“I’ll let you know if he has a problem,” Justan said. “The thing is, he wants me to do the healing. I just need you to tell me what to do.”
Master Coal stepped closer and put out his hands above the raptoid’s head. “Please stay still,” he said. Deathclaw watched the wizard’s fingers, ready to run at the first sign of any unnatural movements.
A vision appeared in the air between the wizard’s hands. Justan could see the pathway in Deathclaw’s head where the tiny bulge was. Justan dove into the bond and listened intently to Coal’s instructions. It only took a few minutes and they were finished. Justan immediately felt the relief in Deathclaw. For the first time in weeks, the pain was gone.
Justan turned and smiled at the wizard, but Coal was still staring at Deathclaw, his face wide-eyed with wonder.
“You see it, don’t you?” he mumbled.
“What?” Justan asked.
Samson walked forward to stand by the wizard, his face etched in concern. “What is it?”
“I know how Ewzad Vriil has been creating these creatures.” Coal turned to the centaur. “Samson, he has the Rings of Stardeon.”
Samson’s fists clenched. “I see.”
“What are you talking about?” Justan asked.
Master Coal opened his mouth to answer but hesitated. “The rogue horses don’t like to talk about it. Samson . . . I know this is a sensitive subject. Are you willing to tell them?”
Samson stood with brow furrowed, thinking about it. Gwyrtha walked over to him and nuzzled his hand. Finally he nodded. “Stardeon was the creator of the rogue horses,” he said. “What Coal is saying is that somehow the same device our creator used to make us is being used by Ewzad Vriil to transform his creatures.”
“It has happened before. In the past.” Coal said. “One of the Dark Prophet’s wizards used it, but the rings disappeared after the war.”
“But how can you tell that just by looking at Deathclaw? I mean, I see that his body has some similar qualities as Gwyrtha, but he is still very different.”
Deathclaw looked at Gwyrtha in confusion.
“He may not have all the other attributes she has but-.” Coal shook his head. “Just look closer. Look at him with your spirit sight.”
Justan did so, drawing a wisp of the bond over his eyes. The traces of magic in Deathclaw’s every fiber were reinforced and held together by strands of spirit magic. “He’s . . .”
“Yes! Exactly. He’s not unstable like the creations of Ewzad Vriil we faced today. He is a rogue horse.”
Justan stared at his master in stunned amazement. “He can’t be. There’s no horse in him. I’ve seen his memories. He was a raptoid living in the desert before Ewzad Vriil changed him.”
“And that explains why he is different from Ewzad Vriil’s other creations,” Master Coal said. “Let me explain it another way and perhaps you’ll understand. You see, no two rogue horses are the same. Most of them are mounts and most of them have some amount of horse in them, but each one is vastly different, as different as Samson is to Gwyrtha. There is only one common link to their make-up.” He paused and looked back at Samson with an apologetic wince. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to . . . You tell them what you wish. This is your story.” He took a step back and folded his arms.
The centaur frowned for a moment, but finally nodded. “When Stardeon first started creating the rogue horses, the results were disastrous. Every creature he made with his rings was unstable. The only way he could keep them from falling apart was if he continually charged them with his magic. He experimented for months trying to find something to stabilize the magic. He only found it by accident.”
Justan listened to the centaur in rapt attention. He had always been curious about Gwyrtha’s origins, but she held her old memories close. They were the only things she had been unwilling to share. Even now he sensed her unease with the subject of their conversation.
“What is it?” Fist asked. Squirrel sat on his shoulder, a nut half chewed, his head half cocked as if echoing the ogre’s question.
“The heart of a dragon.” Samson said. “That is the only part of the body that all rogue horses share in common. It’s the only thing that keeps us from eventually falling apart, and unlike the other creations Ewzad Vrill made with Stardeon’s rings, Deathclaw has it too. He was born with it.”
“That’s why his body stabilized after Ewzad Vriil changed him.” Master Coal said. “Raptoids are a small species of dragon.”
All eyes turned on Deathclaw. The raptoid hissed and ran into the forest. He didn’t like the attention. He continued to listen, but preferred to ponder the revelations alone.
“We can’t leave Vriil with those rings, Coal,” Samson said. “Those are Stardeon’s. They shouldn’t be misused this way. We should get to them right away.”
Coal looked into the centaur’s eyes for a few moments and from the intensity of their gazes Justan could tell that they were arguing. The wizard cleared his throat and said, “Our first priority is to get to the Battle Academy and help Willum and Justan’s family that are there. If Ewzad Vriil is there, we will deal with him as well.”
Gwyrtha let out a deep, angry growl and Justan felt her resolve stiffen. Kill him for Stardeon. Deathclaw hissed from deep in the trees. He wished the wizard dead as well.
“They are right,” Justan said. “We can’t stop at freeing the Battle Academy. He’ll just build another army and attack again. Once we’re done there, we will hunt Ewzad Vriil down and take those rings.”
The Bowl of Souls series will continue in Book 4:
The WAR of STARDEON
Coming in 2013
About the Author
Trevor H. Cooley was born in South Carolina and has lived all around the United states, including Utah, New Mexico, Michigan and Tennessee.
His love of reading started in the second grade with Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series. He couldn't get enough and continued with David Eddings, Tolkein, Robert Jordan, Stephen King, and many others. Since then, all he wanted was to become a published writer.
The characters and concepts that eventually became the Bowl of Souls series started in his teens. He wrote short stories, kept notebooks full of ideas, and generally dreamed about the world constantly. There were several attempts at starting a novel over the years.
Not long after he was married, his wife told him to stop talking about the story and write it down. Many years and rewrites and submissions and rejection letters later, he finally put the books on Amazon in May 2012. He sold over 15,000 copies of his books in the first year through Kindle.
He currently lives in Idaho with his wife and four children.
Hunt of the Bandham (The Bowl of Souls: Book Three) Page 45