“He looks pretty clumsy,” Grant commented.
“He’s fast and strong,” replied Kane. “Never saw anything like the way he jumped around.”
“He knows how to use the lighter gravity to his advantage,” Brigid commented.
The elevator car was fairly spacious, and the troll stood impassively against the rear wall, abnormally long arms crossed over his chest. He pretended to take no notice of the three blaster barrels trained on him.
Four glowing buttons studded a stainless-steel panel near the door frame. They were marked, A through D. The B button flashed in a regular rhythm. Raising his eyebrows in a silent question, Kane looked at the dwarf, hand hovering over the buttons.
The troll pointed down and said, “D.” At least D was the letter formed by his lips.
Kane pushed the button, the doors slid shut and, with the barest of lurches, the elevator began its descent. He announced, “Next stop, Trollville.”
Grant scowled at him. “It better not be.”
The elevator eased to a slow stop. Kane fisted his Sin Eater, whispering, “Triple red.”
The doors slid open on a very deep dark. They gazed at utter stillness. Kane heard Brigid’s and Grant’s tense respiration. Nothing moved in the gloom, but out of the comer of his eye, he glimpsed the troll casually squatting down and lowering his head.
Out of nowhere, out of the darkness, a harp began to sing, notes rippling in tuneless melody. Kane’s memory jerked back to Ireland, to Newgrange and the deadly harp played by Aifa.
With his head encased in the helmet, he should not have been able to hear much of anything external, let alone a sound as subtle as a harp’s.
“I hear music,” Brigid blurted in dismay.
Kane whirled toward her, feeling a trip-hammer vibration shivering up and down his body. The harp sang louder, throbbing through his bones. He felt it sweep over him in a wave.
The troll’s face was screwed up tight, eyes closed, but he was receiving only a feeble backwash of the harping. Grant cursed thickly, like a man drifting off to unwelcome sleep or fighting the effects of a somatic drug.
Kane swung his Sin Eater toward the troll, crouching in a corner like a gargoyle. His finger crooked around the trigger. Then he fell on his face and lay there, struggling to move but only twitching. He was dimly aware of Brigid sagging to the floor, her knees buckling, collapsing half on top of him.
The harp trilled louder, achieving a jumbled cacophony of notes. Their vibrating echoes trailed off into a silence as deep and impenetrable as death.
Chapter15
Brigid remembered nothing that had happened since the harp song insinuated itself into her brain, overwhelming her senses. She fought very hard to ward off the clutching fingers of unconsciousness.
She was still fighting when she found herself waking up prone on a flat surface. The air was thin and bitingly cold on her exposed cheeks. She realized with a start that she no longer wore her helmet.
Snapping her eyes open, Brigid saw blank walls of blue surrounding her. She struggled up to her elbows on the raised disk beneath her body. It was of an opaque, plasticlike substance about four feet in diameter. From beneath it, she heard the faintest susurrus of electronic hums.
She slowly pushed herself to a sitting position, squinting around at her surroundings. The blue room had eight walls, enclosing her and the disk in a featureless octagon. She was alone, but she didn’t pay attention to the sense of dread the thoughts of Kane and Grant evoked. Without much surprise, she saw her blaster, web belt and equipment case were missing.
Breath rasping in her throat, Brigid climbed to her feet, her lips feeling dry and chapped. She noticed she felt heavier than she had upon arriving at the station. Wherever she was, the gravity was close to that on Earth. She moved to the edge of the disk and looked down. It was elevated a foot above the floor, and she made a motion to step down.
A sudden flash of blue lightning filled her eyes, and for an instant, she glimpsed skeins of electrical current dancing along the metal zippers of her sleeves. She whirled around and slammed back on the disk. She felt no pain, no sensation of shock, only an invisible hand swatting her away from the disk’s edge.