Jassion glowered, but said nothing.
Davro himself nodded in Kaleb's direction, though his lone eye never left Jassion. "Apology accepted."
"Good." Kaleb stepped in front of Jassion, a clear signal that it was he, not the baron, with whom Davro would continue to deal. "We've no intention of interfering with your life here, or of bringing trouble-be it Rebaine or anyone else-down on your head. Please, just tell us anything that might help us in our hunt. We'll bother you no more, and you just might acquire some small measure of that justice you earlier mocked."
Inhuman shoulders rose and fell in a heavy shrug. "I'm really not sure what I can tell you. I've neither seen nor heard word of Rebaine since I left Mecepheum six years ago. He's obviously not with his family, so I have no sodding idea where he might've gone."
"That's it?" The words practically quivered as they escaped Jassion's tightly clenched teeth.
A second shrug. "Seems so." A pause. "Maybe if you've access to a sorcerer. After the war, Rebaine cast…" Broad lips quirked into a scowl around the two protruding tusks. "We haven't met, have we?" he asked Kaleb abruptly.
"I think I'd remember. Why?"
"I don't know. Something vaguely familiar about you-but then, all you two-eyed little dwarfs look the same to me."
"Maybe," Kaleb said, "but I can assure you, we've never met. You were saying?"
But it was no good. Whatever the ogre had seen in Kaleb-or imagined he'd seen-was apparently too much. "No, I don't think so," Davro told him, rising from his stool to tower above them. "I think it's time for you to go."
"Damn you," Jassion began hotly, "there's no way-!"
"I think there is." Somehow, without the twitch of a single muscle, the ogre's hand drew their attention to the massive blade at his side. "Go away. You want answers? Go ask Seilloah, the witch, if Theaghl-gohlatch doesn't eat you-and if she doesn't, for that matter. I still have cows to milk."
Without another word, Kaleb offered a shallow bow, and led both a puzzled Mellorin and a sputtering Jassion through the cavernous doorway. "All this way!" Minutes and some few hundred yards later, the baron remained furious enough to chew horseshoes into nails. "For nothing! Just more wasted time. We ought at least to make sure that damn monster pays for his own crimes before we leave!"
Mellorin scowled but chose, for the moment, not to respond. "I don't understand," she asked Kaleb instead. "He was about to tell us something. What happened?"
"I don't know," the sorcerer admitted with a much smaller shrug than Davro's. "Maybe he sensed something of my magics? Ogres aren't much taken with sorcery. Or maybe I really did remind him of someone."
"Or maybe he's just a lunatic!" Jassion snapped. "What does it matter?"
"It's just, if we could convince him to finish what he was saying…"
"He doesn't have to," Kaleb told her. "I know what he was saying." Then, "If you two keep staring at me like that, your eyes are going to pop out and roll away."
"You know?" Jassion squeaked.
"I'm almost certain that's what I just said. It's what I heard myself say. Perhaps I need to clean out my ears."
Despite his warning, the others continued to stare.
"During his various campaigns," Kaleb said with a sigh, "Rebaine cast a spell on his lieutenants, so he could find them again if necessary. It's a flimsy, tenuous magic, and no, before you even ask, I can't use it to trace him back. If the spell had been cast on me personally, I could probably do it, but as it is, the connection's just too faint."
"Oh," Mellorin said, disappointed. "I guess maybe we did come all this way-and kill that ogre," she added deliberately, "-for nothing."
Jassion, however, was frowning, not in his typical disapproving scowl but apparently in thought. "I admit, I know almost nothing about magic…"
Kaleb's eyes went comically wide. Jassion ignored him.
"But would such a spell last indefinitely?"
"No," the sorcerer told him. "A long time-decades, potentially, if no other magics interfered with it-but not forever."
"So wouldn't Rebaine have likely cast the spell on Davro again, after his war against the Serpent? In case the old one eventually faded?"
"Quite possibly. Are you going somewhere with this, old boy? Thinking of taking up magic? It's a little late, and I'm not sure you've got the brains for-"
"It just seems to me, in my ignorance," Jassion said with a slow smile, "that if the first one hasn't dwindled yet, two such spells on the same subject might leave a heavier magical trail than one. Wouldn't they?"
Kaleb's jaw sagged, practically unhinging itself very much like a snake's. "I'm an idiot," he said to Mellorin.
"I just want it noted," Jassion announced smugly, "that I'm not the one who said that."
The sun had settled beyond the mountains by the time Davro returned to his house, carrying a bucket of milk large enough for Mellorin to have bathed in. His eye narrowed in a fearsome glower at the sight of her perched on his stoop.
"I told you to leave!"
"We did, Davro. Kaleb and Uncle Jassion aren't here. It's just me."
"Fantastic. That's two-thirds what I asked for, then, isn't it? What are you doing here, Little Rebaine?"
Mellorin rose. "I want…" She swallowed once. "I want you to tell me about my father."
"You're joking."
"No, I'm not."
"You're crazy, then. Go away."
"Davro…" She rose to her feet, which brought her barely up to the giant's waist. "I don't know what drove you to live out here, apart from your family and your tribe. And I don't need to, to know that it can't have been an easy choice.
"But it was a choice you got to make. I don't know my father anymore-I suppose I never really did-and that's not something I chose. It's something that was taken from me. I know he's not your favorite topic…" She smiled. "Understatement, again?" she asked.
Despite himself, Davro grinned back at her.
"Please, Davro, just tell me something about him. Then, I promise, I'll go."
The ogre set down the bucket with a deep sigh and dropped into a crouch. "All right," he agreed. "But just a little bit."
"Thank you."
"I suppose," he began, deep in thought, "it makes-" He yawned deeply, his head splitting into a gaping chasm of chipped teeth and jagged tusks. "I'm sorry, it must've been-" Yawn. "-a more tiring day than I-" Yawn. "-realized. It makes most sense-" Yawn, a few blinks. "-to start with-"
The ogre toppled with a crash that set a dozen startled sheep to bleating. His snores, sufficient to shake the earth and shame the thunder, began instantly.
An unwary mind, and a few moments of contact.
Mellorin's body flexed, bulged, and melted like candle wax. A moment of hideous distension and impossible shapes, and then Kaleb stood in her place, blinking rapidly as he acclimated to the change in height. Swiftly, he knelt at Davro's side, casting a second spell to keep the ogre deep in slumber. When he finished, he glanced around and found he remained alone.
"Hey! Are you two just going to leave me standing here with my bugger-stick in my hand, or were you planning on joining me anytime soon?"
A shuffling in the nearby grasses presaged a pair of silhouettes rising into view.
"I think I'm appalled. Must he say things like that?" he heard Mellorin ask plaintively.
"I don't know if he must," Jassion replied with unaccustomed humor, "but I've noticed that he very often does."
"Keep watch on him," Kaleb said as they neared. "He should be out for hours, but I've never tried anything quite like this. Fiddling with Rebaine's location spell shouldn't have any effect on the magics keeping him asleep, but let's not take chances."