by Dave Dickie
Beldaer looked thoughtful. “It is hard to believe the great trolls still exist. They have not been seen for four and a half centuries, have not been heard from in all that time. If they are still alive, I could, perhaps, negotiate with them. They were -- or are -- very intelligent. If I explained we had been transported here because of a series of unfortunate events, they might be willing to help.”
“No challenge to single combat?” said Gyeong, speaking up for the first time and sounding disappointed.
Stegar slapped him on the back. “Next time, Gyeong. I’m not sure a great troll would be as easy as a regular troll anyway.” Then Stegar stopped, realizing he had just called combat with four hundred pounds of complete mean “easy.” Stegar had a different thought and frowned. “But humans and the trolls were at war back then, a real war. The Paths of Blood, and we…” Stegar stopped suddenly, realizing that he shouldn’t reveal that humans had, apparently, done something to the world gate here that prevented the creation of great trolls. “We came from a military outpost where humans killed everyone. I don’t know whether they would hold a grudge over the centuries, but I would not bet against it.”
Beldaer shrugged. “If this is a great troll, or a group of them, they will be powerful. Negotiation may be the only option. I do not believe we could subdue even one great troll.”
Daesal nodded. “And they must realize that the war ended over four hundred years ago.” But she was thinking about the world gate as well. Some wounds did not heal with time.
Beldaer said, “Let me talk with him, or them, alone. Elves and trolls have never been at war. I will find out whether there is still animosity toward humans. If there is, perhaps I can get information on a way out of the city and Kom and pass it on to you. If there is not, I will call you forward.”
“I want to be there,” said Daesal. "Great trolls are the stuff of legends. I want to see them with my own eyes.”
“I do not see how we can do that without revealing that there are humans present,” responded Baelder.
“Your belt. The gems are charged items. One of them is an invisibility spell, is it not?”
Baelder suddenly looked cautious. “It is. It was one of the few spells I did not trigger, since the wolves were hunting by scent. Yes, I can do that. Uma lle quena lollenbriatha, amin arwen?” he finished, switching in the middle of his speech to elvish.
“I recognize your language, and assume you are asking if I speak it?” responded Daesal. Beldaer nodded. “I do not speak it. I can read a few words, but even there I do not have much skill.”
“I ask only because I do not speak great troll, and I do not know what language they in turn will speak. In the old days, they spoke elvish fluently.”
Daesal thought that did not ring true. From what she had read, the great trolls were masters of linguistics, and spoke all known languages at the time fluently. But she nodded her understanding and said, “We will find out soon enough.”
They did not wait for the morning, unsure when the great troll, or trolls, would be making their appearance, but instead packed up what they had and headed back to the temple. “We will find another building to stay in, one closer to the temple,” Daesal explained. “We do not know the time of day or night at which our visitor will arrive.” Stegar, having done the trip up and down the steep road once already, felt the second trip in his bones, in his still-healing wounds. He focused on the pain, accepted the pain, welcomed the pain. Duty called, and the pain gave him something to wrestle with, something to fight against. Something to keep his mind occupied.
Beldaer climbed without comment or complaint, a slight limp the only sign that he had been at death’s door just a few days earlier.
When they reached the top, Grim, Nyjha, and Gyeong fanned out to check the buildings around the temple. Grim returned shortly. He pointed to a long, low, square building, sandstone-colored rock with large inset windows. Two of the windows were shattered. “Rooms with beds. I think it was a dormitory; it’s simply furnished. There is a common room with a fireplace, although we will probably have to burn furniture. The wood we gathered from outside the city will be difficult to transport up to this place.”
“No fire,” responded Daesal. “We do not want to draw attention to ourselves. If Beldaer determines that the trolls still harbor ill will towards us we will need to stay hidden until they leave.”
Grim nodded. “A cold dinner it is, then.”
They settled in. A room that faced the temple became the watch room, and they used rooms on the far side for sleeping. Nyjha took advantage of a time when Beldaer was in a different room to pull Daesal aside and warn her again that the elf was not to be trusted.
Daesal frowned. “Nyjha, I understand, and I can see he is not telling us all he knows. But he did try to save our lives at the expense of his own. And this is the most sensible plan we have come up with. I will be cautious, I promise you.”
They had to find a way to watch the temple, being unsure of how the troll arrived or left. The room containing the world gate had windows, but they were set forty feet up the walls, and there was no simple way to station someone that high outside the building. The anteroom had some lower windows, and outside the door sat the remains of a decorative hedge around the building. One surviving bush was not too far from a window. “We could use that as a blind, but it will only allow us to see the guard room,” said Nyjha, pointing at the bush. Daesal agreed. It was the best they could do.
They scavenged leaves and branches from the other bushes and built a blind as Nyjha had suggested. One person stayed in it and peered in the window from time to time. Once an hour, they would enter the anteroom and open the door to the inner temple. The other stayed in the dormitory watch room and waited for a signal from the person in the blind, and made sure that they returned from the inner temple check.
Two days passed. With little to do, people turned to stories to entertain each other. Gyeong spoke of Kanday and the Sa Kajok. “Stangri have family, clan, kingdom, in that order,” he said. “But the Sa Kajok is outside all that. A man choosing between Sa Kajok and family, that would be a difficult decision. Anything else, the Sa Kajok wins.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Grim. “What is the Sa Kajok that it demands such loyalty?”
“They are bands of warriors, a… I think your word is a society, or set of societies. Every Stangri boy, his decision of what Sa Kajok to join is the most important decision of his life. Each dreams of the time when he may take the test, to become a member and a man.”
“The test?” said Grim.
“A right of passage. It is different for each Sa Kajok. Some involve pain, some feats of strength and bravery, some arduous tasks. But to join the Sa Kajok, you must pass test. Then there is celebration and you are marked.” Gyeong held up his wrist, and Grim for the first time noticed a circular scar about the size of a coin. Then he realized it wasn’t a scar, it was a brand with a symbol that looked like a tree in the center.
Grim shuddered. “Maybe failing the test isn’t such a bad thing.”
Gyeong shrugged. “Fail test only one way, dying. Marking is better, I think.”
The room had gone quiet. Gyeong glanced around and said, “No worry, Sa Kajok is not for sawnom, for outsiders. I will teach you manners but not ask you to join Sa Kajok.”
“Good to know,” said Grim.
Even Beldaer told stories, mostly of Lennella Holden, the elvish trading port on an island off the coast of the Evael forest. “The place of silence,” he called it.
Stegar was the only one who did not join in the banter, nursing his pain, looking bored and disinterested. Daesal knew by now that wasn’t true. Whatever had happened in Stegar’s past had left him broken in some way. Only his sense of duty and some minimal interest in self-preservation kept him moving. Whatever was eating at his soul dulled everything else.
Daesal was about to suggest a game of widdershins - Grim, for some unknown reason, had a set of dice on him - when Hantlin
entered the room. “Nyjha has signaled. There is someone in the temple.”
By the time she and Beldaer were at the exit to the building, Nyjha had made it there from the blind. “I did not see them, but I heard noises from inside the temple when I went to check. I did not open the door. There was not much noise. If it is more than one, it is, at least, a small group.”
Beldaer turned to her. “Are you sure you want to accompany me? I do not know what kind of capabilities the great trolls have. They may be able to detect an invisibility spell.”
Daesal nodded. “I am sure. If they do detect me, you can claim ignorance of an invisible human follower.”
Beldaer gave a short nod, then triggered his charged item. Daesal did not feel anything, but had the uncomfortable experience of holding up her arms and seeing nothing. “Remember,” said Beldaer, “you must touch things slowly and gently or the spell will fail. And it will not hide effects of your presence. If you leave muddy tracks on the floor, they will be seen.”
Daesal nodded, and then realized nodding was pointless. “I understand. I will follow just behind you to get through the doors. Let us go.”
The elf led the way out the door, which swung open silently, and Daesal was once again struck by how the troll architecture had survived so long and yet still functioned so flawlessly. She followed the elf across the street, with paving stones so perfectly fitted it seemed a smooth, continuous surface. Beldaer went through the temple doors, pausing a heartbeat to make sure she could follow, then through the inner door.
In the distance, Daesal could see a figure, looking small because of the size of the room and the distance to the world gate, but by comparison to the panel she could tell they were at least twice her height. Even at this distance, she could see the golden armor, the commanding pose. The elf held his hands open in front of him and walked toward what could only be a great troll. As they moved, Daesal slowly took the amulet from a pocket and put it around her neck. The amulet remained invisible to her, but once it was around her neck, and she took it out of it’s dormant state, the glowing letters appeared as they had before. She breathed a sigh of relief. There had been no opportunity to see if the invisibility spell would interfere with the amulet’s effects.
Daesal felt the same strange duality in her head, but she was ready for it this time and clamped down on the crazy, giggling thing that wanted to take over her body and mind. She focused on the orange dot immediately, and when the words “How can I assist you?” appeared, ran the commands through her head without speaking the words, something she had practiced when Beldaer wasn’t around to see. “I want you to translate anything said in this room to human language.”
Beldaer continued moving toward the huge troll, Daesal following close behind.
Chapter Eighteen
The great troll was standing still, but he had something in his hand, an item that looked like a stick with two cylinders on the ends. It did not look menacing, but Daesal knew the shape of an artifact had little to do with what it did or how powerful it was. Beldaer called out loudly in elvish. Words flitted across her vision that said, “Well met. I am Beldaer of the elves, and have arrived here unintentionally. I mean no harm.”
The troll answered in the same language, and the translation appeared. “Beldaer of the elves, I am Gruggrul, and this is the Temple Of Transcendance. No one but trolls are welcome here.”
Beldaer replied, “Welcome or not, I have no choice. I am trapped here. There is no one in the city, no one outside the city. You are the first person I have found, my first chance to return home.” By this time, the troll was closer, and Daesal was surprised to see white hair, deep lines in his face, a trembling in his arms. This troll was old, very old. The golden armor was polished and smooth and, up close, Daesal was not sure it was truly there. It flickered and changed as the troll moved, as if it was made of light, without substance. But the beam that came out of the device in the troll's hand and scorched a line in the floor in front of the elf was real. Beldaer stopped advancing, leaving his arms in the air.
“Do not approach the panel,” said the troll. “You should not have touched it.”
Beldaer nodded. “I apologize, Gruggrul. I meant no harm. I was just looking for a way to return to the Evael. It is locked in any case.”
“It was locked. No longer,” answered Gruggrul.
Beldaer nodded again, more slowly. “Why was it locked? Why did you abandon Vrargron Mard Chazun? Why have you been hiding all these centuries?”
Gruggrul snorted. “Answers to those questions are why only trolls are welcome here.”
Beldaer said softly, “And perhaps I do not need to know them. But I do need to know why you have left an unattended and active world gate with no guard. Even locked, it can be dangerous. The trolls of the great war would have known this. Do you not?”
Gruggrul outright laughed this time. “Oh, little elf, do you presume to lecture me? Do not. You do not know anything. The great war? I fought in the great war. I know your race, I know you age slowly, but I think you are too young by far to remember it. You are, what, seventy, eighty years old?”
Beldaer looked confused. “That was five centuries ago. Have the trolls found a way to stop aging? Because I know your kind’s lifespan, and you do not live centuries.”
Gruggrul smiled. “We know things about the gates, little elf. Things you do not.”
Beldaer said, “Yes, and we know things about the gates you do not. And, yes, I am seventy-two years of age, but I have d’Eruanna, and it tells me that we shared knowledge back then.”
“Yes, your racial mind matrix. I know of it. And we did share, back then. But what happened here…” and the troll stopped and waved at the gate and paused for a moment.
Beldaer looked on in confusion. “What?” he asked.
Gruggrul went on, his voice becoming low and angry. “What happened here, the corruption of our gate, that was done by humans. But we do not believe they could have done it alone. Of our three races, the humans were the least advanced in knowing how to use the ancient artifacts. They did not even have a fully functioning gate available to them.”
Beldaer said, “Humans corrupted your gate? How...no, it does not matter,” he said shaking his head. “You think the humans were incapable of such a thing? Even knowing about the eleven swords? You know those were gate-made. Gate-made by humans, and despite what you did to them, to their damaged, barely-functioning world gate, trying to eradicate those… those abominations, you know what it means. They jumped ahead of both of us, found ways to do things with the gates we still don’t understand centuries later.”
Daesal’s breath had stopped in her throat. What Beldaer was talking about was written in the human history books as the twelve swords, the twelve swords that had been the beginning of the fall and interregnum. Lost in the destruction of the Lanotils island, the seat of the old empire, in an explosion so massive that it had been seen in Kethem, hundreds of miles away. She doubted Beldaer would be so open if he knew the amulet was translating his conversation into common for her, but she was not sure. He could have been telling the truth, that the great trolls were not likely to speak human language, that it was more natural for him to speak to them in elvish anyway.
“And who is to say you did not help them with that as well, elf?” said Gruggrul. “No, I will not help you. And I will not help your invisible friend, either. Did you think the antechamber and temple were not protected from such things? I cannot see them as clearly as I see you, but I know that they are standing there. And I will kill you both for what you have done to my race.” And Gruggrul lifted his hand with the artifact in it.
“Wait!” yelled Daesal in common. “There is something you need to know!”
“Human speech?” said the troll. “Not even an elf. Are you openly in league these days? It matters not. You are both dead.” Then the troll looked back at the door and frowned, because it was opening. Behind it, Stegar and Gyeong held one of the ancient troll spears, one
that Daesal and Beldaer had spent the last two days filling with mana. It was a simpler device than the amulet, a standard mana pool, but the spell on it was, from her limited sense of it, complex. In the front was Hantlin, who had opened the door when he heard the phrase Daesal had yelled, a signal that things were not going according to plan. At the back of the polearm was Grim, hand on the handle, and he said the word carved on the base of that handle, “discharge.” The word was in great troll, and Daesal had used the amulet to translate it. Grim used the human version of the word, but with artifacts, it was the intent of the word that mattered. A beam of blinding intensity exploded from the tip of the spear and hit the troll directly in the chest. His armor flickered, flickered, and vanished. There was a large hole through him and a long cloud of pink behind him, pink that slowly settled to the floor and turned into a streak of red. The troll dropped his weapon, put his hands to the gaping wound, and fell over with a thud.
Beldaer sighed. “I had hoped it would not come to that.”
Daesal checked to make sure the amulet was under her dress by touch, then used the command to make it dormant. The gibbering little knot in her brain continued to struggle for control, but she was getting familiar with its attempts to squirm and squeeze its way out from under her thumb, could keep it locked down without having to focus on it. She took Beldaer’s arm, enough contact to break the invisibility spell. “I had hoped so as well. I must admit, I was not confident if it did come down to a fight we would win. The stories of the great trolls made them sound invincible.”
“They are very powerful, but no one is invincible. And these great troll weapons,” and Beldaer waved toward the group with the pole arm, “they are as destructive as anything my people can make. The great trolls made them without regard for what would happen if the weapons were turned on them. They were arrogant.”