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By Root 374 0

strong enough to rip small trees out at the roots. She had never known a Troll to possess the strength and quickness of Kermadec. But there was much more to him. A Maturen of thirty years, he was the sort of person others turned to instinctively in times of trouble. Solid and capable, he had served his nation with a distinction and compassion that belied the ferocious history of his Race. In the not so distant past, the Trolls had marched against Men and Elves and Dwarves with the single-minded intent of smashing them back into the earth. During the Wars of the Races, ruled by their feral and warlike nature; they had allied themselves with the darker forces in the world. But that was the past, and in the present, where it mattered most, they were no longer so easily bent to service in a cause that reason would never embrace.

“You have come a long way to see me, Kermadec,” she said. “It must be something important.”

“That remains for you to decide,” he said softly. “I myself haven’t seen what I am about to reveal, so it is hard for me to judge. I think it will be equally hard for you.”

“Tell me.”

He slowed to a stop in the darkness and turned to face her. “There is strange activity in the ruins of the Skull Kingdom, mistress. The reports come not from Rock Trolls, who will not go into that forbidden place, but from other creatures, ones who will, ones who make a living in part by telling of what they see. What they see now is reminiscent of other, darker times.”

“The Warlock Lord’s domain, once,” she observed. “A bad place still, all broken walls and scattered bones. Traces of evil linger in the smells and taste of the land. What do these creatures tell you they see?”

“Smoke and mirrors, of a sort. Fires lit in darkness and turned cold by daylight’s arrival. Small explosions of light that suggest something besides wood might be burning. Acrid smells that have no other source than the fires. Black smudges on flat stones that have the look of altars. Markings on those stones that might be symbols. Such events were sporadic at first, but now occur almost nightly. Strange things that of themselves alone do not trouble me, but taken all together do.”

He breathed in and exhaled. “One thing more. Some among those who come to us say there are wraiths visible at the edges of the mist and smoke, things not of substance and not yet entirely formed, but recognizable as something more than the imagination. They flutter like caged birds seeking to be free.”

Grianne went cold, aware of the possibilities that the sightings suggested. Something was being conjured up by use of magic, something that wasn’t natural to this world and that was being summoned to serve an unknown purpose.

“How reliable are these stories?”

He shrugged. “They come from Gnomes for the most part, the only ones who go into that part of the world. They do so because they are drawn to what they perceive in their superstitions as sacred. They perform their rituals in those places because they feel it will lend them power. How reliable are they?” He paused. “I think there is weight to what they say they see.”

She thought a moment. Another strangeness to add to an already overcrowded agenda of strangenesses. She did not like the sound of this one, because if magic was at work, whatever its reason, its source might lie uncomfortably close to home. Druids had the use of magic and were the most likely suspects, but their use of it in places beyond Paranor was forbidden. There were other possibilities, but this was the one she could not afford to ignore.

“Is there a pattern to these happenings?” she asked. “A timing to the fires and their leavings?”

He shook his head. “None that anyone has discerned. We could ask the Gnomes to watch for it, to mark the intervals.”

“Which will take time,” she pointed out. “Time best spent looking into it myself.” She pursed her lips. “That is what you came to ask me to do, isn’t it? Take a look for myself?”

He nodded. “Yes, mistress. But I will go with you. Not alone into that country — ever — would I go. But with you beside me,