T Lain - The Bloody Eye

Finishing her task in the outhouse, Yddith shrugged at her guard once more and stepped past it to get outside again. She motioned toward the latrine as though she expected the desiccated form to have use of it. The skeleton clacked forward, bending its empty skull to look down into the dark pit. With its attention occupied, the skeleton failed to see Yddith’s hand move, though it did hear her whispered prayer to Pelor for help in what she was about to do. It failed to see the log drift off the stack of firewood behind him. The log rose above the dirt-crusted skull, then smashed downward. For a moment, the skeleton tottered as though it might tumble into the outhouse. Crushed bone burst into powder as the falling log glanced off the skull but snapped through ribs. The monster regained its balance.

“So much for magic,” muttered Yddith.

With her gambit failed, she dropped all pretense and simply turned and ran into the trees. The skeleton, having been clobbered with the log and seeing its prisoner escaping, was no longer confused. It knew clearly what it must do. Unsheathing its broadsword, it stepped around the outhouse. As Yddith plunged through the trees, the skeleton pounded the flat of its sword against the rusted metal plate that served it as chest armor, raising the alarm that its voiceless throat could not.

As Yddith sped through the trees with tiny branches slapping at her face and punctuating her flight with stinging scratches, the skeleton marched at a doubled pace behind her. Where Yddith’s pace let the branches perform their tattooing at will, the skeleton hacked away any brush obstructing its march.

Yddith focused on the sound of the skeleton’s inexorable pursuit. Worse, she heard the occasional grunting of a boar and knew that one of the large orcs had joined the chase. At irregular intervals, she heard the skeleton pounding the flat of its sword against its armor and she knew others would be following. Worst of all, she felt herself tiring. Even the power of fear could not keep her moving all night.

“So much for running,” she gasped.

Then, she recognized where she was. She was near the cliff where so many shepherds lost sheep during the spring migration. The forest grew right up to the lip of the bluff and the edge itself was obscured by heavy brush. More importantly, there was a large mulberry tree with limbs that stretched up and over the cliff. She ran directly for it, but instead of tumbling over the edge like a confused sheep, she climbed the tree and winnowed her way up into its leafy canopy.

As the skeleton marched toward her position, Yddith found herself begging for Pelor’s intervention once again. She held her breath as the brittle soldier passed by. She prayed even more fervently as she heard others pass by, but gulped back fear involuntarily as she heard the war boar approaching. Remembering her sorceress mentor, Yddith recalled another trick. She picked and pulled at her cloak till she had a small ball of frayed wool yarn. She held it to the tip of her finger, spoke the power word as a harsh whisper, and blew the ball of wool in the direction where she wanted to hear the sound. All of her concentration was focused on creating the sound of a body running through the brush along the top of the cliff.

She heard the orc grunt in triumph and the hooves of the war boar pounding the dirt as her pursuer charged toward the cliff. She breathed a silent prayer of relief as the boar stumbled at the edge and plunged through the concealing brush into empty air. The magical sound invoked by Yddith was replaced by the crashing, cracking, and smashing of boar and rider tumbling to their deaths.

“Thank you, Pelor,” whispered Yddith as she climbed down the mulberry tree and disappeared into the forest ahead of the skeletons who would inevitably return to investigate the noise.

Confident that she was far enough ahead of the skeletons that she could use the woods to her advantage, Yddith began weaving through the forest toward Pelor’s temple. If anyone could save Pergue from this troupe of undead, it would be the priests of the benevolent sun god.

“Praise Pelor!” she intoned as she realized what she had already accomplished on behalf of her neighbors and friends.

The silver dagger’s edge glowed, reflecting the sickening aura of reddish-orange that permeated the cavern. Calmet felt a surge of power as he started his thrust toward the altar and its unwilling victim. His body fluctuated between feeling flushed with heat and trembling with chills as though he were fighting off a fever. His desire for power consumed him. The frightened eye of his victim winced involuntarily and Calmet hesitated.

He hesitated in a weakness he despised. This moment should have been a major triumph. He hesitated just as he observed within the victim’s frightened eye a small, inverted vision of himself—a tiny Calmet thrusting a ceremonial dagger toward the selfsame eye. He hesitated as his peripheral vision caught the smug grin of Archprelate Laud observing with approval. Calmet hated Laud. In spite of all his desire to please the archprelate and gain more power, Calmet still despised the powerful priest who had opened the passage to power for him.

As Calmet hesitated, he remembered. He recalled his island home, where he served as a missionary priest of Pelor, being invaded by Laud and his henchmen. The house, originally intended as the center of a new monastery, was burned to the ground. He suffered again the mocking of Laud as the evil one blasphemed the power of Pelor and denied the god’s power to save Calmet from the transformation that awaited him.

“If Pelor is provident,” he remembered the archprelate smirking, “he is not potent. If Pelor is potent, he is not provident.” Calmet remembered the pain of Laud removing his eye while the villain’s minions restrained him. “He who cannot see with two eyes,” the vile archprelate intoned, “must find the true sight of one eye.”

Laud showed no mercy as he plunged the dagger into Calmet’s eye, setting the priest on a cursed path of bitterness, cruelty, and destruction.

“Of course, Pelor is not provident,” Calmet observed to himself with fresh anger and resentment. “If Pelor cared about his followers, he would have protected me.”

With the same merciless stroke used by Laud against him, Calmet punctured the eye of his victim. He called upon Gruumsh the One-Eyed to share the raw power he was unleashing from his victim and offer true sight to him to compensate for the vision that was sacrificed.

The sickening umber glow intensified. Calmet’s mind fluttered with a sense of raw energy, as though a spiny tentacle had whipped through his brain. He sensed the presence of Gruumsh within his very being. The god’s power coursed through him and Calmet sensed that he was power. Calmet knew that he was born for power and that he would wield it forever. Even Laud’s smug expression could not destroy the moment. Calmet shrugged off the superior’s condescension with a sense of pity. If the archprelate was so tired that he would allow others to perform the rituals, the archprelate would eventually weaken to the point where the office and the power could be seized by someone worthy of holding them.

Exulting in the afterglow of the sacrifice, Calmet remembered the words from that fateful night when he was the victim. The archprelate’s words twisted pleasingly in Calmet’s mind.

If Gruumsh is great, sneered the priest to himself with unearned haughtiness, he is not gracious. If Gruumsh is gracious, he is not great!

He laughed to himself as he motioned for the half-blinded sacrifice to be carried back to the lower levels of the cavern.

Gracious? The very concept of a merciful god was no more than a joke. Giving and mercy have nothing to do with Gruumsh, he reflected. They have nothing to do with power! Leave grace to Pelor—if he ever bothers to pay attention!