“Where?” asked Geth.
Chetiin pointed, then pointed again. And again.
“Behind us, too,” said Dagii. “Two more. Five altogether.”
“Light more torches,” Chetiin said. “One for each of us.”
“Not me,” Ashi told him. She took a careful step away from Ekhaas and Midian and began to spin the pitch pots as the bugbears had when they’d confronted the trolls on the valley’s slope. The slow hiss turned into a steady rush. The pots became blurred, blue-glowing orbs. As more torches were lit and the circle of light around them grew, the blue glow seemed to fade, but the sound of the flame was still there. Hiissshh…
The expanding illumination caught the trolls at its edge. Their lumpy, blue-green flesh seemed to meld with the mossy trees. They almost could have been trees, tall and thin and twisted, still as old wood, their dark eyes like shadowed knots. Geth turned slowly, looking at each of them in turn and making sure that they saw the head that he carried.
“Dead,” he said. “This one is dead. No healing. No coming back. Do you understand?”
They gave no indication that they even heard him.
“They reacted when Makka challenged them,” said Dagii. “Try Goblin.”
“Let me.” Ekhaas moved forward to stand beside Geth. The tallest of the trolls stood directly in front of them, and Ekhaas faced it. She stood up straight and spoke in Goblin, “Let us pass! We carry fire. We can hurt you.” She let her voice drop into a whisper that matched the rush of Ashi’s whirling pots. “We can kill you.” She pointed at the severed head.
The tallest troll blinked and tilted its head slowly, looking first at the severed head, then at Ekhaas. Its warty, rubbery face betrayed nothing more.
“Let us pass,” said Ekhaas again. “We mean you no harm. Let us pass and we will not hurt you.”
Silence again, a silence that stretched out. Ekhaas didn’t move but just kept looking at the troll. None of the other trolls around them moved, nor did Chetiin or Geth. Midian moved, squirming. Dagii moved, tightening his grip on sword and on torch. Ashi tried not to move, but she found herself swinging the pitch pots faster so that their hiss grew louder and more shrill.
Then the troll moved, throwing back its head and letting out a weird hooting sound. Ashi gasped in surprise and might have released both pitch pots right at it if Ekhaas hadn’t thrust out a hand. “Do nothing!” she said. Her eyes were bright. “It’s calling something-or someone.”
They held still. A few moments later, they heard the sound of something being dragged through the forest. Two somethings, Ashi realized, as the sound drew closer. Two trolls came to the edge of the light, each of them pulling another troll. They released their burdens, then stepped back into the darkness.
The first troll must have been the one Geth’s head belonged to. Its neck was cut through and the stump showed no signs of healing. The rubbery flesh of the corpse had turned gray. There was no doubt that the troll was dead.
There was equally no doubt that the second troll was alive. It groaned and wept quietly, moaning like someone with a fever. The injuries that tortured it, however, were far worse. It was the troll they had defeated near the stairs, the one Ashi had cut open and Midian had burned. Its back was an open wound, a mess of scorched bone and flesh that was either black and charred or red and weeping.
“Rond betch,” she murmured. She saw Chetiin throw a hard glance at Midian. The gnome’s face was expressionless.
The tallest troll hooted again, softly this time, then growled and brought up a gangly arm. It pointed at the dead troll, then at the weeping one. It looked at Ekhaas and hooted again.
“You want us to kill it,” the duur’kala said slowly.
The tallest troll hooted a third time. Once again it pointed from one troll to the other, but this time it followed the gesture by stepping aside for a moment. Its message was clear: Kill the injured troll and they would be allowed to pass.
“These are not normal trolls,” said Dagii under his breath.
Ekhaas looked at Geth, who looked at Chetiin. The goblin nodded. He approached the weeping troll cautiously, drawing the dagger he kept on his right wrist. Ashi didn’t get a good look at the weapon, but what she could see left her with a strange chill. She let the twirling pitch pots slow to a gentle swinging once more.
Chetiin struck with the speed of a serpent, plunging the dagger into the base of the troll’s neck and up into its skull. The troll’s weeping stopped. Its body stiffened for an instant, then relaxed. When Chetiin pulled the dagger out, the blade-dull gray steel set with a thin blue-black crystal-was absolutely clean. He returned the dagger to its sheath and moved back.
The tallest troll looked down at the still, silent body for a long moment, then stepped out of their way. The other trolls around them moved back into the shadows. “Go,” whispered Ekhaas.
“You trust them?” asked Ashi.
“For now,” Ekhaas said. “The next time we meet them, no.”
They filed past the troll, so close Ashi could smell the wet canvas stink of it. Ekhaas and Geth stood where they were until the others had gone, then followed. The troll, however, gave one last hoot and pointed at the headless body.
Ekhaas frowned. “I think it wants-”
“I know what it wants,” said Geth. He went back to the body and laid the severed head beside it, then returned to Ekhaas and the others, taking his place at the head of the party once more. “Let’s get out of here and find those stairs,” he said.
Ashi glanced back at the dead trolls before the light of the torches had completely gone. All of the living trolls had gathered around them as if mourning. It was an eerie, almost tender sight. “I wouldn’t have expected that,” she said to Midian.
Before they’d gone much farther, though, new sounds broke the silence of the valley. Wet tearing. Dry crunching. Popping. Chewing.
“I hate this place,” said Midian.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sound of the feasting trolls urged them to a faster pace. With the monsters behind them-for the moment at least-they abandoned caution and all but raced through the forest. It seemed to Ashi that they were back at the scene of their first battle with the troll in almost no time at all, then through the trees and standing at the top of the stairs with only a few steps more. When they’d come upon the stairs the first time, there’d been only moonlight, and all she had been able to see was the dim form of the steps. With torchlight, she got a better look and marveled at the carved gray stone, perfectly preserved in spite of its age. No one else seemed much interested in the stairs this time, though. Even Midian scarcely glanced at the carvings in the stone. The party paused at the top of the long flight.
“Go ahead,” Chetiin said. “The way is clear.”
Geth’s first step onto the stairs was almost tentative, but he bared his teeth and his pace became bolder as he led the way down into the pit. Ashi thought she could feel the same thing he had. The stairs were ancient and imposing, but once she was walking on them, they felt like any others. Steep maybe, and subtly higher and wider than normal steps, but ordinary stairs just the same.
Then the edge of the torchlight fell on the massive trees that reached up out of the pit. Ekhaas had described them to her before, but even a duur’kala’s description didn’t do the size of them justice. The trunks were as big as small towers. The thin moonlight that had given some illumination to the upper stairs vanished behind the unseen branches. Darkness closed in, with all the eerie silence and tension of the valley focused, it seemed, on the small pool of light that crept along the stairs.
“There are trees in the Eldeen Reaches that are almost this big,” Geth said, “and they didn’t get that way naturally. How much farther, Chetiin?”
“Not much.”
Just a little farther along, the wet canvas smell of trolls rose to meet them. On each side of the stairs, deep
