Trying to puzzle things out, Little Fur went closer. She gasped when she saw that runes had been carved into the side of the round house. They were troll runes such as she had seen in ruined tunnels above Underth, but these were far more beautifully and carefully formed. This had been a city of trolls!
The ends of Little Fur’s furled ears tingled. No story she had ever heard had spoken of trolls capable of building like this. Other creatures left over from the age of magic sometimes said that trolls belonged to an earlier age of the world. Was it possible that there had been an age of trolls in which they had been great workers of stone and earth and makers of runes? But if so, why did no creature know of it? And what had happened to turn trolls into what they had become?
The only thing Little Fur could think of was that there had been two kinds of troll, and that the rune-makers had been overcome by the more savage kind. Indeed, there might have been many kinds of troll. She thought of the trolls she had seen in Underth, who had seemed to be slaves to the others there. Perhaps the slaves were the remnants of the rune-makers? Little Fur’s heart beat fast at the thought that her mother might have been just such a rune-maker. Yet that did not make sense, for how could a troll princess become a rune-maker, let alone a slave?
Ofred laid his soft black paw on her arm and Little Fur started, for she had completely forgotten him in her fascination with the city.
“This was built by trolls,” she told him, running her fingers over the runes and letting her troll senses feel them out. She could almost grasp their meaning, but even though her troll blood was much stronger than it had been before, she could not quite manage it.
“Once my elf blood is gone, I will be able to read the runes,” she murmured. Then she staggered in horror at the ease with which she had uttered this terrible thought. It showed how near her elf blood was to being quenched. “Stop!” she cried, shouting the words so that the cavern threw them back at her in a hundred broken echoes.
Ofred plucked at her arm.
“What is it?” Little Fur snapped.
“There is something under us,” said Ofred, his red eyes strange in all that greenness. “I can feel it.”
Little Fur dropped to her knees. Was it the earth spirit? She pressed her palms to the earth, her heart thundering. She was shocked to find not the earth spirit but another harling!
“Greetings, Troll,” the harling boomed. The voice was female. “It has been long since one of your kind walked here.” Ofred gave a whimper of surprise.
“What … what happened to the trolls who lived here?” Little Fur asked.
“There was a war, and they were driven out,” said the harling.
“A war! But who made war on the trolls?” asked Little Fur.
“Elves,” the harling answered. “They desired an end to stone magic, and they believed that the working of magic should be left to their kind and to wizards.”
Little Fur licked her lips. “What is stone magic?”
“It is strange that a troll knows nothing of the making of stones that can hold magic, for it was once a great art among trollkind,” murmured the harling.
“Trolls worked magic?” Little Fur asked, trembling with astonishment.
“Your kind could not work pure magic like elves and wizards,” said the harling. “But they shaped trollstone to draw in a tiny amount of pure magic. Then they could use their power over earth and stone to make use of it.”
Little Fur felt as if she had been hit on the head. The Sett Owl had said her stone was empty, even though the Troll King had thought it full. And she had wondered what could possibly fill a stone. Now she knew—magic!
Little Fur felt the harling move closer to the surface, though not close enough to crack the earth between them. The earth dragon moved as easily and smoothly as if she were swimming, which meant the flow of earth magic was very powerful here. Little Fur closed her fingers over her green stone.
“What is this?” the harling said. Little Fur felt the earth dragon’s curiosity stirring like a great slow underground river. “You are not wholly troll. There is elf blood in you, though it is very thin. How can this be?”
“My mother was a troll and my father was an elf,” said Little Fur.
To Little Fur’s surprise, the harling began to laugh. The sound was like a shower of rocks falling down a deep well. “The child of an elf and a troll! What strange riddle is this?”
Little Fur was surprised to hear the harling speak of her birth as a riddle, but it also reminded her of her quest. “I have come here to find the earth spirit,” she said. “Do you know where it is?”
Little Fur sensed that the earth dragon had sobered. “You must follow the troll path to the deepest green,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Little Fur. She was about to rise when she remembered the harling under the round house. She told this harling of him. “Perhaps you can go and bring him here?” she suggested.
“That is not possible,” replied the she-harling gravely. “There are three of us who remain near the once-great city of Trollesund, where earth magic is potent enough to let us move easily through the earth. But to go to the surface of the world from this deep place would take many eons, for the closer we came, the more slowly we would move.”
“Then I will tell the harling to come to you when I go back to the human city,” said Little Fur.
“Tell him that he will be welcome among us,” said the harling.
Little Fur and Ofred continued through that vast dead city. They went along an avenue of shaped stones such as humans made, but these were shaped into trolls—such trolls as Little Fur had never seen before. They were tall and slender. Their faces were wise and kindly and noble, so Little Fur understood that these were great trolls honored by the other trolls who had dwelt in this city. There was no question, seeing those carved faces, that there had once been a high age of trolls. Anger stirred in Little Fur’s troll blood that such a city as this had fallen because elves and wizards had wanted to keep the use of magic for themselves.
Little Fur felt Ofred’s eyes on her. She took a deep breath and forced herself to be calm. Her temper might be enough to completely smother what remained of her elf blood! Little Fur forced her mind away from the past and asked the lemur as calmly as she could if he had dreamed of the city.
But he would not, or could not, answer.
At long last, the path wove out of the city and dropped into a deep fold in the earth. The glow of green light there was stronger than ever, but Little Fur could not help glancing back and taking one long, hungry look at the wondrous city. “Trollesund,” she said reverently, telling herself that if she could not find the earth spirit in time, she would come back. And she would read the runes to learn about that lost age in which trolls had made this place.
The path became a set of steep steps. Down and down they went. The panels carved on the stone walls on either side showed trolls creating the city through which they had passed. Little Fur saw not just elder trolls with wise and wizened faces, but young, strong troll men and women laboring at their building. Their bodies were well formed and straight-backed, and their expressions were eager and full of joy. Other panels showed troll families dancing around fires, making cloth and metal, and playing strange instruments.
Little Fur found some mushrooms growing thickly on the wall. She and the lemur ate them so greedily that they were forced to sit awhile before they could go on. It got colder the deeper they went, so they stopped to huddle in the warmth of the elf cloak until the lemur’s teeth ceased to chatter. Then on they went again.
Little Fur wondered if they would ever come to the deepest green. Then the stone and the steps changed to become green like her mother’s stone. Trollstone, she thought. Her heart began to beat harder, for now she could hear something.
It began as a faint whisper, but little by little, it grew until she realized it was the sound of water. Sniffing, Little Fur could tell it was not salten water but water of the earth.
/> At last the steps brought them to the open door of a small chamber. The green light coming from it was so thick that at first Little Fur could see nothing else. Then she saw that there was a well in the middle of the cavern. Its sides were almost as high as her head and heavily carved in runes, row upon row of them, carefully formed and full of mysterious knowledge. This well was far older than the city above and had come from some other place altogether.
Little Fur looked at the lemur. “Is this what you dreamed, Ofred?”
Ofred said nothing, but his eyes blazed red with a strange mixture of hope and fear.
Little Fur spoke his name—“Ofred”—but he seemed not to hear. Then she realized he was not listening to her, but to a soft murmurous rushing sound coming from the well of carved green stone.
There were more stone steps leading up the side of the well. Little Fur mounted them and peered down. She was dimly aware of the lemur’s leaping up onto the rim to look in, too. Then she forgot about Ofred and the runes and her own plight—for here was a swirling of something that was neither green mist nor green water nor green light, but somehow all these things.
Welcome, Little Fur, said a voice. It rose as much from the chamber and the stones of the well as from whatever strange substance filled it.
Little Fur shivered from head to toe. It was the voice she had heard often before, yet never so clearly and strongly as this. “You are the earth spirit,” she whispered.
I am, said the voice.
“How can I hear you when I cannot feel you?” Little Fur asked, trembling at the power that threaded through the voice.
Because of the trollstone, the voice answered.
Little Fur took a deep, shaky breath and asked what she had come so far to ask: “Earth spirit, can you restore me to the flow of earth magic?”
I cannot, said the earth spirit.
The words were a blow to her heart. “Why?” Little Fur cried. She found that tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I did nothing wrong. It was only chance and accidental malice that severed me from you!”
It was not the greeps who cut you off from the flow of earth magic, Little Fur, said the earth spirit gently, and there was compassion in its voice now.
“No? But then … who?” asked Little Fur.
I, said the earth spirit. It was I who severed you from the flow.
CHAPTER 14
Stone Magic
Little Fur thought of the tiny golden pulse of Lim’s life, which had slipped so easily through her fingers. The pain that lay like a stone in her chest grew.
“It is because of Lim, isn’t it?” she asked the earth spirit. “It is because I failed to heal him.”
The earth spirit laughed.
Little Fur was so surprised that it took a moment for her to hear the kindness and sorrow in the laughter.
Oh, my dearest Little Fur, said the earth spirit. My small brave champion in whom goodness and sweetness and courage meet with a humility that humbles me. Oh, what a thing you are to have been made out of so much hatred and pain and fear.
“I don’t understand,” said Little Fur, her voice tiny. “If you say such things and mean them, why did you cut me off from the flow of magic?”
Because it was the only way to bring you here, said the earth spirit.
“You were summoning me?”
I needed you to come to me here because only here, where I am strongest, can I tell you clearly what happened to the last age. And it must be told lest the same fate befall this age, said the earth spirit.
“But it is nature for all creatures and all ages to end,” Little Fur said. Then she blushed at having spoken in such a way to one who must know all things better than she.
The earth spirit answered, That is true, but the last age ended eons too soon, because of the great harm that was done which caused it to sicken and die. That harm has leaked into this age, so that it, too, will hasten to its end.
“The Sett Owl told me I needed to understand,” Little Fur murmured.
It would take an age to tell the story of an age, said the earth spirit. Nor is it all known to me, for I was wild magic before I became the earth spirit—wild magic, as powerful and unaware as that blind tempest of power that flows through the great sea. All I know of the age before this one was gifted to me. Indeed, it was that gifting that formed me. Therefore know this: In the beginning of the age of elves and wizards, trollkind was not degenerate and brutish. Trolls were makers of music and runes, and lovers of beauty. You have seen it yourself, for you have passed through Trollesund, the last and greatest of the troll cities. The last king of Trollesund was Somber. In his keeping was the greatest source of what trolls call trollstone. In shaping it, trolls found a way to draw the wild magic of the earth into the stone, and in that form, they could work magic.
Little Fur gripped the stone around her neck. “The Troll King of Underth tried to steal this stone,” she said.
Because he does not understand the nature of stone magic. He knows only memories of memories. There is no magic in the stone now. Indeed, there is no troll left who understands the art of stone magic. But even if there were a troll who did know it and who could come to this deep, lost place, earth magic is no longer wild and cannot be drawn like water from a well.
Little Fur touched the stone well in wonder.
This well serves to draw magic near, but it is not made to hold it, said the earth spirit. Such wells were made wherever there was trollstone in the earth, and a troll would come to one only with the blessing of the king and his wise counsel, in order to shape a single precious stone. It was a thing all trolls did when they came of age, and did once only, for there was only a small amount of troll-stone in the world, and most of it was here.
“So it was not just troll kings and queens who had the stones?” Little Fur asked.
Not in the golden days when stone magic was an art and the trolls were wise and careful, but in the end, the trolls who fled the cities were bidden to give up their stones so that the king could defend them. Since then, only kings and their blood kin have had trollstones.
Again Little Fur looked down at the stone hanging from her neck and said, “My mother’s stone is empty.”
The earth spirit went on with its story: Elves and wizards did not need to shape stones, for they drew wild magic from all things, and there was no limit to what they could take. Wizards limited themselves, for they had the gift of foresight. They warned elfkind to go carefully, but the elf kings were proud and clever and bade the wizards mind their own long, slow affairs. They thought wizards dull and tedious, but they despised the trolls who toiled in the earth. In the end, the elves destroyed the wells and buried all the trollstone deep under the earth. Troll city after troll city fell, and each of the deepest greens was destroyed until there was only this last city and this last well. Then it fell, too, and the elves used spells to seal the entries and made the very oceans to close over it.
Little Fur was appalled. “I did not know elves were bad.”
They were not all bad, but capable of badness, as is every creature who can think and choose what to do. The elves believed that they were the natural rulers of their age, and as such, none but they should work magic. But the trolls’ working of slow, careful stone magic was one of the things that balanced the age, so once that working ended, the age began to fail.
“But why did the trolls become the way they are since then?” Little Fur asked. “Was it because they had no more magic?”
What happened to them was no more than what happens to any kind that is driven from tradition and custom and hearth by war. They fled and hid, and those who survived were those who were strong and angry. They fought the elves in savage raids, and the more brutal the trolls were, the more brutal they became. Not all were so. Some counseled gentleness and a seeking of new trollstone deposits using the small hoard of filled stones that had been carried from the sacked cities. But those voices were not heeded.
“So the elves truly mad
e the trolls what they are,” Little Fur said, unable to believe it.
The elves destroyed a great civilization out of pride and conceit, said the earth spirit. But in doing so, they also destroyed themselves.
“But you said wizards could see the future,” Little Fur said. “Why didn’t they warn the elves?”
They tried, but the elves would hear no one’s counsel, answered the earth spirit. Only one wizard used all of her art to see into the age that would come next. It was a very great working, and she saw only a few glimpses of the possible futures that might come. All were short, ruinous ages that would infect the next and the next age, so that each age would become shorter and more chaotic. All save one future, which would result from the birth of a youngling of both troll and elf blood. Only in that future might the damage done in the age of high magic be healed.
Little Fur’s head spun, for it was clear that she herself was that youngling in whom elf and troll blood were mingled: here at last was the answer to the riddle of her own birth! The she-wizard who had held her parents captive had contrived her birth not to use her in some fearsome spell, but to save the next age! That was what the old Sett Owl had meant when she had said that Little Fur must not fail the wizard!
“But I do not know how to heal an age!” Little Fur cried, frightened that so much should rest upon her shoulders. “I could not even heal Lim.”
He was already half given to the world’s dream, said the earth spirit. There was a sickness in his blood that no healer could mend. Yet I held it off, for I saw a glimpse of what would come in that which you called the round house, which was once the peace house of a troll village. I saw that the small lemming would save your life and perish from the effort. But I stayed his dying until you touched him and tried to heal him, for I knew this was the way to sever you from the flow.