9

The Transition of Power

Cricket picked up the flask of liquid from Damien's desk.

"It's a simple potion of healing," Oydd said. "Judging by Damien's notes. But he still had no idea what enchantment is on this ring." The rudra sorted through a small pile of parchments.

"I'm surprised we haven't met any resistance," Cricket said thoughtfully.

"By whom? The rats who love you, or the lizardmen who hated Damien?"

"Still..." Cricket sat the flask back down.

"I find it little surprise. Licephus basically expressed his indifference to Damien's removal."

"You discussed this with the vampire?"

"Of course. I'm no fool. He said he would even notify the Left Hand if we were successful. You didn’t consider that? What did you think would happen?"

"What is he?" Cricket asked absently.

"Who?"

"Licephus," Cricket answered.

"Ah. I believe he was an elf in... a former life."

"Why would he choose to live down here? He's no slave."

The rudra considered the question. "Vampirism is a disease. Those on the surface will not accept those who have been cursed by it."

"Not even one of their own?"

"Especially not one of their own," Oydd added sadly. "Also, I believe the sun is unpleasant to vampires. The same it would be to you or me. And, stranger still," the rudra continued, "he has some esteem for the dhampiri, perhaps even a tenderness. He mourns their decline."

Jeshu stooped to enter Damien's office. Once past the door, he still had to stay hunched slightly in the low-ceilinged room. "The ratlings are awaiting orders, but are nervous to approach you."

"Hmph! I should imagine. The lizards on the other hand have been harassing me all morning. They don't like to sit still. But it will take time for me to make sense of these notes."

"Let's give them something to do," Cricket suggested.

"Like what?"

"I can organize some drills. Or we could make something up, like asking them to form squads and choose leaders."

Oydd laughed. "That would undoubtedly result in many deaths. I prefer your training idea."

The druid eyed the potion on the table. "Who is in charge of requisitions now?"

"I have been for some time," Oydd answered. "If you want the potion, you can have it."

Jeshu smiled, grabbing the flask. "In a way I feel like I earned it. As a token for our efforts to protect Azandes."

"Protect Azandes?" Oydd scoffed. "Azandes has been dead for over a hundred years. He was a baron and the bishop in charge of this entire district before the church splintered. The cathedral is only named for him."

Cricket's antennae drooped sheepishly.

"I told you to verify any information you receive from the insect," Oydd continued.

"Hey! I said he was a bishop or a baron, so I was right on two counts."

"You were right on one count, because you said or."

Cricket glowered at the rudra's assessment.

"Anything else important you've discussed," Oydd asked dryly.

Jeshu answered. "I have been wanting to talk to you about Bale."

"Ah! That is precisely why I sent for you," Oydd said excitedly. "Our only standing order, from Licephus, is to investigate the worshippers of Bale."

"What killed all of those ratlings?" Cricket asked.

"An assassin named Jade."

"A single assassin?" Cricket's antennae perked back up.

"Yes."

"I think going after him should be a priority."

"He is completely unrelated." The rudra waved Cricket off. "A waste of our time."

"Who is Bale?" Jeshu interrupted.

"Bale the Betrayer is the most prominent god of the underworld, beyond Serinyes. He has many worshippers."

"Among the dhampiri?" Jeshu asked.

"No, that would be heresy," Oydd said. "A dhampir who worships a god other than Serinyes would be killed—publicly and in an excruciating manner. He is mostly worshiped by slaves. The dhampiri detest him for betraying Serinyes while in her court. That is how he earned his title."

"Oh," Cricket chimed in. "Well that's not as bad as I thought. Nothing wrong with pissing off the dhampiri."

"Why are we tasked with investigating them?" Jeshu asked.

"Licephus believes a cult of Bale extremists has infiltrated the Right Hand. I'm not sure if you're aware," Oydd added, looking to the druid, "but the Right Hand is not a single individual, like the Left Hand of the King. It is an organization. Licephus wanted to purge the lot of them, but I suggested we investigate the cultists first. These extreme worshippers are known for sacrificing body parts in exchange for favor with their god."

"Yes. Licephus seemed interested in their malformities." Jeshu nodded to himself.

"They are not wholly insane. Bale does seem to grant significant power to those who sacrifice to him. That dhampir summoner was unusually strong."

"And the necromancer in the catacombs," Cricket added.

Oydd shook his head. "Unrelated again. He was not missing any limbs." Oydd froze suddenly with a look back toward the lab. "Unless..."

"I saw a trollblood in the lab," Jeshu pushed.

Oydd stroked his white tentacles. "The same. That is, the same one you fought. I had him brought here when I heard about the fight. I have been eager to do some tests on a trollblood. But another time. Cricket?"

"Yes?"

"Can you arrange those drills you mentioned? I want to keep everyone as busy as possible during the... transition of power."

"I'm looking forward to it." Cricket cracked his knuckles.

"Jeshu, perhaps you should stay behind and we can discuss more political matters.

"Hmm..." Jeshu said. "Certainly."

"Anything else?"

Cricket shook his head.

"Then we'll adjourn for now."

*****

On his way to the training grounds, Cricket saw a train of carts unloading near the stable with new recruits. Slaves, Cricket reminded himself. His antennae drooped at the thought. A thought he had often pushed to the back of his mind.. He was surprised not everyone enjoyed combat training, and it had caused some awkward moments in the past.

"Rule number one," Cricket said to himself. "Don't be like Damien." While wasn’t yet in a position to let them go, he could at least treat them well, and maybe even prepare them to fight back against their masters if the opportunity arose.

He approached the foreman near the front of the train—a white, larvae-like worm twice his height, attempting to mark off names from a scroll with his stubby arms.

"Where's this lot from?" Cricket asked.

"Mostly the surface," the worm answered in a frothing accent. He looked Cricket up and down with a grimace. "You in charge 'ere?"

"Uh... yes." Cricket answered.

The worm looked skeptical seeing Cricket's hesitation. "There's a few is goblins, and a few is lizardfolk. But mostly the surface."

"Do you ever bring elves?" Cricket asked in curiosity, remembering Licephus' kin.

"Aae," The worm answered and Cricket took this as a yes. "Though they don't do so well in the dark. But sometimes they're kept as consorts and concubines. A favorite of the dhampiri." The worm forced a disgusting smile.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Cricket surveyed the newcomers. Goblins would likely see an improvement in their living conditions here. Lizardmen would acclimate quickly to the routine. But any surface dwellers were in for a shock. Cricket peered inside the carts and saw a few fair faces of varying ages with pointed ears that reminded him of Licephus.

Despite the foreman's claim that most of his prisoners were from the surface, only two surface-dwellers were dropped off at the Warrens before the carts continued on. An old, greying dryad, with no leaves on his small branches, and what could have been his daughter or granddaughter. The child breathed heavily, her eyes wide, and the older dyad watched her mournfully, helplessly.

Cricket approached them. "What are your names?"

The old man spoke. "I am Zarachi, and this is my niece Yentl." He answered defiantly.

"I'm a slave like you," Cricket assured him. "I'm not your enemy."

Zarachi's visage softened noticeably. His hands shook.

"What's your trade?"

"Ferrier," the dryad replied.

Cricket crossed his feelers. "I don't think we have that down here."

"He worked with horses," the child responded.

"Don't have those either. Say you're a cook."

"I can't cook," the man answered.

"You won't be worse than our chef. But they might keep you two together if they think you can make a good meal. Otherwise, women are usually sent to a separate barracks and you might not see each other again. Besides," Cricket added, "they'll expect a cook to struggle with the different foods down here, so it won't be suspicious."

The old man seemed to consider this advice, but was herded away before he could respond.

*****

Oydd opened the door to the laboratory—his laboratory—and followed the narrow tunnels down to the morgue as he fished a small glass orb from the recesses of his robes. The rudra hovered over the body of the trollblood for a moment then spoke a word of magic and his hand vanished.

Oydd held the orb of invisibility over the cadaver and the flesh disappeared. He adjusted the distance until only the bones rematerialized, having learned the orb had a greater effect on soft tissue.

The rudra ran the orb up and down one arm and then the other, before checking the neck and ribs. Though the rolls of fat on the troll's chest were too dense to see through in some areas, he felt quite certain the skeleton was intact. He ran the orb around the skull, down one leg and then down the other. The ring finger Cricket had removed had almost entirely reformed, a credit to the regenerative nature of troll's blood, even after death.

But what interested him more was new bone growth in the left tibia and fibula. The bone appeared to have been surgically cut below the knee and then had regrown. The marks were subtle, but he could check the age of the bones against the rest of the skeleton to test his hypothesis.

You will report. Oydd heard the Left Hand's words in his mind crisply from a distance and huffed in annoyance.

Mouseling, Oydd thought quietly and the small ratling jumped soundlessly from the shadows onto the examination table.

"I need a sample of this bone. Place a small piece in a petri dish and set it at my station."

Patches grabbed a scalpel, which looked oddly large in her tiny hands and crawled, barefoot, onto the troll's legs.

Oydd rushed away, without a second glance at the mouseling, speaking another word of magic as he departed. The orb in his hand quieted, and his hand slowly rematerialized.

The rudra stowed the orb inside his robes and hurried to the antechamber where the Left Hand usually met Damien. Agena stood guard outside the room, and Oydd avoided looking the lizardman in the eyes as he passed.

A black, tentacled mass hovered in the air before its thralls in an otherwise empty room. It was larger than Oydd remembered—taller than the rudra, even if it weren't floating in the air.

The rudra bowed and was immediately met by a powerful, malevolent force that whipped the robes about his feet. The grey humanoid thralls readied their halberds, then froze like statues, waiting, the rudra knew, on a command from the Left Hand.

Despite the uneasy feeling in his gut, the Left Hand spoke softly, inquisitively. You are master now?

I am, Oydd thought. The force dimmed and his robes settled to the polished floor. He sensed the being smile, as it were, at his attempt to communicate telepathically. Not so much a feeling of amusement, but of gratification.

Oydd remained bowed.

You have new orders. The creature began to relay information in concepts and images, rather than words, conveying a location, a clear objective, the relative urgency and more in an instant. When it saw that the rudra could keep up, it increased both the speed and detail, so that the exchange took only a few seconds.

I understand, Oydd replied, thinking the words, unable to break his thoughts down to refined concepts.

The Left Hand expressed one final, clear thought. Bring the dragon a tribute.

*****

The azaeri's eye made several small adjustments, locking onto his target. Ty'lek paused, motionless, then released the string and his arrow whizzed through the air striking the side of a mushroom stalk.

"You're left-handed," Cricket stated flatly.

Ty'lek lowered his bow and regarded the insect quizzically.

"I noticed earlier when you drew that hunting knife to defend yourself. I bet your instructor was right-handed." Cricket stepped closer to adjust the archer's grip. "So the bow would go this way..."

Ty'lek resisted not once but twice and finally Cricket pried the wood from his fingers.

"Like this."

The azaeri flicked his tongue in annoyance.

"So you'll draw with this hand. Your feet go here. You had this wrong earlier too."

The azaeri hissed.

"You have to line up your hips and your torso this way," Cricket explained, then forced the archer to attempt a shot against his protests.

The arrow missed the target completely, and the azaeri gave Cricket a smug look.

"Draw again."

Ty'lek drew a second arrow, and Cricket took a step away then back in to adjust his elbow. "Pull this one straight from the target. The other bends a little this way." The long feathers on the azaeri's forearms tickled Cricket's feelers and he turned away to sneeze.

The archer fired once more and struck the mushroom stalk much closer to center.

Cricket moved along to oversee the lizardmen's training. Agena demonstrated some basic stabs and swings of the spear to a small group, but the new arrivals were much smaller and struggled to match his prowess, often bouncing back when they stabbed at the practice dummies.

Cricket interrupted and borrowed a spear from one of the recruits. "Place one hand here, and the other here. You want a low stance, especially when you thrust." He took a deep sideways step, extending the spear through the air to the side of the target.

Then he addressed Agena. "They aren't as heavy as you. A wide stance helps reduce the backlash."

Cricket lifted the spear at an angle with the back end over his head. "Block here. Turn sideways so you're a smaller target. Thrust and then pull back to here. If your thrust gets knocked aside, it takes too much effort to pull it back straight. Instead, retract first, back to the blocking position."

Cricket saw Jeshu waiting at the side of his vision and excused himself, tossing the spear back to the recruit.

However, on his way past Ty'lek, he noticed the archer had switched back to his right hand. Cricket yanked the bow from him and placed it in his left hand again. "You shoot ten left for every one I see you do right."

He smiled as he approached the dryad.

Jeshu held the ogre's massive mace on his shoulder. "You ready?"

"Heh-heh..." Cricket linked his fingers. He turned the palms out, popping his knuckles, then repeated with his smaller arms. "More than ready."

Jeshu dropped the mace at his feet with a whump!

"You're first," Cricket said.

"Very well." Jeshu grabbed the mace with both hands then lifted it, trembling, above his head. He let the mace fall again, then stepped back.

"All right..." Cricket grabbed the mace eagerly then hefted the mace, with a slight grunt but much faster than the dryad. He dropped it.

"But you're using four arms!" Jeshu argued, unbecoming of the quiet druid.

"Very well." Cricket grabbed the mace with only his two upper arms and hefted it again, with about the same ease. "But I should be able to use all four. The question was who is stronger. If you were in a running contest with a spider, you wouldn't complain that it had more legs."

Jeshu cleared his throat and composed himself. "Then why was I able to restrain the ratling when you could not?"

"Partly because you're heavier, I think. But also, I told you I couldn't lift as much with the crack in my shoulder." He said as an afterthought, "and I was really hungry and had just worked out."

"I thought you were just making excuses," the dryad admitted, crestfallen. He knotted his brows and reflected. "Let's see who can throw it further."

*****

When Cricket first convinced Oydd to let Patches sleep in the morgue, she simply curled up in a corner of the floor beneath the bodies. It wasn't safe for her to sleep in the commons or even on one of the bunks.

After a week in the morgue, she tired of sleeping in the open, preferring cramped places, and she began to burrow into the back wall. She found a place where the tile had begun to fall away from the moisture of the soil behind it. The mud was wet and soft and easy for her to remove, given enough time.

She carried batches of mud to the entryway, depositing small amounts in the cracks of the walls to hide her digging. At first she dropped some dirt in the ogre's tank, but Oydd noticed it in the morning, which perplexed the rudra, and Patches resorted to hiding the dirt from her digs in less conspicuous places.

After two nights, she hit dry, solid rock, but her tunnel was large enough for her to stretch her feet and small enough to keep Kaser out.

The ghoul's lack of motion did little to mitigate his presence, and the undead goblin often made his way into her dreams, feverishly digging to reach her. At first, she met every sound from the morgue with suspicion, but now the steady drip from the distillation flasks, the burble of fermenting fluids, or even the occasional breathing from the trollblood's corpse seldom interrupted her sleep.

The mouseling laid out her collections in the back of her hole. Four twigs from the surface, a pawful of dried flowers, an eel spine, Oydd's favorite scalpel, and the obsidian ring she had stolen from his office in the commons.

*****

Jeshu stood next to Cricket in Oydd's office with his arms crossed and a very sullen look on his rigid, wooden face. Cricket hid a smile as the rudra spoke.

"Is something funny?" Oydd asked, and the two shook their heads in unison.

"These orders come directly from the Left Hand of the king. And he has asked that I oversee the mission along with Cricket. He intends to run the Warrens in our absence. I assume to assess our suitability to replace Damien."

"And where are we going?" Cricket asked.

"To the swamps. We are to meet a dragon named Yunaba to investigate a disturbance likely linked to the cultists."

"Oh, the swamps," Cricket said excitedly, looking to Jeshu. "It's actually a bit further down, but the ceiling is so high there are holes where light from the surface will reach us."

The druid stopped sulking and looked up. "Are you sure?"

"I've only seen it from a distance" He turned to Oydd.

"Yes, we'll pass by the Craters. They will be nearly a mile above us, but you may see light. Also," Oydd continued, "we are to prepare a suitable tribute for the dragon."

"Like food," Cricket asked.

"No, not like food. Dragons have more refined tastes. Perhaps something silver or ceremonial."

"For a swamp dragon?" Cricket protested. "I don't know..."

"Well I do. I'll research something appropriate. In the meantime, leave someone in charge of training for the next few days and get some sleep. Which reminds me." Oydd switched to a forced, diplomatic tone. "I had intended to take over Damien's private quarters..."

"I don't want them, if that's what you mean," Cricket replied. "I like open space."

Oydd nodded in satisfaction. "Very well, I'll make the necessary arrangements. I'll send for everyone in the morning."

Cricket turned back before leaving. "Oh, Ty'lek needs to train before he goes on any new missions. At least a week, I think."

"That's fine. We need to meet with Licephus again before we decide our course of action. Until then we have few assignments to give."

With that Cricket headed down the corridor to the armory to see Bird about his commissions.