Fist spoke to Jezzer while he dressed, “Did Mistress Sherl tell you anything else?”
“Just that she wants you to meet her at Professor Locksher’s rooms. She said nothing about what she wanted you for,” the old cadet replied, watching Squirrel with amusement. “Though it likely has something to do with your old tribe. I heard that the council was up late in the night debating what to do about it. I was surprised to see her up this early.”
“They were?” Fist asked, buttoning up a clean shirt.
“There was quite a split upon whether or not to let you go,” Jezzer said.
Fist wasn’t surprised, but he wondered how Jezzer knew this information. The old man seemed to hear rumors around the Mage School all the time. “Do you know what they decided?”
“No, but I suppose that whatever side Wizardess Sherl was on was likely the one who won,” Jezzer replied.
“Yes. You are probably right about that,” Fist sat back down on his bed to pull on his boots. He was feeling nervous now. Sherl had seemed like she wanted him to go with his father. Is that what they had decided?
“So are you going to leave us, then?” Jezzer asked. “Assuming that the council lets you?”
“I . . .” Fist put his face in his hands. That was the important question, wasn’t it? Justan had been supportive the night before, but even after talking out his options, the ogre wasn’t completely sure what he wanted to do. Fist felt Squirrel climb up onto his shoulder.
You go, Squirrel said, patting his ear and sending comforting feelings through the bond.
Why? Fist asked.
You are Fist. Squirrel replied. You help.
Fist sighed. That’s what it came down to, wasn’t it? “I don’t want to go, but I will if Mistress Sherl lets me. My old tribe needs me. My father . . . he asked me.”
“I thought you would say something like that,” Jezzer replied. The old man smiled and placed his hand on Fist’s shoulder. “We’ll miss you here, you know.”
Fist felt a lump rising in his throat. He hugged the man and stood, lifting Jezzer with him. The man grunted, his shoes dangling a good three feet off of the ground. “I’ll miss you, too. But maybe Mistress Sherl will say no and it won’t matter.”
“Maybe,” Jezzer replied, his voice muffled by Fist’s robe.
The ogre lowered the man down and walked to the desk where he retrieved Squirrel’s pouch. He left his weapon and armor where they were, and stood back, looking at the room. He felt sad, as if he were already saying goodbye.
This feeling deepened as Fist left his room and headed towards the Rune Tower. His heart was heavy. The Mage School hadn’t quite felt like home to him. Not like the farms of Coal’s Keep had. But he loved this place: the magic of it. He entered the tower and pushed the feelings back, telling himself again that he didn’t know for sure he was leaving. It would be so much easier if Darlan didn’t allow him to go. He could tell his father to go back home and he wouldn’t feel guilty because it wasn’t his decision.
He climbed the long sets of stairs leading to Locksher’s rooms. His legs burned and Fist was reminded once more how much he had neglected his physical training. He was breathing heavy by the time he reached the correct floor.
Lazy, Squirrel admonished from Fist’s shoulder.
Fist gave him a perturbed glance. “Me lazy? You’re the one who rides my shoulder all day.”
Squirrel shrugged and started on another seed as Fist arrived at Locksher’s door. He gave two sharp knocks. The door cracked open seconds later and Vannya’s blue eyes peeked out. She smiled up at him.
“Oh! There you are, Fist. Come in. They’re waiting for you,” Vannya said cheerfully and pulled open the door. She yelled back into the room, “Fist is here!”
“Bring him back,” shouted Darlan’s voice.
Fist stepped into the entrance of Locksher’s rooms hesitantly. He had only been here a handful of times and he was always struck by the way it seemed to be orderly and jumbled at the same time. The large central area was occupied by multiple bookcases, each one crammed with books of different sizes, some of them in bad shape. The walls of the room were covered in little hooks and shelves occupied by various implements and artifacts, many of them glowing with elemental magic.
The book shelves were tall enough that Fist could just barely see over them to the area in the back where Locksher kept his large ornate desk and several workbenches. Craning his neck, he could see the tops of Locksher and Darlan’s heads as they were leaning over one of the workbenches. His nose wrinkled as he caught a whiff of something rotten.
Stinks! said squirrel, placing two paws over his sensitive nose.
“You can smell it?” Vannya frowned, watching Squirrel. “Sorry, little guy. I tried to mask the odor with a spell, but it was pretty intense.”
“They have that chest in here?” Fist asked.
“Yeah. This way. Be careful not to knock anything over.” Vannya grasped one of his large hands with her soft petite one and led Fist around the bookcases into the back area.
As the ogre rounded the last bookcase, he noticed two other people in the room that had been hidden by the bookcases. Mistress Sarine was sitting in an old chair with two long thick needles in her hand, humming quietly to herself as she knitted something with bright blue yarn. Sitting cross legged on the floor next to her was the elf Kyrkon.
“Good morning, Mistress Sarine,” the ogre said.
Sarine didn’t acknowledge that he had spoke, but kept humming. She stared off into space, the needles in her hands making a series of soft clicks as she knitted.
“Sorry, she won’t answer you,” Kyrkon said, looking up at him. A yellow sweater was lying across his knees and the elf was unraveling it from the bottom, winding the yarn into a ball. The elf’s short brown hair was parted down the middle and his sheathed sword was propped up against the bookshelf behind him. The gloves Kyrkon had worn when Fist first saw him were gone and the ogre could see the naming rune on the back of his right hand. “She’s concentrating very hard to block the magic of those worms, and bewitching isn’t her strong suit.”
“Oh.” Fist was grateful that the wizardess was able to block the magic, but he wondered what bewitching had to do with it. Also why, if she was concentrating so hard, was she knitting something at the same time?
“Come on,” Vannya said excitedly, tugging at his hand again. “You’ve got to see what Locksher found.”
She pulled him over to the workbench that Locksher and Darlan were huddled in front of. Fist saw the source of the horrible smell. The chest that the ogres had given him sat next to them on the bench, its lid open. As Fist peered over the two of them to see what they were looking at, there was a sharp crack and a squishing sound.
“That is utterly disgusting,” Darlan muttered.
“Yes,” Locksher agreed. “And it’s also ingenious.”
The rotting dwarf head was lying in the center of a large metal platter on the workbench in front of them. The head had been placed cheek-down and tiny white worms dotted the surface around it, squirming and letting off a slight iridescence.
“What is it? Did you discover something else?” Vannya asked. She dropped Fist’s hand and pulled a notebook from within her robes.
Locksher pulled his eyes away from the thing and glanced back at her, smiling, a scalpel in his hand. “I opened a section of the skull. Look what I found!”
He reached out with metal tongs and pulled back a flap of skin and bone to reveal a gaping hole. Fist’s lips pulled back in distaste. The brain inside was covered in more worms, these ones slightly smaller than the others. Their presence wasn’t a big surprise to him. The chest had been filled with black sludge and maggots. It made sense that they would have penetrated the head inside.
“Ooh!” Vanya said in delight and began scribbling notes.
Fist was about to ask why this was of interest when the head suddenly moved. The dwarf’s jaws opened and closed, its brown-stained teeth alarmingly clos
e to the wizard’s arm. The ogre pointed, his eyes wide.
“It’s trying to bite you!” Fist yelled.
Locksher jerked his arm away, dropping his tools with a clatter, and swung around to face Fist, one hand on his chest. “By the gods, ogre! Don’t sneak up behind a man and shout!”
“I didn’t sneak,” Fist said, taking a step back.
“I could have cut myself with those implements,” Locksher said, perturbed. He carefully picked the tongs and scalpel back up and laid them on the bench. “And considering what I have been using these implements on, that would have been very unsanitary!”
Locksher was a man of average height and rather plain features. His hair was mostly black with small patches of gray at his temples and he looked to be only just out of his twenties, but Fist knew that this was just because his work with magic had slowed his aging. Locksher was actually in his forties and was quite experienced. He was the Mage School’s Wizard of Mysteries, which meant that it was his responsibility to look into any strange magic happenings and report his findings back to the council.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” Fist replied. “But the head was trying to bite you.”
“Of course it was,” Locksher replied. “It’s been trying all morning. But it can’t reach me. It’s just a head. It has no neck to turn on and frankly even if it did bite me it is quite decayed. I doubt it could do much damage.”
“Why is the head alive?” Fist asked.
“It isn’t!” Locksher said. “The dwarf this head belonged to is very much dead.”
Fist’s jaw hung open.
“Come here, Fist, and look at it again,” Darlan said, motioning him closer. The wizardess was wearing an expensive scarlet robe and had her hair pulled back away from her face, held in the back with a gold pin. When he hesitated, she said, “You can figure it out for yourself. Think of it as an intellectual exercise.” She glanced at Locksher and Vannya. “You two don’t help him. This is a learning experience.”
The two magic users looked at each other dubiously.
“Okay,” Fist said, leaning back over the workbench. He knew what an intellectual exercise was. He needed to think about what this meant, not what it looked like.
The head was in terrible shape. This dwarf once had a full head of hair and a beard, but large clumps of hair had fallen out, exposing desiccated skin. One large section of flesh was missing from the side of its face and, now that Fist looked closer, he could see that it had been torn free, maybe by a weapon. In this patch, some of the skull was completely exposed showing bone that had been stained brown much like its teeth. The gaping hole Locksher had made still teemed with the squirming worms.
The head moved again, causing Fist to flinch. One eye rotated slowly and the jaw opened and closed, but those motions were more mechanical than lifelike.
“It does look dead,” Fist admitted. “But how is it moving?”
“That answer lies in another question,” Locksher said, one of his eyebrows rising in excitement.
“Oh, it’s an interesting one,” Vannya agreed.
“Hey!” Darlan pointed at Locksher and Vannya. “You two, keep your mouths shut. I want him to figure it out.”
Their shoulders slumped.
“What am I figuring out?” Fist asked.
“You are looking at a puzzle,” Darlan replied. “This is one piece. Think of the circumstances surrounding this head. Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know,” he said, scratching his chin.
Squirrel tugged on his ear. The ogres!
“I know that, Squirrel,” Fist said. But maybe that was the answer she was looking for. “I guess Crag and the others brought it from the mountain where they say the evil is.”
“And how long did it take them to bring the head to us?” she asked.
“A month,” the ogre replied and Darlan gave him a quick nod as if his response had answered everything. He thought about it for a moment and said. “Should I be wondering why the worms are still alive? Because it’s real cold up in the mountains?”
Darlan looked to Locksher. “You know, that is a good question.”
The wizard shrugged. “I did wonder about the cold, but it seems that the little things generate a lot of heat. The inside of the box is a good five degrees hotter than the rest of the room and the dwarf’s head has a temperature that would indicate a fever in a living person.”
“That wasn’t the question then?” Fist was disappointed.
“Not the one we were looking for,” Darlan replied. “It has to do with the state of the remains.”
Fist frowned. “You mean why does the head still have so much meat on it?” She smiled and he knew he had gotten closer. “I guess I thought that was just because he was a dwarf.”
“Well, that’s true,” Locksher said. “Dwarves don’t decompose as fast as other races. The magic in their blood lingers after death. But that wouldn’t keep them from being . . .” He trailed off at Darlan’s glare.
“Oh!” Fist said in understanding. “The worms should have eaten it by now.”
“Actually, they aren’t worms. They are fly larvae,” Locksher corrected.
“Maggots,” Vannya added cheerfully.
“Otherwise, Fist, you are correct,” Locksher said, keeping watch on Darlan’s expression as he spoke. “There are several interesting factors here. After a month in such an enclosed space, the flesh should be eaten away, the larvae pupated into flies, and the flies should be dead.”
“Some flies flew out when I first opened the lid,” Fist remarked.
“That’s right,” Darlan said, snapping her fingers. “I had forgotten about that.”
“How many flies?” Locksher asked, sudden concern in his eyes.
“Not many,” the ogre replied. “I didn’t count them, though.”
“Hmm. Then they can eventually turn into flies. Make a note of that, Vannya,” the wizard said frowning in thought. The mage nodded and flipped her notebook back a few pages to make some notations. Locksher shook his head. “Well, at any rate, the contents of this chest should be a skull and a lot of dead insects. Knowing that, and what we have seen inside the head, what do you know?”
“That-.” Fist bit his lip. What did he know? The contents of the chest were an impossibility unless . . . An uncomfortable idea came to his mind. “Maybe Crag lied? Do you think the ogres killed this dwarf on the way here?”
“No.” Locksher said. “I don’t believe that to be the case. It would explain the suspended state of decomposition perhaps, but not the malevolent spirit magic or the post-death movement of the tissues.”
“Then the maggots are not eating the head.” Fist supposed, though that didn’t sound right. “But, they are inside it, so . . . They are what’s making the head move?”
“Ha!” said Darlan. “I knew you’d figure it out, Fist.”
“Yes,” Locksher said. “Strangely, the larvae aren’t ingesting the flesh. They are inhabiting it. These maggots are somehow using spirit magic to control the dead tissues of this dwarf and make it move. If his body were intact, no doubt they would make it attack us.”
“Oh,” Fist said. It was a disturbing thought. He peered into the open chest and tried not to gag at the smell. “What about that black sludge?”
The inside of the chest was still covered in the stuff. It undulated and squirmed with the movements of hundreds of worms. Fist was relieved that they weren’t moving in concert now as they had when he first opened the chest. That had been terrifying. They were much less frightening now.
“I’m still not completely sure,” Locksher said, scratching his chin. “I tested it. The black ‘sludge’, as you call it, is simply rotted organic matter. It seems to be what the larvae feed on. As for why it is black, I’ll need to run more tests.”
“It smells like the black stuff in the dark forest,” Fist said, thinking back to that time nearly six months ago when he had gone with Justan and the others into the forest to destroy the mother of
the moonrats. He swallowed. “Could it be her? Is Mellinda not dead?”
“Well, it isn’t exactly the same,” Locksher said, looking at Darlan. “That ‘sludge’ didn’t have larvae like this in it.”
“No,” said Fist. “But when we went after her, the black stuff had stinging bugs in it. And what about the magic the worms tried to attack me with? Kyrkon says that Mistress Sarine is fighting it off with bewitching magic.”
“We have noticed the similarities between the way Mellinda worked and these things,” Darlan said.
Locksher sighed. “However, I must once again point out the impossibility. Mellinda was destroyed by Jhonate after you incinerated the dark forest. The elves have not seen any sign that she survived. Also, we are talking about a possible infestation high in the Trafalgan Mountains, weeks travel from there.”
“Maybe she got away somehow and went there instead?” Fist suggested.
“No. I have to agree with Locksher on this,” Darlan said. “I felt the attack of these worms before my grandmother was able to block them. Mellinda’s attacks felt different, she was mocking and intelligent. What I felt from those things was merely a mindless hatred and hunger for control. It’s not her.”
Vannya frowned. “We can’t dismiss the possibility, though. Can we? There are enough similarities that we should take the prospect into account.”
“With magic, most anything is possible,” Locksher allowed. “But all we can do now is theorize. I shall know better what we are up against once I get to the source.”
“Wait. You’re going, professor?” Fist asked. The wizard nodded. Fist looked at Darlan. “Are you coming, too? Are we all going?” he asked hopefully.
“Unfortunately I cannot,” she replied. “I have too much to do with my council responsibilities. In fact, it’s past time that I took up my post at the academy.” Darlan’s official post on the Mage School Council was as their representative to the Battle Academy. The only reason she hadn’t gone there yet was because so many of the Mage School’s regular council members hadn’t been replaced.
Fist felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. He wouldn’t be staying at the Mage School either way. He’d end up going to the academy with Darlan. “So Professor Locksher is going with them instead of me.”
The Ogre Apprentice Page 13