Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  The creature intensified its light until it filled the cavernous space. Then it slapped two of its limbs against the wall, pulled itself up, and slithered toward the Orglots’ hideout.

  Oscar hung back a moment. He looked down into the pit and spoke quietly into the darkness.

  “Goodbye, Papa. I know I promised I wouldn’t, but… I don’t care anymore if I die.”

  He tucked the dagger into the back of his pants and followed the blue light into the tunnels.

  CHAPTER 39

  “Y ou think he ever leaves that room?” Basher said. “I thought emperors were supposed to attend functions and oversee councils and the like. What does he need that Sightwielder device for, anyway?”

  The Berserker’s brutish voice echoed inside the cavern, dulled by the sound of rushing water. Iolus ignored him. He stood at the edge, the toes of his bare feet catching mist chilled by the river’s journey through the mountain’s innards.

  Every few seconds, a partially lit blood crystal would float by and catch against the net he and Basher had set up. They had made progress, but the quantity wasn’t nearly sufficient.

  “What’s the holdup?” Iolus said.

  Basher scratched the underside of his chin. “Not sure, exactly. The last time I counted, Thrusher, Olfast, and Ilkirk were throwing crystals into the river at a dozen a minute.”

  “If your cousins are drinking on the job again…”

  “I doubt it. I beat enough sense into them last time. Olfast can barely open his jaw after the uppercut I gave him.”

  Iolus scowled in irritation. He studied the low opening where the water gushed through.

  “Make it bigger,” he said.

  “What if it floods the room?”

  Iolus scoffed. “Then learn to swim, idiot.”

  The sorcerer grabbed his boots and strolled out of the cavern, leaving Basher to solve the problem like he solved all others: by swinging his warhammer.

  AT FIRST, all Iolus could see of the creatures were red eyes speckling the dark forest.

  He let his eyes adjust until he could make out their skeletal forms in the moonlight, the bone flakes like jagged teeth growing out of their spines. Each one dragged along a wooden sled attached to the protrusions by leather straps.

  “Nice work,” he said.

  Basher emerged from the cave entrance carrying two sacks of blood crystals as big as he was, one slung over each shoulder. Seeing him, the Elki howled low in their throats, eagerly submissive.

  “Did you say something?” Basher asked him.

  “Nice work,” Iolus said again. “I said that in case you needed to hear it. Whatever it takes to get the job done.”

  “I don’t need to hear it. You know that, sir.”

  Iolus shrugged. “Well, if you ever do, go toss yourself into the nearest lava pit and I’ll repeat it.”

  “Duly noted.” Basher dropped the sacks and approached his four-legged kin. “How are you this fine night, my brothers?”

  The Elki dipped their toothy heads in reverence. Basher dropped to one knee in front of the nearest one and tugged on the leather harness. Then he walked around to inspect the sled.

  “Each one can hold a full load,” he said. “Problem is, we’ve only got so many sacks. If we just pile them into the wagons, we might drop crystals along the way, but…”

  “Unacceptable. All dropped cargo is to be retrieved immediately. Tell them.”

  Basher growled a command. Red eyes blinked in affirmation. The creatures were ready to begin.

  “Let’s get started,” Iolus said.

  Basher went about filling the sleds.

  CHAPTER 40

  Wind blasted the side of the tower.

  Kovax grabbed the handrail to keep from being tossed down the stairs. He was surprised at how exhausted the climb had left him. The last few times, he had barely broken a sweat. Now, he was bent nearly double from the effort.

  The wind was much fiercer at the top, and he tightened his cloak around his body for warmth. This was his first Tower of Light, the one overlooking the courtyard where his wife, Samara, had killed herself. He had considered tearing it down, but now, with his failing stamina, the short distance between his lab and this tower was a good enough reason to keep it.

  The orange glow of dawn told him he had worked straight through the night. He was tired, but no more than usual. After this infusion, he would spend an hour or two with Sightwielder and then turn in for a few hours of sleep.

  He placed his hands on the low wall circling the platform and looked down at the keep across the courtyard. It opened just as he had scheduled. The darkness within seemed to take solid form, shapes bubbling up, as a pair of black levathons emerged with phantasmagoric swiftness, pulling a wagon filled with Feral slaves. Some blinked in confusion at their surroundings. The rest must have known what was coming and huddled together for warmth.

  Kovax stepped back from the edge and waited. As usual, the slaves moaned and wailed as the guards pushed them into the belly of the tower. By now, they were aware death squatted in the darkness to meet them. Their cries rang out into the night.

  Kovax ignored the sound. He busied himself with slipping the five empty bloodstones out of the pouch hanging from his belt. Such precious stones, and so beautiful when they were filled with energy. He kissed one of them, then tilted his head back and closed his eyes. As soon as the door slammed shut, he could begin.

  “Papa?”

  He spun around so suddenly that a crystal slipped from his grasp.

  “Here,” Kofi said. “Let me help.”

  “Stop. Stay back!”

  The boy froze mid-step, looking hurt. What was he doing up here to begin with?

  “Just leave it,” Kovax said, scooping up the stone. His back crackled with a series of painful pops. He clutched the base of his spine and bit back a yelp. “Gods damn me to hell.”

  “Papa, are you going to kill those people like you killed me?”

  “Do you really mean for me to answer that, boy?”

  Kofi shrugged. “Are you?”

  “For your information, yes. They’re slaves. Nothing more. Their kind doesn’t belong on this land anyway.”

  The tower door slammed shut beneath them, cutting off the cries of the Feralkin locked inside.

  A soldier called up to the top. “Ready to go, sir.”

  “Finally.”

  Kovax turned away from his son. He fitted the bloodstones into a stone panel at the top of a waist-high column. Then he drew a sparkling cloud of red mist up through a glass tube embedded in the column and watched with pleasure as the stones brightened.

  More slaves arrived by the wagonload. It was an arduous process that left him utterly exhausted. Once each of the bloodstones carried a significant charge—it would have taken all night to fill them completely—he slipped them into his pouch, feeling rejuvenated.

  “You see?” he said. “Nothing to it.”

  He turned to face Kofi, but the boy had disappeared again.

  Was he going crazy?

  The question had been on his mind lately, haunting him like his dead son.

  CHAPTER 41

  O scar stopped at the fork in the tunnel.

  “I’ll go alone from here,” he told the creature. “It could be dangerous.”

  A single bob of its pale head told Oscar it understood his reasons. If his father were here, he would have said the creature was a gift from God. Oscar would have agreed.

  Thinking about his father made him choke on his next words.

  “Thank you.”

  The creature unstuck a tentacle and held it out. Oscar shook it and watched his new friend slither away.

  The drumming had ceased. Earlier, it had come from the tunnel to the right. Oscar took that path, his mind filling with thoughts of one-eyed giants snacking on the bodies of his friends.

  The tunnel was dark except for the occasional patch of phosphorescent moss. On guard in case of traps, Oscar made sure not to touch
anything. He found that if he clicked his tongue, he could sense the way the sound bounced off his surroundings. This helped him make his way without tripping.

  It also helped him avoid certain death. At one point, he entered another cavern that was pitch black. Had he been using a torch to light his way, he would have been too blinded by its glow to notice the threads of silk running across the cavern, created by the large, bulbous spiders clinging to a web that stretched across the entire ceiling.

  Thankfully, his other senses warned him of this. He could almost feel the heat of thought emanating from the arachnids, a connection much like the one he had formed with the octopus creature. However, the spiders were much cruder in thought; he could not actually communicate with them, only feel their hunger and awareness, the anticipation of their next meal.

  Traps. The place had to be booby trapped somehow.

  He reached out and his fingers found evidence that he was right. Spider silk stretched from wall to wall, each strand surely a trigger. Having to bend and duck around each one, it took him over an hour to cross to the other side. Oscar had almost reached the tunnel at the other end when his tail happened to graze one of the taut threads. A gentle current disrupted the air around him, and he immediately lunged away from the spot.

  The spider was quick. Oscar readied the Tiberian blade and used his nose to locate the creature. He sensed it rushing toward him, and at the last possible second, he thrust the blade outward. He could tell by its muffled, tortured shriek that he had stabbed it in the mouth.

  The spider flipped onto its back, rolled, and scampered away. The air stirred with more motion from above. Oscar got out of there as fast as he could, every cell in his body screaming for the exit.

  Soon the dim glow of fires became visible at the other end of what was the largest tunnel yet. Oscar froze when he reached its gaping mouth.

  He stood at the top of a flight of stone steps leading down into a gigantic cavern. The ceiling was so high it was cloaked in darkness, as were the walls at the opposite end. The ground had been chipped into a flat surface, and scattered all over it were huts made of stone with moss-covered rooftops. There had to be over a hundred of these massive buildings, each one large enough to fit a private airplane.

  Oscar flattened himself against the tunnel wall, safely hidden in its shadow, and studied the nearest source of light amid a cluster of huts. They had built a bonfire. By its light, Oscar watched a muscular, half-naked monster emerge through a set of leather curtains. Tattoos darkened its otherwise pale skin. Its body was hairless except for its head and chin, which sprouted a bushy mane and beard that gave it a lion-like appearance from the shoulders up. Beneath the monster’s chiseled abdomen, a leather loincloth covered its private parts.

  It had one eye, right in the center of its forehead.

  “Orglots,” Oscar said in a low whisper.

  He gripped the hilt of his dagger and listened to his father’s voice in his head.

  Don’t try to be a hero. Do what you must and get out.

  “I’ll try, Papa,” Oscar responded in a thin whisper.

  The Orglot gripped a chain that stretched back into the hut. With a grunt, he gave it a violent yank. A much smaller man with a tail fell through the curtains and landed face down. The chain was connected to a metal band around his neck. A woman fell on top of him, attached to the same length of chain by a collar of her own.

  There were others. Oscar watched with a sinking feeling as five more prisoners stumbled out of the hut, almost tripping over the first two. The woman must have been Sara, the man ahead of her Bil. The third in line was Larry, followed by Jason and the other veterans. They moved as a team to lift the first two. No one was missing—except, of course, Dagon, whose body was probably still back in the tunnels. The Orglot yanked them toward the fire.

  Something about the situation didn’t make sense. Why didn’t the prisoners just phase into birds and fly away?

  Two more Orglots joined the first, forming a circle around the flames. These two were also covered in crude tattoos and wore leather loincloths, though one had a braided beard and wore his hair in a ponytail while the other was completely hairless. It was eerie how much they resembled men despite their size. The height of the chained humans didn’t even reach the knees of the monsters looming over them, but the proportions were the same—except for the layers of thick muscle giving each Orglot a grotesquely masculine appearance.

  They began a conversation that consisted of guttural grunts and clicks. Bil, Sara, and the veterans kept quiet. They all stared at the fire as if biding their time before the end—all except Larry, who was studying the monsters as if in search of vulnerabilities. Even now, he didn’t appear to be the slightest bit afraid.

  A fourth Orglot ducked out of a hut and strutted toward the others. This one was slender and shapely, though still strong-looking, like a female bodybuilder. She wore strips of leather that covered her chest and hips but exposed a rippled belly. Her hair hung in a single braid down her back and she had no visible tattoos. When she spoke, her voice came out higher in pitch and consisted of more hums than grunts.

  She sounded upset and kept pointing at the chained humans. The male Orglots argued back. The female took two steps forward, positioned now behind one of the huts so that Oscar could no longer see her. He would need a better view of the entire scene.

  Maneuvering stealthily through the crooked aisles between the huts until he could see everyone around the bonfire, he hid in the shadows and studied the prisoners. The veterans were bruised and dirty. The Orglots had probably thrown them around a bit before chaining them up.

  The first two, Bil and Sara, were in much worse condition. They were covered in red slashes as if they had been beaten with wooden sticks. That must have been the reason for the drumbeats from before. Jason had mentioned something about Orglots making their victims fight so they could place bets. Luckily, it hadn’t been a fight to the death. Not yet.

  An important piece of the puzzle clicked into place when Oscar noticed that Sara had no tail, and that her eyes were those of a non-Feral. That must have been why Bil and the others hadn’t phased into birds and flown away. It would have meant leaving Sara behind.

  The female Orglot was furious with the one holding the chain. She spoke in a chattering voice and made impatient clicking noises in the back of her throat, gesturing wildly with her hands as she made a case for whatever it was she wanted.

  Oscar felt he could decipher what she was saying if given more time to observe the patterns. An angled swipe of her right hand registered in his mind as a cutting motion; but not just a physical cutting, a dividing as well.

  She pointed at the prisoners and thumped her chest. Oscar understood that the gesture wasn’t one of pleading but of asserting; she was flaunting her higher social status and demanding a thing that was already hers.

  Fascinated, Oscar watched as the males communicated their feelings of loyalty to a set of rules. One lowered his hands, palms up, and thrust them up again with a questioning grunt, as if to say, This is a new situation. What say do you have in the matter?

  Oscar’s grasp of the interaction was not the same as the connection he had felt with the four-limbed octopus, and yet a part of him was translating the gestures and relaying the information in a way that was just as intuitive and natural. These Orglots were not mindless beasts, they were self-aware, territorial, and respectful of the rules of their clan. They were like men in other ways, too. Oscar caught one of the males eyeing the female with a desiring look he quickly hid before she could notice.

  The Orglot holding the chain rolled his eye in frustration at the woman’s demands. He raised a hand and made a fist, halting her mid-speech. Then he made a revolving motion with two of his fingers extended. The female smiled victoriously.

  The male holding the chain reached into his loincloth and pulled out a metal tool. It looked like a crudely crafted wire cutter.

  Sara cried out in pain as the metal band arou
nd her neck was brutally cut away. Larry fought to keep her with the group, but the Orglot slapped him hard enough to knock him over, which nearly took down the entire group of prisoners.

  Freed from the chain, Sara tried to run, but the female Orglot was faster. She darted around the fire, grabbed Sara around the waist with both hands, and lifted her as easily as if she were a doll… and a doll she became. Instead of eating Sara, as Oscar had feared, the female Orglot clutched the human woman to her chest and made a series of cooing noises. Sara sobbed miserably as the giant rubbed the woman’s scalp against her cheek and smiled.

  The bushy-haired male grunted and pointed at the hut from which the female had emerged. The female, entranced by her new toy, slipped back through the leather curtains with not a single complaint.

  Oscar breathed a sigh of relief. He had sensed only gentleness and affection in the female’s doting movements. Sara was probably much safer now than she had been before.

  But that was also bad news for them. Separated from the rest of her friends, it would be more difficult to rescue all of them at once—if such a thing were even possible.

  A fourth male appeared. This one was fat instead of muscular, with folds of flesh hanging like pale saddlebags from his chest and the backs of his arms. He was carrying a bundle of metal rods and wearing a stained sheet resembling an apron.

  An apron—like one would wear for cooking.

  “Oh, no,” Oscar said, studying the prisoners in a new way.

  The fat Orglot began erecting a spit over the bonfire. Oscar had seen pigs roasted on something similar back in Cartagena during holiday street parties in his neighborhood. But this cooking device wasn’t meant for pigs. The horror dawning on the prisoners’ faces told Oscar they also understood what was going to happen eventually. This time, even Larry looked afraid.

  Oscar turned the dagger in his hands as he contemplated possible courses of action. If only Milo, Owen, and Gunner were here to give him advice. If only Emmanuel were here to cast a spell that would whisk them back to the surface.