The Dreaming Hunt (62 page)

Justin waited impatiently while Kadir meticulously laid out the items he would need on a table inside the circle. The acolyte wheeled in a tall cot and placed it in the middle of the circle, as well.

To him, Justin muttered, “Why does that bed have wheels?”

“Easier to carry out the leftover parts if this ritual fails.”

Justin's jaw dropped. He whirled to demand of Kadir, “Exactly how dangerous is this?”

Kadir stopped fussing over the components to glare at him. “I know ten times as much about ritual magics as those moron Collectors, who style themselves such great scientists and students of magic.”

“Who are the Collectors?”

Kadir didn't deign to answer him, but the acolyte did. “Within the Mages of Alchizzadon, they are primarily focused on the collecting and understanding of magic. Particularly spirit magic.”

Huh. They would've had a field day studying Raina had she let herself be taken by these people. No wonder she'd run away from home.

“Up on the table,” Kadir ordered him.

“What will happen to me if this fails or backlashes?” Justin asked as he stretched out on the tall canvas cot.

“Not to worry,” Kadir replied unconcernedly. “This will either work or you will no longer exist. No middle ground. There are more variables to this ritual than even I can count. I have accounted for all the ones I think might kill you. But I may have to adapt on the fly as this unfolds.”

He stared up at the mage, who was starting to gather magic and forming a ritual circle around them. Justin had seen women do the same dozens of times back in Tyrel. But never had he been the target of a ritual. “How many times have you done this ritual?”

“Personally? Never. But I'm a genius at this stuff. I've thought of every contingency. Relax. This is going to hurt a little.”

Justin sat bolt upright. “Hold on now. Never?”

Kadir pulled out one last item from the basket. He did so with great care, placing a tall cut-crystal bottle on the table with the other components. Lavender, vaguely glowing … something … swirled as gently as smoke inside the clear container. The mage explained, “This is a votive. And before you ask what that is, a votive is a magical vessel for storing a spirit.”

Justin stared doubtfully at the bottle. “You're not going to put me in that thing, are you?”

“Exactly the opposite, my boy. I'm going to put the spirit in yon votive into you. The magical portion of quite an accomplished mage's spirit is trapped within the bottle.”

The acolyte made a sound of eager anticipation, and Justin looked askance between Kadir and the assistant. “You didn't answer my question. What do you mean by never?
You've
never done this ritual, or are you saying it's never been tried before?”

“Oh, it's been tried before,” the acolyte replied helpfully. “We're very good at putting spirits into bottles, but nobody's ever quite mastered getting them back out.”

“Lie down, Justin, and be quiet. Don't distract me,” Kadir ordered as he gathered a great, glowing ball of magic in his hands, adding to it from each of the components on the table. Justin was alarmed to see that there was no scroll of instruction for this ritual, apparently. But then this whole procedure was cursed alarming.

Kadir picked up the votive, and the gathered magic transferred to the surface of the bottle, making the entire thing glow brightly. He reached for the stopper. “Don't move, boy.”

Justin gripped the edge of the cot with both hands and held his entire body rigidly still. He fixed a picture of Raina firmly in his mind's eye. This was for her. He thought of her that last day they'd spent together, laughing and her tickling him into telling her what her birthday present was going to be. He'd failed her once. He would not do so again.

Kadir poured the essence in the bottle onto Justin's chest. The lavender-gray stuff settled gently, spreading out across his skin, faintly warm. It felt not quite liquid, not quite gaseous. It sank into his pores lightly, like sunshine warming him.

And then it reached his blood. Without warning, liquid fire ripped through his belly, incinerating him with fiery agony from the inside out. An instant later, a great gout of the stuff reached his heart, and in a single convulsive heartbeat, the searing agony had been pumped to every corner of his body. It was unbelievable. He was being torn apart, individual cells burned alive.

He wanted to scream, but his throat was paralyzed from utter horror at what was happening to him. He wanted to leap up off the cot and run for his life, but his muscles were eviscerated into useless shreds of inoperative tissue. He could only lie there in sheer terror and endure while he died a death worse than anything he could ever have imagined.

Into the morass of agony, an image filled his mind. Of smiling green eyes. Blond hair lifting in a breeze. A generous smile and feisty spirit. The sound of laughter. The comfort of lifelong friendship. The knowing of a long future together to come. He clung to the image desperately, his only fragile lifeline to sanity.

The fire receded, leaving behind a sensation of every bone in his body being slowly pulverized. He panted under the weight of this new pain, unable to breathe as his chest was inexorably crushed.

Time lost all meaning as the agony stretched on and on. He might have lost consciousness at some point. But his entire existence fell away, reduced only to a state of pain, upon pain, upon pain.

And then it stopped.

Where he had once been, now there was only a vast, empty place. Darkness.

Had he died? Was this the spirit realm, then?

*   *   *

Raina had to work hard not to fall behind Sha'Li, who was tracking faster than she would have believed possible. At times the lizardman girl actually broke into a jog as she stared down at the boggy ground. But then, they were all determined to catch the vile beings who'd slaughtered those children. Apparently, the physical trail of the gobrats now ran practically on top of the signs Tarryn had left for them heading south and east, deeper into the swamp, which made it all that much easier to follow.

The going was terrible, at times they slogged thigh deep through black water and at others through knee-deep mud. But they pressed on grimly. Near midday, they stopped briefly at an upwelling of fresh springwater within the brackish swamp to drink and refill their waterskins.

“Into the heart of Angor the trail leads us,” Sha'Li commented in a worried tone.

“Why's that a problem?” Will asked.

“Dark and dangerous is that place. Away from it all living creatures should stay.”

That
didn't sound good. And yet, the trail led arrow straight into the Swamp of Angor. And it wasn't like any of them were about to give up on catching the goblin-rats, particularly if Kendrick and Tarryn were in danger from them.

Raina was deeply unhappy over the whole business of tracking down the goblin-rats because she knew the others were set on executing vigilante justice upon the creatures. She had no idea how to talk them out of it. She fully understood their anger. Stars, she
shared
their anger; however, one murder did not justify another.

Perhaps she could talk the others into merely injuring the gobrats. Her oath was to defend life. As long as her friends didn't cross the line and actually take any lives, would she remain within the strictures of her oath? Perhaps technically, yes. But it would not be in the spirit of the oath. How was she going to stop them? Would she have to sacrifice her own life to protect the gobrats? Would it stop any of them? Stars knew, she was haunted by the sight of those tiny, lifeless bodies back on the island. If she were bent on vengeance, some White Heart member stepping in front of her would not slow her down.

Perhaps an hour after the water break, Sha'Li stopped abruptly, and Will nearly plowed into her. Eben did bump into Will and mumbled an apology. Raina just managed to stop herself before she knocked over Eben.

“What is it, Sha'Li?” Rynn asked quietly.

“High ground ahead.”

Thank the Lady
. Raina was more than ready for a break from wading through this interminable sludge. It was exhausting and, frankly, disgusting.

“Over there, look.” Sha'Li pointed slightly to her right.

Raina peered in the direction indicated at a gap between a pair of black, moss-laden trees, whose spreading limbs hung low over the higher ground.

Rynn moved forward to stare where the lizardman girl pointed. “That looks like a cave entrance.”

Now that he mentioned it, Raina did spy a dark maw beyond the trees.

“Does anyone live around here?” Will asked Sha'Li.

“No one. Of this, I am certain.”

Rosana asked, “But that's where the trail leads?”

“Definitely.”

“Fighters up front,” Will murmured. He slipped his left hand into his amber hand shield and gripped his staff in the middle. Eben slid up on his left, lifting his sword. Sha'Li went first, not to follow the trail this time but to search for traps or trip wires.

They eased ashore, and Raina's legs felt almost weak, so much easier was the going on solid ground.

Sha'Li paused, crouching, to examine a singed spot in front of them. “Here a trap exploded, not long ago. A few days, mayhap.”

“Has it been reset?” Rynn asked.

“Nay.” Sha'Li rose to her feet and pressed on cautiously.

They passed under the two massive trees, and Sha'Li lifted a limp length of wire off the ground. “Disarmed trap,” she breathed.

Twice more, they came across traps that had recently been tripped. Someone had clearly been here and had either removed what was inside the cave that had merited such protection or had no interest in protecting it anymore.

Just as they reached the cave entrance, a huge glob of mud in the vague shape of a man detached itself from the earthen outcropping that housed the cave. It swung a fist at Sha'Li, who ducked under it and came up jabbing at the thing's gut with her claws.

“No!” Rynn cried, but too late.

Sha'Li's claws sank into the belly of the mud beast, but as she tried to pull them out, they stuck fast.

Will started to swing his staff at the creature, but Rynn threw his crystal-gauntleted forearm in front of the weapon and caught the blow. “Your weapon will be trapped,” the paxan bit out. “Use magic.”

As if the creature had also heard him speak, its other fist glowed briefly, and some sort of magic bolt hit Eben. It flashed around the jann and broke into a thousand tiny sparks that dissipated harmlessly.

A mud fist slammed into Sha'Li hard, and she grunted in pain. With her claws trapped as they were, she could not use her quickness and agility to avoid the blows. Both mud fists drew back, preparing to strike again. Raina flipped a quick burst of healing energy at her friend.

“It's throwing stone magic,” Eben bit out. “Meant to root the target to the ground.”

Will gathered a ball of force energy. “Duck, Sha'Li!” he called as he threw damaging magic at the creature. The fists stopped mid-swing and instead swung at this new threat. Will danced back out of reach and sent another bolt of damage into the creature. The being's left side began to melt. One of Sha'Li's claws slipped free. The fists swung down at Sha'Li again, but this time she was able to dodge enough to catch only glancing blows from them.

Still, Raina sent another bolt of healing energy into the lizardman girl. Better safe than sorry. She'd discovered that it was better to overheal her friends and waste some of her plentiful mana than it was to let one of them go down and be lost to a fight, even for a few seconds.

Will gathered a larger bolt of magic this time and fired it into the creature. Most of the mud construct's right side collapsed, melting into a formless glob.

“Again!” Rosana cried.

One more blast from Will did the trick. The entire creature fell apart, losing all form and collapsing into a pile of mud that slowly oozed into a spreading puddle. Sha'Li jumped back, her second claw freed, wiping it clean on a patch of moss. For once, Raina did not have to worry about the ethics of healing or not healing a kill. This was not a living being but rather a magically animated pile of dirt.

“Shall we continue?” Rynn asked as they gathered themselves and adjusted their armor.

They stepped just inside the cave and paused long enough to make sure no more mud creatures waited within to ambush them. Although Will had handled the creature outside with relative ease, he could summon only a finite amount of magical energy, and the creature had taken a fair chunk of it if Raina had to guess. If only there were a way for her to share some of her seemingly endless well of energy with other mages.

The floor of the cave sloped sharply downward. Oh, goodie. They got to go underneath the swamp, apparently. The cave turned into a tunnel of sorts. It had brick walls arching into a low ceiling that leaked, dripping in numerous places. Several inches of water stood on the floor as the tunnel leveled out. They paused to light torches and then continued.

Will murmured, “Is it just me, or do those niches in the walls look like something or someone ought to be standing in them?” At least a dozen of the odd indentations lined the tunnel. She looked where he pointed. Oh, dear. He was entirely correct.

Eben commented, “They look like guard posts.”

“Well, the last two ahead are not empty,” Sha'Li said.

Rynn stopped to peer into the darkness in front of them. “The creatures in them look like some sort of man-sized fungus constructs.”

Sha'Li groaned under her breath. “Mushroom men. Gases and dusts they expel with all sorts of nasty effects. Even love poisons have I seen from them.”

Raina remarked dryly, “If these throw love poisons, we'll let Will and Rosana take the lead.”

Will rolled his eyes at her. “Just be ready to heal whatever these things expel.”