Chapter 5

Turnabout is Fair Play

Novembre 24, 5599

 

Grizill staggered into the dining hall. Half-starved and very parched, he found a half goblet of mead left on the table and chugged it. He coughed a couple of times, managing to barely keep it down. He grabbed a plate and filled it with eggels, thin-sliced bloar, deep-fried plotatoes, and a couple of slices of buttered toasty bread. As he sat down and started to slowly eat, a human slave approached with a pitcher of mead.

Grizill shook his head. “Water,” he weakly demanded.

“Water?” the young man questioned.

“Did I stutter?” Grizill replied, scooping a forkful of eggels into his mouth.

“We don’t, um, have any water, sir, only mead.”

“Then run out the well and get me some,” the captain demanded.

“Outside?” the human replied, squeakily. “I’m not allowed outside.”

“Go now!”

The young slave looked around, his eyes wide. He grabbed an empty pitcher and hustled over to one of the guards. He told him what Grizill wanted. The guard looked at the captain of the Black Plague, a question in his eyes. Grizill made a shooing motion with one hand, his mouth full of plotatoes. The guard shrugged and both he and the human headed outside.

 A few minutes later, the human returned with a full pitcher of cold water. The slave then proceeded to fill Grizill’s goblet. He stood and waited behind the blorc for him to drain the goblet, which he did with gusto. The human poured more water into the goblet and waited for the next refill.

King Gridarg walked in with Reilyk the Red, his advisor, and stopped, staring at the bedraggled Grizill eating breakfast. He cleared his throat.

Grizill looked up, saw his king, and slowly stood up. He bowed to the leader of the blorcs and then plopped back down on the wooden bench. He turned back to his food and shoved a slice of bloar into his mouth.

King Gridarg grunted and sat down across from the captain of the Black Plague.

Grizill glanced up, swallowed the meat, coughed once, and said, “Sire, I have returned.”

“So I see,” the king said, looking the weary dust-covered blorc over.

Reilyk the Red stared at Grizill, saying nothing.

“What of your men?” King Gridarg inquired. “I don’t see them here.”

Grizill shrugged. “And you won’t,” he replied. “They’re all dead.”

“Dead? The Black Plague killed? Impossible!”

“Alas, sire, it’s true,” Grizill replied and then took a swig of water. He wiped the moisture off of his mouth with a dusty sleeve and left a trail of smeared mud on his black lips.

“How?” the king inquired. “Humans?”

“No. Shorn.”

“Shorn?”

“Yes, your son.”

The king’s brows furrowed. “Yes, I know who Shorn is. He’s in the southern Febrile Desert hunting. As I recall, you went after the girl with the swords who was with a welcorg, possibly in the Sherran Hills. How could you have run across my son?”

Grizill slammed his fork down in anger.

Reilyk the Red reached into his sleeve and laid his hand upon his wand. His eyes never strayed from Grizill’s face.

“He was there!” Grizill shouted. “With that human girl! They fought together!”

“What? Incon . . . incociev . . . inconciev . . . impossible,” the king said, confused. “Where was he? In the Sherran Hills?”

“No, no,” Grizill shook his head, dusty grime falling off of his greasy, unwashed hair. “We tracked Shorn as he travelled across Ripplepine Forest. He headed around the perimeter of the Cayuse Plains and ended up in the Latibule Forest far to the south.”

“I don’t understand,” King Gridarg said, scratching his head. “He was supposed to be hunting. Here. In the desert.”

“It seems,” Reilyk the Red said, resting both hands on the table, “that Shorn decided to go after the swords himself.” The black mage already knew that Shorn was with the human girl, but he had kept that interesting tidbit of information to himself. His agent, Viperous, the harpy, had witnessed the battle, but he hadn’t known the result, as Viperous appears to have died.

“Yes,” Grizill agreed. “He was with that girl and she had her swords. They fought together. The two of them defeated the seven of us. They killed Xuz, Pigdung, Slaught, Furblog, Bugglug, and Bytle. When the girl used her swords, she seems to be able to call down lightning from the sky to do her bidding.”

“My son fought with the human?” the king screeched, unable to accept that any blorc with ally with one of their hated enemy. “And, she has magic too?”

“Yes, sire. They fought together, back to back. I barely escaped with my life after a mysterious beam of energy struck me in the chest. It broke my beloved scimitar. I had no weapon and decided that it was better to live and fight another day rather than being slain pointlessly.”

“My son . . .” the king muttered. “With a human.” His entire body shivered in disgust. “How dare he?”

Reilyk the Red put his hand on the king’s shoulder.

“This insult will not stand. Reilyk, we need to find my son. That is priority number one. And we need to find him right now. I want him standing before me. He needs to explain himself. Grab a harpy. Send her out to . . . Grizill, where did you see him last?” the king asked, turning to the captain.

“Latibule Forest.” Grizill scooped more eggels into his mouth.

King Gridarg grabbed Reilyk the Red by his red robe and pulled him within inches of his face.

“Sent it to the Latibule Forest. I presume you have a way of communicating with the harpy? Yes?”

Reilyk the Red nodded, his right eye twitching with fear. “I have a few ways, yes.”

“Good. Get it done. I want that harpy to track him down. Get him back here in front of me. He needs to answer for this betrayal.”

“I’ll get on it as soon as I eat breakfast. It won’t take me long.” The black mage stood up and headed for the kitchen.

“We’ll see what he has to say for himself. My own son, with a human. I just can’t believe it. Where did I fail him? Blast him! It was probably that pal of his, that stinky green goblin, Stench. Oh, he’s gonna die for this. Yes, it couldn’t have been Shorn. It was the goblin. Oh, yes, yes. That’s it. Hmm . . . or was it my son? Yes. No. Yes. No. Wait, maybe it was the goblin! Oh, this kind of thinking is really hard.” He pounded his fists against his head, hoping it would help his figure out who was to blame.

Grizill Toefungus focused on reinvigorating his body with food and water, ignore the king’s rambling.

Sweat beads appeared on King Gridarg’s face, as his brain tried to make something of everything he learned. He was not much of a thinker, so a task like this was very taxing for him. He wiped the sweat off of his forehead and suddenly realized how thirsty he was. He reached across the table and grabbed Grizill’s goblet. He took a big swig and then his face froze. He spit the liquid all over Grizill.

“What in tarnation is that?” he yelled.

“Water,” Grizill replied, wiping off his face and then taking a bite of soggy toasty bread.

“Water?” the king yelled. “Water? Are you trying to kill me?”

“It was my goblet, sire, not yours.”

“All goblets are mine in this land. And you had better have mead in it, if you want to live,” King Gridarg seethed, smashing the goblet flat on the table.

Reilyk the Red signaled to a nearby slave. “Quickly, mead for your king.”

The human slave nodded, turned around, and grabbed a somewhat clean goblet. With his back to the dining table, he held it up to his chest, glanced left and right, and then spit in it. He grabbed a pitcher of mead and filled the goblet to the top. He hurried over the blorc king and placed it on the table, the pitcher in his other hand.

King Gridarg glared at the human and then chugged the entire goblet, slamming it back on top of the table. “More,” he demanded.

A slight smile on his lips, the human refilled the blorc king’s goblet.

Grizill signaled to the human slave behind him to leave the pitcher of water with him. The young man shakily placed the pitcher on the table and backed up. Grizill lifted the pitcher to his mouth and took a drink, returning the pitcher to the table.

The king eyed him suspiciously. “What’s that?”

“A pitcher,” Grizill replied, keeping his hand on the handle. When the king started to reach for it, Grizill lifted it to his lips once again and took a slow, long drink. When he returned it to the table, he continued to clench the handle.

The king’s eyes flickered back and forth between Grizill’s face and the pitcher. As he started to raise his hand again, Grizill piped in, “It’s more water, sire. While I crossed the land of Chelt, which took over a week, I ran out of water on my return home. Besides, this isn’t a goblet, as you just mentioned. And there is a slave behind you with more mead. I need this water.”

The king squinted his eyes as he stared at Grizill. A plan began to form in his tiny and demented mind. A crooked smile appeared on his lips as he leaned back in his chair, and said, “You need to replenish the Black Plague. I need my full set of twelve guards. Have two men start training some of the castle guards to join their ranks.”

Grizill wiped up the eggel yoke on his plate with his last piece of toasty bread and popped it in his mouth. He swallowed it and took another drink of water.

Reilyk the Red sat down with his morning meal and quietly observed the conversation between his king and the captain of the Black Plague. He had never trusted Grizill Toefungus and hoped that the interaction he had just witnessed while walking back to the table would drive a wedge between them.

“We’ll get right on that, Sire.”

The king waived a hand in the air nonchalantly. “Oh, that’s no job for you. I want to you leave immediately for the Qarrug Guk with four of your men. I need you check on the war boats and the guard posts that are being built. Then I have a special task for you.”

Grizill groaned. It seems he wouldn’t even get one night of sleep in his bed.

“Yes, sire,” he replied, tiredly. “What would you like for me to do?”