The tunnel leading back to the lake was fairly straight, with only a few bends near the end. The trolls had made it all the way through even without a torch to light their path, but Aislin doubted they could have made it to the other side of the lake in the absolute dark. She reached the end of the tunnel sooner than she’d expected. When she looked for the trolls, they were only a third of the way around the lake, feeling their way by running their hands along the cavern wall and grumbling as they went.
“Squint dumb. Not run like us,” said Ploot. His voice rang out in the silence of the cavern.
“What that?” Gringle asked, pointing at the fairy light floating in front of Aislin.
The trolls stared at Aislin and her light. In a second, they were running toward her, slipping and sliding on the wet floor. “Girl got light! Ploot want!” cried Ploot.
“Eat girl!” cried Gringle.
“Get girl and light!” shouted Ploot.
Suddenly Kimble appeared from behind an outcropping, as if erupting out of the stone itself. Startled, Aislin froze, but Kimble darted forward to pluck the fairy light from the air. “You want the light, you can have it!” the spriggan girl shouted to the trolls, tossing the light at the troll closest to the water’s edge. “Here, catch!”
Ploot snatched the light from the air and held it out so his friend couldn’t grab it from him. When the troll glanced at Aislin and the spriggan, his ugly face twisted into something hideous. “Now eat you both!” he growled.
The trolls had taken only a few more steps when the eel-creature suddenly leapt out of the water and clamped its jaws around Ploot. The cave went dark as the troll and the fairy light disappeared down the beast’s gullet, though Aislin could see a faint glow descend into its belly. With an enormous splash, the creature dove to the bottom of the lake. The remaining troll bellowed in fear and stumbled against the walls, wailing as he fought to find his way out of the cavern.
“Do fairy lights ever go out?” Kimble asked Aislin as they peered into the water, watching the glow inside the beast move from one side of the lake to the other.
Aislin shook her head. “It would if I told it to, but other than that, I don’t think so.”
“Good!” said Kimble. “Then we’ll always be able to locate Old Grumpy, and he won’t be able to sneak up on us again. What happened to the other troll?”
“A dragon ate it,” Aislin told her.
“I didn’t think you’d killed it,” Kimble replied. “Pedrasi aren’t known for being vicious.”
Aislin opened the sack she was carrying, took out the calcite light, and shook it. The cave slugs squirmed inside and the ball lit, giving off a soft yellow glow. When Aislin looked again, the troll had disappeared up the other tunnel. Glancing at the creature in the lake one last time, she said, “I’m glad the fairy light will be useful down there, because I wasn’t about to go after it.”
She turned to look at Kimble. “I thought spriggans never came to this level.”
“We don’t, unless a pedrasi princess is in danger,” Kimble replied.
“Thank you, although I could have handled it myself,” said Aislin.
Kimble laughed. “I’m sure you’re right, but my way took care of the troll for good. Spriggans don’t have anything against trolls unless they come inside our mountain. Now that troll will never bother anyone again.”
“I need to see what happened to the other troll,” Aislin told her.
“My friends are up there. They’ll take care of it,” said Kimble.
Aislin frowned and said, “That’s what worries me.”
When Aislin and Kimble reached the top of the tunnel, Gringle was nowhere in sight, but the spriggans were waiting with their lamps lit. They looked nervous as they peered down into the tunnel behind Aislin. “Only one troll came up,” Jinxie told her. “Where are the others?”
“They won’t be coming up,” said Kimble. “They met with unfortunate accidents. When the troll came out of the tunnel, where did he go?”
“Into the maze,” Jinxie said. When a horrible wailing sound came from that direction, he added, “He’s probably lost already.”
“He’ll wander around in there forever!” Borry announced, sounding gleeful. “My old pappy told tales of the people who came poking around in the mountain and got good and lost. You can still see their bones in that maze.”
“I can’t believe my ancestors would allow that to happen!” Aislin exclaimed, horrified.
Smax shrugged. “The pedrasi were gone by then, so they weren’t here to stop it.”
“Well, I am,” said Aislin. “I don’t intend to let that poor creature ‘wander around in there forever.’ ” Closing her eyes, she searched for the quickest way out for the troll.
“What is she doing?” Jinxie whispered.
“Maybe she’s in a trance. Do you think she can hear us?” asked Smax.
“I can hear you just fine,” Aislin told them with her eyes still closed. “Please be quiet and don’t move. I have to concentrate and I don’t want to crush you by accident.”
Aislin’s hair began to crackle as she drew more and more power from the rock. She had moved rock this way before, but not on such a large scale. Unsure that she could even do what she had planned, she knew that she’d need a lot more power if she was even going to attempt it. If it worked, it would be the quickest way she could think of to get the troll out of the mountain unharmed. A frightened troll would be more valuable than an injured one; an injured troll would be back with friends seeking revenge, while a frightened troll might be enough to keep others away from the mountain.
The spriggans shuffled their feet, waiting uneasily while Aislin drew more and more power into herself. She could see the glow around her through her closed eyelids as she absorbed more power than she ever had before. Her skin tingled and her heart pounded in her chest, but she didn’t stop until her body began to shake with the effort to hold the power in. Then, squeezing her hands into fists, she willed the rock to move, shutting off some openings and revealing others. The mountain groaned and shrieked as rock scraped rock, rearranging passageways that had been there for eons. Moving the rock around Gringle, Aislin herded him through the maze to the cave entrance that she herself had used. Frightened, the troll wailed as it ran.
Perspiration beaded Aislin’s forehead when the troll finally stumbled out of the mountain and staggered down the slope. With the last remains of the power she’d pulled into herself, she sealed off the entrance as if it had never existed. Although she was exhausted, she couldn’t help but smile. She had surprised herself by doing something that she hadn’t even known for sure that she could do. Apparently, taking the time to gather power first made a big difference.
“Wow!” Kimble said as Aislin opened her eyes and sat down, exhausted. “I don’t know what you just did, but it sure sounded like something big. Are you all right?”
Aislin nodded. “I will be. I just need to rest for a while.”
“Is the troll gone?” asked Smax.
“He is,” said Aislin. “I’m afraid you’ll have to relearn your maze. It’s not at all like it used to be.”
“What is going on here?” a new spriggan asked, stepping out of a large crack in the wall. Aislin hadn’t seen him before, though she’d assumed there were more living in the mountain. Suddenly the space around her was filled with spriggans, young and old, some gray with stone dust and others clean and tidy.
“You should have been here, Poppa,” said Kimble. “Aislin just rearranged parts of the mountain and got a troll to leave.”
“How did she do that?” asked a spriggan with a long beard as straggly as his hair. Although he was the oldest one there, with wrinkled skin and a cane to help him walk, his eyes were bright and he was as covered with stone dust as most of them.
“Aislin is a pedrasi princess!” Jinxie replied. “She can do anything.”
Aislin shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that. There are a lot of things I can’t do.” She couldn’t help but think of all the fairy abilities she wished she had. “But I did get rid of the troll.”
The bearded spriggan frowned. “My name is Winholt and I’m the Elder of Mount Gora. Whatever you did to the mountain, it’s probably unstable now and we’ll all have to leave.”
Aislin shook her head. “It’s not unstable. I was very careful. I even shored up some of the weaker parts near a waterfall.”
“I’ll go look,” another spriggan said, and ran off, holding a lantern in front of him.
Winholt wasn’t entirely convinced. “You’re a pedrasi princess? You don’t look like a pedrasi.”
Aislin sighed. “I get that a lot. Like I told the others, my grandfather is King Talus. I’m half pedrasi and half fairy.”
“If your grandfather is the king, you should be able to read pedrasi,” Winholt told her. “What does that say?” He pointed to something carved into the wall above the entrance to another tunnel.
Aislin studied it for a moment. The words were hard to read because so many of them were spelled oddly, but she finally read out loud, “This way to the baths. Be considerate of others. They want clean water, too.”
A spriggan snorted and clapped another on the back. “That means you, Spillip! You always leave a mess behind.”
Aislin chuckled, but knew she had to get on her way. “I’m sorry, but I have a lot of work to do and I’d like to get started,” she told them. “I want to remove the smoke stains from the trolls’ torches and clean up the rubble they left behind.”
“If you’re here, are the pedrasi coming back to live in the mountain?” asked a spriggan from the back of the group.
“Not as far as I know,” Aislin replied. “But I’m going to suggest that my grandfather start sending patrols to make sure that everything is all right. If anything comes up and you want to contact him, you can send him messages through the patrols.”
The spriggan holding the lantern came running back. “She was right! The weak places near the waterfall are a lot stronger now.” Aislin could tell the group was impressed.
“We can help you clean up,” Kimble told Aislin. “What do you need us to do?”
“You could pick up the rubble,” Aislin replied.
“What about the smoke stains?” asked Smax.
Aislin glanced at the stains on the ceiling. “Leave those to me. I have an idea that might work.”
She had been thinking about it ever since she saw the first stain. Although she was bone-achingly tired, she didn’t want to take the time to rest, so she drew power into herself once more and sent it back into the smoke-damaged rocks. Her first effort sheared off a chunk of rock, but with each attempt she took less and less, fine-tuning her skill until she was able to remove only the smoke-stained layers, leaving clean, healthy rock behind. Kimble put herself in charge of the dust-cleanup crew and made sure that the spriggans were thorough.
Aislin followed the route that the trolls had taken, removing the damaged rock while the spriggans swept up behind her. She worked as far as the tunnel leading to the lake, but didn’t go near the cavern. It didn’t take her long to finish.
Returning to the level where she’d entered the mountain, she closed her eyes once more and finished creating a map of Mount Gora in her mind. She also located three other exits that she could use. When she was finished, she turned to the spriggans who had been following her and said, “Thank you for your help, and please give my thanks to the others who helped as well.”
“Do you think you’ll ever come back?” asked Kimble.
Aislin smiled at her. “I will, as soon as I can. And maybe someday you can come visit me in Deephold.”
“I’d love that!” Kimble cried, grinning from ear to ear. “I want to see every part of Deephold. Do you think the pedrasi will like me?”
“I think they’ll like you a lot,” Aislin told her. “Especially after I tell them how much you helped me.”