Authors: Trevor H. Cooley
Tarah Woodblade
| Tarah Woodblade |
| The Jharro Grove Saga [1] |
| Trevor H. Cooley |
| (2014) |
A Bowl Of Souls Novel
The Jharro Grove Saga: Book One
Tarah Woodblade
A Bowl of Souls Novel
By Trevor H. Cooley
Trevor H. Cooley
Copyright 2013 by Trevor H. Cooley
Cover art © Renu Sharma |
www.thedarkrayne.com
Map by: Michael Patty on
www.trevorhcooley.com
The Bowl of Souls Series:
The Moonrat Saga
:
Book One: EYE of the MOONRAT
Book 1.5: HILT’S PRIDE
Book Two: MESSENGER of the DARK PROPHET
Book Three: HUNT of the BANDHAM
Book Four: THE WAR of STARDEON
Book Five: MOTHER of the MOONRAT
The Jharro Grove Saga
Book One
:
TARAH WOODBLADE
Dedication
This book is for my daughter, Paige. The best and brightest up and coming writer I know.
Remember
No matter who you think you are. No matter who you think you should be.
No matter what other people say you are. These two things are true.
You are you, and you are what you do.
Acknowledgements
I have so many people to thank with this one. My wife and editor, Jeannette, who has been extremely patient with me as I wrote throughout our moving process while she packed the house. Also my friends and family who have been so supportive.
Finally I would like to thank my cousin, John. He has been one of my best friends since I was a child and many of the characters and story ideas from the Bowl of Souls series started with games we would play together. The character of Tarah Woodblade came about through a series of conversations John and I had as he was reading my book series. Many of John’s ideas and thoughts became part of Tarah’s background and personality. As I wrote the book, he helped to proofread it as well. Thank you, buddy.
Author’s Note
The story of Tarah Woodblade’s creation is a complex one. It started with a game.
While I was writing Mother of the Moonrat, my friend Michael Patty, a lifelong gamer and creator of games, suggested the idea of a Bowl of Souls role playing game. Michael was the designer of my maps for the series and I knew he would be great to work with, so I went forward with the idea.
As we designed the game and built it to a playable stage, I did some play testing with my cousin, John. Now John, being the unique soul he is, decided that, instead of playing as a dwarf blacksmith or a mage or Battle Academy graduate, he wanted to play as one of the most basic character options out there. A woodsman. Basically just a frontier farmer that lives off the land. He became excited with the idea of being a character that was a tracker and guide.
So I came up with a scenario and we started to play. As we began talking about the character, a young woman named Tarah, I became more and more interested. We spent hours talking about Tarah’s background and about the dwarf that would become her traveling companion.
As I came closer and closer to the end of Mother of the Moonrat, I knew that beginning the next series was going to be a challenge, especially since I intended for my main characters to take some time off from the adventure while evil started brewing elsewhere. Slowly, as I outlined the series, I realized that there was a large hole in the story. I had a couple ways I could go about tying things together, but none of them quite worked the way I wanted to. Tarah Woodblade’s character kept coming up in my mind.
I made my decision. Tarah Woodblade’s adventure would start off the next series and lead right into the main thrust of the action. As I wrote this book, I fell in love with the story of Tarah and Djeri. My wife was more hesitant. Would the readers be disappointed with the fact that Justan isn’t the main character in this book? I just quit my day job. What if they leave bad reviews and the book sinks? But the more she read the more she was won over and now she says it is is in the top two favorites of all the books I’ve written. I can only hope that you are won over too.
I know the idea of the Jharro Grove series starting off without Justan and Jhonate may be hard to swallow. Just know that they aren’t gone. (and they have a small role to play here too) Justan is back in action in full force with book two. All I can ask is that you trust me. Stick with me. I promise you that if you loved the Moonrat Saga, you will love this book too.
Thank you,
Trevor H. Cooley
Table of Contents
Prologue
227 years ago
“Shh. Yer gonna be alright, Puppy,” said Lenui Firegobbler softly as he stood in front of the rogue horse, its bridle in his hands.
It whimpered and he took off his hat, ignoring the rain that soaked through his red hair. He’d learned that Puppy responded better to him when he wasn’t wearing the hat. It’d been around the smugglers so long it identified their wide-brimmed hats with rough treatment. The rogue horse calmed and licked his face in response, but it continued to give him the sad doggy eyes. The poor thing was dripping with water and had been whining all morning. Puppy hated being wet.
The team of dwarf smugglers had been standing in the hills outside the Gnome Homeland for hours waiting for their buyer to arrive. The storm had started as a drizzle when they arrived, but now it was torrential. Lenui had dismounted to comfort the rogue and was the only one standing. The other dwarves stayed mounted on their horses, their wide-brimmed hats keeping the rain off their faces.
“You listen to Lenui, boy,” Lenui patted its neck and hoped the rain was pouring too loud for the others to hear. “Yer gonna be a lot happier after today. Yer gettin’ new owners.”
“Dag-blast it, Lenui! I done told you a hunnerd times, its name’s just Gold. That’s all the durn animal’s worth to us!” shouted his uncle, Blayne. He always shouted when he was talking to Lenui, rain or no rain. The dwarf smuggler’s black handlebar mustache twisted as he scowled. “That’s Cragstalker rule number three. Don’t go and get yerself attached to the critters!”
“I ain’t attached, dag-nab it! He just looks like a puppy so I been callin’ him Puppy!” Lenui barked as he scratched under its chin. It was a lie, of course. Not that he’d admit it, but he’d come to like the dag-gum thing. The two rogue horses they had may have been uglier than sin, but they were also the sweetest critters he’d ever known. The rogues loved to play and loved to be ridden and they’d do just about whatever a dwarf wanted them to do. “‘Sides, he likes it. Ain’t that why you brought me anyway?”
Normally a dwarf needed to be in his fortieth year at least before he was brought along on an important sale like this one. But when his momma had suggested he go along, the others hadn’t resisted. She wanted him to go so he could learn what a smuggler’s business deal was like. The others let him come because the rogue horses were calmer when Lenui was around and they knew it.
“Yer a corn-tootin’ idjit, Babyface!” yelled his cousin Donjon from atop his chestnut bay. The dwarf had been miserable all day. Not only were his clothes soaked through, he had taken lashes for neglecting to shave his jaw that morning and his rear end was sore. Shaved jaws and handlebar mustaches were the traditional look of their people. The Corntown Smugglers saw those traditions as part of their brand. Nonconformity had consequences and Donjon’s punishment had been all the worse because his father was second in command. “It don’t look like no puppy!”
“I ain’t no babyface, you tender-arse!” Lenui snapped as he fingered his own mustache, pitiful and thin as it was. At twenty-four-years-old he only needed to shave his chin every three days or so and his mustache was just starting to fill in. He couldn’t get it to curl up at the ends like the others, but he was sure it would in time. His daddy’s mustache was legendary, stretching from ear-to-ear and curling up higher than his eyebrows. “And he does look like a puppy. His head’s a puppy head.”
Donjon scowled at the rogue horse. “It’s a friggin’ freak if’n you ask me!”
Lenui disagreed, but he knew what his cousin meant. The rogue was an unnatural looking creature. It had the head and rear quarters of a shaggy dog, but the rest of it was horse, from its neck and forelegs to its back. The end result was that the rogue horse looked awfully awkward, but Lenui had ridden it many times and it rode smooth as silk.
“It’s alright, Puppy,” he whispered, patting its neck. “Just as soon as yer new master gets here, you won’t have to deal with these mean ole dwarfs no more. No sir, you won’t.”
Lenui didn’t know very much about their buyer except that he was a gnome scholar, a fact that had relieved him when he had heard it. The dwarf smugglers usually dealt with the most dark and devious of clients. At least with a gnome scholar, he knew that the rogue horse wasn’t likely to be harmed.
Puppy let out another nervous whimper and Lenui wondered if the rogue might be bothered by more than just the rain. He dug his hand through the thick fur on its head, but it didn’t seem to be feverish and its sad eyes were clear and focused. He didn’t think it was sick, but it kept its tail between its legs and shivered.
“The rain’ll stop soon, boy,” he promised and as if on cue, the rain slowed to a drizzle. Within a few minutes the clouds opened up, letting the sun shine through. Not long after that, one of the smugglers scouting at the top of the hill called out. The buyer was approaching.