Pawn Of The Planewalker (Book 5) by Ron Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

The air was stifling with the heat of human bodies.

    What was Braxidane doing? Why was he meddling again?
    He twisted in his shackles, and his hunger gave a sluggish churn, its movement labored like a fish swimming through stew. He looked for his sword.
    “T’aint here.”
    The huge, three-eyed man he had met in the field of boulders sat on a stool a distance away, a block of wood in one hand and a carving knife in the other.
    “What’s that?” Garrick said.
    “Your weapon. T’aint here.”
    Garrick flexed his muscles, but chains still held his hands above his head. He could not bring his ankles together. He could stand, though. The chains clanked as he did so. The rush of blood made his feet feel like he was standing on briars.
    “Where am I?” Garrick finally said.
    The big man chuckled. The eye in the middle of his forehead glanced out over the crowd.
    Garrick now recognized this massive hall of chaos for the marketplace it most certainly was.
    Buyers milled about, examining men and women—prisoners chained to the wall or suspended from the ceiling in iron cages. Some of them slept. Others yelled, cursed, or groaned in various stages of lucidity. Their voices knit themselves into a steady blanket of noise that echoed across the expanse.
    “This one is interesting,” a female voice said, stopping before him.
    She was smaller than the giant, and she had only two eyes, both of which were brown and both of which sized him up as if he were a cabbage.
    “He’s too small,” said her partner, another woman, younger. “Won’t last a cycle in the field.”
    The woman gave a snort and laid her hand on Garrick’s wiry bicep. “I wasn’t thinking about using him in the field.”
    “You’re disgusting, Matla.”
    “He’s not for sale, anyway,” the three-eyed mage said. “I brought him here specifically for Lord Karasacti.”
    The woman frowned, but moved on.
    A new buzz came from the floor, and Garrick’s hunger twisted like a netted shark. A curtain of people parted, leaving a clear view of a man in blue robes being escorted by two others—a man and a woman in robes of lighter blue. A metallic jangle accompanied their stride, growing sharper as they came nearer. The heavy smell of burnt clove rolled over Garrick when they stopped before him.
    Garrick’s captor stood.
    “It is good to see you, again, Lord Karasacti,” he said.
    “Is this the one?” the man replied.
    “It is.”
    The lord stepped forward, all three of his gray eyes scrutinizing Garrick. He was not as large as Garrick’s captor, but was obviously of similar species.
    From this close, the man’s robe seemed to move of its own accord, shimmering with light, streaks of darkness floating in its weave. An invisible fist seemed to reach out from the robe, as if to wrap its fingers around Garrick’s heart, but it retreated before making contact, sliding back into the fabric as if it were pulled by the tides.
    The man wrinkled his nose.
    “He smells something awful.”
    “No worse than when I captured him, Lord.”
    The man grunted.
    “Who are you?” Lord Karasacti asked Garrick.
    “What does it matter?” Garrick replied.
    The back of Karasacti’s hand hit Garrick’s jaw before he saw it. The power of the blow sent him crashing to the wall, chains rattling. The smell of cloves grew to a gagging force, and the movement of colors in the robe melded themselves into a single pattern that drew the darkness inside Garrick.
    “I asked you a question,” the man said.
    “Garrick,” he muttered, checking for broken teeth. “My name is Garrick.”
    “This is a safe place to live, Garrick. Do you understand?”
    “So far, I would argue with that claim.”
    He had just enough time to set his jaw before the next blow exploded inside his head and a bloody taste filled his mouth.
    The odor of burning cloves intensified. He recognized it as the smell of the lord’s magic, like the citric lemon of a Lectodinian’s spell or the blood-taint of a