The Ogre Apprentice (2 page)

“Cletus told me that you were arguing because you couldn’t see me,” she said. “But I talked to Esmine about it. That shouldn’t happen again.”

“Your invisibility isn’t what we were worried about,” Swen replied in his standard monotone. Tarah tried to determine his meaning, but the tall archer stood with arms folded, his stiff face expressionless. His right arm was bandaged where Shade’s knife had pierced him the night before. For Tarah, it was another reminder of her failure the night before. His eyebrows raised slightly as he focused in on her face. “What happened to your nose?”

“What are you talking about?” Tarah reached up to her face. Had she been wounded in the night and not noticed it or something? But her fingers touched unbroken skin. It was the same bent nose as always.

“I don’t see anything wrong,” Djeri said. He reached out and grasped her hand, his gauntlet icy cold to the touch. “Come on. Everyone wants to talk to you.”

The rest of the party was gathered together behind a rock outcropping that partially blocked the wind. They had wrapped Helmet Jan in blankets and pressed her unconscious form closest to the rock, doing their best to keep her warm. They couldn’t start a fire because any smoke could alert the army to their presence. Instead, Willum’s axe was lying on the ground next to her emitting a steady pulse of heat. Evidently Theodore still had plenty of energy remaining from the blood magic he had absorbed during the fight.

Cletus was talking to everyone animatedly, but they all had their bleary eyes fixed on Tarah. She suppressed a wince. Jan was the only major injury, but several of the others huddled around the heat of the axe had wounds of their own. Dinnis had received several shallow cuts during the battle and Benjo had a deep gash over his eye that had been hastily bandaged.

“There you are, Tarah,” Willum said, standing and facing her. Then his eyes fixed on her face and a look of confusion passed over him.

“Sorry. I was watching the army,” she replied.
Tarah Woodblade never apologizes
, Grampa Rolf said, but she shoved his memory to the side. Why was Willum looking at her like that?

“And you found time to fix your nose while you were at it?” Dinnis said incredulously. Djeri frowned at him and the man added, “What? Did it happen earlier and I just didn’t see it?”

“Why does everyone keep making remarks about my nose?” Tarah growled.

“It looks different,” Benjo said. “It changes your face a lot, actually.”

“It looks funny,” Cletus agreed.

“No it doesn’t,” Djeri said. He stared at her face in confusion. “She looks the same as always.”

Tarah reached up and felt her bent nose again. Nothing was different. She tightened her grip on her staff as understanding flooded her.
Esmine, are you changing my appearance
?

You don’t like that part of your face
, Esmine explained.
You don’t wish others to see the way it is
.

So the rogue horse’s powers went beyond just making things invisible. Tarah wondered what else she could do.
Well, from now on, don’t change my appearance unless I ask you to, alright? I don’t need to hide anything from my friends
.

Okay
, Esmine said with a mental shrug. Tarah didn’t feel any change, but there was a visible reaction from everyone present.

“It’s back to normal,” Benjo said. “How’d you do that?”

“It was Esmine,” she replied gesturing with her staff. “For some reason she decided to change how everyone saw my face.”

“Oh,” Dennis said and everyone looked mollified by her explanation. Tarah found it strange how easily everyone accepted the concept when she was still trying to wrap her own mind around it. Evidently they all had much more experience working around magic than she had.

She changed the subject. “So I understand you’ve been arguing about something?”

“I would couch it more as a minor disagreement,” Djeri replied.

“Uh huh,” she said. “Then I assume you saw that the army is meeting with Aloysius.”

Benjo grunted. “I thought it was something like that when the demons let the smugglers get away.”

“Well you were right,” Tarah said, folding her arms. “They’re drinking tea with him and chatting like best friends right now.”

“Theodore says this is unprecedented,” Willum said with wide eyes. “Imp armies this large were rare even in his days and it only ever happened to quash a group of gnome warriors that were getting out of control.”

“Unprecedented or not, it’s happening,” said Djeri. “The thing we’ve been debating all morning is, what do we do about it?”

“I still say all we can do is inform the Alberri government,” Swen said.

“Ain’t good enough,” Tarah said, shaking her head.

Dinnis snorted. “What do you expect us to do?” The academy graduate was sitting next to Jan with a dour expression on his face, polishing Meredith. He had gotten grumpier and grumpier ever since receiving the sword from Tolivar.

“We go after Aloysius,” Tarah said and after noticing the incredulous expression on Dinnis’ face, added, “Hey, I hired the academy to get a job done-!”

“And the job is done,” Dinnis replied, frustration etched into his face. “We chased Shade and his dwarves down. We tried to save the rogue horse, but she died. I’m sorry, but it’s over.”

Tarah’s fist’s clenched. “No it isn’t!”

“Listen, Tarah!” Djeri said, grabbing her arm. “Dinnis is right. The contract as we wrote it up is fulfilled. The academy’s job is done here.”

Djeri’s words struck Tarah like an arrow. She had feared something like this would happen, but she hadn’t expected Djeri to be against her. She tore her arm free from his grasp. “What? You expect me to give up and go home? After what we know now?”

Cletus clamped his hand over his ears, his face twisted in anguish. “Please, no arguing!”

“No, Tarah,” Djeri said, raising his hands defensively and giving Cletus an apologetic glance. He lowered his voice. “That’s not what I’m saying. But we can’t just go after the scholar. We’re official academy representatives.”

“And?” she asked, hands on hips.

“If this was happening at home, yes, the academy would be getting involved. But outside of Dremaldria the academy isn’t a police force. In Razbeck and Alberri we’re just . . . benevolent mercenaries. It is our policy to stay out of other country’s politics unless they pay us to help. Even then, we don’t have enough manpower to go fighting armies. We do small things. We train. We advise. We send in small strike forces from time-to-time.”

Tarah swallowed. “Then I’m on my own, again. That’s what you’re saying.”

“No, you’re not,” said Willum, shooting a frown at Dinnis and Swen who both looked like they agreed with her statement. “We’re with you, Tarah. It’s just that, as academy soldiers, we have to go about things a bit different. Right, Djeri? You said you had a plan.”

She gave Djeri a hopeful look and the dwarf sighed. “Turds, woman. You know I’m not going to abandon you. None of us are. The point I was trying to make is that we can’t go after Aloysius just yet. Not unless we can get a mandate from the academy. And that isn’t going to be easy.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Swen asked, his expression unyielding.

“Obviously, our first priority is Helmet Jan. We need to get her to a healer and quick,” Djeri said. “So we head to Alberri’s Mage School. It’s about two day’s ride from here. We can get her healed up and while we’re there, we can use their pigeons to send messages to Alberri’s king and the Gnome Council telling them what Scholar Aloysius is up to.”

“Ooh!” said Cletus smiling. “The Mage School! I like that place! They have lots of flowers!”

“Good,” Dinnis said with an agreeing nod. “Like I’ve been saying. It’s Alberri’s job to keep their people in check. Let them deal with it.”

“But,” added Djeri, holding up a finger. “We also contact the academy and tell them that Tarah Woodblade wants to hire us for a secondary mission.” He glanced at Tarah. “That is, if you’re willing.”

“Of course I am,” Tarah said. Her grampa voiced stern objections and she pursed her lips. “But my funds were seriously depleted with our first contract. I don’t know how I can come up with enough money.”

Djeri placed his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t expect you to foot the whole bill. I happen to have some money saved of my own. It’ll be close, but we might have just enough.”

“I guess I could pitch in, too,” Swen said hesitantly.

Willum chuckled, a smile spreading on his face. “I like where you’re going with this, Djeri. But you should all save your money. This mission will be bankrolled by the Vrill Family Estate.”

Everyone stared at Willum in surprise. They knew he was the only living Vriil heir, but it was assumed that he had decided to give up his birthright. Willum had always been uncomfortable with his family’s history and he’d shown no desire to leave the academy and move to Vriil lands. Lord Commander Demetrius had given Willum until spring to decide or his holdings were to be parsed out to other noble families. The deadline was just weeks away.

“Then you’re leaving the academy?” Swen asked, a slight frown creasing his stiff brow.

“Theodore and I have thought of a way around that,” Willum replied, looking proud of himself. “As long as Lord Commander Demetrius is willing to work with me, that is. I’ll have some letters of my own to send out when we get to the Mage School.”

“Alright,” said Dinnis. “I won’t say you’ve convinced me yet, but I’m interested. What will our new mission be? The council isn’t going to okay an assassination of a gnome scholar. Not without an official request from the Alberri government.”

“No, our objective won’t be to kill him,” Djeri replied. “Our mission would be one of disruption.” He let out a grim chuckle. “We are going to make Aloysius miserable.”

*          *          *

I am king
. That was his first thought. Before he had taken his first breath, before he had opened his eyes, he knew it. It was his predestined purpose. He had a people to lead.

His second thought was hunger. No, it was more than a thought. It was a fierce thing; a gnawing and painful ache deep in the pit of him. He took his first struggling breath and coughed out a stream of thick fluid. He hacked and sputtered, his limbs spasming.

Once his lungs had cleared, the king let out a cry of hunger. It was a piercing sound, a screech, high pitched and primal. The sound echoed back at him, reverberating and hurting his ears. His own screech was the first sound the king heard and it stunned him, overwhelming his hunger. What kind of creature was he to make a sound like that?

His other senses awakened one by one. The air around him was hot and humid and a thick moist substance covered his body. He flailed about, with two arms and one leg, but the other leg was stuck. He was hanging upside down, anchored by one foot that was stuck in something soft and wet.

As he dangled there, he breathed in through his nose and was hit by a complex scent. It was musky and alive and full of pheromones. His brain interpreted the smell and fed him a flood of information he found difficult to process. Where was he?

The king opened his eyes for the first time and blinked. His eyes felt odd on his face. It was as if they were different sizes. His right eye saw only darkness, but his smaller left eye saw a brilliant spectrum of reds and yellows, something he instinctually knew was the heat of the area around him.

His heat vision showed the king that he was hanging in a living cave whose walls and ceiling were made of hot flesh. He looked down and saw that his fingertips hung mere inches from a thick pool of liquid beneath him. He wasn’t alone in this place. Dozens of other bodies hung from the ceiling like ripe fruits. Each one of them was alive, but they weren’t yet conscious. None of them were moving or breathing.

As the king looked at these other bodies closer, he became aware that they were all different, varying in size and shape. Some of them were hairy, while others were smooth. Some dripped long streams of slime, while others merely glistened. What were they? Each one seemed to be a mutated mix of various beasts.

Shuddering, he lifted his hands before his face and hissed in dismay as the heat signature showed him that his own hands were odd and mismatched. His left hand was long-fingered and tipped with wicked claws, while his right hand had shorter fingers and stubby nails, but seemed more powerful. He looked at his body and saw a well-muscled torso and powerful legs. The toes on his free foot were tipped with black talons.

Afraid of what he might find, he reached up and ran his fingers over his face. His lower jaw was that of a man’s, though the teeth on the left side of his jaw were sharper than the teeth on his right. He had what felt like a man’s nose, but his eyes were indeed different from one another, the left one small and beady. A long thick mop of wiry hair grew from the left side of his scalp, while the right side was smooth and hairless.

This information stunned him. Why this disfigurement? Why would a king born to rule be so malformed? Why did he screech like an animal? What kind of being was he?

Horrified, the king flailed about and screeched again, trying to pull his leg free from the wet ceiling above him. He felt a sharp pain as the skin of his foot began to tear. The king stopped moving for fear that he would do permanent damage. He hung there, breathing heavily, his body aching with hunger, his mind full of fear and revulsion.