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  DANGER AND THE DRUID

  The Darkslayer Book 4

  CRAIG HALLORAN

  THE DARKSLAYER (Book 4)

  Danger and the Druid

  By Craig Halloran

  Copyright © 2010 by Craig Halloran #TXU 1-611-058

  Amazon Edition

  TWO-TEN BOOK PRESS

  P.O. Box 4215, Charleston, WV 25364

  ISBN Paperback: 978-0-9884642-3-0

  ISBN eBook: 978-0-9884642-4-7

  THE DARKSLAYER is a registered trademark, #77670850

  http://www.thedarkslayer.net

  Cover Illustration by David Chen

  Edited by Cherise Kelley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Publisher's Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  DANGER AND THE DRUID

  The Darkslayer Book 4

  CHAPTER 1

  Venir’s fingers ached with every step. The imp had left his mark, a painful one at that. Despite the healing provided by the armament during his battle with the giant, the remaining stubs below his missing fingertips were misshapen and dark, like the wounds he suffered at the hands of the Vicious he battled at the Warfield. Those memories seemed like a lifetime ago, a hundred years. He thought of Georgio, the boy who could heal from such things. He hoped the boy was safe.

  He sat down at the edge of the river, facing forward, or at least where he thought was forward. He dipped his blackened fingers in the cool water while he stared across the expanse. There was little to note: blue-gray water as far as the eye could see and a rolling fog floating over the top of the waters. The view across the river was much better than that he was surrounded by: Mist. It surrounded him just like before. His wet hand was shaking as he rubbed his face.

  “Bone.”

  How much farther did he have to go to get back to Bish? The farther he walked, the more time escaped from him. Doubt assailed his mind. Boon the Wizard had told him how much the giants lied, tricking men as men tricked them. Had the giant lied, leading him down a path of death through starvation or exhaustion? He scooped up a mouthful of water, catching a glimpse of himself. His face was haggard, his hair wild and his beard almost reached his chest. He punched his fist into the water and spit.

  “What manner of madness is this?”

  WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP! SNORT!

  Every fiber of his body stiffened. The sound had been ongoing since he followed himself into the mist. The image of the black dragon invaded his mind. He pictured rows of giant razor sharp teeth outlining a gaping red maw with an orange furnace burning down its throat. His entire body began to warm as the battle heat spread out to every fiber of hair. He reached over, clutching his leather sack, and craned his neck. Nothing. He sat, the sound of his labored breath filling his ears as he cupped his battered hand behind one ear. He remained still for another hour or minute, he did not know. The flapping of wings had been coming and going. Bedeviling. He remembered fangs as big as his forearm and fire as hot as anything he’d known. He splashed more water on his face. Sometimes it sounded like one massive beast, other times one hundred. The sounds came and faded, leaving him to wonder if they were real or just more tricks of his imagination.

  “Come and get me then!” He reached into the sack and withdrew Brool. The axe was warm in his grip, tingling what remained of his fingers, taking the bite from the mangled flesh. He rose back to his feet. “We got to get out of here.” He could have sworn the axe replied … Indeed.

  Again, like so many times before, he donned his helm and shield and walked, one foot splashing on the edge of the water, the other on the soft bar of sand. The helm did little to amplify the sounds of the waters, and his vision was just as obscured as before by a field of feathery cotton that remained in his path, never ending. Venir had walked another mile or two when he began to stomp and rave. Madness was creeping into his thoughts, mixed with festering anger, frustration and rage. He swung and screamed, growled and howled. Not even an echo greeted him.

  Onward, forward, unrelenting he walked, jogged and ran. His legs were heavy, and his weakening body begged for rest, sleep. He lay down with his legs in the water, and in a moment he was dreaming of walking along the endless river in the mist.

  He snored.

  SNORT!

  He jerked up, wiping his nose, just as exhausted and weary as before. Was that me? The sounds of dragons came again. He replaced the armament into the sack, only to don it again and again. His mutterings and ramblings became more frequent as he conversed with the living and the dead. He laughed, cried, sobbed, lied, thirsted, drifted and starved. Yet somehow he was sustained.

  “HELP ME!” he begged and pleaded.

  “FIGHT ME!” he raged.

  “KILL ME!” he dared.

  None replied.

  The water that sustained him never quenched his thirst, and the tiny minnows did not fill him. Kam? Who was she? Bone? Where was he? Venir was losing. Bish’s ultimate survivor was being whittled away by forces he could not smell, touch or see. A fighter through and through, Venir moved on without day, night or hope, only instinct. His aching legs carried him on, step by step, mile after mile, league after league.

  Plop.

  He stopped, head whipping around. His mind muttered. What was that? Nothing. He grumbled and continued on.

  Plop.

  “Huh …” Venir clutched at the stringy hairs in his beard. The sound was nothing like anything he'd experienced before in the Mist, foreign to his mind and senses.

  Plop.

  Whatever it was, it was ahead of him. A vision formed in his mind of a smooth stone being dropped from a pier into a lake, and then the vision became a drop of rain water dripping from a rooftop into a puddle of mud. Something was going on in the Mist somewhere; it had to be. The tricks his mind had been playing on him were getting old, and his maddening visions must come to an end. Move or die. Someone had told him that once.

  Plop.

  The sound might as well have been a war-hammer smiting him in the ear as the clarity bore into his brain, screaming, maybe warning him that something was out there. He leaned forward, creeping alongside the wet bank, his foot no longer splashing in the water, angling for the next sound. Another twenty steps … plop … thirty steps … plop … ten steps … plop plop … his heart raced … five steps … fifteen steps … thirty steps … nothing. A hundred steps more he counted … nothing. Had he missed it or passed it? He did not know. He punched himself in the head and fell to his knees. He punched himself again and rushed into the river.

  “This is hopeless!” He screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Venir’s feeble mind was breaking. He clutched the sack inside filthy and once powerful hands. He had once been a cunning and crafty warrior so long ago, before the sack. The armament within changed his life forever. The power within changed him, hardened him like stone, not so much as a man but as a minion, a killing machine, a menace to evil. He didn’t ask for it, but he had it and hungered for it. He exacted vengeance with it a thousand times, but his hunger was never satisfied. Underlings. There was a time in his life when for every ten he killed he wanted to kill a hundred more. That fire and fury was no longer there
. All purpose was gone.

  Plop.

  He turned back towards the bank. Venir swore the sound was only thirty feet away in the mist.

  Plop.

  Head down, he dragged his dripping wet body onto the bank, hauling the sack out of the water behind him. The plopping sound was steady now, so close he felt like he could touch it. There had to be something, anything out there making that noise. He had to find its source. He left the river on foot, the giant’s words still lingering in his mind. Follow the river. He had done that. The giant must have lied to him, and there must be another way out.

  Plop.

  The river was his only friend and ally, and he had left it. He looked back one last time, watching its silent waters flow, realizing he would never see it again. He realized something else: he hated the giants.

  Plop.

  Without fear or hope he wandered back into the mist.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was pitch black behind Castle Almen. A delivery depot stood in the view of a shadow pressed into the gloom. A glimmer of pale moonlight reflected in a puddle in the cobblestoned road a few feet beyond Detective Melegal’s nose with drizzling rain shimmering the image. For months, on and off, he had crouched in this very spot, alert to the comings and goings of the castle. At his back was the encompassing wall of the City of Bone, nearly five stories high, a monolith of rock, imprisonment and safe-haven.

  His mind gave an inward sigh as his skinny knees began to ache. More than thirty yards ahead of him, a secured wagon rumbled over the road, making its way downward into the dock below the castle. He saw hapless faces, small and dark, pressed against the bars of the windows:. urchins, some with talent, others without, all scraped off the streets to serve the unforgiving Royals. His heart didn’t skip a beat at the thought of what awaited them, knowing full well he had little more advantage than them. He now—the mighty Detective of the Royal Almens— was little more than a slave himself.

  He rubbed his knee. I’m not old enough to ache. Yet he did. The memory of himself as an urchin—kneeling in silence, hour after hour, inside the castle, either holding a goblet of wine or a candlestick during another one of their pompous and overbearing ceremonies—swelled the anger within him. The fate of those children would be no worse or no less, but he no longer cared. Without him realizing it, every ounce of compassion had been almost entirely driven from him by none other than Lord Almen, complimented by his Lorda.

  A pair of rats crept over his toes where he hunched inside a nook within the city’s giant wall. Each sniffed the cuff on his pants. Looking for a crumb, are we? Melegal’s steely gaze scanned the backside of the castle's reinforcements, noting three heavily armed sentries with halberds dragging in the urchins while another half dozen stood watching from a stone balcony, wearing steel helmets and clutching small crossbows to their chests. All eyes were on the wagon when he made his move.

  Jab. Jab.

  Two dead rats were skewered on the end of his razor thin dagger's blade. A thin smile formed on his tight lips as he slipped up into a standing position along the way. I still got it. Indeed he did. There was little room for error working for Lord Almen, and his training—something forced upon himself, by himself—came from fear and necessity. He studied the two rodents for a moment before flicking them away. The Rat. His deceased mentor McKnight had called him that, many times. The image of McKnight’s face was permanently etched in his mind when he drove his double hilted dagger in one side and out the other. He had figured life would get much easier in Bone for him after that, but it had only become more complicated. Vastly so.

  He stood in the solitude of the drizzling rain, careful to look away from the castle lantern's glow, pondering his demanding charges. Lord Almen wanted results every week when it came to tracking down the Slergs and any others that crossed his path. Every week, death and torture had been led by Melegal's hand. He'd never had much taste for blood, considering it nothing more than leaky filth that would stain your garments. Now, drawing it had become routine and numbing. Results. Results. Results! Lord Almen demanded them, and the tall powerful man would have them. Not in all of his life had Melegal been intimidated by another man, but Lord Almen had managed to shake his core.

  As the wagon disappeared beneath the castle, another one emerged, driven by a slouched over silhouette of a single man, drawn by a single work horse, filled with barrels, crates, sacks and other misshapen things. No sentries escorted them out. Same time every week. Melegal craned his neck. He could hear the murmured greetings of the sentries on the upper balconies changing shift with their fellow guardsmen. This was what he had been waiting for. Tonight’s the night. He tucked his dagger away as he pulled his cloak tighter around him and slipped along the shadows of the wall.

  The wagon, unlike many this time of night, did not have the glow of a lantern on its backside. The sound of the hard wheels rolling and the drizzling rain comforted Melegal on his trek through the darkness. The driver led the wagon another fifty yards past the lower wall courtyard and into a wide alley that ran between the walls of Castle Almen and Castle Kling.

  The area between the two was vast, large enough for three wagons, but not heavily guarded. It was unlikely that any rogue or rebel would attempt to traverse into the private outer corridors of the castles. Many heads had been spiked, and many necks had been stretched for even the mildest of trespasses. And the last city-wide rebellion had resulted in live bodies being catapulted, on fire, over the walls. Melegal was still a boy when he witnessed that. He remembered it being one of those rare moments when he and his fellow urchins were laughing. The lashings were worth it for some sick reason that day.

  His fingertips were tingling. He watched and waited for his chance to dart from the wall and into the alley. If the Kling or Almen sentries saw him, crossbow bolts would pin him like a cushion. As his keen eyes scanned the ledges of the upper balconies, his keen ears listened for any artillery sounds. The wagon was rolling deeper into the alley, loud and lonely in the night. Usually a head or two would peek out from above. Melegal waited as the wagon disappeared from his sight. Move.

  His black shadow dashed over the cobblestones, through the moonlight and into the alley. He waited for his heart to stop pounding in his ears and then moved on. It was another fifty yards to the end of the alley, where the wagon had stopped. Before Melegal caught up, it had lurched forward again. From the darkness he watched as the sentries, one from the Klings and another from the Almens, exchanged words before returning to their posts. The lanterns on the guard shacks and on the main street offered ample light to the corridor. No chance he’d slip by unnoticed there. He had to move quicker. He focused as he crept to the end of the alley and peered around the corner.

  Look up. Look up. Look up.

  His mind illuminated, and his hair tingled. He slipped behind the Kling guard shack stationed on the corner of the castle wall and rounded to the other side. The sentry was staring straight into the sky as he spun around slowly on his heels. Perfect. The wagon with its cargo was heading into the bowels of the upper city districts, passing underneath the colorful district banners that sagged down towards the ground. It wasn’t the only traffic, either. The roads, though not as busy as daytime, still thrived with workers and commerce. Melegal walked backward into the road looking upward, and it wasn’t long before he, the sentries and small passing groups of people were doing the same. Fools and followers.

  “Heh-heh … ” he said, rubbing his cap, before turning back after the wagon.

  ***

  Block after block, turn after turn, he kept his eyes glued on the wagon. A full hour must have passed before it stopped. Something was moving. Melegal crouched along the wall. Yes. Finally. Tonight is the night. The silhouette of a robed man emerged from under a heavy canvas. The person rolled off the back and fell onto the street as the wagon rolled forward. Hah. Melegal smiled as the figure rose to its feet with a groan and rambled forward. He followed, closing in on the lumbering figure block after b
lock, turn after turn. The smell of fish oil wafted into his nostrils, the sounds of wheezing filled his ears, and vengeance filled his heart as his hand clutched around the hilt of his dagger. The feverish eyes of Sefron the cleric peered back over his hunched shoulder from time to time, but Melegal kept himself concealed in the shadows. Where are you going, Fatty? I’ve got a surprise for you.

  The man he hated, Sefron, was little more than twenty steps away, and the urge to slip his dagger into his neck consumed him. He had more disdain for Sefron than he had for McKnight and Lord Almen put together. He respected them as much as he hated them. The creepy cleric, filled with sickness, driven by defiling, had nothing redeemable to offer anyone as far as he was concerned. Lord Almen felt otherwise, but Melegal was determined to prove him wrong.

  Don’t lose him. Focus.

  Another hour of cat and mouse was played in the drizzling rain until Sefron cast one final glance over his sagging shoulders and ducked into another alley. Four seconds hadn’t passed when Melegal crept around the corner and found himself staring down a long and empty corridor filled with an overwhelming smell of excrement and fish oil. He has to be here. He pushed his cloak up to his nose and followed the alley to a dead end. No doors, no ladders, no windows and no Sefron. The cleric had disappeared … again.

  “Sunuvabish,” he exclaimed under his breath.

  An eerie voice from behind him replied, “No, son of a whore is more like it.”

  Melegal ducked and rolled as a long blade ripped through his cloak.

  CHAPTER 3

  Snow and ice.

  “Rah-OOOR!”

  A wooden club slammed into the ground where Fogle Boon’s mirage had stood. The image shimmered and faded as an ogre, covered in furs, with hairy white arms and an unforgettably ugly face, grunted in alarm. It raised its club high once again before bringing it down in the same spot, sending shards of ice along the icy path. Fogle Boon's teeth were chattering as he fought to form the words of power for his spell. Blasted cold! Where is Mood?