Chapter 5

Turnabout is Fair Play

Novembre 24, 5599

 

Grizill staggered into the dining hall. Half-starved and extremely parched, he found a half goblet of mead on the table and chugged it. He coughed a couple of times, barely managing to 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 demanded weakly.

“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 to the well and get me some,” the captain demanded.

“Outside?” the human squeaked. “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 left the dining hall.

 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 Grizill 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 and stopped, staring at the bedraggled Grizill eating breakfast. He cleared his throat.

Grizill looked up, saw his king, and slowly stood. 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, made his way around the long table, 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 over the weary, dust-covered blorc.

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 human 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 . . . itconciev . . . impossible,” the king said in confusion. “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 through 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 former agent, Viperous, the harpy, had witnessed the battle, but he hadn’t known the result, as Viperous appeared to have died during the conflict.

“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 seemed 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 would ally with one of their hated enemies. “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 than to be slain pointlessly.”

“My son . . .” the king pondered ceaselessly, “with a human.” His entire body shivered in disgust. “How dare he.”

Reilyk the Red rested a reassuring hand on the king’s shoulder.

“This insult will not stand. Reilyk, we need to find my son. That’s priority number one. And we need to find him right now. I want him standing before me. He needs to explain himself. Grab someone. Anyone. Send them 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 down to within inches of his face.

“Sent someone to the Latibule Forest, I don’t care who. I presume you have a way of communicating with them? Yes?”

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

“Good. Get it done. I want that person to track my son 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 little 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 him figure out who was to blame. It didn’t.

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

Sweat beads appeared on King Gridarg’s forehead, as his brain tried to make sense out of everything he’d 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.

Reilyk the Red returned with a plate of food, but didn’t sit down, as he observed the interaction between the captain and the king.

“What in tarnation is that?” King Gridarg 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.”

King Gridarg slammed a hand down on the table. “All goblets in this land are mine. 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 the goblet 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 to 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.

With 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 long, slow 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’s 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 of your 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. He had never trusted Grizill Toefungus and hoped that the interaction he had just witnessed would drive a wedge between them.

“We’ll get right on that, sire.”

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

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

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