A Fox Called Sorrow Page 8

  Trolls passed up and down a street that ran for a short way along the very edge of the city. Some were as misshapen as those in the tunnels, but others were much smaller and finer. Like Little Fur, they had long hair, and though it was hard to tell, she thought they might be she-trolls.

  As time passed without any sign of the others, her unease grew. What ought she to do if none of them returned? Must she try to complete the quest on her own? But how could she? Even if she managed to creep into the city unnoticed and get the information the Sett Owl needed, could she bypass the Troll King’s glamours to get back to the surface?

  The distinct sound of rocks clicking softly together cut into her thoughts. She looked up to see Ginger unraveling himself from cat shadow. To her amazement, the one-eyed cat Sly was with him! Only then did she remember that the black dog had spoken of tracking Sly to the troll hole.

  “Greetings, Little Fur,” Sly said in her purring voice, her single green eye as bright as a jewel against her sleek black coat. Her long tail twitched, its broken tip the only awkward part of her.

  “Sly! I am glad to see you, but how do you come to be here?” Little Fur asked, reaching out to stroke the silky pelt.

  “I come here from time to time because it amuses me,” Sly said lightly. “I was surprised to find Ginger’s scent. I thought I must be wrong until I came upon him blundering around.” Her eye glimmered with amused malice.

  Ginger only licked at his paw and said, “Gazrak must have signaled the fox from the edge of the city. I picked up his scent soon after I entered the outskirts.”

  “But why would Gazrak go into the city, and why call Sorrow in?” Little Fur asked.

  “The ferrets have not come back?” Ginger asked.

  Little Fur shook her head worriedly.

  Ginger’s orange eyes narrowed. “Then I will return to Underth,” he said. “I will go into the palace, where the scents of Sorrow and Gazrak lead, for it may be that they are all in danger.”

  Sly coiled around the gray cat, her green eye seeming to laugh. “If a fox and a rat went to the palace, the fox, at least, is a prisoner. And you cannot venture there, Ginger, for the Troll King’s glamours would see you captured, even were you shrouded in cat shadow. Unless you allow me to help you. We can seek the stink of fox and ferret together. The aroma of rat will be there in abundance, for many rats serve the Troll King.”

  Something was troubling Little Fur. “Sly, we rubbed special leaves on our feet to cover our scent. How can you smell Ginger, and how could Ginger have smelled the fox or the ferrets?”

  “I do not know about any leaves,” Sly said, sounding bored.

  “I do not know either, but I could smell both the fox and the ferrets,” Ginger said.

  After the two cats had gone, Little Fur thought about the leaves the Sett Owl had given them, and wondered if the scent could be wearing off. She had not thought to ask the owl if they must be rubbed on repeatedly. She wished she had at least applied some to Ginger’s paws.

  Weary hours passed. She saw many trolls, both the great lumbering kind and the thin, snaky sort. But she also saw several trolls that walked upright and were slender, with long hair like hers. Now she was certain that they were she-trolls. Sometimes small trolls accompanied them.

  Finally, worn down by useless worry, Little Fur decided to enter the city herself. She could pass for a troll child if she dirtied herself and walked with her shoulders hunched. She took off her tunic and hid it with the remaining backpack. Then she hung her pouch of herbs and the green stone her mother had left her beneath her under-shift. Last of all, she tore the sleeves and hem of her dress and smeared mud into her hair to dull its brightness.

  Suddenly Shikra appeared, racing over the jagged stones to the boulders and bubbling mud. She flung herself into Little Fur’s arms, trembling violently. Little Fur held her gently and looked her over for serious injury, but found none. Still, fear itself was a deeper kind of wounding. The healer bathed the burnt and ruffled ferret gently, using water from her bottle. She could smell that the burns stung. At last, Shikra sat up on her hind legs and composed herself.

  “Us hear troll speak of meeting in palace. Us follow troll. He go in palace, then Brave Kell make diversion,” she reported. “When bells ring, troll guards run from posts and us slip inside, too. Inside, no troll looking properly at us. Maybe they think no one can get inside palace. Or maybe they think us rats. Or maybe some ferrets serve Troll King.”

  “What happened in the meeting room?” Little Fur prompted.

  “Long argument,” Shikra said. “Trolls argue about which troll in control while Troll King away. If something happen to king, whoever in charge becomes king. Big troll say he is master while master away. Brod is name. He say his blood same as Troll King’s blood. He say Brod perform great service for king in carrying sickness of cats to human city. Us not know if what he say true. Impossible to smell if troll lie or not, for much they say is nonsense they think true.”

  “Did they say why the Troll King wanted to make cats sick?” Little Fur asked.

  Shikra said, “Trolls speak of experiment and of animal called Indyk and of king’s plan to destroy earth spirit.” She hesitated. “Trolls also speak of . . . Little Fur.”

  Little Fur stared at her in astonishment. “A troll said my name?”

  “Brod say Little Fur most bitter enemy of Troll King. King want . . .” She stopped.

  “He wants to kill me,” Little Fur whispered.

  “Brod say Little Fur ruin Troll King’s last plan and work against him each day of living,” Shikra said. “But when trolls speak of killing earth spirit, they speak of Indyk and of cat sickness.”

  “What is an indyk?” Little Fur murmured, tasting the strange word and finding no flavor she recognized. She shook her head and asked, “What happened to you and Brave Kell?”

  Shikra shuddered deeply again. “After talking, another fight. Shikra and Brave Kell creep away, but rats outside the chamber in hall smell us spies. Us taken prisoner. Us carried down many stairs into vast chamber where are many cages. All creatures in them smell of fear and sickness and pain. Us very frightened. They put us in cage. Bird in next cage scream that Troll King will hurt us to make us sing song of pain. Bird say human taught song to Troll King. Bird smelled of madness but also of truth.”

  Little Fur asked, “How did you get away?”

  “Gazrak and Sorrow come. Rat gnawed cage binding so Shikra and Brave Kell free. Other animals scream and cry and beg: Free! Free us! Noise bring troll guard, then another. Sorrow commands: Ferrets, go before more come. Do not look back. Find healer and flee. Then Sorrow attack troll.”

  “Then what happened?” Little Fur cried, breathless.

  “Shikra obey Sorrow. But Brave Kell being hero! Troll strike him hard. Kell hit wall of cavern with terrible crunch. Shikra cannot feel mind anymore! Shikra want to go where brother lying, but Gazrak scream: Follow! Shikra obey.” This but Gazrak scream: Follow! Shikra obey.” last was uttered with a heart-rending sob.

  “Shikra, do you know what happened to Sorrow? Was he . . . ?” She found she could not say the word.

  “Not know,” Shikra cried. “Gazrak led Shikra to crack in wall. Crack bring us to passage close to door leading out of palace, but there stand guards. Gazrak order Shikra wait until guards gone, then run. Then rat go running to troll. He crying out that intruders are in palace. When they gone, Shikra run. Not knowing what happened to Gazrak. Shikra never see brother again. . . .” She wept, and Little Fur could not comfort her.

  An hour passed, and a hard and terrible hour it was for Little Fur. Shikra fell into a restless, whimpering sleep. Little Fur was thinking again of going into the city when suddenly Ginger appeared from around the boulders with Gazrak scuttling by his side. The cat carried the limp form of Brave Kell in his mouth. He laid the ferret very gently at Little Fur’s feet. Smelling her brother, Shikra woke and gave a cry, but Little Fur hushed her, promising that her brother was not dead. He was
unconscious and badly bruised, but his worst injury was a broken leg.

  Little Fur washed Brave Kell’s wounds and treated them, and all the time he slept. She bade his sister cuddle up to him. The need to care for her injured brother steadied Shikra, and their bond would help to mend both of their spirits.

  Only when the two were settled did she question Ginger, who explained that he and Sly had entered the palace by an obscure door, and had hidden, mantled in cat shadow, until they had heard enough to know that intruders had been captured. Sly knew where they would be taken, and they had gone there, only to find Gazrak sniffing at the unconscious Kell.

  “Sorrow . . .”

  “Sorrow was caged and badly hurt,” Ginger said. “We tried to open his cage, but the knot was too strong. He said that he did not fear to die. He commanded us to take Kell and leave Underth with you. He said the trolls were terrified of what their king would say when he learned that spies had entered the city in his absence, and very soon they would begin to scour the city for intruders. Sorrow said Gazrak must go, too, for the trolls know him.”

  “It is already too late to use the tunnel,” Gazrak said suddenly.

  “What do you think we should do, then?” Little Fur asked him.

  “We must use the under-road,” Gazrak said.

  “But that is the way the Troll King and his warriors will return,” Little Fur protested.

  “We have only to travel on the under-road to places where the earth is cracked and there are narrow paths leading to the surface,” Gazrak said eagerly.

  Brave Kell groaned and opened his eyes. He saw Shikra bending over him and murmured, “Kell was a fool.”

  “Brave Kell,” she whispered, taking his paw and nibbling it tenderly.

  “Wise Shikra,” he answered softly, and rubbed his head against her. Then he grimaced. “Ugh, leg hurts.”

  Little Fur asked Ginger what had happened to Sly. She half expected that he would tell her the one-eyed cat had vanished again, but to her great surprise he said, “It was hard to carry the ferret swiftly without hurting him further, and my cat shadow would not cover him. Sly ran out of the gates and made the guards chase her so that I could slip out unnoticed with Gazrak and Kell.”

  “The guards will come back,” Gazrak warned miserably. “We are all doomed.”

  Little Fur could smell that the others were looking to her to decide what they should do. “Listen,” she said, trying to sound stern and calm. And then she told them her plan.

  “That is not what the fox ordered,” Ginger said mildly.

  “Sorrow no longer leads us,” Little Fur answered. “I do. All of you must take the under-road. Before you go, a trail must be laid to draw the trolls after you. It must be laid so that they will not discover where it leads too swiftly.”

  “What will you do?” Ginger asked.

  “I will enter the city disguised as a troll child to learn more of the Troll King’s plans for the earth spirit. And I will try to free Sorrow.”

  “How will Little Fur escape from Underth?” Shikra asked.

  “I will go out the same way we came in, for the trolls who guard that way will have followed you.”

  “If we would go, we must go now!” Gazrak said urgently.

  Little Fur nodded, her eyes on Ginger, for despite his silence, she knew he was the one she had to convince. “You have to go, because Brave Kell cannot walk and you must carry him,” she said gently.

  The gray cat gave a soft sigh that smelled of surrender, and said very softly, “I do not want to leave you here.”

  “Neither did Crow want us to leave him, yet we left because it was needful.”

  Ginger lowered his head and Little Fur put her arms around him.

  CHAPTER 13

  Little Fur Alone

  Brave Kell rode on Ginger’s back, and Gazrak and Shikra flanked the gray cat as they departed. Little Fur longed to call out to them to stop, to say that she had changed her mind, that she was too small and not made for the task of spying. But the voice in her deepest soul spoke not of fear or longing, but of what was right and what was wrong. So she mastered herself and let them go.

  Hours passed before Little Fur heard the bells that signaled the trolls had found the trail. Little Fur gathered her courage and made her way to the edge of the city. The moment she stepped onto the great slab of rock upon which the city was built, she felt earth magic pulsing through it.

  She hunched her shoulders to make her neck short, and bent her legs to achieve a rolling gait. She made her way along the street she had watched for so long and, turning the corner, entered a wider street. Pools of bubbling mud were everywhere, hung with veils of the shining mist that lit the city. Little Fur had spied out a route to the palace, but there was no need to keep to it, for the building was clearly visible between the stone pillars.

  Suddenly a great host of trolls came thundering toward her along the street carrying clubs and spears. Little Fur froze. But the trolls did not look at her as they passed. She was not alone as she continued to thread her way in the direction of the palace. Older trolls and she-trolls, some of them attended by thin, crouching trolls who seemed like servants, were headed the same way. From what she could smell of the conversations around her, they were wondering what was going on.

  As she reached the edge of the square, a pain made her double over. She knew at once what it was: Ginger was going away from her. She made herself stand up straight and ignore it, knowing it was only a matter of time before it would pass, as the pull toward Crow had done.

  The square was very bright from many pools of bubbling mud. It was also busy, with trolls arriving and more trolls pushing carts of cooked food that other trolls were buying. Troll children ran about, throwing mud balls at one another.

  Little Fur made her way to a wall where a number of older trolls squatted, picking their teeth or dozing in the warmth thrown out by the nearby mud pools. Sitting beside them, she half closed her eyes as if she, too, were sleepy.

  Little Fur studied the façade of the Troll King’s palace. Seen this close, the whole city was even more like a human city, with straight lines and sharp angles. Perhaps this palace was something left over from the humans, something which trolls had taken for their own. Her troll senses assured her that much of what was deep under the earth had once been on the surface, and much that now lay in the sun had been born deep in the earth.

  The palace’s two enormous entrance doors stood open and were guarded by four great shaggy trolls. Armed with spears whose ends glimmered sharp and silver, they were very alert and glared about ferociously. There were two smaller doors to one side of the building. One was shut fast, and a single guard was stationed before the other, which was ajar. But he was also alert and carried a spear at the ready.

  Little Fur waited to see what the guards did when someone entered the palace, but no one came or went. She tried again to understand what the trolls were saying, but other than smelling the seriousness in their words, she could make no sense of their language. Her only chance to learn more of the Troll King’s plans lay in rescuing Sorrow, who might have learned more during his imprisonment.

  No bright and clever idea formed itself in her tired mind. Little Fur felt like weeping at her stupidity for thinking she could make such a daring rescue. She understood that this despair arose from her elf blood, which longed for the sky and the sunlight, but the troll part of her was stubborn. Whether or not she despaired, she would find a way to get to the fox and free him.

  Incredibly, she slept, and her sleep was fitful and full of nightmares. She dreamed that the Troll King sent an army of trolls to burn the beaked house. That changed into a dream of Sly being stroked by the huge horny hands of the Troll King; and then of Sorrow, ringed by fire, beyond which she saw humans jeering and laughing at his terror.

  She woke to the gnawing pain that told her Ginger was getting farther and farther away. She did not understand why the pain of separation was not fading, as it had done with Crow
. She was about to rise when a great troop of troll guards thundered into the square.

  A huge troll lumbered from the palace gates to meet them. The other trolls bowed, and she smelled his name in their mutters. Brod! Shikra had said this was the troll who had assumed leadership in the absence of the king. His roars smelled of questions, but when one of the other trolls began to speak, Brod gave a bellow of rage and struck him a savage blow that laid him unconscious. Then he began to roar at the troll warriors. Little Fur could make nothing of his words, but she guessed he had been told that the intruders had gotten out of the subterranean caverns.

  One of the troll warriors handed a scrap of cloth to Brod. It was the material Ginger had used to lay a winding trail to the under-road! Brod sniffed at the cloth, then uttered a sharp command. The troll warriors turned and went thundering out of the square. Little Fur could only guess that Brod had dispatched them to search along the under-road.

  Once the guards had marched away, Brod went back inside. The trolls remaining in the square clustered together, grunting and growling and waving their huge hairy arms at one another. To her surprise, Little Fur was able to understand some of their words. They were discussing the spies, wondering how they had the courage to go along the under-road, where they were sure to encounter the returning Troll King. One troll said that the spies couldn’t know the king had gone that way, and what a horrible surprise that would be for them. A knot of trolls began to argue about what the spies wanted, anyway, and who had sent them.

  Little Fur’s ears pricked up when it sounded like one of the trolls was speaking of a spy that had been killed, but before she could hear more, they shuffled away. She turned her attention back to the palace gates, wishing she had asked Shikra what Brave Kell had done to cause a diversion. Since she had not, she had better walk around the side of the palace to see if there was another way in.