Tarah Woodblade

by Trevor H. Cooley

  The Jharro Grove Saga: Book One

  Tarah Woodblade

  A Bowl of Souls Novel

  By Trevor H. Cooley

  Trevor H. Cooley

  Copyright 2013 by Trevor H. Cooley

  Cover art © Renu Sharma | www.thedarkrayne.com

  Map by: Michael Patty on www.trevorhcooley.com

  The Bowl of Souls Series:

  The Moonrat Saga:

  Book One: EYE of the MOONRAT

  Book 1.5: HILT’S PRIDE

  Book Two: MESSENGER of the DARK PROPHET

  Book Three: HUNT of the BANDHAM

  Book Four: THE WAR of STARDEON

  Book Five: MOTHER of the MOONRAT

  The Jharro Grove Saga

  Book One: TARAH WOODBLADE

  Dedication

  This book is for my daughter, Paige. The best and brightest up and coming writer I know.

  Remember

  No matter who you think you are. No matter who you think you should be.

  No matter what other people say you are. These two things are true.

  You are you, and you are what you do.

  Acknowledgements

  I have so many people to thank with this one. My wife and editor, Jeannette, who has been extremely patient with me as I wrote throughout our moving process while she packed the house. Also my friends and family who have been so supportive.

  Finally I would like to thank my cousin, John. He has been one of my best friends since I was a child and many of the characters and story ideas from the Bowl of Souls series started with games we would play together. The character of Tarah Woodblade came about through a series of conversations John and I had as he was reading my book series. Many of John’s ideas and thoughts became part of Tarah’s background and personality. As I wrote the book, he helped to proofread it as well. Thank you, buddy.

  Author’s Note

  The story of Tarah Woodblade’s creation is a complex one. It started with a game.

  While I was writing Mother of the Moonrat, my friend Michael Patty, a lifelong gamer and creator of games, suggested the idea of a Bowl of Souls role playing game. Michael was the designer of my maps for the series and I knew he would be great to work with, so I went forward with the idea.

  As we designed the game and built it to a playable stage, I did some play testing with my cousin, John. Now John, being the unique soul he is, decided that, instead of playing as a dwarf blacksmith or a mage or Battle Academy graduate, he wanted to play as one of the most basic character options out there. A woodsman. Basically just a frontier farmer that lives off the land. He became excited with the idea of being a character that was a tracker and guide.

  So I came up with a scenario and we started to play. As we began talking about the character, a young woman named Tarah, I became more and more interested. We spent hours talking about Tarah’s background and about the dwarf that would become her traveling companion.

  As I came closer and closer to the end of Mother of the Moonrat, I knew that beginning the next series was going to be a challenge, especially since I intended for my main characters to take some time off from the adventure while evil started brewing elsewhere. Slowly, as I outlined the series, I realized that there was a large hole in the story. I had a couple ways I could go about tying things together, but none of them quite worked the way I wanted to. Tarah Woodblade’s character kept coming up in my mind.

  I made my decision. Tarah Woodblade’s adventure would start off the next series and lead right into the main thrust of the action. As I wrote this book, I fell in love with the story of Tarah and Djeri. My wife was more hesitant. Would the readers be disappointed with the fact that Justan isn’t the main character in this book? I just quit my day job. What if they leave bad reviews and the book sinks? But the more she read the more she was won over and now she says it is is in the top two favorites of all the books I’ve written. I can only hope that you are won over too.

  I know the idea of the Jharro Grove series starting off without Justan and Jhonate may be hard to swallow. Just know that they aren’t gone. (and they have a small role to play here too) Justan is back in action in full force with book two. All I can ask is that you trust me. Stick with me. I promise you that if you loved the Moonrat Saga, you will love this book too.

  Thank you,

  Trevor H. Cooley

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  227 years ago

  “Shh. Yer gonna be alright, Puppy,” said Lenui Firegobbler softly as he stood in front of the rogue horse, its bridle in his hands.

  It whimpered and he took off his hat, ignoring the rain that soaked through his red hair. He’d learned that Puppy responded better to him when he wasn’t wearing the hat. It’d been around the smugglers so long it identified their wide-brimmed hats with rough treatment. The rogue horse calmed and licked his face in response, but it continued to give him the sad doggy eyes. The poor thing was dripping with water and had been whining all morning. Puppy hated being wet.

  The team of dwarf smugglers had been standing in the hills outside the Gnome Homeland for hours waiting for their buyer to arrive. The storm had started as a drizzle when they arrived, but now it was torrential. Lenui had dismounted to comfort the rogue and was the only one standing. The other dwarves stayed mounted on their horses, their wide-brimmed hats keeping the rain off their faces.

  “You listen to Lenui, boy,” Lenui patted its neck and hoped the rain was pouring too loud for the others to hear. “Yer gonna be a lot happier after today. Yer gettin’ new owners.”

  “Dag-blast it, Lenui! I done told you a hunnerd times, its name’s just Gold. That’s all the durn animal’s worth to us!” shouted his uncle, Blayne. He always shouted when he was talking to Lenui, rain or no rain. The dwarf smuggler’s black handlebar mustache twisted as he scowled. “That’s Cragstalker rule number three. Don’t go and get yerself attached to the critters!”

  “I ain’t attached, dag-nab it! He just looks like a puppy so I been callin’ him Puppy!” Lenui barked as he scratched under its chin. It was a lie, of course. Not that he’d admit it, but he’d come to like the dag-gum thing. The two rogue horses they had may have been uglier than sin, but they were also the sweetest critters he’d ever known. The rogues loved to play and loved to be ridden and they’d do just about whatever a dwarf wanted them to do. “‘Sides, he likes it. Ain’t that why you brought me anyway?”

  Normally a dwarf needed to be in his fortieth year at least before he was brought along on an important sale like this one. But when his momma had suggested he go along, the others hadn’t resisted. She wanted him to go so he could learn what a smuggler’s business deal was like. The others let him come because the rogue horses were calmer when Lenui was around and they knew it.

  “Yer a corn-tootin’ idjit, Babyface!” yelled his cousin Donjon from atop his chestnut bay. The dwarf had been miserable all day. Not only were his clothes soaked through, he had taken lashes for neglecting to shave his jaw that morning and his rear end was sore. Shave
d jaws and handlebar mustaches were the traditional look of their people. The Corntown Smugglers saw those traditions as part of their brand. Nonconformity had consequences and Donjon’s punishment had been all the worse because his father was second in command. “It don’t look like no puppy!”

  “I ain’t no babyface, you tender-arse!” Lenui snapped as he fingered his own mustache, pitiful and thin as it was. At twenty-four-years-old he only needed to shave his chin every three days or so and his mustache was just starting to fill in. He couldn’t get it to curl up at the ends like the others, but he was sure it would in time. His daddy’s mustache was legendary, stretching from ear-to-ear and curling up higher than his eyebrows. “And he does look like a puppy. His head’s a puppy head.”

  Donjon scowled at the rogue horse. “It’s a friggin’ freak if’n you ask me!”

  Lenui disagreed, but he knew what his cousin meant. The rogue was an unnatural looking creature. It had the head and rear quarters of a shaggy dog, but the rest of it was horse, from its neck and forelegs to its back. The end result was that the rogue horse looked awfully awkward, but Lenui had ridden it many times and it rode smooth as silk.

  “It’s alright, Puppy,” he whispered, patting its neck. “Just as soon as yer new master gets here, you won’t have to deal with these mean ole dwarfs no more. No sir, you won’t.”

  Lenui didn’t know very much about their buyer except that he was a gnome scholar, a fact that had relieved him when he had heard it. The dwarf smugglers usually dealt with the most dark and devious of clients. At least with a gnome scholar, he knew that the rogue horse wasn’t likely to be harmed.

  Puppy let out another nervous whimper and Lenui wondered if the rogue might be bothered by more than just the rain. He dug his hand through the thick fur on its head, but it didn’t seem to be feverish and its sad eyes were clear and focused. He didn’t think it was sick, but it kept its tail between its legs and shivered.

  “The rain’ll stop soon, boy,” he promised and as if on cue, the rain slowed to a drizzle. Within a few minutes the clouds opened up, letting the sun shine through. Not long after that, one of the smugglers scouting at the top of the hill called out. The buyer was approaching.

  Donjon moved his horse up the hill to get a better vantage point and pulled a peering stone from within his jacket pocket. Peering stones were one of the Corntown Smugglers little secrets; flat river stones that had been magically charged and runed with air. A hole was carved in the center and when a dwarf peered through it, they could see a great distance away.

  “Yeah, they’re comin’ all right,” Donjon said. “Buyer’s ridin’ a camel and there’s three stewards on horseback with him. Also, four guards joggin’ on foot and . . .” Donjon’s jaw dropped. “Aw, hell. They brought a gnome warrior with ‘em.”

  Lenui’s eyebrows rose. He had never encountered one of those before. Gnome warriors were the most dangerous fighters in the known lands. They were selected and tested at a young age and spent their entire lives focused on nothing but training for battle. Since they were longer lived than dwarves, they became very skilled indeed.

  “Lemme see that,” Blayne snapped, bringing his horse up next to Donjon’s. The dwarf handed the peering stone over and Blayne looked through it. “Gall-ram it, yer right. Ain’t run into one of them in a while. Still, nothin’ we should worry about. Just means that our particular buyer is highly regarded ‘round these parts.”

  “But what if the gnome decides it’d be better just to kill us than pay us?” Lenui asked, warily.

  Blayne snorted and shook his head. “Son, there ain’t no gnome scholar, don’t matter how scatterbrained, that’s gonna make an enemy of Corntown. Their blasted stewards wouldn’t let ‘em. ‘Cides, if they attack, we’ll just freeze ‘em,” he said, pulling his overcoat back to show everyone the handle of the paralyzing rod protruding from his inner pocket.

  The other dwarves nodded. Not many buyers knew the dwarf smugglers methods of capture or understood how to counteract them. Even a gnome warrior would be helpless before them if hit by the magic of that rod.

  “Now, listen up, boys,” Blayne said while the approaching party was still out of earshot. “Y’all keep yer mouths shut while the buyers are here. Don’t talk ‘less yer spoken to. ‘Specially you, Lenui. I don’t care what yer momma says. However Maggie treats you, yer still a dag-blasted baby far as I’m concerned. Keep your gall-durn face closed ‘round the buyers, hear me?”

  “You s-. . . I got you, uncle.” Lenui said, barely stifling a curse. This wasn’t the time to talk back to Blayne. His momma had taught him the rules. Still, he couldn’t keep a frown off his face. It riled him that his uncle gave him orders about how to talk to clients when he himself was so lousy at it. The other dwarves treated him like a child, but dag-nab it, he was old enough and smarter than most of them. If he’d been a human, his parents would have expected him to move out and have a family of his own by now.

  Puppy whimpered again and Lenui rubbed its head. “It’s okay, boy. They’re here. Soon you won’t have to hang ‘round us no more.” The rogue horse licked his face.

  The approaching party neared and as they crested the hill in front of them, Lenui was able to see them for himself. The gnome warrior led the procession and he didn’t look anything like Lenui had expected. Gnomes were tall, lanky folk with long droopy ears and noses, but he had been expecting the warrior to be more bulky than the other gnomes he had seen.

  The warrior was nearly seven-foot-tall and wiry and walked in a near crouch with one hand on the hilt of a long and slender sword that hung at his waist. His head was shaven and he wore no armor, just a loose fitting pair of pants and a voluminous shirt. Perhaps strangest of all were the wide-lensed spectacles that he wore. They did not sit on the gnome’s ears like most spectacles, but were attached to a wide leather band that was tied around his head, likely so they wouldn’t fall off.

  The guards that ran alongside the party looked like average human soldiers to Lenui. All four wore chainmail and carried shields with an unfamiliar crest on them. The gnome’s human stewards were on horseback and wore gray robes and colored sashes. Two of the stewards wore green sashes while the other one, a woman, wore a black sash. Lenui didn’t know much about the culture of the Gnome Homeland, but Blayne had told him to treat the stewards with great respect. They were the human caretakers of the gnome scholars and were highly regarded in the gnome community.

  The buyer himself was perched on the back of a camel, gazing into a book that he held up close to his nose. The gnome scholar had a shock of white hair that sprouted from his head and wore silken robes; light blue with purple embroidery. Lenui didn’t like camels. The ungainly things were temperamental and uncomfortable to ride. He couldn’t imagine trying to read while riding one, but the gnome seemed unbothered by the sway of the camel as it walked. He didn’t bother to look at the dwarves as their party arrived, chuckling to himself as he read.

  “The girl with the black sash will be the one to speak to us,” said Donjon with a smirk. “She’ll be the one in charge of the gnome’s money. The green sash boys are just here to make sure the gnome don’t forget to eat or trip over his own dag-gum feet.” He snorted. “Probably wipe his arse for him too.”

  “Shut yer yap,” Blayne growled, glaring at Donjon. “Gnomes’ got good hearin’. If you ruin this deal, I’ll drag you all the way back to Corntown behind my dag-blamed horse!”

  Donjon’s eyes went wide and he nodded. “Sorry, daddy.”

  Lenui rolled his eyes. It wasn’t fair that Donjon was treated as a full member of the group and he wasn’t. Donjon was four times his age, but the dwarf was still dumber than a bag of road apples. Of course, though Lenui wouldn’t say it aloud, Blayne was nearly just as bad. Lenui had never seen Blayne leave a sale with the buyer in a good mood. The dwarf hadn’t been put in charge of the sale because of his diplomacy. He was only there because he was Pa Cragstalker’s oldest son and second in command of the Corntown Smugglers
. Lenui’s mother was much better at sweet talking clients but Pa liked to send his boy, thinking it would be more impressive to the clients.

  Donjon had been right about the steward, though. The human with the black sash was the one who dismounted first and approached them. The dwarves dismounted and Blayne walked forward to meet her, removing his hat as was proper for business deals. The gnome warrior kept pace with the steward, his eyes darting around as he watched each of the dwarves looking for the slightest sign of trickery.

  As he did so, one of the green-sashed stewards sidled his mount up to the gnome scholar and nudged him. The scholar blinked, looking up from his book in irritation. Then his gaze fell on the rogue horse and he gave the steward a nod. He handed the book to the human and climbed down from the camel.

  “Good day,” said the black-sashed steward.

  “Yer late,” grumbled Blayne. Likely he was hoping to use the buyer’s tardiness as a means to drive up the price.

  “Ah, yes. Many apologies, gentlemen,” she replied, giving him a practiced smile. “We would have left the city sooner, but High Scholar Abernathy does not like to be out in the rain.”

  “Don’t you think he’s livin’ in the wrong dag-gum place then?” asked Blayne with a guffaw. The steward frowned and Lenui shook his head at his uncle’s foolishness. Blayne’s face went red and he cleared his throat. “What I’m sayin’ is, don’t y’all get flooded ‘least twice a year out here?”

  “That is true,” said Scholar Abernathy before his steward could reply. “For now.”

  The gnome approached Puppy, his nose wrinkling at the rogue’s musky wet dog smell. He lifted its chin and looked into its sad eyes. The rogue wagged its tail hesitantly and licked the gnome’s wrist. He grimaced and let go of the rogue’s head, then wiped his wrist off on its horse-like flank. “Hmm . . . it does seem authentic. I must admit I was suspicious when I heard you still had a rogue horse in captivity.”