The Troll King (The Bowl of Souls Book 9) (20 page)

“Just a moment father,” Jhonate said, her eyes as wide as Justan’s. “You are thinking of marriage with
her
?”

Jhandra laughed. “Of course not! She is an outsider and an elemental magic user of all things. Can you imagine the furor that would erupt if he suggested such a thing? I was speaking in a generality. Pretty girls always get your father thinking.”

Xedrion cleared his throat. “Would you care to tell me what she has discovered, Jhonate?”

Frowning, Jhonate told them what Vannya had explained to her earlier. Then she told them about the mage’s request. “I explained to her that such a trip would be too dangerous and that you were unlikely to support it,” she said.

“Sending her into the troll swamps would seem a bit foolhardy,” Jhandra agreed.

“Actually, sir,” Justan said. “Vannya’s idea isn’t a bad one. We have no idea what kind of threat these troll things are. Considering everything else that you are dealing with, it probably isn’t a bad idea to send her out. I would be willing to send Deathclaw with her as an escort. He has been feeling pretty cooped up here in the city.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I have a better solution,” Xedrion replied. “I believe I will send her to see Old Stolz down on the swamp’s edge.”

“Stolz?” Justan said and Jhonate could read enough of his emotions through the ring to know that the name was familiar to him, though he couldn’t quite place it.

“Is he that old hermit?” Jhonate said.

“He is,” Jhandra replied. “And I think he is crazy no matter how smart your father thinks he is.”

“Stolz is a troll expert,” Xedrion corrected her. “He has been studying the Troll Swamps for decades trying to find a way for our people to reclaim it.”

“A lost cause,” Jhandra said.

“Perhaps,” Xedrion acknowledged. The Roo-Tan had spent many centuries trying to fight back the menaces of the swamp before finally understanding that they didn’t have the means to accomplish it. “But of all of us, he is the one most likely to know about these creatures and perhaps be able to give this mage a better idea of whether or not they are a threat to our people. Jhonate, tell her that we will put together an expedition to accompany her there. With everything else we are dealing with I am reluctant to commit too many resources.”

“I have some suggestions in that regard,” Justan said. “I can put together a list of names.”

Xedrion gave him a grateful nod. “Do so. And now, if you do not mind, I would like to address something with my daughter alone.”

“Oh. Of course, sir,” Justan said. He looked at Jhonate. “I’ll be waiting at the archery range.”

Jhonate watched him leave, then turned on Xedrion before he could begin. “Father why you have not been inviting me to these meetings?”

Xedrion looked to his wife. “Did I not announce my intention to address something first?”

Jhandra shrugged. “She is Jhonate.”

“Father, do not avoid the question. I had been attending all your planning meetings for weeks. Why do you suddenly stop inviting me? Have I not been useful to you in the past?”

 “Yes, your input has been useful, even if you are a bit hot-headed,” he admitted.

“Then why leave me out?” she asked. “Especially since you have been letting Sir Edge attend.”

Xedrion smiled and patted her fondly on the shoulder. “You, dear daughter, need to allow your betrothed to spend some time with me without your presence.”

She frowned. That’s what this was about? “And why is that?”

“How can he take proper measure of the man when you keep interfering?” Jhandra asked.

She blinked at her mother, then looked back at her father. “How do I interfere? I let him say what he wishes. I do not correct him.”

“Jhonate, your very presence in the room changes his behavior,” Xedrion replied. “When you are watching him, he stands straighter. He chooses his words more carefully.”

“This is a problem?” That sounded optimal to her.

“One of the reasons I have always found Hilt’s presence so useful is his tendency to be at ease in tense situations,” Xedrion explained. “He often tells me things that my other advisors would be reluctant to say. Your Sir Edge has many of these same qualities, but those benefits are erased once you enter the room.”

Jhonate’s brow tightened as his words sank in. Did she really make Justan so nervous? “He does not have this problem when we are alone.”

Xedrion chuckled and reached around her with one arm, giving her a fatherly squeeze. “Do not worry yourself. Men always watch themselves around women they are trying to impress. The fact that he is trying to impress me as well merely amplifies it. Once you are married this will change. Especially once you allow yourself to relax around him.”

“Allow myself to relax? I . . .” She turned in her father’s arm, her eyes wide. “You said ‘once you are married’. Does this mean you have decided to allow it?”

He released her and folded his arms. “I . . . suppose that I have come to terms with your betrothal.”

“No. You said ‘married’,” Jhonate replied with a smile.

“He did,” Jhandra agreed.

Xedrion couldn’t help but smile back. “Very well. I did.”

Jhonate’s smile grew wider and she pointed at her father. “You like him.”

“I do,” he admitted. “Do you realize how long it has been since I have seen you smile?”

“That is because you have not seen me alone with Edge very often,” she replied.

Her mother snorted and Xedrion’s smile faded a bit while he contemplated her meaning.

“You must tell him that you approve,” Jhonate said excitedly. She embraced him.  “Stay here, father, and do not change your mind. When I come back I expect you to tell him of your approval.”

“Hurry, then,” he replied with a chuckle.

“Do not let him back out,” Jhonate told her mother. Jhandra gave her an assuring nod and Jhonate rushed through the Jharro wood door.

To her surprise, she found Justan standing right outside the door. He was talking to Relf, the messenger.

“Surely that’s not so bad,” Justan was saying. “I’m certain she’ll show up soon.”

Relf winced. “I do not know about that, sir.”

“What is it?” Jhonate asked.

“It’s Tarah Woodblade,” Justan said. “She isn’t in her assigned quarters and her friends aren’t sure where she’s gone. Relf is concerned.”

Relf nodded. “Your father sent me to retrieve her. He has a task he’d like her to complete. ”

“It was my idea, actually,” Justan told Jhonate. “I figured she could use her tracking magic to tell us what that merman ambassador is really planning. That way your father will have a better picture of what he is up against before he speaks to the houses.”

“Actually, Sir,” said the messenger hesitantly. “The thing I’ve been trying to tell you is that I may have an idea where she has gone.” He licked his lips. “And the Protector is not going to like it.”

Tarah pushed her way through the thick jungle undergrowth, her every sense focused on the terrain around her. She had been in this country for a few weeks now, but she still wasn’t comfortable with the environment here. She was used to the thorny vines and brambles and poison oak of Dremaldria, but she didn’t know all the perils of Malaroo yet. She used every bit of plant and animal lore that she knew, but still found herself surprised from time to time.

“Aww, come on, Tarah,” said her papa. Gad the Brawler, the burly berserker turned woodsman, strode through the vegetation with practiced ease. He was wearing his familiar trail garb; a loose brown shirt up top and rugged leather pants below, his cuffs tucked into his boots. He had a bow and quiver slung over his shoulders. His sword, the Ramsetter, was nowhere to be seen. “Don’t get caught up on the small stuff. You’re a woodsman through and through. I didn’t raise no daughter that couldn’t take two steps without checking her boots.”

“Ain’t just avoiding. I’m learning,” Tarah said, bending down to take a closer look at a wide mushroom.

The mushroom was white on top, but had a scarlet underbelly. She felt around underneath it and her fingers brushed the tracks of a mouse that had sheltered underneath the mushroom. A tiny series of memories entered her mind. The mouse hadn’t seen the mushroom as food, but it hadn’t been wary of it either. It might be edible. She cut a small piece of the mushroom free and tucked it into a pouch to test further later.

“The more I know about this place, the more safe I can keep my friends,” she said. “They depend on me.”

She had learned her lesson about Malaroo’s dangers early on. During their first week in the country, Cletus had picked up a colorful frog that had given him a wicked swelling rash. Not long after that, Djeri had received a painful bite from a large spider that had hidden in a bunch of bananas. Tarah had treated the wound, but if he hadn’t been a dwarf, the poison could have proven fatal.

“Well, I have always taught you diligence,” Gad said in approval. “But we’re heading someplace exciting and there’s no need to go slow. Why don’t we just take one of the trails? They’re well-worn and danger-free.”

“They also tend to contain people that we’ll have to avoid,” Tarah replied. “We’re not supposed to be here, remember?”

“Don’t be silly, girl,” Gad said. “Your rogue horse friend will keep us hidden from people. We could mess around. We could yell and they wouldn’t even hear us.”

Tarah froze for a moment, hearing those words come out of her papa’s mouth. It was as if a spell had been broken. She had been talking to him like he was really there. This was happening more and more often and the scariest part was that Esmine was getting better at imitating her papa and grampa. Their voices had stopped echoing inside her mind and had begun to sound as if they were standing right next to her.

Tarah frowned. “I’ve asked you before to stop that Esmine. It’s bad enough that you feel you have to wear his face when you’re talking to me. I don’t want you actually pretending to be my papa.”

 “Aww! Don’t spoil the fun, Tarah!” Gad the Brawler said, sounding and acting every bit like he had in life. “Why trudge around your old memories of me, looking at them with sadness? Enjoy this time. We’re out of that stuffy palace with its empty rooms and its white walls. We’re Tarah and her papa on a new woodlands adventure!”

Come, Tarah
, Esmine urged, this time using her own mental voice, something that had become more and more rare.
Play with me.

“Let’s do something different then,” Tarah said, trying to be accomodating. “This game makes me uncomfortable.”

You always make demands of me
. Esmine’s reply was bitter in a way that Tarah hadn’t heard from her before.
Do what I want for once
!

“Hey, calm down. I’m not saying I won’t play,” Tarah said. She thought she understood. Esmine was bored. “It can even be the same game. Just appear as yourself. Not my papa.”

But I don’t want to be me. I want to do this for you
, Esmine insisted, completely unaware of the way she was contradicting herself.
You miss your papa. This way you can spend time with him
.

“Come on, Tarah. Like when you were little,” echoed her papa pleadingly.

The whole thing was a little odd. Tarah sighed. Then again, maybe it didn’t matter. This was what Esmine wanted. Why not act out her fantasy? After all, Tarah had spent years pretending her papa hadn’t died. Would it really hurt anything to do so once again?

Tarah ignored the feeling of wrongness in her gut and let a smile appear on her face. “Okay, a new adventure. But papa, where are we going?”

“Oh, baby girl we are going someplace special.” Gad came to her side and threw an arm around her shoulders. Tarah could barely feel it. Esmine still had trouble fooling the sense of touch with her illusions. But everything else was so real, from the look in his eye to the not quite pleasant smell of his morning breath that she let herself believe. “It’s a place so big, so magical, yet few ever get to see it.”

“The Jharro Grove?” she asked.

He gave her an impressed look. “You heard of it? Why I’ll be. Was it in one of your mama’s books?”

“Papa, of course I’ve heard of it. I’m here to keep that gnome from conquering it,” Tarah replied.

“I got no idea what you’re talking about, Tarah,” Gad said taking a step back from her. “But I’m gonna show it to you anyway. Wait till you see it. It’s so peaceful there.”

He started off into the trees and she followed. “What’re you saying, papa? You been there before?”

He didn’t reply to the question directly, but he glanced back over his shoulder at her, his expression excited. “The trees are huge, maybe not the tallest I’ve seen, but they are the widest. And they’re alive. Not in the way a normal tree’s alive and not alive like you or me, but more than that. They’re ancient and . . .” He stopped for a moment. “Wait, you smell that?”

Tarah paused along with him. There was something different in the air, an almost minty scent that triggered a fond memory in her mind. “Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the tea that old Ollie used to drink in his bookstore. The smell of it used to fill the place.”

“Oh, this isn’t tea, baby girl,” he said. “That’s the smell of the grove. Come on. Surely it can’t be too much farther.”

“Surely?” she said teasingly. “But, papa, I thought you knew where you were going.”

“Of course I know. It’s just been a long time. I . . .” His voice trailed off and he cleared his throat. Tarah realized that, though her papa had certainly not been here before, Esmine had. “Keep on.”

The minty smell grew stronger and Tarah began to feel light headed. Her legs began to wobble. “I feel strange.”

“It’s the magic of the grove,” Gad said. “Even though you can’t see the trees yet, the life of the place has reached this far. Look around you.”

The plants around her were lush and green without a trace of rot and the soil was thick and black. Tarah crouched down and ran her fingers through it. There was magic there. And a history. Her magic was trying to bring memories out of the soil, but couldn’t hold onto anything specific. It had to be elven homeland. Of course, that made sense. Elves tended the grove and this soil was full of their life essence. Wow, was she feeling loopy.

Tarah sat down and put her head in her hands. A giggle burst from her lips. She felt drunk. That was not a good state to be in when sneaking into one of the most heavily guarded places in the known lands.

 “I don’t know that we should keep going,” she said.

 “I know what you’re feeling,” Gad said, crouching next to her. “It’s just your first time here. Don’t worry. Your body will get used to it in a while.” He stood and held out his hand. “Come on. Get up.”

She reached out and he yanked his hand out of the way at the last moment, smiling. “You still falling for that one, Tarah? A girl of mine can stand on her own.”

She laughed and climbed to her feet. Gad used to do that all the time. Especially if she tripped over something. “You just did that because you know that your hand isn’t really there.”

“You use whatever excuse you want,” he replied. “Truth is, you’re just not as fast as your papa.”

He headed deeper into the forest and she followed. The ground sloped downward quite steeply in places. It seemed to Tarah as if they were walking down the sides of a huge bowl.

The minty smell only deepened as did the heady feel of magic until the air felt as thick as water. At first, she felt unsteady on her feet, but as her papa had predicted, she became used to that intense feeling of life. Then she saw her first Jharro tree. She forgot about anything else and stared in open wonder.

Her papa was right. The trees were enormous. That was the first thought that came into her mind. They were so thick!  She imagined that she could put at least ten of the thickest trees she had ever seen side-by-side and still not be as wide. Their huge silvery roots covered every inch of the forest floor, intertwining with one another like a mass of still tentacles.

She looked from the roots up to the thick branches of the trees. They arced overhead, forming a nearly impenetrable canopy of waxy leaves with a light blue underbelly. The sparse rays of light that did penetrate the leaves filled the entire grove with blue and silver tinted light.

“This place is . . .” The first word that came to her head was
holy
but she didn’t say it. Tarah wasn’t a religious person. Superstitious at times, maybe. But as a person who had lived her life in the woods, this was the closest thing to heaven that she could imagine.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she thought, suddenly feeling guilty for her subterfuge.

“What are you talking about, Tarah?” her papa asked. He was taking in the majesty of the grove with a wide smile, his arms spread open. “Every person in the world should be in this place at least once in their lives. Can you imagine how much an experience like this would change people?”

Tarah understood what he meant. The weighty feeling of the place; the awe that would fall over anyone that stood here. Many would change their perception of nature. Some of them would never want to leave . . . Her brow knit in concern. Others would want to take some of it with them. There would even be people that would hate it. They would see this place of perfect grandeur and want to burn it to the ground.

“No, papa. This isn’t a place for everyone,” she said.

She saw movement among the massive roots of the trees. At first she thought that the trees were somehow moving their roots themselves, but then she saw that there were people running on top of these roots.

They were elves. But unlike the elves she knew, these were small, similar in height to dwarves, but dark-skinned and bald headed. As they ran, the roots of the grove shifted, forming pathways for them to take. Further up the trees she saw the smooth bark ripple in places as more of these elves rode knots along the surface of the trunks.

“We should go,” she said, taking a step back. “We weren’t invited.”

“Nonsense, Tarah. If anyone deserves to be in this place, it is you,” Gad said. He looked at the elves. “Don’t worry. They can’t see you. They can’t hear you. Let’s go a little deeper in.”

Tarah had her doubts about that statement. From the little she knew about the ancient elves that cared for this place, they had a history steeped in magic. Chances are they knew a thing or two about illusion. “But those roots are huge. Most of ‘em are thicker than I am tall. They might move where the elves want ‘em to, but they won’t move for me.”

He laughed. “Tarah, don’t belittle all that I taught you. You’re a woodsman. These are trees. You’ll find a way around.”

Tarah’s papa stepped out onto the gray surface of the closest Jharro root, a thick one that plunged into the ground nearby. He began walking along the top of it as it curved gently up towards the trunk of the tree. He waved at her to follow.

Tarah forced away the feeling of guilt that welled within her and followed him. The surface of the root had a slightly spongy feel and made traction easy. Her eyes wide and taking in the immensity of the place, she continued until she reached a point where the root of another tree overlapped the one she was on. It was taller than her head and the surface was so smooth that it didn’t look easy to climb.