The Seal of Karga Kul by Alex Irvine

Author:Alex Irvine [Irvine, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 2010-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Their halfling rescuers were a river tribe that raided into the Lightless Marsh whenever the mood took them, it seemed. Few of them spoke a Common that Remy could understand, and the only one among the travelers who could understand their river pidgin was, of course, Kithri—and even she laughed at their odd colloquialisms. “We Blackfall halflings are a very different bunch,” she chuckled. “Intermarriage must bring some raucous festivals.”

“What are they doing this far into the marshes?” Keverel asked. “There’s nothing back here but abomination.”

“According to them, abomination and loot go together like bread and cheese,” Kithri said. She was about to go on when the leader of the halflings spoke up in Common.

“The road is as much waterway here as anything else,” the halfling said, pointing back at the gap in the trees where the submerged Crow Road led on toward Tomb Fork. “So here we are. Would you prefer to dispute further, or shall we make our exit?”

“Exit sounds good to me,” Lucan said. “This is no forest. This is a cesspit.”

The halflings had stowed their boat in the lee of a dying cypress whose girth it would have taken six men linking arms to encircle. The boat was flat-bottomed and broad-beamed, designed to take weight over distance on quiet water. Currently it was empty of cargo save for what looked like a short pyramidal stack of muddy coffins. Remy asked if that was what they were, but everyone he asked pretended not to speak Common. The boat accepted the five adventurers’ weight with no trouble and its pilot Vokoun, at a bow tiller, waved at a half-dozen polers to get them moving.

“There are more yuan-ti than there used to be around here,” the pilot said as they poled their way through the swamp. Along the sides of the raft, archers stayed at the ready. Ahead, there was light—a patch of sky. Remy felt a weight leave his chest as he saw it. They had been closer than he’d thought; how terrible it would have been to die so near the goal … or the next stage in the goal, at any rate. “We run the tributaries all along here,” Vokoun went on, “and dip into the swamps as we hear about this or that ruin that might be worth a look. Usually whatever we find isn’t worth the fight to get it, especially the closer you get to the road. But today our shaman had dreams about the roadside near the fork, so we decided to come and see what might need our attention.” He turned to the group and winked. “Turned out to be you. Should have known you had a halfling with you. That’s probably what the shaman was really dreaming about. Half the time he’s chewed so much kaat that he can’t interpret his own mind.”

Vokoun paused for breath and Biri-Daar jumped in before he could get started again. “Can you take us as far as Iskar’s Landing?”

“Sure, that’s where we’re going anyway. From here, not much choice.

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