The Ogre Apprentice (44 page)

“Uh, yes sir,” the young man said.

The master’s approval shone around this one too. Thank goodness the lad wasn’t too strikingly handsome or Matthew would have hated him. As it was, he was mostly curious. “Go ahead and grab a bowl if you’re hungry.”

“Why thank you, Matthew,” John said. “We have ridden hard most of the day to get here.” He picked up the bowls and looked inside them. “These bowls seem to have been used.”

“Oh right,” Matthew said, once again wishing he had known about the visit further in advance. “I was feeling particularly peckish tonight. The kitchen’s on the right. There are clean bowls and spoons in the cupboard. Just take those two bowls in with you. Leave them in the sink.”

John smiled and nodded and walked into the kitchen. Matthew returned his gaze to the young man. Sir Edge looked around uncomfortably for a moment before saying. “I like your home. It looks . . . cozy.”

“That it is,” Matthew replied, chewing the end of his pipe in contemplation. “You can have a seat. There’s a couch right there behind you.”

“Thank you,” the man said, sitting slowly on the edge of the seat. He was probably afraid to scoot back because of all the weapons strapped across his back. “Um, nice robes.”

Matthew looked down at his finely embroidered silk robes and noticed the furry slippers peaking out from the bottom of the hem. His face colored and he tucked his feet back under the robe. He scowled. “Well, I wasn’t expecting royalty!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense,” the young man said. “They are just really nice robes is all.”

To edge’s relief, the Prophet re-entered the room, two bowls in his hands. “So, Matthew, did you get, uh . . .” John’s eyes flickered towards the young man. “The packages I sent you?”

“Yes I did,” Matthew replied. Interesting. So John didn’t want this Sir Edge to know about his little gift. “They have their quirks, but I must say that they are the first useful things you have sent me in a while.”

“Good,” John said with a quick smile. He returned his attention to the young man. “You are in for a treat, Edge. Matthew is a wonderful cook. He looks at it like a science, you see. He is exacting in his measurements, blending in the perfect mix of ingredients.” He ladled out some of the thick stew into a bowl and handed it out to Edge. “What’s in it, this time, Matthew?”

“Yak and potatoes,” Matthew said, narrowing his eyes. John was acting even more polite than usual this time. Matthew leaned back and took a slow draw on his pipe, watching as the young Sir Edge took a hesitant bite.

Matthew took some pleasure in the way the bonding wizard’s eyes lit up. There was something about him that was hard not to like. Matthew wondered if that was why John had brought the man along.

“I must say that this is the best yak I’ve ever eaten,” Edge said.

“Amazing!” John added. “Every bite is like pure gravy.” The young man nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, well I didn’t feel like making bread tonight. I almost . . .” Matthew grew suddenly tired of the pretense. “Why the hell are you here, John?”

 The Prophet didn’t even bat an eye at his exclamation. He bit into a particularly large chunk of meat. “Well.” He chewed a couple times. “You are under condemnation.”

“You think I hadn’t noticed?” Matthew snapped. His powers were still working, but he hadn’t received much guidance from the Creator in decades. The end result was that he was working blind. He had a couple of spies feeding him information and he had been weighing the races’ birth rates off of that. “He’ll forgive me. He always does.”

“That’s good to know.” John chewed a couple more times and swallowed. “Does that mean you plan on changing the way you’re doing things?”

“What do you mean? I have a process. It’s worked for ages.”

“Is that so?” John said. He took another bite. “Do you know what’s going on in Alberri right now?”

“I understand there is a scuffle between the dark wizards and the government,” Matthew replied. In fact he had a strong sense that it was worse than that. He just couldn’t see it.

John snorted. “A scuffle? It is full out war. Many influential gnome scholars have been killed.” He took another bite and pointed his spoon at Matthew. “I’m beginning to fear that you have a gnome warlord on your hands.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Matthew said, letting out a nervous laugh. He thought back over how many centuries it had been since the last occurrence. He’d have to do some calculations. Maybe another one was due. “I would know.”

“I’m here to serve you a warning, Stranger,” John said, causing Matthew to wince. John never called him that. “If you don’t modify your behavior, your condemnation could become worse.”

“That never happens,” Matthew said. “I’ll take a quick trip over to Alberri and clear this up and things will return to normal again.”

“It’s not going to be that easy for you this time,” the Prophet said, his tone turning deadly serious.

“Just a minute,” Matthew said, standing up out of his chair. “That’s a threat! What are you saying? Are you planning to come back and kill me like you did David?”

A look of pain flashed across John’s features. “That was different. Your crime is slothfulness. David didn’t just shirk his duty. He tried to become a god. He was going to conquer all the known lands if I didn’t stop him.”

“Come on, John. We
are
gods!” Matthew snapped. “So he crossed lines, meddled with the other races. You’re not so innocent of that yourself!”

John stood to face him. “You know there is no comparison. I have done nothing that the master would condemn me for. Also, David isn’t truly dead. You should know that too. He is searching for ways to inhabit a new body and it is only a matter of time before he succeeds. You need to get right with the master before he returns, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop him by myself this time.”

Matthew laughed bitterly. “I’ve never gotten involved in your squabbles before and I’m not about to start now. You two can beat each other bloody for eternity as far as I care! I stick to my own responsibilities,”

“Is that so?” John set his empty bowl on the mantle and Edge hurriedly stood to do the same. “Then why don’t you know about the army of demons marching here right now? Isn’t that something you’re supposed to prevent from happening?”

Matthew closed his eyes and reached out to his master, begging him for more information. What was going on that he couldn’t see? But there was no response. The Creator had turned his back on him.

“He never turns his back,” the Prophet said, sensing Matthew’s thoughts. He walked over and began pulling on his boots, motioning for Edge to follow suit. “Like I said, I am your warning. Not your first or your second. The Creator tried, but you ignored those. This is the last one you get.” He opened the door, allowing the sound of the waterfall to crash into the room.

“Wait. John,” Matthew said, reaching out towards his old friend. “How many demons are in this army?”

“Too many,” the Prophet replied and he walked out.

The Stranger stood in stunned silence for a few seconds before he realized that Sir Edge was still standing in the doorway. He blinked. “What is it?”

“I have a question,” the bonding wizard said. “What ever happened to that city of interspecies couples? Is it still around?”

“John told you about Finn’s Landing?” He chewed on the end of his pipe, his hand shaking. “They died out like I thought they would. It took awhile. My races live long lives, you know. The place has never been completely deserted, though. That kind of mixing never completely stopped. Last I checked, there were still folk living there.”

Sir Edge nodded slowly. “I hope you still have it in you to change,” he said, then left, shutting the door behind him.

Matthew stared at the door for quite some time, his mind calculating the odds that he could fix this. He chuckled. “You hope I can change, huh?”

He puffed on his pipe again, but discovered that it had guttered out. He shook his head and tapped out the ashes in the fireplace, then walked over and unlatched the basement door. His servants were standing there, waiting.

“You heard all that, I suppose,” he said.

“We heared,” said Durza, looking ridiculous as always in her frilly human dress. Today the gorc witch was wearing a blond wig and an unseemly amount of eye shadow. She wasn’t exactly within his realm of responsibility, but she was so useful that he hadn’t been able to turn her away. “You’s in trouble, master man?”

“Nothing that can’t be remedied,” he assured her.

“That wass John. The Prophetss,” said Talon from within the cowl of the black robe he had given her.

She was the most interesting of the two servants; a dragon broken and given intelligence by an evil human wizard. Talon had changed a lot in the last four months since showing up and begging him to fix her. Still she had a way to go.

“And Ssir Edge. He wantss to kill me.” She looked towards the door with a mix of unease and excitement. “Sshall I go to him? Let him killss me?”

“No, Talon,” Matthew said. “I have other duties for the two of you tonight.”

He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out one of the white orbs that the raptoid had given to him when she arrived. It was a powerful item of positive spirit magic and Matthew had been surprised that John had let her bring it to him.

He held it out to her. “Take this down to the village.”

“The one where the weirdies live?” Durza asked.

He sighed, but didn’t correct her. “That’s the place. I want you to put this on their altar.”

“There iss a thing there already,” Talon reminded. “A wooden ball.”

“Yes, I know,” he replied. “Don’t let them see you, but take that out and put this in its place. You can keep the wood ball thing if you want.”

“Why do I put this there?” Talon asked, reluctant to take the orb from him.

He found himself smiling. The raptoid always was the one to ask questions. “Just do it. I modified it a bit so that it will help keep those new kinds of trolls out of the village.”

“The squishy ones with cat heads?” Durza asked.

“They don’t all have catss headss,” Talon said.

“Those are the ones,” Matthew said, placing the orb in her taloned hand. “Just go now and hurry.” If his calculations were right, he could very soon lose his ability to protect the village on his own.

 Talon put the orb away in her robe and walked towards the door. She stopped and looked back at him. She cocked her head and her cat-like eyes gleamed in the fire light. “They ssaid an armiess iss coming.”

“I will be fine,” he assured her. “Do me a favor and stay at the village for a few days. I want you to protect them just in case the orb can’t keep the stronger trolls out.”

She hissed and he knew that she had sensed the lie in his voice. But she didn’t question him this time. “Yess, Masster. Come Durza. We go.”

Once Matthew was sure that they had gone, he darted into the bedroom to remove his ridiculous slippers and change into attire that better fit his current plans. He selected his robes bound with the wolf spirit and his favorite road boots. He slipped a few things into hidden pockets within the robes, then returned to his parlor to refill his pipe.

Matthew sat and lit the pipe, his mind busily going through calculations as he waited for his next visitor. He had a feeling this visit wouldn’t be as pleasant.

Justan followed the Prophet back to the rogue horses in silence, disturbed by the events of the evening. The Stranger had called the prophets gods and in a sense they were. They were immortals with enough power to influence or subjugate entire races. Yet at the same time, they were just men, imbued with the same personalities and foibles of everyone else.

Above the prophets, towering over everything, was this Creator. It was something that seemed so strange and foreign to him. Something so great that these three prophets called it master? A being so great and powerful that it had the ability to see and understand all?

Justan had never put much stock in religion. He knew a lot of people that believed in gods, and he didn’t discount their beliefs, but he had put his belief in the power of a person’s will. Even after meeting the Prophet and first hearing of the Creator, he had kept his mind focused on the kinds of things he could control.

Tonight his eyes had been opened and the world seemed a lot bigger now than it had been before. In this bigger world, his place seemed very small and that was a chilling thought. He thought about the Stranger’s attitude and the way he looked at the races under his charge. They were just numbers to him.

If someone like him could think that way, Justan wondered how much something as powerful and all seeing as the Creator could care about an individual man like him? Did his role as a bonding wizard give him any particular status or was he just a tool in the Creator’s arsenal, something that could be used up and replaced?

When they arrived back at the rogue horses, Gwyrtha sensed his mood.

Are you sick, Justan
?

No
, he said.
I’m just thinking
.

“Well, I learned some things tonight that I was not prepared to deal with,” John said. He groaned and rubbed his hand over his face. “An army of demons . . . I have so much to do. I’m afraid that we need to part at this point, Edge.”

Justan had expected as much. But he couldn’t just let the Prophet go like that. “John, how many bonding wizards are there?”

“Currently? Well, let’s see . . .” The Prophet began counting them off in his mind. “There’s you, Alfred, Tolivar, Fist, Mandra, Stolz, Benny, Lissa, uh . . . you know about Sarine I understand?”

“Fist told me,” Justan said. “She showed up at the Mage School a few weeks ago.”

“Well, there was nothing we could do about that.” John continued his count, this time silently. “That makes fourteen overall. Spread all across the known lands.”

“Huh.” That was more than he expected. It made him feel even smaller. “And how much do we even matter?”

John’s brow rose. “That’s a heavy question. What do you mean?”

“I mean, in the big plan of your master, how much does one of us matter? Even if you were to lose one, it seems like you still have a full quiver.”

“That’s nonsense. Every one of you is important. The loss of just one is a great blow.” He paused. “Where are you going with this, Edge?”

“I’d like to get a promise from you,” Justan said.

“I see,” the Prophet said. He folded his arms and leaned against Steff’s side. “That may be a difficult request. Promises are added responsibilities and I have too many responsibilities as it is.”

“Well this is important,” Justan said. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately and you are the only that can help me.”

“Go on,” John replied.

“If I should die, I want your word that you’ll transfer my bonds onto someone else,” Justan said. John blinked in surprise and Justan rushed on, “Fist would be the best choice since he is already a bonding wizard, but I was thinking perhaps Jhonate-.”

“Edge, I’m sorry. I can’t promise that,” John said, cutting him off.

“What?” Justan said. “But why? Aren’t they your responsibility?”

“Everyone that’s bonded, no matter their race, is part of it, yes,” John replied. “But I don’t know the time and place of your death. There’s too much choice involved with that. If I find out about the upcoming death of someone, there is usually very little time to spare. If I could know such things ahead of time, I would have tried to save Yntri.”

“You had no way to help?” Justan asked.

The Prophet looked down, his expression pained. “When I learned about Yntri I was weeks away, even on a rogue horse. All I had was hours. There was nothing I could do. I saw the possibility coming up in my mind, if the likely events fell into place the nightbeast would shove his blade up under Yntri’s chin. It hadn’t happened yet, but there was no way I could warn him. All I could do was hope that things went differently.”

Justan grew quiet. He had built up a lot of hope for this in his mind and the Prophet’s answer had been particularly deflating.

“That being said,” John continued. “Whenever someone as important as a bonding wizard is about to fall, my master does warn me. I will promise you this. If I receive such a prompting and there is any way under my power that I can help to save you or your bonded, I will.”

Justan let out a slow breath. “Thank you. At least I know that they have a chance.”

“Yet that really doesn’t make you feel better.” John observed. “Does it?”

“No. It doesn’t,” Justan admitted.

John walked over and put an arm around Justan’s shoulder. Justan was physically taller than the man, but it felt like when he was a young boy and his father had done the same thing. The Prophet looked up the sky.

“When my mind was first opened and my master showed me a glimpse of all creation, it was the most humbling experience of my life. I felt so insignificant.” He chuckled to himself. “But that isn’t a viewpoint that man was meant to grasp. We don’t have the capacity for that level of understanding.”

He dropped his arm from Justan’s shoulder and climbed onto Steff’s back. “We have to keep our focus on the things we can control. Don’t spend so much time looking upward, that you miss what’s happening around you.” He spun the rogue horse around until she was facing eastward. “Right now your focus should be on getting back to Roo-Tan’lan. I don’t know how much of a threat this army is, but you should let Xedrion know.”

Steff leapt off the trail and the Prophet disappeared into the trees. Justan stared after him for a moment, his mind working over everything he had learned. What John had suggested was easier said, than done. The world still felt small to him, like little mattered.

This is why people can’t usually stay in John’s presence for long
. Artemus said. His voice sounded weaker than usual.
It is sad. He is such a lonely man
.

Are you alright
? Justan asked.

Very tired
.
The elemental has been difficult
, the old wizard said.
It did not like the Stranger. I must retire for a time
.

Justan wasn’t ready for him to leave.
How did you handle being around the Prophet so long
?

I looked at him as a friend. Not a god
. he whispered.
And when I started to feel small . . . I focused on . . . life
.

Artemus’ voice faded and Justan frowned. Focus on life? How was he supposed to do that?

Ride
? Gwyrtha suggested.

“That is a very good idea,” Justan replied. He hopped onto her saddle and leaned forward gripping her mane. “Make it fast.”

Yes
! was her pleased reply.

His stomach gave a slight lurch as she launched herself forward. He focused on the wind that whipped past him and the sounds of the night. Then he dove into the bond, slipping into his connection with Gwyrtha. He opened himself up to her senses. Everything was heightened. She could hear each individual insect and pick out the direction of their chirping. She could smell the somewhat fishy scent of the frogs that hid in the darkness, see the different shades of the plants in the moonlight.

Gwyrtha experienced all these things and processed them at once. For a moment Justan had a glimpse of what it might like to be all knowing, to see everything. This was reality, Justan reminded himself. The minutiae of life.

Feeling a bit better, he reached out through the bond.
Deathclaw, we are finished with the Prophet’s errand. We are on our way back to you
.

Good
, the raptoid replied.

Justan realized that Deathclaw wasn’t in Roo-Tan’lan. He wasn’t in the grove either. He was somewhere closer.
Where are you? Are you tracking the nightbeast? You promised you wouldn’t go alone
.

I did not
, Deathclaw said.
Jhonate is with me
.

Just the two of you
? Justan said.
You were supposed to tell Xedrion
.

Jhonate said that he was busy mourning Hilt and his other fallen people
, Deathclaw said.

Then . . . Hilt is dead
? Justan said, feeling a surge of sadness.

When we left, he was still breathing
, Deathclaw assured him.
The elves have been keeping him alive enough to speak, but they doubt he will live more than another day at the most
.

Justan swallowed. Then there was still hope he would be able to return in time to thank him.
Wait, Xedrion wouldn’t have sent just the two of you
.

Deathclaw hissed. He had hoped Justan would look past that part.
This was Jhonate’s idea. But do not worry. She is a capable warrior. She will not be in the way while I am defeating him
.

That wasn’t good. Both of them were known for charging into difficult fights. Justan tried to think the situation through.
Alright, how much of a lead does he have on you
?

Perhaps two hours, but we are gaining ground. He has stopped several times, which has made it easier. He is too confident
, Deathclaw hissed in amusement.
He does not know we can track him
.

Is he alone
? Justan asked.

Deathclaw paused for a moment, unwilling to answer.

How many basilisks does he have with him
? Justan pressed.

Only two
, Deathclaw said.
It will not be a problem
.

Listen
, Justan replied.
Keep tracking them but do not fight them. Gwyrtha and I will head straight towards you. We will fight them together
.

Deathclaw’s reply was a sullen grumble.

We are a pack, are we not
? Justan reminded him.

Yes
, the raptoid admitted.

Good, then tell Jhonate our plan. Gwyrtha and I are hurrying towards you, but it will probably be morning before we can catch up. Now which direction is he going
?

Right towards you
, Deathclaw replied.

A smile appeared on Justan’s face. So Vahn was following his trail from earlier that day. He would have no idea that Justan was on his way back along the same trail. This was their turn to ambush him.

Good. Keep me informed. We will pinch him between us. He won’t be able to escape
.

An acceptable plan
, Deathclaw replied after a moment.
I will tell her
.

Justan continued into the night, knowing it would be several hours before he was able to come up against the assassin. The rogue horse’s stores of energy were still very deep, so he pulled some for himself and sent some to Deathclaw. It had been an arduous day and they would need all the strength they could get.

He entered the bond and reached out to Fist. The ogre responded right away. He was lying down in a small cave. Another snowstorm had hit and Maryanne and Squirrel were huddling with him under his robe. Fist was the only one of them awake. Justan sensed that he was growing quite fond of the situation.

Justan! You’re okay
! Fist said in excitement.
Did the nightbeast attack at the funeral
?

Justan sighed.
It is a long story
.

Justan relayed everything that had happened and told the ogre what he had learned, unburdening himself of all the turmoil that each event had brought him. Fist listened intently and made Justan feel better as only Fist could, sharing in his grief over Beltry and Hilt and asking insightful questions at the just the perfect moments of the tale.

We should meet up with him in a few hours
, Justan said.
Then I can finally make this end
.

I wish I could be there and fight him with you
, Fist said.
For Hilt and for everyone else he killed
.

So do I
, Justan agreed.

I don’t have much to tell you about my day
, the ogre said.
We have just been traveling north towards the Thunder People territory. It is not the best route. The climbs were hard and the weather has been bad. But Mistress Sarine gave Maryanne a message for me to pass along to you. It’s about Vahn
.