Shaper of Stone (The Shapers Book 1) (5 page)

“Get the rope before she claws
someone’s eye out.”

Tavi’s eyes grew large as a
hooded man leaped from the rooftop. Before he hit the ground, the
stranger drew his sword and slashed. The blade sliced into the
shoulder of one of the thugs who fell without making a sound.

He pulled the blade free and spun with
a low cut that caught the second thug across the shin. The sword
hardly slowed as it passed through the leg. The injured man’s
screams were cut short by a quick thrust to the throat.

Tavi took advantage of the confusion
and bit into the bicep of the man holding him. The man answered with
a scream of his own as he ripped his arm free. He threw Tavi away
from him before wrapping a hand around the bleeding wound in his arm.
Tavi was barely out of the man’s grasp when the stranger
stepped in with a slash that cuts the third thug from shoulder to
hip.

Now only one remained standing. He
backed away keeping Abella between himself and the hooded man.

“I got no fight with you mister,”
he cried as he looked for a way to escape. “You want the girl?
She’s yours. Just let me go.”

The hooded man remained silent as he
marched forward. He snapped his wrist, and the blood slid easily off
of his blade. In one smooth motion he sheathed the sword. He never
broke stride.

The thug couldn’t back up fast
enough with Abella in his arms. As the stranger drew closer the thug
pushed Abella at him. He grabbed his sword and tried to whip it out
in a quick attack. The stranger was faster. Before the sword could be
drawn, the stranger slammed his fist across the thug’s wrist
breaking it and forcing the blade back into the scabbard.

The thug screamed and threw a punch
with his good hand. The stranger blocked it with his right arm. His
hand slid down the arm to grab the back of the attacker’s head.
The stranger’s left palm snapped into the thug’s chin
while he pulled back with his right hand. The result was a violent
twisting of the neck that ended with a loud snap.

The hooded stranger turned toward
Abella and Tavi before the last man completely dropped to the ground.
It was the first time that they saw him clearly. He was a red skinned
lizard man. The hood he wore did little to hide his snout when he was
standing close, but it did keep most of his face in shadows. His eyes
shone like blue pools of water from under the hood. Unlike his kin
who have slit pupils like a cat, his eyes were round and wide.

He dipped his head concealing his
features once more within his hood.

“Go!” he said. “There
are other slavers nearby and they hunt you. I will distract them
while you flee. Guards are rallying to the north and will be here
soon. Go to them, and they will see you safely home.”

The stranger paused to stare at Abella
as he considered his next words. “Beware the deceiver’s
return.”

“Wait. Who are you?” asked
Abella, but instead of answering the stranger raced down the alley
toward the source of the smoke.

Abella watched him disappear before she
and Tavi turned to run in the direction he indicated. Whoever the
stranger was, they owed him their lives.

-o-

It took only a few minutes for the fire
to consume the carriage and the surrounding shops. Twenty-seven
bodies were discovered. Eight of them were so badly burned they were
unrecognizable.

There was no news of Vatrale, Devin or
Carvis following the attack. They weren’t among the
recognizable dead. Guards searched for them throughout the following
day with no luck.

Early in the morning, two days after
the attack, a blood smeared Carvis arrived at the estate. He brushed
past the guards and rushed directly to Lord Vatrale’s chamber.
He emerged minutes later with a small chest tucked under one arm.

By the time Abella learned of his
presence, Carvis had already left with a pair of fresh horses from
the stable. The only thing he left behind was a folded parchment
addressed to her. Like all messages from her uncle, it was direct and
to the point.

“They have Devin. I am in pursuit
with Carvis and the warriors of his tribe. We shall return once we
have him.”

-o-

Ow! Everything hurt. Every muscle felt
like it was on fire. My head was throbbing, and my stomach was on the
verge of staging a revolt at any second. A cold stone wall pressed
against my back. I sat in an empty cell. Light from another cell
across an empty corridor barely reached me.

The corridor was empty, but the other
cell wasn’t.

I didn’t think the three men in
the other cell had noticed me. At least they hadn’t noticed I
was awake. Their voices woke me, and while they periodically looked
in my direction, they didn’t seem to be paying particular
attention to me. That might change if they realized I was awake.

When I first awoke, all I could do was
lay on the floor and listen. I tried to call out at first, but I
couldn’t get anything but a whisper out. My throat felt like a
porcupine had crawled down it. Then I remembered the attack. Where
was Abella and Tavi? What happened to Vatrale? Was Carvis alive?

The last thing I remembered was the
pain and Vatrale charging into the fight. Looking around the cell, I
guessed he lost and that whoever attacked us took me prisoner. I laid
there for several minutes listening to the voices. They weren’t
loud except for the occasional laughter at a joke I couldn’t
make out.

Once I figured I could move without
groaning too much, I crawled further into the shadows. I stayed
there, watching the men in the other cell, trying to come up with a
plan. What to do when you wake up in a prison wasn’t one of the
courses I took during my brief time in college, and I didn’t
have a clue as to what I should do. Just trying to keep the contents
of my stomach in place was enough of a victory for now.

The three men in the cell across from
me were not prisoners. They were in a cell, but the gate stood wide
open, and from my position on the floor, I could see they had cots, a
table, and a few chairs. They occupied a virtual paradise compared to
my own accommodations. Let’s see. What did I have. Oh yeah, I
had nothing.

The cell I occupied was completely
empty. It sort of reminded me of an exhibit at a cheap zoo. They held
me in a stone box with a metal fence at the front for the visitors to
peek inside. There was no cot, no chair, not even a bucket. Something
straw like was heaped against one wall. Maybe that was supposed to be
a bed. I woke up in the middle of the floor, and I think that might
have been the best option. I had no desire to find out what might be
living in that straw. And of course, my gate was closed. I assumed it
was locked.

The only light I had was from the
flickering lamps burning in the other cell. From the shadows in the
hall, it looked like there were other lamps on either side, but I
couldn’t see them from where I sat. I would need to move out of
the darkness and closer to the gate. For now, I was content to watch
my captors.

All three were big guys. Not tall,
although the biggest guy was, but bulky. They didn’t look like
soldiers. None of them were wearing armor or carrying swords, but
there was a trio of clubs hanging from the bars at the front of their
cell.

They probably thought It was okay to
beat a prisoner, but not to stab them. That didn’t make me feel
any better. Those hulks looked like they could beat down a rhino.
Fortunately they seemed more interested in playing dice, huddled
around their table, instead of beating the prisoners. Well prisoner,
as I didn’t think there was any others here.

It seemed like they had a pattern
going. They would drink, roll dice, laugh or swear, then repeat.
Maybe they could put it to music. One of the guards, the smallest
one, appeared to be the brunt of most of the jokes. He was also the
recipient of the occasional slap in the head from the fat slob who
looked like the leader of the trio. At one point I thought they were
about to come to blows, but the smaller guy backed down to the
laughter of the other two.

“Holy crap!” I jumped up as
something big and furry crawled across my hand. Pins and needles shot
through my legs as the circulation rushed back to them. I had been
sitting still for so long they had fallen asleep, and for a second I
was sure they weren’t going to support my weight. I managed to
grab the wall and kept myself from falling.

A black rat scurried through a crack in
the wall only a few feet from where I had been sitting.

Rats! Why did there have to be rats? I
looked around the cell for any more and noticed something burrowing
in the straw. Yeah, I was definitely not going to lay on that.

The dim light leaking into the cell was
blocked for a second when a shadow passed in front of it. The guards!
I had forgotten about them. Sure enough they were no longer in their
cozy little hole, but now they were in the corridor, looking at me.
Damn, they had their clubs with them too. Well, two of them had their
clubs. The smallest of the brutes was still unarmed. He held his hand
up to his bloody nose. No doubt the result of another head slap that
I missed when I discovered my cell mates.

“You awake now?” asked one
of the guards. It was the fat one who kept slapping the other guard.
I noticed as he spoke that he only had a few blackened teeth in his
mouth, and they didn’t look like they planned on staying around
much longer.

Well, maybe he wasn’t really
asking if I was awake now, but I took it as a question.

“Yeah,” I answered. I was
nervous and scared and really just wanted to get out of here. “Where
am I?”

The black toothed guard ignored my
question. Instead he smacked the smallest amongst them on the back
and pointed down the hall, “Go. Tell the Master.”

The smaller guard simply nodded his
head before running off.

“Come on guys. Where am I? What’s
going on? Tell me something.” I tried to sound brave, but my
voice cracked and it sounded pathetic even to me.

Black Tooth looked at me and shook his
head. “Keep quiet!” he barked and smashed his club
against the bars.

My heart skipped a beat when the club
crashed against the metal. They were going to kill me. Maybe not now,
but soon. I had to get out of here. I frantically looked around the
cell for something to use as a weapon. There was nothing.

Maybe... My power. I could shape the
nerafpan, but Vatrale told me that it was just a training tool. A
real master could shape stone or metal or wood, and there was a lot
of stone and metal here. It surrounded the guards. It was above their
heads.

That’s it. If I could bring down
part of the ceiling, I could stop them. I closed my eyes to focus. I
needed to visualize my target.

The stench of the lead guard was almost
overpowering. I could tell he was getting closer to the bars. He must
have been wondering what I was doing.

A block of stone, no bigger than a
softball broke off from the ceiling and flew right at the head of the
first guard. At least that was what I visualized. When I opened my
eyes to project the image, I screamed in agony. My left arm erupted
in pain. It was like the flesh was being peeled away. The outburst
startled both guards, who had been peering through the bars, and they
jumped back brandishing their clubs protectively in front of them.

The image vanished from my mind as I
collapsed to my knees, clutching my arm to my chest. The pain ended
as quickly as it started. Immediately I began to feel better. I
examined my arm and found nothing to explain the pain I had just
experienced. Only the bracelet on my wrist seemed out of place. A
thick coating of white frost covered the bracelet that Vatrale had
given me. In the few seconds that I stared at it, the frost melted
and the bracelet returned to normal. The pain faded until it remained
only a memory.

I looked up. The guards had moved
further back. They still had their clubs ready. As bad as things
were, I couldn’t help but smile. At least I managed to scare
those goons. Not that it was going to help me much.

I got back to my feet and moved to the
rear wall of the cell. The guards eyed me warily for a few more
minutes before they walked away. Okay, maybe they weren’t going
to kill me right away, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t
try later.

I needed to come up with a way to get
out of here.

Too bad I didn’t have any idea
how.

-o-

I had no way to know how much time
passed before the guard returned with a tall robed figure following
behind him. The other guards had remained quiet while we waited. Now
that I had a chance to watch them for a little bit, I think they may
have been just as anxious as me. Whoever their master was, I didn’t
think they wanted him angry with them.

The robed man stopped before my cell.
In his left hand he carried a lamp. It was held low to light the
ground before him. When he turned to face me his face remained in the
shadows.

“Again you surprise me. A lesser
man would have died after what happened. Yet, you not only survive,
but appear to be restored to normal health within a day. Truly I
picked well when I selected you.”

I recognized the voice immediately. A
little deeper and clearer than the last time I spoke to him, but
there was no doubt who wore the robe.

“Vatrale! What is going on? Get
me out of here. Is this some sort of sick game you are playing? It
isn’t funny.” I didn’t know if I should be mad or
happy to learn that the guard’s master was the man who recently
treated me as a guest in his home.

“There are rats down here!”
I added while I looked around the cell for one of the rodents.

“There are things far worse than
rats down here my boy. Far worse indeed. Come closer so I can see
you.”