Protector Of The Grove (Book 2) (15 page)

Bettie grinned. “So do we have a deal?”

Any deal can get better
, Rolf prodded.

Tarah rose to her full height and folded her arms, looking Bettie in the eye. “I don’t know. Seems to me the deal is a little lopsided in your favor.”

“Excuse me?” Bettie said, taken aback.

“I get this beautiful set of armor, a princely gift to be sure. But you get the recipe to make hundreds or even thousands of sets of armor. In twenty years, you’ll still be reaping the benefits of our deal while this suit of armor will surely be gone.”

Bettie narrowed her eyes. “Okay, miss crafty. What do you want?”

“I want a piece of your action,” Tarah said. “I want forty percent of your profits with this new type of armor.”

“Forty percent! That’s robbery!” Bettie shook one big fist at her. “I aughtta punch you right in your mush.”

“Seems reasonable to me,” Tarah said. “It’s a finder’s fee.”

“No it ain’t!” Bettie barked. “You walk away while I do all the work and you still want that big a chunk of my money. No way. Five percent!”

“Thirty,” Tarah replied. Now that she had gotten this far, she had no idea what a fair deal would be. She was used to negotiating guide trips, not business deals.

“Ten!” Bettie said, looking genuinely angry. “And if you push me a step further, the deal’s off!”

Tarah had seen this look before. The half-orc was close to turning away. “Ten, and another set of armor when this one wears out.”

Bettie seethed, breathing heavily. “Done. But I have a condition. The recipe’s gotta work.”

“Of course. No one ever said Tarah Woodblade wasn’t fair,” Tarah said, sticking out her hand.

“And you gotta leave your old nasty armor so I can keep it for tests,” Bettie added.

Tarah hesitated. She had been through an awful lot for that armor. Then again, what use was there in keeping it? The only memories left in it were her own and most of those she’d be happy to forget. “Deal.”

Bettie shook her hand, squeezing a bit harder than she needed to. Tarah felt her knuckle bones grind together, but didn’t allow herself to wince. The half orc finally dropped her hand. She grabbed the new suit of armor off of the table. “Alright, lets try this on you. I can make some little alterations if I have to. You’re not as big in the chest as me.”

Tarah nodded, wondering if that was an insult. She’d never really worried about how big her chest was, though other women did. Her moonrat armor wasn’t made to accentuate that. In fact, it hid it. Tarah Woodblade was to be seen as a legend, not as a woman.

Bettie helped with the armor, showing how it was put together. Where Tarah’s old armor had been laced up, this one was buckled. It fit nicely though. Much more comfortable than her old one and to Tarah’s slight embarrassment, though it was practical and not revealing like some armors she’d seen, it didn’t try to hide her figure.

“I got another question for you, Woodblade,” Bettie said as she helped her buckle on the leather greaves. “What happened to bend your nose like that?”

It was a question Tarah had heard numerous times, usually by people looking to take her down a peg. She had a full quiver of responses ready and this time she didn’t have a baby in her arms to distract her.

She looked the half-orc in the eyes. “You ever hunt elk by headbutt?”

Bettie laughed.

“It’s going to live,” Arcon said, a smile on his sallow and emaciated face as his creation took one shuddering breath.

“
Don’t be foolish. You did a sloppy job
,” Mellinda replied glumly. After weeks of failure, she had grown quite bored of Arcon’s learning curve.

“No, I think I’m starting to get it,” Arcon said, his squirming hands clenched into fists. He hated what the rings did to him, but the more he wore them the more he grew used to it.

The beast, a mix of goat and dog, let out a whimper as it struggled to stand. It had taken a lot of work to get the two animals to fit together. Arcon hadn’t known the process would be so stressful. Ewzad Vriil had made it look easy when he’d done it.

The dog had been much smaller than the goat, so Arcon had first used the rings to cause the dog to grow until its torso was the same size as the goat’s. Then he’d sliced them both in half and placed the front end of the dog onto the rear end of the goat. The difficult part had been matching up the organs and blood vessels as he sealed the two pieces together.

The goat-dog took one step forward and started to hack and cough. Blood poured from its mouth and its eyes rolled up as it collapsed to the ground. The goat half twitched as the dog half deflated, beginning its transformation into gelatinous goop.

“No!” Arcon kicked at the remains, his boot sinking into the melting flesh. He withdrew his foot, wrinkling his nose. No matter how many times it happened, the sight of his failures disgusted him.

“
Like I said, sloppy
,” Mellinda remarked.

When a creature’s body was transformed, the power of the rings was what held it together. When it died, the power left its flesh and the parts of the beast’s body that had been modified lost their grip, turning into their basic states of water and protein. The resulting mush decayed slowly, making cleanup a tedious chore. Scholar Aloysius had to pay servants extra to ensure their silence after what they had seen.

The laboratory Aloysius had given Arcon was in a secure section of the scholar’s estate. It was a seldom used storage building not far from the stables. The building had once been used to hold livestock until the stewards had complained of the smell. Arcon expected the place to start receiving complaints once again. Two weeks of work and it already smelled like a charnel house.

“
So what’s next
?” Mellinda grumbled. “
Shall we try a chicken-cow or a pig-sheep
?”

Arcon’s shoulders slumped. Scholar Aloysius had vast resources at his disposal, but after the first two melted tigers, he decided not to waste valuable creatures during Arcon’s learning phase. Instead, Arcon was supplied with basic farm animals, something easily acquired and just as easily disposed of when he inevitably failed. He could hear them in their compartments in the back rooms now, mooing and baaing as if they knew what was in store for them.

“Maybe we should stop for now,” he said. It was only mid-afternoon, but this had been his second attempt. He’d developed a headache after the first failure. Now it felt as if his eyeballs were pulsing in their sockets.

Mellinda sighed, “
Ah, giving up. Perhaps it’s time we faced it. You are a pretty boy, but you’re not smart enough to figure this out as quickly as we need you to
.”

“Shut up,” Arcon growled.

“
Don’t take offense, dear. I’ll admit that you’re clever enough, but you’re no genius. Your talents lie in sneaking around and lying to people. Not complex surgery
.”

“I will lock you away,” Arcon promised. It had been months since he’d punished her by locking her thoughts away into the dark room in his mind. Perhaps it was time he reminded her who was in charge.

“
No you won’t, dear Arcon. You need me
.”

Arcon gritted his teeth. She was right. He was over his head trying to create a rogue horse. Every step of the process required a deft series of commands through the rings, something which he was still learning, and it also required a complex understanding of creature anatomy, something which he had struggled to stay interested in at the Mage School.

He had hoped that his past skills in healing would make this part easier, but the magic of the rings did not work the way he had been trained. Regular healing worked on the body from the outside while the rings created a temporary bond with the subject and worked their magic from within. To Arcon it was like trying to lace his boots and suddenly discovering that all his fingers had been turned to toes.

He walked over to the wide desk that stood in the center of the room and slumped into the chair beside it. “You say I need you, yet what help have you been? You give instructions, but you can’t guide my hand. Not that it would help much if you could. You were never able to understand Stardeon’s secrets anyway.”

Mellinda snorted, “
So we come to the crux of both our problems. I was Stardeon’s equal when at the height of my powers, yet now my ability to think is limited by your puny brain’s ability to process information. As for guiding your hand . .
.”

Arcon laid his head on the desk, resting his face on a messy pile of books and notes and causing a half dozen pieces of parchment to slide off, falling to the floor. “This is hopeless.”

“
Well now I wouldn’t say that, dear
,” Mellinda said, her voice taking on a motherly tone. She gave him the mental equivalent of an arm around the shoulder. “
Remember, Stardeon made the rings himself. He knew every aspect of their use before he tried to make a rogue horse. Given enough time, you could learn
.”

“Sure,” Arcon scoffed. Stardeon had been the most powerful and intelligent wizard born in his century. “Meanwhile I can’t even make a goat-dog.”

“
Ewzad Vriil had his share of failures, too. You saw some of them yourself and you weren’t even there for the beginning. He accidentally killed two raptoids before succeeding with Talon, and that was after having a full year of experience using the rings
,” she purred. “
It’s not really surprising that you are where you are after just a few weeks
.”

Arcon raised his head from the desk. He actually felt a little better. Then he reminded himself that Mellinda had been calling him stupid just moments before. He was beginning to learn her tactics. Ever a master manipulator, she’d tear him down, then build him back up again, all for the purpose of getting him to depend on her.

“What is your point?” he asked cautiously.

“
Well, it’s just that another strategy comes to my mind that might help
,” she said with a helpful tone.

Now he was even more suspicious. He leaned back in the chair, placing his hands behind his head. “Do enlighten me.”

“
You are the type of person that learns best by observing others. It’s how you learned stealth spells at the
Mage
School
. It’s also how you learned Ewzad’s cleansing spells
.”

Arcon frowned. She had a point. Still, “What does that matter? There is no one alive that knows how to use the rings even if I was willing to let them show me.”

“
No one alive perhaps
,” she said. “
But there is me. If only our connection was more complete, I could show you memories from the treasure trove of my mind
.”

“You never used the rings,” Arcon said.

“
Not so
,” Mellinda replied. “
Stardeon let me wear them a time or two. But the important thing is I was there when he made the first rogue horse prototype. I was there watching from Ewzad Vriil’s mind when he made Talon and his raptoid assassins. I saw his successes and failures and I paid close attention.
”

“Are you telling me that you have knowledge you’ve been holding back from me?”

“
Of course not. The things I’m talking about aren’t pure knowledge that I can recite. It’s about skill in the use of magic. I have a thousand years experience in anatomy and the use of magic to heal. Where you make a jagged stitch, I don’t leave a mark
,” she explained. “
I may not be able to verbally explain the things I know, but if you would let me have control for just a brief time, I could show you-
.”

“Never.” He should have seen it coming. Arcon stood from the chair, his jaw clenched. “I’m not as foolish as you think. If I gave you control even for a brief second, you would never give it back.”

“
Not so
!” Mellinda’s voice was indignant. “
Haven’t we established that you have the power here? I couldn’t take you over if I tried. You could wrest control of your body back whenever you wanted
.”

“That is the theory you’ve been espousing, but I have no desire to test it,” Arcon said, pacing. “One minute, you have a thousand years of experience in magic, the next you’re harmless as a fly.”

“
Melodrama doesn’t suit you, dear Arcon. Besides, I wouldn’t do that to you if I could
.
Have I not proved myself over these long months? Haven’t you learned to trust me
?”

“Tolerate, maybe. Trust?” he let out a bitter laugh. “The last time I trusted you, you had me kill a friend, then put this thing inside me with your filthy hand.”

“
That was when I was the mother of the moonrats
,” she said, her voice sorrowful.
“I was a sick and twisted creature then. But that part of me, all the powers and the rot, has been taken away. The person inside you now is the Mellinda of old. A flawed person, true. But I’m a person again. I’ve . . .
I’ve come to be fond of you
.”

There was such sincerity in her voice that for a moment, Arcon believed her. Arcon shuddered, a spike of fear hitting him. He’d been living months with this snake inside him, knowing it was a snake and yet, even while staring it in the face, he continually let his guard down. “I’ll need a lot more proof than words before I believe that, witch.”

“
You-.
” She made a sound that was almost a whimper. “
So eager to hurt me. Will I never convince you
?”

“I don’t see how,” he said. Mellinda had no reply this time.

Arcon bent and started the difficult process of getting his squirming fingers to pick up the papers that had fallen on the floor. They refused to obey. It was only with the utmost concentration that he was finally able to place the pages back on the stack of notebooks.

He grumbled. So much effort. All for what? Notes? It had taken so many hours of study to produce the amount of information clogging the table and yet so little of it had been useful. He suddenly realized how much this table looked like one of Ewzad’s and a giggle escaped his lips.

Arcon’s blood ran cold. A giggle? He never giggled.

Shivering, he began to tear the rings off his fingers one by one. With each ring removed, he felt his power fade. It was a sad feeling, yet at the same time his body regained its vitality, his cheeks filling out, his face recovering its healthy color. Finally with fingers trembling, yet finally under his control, he tucked the rings back into the secret pocket in his steward’s robes.

“I refuse to become like him,” he said. “You hear me, Mellinda? I won’t be like Ewzad Vriil.”

Mellinda did not respond.

A sharp series of knocks sounded at the wide door of the laboratory. Arcon sighed. This meant that it was one of Aloysius’ messengers. The stewards were constantly checking on him and sending the scholar reports.

“Enter!” Arcon said.

The door opened and a middle-aged woman entered. She was wearing steward’s robes with a green sash, designating that it was her job to care for the physical needs of the gnomes under her care. She gave him a stern look and he thought if it weren’t for her sour expression she could have been quite pretty.

Then her eyes moved to the remains of Arcon’s goat-dog and her expression turned a bit green. Arcon smiled at her discomfort, glad that he had taken the rings off before her arrival. He liked seeing her uncomfortable but didn’t relish the thought of her seeing him that way.

“Steward Molly, my love. So good to see you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Come to rekindle our flame?”

Their brief dalliance had come to an end the moment Scholar Aloysius had made Arcon a steward in training. Molly had become his teacher and as such could no longer see him romantically. Arcon had been relieved. After all, the relationship had only been one of necessity, allowing him to stay close to the scholar. Mellinda, who had been forced to observe their every moment together, had been overjoyed at its ending.

Molly’s stern look returned and she ignored his question as she said, “Scholar Aloysius has requested your presence.”

“But of course,” Arcon said. He strode to the doorway and offered her his arm. “Are you to escort me?”

He saw a momentary blip of pleasure in her eyes, but she pursed her lips. “I am, but not on your arm, Student Arcon. If you continue this supercilious behavior, I shall be forced to add to your work schedule. Am I clear?”

“As ice, Molly,” Arcon replied, giving an ambiguous response to her direct one.

Molly blinked for a moment, unable to determine how to respond. She settled on a glare and left the laboratory, striding across the manicured lawn towards the scholar’s residence. Arcon shut the door behind him and followed. He didn’t bother locking it behind him. Aloysius had a tight control over everything that happened on his property. Arcon knew that the remains would be disposed of by the time he returned.