The Jewel of Turmish

by Odom, Mel

  “She was wrong, and she was selfish,” Ettrian croaked, trying to make his voice fierce.

  Looking at his father, Haarn remembered how strong he’d thought the man had been. He was a skilled druid, master of the quarterstaff and learned in his spells. The Elder Circle of the Emerald Enclave respected his opinion and sometimes sought his advice regarding events going on in lands under or near his custodianship, but there was a weakness in him. Haarn had seen that, too.

  “Yes, Father,” Haarn whispered, feeling the hot flash of tears claw at the back of his eyes.

  He wished he thought better of the woman who’d birthed him. If she had only betrayed him, Haarn didn’t think he’d have held her actions so much against her—if it hadn’t been for the way it all but robbed him of a father as well.

  “She was so pretty,” the elf whispered.

  Haarn took his father’s hot hand and squeezed gently. He wished Druz wasn’t there to see his father in this moment of weakness.

  Ettrian held his hand weakly, but the grip was still there, stronger than the day before. A moment passed, and the rhythm of Ettrian’s breathing told Haarn that his father slept. He released his father’s hand then used the waterskin to make a poultice for Ettrian’s forehead.

  Haarn prayed to Silvanus, put his hands on his father’s body, and released the magic. The power flowed from his heart, through his arms, and out his palms. An incandescent blue light flowed along his father’s body, though Haarn was sure no one else could see it. His magic was for his eyes alone, and so the experience had been but for things that affected the physical world, but anyone could see how Ettrian’s wounds healed so much in just that brief contact, how the scabs dried and started to turn loose of their moorings in his father’s flesh.

  Haarn sat back against the rock wall and took deep breaths. His body shook, but he gave thanks to Silvanus for providing him the power to heal. When he opened his eyes, Druz was looking at him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Haarn resented the question. She always seemed to be prying, trying to find the weak and uncertain parts of him.

  “Why would I not be all right?”

  A hard look flashed through her eyes and she said, “Gods, but you’re a stubborn man, Haarn Brightoak. I was only asking because I’m worried about you. You were injured as well, and you’ve spent every waking moment taking care of us—your father, Broadfoot, and me—though I can take care of myself.”

  Anger flickered in Haarn’s stomach and he considered reminding her how he’d had to show her where to find nuts, berries, and edible mushrooms. He refrained through a supreme effort of will.

  “There’s no reason to worry about me,” he said.

  She wanted to object—he saw that in her face—but she didn’t. Instead, she drew her knees up higher and wrapped her arms around them.

  “I know that,” she said. “I guess what bothers me most is that I feel like a burden.”

  The sudden change in her thinking caught Haarn offbalance. He didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m not used to feeling like that,” Druz went on. “I’m a good sellsword. No one has ever said they didn’t get what they paid for.”

  She stopped herself and shrugged.

  “Well, hardly anyone,” she continued, “and that was through no fault of my own. I fought for those people and bled for those people, but winning what they wanted wasn’t possible.”

  Haarn leaned forward and fed the campfire from a small pile of sticks and broken branches they’d gathered the day before.

  “You’re not a burden.”

  She looked up at him. Haarn felt uncomfortable.

  “If it weren’t for you,” he explained, “I wouldn’t have been able to rest while tending to my father.”

  “You’ve rested very little.”

  “I wouldn’t have rested at all if you hadn’t been here.”

  Druz nodded and said, “Thank you.”

  Haarn watched her for a while, expecting more questions. Broadfoot’s and Ettrian’s breathing filled the overhang over the snap and crackle of the campfire. After a time, the sound lulled Haarn. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He couldn’t have had them closed for very long at all before the woman spoke again.

  “What happened to your mother?” she asked.

  Slowly, Haarn opened his eyes and looked at her. An uncomfortable expression filled her face.

  “I mean, if you don’t mind saying. It’s just that your conversation with your father made me curious. Staying quiet all the time … I’m used to having someplace to go, people to talk with, but I’ve just been sitting here for the last day and a half.”

  Haarn tried to think of what to say, whether to answer her question or to tell her it was none of her business.

  “I’m sorry,” Druz said. “Obviously I’ve stepped over a line here. You go on back to sleep and I’ll watch the fire.”

  Irritation filled Haarn. He wanted nothing more than for the woman to be quiet. Problems already danced in his head regarding his father’s health and what the return of Borran Klosk might herald. He didn’t need to rake over the coals of past hurts, but he didn’t like the fact that she sat there feeling alone. He knew how to keep the peace within himself, but she was out of her element and not necessarily among friends.

  “My mother,” Haarn said, “deserted us.”

  “Why?”

  Haarn hesitated.

  “Maybe that wasn’t a good question,” she said quickly.

  Haarn knew she wanted to know, and he wanted her to know. He looked at her, realizing she was more like his mother than he wanted to admit.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Druz nodded.

  Haarn drew in a deep breath and assembled his thoughts. He’d never talked to anyone about his feelings regarding his mother, and he’d never had the opportunity to talk to someone so like her.

  “My mother was a warrior. I don’t even know where she hailed from.”

  His father never told him and he couldn’t remember his mother ever saying. A twinge of guilt shot through him, but he walled it away with other thoughts and feelings of her that he couldn’t bear to think of.

  “When she left us, she said only that she had to return to where she’d come from, that there were things she’d left undone.”

  “And she never returned?”

  “A few times,” Haarn said. “She stayed away longer and longer each time, until finally one day she didn’t come back at all.”

  “How did your father and mother meet?”

  “She was pursued into the forest by a band of men. My father chose to aid her.”

  “Why?”

  Haarn shrugged. “He never said. I never asked. What was done was done. Silvanus teaches acceptance of things past and a knowledge of things to do now with hopes for a balanced future.”

  “She might have been an outlaw.”

  Haarn nodded, frowning.

  “I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It may well have been true. It’s not as though I haven’t thought that myself. Most civilized people who end up here come because they’ve been chased from the cities by their own kind or because they’re searching for gold or treasure.”

  “Your mother might not have been able to return after her last visit,” Druz said. “Her absence might not have been totally by choice.”

  “I thought she might have been killed, perhaps jailed.”

  Haarn was surprised at how much the old pain and confusion returned to him.

  “If she was a warrior,” Druz said, “she may have signed on to fight somewhere. There’ve been any number of disputes that have drawn mercenaries to Turmish or the Reach.”

  Some, Haarn knew, had pitted mercenaries against the druids of the Emerald Enclave. The possibilities twisted his guts. For his mother to have loved Ettrian and fallen to another druid in battle would have been the cruelest of fates.

  “She might have come fr
om some place on the far side of the sea,” Druz said, as if guessing the twisted tangle of his thoughts. “Maybe she intends to return one day.”

  “It’s been years.”

  That stopped her only for a moment. “Maybe she has returned and was unable to find you or your father.”

  “There are ways for her to get in touch with my father,” Haarn replied, “places she could have left messages. She never has.” He blew out his breath. “There is no excuse for her behavior.”

  Druz eyed him. “Is that you speaking, Haarn, or your father?”

  Anger ran deeply in him then, and he had trouble containing it.

  “Grant me Silvanus’s patience, woman, but you are arrogant.”

  “Not arrogant, Haarn. It doesn’t take a sage to see you’re conflicted in this. Gods’ blood, but you’d have to be if you had any kind of heart—and I know you do—but I also heard your father’s accusation about you finally getting to see a city. I have nothing against your father, but you didn’t deserve that.”

  “You know nothing about what comes between my father and me.”

  “I know enough to make some assumptions. Your father is bitter about loving and losing your mother, but he was brave enough and strong enough to raise you by himself.” Druz eyed him. “Do you want to see a city?”

  Haarn hesitated, wondering if she knew him well enough after the past few days to know a lie from him if she heard it. He started to speak, caught himself, then said, “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know if you want to see one, or you don’t know if you want to deal with your father’s feelings when he finds out you want to see one?”

  Haarn didn’t answer.

  Druz sighed and wrapped her arms more tightly around her legs.

  “I grew up in Suzail,” she said.

  The name meant nothing to Haarn. He didn’t suppose he’d ever met anyone from there before, or perhaps they hadn’t cared for anyone to know.

  “It’s the capital city of Cormyr on the Lake of Dragons,” she explained.

  “I’ve heard of Cormyr.” Actually, Haarn had heard very little.

  “I grew up in a small house,” Druz said. “My father was a blacksmith, a man good with armor and arms, which is a craft that will keep a man hale and hearty in Cormyr, but there are enough skilled craftsmen there that he was never going to get rich. Still, he provided for all nine children and his wife.”

  She gazed into the fire, and Haarn sensed that she had hurts of her own.

  “I was the fourth in the line of children,” she continued, “and the first girl. My three older brothers all worked with my father. My mother thought I would provide help in caring for the children and keeping house, but I had my own interests.”

  Haarn sat and listened to her, amazed at how soothing her voice could be after thinking for days only about how she could drone on and on.

  “When it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be the housekeeper my mother wanted and that Josile, the girl next to me, absolutely loved those things, she was given the chores and I got the opportunity to work with my father in the smithy.”

  “You found that work preferable?” Haarn asked.

  “For a time,” Druz admitted. “I was a fair hand at repairing armor and hammering out horseshoes, but I came in contact with men and women who’d traveled around all of Faerûn. Suzail, as large as it had seemed to me, was only a stopping place for them, a waystation while they rested to continue their travels to far-away destinations. One day, after I was grown, or at least thought I was, I decided I wanted to travel. Over the years, I’d been learning swordcraft from anyone who’d teach me. I learned well, and some said I had a talent for it.”

  Haarn agreed, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

  “One night I left Cormyr, caught the first ship that would hire me on as a sellsword,” Druz said, “and I began making my way as a mercenary.”

  “Have you been back to see your family?” Haarn asked.

  “Several times.”

  “What did your mother and father think about the life you’d chosen?”

  “They didn’t like it,” Druz said. “They still don’t, but they know I’m happy. I’m getting to travel, and the things I fight for—” She wrinkled her nose. “—usually, the things I fight for are of my own choosing and causes I believe in. It’s not a life for everyone, but it’s the life I chose. That’s why I’m telling you this, Haarn.

  “Maybe the cities aren’t to your father’s liking, and maybe they won’t be to yours, but you shouldn’t have to feel guilty about wanting to see them and explore those ties to your mother. I mean no disrespect for your father. Please understand that.”

  Some of Haarn’s anger and resistance went away, and he thought perhaps he did understand, though he wasn’t certain why Druz would be so adamant about telling him.

  “If you ever did get curious about cities and wanted to see one,” Druz said, “and if I were available to show you one, I … I think I’d like that very much.”

  She glanced away from him, as if unable to any longer hold his gaze.

  Haarn looked at his father’s sleeping form. Normally elves didn’t sleep, just went into a meditative trance for four hours or so every day. He could never recall his father sleeping.

  “He loved her very much, didn’t he?” Druz asked some time later.

  “Yes,” Haarn whispered. “Losing her almost killed him.”

  “He’d never known that kind of love before? I know elves are long-lived.”

  “If he has, he’s never mentioned it.”

  “And he’s never loved like that again?”

  “No.”

  Haarn fed more wood to the fire, basking in the warm radiance.

  “Not many people are fortunate to know a love like that,” Druz said.

  “Love like that,” Haarn said, meaning it, “is a terrible thing.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  He gazed at her, surprised by the intensity in her eyes.

  “I’ve seen what it can do to people.”

  “You’ve only seen what it did to your father. Love like that is special, not something easily found.”

  The tone in her voice suggested that she’d had more than a passing interest in the subject.

  “Love like that is a death trap. Better to find someone you like, share time together, then be on about your business.”

  “And you practice that, Haarn?”

  Druz’s voice carried a biting chill to it that was worse than anything outside the protection of the lean-to.

  Haarn looked at her, seeing the challenge there and not totally understanding it. He let his breath out when his lungs started to ache, not even knowing he’d been holding his breath.

  “No,” he answered. “That’s not what I practice.”

  A smile, partly coy and partly relieved, played on Druz’s lips and she asked, “Have you ever been with a woman, Haarn?”

  Haarn’s face burned and he couldn’t believe his concern for his father and their forced encampment in the lean-to had led them to this subject.

  “Now you’re stepping over boundaries.”

  A triumphant gleam showed in Druz’s eyes and Haarn couldn’t understand it at all.

  “I withdraw the question,” she said, “and offer my apologies.”

  Haarn nodded, feeling only a little relieved.

  “Love like your father and mother had isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Druz said. “Wolves mate for life.”

  “Stonefur mated for life,” Haarn said coldly, “and his mate attacked you. You killed her without a second’s thought.”

  His words visibly stung Druz. Her face pinched shut. Glancing down, she pulled her blanket up and turned away from him.

  “Since you’re awake,” she said, “I’m going to sleep now.”

  Haarn watched her do exactly that, and he was irritated at her for raising so many questions in his mind and leaving him with them. He glanced at his father, knowing Et
trian’s presence had triggered some of those questions as well.

  Haarn settled back against the stone wall of the overhang. Never in the past two days had he been so aware of how uncomfortable it was. He gazed at Druz, sleeping so childlike beneath her blanket—except for the naked dagger in her fist—and tried not to think about any of the questions she’d raised within him. It didn’t work, not even when he directed his mind to prayers to Silvanus.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Borran Klosk stood on Mistress Talia’s flying deck, scanning the dark ruins of the Whamite Isles. Lightning seared the sky as light rain continued to fall. At least the sea had quieted.

  The ship had been taken over days before, perhaps even as much as a tenday—Borran Klosk was not sure. Only corpses revived by the mohrg’s magic crewed the ship.

  The change from living to dead had not been without problems. Alive, the crew had been adept at manning Mistress Talia, but rising from the dead had cost them something of their skill. Only every now and again was Borran Klosk able to raise one of his kills nearly whole in ability.

  The five he’d created to carry the pieces of Taraketh’s Hive had been very special. One of them, Borran Klosk knew, had almost been destroyed by druids. He’d managed the skeleton’s escape only with the help of the league of wizards Allis served.

  Lightning burned the heavens again, but nothing disturbed the surface of the sea. Footsteps sounded on the deck behind him. There was only one person who moved freely about the ship.

  Without looking around at Allis, Borran Klosk asked, “Where are the drowned ones?”

  “Under the sea,” she replied. “They’re probably on their way here now. They hunt anything. From what I’m told, even the fish no longer come here.”

  “We need to go in closer.”

  “If we do,” she said, coming up to the railing where he stood, “we run the risk of being overrun by their numbers before you’re able to control them.”

  Borran Klosk raised his arm and regarded the pink and white coral shell that encased his arm. It looked so simple, so powerless. If he hadn’t felt the magic in it, he wouldn’t have believed it could do what she promised. He looked back out to sea, trying to discern some movement in the rolling troughs of water, but there was none.