Hunt of the Bandham (The Bowl of Souls: Book Three) (50 page)

“Why not?”

Fist was asking “why” questions a lot lately. Why do all humans sleep in separate rooms? Why are rocks heavier than wood? Why is the sky blue? Justan supposed that it was a good thing the ogre wanted to understand the world, but that didn’t keep it from being annoying.

“Deathclaw is different from you and me, Fist,” Justan said. What little he knew about Deathclaw came mostly from what he had learned the night they bonded. At the time, thoughts and memories had flooded Justan’s mind and he hadn’t been able to process them all. Deathclaw had fended off every attempt to learn more since. “He wasn’t always like us. He used to be a wild beast before the wizard changed him.”

“He is no longer a beast?” Fist didn’t quite believe it.

“Not truly,” Justan said. “He is just afraid.”

“What is he scared of?”

“I’m not quite sure. Himself maybe. He doesn’t quite know what he is.”

“Either do I,” Fist said candidly. “Am I still ogre? Am I now part human?”

Fist is Fist
, Gwyrtha said.

“Yes.” The ogre grunted in agreement. “I am me. Squirrel is Squirrel. Gwyrtha is Gwyrtha. And Justan is Justan. That is all I know.”

Justan is Justan,
Gwyrtha agreed.

“Good point, Fist,” Justan said with affection. “We have all been through a lot of changes. But we are still us. That’s all that is important. Deathclaw on the other hand hasn’t come to grips with that.”

Justan felt a tightening on Deathclaw’s side of the bond, as the raptoid somehow squeezed it shut. The pain of the headache left as well. Evidently he no longer wanted to hear exactly what they were saying. Still, that didn’t stop Deathclaw from watching them through the trees as they worked.

That afternoon, Justan arrived at the study before Master Coal had arrived. He was trying to decide whether to wait inside for the wizard when he noticed Qyxal kneeling next to the honstule garden that stood in front of the study. The elf had a large leather-bound book open on the ground in front of him and was transcribing notes into a smaller notebook with a quill pen. It wasn’t the first time Justan had seen him like this. While Justan spent his spare time working and training, Qyxal seemed to always be tending the gardens.

“Kind of an odd place for a read, isn’t it?” Justan asked. “Aren’t you uncomfortable reading all hunched over like that?”

“Just a second.” Qyxal made one more quick note and looked up at Justan with a half grin. “It’s fine. My feet may get numb after a while and I’ll have to sit. What are you up to? Is Master Coal not in yet?”

“He’s not. I wonder what’s keeping him. He’s usually leaning back in his chair, sipping a cup of tea by the time I get here.” Justan walked around the edge of the garden to where Qyxal knelt. The sweet smell of honstule blossoms hung in the air and Justan felt the warmth radiating from the soil. Coal kept the garden heated year round. “What are you studying?”

“This is one of Old Honstule’s field journals,” the elf said. “At the end of his life, he devoted all of his time to the development of this vegetable. He calls it ‘specimen p405’. They didn’t start calling the plant honstule until after his death.”

“It’s pretty impressive, isn’t it, a goblin creating something new like that?” Justan said.

“Pretty impressive?” Qyxal shook his head and laughed. “Justan, don’t you know how amazing this plant is?”

“Well it certainly tastes good.” Justan replied. “And everyone says that it’s great for energy.”

“Justan, this plant is much more than that. It is a miracle. That little old goblin created a plant that is practically perfect for cultivation. It grows all year round. You never have to replant it. It lives on a minimal amount of water and you only rarely have to fertilize it. You can harvest the entire plant by cutting it down a few inches above the ground and it will regrow within a month. Every part of the plant can be eaten.”

The elf was so animated that Justan couldn’t help but smile. “Master Coal says that it should be a staple in every farmer’s garden.”

“Farmers that grew this plant wouldn’t need anything else. Justan, lean in close and look at this plant. Come on, kneel down,” Qyxal said and Justan did so. “Now switch to mage sight.”

There was a faint but unmistakable glow of magic radiating from the plant; an intricate mix of earth and water and air magic interwoven throughout the fibers. “I see it.”

“This is the same type of magic that you would see in an apple grown from a tree in an elven homeland,” Qyxal explained. “This plant has elven magic.”

“How did Honstule accomplish that?” Justan asked.

The elf pointed to the large leather-bound book. “According to his notes, the majority of Honstule’s work on this plant was done while he lived at the Mage School. He says that the soil in the gardens at the school was mixed with soil gifted to the wizards by various elven tribes over the years. This means that several small sections of the Mage School gardens are actually elven homeland.”

Justan was impressed. An elven homeland took hundreds of years to create. When Elves moved into an area they seeded the ground with their hair, their waste, and the bodies of their dead. Over time this imbued the soil with their life essence. Trees and other plants that grew in that soil stayed green all year round and never rotted. Justan had eaten elf-grown food before and he had actually been able to feel the life of it enter his body.

Qyxal reached into a pouch tied at his belt and pulled out a small handful of seeds. To Justan’s mage sight, they glowed black with earth magic. “See Justan, Honstule developed a plant that produced seeds that were themselves full of elven magic. If you take a seed from an apple grown in an elven homeland and plant it somewhere else, it doesn’t grow to produce magic-enhanced apples. The magic in those seeds would be borrowed magic. If not planted in the soil of an elven homeland, the plant would grow heartily, but the magic is long gone by the time the tree is big enough to bear fruit. But this plant is different. Its magic isn’t borrowed. Its magic is inherent like the magic of the elves themselves!”

“So . . .” Justan tried to wrap his mind around the concept. “What you are saying is that this plant will produce magicly-enhanced fruit no matter where it is planted?”

“Yes! And look at this.” He picked up a handful of soil. “Master Coal says that this garden was planted just ten years ago. Look at the magic within. Each honstule leaf or flower that is allowed to re-enter the soil as fertilizer has left its own magic traces behind. Its very growth cycle creates homeland!” Qyxals eyes were brimming with excitement. “My people are living in constant battle with the decay of the moonrats. There has been a stalemate for years. For every foot of new homeland we create, another foot of forest begins to rot. With honstule plants my people could create new homeland five times as fast.”

“That’s great, Qyxal,” Justan said, clasping the elf’s shoulder.

“This is why I joined the Mage School. To find a way to help my people with my talent! When we leave here, I will be able to return to the forest. With these seeds and all the growing techniques I have learned while we have been here, we will win the fight. That’s what I have been up to while you were learning bonding magic.” Qyxal picked up the book he had been writing in. “It is all right here. And when the battle in the Tinny Woods is over and the moonrats are driven out, I can take Old Honstule’s plant from farmstead to farmstead and village to village.”

“With a plant like this, a farmer could live anywhere,” Justan said. He was catching on to Qyxal’s dream. “It is a great ambition you have, Qyxal. All I’m trying to do is master my magic and enter the Battle Academy. I haven’t thought much further than that.”

Qyxal chuckled and shook his head. “Justan, I have known you for nearly two years now. In that time you have saved the Mage School from a marauding golem, become named twice, liberated a dungeon full of prisoners from an evil wizard’s castle, defeated a rock giant, and you have even found time to teach an ogre to read. I think that you will find a way to make your future important.”

“Well, that’s an exaggeration,” Justan said. “But I’ll tell you what, Qyxal. If I can help you with your dream I will. That is a promise. Maybe when I am done with my time at the Mage School, I will stop in to help your people fight off those moonrats for a while.”

“I will hold you to it,” Qyxal said.

Justan took his leave and walked back to the door of the study. The wizard still hadn’t arrived, which was strange. He sat on the top step and decided he might as well get some practice in while he waited.

Justan leaned back against the door and closed his eyes. He immersed himself in the bond. Deathclaw was up in a tree beyond the wall, still watching and eating a fox or something as close as Justan could tell. Fist was at Miss Nala’s and he didn’t know where the wizard was. Gwyrtha was out on patrol with Samson. Coal wasn’t with them and she didn’t have a way to ask the centaur about his whereabouts.

With nothing else to do, Justan tested his other bonds. They were fainter, and without a person on the other end to communicate to, he still wasn’t quite sure how to use them. Ma’am was in his room back at the lodge and as usual, he felt only an eagerness from her. She wanted to shoot. His link to his naming dagger, or to be more precise, his links to the two individual blades of the dagger, were odd. Lenny had been working on a way to incorporate them into his sword designs and a few days ago the signals had been jumbled and strange. Today they were as clear as ever. They were at the forge and close together. Perhaps the dwarf had given up. Justan hoped that wasn’t the case.

Finally, and most reluctantly, he delved into his connection with the rune on his chest. He was leery about trying to communicate with whatever living thing the Scralag had placed inside of him, but it was something he made himself do every day at Master Coal’s urging. As usual, the bond ended abruptly as if blocked by a wall. Justan had tried coercing it, yelling at it, assaulting it; nothing had changed. This time, he eased his presence up to the blockage and ran his senses across it. The blockage was smooth as glass and unyielding. He switched to his mage sight and was greeted with a spiderweb of glowing blue and yellow. It was frost magic, just like his own.

Out of curiosity, he stretched a strand of the bond across his eyes and switched to spirit sight. Each blue and gold strand of magic was coated with a fine smoky twist of spirit magic. He reached out with his own magic and used his miniscule talent in fire magic to produce two small red strands. He shaped them like a tiny pair of clippers and tried to cut one of the threads. To his surprise, it snapped in two. As he had done with the barriers in Ewzad Vrill’s castle, Justan began plucking at the strands in an attempt to pull the magic apart.

A stab of pain shot through his chest and an icy cold radiated from the rune. Justan reached up and felt frost caking the front of his shirt. He let go of the web of magic blocking the bond and eased back. To his relief, the tiny bit that he had unraveled stayed in place, the frayed ends of the magic unmoving. Justan was paralyzed with uncertainty. Should he continue to destroy the spell and find out what was behind the blockage? Should he try to weave it back together?

“Sir Edge!” Justan felt rough hands grab his shoulders.

Justan switched off the mage sight and opened his real eyes. Master Coal stood in front of him. His eyes were ringed with worry. Qyxal had put his book down and was running over to them.

“I am okay, sir. I was just-.”

“Gather your friends together,” the Master said. “I have been speaking with Willum. The Battle Academy was attacked early this morning. They are under siege.”

“What about Wobble, Coal?” Lenny asked. “Were the dwarves attacked?”

“I am sorry. I don’t know, Lenny. I will ask Willum the next time we speak. He’s on duty at the academy’s outer wall until late tonight and I cannot communicate with him from this distance unless both of us are completely focused.”

The air was tense in the main room of the lodge. Everyone had questions for the master, but Coal had refused to give any details on the siege until his wife, Benjo, Lenny, and Bettie had arrived. Fist was on his way from Miss Nala’s farm, and there wasn’t room for Gwyrtha in the lodge, so Justan kept the ogre and rogue horse abreast of the situation through the bond.

“We should leave tonight,” Justan said. “The sooner we arrive, the less entrenched they will be.”