by Terry Brooks
Home. How long had she been gone from it now? Two weeks, three, more? She had lost all track of time. She thought about Pan for a minute, wondering where he was and how he was managing without her. He would be worried sick, of course. But perhaps Sider had told him that Deladion Inch had promised to help her, so that he would know she hadn’t been abandoned entirely. She only hoped he wouldn’t make the mistake of trying to come for her himself. The fate of Deladion Inch was an object lesson in how dangerous such an endeavor could be.
She wondered, too, if anyone had discovered the duplicity of the treacherous Arik Siq. He had fooled them all in the beginning, even Sider, but his luck couldn’t last forever. There was every reason to think that he had been found out and dealt with by now. But if he had escaped, then the valley was at risk. He would lead the Drouj into the passes and flood the valley with Trolls bent on taking everything away from them and either killing or casting them out. How could they possibly stop something like that from happening, even with help from Sider Ament?
She was still standing there, thinking about it, when she heard voices on the other side of the door, low and guttural in the silence. Trolls. Some of her Drouj pursuers still lived. She found herself hoping that Grosha was not among them, but what difference did it make who it was? She flicked off the handheld solar light and stood motionless in the dark, listening. The Trolls stood outside for a long time, trying the handle, pushing on the door, talking among themselves. She waited, not knowing what to do.
Eventually, all the sounds disappeared as the Trolls moved away.
She stayed where she was for a long time afterward, waiting on their return. But finally she realized they weren’t coming back right away and decided to venture deeper into the fortress compound. Turning the solar light back on, she started down the darkened corridors, following the path Deladion Inch had laid out, intent on reaching his personal quarters, where she had been told she could find something to eat and a place to sleep.
It took her forever. Or at least, it seemed that way. Part of the problem was in the directions, which required that she follow a series of painted red arrows. There were painted arrows of all sorts, and sometimes they overlapped and sometimes they disappeared for long distances. As a result, she was forced to retrace her steps repeatedly to stay on the prescribed path. She didn’t blame Inch for this; after all, he probably never once thought that someone would have to find the way without him. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to improve on the markings or to develop a more comprehensive map.
She was tired by the time she reached her goal and found herself in the kitchen where he kept his foodstuffs, cold storage, dishes, and utensils. She set about making herself something to eat and sat at the wooden table he must have used for himself many times over. She thought on him at length, imagining what his life must have been like, saddened all over again that it had ended because of her. She had liked him and now wished she had been given a chance to know him better. But chances were few and far between in their world, and mostly you had to settle for what you were given and be grateful.
When she had finished eating, she climbed some steps to an overlook and crept forward to its edge, scanning the darkness. Far away—perhaps a mile distant, but directly in front of the entrance to the ruins through which she had fled to reach the compound—a fire burned bright and steady in the blackness. The Trolls had not left after all, only retreated a short distance to wait out the night. In the morning, they would likely come looking again. She wished she knew what the odds were, but there was no way of telling. Better than before, but still too great.
Then she remembered the automatic weapon Inch had given her, still stuck in a pocket of her coat. She reached down and drew it out. It was a short-barreled, stubby black killing tool, one that used metal projectiles like they had during the Great Wars. The name on the barrel, raised in tiny letters, said FLANGE 350. Inch had called it an automatic. Twelve shots. Just pull the trigger and it would fire them one at a time or all at once. She studied it dubiously. She had never seen a weapon of this sort, never held one before, and certainly never fired one. She supposed she could use it if she had to, but she found herself hoping it wouldn’t come to that. She would be happier with a bow and arrows, if she could find them. The metal weapon felt uncomfortable, as if it were as much a danger to her as to anyone she might try to use it against.
It gave her no sense of satisfaction at all to know she had it. She stuffed it back in her pocket and went back downstairs to sleep.
WHEN SHE WOKE, she was heavy-eyed and disoriented, brought out of her sleep mostly by a sense that something wasn’t right. For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was. She pushed herself upright and peered about in a darkness lit only by gray light seeping through a ventilation opening high up on the wall behind her. She remembered then she was in Deladion Inch’s fortress lair, cocooned away from the rest of the world, sealed off from the Drouj.
She rose and yawned, stretching her arms over her head. She had slept, but felt as if she hadn’t gotten much rest. She switched on the torch, scanned the room in a perfunctory way, and then climbed the steps to the exterior overlook.
This time when she emerged, she did so much more cautiously, crouching down so that she couldn’t be seen from below. The sun was overhead; it must have been somewhere close to midday. She slipped through the door and made her way on hands and knees to the edge of the overlook, keeping the wall between herself and whatever or whoever might be looking up. She found a split in the stone blocks and peered out, searching the landscape below.
She didn’t see anyone.
She kept looking anyway, then shifted her position, moving to one of the sidewalls. This time when she peered over the edge, she saw a Troll moving up through the rocks, scanning the walls of the keep.
They were still hunting her.
She slid down against the wall, putting her back against it and staring at the mist-shrouded peaks of the distant mountains. If Grosha was still alive, he wouldn’t give up. She could feel it in her bones. He would keep looking, and eventually he would find a way inside. She needed to get out of there before that happened. She needed to be far away and leave no trail that he could follow.
She moved in a crouch back across the overlook and through the door leading to the stairs. She passed rooms filled with old furniture and large paper boxes that were battered and broken and stacked against the walls. Pieces of metal and types of materials she didn’t recognize littered the floors of those rooms, which seemed not ever to have been used by Inch. Strange black boxes with shattered glass screens and hundreds of silver disks lay scattered about one room, and in another beds filled huge spaces that reminded her of healing wards, all of their bedding torn and soiled and ruined. Remnants of the old world, once useful, now discarded and forgotten, they were a mystery to her. She glimpsed them fleetingly, dismissed them, and hurried on.
Once in the kitchen, she packed up enough food and drink to sustain her for three days, strapped her supplies across her back, and started away.
She had just reached the hallway leading deeper into the complex when she saw the big cabinet with its doors not quite closed and caught sight of the weapons.
She stopped where she was, debating, and then walked over and opened the doors all the way. There were all kinds of old-world guns, explosives like the ones Deladion Inch had carried, knives, swords, and bows and arrows. She smiled in spite of herself, taking a set of the latter and adding a long knife in the bargain.
She almost left the Flange 350 behind, but at the last minute changed her mind and kept it in her pocket.
The light was poor at best within the corridors she followed, making it no easier to read the sign markings during the day than it had been at night. But she persevered, using the torch when no light penetrated from ventilation shafts, taking her time. Because the rear of the compound was elevated, there were stairs to be climbed, and as long as she was going up she could be certain she was headed
in the right direction. It wasn’t like tracking out in the open, where you could see the sky and the sun and the way ahead was clear. But her sense of direction was strong enough that even without those indicators to rely on, she could find her way.
Still, she got lost and was forced to retrace her steps more often than she would have liked. It was oppressive being closed in like this, buried under tons of stone and shut away from the light. She thought about how people had lived like this before the Great Wars, and she wondered how they had endured it. If she had lived then, how would she have managed? She expected she would have lived her life much as she was living it now, even given the differences. She couldn’t imagine living it any other way.
At one point, she sat down and rested; the complex was so much bigger than she had expected, and the constant back and forth of her efforts was draining her strength. If Pan were there, this wouldn’t be so difficult. Pan could read sign and intuit trails much better than she could. He would have had them out by now. Back in the light. Back in the fresh air.
Thinking of his absence depressed her, and she got back to her feet and continued on.
It took better than an hour, but finally she found an exterior wall and a huge pair of metal doors. Light seeped through the seams of the doors, and their size and shape and the presence of huge iron latch bars marked them clearly for what they were. She studied them for a moment and then decided that opening something this big and closing it again was too risky.
She moved right along the wall, searching for a smaller portal. She found one another fifty feet and several storage bays farther on, tightly sealed with a drop bar and slide latch. She stood at the door and listened, but heard nothing. Carefully, she lifted the drop bar, slid back the latch, and opened the door, just a crack.
The daylight was hazy, but visibility was good, and she could see hundreds of yards in front of her where the foothills climbed toward the distant mountains. She opened the door a bit farther, looked right and left, and didn’t find anything that looked out of place. It should be all right, she thought. The Drouj were still out front. She could slip away before they knew she was gone.
She pulled the door open all the way and stepped outside—right in front of a Troll as it came lumbering around a corner of the outside wall.
She froze, stunned by her bad luck. What were the odds that a Troll would appear just now? It was moving parallel to the wall perhaps twenty yards away, studying the ground, glancing up toward the hillside as it did so, clearly believing she had already gotten clear. Against all odds, it hadn’t noticed her.
She backed toward the open doorway, slowly and carefully. She took one step after another, eyes fixed on the Troll.
Then her foot slipped on the loose rock, and the Troll’s dark eyes found her.
She had but a moment to escape back inside; the Troll was coming much too fast for anything else. It carried a war club studded with spikes, a killing weapon she could not defend against. She was quick, but too small to stop a creature like this without help. The bow and arrows were slung across one shoulder—no time to get them free. She had the long knife out, but she didn’t think it would do much good. She would have to run, but there was no time to go anywhere but back inside.
It took her only seconds to gain the opening and rush back into the building. Once there, she began to run. The Troll came after her without slowing, undeterred by the darkness. It was faster than she had thought it would be, picking up speed as it pounded down the corridors. She would have to hide or outmaneuver it. But she didn’t know her way. Where would she go? She began to panic, searching the shadows for a way out, for an escape. But there were only other corridors and locked doors and hundreds of feet of stone floors and walls.
I should have stayed inside, she thought despairingly. I should have stayed hidden. I should have waited.
The Drouj had almost caught up to her when she remembered the Flange 350. She fumbled for it, yanked it from her pocket, released the safety as Deladion Inch had instructed her, wheeled as the Troll flung itself at her, and fired six times as fast as she could. She heard the sound of the metal projectiles striking her attacker and threw herself aside as it lurched past her, tumbling head-over-heels into the corridor wall.
She came back to her feet at once, swinging her weapon about, searching the gloom.
The Drouj lay folded over in a motionless heap, blood running from the wounds to its body. She looked away quickly, fighting not to vomit. She’d never killed anyone, she realized—as if it were a revelation. Only animals for food and once a wolf that tried to attack her. She didn’t like how it made her feel. Even though it was a Drouj intent on doing her harm. Even so. She looked back, forcing herself to make certain of it. She stared at it for a long moment, but it didn’t move.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she slid down against the wall. A shiver passed through her slender body, and she closed her eyes. She tried to think of what she needed to do. She must retrace her steps quickly and close and lock the door. She could not chance going out again now. She was too frightened, too unsure of herself. She would wait, as she should have done in the first place. If Pan were here, he would approve. He would tell her she was doing the right thing.
She stared at the body of the dead Troll a final time and realized suddenly that she was crying.
THE HOURS PASSED and dusk approached in a webbing of shadows and ground mist crawling down off the heights. In the vast expanse of the wastelands surrounding the complex, the Trolls were still at work, searching for a way in, trying to find a weak spot in the mix of stone and steel. The ragpicker counted five of them—big, hulking brutes with tree-bark skin and hunched shoulders. He didn’t like Trolls much. They were all the same, using their size and their strength to intimidate and, if need be, to overpower. Reasoning with Trolls was of little value. Trolls had a different mind-set about creatures like himself. Why reason with things so much smaller and weaker, they asked themselves, when you could simply crush them like eggs?
His ragged, scrawny figure was hidden by the glare of the fading sunlight as he approached them, barely more than a blurred image. The Trolls hadn’t noticed him at all, even though he had gotten to within a quarter mile of them and was traveling over ground that was mostly flat and bare. He had no wish to engage them, and so he was moving away, heading north toward the darkness, when he sensed the magic.
He stopped where he was, surprised.
Where was magic coming from in a place like this? Not from those Trolls, surely. From someone else, then? Someone inside the buildings that the Trolls were trying to penetrate?
He considered the possibility that it might be the man with the black staff, but couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that he was that lucky. For one thing, the magic he sensed did not appear strong enough. Nor did it appear to be of the right type. The ragpicker could parse degrees of magic; he could intuit their shapes. Over time, during his travels, he had encountered it often enough that he recognized its differences. This magic that he was sensing now was not that of a talisman, but of a living creature—a magic that was personal and innate.
Still, one thing usually led to another. A source here could lead to a source elsewhere and eventually to the one he was seeking. Baby steps, he reminded himself. Small successes.
He sighed. Pursuing this would mean confronting the Trolls. He would have to walk over there to determine what it was they were trying so hard to reach. He was not fond of the idea, but what was he to do? He couldn’t walk away if there was a chance that the origin of the magic he was sensing was one of the missing black staffs.
He stood looking at the Trolls, debating. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of shadows moving like quicksilver on the air, so thin they were virtually transparent. He didn’t bother looking at them. He didn’t need to; he knew what they were. He knew, as well, that trying to look directly at them wouldn’t work. You couldn’t see them that way. You could only glimpse them as bits of motion.
Feeders.
Once, they had been clearly visible to those who had use of magic. Humans and Elves and their ilk couldn’t see them, not unless they had magic at their command. But demons could. And Knights of the Word. But something had changed all that with the destruction of the old world, and in the aftermath of the Great Wars, feeders had evolved into something that was almost entirely devoid of substance. They still fed on human emotions, still savaged those consumed by their darker instincts. But they had become as empty as wind.
What mattered here, however, was that there were feeders present at all. Their appearance signaled the presence of magic; it was the possibility of feeding that had attracted them. Use of magic expended the sort of dark emotion that feeders craved. They were drawn to it like flies to garbage and Men to evil. He smiled. You couldn’t find a better indicator than that, could you?
Decided, he switched directions and walked slowly toward the Trolls, the now distinct possibility that his search was over a guiding light.
THE TROLLS DIDN’T NOTICE HIM AT FIRST, ABSORBED in their efforts to find a way into the complex, working to pry loose the locks and hinges on massive iron doors that sealed the exterior walls. One Troll had found a ladder and climbed to a second level, where he was poking about at windows that were barred and shuttered, having not much better success than his fellows. The ragpicker approached slowly, so as not to alarm them unnecessarily. If he could just speak to them, he might be able to discover whether or not what he was looking for was inside the complex and could then determine if any further action was necessary. It was a risky business; Trolls were unpredictable. But they didn’t usually attack you without reason, so it was possible to believe they might listen to him first.
