Then, abruptly, the fighting stopped as clouds of dark smoke rolled across the flats and began to seep into the village as well. Still Pen hesitated, unsure. He counted off twenty seconds, then took Cinnaminson’s hand and pulled her after him.
“Run!” he ordered, breaking for the open street.
But the instant he showed himself, the huge bulk of an airship hove into view, slicing through the screen of smoke and flames. Gnome Hunters crowded the gunwales, crossbows and slings firing at everything that moved. Out in the open and unprotected, the boy and the Rover girl were instant targets. A flurry of darts whipped past them, striking the stone walls in a cacophony of tiny, violent explosions. One sliced through Pen’s ribs, spinning him around. Another struck him in the arm and sent him sprawling against the closest wall.
“Pen, what’s happening?” Cinnaminson cried, crouching on her hands and knees in the dirt, her face frantic with confusion and fear. Sling stones clattered all around her like hail.
“Get up!” he screamed, hauling her back to her feet, blood running down his arm and side. “Run!”
Searching for any sort of shelter that would deflect the deadly missiles, he tried to shield her as he pulled her after him. It seemed as if they were the only ones left in the village, the streets and buildings empty and the inhabitants all safely inside the tunnels and caves. But where were the tunnels? In what direction? Smoke obscured everything, and he had gotten turned around completely in his effort to escape.
A tiny alcove at the back of a building offered temporary shelter, and he shoved Cinnaminson inside, both of them gasping and bloodied.
I’m going to get us killed! he screamed at himself. What am I supposed to do?
Overhead, the Druid warship was swinging back around, searching for movement. They were safe for the moment, but trapped. Sooner or later, those Gnome Hunters would land and begin a search of the buildings. They couldn’t stay where they were. They had to get out of there.
“Penderrin!” a familiar voice boomed, causing the boy to jump.
“Kermadec! We’re here!”
He yanked Cinnaminson from their shelter and began to run toward the sound of the Rock Troll’s voice, hugging the walls that best protected them as they went. Overhead, the smoke was building in thick black clouds, and the airship was a massive shadow wrapped in its haze. The Gnome Hunters were still firing blindly into the village, and the boy could feel bolts and arrows whistle past him as he ran.
Then Kermadec appeared in front of them, a huge armored behemoth. Without slowing, he snatched them up like children, tucking one under each arm. “Can’t afford to lose you now,” he said, pounding ahead like a great beast of burden. “Hold tight.”
Gripped by one massive arm like a sack of grain, bouncing up and down with each footfall, Pen felt as if his eyes were going to be shaken loose from his head, but on balance he decided that was a small price to pay for being rescued. He closed his eyes to steady himself and waited patiently for the bouncing to stop.
FIFTEEN
When Kermadec set them down again, Pen and Cinnaminson were safely inside the caves that formed the Rock Troll fortress in the cliffs above the village. He had carried them in through an entrance concealed in the rocks, bundled them up a set of narrow stone steps to a door that opened after he’dmanipulated various jagged outcroppings, then deposited them where they could spend a few moments regaining their equilibrium.
“We thought no one was coming,” Cinnaminson offered, her face pale and her honey hair disheveled and coated with dust.
“Oh, it only took finding out where you were,” the big Troll replied cheerfully. His strange, flat face glanced at her briefly. “You can thank the Elf girl for that. She had the magic, some blue gems that showed an image of you hiding in the tunnel of the Gathering Place.”
The Elfstones, Pen thought. He had forgotten them entirely. But of course she can use them now, when there is no longer any reason to guard against revealing our presence.
“I remembered Cinnaminson and went back for her,” Pen said. “But then after I found her, I got lost.”
“Easy enough to do in our streets, young Penderrin. They were constructed to get you lost, if you weren’t one of us. No need to say anything more about it. You’re safe now, and that’s what matters.”
He released the locks on a concealed door and pulled it open to admit them to the safehold. Inside, it was controlled chaos of the same sort that Pen had experienced in the village on the approach of the Druid warships. Trolls bustled in all directions, each with a seemingly different task to accomplish. The chamber was huge, a monstrous cavern fully fifty feet high and more than a hundred across. Dozens of tunnels led away to places the boy could not see for the twists and turns in the corridors. But the openings to the left of where they stood formed a series of fortified redoubts in the cliff wall above Taupo Rough. Sunlight slanted through these overlooks in bright streamers, chasing back the shadows. Smaller cracks and crevices in the stone of the cliff wall admitted additional light. The combination of sunlit openings gave the chamber a peculiarly dappled look, but one that allowed the inhabitants to see clearly.
Kermadec refastened the locks on the concealed door, then added a pair of huge bars that slipped into iron cradles to further seal the entry. “That should keep out any unwanted visitors,” he declared, brushing off his hands. He glanced around. “Come with me.”
He led them to the left, to one of the redoubts, motioning the workers aside and moving to the edge of a thick protective wall of stone blocks that all but closed off the entry. He beckoned the boy and the girl forward and, when they were standing beside him at the fortifications, pointed outside. “I know you can’t see what’s out there, Rover girl, but young Penderrin can describe it to you in detail later. It’s what’s been sent to bring him back.”
The Druid airships had repositioned just outside the walls of the village, hovering not far off the ground, but well back from the possibility of catapult attacks that might be launched from the cliffs. Dozens of Gnome Hunters were scurrying down rope ladders and up to the village walls, some carrying battering rams, some grappling hooks and ropes. They were already scaling the walls and forcing the gates. Behind them lumbered several dozen creatures that looked as if they had been fashioned from wet mud hardened by the sun, creatures that resembled Trolls but lacked the proper proportions and features, as if someone had concocted a batch of poor imitations.
“Mutens,” Pen whispered.
“Our worst enemies. No brains, no feelings, no purpose. They are one step above rocks on the evolutionary ladder. Magic controls them easily. In the old days, it was the Warlock Lord who controlled them. Now it is our Druid adversaries. The Ard Rhys would weep.”
He gestured toward the flats. “Those explosions earlier? We used oil culled from the darker regions of the Malg, capped in barrels and buried in the ground. Highly flammable. The Druids weren’t expecting that. It gave us a chance to get safely away, once we knew that a fight was our only recourse. But that’s all the advantage we get from down there. We fight now from up here, in our redoubt, for today at least.”
He touched their shoulders and led them back into the cavern. “By tomorrow, we’ll be gone from here. I need to make ready for our departure, and you need to rest.” He searched the cavern for a moment, then shouted. “Atalan!”
A burly troll with the blackest eyes Pen had ever seen lumbered up to them. His dark gaze shifted from Kermadec to the boy and girl, then back again. “I have work to do.”
“Now you have new work to do. Take young Penderrin and his friend and find their companions. Take them to one of the upper chambers. See that they all have something to eat and drink and a place to sleep. They will leave at first light. I’ll select their escort.”
The other Troll stepped closer. “What about me, Kermadec? Am I to go?”
His voice was rough and surly; he made it sound more like a demand than a request. Kermadec gave him a long, measured
look. “I will give it some thought.”
Then he turned back to Pen and Cinnaminson. “Atalan will see to it that you are made comfortable. The three of you should get along fine. You are all the same age, if not the same temperament.”
He walked away without looking back, leaving the three staring after him. Atalan shook his head. “He treats me like a child. Who does he think he is?”
Neither Pen nor Cinnaminson was about to attempt an answer to that one, so they kept quiet. Pen was thinking they might have been better off if Kermadec had left them on their own. Atalan was still staring after the Maturen. Then he seemed to remember his charges. He gave them a cursory look and shrugged. “Come with me.”
He led them through the main chamber to a set of steps cut into the rock and from there upstairs to a new level. He didn’t speak for a time, trudging ahead with the movements of one resigned to a fate he didn’t deserve. When they reached the top of the stairs, he glanced back at them.
“Do you have a brother?” he asked Pen. The boy shook his head. “Well, if you did, I would hope he would treat you better than Kermadec treats me. He was born earlier, but not necessarily smarter. He is Maturen now, but I will be Maturen one day, too.”
He broke off and turned away, leading them into a series of narrow tunnels that twisted and turned through the rock. Several times, they encountered Trolls coming from the other direction, but not once did Atalan give way, bulling past the oncoming Trolls with an insistence that bordered on rudeness. He seemed of such an entirely different temperament than Kermadec that Pen could not come to terms with the idea that they were really brothers.
“So you are the reason for all this madness,” Atalan offered at one point. “What is it about you that attracts this kind of attention from the Druids?”
Pen shook his head. “The Ard Rhys is my aunt.”
“Your aunt?” Atalan seemed impressed. “Missing for several weeks now, isn’t she? Do they think you know where she is?”
“I don’t know what they think. Except that they don’t want me hunting for her.”
Atalan nodded. “That would explain why they want you so bad. It would explain why my brother is so intent on helping you, too. He thinks the Ard Rhys is the Word’s own child. He thinks she can do no wrong. He forgets what she was before, a creature of darkness and murder. You know of this, don’t you?”
Pen nodded. He was growing angry. “She was a creature of the Morgawr and not responsible for what she did,” he answered in clipped tones.
Atalan glanced back once more. “If you say so.”
They went on through the tunnels until they had reached a room far back in the cliff rock, where the light was dim and hazy and the noise of the activity taking place below was muted almost to silence.
The Rock Troll gestured. “Wait here.”
He disappeared down another passageway, and when he was safely out of hearing, Pen said to Cinnaminson, “I don’t think he likes us much.”
She turned her milky gaze on him and smiled. “You don’t like him, either. But this is mostly about his brother. You shouldn’t take it personally.”
He nodded, thinking it was easy to say, but hard to do. Especially when it was your family that was being attacked. But she was right, of course, so he put the matter aside. They sat together in the chamber, listening to the faraway sounds of the Trolls and waiting for something to happen.
When Atalan finally returned, he was carrying food and drink, which he deposited in front of them with barely a word before disappearing again. With nothing better to do, they began to eat. But it wasn’t more than a few minutes later that Tagwen and Khyber appeared at the chamber entrance.
“Shades, Penderrin, can’t you stay out of trouble for five minutes without someone keeping watch over you?” snapped the latter. “What happened to you out there? Are you all right, Cinnaminson?”
She rushed over to the Rover girl and embraced her warmly, giving Pen a dark look. Tagwen, standing at the entry with his arms folded over his burly chest, knit his brow in reproof and glared at him. Pen could tell already that nothing he said was going to make any difference.
Aboard the Druid flagship Athabasca, Traunt Rowan stood at the forward rail with Pyson Wence and watched the Gnome Hunters flood the abandoned Troll village. Already, the smell of smoke rising from fires and the sound of furniture being smashed had begun to reach them. Their orders, once it was determined that Kermadec intended to fight, were to destroy as much of Taupo Rough as possible and then lay siege to the cliffside redoubt. The Trolls might think themselves safe inside their rock fortress, but the Druid warships were equipped with catapults designed to breach such defenses. More to the point, the Trolls were outnumbered and constrained by the presence of their women and children. The Trolls might hold out for a day or even two, but in the end, they would be overrun.
“I don’t like it that Shadea is so intent on finding this boy,” Pyson Wence said quietly, his gimlet eyes shifting to find Rowan’s dark face. “I don’t like it that we’re out here at all.”
“Do you suspect that she wants us out of the way?” the Southlander asked, keeping his attention focused on the progress of the Gnomes. Wence had brought them to Paranor from among his own people, but they were under Rowan’s immediate command in this operation. Pyson Wence was adept at many things, but he was not a soldier.
“I think she would like to see what happened to Terek Molt happen to us. I don’t trust her.”
“If you did, you would be unique.”
“It troubles me that we have lost both Molt and Iridia in the span of a week’s time. One dead and one disappeared, and now here we are, the last two of Shadea’s company, dispatched from Paranor to hunt this boy while she cuddles with Gerand Cera and schemes to make the position of Ard Rhys a lifetime appointment.”
Shadea’s infatuation with Cera bothered Traunt Rowan, as well, but he wasn’t convinced yet that it was real. Shadea was far too self-centered to make a pairing of equals with another Druid. She was up to something, and on first hearing of her alliance with Cera, he had decided to wait her out. She wasn’t yet so firmly entrenched that she could afford to discard her old allies. It was unfortunate about Molt and Iridia, but what had happened to them was not directly Shadea’s doing.
Her obsession with finding Pen Ohmsford was more troubling. It was the parents who should concern them, he thought, particularly Bek Ohmsford, who had the use of the magic of the wishsong, which was Grianne Ohmsford’s principal weapon. Yet even though Shadea had locked the senior Ohmsfords in the cellars of the Keep, she wasn’t satisfied. Before imprisoning them, she had tricked them into revealing their son’s location so that she could continue to hunt him down. She was merely being safe, she insisted, but he thought it was something more.
Wheels within wheels. Games and more games. It was a part of the Druid culture, but he had never been comfortable with it. He was better at confronting problems in an open way, at meeting them head-on. It was one of the reasons he had gone to the Ard Rhys on that last night and asked her quite bluntly to resign her office. She might have been persuaded to do so, had he more time to convince her and had Shadea not been so anxious to use the liquid night. But Shadea was ambitious and manipulative; she was more representative of the Druid order at large. Traunt Rowan was more the exception. Oddly enough, it was one of the reasons he believed himself less vulnerable to Shadea’s anger. She knew he was neither ambitious nor covetous; she knew he was content to let her lead. His goal from the beginning had been to remove Grianne Ohmsford as head of the order; it had never been to take her place. In their desire for advancement and acquisition of power, the others were more aggressive than he was. It put them in dangerous waters, while he stood safely on the shore.
He refocused his gaze on Taupo Rough. The Gnome attack force had reached the base of the cliff walls and was forming up for an all-out assault. Scaling ladders and grappling hooks were being brought forward, and shield walls were being prepared. W
hen everything was in place, the attack on the redoubt would begin.
“I want you to go down into the village with your Hunters,” he said suddenly to Pyson Wence. When the other gaped at him in disbelief, he added, “So that they can see we are committed to their efforts. I don’t need you to lead any charges, Pyson. I need you to provide reassurance.”
“Then you go!” the Gnome snapped.
“I would, but I have to command the airships when we begin to launch the catapults. I would leave you to handle this if you had any idea at all how to use a catapult. But you don’t, so your place is on the ground, keeping your Gnome Hunters in line.”
The Gnome Druid gave him a withering stare. “You don’t command me, Traunt Rowan. No one commands me.”
“Aboard this ship and on this expedition, I do,” he responded calmly. “I have been given the responsibility for bringing back the boy. You were sent to aid me. So you must do as I instruct you to do. As you agreed to do by coming with me, I might add.”
Pyson Wence did not move. “If I do so, what is to prevent you from leaving me behind? What if that is what Shadea has asked of you?”
His voice was petulant and accusatory. Traunt Rowan held his gaze. “Look at me, Pyson. Look closely. Do you see treachery in my eyes or hear it in my voice? Since when have you ever worried that I would betray any of us in this business?”
Long moments passed, their measure a blink of an eye to both as they stared each other down. “All right,” Pyson Wence said finally. His narrow face reflected displeasure and disgust. “I will do as you ask. I will go down with my people. I trust you, if not Shadea.”
He went over to the ladder and began to descend to the flats, his black robes billowing out behind him in the breeze. Traunt Rowan watched him in silence, thinking that if Pyson Wence had ever trusted anyone, it was a miracle.