Hidden Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 6) (8 page)

"Whatever," he said, eyes focused on a large pork pie with his name written all over it. No, I'm not joking, that's how large it was.

"How about we start with why you're my guide?"

"Because they made me." He bit into rich pastry.

"Why did they choose you?"

"Because I'm the one that serves the dragon," he said, shrugging.

"And how come you serve the dragon?" What was with this dude?

"Because I'm the only young dwarf around that can enter his lair without going all funny in the head."

Now we were getting somewhere. "And why would other dwarves go funny in the head?"

"Because of all the gold. Don't know what all the fuss is about. It's all right, I suppose, but nothing special."

Aha, so the rest of them couldn't even get inside without being overwhelmed by the riches. Something dawned on me then. "Don't suppose you're a relation to Gavin. I'm his friend, you know?"

Urrad's eyes lit up instantly. "Really? He's a hero. I wish I could be like him. He drives one of your motor vehicles, meeting all kinds of interesting people, different things every day. Exciting."

Kids, they're all the same. As soon as it's something they're into they open up. "Yes, he's a taxi driver. But only because he's allergic to gold. Pretty rare that, but it sounds like you have a little of that in you."

"He's my..." Urrad worked it through in his head. "Er, a cousin, anyway, maybe on my mother's, father's, mother's side, I forget."

"Right. Poor guy, though, he wants to be back down here but can't because of all the gold."

"It's lame. Everyone thinks it's this brilliant thing, but it's just yellow rocks." Urrad put a hand to his mouth and glanced around nervously. "Don't tell anyone I said that, they don't like it."

"I won't." He had every reason to be nervous. It was like insulting the whole of his kind in the worst possible way. You could insult a dwarf's mother and be more likely to keep your life than if you insulted their gold. Any gold. "So, you serve the dragon, do its bidding, because nobody else can handle the stash he's got?"

"Like I said. He gathered it all up, lots of it anyway, and put it all in one place. Now he won't let anyone have it and nobody can go in and get it because it's too overwhelming and even if they use magic to dull their senses the dragon would fry them to a crisp if they tried."

"So the dragon is male?"

Urrad gave me a funny look, like I was utterly daft. "Of course the dragon's male. Are you really a powerful wizard up there? They must have very low standards."

"Why, you cheeky sod. And you, are you male?"

"Now I definitely know you humans have something wrong with you. Of course I am, isn't it obvious?"

"No, it isn't. I hate to break it to you, dude, but where I come from the women don't normally go around sporting full beards and wearing chain mail. Let alone wielding axes. Okay, some of them have axes, but definitely no beards."

"What do they do to cover their chins?" he asked with real interest.

"What!? Nothing, they leave them exposed."

Urrad gasped and his eyes went wide in shock. "And you let them? Aren't they ashamed? Don't they get into trouble?"

"No, of course not. Everyone has a chin. Most men don't even have beards. Not like yours, anyway. We'd never get anything done if we had to spend all our time brushing them."

"Only women brush their beards, I'll have you know," he said, indignant. Damn but I was getting a veritable sociology lesson on all things dwarf. I'd learned more from this kid in one conversation than I had in a lifetime. "But that is so disgusting. For a dwarf, showing their chin is like walking around naked and waving your dangly bits about."

"Hmm, some of us do that." I put an end to the conversation for a while with that, but we do, don't we?

Once we'd finished our meal, meaning Urrad had stuffed his face until the food was half gone, he packed everything up, shouldered his much lighter backpack—leather, of course—and we headed off.

Past marvelous architectural wonders, little corners that seemed to be shrines, vaulted chambers and cramped tunnels where Mithnite and I had to bend almost double so my sciatica flared up and I had to use a touch of magic to ease the pain, and endless, monotonous halls, we seemed to get somewhere. The atmosphere changed, felt charged, and I just knew we were getting close.

"Urrad," I called to the child that was not a child, "how long has this been going on, the thing with the dragon?"

"Oh, about three centuries, maybe four," he called over his shoulder. "No, make that five, I think. He gathered up so much, but still wasn't happy, so it's a bit of an ongoing thing. Everyone's utterly depressed. Everyone says there's no point mining for gold if you can't have it to look at in your own private hoard room. Sure, we have the main one, where he is, but everyone has, or had, their own, too. Only stands to reason, right?"

"Right," I agreed. He was coming out of his shell now, talking like a proper person, not like a teenager with some serious attitude to boot. I almost, kind of, sort of liked him. A bit.

I could feel magic thrumming in the air and knew we were nearly upon the lair of the dragon, guarding a dwarf fortune in gold. It crackled and popped as we walked down a plain corridor, walls nothing but rough hewn rock as if to say, "Nothing here, carry on, don't go looking through this ordinary wooden door at the end of this boring old corridor, it will be rubbish, honest."

Urrad slowed, then came to a halt and turned to us, looking not so much nervous, as pitiful. "Did they tell you about the guardian?"

"No, they bloody well didn't."

"Oh. Okay, see ya. Or not." He ran back past us as fast as his muscular legs would carry him. No sooner was he gone around the corner than I felt the air change from comfortable to cool, then to icy.

Did I say I'm not too keen on dwarves? No? That's weird.

Not on a Full Stomach

There are some enforcer jobs I've been on where I lost my latest meal because things got so out of hand, or what I saw went beyond anything the human body could cope with without purging at least something. This was one of those jobs.

I felt the bile rise and got that strange excess of saliva that seems to appear from nowhere, signaling the evacuation of half-digested food to come. I forced my body to calm, using my will to shunt away the reactions that would otherwise put me at a distinct disadvantage.

Mithnite was already puking his guts up, doubled over and looking like he was breathing his last, or trying to between the vomit.

"Let it ride over you, Mithnite. Tell your body to relax, that there's nothing left to do but harden its resolve. It's inside of you, anything you want, you just have to believe."

He just carried on puking. I'd have to think about how this whole teacher thing worked—so much of what I did was instinct now that I could hardly even recall the lessons that brought me to this point.

I've seen zombies decapitated and their rotten insides spread out in front of them. I've seen humans and all manner of Hidden explode, sometimes right in my face. I've felt unbearable sadness, been touched by madness on more occasions than I can count, but I'd never seen what to all intents and purposes was an actual monster.

Otherwise known as an ogre.

Twelve feet tall, as pale as an albino yeti in a snowstorm, flesh pockmarked, scarred, dented and mutilated in a thousand different ways. Livid lines of raw flesh where wounds went deep and festered through the ages, it had it all, and more. Its head was huge, utterly out of proportion, nose gone, if it had ever had one, huge brow thick and calloused. It had no hair, not a single one, and it had pointy ears adorned with rings, completing the look with a slender bone through each lobe.

As it snarled at us, blocking the way forward, it revealed two rows of needle-sharp teeth filed to points, but that wasn't the half of it.

It's chest was so deep, so dense with muscle, it was as if it was split down the middle, the sternum lost to deep shadow like a ravine. Elongated arms hung low to the floor like an orangutan, easily ten feet in length, forearms like a troll's, biceps as large as footballs.

The legs were just as bad. Calves bunched with tortured muscle, knotted thighs with veins thick as ropes, and everywhere were weird lumps. Strange protrusions the size of golf balls in totally random places, disfiguring its face and its entire body.

A band of ink wrapped around its neck and concentric circles did the same around each limb and its torso. To complete the look was a black tattoo right across its eyes that snaked around its head.

For the second time that day I decided to run. This was way too surreal a place for the likes of me, let alone Mithnite. I didn't go in for this kind of thing at all, especially with the unexpected company I had to keep safe above all else, certainly above the mission.

It was a sick joke, a perversion of tales of dwarves and orcs from fantasy stories I'd read as a kid. I knew they were all based on fact at least partially, same as stories of wizards, faeries, goblins, vampires and everything else is, but I'd never for one minute imagined the world of the dwarves was quite as peculiar as it was turning out to be.

"Do you mind if I go home? I think I left the door unlocked and besides, I haven't got the right shoes on. Neither has Mithnite."

"Grrr," came the reply. I don't think it was a yes, but rather than ask again I grabbed my rather stunned friend and we did the running away thing. For about a millisecond.

As we turned and ran, picking up speed, we slammed into an invisible barrier that shimmered and shook as much as my legs. We bounced back, Mithnite going down hard while I catapulted into the waiting arms of the ogre. It clutched me tight, each arm wrapping entirely around my body, foul, dirty claws digging tight into my sides. The stench of the creature up close and personal was enough to force my food up, but the magic was upon me, and two could play at being big and scary.

As my eyes, normally deep, penetrating, and rather fetching—so I've been told—morphed into the depths of darkness and my perfectly aligned tattoos sprang to attention, shunting powerful energy exactly where it needed to be, my newfound abilities went straight to work.

My hands grew in size as the ink sent magical mayhem down my arms, and each one grabbed and circled the ogre's forearm as I tried with all my might to make a fist. Flesh began to give way and bone began to succumb to terrible forces, and I think for the first time ever I found myself using magic successfully in a fight without having to do any blasting.

My strength was seemingly enough, and as I poured more magic taken from the Empty to complement my own new nature I closed my hands tighter, felt twisted and malformed bone ready to give way.

Then the ogre head butted me in the back of my head and released me at the same time. I stumbled forward, ears ringing, feeling like I'd been hit with a damn demolition ball. I crashed into Mithnite just as he was getting to his feet, slamming him back down with a moan and landing on top of him. No time for pity, though, as the ogre stomped forward, incensed by the fact I'd harmed it. It snarled, foul breath noxious, making it hard for me to think straight.

There was no way out. The magical barrier shimmered with a dangerous light, like lightning ready to incinerate us, so there was only one means of escape—through the door and then all I had to do was deal with a dragon. Talk about needing a few other options, but such is the life of the enforcer.

It was right around this time I reconsidered how wise it had been to break my resolution to stay off magic, but there was no turning back. And, I hate to admit it, but I knew I'd rather meet my end at the hands of an ogre than die because the TV was so bloody boring I just gave up and withered away. Not to say I had any intention of going out quite yet, not on the first day back on the job.

I sidestepped the rather clumsy move of the ogre as it lumbered forward and grabbed for me as I moved in front of Mithnite. While it was off-balance, I cracked the beast at the base of the neck with an elbow, sending him slamming into the force field. He bounced back like he was having a jolly time on a bouncy castle and I took advantage of the backward momentum and kicked out hard and fast, catching him in the throat with the point of my winklepicker. He kept on falling, one hand reaching out to stop himself hitting the ground, the other at his throat.

It wasn't enough, though, and he saved himself from the fall, pink eyes pinpoints of hate as he muttered something in a guttural language I guessed wasn't an invitation to forget the fight and to just be friends. The ogre shook, muscles rippling as he hunched forward, arms bent in front of him, ready to squeeze the life out of me.

Magic surged and my swollen hands spurted sharp jabs of crackling energy at his torso, powerful enough to sear right through him and out the other side. As it hit, he roared and smiled while the magic fizzled and died, leaving scorch marks on the disfigured body, blackened skin that wasn't even a serious flesh wound. I'd heard this was how they were but had never had the pleasure before.

An ogre is a rare creature indeed, never venturing above ground, hardly ever seen below. They keep to the darkest depths of the quasi-human realm, neither one place nor the other, more separate from us than the dwarves, unable to pass over into our world unless summoned or with a great deal of suffering.

This dude seemed to have missed the memo about staying with his own kind, maybe trapped in this place to guard the door against his will.

Ah, maybe that was it. Maybe he was summoned and now couldn't leave, not until he'd carried out his job. An idea came, and it certainly beat getting pummeled by a magic-resistant beastie.

"Trapped, are you?" I shouted above his muttering and roaring as he lunged for me and I dipped beneath the swing of a gnarly fist that could have taken my head off. "Maybe I can help?"

He paid me no mind and snatched for my arm, claws leaving a trail of blood on the back of my hand as I only just managed to move in time.