The Troll King (The Bowl of Souls Book 9) (27 page)

“They exaggerated,” Tarah assured her, returning her smile. “I must say that you are the last person I thought I would see in Malaroo.”

“Oh, that’s right. You have been out of the loop, haven’t you?” Beth said. “I’m sorry I hadn’t been by to see you here sooner. Since Hilt has been staying away from Xedrion’s meetings, we haven’t been getting news very quickly.”

Tarah shook her head in disbelief. “Did you know that the Pinewood mayor hired me to track you down after you went missing? Followed your tracks to the edge of the dark forest before they disappeared. It was the first time I ever lost a quarry.” Tarah didn’t add that she had read suicidal thoughts in Beth’s tracks that day. Beth had intended to go and fight the mother of the moonrats bare handed and hadn’t expected to survive.

“And did the great Tarah Woodblade end up admitting that to the mayor?” Beth asked in amusement.

“I ended up telling the mayor that you had met some stranger and run off with him,” Tarah admitted. “How did you end up here?”

Beth smiled. “Well, to make a long story short, I met a stranger and I ran off with him.”

The man that had come in with her chuckled. “And in the middle of that she discovered she had spirit magic powers, helped save the grove and helped win the war against Ewzad Vriil and the moonrat mother.”

“Don’t forget the part where we adopted a child,” Beth said chidingly. “Tarah, this is my husband, Sir Hilt and our daughter, Sherl-Ann.”

“Hello,” Tarah said, noticing the naming rune on the back of the man’s hand for the first time.

Beth put her hands on her hips. “Now I understand that Tolynn has decided that I am to take you on as a pupil?”

“Something like that,” Tarah replied hesitantly. “She said she’s too busy to teach me everything herself. So I’m supposed to spend time with both of you.”

“Yes, well she certainly didn’t think it prudent to ask me first.” Beth said with faux irritation. “I suppose I owe her a favor though.” She gave Tarah an assessing look. “You don’t mind me listening to you do you?”

“You mean that thing where you lift my arms and-.” Beth grasped Tarah’s arms and lifted them into the air and poked and prodded her a bit before placing an ear against Tarah’s chest. “. . . do this thing,”

Beth’s listening took longer than Tolynn’s had and when the woman pulled back, she had a calculating look on her face. “You know, Tarah, you’re not in as bad a situation as you think. You do have some rather hard decisions coming up, though.”

Tarah wondered what the woman had seen. What situation was Beth talking about and what decisions did she have coming? Before Tarah could ask her, the woman was speaking again.

“Hilt, I feel good about this one. I think I’ll put her in the guest house out back. We’ll need to ask our neighbors if we can borrow some spare reed beds.”

“Excuse me?” Tarah said.

“Well, you’re gonna be a very busy woman for a while,” Beth replied in explanation. “Tolynn’s going to want you all morning long and I’m certain Xedrion’s going to need you at whatever time of the day for this and that, which means I’m gonna have to find time somewhere in the middle. Therefore, you’re staying at my place.”

Tarah opened her mouth, but Beth raised a quick hand. “Before you protest, my house is much closer to the grove and it’s a whole lot less stuffy and boring than this palace. Oh, and I’ll be taking in your friends too. The ones that want to come, that is.”

“You saw about them when you were ‘listening’ to me?”

“Sure,” she said gesturing absently. “Willum and the gnome warrior and the dwarf you’re in love with. Don’t worry. They’re welcome. Hilt can always use some sparring partners and they can pay me back by helping around the house.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Hilt asked.

Beth looked back over her shoulder at him. “You married me.”

Hilt sighed and looked at Xedrion. The Protector shrugged. “Do not look to me for help. I have seven wives of my own.”

“And I picked you for a friend,” Hilt grumbled.

“The best I can do is take you away for a few minutes,” Xedrion suggested. “Beth, I need to speak with your husband about something. Come, Hilt.”

“Sure,” Hilt said. He turned to Beth and held out the child. “Looks like I have a meeting.”

Beth rolled her eyes and took Sherl-Ann from him. The baby didn’t seem to care which parent she was with, yawning during the transfer. “Don’t you be too late now, understand me?”

“Just a moment. Sir Hilt, before you go?” said Sir Edge, catching the attention of Beth’s new husband. He gave Hilt and Beth a proud smile. “I wish to announce to both of you that the Protector has approved my marriage to Jhonate.”

A wide smile split Hilt’s face. “He has?” He glanced over at Xedrion, who smiled and nodded. “Ha!” Hilt said. He embraced Sir Edge and Jhonate in turn. “I am so happy for you two. Have you decided when this is going to happen?”

“There are several complications to iron out,” Sir Edge replied. “My family is far away and so is Fist. I would want them to be here for it.”

“And it will have to wait until this situation on our border is resolved,” Xedrion added. 

Beth giggled. “Oh, I am so excited! Just a second, I’m gonna hug you two! Here, Tarah.” She thrust the baby into Tarah’s arms.

“Wait,” Tarah said, wincing, but it was too late. The moment she grasped the child, its memories flooded her mind. It was a far different experience than seeing the memories of the ancient trees. This child was less than a year old and its senses weren’t fully developed. The result was that, instead of flying by at lightning speed, her memories were vivid and slightly distorted.

First came a memory of being in the arms of a raving woman whose face was streaked with tears. Then a nightmarish creature with cat-like eyes and puffy lips appeared and covered it with kisses. That face was replaced by kind eyes that Tarah recognized right away as belonging to the Prophet. This child had spent quite some time with him before ending up in the arms of Beth and Hilt.

When it was over, Tarah stared at the baby in astonishment. She had seen a very similar set of memories not long ago, from the child Coalvin back in Coal’s Keep. She looked to Beth, who had just finished embracing the betrothed couple. “Beth, th-this baby . . . I just saw-.”

Beth slid over and placed her hand on Tarah’s shoulder. “Don’t say everything you know, dear.”

“Right,” Tarah said, wondering what it was that made these two babies so special and why the Prophet would have gone to all the trouble of bringing them to separate mothers in different countries. She looked into Sherl-Ann’s clear blue eyes. “None of my business anyway.”

Beth threw her arm around Tarah’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “Oh, we are going to learn a lot together, you and I.”

The Troll King sat in the Lone Chair and looked out over the swamp lake before him. The air in Solitude was still. The thick canopy of vegetation surrounding the lake was a barrier to the wind and kept out the sounds of his people working in the city beyond. The only sounds here were the occasional frog chirp and the odd caws of the lalas, long-necked birds with bright green plumage who subsisted primarily on tad poles and the few species of fish that could survive among the slime-infested waters.

Of course, all that was changing now. The trollkin had managed to unclog the ancient series of canals that had once been the streets of KhanzaRoo. The ancient Roo capital was once again being flooded with fresh clean water.

Every day, the city became cleaner as more channels were opened. He could already see the results here in the lake of Solitude. He smiled at the thought of how much less troll slime there was than before. Of course, the Troll Swamps would never be completely cleared, but the Troll King could now imagine the day when KhanzaRoo was once more the great city it had once been.

A peace settled over him at that thought. For a few brief minutes, the weight of his responsibilities eased and he was able to forget that he was a king. He was able to simply exist. He reflected on the beauty of the lake, unbothered by the fact that the womb of the Troll Mother lurked just beneath its calm surface. For that short period of time it was as if he were human again.

The thought startled him and he shook his head, the peaceful moment gone. Human again? What had that meant? He raised his hands and looked at them. Both had the same greenish tint to their skin, but his left hand was long-fingered and wickedly clawed, the hand of a troll, while his right hand was squat fingered and powerful, the hand of a human. Was this the reason for the thought?

He searched his memories for an understanding, but there was nothing to explain it. He was only ever trollkin. He had been born their king. As for why his body was partly human, any time he had presented this question to the Mother, her only response had been an outpouring of love and an assurance that things were as they should be.

“Murtha,” he said, calling to the part-dwarf who stood just a few paces to his right, her form still and silent.

The trollkin female jerked, startled from a reverie of her own. “Yes, my k-king?”

“I am disturbed, my friend,” he said.

“You, my k-king?” she asked, surprise in her voice.

The king frowned. He rarely expressed his doubts to the other trollkin, after all as king he should be the rock, unyielding in his convictions. But this was Murtha, one of the few members of his people that was willing to question him. It was the main reason he had decided to keep her at his side.

“I just had a thought, almost a dream,” he began.

“A dream?” Murtha asked. She turned to face him, her gray eyes curious. “Was it about the hunger?”

“No,” he said. Though he understood why she might think so. All of the trollkin struggled with the hunger; the desire to consume any living thing they came upon. The feeling was voracious and constant and some struggled with it more than others. The cravings were strongest when waking. The king understood that this was because of the trollish part of their makeup, though he didn’t understand why this was so. “No, my dream had to do with being human.”

She looked down, a little embarrassed. “Sometimes I dream that I am a dwarf. Well, part dwarf and part human. But in these dreams there is no hunger and none of me is troll.”

“Truly?” he said. “What happens in these dreams?”

“I . . . do not know, my k-king,” she said. “It seems so glorious, but then I wake-k and I am so hungry that I forget everything.”

“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps that is for the best. Surely such dreams would only bring you discomfort.”

She cocked her head. “K-king . . . have you ever seen a human?”

“Y-. . .” he blinked back at her. “No. I have only ever seen the trollkin and the creatures that live around us.”

“Then how do you know what a human is? How do you know what they look-k like-k?” she asked.

He pondered this for a moment. He knew the answers he usually gave to these questions, but they weren’t quite ringing true in his mind. “The Mother taught me this thing in the womb.”

“Have you ever eaten pepperbean stew?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But I have no knowledge of this thing.”

“I do,” Murtha said. Her eyes looked troubled as she tried to explain. “I have never made it. I have no memory of eating it. But . . . I know how to make-k it! I know what things to put in it. I know what it tastes like-k. I know how it would feel on my tongue and how it would burn on the way down.” Drool dripped from the edge of her mouth and she swallowed hastily. “Why do I know this, k-king?”

 “The same reason,” the Troll King said, though it sounded like a lie in his throat. “The Mother gave you this knowledge.”

“Why would she do this?” Murtha asked. “I understand why it would be good for us to know what a human was if we ever saw one, but why this? How does knowing how to make pepperbean stew help me?”

“Maybe it is a good recipe to know. Maybe you should make it to help our people,” he suggested. Surely that was it. The Mother had a reason.

“But I also know that the ingredients do not grow here,” she said, sounding more and more distressed as each bit of illogical knowledge added up. “I could maybe get them from C-Corntown, but why do I know about C-Corntown when I do not know where it is c-compared to here?”

The king didn’t know how to help her with this series of questions. “I . . .”

“My king!” shouted a panicked voice.

The Troll King stood and turned as Khurley, one of his trollkin guards, ran into Solitude, his face frantic. “A fire!”

A spark of fear shot up his spine. Fire was the biggest danger the Trollkin faced. Well over half of their population exuded flammable slime. Even those that didn’t were still vulnerable if one of the flammable mist clouds that wandered the Troll Swamps was passing through the city when a fire started. It also didn’t help that, despite the cleanup efforts of his people, there were still many pools of old slime water in the city.

“Where?” he asked.

“In the old hospital!” Khurley answered.

The Troll King ran along the bank towards the path that led to the city, Murtha and Khurley at his heels. He shouted back over his shoulder, “Murtha, gather those trollkin that aren’t flammable! Khurley, get everyone else inside a stone building!”

Of course, they already knew what to do. They had instituted protocols regarding what to do in case of fire on the day they had arrived at the city. The trollkin were too promising a new race for him to let them be wiped out because of a stray lightning strike or a fire caused by humans somewhere else in the swamps.

“We already started!” Khurley assured him. “Recks has gone to get Mellinda.”

“Good!” the Troll King replied. “Perhaps her magic can help.”

 The snake woman had been more than useful to his people so far. The Mother’s birthrate had doubled since the woman’s arrival and Mellinda was able to save most of them. There were still those born with the souls of lesser creatures, most of whom were simply released into the swamps or eaten. But just about any deformity could be fixed. The only thing she couldn’t repair was insanity.

Murtha gurgled in irritation. The part-dwarf had a deep distrust for the woman and she wasn’t the only one. Several of the king’s closest servants, including the First had recently warned the king that she was gaining too much power among the people.

The Troll King understood why they were concerned. In addition to fixing the newly born, the snake woman had taken to visiting the rest of the people in the city, offering to heal them of their deformities. Most of the people she repaired were extremely grateful and Mellinda had gained a good number of hangers-on. The trollkin waited on her hand and foot and she seemed to enjoy the attention immensely.

In the Troll King’s mind, the benefits of the woman’s presence far outweighed any risks. He told anyone with concerns that, until the Mother told him otherwise, Mellinda was welcome to as many helpers as she wanted. Thanks to her, the trollkin were flourishing.

If they survive this fire
, he thought as he rounded a corner in the path and the trees opened up. A column of smoke rose from the center of the city. The Troll King ran straight towards the fire while Murtha and Khurley split off to make sure that his instructions were followed.

The Mother had blessed the king with strength and speed to go with his long body and he used them well. The king took the most direct route possible, bolting down streets and bounding over canals with long leaps, though the ever shifting nature of the grass islands meant that there were a few times he was forced to swim across. He shouted directions at trollkin he passed along the way, many of whom had frozen, staring with terrified wonder at the smoke.

Every street and canal he traversed reminded him how far his people needed to go. Many parts of the city were still overgrown and caked with slime and most of the sections that had been cleared were either bare grassy islands or contained wooden buildings in various stages of construction. It all seemed so tenuous and he instinctively wanted to fix all of it. But that wasn’t his immediate concern.

The king grimaced as the hospital finally came into view. The hospital, like the other stone buildings that had survived the centuries, had been made of enormous stone blocks and erected in pyramidal form. How the ancient Roo had accomplished this feat, the king had no idea. It was the third largest building that the trollkin had uncovered after the palace and the library.

There were four entrances and smoke was belching from three of them. The Troll King swore, the word that came out carrying no meaning in his mind. Originally, the ancient Roo had used the hospital to treat injury and disease. The trollkin, with their healing abilities had no need for such a place. They had repurposed the building, using the multiple rooms inside for housing, mostly for the people that exuded flammable slime. He hoped no one had been trapped inside.

 To his relief, the protocols he had put in place had been followed precisely. Non-flammable trollkin had cleared away all with combustible slime and were using clean water from the canals to wash away all slime trails leading up to the building. Thankfully, there were no gaseous mists in the city that day.

He approached one of the trollkin that was standing outside, directing the others. He was taller than average for a Trollkin and had the pointed ears and fair features that marked him as being part elf. “Recks! Khurley told me that you had gone to find the snake woman.”

 “I did, King. Mellinda is inside now,” Recks said, pointing to the one entrance that was free of smoke. He had become one of the snake woman’s dearest companions and his voice carried a trace of her arrogance.

The king ignored his tone. “Is there anyone else still inside?”

Recks shrugged. “The fat one, Julal, thinks his wife is still in their room.”

The king glanced towards a nearby island where chubby Julal, a part human trollkin with a rat-like tail, stood. He was yelling out his wife’s name and two other trollkin had been forced to restrain him to keep him from going in after her.

Marriage among the trollkin was a relatively new concept. The males and females had begun pairing off almost right away, but Julal and his wife Melane had been the first to approach the king and ask to be wed. Once he had agreed, several more couples had come forward requesting it.

The king cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth and shouted. “Worry, not, Julal! I will find her for you!” He turned and faced one of the smoking entrances. If he remembered correctly, it held the shortest route to his destination.

“No,” said Recks disapprovingly. “You are the king. You are too important to risk for the like of one of us.”

“The fire will not claim my life,” the king promised. Though Julal had not been born with flammable slime, his wife had. The chance that she could be saved was slim, but the king had to try.

He ran up the stairs towards the entrance and dashed in. One of the odd idiosyncrasies of the ancient Roo construction was the height of the passageways inside the pyramids. Though the Roo had been of average height for a human people, their buildings had been constructed with ceilings over eight feet high and most passageways were wide enough that three humans could have travelled them walking abreast of each other. This gave him plenty of room to hunch over and keep his head under the smoke that flowed along the ceiling.