The Troll King (The Bowl of Souls Book 9) (39 page)

Mellinda attempted to show her how she was able to fix the defects in the trollkin, but the Mother was greedy. The behemoth, brushed Mellinda’s thoughts aside and greedily poured through Mellinda’s knowledge.

There was nothing Mellinda could do. The Mother had gotten past her defenses. All she could do was sit back and endure it as the behemoth absorbed everything she could about the defects in her children and how they could be repaired. Once she had everything, she pulled away, ready to cast Mellinda aside.

Wait
! Mellinda pleaded.
There is more
.

She showed the Mother Aloysius’s plan. She urged the behemoth to order her people to attend the meeting. The souls harvested there would give the trollkin the population surge they needed to become a true power in Malaroo.

Once again, the Mother bashed Mellinda’s thoughts aside. She searched her knowledge of the Roo-Tan, the Roo-Dan, the grove, and Aloysius’ army.

Please
, said Mellinda.
Do you see? Help me in this and your children will thrive
!

The Troll Mother responded and this time in a language that Mellinda could understand.
We shall see . . . snake
.

Everything went black again.

“
I think she’s gone
,” Arcon said. “
Are you there? Am I dead now
?” His voice was almost hopeful.

No. You are still stuck with me
, she replied. Her thoughts were sluggish and she still could not feel her body.

“
She saw me
,” he said. “
She glanced through my mind as if it were nothing and cast me aside as unimportant
.”

To her you are
, she replied.

“
It was such a violating feeling
,” he said. “
It reminded me of how I felt when you first put the eye inside me
.”

Indeed? I thought you enjoyed that night
, she said, but she didn’t care how he felt. The only reason she had bothered to respond is that he was the only thing keeping her anchored to reality. It felt as though the Mother had scattered her mind and left Mellinda to gather the pieces.

“
Enjoyed?
” He laughed bitterly.
“That night was just the painful beginning. I wish I’d never picked you up your eye
.”

Gradually, Mellinda’s ability to think returned and she began to be aware of her body again. She realized that she was lying on the bank. She could feel the softness of the grass underneath her and she could hear the chirp of frogs. When her eyelids fluttered open she saw the glassy surface of the lake.

The return of her senses brought with them a pulsating headache. She winced and the sides of her face rang out in pain. She reached up and touched the circle of deep puncture wounds around her face and finally, gingerly felt the center of her forehead where the large puckered wound still oozed.

Mellinda could feel the injuries tingle. The Rings of Stardeon were acting quickly to repair the damage. Something in the Troll Mother’s saliva was slowing the healing, but she would survive. She sat up with a groan.

“She lives,” said Murtha with disgust.

“Enough,” the king said, issuing a rare reprimand to his second in command. “The Mother has spoken.”

Mellinda turned to face them. The king was sitting in the Lone Chair, his eyes wary. Murtha and the First stood next to him and Mellinda saw that dozens more of the trollkin stood just outside of Solitude, watching.

“She has spoken?” Mellinda asked.

“We are to follow you to battle,” said the king.

Tarah fired. Her arrow soared through the air towards the target far below. The morning breeze carried it a bit to the left, as she had predicted, and it sank into the second ring, just missing the bullseye.

Tarah swore and reached for another arrow. She was standing on top of the high platform in the archery range at the Protector’s Palace in Roo-Tan’lan. The tower was designed to help archers practice siege warfare. The target she had just hit was a volley shot target and laid flat on the ground at the far end of the range.

“Close. Nothing to be ashamed of,” said Djeri the Looker, one hand above his eyes as he peered at the distant target. The dwarf was sitting on the platform not far from where she stood, his legs dangling off of the edge.

“Would’ve struck the center if not for that armor,” she complained, throwing up one arm as if to protect herself from the glare.

The dwarf still wore his Uncle Lenui’s famous platemail armor, though he had set his helmet on the platform beside him. Tarah had rarely been able to get him to take the armor off since his uncle had given it to him back at Coal’s Keep in Razbeck. It was polished to a high sheen and covered in intricate protective runes. On the center of the breastplate was a large red letter ‘F’ representing the proud Firegobbler family name.

“Don’t blame the armor,” Djeri said with a laugh. “It’s your father’s bow that’s the problem. He made it for hunting, not long range shooting.”

Unlike every other dwarf Tarah had met, Djeri spoke the common tongue without an accent. His father had been a half-dwarf and Djeri had found that he felt more comfortable around humans. It was one of the reasons he had joined the academy at a young age. He even preferred his beard trimmed like a human’s. He kept it short and tight to his face. Tarah found it quite fetching.

“Maybe so,” she replied and notched another arrow on the string. She pulled it back and sighted on the target again. “That still don’t mean I should miss.”

She made a slight adjustment and fired again. This time the arrow sailed just a bit too far to the right and missed the center ring again. “You’re right. It’s the bow.”

In order to even hit the target, she had to pull the wood back to its very limit. That kind of stress made it hard to be precise. It wasn’t normally an issue, because she rarely tried to shoot at this range, but she had already fired at every other target in the range at least a dozen times already and had grown bored.

“Aren’t you afraid that your heavy body could topple this tower over?” asked Esmine suddenly, appearing just behind the dwarf. She had become quite taken with the form of the little elf girl dressed as a Roo-Tan warrior. The rogue horse took that illusionary form whenever she appeared now, popping in and out of existence whenever she felt like it.

Of course, Djeri didn’t hear her and Esmine scowled at the dwarf when he didn’t respond. Djeri’s innate inability to see her illusions was a thorn in Esmine’s side, especially now that she had taken to interacting with other people besides Tarah. She made a little fist and threw a little right hook at his face, but her hand just passed through his head. She had learned to make others feel the impacts of her illusions, but not Djeri.

“Esmine wonders if we should be afraid that your big butt will pull this platform over,” Tarah said helpfully.

Esmine backed to the edge, her little arms pinwheeling. “Yeah, one more pound and-.” She lurched as if the tower was swaying and yelped as her little form fell from view, hurtling head-over-heels towards the ground below.

“Tell her it’s sturdy,” the dwarf assured her, oblivious to the rogue horse’s antics. Nevertheless, he still scooted a little bit further back from the edge.

Tarah sat down next to him. “I was a bit surprised when you followed me up here.” Climbing up a thirty-foot ladder in full platemail was no easy task.

“Yeah, well I figured we had some time alone,” Djeri said.

Willum was off with Mage Vannya helping her with some kind of magical experiment and Cletus was sparring with Deathclaw in the combat ring on the other side of the archery range’s wall. Since the Roo-Tan garrison was out patrolling, they had the range to themselves.

The dwarf placed his arm around Tarah and pulled her close. “I don’t usually get to spend much time with you during the day.”

She leaned her head onto his. “It’s kind of always been that way.”

“Yeah, but it’s been even harder this last couple weeks,” he said.

“I know.” Their relationship had begun on the road and they had rarely stopped for a breath since.

Finding time alone was a difficult proposition when travelling with a group of friends, but at least then they had been together. Since Tarah had begun training with Beth and Tolynn, she hardly saw him at all. Beth had been nice enough to let them stay in their guest house, but by the time Tarah stumbled in at night, exhausted from a hard day of training, they barely had time to say two words to each other before she was asleep.

The only reason they were together now was that both Beth and Tolynn were in the big meeting with the Protector of the Grove. Just about every leader in the city was crammed into that council room. It seemed like the string of meetings had been never ending since Willum and Jhonate had returned from their excursion with news of the troll behemoth that lived under the swamps. The leaders of the various Roo-Tan families had differing views on what acts should be taken and the protector had ordered the evacuations of the villages closest to the swamps. But now a new emergency had arisen.

A messenger from the Mer-Dan Collective had arrived late the night before with an early draft of the treaty they wished the Roo-Tan to sign. Xedrion had called Tarah in to touch the box and the scrolls it contained. Unfortunately, if there was any ill intent behind the drafting of the document the merman scribe that had copied it down hadn’t known it. Tarah had tracked the messenger just in case he knew something, but she had found nothing of value.

The meeting had begun the moment Xedrion had started dissecting the treaty. Sir Edge and Jhonate had been in the council room all night long and the list of invitees had grown. Now the heads of all the houses were there as well as Hilt and Beth and several of the elves.

“We’ll have our time once this is over,” Tarah assured him.

Djeri looked up and kissed her. “Will we?” He placed his hand against her cheek. “Once Aloysius is defeated, what happens then?”

“Well, I suppose we go home,” she replied.

“But where is home?” he asked. “Dremaldria? Your house is gone. I’ve resigned from the academy. Where do we go?”

Tarah frowned. She had tried not to think too much about that part of it. Any time it came up in her mind, she refocused on the mission. “There will be time to decide that once the time comes.”

The dwarf sighed. “I think we should discuss it now. It’s good to have something to look forward too. It helps make the long missions seem worth it.”

“The important thing is that we’ll be together,” she said.

“That’s true,” he said, nodding. “But come on. Dream with me.”

“Well . . .” Tarah didn’t know where to begin. “Where is home to you?”

He smiled. “I’ve always been a wanderer. I grew up near Corntown, but that’s definitely no place for a dwarf and a human woman to live together. Since then, I’ve just been wherever the academy sent me.”

“You could rejoin them,” she suggested.

He scoffed. “What? Are you going to join up with me? You’d have to go through Training School and then academy classes. It would take a few years to graduate.”

“I might,” she said, but she had to admit to herself it didn’t sound like the life she wanted to lead.

“What would you like to do?” Djeri pressed. “We could go back to your old home. Rebuild. You could go back to the Sampo Guidesmen guild. We could hire out together as a duo. Tarah Woodblade and Djeri the Looker, guides and trackers.”

Tarah smiled at the idea. “I don’t know about living in the old place again.”

“Why not? The old memories are burned away. We’d fill it with new ones!” he said enthusiastically.

 “Well, papa wouldn’t approve of us living there unless . . .” Tarah’s cheeks reddened. It had been bothering her ever since her papa had chastised her just before saying goodbye.

Djeri knew what she was thinking. “Then, we’d get married first, of course! After that, who knows? If you want, we’ll fill that little cave of yours full of children.”

Tarah blinked at him. “Djeri the Looker, are you asking me to marry you?”

Now his cheeks were the ones reddening. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, we’re daydreaming for now, but I’d like to. One day. But I’d want to do it properly, though. Dwarf-style. Forge you a ring and everything. I’m not much of a blacksmith, but I know Uncle Lenui would help me with it.”

Tarah swallowed. Her? Married? It wasn’t something that she ever thought would happen to her. After all, she figured that with her build and her nose, surely no man would want her. ‘Tarah Woodblade don’t need no man.’ That was the mantra her grampa had taught her. And it was true. But what she needed and wanted were two different things.

Suddenly, Esmine reappeared, laying across Tarah and Djeri’s laps. The illusion placed her hands behind her head and her little face blinked up at Tarah. “I don’t like the idea of you living with someone that can’t see me.”

“I think we might already have a child,” Tarah joked, looking down at her.

Djeri’s eyes widened. “You what?”

Tarah’s eyes widened back at him and she laughed. “No. Not that. I mean Esmine. You can’t see her right now, but she is laying across our laps and . . . picking her nose.”

“Oh,” he said, placing a hand on his chest and chuckling in relief. “Turds, woman. You gave me a scare there.” He frowned. “Wait, why is she making her illusion pick its nose?”

“It’s what children do,” the elf girl said, then stuck her finger in her mouth.

Tarah winced and shoved the illusion off of her lap. “Hey!” Esmine said as the child plummeted to the ground once again.

“She’s been watching the Roo-Tan children and emulating their behavior,” Tarah explained.

Djeri grinned. “Emulating? I like it when those big words come out of your mouth.”

Tarah was raised by two rough frontier men, and it came out in her speech. But before her mother had died, she had given Tarah a love of reading. It wasn’t something she talked openly with others about, but sometimes those words she learned came out of her mouth unbidden.

Tarah bent and kissed the dwarf again, feeling a surge of happiness. This wouldn’t be so bad. Life with someone who loved and respected her and knew who she truly was. The future looked bright. Even having Esmine around was easier now that her antics were more childish and less painful.

“Ahem!” The child was back, standing behind them this time. Her arms were folded and a glare was on her face. “I was trying to talk. You wanted me to watch the boring meeting, didn’t you?”

Tarah pulled away from Djeri and looked back at the illusion. “Yes, Esmine. What’s going on?”

One result of the daily training Tarah had been doing with Tolynn had been learning new ways to use and expand Esmine’s abilities. Tarah had already known that the rogue horse could create and manipulate illusions anywhere within the range of her powers. Tolynn had pointed out that this meant the rogue horse had the ability to observe the goings on anywhere in that same range.

With a little testing, they had discovered that Esmine’s abilities went beyond monitoring and interacting with a single target. Somehow having all her considerable power tied to that one small staff had expanded her mental ability. The rogue horse could monitor multiple locations in that range at the same time.

Tarah had realized how badly she had been underutilizing Esmine’s abilities. Throughout the journey to Roo-Tan’lan, Tarah and her companions had spent their nights taking turns at watch, while only using Esmine in occasional forays against the enemy army. It was no wonder the tireless rogue horse had felt bored and isolated. They should have set her as a constant sentry, watching for encroachments into her territory and using her illusions to scare off predators or confuse army scouts and unwanted persons.