The Hidden City

by David Eddings

  ‘Does he know that you speak Trollish?’

  ‘He might. The Troll-Gods are acquainted with me, and they know that I run in the same pack with Sparhawk.’

  ‘That’s an odd way to put it.’

  ‘I’m trying to think like a Troll. If I can get it right, I might be able to anticipate what he’s going to do next.’

  Then the Troll shouted up the hill to them.

  ‘What did he say?’ Tynian asked nervously.

  ‘He wants to know what he’s supposed to do. He’s very confused.’

  ‘He’s confused? What about me?’

  ‘He’s been told to meet us and take us to the Troll-Gods. He doesn’t have any idea of our customs or the proper courtesies. We’ll have to guide him through this. Put your sword back in its sheath. Let’s not make things any worse than they already are.’ Ulath stood up, being careful not to move too fast. He raised his voice and called to the creature below in Trollish. ‘Come to this child of Khwaj which we have made. We will take eat together and talk of what we must do.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I invited him to join us for breakfast.’

  ‘You did what? You want a Troll that’s no more than a few feet from you to start eating?’

  ‘It’s a precaution. It would be discourteous of him to kill us after he’s taken food from us.’

  ‘Discourteous? That’s a Troll out there, Ulath.’

  ‘Just because he’s a Troll doesn’t mean that he has bad manners. Oh, I almost forgot. When he comes into camp, he’ll want to sniff us. It’s polite to sniff him as well. He won’t smell very nice, but do it anyway. Trolls do that so that they’ll recognize each other if they ever meet again.’

  ‘I think you’re losing your mind.’

  ‘Just follow my lead, and let me do the talking.’

  ‘What else can I do, you clot? I don’t speak Trollish, remember?’

  ‘You don’t? What an amazing thing. I thought every educated man spoke Trollish.’

  The Troll approached cautiously, moving smoothly up through the birch forest. He used his arms a great deal as he moved, grasping trees to pull himself along, moving with his whole body. He was about eight and a half feet tall and had glossy brown fur. His face was simian to a degree, though he did not have the protruding muzzle of most apes, and there was a glimmer of intelligence in his deep-sunk eyes. He came up onto the bench where the camp lay and then squatted, resting his forearms on his knees and keeping his paws in plain sight. ‘I have no club,’ he half-growled.

  Ulath made some show of setting his axe aside and held out his empty hands. ‘I have no club,’ he repeated the customary greeting. ‘Undo your sword-belt, Tynian,’ he muttered. ‘Lay it aside.’

  Tynian started to object, but decided against it.

  ‘The child of Khwaj you have made is good,’ the Troll said, pointing at their fire. ‘Khwaj will be pleased.’

  ‘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 wou
ld 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.’

  Ulath consulted his map again and crossed the miniature world to the edge of the large lake known as the Sea of Arjun. ‘It is here, Ghworg,’ he said, bending again and putting his finger to a spot on the coast. Then he bent lower and stared at the shore-line. ‘It is really there!’ he gasped. ‘I can see the tiny little buildings! That is Sopal!’

  ‘Of course,’ Schlee said as if it were of no particular moment. ‘It would not be a good picture if I had left things out.’

  ‘We have been tricked,’ Tynian said. ‘It was our thought that our enemies were in the place Beresa. They are not. They are in the place Sopal instead. The one called Berit does not have the Flower-Gem. Anakha has the Flower-Gem. Anakha takes it to Beresa. If the wicked ones meet with Berit in the place Sopal, he will not have the Flower-Gem with him to give to the wicked ones. They will be angry, and they may cause hurt to Anakha’s mate.’

  ‘It may be that I taught it too well,’ Ghworg muttered. ‘It talks much now.’

  Schlee, however, had been listening carefully to Tynian’s oration. ‘It has spoken truly, however. Anakha’s mate will be in danger. Those who have taken her away may even kill her.’ The skin on his enormous shoulders flickered, absently shaking off the snowflakes which continually fell on him, and his face twisted as he concentrated. ‘It is my thought that this will anger Anakha. He may be so angry that he will raise up the Flower-Gem and make the world go away. We must keep the wicked ones from causing hurt to her.’

  ‘Tynian-from-Deira and I will go to the place Sopal,’ Ulath said. ‘The wicked ones will not know us because our faces have been changed. We will be nearby when the wicked ones tell the one called Berit that they will give him Anakha’s mate if he will give them the Flower-Gem. We will kill them and take Anakha’s mate back when they do this.’

  ‘It speaks well,’ Zoka told the other Troll-Gods. ‘Its thought is good. Let us help it and the other one – but let us not permit it to kill the wicked ones. Killing them is not enough. The thought of Khwaj is better. Let Khwaj make them into fires that will never go out instead. Let them burn always. That will be better.’

  ‘I will put these man-things into the time which does not move,’ Ghnomb said. ‘We will watch them in Schlee’s picture of the ground as they go to the place Sopal while the world stands still.’

  ‘Can you truly see something as small as a man-thing in Schlee’s picture of the ground?’ Ulath asked the God of Eat with some surprise.

  ‘Can you not?’ Ghnomb seemed even more surprised. ‘We will send Bhlokw with you to help you, and we will watch you in Schlee’s picture of the ground. Then, when the wicked ones show her to the one called Berit to prove to him that they truly have her, you and Tynian-from-Deira will step out of the time which does not move and take her away from them.’

  ‘Then I will reach into Schlee’s picture of the ground and take them up in my hands,’ Khwaj added grimly. I will bring them here and make them into fires that will never go out.’

  ‘Can you truly reach into Schlee’s picture of the ground and pick the wicked ones out of the real world?’ Ulath asked in astonishment.

  ‘It is easy,’ Khwaj shrugged.

 
Tynian was shaking his head vigorously.

  ‘What?’ Schlee demanded.

  ‘The one called Zalasta can also come into the time which does not move. We have seen him do this.’

  ‘It will not matter,’ Khwaj told him. ‘The one called Zalasta is one of the wicked ones. I will make him into a fire which will never go out as well. I will let him burn forever in the time which does not move. The fire will be just as hot there as it will be here.’

  The snow was heavier – and wetter – after they crossed the rocky spine that divided the rivers flowing west from those that flowed east. The huge cloud of humid air that hung perpetually above the Astel Marshes lapped against the eastern slopes of the Mountains of Zemoch, unloosing phenomenal snowfalls that buried the forests and clogged the passes. The Church Knights grimly forced their way through sodden drifts as they followed the valley of the south fork of the River Esos toward the Zemoch town of Basne.

  Patriarch Abriel of the Cyrinic Knights had begun this campaign with a certain sense of well-being. His health was good, and a lifetime of military training had kept him in peak physical condition. He was, however, fast approaching his seventieth year and he found that starting out each morning was growing harder and harder, though he would never have admitted it.

  About mid-morning on a snowy day, one of the scouting parties ranging ahead returned with three goatskin-clad Zemochs. The men were thin and dirty, and they had terrified expressions on their faces. Patriarch Bergsten rode on ahead to question them. When the rest of them caught up to the gigantic churchman, he was having a rather heated discussion with an Arcian Knight.

  ‘But they’re Zemochs, your Grace,’ the knight protested.

  ‘Our quarrel was with Otha, Sir Knight,’ Bergsten said coldly, ‘not with these poor, superstitious devils. Give them some food and warm clothing and let them go.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘We’re not going to have trouble about this, are we, Sir Knight?’ Bergsten asked in an ominous tone, swelling even larger.

  The knight seemed to consider his situation. He backed up a few paces. ‘Ah – no, your Grace,’ he replied, I don’t believe so.’

  ‘Our Holy Mother appreciates your obedience, my son,’ Bergsten told him.