The Dreaming Hunt (67 page)

The avarian apprentice to Olivar had out a pair of daggers and was whipping them around his head with admirable speed, taking out one of the insectoid creatures with every blow. As she glanced his way, however, one of the big ones wrapped itself around him and latched onto his head. The odd bit was that the avarian just stopped fighting, as if he'd forgotten what he was doing and where he was. Gabrielle took aim and fired a bolt of magic at the snakelike creature. It released the avarian, who just stood there once freed.

“Hit it!” she cried. “Stab it with your daggers!”

The avarian shook himself and then turned and stabbed at the creature.

Where was Mina? Gabrielle whirled and saw the White Heart member sitting on the ground, a blank look on her face, while Kuango picked up creature after creature and threw it violently against the wall beside him. The creatures were not going down, though. They bounced and came right back at the huge yeren, who was fighting maniacally to protect his mistress.

She ran over to the yeren's side and tossed magical damage into each creature he momentarily incapacitated. Between the two of them, they made short work of the remaining creatures.

The entire attack lasted no longer than three minutes, but Gabrielle was completely drained of magical energy, exhausted, and ravenously hungry at the end of it. The party gathered together, taking stock of injuries. Mina, still acting dazed, managed to heal the various injuries that had been sustained in the battle.

Gabrielle turned to Olivar. “You were about to tell me about the storm copper that statue is made of.”

“What statue?”

She frowned. “That one, right over there.”

Everyone turned to look where she had pointed, blank looks on their faces. What in the world? How could they have forgotten finding it just a few minutes ago? Unless …

She turned to stare at the corpses littering the floor of the hall. Those must have been censors, and they'd been sucking the memories out of her companions. The one that had attacked her must have been prevented from removing her memory by Talissar's Octavium Pendant.

“The dwarven statue,” she told Olivar. “You were telling us about old legends of living creatures being turned to storm copper and eternally frozen, alive, inside metal.”

“I was?” A frown. “Oh. Now that you mention it, I do recall hearing such a story.”

One by one, with her prompting them, the members of the party gradually remembered what had been going on directly before they'd been attacked.

“Can we take the statue out of here?” she asked no one in particular.

Gunther frowned. “If I brought in a miner's cart, we could wheel him out.”

“Don't bother,” Mina replied. “Kuango can carry the statue back to our camp.”

Gabrielle was shocked that the yeren was indeed able to lift the large metal statue and hoist it over his shoulder with apparent ease. They had to push aside a little more debris and roll away a few stones to enlarge the opening back into the chamber with the forge, but then Kuango pushed the statue through and followed behind it.

“How come those creatures didn't suck out your memory?” Mina asked her as they hiked the dark tunnels back to the cave where they'd camped before.

Gabrielle shrugged. “I suppose it was the magic I summoned and cast.”

“I summoned magic, too,” the White Heart member replied, frowning.

“Maybe spirit magics didn't chase them away, but my damaging magic did.”

“I guess so,” Mina responded doubtfully.

Gabrielle silently thanked Talissar for gifting her with the protective amulet.

“What are we going to do with that copper fellow once we get him to the surface?” Gunther asked.

She glanced over at Olivar. “Is there somebody who might be able to reverse the process that turned this gentleman to metal?”

“If anyone knows how, it would be the dwarven smiths at the Great Storm Forge.”

“And where might that be?” she asked, praying that the oblivi had not erased the memory from the ogre-kin's mind.

“Rignhall,” Olivar answered firmly.

 

CHAPTER

33

Justin opened his eyes. The ritual-casting chamber took shape around him. Kadir looked smug, his assistant looked shocked, and the painting that Kadir liked was still ugly.

“Welcome back,” Kadir said. “Both of you.”

He frowned. His forehead felt strange as he wrinkled it, and he reached up to touch it.
That was not his face!
He lurched upright, shocked.

“The melding of your spirit with the oginn's has caused certain changes to your physical appearance.”

“An oginn?”

“An ogre mage. The name of the particular one you now carry within you was Damoc. I cannot tell you what his work entailed. It is a great secret of our order.”

Our?
Oh. Right. He was one of them now.

“You will still need lessons in how to use your magic, to shape it, cast, and manage it, before I send you out.”

“Out where?”

“I have a job for you. A recent visitor to Alchizzadon helped himself to a collection of votives. We need you to track him down and let us know when you find him. A team of our mages will join you to get them back.”

“Why would a person put a piece of his spirit in a jar?” he asked.

“We have several reasons for doing such a thing, and they are beyond your need to know until you have more experience within the order.”

“I want to see what I look like.”

Kadir nodded and sent the acolyte out to fetch a hand mirror. The youth passed the polished silver object to Justin, who held it up hesitantly.

His skin had taken on a sallow tone, and his jaw was heavier, squarer than before. His hair was unruly, probably from him thrashing around in the throes of the transformation, but it stuck up in a way it never had before. His eyes were still light blue, and he saw himself in them.

He turned his head side to side, and that was when he spotted the rune on his neck. It was a spiderweb of fine black lines on his vaguely golden skin.

“What in the name of all that is cursed is that?” he demanded. Now that he knew it was there, he became aware of a burning sensation on his skin.

“A rune. I took the opportunity to cast the ritual upon you since we were already doing rituals. I shall also have to teach you how to use its power. Come, Justin. I am hungry. And you have much to learn.”

*   *   *

Sha'Li's cheek burned fiercely, and she slapped her hand over it, biting back a groan. Is this what it felt like to lose her tribe mark? She'd had to make a terrible choice. Her friend or the were-beast who had no control over his actions. Will or Kendrick.

It had been a split-second call. It was not that Will had less status in her mind because he was a human. But he'd been lost in his rage, not thinking clearly. He'd been on the verge of killing Kendrick, and she'd had no other way to stop him. And Raina was here. She would not let Will die. Handy to have around, that White Heart girl was sometimes.

The pain on her face diminished, and she removed her hand reluctantly. There would be no hiding the loss of her tribe mark from her friends. She might as well get the humiliation over with right away.

“Sha'Li!” Rosana cried.

“Gone is my mark, I know.”

“Gone? It's glowing so bright white I can see it from over here,” the gypsy contradicted her.

“What? Have it still I do?”

Kendrick snarled, a deep, rough growl that sounded entirely inhuman. Rynn knelt in front of the young man. “Fight the transformation, Kendrick. Focus on that calm place in your core. Your friends are here. They've searched high and wide for you, and they've rescued you.”

“Don't. Understand,” he panted. “Don't. Want. Rescue.”

Eben stepped forward. “That cursed madman kidnapped you!”

“Not. Mad.”

Something deep inside Sha'Li responded to Kendrick's struggle as he fought against the transformation trying to claim him. She moved to his side. Placed a hand on his shoulder. The turbulence roaring through him slammed into her, shocking her with the intensity of its violence.

“Not you, this is,” she murmured. “Strong are you. Brave and kind.”

He looked over at her, making eye contact with that disturbing red eye of his. “You're tribe, now?”

“So it seems.”

“Can you fix lycanthropy, then?”

She blinked, startled. Lycanthropy? She'd heard stories as a child of tribe warriors who were gifted lycanthropes and could shift from human form to were-creature form and back. Some did it at will; some did it with the cycles of the moon to which they were tied.

“Know not how, do I. But elders of tribe I can ask.”

“You've got the healing mark,” Kendrick persisted. “Kerryl has spoken of it. He said that the reappearance of the white tribe mark after all this time is a harbinger of the coming storm. Your mark is prophetic.”

Her? A prophecy? Not bloody likely. “What storm comes?” she asked curiously.

“Kerryl will not speak of it. He says it is a greater evil than Koth, a greater threat to all life than the Empire, though. And you have been marked to fight it.”

Sha'Li was staggered. She'd never been special, just a middling child of an average clutch, and a girl to boot. Her only oddity had been her determination to travel, to see more of the world than a dank little corner of a swamp in the middle of nowhere. Although if she were to be honest with herself, she'd always wanted to be … more.

“You've got the mark of the healer, Sha'Li. If anyone can remove this curse from Tarryn and me, it is you. I believe in you. If a way can be found, you will do it.”

He felt and sounded as if he was slipping. The beast was slowly, inexorably, taking over his mind and soon would overtake his body.

“My thanks … for finding me … but I am at peace … with my fate. For now, I will stay with Kerryl … and learn more of this evil that comes.” His words were interrupted by bestial pants as the change crept over him.

He gathered himself and said all in a rush, “Take Tarryn with you. She did not want this. Fix her, Sha'Li. She has just been changed; the curse should not have taken root as deeply in her as it has in me.”

Eben knelt before Kendrick and took him by both shoulders. “My brother, you have a right to know. Your father was assassinated by Dominion marauders, likely hired by Anton Constantine. He did not resurrect. He is gone.”

Kendrick stared at Eben for a second and then threw his head back and let out a roar of grief and rage so wrenching that Sha'Li's heart could hardly beat in her chest under the weight of his agony. She jerked her hand away from his shoulder, unable to bear the intensity of his pain any longer.

“Get.” A snapping grunt. “Back.”

And then the transformation was upon him. In a blink of an eye, Kendrick the human was no more, and in his place stood a massive, snarling were-boar bigger than any mundane boar she'd ever seen before and eminently more dangerous, for Kendrick's intelligence worked in the creature's mind.

They all took a stumbling step back.

The beast swung its huge, gleaming tusks aggressively at them once and then turned and plunged into the underbrush. Rynn tensed to give chase, but Eben spoke heavily from the ground where he knelt. “Let him go.”

The night fell deeply silent around them as they mourned the loss of their friend. He had passed beyond them now, become someone and something they could not follow. They'd well and truly lost him.

So. Her white mark meant she was a healer, did it? She felt in her bones that Kendrick did not mean the kind of healing Raina and Rosana did. Her healing was something else altogether. She glanced over at Tarryn, lying on the ground. In her unconsciousness, she'd transformed back to human, as well.

“Restrain the kindari girl we must before wakes she does and kills us all.”

Rynn threw her a grateful look. “You are the most practical one of us all, Sha'Li.”

She pulled a length of stout rope from her belt and held it out to the paxan. That third eye of his made her skin crawl to look at, but he had an exceedingly kind heart. She liked him greatly in spite of his monstrous appearance.

In her experience staying busy was the best way to deal with grief. It gave a person less time to dwell on the pain while the heart accustomed itself to the loss.

“Healing we all need, White Heart,” she said briskly to Raina. “And food you casters need,” she said to Rosana. “A weapons count we need to make sure no swords or staffs we have lost,” she told Eben. “And tell
not
the alligator of Hyland's death when she awakes. Another enraged were-creature we need not. As for you”—she looked down at Will where he was rubbing his newly healed throat—“a talk we must have.”

Everyone seemed a little startled at her taking charge like this, but none of the others seemed up to the task at the moment, devastated as they all were by the loss of Kendrick. She would grieve him in her own way, but later. Alone, in the privacy of nature and in the way of her people.

Will rose to his feet, and she made eye contact with him. He nodded and followed her a little way away from the clearing where Rosana was building a fire and Rynn and Eben were discussing how best to restrain Tarryn.

“What do you wish to talk about?” Will asked without preamble.

“Apologize first, I must. For attacking thee.”

“I'd have killed Kendrick if you hadn't dropped me. It is I who owe you the apology, I think.”

“Accept, I do.”

“And I.”

“Good we are, then?”

“We're good,” Will said firmly.

“About my tribe marking wish I to speak. The other spirit within you, knows he aught of this white mark?”

Will frowned. “He does not speak to me as if he is a second voice inside my head. I only get impressions and feelings from him. I cannot ask questions and get direct answers, I'm afraid.”