The Hidden City

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‘It is good to please the Gods,’ Ulath replied.

The Troll suddenly banged his fist on the ground. ‘This is not how it should be!’ he declared in an unhappy voice.

‘No,’ Ulath agreed, dropping down into a squat much like the Troll’s, ‘it is not. The Gods have their reasons for it, though. They have said we must not kill each other. They have also said we must not eat each other.’

‘I have heard them say it. Could we have misunderstood them?’

‘I think we have not.’

‘Could it be that their minds are sick?’

‘It is possible. We must still do as they tell us, though.’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Tynian asked nervously.

‘We’re discussing philosophy,’ Ulath shrugged.

Tynian stared at him.

‘It’s fairly complex. It has to do with whether or not we’re morally obliged to obey the Gods if they’ve gone crazy. I’m saying that we are. Of course my position’s a little tainted by self-interest in this particular situation.’

‘Can it not speak?’ the Troll asked, pointing at Tynian. ‘Are those bird-noises the only sounds it can make?’

‘The bird-noises pass for speech among those of our kind. Will you take some of our eat with us?’

The Troll looked appraisingly at their horses. ‘Those?’ he asked.

‘No.’ Ulath shook his head. ‘Those are the beasts which carry us.’

‘Are your legs sick? Is that why you are so short?’

‘No. The beasts can run faster than we can. They carry us when we want to go fast.’

‘What kind of eat do you take?’

‘Pig.’

‘Pig is good. Deer is better.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is the pig? Is it dead? If it is still alive, I will kill it.’

‘It is dead.’

The Troll looked around. ‘I do not see it.’

‘We have only brought part of it.’ Ulath pointed at the large ham spitted over the fire.

‘Do you share your eat with the child of Khwaj?’

Ulath decided not to explain the concept of cooking at that particular moment. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is our custom.’

‘Does it please Khwaj that you share your eat with his child?’

‘It is our thought that it does.’ Ulath drew his dagger, lifted the spit from off the fire and sawed off a chunk of ham weighing perhaps three pounds.

‘Are your teeth sick?’ The Troll even sounded sympathetic. ‘I had a sick tooth once. It caused me much hurt.’

‘Our kind does not have sharp teeth,’ Ulath told him. ‘Will you take some of our eat?’

‘I will.’ The Troll rose to his feet and came to the fire, towering over them.

‘The eat has been near the child of Khwaj,’ Ulath warned. ‘It is hot. It may cause hurt to your mouth.’

‘I am called Bhlokw,’ the Troll introduced himself.

‘I am called Ulath.’

‘U-lat? That is a strange thing to be called.’ Bhlokw pointed at Tynian. ‘What is it called?’

‘Tynian,’ Ulath replied.

‘Tin-in. That is stranger than U-lat.’

‘The bird-noises of our speech make what we are called sound strange.’

The Troll leaned forward and snuffled at the top of Ulath’s head. Ulath suppressed a strong urge to shriek and run for the nearest tree. He politely sniffed at Bhlokw’s fur. The Troll actually didn’t smell too bad. Then the monster and Tynian exchanged sniffs. ‘Now I know you,’ Bhlokw said.

‘It is good that you do.’ Ulath held out the chunk of steaming ham.

Bhlokw took it from him and stuffed it into his mouth. Then he quickly spat it back out into his hand. ‘Hot,’ he explained a little sheepishly.

‘We blow on it to make it cool so that we can eat it without causing hurt to our mouths,’ Ulath instructed.

Bhlokw blew noisily on the piece of ham for a while. Then he crammed it back into his mouth. He chewed reflectively for a moment. Then he swallowed. ‘It is different,’ he said, diplomatically. Then he sighed. ‘I do not like this, U-lat,’ he confided unhappily. ‘This is not how things should be.’

‘No,’ Ulath agreed, ‘it is not.’

‘We should be killing each other. I have killed and eaten you man-things since you first came to the Troll-range. That is how things should be. It is my thought that the Gods are sick in their minds to make us do this,’ He sighed a hurricane sort of sigh. ‘Your thought is right, though. We must do as they tell us to do. Someday their minds will get well. Then they will let us kill and eat each other again,’ He stood up abruptly. ‘They want to see you. I will take you to them.’

‘We will go with you.’

They followed Bhlokw up into the mountains all that day and half of the next, and he led them finally to a snow-covered clearing where a fire burned in a large pit. The Troll-Gods were waiting for them there.

‘Aphrael came to us,’ the enormity that was Ghworg told them.

‘She said that she would do this,’ Ulath replied. ‘She said that when things happened that we should know about, she would come to us and tell us.’

‘She put her mouth on our faces.’ Ghworg seemed puzzled.

‘She does this. It gives her pleasure.’

‘It was not painful,’ Ghworg conceded a bit dubiously, touching the cheek where Aphrael had kissed him.

‘What did he say?’ Tynian asked quietly.

‘Aphrael came here and talked with them,’ Ulath replied. ‘She even kissed them a few times. You know Aphrael.’

‘She actually kissed the Troll-Gods?’ Tynian’s face grew pale.

‘What did it say?’ Ghworg demanded.

‘It wanted me to say what you had said.’

‘This is not good, Ulath-from-Thalesia. It should not talk to you in words we do not understand. What is its name?’

‘It is called Tynian-from-Deira.’

‘I will make it so that Tynian-from-Deira knows our speech.’

‘Brace yourself,’ Ulath warned his friend.

‘What? What’s happening, Ulath?’

‘Ghworg’s going to teach you Trollish.’

‘Now, wait a minute –’ Then Tynian suddenly clapped his hands to the sides of his head, cried out and fell writhing into the snow. The paroxysm passed quickly, but Tynian was pale and shaking as he sat up, and his eyes were wild.

‘You are Tynian-from-Deira?’ Ghworg demanded in Trollish.

‘Y-yes.’ Tynian’s voice trembled as he replied.

‘Do you understand my words?’

‘They are clear to me.’

‘It is good. Do not speak the other kind of talk when you are near us. When you do, you make it so that we do not trust you.’

‘I will remember that.’

‘It is good that you will. Aphrael came to us. She told us that the one called Berit has been told not to go to the place Beresa. He has been told to go to the place Sopal instead. She said that you would understand what this means.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Do you?’ he asked.

‘Do we?’ Tynian asked Ulath, speaking in Trollish.

‘I am not sure.’ Ulath rose, went to his horse, and took a map out of his saddle-bag. Then he returned to the fire. This is a picture of the ground,’ he explained to the enormous presences. ‘We make these pictures so that we will know where we are going.’

Schlee looked briefly at the map. ‘The ground does not look like that,’ he told them. He squatted and thrust his huge fingers down through the snow into the dirt. ‘This is how the ground looks.’

Ulath jumped back as the earth under his feet shuddered slightly. Then he stared down. It was not so much a map as it was a miniaturized version of the continent itself. ‘This is a very good picture of the ground,’ he marveled.

Schlee shrugged. ‘I put my hand into the ground and felt its shape. This is how it looks.’

‘Where is Beresa?’ Tynian asked Ulath, staring in wonderment at hair-thin little trees bristling like a two-day growth of beard on the sides of tiny mountains.

Ulath checked his map and walked several yards south to a shimmering surface covered with minuscule waves. His feet even sank slightly into Schlee’s recreation of the southern Tamul sea. ‘It is right here,’ he replied in Trollish, bending and putting his finger on a spot on the coastline.

‘That is where the ones who took Anakha’s mate away told him to go,’ Tynian explained to the Troll-Gods.

‘We do not understand,’ Khwaj said bluntly.

‘Anakha is fond of his mate.’

‘That is how it should be.’

‘He grows angry when his mate is in danger. The ones who took his mate away know this. They said that they will not give her back to him unless he gives them the Flower-Gem.’

The Troll-Gods all frowned, puzzling their way through it. Then Khwaj suddenly roared, belching out a great, billowing cloud of fire and melting the snow for fifty yards in every direction. ‘That is wickedness!’ he thundered. ‘It is not right to do this! Their quarrel was with Anakha, not with his mate! I will find these wicked ones! I will turn them into fires that will never go out! They will cry out with hurt forever!’

Tynian shuddered at the enormity of that idea. Then, with a great deal of help from Ulath, he explained their disguises and the subterfuges those disguises made possible.

‘Do you in truth look different from how you looked before, Ulath-from-Thalesia?’ Ghworg asked, peering curiously at Ulath.

‘Much different, Ghworg.’

‘That is strange. You seem the same to me,’ The God considered it. ‘Perhaps it is not so strange,’ he amended. ‘Your kind all look the same to me,’ He clenched his huge fists. ‘Khwaj is right,’ he said. ‘We must cause hurt to the wicked ones. Show us where the one called Berit has been told to go.’