Undaunted, Nat continued her charge, but Clive knocked her aside with the gentlest punt of his giant’s toe.
“Wait your turn,” he told Nat as she lay sprawled on the ground, “You don’t get to die yet. Not until I’ve done with Ashley and Neville.”
He turned the troll giant on its heel, leaving a great cleft in the earth, then stomped off in the direction of the citadel.
Chapter Ten: Breath Weapon
TERRY CAST ONE last glance at the unblemished blue sky and entered the cavern. He walked in measured steps, sinking deeper and deeper beneath the crust of the earth.
“What am I looking for?” he yelled outside to Elderwood, his voice echoing off the cave’s smooth, glassy walls. “An Easter egg? Some kind of a test?” He quoted Star Wars under his breath. “Remember your failure at the cave, Luke...”
With no answer forthcoming, Terry continued on his way. The cave grew dim, so he did as Elderwood had instructed. Holding the branch at arm’s length, he said the magic word, “Luma!”
The fat end of the stick burst into flames.
“Arrrrgggh!” roared Elderwood from outside the cave, “It burns!”
Panicking, Terry dropped the tree’s flaming appendage.
“Just kidding,” said the tree. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
Terry could have done without that. He picked up the torch and continued into the cave, pointing the light to the dusty ground as he walked. No marks, no tracks. No one had set foot in this place for decades.
He rounded a corner and found himself amongst a forest of quartz the size of jousting lances. The giant, sapphire-coloured crystals jagged from all angles of the shaft, causing the light of his flame to cast a myriad of dancing orange and blue lights about the cavern that shone like a shaken kaleidoscope.
“Cool,” said Terry, though the temperature had become anything but.
He was absolutely sweltering. It was humid as hell down there, and the further he progressed, the hotter he became. He popped open a few shirt buttons, allowing a tuft of chest hair to peek over his neckline like some curious gerbil.
“Seriously, dude,” he shouted back the way he came, “What is this? I don’t have time for side quests.”
An overpowering smell of brimstone invaded Terry’s nostrils as he grunted and picked his way through the forest of crystals. Eventually, the corridor opened up into a huge chamber, so big he couldn’t even make out its ceiling. He looked to the ground, and when he saw what lay there, his torch fell from his hand for the second time.
Mounds upon mounds of incalculable riches.
Heaps of coins, overflowing bowls of jewels, chests trimmed with pearls, nuggets of precious metals, extravagant objets d’art, the finest weapons and armour. Every conceivable manner of treasure, blunting every corner of the room. A trove of plunder that would make Scrooge McDuck blush. It was a greedy splendour that Terry had never dared imagine possible, and he’d seen five seasons of MTV Cribs.
“Man, imagine what Cash 4 Gold would pay me for this lot,” he whispered.
He gazed at the riches for what seemed an age until he became distracted by something moving in the corner of his eye.
A figure stepped from a dark corner and came slowly walking towards him across the ocean of gold, an elderly woman wearing a pair of sheepskin moccasins and dressed in what looked, for all the world, like a nightgown. The woman stood short and stout, with neat grey hair and a pair of sparkling blue eyes.
She stopped in front of Terry and sized him up, as he did her. This was not the sort of lady you pitied, Terry realised: some feeble old dear with arthritic joints and brittle bones. No, this was the kind of strong-limbed old lady who—given half a chance—could run an army kitchen and still take you over her knee for a sound thrashing.
“Come to fill your pockets, have you?” she asked.
“No way,” said Terry, turning out his breeches. “Look, I didn’t even bring a weapon.”
“Hmph,” replied surely the world’s most prolific hoarder. “Well, then why are you here?”
“I’m not sure exactly. I sort of ended up here by accident.”
“A likely story.”
“Seriously. A talking tree sent me.”
“Did he really?” replied the woman, stifling a yawn.
“I’m telling you, it’s the truth. I’m trying to save the world.”
The old woman laughed in a way that usually wasn't available to someone of her advanced years. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing here?”
Terry sighed and slumped down on a hill of coins. “I’m here for a girl.”
The woman lit up. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she trilled, and sat down beside him. “What’s her name?”
“Nat,” he replied. “I’m Terry by the way.”
“Mabele,” said the woman, shaking his hand. “And where’s this Nat now?”
“She kind of dumped me. Or I dumped her. I don’t even know anymore.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Sure.”
Mabele snorted. “It doesn’t sound much like you do.”
“What do you know?” Terry protested. “Look, I get it, I’m a seventeen year old boy. I shouldn’t be falling in love, I should be out there messing around with the rest of them, sowing my wild oats. I get that. I didn’t plan on getting attached either, but then Nat came along and the second she smiled at me I knew it was game over. All I wanted was to be with her. To make her happy. It didn’t take a trip to this place to convince me she was something special, she was already my Chosen One.”
Mabele sniffed. Apparently her eyes had gotten a little dusty too, because they suddenly needed a dab of her nightdress. “You’ve convinced me,” she told Terry. “So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you out there getting her back?
“It’s complicated. Thing is, there’s this elf…”
Mabele’s lip curled. She didn’t like that one bit. “Ugh, elves. Annoying creatures with their snake hips and their pretty boy faces.”
“Right!” said Terry, his voice hitting its topmost register. “Thank you.”
“And this elf, has she pledged herself to him?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been away. Maybe.”
“You don’t know?” Mabele cried. “You mean to say there’s still a chance to win her back?”
“I guess so.”
Mabele sprang to her feet as if reeling from the unlikely plot twist of her favourite telenovela. “Then you must go to her!” she insisted.
“How?” he asked. “I don’t even know where she is.”
Mabele clipped him about the back of the head. “What sort of attitude is that?” she said. “You expect to win back your woman when you give up this easily?”
Terry rubbed his crown. “I do want her back, I promise, I just don’t know where to start.”
The old woman tutted. “You’re lucky you caught me in a good mood. I usually wouldn’t interfere with human affairs, but I’m a sucker for a good romance.” She indicated to an impressive library housing a vast collection of books with titles such as The Cavalier and the Chambermaid; The Promise of the Forgotten Laird and The Damsel Unbound.
“Wait a second,” said Clive, playing catch-up, “are you saying you’re not human?”
Mabele smiled. “Ready yourself, son. We’re going to get your girl.”
With a click of her fingers the old woman was gone, and in her place stood a dragon.
An actual dragon.
Nat had been right all along! They did exist! And here he was, stood before one: a winged monster of legend, straight off of a Welsh flag.
The dragon balanced elegantly on four muscular legs, her leathery, red hide protected by a tiling of radiant umber scales. She swished her arrowhead-tipped tail as she padded towards Terry, making it dance like a charmed snake. Mabele craned her slender neck and leaned in close with her giant head. Two rows of small horns ran either sides of her jaw, leading to a pair of cat-like ears. Th
e thin slits of her nostrils belched twin plumes of steam and she opened her mouth to reveal row upon row of razor sharp fangs.
Terry would have been terrified, were it not for the dragon’s unmistakable twinkling blue eyes. He laughed. “Holy shit, is Nat going to be happy to see you!”
“Language, young man,” Mabele admonished. “But I am glad to hear it. Mostly your kind are none too friendly to mine.” She lifted her magnificent wings to show them dotted with old tears and holes, suggesting some less than happy run-ins with humans.
“Well, you are a dragon,” Terry pointed out. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to be all about razing villages and eating virgins?”
Mabele chuckled. “I’m eight hundred years old with bad eyes and dodgy knees. What am I going to do with a virgin?”
She turned around and began digging into her hoard with the tip of her hooked tail.
“What are you looking for?” asked Terry.
“For something nice to wear. We can't have you reuniting with the love of your life dressed like that, can we?”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“Don’t be daft, it won’t even make a dent.”
She had a point. Given all the riches she had at her disposal, Terry could walk out of there with all he could carry and it would still amount to a harmless bit of stock shrinkage.
“Here,” said Mabele, fishing something from the pile. “This looks about your size.”
She held before him a suit of exceptional armour. Exquisitely designed steel plates had been individually embossed and interlocked to form the kind of finery worn by only the most decorated knights of the realm. It was a true work of art.
“Wow,” said Terry. “That’s a nice bit of clobber. How did you come by it?”
“Some chancer came in here looking to pinch my treasure and got more than he bargained for.”
“Just as well I didn’t come in here looking for trouble then, eh?” said Terry, and received a look from the dragon that seemed to say, “Yes, very much so.”
“He came with a sword,” said Mabele, handing Terry a weapon. “Oh, and he brought this too…”
Using her prehensile tail, she presented him with a shortbow and a quiver of arrows. The bow was crafted from yew wood and its grip was wound with a strip of red rawhide.
“Cool,” he said, testing the weapon’s draw. “I’m going to call her Widowmaker III.”
“Whatever floats your boat.”
Mabele helped Terry into his new gear, smartening him up like a kid at his bar mitzvah. “Climb aboard,” she told him. “It’s time we got going.”
“What about your hoard?” asked Terry.
“It can sit for a few hours.”
Terry nodded and scaled Mabele’s back to take a seat at the base of her neck. He grabbed hold of a couple of protruding spines and spurred the dragon’s flanks with his heels. “Fly, my faithful steed!” he roared.
“Don't push it,” replied the dragon, who was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all.
She beat her wings and took flight, heading up through a vegetation-covered opening in the roof like the batmobile screeching out of its cave. “Where are we headed?” she asked as they soared through the sky.
“I don’t know,” Terry shouted over the wind. It’s not as though he had a pin to drop in Google Maps. “Why don’t you just wing it? Get it?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“I’m eight-hundred years old. Don't you think I've heard every dragon joke there is?”
“Fair point,” admitted Terry.
He took a look below to find his bearings. To find something that would lead him to the citadel. He found one.
Right before his eyes, a patch of trees on the ground changed colour to create a distinct shape. Someone had provided him with a big, red arrow to follow. Terry smiled. Elderwood had done him proud.
“Thataway,” he said, pointing to their new heading.
THE OCCUPANTS OF the throne room reacted to Drensila as though they were goldfish and the queen were a cat dropped into their aquarium. It was chaos. Only the two guards holding Honest Olaf hostage managed to maintain any decorum, letting him go and seizing the intruder.
While Olaf scampered for the door, the daughter of darkness remained precisely where she was. “I’m not here to fight,” she assured her hosts.
Neville gulped, as did Ashley. They’d thought Drensila gone, but apparently reports of her death had been much exaggerated.
“What are you doing here?” asked Nev, his throat suddenly dry.
Drensila presented her palms in surrender and approached the throne. She limped as she walked, Nev noticed, no doubt due to the nasty wound below her right knee, which looked as though it had been mended with a flamethrower.
“I know you must despise me,” Drensila started, “and frankly I don't blame you. I’ve done bad things. Terrible things. I furthered my mother’s legacy unquestioningly, I sought obedience at the end of a cat o’ nine tails...”
Emerdor cut into her speech. “You murdered, you mutilated, you massacred!”
“True,” she remarked. “All of it, true. It wasn’t until I was unseated from my throne that I saw myself for what I truly am. I am evil and I am pathetic. The crown that was placed upon my head? It was put there not by a clergyman, but by a scorpion. A family pet. Besides him, the only other guests at my coronation were trolls; indentured servants of my own making. My life has been a little girl’s tea party, with stuffed dolls instead of dinner guests.”
“Do my ears deceive me?” mocked Emerdor. “Or did you return to your citadel seeking sympathy?”
“No,” Drensila replied. “I came because I can no longer strangle my conscience. I’m not here to ask forgiveness for my crimes. I came here to atone.”
Emerdor put a knife to her throat and made ready to open her jugular. “So, the Queen of Lies comes to us with generosity in her heart, is that it? And how would you atone for your sins?”
Drensila spoke calmly and unflinchingly. “I would help you defeat the new monster that stalks these lands. I would help you defeat your Clive.”
Emerdor looked to Neville and found him stroking his chin. “You surely can’t be considering this?” he begged.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But I think we should hear her out.” He looked to Ashley and found him of a similar mind. It felt good to both be on the same page for a change.
“Might be we could use her,” Ash told Emerdor. “So long as she ain’t just chattin’.”
The elf dug his blade into Drensila’s windpipe, almost breaking the skin. “When this woman’s creatures raided our village I lost my partner,” he told them with a catch in his voice. “My partner of two-hundred and sixty-one years. I demand retribution.”
“Hold up, bruv,” Ash urged, “don’t do nothing silly.”
“Yeah, take it easy,” agreed Nev, “you don’t want a murder on your conscience.”
A tear tracked Emerdor’s cheek. His blade drew a trickle of blood from Drensila’s throat.
“Emerdor,” implored Neville. “Please.”
The elf took a ragged breath and replaced the knife in its sheath. Drensila simply stood there, unmoved. It seemed to Nev as though she didn’t much care whether she lived or died.
“Take her to a cell,” he instructed the two guards, who did as instructed. He turned to Emerdor. “Just let us sleep on this and think this over,” he told him. “That’s all we ask.”
GALANTHRE RACED TO the brink of the crevasse to confront her worst fear. Moments ago Eathon had been sent over its edge, propelled into the fissure by the flick of a giant’s finger. She daren’t look down. Daren’t peer over its edge less she be presented with the indelible image of her brother dashed across the rocks below. Then—
—“Can I get some help, please?”
It was Eathon, hanging from the wall of the crevasse by a tree root, clinging on for dear life.
> Tears in her eyes, Galanthre shot down a hand and hauled him out of the hole. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“I’ve had worse,” he replied, propping his back up against a nearby boulder.
“You mean when you were poisoned by Drensila? Or when you fell into those rapids?
“Actually, I was thinking more of the time a giant scorpion cut off my legs.”
Galanthre laughed at Eathon’s gallows humour and marvelled at his ability to duck the reaper’s blade. He was a survivor, that was for certain.
“We’d best get goin’” said, Tidbit, whose little legs had finally carried him over. “If we’re goan t’ get ta t' citadel afowa that monsta, we'll wanna get a wriggle on.”
“And how are we meant to do that?” Nat asked. She sat in the dirt, hunched and despondent. “Face it, we’re done. We’ll never beat Clive now.”
“Nat—” Eathon started.
“Give it up. All of you. It’s too late. He’s going to march over to the citadel and he’s going to smash up the place and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even if we had some magical way to double back and beat him there, it’s done. A lost cause. We can’t fight a thing like that.”
She kicked a loose rock and sent it spinning into the crevasse. The others listened in silence as it bounced down the cliff wall, until finally the noise of it vanished like the last of Nat’s hope.
Which was just about the point a giant, red dragon swooped from the sky and set down beside them, kicking up a great, choking cloud of dust. Nat leapt to her feet and went for her weapon, but stilled her hand when the knight sat upon the creature’s back flipped up his visor.
Inside of the armour was Terry.
“Player Two has entered the game,” he announced.
Nat lost it. “I told you there’d be dragons!” she squealed.
Cleaver would have clapped if he could. “Mate, as entrances go, that was pretty mint.”
Nat couldn’t have agreed more. The guy was dressed like Sir Lancelot and riding a freaking dragon! This was some Chris Hemsworth level man candy.
Trolled: The Complete Saga (The Trolled Saga) Page 37
