Island Shifters: Book 02 - An Oath of the Mage (23 page)

If possible, the second strike to his chest hurt worse than the first because he now knew what to expect. Tears formed in his eyes, but he refused to let them fall.

Crack.

Lash three hit his stomach followed by a fourth to his upper thigh. He bellowed out in agony.

Crack.

The last crossed the second strike to form a red laced x on his chest.

Blood seeped from the wounds and trickled down his body, and he felt faint from the burning throb and the sudden brutality of the act. Head hanging down, he smelled her musky scent drift to him before she spoke.

“I predict that this will not be the last time you will force me to have you whipped, Prince Beck.” Her voice sounded unusually raspy and the speech garbled.

He did not respond but did look down at her with a murderous glare only to find her face hidden within the folds of her cowl.

“I know this because I can still see it,” she observed. “It is still there.”

He did not wish to communicate with her, but needed to have answers. Needed to know why she had kidnapped him and what she was after. “What? What can you see, witch?”

“Hope. You still have hope that you are going to make it out of here alive. Am I correct?”

Despair washed through his body. The conviction in her voice that the opposite was true seemed to confirm an inescapable conclusion. He was going to die here.

“You hope that your Elven friend will find you. You hope he will charge in here at the last moment and free you from your bonds. And, you hope to see your family again.” She waved her hand in the air toward him. “It is written all over your face, earthshifter.”

“I do hope those things,” he admitted. “More than anything.”

“Anything? Well, we shall see if that holds true. Let me start first with one of the reasons I have asked you to be my guest here at Farout Falls. The Protetor, my dear progeny of Galen Starr. Where can I find this most valuable of all treasures?”

“That is what this is about? The Protetor?” The book suddenly felt heavy in its location in his trouser pocket, but he knew he had to stall. He had to buy time for Airron to track him. “You are welcome to it. I never wanted to accept the book in the first place, but Mage Starr insisted. You will have to travel to Bardot to retrieve it. It is located in my office at the Academy.”

She began to pace back and forth below him, a dark hooded shadow gliding across the floor. “Where in your office?”

“On my shelf where I keep all my books. It is small and black and free of markings.”

“You keep such a valuable item on a bookshelf? Where all have access to it?” she asked in disbelief.

“I did not consider the book valuable,” he lied.

She stopped in front of him. “Very well. I will travel to Bardot to retrieve the book and you better not be lying. However, I think I can also spare a few days before I leave to dispose of the Elf.”

Beck swallowed his fear. “He has probably gone back to

Haventhal by now.”

“Another deception, Prince Beck!”

“Please…”

“The book can wait for now,” she interrupted. “I fear the primary reason I wished to read the book is no longer necessary. My body is too far gone.”

Even though she was standing directly in front of him, he still could not see her face. What did she mean by that?

“Whenever you feel hope creep back into your heart, earthshifter, remember this.” She lifted her hands and removed her cloak and let it fall to the ground.

He shrank back in horror. The body that stood before him was hideous. Bent and skeletal with curved hands and toes that ended in claws. The skin of her face so translucent that it reminded him nothing so much as an animated corpse. Dark circles caused her eyes to look like sunken marbles, and deep cracks sectioned her face like a broken mirror.

He was unable to tear his eyes away as the creature that was once Avalon Ravener unfurled the wings behind her back, the membranes pulsating with what looked like black blood.

He could not help himself.

He screamed.

C
HAPTER
14

Clash of Swords

After Hugo Bassus gave the order to charge, Rogan barely managed to dive out of the way of the last column of horses before the stampede. The cloak fell off Janin’s shoulders when she rolled across the ground, but it was just as well. The disguise would only be a hindrance at this point. His wife immediately fell into a crouch and unsheathed her sword. With the ease of an old dance, she pressed herself against his back at once, and they began to fight their way through the mass of foot soldiers running ahead to close with House Gregaros. With battle lust raging through them, few of the soldiers seemed to notice that they were Dwarves and fewer yet that they were fighting against them. The wound on his thigh where one of the Halfies stabbed him back in Haventhal began to throb in earnest, but he pushed through it, inching closer and closer to the allied forces. Janin, in her element again, screamed her fury at any who ventured too close.

The brutal collision of the two armies and the ensuing clash of men, animals and weapons was deafening. Soldiers younger than he slipped in grass now sodden with blood in their haste to rush to the fight. The full weight of one wounded and staggering soldier hit him from behind and bore him to the ground in a tangle of limbs. He looked up into the man’s eyes, but they were already glazed over in death.

Rogan pushed the dead man off him and jumped back to his feet just as another legionnaire rose up and swung a large broadsword at him. He knocked it aside and Janin made a running leap to bury her blade in the man’s neck.

Rogan hated this.

Men—boys really—sacrificing their lives in combat with their fellow countrymen. But, for what reason? Rogan witnessed firsthand how distressed King Maximus had been when he learned that the living conditions in Iserport had not improved. Given the opportunity, the Iserlohn monarch would have addressed the issue, Rogan was sure of that. But, the nobles had their own agenda for starting this war and it was not necessarily that of the citizens or in their best interests.

Janin cried out when a soldier slammed his elbow into her face and she fell to the ground. The legionnaire immediately jumped on top of her and lifted his fist to strike her again.

Rogan had to fight back the desire to kill, to drag his sword across the soldier’s neck and watch while the blood spilled from the man’s throat. It would take very little effort. Instead, his foot connected with the legionnaire’s cheekbone, and he heard the distinctive crunch of bone.

The soldier fell away from Janin.

Rogan stood over the man who was cradling his face in his hands and pointed south. “Get out of here! Now!”

The young soldier did not have to be told twice and scrambled backward to get away from the crazed look Rogan knew was in his eyes.

He immediately went to Janin. “Are you all right?”

“Nothing broken, but I don’t think I can say the same for the other guy,” she noted with a feral smile.

A large of amount of blood sprayed across their faces from two combatants fighting next to them. Soon, Rogan knew he was going to have to summon fire. To the Netherworld and back with the law. Janin’s life was in danger, and he would not stand by and let her be killed when he had the power to stop it.

He grabbed her by the elbow. “Come on, let’s get…”

A loud angry bellow rent the air and a hole opened up in the melee when the legionnaires lowered their weapons and stumbled back from the shout. All fighting came to an end as the soldiers stopped to watch Gage Gregaros and Hugo Bassus, off their horses now, circle each other once as friends, now as enemies.

“Come on, you bastard!” screamed Bassus, making a clumsy lunge for Gage, and Rogan could see why. The Commander was bleeding from a deep cut on his thigh. The gushing blood told him that the former Saber had sliced Bassus’ femoral artery. Unless the Commander received care within the next few minutes, he would bleed to death.

But, the man did not have even a few seconds.

Gage walked over and with both hands on the hilt of his sword, took the head of the traitorous Hugo Bassus as promised.

Seeing their leader cut down broke the resistance of many of the legionnaires, and they threw down their swords and knelt to the ground. Two Cavalrymen wearing the plumes of officers on their helms dismounted and bent before Gage. “Yield! We yield to you, Lord Gregaros!”

As word of the surrender passed back through the ranks, the warfare ground to a halt.

Rogan and Janin stood out among the kneeling soldiers and Gage’s blood spattered face froze in shock when he saw them. He immediately strode over and held his hand out to Rogan. “I can honestly say that you are one of the last people I ever expected to see here.”

Rogan took the outstretched hand, but before he could reply, the high-pitched squeaks of the Halfies echoed loudly behind him. Gage pointed to the sprites actively routing the army from the plains with their spear points and sending many soldiers sprinting at a dead run south back toward Iserport. “Your idea?”

Rogan shrugged. “I needed an army.”

Gage informed him then of Lord Etin’s plot and his seizure of Nysa. “I will send a runner back with news of Bassus’ defeat to Princess Kiernan immediately. She will want to know that the threat has been eliminated.”

“Has there been any word of Beck?” Rogan asked hopefully.

But, Gage shook his head. “Nothing.”

Rogan felt a tug on his sleeve. It was Vinni Vee. “Thank you for the fight, rude Dwarf.”

Guarding all of his vulnerable parts, Rogan faced the imp. “It is I who must thank you. We will meet again when this is over, Vinni, and I promise you that I will find you a home. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

To Rogan’s surprise, the Halfie turned his back on him, and he wondered if he offended the Tribe Leader with his offer.

When Vinni finally turned around again, he seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Rogan thought he detected a small tear building at the corner of the Tribe Leader’s eye. “That is all we have ever wanted, but most people do not understand that.”

Rogan held out his hand cautiously. “I do, because it is all I ever wanted, too. Until we meet again, Halfie.”

Vinni accepted his hand. “Until we meet again, rude…” He shook his head fiercely as he fought his natural instincts to be mean. “Until we meet again,
Savitar.”

The burning sun was directly overhead when Airron stepped off the ferry and held his hand out to Melania to help her onto the dock. It was their fifth ferry in as many hours, and he was grateful to be on dry land again.

He was also exhausted. He had not slept the evening before after obtaining the confirmation he dreaded. Avalon Ravener had indeed passed through the small mining community, and the proof insulted every moral fiber of his being as a bodyshifter and caused his blood oath to rage.

The shrunken corpse of the young woman had been unceremoniously wedged among an outcropping of rock not far from where the miner family slept in their tents. It left Airron to explain to the father that a fellow bodyshifter had committed this heinous crime. After that, the man looked at him with disgust in his eyes and Airron could not blame him. The father could not possibly be expected to distinguish Avalon Ravener with any other bodyshifter on the island. Magic had killed his daughter. That was all he knew or cared about.