The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

what, they never killed before. It was too obvious to be anything but deliberate. The word around Kahaunga is that they have given up trying to drive humans away from their lands. The people of the city fear they mean to wipe us out.”

“And where did you hear that?” I said. “You were supposed to remain safe here in our room.”

Dryleaf waved a hand. “One must eat.”

I sighed. “Please do not risk yourself. But as long as you are gathering information, I suppose we should use it. You say not many were killed. How many is not many?”

“Less than a dozen, by all accounts,” said Dryleaf. “And that tells us something, considering that the trolls have driven hundreds out of their homes. The people are frightened, and that is understandable, but I think fear is making them foolish. If the trolls wished to wipe them out, many more would have fallen.”

“It is still too many,” I said.

“Of course,” said Dryleaf, bowing his head. “I do not mean to make light of those who are lost.”

“The ones who died,” said Mag. “Did they try to fight the trolls?”

Dryleaf frowned. “Some, yes. Not others. A few were old and frail, and merely trying to escape. Most were simple farmers or craftsmen, without even a weapon to their name, much less in their hands. But … but there were also children.”

A cold feeling came over me, starting in my gut and making its way up towards my heart. “The trolls have killed children?”

“That is … unclear,” said Dryleaf. “No one has said such a thing. Not exactly. But children have gone missing. And there was one man … I had to ply him with much wine to get him talking, for he was distraught, weeping and rocking back and forth in his chair. But when I finally got him to talk, he told me—and he said as well, mind you, that he had already told others this, but that they had not believed him—but he said the trolls took his children away. Two of them, a son and a daughter. He said that two trolls scooped them up into their great stony paws and carried them off.”

Mag and I looked at each other, and I knew she must be feeling the same terror and disgust that I was. The story was all too familiar to us. Children had also been taken from Northwood when it was attacked.

“As if we needed more proof that the Shades are working with the trolls,” muttered Mag.

We rested in Kahaunga for one night, and then we set out into the mountains again. Now a fresh urgency spurred our steps. We pushed the horses as hard as we dared, riding for the village that had been attacked most recently. When we reached it, we found all the same signs as before—destroyed buildings, raided storehouses empty of produce and goods, huge footprints tracked everywhere. But now, too, there were bodies. When we could, we burned them, for it was too dangerous for the families to travel out so far and do so.

We kept at it for days. For over a week we explored the mountains, ranging ever farther north, seeking for the trolls while also trying to avoid being seen by them. There seemed to be no pattern to their attacks. First they would strike to the west, and then to the east, then farther north, and then so close to Kahaunga that the refugees reached the city on the same day of the attack. Anywhere humans had been foolish enough not to retreat from the wilderness, the trolls found them. They could travel almost straight across the land, while we had to navigate the roads and paths around the peaks and over the cliffs and crevasses. Whenever we found their trail, it would always lead into rocky terrain and vanish, or straight up sheer cliffs where we could not follow. Still, we made some progress. I began to see a pattern in the way the trolls moved. Always their attacks came from the north, and always they retreated to the east. That was some clue, at least.

But I began to notice something else. Sometimes I would get a sense of being watched. It put Mag and me on high alert, for we were certain that the weremage was stalking us again. But I could never catch sight of anyone, Shade or otherwise, and I saw no ravens in the sky. Then we began to find campsites—but small ones, just a trampled-down area and the remains of a fire, hastily hidden.

“The weremage?” said Mag, when we found the second one.

“I do not think so,” I told her. “Why would she leave a campfire? She does not need one.”

“Unless she has been remaining in the wilds for days at a time,” said Mag.

I frowned. “Mayhap. We should stay wary.”

On one of our return trips to Kahaunga, I found a mapmaker and bought a map of the area. I began to plot out where the trolls had struck, and our best guess of where they had run off to. Slowly I began to narrow down the area where I believed we could find them. But the more we searched, and the more I plotted on our map, the more I began to realize something. The noose was tightening. The trolls were massing for an attack. We were hearing reports of dozens of trolls at a time now, swarming from the mountains like an army. The pattern of their attacks seemed to be random, but they were steadily moving in one direction: straight to the heart of Kahaunga.

They were close, and getting closer. And I did not know if Ditra could stand against them. My only hope of helping her was by finding and killing the Shades. And especially the weremage.

“Where are they?”

Maia frowned. “The two from Opara?”

Ditra scowled at him. They were in her private chamber, and she was slouched in her chair at the head of her table. Maia