The Sorcerer's Path Box Set: Book 1-4

by Brock Deskins

  It was the fact that she knew she could never harm it that was most infuriating. The hobbi was the master and a powerful user of magic despite his obvious insanity, but Hati knew if she could ever get her hands free and get close enough to use them, she could choke the life out of the ugly, sadistic freak.

  Zagrat turned a wheel mounted to a pulley and pulled the chains taut. The increased tension forced her arms over her head, but at least her feet remained mostly in contact with the ground. Then the hobgoblin turned the wheel further and lifted her off the ground, tightly strung up like a hide ready for scraping. Her arms felt as if they were being stretched from their sockets, and it was hard to breathe.

  “Bring in the donor subject, Grogan,” the hobgoblin commanded.

  The golem walked silently from the room and returned a minute later with an enormous bird in his arms. Its wings and taloned feet were bound, and a cloth sack covered its head. Hati knew that it must be a dire hawk given its size and the russet body and wings trimmed in bright red flight feathers.

  Hati felt sick to her stomach at the thought of what he was going to do to such a magnificent creature. Eagles, hawks, and falcons had long been her most favored of totems. She often prayed that she could transform into one of the powerful raptors so that she could fly away and leave everyone who had ever been cruel to her far below, maybe giving them a few deep scratches before she flew off.

  It was then she realized the significance of the bird’s presence. Oh gods, be careful what you wish for. Not like this, not like this, I never wanted it like this! She screamed in her mind as the golem bound the enormous hawk to one of the stone slabs.

  She closed her eyes and tried to block out the ear-piercing shrieks of the doomed dire hawk as the room filled with the smell of fresh blood. The animal’s agonized cries seemed to go on forever despite only a few minutes passing.

  Hati opened her eyes when the hawk finally fell silent. She saw its motionless, blood-soaked, feathered body on the table, but she could no longer see Zagrat. Then she felt the knife cut deeply into her back. The giant raptor’s shrieks seemed like an eye blink compared to how long hers went on. She screamed until her throat was so raw she tasted blood. Once the carving of her flesh finally stopped, she felt tugging and pressure followed by a sharp instrument, like a needle the size of an awl, being jabbed through her skin over and over again.

  The suturing finally stopped, and Hati hung from the chains sobbing in agony, fear and disgust. She had never felt so violated. Not even when one of the young warriors of her village nearly succeeded in forcing himself on her did she feel this much shame and loathing. She felt the hobbi wrapping some sort of wet poultice around the incision sites on her back then a tingling as he chanted strange guttural words of magic.

  She thought she could never feel any more violated, but the foul taint of magic he used on her was more than she could bear. Her defiance failed, her spirit shattered as she hung there, sobbing and praying for death. Hati realized that the shaman was now standing before her. She looked up at the vile necromancer without raising her head. Blood covered his apron as well as the long, razor-sharp blade gripped in his right hand.

  “You are so beautiful for a human. Now I shall make you magnificent!” Zagrat cried pressed pressed the giant scalpel against her breast.

  Hati thought she was beyond the ability to utter another scream, but her body managed to surprise her. This time, she passed out before the hobbi was even halfway finished.

  Hati woke in a cell covered with fresh straw. In the corner was what passed for a clean jug of water. Her throat was raw, and her craving for a drink was undeniable. She crawled across the floor, expecting the chains to draw her up short where she could only look at the water with longing, but then realized there were no chains attached to the manacles. Hati scrabbled forward even faster and grabbed at the jug as if she feared it would somehow run from her or simply disappear like a mirage.

  She almost dropped the vessel. Her bandaged fingers felt strange and did not want to cooperate. Hati managed to gain control over the jug before more than half of the water sloshed out. She carefully lifted the container to her mouth and drank deeply, spilling a heavy rivulet of water down her neck and aching chest. Her chest. What had the monster done to her? She set the pitcher of water down, nearly empty, and began looking at herself.

  Hati had always been slim and flat chested, yet another source of torment from the buxom Eislander women, but now her chest was big, really big, but not like a woman’s. It was more like a man’s, a very muscular man’s except that the cleft between the pectoral muscles was not as pronounced. There was still a hint of femininity to them, but no one would mistake them for being anything other than very abnormal. A bulky shirt should suffice to conceal her disfigurement. It was not as if the men were knocking down doors to see her chest before.

  Her fingers were all bandaged, but she saw that they were considerably longer than they had been. Hati knew it was probably a bad idea, but fear and rage shoved caution into the corner of her mind, and she began unwinding the rune-scribbled cloth. She wept when she looked at what were once her slender, dexterous fingers. Every one of her fingers had been snipped off as if they had been pruned like undesirable branches on a tree. They were half again as long as they once were, and the last two-thirds of them were the toes and talons of the dire hawk. Hati buried her face in her hands, nearly gouging her eye out with a talon. She took a deep, shuddering breath and steadied herself.

  Get a hold of yourself, girl!

  She forced herself to be calm as much as possible under the circumstances. She felt a weight tugging on her back near her shoulder blades. She gently flexed the aching muscles of her back. The muscles felt larger and stronger than they had been despite the soreness, much like her chest. She gaped in wonder at the enormous wings that spread out to each side. They must have spanned well over twelve-feet. They were so long she could not even fully extend them in the small cell.

  Hati the bird woman wondered if she could really fly or if these things were simply decorative to satisfy the bizarre tastes of the shaman. They certainly looked big enough, and although her muscles were sore beyond description, she felt strong, really strong. So, she had been turned into some kind of bird. It was not the worst thing Zagrat could have done to her. She had seen the worst he could do, or so she hoped and shuddered at the memories.

  Why do I still have control of my mind?

  The minds of all the ragmen she had seen before had been destroyed. Even the ones that were brought in alive and not turned into brainless zombies were stark raving mad. They hated all creatures that were not defiled as they were. Only Zagrat’s power over them kept them from running rampant across the countryside, killing every living thing in their path.

  As if summoned to answer her questions, the hobgoblin shaman stepped through the door. Before he had taken a single step, Hati lunged at him, her new talons ready to rend the flesh from his bones.

  Zagrat’s eyes widened in surprise for a fraction of a second before he barked, “Stop!”

  Every one of Hati’s muscles seemed to lock at once. Only an amazing sense of balance saved her from toppling over onto her face from the sudden halt in her forward momentum.

  “That’s a good girl. As you can see, you cannot hurt me. You are forbidden to harm me or allow me to be harmed. Do you understand?”

  Hati’s mind raged in defiance but the only thing she could say was “Yes, master.”

  The idea that she had suffered the worst violation possible was proven to be a premature judgment. The vile shaman had stolen her mind, or at least her will, and that was by far the worst thing she had ever felt. She could think what she liked, but she knew in her heart she would follow Zagrat’s instructions to the letter, and it made her sick.

  “You have seen much of what I have gifted you with, but the most impressive is within you,” the shaman continued. “Not only have I given you wings to let you fly and muscles strong enough to power
them, I have also given you the great bird’s heart.”

  Hati could not believe what she was hearing but instinctually knew it to be true. Her blood burned hotter and her heart was beating twice as fast as normal even without exertion. She had attributed those factors to the surgery and the stress that ran through her, but now she knew that it was normal…now it was normal.

  “Yes, you feel it don’t you? You needed that heart to fuel those powerful muscles. Even my magic was not enough to do everything, though it has helped greatly. I thought of adding the hawk’s tail feathers, you would need them for proper control, but I decided to use my magic to aid you in that for modesty’s sake. It would be quite hard to wear clothing with the feathers protruding like that. Besides, it did not match the symmetry of the artistic picture I envisioned in my mind.”

  “Why did you not make me insane or mindless like the other abominations?” asked Hati, her voice full of scorn.

  “A very simple answer, Hati. I need officers, and officers must be able to think. A battle will be waged and very soon. You will be one of my generals, or a captain at the least. Your ability to spy upon our enemies from above will prove invaluable.”

  “I will tear your heart out and eat it one day, shaman!”

  “No doubt you will try, little bird, but you will fail. You cannot harm me nor allow another to do so. What you cannot see is the mark I have burned into your forehead, though you have doubtlessly seen it on the others. It is linked to a similar mark, a master’s mark, which is etched upon my body. Even if you managed to succeed, what would you do then? Your people would kill you without question. Humans will see you only as a monstrosity, an abomination to be destroyed. You need only look at your own feelings of revulsion toward my beautiful children. So why go? Why destroy the only one who loves you, the only one who can ever love you? Here you are beautiful, perfect in your creator’s eyes.”

  “Because you are evil! You will make me do evil things. I could never live with that knowledge.”

  “Am I evil? Are my plans and those of my master truly evil? We accept you and the others without hesitation. Those we fight shun you; they shunned you even before your transformation, did they not? We fight against the intolerance of those in power. Even my own people drove me away those many years ago because they did not understand me, said I was mad. Can a madman create such beauty, such perfection as I have created in you? No, he cannot. You are my vindication, Hati. Now rest, my little bird. It will take a few days before you are ready to test your new gifts.”

  Zagrat left her in the small cell alone with her thoughts. She wanted to rail against his bittersweet words, but so much of what he said made sense; at least that was what her mind kept telling her. She flexed her wings in and out as far as she could, loosening and stretching the muscles.

  That night she dreamed of flying. She was soaring over the treetops, the wind racing past her face, the cold air exhilarating against her skin. Movement far below caught her keen vision, and she dove to investigate. A rabbit, white against the exposed grey stone.

  Hati folded her powerful wings closer into her body and dove at speeds far beyond the ability of the fastest horse to match. She unfurled her massive wingspan to its full glory just before striking the ground. She reached down and sank her talons into the prey’s soft fur and flesh.

  Hati raced skyward, her powerful chest and back muscles shoving her wings down against the resisting, invisible air. She reached a comfortable height of a few thousand feet and glided upon the warm currents that helped keep her aloft without expending hardly any energy and sank her powerful beak into the still warm flesh of her meal.

  I don’t have a beak! Hati’s mind told her.

  We once did, her heart replied. Beak or mouth, it does not matter. What is important is flying and the hunt. We will fly and we will hunt again. Nothing else is important.

  Hati liked her heart. It had the right answers. Nothing was important but the hunt, and she would hunt again soon.

  Zagrat retired to his chambers in the underground caverns where he made his home, fortress, and laboratory. The human girl’s transformation had exhausted him more than any other with the exception of Grogan’s creation. He had instilled a great deal of his magic in making her into what he needed. Attaching the wings, muscles, even the heart was not overly difficult for him these days. He marveled at how far he had come over the years. Today was the first time he had successfully transferred the heart of an animal into a human.

  But all those were just parts, simply connecting tubes and arteries and enspelling them to take root inside their new host. All those crafts were still insufficient to give Hati the power of true flight. He made her new muscles and made the existing muscles stronger, but he still had to cast several permanent spells into her to make her perfect.

  He had studied the flight of birds for years, and his early experiments taught him that flight was a very difficult feat. The human body was simply not properly balanced for it. Even the largest wings would not lift the muscle and solid bones of a human, and the muscles required to work them would have to be massive to the point of uselessness.

  Overcoming such obstacles had taxed him severely. He was not a strong hobgoblin, not like the warriors of his people, not even like their average citizen. He was thin and frail amongst a people known for their strength and bullishness. He preferred books to swords and brains over brawn. It was such that led him to study under the tribe’s former shaman, the shaman he had slain when he felt he learned what he could from his living mind and body. Zagrat had learned so much more from him after he had killed him.

  A nagging thrumming seemed to echo through the chamber although there was no sound. He could feel the disturbing vibrations resonating through his pallid, ochre flesh and into his bones. The shaman crossed his room and stared into the large, black pool of water that occupied the far side of the chamber. Ripples spread out from the center in ever-widening concentric circles as if something disturbed its dark surface. Something did, and the source disturbed him as well.

  “Yes, master,” Zagrat whispered to the pool.

  A shadowy, spectral image appeared in the pool’s dark surface. Red pinpoints of light shone brightly under a deep burgundy hood where eyes should have been. Even through the reflection of the pool, the shaman could feel the terror, freezing cold, and pure evil emanating from the creature, yes creature, for although it was once a man it had surrendered its humanity long ago.

  “Have you been ignoring my summons, Zagrat?” Varnath asked.

  “No, master, I have been very busy building warriors for your conquest.”

  “Excellent. How many have you constructed today?” the image asked hollowly.

  Sweat beaded upon the shaman’s brow. “Just one master, but…,”

  “One! You are supposed to be building me an army, Zagrat. One is not an army!”

  “But, master, it is a most splendid specimen, the finest I have ever created! With what I learned, I can make you a unit of fighters that could not be matched, given time.”

  “I am not interested in your toys, shaman. You are spending too much time on your personal projects. I need an army; an army that cannot be simply turned away by Solarian’s cursed Chosen or mindless minions that can be hacked apart by the greenest of conscripts. I have plenty of those at my disposal already. The ground is filled with them. I am sufficiently pleased with your ragmen so get busy!”

  The image faded away as the black water boiled and steamed; a clear indication of his master’s displeasure. Zagrat paced his room. Varnath did not understand how important his work was, how important the things were that he learned today with the Hati construct. With time, he could make an entire company of flying warriors, firing bows or dropping incendiary pots upon enemy ranks with impunity. Just the reconnaissance value alone would be invaluable. But the lich lord was not going to give him the time he needed. Oh well, he would have time after the slaughter and conquest of the southern lands and his very own castle
to work in without interruption.

  CHAPTER 8

  Azerick and Sandy stood atop a low rise looking out across the sands to the distant town of Rapture that sat growing like a malignant tumor a mile to the southeast.

  “I want you to stay near this dune as much as possible,” Azerick told Sandy. “I do not know how long I will be, but if—when—I return, I will look for you here.”

  “Okay, I’ll wait here. Are those goats I see over there?” Sandy asked, looking at a large number of black specks a short ways outside of Rapture.

  Azerick squinted into the distance, but his eyes were nowhere near as keen as the little predator’s. “Probably, but you need to stay away from them. I will leave you with food, so there is no need for you to risk getting into trouble with the people here. Remember, these are mostly very bad people, some of the worst that humans have produced.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll keep away from the humans and hide under the sand.”

  Azerick pulled most of the remaining smoked and salted meats from the magic bag, wrapped them in an ordinary linen sack, and left it for Sandy along with a couple of water skins. The herd of goats was near a large oasis with plenty of water if she ran out and got desperate.

  With one last suspicious look at Sandy, Azerick rode Horse down the hill and toward Rapture. The town was even more decayed and ramshackle than Azerick had imagined, and the smell rivaled that of the stockyards at Langdon’s Crossing. Most of the buildings were crudely fashioned from whatever materials could be carted in from more civilized locations or salvaged. Barely-clothed, filthy, swarthy-skinned children ran amok, looking wilder than the dog packs with which they shared the streets.

  The great black tower loomed over the town. Fashioned from the blackest stone, it was several stories taller than Azerick’s tower in North Haven and twice as big around. It was the only building he had yet seen that did not have hard-eyed men loitering around its walls and was not surrounded by trash.