“That not Shmorkrarg!” said Shmorkrarg. “Shmorkrarg not raised in barn like Helheeti!”
Before the other River Troll could say yeah, right, he saw the oil around them instantly turn bright red. Startled by the blossoming color change, both River Trolls leaped out of the bath and hollered, “It’s cursed!”
Shmorkrarg and his friend then heard laughter. They squinted in the dim light provided by the cave’s gemstones, until the first River Troll pointed ahead and shouted, “Look!”
On the other side of the cave, two Garden Trolls slapped their knees, the leafy branches sprouting from their crowns shaking as they continued to laugh.
“More Garden Troll mischief!” said Shmorkrarg.
He and his friend marched over to the Garden Trolls, who wiped their eyes and deposited the moisture onto the lichens they’d been growing in this cave. The first River Troll said, “What’d you peat pushers do to our oil bath?”
“Easy, now, river rubbish,” said one of the Garden Trolls with a hint of warning.
In retaliation, the first River Troll stomped on the lichen patch. Shmorkrarg shoved the Garden Trolls and said, “You pollute Shmorkrarg’s oil bath!”
“That wasn’t us!” yelled the first Garden Troll.
“But we sure thought it was funny!” said the second as he shoved Shmorkrarg back.
The River and Garden Trolls tackled one another. They traded kicks and punches on the lichen bed, both sides spitting out insults as they fought. Shmorkrarg was about to use his boulder to head-butt one of the Garden Trolls when he heard a strange sound.
Fwip.
Half a second later, Shmorkrarg felt a metal rope wrap around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. He lost his balance and fell over, landing with a thud on the trampled lichens. The remaining Trolls gaped in surprise before—
Fwip. Fwip. Fwip.
Three more coils cinched around their bodies too. Heavy crystal bolas at the ropes’ ends spun into place, forming unbreakable knots. Dazzled by the spinning crystals, the Trolls tipped over and joined Shmorkrarg. They all writhed on the cave floor, trying to break free, but it was futile. Shmorkrarg looked over his shoulder and saw a hooded Troll approach, twirling more of those crystal bolas.
“The longstanding feud between the River and Garden tribes has lain dormant for centuries,” said the Troll in the hood. “But if you bickering fools seek to end that fragile truce, don’t do it with mere fists.”
The cloaked Troll stopped spinning the crystal bolas and pulled out a sharp knife. All four trapped Trolls took one look at the gemstone blade and squirmed even more urgently.
“He crazy!” shrieked Shmorkrarg.
The River and Garden Trolls all cried out in terror as the knife sliced at them—only to see that the blade had slashed their ropes, not their bodies.
“Return to your respective camps,” said the hooded Troll, before handing the gem blade to the River Trolls. “And keep that as an example of my craftsmanship.”
Now freed, the River and Garden Trolls scrambled away to their home caverns. The Troll under the hood trudged toward the oil bath, now faded to murky pink, with bits of trash floating on its surface. Scooping a hand into the oil, the mysterious Troll retrieved a few foil wrappers plus several dropper bottles filled with some manner of red dye. A circular white tablet fell out of one of the wrappers and plopped into the bath, making the oil around it fizz with more bubbles.
The hooded Troll sniffed the foreign items, then muttered a single word: “Humans.”
• • •
Had that Troll not been wearing a hood, Porgon the Trickster might have been discovered in his hiding place. Lurking behind a large rock several feet away, Porgon struggled to stifle his giggles. The Trickster Troll just couldn’t help it. He’d seen two Trolls walk into a cave, then take a relaxing soak in the oil bath. And when the Garden Trolls appeared soon thereafter, an idea for a prank mushroomed in Porgon’s twisted mind. He looked down at the splotches of red dye and fizzy white powder on his hexing hand and experienced another fit of giggles. Because Porgon knew the real fun was just about to start. . . .
CHAPTER 3
SEVEN THOUSAND MILES TO HOME
Jim stormed out of Merlin’s Tomb, squeezing the Amulet so hard his knuckles were as white as the snow now billowing around him. Icy winds tempered the intense warmth radiating from his flushed face and neck. Looking out from the tomb’s entrance, the Trollhunter saw Europe’s famed Ardennes Mountains spread before him. From the way their peaks sloped, it appeared as if the entire range had turned its impassive back to Jim, unconcerned with whatever paltry emotion he felt right now. To combat the cold, Jim held out his Amulet. It ticked again now that Jim had crossed the painted symbol forbidding outside magic in Merlin’s lair.
“For the doom of Gunmar, Eclipse is mine to command!”
In an ebony swirl of otherworldly energy, the Eclipse armor manifested from the ether. The Trollhunter’s black-and-red figure stood in stark contrast to the pristine snow, like some demon that had gotten incredibly lost on the way back to whatever dark place it called home. He trembled inside the armor, not from the frigid gales, but from the anger that boiled within him. Jim retracted the faceplate from his horned helmet and screamed as loud as he could.
The anguished cry only stopped once Jim’s lungs had run out of oxygen. Spent, he slumped onto the ground. Jim heard his howl echo against the mountains before the winds overpowered it with their own scream.
“Feel better?” grumbled a gravelly voice.
“Not at all,” Jim said as AAARRRGGHH!!! emerged behind him.
The gentle Troll shut his eyes in understanding and sat next to Jim on the frostbitten turf. They remained there for a while, not talking, just watching the horizon start to lighten.
“Sun come up soon,” said AAARRRGGHH!!! “Always does.”
“Then we’d better find shade,” Jim said. “Or being near me will turn you to stone too.”
“Wouldn’t be first time,” AAARRRGGHH!!! joked.
Jim heaved with another sigh and said, “We got so lucky, AAARRRGGHH!!! To have you come back to life like that. And I guess I got extra lucky in a weird way. I was so busy trying to survive in the Darklands back then, I didn’t even have a chance to mourn the two weeks you were gone. But that luck . . . it finally ran out. I mean, I’ve had friends come and go before. Heck, even my dad up and left one day. But this . . . this is different.”
AAARRRGGHH!!! turned his round, sympathetic eyes toward Jim. Twin trails of frozen tears glistened on the Trollhunter’s face.
“I’ve never had anyone I’ve known—that I’ve loved—die before,” finished Jim.
The Krubera Troll wrapped his arm around Jim. Now feeling very tired all of a sudden, Jim leaned against his friend and said, “There’s so much I didn’t get to ask him, AAARRRGGHH!!! So many things he still had to teach me about wielding a sword. I never even got to thank him for the way he protected my—oh no . . .”
Jim abruptly twisted the Amulet off his breastplate, vanishing the Eclipse Armor. AAARRRGGHH!!! watched him pull out his cell and dial the first contact in his favorites list.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Jim said as the phone started to ring, knowing this long-distance call would deplete what was left of his low battery—and rack up one heck of a roaming fee.
• • •
Dr. Barbara Lake couldn’t answer her phone fast enough. She raced out of the kitchen, where she’d been overcooking snacks for the many individuals crowded into her house.
“Everyone, quiet!” Barbara shouted, reaching her cell on the coffee table. “It’s them!”
The numerous houseguests—Ophelia and Javier Nuñez, Nana Domzalski, Dictatious, NotEnrique, Gnome Chompsky, and Walter Strickler—went silent, awaiting any news about their children and friends. On the third ring, Barbara answered, turned on the speakerphone, and said, “Jim! Jim, we got your last text! That’s great news about finding Merlin and—”
“M
om,” Jim said.
Barbara had never heard her son’s voice sound so grave. At least, she thought she hadn’t. It had only been one day since Barbara figured out Jim was the Trollhunter—for the second time, that is. Jim and his Troll friends had erased the truth from Barbara’s memory to protect her. Clearly, everyone had expected this knowledge to send the overprotective mother over the edge. But Barbara welcomed it, surprising all but herself. It was as if things had gone back to the way they were before Jim became the Trollhunter, before secrets had come between them.
“What is it, kiddo?” asked Barbara, masking her worry. “Are you hurt?”
“No, it . . . it’s not me,” Jim finally confessed. “It’s Draal. Angor Rot killed him.”
Ophelia, Javier, and Nana traded confused looks, having never met the Troll that once resided in Barbara’s basement. But Strickler, Dictatious, NotEnrique, and Chompsky gasped. They had known Draal well, having fought alongside—and sometimes against—him.
“The son of Kanjigar . . . slain?” said Strickler, aghast.
“That’s ’orrible,” added an unusually serious NotEnrique. “Draal may’ve been a one-armed party pooper, but he was our one-armed party pooper.”
Barbara turned off the speaker, held the cell to her ear, and said, “Oh, Jim, I am so sorry.”
“Me too, Mom,” he said back, his voice cracking on that last syllable. “He really liked you. Even if he never could pronounce your name.”
“When are you coming home?” asked Barbara. “I know it probably seems silly, but a hug from your mother might help. I know it’d make me feel a lot bett—”
The line went dead. Jim checked his phone and saw the empty battery icon before the screen went blank too. He jammed the cell into his pocket and said, “Well, that’s just perfect.”
AAARRRGGHH!!! watched Jim don the Eclipse Armor once again, then heard the rest of Team Trollhunters as they exited Merlin’s Tomb and felt the bracing mountain air. Toby shivered and said, “Okay, how about just a tiny teleport to Brussels, then we catch a flight—business class, preferably—to Newark, with a connection to—”
“No! Magic!” said the wizard adamantly. “As it stands, I can scarcely conjure little more than parlor tricks without my staff. Besides, I’ve been napping for close to one thousand years. I could use the exercise.”
Before Toby could respond, the wizard proceeded down the mountain, whistling contentedly. Blinky threw his four arms into the air and exclaimed, “Great Gorgus, this Merlin is a madman!”
“And he’s locked my Shadow Staff!” griped Claire. “I can’t jump us anywhere!”
She extended her staff and concentrated with all her might. It barely generated an itty-bitty black hole between its tines, far too small to admit any of them.
“The old coot wants us to hoof it all the way back to Main Street!” Toby told Jim.
“No,” said the Trollhunter.
Claire took his armored hand into her own and said, “Jim, I know you’re upset. We all are. But, honestly, I can’t see any other way for us to get off this mountain.”
“That’s not what I meant,” answered Jim, heading back into the tomb. “We’ll go the way the wizard wants us to. But we’re not leaving empty-handed. . . .”
CHAPTER 4
FAMILY FEUD
“So it begins,” said the Elder Garden Troll, shaking his broken branches in dismay. “And so it ends.”
The two Garden Trolls before him—the same duo that had escaped the hooded Troll—exchanged a grim expression, as did the hundreds of other Garden Trolls gathered in their great, grassy cavern. Stooping over, the Elder plucked a flower that was equal parts plant and crystal, and said, “Long have we Garden Trolls clashed with the River tribe.”
He crunched the delicate blossom between his fingers. As its glittering petals fell, the Elder said, “But this latest provocation—this defilement of our sacred lichen patch—signals the end of our so-called truce . . . and the beginning of all-out war!”
A hush spread through the crowd, its members turning to one another in shock at their leader’s words. The shock soon gave way to tribal pride, though. Each Garden Troll stood a little taller and grunted, as if girding themselves for battle.
Seeing the broken flower sparkling at his feet made the Elder think back thousands of years ago, to his childhood and the start of the troubles with the River Trolls. The same crystal flowers had grown in the Garden Trolls’ lands then, and the Elder took special care in cultivating them. One day he’d been merrily tending his garden when a boulder struck him in the head and snapped his crown of branches. In a daze, he saw a lone River Troll pointing and laughing at him from the cliff that loomed over the flower beds.
“Now you look like River Troll!” he had said.
Thus, the seeds of revenge had been planted in the humiliated heart of the Elder—and the hearts of all Garden Trolls.
• • •
“Re-venge! Re-venge! Re-venge!” chanted the River Trolls.
Their Ruler suspected this would happen. When she heard how two Garden Trolls sullied their sacred oil bath, the River Troll Ruler knew the truce had been broken. Just as she knew that convening every River Troll in the shallows of their underground lake would end in a call to arms. But even the wise Ruler had not suspected just how eager to fight her tribe had become.
As the River Trolls churned the waters with their belligerent stomping, the Ruler studied its currents. See the tides shift reminded her of another time, thousands of years ago, when she had just become acting Ruler.
The River Trolls had known a simple life then, their days as placid as the subterranean streams in which they dwelled. But one day those waters stopped flowing. The Ruler traveled upstream and discovered the source of the drought: a humungous dam erected out of the same phosphorescent trees harvested by the Garden Trolls. No sooner had she walked up to inspect the glowing timbers than they began to groan, buckle, and snap. The pent-up water pressure burst the dam wide open. Out cascaded thousands of gallons, washing away the Ruler and flooding the River Trolls’ aquifer, changing the flow of its streams forever.
The Ruler thought she could still feel water from that deluge clogging her ear canals now. But the throbbing in her head came instead from the River tribe’s escalating chants for retribution. The Ruler took the gem knife, looked at the two River Trolls who brought it to her, and said, “Tell me more of this hooded Troll—and his fantastic weapons. . . .”
• • •
Some thought jokes were only funny the first time they heard them, not the third or fourth or even five hundredth time. But Porgon disagreed. No, that dam made from Garden Troll timber was just as funny to Porgon now as when he built it on a whim ages ago. So was dressing up as a River Troll and braining that flower-sniffing Elder with a boulder. Classic!
Porgon loved running gags, and this one had been going on for generations. But thanks to his recent mischief, the Trickster Troll knew all these centuries of setup were finally going to reach their payoff.
Because the Garden Trolls and the River Trolls were about to go to war.
CHAPTER 5
SALT IN THE WOUND
Jim tasted salt on his tongue, though his tears had dried about five miles ago. No, this briny flavor came from the very air he breathed. Merlin had led Jim and the rest of Team Trollhunters into an underground tunnel to avoid the rising sun. In turn, that tunnel gradually led them to a sheer crevasse, its craggy surface coated in fine white deposits of sodium chloride.
“I don’t know if this much salt’s good for your blood pressure, Merlin,” Toby said as he sprinkled some on a Nougat Nummie. “I mean, for a wizard your age and all.”
Normally, Jim would’ve laughed at his best friend’s comment. Yet the Trollhunter wasn’t feeling particularly lighthearted at the moment. Neither was Merlin, apparently. The wizard mockingly repeated Toby’s words before climbing down the crevasse. The others soon followed in a single-file line: Blinky, Toby, Claire, Jim,
AAARRRGGHH!!! . . . and Draal.
After Jim and his friends had gone back into Merlin’s tomb, they climbed down the geode pit and retrieved their deceased friend. AAARRRGGHH!!! then strapped Draal’s body to his own mossy back—just as he had once done with Deya the Deliverer’s, when he carried her from one side of the world to the other. Team Trollhunters had to hurry to catch up with Merlin before daybreak, but the thought of Draal still being with them brought Jim some relief.
Only now, seeing Draal’s unblinking eyes staring back at him hours later, he felt far from relieved. Jim looked down at the wizard scaling the cliff below him. A surge of resentment constricted his salt-parched throat even tighter.
Did he even say “thank you”? Jim wondered of the wizard. We all risked our lives—and Draal gave his—just to wake Merlin up. But did we get even one kind word in return? No! All we’ve gotten are weird riddles and condescending remarks and, like, a full hour of Merlin complaining about lower-back pain! Well, we’ll see how his back feels after I take my Sword of Eclipse and—
“Jim?” he heard Claire say.
The Trollhunter blinked away his hostile thoughts and became aware of his position along the crevasse. He’d been so lost in his reverie that he had climbed past Claire and Toby and was closing in on Merlin.
“We’re all in a rush to get home, Jimbo, but let’s not lose our grip here—literally,” said Toby as he indicated the abyss beneath them.
Tobes and his jokes, Jim thought glumly. Always with the jokes. What a surprise.
Jim then wondered if his friend could somehow read his mind, because Toby’s expression seemed to change all of a sudden. A look of sympathy replaced Toby’s grin as he said, “Look, Jimbo—Jim. I know how hard this is. I really, really do. But when I lost my mom and dad, Nana told me—”
“No offense, Tobes, but the last thing I need to hear right now is some greeting card message from your grandmother.”
The Way of the Wizard Page 2