Trolls by nature are very impatient but can go deeply into something which interests them. Troll lore interests them. Trolls rarely study troll lore from one century to another, but when they do, they are fascinated. So, Thundell pored over the Book of Lore, never skipping a word and sometimes reading a page three times, while the other trolls sat down and stared into space. Perhaps they were thinking, or they were just staring into space.
A boring wait for Adam and his companions followed. Some of them passed the time by eating food from Nabgrasp’s lair.
Thundell suddenly looked up. His face was troubled. “Listen to this!” He began to read slowly, stumbling and hesitating over many words, especially if they were longer than four or five letters: “…in the beginning, the King of the Trolls, King Mou…Mou…Mount…e…bank banished the wicked trolls from the Great Cave and con-condemn…ed them to roam in Poverty. They were only…to return” Thundell coughed nervously, “if they led good and noble lives.”
“That’s daft!” Blunderbore boomed. “Everyone knows that trolls are bad and wild and ‘orrible …” he spat the last word out with relish.
“It gets worse,” Thundell’s voice dropped from a roar to almost a whisper. “In order to check on their be-hav…haviour, Prince Rockell, Lord of the Trolls, was to visit them every five hundred years…” The trolls looked at each other. Trolls have excellent memories, so good that they can remember everything; but only for two hundred years at a time. Then their memories fill up. None of them could remember anything about King Mountebank or Prince Rockell.
Nabgrasp’s brain was working slowly, but very slightly faster than the others. “There y’are then! He’s due ain’t he? The Lord o’ the Trolls is here—I told you so!” He looked very nervous and fidgety.
Blunderbore rubbed his nose. “You might be right,” he conceded. “Go on, Thundell, what else does it say?”
After double-checking, Thundell found his place again and read slowly: “Should he find them unchanged—that is, wicked—Rockell was charged to cut off their heads with his golden sword. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a w-w-warrior so great or fierce as he.” Thundell almost wailed, “If he should find them worthy, he was to lead them out of Poverty and back to the land, er, to the land of their birth—back to the Great Cavern of Comfort.”
“Gor! ‘Eck. What’rrr we to do?” Nabgrasp was tenderly feeling his head; he knew he had been wicked—he liked his head where it was.
Behind the gorse, Adam couldn’t believe his luck. Without stopping to think, or speaking to the others, he pulled out the orb, Cari, and bounded towards the horror-stricken trolls. “I am Rockell!” he boomed, in a voice taken from the trolls themselves, “the fiercest troll that has ever lived! I have come to check your worthiness! By all the magic of my silver sphere!” To Adam’s surprise, the elven orb sent four flashes of brilliant light over the trolls’ heads. “Why are you cringing? You haven’t been wicked, have you?” He took advantage of the orb’s help.
“Nooooooooo!” they chorused. From the way they were trembling, troll lore had made a deep impression upon them.
“Mmm! We shall see.” Adam frowned, looking around. “Aha! There are some passing pixies. Do not be afraid, little fellows, come and join us!” Reluctantly, very slowly indeed, Loy and Lupp came from behind the gorse. They came a certain way but would come no further.
“Well,” Adam said, tossing back his silver hair, “let’s ask whether you’ve been kind, helpful, good-natured trolls—”
“Nooooo!” Nabgrasp wailed. “Don’t ask those two! I know them, they’re liars and cheats and—”
“My, my, that’s not very polite, is it?”
Nabgrasp was hopping from foot to foot in terror. Adam turned to the pixies and asked them to describe the trolls’ behaviour. As the pixies spoke, fearfully at first, but growing bolder, the trolls became white-faced and began to plead and argue.
“Enough!” Adam cried. “I, Rockell, have decided—” Blunderbore gulped and Nabgrasp held his head in place with his hands. Thundell fainted and fell with a tremendous, earth-shaking thump at Rickett’s feet.
“I have decided that you are to be—forgiven!”
“Aaaaaaahhh!” Nabgrasp screamed because he was expecting to have his head chopped off and his brain hadn’t yet caught up with Adam’s words. Slowly, the word forgiven sank into the trolls’ consciousness and they began to smile, hoping to gain Prince Rockell’s favour.
“Be silent!” Adam commanded. “Forgiven…on condition that—”
“Anything,” Nabgrasp pleaded as Thundell sat up dizzily.
“On condition that you solemnly swear on the Book of Lore to be kind to pixies; fight spriggans on sight and confuse the Hag.” Adam had to repeat the conditions slowly several times until the trolls had grasped them all. Then, one by one, he made them swear an oath on the Book. He vowed that any troll who broke the oath would be beheaded at once if he didn’t first die of Black Troll Fever.
“Black Troll Fever?” Thundell repeated the words fearfully. He’d never heard of it, but it sounded terrifying. He didn’t want to catch Black Troll Fever and, judging by the faces of the other trolls, nor did they.
“Take good care of your heads. I shall be watching you, but you won’t see me. Farewell!”
He led the pixies over the hill without a backward glance.
Emily’s silver eyes flashed. “Brilliant Adam! We should have no more trouble with those four. There’s only one thing though—”
“Yes?”
“What happens if the real Lord Rockell shows up?”
“He won’t,” Loy said.
“Oh, why not?”
“Because trolls can only remember for two hundred years at a time, and we’ve just heard that Rockell was supposed to visit every five hundred. Well, Rockell’s a troll too, so naturally, he’ll have forgotten.’
“Trolls are odd creatures!” Adam shook his head.
It was time to move on. Adam ordered Lupp to lead on past the troll’s lair, while he and Emily watched from a hiding place. The pixies marched in a nervous state down the valley towards Blunderbore’s cave. There wasn’t one among them who felt brave. Now, however, they trusted Adam completely and obeyed even this terrifying command. The four trolls were still there. Each was staring into space, thinking slowly. Thinking about what they had been told. Nabgrasp noticed the pixy column first and spoke to the other trolls. The pixies looked straight ahead and hurried their step a little.
“Yoo-hoo! Nice pixies!” Nabgrasp waved.
“Lovely day!” Rickett called, showing his black and rotting teeth in what was supposed to be a friendly smile.
“Great!” Adam whispered to Emily. “They’re stupid, aren’t they?”
“Stupid, yes, but very dangerous and difficult to beat,” Emily warned. “Stay out of sight!”
5
After the trolls had returned to their thinking, Adam and Emily rejoined the pixies. Lupp led them on until they came to a barrier of gorse. On either side, stagnant pools blocked the way. The stench from them reminded Adam of Nabgrasp’s breath. The troop halted. “What now, Lupp?” Adam asked. It seemed to him that there was no way through.
“There’s a way through; there’s a narrow opening that leads into a maze of gorse.”
“A real maze?” Emily asked.
“Ay, Mistress, it’s very difficult to get through.”
“Is it the only way?”
“It is. The Hag turned the gorse into a maze to stop anyone reaching the hot springs. Since they come from deep within the earth, the Hag cannot control them with magic.”
They found an entrance and squeezed painfully into the maze. By standing on tiptoe, Emily, the tallest of them all, could see over the gorse. Because of this and because the pathways were well-beaten, they made good progress towards the centre. Suddenly the gorse began to grow and the paths to widen. The pixies stopped, terrified.
“It’s Hag magic,” Lar explained. “We’ve b
een lured into the maze; she’s making it grow so that the Mistress cannot guide us.”
“How does she know?” Adam asked.
“Her will is everywhere in this land,” Lar’s voice sounded beaten as his squint followed the gorse growth upwards.
“Never mind, Lupp can lead us, he’s been here before, remember?”
There was no way of telling the difference between one track and another except for a knuckle of gorse branch or a broken spiky twig. The band plodded on, twisting and turning through the maze for ages. Finally, Emily called a halt.
“This is no good, Lupp. We’ve been past this knuckle of gorse three times now. Admit that you’re lost.”
Lupp looked anxiously at Lar and nodded.
“Right,” Emily said, “I’ll sort this out.” She tore her cotton handkerchief into narrow ribbons, fastening one to a gorse stem. “Now we’ll know if we’ve been this way before. I seem to remember reading somewhere that you should always turn right in a maze till you get to the middle. Honestly, Lupp, I don’t know how you ever got through the maze last time.”
Lupp hung his head and looked miserable.
Pausing only to tie more ribbons to gorse, they made progress, until, as Emily had foreseen, they came to the middle of the maze.
There they found a stone with runes carved on it. Lar read:
‘LEAVE? EASIER TO MAKE HOLES IN WATER!’
“It’s a message from the Hag, Mistress.”
“We’ll see about that.” Emily pursed her lips.
They pressed on, away from the centre, always turning left. But the plan didn’t work. The Hag was too clever. Their efforts always brought them back to read the same hateful message on the stone.
Eventually, Lar said, “Mistress, I fear the Hag has a sealing spell upon the maze. We shall wander till we drop.” The pixies’ shoulders sagged, even Adam hung his head.
“We don’t give up that easily,” Emily muttered and set off again blindly. She began mixing right and left turns, wondering whether or not the absence of ribbons was an improvement. Deep down, she knew that without a system, the words on the stone were destined to come true. But she couldn’t think of a plan. They pressed further into the maze until they came upon a hole in the ground in one corner. It was a rabbit hole. Emily stared at it and then at Adam. Since the maze had grown about twenty times, so had the hole.
“What about it?” Emily asked.
“I’m game if you are,” Adam nodded.
There was no doubt that the pixies could pass through the tunnel, but it would be risky for Adam and Emily. They couldn’t know where the tunnel led. It might simply take them deeper into the maze, or as they hoped, there might be an exit outside. There wouldn’t be much air down there and what if the Hag shrank the maze back to normal? They would be buried alive. What’s more, they weren’t sure it was a rabbit hole. Whatever had dug the hole could be twenty times bigger down there.
“‘He who hesitates is lost!’ That’s one of our sayings, Lar.” Adam smiled at the little pixy as he slowly repeated these words while he pulled Cari from his pocket. Holding the orb for courage, he squirmed head-first into the tunnel. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe with the darkness pressing in on him. Pushing to the back of his mind the frightening thought that the Hag could shrink the maze at any moment, he squirmed forward. For the moment, it was enough to wriggle on, despite the soreness caused to his elbows and knees.
A dim light began to glow in his right hand. Adam stopped for a moment, causing Emily to crash into his shoe with her arm. The glow was getting brighter until the tunnel ahead was lit by a silver beam: the elven orb was working its magic. Encouraged, Adam began to struggle on again.
On its own, the orb’s beam was not enough to calm Emily. She couldn’t stand being in the dark, in closed spaces. This tunnel was airless while soil filled her hair and entered her mouth and nose. The only way to keep from screaming and losing control was to stare at Adam’s shoes and not to think of anything except her grazed knees. She suddenly felt a horrible tickling on her left hand. Emily screamed. A millipede twenty times its natural size was running its thousand legs across her hand. This moment seemed to last forever, then the creature was gone past the column of pixies who were advancing comfortably through the tunnel behind her. The only discomfort for the pixies was that they had to walk with their heads slightly bowed, so not to scrape their caps against the tunnel roof. Heart still pounding from the shock of the millipede, Emily heard Adam mutter something and then move off to the right. Emily saw that the track forked and Adam had chosen the right fork. This was a decision he made five more times; perhaps because he was right-handed, thought Emily, who was left-handed.
Adam’s heart leapt because he saw a chink of light ahead. Maybe they were getting near the end of their ordeal. Wondering where the tunnel would bring them, he knelt on a bone and gasped in pain. At that moment, Cari’s beam faded away until there was only the dimmest spark at its centre. Adam looked at the sphere, thinking that the spark was like a heart. Cari seemed like a living creature to him. As he thought this, he felt around him with his left-hand and discovered several more bones littered on the ground. These remains were leftovers from some beast’s dinner. Just as this idea occurred to him, Adam saw two huge greenish-yellow eyes glowing in the gloom ahead.
Once more, Emily crashed into Adam’s shoes as he stopped dead. She was suffering too much to protest and unaware of the danger ahead. Adam clutched Cari tighter. He couldn’t make out the shape of the creature, but he could feel its hostility. All he could see were the eyes. Its attack began with a low growl, a throaty rumble before the eyes launched towards Adam. All the creature’s strength was channelled into its hind legs. It sprang as if fired from a catapult. Again, Adam smelt revolting breath. He just had time to glimpse a mouth full of vicious teeth, which seemed to go on forever. The darkness that half-hid the beast from the boy’s terrified eyes saved him. He had enough courage left to react. Even as he threw himself backwards into Emily, Adam instinctively thrust Cari forward. The dull spark suddenly ignited so that the orb blazed out a blinding beam of white light, keener than a blade. It seared the creature’s eyes, causing its shaggy body to twist in mid-air and crash to the ground. The shaken pixies covered their sensitive ears from the creature’s agonised wails filling the crowded space. The creature scuffed a cloud of dust as it turned and fled out of the tunnel. Emily, ears ringing, stared disbelievingly at the orb, Cari. “What was that…thing?” she asked with shaking voice.
“A weasel, I think, but a monster-sized one!”
“It’s the Hag’s spell, Mistress, everything here except ourselves has grown. We have the elven orb to thank for our lives,” Lar explained. Adam puffed out his cheeks in relief; he’d never imagined himself as weasel lunch, not even in his worst nightmare.
They pressed on upwards towards the crack of light, where the air slowly became sweeter and lighter until Adam was able to wriggle out of the tunnel and breathe in clean air. The sensation was so good that he didn’t even notice where he was. It was Lupp who cried out: “Mistress, what fortune! We are out of the maze and not far from the hot springs!”
The pixy set off, sure of his direction this time. Lar looked anxiously high into the sky, where two black kites were wheeling and screeching. As if alerted by Lar’s gaze, they flew like arrows over the hills and away. “We haven’t long to find the flowers, Mistress. The Foul One’s messengers even now are on the wing.”
Picking their way past stinking ponds and tangled briar, they had gone some distance when Lupp looked round. “Look!” he growled. The maze was shrinking back to normal size, and as Lar squinted behind him, he could see the hills beyond quite clearly.
“The Hag knows we have outwitted her,” Lar said grimly. “Her fury will know no bounds.”
6
They hurried on; meanwhile, the air grew still until their voices seemed to ring in hollowness. Emily recognised the feeling that made her so uneasy: the silence before
a storm. Before long, it burst. The wind began to whip dust into their eyes so that their steps became exhausted against its force. Soon, the clouds lowered, dimming the light almost to darkness. Hailstones began to thrash down on them, each one as big as a pixy hand. Hurled by the gale, they struck with a painful bruising force.
“Quickly!” Emily shouted. “Turn your backs to the wind and gather hailstones, we’ll build an ice wall.”
Labouring through a painful beating, the pixies built a wall. Adam and Emily, so much bigger, gathered great freezing armfuls of hail and built ten times faster than their companions.
“The Great Wall of China!” Emily shouted.
But Adam’s eyes were full of tears, he couldn’t manage a brave smile, because he’d been hit a painful blow by a large hailstone on the forehead.
“Shelter behind the wall,” Emily ordered. The plan was simple, but it worked. The huge stones cannoned harmlessly into the ice wall.
“I wonder how long she’ll keep this up?” Emily murmured.
“Not long, Mistress,” Lar replied, “because she’s using a lot of energy. I believe she means to weaken us before her next attack.”
“I hope she doesn’t suspect what we’re up to.”
“If she does,” Adam tentatively fingering the lump on his forehead, looked at his sister, “she’ll find a way of stopping us.”
As he spoke, the wind dropped as suddenly as it had started and the last few hailstones thumped to the ground.
“She’s resting, we must move on while there’s time,” Lar warned.
They slipped and slithered along the trail as quickly as possible. Lupp didn’t waste any time but led them directly to a gorse barrier with a gap through which the footpath passed.
The opening which served as a gateway for the pixies was too narrow for Adam and Emily, so they were scratched and snagged as they forced their way through. Their attention was concentrated on this struggle, so they were even more astonished at the scene before them when they finally broke through.
Whirligig Page 4