Free A Hero's Throne (An Ancient Earth) by Ross Lawhead Page B

it. They didn’t worry him too much, since he had already figured out a way to get past them. He knew from looking down on it from the tower that there was a hole in the roof that could not be seen from the street. The rubble on the far side of the building was high enough, he had judged, to allow him entry to the roof. If he was quiet, no one would hear him, and if he was quick, the yfelgópes on the other rooftops wouldn’t see him either.
    Now was the time. He sheathed his sword and, darting forward, hurried around the side of the building to scrabble up the fallen masonry. He moved on all fours, trying to spread his weight evenly, anchoring himself on the largest chunks to support himself. Providence favoured him, and he made it up the single story without anything beneath him shifting so much as a centimeter.
    The roof was completely flat, with a slight ridge around it at the wall’s edge. A dark, shifting shadow floated above the hole in the opposite corner. In the low light it took Daniel a few moments to recognise it as smoke. Crouching, he stayed near the wall to avoid causing more of the roof to cave in, and reached the hole.
    The floor below was almost completely dark and still except for an orange glow emanating from one corner of the room and a brown, peaty smoke wafting through the hole—a makeshiftchimney. He couldn’t see Kelm. If he was down there, it’d be over quickly. If he wasn’t, then Daniel would wait for him to return and ambush him from the shadows.
    There was a large boulder directly beneath him and it came up nearly halfway to the ceiling. It was the work of a moment to hop down from the roof directly onto it and then slide down into the corner, out of sight of the rest of the room.
    Daniel had been completely silent and was therefore hopefully undetected, but he sat behind the boulder for a few long moments, just listening. He could hear no sound except for the hiss of the fire and the distant bickering of some passing yfelgópes.
    Drawing his sword, he moved around the large, lumpy rock, pressing himself into it to lighten his footfalls. He crouched behind a low outcropping that afforded him a view of the rest of the room. There was indeed a coal fire burning on the other side of the room and near that, an elaborate, wrought iron chair, currently unoccupied. Daniel released his breath in a sigh. He would just have to sit tight and await Kelm’s return, however long that would be.
    He rounded back into the dark area between the boulder and the wall and slouched down to wait. As he focused on stilling his breathing, there was some part of his brain that was buzzing at him, trying to get his attention, telling him that something didn’t quite make sense, something was out of place.
    What was it, exactly? The boulder, that was it—it was out of place. What was it doing here? It was too large to have come through the hole in the roof. It might have been rolled through the door, but why? It might always have been here, but again, why? That was a puzzle. And why did it feel like it moved just then?
    A terrifying idea eclipsed Daniel’s mind like a storm cloud. He turned and looked at the rounded outcropping he had crouched behind.
    It had a face—a bulbous, exaggerated face with rock-likefeatures, but a face nonetheless, with a nose, mouth, ears, and eyes that were looking directly at him.
    Daniel very nearly had time to panic. He brought his sword up and was still in the process of taking a step back when the boulder shifted into a blur of motion and the world went completely dark.
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    “You found the gap in my inner perimeter. Well done. In my defense, however, I didn’t seriously expect anyone to hop onto a troll’s head in order to exploit it. That was an exceptionally impressive display of stupidity—I truly wish I had been there to see it.”
    The words were deep and thick and came to Daniel from a long way off. Somehow they managed to