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.