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.
Kitiara's fingers would not grasp the amethyst. They were already stiff and cold. Sturm gently lifted the magic crystal.
Was there enough power in it to save Kit's life? Did he, a sworn opponent of magic, dare use it to heal her?
Her breath came short, in hard, ragged gasps. Death had
Kitiara in its grasp. There was no time to debate. Sturm closed the amethyst in his fist and placed his other hand on
Kitiara's injured shoulder.
"Forgive me, father," he whispered. "This is for her life."
The stone was hot for the merest second, but not enough to burn him. Kitiara gave a sharp cry and then went limp in his arms. He thought he was too late, that she was dead.
Sturm opened his fingers, to see that the amethyst was clear again. He peeled back the bloody cloth over Kit's wound and saw that it was healed.
Smoke from the hatch was getting thicker. Sturm put an arm under Kitiara's legs and staggered to his feet. Muffled screams filtering through the open hatch proved that the
Gharm hadn't yet overcome the fire.
The smoke got so bad that Sturm retreated to the poop deck, carrying Kitiara. The wind switched from port to star board, never allowing the ship to drive clear of the fumes.
When the first tongues of flame licked out of the hold,
Sturm felt real fear. How could they escape if the ship was on fire? The Werival's longboat was missing.
At that moment, the wall of rain off the starboard bow parted, and out came the brown hull of the Cloudmaster.
The flying ship was skimming over the waves so low that a few high swells lapped the bottom of her hull. Sturm saw the gnomes at the bow, waving white handkerchiefs.
A great shout of triumph escaped his throat. "Kit, wake up!" he cried. "Kit, the gnomes are coming! We're saved!"
Fire blasted out of the fore hatch, and with it, the figure of the Gharm. Blazing from head to toe, the hideous ghoul bounced from bulwark to bulwark, shrieking its cursed life away. Unable to bear the burning any longer, the ghoul finally dived into the churning waves.
The bows were burning now, and the foremast was begin ning to smolder. The Cloudmaster drifted past the stern.
Sturm left Kitiara lying on the deck and grabbed a boat hook from the rail. As the gnome ship coasted slowly along the port side, Sturm hooked it and drew it tightly to the car avel.
The gnomes clutched the Werival's sides as Sturm lifted the limp Kitiara over his shoulder. He sprinted for the rail and leaped, one foot kicking the rail top as he went. The gnomes let go, and the Cloudmaster sank toward the sea.
"Too much weight!" Wingover cried. "Out ballast!'
Amidships, Sighter, Cutwood, and Birdcall threw doors, window glass, and other loose objects over the side. The ship rose again into the low clouds.
"W-welcome aboard!" Stutts said heartily.
"Glad to be here," Sturm said with genuine relief. He lay sprawled on the deck.
"What happened down there? asked Wingover.
"It's a long story."
"Is the lady well? She seems unconscious," said Sighter.
He lifted one of her arms and let it fall.
"She'll be all right," Sturm said. The Cloudmaster broke through the top of the clouds. Below, the cyclone's whirling mass spread out in all its glory. The gnomes set the sails and put the setting sun to their backs.
"It was very clever of you to start a signal fire," Wingover said. "But it got out of hand, didn't it? I mean, you might have destroyed the whole ship before we ever arrived."
Sturm felt a crazy desire to laugh. Instead, he said,
"That's not the way things went." He paused to yawn prodi giously.
"Did you find anything useful on that vessel?" Sighter asked. But by then Sturm was already fast asleep.
Chapter 35
The Road to Garnet
Sturm smelled land: wet soil and flowers and fresh- ly turned fields. The sun was in his eyes. He sat up. He was in the wheelhouse, alone. The windows and doors were gone, as was most of the roof. He went out on deck. At the bow was Sighter, surveying the ground below with his tele scope. Aft, by the former tail post, sat Kitiara, Stutts, Fitter, and Rainspot. Kitiara was talking rapidly and making wild gestures with her hands.