by Layton Green
“They’re on ridgebacks. Larger and faster than normal horses. They won’t last as long as ours, but they don’t have to.”
“So what’s your plan?” Caleb said as he caught up to the Brewer, both men’s knees clamped against the sides of their mounts.
“Plan?” When he glanced over, Caleb saw a look of wild surging in his friend’s eyes. “Ride until they catch us, and pray for a miracle along the way.”
Watching the mountain trolls gain on them was one of the most terrifying experiences of Caleb’s life. Every time he looked back, it seemed the creatures had closed another hundred yards, until they drew close enough for him to get a good look at them. What he saw caused his stomach to lurch in fear, and he gripped Marguerite’s wedding ring that hung on a leather thong about his neck.
Taller and much leaner than their hill troll cousins that Caleb had encountered before, the two mountain trolls wore tattered loincloths with bear pelts draped across skeletal shoulders. Guards of spiked bone protected their shins and forearms. Hairless, their exposed gray skin had the rough texture of bark stretched over sheaths of sinewy muscle. When they rose in the saddles of their enormous steeds, hefting roughhewn spears as they approached, Caleb knew that if he had not been so devastated by the deaths of Marguerite and Luca, he might have fainted from fright. “Can you sing?” he shouted.
“Sure,” the Brewer said. He held his broadsword in one hand, the reins in another. “But it won’t stop those two. Why don’t you try praying?”
“What?”
“You opened the Coffer, right? Ask for some lightning.”
Caleb looked over and saw that the Brewer was serious. Despite the thunder of hoof beats pounding twenty yards behind them, Caleb laughed, loud and harsh. “I tried that when Marguerite died. Nobody brought her back.”
“Maybe try asking for something more modest? Like snapping those whalebone spears in half?”
“God is a fairy tale,” Caleb said with a snarl, reining in his horse and wheeling around to confront their pursuers.
“And mountain trolls aren’t?” the Brewer muttered.
One of the trolls flew past Caleb, bearing down on the older man. The other monster stopped near Caleb and stood to his full height in the stirrups, at least eight feet tall. With catlike agility, one of its spindly arms thrust his spear straight at Caleb’s chest.
But Caleb was quicker. A flick of his left wrist brought his vambrace into play, turning aside the troll’s spear. His ensorcelled bracers only shattered metal, but they were an effective shield against other materials. The troll thrust again and again, thwarted each time by the vambraces. Caleb was an ace tennis player in his youth, and possessed excellent reflexes. He had no way to hurt the troll, but he began to cackle, maddened by fear and adrenaline.
Bruce cried out behind him. Caleb couldn’t turn to see what had happened. The troll attacking him snarled with frustration, but then its eyes took on a triumphant gleam. It stabbed downward, too low for Caleb to block.
Right into the chest of his mare.
The animal cried out and stumbled. Caleb rolled off before she went down, but the mountain troll had already vaulted off his steed, scarily fast, and grabbed Caleb by the throat with a knobby hand. Caleb roared, trying to free himself, but the monster lifted him straight into the air and started squeezing his neck. Caleb flailed in midair, trying to pry its fingers off him, but the mountain troll’s grip seemed made of iron.
Caleb fought for a moment more, and then he saw black.
When Caleb woke, the back of his throat felt like someone had rubbed sandpaper against it all night. He opened his eyes at the same time he smelled the stink of the mountain trolls: decaying bodies in a nursing home, wrapped in moldy coats of fur. Mingling with their stench was the smell of greasy animal fat cooking over a fire.
Caleb was lying on his side at the back of a shallow cave, bound hand and foot with heavy rope that cut into his skin. Beside him, the Brewer lay unmoving with a dark, matted stain on his head. After watching him for a moment, Caleb saw the rise and fall of his chest.
Twenty feet away, at the mouth of the cave, the trolls gnawed on a pile of stringy roots as they conversed near the fire. Four squirrels roasted on sharpened stakes were arranged in a tee-pee above the flame pit.
Fireflies danced in the woods outside, a parody of freedom. Caleb still vividly remembered the night the tuskers had captured him and Will and Yasmina. The terror had gripped him for weeks, paralyzing him. He felt a surge of familiar panic well up deep inside, but this time something else lived beside it, something dark and fierce. A new and unfamiliar presence coiled in his essence, something with its mouth open in a soundless scream, burning for blood and justice.
For his entire life, Caleb had abhorred the thought of harming another living creature. When he had stabbed Zedock to save Will and Yasmina, he sensed the barrier start to waver, though he had tried not to think too hard about that. Living on Urfe had slowly carried him down the path of violence, like a cult member starting to believe, and Marguerite’s death had tipped him over the edge. All he wanted to do was free himself, kill these two filthy monsters licking their chops by the fire, and watch Lord Alistair draw his final arrogant breath.
Caleb’s passions had always ruled him, and he supposed they still did.
Because now he had a passion for revenge.
The trolls were laughing cruelly as they took long drinks from a cloth-wrapped gourd. He wriggled to free himself, careful not to alert the creatures, but nothing he did seemed to work the ropes loose. Inch by inch, he wormed his body into a position where he could see the Brewer’s face. As soon as the older man’s eyes fluttered open, he drew his attention with a hiss.
“Bruce,” he whispered. “Keep quiet but look around.”
The older man blinked and stifled a groan. His eyes flew to the front of the cave, quickly grasping the situation. “Yeah?” he whispered back.
“Can you get us out of here?”
“I’m fine,” he muttered. “Thanks for asking.”
“We don’t have time for that. I don’t want to be dessert.”
“I’m not too keen on it, either.”
“I was captured once,” Caleb said. “I’m not going through it again. I’ll kill myself if I have to. Knock my head against a rock.”
“Geez, kid, calm down. From what I know of mountain troll lore, we have at least a day before they carry us home and eat us.” The Brewer struggled with his bonds, and the combination of sweat and blood running down his forehead caused him to squeeze his eyes shut from the sting. “We’re not getting out of this rope.”
“I know. Can you sing us out of here?”
The Brewer was quiet for a moment. “I can try something, but it’s risky. If it backfires, they might kill us on the spot.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t sing us out of here, but I can tell a story.”
“A story? What do you mean?”
The Brewer gritted his teeth in pain. “Just listen. No matter what, don’t interrupt. Got that?”
Caleb wanted to inquire further, but a glint in the Brewer’s eye made him decide to trust him. He didn’t see another option, so he nodded in acknowledgment.
“If it doesn’t work, and they guess what I’m doing . . . well, it’s been real, kid.”
Caleb let his gaze bore into the older man’s eyes, trying to pour all of his innate movie star charm into his next words. He had never really used his charisma before in that way. “Stop thinking about failure. Whatever it is you’re doing, make it work.”
The Brewer swallowed, gave the smallest of nods, and let his eyes go distant. Just as Caleb wondered if he had lost his nerve, the older man called out to the trolls. “We’re a little hungry over here.”
The creatures whipped their long necks around, stretched and leathery faces gleaming by the light of the fire. Most frightening of all was the cunning intelligence shining in their feral gray eyes.
The tro
ll on the left was missing the top half of one ear. He looked at the other and said, in a voice like chewing nails, “I think it speaks to us.”
The other troll turned to speak to the Brewer. “What say you, little man?”
“I said we’re hungry.”
The sound of their laughter, jagged and intelligent, made Caleb’s skin crawl.
“So are we, yes? Such is why we took you.”
“You don’t want us too thin before you throw us in the pot, do you?”
The troll walked over to him and stroked his chin with a long, crooked finger tipped with nails sharpened into claws. “Not to worry, morsel. A short journey up the mountain will not strip the flesh from your bones.”
The Brewer’s voice turned pleading. “A final meal before we die is our custom. Please, consider this last our request.”
After another harsh laugh, the troll drew a line of blood on the Brewer’s cheek with its sharpened nail.
“How about I make you a deal,” the Brewer continued. “I’ll tell you a story, the best story you’ve ever heard. If you think it’s worthy of a meal, even just a few bites from your squirrel, that’s all I’ll ask in return. And if not, well, what have you lost?”
“You seek to bargain in your position? A bold little man you are!”
The other troll stuck a long, hardened arm into the fire and stoked the flames with its fingers. It blew the ashes off its hand and raised its gourd. “Tell us your story, grub. The night is young.” It bared his yellow teeth with a slow and sinister smile. “If it’s not the best story we’ve ever heard, the very best indeed, then we eat one of you while the moon still glows.”
The Brewer hung his head and started to protest. “How about we-”
“Silence!” the troll by the fire thundered. Caleb lay very still on the ground, not daring to lift his eyes.
“You wanted a bargain, yes?” The troll rose to walk over to them. Caleb could see the gnarled bunions on his feet and a thick scar that ran the length of his left calf. “Now you have one. Speak. Entertain. We shall see if your words gain you another sunrise.”
After the troll backed away, Caleb risked lifting his head and saw that it had rejoined its companion by the fire. They turned the squirrels and drank lustily from the gourds as the Brewer began to speak of a prince in a faraway kingdom, a land of science and enlightenment with machines that produced everything imaginable. Giant mechanical birds carried hundreds of passengers through the sky, food was made in factories, and homes were heated and cooled by metal boxes that harnessed the power of lightning. This particular kingdom, the Brewer said as the trolls grappled with the concept of science, was a mountainous country like the homeland of the trolls, one known for its crystalline lakes and bountiful game. Its people wanted for nothing. Yet for all of its advantages, the young prince of this kingdom was very wicked. So wicked that even the mountain troll chieftains who dwelled deep in the hollows of the Dragon’s Teeth would look in awe upon his cruel nature. So wicked that the prince, who would one day go to war and use his machines to slaughter millions of people in unimaginably horrific ways, would one day be known as the most wicked person who ever lived, his very name synonymous with evil. Perhaps expecting something different, the trolls looked pleased at the turn the story had taken, and asked for it to continue.
The Brewer droned on and on, continuing to speak in detail of this strange and fascinating land, of its descent into war and chaos, of how the young prince stuffed his citizens into ovens and tortured them to death in prison camps. The trolls grew more and more riveted, forgetting about their dinner and listening to the story with rapturous eyes. The Brewer spoke so long that his voice grew hoarse, and one of the trolls, moving as if in a trance, brought him a gourd to drink. The story continued until the moon rose to its peak and fell again, and the stars began to merge with the sky. As the charred corpses of the squirrels fell in ashy chunks to the floor of the cave, the trolls grew heavy-lidded and fought to stay awake, not wanting to miss a single word. Still the Brewer carried on with his tale of secret meetings between nations and ever more death and destruction, ending with a weapon that could incinerate an entire city in the blink of an eye. Caleb grew as weary as the trolls, and he fell asleep to the sound of the Brewer’s hypnotic voice, whispering his tale of horror into the night, too hoarse to speak any louder.
Caleb felt a hand shaking him roughly by the shoulder. At first he thought it was a dream, and then he heard the whisper of his friend in his ear, still scratchy from the long story.
“Wake up, kid!”
Caleb blinked and found himself staring into the morning gloom of a steeply wooded slope. “Where are we?”
The Brewer was gripping the reins of their remaining horse, glancing over his shoulder with a worried expression. “I carried you a hundred yards from the cave. Hurry, now!”
“A hundred yards—what about the trolls?”
“They’re still sleeping, and I set the ridgebacks free. The nasty beasts tried to bite me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came back to warn them.”
After climbing onto the back of the horse, Caleb held on for dear life as they pressed down the hillside, trusting the horse’s instincts to guide them safely to the bottom.
“Thanks,” Caleb said.
“Don’t mention it.”
“How does it work? That was like . . . magic.”
“Dunno, kid. I guess I’ve got the gift of gab. I know that back home, studies were done about how music rewires the brain. Quantum physics and all, I got bored with the details. And story is story, right? Whether spoken or sung. Back home, a powerful storyteller can impart empathy and change your worldview, make a real difference in your life. Over here, well, let’s just say the effect is a little more direct.”
They rode the horse as hard as they could with two people, desperate to create distance. When Caleb asked whether the Brewer thought the trolls would pursue them, he shrugged and said it could depend on how far they were from home, what their orders might be, and how bad they wanted to catch them. None of that made Caleb feel comfortable. They rode through the night along the shore, stopping only to rest the mare.
Early the next morning, they reached a prosperous fishing village and bought another horse, a powerful young stallion the color and temperament of a leaden sky, gray and foreboding. It fit Caleb’s mental state. The spirited horse had a white streak along its back, and he named her Margo.
A sign beside the door of the village tavern advertised mouthwatering local prawns. Caleb insisted on pressing forward. They warned the villagers about the trolls, refilled their water, and bought lobster bread rolls for the day’s ride, then continued south along the coast.
Not until two more days of hard riding passed with no sign of the trolls did they start to relax. No other bandits or large predators approached them. They camped each night without a fire, and the constant presence of the ocean lent a false sense of security. Like a child pulling the covers over his head at night, Caleb could hide inside the rhythmic pounding of those vast blue waves until the danger and memories faded.
As the dusk chill set in on the fifth night out of Freetown, purple light creasing the sky like crushed velvet, the Brewer stopped at the edge of a cliff overlooking a five-fingered promontory jutting into the ocean.
Caleb pulled alongside him, joining him in silent contemplation. In the palm of the promontory, just off the rocky shoreline, sat a cylindrical white tower a hundred or so feet tall. It had long since lost its gleam, and a columned façade twisted around the tower in a spiral pattern that must have been an optical illusion, because as Caleb gazed upon it, he couldn’t seem to figure out where it began or ended.
“There she is,” the Brewer said quietly.
Caleb didn’t need to ask whether this was the legendary Tower of Elarion. Whatever the name of this strange anomaly in the forgotten reaches of the Barrier Coast, sitting proud and alone on the shore, a lighthouse without a light, he already knew this was his desti
nation.
He knew it because, right down to the moody sky and heaps of kelp strewn along the beach, the crash of the waves and the cry of the seagulls flitting above the rocks, this was the exact same tower he had seen in his vision.
-10-
Tiny rented out rooms above his tavern. Three were unoccupied, so he put Will and the others up for the night. Judging by the layout of the rooms and the authentic feel of the construction, all of which looked carved from soot-stained quartz, Will guessed the second floor of the inn had been repurposed from an original dwelling.
The house of a Nephili family, perhaps?
Somehow the thought seemed mundane, as if the builders of the ancient city could only have lived in palaces or soaring obelisks.
Yasmina took a room to herself, and Will wondered what was going through her mind. She had transitioned so quickly from grad student to enigmatic wilder, from studying at the library to wielding the power and responsibility of a steward of the Realm. The emotional impact must be tough—which he knew all too well.
The friendly conversation with Tiny had caused Will to lower his guard, but as he stared out the window at the shroud of darkness settling over the city, soaking into the tips of the spires and spreading down the tops of the ruined arches like an oil stain, as he listened to the streets come alive with raucous laughter and the occasional scream of terror, he drew his sword and decided to post a guard in the hallway. He took first watch, twitching at every scrape of furniture or creak of a door, hoping the pitter-patter of tiny feet in the walls belonged to rodents and not malicious imps waiting for Will and the others to fall asleep.
Sometime after midnight, he woke Mateo to take his place. Bleary-eyed, his cousin squeezed his arm, sat cross-legged in the hallway, and laid his urumi sword across his lap. As skittish as Will was about their first night in Praha, he had barely slept in days.
Dreaming came easy.
The night passed without incident. After preparing a breakfast of eggs, sausage, and spicy duck hash, Tiny wished them luck and pointed them to a general store where they could buy a map.