The Great Troll War
- Автор: Ффорде Джаспер
- Серия: The Last Dragonslayer #4
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Hodder & Stoughton
- ISBN: 9781444799958
- Жанр: Фэнтези
Электронная книга - «The Great Troll War». Краткое содержание книги:
‘What?’ I said, with a vague sense that this was the Quarkbeast speaking through the Mysterious X, and that he wanted to give himself up to avoid bloodshed.
‘You’re sure?’ I asked as the King’s guards exchanged nervous glances.
‘The Quarkbeast has told me he is surrendering to you,’ I said, and the Quarkbeast wagged its tail vigorously. The junior member, the one who would have wet himself and run, looked at the leader, who nodded, and the lad stepped forward and nervously placed a collar on the Quarkbeast. But instead of allowing himself to be led out, the Beast walked to a corner of the ballroom and sat down, dragging his would-be keeper along the floor behind him. Quarkbeasts are as strong as they are stubborn.
‘I think the Quarkbeast has decided that this is where he would like to be kept,’ I said, inwardly applauding the Quarkbeast’s guile and quick thinking, and thanking the Mysterious X for being the vector of communication, ‘until he is handed over.’
‘No,’ said the wiry fighter, ‘my orders are for him to be imprison—’
He was interrupted by one of the Quarkbeast’s razor-sharp scales, which had flown off his back with an explosive report and embedded itself with a thunk in a painting of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who although not actually Cornish, was thought engineery enough to be given honourable citizenship.
The wiry servant of Sir Matt stared at the Quarkbeast’s carbide-tipped scale, which was stuck right in the centre of Brunel’s forehead, then at me, then tipped his head in respect.
‘This is a favourable outcome, Miss Strange. I shall report to the King that we have the Beast in custody.’
‘He likes to chew anything metallic,’ I said as we turned to leave, ‘only not lead as it gets stuck between his teeth – and cobalt, which gives him the runs. He won’t harm you, and he’s fond of chess, so long as you play it without the knights. He doesn’t like knights.’
‘Who does?’ said Tiger, and he and Kevin followed me out of the ballroom, the guards busying themselves with ‘guarding’ the Quarkbeast.
‘Thank you, Kevin,’ I said once we were out of earshot. ‘I think you just saved those men’s lives.’
‘None of those men would have suffered so much as a cut,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t foresee any of that stuff. Your shoelace is undone. With your first swipe you would have lost your footing and been killed by the wiry guy at the front. After that it would have been Tiger, then me.’
I looked down at my shoelace, which was indeed undone.
‘You lied about what you could see?’
‘The future is soft and pliable, Jen,’ said Kevin with a smile, ‘but we do what we can to guide ourselves towards positive outcomes. But I only bought us time. It was the Quarkbeast who saved our lives.’ He smiled again. ‘Well, that’s me for now. If I hurry I’ve got time to catch Back to the Future III at the cinema.’
‘There’s a brilliant bit where the train time machine converts into a flying vehicle,’ said Tiger, then: ‘Oh, sorry, that was a bit of a spoiler.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Kevin, patting him on the shoulder, ‘when you can see the future, all you ever get are spoilers.’
We watched him walk away.
‘Well,’ said Tiger, ‘what do we do now?’
‘You do what you want,’ I said. ‘I’ve had about the longest day of my life. I will offer prayers for Feldspar and the crew of the Bellerophon, then I will be spark out asleep – hopefully for a good eight hours.’
The Worriers
I had a room on the second floor facing the sea, and slept through five storms, woke for the sixth, then was asleep for the next two. I had balanced a bottle on the doorknob to alert me in case anyone attempted to get in, but no one did.
And I dreamed.
I was back on the control deck of the Mighty Shandar’s Tower of Knowledge. The Hollow string quartet were playing a piece by Pachelbel, and from the duct that would funnel the energy from the conjoining Quarkbeasts I could hear the distant murmur of the other Hollow Men and Women working far below, packing the treasures and necessities for Shandar’s journey across an eternity of time and space. Shandar was sitting in a leather armchair and thumbing through a book of spells. Dreams were often a method of communication from sorcerers, so I assumed this was one of those, and waited to see what he had to say.
‘Ah,’ he said, lowering the book, ‘Jennifer. The Quarkbeast is captured, my friends tell me. You shall be granted safe conduct to bring the little beast to me. It is important you are here to witness the conjoinment.’
‘Delivering the Quarkbeast was never part of the deal.’
‘The deal has changed.’
‘We know of your plan,’ I said. ‘You would destroy the Earth and everything on it to pursue your self-serving megalomaniacal ambitions?’
He wagged a slender index finger at me.
‘Total knowledge is a noble pursuit, and nobility always exacts a price. So what if I suck the life out of a few suns and lay waste to a star system or two? There are billions upon billions of stars out there, and I’m sure the universe can spare a dozen or so. No one will miss the Earth. You know what? I don’t think anyone even knows about the Earth.’
‘I know about the Earth,’ I said. ‘Agreed, it may have a few unresolved issues, but it is also full of beauty, and kindness, and love.’
‘And hate,’ he said, ‘and cruelty, and hunger.’
‘It’s a work in progress,’ I replied, ‘and with optimism, diligence and wise guidance we may get to improve ourselves.’
‘Wise guidance? From whom?’
‘From people like the Princess.’
‘Pah!’ he said. ‘Six months of absolute power and even your little well-meaning chum will start building bronze statues to herself and have her underlings avert their eyes in her presence. Humans are horribly flawed, and prone to morbid self-aggrandisement with even a sniff of power. You will miss nothing when you join me on this journey.’
‘I shall not join you.’
‘It is my wish,’ he said evenly. ‘You will not defy me.’
‘I would sooner die.’
I stood up to yell, but in doing so I woke myself up, and I was back in my room, the day outside new and grey and drizzly with patches of sleet, sun, hail and snow. Someone was tapping on my door. It was Tiger.
‘I heard some shouting,’ he said as soon as I opened the door. ‘Bad dream?’
‘Nope – a mental leap to Shandar’s Tower. He’s going to ask me to deliver the Quarkbeast personally, and wants me to accompany him on his journey to the stars.’
‘What is it with you and him?’
‘I don’t know. Were you sleeping outside my door?’
‘I always sleep outside your door. I’ve got General Worrier here. He wants to talk to you about the Princess.’
The time was 6 a.m. General Worrier had his second-in-command, Major Worrier, with him, plus a half-dozen of his trusted fretteratti,46 but they waited outside once they’d apologised profusely for getting in the way and hoped ‘I was not inconvenienced’, and told me how they ‘could never forgive themselves if I was’.
‘Because we were so terrified of disappointing you,’ said the general, perching on the dressing table and looking at his notes, ‘we set about organising ourselves into a tiered command structure so orders could be spread quickly and fast. With the thousand worriers divided into two cohorts commanded by five highly strung centurions each in charge of one hundred overwrought neurotics to recheck each others’ work, we had enough worriers to make a huge number of inquiries, filter them for relevance, then pass all pertinent information on to a centralised committee to be flustered and fretted over minutely before being passed on to me.’