by Liam Lawson
“Where’s Mom?” Abigail asked.
“We don’t know,” Trorm said.
“She…” Lilian closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “She’s a cleric of Xosione again. I…I have to stop her.”
“Winnie is hurt,” Abigail snapped.
“And there’s nothing more I can do for her right now,” she said. “You and Trorm will have to look after her. I need to go after Mom and make sure she doesn’t hurt anyone else.”
Abigail stared at her, then at the sword Lilian still held. “You’re going to kill Mom?”
“Thodos help me,” Lilian said, voice hoarse. “I hope not.”
Chapter Fourteen
Winnie was comatose.
The doctors had her hooked up to all kinds of machines but none of their medicine or spells had been able to make a dent. They had contacted the church of Zoaldir, a deity of restoration, and a high-ranking member of the clergy would be flying out that weekend to see about breaking the curse. In the meantime, Winnie slept fitfully upon her hospital bed, hooked up to an IV drip that was supposed to put her into a deeper sleep.
Comatose wasn’t quite the right term, one of the acolytes who volunteered for the hospital had explained. Medically it was accurate. Magically, it didn’t begin to cover the extent of it. Trisha had plunged Winnie into a nightmare. The medication was meant to plunge her into a state where the bad dreams would no longer keep her restless.
Trorm held her hand whenever he was able. A snarl at the hospital staff had been enough to prevent them from attempting to remove him, Abigail, or Nymal. It played into the stereotype he’d tried so hard to avoid and Trorm didn’t give a damn as long as it let him stay with her.
When they were finally alone, Abigail finally broke the silence. “Do you two have any idea what the frozen hells happened back at the house?”
Trorm tore his gaze away from Winnie’s unconscious form to look at Nymal. “That thing attacked me before. At football practice. It uses some kind of time magic.”
He let the meaning of that sink in.
Nymal hung her head. “Y-you think Soliana…?”
“I do,” Trorm said firmly. “It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“Who’s Soliana?” Abigail asked, her hand drifted to the small backpack she’d brought with her where Trorm knew her tablet was stored. If anyone could find where Soliana was, it would be Abigail.
When Nymal didn’t answer, Trorm did. “She’s Nymal’s sister.”
Abigail blinked. SURPRISED. “I thought elves reproduced really slowly. That’s got to be—”
“Not sister in the human sense of the word,” Nymal interrupted without heat. SHAME. She didn’t meet either of their eyes, looking to the floor as she spoke. “We consider all the children born in the same year to be siblings, regardless of parents.”
Abigail nodded. “I guess that makes sense for elves.”
Nymal made a sound in her sinuses too delicate to be called a snort. “Her mother’s dying. She came to me wanting help to work temporal magic. I told her no. Then this started happening.”
Trorm nodded. “That’s about the gist of it.”
Abigail swallowed. “I’m sorry about her mom, but this is bullshit. Time magic’s illegal for a reason. Look what it’s done to Mom!”
Trorm looked at her. She stood breathing very hard, clenched fists shaking. EMBARASSED. A moment later that changed to AFRAID.
“I understand that it may be difficult,” he said, trying to be as diplomatic as he could. It was hard. He wanted to roar, beat his chance, and demand answers. Only his grip on Winnie’s limp hand kept him from doing just that. “But could you please explain what just happened with your mother?”
Abigail’s cheeks colored. “Mom’s…had a tough life. She grew up on the streets and was eventually taken in by the followers of Xosione. She became an acolyte, then a cleric. I don’t know all the details. Mom doesn’t like to talk about it.” Abigail hugged her arms to herself as if cold. Maybe she was. Not all cold was physical.
“She met Dad, who was another spell-eater and already had Lilian. They adopted me and…” her grip on her arms tightened. “I grew breasts and he grew interested.”
Nymal’s head jerked up and she stared at Abigail.
“I didn’t…It was so normal. It seemed normal anyway. Wrong but like…I didn’t get how or why, if that makes sense,” she said. SHAME. “It…anyway, Mom found out. Turns out not a lot of mothers do what she did when they find out their husband’s…she left him. Left the church because they supported him, since he was the elder cleric.”
Trorm nodded. “That was very brave of her.”
Tears fell down Abigail’s cheeks. “Yeah…and now she’s gone.” She started shaking.
Trorm stood up and crossed the room to take her in his arms. She fell into his torso and began to weep. “I don’t know who she is now! She gave up everything for us and and and….” She pulled away just far enough to look up into his face, tears streaming down her cheeks. “A part of me thinks that maybe we should let her go.”
“Let her go?” Trorm asked.
Abigail nodded, closing her eyes. “She gave up everything for me. I stole her life. Ruined her marriage. She…she’s free now. She’s got a second chance.”
“She does not!” Nymal pushed up from her seat to stand like she was ready to go to blows with Abigail. “What’s happening to her right now? That’s wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels.”
She met Trorm’s gaze. “I felt myself being unmade. My body, it was going backwards but my mind wasn’t.” She looked back into Abigail’s eyes, tears of her own beginning to pool and stream down her high cheekbones to drip from her delicate chin. “We are the sum of our experiences and our choices. That…whatever that thing was…it ripped away my agency, it stole the consequences of every choice I made that made me who I am. Whoever that woman out there is, she isn’t your mother. Not really.”
Trorm gave a slow nod. “Whatever happened, it stole you and your sister from Trisha. She’s nod free, Abigail. She’s imprisoned in the shell of who she used to be.”
Abigail shook in earnest and began to weep into Trorm’s chest. GRATITUDE. “Th-thank you. I-I needed to hear that.”
Nymal hesitated, then joined them, wrapping her arms around both Trorm and Abigail as far as they could go. Which was how the doctors, accompanied by multiple security guards and a pair of acolytes in clerical robes found them. Trorm’s growling earlier had apparently not been forgotten.
“I’m afraid visiting hours are over,” the doctor in the lead said. “As none of you are family, I’m going to have to ask that you leave now.”
Nymal started to protest but Trorm put a heavy hand on her tiny shoulder and she quieted. “We’ll leave, Doctor. When will she be available for visitors again?”
“You can leave your contact information with the nurse on your way out,” the doctor said. PROTECTIVE. “She’ll let you know.”
She wouldn’t. Trorm knew it and so did the doctor. The hospital would want to keep him as far away from the recovering patient as possible.
They left without further incident.
“Why didn’t you let me speak up,” Nymal asked when they were in the parking lot.
The security personnel were trying to make it seem like they’d only followed them down to the exit by coincidence and were simply loitering around instead of watching to make sure they left. The sun was up. Trorm didn’t know what time it was, but the new day was well under way.
“Because we cannot confront Soliana from Winnie’s hospital room,” he said. “Lilian’s pursuing Trisha now, but she doesn’t know about this. We need to find out exactly what we’re dealing with. Then maybe we can use it to make Trisha undo what she’s done.” Or at the very least, restore Trisha to who she was supposed to be.
Trorm was right. It only took Abigail a few minutes to find out that Soliana had booked a hotel room
at the most upscale establishment in town.
She’d rented it out for the week and had it through the rest of the weekend. According to hotel security, she’d locked herself in her room and hadn’t come out for several days. Trorm decided not to ask how exactly Abigail had acquired the information. For one thing, if asked in a court of law he wouldn’t have to lie. For another, he wasn’t sure that he’d understand her explanation anyhow.
What proved more difficult was getting to the hotel room itself. The staff at the front took one look at the motley crew when they walked, two looks at Trorm, and moved to intercept.
“Can we help you, sir?” asked a woman in a neat uniform, accompanied by a pair of bellhops in red coats. One of them kept looking at Trorm’s biceps and subtly flexing his own muscles.
“We’re here to see my sister,” Nymal said. “Soliana.” She gave the room number.
“And your name is?” the woman asked.
Nymal told her.
The woman pursed her lips then shook her head. “I’m afraid Miss Miralee left instructions that she not be disturbed. Your name was mentioned specifically.” She glanced over at Trorm, as if thinking that he might be the cause of whatever disagreement the sisters were having.
At Trorm’s quiet insistence they exited the building, stopping in the parking lot. “That’s bullshit!” Abigail hissed through clenched teeth.
“Agreed,” Trorm said.
“We’re not just going to…” she gesticulated wildly back toward the hotel.
“No,” Trorm said. “We’re not. I thought perhaps there might be some sort of incident that would call the staff’s attention away from the doors and elevator?”
Abigail looked up at him over her glasses.
Nymal looked back and forth between them. “Trorm, I think you might be asking a lot of her.”
“Yeah, what makes you think I can just…I don’t know, break into the hotel’s security and cause some kind of distraction?” Abigail asked pointedly.
“You are cunning, skilled, and determined,” Trorm said.
“Damn right I am,” Abigail said, pulling out her tablet.
A few minutes later the hotel was alive with the screaming sound of the fire alarm going off. “Okay, distracted,” she said, then looked up at Trorm. “I don’t mean to be an ass, but you kind of stand out.”
“I got this,” Nymal said, drawing out her wand. She gave Trorm a sheepish smile. “Trust me?”
Trorm thought about it. “I do.”
“Here’s hoping it’s deserved,” Nymal said and the end of her wand glowed with green light. The light leapt from the wand and suffused Trorm’s entire body.
He shrank, felt himself growing weaker. Weaker. Smaller. He couldn’t see right. He had to take off the sunglasses, which caught awkwardly on his ears, which felt weird too. Once off, he still couldn’t see well. His mouth…his teeth didn’t feel right. He swept his tongue over them. So smooth.
“What’s wrong with my mouth and eyes?” He asked in a much higher voice than he was used to, then realized that he was eye-level with Nymal and looking up at Abigail. “What happened?”
“You’re a very pretty elf, Trorm,” Abigail said, putting a hand over her mouth to hide her grin.
He looked over at Nymal, whose face had gone bright red.
“No time to waste,” she said, and hurried toward the building.
“I’m an elf,” Trorm grunted in a voice that was much too lyrical to grunt.
“It makes sense,” Abigail offered. “An elf going to an elf’s room in a hotel is much less suspicious than a three-hundred-pound orc wizard.”
“I’m an elf,’ Trorm pseudo-grunted again. This was wrong on so many, many levels.
Once inside the building they easily avoided notice and made their way up the stairs to Soliana’s room. They were almost to the door when Trorm was suddenly much taller. He blinked rapidly, the light in the hotel hallway suddenly so bright it was painful.
“What the…?”
“Sorry,” Nymal said, embarrassment tinging her voice. “That’s a really hard spell for me and it only lasts a few minutes. We’re just lucky we made it to the room before it gave out on us. That would have been really awkward to explain on our way in.”
Trorm decided to keep his agreement—and his relief—to himself. He liked who and what he was. If he never had to be turned into an elf again it would be too soon. It simply wasn’t him.
He readied to kick down Soliana’s door, but Abigail stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Hold up, big guy.” She gave his muscles an extra squeeze before pulling away and drawing out her tablet. She typed furiously for a moment, then blue glowing runes lifted from the screen. The light on the electronic door light changed color. “There we are.”
Nymal didn’t hesitate, throwing open the door and darting in, wand raised. Trorm followed, keeping Abigail behind him. Her family had been through enough in the last twenty-four hours to risk letting her be hurt.
He nearly ran over Nymal, who had come to a complete standstill just down the entry hallway.
“Nymal, what?” she pointed.
There, in the middle of the room, was an elven toddler. Passed out and barely breathing.
“Dammit, call an ambulance,” Trorm said.
He had no doubt that the toddler was Soliana but there was no way to know for sure how long she’d been like this. All things considered, it was a miracle she was still alive.
The emergency personnel arrived, took baby Soliana away, and with her, Trorm’s hope to solve this quietly and without incident because the police showed up next.
Chapter Fifteen
It was almost evening by the time Lilian pulled them out of the police station.
Specifically, by the time she was able to pull Trorm out of the police station. Abigail had been released fairly early, being only a magewright in training rather than a true spellcaster. Also, she was not an elf or related to the victim, which was why they’d kept Nymal for several hours longer. Trorm, being both an orc and a wizard—though one of the officers continued to call him an “apprentice,” as if trying to deny that Trorm was already capable of casting anything of worth—was held the longest and questioned at length.
Trorm appreciated the officers’ abrupt professionalism and would have appreciated their suspicion of him as well—what warrior did not want others to be wary of him?—were it not for the fact that their suspicion was founded on nothing more than the basis that he was both an orc and a wizard. That made his time spent in isolation grate on him more. Nobody was rude or mistreated him. Nobody was hostile. He was simply held at length until an interrogator came in and spent several more hours asking him the same questions over and over again in different ways until he finally stopped talking. Then it was back to waiting again for several more hours until Lilian arrived, Abigail and Nymal in tow.
“You realize that they were trying to build a case against you?” Lilian demanded from the driver’s seat of Trisha’s car, which she’d used to pick them up. “Why the hells didn’t you demand council?”
Trorm cocked his head. “Council? I thought I had a fair understanding of the situation.”
“Clearly not,” Lilian snapped. “Otherwise you would have had a lawyer.”
Trorm wasn’t sure he understood what the problem was. He suspected it was cultural. In the Glorious Horde, an orc was expected to defend himself in all things. Advisors were welcome, but the way Lilian spoke, this “council” sounded more like a champion than an advisor. Trorm did not need anyone else fighting his battles for him.
“Or better still, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into that mess in the first place!” ANGER.
“I’m not certain I understand your frustration,” Trorm said. He was seated in the back of the SUV. Abigail sat beside him and Nymal in the front passenger seat, which was pulled up as far as it could go to give him leg room. “You are upset that the police
detained us?”
“I’m upset because you put yourself, and my sister,” Lilian glanced pointedly back at her sister over her shoulder. “In a position to be detained. Trorm, what were you thinking going to that hotel? I thought you were smarter than that.” DISAPOINTMENT.
“You were in pursuit of your mother,” he replied. “This seemed like an alternative lead worth investigating.”
“Worth investigating? Sure, but why wouldn’t you tell me about it?” Lilian asked, shifting her grip on the steering wheel. “Why go yourselves?”
“Because I trust Trorm more than you,” Nymal said, earning a shocked look from Lilian that turned into a glare.
The elf shrank back. “Well I do. And if we hadn’t done what we did, my sister would be dead.”
“How is she?” Trorm asked. “They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“She’s going to live,” Nymal said. “Mostly they had to deal with dehydration…there’s no telling how long she’s going to be stuck that age though.” She shook her head. SAD. “It might be permanent, or she might spring back to her real age. They really don’t know.” SCARED.
Lilian took a deep breath and looked like she was preparing to say something when Trorm’s phone rang. She gave him a sour look in the rearview mirror as he answered it.
“What have you gotten yourself into, Mr. Coldstorm?” asked Professor Hunt from the other end.
Trorm’s relationship with the professor was an awkward one. That couldn’t be helped. Trorm had helped kill his son, Arlen. Arlen had tricked Trorm into robbing his father and then tried to kill Trorm, so Trorm didn’t feel badly about the death itself. He did regret the pain it had brought upon the conjuration professor, who had become something of a mentor over the last few weeks.
“Could you be more specific, sir?” Trorm asked.
“A living spell showed up at my house, then a young lady who I believe was a cleric of Xosione showed up and ate it, then vanished,” Professor Hunt said.