That, of course, had been the entire point of this little charade, but the warlord's daughter was beginning to question the wisdom of "the plan."
And her own, for that matter.
Nearer still, and the beast sidled to one side, keeping its back to the tree. It could watch Mellorin's approach from the corner of its eye, but clearly it had determined Jassion to be the greater threat. Mellorin, despite her recent "influx" of skill and the days of practice since, had to admit it was probably right, and she couldn't keep a sigh of relief pent up in her chest as it turned its attention away.
A few more steps, and Jassion would come within range of that impossibly long spear. Mellorin felt a flutter of panic. Kaleb, now would be a really good time!
She didn't actually believe the sorcerer was listening in on her thoughts, but at that moment he might as well have been.
Her hair blew across her face as something passed with impossible speed overhead. She glimpsed nothing more than a ripple in the air itself, the faintest wisp of steam or mist, wadded into a ball like so much discarded parchment. Had she not been looking right at it, indeed expecting something very much like it, she'd never have known it was there.
The swamp erupted. The murky water was the blood of the earth, gushing from the wound inflicted by Kaleb's invisible hammer. A ferocious tide slammed into her, threatening to knock her from her feet, and for the first time she was actually grateful for the tight grip of the muck below. Mud, bits of plant matter-even a smattering of dead frogs and snakes-rained across the bog, blinding Mellorin to anything, everything, else. Her ears rang with a deafening crack, followed by a second enormous splash. Spray spattered her face, the surface of the swamp roiled against her legs, and even without sight she knew the cypress had fallen.
Mellorin finally managed to wipe the worst of the gunk from her face-remembering, first, to sheathe the dagger she'd held in that hand-and gawped at the carnage Kaleb had wrought.
The tree was indeed gone, snapped unevenly just above the waterline. Only that jagged stump, and a few branches long enough to break the surface where it had fallen, suggested it had ever existed. The ogre lay facedown, limbs sprawled every which way-including a few in which they weren't at all supposed to bend-and the sorcerer himself was struggling to flip the fallen giant onto its back before it drowned.
Jassion, who'd been closer than Mellorin, was only now picking himself up out of the swamp. Water sluiced through the rings in his hauberk, matted his short hair into stubby clumps, and dribbled from his lips as he emptied his lungs with a racking, body-shaking cough. Filth streaked his face, clinging stubbornly despite the sudden bath, and Mellorin thought some of it might be blood.
They reached Kaleb's side at roughly the same time, helped him in flipping the ogre. Jassion, wincing with pain, dug into his pack and removed a coil of waterlogged rope, but the sorcerer shook his head.
"Not necessary. Now that he's out, I can keep him unconscious as long as we need." With a grunt, he manhandled the ogre to slump against the broken stump, ensuring that he'd neither float away nor sink beneath the swamp.
Only once that was done did Jassion give Kaleb a fearsome shove. It wasn't quite enough to send the sorcerer splashing back into the water, but his awkward flailing was satisfaction enough.
"What?" Kaleb demanded, struggling to recapture some measure of dignity.
"What the hell was that, Kaleb?" Bits of swamp water from the baron's hair splashed Kaleb's face as he shouted. "By the gods, were you trying to kill us?"
"Certainly not Mellorin," Kaleb answered calmly. Then, as Jassion's face reddened, "Oh, calm down. I had to hit him hard enough to make sure he was out. If I was trying to kill anyone, I'd have hit him-or you-with the spell directly, rather than casting it nearby."
"You mean to tell me that was a miss?" Mellorin gasped, horrified.
"Well, not really. I hit what I was trying to hit, didn't I?"
"I…," Mellorin began.
"You…," was Jassion's contribution.
"Nobody's dead," the sorcerer insisted. "I'm sorry if I scared you-"
"I wasn't-" the baron protested, but Kaleb wasn't about to let him finish.
"-but you had to be close. I had to make sure he was too distracted to see the blast coming. It's not entirely invisible-" Here Mellorin nodded. "-and if he'd dodged it, if he'd realized he was facing a wizard, he'd probably have sounded that damn horn, and we'd be dealing with the entire tribe.
"So," he continued, driving a finger into Jassion's sternum, "why don't you assume that I know what I'm doing, try something brand new just for a change, and quit flapping your lips for half a bloody minute!"
Jassion's face couldn't actually go any redder, but it certainly made its best effort. Mellorin was a bit surprised that she couldn't actually feel the breeze from his twitching eyelid.
"I, uh, don't want you to think that I assume you don't know what you're doing," she said hesitantly, "but couldn't you have just put the ogre to sleep or something? Was it really necessary to drop a phantom anvil on him?"
Kaleb chuckled. "Poetic. No, I'm afraid I couldn't. Keeping someone asleep is easy. Putting them out in the first place? That's rather more like mesmerism. It requires a few moments of contact, and a relatively unwary mind. You think the ogre would've been willing to sit down for a nice long chat with us? I'd say it's about as likely as your uncle over there founding the Braetlyn chapter of the Corvis Rebaine Appreciation Society and Knitting Circle."
"Kaleb…," Jassion warned darkly.
"You're right," the sorcerer said apologetically. "I should have just had the ogre talk to you. You'd have put him to sleep in a minute flat."
"Can we just get on with this?" Jassion sounded almost plaintive. "You dragged us all the way out to this hellish place just so we could find an ogre. Great, we've found one. So let's be done with it, shall we?"
"Fine." Kaleb knelt in the muck beside the cyclopean giant, placed a hand on the creature's neck, and began to chant.
Unwilling to interrupt, Mellorin sidled over to her glowering uncle. "You want to tell me what we're doing, exactly? When Kaleb first talked about coming to this wretched swamp, he said tracking down an ogre would help us, but he didn't tell me how."
Jassion shrugged. "Not much to it. Kaleb can use the blood of someone's relative to find that person, as long as they're not protected. One of your father's old lieutenants was an ogre. They're all an extended tribe, so pretty much any ogre can lead us to him. Or that's the hope, anyway."
"Kavro?" Mellorin offered, wracking her memories for half-heard tales of the wars.
"Davro, but yes, him."
They watched, both standing with arms crossed.
"Is that why you let me come?" she demanded eventually. "To use my blood to find my father?"
"At first," Kaleb admitted, rising from his crouch. "Corvis is protected, but the spell might prove useful anyway.
"But," he added, voice and features softening, "that's not the only reason anymore."
Her expression remained unreadable.
"Have we got it?" Jassion asked him.
"Yes. As long as he doesn't decide to go sightseeing before we get there, I can take us right to him."
"Good. Then we don't need this any longer."
Mellorin gasped and started forward, hand outstretched, but there was nothing she could do. Jassion whipped Talon over his shoulder and down in a brutal stroke. The waters reddened, and the ogre's head bounced once off the stump before floating gently away across the swamp.
The baron stepped back from his somber duty and promptly toppled once more into the waters as his niece violently shoved him. He stared upward, spitting and gasping, too shocked even to be angry.