God-Kissed: Book 1 (The Apprentices) Read online

  God-Kissed: Book 1 (The Apprentices)

  by Clark Bolton

  Copyright 2014 Clark Bolton

  Smashwords Edition

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Published God-Kissed books

  Prologue

  The girl whirled about in the field of grass and wildflowers to the tune of the flute until seeing a yellow butterfly alight on a nearby flower. Picking it up carefully she got it to sit in the palm of her hand and as it did so her dress and skin turned a similar shade of yellow. When the butterfly flew off she proceeded to catch one with blue tinted wings, this brought the color blue to her cloths, skin and even hair.

  “Bravo!” A boy of about the same age called from his seat in the grass. “Now how about two colors at once!” The flute player, their captain of sorts, was too far from them to be part of their play but close enough to dance to, though the boy never cared for dancing but the girl was pleasant to watch.

  The girl pouted as only a pretty teenage girl can. “I don’t want too.” She announced and then went back to catching butterflies one at a time.

  The boy illusionist stood with a slight look of announce on his face. “Fine!” With that said he then began searching out two different colored butterflies for himself. Finding two near each other he stopped to gaze at them for a moment. Then without even bothering to attempt a capture he caused his left hand to turn a shade of red and his right to turn blue. “See!”

  The girl paused to admire the multi-colored boy for a moment. “Wow, I like that!” she said with a giggle. Then she went back to chasing.

  The flute player smiled around his flute, making it a bit difficult for him to play it, but he managed. Ah, if I had been born a mage, he thought.

  ________________

  The apprentice was the first and only one to dismount as the others waited impatiently on horseback upon the road, which had abruptly ended at the gates of the monastery. Some looked about them at the barren landscape and nervously glanced back at the road behind them which cut back down the mountain to the village they had passed through the hour before.

  Walking forward the young man sought something that would allow him to signal their arrival but found only a single great stone door with nothing adorning it. Touching his hands to the door he found it utterly unyielding with nary a handhold or even a spy hole for those inside to look out. Turning he looked to his master for direction.

  Tenric, the mage could see that his apprentice was at a loss as to how to signal the monks within and he himself had no easy answer. The wall looked to be the height of twenty men and the top showed no signs of any of the inhabitants. He decided to dismount and take things into his own hands.

  “Mind your horses! This will be loud.” He announced as he handed the reins to one of his retainers. He then gazed up to the top of the wall for a moment, and then muttered softly a spell as he gestured with his hands. The result was the sound of a great horn that blew several times sending echoes off the valley walls that were linked together by the single massive wall of the monastery.

  They had painstakingly acquired letters of introduction for the abbot of this place and so having arrived at the fabled Urbourkas Monastery, accompanied by two apprentices and half a dozen retainers, the mage was not about to give up easily.Their group had traveled from a nearby port city, some three days travel away, to this remote barren location which seemed only to have a small village other than the monastery as signs of civilization.

  After sounding their arrival they waited impatiently for a time before finally a basket was lowered from the wall. The apprentice placed the letters they had brought into it and then stood back to watch it slowly ascend without a word of communication from above.

  They ended up waiting several more hours outside the mountain fortress. Seeing nothing but the hands and faces of a couple of monks high up on the wall above the gate was frustrating and greatly tested Tenric’s patience as the hours went by. He considered casting a scrying spell to spy out what the monks were doing within but decided against it as discovery could mean an end to any chance of gaining entrance. Finally the door opened and they were ushered into the courtyard where they were greeted by a dozen or more monks who seemed not so pleased at having guests. The monks mostly stared and shuffled back as the party walked by them.

  Tenric immediately began negotiations with the abbot who greeted them in the courtyard. He seemed cordial enough and unlike the other brethren even looked a little pleased to have the attention. After a short conversation with the abbot and several other senior monks he was stunned when he realized the monks here referred to the creature he had come to find in the present tense.

  The Dieknotkow was still alive! This thought ran through Tenric’s mind but he refused to believe it without proof. Apparently these monks claimed they had been caring for the thing for centuries, containing it in a small tower where it had been all but forgotten. Tenric had long ago assumed the creature was deceased and so was seeking only its remains and whatever information or materials the monastery had on the mystical being.

  The abbot gave permission for the party to view the Dieknotkow with no fanfare, seemingly uninterested as were the other inhabitants of this place. The entrance to the tower was a short hallway off the main courtyard and lacked even a door. A homespun curtain of wool was the only barrier to the staircase that wound up the interior of the short tower. Tenric excitedly followed a monk up the stairs and through a low wooden door that gave entrance to the only room in the tower.

  On first sight of the creature within its dark aviary Tenric’s heart sank as he concluded from the Dieknotkow’s physical appearance and lack of motion that it indeed was dead. “It is as I thought!” he gasp. The monk that accompanied him, a decrepit and eccentric looking man who functioned as the caretaker, only grinned and pointed to the filth littering the floor at the creatures feet. The Dieknotkows itself was mounted to the wall on a wooden frame via wide cords wrapped haphazardly around it.

  “The fruit lord … the fruit!” the monk exclaimed pointing out fruit pits that seemed to make up a large part of the creatures midden. Walking to a large bowl of brown rotting fruit sitting on the sill of the room’s only window the monk unceremoniously stuffed a piece of it into the bird-like maw of the Dieknotkow. “
He no eat much”, the monk commented as he continued to hold the fruit firmly between the beak which was only slightly open.

  Tenric watched for a moment in disgust guessing the monk was daft or perhaps attempting to deceive him. Then he turned to size up the room further for possible objects of interest. Besides the man-bird’s body he was hoping for some journal or other records as well as any artifacts that he could use to divine the secrets of its existence. “The body may be enough,” he muttered to himself as he brought a cloth to his face to try and ease the overpowering stench of the place. “Damn … what the hell is that cantrip,” he muttered again, trying to think of the minor spell that made everything smell temporarily of roses.

  His attention was brought back to the monk when the little man began squawking. At first Tenric thought it might be some trick to get him to believe the Dieknotkow still lived but then realized the monk was actually saying something in his weird dialect.

  “He eats … he eats!” the monk continued squawking as he frantically waved his free hand at the mage to get him to come closer. Sure enough all could now see the Dieknotkow’s thick bird-like tongue borrowing into the mealy fruit.

  With each step Tenric increased his pace as he crossed the room to bring his face within a foot of the creature’s maw. “Gods!” he exclaimed.

  Chapter 1

  The Summer Festival in the city of Astrum, in the kingdom of Bene Aimont, always attracted hoards of visitors, both from the city itself and from far into the countryside. All visitors expected exciting entertainment from tents that functioned as makeshift theaters, colorful stalls of new apparel, as well as foods and drinks of all sorts imagined and hopefully some unimagined. They expected to stay up to all hours of the night as they partied with new acquaintances and reaffirmed old, and all at a reasonable price. After all sleeping in a tent is relatively cheap in most cities.

  Those who came to set up stalls for the sale of their wares or services expected to make in a week what normally would take them a better part of a year. For most sellers it was a time of little sleep, great toil and of great expectations for profit.

  What no one expected was to be shit upon by a great bird, and in such volume. To add insult to injury the stuff was blue, leaving the victim stained like a grotesque doll in a tailors shop. The first victim of the festival was a teenage girl who had been in the process of weeding her way through the foot traffic and occasional ox cart with her family. They were dressed in their finest clothes and quite looking forward to sweets, shopping, and acrobats.

  If her head covering had not been pinned securely to her hair it would have been knocked to the filthy cobblestones. Such was the impact of the blue bomb that her scalp was sore and tender for a fortnight. The bluish white liquid now covered her face and upper body and the poor child was left bawling in the street as the crowd quickly parted and then proceeded to stare and make odd comments. The child’s mother and siblings quickly came to her aid but as they tried to wipe the stuff from her face they learned it soaked into and stained everything it touched and soon the whole family found themselves marked like the initial victim.

  Things got even more bizarre for the family when but a few minutes later several official looking men showed up and informed the father that his daughter was to come with them. Try as he may to explain that his daughter was the victim here and not the assailant the men merely shook their heads and explained, “She’s to come with us … by order of the Mage-Councilor!”

  When several onlookers tried to explain that a great bird the size of an eagle or maybe larger had shat on the girl the officials simply sped up their efforts to escort the victim away saying, “The Mage-Councilor will sort this all out … she is to come with us as are the parents!” A firm hand on the girl, and another for each of her parents soon ended the strange spectacle as they were ushered through the crowd back toward the inner city.

  The second victim was another young girl about the same age and the third was yet another young lady. All three were now blue and found themselves deep in the palace of the Earl of Astrum.

  The fourth victim of the blue-bird, as it had come to be called by the townsfolk, though the bird was not actually blue in color, was Autbek Lairestor Runeholden, the fourth squire of the town of Runeholden, a young man of seventeen, bent on raising some mild hell at his first Summer Festival and indeed his first visit to Astrum. As he recalled later the impact hurt as much as it startled him and claimed it literally knocked him off his horse as he and his single escort were moving against the foot traffic in the hopes of securing a room at an inn before proceeding to the festival which was set up largely outside the walls of the city.

  The wind was knocked out of Autbek who found himself laying on his back looking up at his companion’s mount which looked perilously close to stepping on him. “Ah … cough … oooh … damn … pwwt … pwwt”, he coughed and sputtered as he looked around for his horse which he was pretty sure should be nearby as he had just been riding it.

  “Boy, you alright?” Berdtom, his companion and escort called down from his horse with some volume in his voice. “Get up if you can!” The man urged as he fought to keep his horse under control as the crowd milled about them. Cries of “There it is!” went up several times as Berdtom scanned the surrounding rooftops trying to figure out what had befallen his young charge.

  At first he thought someone in the crowd had thrown something or perhaps someone from a rooftop but the eyes of the crowd kept looking about and people were pointing now at something that was flying off in the distance. He only caught a glimpse of it before it was obscured by the tall surrounding buildings and thought perhaps it was a large bird.

  “Ahh…”, the boy grunted as he got to his feet. “…what the hell.” He asked to know one in particular as he slid and scuffed along Berdtom’s horse toward his own which was being held by some stranger. The back of his horse’s neck and half the beasts head were colored blue and it was about then that he realized the front of his whole tunic and cloak also were blue.

  “Get up!” Berdtom was telling him as he himself dismounted with some difficulty due to the crowd. Helping the boy into the saddle Berdtom then bent down to pick up some of the goo that was puddled in the street. Picking at it gingerly with a gloved hand he extracted a thin piece of what looked to be leather, thinking perhaps it was the remains of a pouch.

  Still a little stunned Autbek let Berdtom take the reins of his horse from him as he himself tried to keep the blue gunk out of his eyes. “Uuughh … damn!” he moaned as he began to think about how he must look at the moment.

  Leading the two horses through the crowd was difficult for Berdtom at first but it soon thinned enough to proceed without much difficulty. Glancing back to see the crowd’s reaction he was relieved to see that people were now beginning to go on their way. “You alright O’t?” he asked as he continued into the city. He figured the boy was not injured … just blue … and a little bruised in body and mind.

  “Ah … yea … I guess”, the boy replied as he tried to find another clean spot on his cloak to wipe more of the stuff off his face and out of his eyes.

  “Good! I was going to say you look a little blue there boy … but I suspect you already knew that!” Berdtom chuckled. It was his motto and indeed his purpose in life to bring levity to the situation at hand.

  “Ha-ha!” Autbek replied in poor humor. He was used to Berdtom’s manners and looked forward to the man’s conversations and remarks on things as his wit was unmatched among his family’s considerable household but he was really pissed off at the moment. “What the hell was that?” he finally asked.

  Berdtom quickly replied, “a gift from heaven … in the form of a bag of blue paint I would guess.” The boy let out a few curses and moans of disgust as they moved onward. After a short moment Berdtom mounted his horse and they began to proceed at a slightly faster pace through the streets as many an onlooker pointed at the boy and asked occasionally what had happened to him.

&nb
sp; Autbek considered what to do to get himself cleaned up and finally decided to risk casting a cleaning cantrip. It was a quick one so he figured no one would notice. So concentrating on his left forearm he waved his right hand over it while whispering the incantation to see if the spell would work on the blue stuff. The spell worked marvelously but on horseback it was difficult to apply. He succeeded in only clearing a long narrow swath on his arm but it was now totally free of the stuff. He then glanced toward Berdtom to see if he had noticed the casting, knowing the man would not approve of it at all. The few Runeholdens who could cast enchantments certainly did not do so in public and in fact it was only to be used for the express purpose of manufacturing the family wares and always away from prying eyes.

  Guessing by the murmurings and questions from the people they passed Berdtom concluded Autbek was not the first such victim. Apparently rumors had it that a great blue bird was shitting on the festival crowds. After a few minutes of riding they heard the approach of a horse that was trotting slowly a turn or two back the way they had come. The sounds of the horse’s shod hoofs as they struck the cobblestones made Berdtom think of the city guard or some other of the Earl’s men. His first reaction was to move his hand to the small rapier he carried but he suppressed it figuring it was much more likely to be someone bringing them news or at least questions on what had happened back there.

  His first assumption had been right, it was one of the Earl’s men but not the city guard, rather it was some man-at-arms for one of the Earl’s many offices. He just hoped it was not a tax collector; such encounters were never favorable to one’s purse.

  The horseman pulled up short and then swiveled around to call back in the direction he had come. “Here he is! I found him!” The man’s voice carried well and it looked like he was backed up by others a short distance away.