The Ventifact Colossus (The Heroes of Spira Book 1)

THE VENTIFACT COLOSSUS

DORIAN HART

THE VENTIFACT COLOSSUS

© 2015
Dorian Hart

Cover art by
Gareth Hinds

http://www.garethhinds.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead,

is unintentional and coincidental.

Comments and inquiries should be addressed to

Dorian Hart

27 John Street

Reading, MA 01867

or sent via e-mail to

[email protected]

For Cris, Frank, Jodi, Kate, Kevin, Kristi, Lonnie, Peggy and Rob

I could ask for no finer Compan
y

CHAPTER ONE

DESPITE THE WOOLEN hood that masked his face, a few drops of wind-blown rain found Dranko’s cheeks and wiggled their way through his latticework of scars. The largest and deepest scar—earned eight years ago when he was caught applying glue from the church bindery to the inside of the head chaplain’s hat—tended to divert rainwater into the corner of his mouth. Every minute or two he wiped his cheek with a damp sleeve.

He lurked in an alley’s shadow and watched the citizens of Tal Hae hurry along the street. A chilly breeze whipped stinging needles of water sideways into their faces, which made it the perfect day for Dranko to ply his trade; people were inattentive to their surroundings in a rainstorm. They would be casting their eyes downward to avoid puddles, while their minds would be on dry rooms and warm fires.

His patience was rewarded in the hour before noon when a likely looking mark walked past his alley. A fancy merchant was trying to keep the rain from his fancy clothes with a fancy umbrella, while the wind played havoc with its fabric. A bodyguard walked ahead of him, head tilted down to keep water from his eyes. The bottom of a coin purse peeked from beneath the hem of the merchant’s silk tunic.

Dranko smiled.
They never learn
.

After drying his face one more time, he slipped out of the alley and started the tail. At first he ignored his target and instead scanned the foot traffic for the two blocks ahead and the block behind. He took stock of everyone in his field of view. A doddering old woman lurched around pools of rainwater; a pair of waifs chased a weaving path between rain barrels and dripping vendor carts; a despondent young man with a basket of bread took shelter beneath an awning. Dranko didn’t need to locate the city guardsmen, as he knew their routes and positions by heart after years of experience. He’d long since memorized every side street and narrow lane that might be useful during a hasty exit.

Satisfied he had plotted a safe approach, Dranko strode forward, drawing a small knife but keeping it concealed beneath his cloak. He caught up with his prey. The knife flashed. The coin pouch dropped into his off hand. The merchant kept walking, oblivious.

There was always a chance of such thefts being spotted by a meddling third party, so Dranko turned calmly down a small side street, then darted into an even narrower alleyway before scaling the back wall of a dilapidated chandlery. Once on the rooftops he scooted from building to building in a low crouch until he was several blocks from the scene of his crime. Only then did he sit with his back to a crumbling chimney and examine his gains.

It wasn’t much. Given the tailoring of the merchant’s clothes and the muscles of his bodyguard Dranko had expected better, but turned inside out the money pouch produced only one silver talon and six copper chits. Still, it would pay a week’s rent and keep him fed for a couple of days, and “fed” was not a condition he took for granted. He returned the coins to their purse, stuffed the purse deep into his pack, and splashed along the puddled rooftops towards his home.

Four blocks from his abode on Fishwife Row, on a gently tilted roof atop a row of weather-beaten tenements, Dranko stopped, lay flat, and cocked an ear. Over the din of the rain came an unusual cry from the street below. Had he been spotted by the Tal Hae constabulary? Had someone been tracking him since his bit of larceny? It was always a danger in his line of work. But he heard the cry again, and this time there was no mistake: it was one of pain. He peered down from the roof. An old beggar crawled into a narrow alley, its cramped width littered with damp, smelly refuse. The poor man slumped against the wall and clutched his ankle. Dranko squinted; there was a pool of blood forming beneath the beggar’s leg, mixing with the runoff from the building wall. His filthy rags were soaked through.

“Gods damn it.” Dranko pulled his head back and out of sight. He’d wait, is what he’d do. He’d wait, and someone else would come along and give the man aid.

Three minutes later there came another pained shout, and the sounds of sobbing cut through the hammering of the rain. Once more Dranko poked his nose over the edge of the roof. The beggar attempted to stand but collapsed and lay still.

I’m wet,
thought Dranko.
I’m cold. I’m tired. I just want to get home and drink something besides rainwater.

Thunder pealed in the pipe-smoke sky.

Damn the Gods. You especially, Delioch.

Dranko unslung his pack and pulled out a rumpled cream-colored robe with faded gold trim. It was too small for him; now in his mid-twenties, he’d grown broad-shouldered and pot-bellied since the church elders had given it to him. It was a struggle to get the wet fabric sorted out, but he managed to pull the robe over his street clothes. From a small pocket inside the pack, he fished out a cheap pendant on a silver chain and forced it over his hood. Both robe and pendant featured the stylized open-fingered pattern that indicated Delioch, God of the Healing Hand.

Properly attired, Dranko carefully descended the wall and approached the beggar. The old man’s ankle was broken, a compound fracture, bone poking through the skin and blood leaking out.

“What happened?” Dranko’s voice was low, gruff, almost guttural.

The beggar looked up, squinting into the rain. When he saw Dranko’s face, he shrank away, cowering against the wall. Dranko sighed—he knew the beggar had ignored his robe, his necklace, and probably even his alarming network of scars. Others, including some in the church, had looked at him in the same way many times over the years. What the beggar noticed were the tusks. Two thick teeth like small boar tusks protruded from Dranko’s lower jaw, marking him as goblin-touched.

“I’m not gonna stand here in the rain all day,” Dranko growled. “You want me to heal that ankle, or would you rather bleed to death in a pile of garbage?”

Water plastered the vagrant’s straggly hair to his face. “I was begging for coins,” he croaked. “All I wanted was a chit or two for a meal, but he pushed me aside. I fell, and my leg…”

Dranko leant down and examined the break. Gods, it was an ugly one. For all his expertise at healing—the one skill for which he had shown aptitude during his time at the church, if one discounted scaling walls and picking locks—he wasn’t sure he could fix this. He didn’t have any of his salves in his pack, only a small roll of bandages along with a few dirty rags. In the best case this poor fellow would live out his days enduring a painful limp.

But maybe…

Some of the more senior priests at the church could channel the divine restorative power of Delioch, but Dranko and his church had parted ways years ago, long before he had mastered any sort of proficiency in the art of divinely inspired healing. Faith, piety, and devotion—these were the things that determined the strength of healing one channeled through Delioch. That’s what Mokad had always told him, especially during his scarring sessions. But despite Mokad’s sharp-edged ministrations, or perhaps because of them, Dranko’s devotion had never been a thing worthy of mention. Though Dranko had tried channeling several times, he had never been successful.

He took a deep breath.

“This is going to hurt.” Dranko offered the man a leather strip from his pack. “A lot. So bite on this and not your tongue.”

None too gently he put the strip in the beggar’s mouth, and before the old man could protest, he twisted and pulled on the broken leg. His patient screamed through clenched teeth.

“It beats being dead.” Dranko prodded the wound with his fingers, felt the bone beneath the bloody shreds of flesh. “Now hold still and scream quieter. I’ve got to get this right or you’ll live out your life a cripple.” He nudged everything back into place as best he could.

Delioch, please let this work.

With one hand clutching his pendant and the other gripping the old man’s ankle, Dranko shut his eyes and entreated his God. “Lord, I pray for healing, that this man be made sound and whole.”

Nothing happened. He spoke the words again, louder. “Lord, I pray for healing, that this man be made sound and whole!” The beggar spat out his bit and screamed in agony. Dranko had rolled the divine dice and lost.

“Lord! Please! I pray for…”

A chill ran through his body, like he had swallowed a bucket of ice water. The beggar stopped screaming. Dranko’s hand grew bright, and a thrilling warmth flowed down his arm into the man’s wound. For all of Dranko’s transgressions, and surely Delioch knew them just as well as Mokad, the God of Healing found him a worthy vessel.

Bones knitted, veins reattached, skin closed. It was more than his own body could endure. Dranko passed out a second later, falling limp beside the beggar in the rain.

* * *

Sometime later Dranko awoke in a fit of coughing, a rivulet of rainwater seeping into his open mouth. The slick wet cobblestones pressed cold against his scarred cheek as he lay on his side, still in the tiny street where he had cured the beggar.

I did it. I channeled.

His body felt drained of its defining energy, as though he had gone a week without food or sleep. He tried to recall the feeling of Delioch’s divinity rushing through him but couldn’t muster up the memory. What he had was a surety that he had served as a conduit for a power infinitely greater than himself. Also, a splitting headache.

There was no sign of the beggar. Dranko set his back to the alley wall and surged to his feet, an unwise maneuver that brought dancing lights to his eyes. He leaned heavily against the wall and willed himself to stay conscious. When his senses returned in full, he cast about for his pack, but there was no point. Someone had lifted it while he napped. His hand dropped to his belt; at least his knife was still there. But his newly acquired coin purse was gone, along with an old apple and some expensive burglar’s tools he’d kept in the bottom of the pack.

Dranko’s first instinct was to rant and rail against the heavens. He had offered up a piece of his soul to heal a stranger, and this was his thanks? To be robbed? A curse upon his god came to his lips, but he left it unspoken. Yes, he had taken Delioch’s name in vain on dozens of occasions before now, for all the indignities of his life, but this time he lacked the animus. He had channeled! Forget all of the scorn heaped upon him at the church; Delioch had worked His perfect grace through Dranko’s scarred body.

Now he was feverish and weak. A channeler was not merely a conduit for Delioch’s might; some of his own essential vitality was given irrevocably to the supplicant. A bit of his soul was gone forever. Doubt and fear crept into his heart.

I’m not doing anything better with my soul these days. Maybe that’s why Delioch let me put it to good use.

He glanced up at the wall of the building, and the thought of climbing it made his head spin. But he was in his priestly raiment, soaked though his robes might be, and seeing as no one had come along to arrest him while he was unconscious, there was no reason not to walk the rest of the way home.

Dranko lived on the third and highest floor of a rotting tenement that leaned precariously over Fishwife Row. He rented a squalid room from a coarse woman named Berthel, who in four years had shown a complete lack of interest in repairing the holes in the roof or purchasing any charms to keep away the bugs. The climb up two flights of stairs left him winded and faint, and he barely had the wherewithal to strip off his drenched robes and change into dry clothes before collapsing into a rickety chair.

He had set out a collection of pots and buckets to catch the drips on days like this. One of them nearby was misplaced, and a puddle was forming on the warped wooden floorboards. Dranko stretched out a foot and nudged the bucket beneath the drip. When the sound changed to the plunk of water into water, he closed his eyes. All he wanted now was to have a few minutes of relaxa—

“Drank-ooooooooooo!”

The sound of his name carried over that of a fist pounding on his door.

“Go away,” he groaned. “We’re closed.”

“Dranko, open up. Rent’s due.”

“That’s why I want you to go away.”

The door opened. Berthel was large, loud, lazy, and never waited to be invited in. She stepped carefully over the drip-catchers while pretending not to notice them.

“And how are we today, beautiful?” she asked.

“Poor.”