“We don’t know.” My voice shook. “She told me she wanted to meet with him to discuss an alliance. It’s why I’m disguised.”
Thibault’s jaw tightened. “No. No, he must not agree to that. You need to go back to Trianon. Tell Tristan to stay put behind those walls. I’ll…” He grimaced. “I’ll deal with Roland.”
“Do you know what it is she wants?”
“I have my suspicions.”
But before he could elaborate, a slithering sound reached our ears, and the troll-lights at the end of the row flickered, then went out. I went very still like a rabbit that’s scented a fox; but the King straightened, eyes searching and head cocked, listening. Hunting.
“Three,” he murmured. “No, four.”
Four sluag. My hands and feet went cold, my pulse thundering in my ears. I’d never heard of sluag hunting together, but why else would they converge like this? Unless someone had sent them…
The magic encasing Martin dissolved, and I mouthed, “Sluag,” at him. He nodded once, and picked up his discarded spear. The tip of the weapon trembled.
Barooom. One of the sluag called out; then another answered, Barooom.
“I hear you,” the King said, then he lifted his arms. The bookcases around us shot back, row after row sliding away as though they weighed nothing, their momentum carrying them even as the sluag’s power melted away the King’s. Several of them toppled, and a squeal of pain rang in my ears as one of the creatures was crushed.
We stood in the middle of a large empty space, devoid of anything but the books that had fallen off the shelves, the only light that which hovered over the two trolls. But it was flickering.
The King picked up a volume and glanced at the title. “Tax law.” He smiled, and the book burst into flame, first the silver of magic, but then the yellow and red of natural fire took over. A shadow moved between two fallen shelves, and their balls of light winked out.
Martin stepped closer to me, twitching with every shiver of motion in the shadows, but the King seemed unaffected. Unafraid. Lighting several more books on fire, he tossed them in a circle around us, creating a perimeter of flame.
A stinger flashed out from the darkness, whipping toward the King’s face, but he batted it aside with his spear and laughed. “You’ll have to do better than that, vermin.”
The sluag shrieked and lunged, its white bulk surging toward the troll even as I sensed motion behind us. I screamed a warning, but the King was already moving.
With impossible speed, he launched the spear in his hands at the first sluag, the force of the blow driving the point through its maw and out the other side. Whirling, he snatched the weapon Martin clutched, and slammed it into the body of the creature attacking from the rear, catching the fleshly stalk of its stinger and wrenching it from its throat.
The sluag writhed, slimy body slamming back and forth in its death throes, but he calmly approached it and pulled the weapon from its flesh with a nauseating slurp.
The flames were burning low, their paper fuel nearly exhausted, and I watched their glow diminish with growing trepidation. There was a third – I could hear it moving through the stacks – and not even the King of the trolls could see in the dark. The building shuddered, and a cloud of dust rolled over us as part of a wall tumbled in, the calls of at least two more sluag audible over the smash of rock hitting the marble floor.
“When I give the word, Martin,” Thibault murmured, gaze tracking the sluag’s progress, “I want you to take Cécile and run.”
“Where, Your Grace?” The librarian’s voice was surprisingly steady considering how tight his grip was on my arm.
“Out of Trollus and back to Trianon.” He lifted his spear. “Go to Tristan’s favorite place to contemplate his woes; there is a passage leading to the surface.”
The lake.
“Tristan told me of no such passage.” Even now, I found it impossible to trust Thibault.
“My son doesn’t know half as much as he thinks.” He took a few steps toward the stacks. “Lessa needn’t have left if she’d wanted to see the faces of her ancestors, and neither did her puppet master.”
He was speaking in code, which meant he believed that Winter was watching. And that she’d try to stop me.
“Run!”
Martin didn’t hesitate. Hauling on my arm, he dragged me across the room. We leapt over piles of books, climbing over the fallen shelves until we reached the side door.
“It’s stuck!” he hissed, hand scrabbling at the handle.
My dagger.
“Break it down!” One of the sluag screamed, and I cast a backward glance toward Tristan’s father. He stood at the center of the dying flames, powerful, brilliant, and fearless, and for an instant, I saw the ruler he might have been.
As though sensing my scrutiny, he turned his head. “Run,” he commanded.