Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 (5 page)

He was exceptional in other ways, as well, not least of which in that he was a confirmed pacifist. This may seem like an odd trait for a military leader, particularly one whose job involves, if necessary, hand-to-hand combat to the death using the traditional close-quarters weapon of the Tragacanthan Army, the ice tong-like
sklezaxe
. Zyxyl was quite prepared to do his duty, if it came to that, but he vastly preferred negotiation or even evasion to confrontation. Physical intimidation and bloodshed were the tools of absolute last resort in his repertoire, although he was quite adept at both.

This morning, though, Zyxyl had a problem that was more biological than military. This morning there was a lesser basking rok on the pathway that wound its way up out of the secluded glen where Amyr-it’s stately home was situated. Now, ordinarily the soldiers in Amyr-it’s guard would not have disturbed Captain Zyxyl for this sort of issue. Presumably members of one of the most elite military units in existence would be able to handle the relocation of a single head of wildlife. The problem here was threefold: first, a lesser basking rok had
two
heads, so they were already behind the curve; second, lesser basking roks weighed upwards of three and a half tonnes; and third, they were magical creatures that possessed a natural shield of missile reflectivity. This meant that any projectiles or magical directed attacks used against one were deflected back in the attacker’s face.

The soldiers stood around the huge bulk of the creature, which seemed totally oblivious to their presence, discussing their options.

“Well, we cants shoot it, and we cants poke it. Cans we scare it?”

“Scare it? Wi’ what?”

“Maybe we could shoot the big gun near one o’ its ears. No shell—jest a blank charge.”

“I heerd tell those things was deef as a post.”

“Who shoveled you thet load of basilisk poop?”

“It were my brother, the one what went ta live up i’ the mountains.”

“Yer brother wouldn’t know a rok from a rooster.”

“Here now. What’s you gots to go speakin’ calumny ‘bout my brother fer?”

“I ain’t speaking calumny, I’m just sayin’ he don’ know nothin’ bout roks and they habits, on accounta they ain’t many of ‘em around no mores.”

“I oughta belt you one, and good.”

“Cheez it you horks, here comes the Cap’n.”

Zyxl strode purposefully towards them, annoyance evident in his gait. Something was holding up the motorcade here and whatever it was, he wasn’t happy that it hadn’t been taken care of by the foremost troops. He hadn’t gotten into position to spy the rok yet. He rounded a corner with his mouth open, prepared to bark out an order, when the full nature of the impediment to navigation hove into view. He stopped with his mouth still hanging ajar like a statue of a frog in mid-bug capture and gaped at the thing. It
was
pretty impressive—if you consider 3,500 kilograms of lard in a wart-encrusted slime-green leather bag impressive, that is.

There is evidence, the rokologists say, to suggest that roks were in the distant past capable of physical flight. Little nublets about where the shoulder blades sit were once wings, they theorize. As the creatures evolved the ability to fly using magic, however, the wings slowly diminished in size and utility. Now they were little more than ridges of flesh and cartilage, the underlying bone having given up the ghost after many generations of neglect.

Using magic for locomotion proved such a good idea from the roks’ point of view that they decided to take it even further. They gradually started relying on magic for gathering food (they were strict herbivores) and eventually even for eating it. In the process they lost all need for useable limbs, and so evolved into the bloated, inert sacks of fat they had now become. When they got hungry, they just conjured some food into their mouths, or, in the case of the laziest specimens, directly into one or more of their half-dozen stomachs. Roks didn’t possess a great many magical abilities, but the ones they did have were finely-honed.

The lesser basking rok was called ‘lesser’ because it wasn’t quite as bloated as the greater basking rok. It was called a ‘basking’ rok because that’s what it liked to do best: bask. And eat. Perhaps ‘somewhat less bloated basking and constantly eating rok’ might have been a more precise moniker, but that didn’t fit on the little plaque at the zoological gardens.

True to form, basking and eating seemed to be the sole items on this particular rok’s itinerary, much to the chagrin of Zyxl and the other members of the procession. They were due at a state function at the Royal Complex in little over an hour, and getting there with this adipose deposit in their path was going to be problematic at best. Zyxl tried to coax it out of the way. He tried to intimidate it. He tried to reason with it. He tried the friendly approach. He made up stories about his tragic childhood to try to win its sympathy. He went into a stand-up comedy routine he usually reserved for regimental parties after a bit too much fuzzfruit razzle. Nothing engaged the rok in the least; it kept contentedly chewing on Yamlop leaves it had teleported up from the southern archipelagoes.

Finally Amyr-it himself came forward to see why they weren’t moving. He appeared pitifully small next to the hulking half-ogre.

“What’s the holdup here?” he asked Zyxl, who was standing there looking peeved.

“This rok here doesn’t want to move out of the way.” He gestured at the huge beast chewing placidly and staring out into space.

“What have you tried?”

Zyxl recited the list. Amyr-it smiled, reached down to pick up a small stone, rubbed it on the rok’s skin, and flung it suddenly and with considerable force at one of the creature’s heads. Instead of being deflected, it struck squarely on the nose of the right-hand head. The rok looked very surprised, stopped chewing, seemed to notice all the people around it for the first time, and levitated heavily into the air, disappearing after a few seconds as it teleported to a less crowded basking and eating spot.

Amyr-it wiped his hands together, smiled at Zyxl, and walked off, leaving the Captain blinking and speechless. “Deflection doesn’t work if the rok’s aura is on the projectile,” he called over his shoulder.

“Told ye they was stone deef,” whispered the soldier.

Chapter Five:
Prootwaddler

T
he Effluent was a dismal place. Through a diabolically efficient combination of magic and engineering, it had become the dumping ground for Tragacanth. Any refuse—solid, liquid, gel, colloidal suspension, liquefied aerosol, you name it—that wasn’t close enough to be piped in was teleported there by sanitation mages (the lowest rung on the professional ladder, just above street illusionists, who were considered mere tradescreatures). Located far out on a miserable spit of land in the least inhabited area of the kingdom, the Effluent literally wallowed in its own, and everyone else’s, filth.

Since all the garbage of the kingdom ended up here, the place had probably the oddest magical aura in existence. Broken but still magically active remains of every conceivable spell book, potion, amulet, ward, phylactery, charm, symbol, rune, and talisman were scattered randomly about, interspersed with many thousands of tonnes of shattered technical equipment. A fair amount of radioactivity was present, as well. All in all, it was the ideal breeding ground for strangeness, and the sentient creatures which found themselves evolving there against their wills were anything but happy about it. ‘Somebody will pay!’ was their rallying cry.

In the third year of the reign of Haxxos IV, citizens of Dreadmost, the nearest settlement to the Effluent, began to report odd happenings. Given their proximity to the Effluent, these folks were not unaccustomed to weird goings-on. They were hard to impress this way, in fact. However, the events that were occurring were definitely twisted enough to cause some stir, even amongst the more hardened senior denizens. Some of these old-timers could even remember what it was like before the Effluent forever changed the landscape, not to mention the air and water quality.

It started innocently enough, as these things often do, with some missing pets. No real shock there; the native conventional wildlife in the area was perfectly capable of absconding with the occasional small fur-bearing quadruped or unwary juvenile ornithosuchian. No, what really made the locals sit up and take notice was the way their missing pets kept turning up later with different body parts than the ones their owners remembered them having previously.

No matter how enchanted you are with your loveable little miniature duck-billed dragonette, when it disappears for a couple of days and then shows up scratching at your door equipped with jellyfish stingers and a musk gland, the honeymoon is probably over. Tragacanthan pet owners are fickle that way.

The phenomenon got so widespread that a new temporary industry sprung up overnight in Dreadmost: itinerant veterinary surgery. Wandering surgeons, most of whom had no surgical training apart from carving at the dinner table, would go door to door looking for distraught pet owners and convince them to shell out a few billmes to have the odd wing, fin, or bioluminescent sexual organ removed. Sometimes, by an extraordinary stroke of good fortune, the pets even survived these procedures.

Despite a boatload of hypotheses, the majority firmly in the ‘crackpot’ category, no one had yet figured out what force was behind the mysterious somatic enhancements. Some thought they were merely accelerated mutations, brought about by the decidedly unhealthy environment of the Effluent. Others opined that the extraneous body parts were attached by some feral magic or a crazed mage running rampant in the area. None of the armchair theorists seemed inclined to do any field research in support of their various propositions, however.

One resident not intimidated by the situation, or indeed much of anything else, was an ancient gnarlignome named Qrud. Gnarlignomes are known for being stubborn, irascible, and just downright ugly, even to other gnarlignomes. One additional trait of the species is an obsession with privacy; little factual information was available concerning how—or even why—they breed. Most people were entirely satisfied with this situation.

Qrud’s favorite pet, a near-blind burrowing hound he’d imaginably named “Digdog,” came home one winter’s day with rabbit’s ears grafted onto its rear end, and this pissed Qrud off something fierce. He pulled himself up to his full regal one meter height and marched out into the frozen wasteland brandishing an old bent walking stick his grandfather had told him was a magic staff. He stomped around for half an hour or so, challenging anything within earshot and waving the stick menacingly.

No foe rose to meet his challenge, and eventually he got tired and headed for home. Not more than thirty meters from his yard he heard a strange melodic whirring and traced the sound to a small rock outcrop. Approaching it cautiously, with staff poised and ready to strike, Qrud leapt onto a boulder with surprising grace and stared disapprovingly down at a wide fissure in the table rock below him.

There was a metallic blob in there; a rambling piecework of a robot studded with blinking lights and seemingly constructed from spare parts intended for a wide variety of instruments and machines, none of which were robots. Indeed, the only electromechanical apparatus Qrud could visualize not represented by one or more of the thing’s components would be a functional automaton. It didn’t seem to have all the right parts for what it was trying to be, no matter what that was.

The chimeric robot chirred away, seemingly unaware of Qrud or his misgivings. It had what appeared to be spotlights aimed out the openings in the fissure on either side, except that they were putting out very little light. It was a soft, fuzzy, blue luminescence, barely detectable by Qrud’s eyes. He realized it must be mostly ultraviolet.

As Qrud wondered what, if anything, to do about the metallic monster, he saw movement off to his right. Crouching instinctively, he watched a rather nice specimen of prootwaddler approach the crevice as though compelled. Proots were eight-legged segmented porcines—roughly a cross between a centipede and a pig—created as a practical joke by some ancient mage. They had proven quite adept at reproducing, and so were now firmly established as a species. Qrud realized that his mouth was watering: proots made for fine eating, at least if you’re a gnarlignome and you roasted them long enough to burn off the fused chitinous shell. Stinky business, that.

The animal scuttled up to the opening in the rock without fear. Its attention appeared to be riveted on the spotlight, which was obviously a powerful attractant and seemed to have a mesmerizing effect as well. It stuck its snout just inside the crevice, sniffed a couple of times, and ambled on in. There was a muffled squeal followed by a low frequency static noise; the robot’s lights dimmed momentarily. The unmistakable odor of frying bacon filled the air, sparking naked hunger in Qrud.

After a few seconds Qrud heard a scratching noise coming from the vicinity of the other side of the crevice. He peered down into the darkness and suddenly a small figure emerged into the soft radiance of the spotlight. It was the proot, except that it now seemed to have something growing out of its back. While Qrud puzzled over the extra appendages, it suddenly unfolded its new wings and flew unsteadily off into the night, flapping the bat-like membranes in heavy strokes.