Even in the skin of a sorceress, I could work no magic in this weakened state. I managed to summon only enough energy to do as ordered. The robes were bulky and awkward, but I was grateful for their warmth. I did not rise from the floor.
“Can I get you anything?”
My home? My true skin? A ride back down the mountain? Freedom? But only one word escaped my parched lips. “Water.”
He poured me a glass from a pitcher on the small table. Fresh, no salt. Desperate, I drank it anyway.
I still felt empty.
I half expected him to leave the room, but he did not. He lowered himself to one of the chairs beside the table and said nothing.
In time, I was able to lift myself up off the floor. Tapestries covered three walls; the fourth had a small window. Beneath this window was a large couch, or a small bed. I crawled onto it, turning myself so that I could stare at Jason. What had the universe had been thinking, creating someone so exquisite and cruel? If he truly was fey, what sort of magic did he possess? Could his magic be his beauty? Surely not. I, above anyone, knew how mutable a person’s outward appearance could be.
I might have asked him, but I did not. Instead, I watched him not-watching me.
I was not surprised when the king, Atatroll, arrived. By then, I’d thought through my situation enough to put that much together. I had been captured for the king. But why me? Or, rather, why her? This body I wore would be useless in an armory, or in the mines. Did trolls even care about anything else? It couldn’t be power—wearing a sorceress’s skin didn’t give me anything like her full abilities, or I would have escaped long before this.
I braced myself, sure that this encounter would not be pleasant.
He was large and smelly, as all trolls were, but his stench was no worse than the guards who’d brought me here. That part did surprise me a little. I’d assumed that a king of trolls would be bigger or stronger or smellier, somehow. This troll simply had eyes a little wider set than the others. His skin was a shade yellower. He wore layers of furs on top of his leathers. His necklaces were made of teeth and claws. What I could see of his own teeth were stained and pointed. A large golden hoop pierced one side of his giant hooked nose.
He reached out a meaty hand, grabbed my robes at the neck, and lifted me off the couch until my face was level with his. I forced myself to remain as limp and calm as I could manage. I would not gag. I would not scream. I would not beg. I would not cry.
He was all muscle and menace. The spelled skin I wore was thin and mortal. For the first time I wondered what death would be like. It might be preferable to whatever the troll king had in store. If only that window were wide enough—
He slapped me in the face with his free hand. My head snapped back, my cheek and jaw exploding with pain. There was blood on my—her—lips. The salty mineral taste was almost refreshing.
Somehow, I managed to stay silent. I knew I had no control over what happened next, so I merely stared into the troll king’s eyes. They, too, were yellow, like bile, the pupils so large I could almost see myself—herself—in them.
The troll king gave a fetid huff, and then tossed me to the ground like a discarded rag doll. “She’ll do.” The nasally growl was addressed to Jason. “For now.”
Jason bowed low to the troll king. “Yes, your highness.”
The troll guards outside flanked the king at attention. They shut the door firmly behind their sovereign, leaving Jason inside the room with me.
“A-ha.” My voice and my lip both cracked. My laugh was a low, raspy cackle.
“Something funny?”
“You are not so much my jailor as you are a fellow captive.” Only half the words emerged from my dry throat, but Jason understood. He fetched my glass and refilled it with water. My pride did not want to take it from him. My desiccated body demanded otherwise.
“They killed my wife,” he whispered. “They will kill my daughter if I do not help them.” He sat down on the floor with me. After what had felt like ages, those soulful dark eyes finally met mine. Hers. “I’m sorry.”
The spiteful laugh died inside me, not that I had the energy to continue it anyway. There were so many ways both of us could have avoided this mess. And yet, here we were. His apology didn’t change anything. I was still glad to have it.
“Who am I?” I raised my robe-covered arms. “Whose body is this?”
“Gana. Atatroll’s sorceress.”
My recollection was hazy with lust, but I vaguely remembered something about a sorceress. Never let it be said that elementals were ever overly intelligent. “A sorceress? Surely not. Her nature should grant me some little power. Even in my weakened state.”
Jason shook his head. “She works in blood magic.”
I glanced around the small room. “No blood and no water.” Not unless I stabbed my cellmate, at any rate, and even then I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Blood magic was learned, not inherited. I wore this Gana’s skin, not her history. I could not help but laugh again at the irony of it all. “You could not have chosen a more perfect prison.”
“Water will help you to heal?”
I nodded.
“I will arrange for a bath to be brought here.” He stood and walked to the door.
“Salt, too,” I said after him. “If you can manage it.”
He knocked on the door. The guards opened it a crack and spoke to him. I could not hear the exchange.
“What did you say?” I asked him when the door had closed again.
“I reminded them that if you die, you will be of no use to the king.”
“What use am I to the king in this state? Who is this Gana to him?” Please don’t say his lover, I silently begged the universe.
“She is Atatroll’s closest advisor,” said Jason. “More importantly, the blood magic gives her power he will never possess. And no one should have more power than the king.”
“I bet that drives him crazy.”
“He hates her as much as he needs her,” said Jason. “Maybe more.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re fey. Doesn’t that make you more powerful than the king as well?”
“If only I had been smarter about it,” he said, as if he’d plucked my previous thoughts right out of my head. “Wiser fey moved south when the trolls began to flex their muscles. But I was too proud of the life I had built here to leave it all behind. So instead of fleeing, I decided to find a way to keep my home. I became a seeker in the mines, and the king valued my service. I thought it would keep my family safe.” He looked up at the small window. “I could not have been more wrong.”
“Your magic is finding things,” I deduced. Seekers found gems and ores and veins of gold in the mines. He had found me easily enough. Found my weaknesses as well.
“Yes.”
“Then I suppose I am here to be… a whipping boy, of sorts. When the king gets frustrated with his sorceress, he cannot take his rage out on her. But he can take it out on me.”
Jason hung his head. “Yes.”
I gave him a moment to steep in his shame. “Are you sure you can’t find a way out of here?”
“I haven’t yet,” he said to the floor.
Love and Strife help me, I reached out to take the hand of this man who had been my doom. “We will survive.” Even with a foreign throat I sounded so sure of myself. I’d had years of practice consoling sad souls with worse lies. “But only if we work together. You must promise to never again betray me.”
“I cannot make that promise if my daughter’s life depends on it.”
Gods bless his stunning, stalwart heart. The child was most likely already dead, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He’d dive headfirst out that window I’d been eyeing, and then where would we be? “What is her name?”
“Rashida.” I could almost hear his heart break as he said the word.
“When you are about to betray me for her sake, say her name,” I suggested.
“I can do that.” He squeezed my hand. I tried not to
enjoy it. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“Give me time,” I said, though I was already nodding.
We did survive after that, though each day was worse than the next for a while. I would have lost count, had I bothered counting them at all from the start. The troll king did not come to me every night, but he visited often enough. Jason continued to walk the line between warden and fellow prisoner. Eventually, he even became my friend.
He tended my wounds between abuses in whatever way he could. Soaking in a salt bath worked the most wonders—the sorceress’s skin healed faster when I was wearing it, but the pain halved when I removed it. And so we maintained that delicate balance. Atatroll would beat his sorceress fiercely enough to relieve his rage but not fiercely enough for me to die, and then Jason and I would patch and soak her—and me—at whatever speed and pain level I could tolerate.
Removing the sorceress’s skin was the most blissful part of those long, wretched days. I relished the ability to simply exist as beautiful, graceful me for some precious little while. Yes, there was still pain, and yes, I was still a thin-skinned mortal, but all the hair and lips and eyes and nose and fingers I wore were mine.
I remember Jason’s reaction the first time I’d slipped out of Gana’s skin—he had not laid eyes on my human form since the night he’d betrayed me. His face was a vision of pure remorse. I would have consoled him had I not been in such pain from a particularly brutal session with the king, so I let him console me. I let him vent his shame and apologies. I let him cry for me. For his daughter. For the displaced fey. For himself. His tears added more salt to my bathwater, and maybe a little magic as well.
More time passed. Seasons changed. Snow fell on the mountaintops outside our small window. I wondered about my home, my cenote, my seal body in the trunk beside the well. I hoped it was safe. I truly would die in this skin if it wasn’t.
Rare days came that weren’t so bad, and Gana’s skin was able to heal by itself in the salt bath. On those days, Jason and I pretended we were strangers in another place, with far less horrible fates. We shared stories. We shared the small bed. Eventually, we found sweet solace in each other. We made our own magic.
He tasted as delicious as I’d imagined.
My days featured little else besides Jason, pain, and time, so I took the opportunity to do the thing I had neglected to do before: I listened. I did not ask questions—the king would have sliced me with a thousand cuts before giving me a direct answer—but I learned how to obtain information. Jason used his own fey gifts to subtly acquire intelligence elsewhere in the castle. Late at night, or while I soaked, paralyzed, in the bath, we shared our discoveries.
There is a saying among immortals: if one is patient enough, one can move mountains.
“The dungeons are filled to capacity. Humans and fey, though the fey keep using what magic they have to escape when they can. It’s frustrating the trolls to no end.” There was pride in his voice as he made his report. “But what’s the point? What are the trolls doing with them all?”
I rested my head against the back of the tub. It had been a particularly physical day. One ear was half gone, one eye was swollen shut, and my arm might have been broken. My toes, my fingers, even my teeth hurt. “Mmm,” I managed to say. I tried again, concentrating on forming whole words. “Mines? Food for winter?”
“The king already has more gold and gems than he could spend in seven lifetimes. If he hollows out any more of this mountain, it will fall down around his ears. As for food, Aurochs are much easier to corral and breed than humans or fey,” he pointed out. “They also yield far more meat. And that’s not counting all the other livestock possibilities. No… it must be something else. Something they need man power for.”
“But troll power,” I muttered.
“Yes. Trolls are definitely stronger than humans and fey put together. So what is it that we can do that they cannot?”
I drifted in and out of my pain, trying to think. “Love,” I said finally.
“I would kiss you for that, if you weren’t so miserable,” was his response. As a consolation, I imagined the kiss behind my closed eyes. It was perfect.
“Art,” I added, after our fantasy kiss had played itself over in my head a dozen times. Art required love, compassion, and a depth of emotion I was sure that trolls could never experience.
“Craftsmen,” Jason said, after a moment. “Didn’t you say last week that they’d rounded up a bunch of woodworking fey and an earth elemental at some point?”
“Mmm,” I affirmed. It might have been last week, or last month. I had tried to stop myself from imagining how many families had been slaughtered to press those fey into service, or what horrible trap they’d set for the Green Man. The king had been particularly proud of his handiwork that day, whatever it was. I hoped all his terrible stories were hyperbole, but I knew they weren’t. Jason and I were proof enough of that.
“They have to be building something. But what?”
I forced my split lips open once more. “War.”
It was always war with trolls. War and money and power. Another battering ram, another sword, another plate in the armor. The trolls would not be happy until every corner of the world was under trollish rule. And even then, I suspected they’d turn on each other just to have something to do.
I’d also gathered tidbits about the sorceress—the real sorceress—but I couldn’t summon the words to tell Jason. I wasn’t sure what to say, anyway. I only knew that something big was brewing, a magic spell that Atatroll resented not being a part of, even though it was being made for him. It was all for him.
“Way out?” No matter how bad the pain, I always asked if his fey gifts had found us a way out. Not that it was something he’d ever forget. But I did love how the question made him smile.
“I might have a lead,” he said. “There’s a story going around about a certain fey… the trolls have captured her three times now. And every time she disappears again, the youngest and oldest and sickest of the prisoners seem to vanish right along with her.”
I did not ask about his daughter. It had been a very long time since he’d mentioned her. I allowed him the dream of imagining that she’d escaped. Dreams like that were what kept us both breathing most days. Dreams and secrets.
I silently thanked the gods. If this fey was real, she’d come at the perfect time.
The next time I was delivered to the troll king’s chambers for a session, I kept that rebellious fey in mind. I intended to see what I could discover about her. But the king had something else in mind.
“Tell me I am the greatest,” he bellowed as I entered. The demand was no surprise; our visits usually began this way. I would lavish praise upon him, list a myriad of achievements, and cower in his shadow.
I chose to skip to the end of the pleasantries. “I tremble in your presence, your greatest majesty.” He usually struck me at that point, and we went on from there.
“Of course you do.” He motioned to a sitting area. “Have some tea.” It was an odd request, not that it was a request at all. Glancing down at the oversized pot and cups large enough for troll hands to manage, I was immediately on my guard. What fresh hell was this? I would have suspected poison, but no troll worth his salt would have carried out such a lazy, passive murder. Especially not a king. Kings were physical, loud, and as bloody as possible. I would know.
Dutifully, I sat.
“I changed the world today,” he said as he settled down into the lavish sofa opposite me. “Henceforth I will be known as the greatest troll that ever lived.”
“And the strongest and richest, to be sure,” I added.
“Riches? You mean garbage,” spat the king. “My men can harness the aurochs in gold and gems for all I care. I have no use for them anymore. I am beyond wealth.”
Beyond wealth? My mind was racing. I forced my skin not to show it.
The only thing trolls valued more than gold, jewels, and iron was power. Had he found a way to subsume
his sorceress’s gifts? Taught himself blood magic? That was a chilling thought. Not only would he be a most dangerous beast, but he would also have no more need for me.
“Your brilliance is unmatched,” I said.
“YES!” He slammed his cup down with such force that the table shook. “The Thaumater was my idea. You may have sacrificed a thousand human souls to your profane gods to make it work, but it would not exist without me.” He slapped me in the face. “You remember that.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“And whatever magics we manage to extract will come to me, do you hear? The power will be mine. Not yours. MINE.”
Each sentence was punctuated with another slap. “Yes, your majesty.”
“My trolls will march down from the mountain, and then I, King Atatroll, will conquer the world. Not you. ME.”
Punches this time, then a sound kick. I answered each with “Yes, your majesty,” until I lost the ability to speak at all. When that happened, I left Gana’s skin to absorb the beating while my mind wandered. The trolls would be coming down the mountain to conquer the world. Atatroll would be leaving the castle. Which meant a significant change in my and Jason’s situation. On top of that, the most direct route from the top of the mountain to the rest of the world was through town. My home and my true skin were no longer safe.
I hoped that fey was real, because we needed her. Now.
The king was in high spirits. The beating lasted for hours. The guards dragged my carcass back to the room where Jason had a salt bath waiting. It was several more hours until the water had healed me enough to speak.
“Escape.” It was more of a moan than a word.
“I spoke to one of the scullery maids who gets food to the dungeons,” he said. “The rogue fey woman isn’t just a story. She’s real, and she’s here. I will find a way to contact her.”
“Now,” I said. There would be no escape if the trolls caught this woman. We could not risk her becoming one of the souls sacrificed by the sorceress. I could not wait until the trolls were on the move.
“What is it that you say to me?” Gods, his eyes were beautiful when he smiled. “Patience can move mountains.”
Where the Veil Is Thin Page 21