The Legend Of Deathwalker By David Gemmell

Druss arrived first. ‘What happened?’ he asked, kneeling beside his friend.

‘We were talking, and he collapsed. Is he subject to fits?’

‘No.’ Druss swore softly. ‘His heart is barely beating.’ Talisman glanced at the axeman, and noted the fear on his broad, bearded face. Nosta Khan arrived, and Talisman saw his gimlet eyes fasten to the sagging name-plate on the coffin.

‘The Eyes . . . ?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Talisman, and told him what they had found.

‘You fool!’ hissed Nosta Khan. ‘I should have been summoned.’

‘It was just a medicine pouch. There were no jewels,’ Talisman responded, feeling his anger rise.

‘It is the medicine pouch of a shaman,’ snapped Nosta Khan. ‘A spell has been placed upon it.’

‘I touched it also, and nothing has happened to me,’ argued Talisman.

The little shaman knelt beside Sieben, prying open the fingers of his right hand. The knuckle-bones lay there, but now they were white and pure – the black symbols having transferred to the skin of Sieben’s palm. ‘But the bag split,’ said Nosta Khan, ‘and it was not you who lifted the Seeing Bones.’

The axeman rose, towering over Nosta Khan. ‘I do not care who is at fault,’ he said, his voice dangerously even, his pale eyes glittering. ‘What I want is for you to bring him back. Now!’

Sensing danger, Nosta Khan felt a moment of panic as he looked into the axeman’s cold eyes. Placing his hand over his heart, he whispered two words of power. Druss stiffened and groaned. The spell was an old one, and shackled the victim in chains of fiery pain. Any attempt on Druss’s part to move would bring colossal agony and a subsequent loss of consciousness. Now, thought Nosta Khan triumphantly, let this Drenai gajin feel the power of the Nadir! The shaman was about to speak when Druss gave a low, guttural growl. His eyes blazed and his hand snaked out, huge fingers grabbing Nosta Khan by the throat and lifting him into the air. The little man kicked out helplessly, as through a sea of pain Druss spoke: ‘Lift the . . . spell, little man . . . or . . . I’ll snap . . . your neck!’ Talisman drew his knife and jumped to the shaman’s defence. ‘One more move and he dies,’ warned the axeman. Nosta Khan gave a strangled gasp, and managed to speak three words in a tongue neither Druss nor Talisman recognized. Druss’s pain vanished. Dropping the shaman, he stabbed a finger into the little man’s chest. ‘You ever do anything like that again, you ugly dwarf, and I’ll kill you!’

Talisman could see the shock and terror on Nosta Khan’s face. ‘We are all friends here,’ he said softly, sheathing his knife and stepping between Nosta Khan and the menacing figure of Druss. ‘Let us think of what is to be done.’

Nosta Khan rubbed his bruised throat. He was astonished, and could barely gather his thoughts. The spell had worked, he knew this. It was not possible that a mortal man could overcome such agony. Aware that both men were waiting for him to speak, he forced himself to concentrate and lifted the white knuckle-bones, holding them tightly in his fist. ‘His soul has been drawn out,’ he said, his voice croaking. ‘The medicine pouch belonged to Shaoshad the renegade. He was the shaman who stole the Eyes – may his soul be for ever accursed and burn in ten thousand fires!’

‘Why would he hide it here?’ asked Talisman. ‘What purpose did it serve?’

‘I do not know. But let us see if we can reverse his spell.’ Taking Sieben’s limp hand in his own, he began to chant.

Sieben fell for an eternity, spinning and turning, then awoke with a start. He was lying beside a fire, set at the centre of a circle of standing stones. An old man was sitting by the small blaze. Naked, but with a bulging bag hanging from one thin shoulder, he had two long wispy beards growing from both sides of his chin, and reaching his scrawny chest; his hair was shaved on the left side of his head, and gathered into a tight braid on his right.