The Ogre Apprentice Read online

  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 h
eard 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.

  Then something happened. There was a stirring of the air in the cave, almost like an exhalation. He felt the hot breath of this living place move over his body and the king’s anxiety faded. This breath was the comforting caress of the Great Mother.

  With a soft sucking sound, his foot was released from the ceiling and he fell into the slime pool below. Immersed in the Mother’s fluid, trace chemicals fed him information and the king began to understand. These differences in his body weren’t disfigurements. They were improvements. They were the mother’s gifts.

  There was a jolt around him as if the cave were moving. He stood thigh deep in the slime pool and watched as a hole opened up in the far end of the cave. A shaft of light pierced the darkness and illuminated him. The king hissed in pain, and he raises his arms in front of his face, wincing. He closed his heat sensing eye, peering through his fingers with his right eye that saw in the spectrum of light.

  The hole widened, letting in more light, and a breeze blew through. This new air was still warm, but in comparison to the Mother’s womb it felt cool against his glistening skin. At the Mother’s urging, the king took hesitant steps forward, rising out of the pool until he stood at the lip of the opening.

  The light showed him that the interior of the mother was a soft pink. But outside there was a brilliance of color. It was swampland. The waters around were a brackish swirl of brown and deep green, while the grassy mounds all around were vibrant green with occasional blue flowers. Tall leafy trees rose from the water and grassy mounds alike. The sky was the brightening blue of early morning.

  The cave mouth had opened in front of one such grass mound. It was a large one and long. Covering the mound and the others around it were dozens of slimy greenish beings, all of them bowing and prostrating themselves before him. The king stepped out of the womb and onto the grass, feeling its soft blades crush beneath his feet.

  He turned and saw the cave shrink behind him. The opening puckered until it was but a greenish sphincter. Then it sank into the waters until only a vague slimy mound remained where it had been.

  The smell of the living creatures around the king hit his nose and he felt the hunger deep within him rise. He had the urge to attack those creatures that bowed before him. He wanted to kill them all and devour them, but he pushed the urge down. A hiss escaped his lips. He was a king, not some mere monster.

  One of the creatures stood and faced him. He recognized immediately that this one was a troll. At second glance, he changed his assessment. This one was a troll in every aspect but two. It had the eyes and mouth of a human.

  It blinked and spoke to him in a raspy voice, “My king . . . You have finally arrived.”

  The king didn’t understand how he knew what it said to him, but he did. He opened his mouth and, though the words felt unfamiliar rolling off his tongue, he was able to speak. “Who . . . are . . . you?”

  The troll thing bowed again. Saliva ran down its chin as it replied, “I am known as the First, my king. I have been serving the Mother and preparing the way for your arrival.” Tears ran down its slimy cheeks. “We have waited so long.”

  He nodded and looked at the forms of the other creatures kneeling all around him. Like the bodies in the cave, these things were of different shapes and sizes. All of them had deformities, some part human, others a mish-mash of various animals. They only had one other thing in common. They were all part troll.

  He looked down at his body once again and saw that the skin covering his taut musculature was tinted green and glistened in the dim sunlight. He was like them. Clenching his hands he raised his voice and addressed his subjects. His words were hesitant at first, but the more he spoke, the more his confidence grew.

  “Your . . . prayers have . . . been answered. I am born to . . . protect you. I am born to . . . rule you-.” He bit his tongue with the sharp teeth on the left side of his mouth and the taste of his own blood ignited the hunger within him again. He seized the hunger and used it to fuel his intensity as he roared.

  “I am . . . the Troll King!”

  Chapter One

  Fist’s dreams were disturbing and violent. This wasn’t unusual for the ogre. He had lived a life often filled with violence. It was part of him, something at odds with his gentle nature. What made these dreams stand out tonight was how vivid they were.

  They began with a recurring dream. It was one that Fist had dreamt dozens of times since leaving the Thunder People tribe. It was always similar with only minor variations, and had become so commonplace to Fist that it didn’t cause him anxiety anymore.

  He was wearing his apprentice robes and reclining, floating peacefully on a bed made of cloud, unafraid of being high in the sky above the earth below. Life was perfect. After all, he was learning so many things and he had friends now and Justan had survived his meeting with Jhonate’s father. Fist relaxed in the fluffy softness, content just feeling the hot sun on his body.

  His peace was interrupted by a thudding noise. He sat up and turned his head to see his father Crag running at him, his large feet obliterating the clouds beneath him with every step. Fist didn’t know how his father had gotten up there,
but following closely behind Crag was an army of winged beasts, dark and terrible.

  Crag yelled at him to stand up and fight, but Fist didn’t want to. He laid back on the cloud and closed his eyes, focusing on the warmth of the sun. The part of him that knew this was a dream willed the darkness to go away. But it didn’t work.

  The sounds of his father’s footsteps and the approaching army grew louder until Fist opened his eyes. Crag stood over him, blood running down his body from several open wounds. His face was pummeled and swollen like it had been the last time Fist had seen him; beaten nearly to death by Fist’s own hands.

  “Go away father,” Fist said sadly. “You’re dead.”

  “Toompa!” his father yelled and swung his arm down in a mighty punch. Crag’s fist caught Fist in the chest and knocked him through the cloud. Fist watched his father’s disappointed face get smaller and smaller as he fell unprotected through the sky towards the earth below.

  Normally Fist would plunge into water at this point, but this time the dream shifted and he never struck the ground. Instead, he was back in the mountains of his youth, at the edge of the Thunder People territory. His robes were gone and he was wearing only fur wraps like he had in the old days, but he was carrying the mace Lenny had made for him. It was a good thing too, because he needed it for the horde that was coming at him.

  It was at this point that he forgot it was a dream. It was real and Fist was angry; angry and fearful because his tribe was under attack. His face contorted with rage as he swung his weapon back, its magic enhancing his speed. The mace was long and heavy with a spherical head. One half of the head was covered in wicked spikes, the other half with rough ridges and Fist put it to good use.

  He punctured and tore through flesh with the spikes and bashed in the heads of the enemy with the ridges. He couldn’t identify the assailants right away. Their faces were blurry. But what did it matter? They fell around him as if they were made of melons, smashing and splattering to pieces, showering him with gore.