72

“Rain and Fire”

Janner and Kalmar stepped out into a courtyard as wide as the Field of Finley. It was encircled by a stone wall at least twenty feet high, with snow heaped at the edges. The deep blue sky was cloudless and cold. Directly across the courtyard was an arched opening in the wall that framed countless snowcapped peaks marching off into the distance. The brothers were at the top of the world.

And the top of the world was crowded with trolls—big trolls—dressed in furs, which made them look bigger and more fearsome, like a herd of bomnubbles.

“Grrk,” one of them said.

One by one, the trolls turned their attention to the boy and the wolf standing with their backs to the castle door. There was no way the brothers could cross the courtyard before the trolls seized them. Or ate them. Or smashed them flat. But Janner could see no other option. The wide world beyond the archway beckoned.

Janner pulled the stone from his pocket, but here in the daylight its glow seemed a petty thing. Besides, the trolls weren’t melded; he doubted the stone’s power held any sway over them.

The hulks grunted to one another and pointed suspiciously, moving closer to the boys.

“Should we run for it?” Janner asked.

Behind them, the spider scratched at the oak door.

“Yes.” Kalmar laughed nervously. “Yes, we should.”

Janner crouched, trying to ignore the tremble in his tired legs. If I die, it will be a good death, he told himself. Uncle Artham would be proud, wouldn’t he?

The spider scraped at the door again, then hammered it, and the old wood cracked.

“Ready?” Janner asked as the trolls edged nearer.

Kalmar chuckled. “You know, I could really go for some troll poetry about now. Know any?”

“In fact, I do,” Janner said with a grin. “We run on the count of squibbit. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Grrk. Glog-glog…ack…woggy!”

Kalmar recited the second line. “Grrk. Glog-glogacksnock-jibbit.”

“Ooog, wacklesnodspadgenoggy,” Janner continued, tensing to spring.

“Nacketbrigglesweeeeeem! Grrk—”

“—squibbit?”

Before they ran, Janner realized another voice had finished the poem. One of the trolls stepped forward and repeated the line: “Nacketbrigglesweeeeeem! Grrk. Squibbit?”

Janner was dumbstruck.

“You talk troll?” the troll asked.

“Um, grrk,” Kalmar said.

“Grrk!” Janner blurted. “Glog-glogacksnock-jibbit!”

The troll grunted something to his companions. The rest of them murmured and broke into childlike smiles.

“How boys know troll talk?” a second troll asked.

“A troll friend taught us,” said Janner, trying to ignore the pounding on the door behind him.

“Troll friends?” the first troll said happily, clapping his hands.

“Yes!” Janner hardly dared to hope that this was happening. “His name was Oood!”

“Oood?” said the second troll. “Me remember Oood. Oood, son of Glab and Thracky!”

“Glab my cousin!” said another troll in the back.

All at once the tension in the courtyard floated away, and the trolls fell into happy chatter, congregating around the boys and looking at them with hideously cheery faces. Janner’s legs almost gave out. The door behind them shuddered with another blow, and the trolls looked at the boys questioningly.

“Listen!” Janner said. “Oood was our friend. He was going to help us smash Gnag.”

The trolls nodded and scratched their heads and belly buttons.

“Smash Gnag good.” The first troll beat his chest. “Yiggit want to go home to Glagron. It too cold here. No trees.” The other trolls grunted their agreement.

“Will you help us?” Kalmar asked.

“Why help Fang?” Yiggit said, narrowing his little eyes.

“He’s not a Fang!” Janner said. “He’s the High King of Anniera. Gnag did this.” He pointed at Kalmar’s fur.

“Anniera,” said Yiggit, nodding. “Gnag smash Anniera.”

“Yes,” Kalmar said. “Now, Anniera smash Gnag.”

The trolls thought about this, and then the whole congregation raised their giant fists in the air and shouted, “Smash Gnag!”

Bonifer banged on the door again and the trolls looked confused.

“There’s a big spider thing on the other side of that door.” Kalmar waggled his fingers. “A bad monster. Can you stop it?”

“Easy,” said Yiggit with a shrug, and he grunted some commands at the others.

“We need to get to Ban Rona,” Janner said. “Down from Throg.”

“Come.” Yiggit beckoned several of his fellow trolls to follow. The rest parted and allowed the brothers to pass, then grinned and gathered around the castle door, waiting to smash whatever emerged.

Just as Janner and Kalmar passed through the archway that only moments ago seemed impossible to reach, the door burst open. Janner glanced behind. Spidery legs shot out over the trolls’ heads, but the trolls descended on the giant spider, and Bonifer’s voice rang out into the air for the last time.

“Yiggit help you down,” said their new friend.

Janner pulled his eyes away from the courtyard and beheld the dizzying expanse of the Killridge Mountains spread before him. Beyond the wall, the mountain fell steeply away. At the brink of the cliff, there was another gondola attached to another series of chains. The chains stretched over the precipice and descended to an iron tower built into a distant slope, then to another and another, down the face of the mountain and around a stony ridge below.

Yiggit indicated with a grunt that the boys were to get into the gondola, and then he moved to an enormous wheel and busied himself with a series of levers. Janner and Kalmar nervously climbed the stone steps to the gondola and ducked inside. It was as filthy as the other, but Janner wasn’t going to complain. He peeked out the window, eyes watering in the cold wind, and waited as several other trolls joined Yiggit at the wheel.

“Oood is a good boy,” Yiggit said.

“Yes.” Janner didn’t have the heart to tell them that Oood was gone.

Yiggit and the others heaved. The gondola lifted from the ground and swayed, then swung out over the open air.

“We’re in a big hurry,” Kalmar said. “Can you voom us?”

“Voom!” Yiggit waved the other trolls out of the way. He waited until the boys sat down, and then he flipped a lever and the gondola shot out over empty air.

The brothers leaned back in their seats, heedless of the grime and their perilous speed. They were exhausted and out of words.

Janner looked behind them at the full height of Castle Throg for the first time. It was beautiful in its way, stone on stone, spired and silent in the freezing heights, a lonely place on a lonely mountain, where madness had made its home. Never before had Janner so longed for green warm things, growing trees, rolling waves, and smiling faces.

The gondola descended until the highest spire of Throg disappeared among the peaks.