Page 9 of The False Shaman (Claimed by the Red Hand #2)

DROKO

I should have been worn out from my long trek to the Red Hand village and my even longer day pretending to be something I was not…but still, I slept fitfully in the strange, hot chamber. It was too quiet without the snores and snuffles of my fellow soldiers, and the air reeked of sulfur. I had dreams that I was stuck in a dark stone room, the walls smooth and vertical. I scrabbled at them to try and find a way out, but they were polished to a sheen like glass, and my nails made an eerie skritching noise against them....

Which, I realized as I opened my eyes, was just the sound of Crespash vigorously scratching his balls with a dry twig. “Is that from my sacred staff?” I asked.

“Don’t blame me.” He tossed the twig into the brazier. “Take a man’s claws…he’s forced to make do.”

I sat up and shook my waterskin—empty—then glanced at my mud-caked boots. Gorgul was right about my slave’s lack of attention. Hopefully that meant the goblin had fared better with the task I’d actually charged him to do. “Did you find the shaman’s crypt?”

“Obviously not, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here watching you mumble to yourself in your sleep. Did your bunkmates back at the longhouse put up with that?”

“Keep your voice down.” I scented the air to be sure we were alone. The goblin was too blase about me being a soldier. “There’s no privacy here, and the tunnels make the sound carry.”

I stood and crossed the room to check my “staff,” the tree branch we’d hastily decorated on our trek to the Red Hand Clan. Staves are normally made by carefully selecting the proper wood, of a grain that is neither too tight nor too loose, honing it down, then curing and hardening the final product. Once hardened, the wood would be exactingly sanded and oiled, and with enough use, it would eventually fit itself to the shape of the holder’s grasp.

This thing we’d created was hardly stronger than the smoldering twig. In the forest, it had seemed passable. But if anyone took a better look at it, we’d be in real trouble.

“This whole ruse is a single false move away from falling apart,” I told Crespash, “And you’re in as much hot water as me. If you don’t find that crypt, this clan will stake your head right beside mine.”

“And that’s if they even give me a stake of my very own. Most likely they’ll just stack us together like a shish kebab.”

“This is no joke.”

“Indeed, it’s not. I covered at least ten miles of passages last night, and there was nary a crypt to be seen. Though I did find your little human sniffing around—”

“He was following my orders.”

“Oh? How can you be so sure? You weren’t there, after all….”

He trailed off at the sound of approaching footsteps. Crespash might love a good argument, but his instinct for survival is well-honed. Gorgul presented himself in my doorway with all the proper greetings, then announced, “My men and I have been searching all night for the crypt, Droko the Sage—”

Crespash muttered in my ear, “Loudly enough to wake every last dead shaman.”

“—and we haven’t found it yet. But—” the guard hastened to add, “I did discover something you will find very useful. Follow me, and I’ll show you.”

I waved him back into the hall. “I will join you in a moment.”

He retreated as I ordered, though not very far. I felt Crespash’s slobber against my neck as he leaned in to whisper, “He’s leading you off to the headsman already?”

“Doubtful. If the chieftain gave the order, Gorgul would carry it out himself, here, on the spot.”

The goblin scoffed. “What are you saying—you actually trust this brute?”

“We are orcs, not goblins. We know our place in the world. Gorgul has nothing to gain by seeing me fail. If anything, he’d want to prove his worth to keep his position secure.” I slipped on the ridiculous shamanic raiments we’d crafted on our way there. The leaves on the neckpiece were already crumbling. Leaving Crespash behind, I rejoined the lieutenant of my honor guard in the hall.

Gorgul led me deeper into the caves with a purposeful stride, and before long, a slither of unease crept up my spine. I’d been trained in the forest. I wasn’t used to being underground. And the farther we went, the more I wondered if maybe Crespash had sensed something about the guard’s motivations I’d been unwilling to see.

The passageway turned…then dead-ended. The perfect spot to trap me in an ambush. I tightened my grip on my makeshift staff. It creaked, and bits of bark sloughed off, scattering to the ground. Gorgul turned and smiled with great satisfaction.

I planted my feet, readying myself to dodge a spear, and flinched as he lunged….

Only to realize he’d folded humbly to one knee. He bowed his head and said, “I hope this tool will serve you well, Droko the Sage. It was Taruut’s private meditation chamber. It hasn’t seen use in decades—longer than any of the honor guard have served—because his sedan chair didn’t fit through the passage. But a pair of my best men have spent the night readying it for your use.”

Gorgul stood and shoved against the dead end, revealing that the wall was a stone that could be rolled aside. As he did, I let out a breath I’d been holding. Crespash might know caves…but he didn’t know orcs. Not like I did. Gorgul could be trusted to serve the shaman. It was just a matter of making sure he thought that shaman was me.

I nodded my approval to Gorgul and stepped into the chamber he’d revealed. The lieutenant stood right outside the door, erect and proud, spear drawn and ready to impale any who tried to gain access without my permission.

The chamber was simple and utterly private. It was carved out of the rock walls with only a single, circular entrance. The walls were smooth and featureless, save for a few runes etched in the stone by an inset shelf where a bank of candles flickered. Unlike the old shaman’s sleeping chamber, there was no clutter of potions and charms. Just a single, broad cushion in the center of the room.

A cushion? Was Gorgul mocking me? The soldiers in my old barracks would have jeered, asking if this was a space for a shaman or a woman recovering from labor. But I stole a glance and saw the guard was still at his station looking perfectly serious.

Even so, I gave the cushion a wide berth.

The only adornment in the room was an old tapestry covering the far wall. The woolen threads were frayed, and their dyes so faded that the designs were hard to discern. The hand-shaped pattern around the border, for instance, was probably red once. But now the threads had turned a murky brown.

I took a few steps back and squinted.

Thanks to the damage time had wrought on the threads, the imagery was confusing and difficult to make out. Eventually, I picked out a single central figure in the tapestry. An orc. The green dye had held up well. On either side of him was a muddled grayish (or maybe whitish) figure, each one smaller than the orc. Similar tapestries hung in my father’s hall, so I understood that the scale of the figures was not meant to be literal. The leader was large, while his supporters were smaller–and his enemies smaller still. I was trying to puzzle out if there was another figure behind the orc, or if he really had three arms, when Gorgul warned from the hallway, “Be careful with that—it’s a very old relic. Best not give it any reason to disintegrate.”

I scanned the room. Had it truly served to provide the clan’s shamans with vision? Or was it simply somewhere private to work out exactly what visions they’d claim to have seen?

Since I didn't want the guard to know that I had no idea how to use the meditation cushion, I rolled the large circle of stone across the doorway and sealed myself away from him. It was a relief…for a few minutes. And then I realized that if I stood there for any amount of time I'd slowly go mad.

I paced the length of the chamber, back and forth, wondering how long exactly a shaman would meditate. Did a series of calisthenics as quietly as possible. And talked myself out of throwing open the door wide simply for the sake of having something to do.

I was just about to start a conversation with the cushion when the sound of stone on stone jerked me to attention and the door rolled aside, revealing Archie.

Back in the sleeping chamber, I could smell someone coming. But the meditation room was so closed off that when the door opened, the scent of human hit me like the flat of a sword. His sweat had an intriguing sharpness to it that was distinctly un-orclike, and it was laced with the copper tang of blood. Immediately, I spotted a large abrasion on his arm, vivid against his pale skin. On an orc, the injury would have blended in, had it even drawn blood at all.

Did he have any concept of how fragile he was? He certainly didn’t act like it. Kof was stationed at the door now, and Archie strode right past him, bold as you please. He set a tray of food on the meditation cushion, then broke the silence with a soft murmur, "I’ve brought your lunch…Droko the Sage.”

“If the slave is disturbing you—” Kof began.

“He’s not.” I considered the guard. The food. The human. “Leave us and seal the door.”

As the door rolled shut, I cast back on all the years I’d been trained to do exactly what the guard captain had done—to obey—and what a burden it was to be expected to take the initiative.

The tray was covered with a dome of beaten copper. Archie pulled it off with a flourish and said, “The esteemed chef has prepared an exquisite stew of the choicest dirt-covered root vegetables and the legs of a truly impressive toad. I think there may even be a succulent grub or two.”

“You think? Or you know? You said you were the chef.”

Archie lifted one shoulder in a playful shrug. “I thought they were some kind of dumplings…till I noticed they were moving. You’ll excuse me if I leave those bits for you. I suspect they wouldn’t agree with me.”

“Fine. Any poison in them would have leached into the sauce by now anyhow.”

Archie cocked an eyebrow as he dragged a spoon through the stew, capturing various bits. “At some point, you’ll have to trust that I’ve got no reason to poison you….” He made a show of sliding the spoon into his mouth, then licking it clean…which ended with a wince. “Unfortunately, now that I’ve used up the ingredients I recognize, I can’t really guarantee my results will be palatable.”

“Forget about the taste. We’re surrounded by scores of herbs and tinctures. Everywhere you turn, there’s a bundle of dried leaves or a bowl of pounded roots—any of which could be deadly. Do you know how easy it would be to slip one of them into my food?”

“But we’re both newcomers here, strangers to the clan. What reason could I possibly have to want you dead?”

I had no idea how the mind of a human worked. For all I knew, he could taint my food for the sheer enjoyment of watching me squirm. Though the way his sky-colored eyes lingered on me, I realized he could make me squirm plenty with nothing more than a look.

I grabbed the spoon from him and focused on my meal.

I think Archie expected me to speak, but I’ve never been one for idle chatter. When the silence grew too thick for him to endure, he said, “I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure of keeping company with someone important enough to need a food taster—and while I appreciate the job security, I hope you realize that I could be put to much more creative uses.”

I glanced up from the stew. As I ate, he’d crept closer. Quiet, and soft. His skin was the color of the inner bark of a tree, and looked just as smooth and tender. And his pale neck was so vulnerable I could surely snap it with one hand…though what I really wanted was to press my snout against his warmth and fill myself with its scent.

Something only a babe does at his mother’s breast—or a man with his wife.

The image of Farya with my elder brother came to mind, unbidden, and I turned back to my food.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Archie smile. “You misunderstand my suggestion, Droko the Sage. Oh, no doubt you’d enjoy putting me through my paces—and I’d surely revel in exploring exactly how different from mine your orcish hotspots and turn-ons may be. But while I am quite skilled in the art of pleasing a man—albeit not through his stomach—what I’m suggesting at this moment is a bit more pragmatic.”

His mouth said no—in many more words than it needed—but his teasing eyes told another story. They held my gaze as his delicate human hands dropped to his breeches and his nimble fingers toyed at the waistband.

Had I actually thought the room was too isolated? It hardly seemed that way now. If fact, it struck me as the perfect place to see if the human was anywhere near as pliant as he claimed to be….

But instead of unfastening the ties, he slipped his fingers into a hidden pocket. “I look at things with a different perspective than anyone else who answers to you. All the guards underestimate me—which I suspect might come in handy.” He drew out a tightly-rolled slip of parchment. “I’m surprisingly resourceful, see? You ask—and I deliver.”

He held onto the scroll more firmly than I expected, which forced our fingertips to brush together as I took it. That meager bit of contact was enough to tease me with how his human skin might feel…but when I opened the scroll, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The thing was covered in inscrutable symbols.

“What is this supposed to be?” I demanded.

Archie was taken aback. “You’re the shaman—I thought you’d have ‘eyes to see’!”

The scroll curled over my hand, determined to roll itself up again. I spread it with my fingers and scanned the markings. The leadpoint figures were not proper letters, only a series of hatches and dots, almost like someone had used the parchment to clean up metal filings that had left their impression on the hide. I slapped the scroll down onto the meditation cushion and held it mostly open. “Are you saying you can’t read it?” I asked Archie.

The human’s cheeks went pink, as did the tips of his ears. “It’s not like any kind of writing I’ve ever seen. I just figured it was how orcs wrote.”

I let go with a sigh. The scroll snapped shut. “Orcs write the same as humans do. Just without all those useless little squiggles and swoops.”

“Well, damn.” Archie planted his hands on his hips and scowled at the scroll. “I’d been looking forward to your gratitude all day.”

Did all humans take failure so lightly? Had I ever delivered such a disappointment to my garrison commander, he would’ve had me whipped. Probably. If I weren’t the chieftain’s son, anyhow. “A slave should not expect gratitude.” The words were hardly convincing, as mostly I was considering the cant of his hip. My voice sounded thick.

And Archie heard it, too. His eyes twinkled. “Expectation and anticipation are two entirely different things.” He dragged a finger through the traces of stew in the bowl and sucked the tip, never dropping my gaze. When I didn’t break eye contact, he smiled around his finger—wicked, and full of promise—and eased forward with a suggestive sway of the hips.

But before either of us could take the conversation any further, we were interrupted by a sharp knock. I flinched back as Kof called through the stone door that the chieftain was here. I glanced at Archie as the door rolled open, but now all trace of mischief was gone from his eyes. An undisguised look of nervousness passed between us as we prepared to face Ul-Rott.