The Magic Rain

Chapter One: The Hunt

Jo-Bri gently pulled on the reins and Brozar slowed to a halt among the tall, thick shrubs. He hesitated, feeling the fear inside him, and cursing himself for it, and then slipped down the side of the large animal, landing nimbly on the hard packed sand.

Jo-Bri tied Brozar to a nearby rock, double knotting the rein, just to be sure. Zornths were powerful animals and it wouldn’t do to have Brozar break loose and come to his aid.

Jo-Bri glanced up at the green sky and noted the position of the two suns. It was just past noon. He spotted a lone Chootah bird circling lazily above. The bird’s wingspan was easily 25 feet, the bird itself ten or eleven feet long from beak to tail, probably weighing as much as two full-grown men.

He pulled a serrated dagger from a sheath on his left leg, squared his shoulders and walked quietly and purposefully through the bushes.

In about five hundred feet he emerged into a clearing. He’d spent every spare moment he’d had in the past two weeks tracking the killers to this spot, knowing from the patterns of prints over that time that this was a place they frequented – and a place where they often ambushed and killed their prey.

He glanced in every direction, including behind him. There was a slight chill in the air and the silence was eerie. Silence meant a predator nearby.

Damn. Why couldn’t he feel as confident as his father always seemed to -- or his mother? He glanced around one last time, turned his back to the thinnest part of the brush, the direction from which an attack was most likely to come, sat on the ground. After a moment he began to sing – loudly – and waited for the Ghiri to arrive.

As he sang, Jo-Bri wondered what he was doing out here. He could be back home, flirting with the village girls. Of course, that might be nearly as dangerous as stalking a Ghiri with nothing but a knife and a prayer – or a spell, in his case. He quickly decided he’d better rely more on the knife than on any spell he might be able to remember. He sang even more loudly. A wizard’s son who couldn’t remember how to do spells.

The growl was low enough that Jo-Bri wondered if he’d really heard it. The second growl came from a different direction. There were two Ghiri nearby – at least two. Jo-Bri resisted the urge to flee. He felt almost dizzy with fear and wondered if this would be the day he died.

Time crept by, second by second, the fear building in him as he forced himself to sit still, his senses desperately trying to figure out what the Ghiri were doing.

Then he heard it: something bursting through the brush. Time suddenly broke free as he stood and turned toward the attack.

There were three Ghiri. He turned his body to the side, backward and away from the lead Ghiri. The killer’s heavily muscled 80-pound body hurtled past him, the animal’s flanks actually brushing Jo-Bri’s chest.

As it passed, the creature turned its massive head, trying to bite Jo-Bri with its huge fangs and powerful jaws.

Jo-Bri thrust his dagger up into the animal’s throat, ripping it lengthwise and jerking it out again. Then the animal was gone, its leap carrying it past Jo-Bri, who turned to see the second Ghiri leaping toward him.

Jo-Bri dropped and rolled. The Ghiri passed over him, also turning its head to snap at him as Jo-Bri stabbed upward into the beast’s underbelly and jerked the knife down along the length of the animal’s body. This time the beast’s fangs slashed a long, shallow wound in Jo-Bri’s arm just as his knife struck a bone in the Ghiri’s muscular body. The animal’s weight combined with the pain in his arm tore the knife from Jo-Bri’s hand as the animal sailed by.

The third animal was now leaping; not up, but down and onto him. Jo-Bri kicked upward, catching the animal under its foreleg and flinging it up and over him.

Jo-Bri rolled to his feet and turned toward the third Ghiri just as Brozar screamed a roar that made the third Ghiri turn to face any possible attack from an enraged Zornth. As Jo-Bri glanced around for something with which to fight the third beast, he saw that the second Ghiri was still alive and trying to regain its feet, even though Jo-Bri’s knife protruded from its lower abdomen.

Then Brozar made his mistake – he roared again. Jo-Bri winced because he knew it would tell the Ghiri that the Zornth was no closer than when he first roared; that Brozar, who could have killed all three Ghiri, was not approaching.

The third Ghiri turned back to Jo-Bri and crouched, ready to leap. The words came out of Jo-Bri’s mouth seemingly without his bidding -- strange, arcane words in a language that had died a thousand years before the boy had been born, a language used now only by wizards and witches.

The Ghiri leapt just as the last word leapt from Jo-Bri’s lips and he whipped his hands up. White light shot from his palms, striking the beast as its teeth were three feet from ripping his face off.

Jo-Bri’s world went red.

Jo-Bri screamed in anticipation of the pain. He felt the Ghiri’s body strike him. He fell backward onto his buttocks. He still saw nothing but red, his eyes stinging. He heard a horrible noise and wondered who was making it. He realized it was him, still screaming, and he forced himself to stop.

He sat on the ground, a weight on his chest. His eyes stung and he panted in panic, pain and shock. He carefully wiped something slimy from his face, and then opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the second Ghiri, again trying to get to its feet, obviously having fallen again, and just as obviously willing to spend the last seconds of its life trying to kill him.

Then Jo-Bri looked down at himself. He was covered with what looked like Ghiri stew. The spell had worked, even if he did not know how he’d remembered it. He had a moment of exhilaration and then realized he had turned a live animal into 80 pounds of meat jelly which had slammed into him at thirty miles an hour, covering him from head to crotch with blood, crushed bone and semi-liquefied flesh. He’d destroyed a life for no reason other than his own pride. Jo-Bri the great hunter, he thought bitterly.

Jo-Bri watched the second Ghiri dying in front of him, its sides heaving. Now the fear in his belly was of what his parents would say when they found out what he’d done. He struggled to his feet, the remains of the third Ghiri sliding off him.

The second Ghiri whined. Jo-Bri walked slowly over to the wounded animal and knelt beside it. The beast lifted its head and tried to bite him but its head fell back to the ground as it weakly snapped the empty air.

He hesitated, and then pulled the knife from the animal’s body, tearing a yelp from the Ghiri. Jo-Bri winced in sympathy and guilt. In one motion he slashed the animal’s throat, making sure to strike deeply enough for a quick kill.

The Ghiri slumped into death, and Jo-Bri began to sob in shame.