The Great Troll War

‘His Mightiness has much on his mind,’ she said, ‘but I am central to his needs. He will return.’

‘Leave Shandar and side with us,’ I said. ‘With your help we can beat him.’

‘My destiny is inextricably linked to that of my master’s,’ she said, staring at me with a glimmer of sadness. ‘As, I believe, is yours.’

‘We have something in common, then. Is this how you see yourself?’ I added. ‘The lackey of a despot?’

‘Your taunts will not sway me from my course,’ said D’Argento. ‘There is a bigger picture that you cannot see, a story that is not yet revealed.’

‘Riddles, D’Argento?’

She cocked her head on one side and regarded me without emotion – and was suddenly gone in another pillar of fire. Shandar must have wanted his socks washed or something.

There was a moment’s pause as we took all this in.

‘Quark?’ said the Quarkbeast.

‘No,’ I said, staring into his expressive mauve eyes, ‘we’ll not give you up. Not now, not ever.’

‘What was all that “bigger picture” stuff about?’ asked the Princess.

‘I’m really not sure,’ I replied. ‘Messing with our heads, most likely.’

‘Is he going to make good on that promise to instantly remove the Trolls?’ asked the Princess.

‘An assurance from Shandar assures precisely nothing,’ I said, ‘so assume not. If we have until Monday morning, that’s two days.’

‘A lot can happen in two days,’ said Tiger.

‘True. Why were you keen to give him the Eye of Zoltar, Boo?’

She nodded towards Monty.

‘While handing it to him I may have accidentally slipped a Lump of East in his pocket,’ said Monty, taking an east-pointing compass from his own pocket. ‘It’s such an old spell he may not notice he’s got it on him.’

Monty put the compass on the table and we stared at it. The needle swung around lazily.

‘What are we looking at?’ asked the Princess.

‘The spell that makes any iron point to magnetic north is the only remaining part of an ingenious Global Magic Navigation System spelled by the Phoenicians around two millennia BCE,’ explained Monty. ‘There were going to be four fixed compass points around the globe, each with a separate metal-based compass that would point to them. Simple trigonometry would then be used to give your location anywhere in the known world with an accuracy down to about five hundred yards.’

‘What happened?’ asked Colin.

‘Budget overruns, mostly – and sabotage by other seafaring nations. The one they planted in the far north is the only one still functioning today.’

We continued to stare at the compass, and the needle swung freely for a while, then turned and pointed fixedly in one direction.

‘Okay,’ said Boo. ‘He’s out of teleportation and somewhere on that line.’

‘He could be as close as Padstow or … in Siberia,’ said Tiger.

‘Exactly,’ said Boo. ‘Feldspar? I need you to take this compass to the end of the harbour, get a reading, then fly to the north coast and get another reading. Repeat several times, and when you think you have a reasonable accuracy, come back and we’ll figure out the trigonometry.27’

‘Right,’ said Feldspar, happy to be doing some work. He flew out of the open window with a raucous beating of wings and an enthusiastic ‘Tally ho!’ then returned a minute later to take the compass that he’d forgotten, and flew off again, only without the ‘Tally ho’.

‘Okay,’ I said to everyone present, ‘just so we’re clear on this: Shandar will not keep his word. The negotiation you saw buys us one thing: time. We’ve got until dawn on Monday morning to figure out a winning strategy. After that, Cornwall will look less like a picturesque peninsula with a rugged coastline and reasonably priced teashops, and more like a Troll’s all-you-can-eat buffet. The Princess’s closest advisers are going to try and formulate a plan of action, and I may call on any one of you to help, so stand close by to await orders. Any questions?’

No one said a word, and I called an end to the Conclave. The attendees all filed out in something of a daze, leaving only myself, Boo, Colin, Tiger, the Princess, Full Price, Kevin Zip, the Mysterious X and Monty Vanguard. Once everyone else had departed, I asked Tiger to go and fetch Lady Mawgon.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘we need to discover Shandar’s overall plan, and once we know exactly what it is, the chances of thwarting him might move, with a lot of luck, from “utterly impossible” to a more workable “highly improbable”.’

‘My kind of odds,’ said the Princess.

We discussed Shandar’s possible plans, making little headway until Tiger came back accompanied by a severe-looking woman who glided into the room dressed in a large black crinoline dress.

It was Lady Mawgon.

Troll Defence