Chapter 11

Gorren is in the leader’s tent, a great big structure of hide stretched among a number of thick log poles. The door is held open with a leather tie, so I peek my head in, hoping he won’t be offended at my unannounced arrival.

“Corporal!” Gorren’s booming voice takes me by surprise. He approaches me with three long strides and slaps me heavily on the shoulder. “I’m glad you finally stopped by. I didn’t want to interrupt you and your mate, but I’m in need of your assistance.”

I blink. “Mine?”

“Of course!” He leads me into the tent, where two other orcs are gathered around a big map, drawn on leather. “You know so much that would be useful to us.”

I have to be careful about what I reveal to him. Putting the city guard in danger is out of the question, but I need to give him just enough to make me a part of his plans.

“I’m not sure what I can offer,” I hedge.

But Gorren just grins. “Don’t play coy. As one of the former city guard, you’re a valuable asset.” He taps on the map. “We are looking for train schedules, guard rotations, anything you know that would be helpful in coordinating an attack.”

Shit. I do know the answer to a lot of his questions, because I came on one of those trains myself from my barren desert, and the guard rotation is burned into my memory. I worked night shifts, and dreaded every time the sun went down.

Gorren surveys me as I hesitate, his thick eyebrows lowering. “Perhaps you need some persuasion.”

That doesn’t sound good. What is this orc willing to do to get what he wants?

Gorren laughs at my expression. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not that.” He stoops down and fishes around for something under the table. The other two orcs in the room stand up and back away, and I wonder if I should, too.

At last, Gorren brings something out. It’s a clay jar, which he sets down on top of the map.

“Come on, corporal,” he urges. “Come look.”

When he opens the lid, radiant purple light seeps out of the gaps, as if starlight has been trapped inside it. He sets the lid aside, revealing the pot is full of some sort of glowing liquid. I’m so astonished that I say the first thing that comes to mind.

“What the hell is that?”

Gorren chuckles and swishes the pot, causing the mixture inside to slosh about. The other two orcs tense as if he has a stick of dynamite in his hand. “Magic.”

The word doesn’t make sense to me. Sometimes magic features in children’s stories, where once upon a time, trollkin like us could wield it, until the world changed and moved on. Now it’s a figment of our imaginations, a power beyond what the mortal realm can handle.

I laugh. I can’t help it. It comes out of me in a burst, and Gorren frowns.

“Sorry,” I say, rubbing my stump of a tusk. “It’s just ridiculous. Magic.”

With a stern face, Gorren sets the pot on the table. “This is quite serious, corporal. This is why we left our own true home deeper in the mountains and came here. And it’s the reason you should help us.”

Instead of replying, I wait for him to explain himself.

“Everything we do is for the preservation of magic,” he continues, “and to prevent those who shouldn’t have it from getting their hands on it.”

He dips one hand into the pot, and comes out with a few droplets of the purple liquid sticking to his finger. Holding it up, he closes his eyes and speaks: “Give me gold.”

I chuckle. “Sorry, I don’t have any.”

But Gorren shakes his head. I wait and watch as the liquid… changes. He rolls it down into his palm and there, it hardens into a ball of what is certainly gold.

I simply stand there, staring, unsure of what I’ve just seen. He juggles it from one hand to the other, then offers it to me. I take the tiny nugget and examine it, tapping one side with my fingernail.

“Real gold,” I mutter. This can’t be right. No, it’s wrong—very wrong. I hand the gold back to him as if it’s dirty.

Gorren chuckles as he takes the nugget back. “You see the danger?” he says, dropping it on the table. “Anything you want, it will become that. Anything you wish, it will happen. In the wrong hands, it could do incredible damage.” He tucks his arms behind his back and returns to the map, ushering me over to look.

I still don’t believe it’s real, despite just seeing it with my own eyes.

“Here,” he says, tapping a familiar spot on the parchment. His finger is near Morgenzan, inside the mountain.

I nod. “The mine.”

“It’s not the mine that’s important to me.” He crouches down to return the pot to its hidden place under the table. “I care about what’s underneath. Magic. It’s just waiting for the Grand Chieftain to discover it should he dig too deeply.” A very dangerous look comes over Gorren’s face. “Do you have any idea what would happen if your imperious leader found this?”

Trollkin sent in the hundreds, the thousands, to dig it out. Rooms overflowing with gold. And then war. War between trollkin and humans would begin again, and go on endlessly until he destroyed humankind completely. We’re only at a truce now because war is too expensive.

“He would have everything he wants,” I say, more to myself than to Gorren.

“This is why we’ve been trying to stop them.” The big orc replaces the lid on the pot and taps his map. “If they reach the well of magic underneath the mountain, then the world as we know it is over.”

I frown. “There has to be a catch. This stuff isn’t really magic. There’s no such thing, and if there were, it wouldn’t come without a catch.”

“You’re no fool, corporal.” A hint of a grin twists his big lips, curling his tusks. “Magic has its limits. There is also one rather unfortunate side-effect to those who touch it.”

I glance down at my hand, where I just held gold in my palm. “And what’s that?” I ask, an uneasiness crawling up my spine.

Gorren cocks his head. “Well, it drives you mad.”

“Huh?” I can’t have heard him right. “What do you mean by mad?”

“My people are not the only ones to discover the existence of magic,” Gorren says solemnly. His yellow eyes rise to mine, and there’s a ferocity there that almost makes me shrink back. “You know of wild trolls of the jungle, don’t you?”

There have always been stories about the wild trolls who make their homes near the trollkin city of Kalishagg—specifically their hunters, who will kill you, strip the flesh from your bones, and probably eat it afterwards.

Is that why they are the way they are? Because of magic?

“But you touched it,” I murmur. And so did I.

At this observation, though, Gorren’s smile grows wider. “Yes. Except that I have a human mate, you see.” He chuckles. “A mighty fine one, at that. Owner of my heart and future mother of my whelps.”

“And what does that have to do with anything?” I ask.

“It’s only because of Vavi that I can wield this great power without risk.” He tucks his hands behind his back and walks around the table. “It’s because of her that I can be exposed to it and not lose my mind. Which is also the only reason I would ever permit you in here with it, corporal. Exposure to raw magic will drive a trollkin to insanity.”

I touched the gold with my bare hand, and I have no such protection. Well, none greater than a lie, anyway.

Fuck. Who knows how long I have before the madness sets in.

“How do you know this?” I ask. “Humans and trollkin, mating, it’s…” I stop myself. Do I really want to say that it’s wrong? I don’t think Gorren would appreciate hearing that.

“It was written!” The big orc puffs out his chest. “My people have been the guardians of these mountains for centuries. Deep in the rock there are caves where magic flows, and on these walls, our ancestors left behind messages for us.”

One of the other two orcs in the room rises to his feet. “Imprinting between humans and trollkin is as old as history, corporal,” he says to me with an impressive importance. “But war turns us against one another. We kill each other when we could be working together.”

I almost roll my eyes. There is no great conspiracy behind why the Grand Chieftain and the human king send their soldiers into battle. It’s greed, through and through. More land, more territory, more and more and more until the whole world is drained dry. Our only saving grace is the recent truce, but who knows how fragile that is?

The orcess who still remains sitting hums thoughtfully. “I don’t need some words written on rock to tell me what my soul knows,” she says, raising her eyes to mine. They are sharp, as if she sees that I’m an interloper. “I was led to my human. Magic drew me to him, and I will forever owe it a debt for that.”

I have to hold in my scoff. Magic did such a thing? These orcs are all nuts.

“It must be a coincidence,” I say. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with mating.”

Gorren slaps me on the back. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here, with your Simka.” Then he grows serious. “But now you understand why we’ll do anything to prevent the Grand Chieftain from finding what’s down there. That’s why we need you to help stop him.”

So this is why the orcs have come. This is why the mine has been under siege, and why they’ve stolen humans from their homes. It all makes sense now, much to my misfortune. If Gorren is telling the truth, who knows when this exposure to magic will drive me over the brink and turn me into one of the wild trolls, too?

What would happen to Simka then?