Hidden scars, p.21
The Ogre Apprentice (The Bowl of Souls Book 8), page 21
“Me?” she said, her eyes widening.
“He had you down perfect,” Justan said, turning to look back down the canal. “The voice, the clothes. Even your smell. It took Gwyrtha a while to figure out that he wasn’t you.”
“He smelled like me?” She said, frowning.
“Where is it now?” Deathclaw insisted. Sherl-Ann giggled at the sound of his voice and slapped the side of his face.
“He jumped into the canal and Gwyrtha went in after him,” Justan explained, sending memories of the situation to him through the bond.
“Is Gwyrtha okay?” Beth asked.
“Yeah. Here she comes now,” Justan said just as the rogue horse rounded the corner of the archery range. She came towards them, still dripping wet.
That’s Beth, she sent.
“I know that now,” Justan replied. He shook his head. “What I don’t understand is why Vahn attacked like that.”
“What are you talking about?” Deathclaw asked, his face twisted with irritation as he raised a hand to block the infant’s repeated slaps. Sherl-Ann grabbed onto his fingers and began gnawing on one knuckle. She was a beautiful child, with large expressive eyes and a head sparsely covered with reddish curls.
“The whole encounter doesn’t make sense,” Justan said. “Vahn showed up and managed to catch me off guard. Why didn’t he just shoot me? He could have killed me before I had time to react.”
“Perhaps he is like Talon. She liked to play with her prey,” Deathclaw suggested. He was trying to gently pry his fingers from the baby’s mouth, but she was insistent. “You must take the child now, Beth.”
She ignored him, her lips tight with anger. “He came here disguised as me? Wearing my same dress? With his hair done up like mine?”
“Well, yeah,” Justan said, looking her over. “He looked just like you in every detail . . .” He blinked. “Except your bow. He didn’t get that right. And your quiver. He only had one arrow.”
Justan turned and ran into the range, looking for the bow that the nightbeast had discarded. He picked it up. It was made of dark wood, similar to Beth’s bow, but the handle wasn’t wrapped in snakeskin.
“He was prepared,” Beth said. Her voice was steady but her eyes burned with rage. “He must have been following me for awhile. Especially if he knew how I dressed this morning. I don’t always wear my hair up this way, you know. Just when I go out walking with Sherl-Ann because she likes to pull on it.”
Justan’s hand tightened on the bow. “He could have planned this fairly quickly. This bow isn’t a perfect match. Maybe he picked it up in a hurry. Why didn’t he just make a perfect duplicate out of his own flesh? The quiver was part of him. As was his clothes.”
“Oooh, was he watching me bathe this morning?” Beth fumed. Her fists were clenched now. “How else could he know how I smelled? I used some of the lavender soap Hilt brought me.”
“The smell is obvious without watching you bathe. The child reeks of it,” Deathclaw remarked, his nostril’s flared. “But you could be right. The nightbeast surely followed you here. It waited until I was with you before it attacked.”
“But he didn’t attack,” Justan said, throwing the bow to the ground in disgust. “What was his point? He only brought one arrow and he fired it at the tree. Was he just trying to prove he was a good shot?”
He looked over to the target where the nightbeast’s arrow was still protruding and walked towards it. The arrow was oddly made. Justan had noticed it at the time and it stood out even more now that he was paying closer attention. The white shaft was thick in the middle, but narrowed at the end where the black fletchings started. Justan reached for it.
“Stop. Let me look at it first,” Deathclaw said. He handed Sherl-Ann back to Beth. The baby fussed, unhappy about leaving his arms. She reached for the raptoid as he walked to Justan’s side. “The arrow could be the real threat.”
“I guess,” Justan said. The raptoid crouched next to the arrow and Justan frowned. “Wait. If it is explosive or something, you shouldn’t get so close.”
“Then you should stand back,” Deathclaw said and Gwyrtha agreed. The rogue horse pushed Justan back with her bulk before joining Deathclaw at the arrow. Both of them sniffed at it.
“I do not smell anything dangerous,” Deathclaw said hesitantly. “The shaft is made of bone.”
It smells like . . . Gwyrtha’s senses flooded Justan’s mind and he recognized the smell immediately.
“Paper and ink. I know what this is,” Justan said in understanding. He stepped forward and pulled the arrow out of the target. “This is a messenger arrow.”
He twisted at the fletched end and pulled and sure enough, it popped free. The center shaft was actually a hollowed-out bone tube and inside was a tightly rolled scroll. Justan unraveled it and saw that the page was filled with Vahn’s familiar flowery script.
To Sir Edge, or Justan son of whoever,
Hello again. This message is to assure you that I haven’t forgotten to kill you. I know you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to. Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve been out recruiting. Now I’m finished. I have a complete new pod of basilisks and I can focus purely on the matter of your death.
Your murder could occur at any time. It could be a week from now. A month even. Or it could be today if I so choose. It depends on my mood and that changes often. Seriously, I work on whims like that. In fact, I may have turned right around after delivering this note and come back to get you. I might have decided to stick around and watch you read this note, excited to kill you at the height of your fear.
I could be behind you right now. Go ahead. Turn around and look. You’re itching to look, aren’t you? You have to wonder. Am I that rock? Am I part of that wall over there?
Justan gritted his teeth.
“This one is crafty,” Deathclaw said, reading along through the bond. There was something akin to admiration in the raptoids thoughts.
“What does it say?” Beth asked.
“He’s playing with me,” Justan said. And blast him, it was working. It took an excessive amount of willpower not to glance around and give in to the nightbeast’s taunts. He forced himself to keep his eyes on the page. Surely Gwyrtha would know if Vahn had returned.
I know I’m being cruel, but I can’t help amusing myself at your expense. You named warriors think so highly of yourselves. I have targeted many of you over the years and I enjoy taking you down a peg before ending you. The only frustrating part is deciding. There are so many ways I could do it. It would be simple to fire an arrow from afar, or I could slip poison into your food. I know of a hundred varieties, many of them tasteless and odorless and many of them causing excruciating pain before death. Then again, I do like the hands on approach. I’m not beyond strangling you in your sleep.
All you need to know is that when that time comes, I promise you, it will be spectacular.
With love,
Vahn
Oh, and I am truly sorry about the old elf. He was in the way. I hope his death taught you that no one who tries to protect you is safe.
Justan read the scroll over again, his hands trembling. His whole body shook and it wasn’t from fear. It was rage. Not just at the gall of the nightbeast, but at himself. Why had he let that evil thing get away once again?
“May I see it, Edge?” Beth asked, shifting the child to her left arm and reaching out with her right hand.
Justan handed it to her wordlessly, deep in thought. Did Vahn really think he would be so easily frightened? Or was it angering him its real purpose? Did it expect him to act recklessly and leave himself open?
Beth tried to read the scroll one handed, but it kept rolling up on her. She tried to hold it open with her other hand, but the baby kept reaching for the paper. Finally she groaned in frustration and held the baby out to Justan. “Would you hold her, please?”
It was the last thing Justan wanted to do at the moment, but he didn’t know how to refuse. He took Sherl-Ann from Beth and held her up against his chest. He patted the baby’s back, absently noting the strong flowery scent that wafted up from her soft skin as he went over the words of the nightbeast again and again in his mind. What could he learn from its threats? He was so angry it was hard to think straight.
Sherl-Ann grasped at his face with her soft little hands and he looked down into her clear blue innocent eyes. Her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration. Her mouth hanging slightly open, a bead of drool hanging on her lower lip. She was giving him such a serious look that Justan momentarily forgot about his anger and frustration. An odd calm fell over him and in that moment a few simple truths about the nightbeast’s threats fell into place in his mind. Then the baby reached up and grabbed his nose. Her thumb went deep into his nostril and her little nail gave him a painful gouge. He winced and pulled his nose out of her grasp as the peaceful moment ended.
“I hate the bastard,” Beth announced and though Justan saw her through watering eyes, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the paper in her hands disintegrated from the sheer intensity of her expression. “That snide son of a dog. Yntri was ‘in the way’?”
“The nightbeast is cunning,” Deathclaw said, folding his arms as he gave Justan an approving nod. “But this letter was foolish. Despite all its preparation, it does not know Justan very well.”
“Oh?” Beth said, and she was surprised to see that a smile had spread across Justan’s face.
Justan kissed the center of Sherl-Ann’s forehead. “That’s right. Sending me that message was a mistake. Now I know exactly what I’m dealing with.”
Chapter Twelve
Vahn clung to the bottom of the canal and waited as the swift current dragged the rogue horse downstream. The only things keeping his body from being swept away with her were a series of hastily-formed claws digging into the tiny gaps in the white bricks that made up the canal walls.
His amoebic body shuddered in disbelief as sharp spikes of agony rippled through him. This had never happened before. He had been wounded by his prey.
As he had hit the water, Vahn had allowed the hard shell encasing his core to soften. This made it less visible in his translucent state, but at the moment of this change, an arrow had struck his body. The sharpened brass head had grazed the soft part of his core, cutting a tiny furrow in the edge of his brain.
It was a severe wound. Not life threatening, but close. Oh how that thought burned him. One centimeter more and he would have died, turned to stone like a malformed statue.
As it was, the part of him that had been damaged was the part that gave him control over his shape. Clinging to his translucent form was causing him great pain and he could feel his control slipping. Several of the claws anchoring him to the rock lost their form and he slipped, nearly losing his purchase and getting swept away by the current.
Vahn growled inwardly. He would undoubtedly have to spend quite some time in his native form in order to heal completely. The indignity of that fact irked him. To look like a common basilisk . . . the disgrace of it repulsed him.
He had underestimated that human again. And the man’s bonded, that rogue horse, had sensed him somehow. Vahn was sure of it. Sir Edge hadn’t known he was there until his pet growled.
What had given him away? His shape had been perfect; his scent, his voice. He had spent a full day shadowing Beth and studying her. He had been the woman in every noticeable way. How had that beast known? Was it perhaps the bow or the arrow he had used? Had they carried an unfamiliar scent?
He would have to be more careful next time. He wouldn’t allow his plans to be derailed by this injury, of course. He would kill Sir Edge in a glorious manner and both of his bonded beasts would fall with him.
The pain that shot through Vahn lessened the pleasure of that thought. Murdering them wouldn’t be enough to sate him. Perhaps he would kill more than his target, nightbeast rules be damned. His client wouldn’t mind. The more noise the better. There were plenty of enemies around. Plenty of tempting targets.
With that comforting possibility in mind, he allowed the rest of his anchoring claws to lose their form and let the water carry him away. He would take another form at the end of the canal and join the pod of basilisks that awaited his instructions. He had things for them to do. There were so many preparations to make.
* * *
“You’re smiling about this?” Beth asked, shaking the scroll at Justan.
“Of course. I was on edge before I read that,” Justan explained. Sherl-Ann squirmed in his arms and reached for his nose again, but he intercepted her little hand with his finger and she held on. “Now I know what to expect from him.”
“How so?” Beth said, her brow furrowed with skepticism. “As far as I can see, he’s just proven that he can get to you whenever he wants.”
“Exactly,” Justan said. “So why hasn’t he? He could have killed me before.”
“What?” Beth said.
Deathclaw understood. “If he could get that close to Justan looking like you, he could have killed him many times over the last week.”
Justan nodded towards the scroll in Beth’s hands. “Look at what he said and then take in mind what we know about him so far. He’s ancient. Confident. Experienced. But what kind of assassin sends a taunting letter like this? This isn’t professional. If one of Hugh the Shadow’s men sent something like this to a target, he’d expel him from the school.”
“This nightbeast is broken.” Deathclaw’s eyes were narrowed. His sister weighed heavily in his mind.
“Yes,” Justan replied, sensing the tone of the raptoid’s thoughts. He thought of the way Talon had tormented Miss Nala’s family before she attacked. There were similarities there. “He’s decided to make this personal. This is why I know he won’t be satisfied with shooting me from afar or poisoning me. He’s going to want to do it up close and he’s going to want to do it himself.”
“Are you sure about that?” Beth asked. “If he plans to attack you alone, why would he go to the trouble of recruiting more basilisks?”
“He has a plan, evidently,” Justan replied. Sherl-Ann, tired of yanking on his hand, twisted around and saw Deathclaw standing nearby. She squealed and reached out, leaning toward the raptoid and Justan had to switch his hold on her to keep her from falling out of his arms. “Uh, that’s more evidence that he isn’t going to act randomly like he claims. He’s going to use those basilisks in his attack somehow.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?” she pressed.
Justan shook his head. “It gives me insight into what he’s going to do. In a sense it makes things easier.”
Sherl-Ann cried out for Deathclaw again, more insistently this time. Justan sighed and handed her back to the raptoid. Deathclaw hissed, but allowed the transfer, curling one lip as she squealed and laid her head on his shoulder. Justan noted that Deathclaw was more practiced at holding her now, his newly modified right hand resting against her back protectively.
“How would you do it, Deathclaw?” Justan asked. “You liked to deal the death blow when you were the leader of your pack. How would you approach it if you had a pack of raptoids at your command and I was important prey you needed to take down?”
Deathclaw blinked at the question.
That is silly. Deathclaw would not hurt you, Justan, Gwyrtha said, pushing her head between them.
“We would track you and watch your movements,” Deathclaw replied in a low hissing voice. “I would instruct my packmates to harry you and wear you down. We would chase you into the perfect position and then, when you were most vulnerable, I would strike.”
A low growl issuing from Gwyrtha’s scaled throat. I do not like this talk.
It’s okay. We are just talking strategy, Justan assured her. He reached out and scratched her behind the ears.
“And knowing all this makes you relieved?” Beth asked.
“It means I have a better idea what to expect,” Justan said. “If I know what he is going to do, I know how to fight him. We’ll know when danger is coming because we’ll start smelling basilisks around. They give off an odor that all three of us know how to identify. He also gave me one big clue with the last line on his letter.”
Beth opened the scroll and read it again. “You mean, his promise that it will be spectacular?”
Justan nodded. “He’s going to wait for a big moment. He’ll make his attempt when it’s going to make the most noise.”
Beth frowned for a moment. “Your wedding?”
Justan thought about it. “Perhaps, but no one knows when that will be. Xedrion hasn’t exactly given me his permission yet. I could be wrong, but I doubt Vahn will want to wait for something as nebulous as that.”
