Raf looked at one of the fresher corpses more closely and recognized something about it.
This corpse wore the distinctive wooden necklace of an elder of his tribe. He had been a Northman!
Then, to his horror, Raf realized that this man had been one of the two elders who had originally been sent to parley with the trolls when they had cut off the river flow—the two elders who had never returned.
Raf stared at the corpses for a long time before he continued on up the slope.
*
As Raf scaled the mountain, Ko and Düm continued to watch his progress from their ledge.
It was hard to follow him in the gloom, especially when he disappeared behind a crag, but since they knew his objective—the summit—they were able to keep track of him.
“Are there any other troll tribes that you know of?” Ko asked Düm as they watched Raf step around the stakes beneath the Winter Throne Hall.
“No,” Düm said sadly. “We last troll tribe.”
“Really? The last one?”
“Yes. We mainly mountain trolls with a few field trolls and cave trolls. They joined our tribe when their tribes failed. Every year our tribe get smaller.”
“Why is that, do you think?” Ko was genuinely curious.
Düm shrugged. “Trolls very simple. Enjoy fighting and sporting and not doing much work. Toughest trolls rule and take wives and eat most food. Strongest troll is king.
“So lowly troll happy when wife give birth to big strong boy. Troll sad when wife give birth to she-troll or runt. Often baby she-trolls and runts killed by parents, because they no use in troll tribe. Only boys useful.”
Ko frowned. “Does that mean you have few females and many males?”
“Yes. That right.”
“Do the males compete for the females?”
“As Düm already say, trolls enjoy fighting. Dispute over she-troll just another reason to have fight. Yes, many fights over that.”
“I see,” Ko said darkly. “What about the smart trolls? I was under the impression that smaller trolls were quite clever and inventive.”
“This true. Wise trolls often smaller trolls, runt trolls. But now few of them. Some time ago troll kings begin to dislike wise trolls, because they often disagree with king, say king doing wrong thing. But king no want to look like fool so he sometimes throw troublesome wise troll off top of mountain. Many recent kings do this. Now king no longer disagreed with.”
“But without clever tribe members,” Ko said, “how does your society develop new ways of doing things?”
Düm shrugged again. “Trolls just keep doing things the way they always been done. Fight as have always fought. No need to farm, since trolls take tribute from humans. Düm not even know how to farm. Düm just know how to drag, drag food and water up dragging path. Senior trolls spend most days lazing and drinking and having death fights for sport.”
Ko didn’t speak for a long time.
Then he turned to face Düm.
“Is this what happened to the other troll tribes?” he asked.
“Düm not know. Düm just humble worker troll. But some draggers come to Troll Mountain from other failed tribes and, yes, them say same things happen in their tribes.”
Ko gazed out at Troll Mountain.
“Your race is dying and it doesn’t even know it,” he said softly. “Your very culture is killing you off. Within a generation or two, there will be no more trolls walking the earth.”
There was a short silence.
Then Düm nodded at Raf on the mountain.
“What about Master Raf? If trolls catch him, they be very angry. Very angry.”
Ko nodded. “All we can do now is keep an eye on him. But if our young friend is not back by morning, we must assume he has been captured.”
“And if he captured? Then what? Master Raf nice human. Save Düm’s life when no have to. Seem bad if he be left to die among trolls.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Ko said. “There is something about that boy that I like a lot. He’s different from the other members of his tribe. He has a future while they do not. I would not like to see him meet a gruesome end.”
THE WINTER THRONE HALL
Chapter 15
After three hours of strenuous climbing, Raf arrived at the upper reaches of Troll Mountain.
Crawling over the lip, he slid up onto the flat stone floor of the open-air Winter Throne Hall and stood.
Raf’s jaw dropped.
It was an incredible space: wide and magnificent, even in the eerie darkness of the night. The smooth stone floor, polished to a dazzling sheen, reflected the silver glow of the moon. Four thick, colossal pillars held up the hall’s ceiling and, above that, the summit of the mountain.
In the middle of the space, rising on a many-stepped podium, was the king’s winter throne. Two long banners made of thick cloth hung from the roof behind the throne, framing it.
Raf noticed a single stairway that burrowed into the polished floor, leading down into the mountain. But there was no obvious staircase going up, giving access to the mountain’s summit. Perhaps there was a hidden stairway somewhere.
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t planning to use it anyway.
Raf dashed across the wide polished floor and quickly ascended the massive podium until he stood before the king’s winter throne.
(An inscription on it read, in the same ancient language Raf had seen on the monument: THE SEAT OF POWER OF THE NORTHERN GOVERNOR: ALL THAT CAN BE SEEN FROM HERE, HE GOVERNS IN THE NAME OF THE GLORIOUS EMPEROR [UNREADABLE], ALL HAIL HIM, RULER OF THE WORLD.)
Raf was about to grab hold of one of the banners that hung behind the throne and climb up it, when he saw the view from the throne.
It took his breath away.
Beyond the jagged peaks of the nearby lesser mountains, he saw the landscape to the south: the Badlands, his own river valley, and beyond that, the vast southern sea, glimmering in the blue moonlight.
As he gazed out at the magnificent vista, he cursed the cruel trick of geography that allowed the trolls to keep a stranglehold over the valley tribes.
Raf had once asked one of the elders why the Northmen didn’t flee to the north of the mountains and escape the tyranny of the trolls.
The elder had smacked him over the head, hard. “Silly boy! Do you not pay attention when the traditional stories are told? As everyone knows, there are no habitable lands beyond the mountains. There are just more mountains, stretching away to the earth’s end.”
Recalling those words, Raf turned around and faced north, expecting to see an endless range of mount—
Wait a moment.
Raf frowned as he gazed northward.
From this vantage point, he could see beyond the jagged peaks of the mountain range, and what he saw shocked him.
The Black Mountains did not go on forever.
In fact, they ended quite abruptly only a short distance from Troll Mountain. And beyond the mountain peaks, Raf saw broad sweeping plains, rolling hills and grassy vales, stretching away to the north as far as the eye could see.
“There is more land out there …” Raf gasped. “The traditional stories were wrong …”
He wondered how the stories could have gotten it so wrong. Who had created them? And had anyone ever actually checked their accuracy? Or were they accepted simply because they were old and passed on by generations of elders?
Raf shook away these thoughts and returned to the mission at hand—he had to be off the mountain by dawn, before the sun removed the cover of darkness.
He grabbed one of the long banners hanging from the ceiling behind the throne and, moving nimbly hand over hand, scaled the banner and arrived at the rocky uppermost section of the mountain.
Peering upward, Raf spied the thick battlement ringing the summit.
Two guards patrolled it.
He could tell from their postures that they were idle, bored: they clearly didn’t believe any intruder could—or woul
d even dare—get this high up the mountain.
Raf saw them stroll away, chatting, with their backs to him—and so he seized the opportunity and darted from cover, scampering up and over the battlement before quickly scaling the last twenty yards of rocky ground that led to the tower at the absolute summit of Troll Mountain: the Supreme Watchtower.
*
Of course, the Supreme Watchtower had no external doors on its brick-walled flanks. Access to it was only available from within.
But given it had once been a working watchtower, Raf guessed correctly that it would have a door up on the lookout platform at its peak.
No sentries patrolled that platform, since the watchtower was now only used to keep the wise old troll Vilnar imprisoned.
Raf flung his trusty rope up over the crenellations of the Supreme Watchtower’s parapet and, hanging from it, scaled the lofty tower with the peaks of all the neighboring mountains far below him.
At length, Raf slid over the crenellated platform and beheld a thick wooden door leading into the Supreme Watchtower.
With a final deep breath, Raf opened the door and stepped inside.
Chapter 16
Raf found himself in a small guardroom lit with candles: a room that had been converted into a laboratory.
Thick wooden benchtops were covered with jars, pots, and barrels, all of which were filled with bubbling, steaming liquids. On long shelves sat unruly clusters of flowers, fruits, and vegetables; garlic and onions hung from strings.
In the floor in the center of the guardroom was a wooden ladder that led to lower levels.
And in the midst of it all, snoring loudly, fast asleep in a chair, was a small wrinkled old troll.
*
Raf stared at the old troll in wonder.
He had never seen a troll like him. He was smaller than the others, shorter even than Raf was. And he had reedy arms and thin knock-knees. His nose was long and beaky, with several warts, and he had a long white beard on his chin and wild bushy eyebrows. A field troll.
As Raf peered in wonderment, the troll snorted suddenly, making him jump.
But it was well and truly asleep.
Raf realized with a thrill that this was his chance: to steal the Elixir and get away from Troll Mountain unnoticed.
If he could find the Elixir now and leave this tower without waking the old troll, he could be out of the mountains by morning and home with the cure within days.
Moving slowly and carefully so as not to make the slightest sound, Raf went over to the laboratory’s benches, scanning them for the Elixir.
There.
Three small glass bottles stood on a table off to one side, all on their own, separated from the clutter of the rest of the room.
They were all filled with the same amber liquid and each bottle was of far higher quality than any of the other vessels in the laboratory. Apart from the dry husks of several discarded lemons and limes beside them, the benchtop around the three bottles was empty. Clearly, these three bottles were special.
Raf stood before them, gazing at the all-powerful Elixir.
Damn the trolls, he thought. He’d take all three.
He stepped forward, his foot landing on an ancient floorboard.
It creaked …
… and the old troll awoke mid-snore, snapping up, looking around in a muddle. “What—? Who—oh my—how did you get in here!”
Raf stood erect, somehow finding nobility in being discovered. “I come from the valley you trolls keep under your thumb—”
The little old troll ignored him, rushing past him to the door through which Raf had entered the tower.
He crouched by the doorframe, looking down at the floor beside it. “You silly fool—!”
“I seek the magic Elixir,” Raf said desperately. “My people are dying. Please do not raise the alarm …”
The old troll turned, pointing to a mechanism in the floor by the door: a weighted rope plunged down into a hole in the floorstones there.
“My young friend, I’m sorry to inform you that the alarm has already been raised.” He spoke far more eloquently than Düm or the guards did. “The Troll King keeps me prisoner here. I cannot even go outside for air without his knowing it. When you opened that door, a stone attached to this rope was released. It has already fallen down its hole and hit a bell in the guardroom below. The king’s guards already know something is amiss. They will be here any moment!”
“No … no …” Raf’s mind was racing. “I can take you with me then,” he said quickly. “You are Vilnar, are you not? My name is Raf and I am a friend of Ko’s, the old hermit of the Badlands. He speaks highly of you.”
The troll looked at him askance.
“I do indeed know Ko. He is a fine and wise man. And you, young man, you scaled this guarded mountain to steal the Elixir for your people? And now you offer to release me from my confinement, even though I am a troll. What kind of hero are you?”
“I’m no hero, I’m just—”
“Nevertheless, you deserve something for your efforts, even if you are ultimately to end up in the king’s belly. If I cannot give you the Elixir, let me at least give you some knowledge: the Elixir is not magical. It is the result of much hard work, my hard work conducting experiments in this room.”
Raf heard a door slam somewhere deep within the watchtower, followed by urgent shouts.
His eyes shot to the door through which he had entered: he could get out that way, but he knew that he’d never get past the battlement that ringed the summit. The guards on it would be alerted by now.
Vilnar grabbed Raf’s shirt and yanked his face to his own, right up to his wart-covered nose.
“Young man, pay attention! The illness, it is not a curse or an omen or black magic. It comes from a lack of nutrients—nutrients peculiar to lemons, oranges and limes. That is all. Which means the Elixir is not magical either, it is merely a juice made from those same fruits. But if I tell that to my captors, they will kill me and retain my hard-earned knowledge!”
Raf’s mind was reeling. His brain was in a panic, thinking only of escape and fleeing, and yet here was this silly old troll giving him a lesson in medicine.
He turned desperately. “I have to get out of here—”
“That’s not going to happen,” a hard voice said from behind him.
Raf spun—
—to see four large guard-trolls step up from the ladder in the floor, great hammers gripped in their fists.
Raf’s blood went cold.
His mission was over.
Chapter 17
Flanked by the four guards, terrified and alone, Raf was marched down through the Supreme Watchtower, then down a tight spiral staircase concealed within the north-western pillar of the Winter Throne Hall. He emerged from a secret door cut into the base of that pillar, stepping out onto the open-air space. It was still dark. Dawn was a couple of hours away.
“Take this scum to the cells,” the head guard growled to the others. He held Raf’s rope and lightweight axe in his huge hands. “The king sleeps. I shall inform him of this thief when he wakes in the morning.”
Raf was pushed across the Winter Throne Hall and down through some more tunnels cut into the main body of the mountain, before he abruptly emerged into fresh air again, arriving at a wooden platform erected high above the western flank of Troll Mountain.
A large wooden box-like contraption—had he known the word, Raf would have called it an “elevator”—hung before him, dangling from a thick rope in such a way that it could be lowered through a rectangular hole in the floor of the wooden platform. (Raf couldn’t see it, but a huge cogwheel housed in a shack above the platform raised and lowered the elevator when the cogwheel was turned by a single muscular troll.)
Escorted by two guards, Raf was shoved onto the box and lowered down the western face of the mountain.
He recalled that during his ascent he had been unable to scale the western face because it was sheer and vertical.
Now he saw that it was more than that.
The entire western side of the mountain had been smoothed by the hand of some outside agent—man or troll, it didn’t matter—so that it formed a perfectly vertical surface.
And now, as he was lowered down that sheer polished rock face, Raf saw that cut into it were shallow recesses. Each recess was shaped like an upside-down triangle, with a sharp point at the base, and inside many of the oddly-shaped recesses were …
… human prisoners.
The cells had no bars. They didn’t need them. The drop below their brinks was two thousand feet and at the wall’s base was a tangled forest of upwardly pointed stakes.
From what Raf could see, the cells were arranged in a grid formation. There were about thirty cells, widely spaced, in three vertical columns. Roughly half of them were occupied.
Forlorn bearded faces stared out at Raf from the cells as he was lowered past them. The prisoners were mostly men and they appeared emaciated and starved. By virtue of the inverted triangular shape of each cell, the prisoners sat in them awkwardly, curled and hunched.
And then suddenly, among the despairing faces, Raf saw one that he recognized.
“Bader …!” he gasped.
The prisoner’s eyes sprang open in recognition, but before he could reply, Raf’s elevator had gone past him, descending lower still.
Raf was finally deposited in a triangular cell of his own. The elevator withdrew upward, taking the guards with it, but not before one of them gave Raf some parting advice:
“Sleep well, thief. If you cannot sleep, you might consider throwing yourself from your cell before the morning, for when the king sees you tomorrow, you will wish you were dead.”
*
When his captors were gone, Raf sat glumly in his cell, pressed against its sloping walls.
The mountain wind was the only sound.
The triangular walls of the cell were perfectly cut, made of hard polished stone without a chip or a notch. The cell was perhaps seven feet high but only four feet deep. The brink yawned before Raf, rimless and railless. Out of the rear wall of the cell poked many tiny bronze spear-tips which prevented a prisoner from leaning against that wall.
Troll Mountain Page 6
