“Like a remote valley,” said Kanza.
“Or an ancient abandoned lodge on a high peak,” said Yorick.
“But what we found,” said Trogg, “was far, far better.”
“It sure was,” said Yorick eagerly. “You oughta see what we discovered when we went back into the—”
Trogg jumped to his feet and let loose an absolute explosion of fury and insults. When he’d finished calling Yorick a dozen kinds of mush-brained idiot, he lowered his voice and hissed at him, “We don’t talk about that. Not to someone who just showed up out of nowhere. When the time comes to talk about it, I will do the talking.”
Yorick cowered, hunching his shoulders up around his ears. “Sorry,” he said. “Forgot.”
“Oh, Yorick, Yorick, alas,” moaned his mother. “You’ll endanger us all if you aren’t more careful. Listen to your father.”
“To go on,” said Trogg, sitting back down. “What we found was the entrance to a cave. We went in; we found a nice smooth wide path; we followed it down and down, quite a distance. And at the bottom, we found something very interesting, boy,” said Trogg. “You would never guess.”
I bet I would, Doon thought.
“We found a pool,” said Trogg, “jammed with empty boats. Jammed. There must have been a hundred of ’em, just floating there, some of them wrecked, some of them half sunk. ‘Something happened here,’ I says to Yorick. We didn’t like the look of it. We could tell these boats had come on an underground river. Only way to travel that river from where we were was to swim upstream.”
“Which we didn’t want to do,” said Yorick.
“So we went back out, tramped around some more, and wallah.”
“Wallah?” said Doon.
“Ancient expression,” said Trogg. “It means, ‘there it is.’ A crack in the mountainside. And here’s an interesting thing, boy, that I spotted because of my long experience observing the terrain. Somebody made that crack and then blocked it up.”
“But it wasn’t blocked,” said Doon. “That’s how I came in here.”
“It isn’t blocked now,” Trogg said. “But it used to be. I could tell from looking at the stones lying outside it. They’re covered with earth and grass now, but still, my expert eye spotted them. Too square to be natural. What happened was, the earth shifted, and”—he put his palms together, made a growly creaking sound, and pulled them apart—“stones fell out, crack opened up,” he said.
Doon was confused. “What do you mean, the earth shifted?”
Trogg goggled at him as if he were an ignoramus. “Earthquake, boy! Never heard of them? Where have you been all your life? Didn’t you notice that dent in the ground leading up to the crack? It’s a sure sign. Earth shakes, falls in, everything budges, things that once were closed now are open. Probably happened in that quake we had ten or twelve years ago.”
“Oh,” said Doon. He hadn’t noticed any quake; but then, he would have been a baby, or not even born.
“So,” said Trogg, “I squeezed into that crack, found a skinny passage that led to a cliff at the edge of a huge hole. And down at the bottom of that hole, I saw—”
Utter darkness, thought Doon.
“Utter darkness,” said Trogg, “for a long time, and then—” He paused again, peering at Doon from under his bristling eyebrows—“and then . . . something breathing.”
“What?”
“Something breathing, I said. Aren’t you listening? It was like something breathing. Way down in there, a mist of light came up.” Trogg put his hands low to the ground and raised them slowly. “In the light, shapes, dark shapes like buildings. And then in a couple of minutes, it went down.” He floated his hands down. “Faded in, faded out. Like something breathing, like something almost dead, breathing.”
“Ah,” said Doon. The generator, he thought—its last gasps. Still sending out weak pulses of power now and then. He was filled with amazement and sorrow, as if the city were indeed a living thing on its way to death.
“Now,” said Trogg. “I should tell you that I am a rock climber. Fearless, and skillful as a spider. I saw this place; I knew it was meant for my family. I discovered the narrow path along the wall. I went down. A solo expedition. Encountered some trouble, though. That ditch out there. Very deep.”
Doon shuddered, remembering.
“Luckily,” Trogg went on, “I am a person of great ingenuity. I simply tied a hammer to the rope I carried with me and hurled it across, which let me measure, more or less, the width of the thing. Not out of the question, I thought. So I jumped it.”
“What?” said Doon, not sure if he’d heard right.
“Gave myself a good running start,” said Trogg, “and then”—he chugged his arms back and forth like pistons, clenched his face into ferocious determination, and roared—“r-r-r-r-rrrrrrraaaaaargh! Ran like crazy, leaped; almost made it.”
“Almost?”
“Hit the opposite bank, had to do some scrambling up through the bones and slime, but I got over.” Trogg beamed, clearly proud of himself.
Doon spent a moment imagining the kind of nerve it would take to jump over that ditch in the dark. Not to mention the leg muscles. He felt a kind of horrified admiration.
Trogg went on. “I found this place. I claimed it. I named it. Darkhold, because it is the dark place where we hold off the hard and treacherous world outside.” He swept out an arm in a lofty gesture, indicating his private kingdom. “Then I simply wrenched some boards off a wall, put together a decent bridge, and flopped it over the pit. Climbed back up to my family, told them my discovery. All of us came down, and we’ve been settling in ever since.”
“How long have you been here?” Doon asked.
“Four weeks. More or less,” Trogg said. “Hard to tell what divides day from night if there’s no sun. But we came prepared. We’ve got that.” He pointed, but Doon couldn’t tell what he was pointing at. “The hourglass, boy!” said Trogg. “Right there, on that heap of sacks!”
Doon had never heard the word “hourglass,” but he saw that it must be the thing shaped more or less like a figure eight—two glass funnel shapes attached one on top of the other, the top one right side up and the bottom one upside down, all of it held in a wooden frame. Something in the top funnel was sifting slowly down into the bottom one.
“Never seen one, hah, Droon? It works thusly: the sand trickles down from the top to the bottom in exactly eight hours. Then we turn the thing upside down, and it starts again. Sixteen hours equals day, eight hours equals night. All we have to do is remember to turn it.”
“Hmm,” said Doon. Actually, he thought this was a very clever device, but he didn’t want to admire it out loud.
“Whoever used to live here left in a hurry,” Trogg went on. “Abandoned all their stuff. This place is a treasure trove. We can live here, perfectly safe and comfortable, for a good long time. As long as no one tells the world about us.” He stood up and smacked his hands together. Yorick sprang up, too, and Doon saw the light-haired person struggle to his feet. “Now,” said Trogg. “We can get back to work, as soon as we take care of one thing.” He raised his bristling eyebrows at Doon.
And that was when, all of a sudden, the city breathed. The streetlamps over Harken Square buzzed and sizzled and blinked. Everyone stopped moving and looked up at them. Dimly, the lamps began to shine. Faint lights showed in the upstairs windows of a few apartments. The light grew brighter and brighter, until for a moment Doon saw Ember as he remembered it, its great lamps making pools of light on the streets, casting shadows, lighting the steps and columns of the Gathering Hall. And then the lights began to fade.
But before they did, Doon’s eye was caught by a quick movement down at the base of the Gathering Hall steps—a hand, fluttering. A face appeared beside it, and he realized it was Lina, leaning out from behind the big trash bin by the wall. Their eyes connected, and Doon, seeing that the Troggs were all gazing upward at the lights, shaped silent words with his mouth, hoping Lin
a would understand. Go home, he mouthed. He aimed a look upward to make clear what he meant. Get away. Go home. Get help. He thought he saw Lina nod—but then the lamps went out, and darkness fell again.
“So there you are,” said Trogg. “That’s what I was telling you about. Don’t suppose you’ve seen anything like that before, have you?”
“Not exactly,” said Doon.
“Think you could get used to living here?”
“No,” said Doon.
“Too bad,” said Trogg. “This is your new home.”
CHAPTER 10
________________________
Looting
“Now to our little problem,” Trogg said. “We want you to help with our work, so you have to be able to move around. But we don’t want you running off, so you ought to be tied up. But if you’re tied up, you can’t work. What’s the solution?”
Doon said nothing.
“The solution that first occurred to me,” said Trogg, “is to tie up your feet and leave your hands free.
But then I thought, Trogg, that won’t work. If his hands are free, he could just bend down and untie his feet. That was when I remembered some useful things we found the other day at a very interesting store. Where was that place, Yorick?”
“Over that way,” said Yorick, who had flopped down into a fat, shabby armchair. He waved in the direction of Greengate Square. “Funny place, full of a million little bitty things, like screws and bolts and pins and nails and cords and buttons and knobs.”
Doon went rigid. That had to be his father’s store—the Small Items Shop. That was the shop he had lived over all his life until he left Ember.
“Yes, very useful place,” Trogg said. “Bring me that sack, Yorick. That one, over there.”
Yorick heaved himself out of the chair and fetched the sack, and Trogg dumped it out on the ground. All kinds of metal doodads clattered out. “Let’s see,” said Trogg. “This might work.” From the heap, he pulled a couple of C-shaped handles that might have come from cupboard doors. He pressed them together to form a ring. “Just right,” he said. “Now we need two more. . . . Here they are. . . . And then some screws and bolts . . . and this piece of chain. And this nifty little padlock, complete with key! Perfect. Help me here, Yorick.”
Doon’s heart was hammering. Shackled by a chain from his own father’s store? “No,” he said. As hard as he could, he rocked the chair he was tied to from side to side, but it made no difference. Yorick held him fast and Trogg worked. First he clamped a pair of handles around one of Doon’s ankles and screwed them tightly together.
“Ow,” said Doon. The metal pressed against his bone.
Trogg ignored him. He cuffed Doon’s other ankle. Then he looped the chain through the cuffs and connected its ends with the padlock.
“There,” he said, grinning his wide grin. “It’s just right. Long enough so you can walk but not run. And not possible to undo, even if your hands are free, unless you can find yourself a screwdriver, which you won’t be able to do, because we will be watching you all the time, or unless you get your hands on this little key.” He held up the key to the padlock. “Which you also won’t be able to do, because I will hide it where sneaky fingers can’t find it.” Trogg untied the ropes that bound Doon. He tossed them away. Then he stood back and gazed proudly at his new worker. “You’ll need one more thing,” he said. “A lightcap. I’ll have Minny make you one. In the meantime, just stick close to my kids.” He nodded to Yorick and Kanza. “You two head out,” he said, “and take him with you. Pick up our bags from where we left them, and then start on that neighborhood there.” He pointed over toward the school. “I’ll bring the wagon and catch up with you in a moment.”
So the two younger Troggs grabbed Doon’s arms, and he stumbled along with them. They headed across the square and around the end of the Gathering Hall to Greystone Street, where they picked up the bags they’d dropped when they’d captured Doon. Then they turned around and started down Otterwill Street.
The cuffs chafed Doon’s ankles, but the humiliation of being a slave in his own city was far worse than the pain. He tried not to think about how impossible his predicament was. If he didn’t know where the key was, how would he ever get out of here? He would have to count on Lina to bring help—and the very thought of Lina, walking alone all the way back to Sparks, made him feel so anxious and so miserably guilty that his knees nearly collapsed. It had been a terrible, terrible idea to come here. He wished he had never found that wretched eight-page book.
At the corner of School Street, Trogg caught up with them. He was hauling a wooden wagon behind him; Doon recognized it as one that used to carry garbage to Ember’s Trash Heaps. Trogg poked Doon in the back. “Move along, Droon!” he said. “Work to be done.”
Doon jerked his head around, furious in an instant. “My name is Doon!” he cried. “Not Droon, not Doom! At least call me by my right name!”
Trogg backed away, grinning, stretching forward a big hand as if to ward off a blow. “All right, all right, no need to yell,” he said. “Glad to see our new boy has some spirit.”
“I am not your boy!” Doon said. “I am my own boy.”
Kanza, who had hold of Doon’s right arm, sniggered. “A fighter,” she said. “Isn’t he cute?” She made a fake cute face at him, bunching her lips as if she was going to kiss him and squeezing his arm so tightly he could feel her fingernails through his sleeve.
Doon told himself to hold his temper. Flying into a rage would help nothing. But it was very hard not to.
They turned onto Murkish Street and trudged down the block. “All right,” said Trogg after a while. “We’ll start here.” They stopped beside a stationery store that Doon remembered had been closed long before people left Ember; its shelves held nothing but dust. “Upstairs,” said Trogg, parking the wagon and leading the way to the apartment above. “Open everything,” he instructed Doon. “Drawers, cabinets, cupboards, closets, everything. Pull all the stuff out, and we’ll sort through it. Any eyeglasses you find, give them to me. I collect them.”
“Why?” asked Doon.
“Because I want perfect vision, of course,” said Trogg. “Not that there’s anything wrong with my vision. But with the right pair of glasses, you can see for miles. Sometimes you can see in the dark. I just haven’t found the right ones yet. Now get busy.”
Doon followed instructions. Out came the possessions of whoever had lived here—sweaters, coats, mittens, scarves, underwear, teacups, soup spoons, knitting needles, salt shakers, bed pillows, bars of soap—and the three Troggs pawed through it. Kanza tried on clothes and looked at herself in the mirror. “Would this look good on me?” she said. “Or maybe this?”
“No more clothes!” bellowed Trogg. “You’ve got enough.”
Yorick had a comment about everything he picked up. “This is a good knife—I’ll keep it.” He stuffed it into his bag. “These cups are useless. We already have some just like them.” He tossed them away, one after another.
Some rolled into a corner. Some shattered on the floor. “Look at this ugly shirt—who would have worn this?” He wadded it up and pitched it across the room.
In the kitchen, Trogg snatched up anything that looked edible and crammed it into his bag, sweeping the rest off the shelves. Empty cans and bottles and boxes fell to the floor, bouncing and breaking. Doon noticed that this family had still had a fair amount of food when they left the city—enough to keep a family in Sparks going for several days at least. He made a mental note. There might be many houses the Troggs had not yet looted.
“All right!” cried Trogg finally. “We’re finished here. Load the stuff in the wagon, and on to the next.”
It was like this the rest of the day. Doon followed along as they looted the homes and businesses of his former friends and neighbors. As they left each place, kicking aside the mess of scattered and broken belongings, Doon said a silent apology to the people who had lived there. They would never know their homes had b
een robbed and wrecked, nor would they know he had watched it being done. But even so, he felt sorry and guilty. He hated being part of this.
At the end of the day, the Troggs gathered around the fire in Harken Square. They all seemed excited. Doon saw that they were building the fire up higher than usual and that they’d set up a sort of rack at the edge of it—two piles of stones with a metal rod stretched between them, a curtain rod, maybe, or a pipe.
Yorick slouched up to his father. “Shall we go get it, Pa?” he said.
“Sure,” said Trogg. “You go, too, Kanza, and help him. I’ll stay here.”
Yorick and Kanza went to the wagon loaded with the day’s loot and tossed it all out onto the ground. Then they went off down Gilly Street, pulling the wagon behind them.
Doon became aware of Minny, standing a little distance away, saying something in a trembly voice. Trogg noticed her, too. “What, Min?” he said. “Speak up!”
She took a step forward and murmured some more, holding out a folded black cloth.
“Oh, the lightcap,” said Trogg. “Well done!” He strode over and took it from her and handed it to Doon. “This is for you,” he said. “Get one of those candles over there and stick it in this part.” He pointed to the tube at the front.
Doon fetched a candle from a box of them behind the armchair. He held it to the fire to light it, and he put it in the cap and then put the cap on his head. It fit well and gave a useful amount of light. He wondered why no one in Sparks had yet thought up such a thing.
“Kanz and Yorick will be gone awhile,” Trogg said. “In the meantime, you can help us get ready.” He picked up a bucket and handed it to Doon. “We’re going to need some more water. See that brown door over there? The one on the corner?” He pointed at an apartment on Gilly Street. “That’s ours. Go upstairs and fill the bucket.”
Doon was puzzled. “Upstairs? But—”
“Aha,” said Trogg. “I know what you’re thinking. When I first came to this place, I couldn’t figure out where the water came from, either. I knew they must have had it. They had sinks; they had bathtubs. But where did the water come from?”