close or if it was strong.

She knew the magic Haarn used was powerful just by the way it prickled her skin and tightened the hair at the nape of her neck. He spoke a single word at the end of the chant and a sudden cold feeling stabbed into Druz’s stomach.

Haarn’s features started to melt, collapsing and flowing like a beeswax candle. Feathers took the place of flesh as the druid dwindled in on himself, becoming smaller and smaller. In a matter of heartbeats, a great horned owl stood on clawed feet where the druid had been sitting only an instant before. The leather fetters lay on the ground.

The owl unfurled its great wings and leaped up. Though the winged predator’s weight prevented it from speedily gaining ascent, the owl flew nevertheless. The druid in owl form sped toward the five slavers gathered around the cookfire. Druz heard the wings beat the air as the owl sailed over the sleeping slavers.

One of the slavers noticed the owl’s approach and cried out in alarm as he dragged at the sword sheathed at his side. Without hesitation, Haarn raked his owl’s claws across the man’s face, savaging his features into a bloody

ruin and narrowly avoiding the sword blow that cleaved the air for him.

The slaver fell back, squealing in pain and fear. The other slavers grabbed for their weapons and shouted an alarm. Even as the rousing slavers struggled to come to their feet and react, the huge brown bear broke the tree line around the clearing and charged into the camp. The bear roared and the sound was deafening.

The slavers yelled in fear and called on their gods. In the next instant, the bear was among them, flailing and rending with its great claws and fangs. Men dropped away from the bear’s attack, and many of them never moved again. The bear was as vicious as it was relentless.

Haarn, in owl form, attacked a man who had fitted a crossbow to his shoulder and was taking aim at the bear.

The slaver dropped his weapon and screamed, “My eyes! My eyes!”

He stumbled back and fell into one of the campfires. Smoldering embers rose into the night air along with the man’s renewed screams of pain.

The chain holding Druz’s leather restraints jerked. She glanced down the line of slaves and saw that most of them had roused. Three of the men grabbed rocks from the ground and stood ready to defend themselves. Druz pulled at the leather binding her, but there was no way to get free. She watched helplessly, knowing that if the druid wasn’t successful in killing the slavers, he might have doomed them all to harsh deaths.

The owl cut the air and glided over a small wagon that sat at a tree on the other side of the camp. A pair of horses neighed loudly and fought against the ropes and hobbles that held them. The owl dropped from treetop level and plummeted with folded wings. The druid touched the ground again in human form.

Haarn raced to the small wagon and went through one of the chests in the back. He located his scimitar and a small kit that Druz assumed he’d worn under his blouse because she hadn’t seen it earlier. He also took out her sword belt. Firelight danced across his features and the

wild black hair that brushed his shoulders. His face was cold and impassive, and the absence of emotion—fear or anger—made him appear like an alien thing.

The bear roared and growled deep in its huge chest as a crossbow quarrel took it high in one shoulder. The offending sliver of wood and fletching looked incredibly small against the bulk of the ursine. Turning its broad head, the bear snapped at the quarrel and bit part of it off, leaving only a few inches embedded in its flesh.

Haarn threw himself into the attack. Firelight glinted along the scimitar’s length as the druid engaged one of the slavers. The fight lasted only a moment. Perhaps the druid had never been to a city to accept proper tutelage, but his bladework was some of the best Druz had ever seen.

Fiery red lightning strobed across the night sky like a hag’s withered claws. Druz smelled the change in the weather as the humid heat that had plagued the day suddenly chilled. For a moment she believed the druid might have summoned the weather change, and she knew the slavers probably believed that as well.

Out of over twenty men that Druz had counted, a dozen lay stretched out on the ground. Many of them never moved, and the others wouldn’t be getting to their feet soon, nor were they in any kind of shape to resume the fight.

Twisting viciously, the druid avoided a desperate sword cut from his opponent. Still carrying Druz’s sword in his other hand, the druid whirled and brought his scimitar around in a flash that was almost too fast for even Druz’s eyes to follow in the uncertain light. The scimitar’s last few inches slashed through the slaver’s throat.

Crimson bubbled down the man’s shirtfront as he dropped his blade and reached for his throat. Druz knew from experience that the slaver wasn’t going to survive the cut.

Coldly, the druid stepped forward as the dying man dropped to his knees. Haarn’s attention was already focused on his next opponent. He stepped forward and took his place at the bear’s side with a graceful ease that showed

years of experience.

The remaining slavers broke and pulled back.

The slaver leader, Brugar, called the surviving men to him, holding his battle-axe in two hands before him.

“Form up a damn line!” he called. “Do it now or the damned forest elf is gonna gut you all!”

The men scrambled, pulling into a loose formation behind their leader.

Haarn threw Druz’s sword belt over to her. Kneeling, the druid plucked a throwing knife from a dead man left stretched out by one of the bear’s blows. His eyes never left the slavers as he tore away a piece of the dead man’s red shirt.

Standing with the piece of red cloth trapped between his fingers, the druid spoke words in a guttural tongue. The red cloth frayed in the whipping winds that preceded the cannonade of thunder that shook the earth. Lightning threaded across the wine-dark sky again, briefly illuminating the camp and the horror it had become as if in the brightest day.

One of the men tied to the chain darted forward, intent on daiming Druz’s sword belt. She turned on the man, catching his eyes with hers.

“No,” she commanded.

She felt pity for the people bound to the chain, but she knew from experience that she couldn’t do them any good if she wasn’t able to take care of herself.

The man backed away resentfully and said, “If they get the chance, they’re likely to kill us now that you people have interfered.”

Interfered? Druz bridled at the comment, then pushed it out of her mind. During her years of service she’d sometimes found herself cursed by the same people who’d thanked her for her help at first. It had gone the other way too when an engagement played out well.

Druz gripped her sword hilt and slid the weapon free of its scabbard. Holding the sword trapped between her knees, she slid the leather binding her wrists against the sharp edge. The leather parted like a spider’s web. Still, her hands

had numbed and she knew she couldn’t properly wield the weapon, so she made herself wait.

One of the slavers reloaded the crossbow he held while the others screamed at him to hurry.

“Haarn!” Druz called out, seeing that the druid was praying again and might not have seen the threat.

She became aware of a distinct buzzing noise that cut through the silence left after the thunderous cracks. Even as the crossbowman brought his weapon up, a swirling mass of flying beetles slammed into him. The insects cut at the slaver’s flesh. Bright drops of blood streamed from his face and arms. The beetles clustered to the man, covering him the way bees swarmed over a honeycomb.

The slaver threw the crossbow down and tried to flee, but the flying beetles pursued him. He didn’t go a half dozen steps before he tripped and fell, seemingly weighed down by the heavy mass of beetles clinging to him. The man stopped writhing and fighting in seconds, and chill horror cut through Druz as she realized she didn’t know if the man was alive or dead.

The bear growled a challenge and started forward. Almost carelessly, the druid reached out and caught up a handful of fur.

“No, my friend,” he said softly, holding onto the massive ursine.

The bear twisted its wedge-shaped head and growled again. It sounded as if the bear was protesting the fate of the slavers.

“Kill them,” Brugar snarled, starting forward.

Druz took up her weapon. Though feeling hadn’t quite returned, she knew she couldn’t leave the druid standing against the slavers on his own.