A culler standing next to Djeri gasped. His name was Welven and he was a massive part-human with feathers sprouting from his back. “She’s never done that before.”
“What?” Djeri whispered, wincing at the state the Mother had left their leader in. The king’s head was covered in punctures from her teeth. More disturbingly, there was a large round hole in the center of his forehead. None of these wounds bled, though the forehead one oozed.
“Made that hole in his head,” Welven replied as several of the other cullers mumbled similar things. “Maybe she sucked his brains out.”
Murtha must have had similar concerns because she knelt worriedly at the king’s side. She grasped his shoulders and shook him gently. “K-king? Are you okay, my K-king?”
The Troll King’s arms twitched and he took a deep breath, blinking rapidly. Then a smile appeared on his lips and he stood. “The Mother will birth soon.”
“Did the Mother answer your q-questions?” Murtha asked. He swayed on his feet and she reached out to steady him. “Were you able to dissuade her?”
“Dissuade the Mother?” His speech was a bit garbled and Djeri couldn’t tell if it was because of his ordeal or if it was just because of the way the trollish side of his mouth was formed. The king let out a laugh. “You shouldn’t say such things. The Mother does as the mother wills.”
The First, with a curious expression on his face, held the king’s bow and staff out to him. “Your weapons, my King.”
For a moment it looked as if the king didn’t recognize them. Then he nodded and gestured to the Lone Chair. “Sit them there. I don’t need them at the moment.”
The First did so, rubbing his hands together as he let go of them. “These weapons seemed to respond to you. They are warm to the touch.”
“Yes, and there are plenty more where they came from,” the king replied.
“There are?” the First questioned.
“I found a treasure trove,” the king said proudly. “Enough weapons to arm the Mother’s army.”
“I see,” said the First.
“But that is not for today,” the king continued. He strode over to the gathered cullers and raised his voice. “The Mother births again! A great many new members of our race with join us. Are you ready?”
“Yes!” the cullers replied, eager as always to do their job.
Djeri couldn’t take his eyes away from the oozing hole in the king’s forehead. The smaller wounds from the Mother’s teeth had already begun to close, but this one still gaped.
The Troll King put his hands on his hips, his eyes searching the crowd. “So many more of you than the last time I was here. Mellinda was smart to assign more cullers. You will be needed. Where is Mellinda?”
The trollkin glanced at each other in confusion. Murtha came to the king’s side, her face lined with concern. “You sent her away, K-King. Do you not remember?”
The king frowned briefly but his smile soon returned. “I suppose I did. Welven, go and find her. Tell her . . . she is needed.”
The tall trollkin nodded. “Yes, King!”
As Welven trotted away in the direction Mellinda had gone a bevy of lala birds took to the air, cawing noisily. The Troll King looked back to see that the waters of the lake were swirling once more. The Mother’s womb was approaching the shore.
The King returned his attention to the rest of them. “I know most of you, but there are a few whom I have not met.”
He stepped into the crowd and reached out to grasp the shoulder of one of the newest cullers, a female with elf-like ears who was nearly as tall as the king. Djeri knew her to be part merwoman, a fact that Mellinda had been overjoyed to learn.
The king looked into her eyes “Hmm, you regenerate. Your slime is not flammable. The hunger is a struggle for you, but you overcome it. Mellinda chose you for this position well. What is your name?”
“Helja,” she replied, eyes wide as she gazed into the king’s face. “You are not like I expected . . . I glory to meet you, my king.”
“And I am happy to meet you, Helja. We will need your strong arms this day.” He walked through the crowd and many of them reached out to touch him as he passed.
Djeri watched as he spoke with other cullers, each time knowing things about them that Djeri couldn’t see even with his talent. As the king touched each one their faces gleamed with reverence. It was an odd thing, for some of them had been speaking badly of him only the day before.
By the time the king stopped in front of Djeri his wounds had mostly healed. Even the hole in his forehead had closed. An angry looking red mark was all that remained. The king looked Djeri up and down, sizing him up.
The part-dwarf’s back straightened under the king’s gaze. Djeri stood at a proud six and a half feet tall. He wasn’t sure why this was a source of pride for him since most Trollkin were closer to seven feet, but it was. His shoulders were broad and his arms thickly corded with muscle. Unlike most of the trollkin Djeri’s skin did not have a greenish tint, but he did have stout claws on his hands and was covered with a thin film of slime.
He was also attractive for one of his kind. He had a full head of hair and a thick brown beard. His dwarvish features were evenly formed and his eyes were a piercing green. Mellinda told him he was beautiful, though that part likely didn’t matter to the king standing in front of him.
All of these thoughts were tumbling through Djeri’s head as the king put his hand on his shoulder.
A jolt went through the part-dwarf as a series of chemical messages were sent from the king’s skin to his. Djeri knew with a sudden surety that he was born to follow this person. Despite the things he had heard from Mellinda’s other followers, this king was good and true. At that moment he could not comprehend how anyone could have said anything disparaging about him.
Unbidden, words formed on his lips. “My king.”
“You are strong,” said the king, nodding approvingly as he received certain chemical signals back from Djeri’s skin. “Your body regenerates. You sublimate the hunger. However, your slime is flammable. You should have Mellinda fix that for you.”
Djeri blinked. He hadn’t known that. “Uh, I will, my king!”
“What is your name?” the king asked.
“I am Djeri,” he replied. “What is your name, my king?”
“I . . .” A momentary look of frustration passed over the king’s face as if he had forgotten. He cleared his throat. “My name does not matter. I am the King. That is what the Mother wishes me to be.”
“She comes!” announced the First.
The king turned away from his cullers and approached the shore. “Ready yourselves.”
The Mother’s womb rose from the lake’s waters looking like a great hill of glistening green flesh with a puckered spot in the side of it. The womb pressed up against the banks and that puckered spot began to distend and open, yawning widely until it was the size of a large cave entrance.
A series of screeches echoed from the opening. The cullers, having performed this task many times in the past, spread out so that nothing could escape past them. The two largest of them took positions at either side of the opening, prepared to meet the newest members of their race.
“Come along,” the king shouted into the womb. “But if you can understand me come one at a time.”
If his request was heard it wasn’t immediately evident. Two trollkin burst free of the womb together, pushing and shoving. They snarled, biting at each other until the cullers were able to grab them and pull them apart.
The Troll King stepped up to the one closest to him. It screeched and snapped, struggling against the experienced culler who held it firmly from behind. It was a female, short for their kind at perhaps six feet. Its skin was very pale, almost white. Its eyes and hair were wild and trollish, but its nose was long and narrow and its wide mouth full of short but sharp teeth.
The king placed his palm on the center of the female’s chest and it calmed down. “Yes,” he said encour
agingly. You know who I am.”
The female blinked her beady eyes. “My king? Where am I?”
He smiled. “You are among your people now. And you are strong and unique.”
Djeri moved close to the king and focused his talent on this newborn. This was not Djeri’s first experience as a culler. He had helped Mellinda sort the newborns for the last several days.
The part-dwarf felt that familiar flexing behind his eyes and he saw this female as she once was. “This one is part imp, my king.”
“Imp?” said the king in surprise.
“I am?” she said, looking down at her long-fingered hands with their black claws.
The king cocked his head at Djeri. “You can see this?”
“It is my talent. My discerning eye. Or that’s what Mellinda says,” Djeri replied with a shrug. “We must take care with this one. Imps have magical ability with fire and air magic and so could she. She could set her own slime ablaze.”
“Oh no!” the female exclaimed.
“Your slime is not flammable,” the king assured her. He pointed her towards Murtha and the Lone chair. “But nonetheless, would you stand over there? Murtha! Take care of this one.” He glanced back at Djeri and added. “There may be more.”
Indeed as he spoke more screeching newborns ran out of the womb and were caught by cullers. The king motioned for Djeri to stay at his side and together they examined the next trollkin.
This one was part human, but with a dog-like snout. To Djeri’s discerning eye he had been Roo-Dan in his former life. This newborn couldn’t manage to speak with these mouth parts, but the king announced that his mind was sound. He was separated into another group that would be held for Mellinda to administer to.
They kept moving along, trying to sort the trollkin as quickly as they were born. Those that were calm and needed no immediate attention from Mellinda were separated in a group to be taken into Khanzaroo to be fed and assigned living quarters. Those that were terribly malformed or otherwise in need of Mellinda’s magic were set aside with the dog-faced one.
Every once in a while something was born that did not have a humanoid soul at all, but instead possessed an animal spirit. These creatures, some of them with humanoid bodies, were seen to by the king and as long as he didn’t deem them dangerous to their own people they were set free. In addition, there was an occasional animalistic trollkin born with a human soul.
Djeri found these particular types of births strange and after one particularly bizarre sorting of a part-bird trollkin with the soul of a Roo-Tan warrior, he wondered aloud, “Why does the Mother bother with making children like this?”
“The Mother’s wisdom is higher than ours, Djeri,” the king replied. “Perhaps this one has a purpose to serve that we do not yet understand.”
“Perhaps,” Djeri responded although the way the tortured bird-person teetered awkwardly on stubby legs, flapping wings it did not know how to use, did not give him the same confidence the king had.
Then there were the monstrosities, newborns with such horrible deformities that they could not live an existence without pain. These didn’t happen very often, which was much better than in the early days according to the king. But when they did occur they were either killed and set aside to be eaten by the other trollkin or fed back to the Mother. The First helped in these cases, calling the Mother’s mouth to the surface so that the cullers could throw the struggling things into her waiting maw.
But the large majority of the births this day were healthy and deemed able to contribute to their race. Most of these had been human warriors from the Roo-Dan or Roo-Tan, swallowed by the Mother during the event that the trollkin called, “The Great Feast.” These ones were sent to sections of Khanzaroo where the Mother’s army was being housed and actively trained.
The culling went on most of the day. It was the largest birthing Djeri had ever helped with. He used his talent many hundreds of times and by that afternoon a dull ache had settled behind his eyes. The sky was darkening with the oncoming night by the time the Mother’s womb closed up and sank under the waters of the lake.
Djeri slumped to the ground and rubbed at his temples. Pinpricks of white light floated in his vision and that dull ache had turned into a pulsing pain.
“I think I overused my talent,” he said with a grimace. “Feels like my brain is full of flaming turds.”
“Flaming turds?” The Troll King chuckled and Djeri’s face colored. He wondered why he had chosen that word. “What a description. I understand the feeling, though. My hands are burning right now from using my own ability so much this day.”
Murtha approached them. The worried look on her face had remained there for most of the day. “Your hands burn, my k-king?”
“It is a small thing and it will pass,” he assured her and turned to face the one sorted group of newly born trollkin that remained at the lake. “I do worry about something else, though.”
“It’s the Snake-k Woman,” Murtha hissed. “She has forsak-ken her duty,”
“She has not!” Djeri replied, his tone more forceful than he intended.
“She should have been here!” Murtha insisted. “The Mother births and the woman sulk-ks because K-King chastised her.”
Djeri opened his mouth to respond, but he could not explain Mellinda’s absence from the birthing. She hadn’t truly shirked her responsibility, though. She had sent Welven back to Solitude many times during the day to escort groups of malformed newborns to the Old Hospital where she could heal them. The tall trollkin with the feathered back had said only she was busy helping people and would not join them.
“It does not matter,” the king said. “The Mother told me that she approves of Mellinda’s help with her children. If her feelings were hurt by my actions earlier I will apologize to her.
Murtha sputtered. “But K-King-!”
He raised his human-like hand to silence her. “I will not hear more on the matter.” He returned his attention to Djeri. “Djeri, you did admirably in your duty here today. I am pleased that the Mother blessed us with your presence.”
Djeri’s face colored at the king’s praise and a smile spread his lips.
“He did . . . well,” Murtha admitted, and her eyes roamed over Djeri’s sitting form. “It is good to see another part-dwarf with talent. Just remember where your loyalty should lie.”
The Troll King sighed at her and looked back at that last group of newborns clustered around the Lone Chair, the First watching over them. “Enough of that. Without his help we would not have learned of these children. Of all the births today, they are both the most troubling and most promising.”
These were those Djeri had identified as possible magic users. That first part-imp female had been joined by four more of her kind along with twenty part-kobalds and ten part-merpeople. Standing with them were also a handful of human men and women whose past selves Djeri had seen painted like Roo-Dan shamans or wearing the flowing clothing of Roo-Tan spirit wielders.
In the past those with magic had gone mostly undiscovered until some event brought the ability out of them. This had led to tragedy in the case of a trollkin named Thurgle who had accidentally immolated himself and started a fire that had coursed through the Old Hospital and might have killed many trollkin if not for Mellinda’s intervention.
“Murtha, you must take them someplace to keep them until they learn the extent of their abilities,” the king decided.
She nodded. “Somewhere where they can’t hurt anyone . . . there is a new stone building that we have been unc-covering on the north side of the city. No one is living in it yet.”
“Good,” the king said. “In the meantime, Djeri, you must go to Mellinda. Tell her what you know. No doubt she is as exhausted as we are after seeing to so many, but perhaps she can come with up a way to tell which of them has magic and which ones don’t.”
“Yes, my king,” Djeri said, standing up.
“And get some rest,” the king advised. “It is possi
ble that every day for the foreseeable future will be just as tiring as this one.”
The Troll King walked to the Lone Chair and picked up his Jharro bow and staff. The First watched him do so, but if he had expected some special kind of reaction from the king upon touching the items he did not get any. The king casually pulled the bow over his shoulder and addressed the group of possible magic users.
“I am sure that this has been a strange and wondrous day for each of you. You may be wondering why you have been set aside from the others. The truth is that I believe you have special talents. We will try and discover what those are. Follow Murtha. She will take you to a place where you can stay.”
Several of them had questions and as the king did his best to answer them Djeri walked down the path towards the city’s center. Despite his headache a smile remained fixed on his lips. He had helped with a great work today and his king had expressed confidence in his abilities.
He had only walked half way down the path when he heard a rustling in the undergrowth nearby. He turned just as a large beast burst onto the trail behind him. Djeri fell into an attack posture, his claws held wide and ready to rake. Then he recognized the beast and relaxed.
This was one of the day’s newborns, a part-kobald. Gray scales slick with slime covered his body. If he had stood erect he would have been just over five feet tall, but this one was crouched on all fours. The reason he was not with the others is that he was no threat. This one had the mind and soul of a small dog.
“What do you want, gray one?” Djeri asked. The white specks in his vision fluttered, his headache pulsing after the momentary excitement.
The part-kobald approached him hesitantly, sniffing at him. It was an odd sight the way it padded around on limbs meant for an upright being. The only thing visibly dog-like about it was its long lolling tongue and its upturned tail which was wagging madly.
It licked at his leg and let out a short bark, then set back on its haunches, hyperventilating with excitement.
Djeri sighed. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
He kept walking on his way and the gray one followed along beside him. Djeri ignored the thing, hoping that it would soon go on its way. Several times it seemed like that was the case. It would run off into the brush or stop at a pool of standing water to drink, but each time it came back to his side.
Behemoth (The Jharro Grove Saga Book 6) Page 9