Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

‘Well, well,’ said Shandar, moving towards me. ‘Looks like we may have to bring our once cosy relationship to a premature close. That’s a shame, Jennifer, dear, because once I had properly assimilated your heart and mind to me and my cause, you would have been a dazzlingly good ambassador and a delightfully compliant wife. It wasn’t just my Better Angels I needed to use – it was yours . A righteous person utterly corrupted would have been an awesome diplomatic weapon, but it is of no matter – I will simply retrieve what is mine, take what is yours and abandon you on Ganymede. A Jennifer Strange but with all the very best bits taken out. You will live life eternal in isolation as an embittered angry wretch, a twisted knot of hate, anger and jealously.’

His pretence of charm had all but vanished. I was a threat, this was business, and in business he was ruthless. He pointed a finger at me and I felt my insides begin to move and shift, along with a curious draining feeling as he began to draw out the Better Angels – his, and mine. I started to feel not anger and fear but petty jealousies in that D’Argento was better looking than me, had better clothes and more money, and I wanted that stuff too, and would steal it from her when I got the chance. I stopped breathing and felt myself collapse inwards as my vision began to fade. I think I saw Shandar laughing, and then, quite abruptly, the pain stopped, and all jealousies vanished as the Better Angels snapped back inside me, the blue sphere vanished and I fell out of the air to land, fortuitously, on an armchair, but in an untidy heap. By the time I had got up, Shandar had dropped to his knees and his mouth was wide open, face contorted in pain. Behind him, Miss D’Argento was holding the Eye of Zoltar in a pair of blacksmith’s tongs and pressed hard on the small of his back. The Eye, suitably reversed, was doing what it did best: absorbing and then focusing wizidrical energy. Only this time it was taking it out of Shandar, and the energy was streaming in a narrow beam out of the window and to the surface of Ganymede.

‘I’ve waited so long for this moment,’ said D’Argento, lips pressed together in a single line. I looked at her, then at Shandar, whose arms were now stretching out in length to more easily dislodge the jewel from D’Argento’s hold.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

D’Argento looked at me and smiled. But it wasn’t the smile of Shandar’s agent, it was the smile of someone closer. A friend perhaps, or even a family member.

‘You asked what I was to get out of this,’ she said. ‘I told you “an opportunity to assist a truly great person in their moment of triumph”.’

‘So?’

She smiled.

‘I wasn’t talking about Shandar. Now: that plan of yours, whatever it is – I know you have one – make it happen.’

The sorcerer’s arms were plucking uselessly at the jewel, trying to dislodge it from the tongs held tightly by D’Argento. He was still on his knees, head down, greatly weakened by the effort and the power that was flowing out of him. I stepped forward, but then hesitated as Shandar’s creepily long arms plucked the Eye of Zoltar from D’Argento’s grasp.

‘That really hurt,’ he said, panting with the exertion. He was still kneeling on the floor, sweating profusely. His arms cracked and squeaked as they returned to their normal size, and the Eye vanished from his grasp – teleported, I presumed, to a safe place.

‘Winning the bout is not winning the fight,’ he gasped, trying to stand but falling back to his knees, ‘but I am the Mighty and most magnificent Shandar, more powerful and fabulous than you can possibly imagine. You took some of my power, but not enough to make a difference – harvesting your sun will easily replace the shortfall. You cannot defeat me.’

In this, I think, he was correct. While X could channel a huge amount of power through my life-force, X or I would never have the skills to defeat him on a wizard’s field of battle. I was the rowboat, and he the battlecruiser. But I knew what I had to do. I knelt down in front of him and wrapped my arms tightly around him.

‘I don’t need to defeat you,’ I whispered in his ear, ‘all I need to do is what you asked: help you understand the lost opportunity to have done something truly useful with your life.’

The Mysterious X then spelled the first part of my plan: to give Shandar back the Better Angels of his Nature. All of them, every last little bit. And in that moment of self-realisation, the true understanding of his heinous crimes and the depth of his malevolent intent, his face crumpled.

‘Oh my good God,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘What have I become?’

He started to sob, as the many burdens of his inflicted sorrows flooded his mind, as if all the people he had crushed and defeated and murdered were crowded inside his head, questioning him, condemning him, and finding him wanting.

But I knew this would not last for long. The evil that was Shandar was greater than the man, and would reject the Better Angels as he had before. No, I needed him weakened by the burden of his guilt so I could make my last and only play, the second part of my instructions to the Mysterious X: a thermowizidrical detonation large enough to achieve criticality . Shandar, myself, D’Argento and the tower and the Hollow Men and all the spells herein, utterly annihilated in an uncontrolled explosion of epic proportions. I held on to him and yelled: ‘Now, X, now!’

I closed my eyes tightly, ready to welcome the nothingness that would announce my success.

‘Was something meant to happen?’ said D’Argento, and I opened my eyes. I looked down at Shandar, whose evil personality was beginning to re-form as he once more expelled the Better Angels. Worse, even in his weakened state, he was still more powerful than me.

‘You little fool,’ he said in a weak voice. ‘You do not have the emotional energy needed to focus your powers to initiate a criticality. You are weak, as you have always been. But never fear, I shall give you the end that you so desire – only it will be on your own: sad, unremembered and unmourned, abandoned on Ganymede to watch as I suck the sun dry of its power.’

He paused, weakened by the speech. But already I could feel his power returning; it would not be long. He would succeed. He was all-powerful.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and D’Argento’s voice close to my ear. It was soft, and warm, and caring.

‘Our parents live in a village outside Leominster,’ she began, ‘in a small house with a wisteria on the gable. There is a swing in the garden under an apple tree and the paddock leads down to a brook. In the springtime, the blossom drifts around the house like snow, and in the summer the hedgerows are alive with the creamy scent of meadowsweet. Our father James looks after the house and our mother Lynda is head nurse at the local hospital. She is good at her job, and much admired. Zambini came to them and explained what was needed, what we, and they, had to do. You at Kazam and me embedded with Shandar. They followed our progress, and love us, miss us, and will be proud. But they knew that we had a function to play in the Great Scheme of Things, they understood that, and put aside their sorrows, and love us just the same.’

I felt my eyes fill with tears. I thought of the photograph I’d found in the glovebox, and the unseen child in the back of the VW Beetle. I also remembered the misspelling of the writing on the back. Only it wasn’t a misspelling.

‘Assett is our surname, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I am Belinda, and you are Catrina. You are my little sister by four years.’

‘Catrina Assett,’ I said whispering my birth name for the first time.