“Stop, Woodblade!” Deathclaw hissed and charged at her.
“Yess! Sstop!” Talon echoed.
Esmine changed her tactics. Now the raptoids were faced with a score of Tarah Woodblades. She even placed an illusory Tarah over the real one, thinking that might throw them off. It worked at first. They stopped momentarily. But then Deathclaw let out another chirp and they came towards her again.
Tarah realized that she wasn’t going to be able to ignore these two. Even if she got past them they would just follow her. She was going to have to take them out of the fight.
Oh well, Tarah thought, bringing her staff in front of her. At least she didn’t have to worry about killing either one of them. From what Beth had told her, they would recover from just about anything.
Deathclaw was the first to reach her. He lunged, grasping for her, but Esmine was able to throw him off, just enough. Tarah dodged to the side and swung her staff. The gray wood connected with the back of his head, sending him staggering forward. He swiped his tail out behind him as he went and the barbed end missed her shoulder by inches.
Talon was right behind him. The raptoid jumped for Tarah. She rolled under Talon’s attack and followed through with her staff as she came to her feet. The edge of the staff struck the side of Talon’s knee, crumpling it inward. Talon let out a hiss of pain that ended in a chitter of laughter. Limping, she turned around to come at Tarah again.
Tarah knew she had to end this quickly before they adapted to the illusions further. She went on the offensive, sending her staff in a whirring series of strikes. She beat aside every swiping claw, every hesitant lunge. Each blow of the weighted staff hit with bone-shattering force.
Talon gurgled with each strike and Deathclaw hissed. Both favored broken limbs and Tarah knew that they were trying to decide whether it was time to stop trying to grab her and use lethal force instead.
“I’m sorry, you two,” she said. Esmine, give them an explosion.
A blinding flash and earsplitting roar hit both raptoids at once, causing them to flinch. Tarah used the distraction to aim a series of right and left blows at their scaled heads. Talon dropped, her head flopping on a broken neck. Deathclaw, his skull fractured, slowly toppled over into unconsciousness.
As she looked at them laying there twitching a surge of guilt rushed over Tarah, accompanied by a wave of nausea. She bent over and retched until she vomited onto the rocks at her feet.
“This isn’t right,” Tarah said, spitting the foul taste from her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes. “Esmine, what are we doing?”
“He’s right over there!” the elf child said, pointing with excitement and Tarah looked up. There he was on the other side of the encampment. She could see him through a gap in the trees and he was looking right back at her.
Aloysius was tall and slender, his face hawk-like. He no longer masqueraded as a scholar. He wore a suit of chainmail as black as his soul and the circlet of a king sat on his brow. At his waist was belted the sword that had once pierced the Stranger’s back. The Warlord’s arrogant look as he met her gaze was one of derisiveness.
The moment her eyes fell on him, her doubts faded. A stillness came over her.
She strode towards him through the camp, the chaos of Esmine’s magic swirling around her as people staggered by, each one undergoing their own personal torment. She had no thoughts for these people. All peripheral sounds and smells had gone away and her eyes remained focused only on the gnome.
Her only pause was when Sir Edge came to stand in front of her. The named warrior held a sword in his left hand, but he wasn’t raising it against her. He looked confused. Blood streamed from his nose and lips and he tried to say something, his expression urgent, but she couldn’t hear it. She swept her staff low, taking his legs out from under him.
Aloysius saw her progress and gave his head a haughty shake. He reached up and removed his circlet, then held it out to someone standing next to him. The man put the circlet on his head and looked at Tarah. Her gaze finally fell from the gnome as she realized who this man was.
Shade. The man that Aloysius thought of as Oliver.
This was the man who had first hired Tarah to track the rogue horse. This was the man who had captured her and Djeri and hung them in the tree by their elbows. He had forced Tarah to work for him, to hunt for him, and on the day that Aloysius had killed Esmine Shade had been at the gnome’s side.
“Stop this now,” said a faint voice, barely a whisper to her ears.
Shade sneered and shouted something at her, then drew a knife from within his robes and threw it at her. Tarah’s staff spun, knocking the blade from the air. She continued walking towards him.
The steward drew his sword and charged. Tarah had seen Shade spar with the dwarves during her time in his service. He was an accomplished swordsman, perhaps even a master, and that circlet Aloysius had given him seemed to dispel Esmine’s illusions. But Tarah felt no worry.
“Stop, Oliver!” commanded the voice again, slightly louder but still faint.
Shade’s movements, though precise, seemed sluggish to her focused state of mind. Her whirring staff parried each thrust of his blade. She hit him with a low numbing blow to his shin, then broke the wrist of his sword hand with a follow-up swipe.
“Tarah Woodblade, stop this.” This time she knew that it was the Stranger’s voice she heard. It was a bit louder now. His tone was deadly serious. “You must listen to me before you go too far.”
Shade shifted the sword to his other hand and tried to pierce her with a desperate lunge. Tarah knocked the sword to the side, then spun, bringing her staff around in a vicious swipe.
On the night of Esmine’s death, Tarah had struck Shade down. She had been invisible at the time, her staff bleeding profusely as Esmine’s newly bound soul allowed it to release all of the blood it had absorbed over the years. Tarah had held back her blow that time. She had contented herself with his humiliation, letting the blood pour over his unconscious form. Not this time.
Her staff struck the back of his skull with full force. There was a dull crunch. Shade’s head was rocked forward and he dropped straight to the ground, a gash in his scalp spewing blood.
Tarah’s eyes were back on Aloysius now. The gnome’s arrogance was gone, now replaced with outrage. She pointed her staff at him promisingly. He drew his sword from the sheath at his waist.
The Warlord’s stance was perfect, his gaze furious but confident. Tarah knew that he had the fighting skill of a gnome warrior. Cletus had told her so. She didn’t care.
They came at each other, weapons raised.
“I SAID STOP!” the Stranger commanded, the full force of his will behind it.
Everything froze.
Chapter Twelve
Tarah couldn’t move. Her teeth were bared and her staff raised high. The evil gnome was finally right in front of her. She finally had the chance to make him pay for the people he had hurt and the way he had hurt her and she could do nothing. She was standing there open and waiting to be slain.
Fortunately, Aloysius was frozen as well. His eyes burned with self-righteous anger. His magic sword was raised to deflect her blow, but at an angle that would allow him to slide his blade down the staff and slice at her hands.
“Whew!” said the Stranger as he walked between Tarah and Aloysius, a lit pipe in one hand. Sweat stood out on his brow. “It has been a very long time since I have had to do that!”
He was a nondescript man, perhaps two or three inches shorter than Tarah. He wore silken robes that were dark green and embroidered with golden runes. He had brown hair and average features, neither plain nor ugly, but his eyes . . . they were ancient eyes, full of knowledge.
He focused those eyes on her and to Tarah it felt like he was looking through her. It was as if her soul were laid bare and all her past deeds were being dissected under his calculating gaze. Suddenly, at that moment, there was nothing she wanted to do more than run away.
“Tarah Woodbl
ade,” he said. “Here on a quest for vengeance; your normally sharp mind dulled by sorrow and rage and numbed by the intrusive magic of that staff of yours.” He stepped up to her. “I think I should hold onto that for a while, otherwise that rogue horse is going to keep making quite the distraction.”
The Stranger placed his pipe in his mouth and reached out to grab the staff. Tarah didn’t want to let go, but her grip, though white-knuckled on the wood, loosened on its own. As he pulled the staff away, his fingers grazed hers.
“Oh! And pregnant.” He moved the staff to his left hand and reached out to grip her hand again with his right. His eyes widened slightly and his voice became thoughtful. “And the child is part-dwarf. That changes things.”
He let go of her hand and reached down to touch the white line of spirit magic that led away from her chest. “And that’s not all. This odd connection . . .” The magic coiled around his finger, reacting to his presence. “Ahh, I see what this is. Hmph. That John, always acting by instinct, never questioning his promptings.” He stepped back, his gaze pensive. “Yes, this changes a great deal. I shall have to re-think my course of action a bit.”
The Stranger stood there for a moment, looking at her as he puffed on his pipe. Lazy wisps of smoke rolled from the corners of his mouth and braided themselves together into intricate rope-like shapes before dissipating.
A scowl formed on his features. “Why did you have to go about it this way, Tarah? Tell me, what did you really think you were accomplishing here?” He raised an eyebrow. “Go on. You can talk now.”
Tarah blinked, finding that her face had been freed from the paralysis. “Let me go, Stranger!”
“You can call me Matthew, and no. Not just yet. We’re having a conversation first, you and I. Now I asked you a question,” he said and motioned her to speak.
“I’m here for justice,” she said, though it didn’t feel exactly right when she said it. “Aloysius deserves death for what he has done!”
Matthew nodded. “I understand that point of view and if he were anyone else, I wouldn’t dispute your claim. However, that does not answer my question. What did you hope to accomplish? Say that you had succeeded and Warlord Aloysius lay dead at your feet. What then? What’s your next step?”
“It doesn’t matter!” She frowned. “Or . . . I mean, I would have focused on the war ahead.”
“Would you?” He used Tarah’s staff to gesture around the camp at all of the figures frozen in some form of distress. “Witnesses. People who could spread the tale of Tarah Woodblade’s magical assault and the assassination of their leader. Do you think that you would have been able to go on like before? Would the Protector of the Grove continue to allow you under his roof with all of the Mer-Dan screaming for your blood?”
“I . . .” Tarah swallowed.
She looked at the arrogant gnome and tried to summon the outrage that she had come into the fight with, but it was no use. Now that the rush of the moment was gone she couldn’t deny the bulky weight of the reality that the Stranger had just slapped her with. She had almost ruined everything.
Tarah could see the situation clearly now. With looming war on two fronts, Xedrion would have had no choice but to banish her or turn her over to the Mer-Dan. She wouldn’t have gone willingly, and no one could have stopped her from using Esmine’s powers to simply walk away, but, no matter how it went, her time in Malaroo would have been over. Aloysius would have been dead, but what of Djeri? Or the Grove? She felt incredibly stupid and she was furious that she had needed this person to explain it to her. When had her judgment become so bad?
The Stranger saw the look of defeat on her face. “Can I release you now?”
“I won’t try to kill him again if that’s what you mean,” she replied. He nodded and Tarah’s arms fell to her sides. The rest of the camp remained frozen. “What about everybody else?”
“Oh, I think they should stay put a little longer. At least until we have figured this out. In case you’re wondering, they are all completely unaware of our conversation. Their thoughts are as frozen as their bodies. All that is, except for Sir Edge and Warlord Aloysius. They are hearing all of this.”
“But why do they have to hear-!” She turned to look behind her and took a few steps back, startled to see that Sir Edge was mere feet away, frozen in the air mid-leap, his arms outstretched to tackle her to the ground. A few strides behind him was Gwyrtha. The rogue horse looked as if she had been running at full speed.
Tarah wondered if they were trying to save her or stop her and realized that it didn’t matter. “I wouldn’t have succeeded anyway, would I?”
“The odds were rather highly against you,” Matthew said. “Even if I weren’t here and Esmine had been able to keep Sir Edge or Gwyrtha away from you, Warlord Aloysius has the skills of a gnome warrior. In truth, your best chance would have been to stay completely invisible and shoot him with an arrow from a distance.”
Tarah clenched her teeth. She had been doubly stupid. And Esmine had encouraged her. Actually, Esmine had done more than that. Esmine had pushed her and prodded her and Tarah had stumbled forward like an enraged bull.
She turned her humiliated gaze back to the Stranger, expecting a condescending smile. Instead, she found a look of understanding.
“I want you to know that I am sorry, Tarah,” said the Stranger. “I am sorry for everything you have gone through. Much of the anger you have directed at Warlord Aloysius should have been directed at me.”
Tarah frowned. “How is that?”
“The Gnome Warlord is my responsibility. I should have been there since he was a child, teaching him and guiding him, but I wasn’t. What happened to you is the direct result of my inaction.”
“And that’s supposed to excuse him?” Tarah said. The ridiculousness of his statement was causing her anger to rekindle. “He murders people. He starts a war! He unleashes a monster that swallows and changes people and I’m supposed to blame his lazy nursemaid? He’s a centuries old scholar, not a baby you can take responsibility for!”
The Stranger’s jaw dropped open slightly. Then a laugh escaped his lips. “True-true. It does sound rather egotistical of me. I would still like to do what I can to make amends.”
“What can you possibly do?” she asked, giving him a skeptical look.
“Well, first we need to see what we can do about the mess you made on the way in here,” he said and nodded to Shade, who still lay motionless where she had left him.
“Oh,” Tarah said. “Is he dead?”
Matthew gave her a dull look. “There is still some of his brain matter on this staff.”
Tarah saw how bad this made the situation, but she couldn’t summon any remorse for his passing. “We were fighting each other. He was trying to kill me. I won.”
His look grew even duller. “I’m not the one you have to convince.” His posture straightened. “Warlord Aloysius, you may move.”
The gnome lowered his sword, but he did not sheathe it, his face still a rictus of anger. He stepped towards Tarah, but Matthew moved to stand in front of her. “Enough, Stranger! I order you to move aside. This farce ends now.”
“I cannot do that, Warlord,” Matthew replied.
Aloysius stormed past the Stranger and Tarah and moved around the paralyzed form of Sir Edge. He came to stand over Shade’s body and crouched down beside it, reaching out to close his still-staring eyes. The gnome’s voice was surprisingly emotional. “Poor Oliver. She murdered him right in front of me. You saw it!”
“It was him or me,” Tarah insisted. “And I would do it again!”
Matthew shot her a glare. “I saw what happened Warlord. Nevertheless, his death is something that must be forgiven,”
“Forgiven?” the gnome let out a humorless laugh. He stood and fixed the Stranger with a sneer. There was an unexpected sadness in his eyes “You never liked him.”
“He was an evil man,” Matthew said. “Whose only redeeming quality was his loyalty to you.”
“Yes, Tarah!” said the Stranger. “I know that this is difficult for you to believe, but Warlord Aloysius is the only hope that the Known Lands will survive the future.”
Aloysius face was fixed in rage. “Call Oliver what you wish, but I demand her head for this.”
Matthew folded his arms. “You may not have it.”
“I allow you to be my counselor. I allow you certain freedoms. But I do not allow you to give me commands!” He pointed his sword. “I will have her life or I will abandon you for this disloyalty.”
“Her life is not yours to have or mine to give,” Matthew replied. “I told you before that there were certain things I would not be commanded to do and right now you are not thinking things through logically.”
“Oliver was my friend!” Aloysius said.
“And Esmine was mine!” Tarah replied.
The warlord’s eyes narrowed. “I see. So I killed a friend of yours and you killed a friend of mine. This is supposed to make things even?”
A snarl rippled Tarah’s features. “It will never be even!”
“This is not about making things even!” Matthew snapped at her. “It doesn’t matter whether justice is served or whether past wrongs are righted. This is about the future good of the world we live in.” He returned his attention to Aloysius. “I would say the same to you. Tarah’s role is every bit as important to the here and now as yours is to the future.”
Tarah’s eyes widened. He had to be referring to her dream. If the Grove was to be saved, she had to be there and somehow use Esmine’s powers.
Aloysius snorted haughtily, “Indeed? How can that be?”
“I will prove it to you momentarily,” Matthew replied. “If I can do so, will you be willing to look past your anger and forgive her for this? And I mean permanently.”
The gnome’s reply was cold, but interested. “I am always the pragmatist.”
Matthew nodded. “Then please, stay your hand and observe.” He gestured. “Sir Edge, you may move now.”
Behemoth (The Jharro Grove Saga Book 6) Page 21