Jinx's Fire

by Sage Blackwood

  “Yes. Perhaps we should ask the next one we see to conduct us to their leader,” said Wendell.

  And that was how they ended up getting captured by trolls.

  The Troll Trial

  Jinx, Elfwyn, and Wendell were quick-marched up the Troll-way and onto a wide glass plateau surrounded by high glass cliffs. Their captors’ names were Heg, Gak, and Blort. And soon they were completely surrounded by trolls. The smell of rotten meat was overpowering, and Jinx had to fight not to be ill. Wendell and Elfwyn looked quite green.

  A troll who was bigger than the rest came forward and grunted at them. He was wearing a necklace of what appeared to be teeth.

  “This is our leader,” said Blort. “Great leader Sneep.”

  “Who’re you?” Sneep asked.

  “Jinx,” said Jinx. “And—”

  “That’s him,” said a voice from the crowd. “That’s that no-good boy that cut off my arm.”

  Jinx fumbled in his coat for the Glass Ax. He held it up.

  “Where you get that from? You kill a werewolf?”

  “No,” said Jinx, trying to be patient. “The werewolves lent it to us. It’s to show we come in peace.”

  “In pieces?”

  “We need to talk to you,” said Jinx. “About threats to the Urwald. And we need to get to—”

  Wendell laid a hand on Jinx’s arm. “Er, maybe we should let Elfwyn tell it. That is, if she doesn’t mind.”

  “Why—” Elfwyn began. “Oh. I see.” She turned to Sneep. “Um, have you heard of, er, a person called the Truthspeaker?”

  Mutters and grunts amongst the trolls. To Jinx’s surprise, they nodded.

  “Heard something about that person,” said Sneep. “She always telling the truth. Like it or not.”

  “Oh good,” said Elfwyn. “Well, um, that’s me.”

  The trolls looked skeptical. “You the Truthspeaker?”

  “Yes,” said Elfwyn. “And that has to be the truth, because I can’t lie.”

  The trolls frowned. They seemed to feel there was something wrong with this statement, logically, but they couldn’t quite work out what it was.

  “So now I’m going to tell you what we’re doing here, and why we have the Glass Ax,” said Elfwyn.

  The trolls grunted.

  She cleared her throat nervously. “Right. Well, you see, there are some soldiers from Keyland—”

  She explained about the attacks on the Urwald, and about the three kings. Jinx thought she should have talked more about the Bonemaster, but the trolls seemed to be very incensed at the idea of the trees being cut down. They nodded and growled, and now and then let out an anguished roar which, as far as Jinx could tell, meant agreement.

  “That’s why we got no more Wanderers,” said Heg. “’Cause of war.”

  “Yah, ’cause of war. We wondered why they stopped coming,” said Blort. “We never ate any.”

  “But why you got to walk the Eldritch Ways?” said Sneep. “How that going to help?”

  Two questions. Jinx winced. He knew how much Elfwyn hated being asked questions.

  “It’s Jinx who’s got to walk them,” said Elfwyn. “The Bonemaster’s done something to the, um, Eldritch Ways that makes him able to drain the Urwald’s lifeforce, and that’s making it much harder for us to fight the invaders. But Jinx might be able to undo it.”

  Sneep frowned. “This some kind of wizard thing?”

  “Yes,” said Elfwyn.

  “You all wizards?”

  “Not yet,” said Elfwyn.

  “Don’t like wizards,” said Sneep.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Elfwyn. “But the Bonemaster’s a wizard, and—”

  “Heard about this Bonemaster. Would make a good troll.” Sneep nodded at Jinx. “Supposing we let this wizard boy go down the hole. What good that do?”

  “We think he can remove the seal that the Bonemaster’s used to connect his power to the Urwald’s power,” said Elfwyn.

  “You think that, huh. Maybe you not so smart for a wizard girl. Plenty people go down that hole. But nobody ever come back.”

  Ripples of dread from Elfwyn. Jinx was annoyed—what did she think was going to happen? Of course no one ever came back.

  “Anyway,” said Sneep, “we got other use for this wizard boy. Got to kill him.”

  “But we have the Glass Ax!” said Elfwyn. “That’s supposed to mean you can’t hurt us! Malthus said so.”

  “Don’t mean we can’t try a criminal. He a wanted boy. Cut off poor Bergthold’s arm. And he set some trolls on fire.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Jinx. “That was self-defense.”

  “Don’t know nothin’ ’bout no fence,” said Sneep. “Know the law, that’s all. We have a trial. Kill you or eat your arm off, one.”

  Elfwyn, Jinx, and Wendell looked at each other in dismay.

  “Can we have the trial after I get back from the Paths?” said Jinx.

  “Huh. Think we stupid? Nobody don’t never come back from there.”

  “Fine,” said Jinx, frustrated. “Have a trial, then.”

  The trial was very brief.

  “That’s him,” said Bergthold. “Cut my arm off. With an ax.”

  Sneep turned to Jinx. “That true?”

  “Yes,” said Jinx. “But he—”

  “Guilty,” said Sneep. “Now we—”

  “Wait a minute!” said Jinx. “He tried to bite my arm off last year. He broke it in two places! It still hurts on rainy days.”

  “So that the one we eat,” said Sneep. “So’s you still got one good arm. Fair enough?”

  “No!” said Jinx.

  “Also, he set many trolls on fire,” said Bergthold. “Should be we set him on fire, after we eat his arm, right, chief?”

  “But I put them out again,” said Jinx.

  “So maybe we put you out again, too,” said Blort.

  “Excuse me,” said Wendell. He looked at Bergthold uncertainly. “Aren’t you the stepfather who abandoned Jinx in the forest when he was six?”

  “Huh. Gave him opportunities,” said Bergthold. “Go out into world, seek his fortune. Boy does that, he always ends up rich and married to some kind of princess. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, it was sort of like killing him,” said Wendell. “After all, the children who get left in the Urwald usually die, don’t they? I mean, there was Jinx’s stepsister, Gertrude—”

  Bergthold let out a roar. “What?! What happen to Gertrude?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wendell. “But the point is—”

  Bergthold lunged at Jinx. “What happen to Gertrude?” he howled.

  Jinx stumbled back from the smell of Bergthold’s breath. “I don’t know!”

  “That lady abandon her? I know that lady abandon her! That lady a no-good lady!”

  “You mean Cottawilda?” said Jinx. “Your wife? Well, I don’t like her much either, but it’s the same thing that you and her did to me.”

  “NOT the same!” Bergthold roared. “Gertrude MINE!”

  Jinx turned to Elfwyn and Wendell. They looked as perplexed by this development as he was.

  “Going to get revenge for this!” said Bergthold. “Abandon MY baby! Huh.”

  “Instead of getting revenge, maybe you could look for her,” Wendell suggested.

  “Going to look for her, that no-good lady!”

  “I meant look for Gertrude,” said Wendell.

  “Yeah,” said Jinx. “That’s what Cottawilda’s doing, anyway.” Well, what she was supposed to be doing.

  “Jinx told her to,” said Elfwyn, apparently thinking this might help. She turned to Sneep. “Anyway, Jinx has to walk the Paths. If he doesn’t, we’ll have no way to fight the invaders, and you want the invaders fought, don’t you?”

  Much discussion among the trolls. Shouting, howls, roars. Finally Sneep turned to Elfwyn, who he seemed to have decided was the leader of the human expedition. “All right. He go. You stay here. You and the big b
oy. Wizard boy doesn’t come back, we eat you. Fair enough?”

  “Not really,” said Elfwyn.

  “Yeah, you said nobody ever comes back,” said Jinx.

  “Nobody especially don’t come back when we say we going to eat his arm off,” said Sneep. “Take it or leave it.”

  Jinx looked around. There were at least a hundred trolls surrounding them. And Jinx wasn’t even going to be able to find the entrance to the paths without their help. “I guess I take it,” he said.

  “Good. We show you the way to the Paths.”

  Jinx had heard tales about people who had to climb glass mountains to win a princess’s hand, and presumably the rest of the princess as well. He had always wondered how it was done. Now he saw the answer. There was a stairway, carved into the mountainside. It wound around the mountain, glittering in the sun.

  And it wasn’t quite wide enough.

  “Just don’t look down, Jinx,” said Elfwyn.

  “I’m fine,” Jinx snapped. He didn’t appreciate being reminded that there even was a down.

  They were escorted by several trolls. The company of trolls takes a lot of getting used to. It wasn’t just the way they smelled. There was something very disconcerting about the sound of their gnarled, clawlike toenails on the glass steps.

  When they finally reached the top of the stairs, there was a translucent platform, just a few feet square. Jinx backed up against the glass wall of the mountain and looked across, not down. The gray-white winter expanse of Urwald stretched on forever, broken here and there by evergreens.

  “Do you mind not standing so close to the edge?” he said.

  “We’re not,” said Wendell, surprised. “Er, I guess this is where we go in, then.”

  Jinx turned, not letting go of the wall, and saw a gap. It was barely wider and higher than he was. “Not ‘we,’” he said. “I’m going alone.”

  “Anyway, you our hostage,” said Sneep, tapping Wendell on the shoulder with a gnarled fingernail. “Make sure magic-boy comes back so’s we can eat his arm.”

  A breath of warmer air came from the gap. Whatever was in there, Jinx thought, at least he wouldn’t have to go down the glass stairway.

  He looked at Elfwyn and Wendell, and then at Elfwyn again. Seeing how worried they were didn’t help.

  “I think I could walk the paths,” said Elfwyn. “Because I’ve—”

  “No,” said Jinx.

  He handed her the Glass Ax.

  She clutched it tightly. “Jinx, remember the stories.”

  “Which ones?” Stories were the last thing he needed to think about right now.

  “You can’t eat anything they offer you, or you’ll be stuck down there.”

  “Who’s going to offer me anything?” said Jinx. “Anyway I’ve got a loaf of bread in my pack.”

  “Elves, maybe,” said Elfwyn. “And then, um, there’s the thing about time.”

  Oh yes. The thing about time. In stories, when people came back from the land of elves they found a hundred years had passed in the Urwald. “Well, what am I supposed to do about that?” he said.

  Elfwyn looked miserable. “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah. Me neither.” He looked at Elfwyn and Wendell again. He had to come back, or the trolls would kill them.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Wendell murmured in Samaran. “I’ve got a plan.”

  If anything, this made Jinx feel more worried. “Right. See you later then.” He turned and ducked quickly into the gap.

  And could see absolutely nothing. It was pitch dark.

  He turned around and saw Elfwyn’s and Wendell’s heads silhouetted against the gray winter sky. “What’s in there?” said Wendell.

  “I can’t see anything,” said Jinx.

  “Some magician, you,” came Sneep’s voice. “Can’t even make fire?”

  “Of course I can make fire,” said Jinx irritably. “But I need something to burn.”

  A troll arm shoved through the gap. “Here. Burn this.”

  The arm came accompanied by a rancid smell, and Jinx was afraid “this” might be something foul. But no, it was Sneep’s walking stick.

  Jinx lit it. “Thanks.”

  The walls of a narrow chamber glinted glassily in the torchlight. Jinx looked around. Where was the—ah, there it was. A doorway. And black words printed over it, in Old Urwish. The paint was peeling, and Jinx had to squint to read what it said:

  entry not advisable

  Well, duh, Jinx thought. “I’m going in,” he called. “Bye.”

  There was a stairway, for a while. Then there was a path. The glassy walls were not quite as close as in Jinx’s dreams of walking through ice.

  Sometimes the path sloped steeply downward and Jinx sat down and slid, which would have been fun if he hadn’t been worried about sudden drop-offs and things like that.

  At the bottom of one long, steep slide, he found a heap of bones and a skull.

  He stared down at it. Then he picked up the long-extinguished torch that lay beside the bones, stuck it in his belt for later, and walked on.

  He could have taken a bone to burn, but he found he . . . couldn’t. And anyway (the thought came unbidden) there would probably be others later.

  It was some time after that that he heard the trees.

  Listener. Where are you going, Listener?

  He must be out of the mountains now, and under the forest. The walls were stone, and he could see no roots of trees, but he could hear them.

  Listener, no, stop.

  He has to go on. The roots of the Listener go deeper than the roots of trees.

  I have to break . . . to remove the seal, he told the trees. Before it kills all of us.

  The trees seemed to accept that, murmuring and mumbling their regret.

  You don’t happen to know how I do that, do you? Jinx asked.

  Wizard’s magic, said the trees.

  Jinx sighed, and went on walking downward. Soon he couldn’t hear the trees anymore. He was completely alone. The earth had ceased to be made of the remains of living things. It was all cold stone.

  The stone, he felt, had once been fire. It had belched up, burning, out of the earth. He could not have said how he knew this, but he was sure that it was true.

  The torch was now just a tiny stub in his hand. It spluttered and went out. The darkness was total, devoid of even the possibility of light. This was the dark that darkness came from, the place where night was born. He heard a faraway sound like whispers in distant rooms. He fumbled for the skeleton’s torch and lit it. It flared, and Jinx knew the old dry wood would burn quickly. And then what would he do?

  Send the fire into the walls.

  Jinx wasn’t sure where the thought had come from. It almost but didn’t quite feel like his own.

  He tried it. He reached for the fire inside him and sent it into the walls.

  The fire flared out from the walls, then leapt, much faster than burning, sending flames dancing down the walls of the tunnel and out of sight. The flames came leaping and spiraling back again. They raced along the walls behind him—he looked back, and saw them cavorting up the last slope he’d come down, and then they came dancing back. And then they went out.

  But the walls glowed. Not orange like the embers of a fire, but a cool, pale yellow. They glowed into the distance as far as Jinx could see.

  He extinguished the torch, and walked on, guided by the glow of the fire in the walls.

  The floor under Jinx’s feet was no longer stone—or at least, he didn’t think it was. It looked like glass, or obsidian. It felt to his feet like ice. Jinx mentally dubbed it ice-glass. He walked on it as though it were ice, carefully at first. Then he skated along it. Then he ran and slid, ran and slid. Then he fell, hard, just as the path began to go down again.

  The path was a spiral, and he was zooming around and around, faster and faster.

  The Eldritch Depths

  The slide ended abruptly and Jinx flew through the air, hoping he wou
ld land on something soft.

  He did not.

  He lay for a minute, trying to breathe and trying to figure out if anything was broken. It felt as if everything was.

  “This is him, isn’t it?”

  “I told you he was coming.”

  The words were spoken in Qunthk, a language that sounded like an all-out battle between a tomcat and a trash can.

  Jinx sat up, painfully, and faced the cold stare of three blue-skinned, silver-haired elves.

  “I know you,” he said, in Urwish. Well, two of them, anyway.

  “We should kill him,” said the elf who Jinx remembered was named Neza. “I don’t know how he got down to the Eldritch Depths, but he must not be allowed to leave.”

  Jinx scrambled to his feet and backed away.

  One of the elves, Dearth, arched an icy eyebrow at him. “You understand the Eldritch tongue, I see.”

  “I wasn’t even trying to get to the Eldritch Depths,” said Jinx. “I’m trying to get to the nadir of all things. Is this it?”

  Jinx had never heard elves laugh before. It was a most unpleasant sound, like trolls walking on ducks.

  “A matter of opinion,” said Dearth. “For many humans, it has been.”

  “My mother,” said Jinx. He couldn’t remember his mother. But he knew she’d been carried off by elves.

  “We should kill him,” said Neza.

  The third elf spoke. “We should feed him to the Queen.”

  Jinx put his hand on the hilt of his knife, and the elves laughed again.

  “The Queen is asleep, Shatter,” said Neza.

  “We should not kill him. He’s the wick of fire,” said Dearth.

  “I know that,” said Neza. “That’s why he would be better off dead.”

  “I would not!” said Jinx.

  “And what happens to our balance, if the other wick wins?” said Dearth.

  “Balance happens on its own,” said Shatter.

  “You’re wrong,” said Dearth. “Balance requires care and guidance.”

  “The Bonemaster is already winning,” said Neza. “He has nearly won.”

  “As I’ve told you before, that is not necessarily desirable,” said Dearth, flickering irritation. “The Queen desires balance. Ice in ascendance, yes, but balance. Let this one go down and try to remove the seal. He’ll die, of course, but he might succeed even so.”