"What?" Grump released the iron and wiped sweat beading on his brow. "I almost had it."
"You certainly did not almost have it, unless what you wanted to have was my bashed skull."
"Don't be ridiculous—or tempting. It's—"
"Blood magic," Elyse interrupted. "The bars are weak, but it's not the metal that keeps them sturdy."
Grump's ear twitched at the woman's grating voice. He looked behind him and noticed the smirk on her cracked and peeling lips. She flashed her brows. "Not even a troll's going to open that cage. You might've heard rumors of the haunts, but no one really knows them. We've been here long enough to learn a thing or two about these nightmares. One's that they love to drink. Another's that they use blood magic."
"Blood magic?" Grump shrugged. "Never heard of it."
"You're from the east side of the Ridge then. Blood magic's used by the greenskins in the Hordelands." She narrowed her eyes and inspected him. "You're from the blackwoods, north of Farlain? How'd a troll from the swamps survive the elves and cross the plains?"
Grump snarled. "None of your business."
"Fine, but you are from the East, that much is obvious. Those of us from the old world know a little more about dark magic than you. We still tell our children the stories of the days when the skies burned as often as the sun set. Blood magic's an old thing, a dark thing conjured up by those who bent their knee to the Ebon Robes. It's made to harm, to hurt ... to torture."
She sucked in her breath, pressing her lips into a tight line until she recollected herself. "These haunts steal life to power their enchantments, and the haunt who enchanted these prisons is more powerful than all the rest. Only his defeat can break the magic sealing us in this hellish place."
"I don't suppose I could just ask him nicely?"
"This is Getshabal, troll, the ancient city under the mountain. It belonged to your kind before the haunts made claim to it. You think he will be so willing to help an old enemy returned?"
"Well, bat dung and beetle eggs! This is all too much trouble." Grump readjusted Rose's satchel and headed back the way he came. "I'm sorry, Boil, I tried, but your human cellmate's silvery tongue has talked me out of helping any of you."
"Grump," Boil's voice tumbled into a sad whimper. "Please. I—I don't want to die in here. They'll kill me. I can't work like a human can. I'm not strong enough."
"More than likely they'll use your blood for something," Elyse said. "Or just roast you on a spit and have you for a nice appetizer."
Grump reached the bridge leading back into the tunnel and paused there, staring at his toes. His eyes shifted toward Rose. "You heard her. It'll be damned near impossible."
Boil's cage squeaked almost as sadly as the goblin's voice as it shifted with his weight. "Please, you've got to try. You really aren't like other trolls. You're better than them. I know it. You're better than me, even."
"I'm no hero, Boil."
"But you are. Leaving me here'll put a thorn in your heart until the day you die. You know it will."
Grump narrowed his gaze at his cracked and broken toenails. "Good luck to all of you."
He took a step onto the bridge. Boil whimpered like a puppy. Grump could practically feel the goblin's pointy ears droop.
His eyes flicked to Rose's satchel once again. He could imagine the soft pink ball of her form cradled against his chest. He sighed and raised his palms, the deep lines carved into them from long nights digging into soil or climbing unforgiving redwood bark. "This is your fault, Teacher," he muttered, clenching his fists and spinning around. "Ancestors be damned to all the damning damnable hells there ever were and ever will be. You owe me twice as much for this, you cursed greenskin."
Boil's sad ears shot straight. He wiped his sleeve across his nose and nodded so hard Grump thought his head might rattle off his shoulders. "I knew you'd come through!"
"So you'll save us?" Elyse asked. By then most of the other humans had forgotten their fear and clamored as close as they could to the front of their prisons.
Grump grimaced at all the fair folk. Not a single one of them would have thought twice about putting him in one of those cages in exchange for their own freedom if a haunt so much as hinted at the idea. He passed his tongue over a tusk and stepped toward Elyse. "What's this haunt look like who can break the enchantment?"
Elyse's eyes brightened as smiles broke out in the filthy crowd. "Have you ever seen a haunt?"
"No, but I guess I will soon enough. You gonna tell me, or am I supposed to riddle it out of you?"
"Listen well, Grump. Haunts walk like men, but they've got thick coats like wolves and heads just as vicious. They take to wearing bones and hides, but only one of them wears feathers. That's the chief. His name is Rahl, and one of his eyes his bad. He's old, but his wits are sharp as any carving knife fresh from the whetstone."
Grump nodded and stomped through the platform. He reached the other end and frowned at the dark tunnel. "Well, here we go—"
"Wait!" Elyse called.
"What? Let me get this over with."
"He loves his wine. Loves it. Use that to your advantage. And he respects strength. Don't show an ounce of fear or you'll end up here with us."
"In a cage?" Grump smirked and rubbed a finger across the thick scar on his chest, feeling tough flesh that sat like a huge leach over his ribs. "Trust me when I say that won't be happening."
"Before you go, take this," Boil said. "It may help you."
"Eh?" Grump ambled to the cage.
Boil slipped something from around his neck and thrust his hand through the bars. "I told you the wizard would prepare me. Keep this close. If you're in a bind, show it."
"Well, why didn't you do it before when you got in this mess!"
"I wasn't quite sure what it'd do."
Grump snatched the necklace. It was a dark metal chain with a black stone disc. A rune etched into the disc shimmered whenever his breath washed across the stone.
"You were scared." Grump slipped it into his chest pocket and patted his overalls.
"I don't like the underground, Grump. I don't like it at all. Please hurry. Please."
Odd thing for a greenskin to hate being underground. Then again, it was just as odd for a troll to garden. He adjusted the shovel on his back and licked his lips. The prospect of violence excited and terrified him all at once. It had been so long since he harmed another. So long....
"Concentrate, Grump. You can do this, you old fool," he whispered.
Grump slipped into the tunnel, their hopeful eyes boring into his broad back.
Once around the first bend beyond the prison, the passage quickly curled upward and ascended a steep slope. Bones and refuse littered the passage, filling it with a stench so vile Grump's eyes watered. Eventually, a cool breeze washed across his face and buried the stench behind him.
He sniffed the air. This was more than fresh air. This was the crisp, clean scent of high mountain air.
His pace quickened. He pulled the shovel from his back and brandished its wide blade like a soldier would a spear. Dim starlight washed across the rough walls. The light brightened. The cool breeze grew into the distant, intermittent howl of a strong wind.
Grump slowed at the last bend. He squeezed the shovel and spun beyond the passage.
Before him, an enormous crater opened to the glittering sky. A vineyard carpeted the ground, long rows of jagged, uncaring vines forming a tangled labyrinth of emerald blades with the bulbous tails of grapes beneath them. Mirrors placed strategically along the crater's steep walls reflected the sky, giving the appearance of a mountain made of holes and not granite.
He could only imagine this place midday, when the sun blanketed the vineyard with its light and the mirrors eagerly magnified and reflected it. These plants would drown in brilliant warmth.
For a moment, he paused to picture the light washing over his cheeks. Grump's lips slowly peeled apart, and he reached toward the blazing disc burning through the sky. "I alw
ays envied you for this, Teacher."
He clenched his fist and dropped it to his side. With eyes wide, the vision faded to the reality of a cold, dark night.
Grump took a step forward. His heart fluttered as he caught another stench on the breeze, this time one certainly not of the fair folk.
His scar itched. He slapped his hand over his chest and grit his teeth. "You can do this. For Boil. For Rose."
Grump looked to the rough satchel slung over his shoulder, and his hard look softened. "Don't worry, you'll be just fine. They're not gonna get a claw on you, I swear it."
With a sharp nod he wiped all the silly nostalgia and wonder from his thoughts and strode confidently into the vineyard. So close the vines grew, the leaves tickled his elbows as he passed.
He searched for any movement in the vines and kept as low a profile as a troll could. He sniffed the air again, but this time no stink was on it. "Not very good at haunting, these haunts."
Grapes hung from their tendrils in plump, rubbery bundles. From a distance, they looked ripe enough. He wondered when the haunts might harvest them. If they truly loved their wine as much as Elyse believed, they would need these grapes soon else the whole harvest would spoil.
His gardener's curiosity sunk its claws into him, and he slowed to inspect a vine. "Let's see if these haunts make better gardeners than a troll, Rose. There's time enough to get back to all this danger. It's been a good few days since I've had a decent plant in my hands that wasn't root or weed."
Grump grabbed a stem, lifting the bundle to take a good whiff of the grapes. He paused and grimaced, holding the fruit to the starlight. White splotched the purplish skin. Their leaves sported cringe worthy patches pale as chalk dust and patterned across the blade like freckles across a cheek.
Like a hot coal he dropped the vine and watched it bounce, flicking whatever might have remained on his fingers from them. "Guess these haunts aren't as good as gardeners as I thought, huh? Vine rot's got them. Probably got the whole harvest if I had to guess since the fools planted them so close together. No wonder they're still on the vine. This is no wine to drink unless you're aiming to kill your guests."
Vine rot was common, but thankfully that made it easily curable. How a bunch of wine lovers let vine rot infest their vineyard was beyond him.
"Vine ... rot...." a voice grumbled from behind, low and slow barely more than a growl.
Grump stiffened at the sound. His gaze swept around as his Hunger roared. Swinging the shovel in these tight rows wasn't ideal, but he would manage it in a fight.
He pivoted on his heel and faced the stranger. His Hunger sizzled hotter when his gaze came to the group before him. Three haunts stood on the path. He could take three—with luck.
Shadows swiftly passed behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. Three more snarled just beyond his reach. He would never survive six.
"You damned fool," he murmured.
Like Elyse described, these haunts stood like men, and like men, he towered above them. Coarse fur covered their burly arms and broad shoulders while long, hooked claws twitched from their eagerly trembling fingers. Their wet, dark eyes glared down long snouts wrinkled by fanged snarls. Their thin, pink tongues hung between their teeth and wet the long fur beneath their jaws.
Grump resisted the mighty urge to launch himself at them and rip them apart. His Hunger pleaded for blood, begged for cracking bone and tormented screams, but he swallowed the urge with an awkward smile. "I, ah, ahem ... yes. You've got yourselves a nasty case of vine rot in your grapevines. It'll kill your whole crop if you're not careful."
The center haunt cocked his head. He stood taller than the rest. Brown peppered his dark coat, and the fur on his left arm was crisscrossed with pale scars. "You know what ails our crops?"
"Well enough." Grump fought through the muddled rage clouding his thoughts until the light of an idea burned away what Hunger remained. Teacher's calming voice led him through the rage, pulled him from the violence. "I'm a gardener, you see. Troll gardener, not like those weak humans. Heard a rumor of a haunt vineyard and had to see it for myself."
"Not even a troll is fool enough to pass into our Ridge seeking out the haunts. You think you're safe because you fools once made your homes in Getshabal? We still find greenskin bones in our mountains from the days the humans drove you out and claimed the Winding Road."
Grump met the creature's steady gaze. "Times are changing. The humans aren't as strong as they were then, and there's nothing on Oya I fear. I am the thing that's feared, the stories humans tell their children to keep them in their beds. I'm what lurks in the dark. I'm what cracks branches in the night, slowly moving through the shadows on my way to my meal."
The words spilled out with such ease he nearly terrified himself, but instead of dropping his jaw, he lifted his chin and gripped the shovel, staring down his nose at the tall haunt. One of the other haunts snarled words in a language Grump couldn't decipher. The leader snapped something back, and his companion quieted. "And how do we rid ourselves of this vine rot?"
Grump smirked and struck the tip of his shovel in the soil. "It's a complicated medicine. I could tell you, but you'd prepare it wrong. But why would I tell you? You'd just kill me once you knew, and then you'd fail anyway and I'd be dead. Maybe I'm not the fool you think I am, eh?"
The haunt motioned to his guards, who quickly closed in on Grump. The creature flashed his grotesque teeth in what Grump assumed was a smile. "No, I think you're still a fool. Come. If you can truly cure the rot, then Rahl will see you."
"Good. I'm sure he'll see reason and we'll work something out."
His guards rasped wheezing laughs as they made their way toward a tunnel opposite where Grump entered. Their leader walked into the shadows and turned, his dark eyes glittering like black beads. "No one comes to us willingly, troll. No one. We don't want greenskins in our mountains. First the goblin, now you. Rahl will think the horde returns. Rahl will think you have come to take what's ours."
"And what will he do if he thinks that?"
"Maybe he will drain your blood. Maybe we will dine on troll." The haunt's eyes faded into the black. "There is so much of you for the eating. So much."
Grump narrowed his eyes. "It might be hard to swallow with no wine to wash me down."
The haunt's laugh echoed on the walls. Grump rested his hand over Rose, wondering if all this bravado had been a fatal error. His Hunger gnawed at his thoughts, whispering that it would be ready to sing its song at a moment's notice. That more than anything terrified him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Haunted of the Haunts
Oily, smelly, growling haunts crowded Grump as they headed deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels carved into the mountain. Unlike the passage leading to Boil's cage, these tunnels were wider and higher. Shallow caves dotted the walls. Bones both yellowed and freshly white clustered in dark corners.
In the shadows, glimmering eyes stared back, unblinking and hungry. He passed a cave and a ragged, greying haunt stumbled from its dripping entrance. Mange had gnawed away most of the creature's fur, and its milky gaze cast about wildly. One of the guards barked and backhanded the pathetic creature, and it slinked back into the black.
Every so often, just as darkness was about to blind him, a flickering torch would appear and offer some meager light. The firelight reflected off lines of sour moisture running along the walls and collecting in shallow, rotten pools.
Grump kept a hand on Rose's satchel. He buried his nose in the crook of his other arm and tried not to gag at the horrid stench curdling the air. Not even his compost at the garden ever approached this awful level. The stench was everywhere, invading his nose and sliding down his throat with each breath.
The tunnel spiraled downward until it ended at a mouth at least six times as tall as Grump. Skulls framed its entryway, and from the mouth of an enormous ram's skull hung a cast iron chandelier burning a flame that consumed no wood. "How is that burning?"
"Bl
ood," the haunt leader growled, motioning through the doorway.
Grump had glimpsed magic from a distance before, but never had he witnessed it so close. Trolls and magic didn't mix. It was a reminder of the curse they carried, of the enchanted blood that gave them power but also granted death at the touch of sunlight.
He stared at the roiling ball of fire and shivered. A claw dug into his back.
"Move!" the haunt barked.
Grump squeezed his eyes shut and bounded beneath the morbid chandelier. He felt the heat of the flames as he passed beneath them, and once he arrived on the other side, he opened his eyes with a great sigh and wiped a sweaty hand along his overalls.
While the shallow pits and dank tunnels behind him were dark and primitive, this chamber was nothing of the sort. Cast iron torches shaped like horns lined the walls and rose taller than even Grump. They belched smokeless ruddy flames that blackened the rock. As his vision followed the smoke, it rose to a ceiling peaked at a height so great an old redwood could easily fit within the chamber, its highest branches not even close to tickling the top.
Pillars wide as blackwood trunks supported the high ceiling. Switchback stairways carved into the columns' sides scaled the mighty structures at sharp angles. Dark entrances and shallow balconies draped with furs dotted the spaces between the stairs. Distant barking, dulled growling echoed through the enormous cavern, punctuated every so often by soft whines.
"My kind built this?" Grump asked, staring slack jawed at the gargantuan city hollowed out of a mountain's belly. The trolls he knew could hardly dig a hole without drawing one another's blood.
"And haunts claimed it," the haunt snarled. "Now get!"
Grump's guards led him between two gigantic troll statues raging at the ceiling. Water gushed from their jaws and splashed into deep channels at their feet. A fine mist kissed his cheeks and dampened his overalls, and the roaring water muted the howling echoing through the city.
He took a deep breath and squeezed his fists. This city beneath the mountain was nothing like the Blackwood Swamp, and yet they were very much the same. A malicious hunger lurked on every breath. Every stranger's glance held a glimmer of bloodlust within it.
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