Trolls and Tribulations

by Kevin Partner

  She looked around at them, all staring up at her with expectation and, she was pleased to see, fear. Of the thirteen, ten were men and three were women. Sadly, the females were as useless, when it came to arriving at a point, as the men. Indeed, there was little to choose between them except that the females were more polite and a little less hairy in the chin department.

  “There’s trouble, see,” said a dwarf Gramma was pretty sure was called Idla, “and we don’t know what to do about it.”

  Badger, who’d been snoozing by the fire, put his paw over his eyes. He didn’t like to see blood spilled.

  “You told me that two hours ago!” Gramma said, wagging her finger at him, “and not one of you’s getting no more cakes, nor no more beer neither, until somebody lays it out plain and simple.”

  With a grunt, Skiver got up and stood in the centre of the circle. “It’s the kobolds,” he said, “and the gnomes, the knockers and the sprites; all the little people. And, in truth, quite a few of the, err, more junior dwarfs.”

  “What about ‘em?”

  Skiver looked around the room and whispered: “Rebellion.”

  “Ay?” Gramma said, cupping her ears.

  “I said rebellion,” repeated Skiver a little louder.

  “Ay?”

  “Rebellion!” Skiver shouted at the top of his voice. He clasped his hand over his mouth as the word echoed around the little room.

  Gramma smiled. “Right, at last. Now, why do the, what do you call them?”

  “Little people,” Skiver responded, deadpan.

  “Right, littler people, why are they revoltin?”

  Skiver sighed. “Well, it’s a long story…”

  “Then bloody well give me the short version!”

  Silence dropped like a wet fart and lingered uncomfortably as Skiver’s mind organised his thoughts in descending order of personal danger.

  “We dwarfs are famous for mining, as you know,” Skiver began, hiding his nerves behind a curtain of pomposity, “but, compared to other races, we are few and we do not grow in number. So, we have always employed the little folk to work alongside us in the mines.”

  Gramma gave a little snort. “I can’t see no dirt under your fingernails, Master Skiver. Perhaps it’s the littler folk who do the diggin’ and their masters who do the eatin’ and drinkin’”

  She cast her eye around the company who, despite sitting cross-legged on the floor, gave every impression of being ready to spring for the exit.

  “Some dwarfs do work in the mines; generally those who’ve fallen on hard times. And there’s the Paleos, of course,” Skiver said, his voice trailing off as if he’d said too much.

  “Paleos?” The old woman’s hearing wasn’t that bad, when it suited her.

  Skiver sighed. “There’s a movement amongst some of the younger dwarfs to ‘reconnect with our ancestral spirit’,” he pulled his face at this, “by digging for themselves. It’s crazy, in my view. After all, why have a kobold and dig yourself? I mean, where’s the sense in that?”

  The temperature in the room dropped by a degree or two and the silence that blanketed the other dwarfs only deepened as they watched their colleague excavate an ironic hole.

  “Right, and I imagine these Paleos are stirrin’ up trouble with the littler folk?” suggested Gramma, finally feeling she was getting a grip on things.

  Skiver shook his head. “Oh no, not at all.”

  “Then why the bloody hell did you tell me about them?”

  The dwarf shrank, if that were possible, from the old woman’s anger but, as there was no escape, opted to finish digging his metaphorical grave in the hope someone would fill it in and forget he was there.

  “Because it was the Paleos that found out about the revolt,” Skiver said, approaching the point in the nick of time. “One of their groups was attacked as they were working, two of them were killed but the others got away.”

  Finally, thought Gramma. “Who did the attacking?”

  “Mainly kobolds, in the first attack but my fellow dwarfs here have reported that all the little people are now in open rebellion. We have secured most of our mineshafts and our city is safe, for now, but there are whole galleries beneath the ground that we no longer control.”

  “So, what do they want?” Gramma asked, intrigued and worried.

  Skiver rejoined the circle of dwarfs and slumped cross-legged on the floor. “The death of every dwarf in the mountains,” he said.

  Chapter 8

  “Nicely done,” Brianna said, again.

  Bill didn’t respond. He certainly didn’t need Brianna to remind him of what an idiot he’d been. To wander into (probably) the greatest library in the world and threaten to burn it down without imagining, for one moment, that they would have protection against exactly that happening was perhaps the most stupid thing anyone had ever done.20

  The incident, as well as presenting the sort of practical problems that arise from being locked in a prison cell, had severely damaged Bill’s hubris. Barely 3 months ago, he hadn’t imagined he possessed such a thing but now, with it lying in tatters on the floor of the library, he found he missed it.

  To begin with, Bill had been relieved that he and Brianna had been incarcerated together but that had worn off pretty quickly. He’d never seen her so angry, but he rather suspected she was using rage as a cloak for her fear, just as Bill was using shame.

  Right now, he wished with all his heart that he could simply run away, in the hope that, for a time, he could outpace his disgrace, but he was trapped in a stone cell on one of the uppermost floors of a tower. There were no bars at the window and Bill wondered whether that was to invite prisoners to take matters into their own hands for the common good and the convenience of the prison officials. He leaned out of the window and looked down. Yes, it was a long enough drop to quite efficiently draw a line under his shame, or make a puddle.

  Bill felt a hand yank on the back of his shirt.

  “Don’t make matters even worse,” said Brianna as he straightened up, “if you die down there, your magic will be lost forever and I’m sure we could find someone to make better use of it than you.”

  “And, for a moment there, I thought you actually cared,” Bill snapped, before stomping off to the other side of the cell - a gesture that would have been more dramatic if it hadn’t been 6 feet away.

  Brianna didn’t respond but continued to look out of the window onto an aggravatingly sunny cityscape.

  “If you want my opinion,” said a voice from the floor, “you two should make up. Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again…”

  “Oh, shut up,” Brianna said, without looking down, “or I’ll add a few more to your tally.”

  Bill turned back from the whitewashed brick wall he’d been pretending to study and sat down beside the man on the floor with whom he felt a sudden sense of camaraderie.

  The two men exchanged raised eyebrows and shrugs as men do when sheltering from the justified indignation of their womenfolk.

  “So, tell me,” Bill said, grateful for an opportunity to change the subject briefly, “what are you in for?”

  The old man smiled, his tatty grey beard spreading as he did so and the hairs up his nose threatening to explode outwards. “Oh, I was very naughty. I’m a research philosopher, you know, and that means I sometimes discover things that the authorities don’t wish to be known.”

  “Like what?”

  “That the world goes around the sun, and not the other way around, and the triple world conjecture, for two examples,” he said, “by the way, we haven’t been properly introduced - my name is Marco Marcello. You may have heard of me?”

  “Nope,” Brianna said to the window.

  “I have,” Bill said, excitedly, “Vokes talked about you. Something to do with the origins of magic.”

  Marcello’s deep brown face broke into a grin. “Nomenclature Vokes? Ah, you were taught by a true scholar. Yes, early in my career I investigated the roots of magic. There
are many types, you know, varying in their power, application and how difficult each is to successfully harness. Judging from your conversations with your caustic companion there, I conclude that you have inherited some elemental talent.”

  “Nomenclature Vokes was my grandfather,” said Bill. “I inherited the gift of fire from him, although it doesn’t feel like much of a blessing right now.”

  “He’s dead then, a pity.”

  Bill nodded. “Yes, he died in the final battle with the Faerie King.” There was, Bill decided, no need to tell the old man what Vokes’s role in that battle had been. In the months since his death, Bill had found himself warming to Vokes and sympathising with him, at least a little.

  “The Faerie King?”

  Bill expected the derision that usually followed any mention of the King, but Marcello became instantly fascinated.

  “Were you there? Did you meet the King?” he asked.

  “Yes to both. It did, indirectly lead to me being here.”

  Marcello leaned closer. “Do tell,” he said.

  #

  Rasha waited for his friends in the appointed place that night but they didn’t turn up, and that worried him. His brood mother, back in the warm tunnels of the Darkworld, would have scolded him for expending any emotion on humans and he knew that it would make matters much simpler for him if he didn’t care about Bill and Brianna. But the fact was that he did.

  He’d spent the day hiding in the down below, learning its labyrinthine ways and meeting those of its inhabitants that seemed most friendly and receptive. The goblin-folk in the underground called themselves “kobolds”, a strange word that meant “invisible” in his tongue, and seemed largely content to live their lives out beneath the city of humans. It seemed that they collected detritus from the surface and, according to legend at least, cleaned houses that were left empty for them. Others he’d met suggested that, in fact, they cleaned out such houses and were little more than petty thieves.

  There were some dwarfs down here as well. They were a strange race with no equivalent in the Darkworld but here, beneath the city streets, they somehow enjoyed a status beyond their stature. Each time he came across a new group, the chances were that their leader was a dwarf or, at least, if not their leader then the person profiting the most from their endeavours.

  But Rasha had heard mutterings and grumblings. Naturally, he had spoken mostly with the kobolds as they shared a similar language and could make each other understood. Rasha didn’t know whether they were any more disaffected than usual or whether this sort of moaning was normal for such creatures. He’d had less contact with the other creatures of the underground and had actively avoided the humans down here but there was no doubt that many of the denizens of the under-city were unhappy and, perhaps, waiting for a spark to ignite them.

  As he sat here, waiting in the shadows for Bill and Brianna, he looked around at the torch-lit square. Small groups of people, all human by the size of them, scuttled across the cobblestones and he could hear snatches of conversation as they passed, unknowing, near his hiding place. He knew enough of the common tongue to work out that the male voices were mainly talking about drinking and girls whereas the female voices were mainly talking about drinking and boys. And this was the cultural capital of the world?

  Despite these occasional interruptions, Rasha’s vigil was a peaceful one; in contrast to the noise and activity he knew was taking place below him. The difference puzzled him. Two worlds separated by nothing more than the thin barrier beneath his feet, one world almost entirely unaware that the other looked up at it with envious eyes.

  #

  “You mentioned a staff,” Marcello said, “what more can you tell me about it?”

  Bill felt as though the story had been sucked out of his mind by Marcello’s insistent probing. He was exhausted but, in the absence of any reaction from Brianna, who remained at the window quietly steaming, he had little option but to endure the interrogation.

  “There’s not a lot to say. It was oak; deeply stained but otherwise unmarked.”

  Marcello leaned in closer. “How old would you say it was, based on its appearance?”

  “That’s a tough question,” Bill responded, “the dark colour suggested it was ancient, and had been revarnished many times but it had no scratches or any other evidence that it had been used much.”

  “And the King, this Humunculus, absorbed your power through the staff and it destroyed him?” Marcello said, repeating what Bill had already told him.

  Bill nodded. “Yes.”

  The old man regarded Bill thoughtfully. “But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? You haven’t told me everything about the role of Vokes in all of this. You haven’t told me where the staff is now or why you feel compelled to travel all this way to research it in the Great Library.”

  “You’re right,” said Brianna, turning to face them, “and that’s the first sensible thing he’s done all day. Now, it’s time you told us why you are so obviously interested in this staff. Do you know anything about it?”

  Marcello sat up and leaned against the cold brickwork of the cell. He looked up at Brianna. “You are most perceptive,” he said, “and caution is needed. Yes, I suspect I know this staff and, if I’m right, it’s the most dangerous magical device in existence and must be found.”

  “What can you tell us?” Bill asked, all fatigue having fled.

  The old man smiled. “I believe it is called The Reaper. You see, if it is the staff I believe it to be, it wasn’t created simply to amplify magic and to transfer it, in the way that you’ve used it, it is a weapon whose primary purpose is to harvest souls.”

  Bill and Brianna stared, silently, at Marcello, who smiled grimly. “Yes, it is hard to believe, but I suspect the last soul it reaped was the black spirit of the Faerie King and that might prove very bad, very bad indeed, for all of us.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Brianna said, having unsurprisingly recovered her powers of speech before Bill, “why harvest souls, wasn’t it enough that it killed people?”

  “That was its purpose. The soul is the most potent known source of magical power and the staff was like a reservoir, storing that energy until it could be released and used by its maker.”

  “You know who made it?” Bill said, finally recovering the use of his vocal chords.

  Marcello looked at them both, sadly. “I do. The staff was created many hundreds of years ago by the most powerful mage the world has ever known - Minus the Great. With it, he led the Varman armies in conquest across the known world. And then he discovered the first pinch-point between the worlds and the first portal was made.”

  Brianna was the first to break the silence. “I thought the portals had always been there.”

  “Nothing has always been. There was a time before the universe was made, a time before the Lord Eric moulded our planet out of cosmic mud. And there was a time before the portals. The other worlds have existed for as long as our world, or at least there’s no reason I know of to suggest otherwise. I believe it was a mistake, a slip of the hand of Eric, worlds in the neighbouring dimensions but occupying almost the same space.”

  Marcello was warming to his task now, elucidating his theories to a willing audience. “Imagine two spheres next to each other,” he said, each hand balancing an imaginary globe, “bring them slowly together so that they touch, and then overlap. The places where the surfaces of the two globes meet are potential weaknesses in the fabric of nature; Minus used this weakness to open up portals between the worlds.”

  “How did he know the other world existed?” asked Bill.

  “I don’t think he did, I suspect it happened purely by accident when he used the staff near one of these weak spots and opened up a rip. The rest was a matter of careful experiment and, I suspect, the sacrifice of a few slaves and prisoners as he discovered how to stabilise the portals and what lay on the other side. In many cases, the door opened into thin air, sea or even lava but, every n
ow and again, a servant would be pulled back alive and, in that place, he would mark out a stable portal, binding it with protection so that nothing could cross without his permission and help.”

  “Look, this is all very fascinating,” Brianna said, “but we’re interested in the staff, what happened to it and what sort of danger it poses, especially with the soul of the Faerie King inside.”

  Marcello looked up at her as if he’d been dragged out of some deep thought. “Hmm? Oh yes, yes indeed. Well, there are many possibilities, but it depends on whether the King can work out the true nature of the staff. The worst possible case…”

  “Yes, that’s the one we want to hear.” Brianna interrupted.

  “...is if he somehow manages to have the staff taken to the ancient laboratory of Minus. It has been lost for centuries and the staff has, presumably, been used many times since then, so it will be full of souls and, therefore, energy. I cannot imagine the horrors that would be unleashed if the staff were connected to the Great Orb after so many years.”

  Bill and Brianna glanced at each other, feeling as though their destiny was being laid out before them without the courtesy of making itself clear.

  “This ‘lost’ laboratory,” Bill said, “any idea where it is?”

  Brianna’s expression could have cured cement. “Idiot,” she mumbled.

  “As it happens, I do,” Marcello said, as Brianna flushed, “there is a place to the west of here called Cake Pass and the laboratory lies beneath the labyrinth at its centre.”

  “What a remarkable coincidence that we happen to have been locked up with the world’s leading authority in Faeries, magic and multidimensional worlds.” Brianna said, fixing Marcello with one of her special gazes.

  The old man didn’t flinch. “No, not really,” he said, “you see, I knew you’d arrived in Varma and have been watching out for you for some time.”