Grizelda Read Online Free PDF

was
immediate. The experiment made a loud cracking noise and threw off
a shower of incandescent sparks across the room. Lenk rushed to
shut it off, covering his face with the webs of his hand.
    Slowly the sparking subsided. When the table
was cool enough again to approach, Lenk surveyed the damage. He
found he had another scorch mark to add to the collection, and some
of his wires had gotten so hot they’d fused together. A little
further searching brought him to the source of the problem. The
leads on the receiver had lost all their insulation. Or rather been
stripped of it. With tools.
    Wearily Lenk sat back in a chair he had
stashed in a corner for just such occasions. He should have known
it. Ratriders again.
     
     

Chapter 4
     
    Geddy slipped through a triangular gap in the
place where the boards met the floor and beckoned Grizelda to
follow. She knelt and, experimentally tugging on a board, found
that it was rotten enough to come away easily. With only a little
effort, she cleared a space big enough to get through.
    She was immediately aware of a change in the
air once she got to the other side. The air in the cellblocks was
cold, but this air was ancient . It smelled of dust and
disuse. Now that there were living creatures in the chamber, the
air moved sluggishly, as if out of practice. And speaking of dust–
To steady herself as she was crawling through the hole in the
boards, Grizelda had put her hand down on the floor. She discovered
that there was a layer of gooey black tar over everything, a
quarter of an inch thick.
    She scrambled to her feet as quickly as
possible, but she couldn’t help getting it onto her clothes a
little, and the gunk on her hand didn’t wipe off easily. If the
tunnels of Promontory had been too high to have been built by human
hands, these ones were too low. When she stood, the ceiling just
scraped her head. She could imagine the sort of crooked beings that
must have scurried back and forth in this tunnel back when it was
used.
    They walked on down the passage, and as they
went, she passed her hand over strange carvings cut into the wall.
There were ceiling-high frescoes that told the story of the goblins
in their glory days: teams of goblins hewing out the tunnels,
holding feasts in their vast underground chambers, trading
gemstones with tall, spindly figures that must have been humans.
The pictures were accompanied by blocks of goblinish script that
she couldn’t understand.
    These tunnels must have once been part of a
manufacturing plant. They passed great lifeless rooms that in their
day were busy with heat and noise, now silent. Great corpses of
machines stood open, uncovered, like they had been abandoned in a
hurry. In some rooms they’d been dashed to their sides by some
powerful torrent. And everywhere there was that thin layer of grime
on the floor. What had happened here?
    At length Geddy broke the silence. “I
wondered if I might… See, I’ve never had the chance to talk to an
ogre face-to-face before…”
    Kricker and Tunya exchanged knowing
glances.
    Ogre. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard
a ratrider use that word, and she couldn’t understand why. “What do
you mean, ogre?”
    “You. Topside people. The Auk slaves.”
    “I’m not an–” Grizelda began, then thought
better of it. “What do you want to ask?”
    He looked very serious. “Could you explain to
me the concept of the birthday party?”
    The ridiculousness of the question almost
made her laugh, even in this cheerless place. She suppressed it out
of concern for the poor fellow’s feelings. “What?”
    “Birthday parties. Why do you have birthday
parties?” he pressed with a sort of scientific earnestness.
    “But why do you want to know about birthday
parties?”
    “I’m-” He looked down. “I’m writing this
book. About the ogre habits and customs.” He got over his
embarrassment and warmed up to the topic. “I spend almost every
night in your library. I kind of– knock the