Holmberg, D K - The Painter Mage 01 - Shifted Agony by Holmberg D K

Author:Holmberg, D K [Holmberg, D K]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ASH Publishing
Published: 2015-04-27T23:00:00+00:00

7

Devan found the next marking in the park.

We’d split up, searching for any sign of other patterns carved or painted onto trees. I kept striking out, though I did find a few other things that were different than I remembered.

When I first returned to Conlin, I’d spent the first week preparing the park. The sculptures here were created by my father and I wanted to know anything I could about them. Not only Agony, although he was the best known of the park sculptures, but also the others. It was one of these that I came across.

With the growing shadows, I nearly stumbled onto it. Like the others, it was made of the strange, slicked-looking stone, carved or shaped or possibly even painted into existence, though I didn’t have any idea how he would have managed to paint a sculpture into being. It was something like a hand or a claw stretching out of the ground. Fingers were thrust outward, twisted and bent, and long nails pointed toward the center of the park. More than any of the others, this one bothered me the most.

Most considered Agony a fearsome sculpture. It was the reason so few wanted to visit the park after dark. To me, two of the others were more frightening. The Claw—I don’t know what my father had named this piece—bothered me simply because it looked like something trapped in the ground was trying to escape. The sharpened nails would catch at you if you weren’t careful. Like me, now.

I winced as my foot kicked the claw and bounced back.

A hollow sound came from it, but nothing else. I didn’t worry about damaging it. Like with Agony, there wasn’t much that could damage it. The city had placed a sign nearby warning others to be careful with it, and most simply avoided it.

I gave the Claw a wide berth and studied the trees. If Taylor had been through here, I figured she would have stopped at each of the sculptures. It was what I would have done had I learned of a Master artist leaving sculptures in the park.

Nothing told me that she’d been through here. I saw no sign of footprints, even though it had rained the day before, and there were no markings on any of the trees.

Could I have found the only one she’d marked?

That seemed unlikely. The markings on the pine trees had taken a specific pattern. The long, thin triangle she’d made on the lone tree wouldn’t be effective for much, but as part of something else, it was possible the pattern would be more powerful, especially to an artist like Taylor.

I hurried through the park, looking for anything that might draw my eye. If Jakes saw me, he’d likely have more questions of the kind I didn’t really want to answer. I suspected he knew more than he let on, though I wasn’t sure what he might know. Could he really know that a shifter had battled a painter and one of

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