by SJB Gilmour
Siouxanne blinked several times then rose on wobbly legs. She spread her enormous jewelled wings out to steady herself. Though still dizzy from the lightning bolt she’d received, she managed to focus on Mautallius. She drew in a lungful of air then belched another fireball at the ancient sorcerer.
He realised what she was doing and shouted ‘Aguasilk!’ Then he leaped aside.
Siouxanne’s fireball missed Mautallius but struck Miranda and Jimbo full on and engulfed them entirely. Then Mautallius’ spell took effect. The fire spread out to cover nearly all of the trolls behind them. Where a rain of water had once fell, now a shower of oil cascaded down into the cavern.
The oil ignited with a horrific boom. Hundreds more trolls and thousands more pieces of troll were incinerated. Shielded from the horrendous flames by Siouxanne, the wounded were protected from the flames that passed over them. When the flames subsided, Jimbo lay motionless on the charred remains of Miranda Molotov.
Mautallius scrambled up and into the tunnel Ronny had dug.
‘Traitor!’ Thrag howled at the fleeing sorcerer.
Siouxanne roared and lunged forward after Mautallius, but he had one last card to play. As he attempted his escape with far more energy than anyone would expect from a man so old, he used his last ounce of strength to blast at the ceiling. It hit the stone roof of the cavern and more blocks of stone fell down directly over the opening of the tunnel just as Siouxanne snapped at him. She caught his ankle between her jaws just as a huge chunk of stone landed on her head. It bounced off her scales harmlessly, but the force of the falling rock caused her to bite down hard.
Mautallius screamed as the dragon’s huge jaws snapped shut. She drew her head back and spat out Mautallius’ left foot. In its place was the horrid, green-scaled foot of the demon within him.
The falling ceiling also managed to lock Mautallius out of the tunnel. Howling in pain and desperation, he created a portal and crawled towards it.
Siouxanne reared up again. ‘Demon blood!’ she roared and spat again, desperately trying to get the foul stuff out of her mouth. She turned to Angela, who was all but unconscious.
‘Necromancer!’ the dragon bellowed at her. ‘Now is your chance! Exorcise the demon!’
Unfortunately, Angela was far too dazed to do any such thing. Mautallius reached the portal and dragged himself through. As soon as the scaled and still gory demon foot disappeared through it, so did the portal. Only a trail of green blood remained behind.
Sarah managed to rouse herself enough to howl a brief, heartbroken dirge for her fallen parents. Then she collapsed again in the rubble and mud.
Those trolls that hadn’t melted or burned to cinders took to fighting each other. Within a few moments, there were only a few hundred left. They scattered into various halls and corridors in the cave system.
Once the smoke had cleared, Angela finally managed to come to. She took Mel and Sarah out through the main gates of Troll Mountain. The wards The Guild set up had finally failed and now only the last traces of the enchantments flickered here and there.
Once outside, Sarah collapsed on the desert sand to lie in the moonlight. Siouxanne carried Benjamin while Robert and Roberta took on the sad task of carrying Sarah’s parents outside. James picked up Ronny and followed them.
Angela was weeping silent tears. She was exhausted and wretched. She sunk her head for several moments until she managed to bring her crying under control. Then, a steely resolve within her showed itself. With pursed lips and a determined set to her bloody face, she wrenched open her purse.
James, who was further out from the entrance, sat heavily on the sand next to the comatose Ronny. He poked at the smoking hole in his vest that Mautallius had left, wincing as his fingers touched raw, burned skin.
‘Chock me,’ he moaned. ‘That hurts, but I’ll live.’ He looked up at his cousin. ‘What the chocolate are you doing?’ he demanded as she searched desperately through her purse.
‘I have to find it!’ she panted. ‘I have to find my hairbrush!’
‘Forget your chocking purse, girly,’ he growled to his cousin. ‘This isn’t over yet! Those trolls in there are going to regroup and soon enough, there’ll be more of them!’
‘Later!’ Angela panted. ‘James, please! Help me!’
James shook his head and clicked his fingers. Four large hairbrushes appeared in the air and he threw one each to Angela, Roberta and Robert. They quickly rushed to Sarah’s side and began brushing her thick golden coat.
Soon they had collected a small handful of short, solid gold hairs, which they gave to James. He popped one in his mouth and then counted out ten more and stuffed them into one of his pockets. The remaining ones, he handed to his cousin. Angela then inserted a single hair into each wound her friends had sustained. Mel was the first to recover. She sat up on the sand, coughing. Angela was about to give her another, but Mel shook her head.
‘Do the others,’ Mel croaked as Sarah’s golden hair destroyed the troll’s poison in her veins. A few moments later, she was on her feet. Angela nodded but pressed the hair into Mel’s hand anyway.
Then Benjamin coughed and sat up. He too struggled to his feet and went to nuzzle Angela. The hole in his side had healed over. He was still a bit wobbly on his paws, but he seemed much better. He coughed a few more times, spitting out a disturbing amount of blood he’d brought up from his lungs.
Ronny, whose wounds were more serious than the others, did not wake up. Mel had been struck only once, and like her mother, had a very strong constitution. The gnome was not so lucky. His wounds did close somewhat, but then the healing power of Sarah’s Golden Mane hair ran out. He lay on the sand, drenched in sweat and shivering terribly. His fever was dangerously high. Angela pushed past Benjamin and put the last two hairs she had into Ronny’s drooling mouth.
Sarah lay on the sand in the moonlight. When she saw what Angela was doing, she decided to stay put – which was a very good idea. As soon as her hairs began to do their work, she swooned. The world spun around and around and she felt incredibly light-headed. She whined as the most incredible sensation surged through her body and then she passed out again.
Inside the ruins of the cavern, Siouxanne found the near-dead Thrag, former ruler of the trolls. She looked up at the weakly struggling Kevin, suspended high above her and then back at Thrag. She took in a deep breath and chanted a short spell. The air around both Thrag and Kevin shimmered. Suddenly they swapped places. Now Kevin lay in the rubble, while Thrag howled, bound in the very harness that the trolls had constructed to hold Kevin. The enchanted device had contracted down to hold its new, much smaller occupant.
Kevin struggled to rise. Siouxanne put one massive scaled claw firmly on his chest and pushed him back down.
‘You stay there, you treacherous oaf,’ the mighty dragon growled with contempt at her former partner. ‘Once I have finished helping these folk who,’ she looked at him scathingly, ‘understand the real meaning of loyalty, you and I are going to have a long talk.’
Kevin moaned. ‘Siouxanne…’ he began pleadingly.
Siouxanne’s eyes whirled in fury. ‘Silence!’ she bellowed, blasting flame from her nostrils.
Kevin shrank back in the mud as a blast of Siouxanne’s flame burned away his hair and eyebrows. The enormous dragon then looked about for any sign of Mautallius, but he was long gone. She went back to surveying the damage to her home. As she looked about, she noticed a small motionless form on the floor. The massive dragon looked out to where Mel was searching desperately for her former familiar.
‘You’d better come, Amixo,’ the dragon rumbled.
Ashen faced, Mel ran back down into the cavern to where Siouxanne was standing sorrowfully over Jimbo’s tiny body.
‘Is he dead?’ cried Mel, fresh tears pouring down her face.
The great dragon looked down at Mel and shook her massive jewelled head. ‘No, child. However, his wounds are severe. The Golden Mane hair you hold should revive him.’
>
Mel inserted one into Jimbo’s mouth. His charred scales glimmered and then were gleaming and fresh once more. His eyes glowed and whirled and he craned his neck up to nuzzle Mel affectionately.
‘It’s time to go, Jimbo,’ Mel told him. ‘Siouxanne can teach you better than I can.’
Jimbo nodded with understanding, but his glowing eyes brimmed with tears. Then he gingerly crept up to Siouxanne and curled up on one of her massive paws.
Sarah woke again. She looked up at Angela and Benjamin, then over to Robert and Roberta, then finally to her parents. Henry and Jozefa lay still in the fading moonlight. She hauled herself to her paws and staggered to them. Whining sadly, she crouched on all four paws and rested her head on the sand. If she had been human, tears would have been pouring down her face.
Angela went to Ronny and knelt by his side. ‘He’s dying!’ she grated. ‘He’s not supposed to die! The hairs aren’t working!’
Angela bowed her head over the gnome in hopeless grief. She looked up again and in desperation, tried to command the healing spell.
‘Santicularus!’ she panted, but too much of her energy was gone. The spell did nothing.
Angela looked up at James. ‘Cousin!’ she cried. ‘Help me!’
‘Ahh, chock it!’ James muttered. ‘I tell you, we’re gonna have to finish those trolls off soon! Listen!’ It was true. A great deal of Trollish shouting was coming from the tunnels inside the cave and it was getting louder.
Then he too concentrated and cast the same spell. ‘Santicularus!’ he yelled in a much more powerful voice. Still the spell had no effect.
‘Chocolate me, that really hurt,’ the bald and battered sorcerer muttered. He rubbed his head and groaned from the effort of casting the spell. His expression was miserable. Then he spied Siouxanne who was gently nuzzling her new charge.
James stamped forward towards her. ‘Hey!’ he yelled at the dragon. ‘A little help? We’ve got an injured gnome, two dead werewolves, no elevator and those trolls are coming back for more!’
Siouxanne studied the angry little botanist. ‘Leave the trolls to me,’ she told him confidently. ‘As for your brave halfling friend, have you not applied rhubarb essence?’ she asked him mildly.
James exploded. ‘It’s gone!’ he bellowed at the dragon. ‘It blew up in the gnome’s satchel! Now we’re out in the middle of the chocking desert! Where the chocolate am I going to get more chocking rhubarb out here? I’ve got all the other ingredients! Even that chocky-awful durian pulp, but no rhubarb! He used up all my stash making the first batch!’
Siouxanne grinned at the furious Master of Flora. ‘The gnome told us you re-grew an entire oasis from the ashes of demon fire, but you can’t grow one little rhubarb patch?’
James stopped suddenly and went very pale. Embarrassed, he smacked his hand against his bald scalp. ‘Oh chocolate me!’ he groaned. Then he fished his leather pouch out of his satchel. He reached inside and took out a pinch of bright green powder. He held it carefully in his hands and looked at it. ‘Rhubarb!’ he instructed the powder and tossed it over a bare patch of sand.
‘Angela, would you mind?’ the embarrassed sorcerer asked his cousin.
Angela stood and stretched for a moment. Her strength was returning. She pointed at the sand and chanted her storm-summoning spell again.
A tiny rain cloud formed above the sand. It gave one short peal of thunder and a few miniscule sparks of lightning and then unleashed a steady torrent of rain down onto the would-be rhubarb patch. After a few minutes, Angela held out one hand and the rain stopped. The cloud disappeared.
James nodded approvingly. ‘That ought to do it,’ he muttered. ‘Horticus!’
An area perhaps ten metres wide began to shimmer and a dozen neat rows of rhubarb burst forth out of the sand. Mel and James rushed to the patch and picked several armfuls of rhubarb stalks. They carried these back to a large black iron kettle half-full of boiling water that Angela had placed over a fire. Angela quickly added various other ingredients from James’ satchel and stirred the vile-smelling goo with an enormous wooden spoon. She held up the massive spoon and delicately tasted the awful concoction. She grimaced.
‘It’s nearly ready,’ she told them. ‘Ugh! I can’t believe mortals actually eat this stuff.’
James nodded in agreement. ‘They eat broccoli too,’ he said conversationally. ‘If they found out what that stuff does when no-one’s looking, they’d never go near it.’ Then he paused and smacked his palm to his forehead again.
‘Cousin, if you keep smacking your head like that, you’re likely to hurt yourself,’ Angela chided him as she stirred the bubbling salve. ‘What have you forgotten now?’
James sighed. ‘Broccoli,’ he muttered, glaring at the prone form of Ronny.
‘What?’
‘Broccoli,’ James repeated. ‘If I’d thought to remind Mason here about what broccoli gets up to at night when it’s all alone, I’d have been able to prove to him that plants are aware,’ he lamented.
Angela sighed. ‘Can’t you ever be serious?’ she demanded.
James looked at her critically. ‘Serious? Okay, here’s serious. You’re getting soft,’ he accused. ‘The old Angelina I knew would’ve had Miranda’s guts for bootlaces in a heartbeat. As for letting Mautallius go when you had the chance to exorcise the demon, well that’s just chocking-well lily-livered! You need a good kick up the chocky. When all this is over, go back to Lentekhi for a refresher course.’
Angela smiled sadly and glanced back at Benjamin. ‘Maybe,’ she admitted quietly. She sighed and paid her attention back to the bubbling goo the two were concocting.
‘It’s too hot,’ she warned. ‘It’s going to burn him.’
‘I can fix that,’ James replied. He pointed one of his polar portals at the huge pot. The fire went out instantly as the icy gale blew over it and the pot. Angela continued to stir the awful muck. After a few more minutes, she stuck her finger directly into the salve.
‘That’s better,’ she said. She and James then picked up the pot and tipped its entire contents over Ronald. Then everyone stood back and watched the miraculous salve. It glowed a strange golden colour and shimmered.
Ronny drew in a shuddering breath. Then his wounds healed over completely as the last of the troll poison leeched out of his skin. In minutes, he was sitting up, all gooey and sandy. He looked at his clothes in absolute disgust. Then he shook his head regretfully. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘it’s not quite my grandmother’s recipe, but it’s near enough in a pinch!’
Sarah dragged her attention away from her parents. She shook her head several times to gather her wits and rushed to greet Ronny, wagging her tail so excitedly she could hardly run straight. She nudged and licked him several times, although the muck he was covered in did not taste very nice at all.
Everyone crowded around the gooey gnome and hugged him, cheering. Soon they were all covered in the awful goop.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ James warned them. ‘We’re not done yet.’
The trolls began to pour out of the caverns and tunnels in the cave. Siouxanne turned and belched a massive ball of flame at the first wave of them, blasting them to ashes. Then she spread her giant wings out and with a great roar, leaped into the air. She flew gracefully up and around in a great loops. Then she swerved and began to dive, just as the next and much larger wave of trolls poured out onto the sand.
‘Duck!’ yelled James.
Everyone hit the sand as fast as they could. Only Sarah and Mel looked up and what they saw was both fantastic and terrible. With her giant diamond wings spread out wide, Siouxanne dove down and swept directly at the cave, blasting a huge stream of flame before her. She did not stop when she hit. Her wings and fire cut through the mountain rubble as if it were sand. The remaining trolls could not escape. The stench of hundreds of burned trolls filled the air as did smoke and dust from the dragon’s impact with the cave. The ground shook with a powerful earthquake.
‘Ichtumbler!’ yelled James, using the Magaeic spell for ‘take us over there!’ and he and the others were immediately transported several hundred metres further out onto the desert sand. There was an eerie pause and then the entire mountain collapsed upon itself. A huge cloud of rubble and dust billowed outwards. The heavier pieces of rock fell safely close to what was left of the mountain, but still the group was showered with smaller rocks and dust.
Then Siouxanne burst free from the midst of the destruction and flew up into the air once more. With a roar of triumph, the dragon circled what was left of the mountain twice, and then came to land close to Sarah and her friends who were nearly all too stunned to speak.
Then Sarah turned back to her parents. The awful reality of their deaths struck her like a blow. She crouched low on the sand again and whimpered. Benjamin sat beside her, nuzzling her neck gently.
James wiped himself off and looked back at the rubble. He shook his head admirably at Siouxanne.
‘Nice job,’ he complimented her. ‘Do you reckon there were any survivors?’
Siouxanne nodded. ‘Look there,’ she rumbled. Limping towards them was Kevin, carrying Thrag by one ankle. The rock giant was bleeding from several nasty gashes on his head, arms and shoulders but for the most part, he seemed more embarrassed and chagrined than hurt. Thrag appeared to be in worse shape. The chief troll was missing an arm from the elbow and one foot and could barely struggle against the giant.
Kevin held Thrag out to Siouxanne wordlessly. Siouxanne took in a large breath of air and appeared ready to roast the troll when James stepped up to her.
‘Hang on, old girl,’ he told the dragon. ‘We’re not done.’ He handed Siouxanne the ten Golden Mane hairs he’d pocketed earlier. ‘Deal’s a deal,’ he told her. ‘The beans will be delivered as soon as they’re cropped. Should be about a week.’
‘The tome’s in what’s left of my hoard,’ she told him, deftly tucking the hairs away under a scale. She nodded at the rubble and large orb floated up out of the ruins and drifted towards them. As it approached, everyone could see inside a jumbled pile of treasure. The orb set itself down beside Siouxanne and she reached out and covered it with one enormous wing. Then she snaked her massive head inside and rummaged around a bit until she emerged with a battered old tome held delicately in her teeth. She dropped it into James’ hands.
