In the Company of Ogres (5 page)
The Red Woman reached her cave with some effort. The mouth was deceptively small, and a bend in the tunnel gave the impression of shallowness. But the cavern was exceptionally large, and she needed all the space for her various duties. It would’ve been too much for her to handle if she hadn’t taken to drafting the dead. Dozens of zombies milled about their appointed tasks. Some were nearly indistinguishable from the living, but most were obviously deceased. One lurched to her side and took her cloak. Another handed her a glass of brandy. A drowned maggot floated in the beverage, but she’d grown accustomed to the sight. One couldn’t work with walking corpses day in and day out without a strong stomach, and she’d developed a taste for maggots and worms and flies out of convenience. She sipped down the brandy and tucked the white speck under her tongue with a pleased smile.
She went to her cauldron and checked the corpse stirring the brew. Then she reviewed the jeweler’s progress in sorting precious stones. Then she inspected the shroud weaver’s latest work before checking the smithy’s newest batch of swords, not one of which was worthy of the slightest enchantment. So many things to do, she mused. But she limped her way over to a stool and had a seat, resting her staff against her shoulder. Her raven was right about the climb, but none of the other caverns had the correct atmosphere.
A zombie maiden stopped sweeping. In life, the maid had been pleasant-looking, if not exceptionally beautiful. Now her skin hung from her bones, unliving proof that while perhaps one could never be too rich, one could certainly be too thin. “Did you do it?”
The sorceress nodded.
“He dies a lot, doesn’t he?”
The sorceress nodded again.
“He must be very clumsy,” said the maiden.
The raven cackled. “He’s a buffoon.”
“Death doesn’t favor idiots,” said the Red Woman. “She simply favors Ned. Oblivion doesn’t surrender her prizes easily, and she never forgets those held, however briefly, in her loving embrace.”
“She doesn’t seem to care about reclaiming me,” said the maiden, her sallow skin and yellowish eyes drooping.
“That’s because you’re only half alive. Death is far too busy to be concerned with the trivialities of whether your corpse continues to walk about.”
“Let’s hope he can go a while longer before expiring again,” said the raven.
She smiled. Though her caretaking of Ned was her greatest duty, these journeys still consumed much of her valuable time, and she hoped Ned would stave off his next demise by at least a month or two.
The zombie maiden sniffed the air. Had her nose not fallen off long ago, her nostrils would have flared. “Do you smell that? Is that me?”
“I think it’s me,” said a gooey corpse mixing potions.
A dead knight raised his helmet visor. “Well, it’s not me.” He was a fresh addition to her staff. He was still in denial, though a spear clearly pierced his chest.
The legless torso of a deceased jeweler paused in his task of sorting gems. “It’s not me. That’s for sure. My flesh is almost all gone.”
The rest of the zombies grumbled. When all the flesh fell from the bone, a zombie’s conscription ended. A small scrap of skin clung to the jeweler’s elbow, and several flies busily worked at it. His freedom was soon at hand, and his fellow drafted dead couldn’t help but resent him. The Red Woman disliked this as well. She’d have to find another jeweler soon, yet another task she didn’t have time for.
“Then it has to be me,” said the maiden.
“No, it’s me,” disagreed the cauldron stirrer.
The raven cawed loudly. “Oh, for the heavens’ sake, it’s all of you, you decaying idiots!”
The zombies hung their heads and muttered.
“Not me,” grunted the knight. He subtly raised his arm and sniffed himself, but his creaky, rusting armor drew attention to the maneuver.
The Red Woman sipped her brandy. Frowning, she shot the evil eye at some buzzing flies. They perished, falling into her glass. She took another drink and found this more to her liking.
The mountain rumbled, and she sensed an impending arrival.
The wizard materialized slowly with a great deal of pomp. He’d always been more concerned with the form of the magic than the function. A black tower of smoke billowed in the center of the cavern. Phantom women, absurdly proportioned with impossibly ample bosoms and preposterously thin waists and welcoming hips and long lithesome limbs, spun around in the air, droning in a demonic chant.
“Belok, Belok, Belok, Belok, Belok ...”
One of the phantoms hovered before the Red Woman. The ghost’s features peeled away to reveal a shining green skull. Her flowing hair turned to scorpions. Her gown fell to tatters. “Belok has come to call upon you. May the gods grant you mercy, for he certainly shall not.” The phantom’s appearance returned to her pretty state.
The smoke sank back into the ground, and a tall, thin figure stood in its place. His eyes were two golden pearls, his tunic a shimmering silver. He literally glowed with power. But his most striking features were a gray duckbill, a dome of short brown fur spreading from the top of his head to just below his eyes, and webbed, clawed fingertips.
The Red Woman was unpleasantly surprised to see him. She rarely entertained visitors, and this was one she could do without.
“Hello, Belok. Care for some brandy?”
The singing phantoms settled around the wizard’s shoulders. They moaned musically.
With eyes that were still as sharp as in her youth, she spied a new hair sprout on the wizard’s chin. The mountain godling brimmed with magic, and even merely breathing the enchanted air here brought on Belok’s accursed allergies.
He reached into his tunic and held up a gleaming diamond. “By this shard of the Splendid Orb of Truth, I compel you, witch! May you speak only with ultimate veracity!”
“Veracity, veracity!” sang his phantom paramours in melodious glee.
Belok’s golden eyes gleamed. His aura drew all the light to it, thus shining brighter and darkening the cavern at the same time. The gem clutched in his hand bathed the Red Woman in a pure white beam.
“Speak, witch!” shouted Belok. “I command you, speak!”
“Speak, speak, speak,” chanted the chorus.
The Red Woman supposed a wizard allergic to magic shouldn’t make such a production of it. But for all his power, Belok had never been particularly bright. She sat down again and waited for him to finish. It went on for another minute, although she stopped paying attention to the details. By the end, the fur on Belok’s face had advanced its march to cover another fourth of an inch.
“Where is he?” demanded the wizard.
It took a moment for her to realize he was done with his spell. She’d nearly drifted off to sleep.
“Answer unclear,” she replied. “Try again.”
She thought he snarled. It was hard to read such expressions on the wizard’s accursed bill. “But I wield a Shard of Truth. You can’t keep a secret from me.”
“You overestimate yourself, Belok. And your stone.” She hobbled over to his side and plucked the diamond from his hand. “May I?”
He nodded curtly.
She tossed the stone to her jeweler, who examined it for a moment. “This isn’t a Shard of Truth. It’s just a diamond. And a poor quality one at that.”
“You must be mistaken,” said Belok. “I bought the stone from an alchemist in Minetown, and he assured me—”
“He bilked you,” replied the jeweler.
“I am Belok. I am the greatest wizard in all the lands. I cannot be bilked.” His phantoms shrieked mournfully at the very notion.
The Red Woman took the stone from the zombie and gave it back to the wizard. “Fine. Just take your worthless shard and leave me be. I don’t know why we keep having to go through this. Orb of Truth or not, you haven’t the strength to compel me. These visits of yours change nothing. Nothing except you.”
“Damn you, witch. I should rip out your hollow soul and feed it to my minions.”
The phantoms licked their lips.
“Spare me your threats. I’m every bit as powerful as you. Certainly my defeat is a possibility should we duel, but I would not fall easily, and the victory would cost you dearly, wouldn’t it?” She leaned on her staff. “Have you grown that tail yet?”
He frowned. “A little one.”
“Ah, well, I see the transformation is coming along smoothly then. You know, you needn’t ever worry about it if you’d stop using magic.”
“I am Belok! I am magic in the flesh! Vengeance is mine!” His phantoms howled terribly, shaking loose a few of the smaller stalactites. They crashed to the ground, shattering. The zombie maiden sighed while sweeping the pieces into a pile.
“Be off on your vengeance then, but I can’t help you. I can only offer my sympathies toward your plight.” In truth, the Red Woman had absolutely none. He’d earned his curse, and she considered it mercifully short of the punishment he deserved. But there was some irony in it, she supposed. For Belok could’ve lived a perfectly peaceful life had he the wisdom to put aside his magic. Something he could never do. The punishment was only the form of his undoing, while his own mad obsession with arcane power was the true cause. In that way, the curse was quite poetic.
“Shall we continue this discussion?” the Red Woman asked. “I haven’t the time to spare, and neither, I suspect, do you.”
“You can’t hide him forever.”
“And neither can you stave off your transformation forever. Not so long as you insist on casting spells that will not work and visiting enchanted mountains.”
“I’ll be back.” He snapped his duckbill. “And next time, you’ll tell me what I want to know.”
His exit wasn’t the presentation of his entrance. It never was after one of these unsuccessful visits. He and his phantoms simply vanished.
“I thought he’d never leave,” said the raven.
A fly nibbled away the last particle of flesh on the jeweler’s elbow. The skeleton chuckled, falling into an inanimate heap. The rest of the workers glared enviously at the pile of bones.
“You’ll be dead evermore soon enough.” The Red Woman smacked the sweeping maiden lightly on the backside. “Now get back to work.”
The sorceress eyed the jeweler’s remains and shook her head with a sigh.
Five
CONSCIOUSNESS ATTACKED NED like a thundering beast. Given a choice, he’d have stayed asleep. Forever. It was the next best thing to being dead. But he didn’t have choices. He just had things he had to do, and waking up was one of those things.
His brain throbbed, pushing against the cage of his skull. He thought for sure it must’ve been oozing out of his empty socket. His left arm was stiff and unyielding. Any attempt to move it met only with a terrible ache, so he let it lie. Blood crusted under his nostrils. All these he expected, but there was something new: he tasted fish.
He hated fish. Even drunk on doom stout, he couldn’t imagine willingly putting it to his mouth. He ran his tongue across his lips. It was fish all right. Salty, not horribly fishy tasting, but indisputably fish.
He smacked audibly and moved the pillow from atop his head. Furious light flooded in, and he put the pillow back with a groan.
“Good morning, sir,” Miriam purred, “or should I say, good afternoon?” Her silken voice stirred those animal lusts, but his hangover and the peril of daylight kept him from responding.
He was too achy to smile, but he remembered now. A vague recollection of a night spent with her in his arms. It’d been magic. At least, he thought it’d been magic. The stout blurred the details. Still, he’d gotten laid. That counted for something. Maybe Ogre Company wouldn’t be so bad at all.
Something scaly slipped between the covers to touch his shoulder. He pulled away.
“I have to get going, sir,” said Miriam. “Kiss before I’m off?”
Eye closed, he lifted the pillow and puckered. Soft, cool lips met his. They tasted like fish. She tasted like fish. Reflexes kicked in, and he tumbled out of bed. For a minute, he struggled against the covers entangling him and the burning heat of daylight. When his vision cleared, he glimpsed a creature, a woman covered in golden scales, standing over him. She spoke with Miriam’s voice.
“I guess this means the honeymoon is over, sir.”
Ned covered his eye. “How drunk was I?”
“Very drunk, sir. But that really doesn’t have much to do with it. I tend to appear to all men as the woman of their innermost desire. Hazard of being a siren.”
He recalled how she’d looked last night. Pretty, yes, but nothing supernaturally appealing.
“Think about it,” she said. “Is there anyone you’ve ever desired who you couldn’t have?”
He didn’t feel like running through the list right now. It didn’t matter. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d left a tavern with a beautiful girl and woke up to a woman with webbed toes. He swore this time it’d be the last. Although he’d sworn that the last time, so he couldn’t pretend the promise counted for much.
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