by Ethan Spears
She slapped a palm against the bed. “I am no thief, either! What did I steal?”
“How should I know? Some gibberish about your ‘teacher’s power.’” He turned to Reggy. “See how she didn’t deny the ‘traitor’ part?”
Mergau frowned at him. “He said I stole my teacher’s power?”
Aoden nodded. He repeated the line as he had heard it in Orcish.
“That’s impossible,” she muttered.
Reggy leaned forwards. “Does that mean something to you?”
She nodded. “It’s a belief among my people who are unskilled with magic: should an orc wish for magical power without working for it, they can slay their teacher and steal the power for themselves.”
“Barbaric,” opined the halfling.
Mergau shook her head. “Mere superstition. ‘Magic rests only in a working body or a container made to contain it.’ That’s what my teacher taught me. Stealing magic from a corpse would be impossible. It’s widely believed among laymen, but untrue.”
“Well, true or not, that seems to be what they think you’ve done.”
Mergau was silent.
“So, someone murdered your teacher?” asked Aoden.
Reggy jabbed him in the thigh with an elbow. “Clearly she wasn’t aware of the fact. How about possibly showing some tact?” He blinked. “Hey, that rhymed!” He looked pleased with himself.
Aoden rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Reggy, not immediately after calling me tactless, please.”
“The filthy elf is probably right,” Mergau admitted.
“Filthy?”
“A warrior would not have been sent without reason.”
“Who’s filthy? She called me filthy, Reggy.”
“Otherwise, I can’t see why one would have followed me this far from my homeland.”
“Well my friend, you still have quite a bit of orc blood on you. And your travels have left you a bit ripe, so you are kind of filthy.”
“That would mean that someone murdered my teacher. But that’s not possible. She was…” she caught herself.
“Powerful?” offered Reggy.
“Yes, powerful,” she said. She felt revealing her teacher was a seer would be a terrible idea. Revealing anything she already had was probably a bad idea but, with two dangerous people hovering over her and her powers locked away, all she could do was talk.
“Well,” said Reggy, “we have something of a problem, then. You obviously can’t stay here if there are people following you; they’d find you in no time, and that would be trouble for us all and put innocent people in peril. You can’t go back home either because if there’s more than one assassin, that’s where they’ll be coming from. I’d trust you to take care of yourself if you had your magic, but the poison is taking care of that. Quite a predicament we have, hmm?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something, Reggy,” said Aoden. He leaned in and added in a whisper, “Just don’t push yourself too hard for her sake. She’s an orc, after all.”
“An orc is as sapient as you or me,” Reggy whispered back harshly. “They fear and love just the same. I think you’ve spent too much time around those elves if you’re talking like that.”
Aoden bristled. “We know nothing about her. She could well be a murderer trying to lie her way out of death.”
“I don’t believe that to be true. I get a phenomenally good feeling when I look at her. I think there’s more to her than we can see.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d taken up fortune telling. Maybe you can read my palm when we’re done here.”
“It seems I’m at your mercy,” called Mergau from the bed, “and you whisper my fate among yourselves. If you’re going to discuss my death, at least be men enough to say it to my face.”
Reggy glared at Aoden and gestured towards the orc.
“Fine,” Aoden sighed. He faced Mergau, crossed his arms, and gave her a stern look. She met his gaze with one equally defiant. “My friend here insists on helping you heal, and we’re in his house, so I cannot deny his wish. However, so long as I’m here, you will do nothing to harm him, understand?”
Mergau slowly nodded. She looked a mixture of confusion, relief, and rage.
“Ah, Aoden, about that,” said Reggy, hopping into his chair. “Given the current situation, I’m going to have to insist that you extend your stay.”
“What? Reggy, I’m a military man. I can’t just—”
“Well, you’d better find a way,” said Reggy. He pointed towards Mergau who was trying to watch them but whose rapid blinking and sagging head suggested she was moments from sleep. “I want to help this young lady, and I want you to help as well. I have a thing for strangers in hostile foreign lands. I’d think you of all people would understand.”
Aoden sighed but otherwise didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to watch the wounded woman’s head sink into her pillow, and her breathing fall into a steady rhythm.
Chapter 14
Failure and Lesson
The next few days were painfully awkward
Reggy remained congenial, but Aoden and Mergau were at each other’s throats. The orc was polite (if standoffish) with Reggy, but uncooperative and often outright hostile towards ‘the Elf,’ as she called Aoden, refusing to use his name. Aoden was little better; with his history, it was no surprise he took offense to her hostility. He exchanged barbed remarks at the slightest provocation and made a point of asking Reggy in a carrying voice why he would bother helping an orc at all.
Reggy was amused to find that, despite their constantly butting heads, the two of them spent more time with one another than with him. Once Mergau regained the strength to walk, she began following Aoden around the house, watching his movements and actions closely, a creature of study and curiosity. Her knowledge of everyday objects and activities was woefully lacking and Aoden delighted in teaching her why people go to pubs or what scissors were for in a condescending manner, like he was speaking to a child. Nearly every one of those lessons devolved into arguments sooner rather than later, but Reggy was pleased to watch those prior moments when he stumbled upon them.
Mergau, meanwhile, was in a waking nightmare. She was trapped in a house with him, had to see her brother’s killer’s face and hear his voice every waking moment and could do nothing about it. She could barely hobble around the house, much less flee in the night. Even if she somehow got out of town without being killed by the guards, it meant losing the one opportunity she had for vengeance.
She considered killing the Elf in his sleep, something she would have attempted without a thought before, but her current state made her reject the idea; without her magic and physically weakened, she couldn’t see herself killing a warrior, even catching him unawares. Orc warriors were trained to be sensitive to sound, to wake at the slightest disturbance; surely elves were the same. He was already suspicious and catching her hovering over him with a knife would be all the excuse he would need to run her through, she was sure of it.
On top of that, she now had to worry about her spirit. Death hadn’t been an immediate concern: she had half-expected to die at the hands of the guards or in the wilds after she slew the Elf, a vague hope that her people would pray her spirit on to the afterlife, something she hadn’t given much thought to. Now her tribe believed her a traitor and would withhold their rituals and prayers, dooming her to never see her brother in the afterlife. One of the things she anticipated most was seeing his face when he heard he had been avenged. She couldn’t pretend it would work itself out anymore. If she died now, her spirit would circle the skies forever.
The idea of that twisted her guts. She was so used to sharing her worries with those near her, whether her mother or Jierta or Ezma, and was so consumed by the terror of the thought that, when the Elf was out, she took a chance and expressed her concerns to the halfling—minus the part about killing the Elf, of course. After realizing that they had no immediate intention of killing her, her natural curiosity often broug
ht her out of her room to talk to the halfling. She had found that he was, at the very least, a good listener.
“Interesting,” he said, following a lengthy explanation of the ritual performed to usher souls into the afterlife. “So, your people essentially control who goes to the afterlife and who doesn’t? We have people like that, though they’re viewed rather negatively. We call them necromancers.”
“Aren’t they doing their duty?” she asked.
“Not quite. Humans, elves, halflings, even the giants of the south, if I’m not mistaken, are allowed to pass to the great hereafter so long as they paid the proper obeisance to the gods, which usually means not directly blaspheming them and occasionally offering prayers. Entry isn’t as strict as you made it sound for the orcs. So, if there’s no one to perform the rituals or no one knows that you’ve died, your spirit wanders the land forever?”
“That’s right.”
“So very tragic.” Reggy had quickly recognized that Mergau could be distracted by scholarly pursuits. They seemed to calm her. At least until Aoden returned, that is. With this in mind, he turned to a bookshelf and pulled out a large tome bound in red leather. He flipped through several pages before turning it to face her. Upon the open page was a drawing of a shambling human corpse, hunched and rotting, reaching out for some unseen goal. Mergau had the unpleasant memory of a sprite-possessed Ezma. “The pink races can become undead horrors such as ghouls, ghasts, zombies, and what have you.”
“Undead? As in, not… dead? Wouldn’t that just mean ‘alive’?’”
“I suppose the word isn’t intuitive if you’re not a native speaker. Something ‘undead’ is like a body without a spirit, a puppet of flesh and bone animated by magic.”
Mergau looked sickened. “It’s much different for us. Our bodies do not walk the lands, only our spirits.”
“I’m sure it has much to do with the gods we worship.”
“Your gods are gross.”
Reggy smiled politely. “Our people think the same of yours. Our dead can rise again but, barring necromantic activity, that only happens if they die in particularly horrible ways or were especially evil.”
“My people are not evil.”
“You know, if you’re looking for ways to be offended by everything I say, we’re not going to have a very enlightened conversation. No, I don’t think your people are evil. I do, however, think that your god Kenta is a right bastard.”
“You will find we agree on that,” she said. “And he’s not my god. I will thank you not to assume such awful things.”
Reggy looked up from the book, an eyebrow arching. “You don’t worship Kenta?”
“Of course not! He’s a savage and a monster! He may have created the orcs, but he uses them like puppets to fulfill his twisted dreams. The eastern tribes may pay homage to gain his gifts of battle, but you would find no followers of his among my people.”
Reggy scratched his chin. “It seems I have much to learn. You know, it’s so obvious once you state it, but I’ve never considered that possibility. I thought since the orcs have only Kenta—unless I’m mistaken about that, as well?”
“No, just Kenta.”
“Simply fascinating. We’ve many gods, and everyone has at least one they give regular worship to. I wrongfully assumed the orcs were the same, except they only directed devotion toward Kenta.”
“Very wrong.”
“Yes, alright, don’t rub it in. So, if you don’t worship Kenta, that means you fall outside his sphere of influence, correct?”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Right.” Reggy searched his head for a way to explain. “Our gods can only affect those who worship them: give them special knowledge, speak to them, strike them down and so forth. If you don’t follow the god, they can’t dole out rewards or punishment to you.” He looked at Mergau to see if she was following and she nodded. “Right, well, you know that thing he does with his warriors? Where he pumps them full of murder magic that makes them huge and fast?”
Mergau made a face of utmost disgust. “Mwezgala.” She spat the word. “The blood power he gives his followers.”
“Mwezgala?” Reggy repeated. “Why, that word sounds downright delightful compared to what it represents. I thought it would be something more like—” he proceeded to make a variety of hissing, snorting, and roaring sounds.
“That sounds nothing like Orcish.”
“Well, an orc affected by Mwezgala barely resembles an orc, so it seems appropriate.” Mergau laughed, nodding her agreement. “But going back to what I was saying about his influence: since you don’t worship him, he can’t affect you with Mwezgala, can he?”
“Why would he want to?” she asked. “That seems like that last thing you would want to do for an infidel or enemy.”
“Perhaps to kill you?”
“Again, if he wanted to kill me, he would have better methods than Mwezgala.”
“But it would kill you, yes? We saw it before when the orcs destroyed the human kingdom.”
“What? It shouldn’t kill. That would defeat the purpose.”
“It most certainly does,” he insisted. “I saw it myself. After Kenta spent twenty days ravaging the human’s lands, all the orcs affected by Mwezgala west of Doddin’s Line simply dropped dead.”
Mergau nodded understanding. “If an orc were infused with that much power for twenty days, it would make sense that they drop dead from exhaustion. My teacher spoke on the subject when I was still learning to control my power. Mwezgala isn’t intended to be used all the time. It distends and damages the body with magic beyond what it can sustain, and all that weariness and pain they would have felt while in Mwezgala strikes them at once when it wears off. In fact, if I understood correctly, they would be in great pain and risking permanent insanity after a few days. But after twenty days?” She shook her head. “The thought of all those warriors throwing their lives away for Kenta sickens me.”
Mergau held out a hand for the book and the halfling passed it over. She’d had enough talk of that horrible blood magic and Reggy was tactful enough to not push for more. She thumbed through the section he had shown her, occasionally stopping to ask what unknown words meant.
“It is so much simpler than what my people must go through,” she observed. “Your bodies can be buried, burnt, put out to sea, put in boxes, wrapped in cloth, or simply left as they are. There are no exact methods at all!”
“I suppose the method varies from people to people, but our gods aren’t too finicky about the details.” He was struck by a thought. “Can I venture a theory?”
“Please,” she said with genuine interest.
“Well, whether you worship Kenta or not, he is nonetheless your creator god.” Mergau looked displeased but offered no objection, so Reggy continued. “The god chooses who goes to the afterlife and who doesn’t, but I think your people have found a loophole.”
“Loophole?”
“A workaround; another way of doing things that bends the rules but doesn’t technically break them. I bet Kenta would love to keep all your clansmen out of the afterlife—this goes back to my ‘Kenta is a bastard’ hypothesis—but he has to follow divine law just like every other god. So, your people can circumvent his power by doing your burial rituals and prayers.”
Mergau looked skeptical. “That seems like a broad conclusion to be made with so little information.”
Reggy shrugged. “The only real difference between the green and pink races is their gods. Why else would our ascension be so simple, but yours so difficult? Say what you want about height or intelligence or civility or martial prowess, I’d say the only key difference is divine. And if it is merely divine, it stands to reason there’s something divine to explain these differences in matters of life and death.”
Mergau pondered this but didn’t find the idea of being similar to the elves enticing. She let herself get reabsorbed in the book, again asking Reggy to define uncommon words.
“You
know, it would be far simpler to have Aoden translate into your native tongue than to have me try to define every word. You should talk to him when he returns.”
“You will do fine,” she said tersely.
“Oh, I’ll ‘do fine.’ How flattering.”
He almost chuckled when he saw a hint of color rise in Mergau’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
Reggy waved away her apology. “I’m just having some fun with you, Mergau, though I do wish you would give Aoden another chance. I know he didn’t leave a stellar first impression, but he’s really a fabulous fellow and someone in whom you can trust.”
“I doubt that. His people are oppressors and murderers.”
“Ah, so you’ve been victim to one of the Elvish campaigns. But the halflings are just as much an enemy of the orcs and you seem fine with me.”
“It’s different. The elves are worse.”
“Oh, I daresay the halflings can kill orcs as well as the elves.”
Mergau turned to look at Reggy, surprised by his uncharacteristically harsh comment. His jovial manner had evaporated, his eyes were boring into hers, and his tone was sharp. She pulled away from him. Had she offended him somehow? He was scrutinizing her harder than she was comfortable with.
“Was it your husband? Your son?”
Mergau hesitated. Did he understand? Did he know? She returned his stare weakly. She was strangely frightened. Perhaps all mages really were as intimidating as her mistress, for in the moment it was like he towered over her. At the same time, however, she felt an urge—a need, even—to trust the little man. It wasn’t the manipulative ‘need’ she had felt around Ezma; it may have been born of fear and isolation, but it was still natural.
It wasn’t easy, but she made herself speak. “My brother.”
Reggy nodded and sat back. He smiled at her sadly, the atmosphere breaking.
“That explains much,” he said, pulling out his pipe and tamping in tobacco. “Maybe more than you’d think.”
