Hot Obsidian - страница 25

Kosta wiped his bloody mouth with his sleeve, got up, and raised his face to the sun. He was smiling; the colour returned to his cheeks; the horrible disease was no more.

Bala sheathed his sword and approached Kosta.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, desperately trying to find the answer for himself, but there was too much blood on the young Ollardian – both his own and his enemy’s – to know for sure.

“No,” answered Kosta. For the first time since the very beginning of their journey, Bala heard Kosta’s real voice, unchanged by wheezing or panting. It was a very pleasant voice: childish, clear, kind. “And you?”

“I’m fine…” Bala lowered his eyes. “Forgive me for being a burden…”

“There was nothing you could do,” Kosta reassured him. “Moroks are masters of manipulation, both psychological and magical. You had no chance of winning. It usually takes a battle Seven to kill a monster like this one.”

Bala glanced at the monster. Now, when the morok was dead, Bala was afraid that its body would take a form of a child again. But no, it didn’t.

“I thought creatures like this were afraid of the sun…” Bala shook his head. “Why did it pretend to be a child?”

“It wanted to split us at first,” Kosta frowned, “and then – to make you turn your back to it so it would attack you from behind.”

Bala winced at those words. Suddenly, all the horror he had been through, welled up in his heart again.

“Moroks are not stupid,” explained Kosta. “They know how dangerous a sword can be. It’s unlikely that you would have killed it, it knew, but it didn’t want to get wounded. Hence the performance… Bala, it’s a good thing that you kept clinging to your sword. No way I would have got to you in time otherwise.”

Now, when Bala had a good look at the beautiful forest’s true face, he dreaded the prospect of staying here after dark. They got lucky this time but few people get that lucky twice in a row.

With Kosta’s disease defeated – literally – the boys could move much faster now, so they headed back to the city in a run.

Running was difficult for Kosta, still weak from the weeks-long ordeal, but easy enough for Bala to allow gloomy thoughts and doubts pester him as he ran. How could a sick, dying boy have defeated the monster worth of the effort of a professional battle Seven? How could he resist the waves of horror the morok kept sending his way? Who was Kosta for real?

So many questions but no answers.

***

Someone knocked at the locked gates of Firaska. It was a quiet, almost shy knocking but the Crimson Guardians took it as seriously as they would a blaring alarm. Hundreds of newly-made Liht spheres, thrown from the watchtowers, dotted the grass beyond the walls, chasing the darkness away. But they didn’t reveal much. There were no monsters around, just two human figures by the gates: the very kids that had left the city in the morning. On seeing them, Aven Jay Zarbot cursed under her breath: she knew those young Lifekeepers would be trouble.

The younger of the two was holding a dirty bundle in his arms. When one of Aven’s mages demanded him to open it, the boy obeyed. He threw the rags aside and raised his trophy with both hands for everyone to see.

It was a severed head. A morok’s head…

***

“There are many dangerous creatures in our world. You need only a warrior to stop most of them. You need a mage to stop the ones of a more dangerous kind. And a battle Seven to stop the most vicious ones. But not all dangerous creatures are children of the night. This is the term reserved only for the monsters that specialize in humans, imitate their appearance and even speech while hunting.