Jace caught up with Ruric Thar and a gang of his Gruul cohorts near the Orzhov guildgate. They were camped in a patch of thicket in a city park in view of Orzhov territory, seemingly about to go on the warpath.
Jace hadn’t seen Ruric Thar lead a war party like this; in fact, Jace had never seen, or for that matter smelled, a Gruul war party at all. Their armor was made from animal hides and bones, and their weaponry was heavy pieces of scavenged city rubbish. Their skin was alive with tattoos, etched with a combination of magic, ink, and, Jace supposed, a considerable amount of pain. Each of them was a hulk of muscle, and Ruric Thar was the largest and mightiest of them all.
Jace figured the direct route was best, and approached the war party. “Hail, Ruric.”
Ruric Thar and the Gruul war party turned to him.
“He’s Ruric,” said the leftmost of the ogre’s two heads, tipping toward the right. “I’m Thar.”
So they used different names for their two heads. Jace thought of them as brothers, in a way, but he supposed that wasn’t accurate. They were the same being from the necks down.
“Both of you, then,” said Jace. “I come to ask for your help. Since you worked for me, you’ve been traveling around the district in a certain way. Following a route. Visiting gates.”
“How you know this?” asked Ruric.
“Are you following a pattern of some kind? Some new information that you might have picked up at our last meeting? I think I may have left something in your mind, and I need it back.”
Thar chuckled, a sound that echoed in the ogre’s chest like a barrel. “Can’t, little mage. Ours now.”
“I’m afraid I need it, and I’m afraid it has to be now. It’s vitally important.”
“Answer’s no,” said Ruric, waving the arm that terminated in a large axe. “Now go. We have crook-priests to smash.”
“I’ll do whatever you want,” said Jace.
The Gruul warriors looked at each other, as did the Ruric head and the Thar head.
“All right, then,” said Thar. “You want it, you must take it. Take out your sword.”
Jace spread his palms. “I—what? I have no sword.”
Ruric and Thar nodded understandingly. “Axe, then.”
“What I mean is, I don’t carry weapons.”
“You must have weapon. You are challenger. Challenger has the honor of first hit. Oszika, give him your sword.”
“Isn’t there another way to do this?”
Ruric shook his head. “This is Gruul way.”
A tall female troll presented Jace with the hilt of an enormous, wide-bladed sword. Jace took it, recoiling from the weight of it. He tried to heft the tip of it, and barely managed to pull up the point.
“Swing it,” said Thar.
Jace knew he was far beyond the bounds of his expertise, but he gave the sword a test swing. It was so heavy that he had to use gravity to swing the end of it around, which gave it so much momentum that it nearly spun him around. It took all his body weight to absorb the trajectory of the sword and end his swing.
Ruric spat on the ground in disgust. The Gruul warriors laughed.
“While I’m flattered you want to duel,” said Jace, “I am not going to strike you. I only need a moment to plumb your mind, and I can be on my way.”
The war party laughed again. “Just try it!” one of the warriors shouted.
Thar had the left hand on his chin. “You do spells.”
“Yes,” said Jace. “Spells. Just one spell to scan you two, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Then spells will have to do.” Ruric Thar took the sword back and handed it back to its owner. He squared up opposite Jace and braced for impact. He was empty-handed, but not unarmed: one of his forearms ended at the elbow, and had been fitted with a huge axe.
“As we said, first hit goes to you,” Ruric said. “No death magic, no summoned creatures, no rotting spell. Fire, lightning okay. Hit us.”
This is barbaric, Jace thought. He wasn’t going to attack this ogre with magic, not while he just stood there. That would only invite a counterattack, and would just start a fight, which Jace suspected was exactly what the Gruul ogre wanted. Jace would be agreeing to a fight he couldn’t win. He just wanted to explain himself, but it didn’t look as though things were heading toward a diplomatic resolution.
Plus, there was an even more pressing problem. “I don’t typically use spells that … hit people,” he said.
“Ah,” said Thar, nodding. “Grow claws, slash my face?”
“No, I can’t do that, either.”
“Call down blast of searing light?”
“No.”
“Lift and hurl heavy boulders at great speed?”
“No.”
“Unleash flurry of jagged blades?”
“No …”
“Turn yourself into giant? Shred me with serrated vines and leaves? Sonic scream of rage? What?”
“Listen, Ruric, Thar. I’m not a warrior. I’m not a battlemage. I can’t do any of those things.”
This set the warriors to murmuring.
“What’s your magic do?” asked Ruric, finally.
“You already know that. I’m a mind mage. I alter the mind.”
Ruric and Thar laughed heartily. “A wizard of daydreams. Yes. So you are. So, no hitting. No hitting, no duel. No duel, no prize.”
Jace had no recourse. He had to have what was in the ogre’s mind. If Ruric Thar wanted a blast of Jace’s magic, he would have it. “All right. I will try.”
The ogre nodded doubly, and once again positioned himself to absorb an impact, the faintest smile on both the ogre’s faces. Jace summoned up all his mental strength, and formed his mind into a projectile, firing a blast of mental force at Ruric and Thar simultaneously, hoping to knock the Gruul warrior down in one psychic blow.
The backlash was immediate and blindingly painful. The force he sent at both of the ogre’s minds reflected back on him, and he was hit with the full brunt of his own spell. It knocked him down with a nauseating wave of crushing agony, and he lay there, trying to hold the sides of his head in. The Gruul warriors apparently thought that was the funniest thing they had seen all day.
Savage echoes of pain reverberated through Jace’s skull. It didn’t feel like a protective enchantment or some other kind of reflective spell that had sent back his psychic blast—the ogre hadn’t had to react at all. Ruric Thar’s very nature had rejected the magic somehow.
“Was that your hit?” asked Thar.
“We’ll give you another try if you want,” said Ruric.
“Just a minute,” muttered Jace. “Let me finish throbbing.”
The ogre had something in his nature that absorbed magic and sent it back at its caster, or focused it. It explained why the ogre had been able to smash his way through a series of guild-controlled gates almost singlehandedly. Jace tried to imagine legions of guildmages trying to slow down the rampaging ogre. They probably ended up with more than bad headaches.
When he felt like he wasn’t seeing four heads instead of two, Jace stood and brushed off his cloak. “I can’t beat you with mind magic,” he said slowly, his cranium still pounding. “But I still need what’s in your mind.”
“Have to beat us somehow,” said Ruric.
“Or we can just kill you,” offered Thar.
“Neither of you is ‘the nice head,’ I take it,” said Jace. “There’s nothing I can offer you? Some way to convince you to let me poke around in there?”
“Fight or die, mage. Decide.”
CHANGES OF HEART
Emmara approached the sacred grove where Calomir had an audience with their guildmaster, Trostani. She told herself she wasn’t sneaking up on them—she simply hadn’t announced herself, and her gait was naturally quiet. She couldn’t bend minds or wrap herself in illusions as Jace could, but she had an elf’s subtle step and a good read of body language, and she knew she was not detected. And it wasn’t her intention to eavesdrop, exactly. She would stride into the grove without hiding, as any other audience with Trostani. But she put the slightest delay in her step, because she had the sense that Calomir did not share her desire for peace and unity between the guilds, and wanted to hear how their discussion was going, and how he was advising their guild leader.