He walked for a long time. For hours maybe. One step fell in front of another until finally he found himself no longer in motion, his legs locked in place.
Where was he?
Was this his destination?
Had he arrived?
He looked around. It was a patch of forest like any other, no landmarks to speak of, nothing to catch the eye.
He swiped his phone and turned on its torch to get a better look at his surroundings. There was something there. Not there in the woods, but something triggered by the act of using the phone. A scrap of memory flickered across the back of Terry’s mind, dim and insubstantial, like a movie projected into a black hole. Someone had lost their phone, hadn’t they? Nat maybe? And hadn’t something bad come of it? Something terrible?
He swept his torch across the forest floor and caught a mental flash of a body lying at his feet. It was the body of a wounded man. No, not a man. An elf. Except that was impossible. Elves belonged in D&D bestiaries. In games and movies and fairy tales, but not in real life. His mind was playing tricks on him. He kicked up a clump of dirt and cursed. He’d come all this way for nothing. Whatever had happened in these woods, the memory of it was gone. His friends were gone. Nat was gone.
Terry turned back the way he came and saw the dim glow of the distant car park between the gaps in the trees; a beacon lighting the way home. He pictured himself walking back there, returning to the inevitable, crushing reality of his life. His quest has yielded no treasure. There was nothing to be learned from this place. This is where his story ended. He began the long march to Ongar, his feet stomping angrily against the soil as he mashed a path home. A looming branch brushed against his forehead and he swatted it aside with the back of his hand. Tree roots snagged at his feet as if they were reaching out to trip him...
Roots.
Something to do with roots.
Growing into a shape and forming a kind of…
His mind went blank again. Why couldn’t he remember? What had happened in these woods?
“I want to go back,” he screamed, though he knew not where.
His voice was heard though.
The ground beneath him throbbed and broke apart, then thick stems surfaced, climbing and stitching together to form the frame of an oval doorway.
“You came back,” spoke a sonorous voice.
Terry swung his torch around to find Elderwood’s face smiling at him from a nearby tree.
It all came back at once. The portal. The elves. Drensila the Black. The Chosen One. His own words echoing back at him. “Get into it. Don’t be a tourist. Commit to the fantasy.”
The gaps in his head filled up like potholes in the rain. He remembered everything. All of it.
“I know Kung fu,” he whispered.
One of the tree’s roots snaked out from the earth and held something before Terry that caught the glow of his torch. It was an engagement ring.
“She needs you,” said Elderwood.
Terry tossed his phone and stepped into the portal without a second thought.
EMERDOR THE ELF, whom Neville and Ashley had appointed as their official court advisor, glided into the throne room.
“Sirs, a visitor is asking if he might be favoured with a moment of your time.”
“What for?” asked Neville.
“He claims to be a merchant,” replied Emerdor, with a caustic note. “A vagabond.”
“A gypsy?” said Neville, reading his tone.
“You are most astute,” the elf replied. “Shall I send him on his way?”
Ashley jumped in. “Where’s your head at, bruv? We’re trying to set up a trade route, innit? This could be our boy.”
Emerdor looked to Neville, who shrugged. “He’s got a point.”
“Very well,” said the advisor, against his better judgement, and gave the merchant permission to enter.
A man strode in dressed in a patchwork garment of many colours: ice blues, scab reds and sunburst yellows, the full Citadel Paint range. He wore a dipped-in-tea tan and a winning smile. “Greetings, gentlemen,” he said with a sweeping bow and a grin like the keys of a grand piano, “My name is Honest Olaf and I come to you from the faraway land of Kr'chollin’a.”
Neville hid a smirk. Did the person who named these nutty places fall asleep on their keyboard or something?
“Thank you for your kind attention this day, my lords,” Olaf went on, “I can scarcely believe I am in the presence of the victors of the great skirmish the bards have dubbed The Battle of Bludoch Dungeon. It humbles me, sires, so it does.”
Ashley took an immediate liking to the man. He was reminded of a colourful uncle who worked a stall at Walthamstow Market selling fruit and veg by the bowl. A kind man with a big heart and a good word to say about everyone.
Olaf laid a blanket on the throne room floor and spread it out to show off his wares. He took a step back, inviting his audience to inspect his chintzy collection of alchemical tinctures, scrimshaw and assorted curios.
Emerdor cringed at the display. It was, to say the least, a trifle gauche. “You came all this way just to flog this pile of junk?”
“Junk, my lord?” replied Olaf, as if mortally afflicted. “These wares you see before you are rare treasures! Priceless magical artefacts! Insurance against the very worst this realm has to offer!”
“And what makes you think we need insurance?” asked Neville.
“With all due respect, sire—of which you are owed a bounty—there are those who would question your glorious rule. This world is a dangerous place, and one must be prepared to see off would-be usurpers.”
He had a point. How long before Clive turned his attention—not to mention his troll giant—on the citadel?
Ashley made his way to the trader’s blanket and began poking through his bits and pieces. He picked up a cork-stoppered vial wearing a label scrawled with some incomprehensible language.
“What’s this, fam?”
“You have a fine eye, sire,” Olaf replied. “The object you have selected is a potion of levitation.”
Emerdor let out a pshaw of contempt. “Snake oil more like.”
Nev agreed. He knew a charlatan when he saw one. “Yeah, I’m not convinced. How about you let us try a sample?”
Honest Olaf put a hand to his heart. “You wound me, sires. I am a man of honour. Why, my good name is known from the Stormbeat Steppes to Brigmar Fell.”
Neville sighed. “Okay, we get it,” he said dismissively. “Tell you what, if we ever need your services, we’ll give you a call.”
“But why wait?” asked Olaf, still determined to make a sale. “The time to act is now, my lords.”
Among the trader’s goods Ashley found a wooden stick with a bit of leather wrapped around one end. “What’s this?” he asked.
“It is a magical wand, sire. It might not look like much, but it is an ancient relic recovered from the fabled ruins of Syzoc. No less than a dozen treasure hunters died in pursuit of this incomparable piece. It’s worth is incalculable.”
“This is a twig,” said Emerdor, turning it over in his hand.
“Surely you jest, sire? This priceless artefact is able shoot a bolt of lightning powerful enough to destroy a titan!”
“Then let’s see it in action,” said Nev.
Honest Olaf shook his head. “Would that I could, but the item only possesses a single charge. To demonstrate its power would be to exhaust its very function.”
Ashley nodded along. Against all odds, it seemed he was buying the merchant’s pitch. “I reckon we get it, yeah,” he told his colleagues. “We already know them trolls don’t like lightning.”
Emerdor chose to humour the wily trader. “May I ask how much you are asking for this priceless magical artefact?” he inquired.
“A thousand gold crowns,” Olaf replied, flatly.
Emerdor’s steely facade cracked as he broke into a gale of laughter. “Ha! That’s all the money we have in our coffers and more!”
Neville was similarly unimpressed. “I think it’s time you got going,” he told the visitor. “We don’t want your monkey paws here.”
Olaf protested, but Emerdor showed him the door and insisted he use it. When that didn’t work, he had the throne room’s guards chase him out. Seeing that he was no longer welcome, the merchant nodded solemnly, wrapped up his wares and offered a parting bow before exiting the chamber.
Ashley watched Honest Olaf leave and hung his head, convinced they’d made a mistake.
DRENSILA THE BLACK wandered aimlessly as the night closed in. A stranger in her own empire, she sought nothing more than to widen the distance from her ancestral home and leave her past behind. To walk away from her sins. And yet the past refused to let her be.
She encountered more trolls along the way, too many to fight this time. The best she could do was keep out of their way, which she did by casting a glamour and disguising herself as one of their kind. It worked well, at least until she encountered one troll that took an interest in one of his “comrades” walking against the flow. Against the tide of trolls traversing the land to merge with Clive’s giant.
The troll stomped up to Drensila and drew his weapon. Trusting her magic to conceal her, she stood firm against the creature, jutting out her chin in defiance. The troll sniffed at her suspiciously and growled, sensing something was amiss. Drensila continued to stare him down, her glare reflected in eyes empty as glass marbles, until finally the beast gave up and moved on, falling in line with the rest of his kin.
Drensila breathed a sigh of relief and continued her journey. In time, she found herself navigating a narrow tongue of land through the stagnant bayous of the Bloodmyre Swamp, so named for the iron deposits in its waters, which stained the fen blood red. As she trudged through the mangrove trees, the slough clung to the hem of her dress, leaving it fetid and heavy. She considered using the knowledge she’d learned from Nat’s world to manufacture a technological conveyance to carry her across the swamp uncontaminated, but the doing of such things required materials she didn’t have and a stomach she no longer possessed. Besides, she was too tired by this point to even summon a flame to light her way. She needed food to fill her belly.
Hungry and parched, she lumbered on until she came to a settlement upon the swamp – a collection of wooden pontoons trussed together to form a shanty town. A squalid little oasis. She recognised the settlement from one of her maps – it belonged to a tribe of orcs who bowed to her rule. At least they did when her trolls were there to keep them in check. She looked to the settlement’s watch tower expecting to see a Durkon banner, but saw no trace of her family crest. No matter. She would infiltrate the settlement, stock up on provisions and continue her journey.
Gaining ingress to the orc’s den of iniquity proved as simple as walking by the watchtower’s sleeping guard. Drensila roamed streets empty but for the occasional rat scurrying underfoot. She passed between huts made of wattle and daub in search of sustenance, a cold store or a curing shed, wherever food and water could be found.
She happened across a well in a market square. A battered steel cup hung from it by a length of chain, which she used to scoop water into her thirsty mouth. It tasted like old puddle, but revitalised her nonetheless.
Just then she was grabbed from behind. A pair of long, knuckle-scraping arms seized her roughly and dragged her into a crooked alley, where she found herself surrounded by whatever the collective noun for a group of orcs is. A blemish? An infection? A mistake?
“What do we ‘ave we ‘ere?” said Drensila’s captor, in a tongue she struggled to recognise. His jutting underbite terminated in curved, yellow tusks and his chin was soaked with saliva. He gave off a smell you could chew.
“Let go of me at once,” Drensila demanded. “I am your queen!”
The orcs sneered.
“We ain’t got no queen,” said the chieftain holding onto her arms. “We do as we please... starting with you.”
One of the orcs grabbed Drensila by the ankles and another began to tear at the skirt of her gown. The usurped queen kicked and screamed but she hadn’t the strength to stop her attackers. This was real evil, hands-on and dirty, not the pantomime kind she used to conduct from the safety of her keep.
Drensila chose her next words carefully, as though she were etching them into stone. “If any one of you lays a hand on me, each of you meets his maker.”
The chieftain offered her a sharkish grin and began to unbutton his breeches. “Gonna make me a half breed...”
Drensila would sooner dissolve in a troglodyte’s belly than give herself to these vile creatures.
Through pure strength of will, she managed to twist her arm around to her back and wrap a hand around the last of her onyx hair pins. She pulled the weapon from its sheath and plunged its poisoned tip into the forearm of the chieftain.
The orc recoiled and tugged the pin from his flesh. Drensila looked for the first sign of Stinger’s toxin taking hold of his body, but a grin returned to the chieftain’s face. He sniffed the pin and tossed it to one side.
“Poison don’t work on orcs,” he told her.
He raised the back of his hand to her and cuffed her across the mouth.
Tears sprang up in Drensila’s eyes. All she wanted was to be free. Free of these orcs, free of this village, free of the very skin she lived in.
Panic transformed into action and her lips began to mouth an incantation. Just as the chieftain was about to have his way with her, a blazing ball of vermillion light appeared before his face, so hot and so bright that it melted his eyes from their sockets and blinded all around him.
The orcs went down, squealing and snapping at the ground like downed power lines.
Drensila was so depleted that it hurt her to cast the spell. She felt a pinch in every nerve in her body as she collapsed to the ground, scooped out and hollow. Using what little stamina she had left, she scrabbled away from her attackers, found her feet and fled the settlement.
She limped on through the village gates, clothes shredded, lungs burning. She was terrified, and yet through her dismay, she’d come to realise something. For the first time since she’d been ousted from her throne, she knew where she wanted to be. Her encounter with the orcs had taught her a valuable lesson. Evil wasn’t what she was, it was a yoke around her neck – a yoke she intended to cast off. And yet it wasn't enough for her to walk away from her sins. To carry on in this world, she needed to put things right. To atone.
Free of the orcs’ clutches, she bent to the ground and cast a spell that drew a handful of minerals from the earth. Using her knowledge of modern technology, she cast a second spell that fashioned the raw materials into a device she would use to aid her travels.
A compass.
A sliver of white light broke the horizon. It was the dawn of a new day. Drensila checked the needle of the compass and plotted a course.
She knew where she was going now.
She was going home.
Chapter Eight: Difficulty Check
THE BOULDER BENEATH Eathon and Tidbit rumbled, then two giant arms reached up and seized them each in a granite fist.
The rock elemental, whose moss-topped head they had been unknowingly standing on, subjected them to its scrutiny.
“What do you want from us?” Eathon shouted over the roar of the thundering rapids, which presented no challenge to the stone behemoth.
The elemental arranged its features into a smile and showed a set of teeth made of nuggets of precious minerals. “What do I want?” it intoned in a voice so deep it loosened the bowels. “I want you to solve a riddle.”
Tidbit’s eyes lit up. “A riddle?” he said, clapping his hands in glee. “Wha’ d’we get if we gerrit it right?”
“If yo"u solve my puzzle I will allow you to return to the riverbank,” the elemental replied.
“‘n’ if we don’t?” the dwarf asked.
“Then I cast you over there,” said the behemoth, nodding to the plunging wat
erfall that lay just ahead of them.
This dampened Tidbit’s excitement somewhat, but not so much that he didn’t relish the chance to prove himself. Dwarves have a kinship with rocks that quite defies explanation.
The elemental began his riddle. “You have twelve marbles and three identical pouches,” he told his captives. “Your challenge is to place the twelve marbles in the three pouches, with each of the pouches containing the same number of marbles—”
“—Easy peasy—” Tidbit cut in.
“—Without,” the rock went on, “putting four marbles in each of the pouches.”
The dwarf harrumphed, then stroked his hairless chin and immediately got to work.
Eathon saw the cogs turning in his companion’s head and threw up his hands. “What are you doing?”
“Wha’ does it look like?” replied the dwarf. “Solvin a riddle.”
“This isn’t one of your machines to take apart and analyse, dwarf.” He turned to address the elemental personally. “What does solving a riddle have to do with whether we live or die?”
The monster’s gargantuan stone fist closed around the elf’s waist, threatening to turn his pelvis into a jigsaw puzzle.
“Jus’ play t’ game, lad!” Tidbit beseeched his companion.
Perhaps the elf’s newfound cynicism came from spending too much time around humans, but he was through playing games. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Why do you need to be appeased this way?” he asked his captor. “What are you getting out of this?”
The creature’s grip loosened and a look of puzzlement crossed its literally craggy face. It seemed he’d never questioned the convention of what he did before. “Well… you have to do something to keep your mind occupied, don’t you?” he replied weakly.
“Fine,” replied Eathon. “But does it have to involve sitting in a river all day waiting to trick passing travellers?”
Trolled: The Complete Saga (The Trolled Saga) Page 34
