Bearers of the Black Staff: Legends of Shannara (27 page)

Panterra had no idea how they were supposed to avoid showing fear when they were captives in a camp of thousands of Trolls, any of whom might choose to kill them with not much more than a momentary thought. But he took Prue’s hand in his own and stood with her, facing the tent flap, holding himself erect. Sarn gave them a quick glance and then stepped to one side, distancing himself by doing so. It seemed an ominous sign.

“Watch me closely,” Arik Sarn said quickly.

The sounds of footfalls and voices entering the outer portion of the tent froze them in place. Seconds later the tent flap was thrown back, and a clutch of armored black bodies strode through the opening and came to a halt. Panterra knew at once which of them was Taureq Siq just from the obvious deference paid him by all but one of the other Trolls who accompanied him. It was in their body language and their silence, but mostly it was in the way he dominated the room. Trolls were large to begin with, but Taureq Siq was a giant, standing fully eight feet tall and weighing well over three hundred pounds, all of it looking to Pan as if it were muscle and bone. Only Grosha, dark-browed and cold-eyed, standing at his father’s right hand, showed no hesitation at crowding forward and then launching into a diatribe that was accompanied by angry gestures toward Panterra and Prue and his cousin. His father let him go on for a moment before backing him away with one massive arm and a single sharp command that turned the furious boy silent.

He took a step forward so that he stood at the forefront of the little assembly and close to the boy and the girl. His huge body was layered with scales as thick and rough as bark looming over them like a tree trunk, and his flat, empty face was ridged with scars. He studied them, letting the silence build for a moment before he shifted his gaze to his nephew and asked a quick question. Sarn answered briefly, and then there was a further exchange.

“Taureq says to tell him where you come from,” he said quietly.

Panterra took a deep breath. “We come from deep in the mountains east of these plains. Those mountains are our home.”

Another quick exchange among the Trolls followed. “Taureq says to tell him if you are a nation of Men only or of others, too.”

“We are a nation of mixed Races. Men, Elves, Trolls”—he was quick to remember that the word
Lizards
was not to be used—“and Spiders.”

Another exchange followed this translation. “How many?”

“Hundreds of thousands,” Panterra lied.

There was a pause after his answer was given, then a flurry of words from the Maturen. “Taureq never heard of you. Why not, if your people are so many? Why live in the mountains and not in the grasslands south?”

Again, Panterra answered, embellishing the truth where it was needed. They had not come out of the mountains until now because they did not know if it was safe to do so or if the rest of the world had been destroyed. They were happy isolating themselves. They had found a home that could sustain them and that they could protect. He went on from there. He made it sound as if they were self-sufficient and well fortified against intruders, a united community of friends and neighbors deeply entrenched inside mountain passes only they knew how to navigate. He had no idea if he was saying the right thing; he only knew he needed to give the impression that an intrusion or attack of any sort would be a mistake.

Then, abruptly, the questions stopped. Taureq Siq stood quietly, looking at Panterra. He seemed to be considering. Pan waited, keeping his face expressionless, trying to convey a sense of calm. But as the seconds passed, he sensed in the spaces between their soft, slow fading that he had made a mistake.

As if in response to his fears, Taureq Siq made a quick, dismissive comment, and Arik Sarn turned to Pan and said, “He says you are lying. He wants to know why.”

Panterra felt his throat tighten as he struggled to find the right response. “I don’t lie. But I am worried that he intends to use his army to invade us and want to make clear that we are a poor choice for an attack.”

A further exchange between Trolls followed. “He says no harm will come to your people, but you should not lie to him because if you do he will take his army into the mountains and find your people and kill them, but first he will kill you and the girl.”

Sarn’s words died away into silence.
So he means us no harm, but he’s willing to kill us all if he decides he’s being lied to?
Pan gave a mental shake of his head. He could trust nothing of what this man was saying, which was pretty much what Sarn had suggested in advising him to reveal nothing he did not wish repeated. Grosha was smiling, standing next to his father, hands clasped almost gleefully. He sensed he was about to have his way with them, that they would soon be entertainment for his Skaith Hounds.

“I have answered truthfully,” Pan said, trying to deflect both Taureq Siq’s threat and his own fear. “I don’t know what more I can do. What else do you want to know?”

Beside him, he felt Prue inch closer.

Another long pause as Taureq Siq considered. Beside him, Grosha was growing more agitated, restless enough that he was trying to push forward again. His father, almost absently, shoved him back, and then spoke anew to Arik Sarn.

“He says you must take him to meet your leaders,” the latter advised Pan. “Tomorrow.”

Pan hesitated.
Now what am I supposed to do?
His mind raced, searching for an answer that wouldn’t come. “I’m not allowed to do that,” he said finally. “I don’t have permission to take anyone into the mountains. But I could bring our leaders somewhere close to where your son captured us. I could arrange a meeting. I just need a little time.”

He said all this without having the faintest idea if he could arrange a meeting or even with whom he might try to do so. Those in the valley didn’t have any unity of the sort he had described, and there was no one who could speak for all of the various peoples. But it didn’t matter. He would tell the Maturen anything to keep him at bay. Whatever happened, he must not take these Trolls into the passes or he would forfeit whatever measure of security those living in the valley might still enjoy now that the protective barriers were down.

He watched Taureq Siq’s face as Sarn translated his words, but could read nothing in the Troll’s impassive expression. The Maturen said something in reply, and then the two went back and forth for a few minutes in what appeared to be either an argument or an attempt to clarify. Whichever it was, Pan didn’t like the feel of it.

Arik Sarn turned back to him. “Taureq Siq will think on your sug
gestion and give you his answer before the day ends. He says you must think some more on the answers you have given him. Maybe you will want to change some of them. He orders me to stay with you until you do.”

Pan exhaled softly. “Tell him I am grateful,” he said, not knowing exactly why he was grateful for anything that was happening, but thinking he needed to say something encouraging. “I will do as he says.”

The Maturen gave him a short nod, one that managed to convey both approval and menace, and then he beckoned the others after him and departed the way he had come without a glance back. Grosha, however, gave Panterra a long, hard look that promised that as far as he was concerned, nothing was settled.

Panterra felt Prue clasp his arm. “Maybe he’ll let us go,” she whispered. “Maybe he’ll agree to your suggestion.”

Pan didn’t think so. He didn’t know what would happen, but it wasn’t that. He suspected that Taureq Siq had already made up his mind about what he was going to do, but had decided to wait to let Panterra’s imagination take hold.

He started to say as much to Arik Sarn, but the Troll held up his hand in warning. They stood in silence for a long time, listening. Then Sarn walked to the tent flap and peered out.

“Spies stay behind sometimes. Hide and listen and then tell him things. Maybe not this time because they don’t speak your language. Talk freely, but softly. Be quick. He will come back soon.”

“You think he has decided, don’t you?” Pan pressed.

“Yes.”

“He won’t let us go, will he?”

“No.” The Troll glanced back over his shoulder, and then moved away from the tent flap to stand close. “He won’t let you go until he has the answers he wants. Maybe not then, either. He wants to know how to get into your valley so he can decide for himself if he will occupy it. This is what he is not telling you. He moves the Drouj from its traditional homelands, which have sickened. The Drouj avoided this for a long time after the Great Wars, but no longer. Things have changed. Taureq looks for a new homeland; that is what he is doing out here.”

“But where are the women and children?” Prue interrupted. “Have they left them behind?”

“Doesn’t matter what he’s done with his women and children. Do you understand what I am telling you? Do you see the purpose of Taureq’s questions? He seeks your home in the mountains. If he likes it, he will take it from you.”

“And you don’t approve?” Pan asked.

“It doesn’t matter if I approve.”

Panterra shook his head. “But I don’t understand. Why are you telling us all this? Why are you helping us at all? Aren’t you putting yourself in danger by doing so? If the Drouj find out what you are doing, won’t they be angry?”

Arik Sarn nodded. “Very angry. Taureq Siq would kill me instantly, forget any agreement with my father and their shared blood. He would do it even if it meant sacrificing his eldest, in turn.”

“Then I’ll ask it again. Why are you helping us? With so much risk, so much at stake, why?”

The Troll’s smile formed a small break in his impassive features. “It is complicated.”

“Yes,” Prue said at once. “But explain it anyway.”

The Troll shrugged. “We have only a little time, so I have to hurry.” He paused. “Wait.”

He walked back over to the flap entry and peered out once more. “I thought I heard something,” he said. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He shook his head, walked back to them, and motioned for them to sit. “I think we are family,” he said very softly. “Your people and ours.”

“Family?” Panterra repeated in disbelief. “How?”

The other leaned close, and his words were barely audible. “Once,” he said, “hundreds of years ago, at the finish of the Great Wars, our ancestors both were seeking a place to survive what would come after. Two of mine were street children led by a boy named Hawk. He gave to his family—to those children who followed him—a name. It was the same name my ancestors gave their own tribe when they formed it later.”

He paused, and then leaned closer still. “In Troll, the name is Karriak. But in the old language, the language of Men, the name he gave them was Ghosts.”

G
HOSTS
.

It was the name the old stories said the Hawk gave to the street children who followed him. A name out of their own history, repeated from generation to generation by those who had followed the boy leader into their valley home. Panterra and Prue both knew the name well; both had heard it many times.

Ghosts.

And so, closeted away in the shadowy, concealing confines of the tent, the activities of the Troll camp a distant rumble beyond the hide walls, they listened with rapt attention as Arik Sarn told them the strange story of his own people’s history.

“Some Ghost children were killed along the way. Some got safely to the place that became their home then and is yours now. We know this. But one who lived did not go with the others, did not want to come into the valley, did not want to be confined by walls. Better out in the open, no matter the risk. This one was named Panther. He met a girl with mutation sickness that turned humans into what used to be
Lizards, and they went north where the fallout from the wars and poisons did not reach. Panther was still human, but the girl was changing. The old stories do not tell why they bonded. Perhaps love, as the legends say. Perhaps for convenience and sharing. But a partnership was made, and in the north Panther and the girl found others like themselves and formed a tribe, the Karriak. It was the first of the great Troll tribes, and Panther and the girl become its leaders.”

“I’ve heard the story of Panther and the girl from my mother,” Prue interrupted. “The girl was called Cat. They turned north, just as you’ve said, right before they reached the valley, and they were never seen again. The Hawk brought the others into the valley where we live, and the mists closed everyone away and kept us in and everything else out. So no one ever knew what happened.”

Sarn nodded. “Our stories are silent about those who went with Hawk except to say they found a place in the mountains that Panther and the girl left behind. So, we have different parts of the same story. But the Karriak tribe survived and grew strong in a place that sickness and firestorms passed by. The legends say that Panther became a Troll, the first after the girl, and named them so, said they are like Elves—like Faerie creatures of old in books—creatures that have strength and pride and stand upright and do not crawl like insects. Panther fathered children with Cat, and became the first Maturen of his tribe. His children followed him and their children after.”

He paused, considering. “All centuries back, a long time ago. The Karriak grew too large and split to form other tribes. The Drouj is one. In the beginning it was a lesser tribe, but it became the most powerful. Leadership changed in both tribes, new families took power. The Trolls number in the millions and hold the whole of the North Country from the Blue Divide to the Storm Seas. The other Races are still small, not so many members, Men, Spiders, and Elves—though hard to say about the Elves, who hid again after the wars. We don’t see them anymore. Most settled on the western coasts and out on the islands, far away.” He shrugged. “So they say. Other peoples survived, too—others than Elves and Spiders and Men. But mostly there are Trolls.”

He paused. He was struggling with his words now. “My family’s bloodlines are Panther’s, come down to me through generations.
Others gave up caring about their ancestry. It is enough for them that they are Trolls. Not my family. Not me. I know the truth. I know that to be related is a difference. It is not meant for people to be apart and not care. The world is not a place where no one should care for anyone. It is a place where all are part of one family, all are related, all belong to what remains of what is long past, of what was lost to the wars.”