“Truly?” he said. “What happens in these dreams?”
“I . . . do not know, my k-king,” she said. “It seems so glorious, but then I wake-k and I am so hungry that I forget everything.”
“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps that is for the best. Surely such dreams would only bring you discomfort.”
She cocked her head. “K-king . . . have you ever seen a human?”
“Y-. . .” he blinked back at her. “No. I have only ever seen the trollkin and the creatures that live around us.”
“Then how do you know what a human is? How do you know what they look-k like-k?” she asked.
He pondered this for a moment. He knew the answers he usually gave to these questions, but they weren’t quite ringing true in his mind. “The Mother taught me this thing in the womb.”
“Have you ever eaten pepperbean stew?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “But I have no knowledge of this thing.”
“I do,” Murtha said. Her eyes looked troubled as she tried to explain. “I have never made it. I have no memory of eating it. But . . . I know how to make-k it! I know what things to put in it. I know what it tastes like-k. I know how it would feel on my tongue and how it would burn on the way down.” Drool dripped from the edge of her mouth and she swallowed hastily. “Why do I know this, k-king?”
“The same reason,” the Troll King said, though it sounded like a lie in his throat. “The Mother gave you this knowledge.”
“Why would she do this?” Murtha asked. “I understand why it would be good for us to know what a human was if we ever saw one, but why this? How does knowing how to make pepperbean stew help me?”
“Maybe it is a good recipe to know. Maybe you should make it to help our people,” he suggested. Surely that was it. The Mother had a reason.
“But I also know that the ingredients do not grow here,” she said, sounding more and more distressed as each bit of illogical knowledge added up. “I could maybe get them from C-Corntown, but why do I know about C-Corntown when I do not know where it is c-compared to here?”
The king didn’t know how to help her with this series of questions. “I . . .”
“My king!” shouted a panicked voice.
The Troll King stood and turned as Khurley, one of his trollkin guards, ran into Solitude, his face frantic. “A fire!”
A spark of fear shot up his spine. Fire was the biggest danger the Trollkin faced. Well over half of their population exuded flammable slime. Even those that didn’t were still vulnerable if one of the flammable mist clouds that wandered the Troll Swamps was passing through the city when a fire started. It also didn’t help that, despite the cleanup efforts of his people, there were still many pools of old slime water in the city.
“Where?” he asked.
“In the old hospital!” Khurley answered.
The Troll King ran along the bank towards the path that led to the city, Murtha and Khurley at his heels. He shouted back over his shoulder, “Murtha, gather those trollkin that aren’t flammable! Khurley, get everyone else inside a stone building!”
Of course, they already knew what to do. They had instituted protocols regarding what to do in case of fire on the day they had arrived at the city. The trollkin were too promising a new race for him to let them be wiped out because of a stray lightning strike or a fire caused by humans somewhere else in the swamps.
“We already started!” Khurley assured him. “Recks has gone to get Mellinda.”
“Good!” the Troll King replied. “Perhaps her magic can help.”
The snake woman had been more than useful to his people so far. The Mother’s birthrate had doubled since the woman’s arrival and Mellinda was able to save most of them. There were still those born with the souls of lesser creatures, most of whom were simply released into the swamps or eaten. But just about any deformity could be fixed. The only thing she couldn’t repair was insanity.
Murtha gurgled in irritation. The part-dwarf had a deep distrust for the woman and she wasn’t the only one. Several of the king’s closest servants, including the First had recently warned the king that she was gaining too much power among the people.
The Troll King understood why they were concerned. In addition to fixing the newly born, the snake woman had taken to visiting the rest of the people in the city, offering to heal them of their deformities. Most of the people she repaired were extremely grateful and Mellinda had gained a good number of hangers-on. The trollkin waited on her hand and foot and she seemed to enjoy the attention immensely.
In the Troll King’s mind, the benefits of the woman’s presence far outweighed any risks. He told anyone with concerns that, until the Mother told him otherwise, Mellinda was welcome to as many helpers as she wanted. Thanks to her, the trollkin were flourishing.
If they survive this fire, he thought as he rounded a corner in the path and the trees opened up. A column of smoke rose from the center of the city. The Troll King ran straight towards the fire while Murtha and Khurley split off to make sure that his instructions were followed.
The Mother had blessed the king with strength and speed to go with his long body and he used them well. The king took the most direct route possible, bolting down streets and bounding over canals with long leaps, though the ever shifting nature of the grass islands meant that there were a few times he was forced to swim across. He shouted directions at trollkin he passed along the way, many of whom had frozen, staring with terrified wonder at the smoke.
Every street and canal he traversed reminded him how far his people needed to go. Many parts of the city were still overgrown and caked with slime and most of the sections that had been cleared were either bare grassy islands or contained wooden buildings in various stages of construction. It all seemed so tenuous and he instinctively wanted to fix all of it. But that wasn’t his immediate concern.
The king grimaced as the hospital finally came into view. The hospital, like the other stone buildings that had survived the centuries, had been made of enormous stone blocks and erected in pyramidal form. How the ancient Roo had accomplished this feat, the king had no idea. It was the third largest building that the trollkin had uncovered after the palace and the library.
There were four entrances and smoke was belching from three of them. The Troll King swore, the word that came out carrying no meaning in his mind. Originally, the ancient Roo had used the hospital to treat injury and disease. The trollkin, with their healing abilities had no need for such a place. They had repurposed the building, using the multiple rooms inside for housing, mostly for the people that exuded flammable slime. He hoped no one had been trapped inside.
To his relief, the protocols he had put in place had been followed precisely. Non-flammable trollkin had cleared away all with combustible slime and were using clean water from the canals to wash away all slime trails leading up to the building. Thankfully, there were no gaseous mists in the city that day.
He approached one of the trollkin that was standing outside, directing the others. He was taller than average for a Trollkin and had the pointed ears and fair features that marked him as being part elf. “Recks! Khurley told me that you had gone to find the snake woman.”
“I did, King. Mellinda is inside now,” Recks said, pointing to the one entrance that was free of smoke. He had become one of the snake woman’s dearest companions and his voice carried a trace of her arrogance.
The king ignored his tone. “Is there anyone else still inside?”
Recks shrugged. “The fat one, Julal, thinks his wife is still in their room.”
The king glanced towards a nearby island where chubby Julal, a part human trollkin with a rat-like tail, stood. He was yelling out his wife’s name and two other trollkin had been forced to restrain him to keep him from going in after her.
Marriage among the trollkin was a relatively new concept. The males and females had begun pairing off almost right away, but Julal and his wife Melane had been the first to appro
ach the king and ask to be wed. Once he had agreed, several more couples had come forward requesting it.
The king cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth and shouted. “Worry, not, Julal! I will find her for you!” He turned and faced one of the smoking entrances. If he remembered correctly, it held the shortest route to his destination.
“No,” said Recks disapprovingly. “You are the king. You are too important to risk for the like of one of us.”
“The fire will not claim my life,” the king promised. Though Julal had not been born with flammable slime, his wife had. The chance that she could be saved was slim, but the king had to try.
He ran up the stairs towards the entrance and dashed in. One of the odd idiosyncrasies of the ancient Roo construction was the height of the passageways inside the pyramids. Though the Roo had been of average height for a human people, their buildings had been constructed with ceilings over eight feet high and most passageways were wide enough that three humans could have travelled them walking abreast of each other. This gave him plenty of room to hunch over and keep his head under the smoke that flowed along the ceiling.
One of the fire protocols that had been instituted required the hallways of all buildings to be washed clean of slime trails daily. The people had kept to this rule with strict obedience and was likely the reason that the fire had not spread quicker. The same rule had not been issued for the interiors of the trollkin’s rooms, mainly because it would have been too difficult to enforce. This had led to a slime build up on the floors of the rooms.
The Troll King came across several rooms that were fully ablaze. He stayed to the far side of the hall as he passed them, but a few peeks inside told him the reason why. Flaming strings of slime dribbled from tiny gaps in the stone ceiling. The fire had started on the floor above.
When he finally reached the room he was looking for, the king saw why Julal’s wife hadn’t left the building. Tiny driblets of fire fell from the crease in the stone above her doorway.
“Help!” coughed a weak voice from within. “Is someone out there?”
“Melane?” The Troll King came as close to the room as he dared and peered inside.
“King!” the woman gasped in surprise. Her beady trollish eyes were puffy with tears and gleamed orange with reflected flames. Melane was considered a beauty because, unlike most trollkin, her hair was a light auburn and her skin a deep brown.
She was crouching in the far corner of the room, surrounded by a puddle of slime, her face blackened with smoke, but unburned. He saw that she had smartly used animal skins to scrape her slime away from the fire that dripped in her doorway. She had gained herself some time, but the flaming substance was pooling on the floor and spreading her way. Soon it would touch the pool around her and she would be immolated.
“Melane,” he said. “Stay where you are, but stand. Be ready to run when I give you the command.” He eyed the doorway. This would be a delicate maneuver.
“But King, you must go,” she said, her eyes full of fright. “I am not worth the danger.”
“This fire will not kill me,” he assured her. This was the second time he had said that phrase. He did not understand why he was so confident. He had never tested himself against fire and though he could sense the strength or weakness in the others of his people, he was blind when it came to his own abilities. He trusted in the Mother that she had given him the power to survive this.
Keeping his jaw clenched, he reached for the dripping section of Melane’s doorway. He swept the flaming droplets aside with his clawed hand and pressed his forearm firmly against the crack. The fiery slime clung to his skin, but his own slime did not ignite.
He ignored his burning skin and reached out with his left foot, trying to push aside the flaming slime that had puddled in the doorway. He was not as successful with this attempt. It flowed back as soon as he scraped it away. Fire licked at his feet and between his toes. The slime from the crack above began to leak over his forearm and drip on his shoulder. His body was healing the damage almost as quickly as it was done, but he still grunted with the searing pain.
He scraped faster with his foot, moving as much of the slime as he could and cried out, “Now! Go! Keep to the right side of the passage until you get out!”
Melane obeyed, darting from the corner and he squeezed to the side of the doorframe, giving her room to scoot through. Once she was safely in the hallway, he cried out and released his hold on the crack. He stepped out in the hallway with her just as a droplet fell and hit the back of his human hand.
Flames erupted along his skin. He realized that the Mother had not made him completely exempt from this particular weakness. Soon the right side of his body was engulfed in fire.
Melane backed away from him, her eyes filled with grief and horror. “K-king!”
“Ruun!” he shouted.
She did so, running as fast as her legs would carry her but the king, who was much faster, was forced to hold back. He knew that if he even brushed against her in his rush to escape, she would not survive.
The king had never imagined a pain such as this. Every nerve on the right side of his body cried out. Again, his tremendous ability to heal fought back against the heat, but it was a losing battle. The attempt to heal made the pain worse. He felt every nerve that was extinguished as each layer of his skin cooked. He could even feel the liquid around his eye boil as his eyelid burned away.
Finally, Melane dove through the exit and got out of his way. The king barreled past her. The trollkin watching the blaze cried out in alarm as their king ran screaming down the steps, his human half ablaze.
At the very first possible moment, he dove into the canal. The cool water extinguished the fire, but not the pain. Raw and rebuilding nerves cried out at exposure to the water. He came up gasping and climbed out as quickly as he could.
Julal ran to his wife and threw his arms around her. “Thank you, King! Thank you!”
Melane’s gaze was turned onto the king as she sobbed. “I am so sorry!”
“No, Melane. Don’t worry about your king,” he said, despite the pain. He realized that his people were staring at him in awe now and he forced himself to look back at them calmly as his body’s regenerative properties worked to heal the damage. He raised the raw red flesh of his right arm into the air and cried out. “We are trollkin! We are strong! We survive!”
His people raised their arms in the air and roared in agreement, proud of their King and grateful that he lived.
“A beautiful speech, my king!” said a sultry female voice. “I am so glad that you are alive.”
The vision in his human eye was cloudy, but the heat vision in his left eye told him that the voice belonged to Mellinda. Three beefy trollkin stood with her as well as the more slender form of Recks.
The snake woman curtseyed on her wavering legs. “For a moment there I thought the fire had ended you.”
“The Troll Mother would not make me so weak,” he said. “I see that you escaped the building unscathed. I thought you had gone in to fight the fire.”
“Oh, I was doing much more than that, my king,” she cooed. “But you are right. It is time this ended.”
Mellinda turned towards the smoking building. Her snake-like arms waved and her fingers writhed. Columns of water rose from the surrounding canals and rushed into the hospital’s entrances. Steam joined the smoke rising from the building. She bared her teeth in concentration and water continued to flow in until the steam stopped and water leaked from between almost every stone.
Then she threw her arms down, ending the spell. Water, dark with ash, gushed from all four entrances, pouring across the grass and back into the canals to be swept away by the current. The crowd’s roar at this feat was even greater than with the king’s short speech. She laughed and waved back at them, basking in their praise.
The king watched the whole thing with a mind in turmoil. Perhaps it was just that his nerves were still in agony and his flesh itched madly in places, b
ut he felt anger rise within him. Surely he should have been pleased that the woman ended the fire, but something didn’t seem right. Why had she been in there so long?
Mellinda noticed the look on his face. The smile of triumph slid from her face, replaced by a repentant look. “I am sorry, my king. That does look painful. Should I have offered to heal you first?”
“Why did you not extinguish the fire sooner?” he asked.
“Recks told me that you were inside, my King,” she explained. “I was fearful that you might drown if I cast my spell then.”
“K-King!” cried Murtha, just arriving at the scene. She leapt across a narrow section of the canal and rushed up to him aghast to see him in such a state. “What happened to you?”
He raised a hand to silence the part-dwarf, his gaze still focused on the snake woman. The vision in his right eye had cleared and he noticed that, though the trollkin with her were blackened with soot, there wasn’t so much as a trace of it on her.
The Troll King (The Bowl of Souls Book 9) Page 26