Unfortunately for Jozan, another head had no such distraction. The teeth punched through armor and into the soft flesh of the man's neck. The cleric faltered, knees buckling, blood splashing down the bright metal. Even though he continued waving his mace at the beast, it was clear that his strength was gone. Mesmerized by the bright red rivulets streaming down from the severed joints of the cleric's armor, Yddith cried aloud to Pelor in despair.
Yddith's cry of panic and desperation caused two things to happen. First, Alhandra sliced her blade through the air with a new confidence. Instead of small, rapid cuts that were having no effect, the paladin raised her sword and stood poised for a mighty stroke. She seemed to be reciting something as she hewed the blade through the hydra's neck.
"Be smooth, not strong!" echoed across the muddy bank of the swamp.
Alhandra's blade cut through the swamp beast's neck and nearly severed the attacking head so that it hung obscenely from the stump of its neck.
But Alhandra wasn't finished with her deadly maneuver. The paladin had leaped forward into the attack, and she allowed the momentum of the blow to carry her past the other heads. The first to snap at her received a savage backhand slash that neatly sheared off its lower jaw, leaving it unable to bite and useless.
Before Yddith could so much as cheer, however, the unthinkable happened. The hydra's remaining head clamped down on Krusk's right shoulder and began pulling the half-orc toward the water. Krusk chopped at the beast again and again, but his arms were pinioned such that his blows were weak and only glanced off the muscled neck.
Not knowing what to do, Yddith yelled for Jozan and Alhandra to help the half-orc. The badly wounded cleric was staggering bravely toward the hydra's head before the words had left Yddith's hps. If matters hadn't been so serious, she might have laughed at the cleric's exaggerated, drunken movements. With his feet planted far apart, Jozan swung his mace unsteadily at the hydra's head with all of his remaining might. The beast shrugged off the puny blow and dragged Krusk toward the murky, bloodstained water.
Foolishly, Yddith grabbed the kitchen knife at her belt and rushed toward the hydra. Fortunately, Alhandra stepped in front of her. The paladin's blade fairly sang as she sliced a third time through the monster's neck. With intense satisfaction, Yddith watched the hydra's last remaining head fly into the putrid, green water of the swamp.
Then, before she could even join Jozan in a hymn of praise to Pelor, she looked up and realized that the battle wasn't over. A group of orcs was approaching through the underbrush, drawn by the sounds of battle. Krusk grunted that more orcs were coming. Alhandra's sword whistled down through the air, spattering hydra blood onto the ground. Jozan performed his healing ritual on himself as Yddith desperately hoped the troops weren't as tough as their monstrous sentinel had been.
13
Calmet slumped in his chair with his head on his writing table. The one-eyed heretic was surrounded by scroll cases of every description stacked haphazardly to either side. Some of the cases were carved from human bone, others were silver, and some merely wood. Some had arcane markings on them, others had carvings of horrifying rituals, and others mere words. They ranged from staggeringly ancient to new. Some Calmet had stolen from the Soldiers of the Sun, the military and monastic order dedicated to Pelor from which Calmet had split.
The cleric had been scrutinizing every scroll, tome, and artifact he could assemble in his search for a solution. Between the gold he had embezzled from his former sect and the gold they had mined during the past few years, he had been able to purchase or commission more sacred, arcane, and damned artifacts than he had ever dreamed possible. Yet, he still couldn't find the answer to his problem. He could find no plan, spell, source of power, or anything else that could help him meet the crushing deadline he faced.
If he didn't figure out a way to finish tunneling into the sacred shrine by the solstice, he knew that the best he could hope for was that Laud would have him fed to the violet fungi and shrieker guarding his inner sanctum. He had walked by the disintegrating corpse of the last unfortunate sacrifice earlier in the day, and felt a flash of pity for the poor, dead slave. Laud could certainly think of more painful ways to express his displeasure if Calmet failed his unforgiving mentor.
"Where there is power, there is Gruumsh!" asserted the heretic, even though he and the homunculus were the only beings in the cavern, and the homunculus communicated with his master by telepathy rather than speech. He sat up and grabbed a piece of stretched skin with faded brown uncials painted onto it and read aloud.
The Eye that cannot see is the Eye that will comprehend.
The Eye with no feeling is the Eye that will judge.
The Eye that cannot move is the Eye that will rule.
Until the Eye that cannot see shall fill with light
And until the Eye that cannot move has been moved,
There shall no Power be.
He reflected on eyes, literal and figurative, of which he had known or heard. His troubled cogitation awakened memories of city gates, spies, narrow inlets, round openings, and gems. Calmet remembered when his own eye was sacrificed. Laud had pricked the eye with the silver dagger and said something like the first line. Perhaps, the ancient oracle referred to those who had given their left eyes, willingly or unwillingly, in Gruumsh' service? That was a possible interpretation. Indeed, it was Laud's preferred interpretation, but it didn't ring true with Calmet. Feeling may have been reduced in his empty eye socket, but if it was touched deeply enough, there was still feeling. He knew that from the times that the cold had penetrated his deformity and caused icy headaches to clamp around his brain like one of the screwlike devices Laud used to torture unwilling informants. Physical sight may have been bartered for spiritual insight, as Laud had claimed, but there was still feeling, and that meant the oracle was not referring only to the servants of Gruumsh.
Calmet preferred to believe that the Eye was an artifact. It might be a carved eye of jade, reflecting the green glow that often accompanied manifestations of Gruumsh's power. It might be a banner with Gruumsh's eye depicted on the unfurled standard. Calmet doubted that. A banner with an eye depicted on it would not be known as an eye, but as the bearer of the eye or the symbol of an eye. Calmet's theory was that the eye with no feeling was a necklace with a sacred stone that looked like an eye. After all, the prophecy stated that the eye could not see, but it would fill with light.
His concentration was diverted when someone spoke. It was not the telepathic warning often radiated by the homunculus, but as though someone had whispered his name. A shiver ran across the priest's body like rivulets of cold perspiration and he clearly heard Laud whisper, "Meet me in the main passage, immediately."
The apostate priest shuddered. Archprelate Laud was a significant distance away from him, but the elder priest had still managed to summon Calmet from his inner sanctum. Calmet felt stripped and violated as if he were one of the slaves being disciplined in front of the others. A sense of helplessness stirred through his mind and body and the once proud priest, the apostate who abandoned the sun god for the dark promise of power, slumped in despair.