The Way of the Wizard

by Richard Ashley Hamilton

  “The problem isn’t with the Amulet,” Toby said. “It’s with Jim.”

  “What?” Jim said through clenched jaws.

  Toby lowered his head, just as he had when Jim snapped at him on the crevasse, and said, “No offense, Jimbo, but it’s like Blinky told you on day one of Trollhunting. The Amulet’s tied to your emotional state. Since you’re currently flooded with all kinds of different feelings right now—and who wouldn’t be?—I don’t think the Amulet knows how to respond.”

  Jim wanted to yell. Not at Toby, but at himself for missing so obvious a truth—and for making that same, hurt expression appear on his best friend’s face yet again. A few feet away, Merlin slow-clapped. He nodded at Toby and said, “Now I see why you keep this one around.”

  Jim turned over the useless Amulet in his hands, hearing an odd rattle in its gears. Midway through the third flip, Jim froze. He peered deep into the Amulet’s inner workings and saw the source of the rattle—Claire’s yellow hair clip, which now served as the lynchpin holding together the entire Amulet. Jim looked up at Claire with sudden insight, and she immediately read what was on his mind.

  “Good thing I wear so many of these,” said Claire, taking another barrette from her hair.

  She bent the pink hairpin and jammed it into the keyhole at the center of her cuffs. After a few seconds of fiddling, the shackles sprang open and fell to the cave floor with a thud. Jim held out his wrists and said, “Have I ever told you how much I like your hair when it’s down?”

  “That’s sweet,” said Claire as she pecked Jim on the cheek and opened his shackles. “But I’m not the one you should be sweet-talking.”

  Jim followed her gaze to Toby, who now waited for his turn to be freed. He unshackled Toby, and then Blinky, and finally AAARRRGGHH!!! Jim knew he owed his best friend the apology of a lifetime, and he wasn’t going to wait another second to deliver it. Knowing that there were so many things left unsaid with Draal taught Jim that there was no time like the present to make amends.

  “Tobes, I—” Jim began before a long shadow loomed across him.

  Now released from the Sapstone fetters that bound them, Team Trollhunters saw the hooded Troll blocking the only exit. The shrouded figure eyed the device in Jim’s hand and said, “So the rumors were true. Kanjigar, my . . . my Trollhunter, was felled. And the Amulet now belongs to the human standing in my smithy. I wonder, human, do these belong to you as well?”

  The hooded Troll held out the droppers and foil wrappers from the oil baths. Jim recognized them as the kind of food coloring he’d use in his red velvet cake and the kind of antacid tablets his mom would give him when he had an upset stomach—usually after eating too much of that cake.

  “Those are definitely from the surface world,” said Jim. “But I swear, they’re not ours.”

  “We hate littering too, but don’t you think imprisonment is a bit of overkill?” added Toby.

  “I’ll ask the questions, instigator,” said the hooded Troll.

  “Stink gator?” AAARRRGGHH!!! asked in confusion.

  “Instigator,” corrected Blinky. “Another word for a troublemaker, inciter, or firebrand.”

  “And now, my final question,” said the Troll in the hood. “Which of you killed my son?”

  Jim and his friends looked from Draal’s body in the corner of the cave to the Troll as she removed her hood. Blinky covered his mouth with all four of his hands and gasped, “Ballustra!”

  The Monger Troll tossed her cloak to the side and leveled her crossbow at Team Trollhunters. Suddenly feeling very naked without his armor, Jim stepped in front of Toby and Claire and braced for the worst. But before Ballustra’s finger could pull the crossbow trigger, an explosion rocked her blacksmith stall, shattering the worktable and all its contents. And for the second time that day, everything in Jim Lake Jr.’s world went completely black.

  CHAPTER 8

  HATCHING A PLAN

  “Unending darkness,” growled Gunmar the Gold. “This is what I herald.”

  Strickler heard the Gumm-Gumm’s awful voice reverberate along the dry canal. He wasn’t sure whether to run for his life or revert to his Changeling form and beg Gunmar for forgiveness. But Strickler decided to stay hidden behind the canal’s tall, overgrown weeds. This choice ultimately proved to be a wise one, as two more figures emerged from the Horngazel.

  “Lord Gunmar,” said Queen Usurna, her engraved tattoos glowing in the shadow of the overhead bridge. “I would never question a leader as brutal and wise as you . . .”

  Behind her, Angor Rot did his best to cover the disgust spreading across his pitted, crumbling face. The Troll assassin had spent two lifetimes battling—and now being forced to obey—Gunmar the Black, the Vicious, the Skullcrusher, or whatever other mad title he went by these days. As such, Angor Rot had seen firsthand just how impulsive and mercurial the one-eyed Gumm-Gumm could be. Brutal? Yes. But wise? Hardly.

  Usurna chose her next words extremely carefully and said, “Yet, is this incursion onto the surface world advisable? You’ve just returned to Dark Trollmarket with Merlin’s Staff of Avalon. You’ve uncovered Morgana’s body at the very root of the Heartstone below us. Though she still remains incarcerated, the Eternal Night is within our grasp!”

  “No thanks to you or your duplicitous ways, Usurna,” spat Gunmar. “Never forget your place, which is beneath my heel, beside Angor Rot. And never forget how I, your Dark Underlord, have brought about the coming cataclysm single-handedly.”

  Angor Rot’s scowl only intensified. Single-handedly. Absurd. Leeching all that power from the Heartstone had clearly made Gunmar delusional. How else could the “Dark Underlord” forget that Angor Rot had helped him secure the Staff of Avalon? That it had been Angor Rot himself who provided the borers—the tanklike drilling vehicles they used to travel to Merlin’s Tomb? That while Gunmar was content to keep the Trollhunter’s ally, Draal, alive as a mindless puppet, it was Angor Rot who had finally killed him? Or that Gunmar, in turn, had left Angor Rot for dead and taken one of the Borers back to Dark Trollmarket like some vainglorious conqueror?

  After Angor Rot had crawled his way out of the geode pit, he’d vowed to return the favor. He had found the second Borer at the base of Merlin’s Mountain, abandoned there by Gunmar just as Angor Rot had been. During the bedrock-breaking ride back to Dark Trollmarket, Angor Rot seethed. He fantasized of countless ways to slay Gunmar while the Borer’s diamond-tipped drill bits tunneled through the Earth’s crust. But by the time the vehicle returned to Dark Trollmarket’s battered gyre station, Angor Rot had settled on a simple, elegant means of revenge. He would simply stab Gunmar in the back with his dagger and let the poisoned blade turn him into solid stone. Angor Rot would then break off pieces of Gunmar, toss them into the Borer, and watch the drills chew the “Dark Underlord” to dust.

  Angor Rot had been just about to do it, too, when a chilling voice called to him once again. Morgana herself spoke directly into Angor Rot’s soul from her prison in the Heartstone. Though her body had been trapped within the living crystal like a fly in amber, her will remained as domineering as ever. She ordered Angor Rot to stay his hand, just as she had granted him unbelievable power ages ago—power that came at a considerable cost.

  Even from his hiding place, Strickler could see Angor Rot struggle to conceal his contempt for Gunmar. The Gumm-Gumm king breathed in the morning air, then bared his fangs at the acrid scents of car exhaust and other human pollutants. Gunmar spat black phlegm onto the canal floor and said, “The Eternal Night will exterminate the disgusting, pitiful creatures that have infested the surface world during my long absence. But first, these fleshlings must be made to suffer as I suffered in the Darklands. Bring forth . . . the eggs.”

  Strickler watched Angor Rot grudgingly do as told. The Troll assassin opened the crate under his arm, revealing what looked like nine round, red rocks.

  “Nyarlagroth eggs,” gasped Usurna. “Were these smuggled out of the Darklands?”

/>   “Those and many more,” Gunmar said. “They made for tasty snacks upon my return. That is, until I rediscovered my appetite for human flesh. These nine eggs are all that remain.”

  The towering Gumm-Gumm now acknowledged Angor Rot’s existence for the first time since they passed through the Horngazel. Gunmar studied Morgana’s lackey for a moment, then said, “I recall you once had a way with animals, Angor Rot—perhaps because you are nothing more than an animal yourself. Awaken these sleeping beasts . . . or incur my wrath.”

  Angor Rot held Gunmar’s stare for a moment before nodding in obedience. He arranged the nine eggs in a circle on the dry canal and began chanting, his voice low and guttural.

  “Arune nagath,” intoned Angor Rot. “Nin sun nagath.”

  Gunmar the Gold smiled malevolently. The red shells splintered as Angor Rot continued in the old, forbidden tongue. And once his mantra stopped, a new noise replaced it. Nine blind Nyarlagroths hatched from their eggs and took their first breaths. The mewling eel-like creatures screeched and uncoiled to their full lengths of about three feet each.

  “Gunmar, no Nyarlagroth has ever trod upon the surface lands,” Usurna cautioned. “Who knows what effects their presence here might wreak!”

  “I know,” said Gunmar, picking up one of the Nyarlagroths and permitting it to slither between his claws. “And so should you. As a deep-cave Krubera Troll, your knowledge of this world’s subterranean structure should be second to none.”

  Usurna’s feathered headdress trembled with the rest of her body when she considered the full implications of Gunmar’s statement. She steeled herself and said, “This human city rests on an active fault line—a fissure where two tectonic plates meet. If these Nyarlagroths should burrow beneath Arcadia as they do in the Darklands, it would trigger—”

  “An earthquake,” Strickler whispered to himself in horror.

  “The fleshlings’ suffering will be so absolute, they shall beg me to slaughter them even before the advent of the Eternal Night,” said Gunmar.

  He returned the baby Nyarlagroth to the rest of the litter and stomped on the ground, breaking the concrete. The vibrations startled the sightless eels, making them scurry through the crack at Gunmar’s hooves. Behind the weeds, Strickler swallowed nervously. He could feel the juvenile Nyarlagroths tunneling under and past him already.

  And behind Gunmar, Angor Rot reconsidered his earlier position. Yes, the Gumm-Gumm king was clearly brutal. But in seeing how cleverly he plotted this new wave of destruction, Angor Rot conceded that Gunmar the Gold might indeed be wise as well. Yet this was not the wisdom of a teacher or sorcerer.

  This was the wisdom of a maniac.

  CHAPTER 9

  WORLD WAR TROLL

  The Amulet may not have been able to conjure any armor around its Trollhunter. But at the moment, it made for a pretty handy flashlight. Jim used its faint blue glow to search the rubble around him. Although he couldn’t see what happened after that explosion struck Ballustra’s smithy, Jim certainly heard its walls come down around him and his friends.

  “Claire! Tobes! Blinky! AAARRRGGHH!!!” Jim called. “Let me know you’re okay—PLEASE!”

  By way of answer, the debris beneath Jim’s sneakers shifted. He jumped out of the way just as AAARRRGGHH!!! burst out of the ruins. Holding up tons of rock, the gentle giant made a path for Toby, Claire, Blinky, and Merlin to emerge unscathed.

  “I didn’t hear you call my name in concern,” Merlin said as Jim hugged his friends.

  With everyone now clear, Jim canvassed the remainder of the cave and discovered that Ballustra was gone. He also found Draal’s overturned body lying on its side amidst the scattered wreckage of the smithy. One piece had been knocked loose from the statue and gleamed in the Amulet’s glow—Draal’s nose ring. Jim pocketed it as another deafening detonation thundered nearby.

  “Why, it sounds as if a veritable Troll war erupted just beyond this cavern!” said Blinky.

  “A war? Here? Right after Draal’s mom accused us of instigating trouble?” Claire said skeptically. “Doesn’t that seem a little too coincidental to anyone else?”

  Merlin gave Claire a knowing wink and tapped the side of his nose, as if she was onto something. Watching the Amulet pulse in his hand, Jim reminded himself that, when it came to Trollhunting, there was no such thing as coincidence.

  “Only destiny,” Jim uttered to no one in particular.

  “What’s that, Master Jim?” asked Blinky, not quite hearing him.

  “This has been a seriously messed-up day, and I seriously need to hit something,” answered Jim. “What better place to do that than a battlefield?”

  The rest of Team Trollhunters and Merlin followed Jim as he marched out of the blasted blacksmith stall and down a tunnel choked with more fallen rocks. Before long, the path widened into an antechamber, and the sounds of conflict rang louder than ever. Turning the last corner, Jim looked out at an immense cavern—where an equally immense civil war between the Garden Trolls and River Trolls was underway.

  Boulders flew. Dwärkstone grenades blasted into shrapnel. And rival Trolls collided against one another on the front lines like pawns on a bloody chessboard. Spurred on by their Ruler, the River Trolls dug deep trenches in the ground, exposing underground streams. The water shot out of the ruts like the stream from a fire hose, knocking back the enemy infantry. In retaliation, the Garden Trolls joined their Elder as he bade wild, twisting plant roots to punch out of the earth and ensnare the River tribe’s strongest warriors.

  Jim and the others could barely process the full scope of this crazed conflict. Except Merlin. The wizard simply shook his head wearily, as if he’d seen this type of thing happen far, far too many times before. Claire’s eyes scanned the various fronts, then widened when they spotted someone smack-dab at the center of the conflict. She pointed straight ahead and said, “There!”

  The team followed Claire’s line of sight to a middle ground in the sodden, vine-strewn combat zone. There, Ballustra distributed various weapons—similar in design to her crossbow—to the River Trolls. In return, the boulder-topped soldiers handed over purses filled with gems.

  “Unbelievable!” Jim roared. “She’s an arms dealer!”

  Blinky placed a calming hand on the Trollhunter’s shoulder and said, “Master Jim, you must understand. Ballustra is a Monger Troll. It is in her very nature to construct and disperse arms to those who wage war.”

  “Her nature?!” cried Jim. “Blink, Ballustra’s own son just died, and she’s conducting business in the middle of a battlefield and—wait a minute. Is she selling to the other side now?”

  He indicated Ballustra’s weapons bazaar, which had now moved to the Garden Trolls’ camp. As she bartered more of her bolas and double-headed axes for bushels of glowing tubers and jugs of resin, Jim said, “What about that seems in any way natural to you?”

  “Actually, gang, I don’t even know if nature has anything to do with it,” Toby chimed in. “Look who else crashed World War Troll!”

  Toby jerked his thumb to the other end of the cavern, where Porgon delighted in fanning the flames. Skulking in the periphery, he brushed his glowing hex arm against one of the River Trolls’ water bazookas, causing it to backfire and soak its handlers. The Trickster Troll then stealthily grazed one of the Garden Trolls’ vines, making it snake around their Elder and throttle him. Porgon positively overflowed with giggles, yet none of the fighting Trolls noticed him amid the chaos. None noticed him save for the members of Team Trollhunters.

  “Stink gator,” said AAARRRGGHH!!!

  “A most appropriate appraisal, my friend,” Blinky agreed. “Though the River and Garden Troll feud is the stuff of legend, Porgon’s presence here only serves to foment more hostility.”

  “Oh?” asked Merlin. “You’ve encountered this Porgon cretin before?”

  “Yeah, back in Arcadia, right before Jim skewered him with the Sword of Daylight,” said Claire. “We figured that was the end of Porgon . .
. only now I’m starting to understand why he’s called a Trickster Troll.”

  Blinky’s eyebrows arched as he said, “In point of fact, the Trickster Trolls were the very same charlatans who created the Glamour Masks we’ve employed of late. It is conceivable he used one such mask to make another, hapless Troll appear like him while the real Porgon made quick his escape!”

  “You mean he pulled a switcheroo, and Jim eighty-sixed the wrong Troll?” Toby wailed.

  “Sadly, it would appear so,” conceded Blinky.

  “And it would appear I’ve found something to hit,” said Jim.

  Despite his lack of armor, the Trollhunter rolled up his sleeves and marched headlong into the battle. Claire, Toby, Blinky, and AAARRRGGHH!!! scrambled after him, while Merlin went back to shaking his head.

  “Master Jim, with all due respect, have you completely lost your mind?” Blinky cried, dashing past wrestling Garden and River Trolls.

  Jim may not have had his sword or shield, but he still knew how to move during a battle. He ducked the blast of a water jet and somersaulted over a tangle of sentient roots. Toby extended his Warhammer and swung it back and forth to keep oncoming Troll soldiers at a distance, while AAARRRGGHH!!! did the same with his fists. Claire rushed up to Jim and forced him to stop in his tracks.

  “Jim, this isn’t like you!” she said. “Taking out your anger on someone—even someone as terrible as Porgon—isn’t going to change things. It isn’t going to bring back Draal.”

  Jim looked into Claire’s wide, searching eyes. In that moment, he wished he could give anything—even his own right arm—to make their lives return to the way they were just a week ago.

  “Master Jim, watch out!” yelled Blinky.

  His six eyes spied Porgon recognizing the Trollhunter from a few feet away. The Trickster Troll tittered with more laughter and hurled a spell with his enchanted arm. Blinky shoved Jim clear just before the hex hit Blinky, AAARRRGGHH!!!, Toby, and Claire. Satisfied with his mischief for the moment, Porgon scampered away. But his spell drew the attention of several River and Garden Trolls in the vicinity. The bruised grunts spotted Team Trollhunters. Yet when the hex’s smoke cleared, their eyes saw something entirely different.