Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) (49 page)

Justan concentrated on the area of the spell that covered his head.  He used the technique shown to him by Professor Locksher and turned his mage sight inward. He could see the complex spell was connected like a web through his muscle tissues, freezing them into the last stance given to them by the impulses from his brain.

He didn’t think that he could break those strands without unraveling the whole web. Instead, he needed to bend the strands and reconnect them elsewhere. This was going to take longer than breaking the spell completely and his lungs were already aching for air.

Ever so slowly he rerouted the paths of the spell strands, sometimes shorting out a muscle with painful effect. His nasal passages became completely blocked and he forced himself to work methodically and not panic. After what seemed like an eternity, his mouth opened with a gasp, and even though the rush of air that filled his lungs was putrid, it seemed as sweet as any air he had ever breathed.

He had done it! At first, Justan felt a thrill, but his excitement was tempered by the reminders of where he was. By the third breath, the air didn't seem so inviting anymore.

Ten minutes later the spell collapsed on its own. Justan was able to sit up and get a better feel for his surroundings. He hadn’t thought it possible, but his cell was even more dank and dark than the corridors had been.

When he stood up, he struck his head on the crudely carved ceiling. The resulting pain was a reminder of how much of a beating he had taken that day. Running his hands along the walls, he discovered that the cell was six feet by seven feet. There was a half full bucket of filth in one corner of the room and protruding from the wall was a wooden shelf covered by a thin straw mattress.

Lying on that mattress was Justan's cellmate, Lewis. He was the source of the stench in the room. The man had been dead for a while by Justan's reckoning and the humidity of the dungeons had aided his decomposing along. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that the corpse had bloated until its face was unrecognizable. Justan shuddered. He knew that he was going to have to move it if he was going to be able to sleep in this place.

He ignored the smell as best as he could and grabbed the corpse by the ankles. Its flesh felt slimy in his hands. He tried to be careful as he dragged the body off of the shelf, but when it hit the ground, there was a popping noise and an even stronger smell filled the cell. Justan found himself on the floor, retching. Finally, he dragged the body to the empty corner of the cell.

Justan had figured that once the body was gone, he could just turn the straw mattress over and sleep on it, but the mattress was soaked with rotting fluids and he couldn't make himself lay on it. Instead, he dragged the mattress over to the corner and covered the body with it, hoping that it would stifle the smell, but his nose couldn't tell any difference. At least he couldn’t see the body any more.

With a disgusted sigh, he sat on the wooden shelf and leaned against the wall. He sent his mind out in search of Gwyrtha. Perhaps he could get a message to his friends. To his surprise, it wasn't hard for him to sense her. He could even tell which direction she was in, but her presence was faint. He strained and strained but her presence in his mind only grew slightly. She was farther away from him now than she had been since the bonding. It was much too far for him to communicate with her as he had earlier that night.

Justan laid his head in his hands. His situation seemed hopeless.

Chapter Thirty One

From his perch in the trees near the castle, Deathclaw watched the group of men stalk his trail. The dogs leading the men on their chase sniffed about busily.

Deathclaw looked down on the dogs, his face twisted in a silent snarl. He hated the furry beasts. They were but another new trick brought in by the humans. In the last few days, they had led the humans to his position several times and it was getting difficult for him to hide.

At first the packs of dogs were led by the human Hamford that he had followed out of the desert a year ago. Hamford was easy to avoid, Deathclaw knew his search patterns all too well. But recently a new human began leading the dogs. This one had blood red hair and a twitchy nose. Unlike Hamford, this one’s scent smelled like the dogs and he hunted like them too. He was not so easy to stay away from.

Deathclaw had learned not to be afraid of the humans. He was confident that they were no match for him in small numbers, but they searched in parties too big for him to take on at once. Besides, killing the humans wasn't his goal anyway. He knew that his brood mate was inside this building and he was determined to find her.

He and his brood mate used to be raptoids, a small species of flightless dragon that hunted the desert in packs. The wizard had ambushed his pack and changed him. His arms and torso grew long and powerful. His skull was expanded, his snout shortened, and his faced changed to a more humanoid appearance. The wizard tried to take him, but Deathclaw had escaped and learned to use this new body.

He had been miserable at first, but now he liked this body. He could do things that he would never have been able to do as a raptoid. With his expanded mind, he thought about things that the old Deathclaw would not have been able to comprehend. He was smarter, stronger, more agile, and . . . lonely. There was only one other being like him in the world. He just needed to know where she was being kept.

He had been trying to get in the unfinished castle for a long time now. He just hadn’t found the right opportunity. Too many people were around the entrances during the day and when they were gone at night, the doors were locked.

One night just after his arrival at the castle, a door had been left open and Deathclaw had almost darted from the cover of the trees. Then the one human that he feared came through the door. It was the thin one. This was the wicked man that had killed his pack and taken his brood mate away. This was the man that had changed him forever. Deathclaw had hesitated and the moment was lost. Many more men had followed the man out of the door.

Now he waited and watched, patient that the right opportunity would present itself. He had seen the thin one with the wavy fingers many times since then and he had a new motivation for his existence. He would find his brood mate and then he would kill this man. No, they would kill him together.

His thoughts were interrupted by an unwelcome development.

The man with the blood red hair had somehow brought the dogs to the small grove of evergreen trees that he was hiding in. Deathclaw hissed silently to himself in displeasure. How had this new human known to bring the dogs to look for him here? He had spent the night laying false scent trails among the trees all around the castle. This tactic had worked well for him in the desert with other beasts that hunted by smell.

The dogs began milling about, having caught a whiff of his scent. The red haired man pulled a long shiny sword and grinned, while the rest of the group of humans began looking up in the trees nervously.

When Deathclaw had first come out of the desert, the trees frightened him. He had thought them to be large green predators like some of the plants and cacti in the desert. But when following Hamford through this moist land, he had found out that the trees were his allies. Their green leafy boughs hid him from detection and gave him a great vantage point over his prey.

This worked wonderfully at first. Then the weather began getting colder. Deathclaw’s new body adapted to the cold, but the leaves on the trees turned brown and fell, leaving only skeletons behind. Now the leafy trees gave him no protection and he had learned to use evergreens to hide in. These were more difficult to use as the slightest movement could cause the boughs to shake, but over time he had learned to hide in them effectively.

Deathclaw made good use of that experience now. As the humans searched for him, he made no sudden movement, letting his body sway with the subtle movement of the branches. The humans couldn't distinguish him from the branches, but the dogs weren't fooled. They had his scent.

Then the barking began.

Deathclaw hissed as the dogs gathered around the base of his tree. He had avoided situations like this in the past by being cunning enough to hide in a place that had easy routes of escape, but the hunting party had caught him by surprise this time. The other trees in the grove were too far away for him to leap to.

The humans still couldn't see Deathclaw in the branches, but this was the best reaction they had seen in the dogs yet. Some of them began shooting arrows wildly into the tree, while others unfurled a wide net and waited for the dragon to try and escape.

Deathclaw didn't want to fight. Their numbers gave them an advantage. He tried to wait them out, but some of the arrows flew too close. He had no choice.

In an explosion of pine needles, Deathclaw leapt from the tree in an arc over the men unfurling the net. They had misjudged his leaping ability. As he landed, he whipped his tail out behind him. His tail barb ripped through the chest of one of the humans holding the net. He was now in the midst of them.

It was chaos. There was screaming and cursing. The men were shouting orders at each other. The dogs barked madly. Horns blew, and in the middle of it Deathclaw was a whirlwind of death. His body twisted and contorted as he lashed out at the men around him with teeth, claws, and tail. Three men, then four fell. The archers couldn't get off a shot for fear of hitting each other.

Through it all, Deathclaw’s mind was a calm spot in the storm. As was the case whenever he went into battle, time slowed down for him. His senses reported the movement around him and his mind sent signals to his limbs, moving them in precisely the action needed to clear a path to escape. Every part of him was a weapon. The claws on his hands and feet rent flesh. His tail speared. His teeth ripped.

Then a buzzing sound cut through the air. Everything came to a standstill. The man with the blood-red hair held forth a glowing scepter and every living thing in a cone shaped path away from the man was frozen in place.

Deathclaw felt his body begin to seize up in the spell and a jolt of fear shot through him. The last time he had succumbed to this spell his body had been changed forever.  His mind recoiled at the memory and he fought against the magic with all he had.

The paralysis spell is a difficult one for a non-magic user to fight because it attacks the body on a minute level. It is almost impossible for a thinking being to gather the control necessary to counter it. But control was Deathclaw’s specialty. The last time he had been frozen, the spell had caught him off guard and his primitive brain had been too shocked by its effects to resist. This time it was different.

Deathclaw resisted with the control he had over every inch of his body. The spell only held him for a few moments before it shattered under his sheer will. With his pursuers still frozen, he darted away, escape the only thing on his mind. He spat as he ran. He had killed his first humans today and the taste of their flesh was not pleasing at all.

He heard breathing behind him and looked back to see the human with the blood-red hair running after him, sword drawn. A toothy grin was etched into his face. Deathclaw increased his speed, but the human kept pace. They were soon far from the other humans and the dogs that still milled about in confusion.

How was this human keeping up? It did not matter. He needed to be dealt with. Deathclaw considered stopping and killing the man right away, but the sound of dogs barking in the distance, told Deathclaw that the other humans had overcome their stupor. He would have to lead the man somewhere the others would not be able to follow.

“Why do you run?” the man yelled, his breathing rough but not ragged. Deathclaw looked back to see that the man’s eyes had turned a dingy yellow. “Do you fear me, dragon?”

Deathclaw did not understand the meaning of most of the words, but could tell it was a taunt. His year following Hamford from a distance had shown him that the humans communicated with sounds far more complex than raptoids. The few words he understood were the ones that Hamford used frequently. He had practiced some of them by himself in the darkness, but had not mastered the sounds.

They came upon a flowing stream and Deathclaw cleared it with a single leap. As he had done many times before, when escaping from the dogs, he caught the low hanging branches of a tree on the far side and leapt from tree to tree, putting the stream behind him in an attempt to see just how good of a tracker this human was. The man did not disappoint.