The War of Stardeon (The Bowl of Souls)

by Cooley, Trevor H.

  She trotted back to the boulders to check on her marksmen and found that, although two of them had been wounded by the spider rider, all five men under her charge were alive. Luckily Faldon and Jobar had killed the orc and fought the spider off.

  The operation had been a success. The caravan had been wiped out and only one of their men, one of Tamboor’s Howlers, had died. But for some reason, as Jhonate found her teacher, he did not look too pleased. Faldon stood apart from the other men. He was talking to Jobar, but when he saw her approaching, he folded his arms, a stern expression on his face.

  “I have come to make my report, sir,” Jhonate said. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Jhonate bin Leeths, why did you leave your men behind and run into battle alone?” Faldon asked.

  Jhonate’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “They are veteran warriors in a defendable position. I had given them precise orders. They knew what to do. I destroyed the moonrat and left to dispatch the giant I thought it was controlling before it got out of hand, sir.”

  “That explains it. It was the moonrat.” Jobar said with a slight smile and a shake of his head. “You always have to go after the moonrats, don’t you, daughter of Xedrion?”

  “I do what is necessary.” Jhonate narrowed her eyes at her tattooed fellow student. Indeed she had made a point of dispatching every moonrat she came across. They were the witch’s children and every one she killed gave the witch some amount of pain. She could feel it.

  Faldon did not agree with her assessment. “Part of the reason I put you with the archers is your skill with your sling and the fact that you could protect them if the enemy came too close. Jobar and I had to abandon our position to cover for your absence. The archers dispatched two gorcs trying to escape, but we’re lucky that there weren’t more. They may not have been able to stop them otherwise. If word gets to the rest of the army that we were here, we could find ourselves fighting off a much larger force.”

  “A moonrat died,” Jhonate said. “Their mother knows that something happened here.”

  “But she doesn’t know how many of us there are or what tactics we used,” Faldon replied. “Secrecy is of the utmost importance if we are to strike fear into the goblinoids. You know this.”

  “I apologize, sir. I thought I was doing what was best.” Jhonate said, her cheeks reddening. Faldon had never berated her publicly before. Had she truly been in error? “I left my position to dispatch the two giants and, with Tamboor the Fearless’ help, killed a large troll.”

  Jobar laughed. “I love the way she says it so easily. Took out two giants and a troll? Maybe we should call her ‘Jhonate the Giant Killer’.”

  The blow from her staff caught Jobar in the stomach, doubling him over.

  “I have not given you permission to call me by name, Jobar da Org.” she said as the muscular man wheezed.

  “You know her rules, Jobar,” Faldon agreed, frowning at the man. “Respect them.”

  Jobar scowled but nodded sullenly. He knew to refer to her only as Daughter of Xedrion, which was the proper form of address among her people. Of all the troops in the army, she had given only Faldon the Fierce and Wizard Locksher permission to call her by name. Tamboor deserved the honor as well, but as he did not speak, she had not felt it necessary to tell him.

  Faldon returned his stern gaze to Jhonate. “I understand your impulse to act, but I will not look past such behavior in the future. Your first duty is to the men under your command. That is something that all my advanced students should know, and you should know better than most.”

  Jhonate, along with Jobar, Qenzic, and Poz were the members of Faldon’s graduate class, a group of students that had signed on for two extra years of schooling under his direct command to learn leadership and guerrilla tactics.

  “Yes, sir. It shall not happen again,” Jhonate said. Truth be told, she had not truly thought of the archers as being under her command. She was not a true markswoman. Her sling always shot true, but it was slow to reload and her other skills were far more useful.

  “See that it doesn’t,” Faldon said. “Now tell me about this troll you were fighting. We didn’t see any trolls when we scouted the caravan."

  “The troll was hidden within the boxed wagon,” she explained. “It was unlike any troll I have ever seen, sir. It was wide and muscular and immune to fire.”

  “A troll immune to fire?” His brow furrowed with concern. “Show me.”

  As she led him to the beast’s remains, Jhonate described the battle in detail. As they passed the corpses of the two giants and the spider, Jobar whistled in approval.

  “You weren’t kidding, Daughter of Xedrion. You really tore them up,” he said before scowling again. “Your whole name/respect tradition really messes with everyone else’s traditions. How are we supposed to give you a good warrior name? What are we supposed to call you? ‘Daughter of Xedrion, Giant Killer’?”

  “It broke free from the wagon there,” she said, ignoring Jobar, and pointed out the body of the strange troll. “Look sir, it is still twitching.” That was quite odd. When a troll’s ability to regenerate was taken away by their body’s reaction to the pepper, they usually died just like any other creature.

  Faldon reached down and lifted the troll’s head by its slimy hair. Its face twitched and its jaw opened and shut as if trying to bite him. He looked into its rolling beady eyes and said, “Jobar, wrap up that troll’s body. We need to take it to Locksher.”

  While Jobar went to find something to wrap the body in, Jhonate climbed to the top of the wagon and retrieved her iron ball from the moonrat’s head. She picked up its two green eyes and felt a twinge of anger stir from within her mind. I blind you yet again, witch, she thought and crushed them to jelly.

  Chapter Four

  Jhonate felt the location for their camp had been well chosen. The scouts had found a cluster of ancient fir trees whose upper branches had grown so closely together that their lower branches had withered and lost their needles. In a short amount of time, men with hand axes had cleared away the lower branches a good ten feet above the ground, leaving a rather open and well protected area in which to pitch their tents. The thick pine canopy above hid the light of their fires at night and protected them from the prying eyes of enemy scouts during the day.

  They had left Jack’s Rest a week prior, taking most of the able bodied men with them. The town was well fortified and since the goblinoid army had left the mountains to wage war on the academy, it was no longer a threat. So they left the town in the hands of the few men that wanted no part in the battle ahead.

  There were several hundred men in Faldon’s army now, most of them academy veterans and retirees, though there were many refugees from the villages and homesteads around that had joined their cause. The army was orderly, their tents clustered tightly together and cookfires were kept small and as smokeless as possible.

  When they returned from the ambush, Faldon ordered the spoils of their victory distributed amongst the army. This mainly consisted of the contents of the supply wagon and the few enemy weapons that were in good enough condition to be of use. Their wounded were brought to the healing tent which was staffed by Vannya, a few herbwomen, and a wife of one of the academy retirees that had been a mage once herself. While these matters were attended to, Faldon, Tamboor, Jobar, and Jhonate went to the command tent to meet with Wizard Locksher.

  When they opened the tent flap, a cloud of acrid smoke was released, causing all of them to hack and cough. Faldon peered into the tent with concern. “Locksher, are you okay in there?”

  The wizard spent most of his time in the command tent working on various projects. He had his own tent but rarely used it but for the occasional nap. Since the command tent was much larger, he had room to spread out his instruments and conduct his experiments. Faldon put up with it, though it was difficult for Jhonate to understand why.

  “Of course. Come on in. Sorry about the smoke, but it is necessary.”

  Desp
ite the smoky haze, the tent was well lit by glowing orbs that floated in the corners. Locksher was in the back of the tent at a makeshift workbench. A thick set of glasses were perched on his nose and he puffed away absently on a pipe that belched purple fumes. He had laid several instruments out on the table before him and was peering at something glistening on a square of white cloth.

  “So how was the ambush?” Locksher asked.

  “We were successful,” Faldon replied. “The caravan was destroyed and none of them got away.”

  “Good. Have you found any others?”

  “Not yet. Poz, Qenzic, and Zambon are out scouting the mountainside,” Faldon said. He peered at Locksher’s workbench. “Still working on that moonrat eye?”

  The night before, Locksher had begun dissecting a shriveled eye they had found in the possession of an orc captain a few days prior. Jhonate had wanted it destroyed, but the wizard had insisted on keeping it in a pouch that he had prepared with his magic. He had assured them that no sound could penetrate the material and that the spells he had used should disorient whatever signal the mother of the moonrats used to communicate.

  “Yes I am and the results are fascinating,” he said. He noticed their coughing and teary eyes and reached down into the pockets of his robes. He pulled out several sets of glasses similar to his own. “Here, put these on. I prepared them just for this sort of occasion.”

  Jhonate put the glasses on and to her surprise, the irritation went away and she could see and breathe clearly. Before she could ask why, Locksher continued.

  “Step over here and look at what I’ve found.” He gestured to the square of white cloth and Jhonate saw that the eye had been cut into several sections. “I always wondered about these beasts, you know. Their eyes are overly large and impractical. I used to think that was because they keep mostly to the dark, but that is incorrect. Moonrats are mostly blind and rely on their sense of smell and hearing to get around. Their eyes are actually intricate receptors and transmitters of energy.”

  “What do you mean?” Jobar said and Jhonate could see that the man was completely lost in the wizard’s large words.

  “It was also hard for me to understand at first,” Locksher replied. “Let me put it this way. The eyes have two purposes. They gather information and send it back to this moonrat mother and she uses them to send commands back to her army.”

  “We have already figured that much out,” Faldon said and Jhonate noticed that he was tapping his foot impatiently. Faldon was usually a very patient man, which was part of why he was such a good teacher, but since finding out about the siege on the academy, his patience had faded. Jhonate knew he was worried about his wife.

  “Yes, but we didn’t know how she did it,” Locksher said. His lips pursed in frustration and he added, “This would be so much easier if you were magic users. I will try to explain.

  “One of the things that intrigued me about the eye was that my mage sight could find no magic emanating from it. I knew she was communicating with them, but how?” A grin lit up his face. “I discovered the answer just an hour ago.”

  “How does she do it?” Jhonate asked.

  “Spirit magic,” Locksher said triumphantly. When the only response on their faces was a vacant expression, he added, “We wizards use elemental magic. Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. Every spell we cast is woven of those four elements. However there is another type of magic that has long been lost to us called spirit magic. We don’t even teach about it at the Mage School any more. I only know about it from my research into the deepest mysteries. Some of the oldest tomes in the library mention it. Others hint at it.”

  “So it’s old magic?” Faldon asked.

  “The oldest, or so I understand. This is the magic that the prophet uses. This is the magic used by the Bowl of Souls when it names warriors and wizards. It is invisible to even mage sight.”

  “Then how do you know it is the way she controls her army?” Jhonate asked.

  “There are two reasons, Jhonate.” Locksher said. “First of all, I had eliminated every other possible option. The second reason is all around you.”

  Faldon and Jhonate looked at each other.

  “The . . . smoke?” Jobar said.

  “Brilliant deduction, Jobar.” Locksher said. “Indeed, the smoke from the specially treated herb in this pipe makes spirit magic visible to regular mage sight.”

  “This piece of the eye . . .” He grabbed one shiny metal instrument and gently lifted one tiny clump of tissue from the white cloth. He glanced over at Jhonate and paused. One of his eyebrows rose with sudden interest. “It, uh . . . positively glows with spirit magic. It is quite remarkable, actually. Jhonate, would you care to see?”

  “I, sir?” Jhonate said in surprise. “I cannot see anything.”

  “No, you can’t. Because you are not a magic user. If you were, your powers would have manifested in some way by now. However, everyone has some small trace of magic ability.” He waved her over. “Come here and I will show you.”

  Jhonate took a few cautious steps forward. Locksher had the expression on his face that she had come to know meant that he was fascinated by something. She wondered what this had to do with her.

  “Now,” Locksher reached into his pocket and pulled out a small triangular piece of metal. “I am going to touch your forehead. When I do, look at this object and tell me what you see.”

  Locksher reached out with one finger and Jhonate had to force herself not to shy away. The wizard touched her between the eyes and Jhonate’s vision blurred momentarily. She blinked a few times and when her vision cleared, she looked down at the triangle in his hand.

  “It burns a bright red!” she exclaimed.

  “Good! That is the element of fire. This is my kindler. I use it to light campfires. Avoids wasting my magic. Now look at the eye on the cloth. Do you see it?”

  Jhonate’s leaned over the workbench and her vision blurred a bit more, but she shook her head slightly and it came into focus. “There is some sort of white haze around that part of the eye.”

  “Yes! That is the spirit magic I told you about. Now look at the staff in your hand.”

  She looked at the staff to see a silvery haze surrounding it. The staff practically glowed. One white strand led from the staff up along her arm and disappeared into her chest. “What is this?”

  “I had wondered how you were able to manipulate that staff of yours to do what it does. Now we have the answer. You are linked with it. The spirit magic connects the staff to your mind.” He looked thrilled. “You must tell me more about how you came to have it.”

  Jhonate’s eyes widened. “And what is this?” she asked, lifting the index finger of her right hand, where the ring Justan had given her glowed a dark blue.

  “Oh, that ring of yours has magical properties. It is a mix of water and earth magic. If I examined it more closely I could tell you what it does.”

  “It’s a protective charm,” Faldon explained. “That ring has been in the family for a long time. Justan gave it to her.”

  “Amazing. What a rarity,” Locksher said. He lifted her hand. “And powerful. Why there is a fine barrier covering your skin.”

  Jhonate stared at Faldon in shock. “You knew about this and you did not tell me?”

  Faldon gave an embarrassed shrug. “Justan wanted you to have it. I didn’t know if it really worked, but I was afraid that if you knew what it was supposed to do, you would refuse to wear it.”

  She grasped the ring and twisted it on her finger. “Then all this time . . . in all these battles . . .”

  “You never have a scratch,” Faldon confirmed. “Though that may just be your skill.”

  “No. It makes sense now.” She thought back to all the times she had mended torn armor and clothing. With all the battles of the past year, she should have some scars just as everyone else had. The cool blue glow of the ring suddenly made her feel as if Justan was with her at that moment. Part of her wanted to tear the ring off. I
nstead, she found herself clenching her fist.

  “Don’t cut yourself short, Jhonate. It was skill,” Locksher said. “Just because it has protected you from a few scrapes doesn’t mean it would save you from a direct sword thrust. I wouldn’t depend on it too much. That ring won’t make you invincible.”

  “This mage sight. Can you teach it to me?” Jhonate asked.

  “Well . . .” Locksher’s brow furrowed in thought. “I could help you from time to time the way I just did. If you remember the way it felt and focus and practice enough, I believe you could learn to use it at will. I don’t see why not. All cadets learn it.”

  “You can teach this?” Faldon asked. “Mage sight?”

  “Well, to some. There are a few like Jhonate that could handle it.”