Friday Flash Fiction: Gorg in Winter, Part 2

Still no Wendig Challenges, so I'll move right on to the next part of Gorg's story, continuing the episode I began last week.

Gorg at Midwinter, Part 2

Gorg stood by the base of the tower from which he’d just escaped, and let the wind batter icy snow crystals against his stone face. He was cold to his stone core, and far from home, but he was back on the ground and he was free.

And he had a job to do.

Gorg looked back up at the tower. Had Duke Bale the Artichoke Hearted really believed that prison could hold him? Or was it a trick? Gorg pulled a small flask from his belt and took a swig of the Tongue-Knotter. It had been devised to render a person incapable of coherent speech or thought, and it did. It had the opposite effect on trolls.

Gorg felt his thought processes accelerating as he moved away from the tower and into the blinding, swirling snow. If Bale was as smart as Gorg had to believe he was, the latest pet sorcerer would be waiting for him. This sorcerer had been powerful enough to magically lift the stone-fleshed Gorg and imprison him in a sealed tower room.

Mind whirling under the influence of the potion, Gorg ducked his head, turned, and plowed through the storm back toward the castle. The sorcerer would be waiting just beyond the buildings, where the rocks formed a natural shelter. That was the obvious place for Gorg to go when he escaped, so he didn’t go there.

A minute later, in the lee of the castle, Gorg decided he should have taken an extra swig from the flask. There, waiting for him with a look of business-like determination, was the sorcerer.

“I though this would be the night,” the wizard said. “You didn’t really think we failed to notice how you were enlarging the window, did you?”

Gorg looked at the sorcerer. This one was different from Bale’s last two henchmen, with whom Gorg had dealt rather permanently. This one—how had he failed to see it before?—was a henchwoman.

“You can’t stop me,” Gorg said as bluntly as if it were true.

“I could turn you into stone without even lifting a finger,” she said. “As it happens, Bale has merely asked me to relocate you. To one of the sulfur vents.” It would be warm there. Warm enough to melt even a troll.

“But you won’t,” he said.

“Why not? It’s what Bale paid me to do. He seems to be rather fed up with you.”

“As am I with him. I have prevented him from taking over the country, and put the fear of trolls into his soul. And you are willing to let him make you a murderer for a few bits precious metals?”

“Is there a better reason?”

Gorg thought about that. One part of his mind was working on the basic goal of keeping her talking, which would keep her from dunking him into the steam vents. Another part of his mind was working on a good reason why she shouldn’t do Bale’s bidding.

“Are you aware of what happened to Bale’s last two pet sorcerers?”

“Well, yes. And I know that you were responsible for that. So that would give me an extra reason to take care of you, wouldn’t it?”

“Why? Were they kin of yours? The way most of Bale’s victims in the troll world were kin of mine? Why avenge those fellows? They were lousy people and worse sorcerers.”

His words seemed to be making some inroads into her mind, which unlike his was not stone, though it might have been near to ice by this time. That would even matters a bit. Gorg eased a little closer to the castle wall, where it felt almost warm by comparison with the wind-swept valley beyond.

“Don’t come any closer, Gorg.”

“Just getting warmer,” Gorg answered, trying to read her face. That was asking too much. Trolls’ stone faces gave very little away, and that meant a troll wasn’t really equipped to read human faces. “Do you have a name?”

“I am Katerina of The Vale of Kale. What’s it to you?”

Gorg sighed. “Just trying to keep things friendly. Are you going to try to take me, Katerina of Kale? That might force me to do something we would both regret.”

It was a mostly empty threat, but he would certainly make the effort. Could a reverted troll—one who had been returned to the stone from which they all sprung—regret anything? Idly, he let his fingers explore the stones beside him. If he could just get one loose…

All Gorg was thinking of was pulling out a stone to throw at the sorceress, as he had no other weapon. But as his fingers insinuated themselves into the gaps between the hastily-laid stones, he began to smile.

As the smile grew on Gorg’s face, one faded from Katerina’s. She looked long and hard at the hand which seemed to have become a part of the castle wall, and turned pale. If she moved him now, a big chunk of the castle would go along.

“I can still turn you to stone,” she pointed out.

“And when I fall over, because I’m holding myself up with living muscles, not stone, I will take the castle with me.” Gorg didn’t know if it was true, but it felt right. His fingers had insinuated themselves deep into the structure of the wall. “Is there anyone inside besides Bale?” Gorg needed to know.

“No. No one will work for him anymore. He is supposed to be dead.”

“No one but you,” Gorg pointed out.

“Not any more,” said Katarina of Kale, and vanished. Gorg hoped she had relocated herself to the Vale of Kale, and that the wind there was not blowing ice in anyone’s face.

Gorg looked thoughtfully at the wall, where his fingers twined in and through the stones. Then he began to lumber away, letting go of nothing.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass

Did you enjoy this story? Do you like fantasy? Load your eReader with my latest book, Halitor the Hero, a fantasy for 10-year-olds of all ages! Use the Smashwords code AV66V to get it at 40% off! Just click on the cover image:

Flash Fiction Friday: In the Valley of the Baleful Stones

Chuck Wendig is not a nice man.  This week he gave us a list of random words, ten of them, and told us to use them all in a story.  All ten!  That's just mean.  I was doing pretty well with the list and my fantasy setting until I got to the last one.  You'll know when you reach it.  I'll give you the whole list at the end of the story, just for fun.  Feel free to see how many you can guess without cheating.  Then visit Chuck's blog and check out how some others used them (warning: other bloggers may not be suitable for youngsters, or work, or polite company.  I can't make any promises).  990ish words.

In the Valley of the Baleful Stones

Gorg left the Iron Desert through a narrow canyon, a tight, stony gorge just too wide to be a slot.  Nothing grew there but stones.  After days crossing the unyielding iron of the desert, the stones represented life to Gorg the Troll.  Being stone himself, mostly, he grazed happily on chunks of granite and basalt as he strode along, with an occasional conglomerate for a relish.

The midday sun beat down, turning the canyon into an oven.  Had a human chosen that route, there wouldn't even have been a corpse left for the funeral.  They'd have been cooked to nothing and picked clean by the vultures that waited on the high cliffs.  Though even the vultures might have waited for night to cool things down a bit.  The troll just kept moving, even humming a little--a sound like a cross between a rockfall and an elephant in distress.

The canyon broadened and straightened just a bit.  In the distance Gorg could now see a lone willow--sure sign of water.  He didn't need water; trolls didn't drink except for fun.  But it told him he was nearing the end of his journey, and he picked up the pace.  He had a date to keep with Duke Bale the Artichoke-Hearted, and he didn’t want to be late.  Duke Bale had been responsible for several members of Gorg's family being turned back into the stone from which they'd been born, and his Uncle Grk had, in the next heavy rain, been dissolved back into the clay of his home mountains. Gorg had vowed that the Duke would pay.

A league beyond the lone willow, Gorg found the road to the Valley of Baleful Stones, Duke Bale's family holding.  The name held a charm that would captivate the ordinary troll, but Gorg knew that all he would find in the land of Bale would be deceit and disappointment.  Probably even the stones would be untrustworthy.  He turned west on the road, and switched his giant stone war hammer from his left shoulder to his right.

He knew he grew close when he began to smell rotten eggs.  The Baleful Stones of the valley's fame were the disfigured sulfurous mounds deposited by a volcanic vent that ran length of the north side, and the entire valley stunk of it.  Gorg thought it only fit, for the heart of Duke Bale stunk still worse.

Now he could see the castle in the distance, and he shifted his war hammer back to his left shoulder, and tried not to breathe too deeply.  Even trolls disliked the sulfurous brimstone, and would neither eat it nor live near the volcanic vents that produced it.  Only Duke Bale, banished nephew of King Celery the Half-Wit, would do so, and he, Gorg thought, only because he'd been sent there by royal decree.
#

In the depths of the ugly castle that crouched as far as it could from the sulfur vents, the Duke studied his plans for the thousandth time.  Soon, his fool of an uncle would know that Bale was plotting to dethrone him.  But by then, it would be too late.  He studied the device that the sorcerer Stenrick the Brilliant had made for him.  Soon, he would have Stenrick go out to meet the pesky troll, that persistent annoyance of a Gorg.

Bale hadn't meant it to work this way when he'd sent Mergle to kill the group of trolls that had stumbled into his secret mines.  But Gorg had proved useful.  Mergle thought too much of himself, and had attracted the attention of the swordswoman--what was her name?  And what had become of her?  She hadn't caught Mergle.  Gorg took care of that one.  But Mergle had drawn the attention of the King, and so had become a liability.  Gorg, poor stupid troll, had done him a favor, Bale reflected.

Now Gorg was coming here, and would meet with Stenrick.  One or both would be killed, and Bale rather hoped it would be both.  He would have to take care of whoever was left before he could take care of the King.  Ordinarily, Bale would have been no match for either a sorcerer or a troll, but Stenrick, the fool, had given Bale all he needed, and now Bale no longer needed Stenrick.

Near the edge of the valley, in a cleft well hidden from the road, the half-magical balloon swayed gently, its silk bag filled with the gasses from the vent it covered.  Bale would be high in the basket suspended below the balloon when Stenrick blasted Gorg into a pile of rubble with the spell he called the "Atomic Blaster," whatever he meant by that.
#

Gorg came on into the valley, and didn't falter when he saw the billowing robes of the sorcerer approaching.  Stenrick was a far greater sorcerer than Mergle had been on his best day, but Gorg knew what he could do.  Shifting the war hammer once again to his right shoulder, so as to leave his more powerful left hand free, Gorg scooped up a selection of stones.

The first stone to leave the sling struck the wand from Stenrick's hand.  The second slew the sorcerer as he stooped to retrieve it.  Gorg came on, stepping on the man just to be sure.  No one survived a troll walking over them.

Gorg's remaining stones were flung after the balloon which suddenly rose from the rocks nearby and soared into the sky, Bale leaning over the edge and jeering.  Those that hit the balloon bounced uselessly off.  Only one stone struck something solid, and Gorg didn't know of that.  The wind carried Bale out of sight before the Duke discovered that Gorg had put out of action the magical appliance that controlled the balloon's flight.

He was at the mercy of the winds.  Gorg had won another round.

#####

Okay, here's the list: 

Funeral, Captivate, Deceit, Brimstone, Canyon, Balloon, Clay, Disfigured, Willow, and (I'm sure you guessed this one) Atomic