Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) (63 page)

  “SHE . . . is . . .
my
. . .” Ewzad Vriil looked down to see the hilt of Tamboor’s sword protruding from his chest.

“No.” The duke fell to his knees. He looked at the darkness gathering around his arm.
“No, its not . . . “

The fingers on his hands began jerking about madly. The dark swirl around his knife wound grew and circled around his body. The wizard’s already sunken cheeks deepened.

A piercing scream erupted from the wizard’s throat and ripped through the air, causing the room to shake. Blood bubbled from his withered lips. His flesh sunk in. The darkness around him gathered. The shriek rose to a higher pitch and the dark cloud that enveloped the wizard became impenetrable.

The shriek slowly faded. The darkness dissipated and he was gone.

Of Ewzad Vriil, a pile of clothes and a black stain were all that remained.

Chapter Forty Two

The two dragons stood frozen, staring at the ramp that had lowered from the ceiling. Deathclaw cocked his head and let out a questioning chirp.  Talon hissed wetly in response. Their heads slowly turned back towards the door the human was hiding behind. Hamford imagined that he saw smiles at the corners of their mouths.

They began attacking the door again, determined to get at the human inside. The door began to rattle on its hinges and Hamford knew that his end was near. Just as he was sure the door was about to come down, Talon let out a bloodcurdling shriek and collapsed.

At the same time, Hamford felt as though an unseen hand was squeezing his heart. Pain shot through the core of him and he curled up on the floor, clutching his chest. It seemed to last for ages and he nearly blacked out. Then it was over.

Hamford gasped deep breaths of air, his forehead pressed against the cool stone floor. The pain had gone as quickly as it came, but there was something else. He felt strangely hollow inside. It was as if something was missing. A smile split Hamford’s face. Something really was missing. He couldn’t sense that kernel of power that Ewzad had placed inside him any more.

What had happened? He knew that the duke would have never willingly released him. The wizard must be dead. Dead or gone so far away that he had no power over Hamford anymore.

Hamford laughed. He was free! But his smile faltered with the reality that certain death awaited him at the hands of the dragons. Hamford sighed. At least he would die a free man.

He listened. The sounds had stopped. Hamford looked up.

He couldn’t see them. They weren’t standing in front of the door any longer. Slowly, Hamford got to his feet and approached the door, wincing at every step forward, expecting the beasts to appear again. He pressed his face against the transparent door and gazed down the hallway in either direction. From what he could see, the only things in the passageway were the remains of Ewzad’s creatures.

Hamford looked to the ramp that now hung from the ceiling. Perhaps the evil beasts had ascended the ramp and were now in the tunnel to the surface. Hamford hurriedly turned and tugged on a lever, raising the ramp back into the ceiling.

He waited a moment to make sure that no more sounds came from outside the door and reached for the door handle.

Hamford jerked his hand back as if the handle were red hot. What a fool he was being! These demons were sly, crafty creatures. They hadn’t been able to get through the door, so they were probably just out of sight, waiting for him to leave. Well, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. He was patient. He could wait until he was sure that they were truly gone. 

The minutes crept slowly by. Several times, Hamford was tempted to leave his place of safety. He thought, surely they were gone if they hadn’t shown up by now. But each time, he stopped himself short of releasing the lock, thinking he heard some unexplained sound or saw something out of the corner of his eye.

Then he did hear something. It was the sound of the tumblers to the door that led to the stairwell. The door opened and shut. A figure began creeping up the passageway. The man was wearing nothing but a ripped piece of fabric for a loincloth. The sight was so strange that it took Hamford a moment to realize that it was his brother, Kenn.

“What happened here?” Kenn wondered at the sight of his master’s creations lying in smoldering puddles on the ground.
Then it must have occurred to him that all of the doors were open and one of the creatures could still be alive. He ran for the control room. Kenn reached for the handle, but cried out as the door opened. Hamford’s large hand shot forth and grasped his arm.

He pulled Kenn inside and locked the door behind them, expecting the two demons to throw themselves at the door at any moment. But there was no movement in the passageway.

“Hamford, what are you doing here? What happened?” Kenn looked into his brother’s haunted eyes and winced. “Well?”

When Hamford didn’t answer immediately, Kenn sputtered, “L-look, it’s not my fault, okay. I had him in the Corridor of Screams and I was going to pay him back when this ogre came out of nowhere and attacked me. When I came to, there he was, standing there with that ogre, smiling down at me. They had chained me to the torture table! I don’t know how he got it to help him, but they took my clothes and my keys and left me there to rot.”

“Who?”
Hamford asked.

“Him!
Justan! The guy that got me kicked out of the Training School.”

“Justan, the son of Faldon the Fierce?”
A laugh escaped the large man’s lips. “I knew it! I knew it the moment you told me who he was. I told you that if he were anything like his father, he would find a way to escape.”

Kenn gave his brother an evil glare. “He won’t escape me next time! The bastard left me to rot, knowing that my master would kill me if he escaped! I laid there for hours. Then some withered up prisoner came in and set me loose. Luckily, he didn’t recognize me and I was able to wring his neck and take the keys. Hamford, the dungeons are nearly empty! The guards have all been slaughtered and . . .” Kenn’s eyes grew wide.

“It’s gone.” Hamford finished for him. 

“For you too?”
Kenn clutched at his chest. “The power, it’s . . . gone. Where did it go? I think he took it away to punish us.”

“I think our master is dead.”

“No! I need it back! He can’t be gone!” Kenn began to pace, his eyes darting about feverishly as he thought. “Okay, think Kenn, what can we do . . .?”

“Don’t you understand, Kenn?” Hamford grasped his brother’s naked shoulders. “We are free of him! If we can get out of here alive, we can get our lives back!”

“Okay, this is what we do.” Kenn said, ignoring his brother’s outburst. “We escape through the surface tunnel and wait for the prisoners to leave. Then we come back in and fix things up. The next duke has to take us in . . .” Kenn reached for the lever to lower the ramp.

Hamford slapped his hand away.
“No, you goblin brain!
The demon is out there.” He pointed into the passageway. “He and Talon are here together! They could be outside waiting for us to try to escape!”

Kenn swallowed. He looked at the remains of Ewzad’s creatures out in the passageway.
“Both of them?”

Hamford nodded.

“What do we do?” Kenn asked with a tremor in his voice.

“I don’t know.” Hamford shook his head helplessly. “I guess we wait.”

It was a long time before either of them dared open the door.

*                      *                      *

The orc clutched at its chest, trying to stem the flow of its lifeblood as the lithe female warrior removed the tip of her weapon. Its efforts were fruitless. She helped it along on its way to oblivion with a follow-up slash to its throat.

Jhonate twirled to face the next attacker, this one an enraged ogre. It charged at her, club raised high, but she nimbly stepped aside and its swing went wide, giving her a perfect opening. She ducked behind the ogre and with but a thought, the end of her Jharro staff formed a razor sharp edge. One slash behind the knees hamstrung the ogre and it collapsed. Her next strike was aimed between its ribs, and her staff formed a spear-like tip piercing its heart.

She twirled to face the next enemy but there were no more. The bestial army was retreating up the mountainside, leaving their dead scattered on the snow covered ground. She leaned onto her staff and watched them go, happy that she didn’t have to keep fighting in this cursed weather.

It had taken her a while to get used to the thicker winter leathers she had to wear under her light armor. It was easier now, but how she yearned to shed the extra layers and fight with more freedom of movement. If only it were not so blasted cold.

She looked around and took count of their forces. Several of the rank and file soldiers were dead, but all of her fellow academy students were still standing. An acceptable victory, she decided.

She pulled out her message stone and informed the camp that the battle was over.

For weeks now, their strike force had been attacked almost daily. They received reinforcements from the border patrols, but the academy was stretched thin as it was and it was difficult to get Dremald to include any more troops.

She set out across the battlefield, careful not to slip in the bloody slush and assessed the wounded. All academy students were taught battlefield medicine to some degree and any minor wounds would be sewn up on the spot with their field-aid kits. Anyone that was severely injured would have to be transported to the border patrol base camp where the on-staff mages could heal them.

It didn’t take long. The wounded were few and none so severe that they couldn’t be taken care of right away. The beasts had given up relatively easy, a thought that didn’t sit well with her. What had happened to cause them to flee?

She saw Faldon approaching from the direction of the camp and Jhonate rushed to join him. She gave her report as they walked.

“Twelve goblins, eight gorcs, ten orcs, and five ogres killed, sir. Three local
troops
dead and four with minor wounds on our side. The student troops all survived without major
injury,
though Jobar needed a knife wound sewn shut.” Faldon had appointed her as second in command, so it was her job to report the results of the battle.

Faldon nodded in response, but didn’t say anything. He looked to be in deep thought. A dying goblin cried out at her feet as they passed by and Jhonate silenced it with the heel of her boot.

“To update that figure, there are thirteen goblins dead,” she added. Faldon shook his head and looked at her with a slight grin.

“You don’t have to be that precise, Jhonate. You can put the details in your final report later.” He stopped for a moment and surveyed the field. He reached up and scratched his head. “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

“The battle ended too quickly, sir,” she said.

“Yes, I know.” Faldon the Fierce looked at her, his face concerned. “But it wasn’t just here. The reports came in just before I left the camp. All across the border, scouts report that the monsters are heading back into the mountains.”

“Is this not a good thing, sir?” Jhonate asked.

“I am not so sure. The patrols reporting back were scattered across a hundred miles of border territory. For the retreats to all happen at once, the army we are facing has to be far more organized than we realized.”

“I understand,” Jhonate said. “But at the very least, something big must have happened to have caused them to react this way. Perhaps if we are lucky, this will mean that the fighting will quiet down for a while.”

“We can hope,” he agreed. “Now let’s help everyone else gather and burn the enemy dead so that we can get out of here.” They were no longer worried about smoke from the corpse fires. The enemy knew where they were.

As they moved through the snow towards the place where the soldiers were stacking the enemy dead, Jhonate cleared her throat.
“Sir?
Have you heard from Justan?”