Messenger of the Dark Prophet (The Bowl of Souls: Book Two) (35 page)

“But it’s not normal screaming sir. They are screams of torture and pain. And it’s not just that. My men say that some of the workers have seen body parts thrown to the dogs, and the dungeon keepers, well they just don’t seem human.”

“Torture?”
Ewzad feigned horror at the suggestion. He needed to tell his torture masters to be more inconspicuous.
“Why, how awful!
I never ordered such atrocities!”

“Of course not, sir.
We knew that the king’s good friend would never let such things go on.” Ewzad could see that the captain of the guard didn’t believe him. A sense of righteous indignation showed in the man’s features. “That is why I am here. I know that this is not our regular area of responsibility, but we recommend that whomever you have put in charge of the dungeons, be dealt with.  That kind of conduct is inexcusable and if word ever got out to the populous, we could have revolt. The king would not be pleased.”

The man had just threatened him! How dare he? Ewzad wanted to open the artifact and make the man’s head explode, but he forced his anger down.

“I shall put a stop to this at once, captain. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I shall go down there and visit the dungeons myself.”

“I would like to volunteer to accompany you sir. It would ease my men’s minds if I could tell them myself.” It was clear from the captain’s expression that he didn’t expect the duke to cooperate.

Ewzad clenched the gold inlaid box on his lap with such force that his knuckles were white. The king’s soldiers were now beyond being a simple nuisance. Oh, how the rings called to him, but he had a better way of going about it. Ewzad always knew that he would have to get rid of the guards at some point. It was a bit soon for his liking, but they had forced his hand.

“That would be perfect, Captain Demetrius.” Ewzad sent a mental command to his servant outside of the throne room. “Yes, I would prefer to have you along, actually.”

The Duke’s unexpected response jolted the guard and he relaxed a bit. A knock sounded at the door and the Duke’s servant entered. His name was Rudfen, a large heavily muscled man with several distinctive scars running across his face.

“I have an urgent message for you, sir!”
Ridfen
said and ran across the throne room to hand the Duke a piece of parchment. After the Duke took it from his grasp, the large man moved to the side and stood with his hands clasped in front of him, eyes staring vacantly off into space.

“Thank you, Rudfen.” Ewzad pretended to read the blank piece of parchment. “Oh! Dear-dear. . .” He looked back at the captain with concern. “I am afraid that I may have spoken to soon, Demetrius. This is a note from the northern border of my territory just below the edge of the
Trafalgan
Mountains
. There seems to be a group of goblinoids amassing there.”

“Goblinoids, sir?”
Demetrius frowned. Ewzad knew that the captain hated the things. His garrison had been ambushed by a hundred of the beasts on their way to the new Duke’s holdings. That day the captain had lost twenty men. That was also the day that Ewzad had lost a hundred goblinoids.

“Oh yes, I’m afraid so,” Ewzad said. “Yes, the report says that there may be more than forty of the filthy creatures in this bunch. I need to send a strong contingent of warriors to destroy the beasts. Unfortunately, my own army is still quite green and I need to send a message of strength out to the people to give them confidence, don’t you think, Dear Captain?” The Duke leaned forward expectantly.

“My men are available,” the captain said. “Any chance to kill goblinoids is a welcome one.”

“Hmm, yes.
Very well then.
I need you to gather your troops and go out at once. I will send you more detailed instructions when you have your men ready. That is . . . if you think your men capable of handling such a mission.”

“Yes, sir!”
The captain bowed.

“Ah, good-good, and Demetrius?
Don’t worry about the dungeons. I will take care of the situation right away.”

Reluctantly, the captain nodded and strode out of the throne room. The moment the door shut behind the man, Ewzad Vriil opened the box that he kept so near to himself.

“The fool,” he muttered. “What will he do when he finds not
two score
but two hundred of the beasts? Ooh, perhaps I can be there to see it. Yes-yes, I think I will!”

With greed, the Duke pulled a red velvet bag from within the box and opened it into his hand. Out poured ten small rings linked together with golden chains in sets of five. Each one was a gold band with a different color stone set into it. Ewzad shuddered in anticipation.

They were the Rings of Stardeon. It had taken Ewzad Vriil a long time to master the powers of the rings, but it was well worth it. In the three years since, he had been very busy building his army of monsters and wedging himself into a place of influence in the kingdom. If King Andre only knew the truth, he would die of fright.

His lips quivering with pleasure, Ewzad Vriil slipped the rings on. As each ring moved over the second knuckle, the finger began to writhe
bonelessly
back and forth like a snake. After the last ring went on over his right thumb, Ewzad felt the energy soar through him. At the same time, he felt his body change. Ewzad’s cheeks sunk in and his body lost muscle tone until his normally healthy body looked frail.

The power of the rings came with a price, and the physical changes were just part of it. Because of the physical changes, Ewzad could not wear the rings in public.
At least, not yet.
But the power was so addictive that he couldn’t bear to be without them for long.

The wizard leaned back into the cushion of his throne and giggled. Before he had found the rings, Ewzad Vriil had been a competent magic user even though not well trained, but with them on his fingers he was a wizard of great power, perhaps one of the most powerful wizards alive.

It was the kind of power that one had to have to be the messenger of the Dark Prophet.

Chapter Twenty Three

The borderlands of Dremaldria were a dangerous place. The lower reaches of the
Trafalgan
Mountains
were full of goblinoids, trolls, and monsters of all sorts. Yet humans still settled there. The people of the borderlands were stout and courageous. Most of them were retired soldiers or people with a love of danger that wished to be left alone by the rest of the kingdom. This worked well for them except when the monsters banded together and raided the borderlands.

The only protection that the people of the border and the rest of Dremaldria had from these raids were the border patrols of the
Dremaldrian
Battle
Academy
. They had protected the people ever since the War of the Dark Prophet centuries ago, but it was hard work. There were too many places for monsters to hide and it was easy to get ambushed. The woods were thick in the lower elevations, and it was hard to see an attack coming.

Jhonate, daughter of Xedrion bin
Leeths
used that to her advantage.

With her Jharro staff strapped to her back, she stepped gingerly through the fall leaves, barely making a sound as she followed the slimy tracks of trolls. It wasn’t a hard trail to follow. Their slime stank in a way that burned the nostrils.

She was at home in the forest. Though her kingdom bordered a vast mountain range, she grew up in the jungle near the homelands of the elven
Treemasters
. The woods there were luscious and green all year round even in the depths of winter. She wished it were that way here. The fall leaves had a tendency to crunch beneath her feet and the thick winter hides she wore under her armor to combat the cold hampered her movements too much.

The trail continued through several hundred yards of fall leaves. She had to be careful that they didn’t find out she was following them. It would be difficult to take on multiple trolls at once.

Jhonate heard them before she saw them. A low rhythmic grunting filled the air. It was the sound that she had learned to recognize as the labored breathing of trolls. There were quite a few of them by the sound of it.

She ducked behind a large tree and pulled out her message stone. It was a smooth flat stone slightly bigger than her palm. With it, she could communicate short messages back and forth with the commander. It didn’t have a very long range, but it was perfect for someone scouting ahead.

She used the tip of her fingernail to etch out a message to the commander, telling him her location and that trolls were nearby. The words disappeared and she waited for the response. It came back shortly.

Words appeared on the surface of the stone telling her to find out how many there were. He would . . . She blinked a couple times trying to make out the last part . . . bring the troops closer? She frowned. Why did Faldon the Fierce have bad handwriting?

She eased out from behind the tree and crept parallel to the trail of slime towards the troll’s noises. She was glad that the wind wasn’t blowing. It was difficult to track trolls without them catching your scent. Troll’s had horrible eyesight and hunted mainly by smell. This worked fine for them because they would eat any creature alive or dead.
The smellier the better as far as they were concerned.

She came up behind a large downed tree just outside of a wide clearing. As she peeked over the top, she saw her quarry.

All trolls looked identical to each other; seven-foot-tall gangly beasts with greenish skin that dripped with slime wherever they went. They were mindless creatures driven only by hunger and were very hard to kill. They could recover from any injury because of their tremendous regenerative abilities. Chop them into ten pieces and in a few days you would end up with ten trolls. The only things that were certain to kill them were fire and starvation. And, she had learned recently, a certain common household spice.

One of the advantages to being the best training ground for warriors in the known lands was that the
Battle
Academy
received applicants from every diverse culture. A few weeks prior, a new student to the academy told the council that for years his country had been treating their weapons with pepper to combat their troll problem.

His people had discovered that trolls had a devastating reaction to the spice. It was so poisonous to the beasts that any troll infected could not regenerate. Since then, the academy had been using the method to deadly effect.

There were fifteen of the beasts in the clearing, an unheard of amount to be hunting together. Trolls usually hunted in groups of five or less because they had to eat such a large amount of food to stay alive. With fifteen trolls in the same area, there wouldn’t be enough food to go around. They would die off. But that wasn’t the only thing strange about this group.

They were standing in a tight circle, all of them staring down at something in the middle. They barely moved except to shift slightly as if to get in better position to see whatever was down there. They were packed together so tightly, Jhonate could not make out what was in the center.

She knelt back down behind the tree and pulled the message stone out again.
Fifteen trolls
, she wrote with her fingernail.
In close quarters.
Instructions?
The letters disappeared. She chanced a glance back over the tree while she waited, but nothing had changed.

Stay there. We are caning.
She shook her head. Caning? She looked closer. The middle letters were
smooshed
together. He had to mean coming. It was the only word that made sense. She would have a talk with him about his writing after this mission was over.

In a way, she was surprised that Faldon had decided to attack. They had a small strike force of only twelve warriors. Fifteen trolls were a daunting force to take on with even twice that number. Evidently Faldon thought that their new weapon gave them enough of an upper hand to take the chance.

She heard a new noise from the clearing. With caution, she raised her head just over the downed tree and looked again. Her jaw dropped. A large steer came through the trees towards the clearing. It was huge, about the size of two cows in her kingdom. What was it doing there? Had it wandered off some nearby farm? The animal was breathing heavy and copious amounts of drool hung from its mouth. Its eyes were rolling in their sockets. Was it sick?