not the act of a friend.”
“I can’t understand her,” Mom whispered. “Can you?”
“Yes, she doesn’t like me.”
“I gathered that from the club.”
“This is my mother.” I tilted my head toward her without lowering my sword. “She said someone here—ah, Greemaw—might be able to answer a few questions. I don’t want a fight, just information.”
I wondered if the troll knew about the werewolves and would call me a liar, since I’d been fighting them.
She looked over our heads, an easy feat since she was almost ten feet tall, and out toward the forest. The nostrils in her wide squat nose flared. I don’t know what the winds told her, but she gave me a flat, unfriendly look.
“The price of information will be high for the Deathstalker.”
“If I introduce myself as Val, will that help?”
“No. Come.” The troll lowered her club, turned, and strode into the tunnel.
“Are we invited in?” Mom asked.
“Something like that.”
I started to go first, but she lifted a hand and caught my arm. “Rocket and I have been here before. I stumbled across this place when I was searching for a kid who’d gone missing from a campground.”
“The troll didn’t eat him, did she?” Reluctantly, I let her lead, but Sindari and I followed right after her. Which made Rocket nervous—he kept glancing back, not ready to accept a tiger as a hiking buddy yet.
“No. An orc who’d lost her own child found him and wanted to adopt him into the clan.”
“There’s a whole clan in here?”
The passage we’d entered looked like the other lava tube caves I’d seen in the area, wide with a high curving ceiling and veering slightly downhill. The ground was covered with flat sandy dust, packed down from the tread of countless feet.
“Among other things,” Mom said.
The temperature dropped as we walked farther from the entrance. A shadow fell behind us, the solid rock reappearing and blocking out daylight. Magical torches sputtering in holders on the rock walls provided light, but the uneasy feeling of being trapped crept into me. I reminded myself that I had the key to the door.
A small, round shape on the ground against a wall came into view as the passage curved around a bend. My first thought was that it was a skull and that we would soon pass all manner of discarded bones from some predator’s meal—some troll’s meal—but it was a ball. Rocket trotted forward and sniffed it, but it was too large for a dog’s mouth. Sindari could have picked it up in his teeth if he were so inclined, but he was probably too regal to play with a ball. Or play at all. Once, I’d shown him a video of panthers, lions, and tigers in a big-cat rescue having fun with boxes. He’d been unimpressed. Someday, I was going to find a box big enough for him and see if it tempted him.
Another bend took us past a natural pool against one wall, droplets of water dribbling down from a crack in the ceiling to fill it. On one side, a pair of swimming pool noodles bobbed, along with an inner tube that might have escaped from someone doing the river float through town.
I sheathed Chopper. Whatever this place was, I didn’t think I was walking into a war zone.
What I didn’t expect was for the tunnel to end and open back up into the outdoors. We walked into a valley filled with a surprising variety of wood, stone, and hide dwellings, everything from one-room huts to sprawling complexes surrounded by fences. The path turned into a road that meandered down the middle of the valley, past the residences and also a number of service tents and market stalls.
There were magical beings everywhere, the most orcs, trolls, dwarves, gnomes, kobolds, and goblins I’d seen in one place. There were a few more exotic beings as well, ones I’d heard about but never run into, such as firbolgs, a satyr, and a minotaur. Mom looked toward a handsome elf who looked like he’d walked off the set of Lord of the Rings. A wistful expression crossed her face.
Interesting, Sindari remarked as we followed the troll down the road, almost all of the beings turning to watch our passage. These people represent several different worlds and wouldn’t usually be found together. Historically, many of them have made war on each other.
It’s got to be a refuge of some kind. Maybe someone powerful—this Greemaw?—keeps the peace. What was more surprising to me was how this