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In the Land of Stories Old
It was another day’s travel before they reached the area where Ari thought the palace the Rock Trolls had built for their human king and queen had been, and a little searching did finally turn up part of a mostly-buried foundation which appeared to have been formed from solid stone rather than individual stones shaped and placed. “That was the power of the Rock Trolls,” Ari confirmed. “They could bend stone to their will with ease, and move through it as though it was water.”
Kio looked down at the rocky ground under their feet with some little dismay. “Could they have been trapped in it, when the magic left?”
“Possibly, but I know that they knew what was coming, so I can’t think they’d have risked being underground or inside rock in that way.” The shade looked around. “Keep looking, and be careful of small boulders—they were known to hide that way in plain sight.”
Everyone kept looking, and finally Pino spotted a deep crack in the rocks which turned out to be the broken entrance into a somewhat sizable cave. Merlin conjured a mage-light and they went inside…only to stop in horror at the sight the light revealed. The Rock Trolls were there. Half in and half out of the cave walls, some of them, and others partially sticking out of the ground. Most had curled up on top of the cave’s stone floor and could easily have been mistaken for small boulders if they’d been anywhere else.
There was no sign of life in any of them. “The sheer hatred it took to do this,” Jack said. His jaw was clenched, and so were his fists. “I do not need magic to know they were targeted specifically.”
“You do have magic now,” Merlin reminded him. “But I agree, to do such a thing…it’s unimaginable.”
Arthur trailed his fingers over one bent stone head. “They looked…they looked like us. Like we did.”
“Yes,” Pino said, crouching down to see the face of a stooping stone troll. “They did.”
Ari was making his way around the cave, frowning. He knew enough about the Rock Trolls to know they wouldn’t have been caught entirely by surprise; in fact, he suspected that the cave had been sealed with both rock and magic and may have held off the effects of the dawning Cataclysm for at least a small amount of time. There was no way the Rock Trolls hadn’t left a message behind, just in case they were found. He finally spotted it high up on one wall, almost concealed by the partially embedded stone body of the troll who had been etching it into the rock. Ari floated up and saw the image of a tree with some sort of shapes swimming around its roots, and the roots of that tree spelled out the words ‘I AM BANISHED BY MAGIC FREED AND CLAIMED.’
As soon as he’d told his living companions what he’d found, they at once set about making a way that they could see the message for themselves. The triplets’ climbing pinons were dismissed as an option almost immediately, as everyone was afraid more rock trolls might be inside the walls and the pinons would damage them. There was nothing around to make a ladder out of, and nothing to hook a rope around either, and so finally Merlin climbed up on Arthur’s shoulders, which got him high enough to see around the body of the troll who had been doing the carving. “It’s…I think this is representing the shadows,” he called down. “The shapes under the roots, they’re like fish without fins or tail.”
“Which is what the shadows in the water look like,” Hans agreed. He had already moved everyone else around so they would be in position just in case something happened to make Merlin or Arthur lose their balance. “Is there anything special about the tree?”
“No, it’s just a very general sort of tree,” Merlin said. “And it’s not an apple tree, so this must not be referring to Valeureux.” He reached up, reaching under the Rock Troll’s frozen arm, and touched the carving…and there was a bright flash of light that seemed to come from the cave’s walls. For a moment, just a moment, the frozen stone bodies warmed with color, but it was gone as suddenly as it had come and Merlin was shaking his hand like something had bitten him. “That…all right, I don’t know what that was.”
“That was the sign that it’s time for you to get down,” Arthur told him. “And there’s not room in here to get fancy with it, just sit down.”
Merlin did so without argument, lowering himself to sit on Arthur’s shoulders and then jumping off backwards from there. He shook out his hand again, prompting Snow to catch it and look, but there was nothing there to see. “It just stings,” he told her. “I’m not sure why. Maybe they’d left magic in the walls to revive themselves with, but it’s dissipated?”
“Or the great sucking of magic out of everything when the Deep Magic was called drained most of it,” Ari suggested. He made a face. “They deserved better, but then I daresay the whole world deserved better.”
“That it did,” Pino agreed. He abruptly turned into a dwarf, the better to look at the face of one of the Rock Trolls, and then straightened up as a man again, shaking his head. “I think we should seal this cave when we leave.” Everyone looked at him. “Perhaps someday, magic will be able to wake them. But with this cave open to the elements, or to whoever might wander this way…I do not want to someday visit a fool’s kingdom and see the bodies of these stone cousins chipped and mutilated and serving as gruesome ornaments, do you?”
“They would be able to effect their own escape, should they wake without help,” Noki said, nodding. “And to seal the cave would prevent weather from damaging them as well.”
“And if we should ever find a way to rouse them from this stone sleep, we could easily re-open the cave for ourselves,” Kio agreed. “Yes, the cave should be sealed.”
Arthur shrugged. “I’ve got no problem with it—and I agree, some idiot who finds this place would be likely to try to take one or more of them and pass them off as old statues.”
“But can we seal the cave without risking bringing part of it down?” Hans wanted to know.
“They made this cave, I think,” Ari said quietly. “Just for this purpose, by…convincing the stone to grow itself into a space for them. It withstood the Cataclysm. So it shouldn’t fall if you’re careful.”
“I can be careful,” Snow said. She paused to touch one of the huddled stone lumps and then went back outside, everyone else following her. She borrowed Arthur’s gloves and then started moving the boulders, but she didn’t at first move them to block the cave entrance. Instead she arranged them carefully, lifting some and rolling others until they looked like randomly strewn rocks but formed a sort of hidden path to the cave and at the same time concealed the entrance, and then she stepped to the side and handed Arthur back his gloves. “Now the rest of you pile up rocks to close it off, because if I do it nobody but me will be able to move them later to get back in.”
“Good thinking,” Jack said, pulling out his own gloves. “Larger ones on the bottom, I think, and then build it like a wall?”
Arthur cocked an eyebrow. “You know how to build a wall.”
Jack shrugged. “I know how to repair a wall, by stacking the rocks back up which have fallen.”
“That’s not quite the same as buildin’ a wall of rocks from the ground up,” Arthur told him. “Grab that rock over there and I’ll show you. People on Avalon do this to keep the sheep from gettin’ in places they shouldn’t go, there’s a trick to the stackin’ that makes the wall stay up…”
The triplets, Hans and Jack all picked up rocks according to Arthur’s directions, and Merlin started gathering smaller, flatter stones—he apparently knew exactly what his brother was doing, which told Snow that they’d probably learned it together. The wall grew fairly quickly in the broken opening of the cave, and looked quite stable and solid once it was done. Ari looked it over and whistled. “Now that is impressive, boys. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Arthur grinned. “Dad says our people’ve been doin’ it this way for generations, even before the Cataclysm. There’s rock walls like this all over Avalon.”
“And some of them are a hundred years old, if not more,” Merlin chimed in. “Once they’re up, they stay up until someone takes them down. Usually so they can build another wall in a different place.”
“That makes sense,” Pino observed. He stretched. “I do not know about the rest of you, but I am tired now.”
“I would not object to making camp early,” Hans agreed. “And we can discuss where to go from here. The message left by the Rock Trolls seems to have referred to the shadows, but what does it mean?”
Merlin shook his head. “I feel like I should know, like it’s right there, but I just can’t…” He put a hand up to his temple, frowning. “I just can’t reach it.”
For some reason his words made Jack’s medallion…hum against his chest. “I also think it is a good idea to make camp now,” he said. “We have no clear direction to go in from here, so to walk farther before we do would be pointless.”
Jack took the first watch, and he waited until everyone else was asleep before clearing his throat. “I know you are there, little friend.”
There was a very soft snort, and then a rock unrolled itself into a small gray troll. “Only because your patrons told you.”
Jack smiled. “I did not at first understand what the medallion was trying to convey to me, but then I realized there was a rock where none had been before. You are the only one who woke?”
“Yes. There was only enough power left to free one of us from our sleep.” He pointed to the other side of the fire. “We need the mage for this discussion.”
Jack at once got up and woke Merlin, who carefully disentangled himself from his sleeping wife and greeted the troll with a bow. “Just the one of you was freed? Is there anything I…”
The troll held up a stubby-fingered hand. “You don’t have enough power to even wake one of us,” he said, not unkindly. “Although I thank you for triggering the release of the magic that woke me. Your magic called ours, and here I am.” He sighed. “I don’t really have any way to help you, aside from telling you what the rocks tell me: There’s nothing for you if you continue north and west—or rather, south and east—but if you return to the Valley you’ll discover the key which unlocks the solution to your problem.”
“The solution is in Valeureux?”
The troll shook his head. “No, the key to unlock the solution will be found there.” He huffed. “I’m not being difficult on purpose, just so you know. Rock Trolls are…our magic lends itself to visions, you see, but they are vague and can be tricky to unwind. Our people made a terrible mistake once, unwinding a vision the wrong way, and because of it we helped set the stage for what happened to our people and the whole world besides.”
Ari appeared then, sitting next to them. “They were fooled by the fairy bitches the same as everyone else,” he explained. “John told me, because King Kristoff told him. And I remember you. You came to the castle that one time, guarding your king and John’s huntsman and the royal children.”
The troll nodded to him. “I did. You’re stuck, are you, shade?”
Ari snorted. “You could say that, yes. Merlin here made me a stone so I could come with them, to guide them, but I’ll have to go back to the Hole sooner rather than later. Someone has to watch the merjin.”
“Hmm, perhaps I’ll come with you, I would like to see the place where the Deep Magic struck,” the troll told him. “But first things first, and that has to be what I know but can only tell the part of: If you return to the Valley, you’ll discover the key which unlocks the solution to your problem. The shadows are banished by magic freed and claimed.”
“As was carved on the wall…by you?” The troll smiled, and Jack smiled back. “That was very nice carving.”
The troll waved that off. “I was actually in a hurry, because the vision came late, but thank you just the same. I am called Gothi, by the way.” Ari introduced Jack and Merlin, and the troll nodded. “I can feel it, the power settled on you at the coronation. And the other powers besides.” He chuckled. “How does it feel to you so far?”
Jack sighed. “Strange, to be honest. I had never experienced anything like that before, and now it feels like my every word and movement carries a terrible weight.”
“Only if you speak or move with royal intent,” Gothi reassured him. “But it does take time to adjust to having that power. Our human king, King Kristoff, had the same complaint after his coronation. It took him…about a month, I think, to get used to it.” He snickered. “And then he complained that people treated him like a king and not a regular person, which he did not like at all.”
That made Jack laugh. “There is something to be said for anonymity, yes—it gives one a freedom which cannot be obtained in any other manner.”
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