The Fading Dream_ Thorn of Breland - Keith Baker [80]
And with this much magic invested in the place, I imagine there are more than five guards.
Thorn still had no sense of the size of the place, and she hadn’t seen so much as an arrow slit in the walls. And she had only a minute or two of invisibility left. Still, she needed more information; she wanted to see where they were going.
Luckily for her, the team had reached its destination. There was no handle on the door; the Kundarak seal held it closed. The Vadalis savant placed one hand on her hippogriff brooch and her other palm on the door and pushed it open. It immediately became clear why there was a spell of silence on the room. The instant the door was opened, the air was filled with growls and snarls, bestial cries of rage and pain.
The guards wheeled the cart into the room, and Thorn slipped in after them. The door clicked shut behind her. Keeping her back against the wall, she stepped to the side and surveyed the situation. Her first impression was that someone had taken one of the healing houses of House Jorasco and merged it with her brother’s ramshackle clinic in Wroat. Shelves were piled high with stacks of bandages and other supplies. Surgical blades gleamed in baths of sterilizing fluids, and the walls were covered with anatomical charts and pages of parchment covered with scrawled notes and diagrams. Then there were things she’d never seen in a Jorasco ward. Alchemical equipment whose purpose she could only guess at—strange contraptions of glass and metal, dark fluid bubbling over low flames and chunks of rubbery, green flesh suspended in clear liquid.
Then there were the prisoners.
There were four beds on one side of the room, though bed was a kind word. They were clearly designed for restraint, not comfort; each was a virtual cocoon covered with leather straps and iron chains. At a quick glance, one might think there were four men bound in the beds. But they weren’t men. Each was over ten feet in height and massively muscled. Their hides were rubbery and green, covered with warts and boils. Long, hooked noses hung over mouths filled with needle-sharp teeth. They were trolls. Distant relatives to orcs and ogres, trolls were savage carnivores infamous for eating anything they could tear apart, and the talons of a troll could rend steel. They’d been driven from civilized lands long in the past, but they still lingered in deep caverns and dark woods, in the most desolate peaks of Mror Holds and in the wilds to the west. The last time Thorn had seen a troll in the flesh had been on her mission to Droaam. The leaders of that land had brought ogres, gnolls, shapeshifters, minotaurs, medusas and more together to build their nation, and Thorn had seen quite a few trolls among the guardians of the Great Crag.
There were handful of halflings and humans scattered around the room, savants wearing the colors of House Vadalis and the healing house, Jorasco. A thin halfling with wispy, white hair nodded to the newcomers. “Take table three. You can have your choice of left or right, and I’d like to see that one taken down a notch. I cut his tongue out yesterday, but you know how they are.”
One of the trolls roared again, a howl of sheer rage. Its fury was no match for its bonds. The guards surrounded it, and three of them worked with its arm. The restraints worked in series; they were able to separate the arm from the main cocoon, and working together, the four soldiers were able to force the creature’s arm down onto the stretcher they’d brought with them, lashing it onto the new restraints.
“Shadow hears me!” The troll’s voice was a guttural roar, as loud as thunder. Thorn vaguely recognized it as the language of the goblins, shaped with a mangled tongue. To her ears, it sounded like the meaningless snarls of a savage beast. But Thorn was wearing the gift she’d received from the Lord of Pylas