The Scralag stood ten feet tall with skin a sickly white. Its long, thin arms nearly touched the ground, its hands tipped in long black claws. Cold radiated from its body, turning the air about it into a frosty mist.
Justan didn't dare breathe. The Scralag swayed for a moment as if disoriented. Its skeletal, noseless head searching back and forth.
The Scralag’s beady red eyes latched onto Justan and its thin lips pulled back into a hideous smile, revealing a gaping maw full of sharp, curving teeth. Justan wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to do anything, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know if it was a spell or his own fear that immobilized him, but he was frozen in place.
The Scralag took several shuffling steps toward him, but did not immediately attack. Instead, it put its shoulder to the largest of the boulders and tilted it back. It pulled something from underneath the boulder and moved silently toward Justan. Mist trailed behind it like a shroud. Then it was right beside him, pressing a small, ancient-looking book into his hand.
Justan stood still, frozen with an icy fear as the Scralag reached up with one claw and traced something on his chest. Its touch burned like fire. The Scralag began chanting in a strange wheezing language, a white-tipped blue tongue visible between its wicked teeth. The eerie chanting reached a crescendo. It lunged forward. Its razor teeth snapped shut an inch from Justan’s face.
Justan wasn’t paralyzed anymore. With a primal scream, he shoved the Scralag away and scrambled up the hill, oblivious to the sharp rocks slicing his hands and legs. He was up to the trail before he knew it.
Justan sprinted full-speed away from the creature. He knew was right behind him, its claws ready to tear him apart.
He ran harder than he had ever run before. Soon he was out of the Scralag’s territory. The waiting spectators were shocked to see Justan sprinting along the path, covered in contusions. He flew past stunned trainees without looking back. He didn't even notice passing Benjo. Justan ran for two straight miles before his beat up body caught up with his fear.
He slowed a little. His side began to ache with each ragged breath and he remembered his cracked ribs. Every bruise and twinge let itself known. Justan came to a halt, gasping for air. He looked down at his hands and saw frost clinging where he had touched the creature. A familiar voice rang out from within the spectators.
“Justan!” Ma’am rushed over to him. “By the gods, Justan, what happened to you?” Justan lurched and she helped steady him as she looked over his wounds.
“I fell.”
“I can see that.” She handed him some water. “Some of these cuts are deep. Is anything broken?” He shook his head. “Well, despite ‘falling’ you have actually made good time. So far you have lost only the one point for stopping.”
Justan smiled at Ma’am. He wanted to unload on the woman who had become his mentor and friend, to tell her about his frightening experience, but he had to move on. He wouldn’t get another chance to run this course.
Justan drank some water and stepped away from her, feeling a little bit steadier. “Well, no more wasting time, then.” He started to stumble off when he noticed an uncomfortable lump in his back.
He reached back to find something stuffed in the back of his pants. It was the book that the Scralag had given him. He must have tucked it back there at some point during his escape. He handed the book to Ma’am
“Hold this for me. I’ll explain later.” There was puzzlement in her eyes, but she took the book without question and prodded him forward.
“Get moving!”
Justan staggered on. He tried to find a steady pace. His mad sprint had made up for the time lost in the fall. Now he just had to be steady and get his body back into a rhythm.
The stones lining the trail were yellow at this point, meaning that he still had five miles to go. Five miles! He felt like he had already raced twenty. He focused his mind and tried to ignore the pain that accompanied each jolting step and each intake of breath.
He stumbled out of the hills to more rousing applause from the spectators and the pain began to fade. Justan found that his reservoir of adrenaline wasn’t empty quite yet. He had three miles to go and he had caught a second wind.
As the pain retreated, Justan's thoughts turned toward his experience. The Scralag's visage flashed through his mind. It was actually real. He had stood not two feet from it. Its icy hand had touched him. The memory brought back a trace of fear. The Scralag had touched him and it . . . it had given him a book. Why would a ghost give him a book? What was in it?
He was still mulling over this mystery, not paying enough attention, when he stepped into a depression in the road. His foot rolled within his boot. Something gave way inside his ankle and Justan crashed to the rocky ground. The crowd gasped.
The shock of the fall re-ignited the pains in his body. He lay in the dirt breathing heavily and moaned for a moment. Bitter thoughts ran through his mind. How was this possible? How could one person have so much bad luck in a single day?
Justan forced himself to stand. There was still a mile left to go. His ankle screamed with each step and fresh blood dripped from a new gash in his forehead, but still he stumbled on. The last mile stretched before him as if it would never end. Every step forward seemed a step back.
The ankle slowed him down greatly, but as the finish line came into view, Justan noticed a few runners nodding to him respectfully as they passed. Several trainees kept pace with him in case he fell again.
Justan lifted his head. His body didn’t hurt so badly anymore. He wiped some blood out of his eye with the back of his hand and ran on.
Before Justan knew it, he was in front of the finish line. A huge crowd cheered. Many of them shouted his name. Ma’am was there, waiting with several teachers.
The moment he stepped over the line, people swarmed forward. His vision swam. Ma’am was speaking to him, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. He felt hands grasping him.
The world went black.
Chapter Six
When Justan’s vision cleared, he was laying on a pile of blankets in the Judges Tent. He looked up and saw a crowd of people staring down at him. Ma’am, Hilt and several of the teachers from the school were there. In fact, the whole training council was present. Swift Kendyl held a very frightened-looking Benjo Plunk in place by the scruff of his neck.
A mage was brought in to the tent to heal Justan’s wounds. Soon he felt the probing tingle of a healing spell moving through his body. The mage smiled down at him. “It’s not too bad, kid. You have a few cracked ribs, a sprained ankle and enough abrasions that it looks like you got in a fight with a swamp cat, but don’t worry. This shouldn’t take too long.” Justan could feel the ache in his ribs cease and his wounds began to close.
Everyone started asking questions at once. Justan was trying to decide which one to answer when the healer cried out.
“What’s this?”
The mage pulled up Justan’s shirt. The room went silent. There was a frost-encrusted scar on his chest in the shape of a circle with a jagged line drawn through it.
“It’s a frost rune!” the mage said. “How did you get it?”
Justan, stared at the scar open mouthed, looked up into the stunned faces above him and stammered. “I-it was the Scralag. When I fell off the trail, it was there, waiting. It . . . drew this on me, I guess. What is it? What does it mean?”
The mage stared at the rune and shook his head. “I don’t know.” He traced his finger along the rune, mumbling a spell. “At least it isn’t hurting you in any way I can see.”
“Well, can you take it off?” Justan asked.
The mage closed his eyes and concentrated. “I can't. I'm afraid that you are stuck with it for now. Maybe you should have a full wizard look at it. There are some wizards at the Mage School that have experience with this kind of thing.”
Ma’am reached down and helped Justan get to his feet. He felt exhausted from the healing, but at least nothing hurt anymore. E
veryone began asking questions again. Justan answered them as best as he could, though for some reason he didn’t understand, he didn’t mention the book that the Scralag gave to him.
When Swift Kendyl asked him why he fell, Justan looked straight at Benjo. The large man turned away, his face red.
“I don’t know,” Justan said. “Perhaps I slipped. Perhaps it was the Scralag. All I remember is passing a big boulder in the road. The next thing I knew, I was tumbling down the slope.”
Benjo’s shoulders slumped in relief. Swift Kendyl looked at the big man with a frown, but with Justan’s history of clumsiness, he didn’t push the point. The council determined then and there to change the course of the Stamina Test. Swift Kendyl raced out to direct the runners around the Scralag’s territory.
Later that day, the point totals were announced. Justan received three points for his efforts. He refused to be bitter about it. He had done as well as he ever had in the stamina test. Besides, considering all that had happened to him during the run, he was fortunate to have received the points he did.
The story of his encounter with the famed ghost had spread through the training grounds like wildfire. The other trainees swarmed around Justan, asking about the Scralag. When he was finally able to get away from all the prying questions, he found Ma’am and Hilt talking together near the archery range.
Hilt saw Justan approaching and smiled. “Justan! What a day for you, eh? Have you grown tired of all the attention yet?”
Justan thought about it for a moment. “It’s strange. Everyone is acting like I am this hero. But, it’s not like I fell and met the Scralag on purpose. It doesn’t feel quite right.”
“That’s how it should always feel, Justan,” Hilt said. “Being a hero isn’t as fun as it seems. If you listen to the praises of others too much, you’ll start believing them. That's when ‘heroes’ make mistakes, and that's when ‘heroes’ get killed. Remember the way you feel today, because if you go in the direction your dreams are pointing you, you will find this kind of praise everywhere you go.” Hilt clasped Justan’s shoulder. “Well, I have things to do. I will be watching again tomorrow.”
He turned, bowed to Ma’am, “Miss,” and walked towards the city.
Justan watched the warrior go and scratched his head. “Wait! Sir Hilt!”
“Just Hilt, Justan. You don’t need to call me sir.”
“I must ask you.” Now that Justan had stopped Hilt, he wasn’t quite sure how to phrase his question. “Um, how do you . . . know . . . so much? You don’t seem that old. I mean, you’re definitely younger than my father, and yet you seem to know everything there is to know about being a warrior.”
Hilt laughed. “Like I told you before, Justan. All knowledge does not have to come from experience. Look at yourself. I understand that you defeated Oz the Dagger in strategy class. Does this mean that you know more about tactics than him?”
“No,” Justan admitted.
“And don’t assume that I am a better fighter than your father just because I have this rune on my hand. Being named has nothing to do with a person’s skill level.”
“But only the greatest warriors are named.”
“Ah, but what makes a warrior great? Is it skill? Is it experience? Is it accomplishment?”
Justan’s brow furrowed. “Okay . . . I’m confused.”
Hilt chuckled again. “Becoming named has nothing to do with any of those things. There is only one requirement. Do you wish to know what it is?”
Justan nodded.
“I can only tell you one thing and that is this. You must know who you are.”
“Know who I am,” Justan repeated.
“That’s right. Now I really must go,” Hilt said and strode back towards the city.
“Did you understand any of that, Ma’am?” Justan asked.
“I do not know enough about it, Justan,” she said. “I had not heard of this naming ritual until I came to the Academy. No warrior among my people has ever made the journey to the Bowl of Souls.”
Justan smiled. “Maybe you’ll be the first.”
Ma’am gave him a wry look and pulled the Scralag’s book from a pouch at her belt. She looked at him expectantly.
He took the book from her and turned it over in his hands, looking closely at it for the first time. The book was very old, the leather binding faded and cracked. The front cover was torn in half. Justan could just make out the letters “BO” and what looked like an “A”, but that letter was torn in half with the rest of the cover. He looked up at Ma’am.
“Have you read any of it?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said.
“I have no idea why it gave the book to me. I have been thinking about it all afternoon, but . . . Honestly, I am afraid to open it. What if it’s something bad?”
“My people believe that when a spirit has great need, it will seek out someone who can help,” Ma'am said. “Sometimes they give us gifts to help them.”
Justan thought it over. “So you think that it gave this to me because it needs something?”
“Perhaps.” She shrugged.
“Like what? What would a ghost need?”
“There are many different kinds of spirits and not all of them are evil,” Ma’am said. “You can feel an evil spirit’s presence. Did it feel evil to you?”
“It looked like the scariest thing you could imagine, but,” Justan thought back to his experience. How had it felt? It was a hard thing to quantify. He had been terrified, but now that he thought it over, the Scralag hadn’t necessarily felt evil. Just dangerous. “No . . . no I don’t think so. But what would it want?”
“I do not know. After you told the council your story, Hilt went out to the place you described on the trail. He found the boulders and searched around them, but there was no sign of the creature.” She gestured at the book. “Perhaps your answers are in there.”
Justan ran his fingers over the cover again. He opened it and leafed through the pages. They were hand-written in dark ink. Though the book looked weathered and dirty on the outside, the pages inside looked clean, hardly damaged at all.
It was written in the common tongue and Justan tried to read it, but after the first word, his vision blurred. He felt disoriented. He looked away and his vision returned. Ma’am looked at him, concern in her eyes. He tried to read it again, but this time the disorientation was so violent that he felt sick to his stomach. He shut the book. “Maybe I’m not supposed to read this.”
“What is wrong?” Ma’am asked.
“I can’t get past the first word. I think there is a spell on it.”
“What is the first word?”
“The,” Justan replied. Ma’am frowned. “What? Do you want to try reading it?”
Ma’am refused and again she seemed offended that he’d asked. Justan thought that odd, but he had more pressing things on his mind. He ran a hand under his shirt and traced the scar. It was still covered in frost. Why had the Scralag marked him? What did it need?
Justan shook off the nagging questions.
“I don’t have the time to figure this out right now.” His focus had to be on scoring as many points as possible in the tests this week. He could worry about the Scralag after he was accepted into the Academy. Surely there were experts there who could help him. Justan looked at the archery range. “I’d like to get in some practice before I go back.”
Ma’am smiled. “You may earn that bow, yet.”
Later while Justan was shooting, Ma’am confronted him, “You did not really ‘fall’ did you?”
“Yes, I really did fall,” Justan said. “I just had some help, that’s all.” He let loose and the arrow hit near the center. Justan found that lately he was hitting near or in the center most of the time. His skill was improving rapidly and it scared him to think of how much his stubbornness had been holding him back. If only he had been willing to listen to Mad Jon’s teachings in the past, he wouldn’t have needed this extra year.
&n
bsp; “It was Benjo,” Ma’am stated, interrupting his reverie. Justan nodded. “Why did you not tell Swift Kendyl about this when he asked?”
“I can handle Benjo and Kenn by myself,” he said automatically. Then he smiled and shook his head. “I get the impression that Benjo doesn’t hate me like Kenn does. I think he’s just used to doing whatever Kenn tells him. The truth is I figured that having Benjo on my side might help me the next time I run into those two.” He turned back to his shooting.
“You are wise beyond your years, Justan son of Faldon the Fierce.” Ma’am said with what he took to be sarcasm. He didn't see the growing respect in her eyes.
Eye of the Moonrat (The Bowl of Souls: Book One) Page 7