Every stream bore abandoned castles, many so ancient that they were buried in jungle. A surprising number of them showed evidence of occult shielding. That abundance of shielding was the only encouraging thing Rap had discovered on this mad pilgrimage. It confirmed his theories about the best places to look for sorcery. For untold centuries, the gentle folk of Faerie had been exploited for words of power. The Nogids and the Mosweeps were barriers on the road home to the mainland. Many geniuses and adepts must have been shipwrecked, and words of power outlived their transitory owners. He had assumed that the trolls and anthropophagi would include more than their share of mages and sorcerers, and so far his guess seemed to be working out.
Gathering them together, even with Grunth’s help, would be another matter altogether. One lifetime would never be enough.
Somewhere just ahead, though, was another troll castle. Soon he would discover who lived in it, if anyone. Many trolls were completely solitary. Others lived in strange groupings—two or three men and one woman, or the other way around. Once or twice he had met bands of children living together with no evidence of adults to care for them. Little Norp had attached herself to one such band without even a word of farewell. Trolls were peaceable and could eat anything. They had no need for social organization.
Yet they had a culture, of a sort. He had not known of their singing and dancing before, but they existed. Although they were strange to him, he could appreciate them as art. Trolls made strangers welcome—indeed their hospitality toward other trolls was unlimited. They would share even their mates without jealousy. Rap had refused several offers in the last two months, always with as much tact as he could muster.
Darad had no such inhibitions. Even after exhausting days of scrambling through impenetrable vegetation, he could never resist challenging the men to wrestling matches. He never won, and he never learned. His activities with the women had perhaps been more successful, but he had suffered numerous broken bones in both sorts of encounter, despite his partners’ efforts not to hurt him. Had Thrugg not cured his injuries, Darad would have long since been left behind, a helpless cripple.
Darad and Urg were following, probably quite close, but the dense undergrowth blocked noise.
A glimpse of weepy gray sky showed through the trees ahead, and the noise of water grew louder. The day was far from over, but the promise of rest was too tempting to refuse. At this rate, Rap was going to be as old as Sagorn before he even met up with Witch Grunth.
His gloomy meditations were interrupted by a thunderous roar from Thrugg. Trees shuddered and cracked as the giant hurled himself forward and disappeared down a bank. Rap scrambled after, hearing more ferocious bellows, and then others in answer. He emerged from cover at the edge of a small pond. Thrugg and another man were rolling around in the center, roiling the water to spray, punching, roaring, and struggling as if bent on mutual murder. Such was the normal friendly greeting between male trolls. Fortunately, they were rarely so affectionate toward men of other races.
Beyond them stood a wall of gigantic rocks, with the stream cascading down from the front door. Venturing a peek with farsight, Rap established that the castle was indeed shielded against sorcery. That was welcome news, and so was the relative absence of moss on it. It must be very recent—and that suggested a sorcerer in the neighborhood.
Shortly thereafter, Rap was reclining at ease in a comfortable chair identical to his favorite chair in Krasnegar. Cold drinks stood on a table nearby. He was clean and garbed in loose cotton slacks. He had healed his scrapes and bruises, including the dislocated shoulder he had suffered in being introduced to Shaggi, his new host. Sorcery had a much greater appeal in the Mosweeps than it did anywhere else.
The room was troll size, a modest cathedral, although in shape it was more like a cave, with few level or vertical surfaces. It was dim and relatively cool. A waterfall cascaded down the rear wall to feed a series of pools crossing the floor to the entrance. Jungle was already clambering in through the windows. Apart from Rap’s innovations, there was no furniture.
Thrugg and Shaggi sprawled side by side on a rock ledge, growling and gabbling at each other incomprehensibly. They appeared to be old friends, for they laughed often, and jovially swung killer punches at each other. Shaggi was something of a mystery. If anything, he was even larger than Thrugg, and of about the same age. He was not, apparently, a sorcerer. Or else he was concealing the fact superbly.
Just when the mayhem seemed to be slowing down and Rap thought he might manage to enter the conversation, a shadow darkened the doorway. Urg came striding in, carrying Darad. He was delirious, thrashing and struggling vainly against her greater strength. Thrugg leaped up in alarm, and his image brightened in the ambience as he inspected the damage. Snakebite, Urg explained casually. A sorcerer of Thrugg’s power could heal anything short of death, and in moments the jotunn was sitting up and looking around with his usual ferocious grin. Rap organized another, very solid chair. But of course Darad would have to meet his host, and there would be more violence.
Rap could contain his impatience no longer. “Shaggi?” he demanded hastily. “Who put the shielding on this house?”
“Uh?” Shaggi scratched his head. “Shielding?”
Thrugg chuckled. “I did.” He was sitting on a rock by the stream, crunching on a thick tuber he had magicked up for himself.
Rap’s mood turned black again. “Oh.”
“He’s my brother.”
“Oh!” Well, that explained the joviality. “I was hoping maybe we’d met up with another sorcerer.”
“You did!” a new voice said. A monstrous old female came lumbering out of the shadows under the waterfall. Her hair was gray and tied behind her head in a ponytail, which was an odd affectation for a troll. She wore a loose cotton gown, which was even odder.
Thrugg leaped up and tried to embrace her. She swung a sideways punch that would have smashed any normal skull like an egg. It bowled the young giant right off his feet, and he flipped into the pool with a splash that soaked half the chamber.
“Idiot!” she snarled. “Why did you bring these vermin here?”
Wiping water from his face, Rap sprang to his feet. He had done it! All those weeks of torment in the horrible jungle had not been wasted—he had found the woman he came to seek. He bowed low.
“Greetings, your Omnipotence!”
Grunth glared at him and then spat. “Go away!” she said. The ambience flared dangerously, with images of molten rocks. “Go away before I bum you to ashes.”
2
Shaggi bounded over the stream to Rap and enfolded him in a bone-creaking hug. “He is my guest!” he bellowed, apparently believing that his mother would be unable to damage Rap without hurting him at the same time—which was far from the case, of course.
Even before he had spoken, though, or Darad had stopped blinking his surprise, Thrugg spoke out in the much faster world of the ambience. In a stream of images almost instantaneous, he described Rap’s attempt to rescue the slaves at Casfrel. He explained how that had been an act of pure altruism, and a very dangerous one. His appreciation and gratitude were obvious—embarrassingly so. Rap himself had almost forgotten the incident, and thought nothing much of it anyway.
But it cooled the witch’s anger. She sat down on a convenient rock and scowled at him. “My thanks, then,” she said reluctantly. “But you are not welcome here.”
“I see that,” Rap muttered, still breathless from Shaggi’s embrace. ”Can we talk about it?”
The molten rocks glowed again briefly. “Talk. I’ll listen. ” Grunth turned her attention to Urg, holding out her arms in welcome. While the two hugged in the mundane world, Rap started to speak in the ambience. Thrugg introduced Darad, who was as far out of his depth as usual, and Shaggi went splashing out down the stream. He returned very shortly with a double armful of branches for supper. And while all this was going on, Rap was bringing Witch Grunth up to date on everything that had happened since she had made her brief appearance in the Rotunda. It was a real shock to realize six months had gone by since that fateful day the old imperor died. During those six months, the usurper had undoubtedly been consolidating his grip on the world. Time was slipping away.
Only once did Grunth comment. When Rap described the new protocol he hoped would bring peace to the world, she projected a fragrant image of an ill-kept barnyard. Somehow that did not seem like a very hopeful sign.