The Academy warriors soon followed Willum to find the barracks. Tarah took the rest of them off of the palace grounds leading them towards Beth’s house. It was an odd procession and they got a lot of wide-eyed stares from the locals. They were used to seeing Cletus, so Maryanne wasn’t as much of an oddity, but there weren’t any ogres in Malaroo and the way he walked, they wondered if he was an enormous man or a runt of a giant. It didn’t help that Rufus and Gwyrtha were walking right behind him.
Thanks to Tarah’s presence, no one was hostile to them, but everyone was wary. Fist was relieved when they reached the small gate at the city’s northern edge. Tarah talked them past the city guards and they were soon walking down a path through a thickly forested area.
“How much farther is Beth’s house?” Fist asked.
“Not far,” Tarah replied.
Fist nodded and sighed, continuing to follow her.
Maryanne snorted. “You keep mentioning this woman. What is it about her that makes you so nervous?”
Beth loves Fist, Squirrel said.
“There’s no reason to be nervous about Beth,” Tarah said with a laugh.
“Beth’s a listener,” Fist said as if that explained it.
“Yeah? I know what a listener is,” Maryanne replied. “So?”
Fist grimaced. “Well, she really likes listening to me.”
Tarah laughed again. “Okay, I guess that’s something I can understand.”
“What do you mean?” Maryanne asked.
Tarah glanced back at her. “You should know better than any of us.”
The gnome warrior put her hands on her hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sure Beth can explain it better than me,” Tarah replied. She blinked. “Oh. Esmine says she just told Beth that we are almost there so you’ll see soon enough.”
They truly didn’t have much further to go. They turned a corner in the trail and a small homestead came into view. No sooner was it in sight, than the door opened and Beth emerged. She was a pretty woman in her late thirties with dirty blond hair. She was wearing a flour covered apron and had a baby in her arms. A broad smile lit up her face and she ran towards them, holding the child out in front of her with both hands.
“Tarah! Hold the baby!” Beth shouted and dropped the child into Tarah’s arms before darting over to Fist, her arms spread wide.
Fist reached out to her resignedly. As she hit his chest with a soft thump, a cloud of flour rose into the air and she wrapped her arms around his torso. “Oh Fist, I missed you so much!”
Fist patted her back. “It is good to see you too, Beth.”
She stayed there a bit longer than necessary and let out a soft moan. Maryanne folded her arms. “Everyone sure is happy to see you,” she observed, a cautious eyebrow raised.
“Beth,” warned Tarah.
Reluctantly, Beth let go of Fist and stepped back, a little unsteady on her feet. “Sorry.”
“Beth, this is Maryanne,” Fist said, “She is-.”
“The woman you love,” Beth said, turning her smile on the gnome. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I know it seems strange, but Fist is something special. As a listener, I have heard all sorts of people. And all of them, every one, has a darkness of sorts in their heart. But Fist!” She patted his arm fondly. “He has a soul that is truly pure.”
Lenny let out a chuckle. “Well, dag-gum, son.”
“Truly pure?” Maryanne said. She gave Fist an unsurprised look. “Well, I guess I could’ve told you that. But that alone causes this kind of reaction?”
“It’s more than that,” Tarah said.
“He’s also a powerful soul,” Beth added, looking a bit droopy eyed. “He’s a bonding wizard, tied to the power of the Creator and that combination? Intoxicating.” She shook her head and blew out a quick breath. “Anyway! Let’s take a look at you.”
Maryanne knew how this worked. She held out her arms and let Beth prod her, but the woman didn’t get very far before letting out a gasp.
“My goodness!” Beth said, clasping her hands together. “Fish and a red mark?”
Fist placed a hand to his forehead. Maryanne’s mouth dropped open slightly. “Well-.”
“I am so happy for you two!” she exclaimed. “Oh, you will have the sweetest b-!”
Maryanne clamped her hand over the woman’s mouth and said very softly, “We are keeping that quiet.”
“Holee hell,” Lenny said as he made the connection in his mind.
What? said Squirrel, realizing from the panic in Fist’s head that something important had happened. In his mind, getting a female pregnant was nothing to get worked up about. He did it all the time.
Tarah looked from the ogre to the gnome multiple times and shook her head. “It’s that damned Aloysius. He’s turned up the fertility rate so high, everybody’s gonna end up pregnant.”
“What?” Lenny exclaimed. While Tarah explained to the dwarf what the Gnome Warlord had been up to, Beth reached up and gently tapped on Maryanne’s hand.
“Sorry,” Maryanne said and let go of the woman’s mouth.
“I apologize for letting that little secret out,” Beth said calmly. “To make sure I don’t make a fool of myself again, who else have you told?”
“Now it’s just you and Tarah and Lenny and Justan,” Fist said. He looked over to Rufus who was busy playing with Cletus and Gwyrtha and the ghost-like forms of Esmine. “And Squirrel.”
“You told Sir Edge?” Maryanne said with a glare, her hands balled into fists. “I haven’t told anyone!”
Fist grimaced. “Well, he promised not to tell! I couldn’t just not say anything to Justan.”
Beth cleared her throat. “I do have a particular talent when it comes to predicting the outcome of pregnancies. Undoubtedly, you are concerned about the child given the size difference between ogres and gnomes?”
“Yes,” said Fist. “Can you look at her?”
Beth turned back to Maryanne. “If you’ll let me finish?”
She had Maryanne hold her arms out again and prodded her a bit more, then lay her head against the gnome’s chest. She stayed there for a solid minute before sliding her ear down to the gnome’s belly. When she stepped back, her face was steeped in concern.
“What is it?” Fist worried. “Is the baby gonna be okay?”
“I saw glimpses. There are a lot of possibilities.” She sighed and rubbed her temples. “The child’s fate is tied into the war that’s upon us. If you survive, if the Grove survives . . .”
“What?” Maryanne said. “What happens?”
Beth patted the gnome’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. Not everything I saw was directly connected to you. It will not be an easy pregnancy. You’ll likely need to have it at the Mage School where experts can watch over you, but . . . ” She smiled. “Do you want to know what it’s gonna be?”
“No!” Maryanne said before Fist could say yes. “I mean, not yet. After this is all over, maybe then.”
“Okay,” Beth said, nodding her head. “Then what do you say we go in and eat? I had hoped that some of you would be coming by the house tonight, so I made plenty.”
Beth had not been exaggerating. She had cooked four loaves of cheese-encrusted bread, two roasted pheasants and a cauldron full of roasted potatoes and peppered onions. They ate heartily, ending with a local delicacy; caramelized banana pie. Afterwards, they sat on the porch outside of Beth’s home and discussed their strategy for trying to reach Djeri that night.
“I’m worried,” Tarah said. “What happens if he just pushes me away again?”
“It could happen,” Fist told her. “When Justan first bonded to Deathclaw, he was really hard to get through to. It took a long time before he trusted Justan enough to let him talk.”
She rubbed her face in her hands. “But I don’t have time for that. A fight is coming. I need to have him on our side before it begins. Not to mention that Xedrion and Aloysius want me to mine him for information.”
Lenny let ou
t an angry grunt. “Don’t you worry ’bout those rot-eatin’ buzzards! This is about getting’ Djeri back first!”
Fist gave it some thought. “This is different from Deathclaw, though. This is more like when I bonded with Rufus.”
“What do you mean?” Tarah asked.
“Well, when I bonded with Rufus, he was infested with larvae full of Mellinda’s evil. They were making him angry. He wasn’t his normal self. I had to go through the bond and shock him with magic to kill all those larvae.”
“That was different,” Maryanne reminded him. “He was gonna kill you.”
“Well, yeah. But the point is that he wasn’t himself. He was sick and I had to hurt him to make him better, whether he wanted me to or not,” Fist explained.
Tarah’s brow was furrowed. “I’ll have to hurt him?”
“You might,” Fist said. “If he’s trying to push you away, you’ve got to fight back. You’ll have to use the bond to go into his mind and try to get rid of whatever it is that the Troll Mother has done to make him forget. Once his memory is back, he’ll forgive you.”
Tarah groaned. “Doing something like that against his will just feels wrong.”
“Look, Tarah. Fist is right. You go into this with baby hands, yer just gonna get hurt.” Lenny hopped down off the porch, gesturing demonstratively. “You gotta see this like it’s a job. This is like yer goin’ in to muck out a stall or scrape down a forge!”
“This is Djeri’s mind I’m going into,” Tarah said.
“Don’t matter! It’s yer dag-gum mind I’m talkin’ ’bout, woman! You gotta go into this knowin’ it ain’t gonna be pleasant. What yer doin’ is like . . . tryin’ to empty a piss bucket with a shoe horn. Don’t matter what way you go about it yer gonna get wet. So’s you gotta go in with yer sleeves rolled up and be ready fer the fight.”
Beth wrinkled her nose. “That’s a gross analogy, but it kinda fits. You can’t be squeamish about it. This is a healing, not an assault.”
“There is one way to empty that piss bucket without getting wet,” Maryanne suggested. “You don’t use the shoehorn. You kick it over.”
“Whatever works,” Lenny said.
“Whatever works,” Tarah repeated. She took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m ready. Let’s do it.”
Chapter Eighteen
Djeri’s new room in the Axis Palace was much nicer than his accommodations in the Old Hospital had been. Instead of simply lying on the stone floor on a grass mat, he now slept on multilayered mattress on top of a stone bench. He also had shelves in which to store belongings.
But the thing he enjoyed most about living here was that he didn’t have to deal with Mellinda’s constant manipulations. For the last two full days in a row, he hadn’t even seen the woman. She hadn’t shown up at the birthing, insisting that she was more effective elsewhere and had them send any deformed newborns to her.
Of course, Djeri knew that this meant that she was instituting more of her awful plans. He still hadn’t told the king everything he knew. Djeri was certain that to do so would likely mean upheaval within the trollkin. If it ever came down to the king battling Mellinda, the woman would simply destroy him and then burn Djeri alive because he had talked.
The only downside to his new location was how close he was to Murtha. The other part-dwarf thought this meant a new stage in their relationship would evolve. Djeri wasn’t ready for that. Not until he could somehow resolve the situation with the woman who haunted his dreams.
There was something about that bent nosed woman that he found incredibly dangerous, especially after seeing the confrontation between Stolz and the king. The woman had wanted him to see his past, had shown him false memories of a dwarf that was so different from him that they couldn’t possibly be true. It must be a test from the Mother. Or a trick from Mellinda.
Whatever it was, he refused to be deceived. The woman had caught him off guard the first night she had come to him. She had made him feel guilty for rejecting her. He wouldn’t be fooled again. He had been ready on the second night. He had refused to listen to her and presented her only with a wall of blank rage.
It had worked. She had fled in tears, attempting to make him feel guilty again, but he had held strong. This night as he entered his room, he prepared himself for the attack he knew was coming. She would beg him to listen and plead, but she would find no traction. He was a trollkin. He was loyal to the Mother and loyal to his king.
“I mean it, Gray,” he told the part-dog as they entered his room together. “I won’t listen. I can’t.”
In response, Gray sat on the ground and tried to scratch the back of his head with his rear leg. As usual, it didn’t work. He let out a whimper.
Sighing, Djeri reached down and grabbed Gray’s hand. He lifted it and helped the dog scratch behind his ear. “You’ve gotta learn, Gray. You don’t have a dog body. Use your front arms more.”
The part-dog wasn’t all that smart, but Djeri was pretty sure he’d learn to use his body sooner or later. Gray already used his hands to tear his prey apart and occasionally used them to push food into his mouth.
Djeri sat down on his bed. This was it. He would push the woman away and get the sleep he needed for the next day. That was important. Using his talent didn’t give him the same searing pain it used to, but if he didn’t get his rest he would still develop a thumper of a headache.
He lay down and placed his hands on his chest, keeping his breathing steady as he built up a shield of rage in his mind. Now he just needed to wait. He kept his focus on the corner of his mind where the woman had come from before.
Djeri. The face of the woman came to the forefront of his mind. It’s me, Tarah.
He hadn’t expected it to happen this quick. He pulled the wall of rage in front of her thoughts. Go away! I don’t want you here!
Too bad, she replied and pushed back, somehow breaking through his anger. Listen, Djeri. I made a mistake the first time. I showed you my memories when I should have focused on helping you recover your own.
I don’t want my old memories! Djeri said, trying to pull his shield of rage back into place. I am not a dwarf. I am a trollkin. I am loyal to my king and loyal to the Mother!
Why would you be loyal to that behemoth? Tarah scoffed. She attacked your friends and swallowed you! She took you away from me! She had built up a wall of rage of her own and was using it against him to great effect, keeping him on his heels.
The Mother is my goddess. She created me and my people. She made us better! Better than ugly humans like you!
Tarah paused in her attack. What was that, Djeri? Did you just call me ugly?
Yes! he said, encouraged by her halt in progress. An ugly bent-nosed human with . . . freckles and ratty armor!
You like my nose, she said in realization. You like it even if you don’t know why.
I don’t! he insisted.
I can hear the lie in your thoughts, she said and pushed around his shield, looking deeper in his mind. You find me . . . interesting. Interesting and dangerous! She sounded far too pleased by that last part. Djeri Firegobbler, you like me.
No! he said, but that last name . . . Firegobbler. It had a ring of truth to it. He abandoned his shield of anger and threw up one of disbelief. You cannot tempt me away from the Mother. I believe in Her above all!
Oh do you? Let me tell you about the Troll Mother. She is nothing more than a troll behemoth created by Mellinda.
It was Djeri’s turn to laugh. What a ridiculous notion. Mellinda serves the Mother!
Tarah pushed her thoughts through to him, forcing him to feel the sincerity of her words. Mellinda created the behemoth and then put her under the swamps to drive the Roo people out of their homeland. At first your “Mother” only made trolls. Then over the last thousand years she has figured out how to swallow people and turn them into monsters.
Blasphemy! he roared and shoved back at her, refusing to listen.
Tarah pushed back, fighting him thought-for-tho
ught. Then she waited as if listening to someone else and he realized that she was being coached. This wasn’t just one single woman trying to get through to a friend. This was a conspiracy.
Get out of my mind! he raged. You and whoever else you’re working with.
No, she said firmly. I just realized that trying to talk to you isn’t gonna do it. I’m just gonna have to dig up your memories myself.
Djeri didn’t like the sound of that. Get out!
Sorry. I guess this is the shoehorn part, she said and Djeri could feel her rummaging about in his mind. Recent memories were being flipped through, flashing to the forefront of his mind as she went. He saw the Mother’s womb and newborns emerging to be sorted. He saw his hand reaching out to scratch Gray’s back.
Djeri panicked at this invasion of his innermost thoughts. He pushed back at her, shouted, called her names, but nothing worked. Then he noticed that she recoiled briefly at the scene of one of the Mother’s misshapen births before forging ahead.
Djeri realized that her human mind had difficulty dealing with the disturbing nature of the Mother’s process and he fought back. He pushed other memories onto her, showing her every deformed newborn and the way that some were thrown back to the Mother’s mouth while others were torn apart and eaten right there on the lake shore. He had joined in that frenzy multiple times, allowing the hunger to take over while he feasted.
She recoiled further and he taunted, See! I am no dwarf. I am a trollkin!
A sob escaped her, but she pushed on, sorting through large sections of memory at a time, going all the way back to his first memory, that of waking in the womb. He relived it, as clear as the day it had happened. He felt the humid heat of the mother around him, saw the movement of his fellow trollkin in the darkness as they waited to be born . . .
Tarah pushed past that too. Now she was at the end of his memories as a trollkin. There was nothing more to find. So she began to dig.
A searing pain shot through his mind . . .
The day was a blisterer. The sun seared the top of his head even through his wide-brimmed hat as he weeded around the pepperbean plants. Oh how he hated farm work.
Behemoth (The Jharro Grove Saga Book 6) Page 30