The Troll King (The Bowl of Souls Book 9) (28 page)

One of the fire protocols that had been instituted required the hallways of all buildings to be washed clean of slime trails daily. The people had kept to this rule with strict obedience and was likely the reason that the fire had not spread quicker. The same rule had not been issued for the interiors of the trollkin’s rooms, mainly because it would have been too difficult to enforce. This had led to a slime build up on the floors of the rooms.

The Troll King came across several rooms that were fully ablaze. He stayed to the far side of the hall as he passed them, but a few peeks inside told him the reason why. Flaming strings of slime dribbled from tiny gaps in the stone ceiling. The fire had started on the floor above.

When he finally reached the room he was looking for, the king saw why Julal’s wife hadn’t left the building. Tiny driblets of fire fell from the crease in the stone above her doorway. 

“Help!” coughed a weak voice from within. “Is someone out there?”

“Melane?” The Troll King came as close to the room as he dared and peered inside.

“King!” the woman gasped in surprise. Her beady trollish eyes were puffy with tears and gleamed orange with reflected flames. Melane was considered a beauty because, unlike most trollkin, her hair was a light auburn and her skin a deep brown.

She was crouching in the far corner of the room, surrounded by a puddle of slime, her face blackened with smoke, but unburned. He saw that she had smartly used animal skins to scrape her slime away from the fire that dripped in her doorway. She had gained herself some time, but the flaming substance was pooling on the floor and spreading her way. Soon it would touch the pool around her and she would be immolated.

“Melane,” he said. “Stay where you are, but stand. Be ready to run when I give you the command.” He eyed the doorway. This would be a delicate maneuver.

“But King, you must go,” she said, her eyes full of fright. “I am not worth the danger.”

“This fire will not kill me,” he assured her. This was the second time he had said that phrase. He did not understand why he was so confident. He had never tested himself against fire and though he could sense the strength or weakness in the others of his people, he was blind when it came to his own abilities. He trusted in the Mother that she had given him the power to survive this.

Keeping his jaw clenched, he reached for the dripping section of Melane’s doorway. He swept the flaming droplets aside with his clawed hand and pressed his forearm firmly against the crack. The fiery slime clung to his skin, but his own slime did not ignite.

He ignored his burning skin and reached out with his left foot, trying to push aside the flaming slime that had puddled in the doorway. He was not as successful with this attempt. It flowed back as soon as he scraped it away. Fire licked at his feet and between his toes. The slime from the crack above began to leak over his forearm and drip on his shoulder. His body was healing the damage almost as quickly as it was done, but he still grunted with the searing pain.

He scraped faster with his foot, moving as much of the slime as he could and cried out, “Now! Go! Keep to the right side of the passage until you get out!”

Melane obeyed, darting from the corner and he squeezed to the side of the doorframe, giving her room to scoot through. Once she was safely in the hallway, he cried out and released his hold on the crack. He stepped out in the hallway with her just as a droplet fell and hit the back of his human hand.

Flames erupted along his skin. He realized that the Mother had not made him completely exempt from this particular weakness. Soon the right side of his body was engulfed in fire.

Melane backed away from him, her eyes filled with grief and horror. “K-king!”

“Ruun!” he shouted.

She did so, running as fast as her legs would carry her but the king, who was much faster, was forced to hold back. He knew that if he even brushed against her in his rush to escape, she would not survive.

 The king had never imagined a pain such as this. Every nerve on the right side of his body cried out. Again, his tremendous ability to heal fought back against the heat, but it was a losing battle. The attempt to heal made the pain worse. He felt every nerve that was extinguished as each layer of his skin cooked. He could even feel the liquid around his eye boil as his eyelid burned away.

Finally, Melane dove through the exit and got out of his way. The king barreled past her. The trollkin watching the blaze cried out in alarm as their king ran screaming down the steps, his human half ablaze.

At the very first possible moment, he dove into the canal. The cool water extinguished the fire, but not the pain. Raw and rebuilding nerves cried out at exposure to the water. He came up gasping and climbed out as quickly as he could.

Julal ran to his wife and threw his arms around her. “Thank you, King! Thank you!”

Melane’s gaze was turned onto the king as she sobbed. “I am so sorry!”

“No, Melane. Don’t worry about your king,” he said, despite the pain. He realized that his people were staring at him in awe now and he forced himself to look back at them calmly as his body’s regenerative properties worked to heal the damage. He raised the raw red flesh of his right arm into the air and cried out. “We are trollkin! We are strong! We survive!”

His people raised their arms in the air and roared in agreement, proud of their King and grateful that he lived.

“A beautiful speech, my king!” said a sultry female voice. “I am so glad that you are alive.”

The vision in his human eye was cloudy, but the heat vision in his left eye told him that the voice belonged to Mellinda. Three beefy trollkin stood with her as well as the more slender form of Recks.

The snake woman curtseyed on her wavering legs. “For a moment there I thought the fire had ended you.”

“The Troll Mother would not make me so weak,” he said. “I see that you escaped the building unscathed. I thought you had gone in to fight the fire.”

“Oh, I was doing much more than that, my king,” she cooed. “But you are right. It is time this ended.”

Mellinda turned towards the smoking building. Her snake-like arms waved and her fingers writhed. Columns of water rose from the surrounding canals and rushed into the hospital’s entrances. Steam joined the smoke rising from the building. She bared her teeth in concentration and water continued to flow in until the steam stopped and water leaked from between almost every stone.

Then she threw her arms down, ending the spell. Water, dark with ash, gushed from all four entrances, pouring across the grass and back into the canals to be swept away by the current. The crowd’s roar at this feat was even greater than with the king’s short speech. She laughed and waved back at them, basking in their praise.

The king watched the whole thing with a mind in turmoil. Perhaps it was just that his nerves were still in agony and his flesh itched madly in places, but he felt anger rise within him. Surely he should have been pleased that the woman ended the fire, but something didn’t seem right. Why had she been in there so long?

Mellinda noticed the look on his face. The smile of triumph slid from her face, replaced by a repentant look. “I am sorry, my king. That does look painful. Should I have offered to heal you first?”

“Why did you not extinguish the fire sooner?” he asked.

“Recks told me that you were inside, my King,” she explained. “I was fearful that you might drown if I cast my spell then.”

“K-King!” cried Murtha, just arriving at the scene. She leapt across a narrow section of the canal and rushed up to him aghast to see him in such a state. “What happened to you?”

He raised a hand to silence the part-dwarf, his gaze still focused on the snake woman. The vision in his right eye had cleared and he noticed that, though the trollkin with her were blackened with soot, there wasn’t so much as a trace of it on her.

He cocked his head. “You were here before I, Snake Woman. Why did you not cast your spell before I arrived?”

The large trollkin that stood around her frowned at his tone. These three were part-humans that had once been terribly deformed. Mellinda had fixed them and continued to make changes as they requested them. All three of these trollkin now looked more human than troll, something which had not bothered the king until now.

Mellinda gave him a simpering smile. “As I alluded to before, I went inside to discover something important. The source.”

“Of the flames?” he asked. He had been curious as to how the blaze started.

She inclined her head. “Yes, my king. And the answer told me far more than I expected.”

He cocked his head. “Explain.”

She came close to him and placed a hand on his trollish arm. His nerves cried out and the Troll King realized that he had forgotten all about the minor burns on that side of his body. She leaned up towards his ear. “This blaze was started by magic.”

“You did this?” he said in surprise.

“Of course not,” she said with an unconvincing laugh. “That magic came from one of your people.”

“Thurgle,” one of the beefy trollkin added.

The Troll King frowned as much as his damaged face would allow. Thurgle was a relatively new born trollkin, a part-human with a frog-like face. “How is that possible?”

“He had an awakening,” she said, watching his face for a reaction. When she didn’t see any recognition of the term, she added, “That is what we wizards call it when a person uses magic for the first time. The results can often be . . . messy. In this case, Thurgle immolated himself. It was quite sad.”

“You are sure of this?” he said, quite shaken by the idea.

“Oh yes,” she said. “I arrived far too late to save him, of course, but . . .” She pointed to her eyes. “My mage sight told me everything.”

His eyelid had grown back enough for him to blink in concern. He was imagining trollkin across the city randomly bursting into flame. “Could this happen again?”

“It is unlikely, but possible,” she said, then licked her lips and gave him an aside glance. “Perhaps if I better understood how your people are made, I could figure out how to prevent it.”

“We are made by the Mother,” he said automatically. “You have seen it happen. We come forth from her womb fully formed.”

“I have seen that, darling king,” she said as if he had told a joke. “What I would like to know is how she does it.”

He could tell she was hinting at something, but didn’t know what. “You know as much as I. You have seen inside of every trollkin you have fixed with your magic.”

Her smile seemed a bit forced now. “Yes, but you have a connection with the Troll Mother that I do not. When the children come from the womb, you touch them and immediately know their strengths and weaknesses and more.”

What was she searching for? “It is a gift given me by the Mother. When I touch them, I know things. It is her way of helping me know which of her children can become trollkin.”

“Ah!” she said, raising one twisting finger. “I believe you are close to the answer I am seeking. Think back to the day when Thurble was born.”

“His name was Thurgle,” he corrected, becoming irritated with this line of questioning. Many of the nearby trollkin had gathered closer to hear the discussion and he wasn’t sure this was something he wanted them to hear.

“Thurgle, then,” she said with a frustrated smile. “You said something when he was born. You touched him and said something like, ‘this one has flammable skin, but will regenerate. He knows me. He has a . . ?”

“Human soul?” the Troll King finished.

“Right,” she said, still smiling. “Explain that.”

“All trollkin have souls,” he said matter of factly.

“But trolls don’t,” she said.

“They don’t?” Murtha said.

“No!” she said, looking around at the small crowd that had gathered. “Trolls are soulless hungry monsters. But you lot are not.”

“We know this,” the Troll King said, ready to end the conversation. “We are not trolls.”

“True. Oh, dears, I love you all, it’s true. You are not trolls. I came to the swamps expecting to find nothing but a mindless screaming hungry horde of trolls, but I found you instead.” There was a dull anger in her eyes now. “The question, oh king, is why you have that part that makes you different from them?”