The Great Troll War

Inside Shandar’s Tower

The basement was single-storey, and in the centre was a service elevator large enough to hold a truck. The floor space was about half the size of a soccer pitch but roughly trapezoid in shape with solid steel uprights spaced at regular intervals supporting the building above me and diagonally cross-braced to the walls and each other. The area was filled with floor-to-ceiling storage racks, all meticulously labelled and stocked with a bewildering variety of goods: clothes, tinned food, ping-pong balls, spare dishwasher parts, bottles of wine, packets of seeds. There was even an entire rack devoted to movies and TV series on DVD40 – more than one could ever watch in a lifetime.

I walked towards the service elevator and stairway block, intending to continue my explorations on the next floor up, but when I turned a corner I stopped dead as a Hollow Woman was walking towards me, pushing a shopping trolley full of empty jam jars. Unlike the Hollow Men, who typically wore a dark suit, hat and white shirt, the female version of the Hollow Man was dressed in denim dungarees and a gingham shirt. She wore gloves, but instead of a hat she had a red-spotted headscarf wrapped around where her head would have been. Although devoid of life and essentially nothing but a set of clothes given movement and purpose by Shandar’s power, these dungaree-clad drones seemed more to do with storekeeping than defence, because as I stood there, hardly daring to move, the Hollow Woman simply walked straight past me and carried on to place the items in the trolley on a shelf, then make a quick note on a pad detailing what was stored where.

I turned and climbed noiselessly up the stairs to the next level, which was more of the same: racks and racks of stores. Clothes, huge forty-gallon drums of peanut butter, a complete set of National Geographic, and a lot of really good art – much of which I knew rightly belonged to the regional galleries that were dotted around the UnUnited Kingdoms. It wasn’t just paintings that had been stolen, either. There were sculptures, tapestries and priceless silver and tableware. The next level up from this was furniture – mostly ornate and upholstered with brocaded patterned work, all far more intricate and beautiful than could ever be conjured up by magic. There were eight sub-basements in total, each full of everything that might be needed for a lifetime of luxurious living. The last sub-basement before I reached the ground floor was the loading dock, which had a large opening to an exterior ramp.

Hollow Men were milling around while trucks offloaded more goods to be stored either in the sub-basements below or the office space above, as the large service elevator went both ways. There were too many Hollow Men here to avoid being spotted, so I hastily made my way up another flight of steps and came to a door marked ‘Lobby’. I pushed it open a crack and peered out.

The entrance atrium was triangular. The sunlight had turned a deep orange in anticipation of setting, and was now throwing a warm glow upon the wood marquetry, stainless steel and marble interior. The high ceiling was covered with a large painting that depicted the Mighty Shandar’s numerous achievements – magical exploits, created animals, finest spells, biggest castles. It all looked very much as though the painter was eager to massage Shandar’s ego – the wizard was always portrayed in a heroic way, his foot on the head of a defeated Dragon, dopey things like that. To my right I could see the main entrance with what looked like airtight doors, currently secured open. There were eight Hollow Men in the lobby, all motionless. I took a homing snail from my bag and wrote on the shell in very small letters:

Alive, Feldspar and crew of Bellerophon heroes of resistance, more later.

I then took the tiny hood off the snail’s head and they41 yawned, waved both sets of antennae at me and looked around. I laid them on the floor and then, after a moment’s pause to get their bearings, they were off like a rocket, zigzagging towards the entrance. If the Hollow Men on guard duty saw the snail, they did not consider them a threat and the last I saw of the heroic gastropod was as they slid out into the daylight and then hurtled off in the direction of the M5. Snails often navigated by motorway – fewer obstructions, well signposted and the white lines a low-friction surface conducive to sustained speed. They’d probably get the message in Penzance in about two hours, so long as the plucky mollusc could figure out the Button Trench.

I gently closed the lobby door and carried on up the tower, but this time more cautiously, one hand on the hilt of Exhorbitus. My caution was unnecessary: the first floor was empty. I went to the window and looked out onto a landscape bathed with the long shadows of the setting sun. It was the end of a very long day by now, the dawn trip to the Spellsucker radio mast with the Dragons feeling like weeks before, the memory relegated to misty forgetfulness by the drama of the rest of the day’s events.

The window, I noted, was sealed tight shut and made of thick glass, but with nothing else to see here I worked my way upwards, exploring the floors as I went, which wasn’t so very hard as each floor was pretty much open plan, a square space around the central core that carried the elevators, stairs and service shafts. I noted that the building was strengthened by more steel girders that were criss-crossed by bracing bars, some of which were in awkward places and needed to be stepped across.

I carried on trudging up the steel stairs as outside it turned from day to dusk to night. Most floors were empty, but others were notably in use: four floors were allocated to Hollow Men and Women storage – rows upon rows of shelves upon which were placed parcels of folded clothes wrapped in cellophane, ready to leap into life at Shandar’s command. Three more floors were made over to market gardening and another two seemed to have been converted into a double-height library, with a dizzying collection of books contained upon oak shelves, and a reading area of plush green leather armchairs in front of a crackling fire. By the time I reached the thirty-ninth floor, Quarking noises from above told me I was closer to something more relevant. I quietly opened the fortieth-storey door and, once I’d ensured no one was about, crept in and found myself in a floor entirely devoted to Quarkbeasts. The creatures were all held in their own sumptuous living quarters, fully equipped with all the things Quarkbeasts really like, which generally revolved around chewing on a zinc-plated anchor link while sprawled on a large sofa sipping rusty water and watching TV.

I looked around the individual rooms cautiously and could see that our theories regarding Shandar and the Quarkbeasts were correct – each Quarkbeast was housed in a room next to his or her identical yet opposite twin, and a shared door between their quarters could open when required and the Quarkbeast, naturally curious, would meet their twin – and being entirely opposite to one another, would cancel each other out with a staggeringly large release of raw wizidrical energy. But instead of leaving North Devon as simply a smoking hole in the ground, the energy of all those simultaneously conjoining Quarkbeasts would be channelled through large silicon-coated steel funnels in the ceiling that led up a long vertical shaft that disappeared into the gloom high above – presumably to where the Mighty Shandar would be waiting to receive all that extra power.

I had a scout around and found that all Quarkbeasts except one were present – mine. After finding the room destined for him, I felt a cold shudder of revulsion go through me. The recent loss of Feldspar and the Bellerophon and the damage that had been wrought by Shandar’s assistance to the Trolls bubbled to the surface. I felt hot, and twitchy, and all of a sudden I didn’t really care what happened to me or who knew I was here. I headed straight to the main passenger elevator and pressed the call button.

I didn’t have to wait long for the car to arrive, and the doors opened to reveal … Miss D’Argento, surrounded by a half-dozen Hollow clerks who were so startled by my sudden appearance that they spontaneously collapsed into six neat piles of clothes, the papers they were carrying now scattered in the air like a ticker-tape parade. If Miss D’Argento was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it. She merely raised a jet-black eyebrow.

‘Miss Strange,’ she said, inclining her head in greeting.

‘Miss D’Argento,’ I said.

There was a pause, until she asked:

‘Which floor?’

‘All the way up,’ I told her.

She leaned across and pressed a button marked ‘Control Deck’.

‘What are you hoping to do?’ she asked as the lift rose. ‘Shandar’s power will soon be without limit, and no one will be able to withstand his might.’

I looked at her for a moment.

‘They all say that,’ I said, ‘every single despot who ever tried to take what was not theirs by force. And you know what? They always end up ignominiously defeated, vanquished by events they can’t predict, from a quarter they don’t expect.’

‘I don’t think you understand the Mighty Shandar well enough,’ said D’Argento, who seemed no longer to refer to herself in the third person, to my great relief, ‘nor of what he is capable, nor his plans.’

She was right. Zambini had sent a message to the effect that his plans were ‘bigger and bolder’ than anything we could dream up. But that didn’t matter right now.

‘I understand him perfectly,’ I said, ‘but you don’t. If you did, you’d be helping and not hindering.’

‘Our destinies are inextricably bound,’ she said. ‘I’ve known that for a long time, and learned it from someone wiser than you.’

I didn’t really understand D’Argento and Shandar’s relationship. She was too smart to simply be a minion, yet not outwardly evil enough to stand by his side. She was basically his agent – an employee. Insanely loyal or simply in it for the cash? I couldn’t tell – but people who stood on the right-hand side of tyrants usually ended up on the wrong side of history.

‘What’s your play?’ I asked her.

‘What’s yours?’ she retorted as the bell sounded and the lift doors opened. I made no answer and she stepped out of the elevator and indicated the room with a flourish.

‘Welcome,’ she said, ‘to the Tower of Knowledge.’

I stepped into the room. The doors slid shut behind me and I looked around.

Whatever the real Chrysler Building looked like inside, I was willing to bet good money it was nothing like this. The floor area was smaller than on the lower storeys as the building narrowed as it rose, but the room was still large and sumptuously furnished with leather armchairs and walnut tables and desks. To one side on a low dais a string quartet of Hollow musicians were neatly folded next to their instruments, and on the other side of the room a log fire blazed in a grate within an ornate fireplace. Centred on all the four walls were large semicircular windows, giving far-reaching views in all directions. Above our heads was the interior of the tower’s spire: an empty void of at least six storeys in height, with the distinctive triangular windows allowing a clear view of the dark sky outside.

I noticed a large aperture in the centre of the room, across which was placed a stainless steel grate. I walked across and peered into a vertical shaft which plunged into darkness far below, from where I could hear faint Quarking noises.

‘During the mass conjoining,’ said Miss D’Argento, who had walked with me, ‘the raw wizidrical energy will flow up this conduit, and will be absorbed and then focused by the Eye of Zoltar into every cell of his body. No one has ever been that powerful before. He will, quite literally, become—’

‘A living god?’ came a voice from behind us. I turned. It was the Mighty Shandar, and he looked younger and fitter than when he had appeared last in the Queens Hotel ballroom.

‘Practising your humility, Shandar?’

I purposefully left off the ‘mighty’ honorific. His eyebrow twitched and I saw D’Argento flick a nervous look towards me. A lesser mortal would have been vaporised into dust where they stood, but I was not frightened of him, and it was best he knew that.

‘There is a fine line between boldness and stupidity,’ he said, commenting either on the absence of the honorific or my sarcasm, but I wasn’t sure which. He snapped his fingers and the Hollow string quartet popped into life, picked up their instruments and began to play softly in the background.

‘D’Argento,’ said Shandar, ‘bring us coffee. Jennifer and I need to talk.’

D’Argento nodded respectfully and departed. We stared at one another for a few moments.

‘Are you going to kill me?’ I asked.

‘If it were that simple,’ he said, ‘I would have done it years ago, the first time I realised who you were, the moment I realised Zambini had put a plan in place, the moment I saw you for the threat you are.’

I thought about the photograph I found, the one of me at the orphanage, with ‘The Assetts’ written on the back. Me and the Quarkbeast. I had to know more.

‘Enlighten me.’

‘I shall not,’ he said, wagging a finger at me. ‘The supreme delight I will get from destroying you lies in the fact that you will never know what it is you could have done. But the people you failed, the people you left behind, I’ll make sure they know how absolute was your blundering stupidity. The name of Jennifer Strange will be synonymous with complete and utter failure.’

And he laughed.

My temper spiked and in an instant Exhorbitus was out and had sliced him cleanly in half. Or rather, that’s what I had intended – but Exhorbitus, who could change thought into immediate action, was still too slow. The instant before the blade struck him, Shandar had teleported to a position beside the fire, where he stared back at me laconically.

‘What do you think?’ he asked, indicating his creation, the tower.

‘Vulgar and ostentatious,’ I replied, taking two steps towards him. He effortlessly teleported to one of the windows, then another, each time accompanied by a faint ‘pop’ as the air rushed in to fill the area left empty by his departing form. If I were to beat him, it would not be with a blade. I calmed, and placed Exhorbitus back in its scabbard.

‘You’re already all-powerful,’ I said. ‘Why annihilate all those Quarkbeasts in the mass conjoining? What could you want that you do not already have?’

‘I have plans far bigger and bolder than you could possibly imagine,’ he said. ‘You will never find out what I am going to do until I have done it.’

‘We’re working on that,’ I said, wondering whether the team back in Penzance had managed to find a fantasy author with a suitably aberrant imagination, ‘but really,’ I added, ‘centuries of planning to give yourself, what, two TeraShandars of power? It’s big enough to achieve world domination, but not enough to keep it.’

He smiled.

‘Who did your maths? That Full Price nincompoop, or the perpetually moody Lady Mawgon? “She who no-one obeys”.’

‘It’s more?’

‘Considerably more. You don’t total the power of each conjoinment, you multiply them. The power available to me is roughly two raised to the power of sixty-three.’

He placed the figures in the air as smoke so I could better understand them.

263

‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’ he said. ‘But when you consider that the notable Carl Sagan42 calculated that two raised to the power of eighty was likely the number of elementary particles in the universe, I think you will agree I will have more crackle on tap than I’d really know what to do with.’

‘More skyscrapers in North Devon?’ I asked.

‘You’re very sarcastic, aren’t you?’

‘I learned it from a friend,’ I said, thinking of Tiger.

‘It’s not skyscrapers I want to build,’ he said after a moment’s thought, ‘it’s enlightenment.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘The acquisition of knowledge follows broadly established lines: research, collation, evaluation, testing, modification and conclusion. These can all be done by others and deposited in libraries. Terrific if you’re a specialist, but if you are looking for a broader and fuller understanding of exactly what all this is here for and how and why it works, then you will need an all-encompassing overview, a full and complete understanding of an almost infinite host of subjects. A lifetime is not long enough to do that.’

‘I don’t disagree with that,’ I said, ‘so far.’

‘In the pursuit of knowledge,’ he continued, ‘humans fight, regimes fall and knowledge is lost, forgotten or warped for political gain. With a clear objective and time enough in which to do it, I can achieve full enlightenment. If you stop to think for a moment, Jenny, I’m actually making the greatest possible contribution to human knowledge. I call it “The Everything Project”.’

There was a pause in the conversation as D’Argento reappeared and handed Shandar a coffee, and me a banana milkshake, my favourite.

‘All the great unanswered questions of the world will be answered,’ I said, recalling Yolanda of Kilpeck’s prediction of what would happen when the Quarkbeasts came together.

‘Correct,’ said Shandar. ‘The Quota of fully Quorumed Quarkbeasts will allow me to become what will be known as “the Shandarian Oracle”.’

He paused for a moment.

‘But to ultimately know everything I need to transcend the boundaries imposed by human biology. When the Quarkbeasts conjoin I will have the power to achieve immortality. An eternal life to answer the Eternal Question. Better still, I will have enough spare power to bestow it on others. Like the loyal Miss D’Argento, for instance – and you.’

‘You’re offering me eternal life so I can help you figure out the riddles of the universe? That’s quite an offer.’

‘The best you’ll ever get,’ he said. ‘Give me your Quarkbeast, and live a life eternal at my side, learning all there is to know about everything.’

‘That’s all I have to do?’

‘Pretty much – oh, and you have to be my friend, stop all this hating and occasionally help me out in times of need.’

I thought for a moment. Not about his offer, which would have massive strings attached – but what he was actually up to. There was more to this, and it certainly reeked of world domination – but we’d already discounted that. There was something more.

‘Tell me your plans and I’ll give you an answer.’

‘Give me your Quarkbeast and after the conjoining I’ll tell you everything.’

‘Why not just take it?’

He paused.

‘It’s … not as easy as that.’

‘But all this Troll mass murder is?’

‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he said, ‘I simply allowed the Trolls to express themselves in an openly geographical manner. It’s not my place to instruct the Trolls as to their eating habits, any more than you can insist I be vegetarian.’

‘So you’re okay with all that “being eaten alive” stuff?’

‘Of course,’ he said, mildly puzzled that I should ask. ‘Looking at it objectively, there is no difference between Trolls eating humans and humans eating sheep. Thinking otherwise strikes me as actually a little hypocritical, wouldn’t you agree?’

I had been vegetarian for years, although not militant, but there was a point buried deep somewhere in his twisted logic.

‘May I ask a question?’ I asked.

‘Shoot.’

‘How does someone get to be as utterly immoral as you?’

‘You’ve got me all wrong: I’m not immoral, for that would make me at worst deceitful or unprincipled, as I would understand the wickedness behind my actions. No, I am amoral – without any morals at all. I see, I want, I take – without guilt, pity, mercy or sorrow.’

‘And how’s that working out for you?’

‘It’s working out very well,’ he said, indicating the surroundings, ‘as you can plainly see.’

He stepped closer.

‘Look into my eyes, Jennifer, and see if you can tell me what is missing.’

He was uncomfortably close, and I could smell the salt and vinegar crisps on his breath. But I did what he asked, and stared into his eyes. They were dark and empty like Once Magnificent Boo’s, but while the ancient sorceress’s eyes had a sense of bruised yet defiant humanity within them, Shandar’s had none, and I shivered.

‘Oh my goodness,’ I said in a quiet voice, ‘you have no soul.’

‘Correct,’ he said, ‘and it’s so much easier. A conscience is as much a barrier to knowledge as biology is to eternal life. Eventually, I will have both.’

‘So long as you get the Quarkbeast.’

‘You’ll come round to it,’ he said, ‘and you will join me on this journey, as will Miss D’Argento – you will not be friends to begin with, but will learn to enjoy each other’s company, like sisters.’

‘Very cosy.’

‘I’m offering eternal life and the ultimate answer to everything. What’s not to like?’

‘There’ll be something not to like,’ I said. ‘I can smell a catch in all this. It permeates your words, like cheap cologne.’

He smiled again, but I could see now that it was utterly devoid of warmth, humour and humanity. I shivered. There is little defence against someone with no soul. Even a Troll can keep a promise.

I’m going home now,’ I said, ‘and once there, I will figure out a way to vanquish you.’

‘Good luck with that,’ he said. ‘You’ve been an exciting adversary, but I think we’re pretty near the endgame. I will have the Quarkbeasts, they will conjoin, I will have eternal life, you will join me on my journey. It is foreseen, it is inevitable.’

‘The one thing I’ve learned about premonitions,’ I said slowly, ‘is that they come true in unexpected ways.’

‘I think we’ve talked enough, Jenny. If you haven’t surrendered the Quarkbeast to me before sunrise on Monday morning, then the Trolls will come into Penzance, and I will have the Quarkbeast anyway.’

He touched me on the shoulder and I felt the warm fizzy sensation of a user-defined enchantment.

‘When you’re ready to go,’ he said, ‘just click your heels twice and name your destination.’

And he vanished.

I looked across at D’Argento, who smiled back at me. Unlike Shandar’s smile, hers appeared almost genuine.

‘You agree with all that?’ I asked her.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘The Mighty Shandar is a true visionary. The Everything Project is a venture of extraordinary scope and ambition in which I am hugely honoured to play a part – as will you be.’

‘Cosying up to a man with no soul isn’t going to end well, D’Argento. It never does.’

‘Undertaking a self-soulectomy43 is just one of the many sacrifices Shandar has made on the altar of human enlightenment. Dispelling the Better Angels of his Nature was a difficult decision – but necessary.’

I stared at her for a moment in silence.

‘C’mon,’ I said, ‘he’s gone. Tell me what you really think – and what he’s actually up to?’

I saw the briefest flicker of doubt cross her face, then it was gone. It was a loaded question, and her reaction was what I was looking for. She couldn’t tell me anything even if she wanted to. Shandar would be watching and listening right now. She may even have been beguiled; possibly her will was not her own.

‘The Everything Project was four centuries in the making,’ she said. ‘Once His Mightiness has the Quarkbeast he will reveal all – and you will clamour to be by his side.’

‘Don’t count on it, D’Argento – and look, thanks for the milkshake.’

I tapped my heels twice and murmured ‘Queens Hotel, Penzance’. There was a sound like a thousand crisp packets being scrunched in unison, and there I was, outside the main entrance just across from the promenade. All the street lights were on and scattered groups of people were out for a walk in the warm night air. The Quarkbeast, who usually sat on the top step to soak up the sun when it was sunny and the water when it was rainy, sat up and wagged his weighted tail happily.

‘Quark,’ he said.

‘Hello, boy,’ I said, stepping forward to tickle him under the chin. ‘What’s been going on?’

‘Qu-ark,’ he replied, and his tail dropped. This didn’t sound good at all, so I hurried up the steps into the hotel.