Drott said we should stay and fight. After we killed the scaly folk, he said, we could take back all the weapons we'd sold them and sell them again.
"There was no battle. The dark cleric came from his place on the stern of the dragonship and threw his arms wide.
'Go, greedy vermin, and take away your dishonored gold. I curse you and yours forever! Those who lust for gold shall lust for the flesh of their fellows, those who jeer at the min ions of the Dark Queen shall know her wrath! They shall hear her mocking laughter forever! ' he said.
"It was a terrible curse, and the full weight of it did not fall on us for some weeks. We left the shores of Coastlund for
Sancrist, but never saw land again. Strange, circular winds blew us farther and farther from land. The crew began to hear voices — a woman laughing — and they slowly went mad. The few healthy sailors that remained chained the mad ones below decks. Food and water dwindled, but try as we might, we could not bring the Werival to shore.
"Drott changed. He had always been a vain man, proud of his quick mind and good looks. Now he ceased to care for himself, allowing his beard to grow and his clothes to fall to tatters. The meat shrank on his bones and his skin whitened to a ghastly color. As the days passed, my first mate and friend perished as the hideous curse worked upon his wretched body. Drott prowled below, snaring rats in his hands and eating them alive. Soon rats were not enough for him. He had become a Gharm, a ravenous ghoul that feeds on the flesh of men."
"Why didn't you kill him?" Kitiara said sharply. The drumming of feet had stopped, but they could still hear the
Gharm's cackle as the monster capered madly in the rigging.
"I could not, for as much as his new form disgusted me, I pitied my lost friend. The crew, poor wretches, learned to keep him at bay by giving him those who died of madness and starvation. When there were only five sound men left, they decided to try to put an end to the Gharm. Our young cleric, Novantumus, wove a temporary protective spell.
The sailors armed themselves and drove the Gharm to the fore end of the ship with fire and sword. Novantumus meant to imprison the fiend in the anchor locker, and he fashioned a magic seal to keep it in. The Gharm attacked the men savagely and killed them one by one. With his life's blood spilling on the deck, the brave Novantumus succeed ed in compelling the Gharm into the locker. I alone lived, and here at my table I died of hunger, thirst, and despair."
The ghost had shrunk throughout his telling, and the cold glare that it cast had diminished to a firefly's sparkle. Sturm was deeply sorry for the captain.
"One question," said Kitiara. She picked up the skull that had been set between the captain's feet. "Who is this?"
"That was Drott's head. One of the sailors cut it off before the Gharm killed him."
"But that thing out there has a head!"
"A new one it grew afterward."
Sturm said, "Can the Gharm be killed?"
The ghost shriveled to a slender coil of white mist. "Not by steel, iron, or bronze," it said, a tiny, far-off voice. "Only purifying fire will make this ship clean." With those final words, the ghost vanished.
"This is wonderful," Kitiara said bitterly. "A monster we can't kill unless we burn up the ship that's keeping us out of the water!"
"What we must do is stay alive until the storm ends,"
Sturm said. "The gnomes will be looking for us and we'll be able to leave this cursed ship — " A splintering sound halted
Sturm in midsentence. The Gharm had rammed one bony, clawed arm through the thin, louvered panel of the cabin door.
"Something tells me our moment of immunity is over!"
Kitiara said. Sturm leaped up from the table, drawing his sword in one smooth motion. He brought the keen blade down hard on the grasping talons. The Gharm roared in pain and withdrew the stump of its left arm.
"Suffering gods!" Kitiara kicked the severed arm away.
The limb rapidly decayed to bone, and then to dust. The
Gharm put one of its baleful eyes to the hole that it had made and glared at them. Sturm raised his sword again and the monster backpedaled.
Kitiara went to the cabin's rear and started tearing through the captain's bunk.
"Kit, what are you doing?" he called.
"Don't worry, just keep that damned thing away a minute longer!" He heard wood being split behind him, then felt heat on the back of his neck.
Sturm turned and saw that Kitiara had made a torch from a bunk slat and a strip of ticking. Doused with oil from the captain's lamp and ignited by flint, it blazed furiously.
"Ha! Try this, ghoul!" she shouted, brandishing the flame before the door. The Gharm howled and hissed, its fangs dripping saliva. "I'll give you something to chew on." Kiti ara kicked the smashed door frame open. The rain had almost stopped, but a fierce wind still raged across the open deck. Kitiara dashed out, whipping the torch to and fro like a fencing blade. The Gharm crouched back on its rail-thin haunches, spitting and hissing.
"Kit, be careful!"
"It's my fault this thing is out. I intend to kill it!"
She moved on the ghoul again, forcing it to retreat up the rigging. It hung twenty feet above the deck, giggling in an obscene parody of humanity. Kitiara paced below it, wav ing the torch to keep it bright and hot.
Sturm closed behind her. "Don't let it drop down on you," he counseled.
"If it does, it'll go back up a lot faster than it came down."
The ceiling of black clouds scattered into streams of dirty white as the blue of clear sky shone through. The wind had died down but did not cease. They were in the eye of the cyclone, the calm center of a miles-wide storm.
The Gharm swung over to the port side rigging. Kitiara followed across the deck. She was so intent on keeping the fiend in view that she missed the end of the mainsail Sturm had cut free. The heavy, flapping canvas was soaked with rain, and one corner of it whipped around and slapped Kiti ara between the eyes. She fell backward and lost the torch.
As the sail struck her, the Gharm pounced.
"No!" Sturm cried. He was on the fiend's back in a flash, slashing at its pale, leathery hide. The ghoul had one set of talons deep in Kitiara's shoulder, but Sturm's attack made it let go. He inflicted wounds that would have killed a mortal foe, but the Gharm wasn't slowed. A detached part of
Sturm's mind noted that the ghoul already had grown back the arm that he'd chopped off.
Kitiara pushed herself away from the duel between Sturm and the Gharm. Her shoulder wound burned like Bell crank's vitriol. She crawled to where the torch lay charring the deck. In her pants' pocket she still had the tin can of oil from the captain's storm lamp. At the right moment, when
Sturm gave ground to the monster, she flung the oil over the
Gharm, and with it the torch.
It was scarcely a cupful of oil, but it burned rapidly, and the Gharm yowled in unimaginable pain. It threw itself on the deck and rolled to put out the flames. Failing that, it leaped up and ran forward, burning as it went, and tore off the hatch cover. The Gharm disappeared below, trailing a thin plume of putrid smoke.
Sturm knelt and put an arm around Kitiara. Her teeth chattered. She had been poisoned by the ghoul's vile talons.
"Kitl Kit!" Her eyes were almost completely white, they had rolled so far back in her head. "Kit, listen to me! Don't give up! Fight it! Fight it!"
Her hand came trembling to her throat. There, under the thin fabric of her blouse was the amethyst arrowhead pen dant that Tirolan Ambrodel had given her so many weeks before. Drained of color before they met the gnomes, the crystal's magic had been restored by the days they'd spent on Lunitari for it now was a rich, royal purple. The stone had not surrendered its power upon its return to Krynn.