Sir Edge Read online

  The Dark Prophet Saga: Book One

  Sir Edge

  A Bowl of Souls Novel

  By Trevor H. Cooley

  Trevor H. Cooley

  Copyright 2017 by Trevor H. Cooley

  Cover art © Renu Sharma www.thedarkrayne.com

  Map by: Michael Patty on www.trevorhcooley.com

  Books by Trevor H. Cooley

  Noose Jumpers:

  Book One: Noose Jumpers

  Book Two: (Upcoming)

  The Bowl of Souls Series:

  The Moonrat Saga

  Book One: EYE of the MOONRAT

  Book 1.5: HILT’S PRIDE

  Book Two: MESSENGER of the DARK PROPHET

  Book Three: HUNT of the BANDHAM

  Book Four: THE WAR of STARDEON

  Book Five: MOTHER of the MOONRAT

  The Jharro Grove Saga

  Book Six: TARAH WOODBLADE

  Book Seven: PROTECTOR of the GROVE

  Book Eight: THE OGRE APPRENTICE

  Book Nine: THE TROLL KING

  Book Ten: PRIESTESS of WAR

  Book Eleven: BEHEMOTH

  The Dark Prophet Saga

  Book One: Sir Edge

  Book Two: Halfbreeds (2019)

  The Tallow Mysteries

  Book One: Tallow Jones, Wizard Detective

  Book Two: Tallow Jones, Blood Trail

  Book Three: (Upcoming 2019)

  Dedication

  To my younger sister Megan, who often seems like an older sister. You are like the Jhonate of our family. Firm, stern at times, but willing to sacrifice everything for those you love and when you want something you don’t stop until it gets done. Love you, Sis.

  Acknowledgements

  A special thanks to my Patreon supporters and alpha readers. Here are just a few of you that have helped to make my dream of writing full time a continued success: Stephen Quinlan, Vincent Miles, Randy Stiltner, Ethan Nicolle, Derek Morgan, Adam Masias, Aglaia Greenberg, Brian Layman, Brian Every, Michael R. Clay, Amanda, Alexander Arn, Zekeriah Jones, Keith E. Scott, Madisen Dunn, Rebecca Smith, Jay Williams, Elliott Williams, Dave King, Michael Schober, Honor Raconteur, Chris Robey, Kami and Jacob Jenkins, and Vern Pehl.

  Also, thank you to all of my active supporters on Facebook, Discord, Twitter, and everyone who have left reviews for my books. Your support and encouragement got me through a lot of stressful times this last year. I love you all.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter 1: A Toothy Grin

  Chapter 2: Mist and Light

  Chapter 3: Uncle Tallow

  Chapter One

  Sir Edge – Memories

  The child lay dying. She was sprawled on the ground, her red hair looking oddly clean fanned out on the muddy street. Her breaths were quick and shallow, her lungs constricted by the tremendous pressure across her waist. The lower half of her body disappeared beneath the collapsed roof of the building.

  Every building in the village was in ruins now. The monsters had swept through, killing everyone, burning and looting. She didn’t know why. She only knew pain and sorrow.

  She shivered as she grew colder, tears flowing, her mouth opening and closing in soundless cries. The sky above, tainted by billowing clouds of smoke, flowed slowly above her, populated by sparkles in her vision. Then, as her eyesight began to dim, a shadow fell over her. Someone crouched beside the child and a nightmarish face looked into hers.

  The creature was bald and covered with tiny greenish scales. It had no nose to speak of, just slits for nostrils. Its eyes, set under thickly-scaled brow ridges, were golden and calculating. It placed a clawed hand gently on her chest as it surveyed her situation. When it parted its thin lips to speak, she saw teeth like razors.

  Its voice was a dry hiss, but it managed to enunciate perfectly. “This one lives, but barely.” It turned its earless head to speak to someone out of view. “A beam is crushing her. I don’t know if she can be saved, but if you hurry you may at least find out what she saw.”

  “Take care with what you say. You’re going to scare her,” chided a man’s voice. She would have turned her head to look at this newcomer, but at the moment it was taking all her strength just to continue drawing breaths.

  The creature turned its face back towards her, its brow ridges shifting in an apologetic look. “Sorry if I frightened you, dying child,” it said and moved out of her line of sight.

  The creature’s lithe form was replaced in her vision as a man knelt beside her in the mud. He was a big man, broad of shoulder and heavily muscled. Brown hair, cut at chin-length, framed a face that was both young and weathered. At the left side of his face hung a single braid that was interwoven with a green ribbon. He looked down on her with kind eyes and smiled.

  “It’ll be alright,” he said and reached out to cup her face with his left hand.

  The moment his hand touched her skin, the child’s pain fled as if sucked away by his fingertips. Her breathing eased, and her vision cleared. She was numbly aware of her grievous injuries, but there was no emotion to go along with this information.

  She managed to speak a single word. “Who?”

  “Don’t speak, sweetie. Just breathe,” he said, and with her mind free from pain she noticed that the man was well-armed. He wore a complex leather armor vest that was stitched together with silver thread and stamped with a myriad of runes. Rising over his shoulders, she could see the hilts of two strange swords as well as a quiver of arrows. “Deathclaw, give me a hand?”

  The creature returned to her field of view and drew the sword that was sheathed over the man’s right shoulder. Now that she saw the weapon fully, she wasn’t so sure it was a sword. The weapon was three feet long and crescent-shaped, the sharp curved edge of the blade arcing past the hilt to end in a dagger-like point at the bottom. An intricate square rune was etched into the blade just above the hilt.

  “Where should I pierce her?” the creature asked, pointing the unwieldy-looking weapon at the girl.

  The man’s smile twitched and he gave the creature a reproachful glance. “You didn’t need to ask that aloud.”

  It arched a brow ridge at him. “She cannot feel fear at the moment. You are stealing it away.”

  The man frowned at the creature and as they locked gazes, something unspoken passed between them. He rolled his eyes and returned his attention to her. “Don’t pay him any mind. I’m going to do my best to heal you. You won’t feel any pain, but it’ll be kind of strange. You might see and experience things that you don’t understand. Don’t worry. Those thoughts will fade.”

  The creature brought the pointed tip of the blade closer to her body. The child watched with lack of emotion as it pierced the flesh of her forearm. She felt the steel enter her, but the man was right. There was no pain to go along with it.

  Later, she would not remember the man letting go of her face and
grasping the hilt of his sword. Nor would she remember the creature lifting the beam off of her body or the man’s magic knitting together her ruptured organs and fractured bones. Instead, her mind was whisked away.

  No longer did she have the thoughts of a broken girl of nine. She saw the sights and thought the thoughts of a young boy. His name was Justan. His father was a famous and powerful warrior, a leader in the Dremaldrian Battle Academy. His mother was a beautiful and kind woman, a wizardess in hiding who fiercely commanded the community they lived in.

  All this boy wanted was to be a warrior like his father. One day, he too would be respected and given a warrior’s name. Only as he grew older, his body was gawky and clumsy, the body of a scholar, not a fighter. He was a stubborn lad and refused to accept this fact. He trained himself hard and when he was old enough he joined the training school, determined to pass the Academy’s entrance exams.

  He failed. But though his body was weak, his mind was sharp. He excelled in strategy and showed enough promise that he was given multiple chances. Finally, he was given one last chance. Justan’s father hired a strange young warrior woman from a far-off land to be his teacher. Her name was Jhonate and for one long year, she trained him mercilessly. He hated and resented her at first, but over time he began to trust her and under her harsh tutelage his ungainly body began to improve.

  The trust between Justan and Jhonate blossomed into a deep friendship. On his eighteenth birthday, she gave him the priceless gift of a Jharro bow, a powerful weapon that would link him with Jhonate and her people forever more. When the year of training ended, the time of testing came once again. Justan went into it with a renewed confidence, not knowing that schemes were in place to stop him from entering the Academy.

  On the day of the stamina test, Justan was pushed down a steep embankment where he encountered a wicked ghost known as the Scralag. The creature scarred his chest with a frost-covered rune and vanished inside him. On the day of the final test a miraculous event happened, and he used a strange form of magic that gave him the skill and stamina he needed to win the day. Justan exulted, thinking his goal finally met, but it was not to be.

  A wizard appeared with the Academy Council and it was decreed that before Justan could enter the Academy he had to go to the Mage School and learn to use this strange magic within him. Justan had no choice but to go and as he parted from Jhonate he realized that the friendship between them had deepened to love in his heart.

  It was during the journey to the Mage School that the nature of Justan’s magic began to be revealed. He became lost in the woods and was beset by evil moonrats. As he contended with the beasts, he was rescued by a magical creature that was a mix of horse and lizard. Her name was Gwyrtha and the magic within him forged a permanent mental bond between them. As a side effect of this bond, his stamina was increased.

  Justan spent a year at the Mage School, frustrated that his dream of being a warrior was put to the side. He learned quickly, and on the day he was to graduate from cadet to apprentice, his life’s course was changed once again.

  During the apprenticeship ceremony, each cadet stood before the Bowl of Souls, a holy artifact that could see the true value of the person before it. The bowl was the ultimate arbiter of good and truth and as Justan stood before the bowl, its magic enveloped him. A new name burst from his lips and he was marked with runes on the back of his right hand and the palm of his left. Justan was named Sir Edge and marked as a warrior and master wizard.

  Justan couldn’t understand why the bowl had done this. He wasn’t a great warrior. Nor could he use magic like a wizard. Justan looked at his naming runes and felt cheated. He hadn’t been given the chance to earn his new name. He wouldn’t feel comfortable using it for many years.

  Over the ensuing months a war erupted in the land. A dark wizard by the name of Ewzad Vriil sought power and the destruction of both the Battle Academy and the Mage School.

  Justan’s magic expressed itself twice more. First, he forged a new mental bond with a tender-hearted ogre by the name of Fist. Fist gained intelligence from his bond with Justan and Justan gained strength from the ogre. His final bonded was Deathclaw. He was a raptoid, a type of dragon who had been captured by Ewzad Vriil and altered by his wicked magic.

  Now with a humanoid form, Deathclaw had only revenge on his mind. Justan gained agility and control over his body from the raptoid. Through his bond with Justan, Deathclaw gained intelligence and human understanding.

  During the war, Justan saw many of his friends and mentors killed. The Academy was destroyed, and the surviving forces gathered in the Mage School. It was here that Justan learned that the Scralag who lived inside his chest was bonded to him and was actually the corrupted spirit of his great grandfather, Artemus.

  With the help of the combined might of the Mage School and Academy forces, Justan and his bonded were able to destroy Ewzad Vriil and his army of monsters. The Academy started the process of rebuilding and Justan was now free to marry Jhonate, the love of his life. The only thing standing in the way of their union was her father, the Protector of the Grove, leader of the Roo-Tan.

  In the land of Malaroo, the Roo-Tan guarded the Jharro Grove, a holy forest of ancient trees that emitted a power that protected the land. Jhonate’s father was not pleased that she had become betrothed to an outsider and he refused to allow their marriage until he had settled his countries problems.

  An ancient witch known as Mellinda had returned from death seeking to destroy the Jharro Grove. She sought the help of the trollkin that lived in the swamps. Their goddess, a troll behemoth that lived beneath the swamps, was eager for the power of the grove. Mellinda used that eagerness to gain power and control over the trollkin.

  During a treaty meeting, the behemoth attacked. It swallowed half of the Roo-Tan warriors, including several of Justan’s friends and Jhonate’s family members. The behemoth took away the memories of those it consumed and combined their flesh with the flesh of trolls to create more trollkin. They were led by the Troll King, who had once been Jhonate’s oldest brother.

  As the Roo-Tan fought against the trollkin, Justan led a force of his bonded and their friends to the heart of the swamps. There they fought Mellinda and the behemoth she controlled. Justan managed to use the power of his sword to rend the behemoth’s mind asunder and finally destroy Mellinda for good.

  Malaroo enjoyed its first true peace in a thousand years. Justan and Jhonate were finally able to wed.

  In the sixteen years since their marriage, Justan and Jhonate had gone through many adventures together. During this time, Justan had grown into his name. He was Sir Edge now and his deeds were well-known. He had the fame and glory that he had dreamt of as a child, but those things meant nothing to him anymore.

  He was now embroiled in a new conflict and driven by a deep pain within him, a pain fifteen years in the making . . .

  Sir Edge knew that the little girl was searching through his memories. This was an unfortunate side effect of using his left sword to heal another person. While his sword was in their body, a temporary bond was created. This allowed Edge to use his magic to heal them from within, but it also connected their minds, leaving his thoughts open to intrusion.

  Most people he healed this way didn’t think to intrude this deeply, but the girl had been through a terrible tragedy. To flee from those horrors, she had taken refuge in his mind. He didn’t stop her. While she was experiencing his past, Sir Edge experienced hers.

  The child’s name was Lillian and she was nine years old. She had spent her entire life in this small village. Her family was poor, but happy. They worked hard in the fields and spent their evenings together playing games and telling stories.

  Lillian didn’t know why her father had been frightened that morning. The other kids said that the town council had met and that something big was going on, but that was grownup stuff. Lillian’s mind was focused on the coming harvest festival and the enormous melon that she knew was cooling in the creek. />
  Edge’s lips twisted as he experienced her horror and fear as her family was slain. He saw the devastation of her village and he saw enough to know the identity of the monsters that had committed this atrocity. The vision ended and as he finished healing her, tears fell from his cheeks. He blinked and saw the child looking up at him.

  “Don’t cry for me, Sir Edge,” she said, reaching one arm up towards him, her small brow wrinkled in concern.

  “Sleep, Lillian,” he said gently, and she did.

  Edge slowly drew the tip of his sword from her forearm, healing the wound left by his blade as he went. When he sheathed his sword, only the shallowest of cuts remained in her skin. He bent down and picked her up carefully in his arms.

  “You shouldn’t have let her see so much,” Deathclaw said in disapproval. The raptoid stood a short distance away, his arms folded over the bandoleer of throwing knives that crossed his chest. “Her small mind will be overwhelmed by so many memories. And now she knows your secrets. Our enemies could find out.”

  Edge pushed away the sorrow of her memories and let out a patient sigh. He rubbed the tears away from his face. “I didn’t let her see anything that would put her in danger. The memories she did see will help to crowd out the things she experienced today.”

  Deathclaw shook his scaled head. “You have a weakness when it comes to children.”

  “And you don’t?” Edge teased. “I know your mind. I’ve seen how gentle you are with small ones.”

  Deathclaw hissed in derision. “They are delicate and easy to harm.” He gestured towards Lillian. “What would you have us do with this child, Edge?”

  “There is a village not far from here,” he said. “We will bring her there and find someone to care for her.”

  Deathclaw nodded in approval, relieved that Edge didn’t intend to care for the child himself. “And then?”

  Sir Edge set his jaw. “And then we hunt down the people who did this.”