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

and ran from the battlement. The trapdoor still hung open, and I dived into it, running down the stairs and through the rest of the keep. At the front of the main hall, soldiers were leaning on the bracers, holding the door shut as long as they could. There came a great, shattering crash as a troll threw itself against the doors. I reached Mag and Ditra just at the entrance to the main hall, and I seized Mag’s shoulder to pull her around.

“Kaita!” I cried. “The female troll lurking near the leader. She is Kaita in disguise.”

Mag stared at me in wonder. Ditra turned at my words, astonished.

“How do you—”

“Fire struck her, and she used her magic to heal herself,” I said. “It was only a flash, but I saw it. It is her.”

There came a great crack as timbers began to splinter on the keep door. Through a hole in the iron grid, I saw a troll’s eye peeking through.

Mag’s face went stony as the battle-trance settled over her. “Then I will kill her.”

“We cannot. You have to expose her.”

“Killing her will expose her, Albern,” said Ditra. “If a weremage is killed, they take their true form.”

“She hangs back from the fighting,” I told Mag. “You might get close enough to strike her, but I cannot. But there is Tuhin’s trick. The one they showed us in Opara.”

Mag’s face remained impassive. “I remember.”

“Use it. Force her to resume her human form in front of the trolls. She has been goading them all along. They have followed her advice because they think she is one of their own. When they realize a Shade has been deceiving them the whole time—”

A thunderous crash rocked the keep as the doors shattered inwards. Timbers and bands of iron went flying, flinging soldiers away from the door. Dotag flew into the open space at the front of the hall, roaring his hatred. Trolls tumbled in behind him—and among them was Kaita.

“Push them back!” cried Ditra, raising her axe and running forwards. “Fire! Fire!”

Flasks of oil came flying from all directions. A brazier stood next to me against the wall, and I lit and loosed. Flame erupted among the trolls. But they were too enraged now to let that stop them. They seized any Telfer soldier they could get their hands on, flinging them into walls, smashing them against the floor, or simply squeezing them until their bodies broke.

But they could not touch Mag.

She had sprung towards them as soon as the doors caved in. Now she vaulted and leaped off a woman’s shoulders. Dotag froze in shock as she flew straight towards his massive head. But she landed on his shoulder and jumped again.

Kaita saw her at the last instant. Her wide troll’s eyes filled with fear, and she scrambled desperately to try and escape the keep. Even in a troll’s form, she was too afraid of Mag to face her in battle. But the crowd of trolls was too thick, and she could not flee.

Mag landed in the midst of them. A troll attacked from either side, trying to seize her, to smash her, to fling her away. She rolled under the grasping hands of one, and leaped over the swipe of another.

She cast aside her spear and shield, landed on one of her assailant’s oak-thick arms, and jumped straight for Kaita’s terrified face.

I could see nothing else in the hall. The world seemed frozen for a moment. I can remember it now as clear as anything—Mag’s fluttering cloak, and Kaita trying desperately to evade her.

Then Mag swept her fists forwards and struck. One fist crashed into each temple, just where Tuhin had showed us in Opara.

Kaita screamed, a deep, guttural roar that echoed through the hall. Magelight poured from her eyes, bright as a beacon fire, lighting the ceiling and walls.

The trolls’ assault shuddered to a stop. At their head, Dotag turned and looked upon Kaita in confusion. And as trolls and humans alike watched, frozen in place, Kaita shrank, withered, and became human once more, to fall stunned at Mag’s feet.

Everyone in the hall, human or otherwise, seemed to be waiting for someone to say something—to explain, to denounce Kaita, anything. Instead, the only sound was a slight scrape of metal on stone as Mag fetched her spear, and then stooped to haul Kaita up by the back of her neck. She turned the weremage to face Dotag, holding the haft of the spear across the weremage’s throat.

“A weremage,” she said loudly, so that every troll could hear. “A human. She has prodded you into this fight. She has led you to go far beyond the pact boundary, to attack the family Telfer. She has been using you.”

Ditra saw her chance and stepped forwards. “This was a base, dishonorable trick,” she said. “This woman has harmed both our people equally. We have both lost many of our own here today. But we need not fight any longer, now that we see our common foe.”

But Dotag ignored both of them. He only stared at Kaita in shock, his shoulders drooping, his mouth hanging agape. He took one slow, hesitant step forwards. And then he spoke, in the troll’s language, which I could not understand. But others in the hall knew it, and they told me later what he and the other trolls said in the moments that followed, and so I will render it to you now.

“Gatak,” he said. “Gatak, what trickery is this?”

“Not Gatak,” said Ditra, for she knew the troll tongue. “Kaita. Her name is Kaita.”

Dotag barely seemed to hear her. “You pretended. You pretended to be one of us.”

Kaita, for her part, did not seem to be even slightly interested in Dotag’s horror. Her eyes darted everywhere, wild, terrified at Mag’s grip upon her, desperate to find some way to escape.

“Answer me!” roared Dotag, so loud that I jumped.

That seemed to snap Kaita’s attention back to him. She