Bloom of Blood and Bone

by R J Hanson

  Jonas drew his shortsword, a pitiful weapon indeed against a monster of such size, and held it before him. Blood flowed from Jonas and the large beast alike. The skinshifter shook its head violently as it turned to face Jonas again. Then, it lowered its head and began its charge. Jonas thought of the raven and the rose. He hadn’t thought about them in years and now his family’s crest, the symbols so dear to them, had been so violently and vividly thrust into his path.

  The skinshifter closed and was only a few feet away when a bright light caught Jonas’s eye. The flash was there for only a moment before Dunewell, head down and shoulder forward, crashed into the side of the charging beast. The force of Dunewell’s charge knocked the large creature off its feet and sent it rolling into the brush of the forest.

  Dunewell ran close behind and drew his war hammer as he charged. Jonas saw the distinct light of holy enchantments wind their way up the haft of the weapon and encircle the hammer’s head. As Dunewell entered the brush, the skinshifter, this time in the form of a lion, the first copied creature Dunewell recognized, leapt toward him. Dunewell struck so swiftly that even Jonas could not follow the movements of the weapon as his companion bashed the skinshifter’s skull with the flat head of the hammer. Then, reversing the arc so quickly that the skinshifter’s head hadn’t even begun a descent, Dunewell struck upward with the spike of the hammer driving it through the skinshifter’s jaw into its brain. The power of Dunewell’s strikes quelled the momentum of the skinshifter’s charge completely and dropped it at Dunewell’s feet.

  Dunewell watched as the lion magically reverted to the form of a man. Dunewell recognized him as the houseman they had met on the road to Ivantis. He thought the fellow’s name was Hemming.

  “I think his name was Hemming,” Dunewell said while still viewing the corpse. “The houseman of Wellborne we met on the road to Ivantis.”

  “Its name was Hemming,” Jonas said with a strain in his voice. “It surrendered any right to being called a man the day it knew what it was becoming and failed to hang itself.”

  Dunewell then moved to Jonas and eased him to the ground. Jonas did not cry out but did keep his teeth clenched against the lightning pain stabbing into his stomach from his leg. Jonas was glad he had not given in to the temptation to use his magic, but he was paying the price for that now.

  “My bag,” Jonas said through teeth still clenched against the pain. “There’s an herb…”

  Jonas stopped mid-sentence as Dunewell laid his hand on the wounded leg. Dunewell closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to Bolvii. A prayer that was answered. Jonas watched in amazement as a blue hue extended from Dunewell’s hand to envelop his thigh. He watched as his bone painlessly, he now realized the pain had stopped, collapsed back within the muscle of his leg. He watched as the skin drew close together and began to knit itself together, stemming the flow of blood.

  “That’s the best I can do for now,” Dunewell said after he finished his prayer. “It will likely be several days before you have full use of it again.”

  “It’s incredible,” Jonas said in a rare moment of genuine appreciation. “I’ve seen many charlatans pretend to heal, and a few priests actually able to heal minor injuries, but I’ve never seen the likes of that. Not with such speed. It would take a team of clerics working for days to heal a wound like that.”

  Dunewell nodded.

  “I’ve had my share of dealings with priests who made boasts of healing,” Dunewell said, thinking of the gold his mother had given to the church despite their inability to heal Silas’s childhood afflictions. “It has taken time, but every day I’m discovering more I can do through the champion. Or perhaps it’s more that he can do through me.”

  “That was a remarkable display,” Jonas said. “That thing must have weighed over four thousand stone, and you knocked it off its feet.”

  “Closer to five thousand,” Dunewell said, still examining Jonas’s leg. “How’s your arm?”

  “The arm is fine,” Jonas said with an edge rising suddenly in his voice. “I’m trying to thank you!”

  “Then just say thank you,” Dunewell said, maintaining his own state of calm.

  Jonas opened his mouth, and then bit back the bitter words that rose to his tongue. Several moments passed before he was able to smile.

  “Thank you,” Jonas finally managed.

  “Did that hurt to say?” Dunewell asked as the edge of his mouth curled into a grin.

  “More than the leg,” Jonas said.

  Dunewell carried Jonas to a small clearing near the rose bush and sat him down among the lush spring grass. It was not lost on Jonas that Dunewell lifted and carried him as a father might his infant child.

  Jonas flexed his leg gingerly and decided not to push it if he didn’t have to. He began gathering kindling for a fire from what lay close at hand.

  Dunewell checked on the horses only to discover Jonas’s mount dead and his own nowhere to be found. Dunewell stripped the gear from Jonas’s horse and stowed it all within reach of Jonas in the clearing. Then he started a fire with the kindling Jonas had gathered and set water on to boil.

  Dunewell fetched the two broken pieces of Jonas’s sword and rolled them into the pack. Except for the silver inlays, a proper re-forging would cost almost as much as a new blade. But, there was the silver. Dunewell took the spade from the pack and returned to the body of Hemming, the body of the skinshifter.

  Dunewell struck the head from the body using the spade and then dug a grave for the majority of the corpse. Dunewell had to govern his remarkable strength and speed to avoid damaging the shovel as he dug.

  Once all but Hemming’s head was buried, Dunewell walked to a nearby tree and peeled bark from the trunk. Dunewell carved the gauntlet and owl of Bolvii into the bark and placed it at the foot of the grave. Then he knelt at the foot of the grave and prayed.

  “I make no judgments of this man’s soul,” Dunewell said. “I have adjudged his actions here in this world and now surrender his soul to Fate and Time. May he rest with no memory of the evils of this world.”

  Moments later, Dunewell returned to the fire and placed several strips of jerky and a few slices of potato into the boiling water. While he prepared the stew, Jonas dug through his pack and produced their two bowls and two spoons.

  Jonas passed the bowls to Dunewell, who, in turn, poured stew for each of them. After each had a bowl of stew in their hands, Dunewell threw Hemming’s severed head into the fire. A puss green flame erupted from all around Hemming’s mortal crown. Jonas ate in silence and nodded his approval to Dunewell.

  As the flesh burned, Dunewell used his shortsword to push Hemming’s mouth open and expose the glands hidden behind the charring tongue; glands a person develops after becoming such a beast. Dunewell punctured both so the fire would burn up the contagious poison that could so twist the heart and body of a man.

  “From here?” Dunewell asked.

  “Bolthor,” Jonas answered.

  Jonas took another bite of stew, and both watched the head of the skinshifter burn for several long moments.

  “Split Town by sea, then,” Dunewell said.

  Jonas only responded by taking another bite of stew and nodding his head.

  “The informant in Split Town, it’s one of the church party you were sent to save, isn’t it?” Dunewell stated as much as asked.

  “How did you arrive at that conclusion?” Jonas asked around a mouthful of potatoes.

  “On the way into Ivantis, you pumped our friend Hemming here for all sorts of information,” Dunewell said as he poked the head in the fire with the end of his sword. “You hid it well, but you were surprised to learn about the smuggling issues in Split Town and were clearly interested. It wasn’t a leap to conclude you saved at least one of the church party and, and what? He owed you his life, so you cashed in by sending him to Split Town to spy on the Shadow Blades.”

  “Not just spy on them,” Jonas said. “I sent him to join them. Operating on a guess th
at whoever is trying to set up shop in Split Town is trying desperately to hire outside talent, I sent them a Witch Hunter.”

  “You lied to Belyska,” Dunewell said.

  “Yes, and to you,” Jonas said, not missing the familiar way Dunewell referred to the Paladin of Silvor. “And now we have an ally that has already learned the lay of the land and provided us invaluable information. An ally that is a Witch Hunter.”

  “You mentioned that,” Dunewell said. “I get it, they’re good on the trail. Remarkable trackers.”

  “They’re more than that,” Jonas said. “You hunted with them in Tarborat. A land where their prey hid among the rocks, caves, dunes, and washes. Witch Hunters are trained to ferret out those that would practice witchcraft anywhere. They are trained interrogators and possess divining spells, not unlike sleuths. He has already proven very useful.”

  The mention of the sleuths made Dunewell think of his friend, Benedict. Sleuths were investigators educated and trained by the best in the world. They were taught the use of secret spells and protected knowledge. Sleuths were also exclusive to the Silver Helms.

  To Dunewell’s knowledge, Benedict was the best of them. His personality was off-putting on his good days, but his mental faculties were unrivaled. Dunewell had worked with Benedict on a few cases in Tarborat, and once in Moras. In those instances, Dunewell had served the role of enforcer of the law, rather than investigator of crime because Benedict had so outdistanced him in his capacities for interrogation and analytical thinking. In working together on those varied cases, Dunewell had learned a great deal from Benedict. Benedict, it seemed, was surprised at Dunewell’s willingness to learn and rational approach to problem-solving. During that time together, they became good friends. Dunewell wondered where Benedict was and what he might be doing. Benedict might be the only friend he had left in the world.

  “And if the mission you sent him on gets him killed?” Dunewell asked as his thoughts returned to Jonas, and the spy he’d sent to Split Town.

  “Then he would be no more dead than he would have been had I not come along in the first place.”

  Chapter IX

  Trap?

  “We haven’t much time,” Berje said as he addressed the small council of Blue Tower wizards.

  They were in an exclusive hall on a hidden floor of the great Blue Tower. A floor that existed in a separate dimension and was impossible to find unless one knew exactly how to approach it. The greatest treasures of the Blue Tower were kept here. Legendary weapons bearing the dried blood of gods and goddesses on their blades, ancient scrolls of arcane spells, and components derived from the corpses of dragons and leviathans were among the coveted articles protected in this magical place.

  Now seven wizards, the ruling council of the Blue Tower, convened here to discuss a troubling matter. They convened to discuss the retrieval of the only person to have ever seen the interior of their legendary tower and escape from it.

  The Blue Tower had taken whatever it wanted from the seas and lands of Stratvs. Never had they faced a challenge to their authority or their capabilities. They did not concern themselves with the trivial matters of kingdoms and churches. They did not care about the fall of Ozur and were unaffected by the war between Tarborat and Lethanor. The outcome of that war did not interest them in the least.

  When the Blue Tower was established generations before, it was founded on the single-minded pursuit of knowledge. No knowledge was taboo here. No research or field of study was hampered by the edicts of moral or ethical boundaries. Over the generations, that single purpose had been joined by a second; to live a life of ease and pleasure.

  Three of the ruling council, Morden Desch, Etern Garria, and Eljen Unglau, were founding members of the Blue Tower; their mortal years extended to centuries through their mastery of dark magics. The world of Stratvs and the adjacent planes and dimensions held little mystery for those three, and they found the pleasures of the flesh dull. However, the influence they held over the other wizards of the Blue Tower and the absolute power they maintained over their slaves offered each of them a type of joy. The type of joy felt when one holds a newborn kitten knowing how easy it would be to snap the neck of the small creature and take its life.

  However, when one takes up a kitten to place his or her fingers around its delicate neck, one does not ask the name of the kitten. One does not concern one’s self with any detail about the kitten other than its fragile nature; the fragile nature that provides such dark pleasure.

  Thus, Dru’s escape was unprecedented and contradicted everything these human gods had come to believe about the world in which they lived, a world they were convinced they controlled. Even more embarrassing, their attempts at scrying the young woman were fruitless in that they did not even know her name. The question had been raised as to whether or not a more senior mage should travel beyond the confines of the Blue Tower to seek out this heretical female, but the suggestion was dismissed outright. How better to admit defeat than to violate one’s own edicts to put right what should have been impossible to go wrong?

  To compound the wound this slave girl had inflicted, all save Morden Desch were convinced her escape was only made possible with assistance from one of their number. More than a dozen wizards and sorcerers, Morden Desch had not really bothered to count, had been tortured to death for being suspected of complicity in the escape. The rest of the Blue Council were happily self-assured her escape was not possible without help. Morden Desch feared that was not the case. Morden Desch feared she had managed the feat on her own. If that were the case, what did that indicate about their perceived power versus actual control?

  Thus, decades had gone by with the agents of the Blue Tower quietly pursuing this elusive slave. Decades had gone by while the Blue Council had feared another escape, or an uprising, or any number of other possible outcomes resulting in their loss of power. Now, after seventy-five years and long after she should have been dead, the slave had been spotted in Moras. Now, for the first time in Morden Desch’s considerable memory, trade had been denied the Blue Tower.

  “I have her name from the Steward in our dungeon,” Berje continued. “She is to meet with a pirate in the port city of Wodock three weeks hence.”

  “What do you propose?” Eljen Unglau asked.

  Berje began to answer but then decided to filter his words through a screen of patience and wisdom before allowing a foolish word to slip from his lips. Well, another arrived at that conclusion, and Berje had no choice but to submit.

  Eljen Unglau, like all wizards of the Blue Tower, kept his face concealed beneath the rich silk of his hood. The mages were only able to recognize one another by the signet rings each wore identifying their fields of study and the relative mastery of those fields they had achieved.

  Eljen Unglau hated a hasty word or act. Eljen Unglau hated the unconsidered word. Eljen Unglau was particularly skilled in disciplining his subordinates, slaves and lower-ranking mages alike, for spouting poorly conceived oration.

  “I propose to handle this matter personally,” Berje was made to say. “I will take the Steward of House Morosse with me to bait them in. I will need six of our watchmen, and the goods promised to this pirate. Of course, should any other brethren wish to join me, they would be welcome, and their efforts appreciated. I will travel to Wodock and scout the warehouse where this meeting is to take place. I will then prepare a trap for her and for those with whom she has associated. Once I have them, I will bring them back here, delivering them directly to our dungeon below. Then each member of the council may use her and her compatriots in whatever fashion you see fit.”

  “Why take the seized goods to this warehouse?” Etern Garria asked. “Why not create an illusion of the goods?”

  Berje, or rather the entity occupying his mind, thought it would be interesting if Etern Garria were a subordinate of Eljen Unglau’s. He would enjoy watching Eljen torture Etern for such a foolish question.

  “The runes and wards I will lay wil
l give off no magical emanations until triggered,” Berje’s mouth said. “The goods must be seen and inspected likely before the trap is sprung. I could use an illusion to achieve the same effect, but that would be risking the slave or these pirates spotting the trap. I propose to take no risks in that regard.”

  “See that it is done,” Morden Desch said.

  The rest of the council nodded their approval as well.

  “I’ll travel with you,” Etern Garria said. “I haven’t had the chance to properly study the unique armor hidden amongst that cargo. I want to ensure I’m not robbed of that opportunity.”

  Berje, and several others at the table, looked to Morden Desch, who responded with a slight nod.

  Berje made his way back through the complex pattern of faux bricks and pocket dimensions to emerge in the master stairwell. He descended until he came to the landing for the general library. Berje entered and summoned two younger mages who abandoned their reading without hesitation to accompany the member of the Blue Council.

  The Blue Tower drew a unique sort of practitioner of the mystical arts. There were very few paths one could follow to study magic in Stratvs. The church offered the study of channeling divine powers through prayer, but within very strict guidelines. The Archives of the Arcana taught the magical powers of manipulating the essence of the universe, but strictly for the service of the Archives. Furthermore, even those few who were chosen to study in the Archives were allowed access to only limited knowledge therein. The Silver Helms trained a very select few in the ways of mentalism to enhance their abilities to command on the field of combat. However, one had to be selected for Silver Helm training, survive their brutal academy, and then continue to serve whatever lord, lady, or King they were sworn to.