Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  The arena was a circular patch of dusty ground littered with human bones and lit by thick, standing torches. Either the bones were there to intimidate the smaller fighters, or the Orglots considered them a form of decoration. Even more terrifying were the patches of dried blood scattered all over the ground.

  The Orglots had gotten rowdy during the trip. Several of the males pushed each other into the arena and began to wrestle. Ruk and Ukril watched for several moments, apparently pleased by this display of violence, before the elder finally raised an arm to signal for everyone to clear the place.

  Quiet descended over the arena. Ruk gave the nod, and Ukril released Larry from his collar using the shears. Larry strutted into the center of the arena, then reached toward Ruk for the weapon. The elder slipped it out of his loincloth and tossed it dismissively at him.

  Larry caught it with a graceful movement that took Oscar by surprise. The entire left side of the man’s body was clearly crippled, and yet his right side had compensated with such practiced agility that the old man seemed to weave through the air like a ribbon.

  Ruk yanked Oscar’s chain to get his attention.

  Tell your fighter this—if he takes animal form, he is cheating, and I will smash his kin into the ground.

  Oscar nodded. Larry was watching him, waiting for an explanation.

  “He says if you phase into an animal shell, he’ll kill us.”

  Larry nodded once and held up the dagger. “I won’t need to.”

  What did he say?

  Oscar glanced at Ruk. He said his skill with the knife is all he needs.

  Ruk translated this to the rest of his group, then tipped his head back and laughed. The others joined him. The cavern filled with the wild roars of their amusement.

  Jason and the other prisoners stood at the arena’s outskirts, their binding chain held firmly in the hands of the redheaded Orglot. They watched in obvious desperation as Larry turned to address them.

  “Fly her out of here. Don’t look back. Understand me, men?”

  What did he say? Ruk asked, jerking Oscar’s chain again.

  He said he would defeat Ukril in battle and sing songs of this hour until the end of his days.

  Good. I hunger for what is to be a very entertaining fight.

  Me too, Oscar replied. Me too.

  Good, Speaker. Then let us begin.

  CHAPTER 44

  C alista hated Jasparta.

  The first week went by at a snail’s pace. Helena’s contacts bribed city officials to get Artemis and his team through the checkpoints and past the walls. Once inside, they hid in a stone Valcyonic church, where old men and women shuffled in each morning to kneel on the empty, dusty floor and pray to the warrior goddess for protection. The statue of Valcyona had long ago been removed or stolen.

  Calista was only allowed outside under Lance’s supervision, which wasn’t so bad except that Artemis had ordered them to keep off main streets and avenues. And they could only leave for one purpose—to restock their food and other supplies.

  Calista couldn’t imagine living like this for much longer, though she voiced no complaints. This was a soldier’s life, after all. She had signed up for it willingly. Yet the boredom wasn’t even the worst part. Their first day inside, Artemis handed out collars designed by Kovax to keep them from phasing.

  “Once these click shut,” he explained, “they can only be taken off with one of these.” He held up a pistol-shaped device. A spark of electricity danced on its metal tip. “For now, they stay on,” he said, slipping the device into his pocket. “It’s too dangerous to be seen without one.”

  The snap of cold iron around her neck and the tingle of luminether currents made Calista want to lash out and punch something. During trips outside the chapel, she often saw men, women, and children with ribbons and other decorations on their collars. She wondered how long it took to begin thinking of the horrible contraption as jewelry. The thought made her sick to her stomach.

  All anyone in her unit ever talked about were missions and towers and explosive devices. Artemis’s people had built a working prototype of the bomb—nicknamed “the creeper”—and for days after it arrived at their hideout, it was all Artemis and Lance could focus on. The device didn’t even look that powerful. It resembled a six-legged metal spider, with an empty luminether crystal embedded in its back. Even Calista could lift it with one hand.

  When she wasn’t training, she passed the time alone in her sleeping nook. It was located on a balcony above the seating area, in a corner where the slanted rooftop made it impossible to stand. Calista had picked it herself. She would sit cross-legged and sketch portraits of people she had once known, animals she admired, and landscapes she had seen during her travels. She used a battered old sketchbook and a stub of charcoal Lance had given her out of his own personal belongings.

  Athenara came by one evening with a fresh loaf of bread wrapped in a handkerchief. She was about to hand it to Calista, smiling as she bent to fit her tall frame into the alcove, but stopped when she saw the drawings pasted on the ceiling.

  “You’re quite talented,” she said.

  Calista looked up from her latest drawing of a levathon and smiled, then went back to sketching.

  “Who’s this?” Athenara said.

  Her fingertips were almost grazing the black-and-white face of a boy Calista had sketched the week before. She stopped short before she could smudge the drawing.

  “You used color on this one, but not the rest,” Athenara said, indicating the boy’s mismatched eyes. “Except only one of his eyes is orange. Now, why’s that?”

  “His name’s Oscar,” Calista said. “He was one of the boys at Ascher’s Ranch. His eyes were just like that. No one knew why. He couldn’t phase, either.”

  “Huh.” Athenara studied the orange eye. “You used a flower petal—Oliandros, if I’m not mistaken—for the coloring.” Calista nodded, and Athenara smiled in admiration. “Very creative. He’s quite handsome, your friend, Oscar.”

  Calista tried to hide her embarrassment. “My… What do you mean?”

  “It’s the way you drew his face. He’s slightly… proud. Looking up and into the distance. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you had a crush on this one.”

  Heat rose to her cheeks. Calista wanted the conversation to end immediately.

  “I’m starving,” she said, setting aside the sketchbook and jumping to her feet. “What’s for dinner?”

  THE BOREDOM BECAME TOO much to bear, until one night Calista decided to sneak out while everyone else was asleep. If only she could have phased into her cat form, she would have leaped out of an open window. Instead, she stole a key from Lance and used it to slip through a back door.

  This late at night, there would be fewer of Kovax’s Berserkers about. Calista saw one of them once, a big, hulking brute that reminded her of Basher back at the ranch, when he had tried to kill them in the glowing forest. The ones here in Jasparta were an especially mean bunch. They entered restaurants and taverns by kicking the doors down, and they gorged themselves on food and drink without paying. Any Ferals they saw that looked suspicious were immediately picked up—literally—and stuffed into huge carriages that would take them to Xanthus’s tower for consumption. Thankfully, Berserkers were a superstitious bunch. They avoided churches completely, which is why Artemis had chosen this as their hideout.

  The night was cool and moist with a salty breeze that rolled off the ocean and right over the city. Perfect for a stroll. Calista entered a broad street and made her way up the sidewalk, aware she was breaking Artemis’s most sacred rule. No one would ever know. She had mastered the art of blending into shadows at an early age, and besides, there were other lone Ferals skulking about. Why should anyone single her out?

  She passed rows of shuttered stores that had gone out of business, their windows broken and graffiti splashed across the walls. Vagrants sat against the doors, looking glum and fingering their collars, tails riddled with bal
d patches. Of the places still in business, only a few were open this late—taverns, mostly. Glancing through the windows, Calista saw people drinking alone at the bars or passed out in seats near the back.

  The trip turned out to be more depressing than liberating. After less than an hour, Calista was about to turn back when she saw a pinkish light coming from a shop window across the street. She crept over and ducked beneath its ledge. Having checked for enemy patrols and found none, she peered through the glass, through holes in a thin layer of pink drapes, and saw a room with a reclining chair planted in the center. Narrow tables lined the walls, covered in jars, bottles, and trays.

  Inside, a young woman emerged from a back door. She was followed by another, slightly older woman. The younger one took off her jacket, exposing her bare arms and shoulders, and sat back on the reclining chair. The older one fiddled with something on a nearby table, then approached the other, carrying a wand with a glowing tip. She bent over the younger woman and made quick, jerking motions that could only be the movements of a painter drawing on a canvas. The younger woman grimaced as the wand danced along the length of her arm, its tip changing colors seemingly without being told.

  When the process ended, the young woman sat up and studied the design. Flowers of different varieties and colors covered her arm from shoulder to elbow. She smiled up at the artist but said nothing. Instead, as if afraid of being caught in this place, she furtively passed the artist a marble statuette about the length of her forearm, then threw on her jacket and slipped through the same door from which she had entered less than ten minutes before. As far as Calista had been able to tell, the two women had not traded more than a few words the entire time.

  Calista sprinted around the building to an alley in back. Before the young woman could disappear into the shadows between two dilapidated houses, Calista halted her with a whispered command.

  “Hey you, wait.”

  The woman spun around, and her tail jumped behind her back as if it had a mind of its own. Her face was barely visible, though Calista caught the whites of her eyes and teeth as she spoke.

  “You scared the mites off me,” she said, relaxing a bit. She was apparently too naïve to think a girl of Calista’s age could be any sort of threat to her. “What do you want? I don’t have any money, so don’t bother begging.”

  “Your tattoo,” Calista said.

  The woman stiffened. She glanced at the sleeve of her right arm, then draped her left arm protectively over it. “What about it?”

  “How much did it cost?”

  The woman frowned. “You pay what you think it’s worth.”

  “Well, it’s beautiful,” Calista said. “That statue must have meant a lot to you.”

  “You were watching,” the woman said, looking shamefully down at the ground. “Careless of me. I guess anyone can see through that window.” She met Calista’s eyes and sighed curtly. “My mother gave me that statuette. It was a carving of Valcyona in Feralkin form. My mother made it herself. That was before they took her.”

  A chill ran up and down Calista’s tail. “Who—who took her?”

  “The ones that take all of us, eventually. The men who run those towers.”

  “I’m sorry,” Calista said.

  The woman nodded. “That’s why I got this design.” She rolled up her sleeve and stepped out of shadow and into the moonlight. Calista studied the extravagant burst of flowers splashed along the length of her arm. Strangely, they were all orange, yellow, or red, resembling a bonfire when seen all at once. “They’re from my mother’s garden. She used to pick them and put them in my hair. She had the most beautiful eyes, my mother, like raw copper.”

  “I love them,” Calista said.

  Entranced, she went to run her fingertips over the tattoo. The woman pulled her arm back suddenly. When she spoke, her voice sounded heavier and more ragged, as if she’d been possessed by a much darker side of her personality.

  “These flowers will burn with me,” the woman said, “and my ashes will be the color of her eyes. You wait and see.”

  She yanked the sleeve over her arm, extinguishing that beautiful fire, then spun around and darted into the alley and disappeared. Calista walked hurriedly back to the church, shivering the entire time.

  “I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU,” Artemis told Calista during a training session. Nearby, Lance looked on with a secretive smile tugging the corners of his lips—a smile he couldn’t hide even as he took large bites out of a red apple. Calista lowered the wooden sword she’d been training with for weeks.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The object Artemis held out was long, bulky, and draped in a white sheet. When Calista pulled the sheet away, two old friends greeted her.

  Wind and Quicksilver, the shortbow and sword Artemis had given her back at the bakery.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said, placing a hand on the weapons.

  “I only wish you never had to use them,” Artemis said. “But the day will come when you’ll have to, and for one purpose only—to spill blood.”

  Lance took another loud bite from the apple. Too loud, as if he needed the attention. He was up to something. Taking several steps back, he shouted: “Hey Cali, think fast!”

  Calista snatched up the sword and sliced the air in front of her. One half of the apple went sailing toward a boarded window. The other smacked Artemis right in the face.

  “Tail of a goddess,” he swore, spitting out a seed. “How about a little warning next time!”

  THOSE FIERY FLOWERS haunted Calista’s dreams. They will burn with me, she heard the woman say each night, and my ashes will be the color of her eyes.

  Except that in most of her dreams, the woman was not a stranger. She was an older version of Calista, and she was lost in her pain, a thorny garden of pain that threatened to consume her with its flaming colors.

  Calista awoke one night and decided she’d had enough. There was something she needed to do, and now she finally had the means to do it. She snuck out of her alcove, grabbed a few things, and was out the back door, headed for the pink glow of that window.

  THANKFULLY, she had brought a coat.

  Wrapping it more tightly around her body, Calista approached the window. The light was on, but the place was empty. She crept around the back and knocked on the door. It took about thirty seconds for the bolt to finally click open. Several more locks and bolts followed, clicking or banging open in quick succession. No voice had questioned who was outside, which seemed strange considering the owner’s need for so many locks.

  Calista soon understood why. After the moment the door swept open, the barrel of a shotgun was thrust in her face.

  “Don’t!”

  Calista fell back into a defensive crouch, ready to dart away. She was too slow, but luckily there was no blast. The woman only watched Calista through smoldering orange eyes, the wand with the glowing tip in one of her hands, the shotgun in the other. The crude weapon was little more than a metal pipe fixed with twine to a wooden stock—it didn’t even have a trigger. In order to fire it, the woman had to touch her glowing wand—clearly, it served as more than just a tattooing device—to a hole probably filled with homemade gunpowder.

  “What do you want?” the woman asked, the tip of the wand as brightly yellow as a flame. “Quickly.”

  Calista put her hands up and rose slowly. “I—I just came for…”

  “Spit it out, cub. If you’re here to beg for money, you might as well go climb a tree.”

  Calista was tired of being accused of that. “Do I look like I’m here to beg? At this time of night?”

  Considering this, the woman eyed Calista’s simple but clean jacket and pants. It was the plainest outfit she could have chosen, which hopefully indicated to the woman that Calista wasn’t homeless or in need of charity.

  “You can keep your money and your table scraps,” Calista said.

  The woman scowled. “You’re not wearing makeup, which means you aren’t a gutte
rcat. And your Jaspartan accent is clearly fake.”

  Calista blushed at that; she had been practicing daily with some of her fellow soldiers who’d grown up in the city. “

  So, what do you want?”

  “To make a trade. That’s it.”

  The woman lowered the shotgun.

  “You’re too young to be here,” she said. “Get out. Don’t argue, just go.”

  Calista wanted to throw herself at the woman’s feet—her ragged, black boots, more accurately—and beg. Instead, she unbuttoned her jacket and hoped for the best.

  “What are you doing?” the woman said through a frown of suspicion.

  “I brought something precious to me,” Calista said, opening her jacket. “I hope to exchange it for one of your designs.”

  The hilt of her sword stuck out from Calista’s belt, but she didn’t dare reach for it. The woman’s eyes widened. Weapons of this quality were rare in Jasparta these days according to Artemis. The woman didn’t hesitate one bit; she turned into the building, beckoning for Calista to follow her inside.

  “Thing barely works anyway,” she said, tossing the shotgun onto a nearby table.

  Once the door was shut, Calista reached for the hilt. The woman stopped her with an outstretched arm, her fingers rigid, and removed the sword herself.

  “It’s worth quite a bit,” she said, studying the blade. “You could eat for months off the price this baby could fetch on the street.”

  “I call it Wind,” Calista said. “It’s been with me since I was a child.”

  Instead of taking it, the woman slid the sword back into its hidden scabbard. “You’ve seen death, have you, cub? I can always tell. It’s in the eyes.”

  “We’ve all seen terrible things.”

  Shaking her head, the woman brandished her wand as if to warn Calista of its life-changing power. “What I do isn’t meant to cover up pain. It’s meant to bring about inner beauty. Unless you understand that, my designs won’t change a thing. What’s your name?”