Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘Riddles, D’Argento?’

She cocked her head on one side and regarded me without emotion – and was suddenly gone in another pillar of fire. Shandar must have wanted his socks washed or something.

There was a moment’s pause as we took all this in.

‘Quark?’ said the Quarkbeast.

‘No,’ I said, staring into his expressive mauve eyes, ‘we’ll not give you up. Not now, not ever.’

‘What was all that “bigger picture” stuff about?’ asked the Princess.

‘I’m really not sure,’ I replied. ‘Messing with our heads, most likely.’

‘Is he going to make good on that promise to instantly remove the Trolls?’ asked the Princess.

‘An assurance from Shandar assures precisely nothing ,’ I said, ‘so assume not. If we have until Monday morning, that’s two days.’

‘A lot can happen in two days,’ said Tiger.

‘True. Why were you keen to give him the Eye of Zoltar, Boo?’

She nodded towards Monty.

‘While handing it to him I may have accidentally slipped a Lump of East in his pocket,’ said Monty, taking an east-pointing compass from his own pocket. ‘It’s such an old spell he may not notice he’s got it on him.’

Monty put the compass on the table and we stared at it. The needle swung around lazily.

‘What are we looking at?’ asked the Princess.

‘The spell that makes any iron point to magnetic north is the only remaining part of an ingenious Global Magic Navigation System spelled by the Phoenicians around two millennia BCE,’ explained Monty. ‘There were going to be four fixed compass points around the globe, each with a separate metal-based compass that would point to them. Simple trigonometry would then be used to give your location anywhere in the known world with an accuracy down to about five hundred yards.’

‘What happened?’ asked Colin.

‘Budget overruns, mostly – and sabotage by other seafaring nations. The one they planted in the far north is the only one still functioning today.’

We continued to stare at the compass, and the needle swung freely for a while, then turned and pointed fixedly in one direction.

‘Okay,’ said Boo. ‘He’s out of teleportation and somewhere on that line.’

‘He could be as close as Padstow or … in Siberia,’ said Tiger.

‘Exactly,’ said Boo. ‘Feldspar? I need you to take this compass to the end of the harbour, get a reading, then fly to the north coast and get another reading. Repeat several times, and when you think you have a reasonable accuracy, come back and we’ll figure out the trigonometry. 27 27 With this method, Feldspar would ascertain two angles and one side of a triangle. Enough to figure out the other angle and sides – and a fix on where Shandar was based. ’

‘Right,’ said Feldspar, happy to be doing some work. He flew out of the open window with a raucous beating of wings and an enthusiastic ‘Tally ho!’ then returned a minute later to take the compass that he’d forgotten, and flew off again, only without the ‘Tally ho’.

‘Okay,’ I said to everyone present, ‘just so we’re clear on this: Shandar will not keep his word. The negotiation you saw buys us one thing: time. We’ve got until dawn on Monday morning to figure out a winning strategy. After that, Cornwall will look less like a picturesque peninsula with a rugged coastline and reasonably priced teashops, and more like a Troll’s all-you-can-eat buffet. The Princess’s closest advisers are going to try and formulate a plan of action, and I may call on any one of you to help, so stand close by to await orders. Any questions?’

No one said a word, and I called an end to the Conclave. The attendees all filed out in something of a daze, leaving only myself, Boo, Colin, Tiger, the Princess, Full Price, Kevin Zip, the Mysterious X and Monty Vanguard. Once everyone else had departed, I asked Tiger to go and fetch Lady Mawgon.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘we need to discover Shandar’s overall plan, and once we know exactly what it is, the chances of thwarting him might move, with a lot of luck, from “utterly impossible” to a more workable “highly improbable”.’

‘My kind of odds,’ said the Princess.

We discussed Shandar’s possible plans, making little headway until Tiger came back accompanied by a severe-looking woman who glided into the room dressed in a large black crinoline dress.

It was Lady Mawgon.

Lady Mawgon was in charge of the Operations Room, which was just down the hall and opposite the main reception. The converted reading room was now full of desks, telephones and hastily employed clerks who were taking calls from the network of observers dotted around the country. All the information came through Mawgon, who decided what was relevant and necessary as opposed to what was hearsay and exaggeration. At the same time, she coordinated the regional resistance groups.

‘Good evening, Lady Mawgon,’ I said. ‘How are things looking in the Troll defence network?’

She was ex-Zambini Towers, one of the few who had escaped the Troll/Shandar attack. She and I had not really got along until this moment of National Jeopardy, following which she had transformed herself – I hope permanently – from ‘openly hostile’ to ‘mostly disapproving’, a huge step forward.

‘The situation is not looking favourable, Miss Strange.’

She’d get round to calling me ‘Jennifer’ eventually, and perhaps even ‘Jenny’, if either of us lived that long. Lady Mawgon curtsied to the Princess, whose new role as Queen had got about, and made a short speech of loyalty, then nodded respectfully to Once Magnificent Boo, who she saw not just as a mentor in the mystical arts, but the finest exponent of the often tricky art of looking perpetually moody without really trying.

Lady Mawgon moved to where there was a large map of the UnUnited Kingdoms on the wall. She didn’t so much walk as drift across the room. I knew for a fact she wore roller skates under her large black crinoline dresses, an odd affectation that softened her a little in my and Tiger’s eyes.

‘We’ve just heard that Wales has finally fallen,’ she said, pointing at the map with her stick, ‘and the last two hold-outs of the Duchy of Portland Bill and the economic City State of Financia surrendered last week rather than be eaten. The only part of the UnUK at liberty aside from this tip of Cornwall is the Seagoing Nation of the Isle of Wight, but they will not be of any help: in their eagerness to get away they ran themselves aground on Iceland in the fog.’ She paused for a moment. ‘So aside from a few pockets of resistance where they had either hidden up trees or are marooned on islands, the UnUnited Kingdoms are now Greater Trollvania.’

‘To them ,’ said Tiger. ‘The United European Nations will never accept the Troll as legal owner of islands that were invaded against their will.’

‘Actually,’ said Lady Mawgon, ‘that’s exactly what the UEN did. It really is now known as Greater Trollvania. I think it was part of a deal whereby the Trolls didn’t further their territorial ambitions into Europe.’

We stared at the map of the UnUnited Kingdoms for a moment. We really were on our own.

‘If it only took two weeks to conquer the entire UnUnited Kingdoms,’ I said slowly, ‘the biggest question is why they haven’t done it since the Romans last expelled them beyond the Great Troll Wall in AD 130.’

‘The Wall was designed to keep them out,’ said Monty, ‘and as far as anyone knows, they never once tried to invade us – all the Troll Wars since then were instigated by humans.’

‘As a precautionary measure against the Trolls attacking?’ asked Tiger.