01 - The Sea of Trolls

by Nancy Farmer - (ebook by Undead)

  Jack looked up to see a creature from his very deepest and worst nightmares. It was eight feet tall with a shock of bristly orange hair sprouting from its head and shoulders. Eyes the color of rotten walnuts brooded under a browridge that resembled a fungus growing out of tree bark. It had long, greenish fingernails crusted with dirt, and its teeth—for the creature’s mouth was hanging open—were like jumbled blocks of wood. Two fangs the size of a billy goat’s horns lifted the sides of the creature’s upper lip in a permanent snarl. It belched, and the sulfurous smell drifted over Jack again.

  He couldn’t help it. He fainted. He had just met his first troll.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  FONN AND FORATH

  He was lying on an incredibly soft bed. The room he was in was so beautiful, Jack thought he must have died and gone to Heaven. The walls were painted like the ones in the Bard’s Roman house, except that these pictures were new. Jack saw trees covered in flowers, a house with a man and woman sitting outside, and children playing with a dog.

  The floor was made of different kinds of wood, inlaid to make a pattern of autumn leaves. A metal bowl filled with glowing coals stood on an ornately worked metal stand. Jack felt its warmth on his face, which was the only part of him sticking out of the covers.

  The coverlet, too, was a marvel of color and design, and it was padded with feathers. Jack sank down under it, as snug as an acorn in its cup.

  Bits of memory began to come back. Carefully, he felt his shoulder. It was swathed in a bandage and didn’t hurt as much as he’d expected. He’s waking up, someone said. No, not said. Something else. The words just appeared in Jack’s mind.

  He’s kind of cute for a two-legged deer.

  You give him breakfast and I’ll tell Mother. Jack heard heavy feet and a door open and shut.

  I’m not in Heaven after all, he thought miserably. I’ve been taken prisoner by Jotuns. Maybe if I keep my eyes closed they’ll think I’ve gone back to sleep.

  “It won’t work,” said a harsh voice. “We can tell when humans are lying.”

  Jack opened his eyes and just as quickly closed them.

  “I know. Trolls take getting used to. Personally, I think humans look like boiled frogs, but I’ve learned to overlook it.”

  Jack opened his eyes again. The troll—female he guessed from the bulges under her blouse—was even larger than the male he’d encountered at the ice bridge. She, too, had orange hair sprouting from her head. Her shoulders were covered, so he couldn’t tell whether she had hair there, too. Her ears stuck out like jug handles, and she wore heavy gold earrings that dragged the lobes down until they dangled below her chin. Her upper lip rounded over two dainty fangs—dainty in comparison with the male troll.

  For all that, she was much better groomed. Her nails were clean and polished. Her teeth, though alarmingly large, were orderly. Her expression was cheerful. If she’d been standing farther away, Jack thought she wouldn’t be completely horrible.

  The Jotun barked, a sound that made Jack burrow deeper into the bed. “Not completely horrible! I like that! Well, you’re not completely horrible either, though your manners need work.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said.

  “It’s all right. My name’s Fonn. My sister Forath and I have been watching over you.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said, not sure exactly what “watching over you” meant. Perhaps they were only making sure he didn’t run away before they ate him.

  Fonn barked again. It seemed to be a kind of laugh. “We don’t eat two-legged deer anymore—unless we bag one in a fair fight. Especially, we don’t eat humans who arrive with the queen’s missing chess piece.”

  “I’m glad I still had it. I was afraid I’d dropped it when I fell off the bridge.”

  “Frith gave it to you, eh?”

  Jack nodded.

  “She’ll want something in return. Frith never does anything unless it’s for a selfish reason. Mother’s been upset that she couldn’t host a chess game for the Norns. She had a new piece made, but of course it didn’t have magic and they rejected it.”

  A dozen questions popped into Jack’s head at once. What kind of magic? Where were the Norns? How did Fonn know Frith? And who was “Mother”?

  “Slow down,” said Fonn with her barking laugh. “You aren’t ready for so much activity. I can tell you it was touch and go for a while with that wound on your shoulder. I thought you’d never use your arm again, but Mother sang the poison out.”

  “Who’s Mother?” Jack asked.

  “The Mountain Queen. Forath and I are her daughters. As is Frith, unfortunately.”

  “You don’t look like Frith.”

  “Thank you. She had a different father. Poor man. He languished in this room for years, ever wanting to return to Middle Earth and his family. That’s them on the wall.”

  The paintings of the man and woman and the children playing with the dog took on new meaning. “Why didn’t the queen let him go home?”

  “His family was dead. They died in an avalanche and Mother rescued him, but he never believed her. I’ve always thought his unhappiness may have affected Frith. But, of course”—Fonn sighed, a sound like a small gale—“her real problem is that she belongs nowhere. Humans can marry other humans no matter where they come from. But troll/human or elf/human marriages almost never work, and their children are always torn between two worlds.”

  Forath burst into the room, and Jack, in spite of himself, dived under the covers. Two nine-foot Jotuns with bristly orange hair and fangs were a lot to take.

  “Come out, you coward,” said Thorgil. Jack reappeared. He was never so glad to see another human. She was dressed in new clothes and sported a new knife at her belt and another strapped to her leg.

  “You’ve done all right,” he observed.

  “Why wouldn’t I? This is the most exciting place I’ve ever been. I love trolls!”

  Jack sat up. Dizziness made him lie down again. “Bold Heart! I forgot about him. Is he all right?”

  “He’s in the main hall with Golden Bristles. Did you know the queen healed his wing? She sang it back into shape. He’s flying all over the place. I’m a special guest because I’m Olaf’s daughter. Queen Glamdis was in love with him and wanted him in her harem, but she’d given her word he could go.”

  “That was lucky for Heide, Dotti, and Lotti,” said Jack. He could imagine Olaf trapped in this room.

  “They’d have survived,” Thorgil said carelessly. “The louts—those are male trolls—are champion fighters. They’ve been teaching me dirty tricks.”

  “Wonderful,” Jack said, sinking back into the soft mattress. The pain in his shoulder seemed sharper, and his whole body was drained of energy. He felt for the rune. Something was missing. “The thrall collar—” he said.

  “Oh, that old thing. As Olaf’s daughter, I inherited you,” Thorgil said. “He said he was going to free you when we returned, so I did it here. Don’t think that gets you out of the quest. You owe me eternal gratitude, and I expect you to die cheerfully if it becomes necessary.”

  “Or live cheerfully,” murmured Jack. Forath herded Thorgil out of the room, for which the boy was thankful. Much had happened, and he needed quiet to take it all in. The Jotuns, whom he’d been taught to fear and hate, had turned out to be not so bad. Olaf always said he wouldn’t mind living next to them as long as the ground rules were worked out. It seemed he knew more about them than anyone realized. And Thorgil—evil-tempered Thorgil, who called him a thrall on every possible occasion and had shown him nothing but contempt—had freed him.

  It was all extremely puzzling.

  One of the hardest things for Jack to get used to was the constant whisper, whisper, whisper of thoughts around him. They were jumbled up because everyone was thinking all the time, but he picked up words if someone was close by.

  He let Fonn spoon soup into his mouth. She broke up chunks of soft, white bread and spread them with butter and honey. She placed a b
owl of fruit within his reach.

  “What’s that?” said Jack, pointing at a cluster of purple berries.

  “Grapes,” Fonn said proudly. “I grow them in the greenhouse. Olaf brought us the seedlings from Italia on one of his trips.”

  One of his trips? Jack thought. “How long have I been sick?”

  “A week. You were in bad shape when you arrived, so Mother thought it best to make you sleep.”

  A week! Jack had lost complete track of the days. He didn’t know how long he’d been in the hidden valley, and now he’d wasted another week. How much time was left for him to rescue Lucy?

  “Don’t worry,” Fonn said in her harsh, yet oddly gentle, voice. “Worry makes it difficult to recover. Everything is decided by the Norns, and nothing any of us can do will change it.” She drew a thick curtain over a window Jack had noticed but had not looked at closely. He wondered what lay outside. He fell asleep thinking of Olaf trapped in this little room, carving toys for children he would never see again.

  Another week passed before Jack was strong enough to walk around. The eagle’s talons had been tainted and had poisoned his blood. Only the queen’s magic had saved him. He grew used to Fonn and Forath, though the latter found it difficult to speak aloud. Jotuns communicated from mind to mind. They had no use for speech, but a few had made the effort to learn it for strategic reasons. Humans sometimes invaded Jotunheim, and trolls—especially teenagers—liked to go on raids to Middle Earth.

  The view outside the window was of a seemingly bottomless cliff of ice. It was both beautiful and cruel-looking. No human could possibly escape that way. There might have been land far below. Jack could see nothing through the swirling ice crystals.

  The Jotuns loved cold. They complained of heat when the temperature rose above freezing. They had managed to keep a pocket of eternal winter in their own world, but Fonn said summer made inroads every year. Once, she said, the earth had been a sheet of ice. The sea had been frozen as well. You could walk all the way from Utgard to Jotunheim.

  “Utgard?” Jack asked.

  “The Land Beyond the Sea. Our ancient home.”

  “Olaf mentioned something about that,” Jack said. “He said it was destroyed by a volcano.”

  “Yes,” Fonn said sadly. “My great-great-great-grandmother walked from there over the breaking ice. It was that which sundered us from the heart of our world. We can never return, and with each age, the forces of summer move deeper into our realm. Someday it will be entirely gone.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” Jack said. “Isn’t anything left of Utgard?”

  “Forath speaks to whales. That’s her special skill. They say a small island remains. At the center is the volcano, and all around lie empty windswept fields of ice. It sounds lovely.” Fonn sighed.

  “Can’t you build a boat and go back?”

  “We’re not made for ships. We’re too heavy, and all of us have a terror of deep water. A few of us, like Forath, go on whale-back, but only near the coast.”

  Bold Heart visited every day, and Thorgil burst in from time to time with horrid stories about how to kill things. The Jotuns weren’t cruel about slaying their enemies, but they were very efficient. They appeared to have taken a shine to the enthusiastic little berserker. Once, Golden Bristles came in, and Fonn translated for him. He thanked Jack for freeing him from Freya’s cart, and Jack remembered, with a sick rush of guilt, that Lucy would soon be trapped in it.

  How much time had passed since he’d arrived in Jotunheim? He wasn’t sure. From the position of the moon he guessed three weeks, but that meant he’d spent no time at all in the little valley near the dragon’s lair. How could that be? All Jack really understood was that time was passing, slowly perhaps, but still moving. And that the day of Lucy’s sacrifice was drawing ever closer.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN

  The hall of the Mountain Queen was very different from the little room where Jack had recovered, but it was also beautiful—in a huge, Jotun-like way. The walls were of ice, and tall windows let in the blue light surrounding the top of the mountain. Frost-laden air swirled great, white curtains on either side.

  Most of the Jotuns were dressed in furs, though a few louts wore only loincloths to show off their bodies. Jack decided long fur cloaks were an excellent fashion. Those lumpy shoulders sprouting orange hair, those wrinkled potbellies and yards and yards of flaky troll flesh were greatly improved by being covered. Even that wouldn’t have concealed the browridges on the males. These were proudly displayed, the bigger the better, and those who had a human kill to their record were tattooed.

  Queen Glamdis sat on a golden throne sparkling with diamonds. It had been made by dwarves, Fonn whispered as they waited by the side to be summoned. The queen wore a glittering crown in her orange hair and a long blue dress embroidered with gold. Over this was a bearskin cloak. Her face was much older than Fonn’s, and her features were sharp and hawklike. Jack thought she looked quite noble. He was getting used to trolls.

  To one side of the throne was Golden Bristles with Bold Heart on his back. Thorgil sat proudly at the Mountain Queen’s feet. On the other side was arrayed the harem.

  Sixteen louts of varying ages were dressed in finery. The oldest sat on a throne only slightly less imposing than that of Queen Glamdis. He was so aged, his browridge had collapsed over his eyes and he propped it up with a Y-shaped stick.

  “That’s my father, Bolthorn,” Fonn whispered.

  Jack himself was dressed for the occasion in three sets of woolen clothes, one on top of the other, beneath a cloak of marten fur. He was still cold. His boots were made of cow skin with the hair still on to help his feet grip the floor. It was made of polished silver, very bright and beautiful, but as slippery as ice.

  “Come forth,” said Queen Glamdis in a harsh voice like Fonn’s. Jack knew it took effort for the Jotuns to speak at all, and they were not capable of making themselves sound sweet. He came forward, as he’d been instructed, and bowed deeply.

  “So you’re the one who melted my ice bridge,” said the queen.

  Uh-oh, thought Jack.

  “You’re a fire wizard,” she declared.

  “I’m a bard, Great Queen. I serve the life force.”

  “I met another of your kind. He was called Dragon Tongue, and he melted a hole through that wall.” She pointed at a patch of darker ice near a window. “I had it mended, of course, but the scar’s still there.”

  “He was trained by Dragon Tongue,” Thorgil piped up.

  Be quiet, Jack thought.

  “I’ll decide who will or won’t be quiet,” said the queen, and Jack cursed himself for stupidity. He’d forgotten Jotuns could see into his mind. “However, I detect no malice in you,” Glamdis went on. “Thorgil Olaf’s Daughter has told me of your quest, and I’ve agreed to help. I should warn you that the Norns obey no one, not even the gods. I can ask that you be present when they visit. That’s all.”

  “Thank you, Great Queen.”

  “You don’t have to use that ‘Great Queen’ nonsense with me,” Glamdis snapped. “That’s the sort of thing Frith lives for. I am a great queen, and everyone knows it. You’re still a cub, so you can call me Mother.”

  “All right, M-Mother,” said Jack. It sounded strange to use the word for anyone who wasn’t his real mother. “I’m truly grateful that you cured my shoulder and healed Bold Heart.”

  “Ah, Bold Heart,” said Glamdis with a gleam in her dark eyes. “There’s a cheeky rascal.” But she didn’t explain what she meant. “And now I bid you all to a celebration of Olaf One-Brow’s life. It shall be as he wished, a feast with music, dancing, and good food. I’m sorry he’s gone to Valhalla, but I know Odin will be glad to see him. He was the finest two-legged deer I ever met.”

  Jack’s eyes filled with tears, and even the queen—or Mother, Jack reminded himself—wiped her eyes with the edge of her cloak. Thorgil wept aloud.

  Finally they le
ft the throne room and proceeded down long hallways until they got to an inner courtyard. It was huge and round, more like a frozen lake than anything else. It was open to the sky, and booths were set around the edge. Jack smelled roast grouse. He was seated at a small table with Thorgil—the Jotun tables were far too large for them to use. Fonn and Forath kept them company at the side.

  For the first time Jack saw troll-children—or cubs, as they were called. They darted in and out among the tables and stole treats when no one was looking. They slid across the ice, collided with one another, and roared challenges that often ended in play fights. There weren’t many of them. Fonn said they grew slowly—ones that appeared to be Jack’s age were actually fifty years old. Fonn herself was not considered old enough to start a harem.

  No one seemed to mind that the cubs brought chaos wherever they went. The adults smiled indulgently as the young climbed curtains, overturned chairs, and threw snowballs. At home Jack would have been thrashed for doing far less.

  Jack and Thorgil were offered grouse with lingonberry preserves, rabbit stuffed with onions, bear paws (Jack passed on the bear paws), and slices of elk. The Mountain Queen gnawed on an elk haunch all to herself, and both Fonn and Forath tore chunks out of giant salmon. Table manners were no more part of a troll feast than they had been at King Ivar’s party.

  “One foot on the floor!” roared a young lout who kept ogling Fonn. “That’s the only rule around here. You have to keep one foot on the floor while you’re eating.”

  “He’s trying to impress me by learning human speech,” said Fonn.

  There was also bread with fresh butter and honey, spiced apple pudding, grapes from Fonn’s greenhouse, and cheeses that Thorgil said came from a creature called a yak. She said the queen kept a herd of yaks in her barn. Buckets of cider, mead, and beer were passed around. The louts kept trying to lure Thorgil into a drinking contest, but she firmly said no.

  “They’ll win. They know it. I’m not going to humiliate myself,” she declared.