It was a few hours before there were any alarms going off in the jungle, mostly because the number of real tuskers near the pool, waterfall, and the lake was pretty low.

  Perhaps not coincidentally, the majority of the tuskers called to the lake had Spawn Points located not far from the lake itself. That meant they reappeared nearby, and could certainly be ordered back quickly as reinforcements… if there was someone alive who could command them to do so!

  This also happened to be the most tainted and diseased ground in all of the Aphus islands, so the real tuskers basically wanted nothing to do with the area, and thus stayed far away. The Summons sitting on their Spawn Points out in the jungle were thickly placed and reinforced one another pretty quickly, but they were Summons, with Summons combat programming. As long as they didn’t make too much noise shouting and dying, and we kept the magical displays down below the treetops so they didn’t carry, we could and did sweep the surrounding terrain slowly and thoroughly.

  Tim, staying down on the ground, was very, very useful to this endeavor. He attracted all their attention, the tuskers converged on him, and we could mass slaughter them fairly easily. He could also kill them with incredible speed, so he towed around his own kill crew of Archers on Disks.

  That wasn’t to say the lads weren’t getting their own experiences in. King Borelean had a team of Royal Knights in here getting in some work, and more impressively, a wagonload of elite spearmen had been brought by Briggs, their layered lines of burning Spears just a hedge of death to any tuskers who dared to charge them. They’d gotten the taste for the fighting helping clear the northern island, and with the Skeeters and Royal Guards watching the flanks, they were a blazing row of thorns moving through the jungle, disposing of the tuskers charging at them and only succeeding in getting themselves impaled on multiple Firephased Spears.

  ---

  I kept an ear on the fights out there, but the Marked were talking carefully, moving with precision and skill, and whole sections of the jungle around us were now clear of tuskers and Burning en vivus, especially around the stream that led out of the lake.

  I’d made up a whole bunch of stone braziers for this, fit them with Vivic Eternal Lights, and left them Burning underneath the water, going after the magic-originated disease and rot from the Tainted tuskers, wiping it away with grace and speed, and starting the slow job of cleaning up the waters and everything downstream.

  I’d also ringed the whole lake proper in yet another thirty-foot high, twenty-foot thick stone wall to keep out any stray tuskers who might show up, or at least make it harder for them to get in. Tim helped by tearing down any palms growing too close to the walls when he came back to take a rest.

  His Fast Healing abilities were more impressive than any Healing spells I could ladle onto him, especially when enhanced with Life Magic to nearly three times their normal speed. They burned a lot of energy, however, and while the Armor helped a lot, it didn’t stop all the damage. By the time he came in for a rest, he was down to half his Health Qi, meaning the tuskers had somehow managed to wear away half a million Health Qi from the big fellow… which probably meant they’d done ten times that much damage to him, all told, and it just hadn’t been able to stop him.

  I was pretty satisfied.

  Princess Kristie was working over a very big cauldron full of boiling water over there, into which the bodies of several improbably thick centipedal obsidian chitticks she’d stumbled across had been peeled, gutted, and dumped, and were now being boiled in something that smelled very spicy and quite incredible. A bunch of vegetables, rice, massive shrimps, strips of remoran meat, lemons, oranges, and I’m not sure what else had gone in, and everybody was trying not to drool just smelling it as it cooked and thickened up.

  Not coincidentally, the smell also blew down around and behind the waterfall, where a great big cave entry, large enough to fit the mightiest of tuskers, gaped open behind the curtain of the falling waters there.

  The lake, and its counterpart up above, looked more like a sparkling, misty idyllic scene at a comfy resort than the messed-up, stinking, decaying mess that it had been just a few hours before. The rot was Burned away, the waters were clear enough to see the sands and pebbles below, the Summoned Corpses were dissolved, and the unhealthy growths and decay along the shores had all been reduced to white dust from vivus, kind of unreal and sacred and placid in the other direction now.

  The sweet clarity of the fresh air really carried the smell of whatever jambalaya or gumbo or whatever Kris was cooking up, too.

  I finished up planting the last of the braziers near the outflow from the lake, the glowing and misty waters flowing out and attacking the rot and Taint beyond eagerly and continually, filth washing away and Burning in fingers of growing whiteness as the residual vivus purified what had been contaminated.

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  I was walking back to the big circle where Kris was up on her Disk using a four-inch stone pole I’d made up for her just for this to stir the mouth-watering stuff.

  “Ten minutes, quit moaning! It’s just getting better as I stir it!” she snarled at everyone, batting away Tim’s poking finger with a crack like a hammer, flinging it away. Chided but still eager, the monuga’s three eyes followed the regular circling of her pole as if hypnotized… and there was a monstrous bowl there obviously sized just for his hand, waiting to be filled.

  I plopped into my seat off to the side near the freshly-whitened beach, my Disk taking my weight without a problem. I heard a cough, and the Mick dropped onto a conjured Disk, while a startled older very darkly-skinned Gharu’n woman with graying hair and a very rough robe of palm fibers was pushed into place next to me on his own Disk.

  “She thought she were being stealthy, coming out of the cave back there all sneaky-like. Like I’ve not seen sneaky old hags like her creeping around t’ do their dark an’ nasty deeds before!” he grinned shamelessly.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Always a damned McMikal be undahfoot when ya nevah want one around! Churl! Brigand! Ingrate!” the woman promptly swore at him.

  “Lady Magos Ryin, meet the great and dreaded Kleoh, wise woman, spirit talker, poison-tongued harridan, snake oil saleswoman, an’ expert on lowlifes where’er they might be found,” the Mick introduced the new comer shamelessly.

  Her attire was much-patched and carefully preserved, the charms and beads she was wearing carved by hand from stone, bone, and wood with long and careful fingers. She definitely looked out of place among all the smartly armed, armored, and polished mainlanders, all of whom were maintaining their armor as they sat about and waited for what was going to be an early morning meal.

  “Madam Kleoh, we’ll be doing the Salute to Aru to start the meal off in a few minutes. You can just sit here and smell the air, or you can leave… but you really don’t want to miss Princess Kristie’s jambalya.”

  There was no missing the way she sniffed the air and narrowed her dark eyes hungrily. “I ain’t had nothing like dat foh a good ten yeehs now, girl. You best believe Madam Kleoh be going to sit around and wait foh it!” she almost cackled eagerly. “Who is dis Aru you be speaking of? Kleoh never heah dat name befoh.”

  “He’s an actual god of the Sun, Light, Life, and new beginnings, among other things.” I didn’t miss the skeptical flash in her eyes. “You’ll see shortly, elder. May I ask how King Bobo is doing?”

  “Poorly. The poison in de watahs be designed specially ta huht da Tuskah King and keep him weak. All de fightin’ and defendin’ o’ de cave has been done by da mighty Mowen foh yeehs, backed up by dose tuskahs still loyal ta Bobo,” she admitted after considering us carefully, especially the looming mass of Tim.

  “We’d like t’ verify that Bobo didn’t give the order to kill all the Isparians he enslaved on the island, Madam Kleoh,” the Mick said, in a voice that was as light as his eyes were dark and cold.

  She read him perfectly. “Would I be dehe now if dat were true, McMikal? Not all de beings aroun’ be as nasty as you and youh family be!

  “No, dat bit o’ poison was from Mudmout’, and be no mistakes about it!” she sighed, at least managing to look a little sad about what had happened.

  “Please tell me you’ve been maintaining Scrywards about the caves and there’s more real humans down there in the deeper places?” I inquired of her.

  A slow, hard smile spread across the older woman’s face at my question. “Near a hunnert managed t’ find shelter an’ survive down in de deep aheas, where de old magic made it possible to plant some things and keep us fed, however poohly. De caves, dey be much bigger den you tink down dehe. Got us whole gahdens down dehe, fake magic lights what suhvived the magic goin’ bad, an’ the like.”

  “Fertilized by tusker turds, no doubt,” the Mick sniffed grandly, unimpressed.

  “Aye, but faih enough when grown, for all de souhce. Maybe t’ree, four hunneht tuskahs down in dere, too, but the magic Bobo put on de place means dey don’t really need to eat, oh we would ha’ stahved out long ago,” the older woman retorted quickly.

  “We have ten doses of King’s Crown Infusions prepared and ready to be rendered into medicine if you need them,” I told her, and she stiffened immediately, surprise and hope mixing in her features.

  “Dat be real t’oughtful of you, it be, chil’,” Madam Kleoh finally answered, giving me another assessing once-over. “It seems dis fool tol’ you a few t’ings of de past, aye?” she asked me.

  “Lord Warden of the Royal Scouts of Freehold Mikal McMikal has been quite effusive with his knowledge of these isles from nearly two decades ago, although he has also admitted there’s been quite a few changes.” She glanced at the Mick in some surprise at him having achieved such a lofty station, and he just grinned back at her. “We found what happened with Ketnan and the others who didn’t make it here, those who tried to take shelter in his Emporium.”

  Madam Kleoh just sighed and shook her head. “We know, child. We’ve known foh years. Mudmout’, dat bastard, liked to boast about what he and his slaves done to de oddahs. Howevah, he stopped bragging about it and his attacks on us let up not too long aftah dat. The living tuskahs spoke about dead tuskahs eating tuskahs, pahalyzing with a touch, chahnel deat’ on de wind, and tehhible things hunting ‘em at night.”

  “Tusker ghasts and noble ghouls,” I confirmed for her, and she just cackled sinisterly and knowingly at my words.

  “Serves dem right, livin’ in feah all dese yeahs as de cohpse-eaters hunt de livin’ among’em, including Mudmout’ hisself. We t’ink dey almost got him a couple times, an’ he’s had no stomach for much fightin’ since then, not knowin’ what to do about ‘im.”

  “I’m afraid we had to kill them, but that shouldn’t be all the surprising,” I told her. “After all, we intend to kill Mudmouth, too.”

  Her dark eyes moved over to the massive form of the Tremendous Monuga in his magnificent Armor gathered there, Brown and maybe just a little Yellow lights glowing on the Runes thereon. “You tamed de beast what took Bobo’s hand and were chased from de island. You gots powah, dat be suhtain, chil’.”

  “Truer words,” the Mick mused, as I rose to my feet.

  It was time for the Salute to Aru.

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