“Now wait a minute!” Andor said, strident with fear. “This makes no sense at all! We’re caught in a dead end here! The only way we can go is back down the valley, and they’ll chase us as soon as they find we’ve gone.”
“I know that, but—”
“They’re probably counting the silverware already.”
“The stables—”
“I’m going to call Darad. He’s much more—”
“No!” Rap grabbed Andor’s cravat and squeezed. “Now, listen carefully! If you bring Darad, that’s sorcery! You’ll give us away. You’re far better on a horse than Darad is, anyway.” Andor’s teeth chattered briefly.
“What’s more,” Rap said, just so there would be no misunderstanding, “if they catch Darad, they catch you, too. If Zinixo gets any one of you, then he forces your word out of whichever one of you he’s got, and then you all die. All of you, is not so? Besides, I need you. Come on. ”
Releasing Andor’s throat, he took a firm grip on his arm and led him off through the night as fast as he dared go.
“Need me how?” Andor muttered sulkily. “I think you’ll have to pick a lock.”
“I can’t do that! It’s Thinal you need for that, and I can’t call him because he called me. That’s all your fault, too. Know something? You really messed up a beautiful piece of sorcery when you mucked around with Orarinsagu’s formula, you dumb faun!”
“Not my idea. I know I need Thinal, but you can’t call him directly, and two transformations would be totally insane. Thinal must’ve picked a million locks. You’ve got his memories, haven’t you? So use them.”
“Just because you’ve heard singing doesn’t mean you can sing!” Andor objected, but the light was so tricky and Rap was setting so hard a pace that he soon had very little breath for whining. The settlement was sliding into sleep. Few lights showed in the cottages. The gnomes would be scavenging, of course, but they never interfered with the activities of dayfolk.
“Wait a minute, Rap!— The stables are over that way, aren’t they?”
“No, they’re that way. We’ve got a call to make first.”
“What sort of a call?”
“Trolls . . . Oh, do stop bitching, Andor!”
Fighting his way through some prickly bushes, Rap reproached himself for his ill temper. Andor was not the only frightened man among the two of them. With sorcery ruled out, they were nothing but mundane intruders in a private fortress. There were dogs and armed soldiers around. The legionaries might have been stationed at Casfrel as official border guards or just because the senator had pulled political strings to protect his estate; in either case those men would know exactly what to do about mundane intruders.
And if sorcery was not ruled out, the situation was even worse. Rap kept thinking up darker and darker possibilities. Uoslope himself—and he lived very well, as virtual ruler of a private kingdom—or his withered wife; or the butler, or one of the lute players . . . someone had power, perhaps very great power. The greater the power, the less detectable it was in use. Perhaps that person had been eavesdropping on Rap’s thoughts ever since he arrived and that one tiny ripple had been just a momentary carelessness.
God of Fools! Why hadn’t he listened to his premonition? The trolls’ prison was directly ahead, gleaming where moonlight shone on massive blocks of whitish stone. It was obviously new, and must have been built after last year’s breakout. A cell to hold trolls would have to be constructed like an elephant pen—trolls were usually restrained by brute terror, because anything else could be ripped out or torn apart. This close to the mountains, though, even a brutalized troll might feel that the chance of escape was good enough to risk yet another savage beating.
Panting and streaming sweat in the chill night, Rap arrived at the door. Andor was close behind, still muttering under what breath he had left. Fortunately, the entrance was in shadow. A bat twittered overhead in jerky flight.
Again Rap risked the merest hint of farsight, an occult peek . . . surprise!
“It’s not shielded,” he gasped. “I thought it would be.”
“So?” .
“So there’s a sorcerer around somewhere. Why not shield the building?”
“Bunk!” Andor said. “Where would a plantation manager find sorcery? Or a senator? What market do you go to to buy sorcery? Sorcerers don’t need money!” He muttered “Stupid!” a few times.
That was true, and yet Rap had expected shielding, somehow. He leaned against the wall for a moment, trying to puzzle it out. There was something other than logic involved, though, and he couldn’t find the answer.
“Can you pick this lock?” he demanded. “No,” Andor said sulkily.
The lock was a bronze box about the size of a suitcase. The door itself was not much larger, like the entrance to a dog kennel. The trolls would have to crawl through on their hands and knees.
“Right, I’ll risk it.”
Tumblers clanged, sounding like a fire gong in the still night. ”Couldn’t you have done that a little quieter?” Andor wiped his forehead.
“Not without using more power. Come on.”
The door grated open. Rap crouched down and wriggled inside.
The interior was one huge room, still hot as a baker’s oven and acrid as a pigpen—what would it be like in summer? High slits admitted beams of moonlight, striped by bars thicker than a jotunn’s forearm. Straw rustled. He sharpened his vision a fraction and made out two bodies stirring in a corner. They were the women he had seen earlier; they sat up together with grunts of surprise. The man was lying facedown in another corner, breathing harshly. Sacking hung on pegs along one wall. The only furniture was a bucket.
“Phew!” said Andor. “Let’s get out of here!”
“My name is Rap. I am a friend.”
The two girls whimpered and huddled back into the corner, hugging each other. Making a wild guess, Rap estimated their ages as thirteen and eighteen respectively. They had no clothes on, and their pale skins glimmered with sweat. Even the child would have outweighed him handily, and she must have been the one he had seen hauling the wagon. He thought of Kadie, home in Krasnegar, with her fancy clothes, her fencing lessons, her books and romantic dreams. And then this? There were times when he despised the Gods.
He had forgotten how big trolls were—almost as tall as jotnar and burly as goblins. Their skins were doughy and tough, yet prone to sunburn; their hair was brown and woolly, their strength legendary. Doubtless a male of their own race would appreciate these two maidens’ protruding muzzles and sloping foreheads, but it was hard to think of trolls as human when you looked them in the face. Rap had met trolls in Durthing, many years ago, and he knew them to be gentle, worthy folk, placid and friendly—
“I am Rap,” he repeated. “Tell me your names.”
The girls scrabbled even farther back into their corner. Then the older seemed to understand. She pushed her younger companion away and began stretching out on the straw, making herself available.
A spasm of revulsion made Rap want to puke. He remembered Mistress Ainopple’s remark about a breeding program. He remembered things Ballast had told him, years ago, on Stormdancer. Ballast himself had been part jotunn. Half-breeds were prized even more than full-blooded trolls, because they were supposed to be more intelligent.
“No! I want to help you. Tell me your names!”
“Rap, for the Gods’ sake let’s get out of here!” Andor was gagging.
“Master not . . . come to . . . make baby?” Trolls’ heavy jaws made their speech slurred. They spoke little, and slowly, which perhaps explained their reputation for stupidity.
“No. I come to help you. What is your name?”
“Urg, Master.”
“And the child?”
“Norp.”
The big male groaned. Rap swung around to look, and then used farsight. The man’s body was a jelly of bruises and scrapes. There was blood on the straw.
“That is . . . Thrugg,” Urg mumbled. “He’s been beaten?”
“Masters say . . . Thrugg was . . . bad.”
Gods! He looked as if he’d been stamped on by a legion. Trolls were reputed to be indestructible.
“Rap!” Andor squealed. “As soon as the cooks go home, they’ll let the dogs loose. We’ve got to get out! Now!”
“Oh, shut up! I can’t leave them here!” Rap strode over to the pegs and scooped up the sacking; he hurled it at the girls. “Get dressed! You heard me! Dress!”
With urgent motions, they began. Ignoring a torrent of shrill complaint from Andor, Rap went over to kneel beside the comatose male. He stank of fresh blood and vomit.
“Thrugg! Thrugg, can you walk?” The answer was a subterranean groan.
Andor’s protests grew louder. He was dancing from one foot to the other in his impatience. Rap wiped an arm over his brow. He knew he was being just as crazy as Andor was describing him, but he could not imagine himself going away and leaving these people. They were none of his business. The risk was absurd—but he had to take that risk, because he had to live with himself until he died.