Page 101 of Swordheart
“It’s a hollow way,” said Zale. “One of the old, old roads. People passed here so often that they wore a groove in the earth.”
“It looks like a tunnel,” said Sarkis, loosening his sword. “And it feels like a trap.”
“It’s just the acorn wood,” said Halla, but she didn’t sound as sure as she had a few minutes ago.
“Better hope an ox doesn’t meet a hog on the road,” said Brindle. “An ox might get… upset.”
Sarkis pictured the ox panicking. It took some mental effort. But assuming the ox was like a horse, and tried to get out of the way of a threat, or tried to run… He pictured the high-wheeledwagon tipping over and being dragged sideways through the hollow way by the panicking animal, or getting hung up in the shafts and breaking legs… No, that was not a good thing. And if the ox decided to attack instead of run, the situation wasn’t going to be much better. Sarkis didn’t want to think about an ox trying to gore a boar that was trying to gore an ox, all while dragging the wagon yoke behind it.
“I see light,” said Halla, pointing. “It opens up there.”
Brindle urged the ox to greater speed, which was largely an exercise in futility.
They reached the end of the hollow way and emerged, blinking, into the sunlight.
They were no longer in the acorn wood. They were halfway up a hillside, near a drop-off. Hills stretched out around them, blazing orange with fall color, set against a steel-blue sky.
Zale and Halla went very still. Brindle halted the ox.
“We’re out, right?” said Sarkis. “We can turn around?”
“Out of a hollow, sword-man,” said the gnole. “But into something worse.”
CHAPTER 33
“It’s the Vagrant Hills,” said Zale. “It’s got to be.”
“But they’re south,” said Halla. “Much farther south! Days of travel, at least, and there are hills and…” She knew that her voice had a hysterical edge to it, but she couldn’t quite seem to control it.
“Not if they don’t want to be,” said Zale.
Sarkis looked from one to the other. “The what?”
“The Vagrant Hills,” said Halla. “They… well, they sort of move around a bit. Sometimes they grab people. But we should have been much too far north for that!”
“Perhaps they made a special effort,” said Zale, glancing at Sarkis. “To get a closer look at something that interested them.”
“A gnole is not getting paid enough for this…” muttered Brindle.
Halla put her hands over her eyes. Ofcoursethe haunted Vagrant Hills had grabbed them. Why wouldn’t they? Her life had been wildly out of control ever since Silas died. A cranky, if attractive, warrior in a magic sword, random people attacking her… what was one more patch of enchanted geography, more or less?
Quit dithering. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.
“How are we going to get out?” she asked. “Does anyone have any ideas?”
“All my knowledge of magic is abstract,” admitted Zale. “I do not even know if the Hills count as magic, in the sense that we understand it, or if they are something else we have no word for.”
“A gnole’s job is to drive the wagon. You want magic, you find a different gnole.”
“Well, I don’t know anything much about magic,” said Halla. “My family hasn’t even thrown a minor wonderworker in generations.”
“On your mother’s side,” said Sarkis.
“… true.”
“Of us all, the only one with significant firsthand knowledge is Sarkis,” said Zale. “So if anyone is qualified—”
“What?” Sarkis laughed, mostly in disbelief. “My firsthand knowledge is all from the wrong direction. One might as well say that getting trampled by a horse would make you an excellent rider.” He waved his hand toward the landscape before them. “And even if it did, this is wildly different than anything I’ve ever seen. The Weeping Lands doesn’tdothis.”
