by Tanya Huff
The elevator opened into some kind of central depot. Considering it was nothing more than a large room carved out of the rock to be a tunnel terminal, it was well lit. The five tunnels Charlie could see from where she was standing were not.
“We didn’t turn the lights off in C tunnel when we left,” Paul said quietly.
“Goblins don’t like the light, remember?”
“They figured out how to turn the lights off?” He sounded horrified.
“Didn’t have to,” Charlie told him, sketching night-sight charms on her eyelids. “They probably ripped down the wiring and smashed the fixtures.” She hadn’t needed night sight at the festival, hadn’t bothered with it on the road, but here and now, it seemed like a good idea. Not that it helped much. Beyond the first two meters, the tunnels weren’t so much dark as filled with an absence of light, and the charms, like cat’s eyes, needed minimal illumination to work.
“Why aren’t they waiting for us,” Eineen murmured, close enough that her breath lifted the hair off the back of Charlie’s neck. “They must have heard the cage descend.”
In a just world, Charlie would have refused to shiver. In this world, her body went with it. “Were they waiting for you the last time?”
“No. We heard them approaching when we got close to the skins.”
“Best guess, they’re exploring. If Auntie Catherine left them to guard the skins, then they’ve set up wards and your proximity called them back.” Locked into the mine, easy to find, they wouldn’t want to fail at the task Auntie Catherine had set them. Charlie covered a yawn with the back of her hand. She needed to get this over with and grab some sleep. “Okay, which way?”
Paul moved out in front, and Eineen let him. Given how close she stayed behind Charlie’s right shoulder as they made their way through the open area, her position remaining constant as they stepped around abandoned carts and over the tracks they ran on, Charlie figured it had less to do with giving Paul a chance to man up and more to do with being terrified. Paul feared the Goblins because they were outside his experience. And okay, because they were freaky little not! Humans who’d tried to claw their way through steel to get to him. Eineen feared them because she knew exactly what the freaky little not! Humans were capable of.
When Paul began to maneuver one of the flat carts onto the rails heading for tunnel C, Eineen stopped him and said, “We won’t need it.”
“Four pelts weigh . . .”
“As much as four lives, as little as I need them to.”
“But the last time . . .”
“I didn’t realize that was why you were taking the cart.”
Charlie could tell he wanted to ask Eineen just what she’d thought he was going to use the cart for, but, in the end, he only shook his head and moved toward the tunnel. Given that he hadn’t had the sense to run when Eineen came out of the water to dance, he’d better learn to cope with confusion.
Unfortunately, no matter how many times Paul flicked the breaker, the lights remained off in tunnel C.
Charlie put her hand over Paul’s and stopped the obsessive working at the switch. “I think they’re broken. I’ll go out in front from here on, okay?”
For a moment she thought he was going to protest. Give her some involuntary testosterone-produced crap about being the man, but all he said was, “Okay.”
Enchanted. Not stupid. Good to know.
About to draw a charm on the wall with a wet finger, Charlie squinted as a light bulb came on above her head.
“Sometimes the helmet lamps take a while to warm up,” Paul explained. “And there’s no absolute guarantee that, in spite of regulations, the batteries are 100% full.” He laughed, nervously. “Still, there’s no absolute guarantee for anything, is there?”
“I thought you met Auntie Catherine,” Charlie muttered, scanning the rocks for . . . “There you are. Come to Mama, baby.” The piece of coal was about the size of a chocolate truffle and soft enough it ran easily over the rock wall as she sketched a charm at the point where the light from the big open area gave up and quit. Leaning forward, she huffed a breath at the wall. The black lines sparkled, then gleamed, then glowed white. The charm didn’t throw a lot of light, but it created a small oasis in the darkness. Charlie’d learned it in Auntie Claire’s outhouse, the charm written so that closing and latching the door completed it.
Oh, great. Now I have to pee.
“What would happen if I drew that mark?” Paul asked speculatively.
“Think you can remember it?” The lines of the charm had been washed out by the light.
“Of course, I . . .”
Leading the way down the tunnel, Charlie grinned at the frown in his voice. “Let it go, dude.”
“Do you know how much energy could be saved if everyone could draw on the wall, or the on ceiling, and light their houses?”
“Do you know how boring music would be if everyone sang in the same range?”
“What?”
“To each their own, Mr. Belleveau.” About two meters past the light from the first charm, she drew and activated another. If she’d been using spit, she wouldn’t have needed to activate, but breathing took a lot less time than having to constantly wet her finger. She was pretty sure there was a dirty joke buried in that statement, but she was too tired to bother digging it out.
As time passed, she fell into what Mark would’ve referred to as a Zen state and Charlie thought might be closer to bored stupid. Walk and charm, walk and charm. Half circle of tunnel; curved roof, flat floor. Walk and charm, walk and charm. Rough roof, smooth floor. Walk and charm, walk and charm. Sound of her footsteps, sound of Paul’s footsteps, silence of Eineen’s footsteps. Walk and charm. When Eineen touched her shoulder, she jumped and made a noise she had every intention of denying later.
“We’re nearly at the skins,” the Selkie murmured. “The next side tunnel to the left.
“So far, no Goblins,” Paul added.
Eineen made a nearly inaudible sound of protest.
“What?”
Charlie rolled her eyes as the unmistakable sound of claws against stone drifted up from the lower tunnels. Two degrees and the man had no understanding of what not to say in this kind of a situation. “And at least it’s not raining,” she sighed, finished one last charm, and dropped what was left of the coal. “Little bastards are fast.” The sound of the claws had already come notably closer.
“We can hear them,” Paul pointed out.
Kind of pointlessly, Charlie thought. The Goblins weren’t trying for a stealth attack.
“So they can hear you,” he added.
Oh. “I want them close enough the sound doesn’t distort.You knew the job was dangerous when you took it,” she added before he could protest.
“Without the Dragon Prince, what can you play that will make a Goblin run?” Eineen asked.
“Okay, first . . .” Charlie ran her thumbnail over the strings checking the acoustics. “ . . . if you thought I had nothing to offer without Jack, this is not the time to bring that up. And, second, they’ve met Auntie Catherine.” She squared her shoulders, settled the guitar into place, and wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the fretboard. “I’m going to point out the relationship.”
When the darkness began to break into pieces, pieces that gleamed and glittered like eyes and teeth, she began to play.
Auntie Catherine’s song. Her song. The song of the Gale women who hunted down Uncle Edward, tore him to pieces, and devoured him. Wild songs.
The gleaming and the glittering got no brighter.
Then it faded, and there was only the darkness.
Charlie played a moment more, then stilled the strings. The silence in the tunnel was oppressive. Calm before the storm, she noted silently. Because unlike certain executive assistants who’d been recently saved from the darkside by the love of a good sea mammal, she knew better than to poke at fate.
“Did they look like they were running scared to you?” Paul took another
poke. “They didn’t look like they were running scared to me.”
“The point is,” Charlie reminded him, “they ran. Let’s get the skins, make like a tree, and get the hell out of . . .”
Eineen raced past her.
“. . . here,” she finished as Paul ran to catch up. Speeding up a little, although she was not going to run, Charlie watched him reach the side tunnel and smack at a switch on the wall.
These lights were still working.
Paul glanced suspiciously up at the ceiling.
“You didn’t get this far the last time, so the Goblins had no idea there were lights. They understand destruction,” Charlie added, falling into step beside him. “They don’t understand electricity.”
“You say your family doesn’t get involved with the business of the Fey, but you seem to know a fair bit about them.”
“You’d be surprised how many people consider neutrality to be weakness.”
“MBA; no, I wouldn’t.” He ran to join Eineen at the skins.
Charlie was just as glad three of them were in what looked like garment bags because the whole collapsed face, empty eyehole thing on the fourth was a little gross.
Her hair flowing around her in midnight currents in spite of the lack of any kind of a breeze, Eineen picked the top skin off the pile as though it weighed nothing at all and flung it into the air—kind of like Auntie Jane flicking the crumbs off a tablecloth. Except the tablecloths stay tablecloths while the pelt shimmered in midair and then became a beige scarf Eineen looped around her neck. She bent to the pile again and the sound of reinforced nylon tearing suggested she hadn’t bothered with the zipper.
Skin two became a dark brown sweater with black patterning.
Charlie saw Paul open his mouth as Eineen shrugged the sweater over her shoulders, but she didn’t hear what he said over the sudden sound in the main tunnel.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Steadily growing closer, claws on stone playing melody over percussion.
“If whatever that is traps us in here, we’re done. Pick up the pace!” Holding her guitar tight against her body, she ran to the tunnel mouth. Looking back toward the elevator, the charms were circles of light like pearls spaced along a black silk cord. Looking the other way, she almost thought she saw the darkness tremble with each heavy . . .
Thud.
Thud.
A piece of the wall broke way and skittered down the stone face to the floor.
Thud.
“Oh, shit.”
She knew drums. Bodhrans. Tom toms. Snares. Steel. Taiko. Darbuka. Kpanlogo. Basic big bass drums.
Thud.
That wasn’t a drum.
Thud.
That was a footstep. What had feet that would make that kind of an impact and still fit in the tunnels?
“They have a cave troll,” she sighed as Paul and Eineen rocked to a stop behind her.
“Really?” From his tone, Paul didn’t get the quote.
“You don’t get out much, do you?” She reached back, snagged a handful of fabric—Paul’s shirt—and yanked him past her into the main tunnel. “Now, move it. And no, not really,” she added as Paul grabbed for Eineen’s hand and all three of them started to run. “It’s a regular troll; I just always wanted to say that.”
“Catherine Gale brought a troll in with the Goblins and the . . . uh . . .”
“Boggarts. And, again, no. He’s probably been here for years.” Paul’s slick-soled shoes had crappy traction, Charlie realized as Eineen kept him from falling. Her flip flops were no better, though, so it wasn’t like she could call him on it. “Trolls are like living earth, they just seep through the barrier, but I wouldn’t bet against Auntie Catherine using his seepage to anchor the gate.”
“It would have hidden it on the other side,” Eineen allowed.
“Yeah, like the Courts care.” The Goblins had to have found the Troll when they were exploring the mine. Found it, woke it, got it moving. Trolls were nearly mindless and mindlessly vicious if provoked. Kind of like an avalanche. Sounded like the Goblins had provoked it and then aimed it.
“Why don’t you do your thing and get rid of it?” Paul demanded.
“Living earth, remember?”
They were nearly past the last of the side tunnels, when the scrabbling of claws grew suddenly louder.
Charlie grabbed Eineen’s arm and dragged her to a stop. Eineen’s grip on Paul’s hand stopped him. “There’s Goblins between us and the big open area.”
“It’s called Canaveral,” Paul whispered.
“Okay. There’s Goblins between us and Canaveral.”
“Are you sure?”
Something hissed in the darkness between the last two charms.
“Pretty sure, yeah.” Fishing a pick from her pocket, Charlie slammed out fifteen seconds of power chords.
“Sister Mary Benedict,” Paul gasped as the sound rolled away from them. “She terrified me in grade two. I haven’t thought of her in years. What . . . ?”
“Basically, don’t make me come up there,” Charlie told him, pick sliding from sweat-slicked fingers. “Now run!”
THUD.
THUD.
BOOM.
“Boom?” Charlie demanded of the universe.
“Why is it so close?” Paul gasped and tripped over a rail. Eineen kept him upright until he regained his footing.
“Inertia.” Charlie dodged around a row of empty carts. They probably weighed a couple hundred kilos each, but they were trembling. Not a good sign. “Once it gets moving, it keeps moving faster until something stops it.”
“What the hell’s an equal and opposite reaction to a Troll?”
Good question.
“If we get the elevator high enough, it’ll fall down the shaft.” Eineen could have been inside the elevator and halfway to the surface by now, but she held her pace to Paul’s. More or less. Could be true love, could be because she didn’t know how to work the machinery.
Not really the time to speculate, Charlie reminded herself running out of a flip flop and leaving it behind. Faster to kick the other one off.
Eineen reached the cage first, still dragging Paul behind her.
Charlie pushed past as they began to drag the gate closed.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM!
She turned. It felt like she was turning underwater, moving against the pressure exerted on reality by the creature coming out of the tunnel.
It walked like a gorilla, massive body bent forward, the impact of its fists against the floor making the carts shimmy off the rails. Its half circle of a head sat directly on shoulders that scraped the sides of the tunnel as it emerged.
The darkness behind it splintered into glittering and gleaming, although the Goblins stayed prudently back. Waiting to see if the right side won.
Speed of the elevator. Speed of the troll. Charlie sucked at math, but it was obvious they weren’t going to get the cage far enough up the shaft.
The Troll would hit the steel.
Reach up. Grab hold.
If it went over the edge, it would drag the crushed cage down the shaft with it.
Simple choice, really: Die in the elevator.
Or take a chance.
“What are you doing?” Eineen shrieked as Charlie slipped out past the closing gate.
“I have no idea.” She was a Gale. They had roots sunk deep in the earth. The Troll was living earth.
And she was about to try and stop an avalanche with a song.
Fun, wow.
She’d dropped her only pick so it was back to her thumbnail and blood on the strings.
What stopped moving earth?
Heavy metal.
She remembered asking a guy in a different elevator if he knew the weight of the battery pack it took to run a portable amp. Not the sort of thing she wanted to schlep around with her. Here and now, it suddenly seemed worth the effort. A wah wah pedal wouldn’t have
hurt either.
The Troll reared back when the sound hit it, the ceiling of Canaveral just barely high enough to contain it. Its fists came off the floor and spread into three-fingered hands—thumbs and fingers the same length.
Its legs seemed too short to be jointed. Upright, it moved slower, but it kept moving.
Bare foot stomping the beat into the rock, Charlie screamed defiance over the chords. Metal didn’t have to sound pretty, or melodic, but it had to be loud. The music bounced off a hundred different hard surfaces and ricocheted, creating a discordant harmony.
Behind and around, filling in the spaces, her fiddler threw in “Devil in the Kitchen.”
The Troll ignored the shower of dislodged rock that fell from the ceiling and bounced off head and shoulders. It shoved one of the heavy steel carts out of the way and kept coming.
Slower though. Definitely slower.
That was good.
It’d stop before it got to her.
It would stop . . .
It grabbed the guitar, grazing Charlie with one finger and knocking the wind out of her. As it lifted the guitar and her by the strap now jammed painfully up under her arm, the ricochets of sound continued, but she couldn’t reach the strings to pull them into a whole. Time slowed as the guitar splintered. Strings lost tension in the collapse. Sighed in defeat.
Without an instrument . . .
With no way to bend the music . . .
Keep playing, Charlie begged the fiddler, but silence answered.
The tension on the guitar strap gave way. Charlie braced one foot against the Troll’s torso, clutched at its shoulder, dug her fingers into the ridges of living rock, and looked it in the eye.
Its eyes were the same slate gray as its body. Wild eyes. Truly wild. No allegiances.
Living earth.
The Gales had their roots sunk deep in the earth, but no one, nothing, had ever rooted in the Troll.
And doesn’t that sound ridiculously smutty, Charlie thought.
It flicked away the ruined guitar—Charlie heard the pieces hit the ground even if she couldn’t, wouldn’t look—and closed a hand around Charlie’s body.
Fuck my life. Should’ve stayed in Calgary.
