My guide gave me a glower. “Angry. Hungry.” Then he stepped into a spot where the tangle of branches overhead was thin and winced at the wan light leaking down from the sky.
That’s how trolls are. It’s a myth that sunlight turns them to stone, but they’re sensitive to it. Had my companion not been charged with keeping watch on the trail, he might well have opted to sleep by day and roam around at night.
Certainly, that was the case with the majority of his fellows. They lay snoring in heaps of leaves and pine needles in a particularly shady portion of the forest floor.
Despite the crudity of the sleeping arrangements, the place had the air of a home and not just a camp where nomads had stopped for a day. The trolls had taken the trouble to wedge racks of antlers and skulls, some of them human, in the crotches of trees and to scratch crude drawings on the trunks.
That was all I had time to take in before one of the wakeful trolls noticed me. He roared a warning, whereupon his fellows roused and, glaring and slavering, came shambling to surround me.
I didn’t realize when one reached to grab me from behind. Fortunately, my guide noticed. He snarled, slashed with his claws, and sent my would-be assailant reeling backward with a gashed face.
It was more assistance than I had any right to expect. But I’d entered the trolls’ home at the side of my reluctant escort, and maybe that meant an attempt to harm me implied disrespect for him.
The balked troll swiped at his flowing blood and gathered himself to lunge. Fearing that a general brawl was imminent, I shouted, “I speak for the lords of Balathex, and I can tell you what’s become of Ojojum!”
Some part of that was surprising or intriguing enough to make the creatures around me falter. Then another troll, one who hadn’t rushed to encircle me with the others, prowled out of the gloom.
Upon observing him, I decided I’d been wrong about one thing. I would have recognized Skav Hearteater on sight. He was even bigger than the others and had dried blood and yellow earth streaked on his face and chest.
I couldn’t tell if he also had an incubus riding him. I hoped Elkinda’s witchcraft would answer that question in due course.
“What do you know about my mate?” Skav demanded.
“One thing at a time,” I said. “Do you understand that I speak for Balathex?”
He flicked his hand in an impatient gesture I chose to interpret as yes.
“So do you promise to receive me hospitably and allow me to depart in peace,” I persisted, “as the rulers of men deal with one another’s envoys?”
“Tell me where Ojojum is!” he bellowed, “or my people will tear you to bits!” The trolls surrounding me poised their hands to rip and snatch.
“Kill me,” I said, “and you won’t find out about your mate. More, if I don’t come home in one piece, Balathex will avenge the affront to its sovereignty by sending an army to scour the forest clean of trolls, as many of my folk believe we should have long ago.”
Skav glared at me. I stared back while trying to look like a dauntless idiot who’d enjoy nothing more than dying hideously for the sake of the Whispering City.
Finally the Hearteater said, “I promise not to hurt you. Why not? What does a little turd like you matter either way?”
“Thank you for your courtesy,” I replied. “May I approach?”
“Come,” he said, and, looking disgruntled that I might not be supper after all, the other trolls opened the way for me. I walked forward until I was near enough to converse comfortably, which in this circumstance wasn’t comfortable at all.
Without taking my eyes off Skav, I bowed. “My lord—”
“Ojojum!” he snapped. “Where?”
“Balathex,” I replied.
“You captured her.” His clawed fingers flexed, and growls and muttering sounded from the trolls behind me.
“No,” I said. “She came to the city of her own free will seeking sanctuary, and the August Assembly gave it to her.”
He hesitated. Then: “You’re lying!”
I certainly was. Had his mate presented herself at a city gate, the guard would have attacked her on sight. But I hoped ignorance of human society would prevent Skav from realizing how preposterous my claims actually were.
“Admittedly,” I said, “it’s a novel situation. But your mate’s petition came to the attention of the Hand Maids of Rendeth. The welfare of mothers and children is their particular concern, and they pleaded on Ojojum’s behalf.”
“For a troll! And the leaders heeded them?”
“Yes. They respect the temples, and honestly, I think the very strangeness of it all intrigued them.” Trying to look casual about it, I drew a handkerchief from my sleeve, ostensibly to wipe sweat from my face. In reality, Mother Elkinda had soaked the cloth in something she’d brewed in an iron pot, and I needed to get the fumes into my eyes.
When I did, my eyes burned, and tears dissolved the world into blur. I daresay blindness is never desirable, but I can attest that unexpectedly losing your sight in the midst of a mob of man-eating brutes is particularly disconcerting.
Fortunately, none of the trolls availed itself of the opportunity to attack me before the stinging faded and I blinked and wiped the tears away. Instead, Skav asked me, “What ails you?”
“Pardon me,” I said. Meanwhile, inside my head, I was cursing Elkinda for not warning me. “Apparently something’s blooming hereabouts…”
Suddenly, midway through my excuse, Skav’s face changed. A second set of features shined through it like firelight glowing through a paper lantern, and remarkably, the one underneath was even more disturbing. With his crooked fangs and piggy crimson eyes, the troll chieftain was ugly and intimidating but not unnatural. In contrast, the long, narrow visage of the incubus twitched, oozed, and flickered from moment to moment in a way that was both wrong in some fundamental manner and sickening to behold.
But I couldn’t let the demon know I beheld it. I held myself steady and finished my thought: “…that disagrees with me.”
“I’ll disagree with you,” said Skav, jumping back to the actual point of the conversation, “unless you prove you’re telling the truth.”
“Just think about it,” I replied. “If Ojojum didn’t come to Balathex, how do I even know her name, let alone that she’s gone missing?”
Apparently he couldn’t think of an alternative explanation. For after another pause, he snarled, “Send her back! Or I’ll kill every human in the forest!”
Now that I had the information I’d come for, I would have liked nothing better than to assure him Balathex would bow to his wishes and make a speedy departure. But alas, the emissary I was pretending to be wouldn’t behave that way.
“We’ve been over this,” I said. “If you trolls make pests of yourselves, the August Assembly will do whatever is required to exterminate you. But it needn’t come to that. Ojojum wants to return home.”
Skav grunted. “What’s stopping her, then?”
“You are. She says you’ve been beating her for no reason, and she’s afraid she’ll miscarry.”
He hesitated. Then: “There are reasons. But maybe I’ve been too strict. I don’t want to hurt the child.” Behind its mask of flesh, the incubus grinned.
“Good,” I said. “But it won’t be quite that easy. When Ojojum returns, six Hand Maids will accompany her. They’ll ask you to swear on a lock of Rendeth’s hair that the abuse will stop.”
The incubus’s leer stretched until it split his seething face in two. “If that’s what it takes.”
After negotiating the details of the fictitious rendezvous, I took my leave and, once I was a little way down the trail, quickened my pace. Shortly after that, I had to stop and puke. The devil’s face had been that upsetting.
WHEN I TOLD Mother Elkinda about the palaver, she said, “You didn’t tell me you were going to talk to them. It’s a wonder you’re still alive.”
I shrugged. “I made Skav believe he had to let me go to seize a bi
gger prize, namely, Ojojum at his mercy once more, six nuns to eat, and a sacred relic to defile. What I don’t understand is why he and the tribe aren’t rampaging through the woods killing people already.”
The witch shifted on the only chair in her hut. “Maybe the incubus wants to get used to being Skav first,” she said. “Or spend more time enjoying it. The spirit may believe that once the slaughter starts, an army truly will come running to wipe out the trolls, its host included.”
“Too bad that isn’t so.”
When the residents of Balathex thought about the forest dwellers at all, it was as poachers, runaway indentured servants, and mad hermits whose welfare was of trifling importance. In time, I supposed, the August Assembly might send sufficient troops to put an end to the trolls, but by then, whole settlements would lie dead.
“No use crying about it.” Throwing her head back, Elkinda emptied her jack of the bitter beer they brewed there in her village, then used her walking stick to heave herself to her feet. “I’ll just have to clean up my own mess.” She started hobbling around gathering the ingredients for a spell, a clump of moss from this shelf, a piece of stag horn carved with a rune from the table in the corner.
I stood up from the earthen floor so I could stay out of her way. My head jostled a dried lizard hanging beneath the thatched roof.
When Elkinda had collected everything she needed, she carried it outside to the crackling yellow fire she’d built, and I followed. She gazed up at the moon and stars, or what we could see of them through crisscrossing branches and wisps of cloud, then motioned for me to stand in a particular spot.
I couldn’t tell what made that bit of ground special. She hadn’t scratched a circle of protection in the dirt or anything like that. But I obeyed without asking the reason why. Once mages set to work, it’s dangerous to distract them.
With me positioned to her satisfaction, the wise woman started chanting words in a language I didn’t recognize. Periodically, she tossed one of the items she’d collected into the flames until they were all gone. Afterward, the incantation droned on.
Then, in an instant, the fire turned from gold to scarlet and shot up high over Elkinda’s head. At the top, the pillar of flame spread into a fan shape in a way that reminded me of a hand poised to swat a fly.
Elkinda gasped and jerked backward. She recognized the threat as quickly as I did, but that didn’t mean she was spry enough to avoid it.
I lunged, threw my arms around her, and drove onward until balance deserted me and we fell. Behind us, fire hurtled earthward with a hiss like a cataract. A wave of heat washed over me.
But when I checked, neither Elkinda nor I were burning, nor had the plunging blaze left a sheet of flame licking at our feet. Some tufts of grass were charring and smoking, but mostly, the fire was gone. In the pit where the witch had lit it with a word of command, only coals remained.
I stood up, offered my hand, and hauled her to her feet. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Did I hurt you? I didn’t want to knock you down—”
“I’m fine!” she spat. “But don’t you understand what just happened? I can’t cast out the incubus! It’s protected. Too much darkness stuck to it when I pulled it up from the places underneath.”
“Maybe if you try again?”
“I will. I owe everyone that, no matter what the danger. But it won’t work.”
“Then don’t be foolish. Think of a different tactic.”
She shook her head. “There’s only one. I’d need to attack the incubus close up, with Skav in front of my eyes. That might tip the balance in my favor. But how could I do it without the trolls spotting me?”
How indeed?
Curse it, it wasn’t fair. I’d called on the trolls once and lived to tell about it. That should have been sufficient.
But there isn’t much in life that counts for less than fair and should. I took a breath and said, “Well, plainly, you can’t creep up on them, not tottering along with a cane. We’ll need to hide you where the creatures will come to you. And then I’ll need to distract them.”
MY SECOND MEETING with the trolls was set for dusk. Plainly, that was stupid. Even if a man survived the parley itself, he’d start the night in the deep forest for the man-eaters to stalk as the temptation seized them. But when Skav and I negotiated the details of the rendezvous, I hadn’t imagined I’d actually be keeping it.
As Ojojum and I advanced up the trail, I resisted the urge to look for other trolls. It didn’t matter if they were already shadowing us. The important question was, had the creatures stumbled across Mother Elkinda in the thicket where I’d hidden her that morning?
Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing, and perhaps Ojojum realized as much, for she, with her tangled steel-gray tresses and unborn child swelling her belly, looked as nervous as I felt. After a while, I noticed she was shivering.
It sounds asinine to say I felt sympathy for a troll, but perhaps it was because we were comrades in a dangerous venture. I touched her on the forearm, above the spot where some animal’s teeth or horns had scarred her, and said, “It’s going to be all right.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t tell Mother Elkinda everything Skav did to me. Beatings weren’t the worst of it.”
“It wasn’t truly him,” I said. “That’s why we’re here, to bring the real Skav back.”
“I know.” She spat in the dirt as a soldier will try to spit away fear. I shifted my hold on the chest tucked under my arm, and we headed onward.
I’d carried the box around through years of campaigning, and though I’d done my best to clean it up, it still looked like the scratched, utilitarian article it was. But I hoped that to troll eyes, it would pass for a reliquary.
After another bend, the trail widened out to make a clearing. Concealed by brush, a stream gurgled nearby.
Skav was waiting with much of his tribe but not, I was relieved to see, with a killed or captured Elkinda. Upon sighting Ojojum and me, he asked, “Where are the Hand Maids of Rendeth?”
“I apologize,” I said. “When the time to set forth arrived, it turned out that even holy sisters are susceptible to human frailty. By which I mean, they were afraid to meet trolls. But surely that doesn’t matter. You see Ojojum is with me. I also brought the relic.” I held out the chest.
Meanwhile, I prayed my nattering had fixed everyone’s attention on me. That Elkinda had lit her fire—she’d said she could manage with a small one, but the exorcism required at least a bit of flame—and started whispering her incantation without anyone noticing.
Skav glowered as though pondering whether there might be some way of forcing me to produce the absent nuns. Finally his red eyes shifted to Ojojum. “Have you truly come back to me?” he asked.
She hesitated, and the thought came to me that our deception was about to fail because she was too afraid to lie convincingly. But then she said, “You hurt me and shamed me, but a child needs a father. I’ll come back if you take the oath.”
“Good.” The Hearteater looked back to me. “Open the box.”
“As you wish.” I set the chest on the ground slowly, feigning reverence. Then I slipped the iron key into the lock and tried to twist it.
It wouldn’t turn. Since I’d previously broken the lock with the point of a dagger, that didn’t surprise me.
But I did my best to feign surprise. As I jiggled and shifted the key, I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t try this before I left the temple. The Hand Maids didn’t warn me the lock sticks.”
Skav endured my clicking the key back and forth for a bit longer. Then a clawed hand gripped my shoulder and flung me backward. The troll chieftain dropped to one knee beside the chest and started trying to turn the key himself.
Why, you may wonder, did he bother? He surely intended to end this farce by giving Ojojum the most vicious thrashing yet and telling his fellow trolls to tear me apart. Why not get on with it, then?
I can o
nly speculate, but maybe the incubus simply wasn’t very clever. With the right bit of mummery, you could fix its attention on something insignificant.
Or maybe it enjoyed toying with its victims and so didn’t care to reveal its true intentions just yet. It wanted Ojojum and me to enjoy false hope a while longer.
While Skav fiddled with the key, I silently implored Elkinda to hurry and fought the urge to glance in her direction. I wanted to know if there were at least wisps of smoke rising from the thicket, but I couldn’t risk some troll looking where I was and spotting them, too.
Skav eventually snarled, sprang to his feet, and grabbed the chest. His claws digging into the wood, making it snap and groan, he swung it over his head.
“Please, don’t!” I cried. “The chest is sacred in its own right!”
Ignoring me, he dashed the box to the ground. It smashed apart to reveal the emptiness inside.
The Hearteater rounded on me. “What does this mean?” he growled.
It meant I needed to improvise a new stalling tactic.
“It’s a miracle,” I said. “Rendeth whisked the lock of hair out of the chest and back to the temple.”
Ridiculous as that assertion sounded, it gave Skav pause. His true plans for the relic had surely been impious to say the least, and perhaps in his mind, that bad intent lent my claim a trace of plausibility.
As before, his hesitation didn’t last long. Then he said, “The hair was never in there.”
“It was,” I insisted. “I saw it myself before the Hand Maids closed the chest. And I know what this means.” I turned to Ojojum. “You said you had to return to Skav for the baby’s sake and so we could never be together. But the Bright Angel has given us a sign that our love is meant to be.”
The trolls gaped at me. The notion of romance between one of their kind and a human was as bizarre to them as it is to you and me.
But grotesquerie was helpful. Anything to keep Skav off balance.
Ojojum was as surprised as everyone else and needed a moment to reply. When she did, though, she followed my lead: “Yes. You’re kind, and Skav’s cruel. You’re clever, and he’s stupid. You’ll make a better mate and a better father.”
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