The Great Troll War

The Mighty Shandar

Shandar seemed more relaxed now I had agreed to his terms and the question marks over my compliance had at last been lifted. He shook my hand warmly.

‘So glad you could make it, my dear,’ he said as a team of Hollow Men heaved the blast doors closed behind us. ‘Don’t think me suspicious, but you were once a formidable opponent so I want to make trebly sure there are no tricks up your sleeve or well-laid plans in your mind. Is there anything you’d like to tell me about now? For I will insist on searching you – mind, body and luggage.’

Just me being here was the plan, but I suppose he was right to be suspicious.

‘I have a Pollyanna Stone,’ I said, digging it out of my pocket. ‘I used it to conjure up who I thought were my parents in times of stress.’

‘Family are overrated,’ said Shandar. ‘When you need them they’re not there, and when you don’t want them they’re on your back wanting part of Cumbria or a castle or a pet Leviathan or something.’

The Mighty Shandar’s family were now assumed casualties of his Soulectomy. Wagging tongues said they were turned to stone and used as garden ornaments.

‘You are to surrender the stone and anything else with an enchantment attached,’ he said. ‘It’s a wise precaution, I think you will agree. Where is Exhorbitus?’

‘I gave it to Tiger.’

I didn’t tell him, I just left it in his bedroom with a note.

‘Just as well you did,’ said Shandar, ‘for I would have had to destroy it. There will be no magic in Shandar’s Tower aside from mine.’

I handed over the Pollyanna Stone and Shandar crunched it to powder between thumb and forefinger, the residual wizidrical energy fizzing out as orange sparks.

He put out his hand to touch my head, fingertips glowing a bluish colour.

‘Do you mind?’

‘Knock yourself out.’

He placed his fingertips on my temple. I had thought it would feel creepy, but because I was made of the better parts of him, it felt weirdly as though I were touching my own head, only with thick gloves. I could also feel his mind inside mine, teasing and looking, searching and ferreting, as though drawers were being pulled out and the contents dumped on the floor in a search for well-laid plans or magical contraband, similar to the early-morning raids the nuns used to pull on us back at the orphanage. As Shandar delved I had little flashbacks of the past couple of weeks as he teased the information from my head, but I feared nothing. There was no plan; I had agreed to his deal, and was quite willing to keep my side of it.

‘Nothing sinister there,’ he said, ‘but I can feel the goodness that was once mine – it comes across as old fashioned and stale, like listening to the tiresome and idealistic rants of a naive youth. I can also sense you despise me. A couple of hundred years will bring you around to my way of thinking. I’m really quite endearing when you get to know the better of the worst parts of me.’

‘I’ll have to take your word for it.’

He ran his hands over my small amount of luggage, and then the Volkswagen.

‘Any spells hidden anywhere? A sorcerer miniaturised and hiding in the glovebox? A Dibble Jar full of crackle waiting to do me some mischief?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘I still need to be cautious,’ he said. ‘There are always a few naysayers who want to rain on your parade when you contemplate galactic domination.’

He gently laid his fingertips on the Beetle’s bonnet, and there was a low humming noise. Shandar paused, like a tuner listening to a piano. He moved down the rear panel, then reached right under the car in the area of the engine and pulled out a small Bovril jar that had been tightly stoppered with red wax.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘You’ve just been inside my head,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know – and you know I don’t know.’

He sniffed it delicately, then covered it with both his hands.

‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘a timed thermowizidrical explosive device, due to go off in twenty-six minutes and eight seconds. Written in ARAMAIC V3.4, to give a low wizidrical signature. It looks like one of Monty’s. I will concede he’s a good spell-writer. If he’d been able to do magic as well, he may even have been relevant. It’s a little crude, though. A bomb? I thought they would have been more imaginative.’

‘Powerful enough to start a chain reaction?’ I asked.

‘No – it would just have taken a sizeable chunk out of the tower and enough to topple it. Your friends just tried to kill you,’ he continued with a smirk. ‘Funny how people turn on their chums when they get desperate, isn’t it?’

‘I would only be collateral damage in the assassination of a tyrant,’ I replied. ‘They would have happily accepted the same fate, even if engineered by me. And I would have,’ I added, fixing him with my best steely gaze.

‘You pompously self-righteous people are all the same,’ he said, ‘horribly—’

‘Pompous and self-righteous?’ I suggested.

‘I was going to say “disgustingly smug”. And I’m not a tyrant. In fact, I’m probably the least tyrannical person you know.’

He didn’t go on to explain why he thought this, or even why he thought I should believe it. He then crushed the explosive device in his hands, and the stored wizidrical energy flooded into his body.

‘Happy now?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, continuing his search in and around my Beetle, ‘for if I wanted to assassinate someone, I would place two weapons – one hard to find, and the other almost impossible.’

He was right, and eventually found the second, which had been suspended inside a glass jar filled with water – always a good way to cloak wizidrical energy. It was well concealed, too – Shandar had to actually reach through the metal to retrieve it.

‘Much more impressive,’ he said, showing me the jar, which was glowing a soft shade of emerald green in his hands.

‘Now this might have kicked off a chain reaction,’ he said, almost admiringly. ‘D’you know, I almost respect your wizardy chums. There was only a 4% chance I wouldn’t find it, but at least they tried.’

He absorbed the power from this one, too.

‘We’re clear,’ he said finally. ‘One of the Hollow maids will show you to your quarters.’

‘When do we leave?’ I asked.

‘Leave? My dear girl, we’ve already left. We’re currently 20,000 feet above the Earth, travelling at roughly fifty times the speed of horse. We’ll pick up more speed once the Quarkbeast conjoinment occurs, but we won’t be leaving the solar system straight away – as chance would have it, Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction, so we can drop off for a look-see on the way out. After that, I’ll ramp up the speed and we’ll head off across interstellar space to Proxima Centauri, allowing me to refuel myself, then jump into a more richly inhabited part of the galaxy – somewhere that will give me greater scope for the crushing of worthless peons who dare to oppose my might.’

I stared at him.

‘Or,’ he added quickly, ‘to a place where you can advise me how best to temper my worst excesses to maximise the size and reach of the Shandarian Empire. Now say goodbye to the Beast and I shall elevate myself to immortality.’

The Quarkbeast had been sitting there, quite happily, and wagged its tail as I knelt down to say goodbye. I’d never hugged it before as its sharpened scales didn’t lend themselves easily to cuddling unless there is a large tin of plasters and a bottle of iodine to hand, but as I approached his spines folded flat into his back and he closed his mouth tight so his fangs wouldn’t show. I placed my hand on his back and he purred at me.

‘Sure you’re okay with this?’

He wagged his tail and licked my face, which felt raspy and smelled of rusty hammers.

‘You’ve been a good friend,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Goodbye, Jennifer. The best view of Jupiter is from the orbit of Ganymede.’

‘What did you say?’ asked Shandar.

‘I didn’t say anything.’

I hugged the Quarkbeast tightly. I’d had to trust Maltcassion the moment before I slayed him, and the Quarkbeast had told me that death brings about opportunity. I’d also learned that death is sometimes not the worst thing that can happen: it can be a gateway, whereby old things pass away and new and better things arrive in their place.

I relaxed my grip on the Quarkbeast, and he wagged his tail again, gave me a wink, laid his paw on my hand and then trotted off towards the central stairway and the Quarkbeast Deck.

‘Quark,’ he said as an afterthought once in the stairwell. ‘Quark-Quark-Quark.’

‘Why do you shed tears for something that isn’t real?’ asked Shandar, staring at me.

‘You couldn’t possibly understand,’ I replied.

He smiled.

‘But you will teach me. Now: I’m going to give you free rein to move around the tower, but if I suspect you’re getting up to any monkey business, I will have you bricked up in your quarters. The one thing I’ve learned about Jennifer Strange is that she’s very resourceful, but since you have no plans or magical gadgets to help you out, I have little to fear from you. But the threat of bricking you up in your quarters remains. Understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. The Hollow maid will show you to your rooms.’

And so saying, Shandar vanished.

The Hollow maid was dressed the same as the other Hollow Women, but with the addition of a white apron with pockets. She, like the rest of the Hollow people, was just empty clothes hanging in the air.

‘Lead on,’ I said, and she walked me towards the elevators.

‘Mind the step,’ she said in a weirdly empty voice.

‘You can talk?’ I asked.

‘The Glorious Leader has great plans for make good benevolent domination of galaxy,’ she said mechanically. ‘We are earmarked for Mandrake Sentience Emulation Protocol upgrades. His Mightiness believes eons better spent more comfortably with servants who have personality. Is this good?’

‘Yes. You’ll enjoy the protocols.’

‘I do not feel real today. Will I, in time?’

I thought about the Quarkbeast and the Transient Moose, both of whom had a personality, despite being little more than a spell.

‘Whether biologically or wizidrically based, it makes no difference. Once you care for others, and understand kindness, empathy and the value of friendship and selflessness, you’ve got what it takes to be human. Nothing else matters.’

‘Your word I will take for this.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘I would like you to name me. I think you will be good at that.’

‘Blousie.’

‘I like that,’ said Blousie, ‘it is a good name. Do you want to hear a joke? I tell jokes well. It is about a family of balloons during a thunderstorm. I think you will laugh.’

‘Maybe later. For now just show me to my quarters.’