Free The Lost Library of Cormanthyr by Mel Odom Page B

at once, though the ghoul continued to cry out in rage.
    Baylee stood on trembling legs. He wiped his mouth and blood streaked his arm. He glanced at the azmyth bat hanging from the ceiling. Thank you, Xuxa.
    The bat chuckled warmly, then dropped and flapped its wings, flying back up out of the well.
    Jaeleen looked pale as she walked toward the ranger. She held her lamp high. “Is it dead?”
    “Dead or dying,” Baylee growled. Every shadow stubbornly clinging to the inside of the chamber looked suspicious now. He picked his torch up from the ground. “Help me gather some of the clothing that still covers these hapless souls.”
    In a few moments, with Baylee doing the bulk of the work because Jaeleen was busily stripping whatever jewelry and coin purses she found among the dead, they had a pile of clothing in the center of the chamber. The ranger tossed the stub of his small torch into the clothing, then lit another.
    The clothing burned quickly, throwing out heat that made the chamber suddenly sweltering and filling the air with eye-burning and throat-searing smoke. They worked quickly, without talking.
    Baylee tried to keep track of what prizes the woman gathered, but found himself unable to. Her hands moved as quickly and skillfully as any thief’s. And the items she procured disappeared, he noticed, not only into the bag she carried, but into her clothing as well. Baylee soon saw that her clothing was littered with concealed pockets he’d never known about.
    The ranger’s own searchings were more limited. The object he sought wasn’t jewelry or made of gold or silver or precious gems. In truth, he was surprised at how much remained to be claimed among the victims.
    It was a sacrificial well, Xuxa intruded into his thoughts from above, and Vaprak is a jealous and vicious god. He would have known if the trollkin stripped their victims of their wealth and claimed it as their own. It probably only took Vaprak killing a semi-loyal follower or two before his displeasure was made clear and the others fell in line with his demands.
    Going through the accumulated bones took more time than Baylee had at first guessed. From the mention in the herbalist’s book, he had come expecting to find a number of victims. The section in the book had been written before Lord Woodbrand had broken the hold the trollkin had on the land. The ranger had figured some families of the deceased would have exhumed the bodies for proper burial.
    Perhaps there were other magicks at work, Xuxa said. It is possible that not even Lord Woodbrand knew of the well. Not all of the trollkin were as devout as the ones who built and maintained the well.
    True. When we get back to Waymoot, I’m going to mention the location of this well to some of the town criers, and to Woodbrand himself. Finished with the current pile of bodies, Baylee started back among the ones Jaeleen had gone through.
    The woman straightened, rubbing her back as if it ached. Dust stained her face, but Baylee found even that alluring.
    “I’ve already gone through those,” Jaeleen stated. Her eyes covetously roved over the bodies Baylee had examined. “You won’t find anything of worth there.”
    “I look for different things than you,” Baylee replied.
    “What? A scroll with a treatise on philosophy? A map concerning trade routes that have long been discarded for one reason or another? The pathetic scribblings of some farmer who learned to compose his thoughts and put them down in ink?” Jaeleen snorted her disbelief. “Treasure are items you can trade. Gold, silver, gems, maybe an occasional magic item that you don’t have a use for yourself, those are treasures.”
    It hurt Baylee to hear the woman speak so. When he had been younger, still protectively under Fannt Golsway’s wing, to listen to her talk of the places she’d been, the things she’d seen, had seemed the pinnacle of achievement any young man with adventuring on his mind could hope for. He’d heard the