The Troll-Demon War Page 6

  King Garethen still didn’t talk with his brother Te’Dur, Kizalynn’s biological father. That traitor now lived with the gatekeeper, Rodericket, who maintained the gate on this side of the fairy troll bridge.

  Rodericket was at least someone the king could trust and made regular reports on Te’Dur to the king’s guard, which got forwarded right away to the king.

  While some of the court had been against the king’s choice of heir, most of their objections had been, quite frankly, politically motivated. It wasn’t because they considered her a bad choice. However, they’d married into the royal family with hopes of being closer to the throne. Once Kizalynn had been declared the king’s heir, their positions had diminished, as her family would be in line for the throne now.

  The king knew that Lapundar was wrong. They needed those border guards.

  However, did the kingdom need as many guards as they had? Ozlandia, the head of the king’s guard, would say that they did.

  On the one hand, it had been five years since Lars and the other demons had been stopped and the Great War averted.

  On the other hand, they were demons. They would come back. Even if it took one hundred years. They’d return for yet another fight.

  King Garethen reached up and ran his fingertips against the rough edge of the broken tusk sticking up from his bottom jaw.

  He remembered the battles. His brother Te’Dur, traitor though he may be, still bore the scars of Hell fire. Demons had set Kizalynn’s crib on fire, and Te’Dur had risked his own life to save his daughter. Then had made the difficult choice to allow her to become a changeling, the only way Te’Dur could see to save his daughter’s life.

  Kizalynn bore similar scars on her arms.

  The demons would be back.

  How much did the king need to prepare before they returned? And at what cost?

  King Garethen met with Ozlandia and Alberthendi, the head of the king’s guard and her second in command, in his private study just after lunch. The walls held cases for scrolls and beautiful stones. Thin slits for windows on one wall looked out over the back gardens of the palace. A large geode—about three feet in diameter—hung from the wall directly behind the king. He liked all that solid rock behind him. It was a pretty purple color, with clear crystals in the center of it.

  The desk had been shaped out of solid stone, a great boulder of granite perfectly carved to fit the height of the king. The top had been polished so diligently that it reflected the flame of the oil lamp sitting on the corner of it. Scents of spicy lamb and turnip stew floated across the air now and again, leftovers from a very fine lunch.

  The king didn’t have papers strewn across his desk. He wasn’t a merchant. Instead, he had a small notebook that he used for jotting down a few notes now and again, just to jog his memory when he needed to.

  His memory was much better than a human’s. However, that didn’t mean he always remembered everything.

  A solid, comfortable chair sat behind the desk, and two more on the other side. They were all made from iron and leather—mere wood would have groaned and protested and eventually given up the ghost after having to support the weight of trolls day in and day out.

  Ozlandia came in first, wearing the outfit of a standard guard, with a navy-blue jacket and breeches, thick black boots, and a peaked metal helmet. She had her long, double-headed ax tied to her back. In addition, net bags full of sharp rocks hung from her belt, as a troll could accurately hit just about anything they aimed for.

  She was tall for a commoner, as most of the truly tall trolls came from royalty. She wore her brown hair short and straight, barely long enough for anyone to grab during a fight. Her two lower tusks were scratched but not broken. Her brown eyes glowed with an internal fierceness that the king had come to respect.

  Alberthendi came in second. He frequently traveled through all of Trollville, so was dressed more like a commoner in a plain, off-white muslin shirt and brown wool pants. However, he also bore a long, wickedly curved sword on his left side and the bag of stones on his right.

  “My king,” Alberthendi said, bowing low as he came into the room.

  “Sit, sit,” King Garethen directed from his side of the desk. “So what reports do you have for me?”

  The two guards exchanged a worried glance.

  “I’m not going to like this, am I?” the king said with a sigh.

  “No, but it’s an easy enough request to deny,” Ozlandia said. “We’ve been approached by the cambions to the west of the kingdom.”

  King Garethen sighed. The cambions were creatures that were half demon, half human. They were unpleasant to look at, as they appeared as really ugly humans. However, they weren’t as bad as some of the other demon races. He wouldn’t trust a large group of them, but individually, they were frequently not that bad. No worse than humans.

  “What do they want?” the king asked.

  “They want direct access to the fairy troll bridge,” Ozlandia said.

  “Why on dear solid ground would they want that?” the king asked. “They aren’t any more welcome on the human plane as anywhere else.”

  Alberthendi shrugged. “Don’t know. Not sure what their scheme is.”

  “Is there a scheme? Some dark plot?” King Garethen asked.

  “There must be,” Ozlandia said firmly. “Otherwise, why would they ask?”

  “Just for the convenience?” the king proposed.

  “No, I’m sure there’s something else going on,” Alberthendi said.

  “There always is,” the king replied.

  The two guards stared at him.

  “There’s always a dark plot out there. Something to end the world as we know it. However, we haven’t had a good battle in years.” The king narrowed his eyes and stared hard, first at Alberthendi then at Ozlandia. “I had a complaint from a merchant today about taxes.”

  They both gave him perplexed looks.

  “I know, I know. If there’s one thing that all merchants have in common, it’s complaints about taxes,” the king continued. “The complaints are as constant as the morning sunlight, coming every day, it seems.”

  King Garethen sighed. “I have not forgotten that it is demons we’re fighting. Demons who would like to tear everything apart and remake the world as their own personal garbage pile. But how prepared do we need to be? Is constant vigilance the answer? Particularly when the threat remains nebulous?”

  He had their attention now.

  “I know you requested hard coal for making more swords,” the king continued. “Again, why do you need to be so heavily armed? What is the point?”

  King Garethen looked from one guard to the other. Neither replied. “Someone? Anyone?”

  “Sire, the threat is real,” Ozlandia said slowly. “We need to be prepared.”

  “Does it make sense to make all those swords now? Or just make them as we need them?” the king countered. “As the merchant said this morning, they’ll all gladly contribute to the war coffers once war starts. In the meanwhile? They think it’s all going into useless weapons and feeding soldiers we don’t need.”

  “Demons are trained as fighters from a young age,” Alberthendi pointed out. “Trolls are tough. I’d take an untrained army of trolls against a crowd of demons any day. However, taking a group of trained trolls is an even better advantage.”

  The king nodded. He could see Alberthendi’s point. He understood that it was better to be more prepared than less.

  He still wasn’t sure what level of prepared they needed to be at.

  “How many trolls guard our borders?” the king asked. “And what would happen if we halved that number?”

  Ozlandia looked shocked. Alberthendi just looked stubborn.

  “Go work the numbers,” the king directed them. “Figure out the scenarios. Does it make sense to keep so many trolls employed there? How many are actually doing patrols? Or tending to their crops and their cattle instead?”

  “Sire, we just had a few who we
ren’t actually patrolling,” Ozlandia protested.

  It hadn’t been that long ago when some of the border patrol had been reported on by their neighbors for no longer doing their jobs, but instead pocketing the gold paid to them and only focusing on their own crops instead.

  “And by now, how many more have slipped into bad habits?” the king asked. “I think it’s better to keep a smaller team who are more sharply trained. So it will be easier to monitor them. When there’s a real, obvious threat, of course, we will recruit more trolls.”

  “But we can’t patrol everywhere!” Ozlandia complained.

  “You can’t patrol everywhere now,” King Garethen pointed out. “You patrol each area, what, once every two weeks or so?”

  “Then we need more trolls, not less,” Alberthendi said.

  “No,” King Garethen said firmly. “Just get me the numbers. Let’s do some serious planning. And see what the minimum number is that you actually need.”

  He dismissed the guards, then pulled his notebook over to him. He recorded the date along with a note about not merely halving the border patrol, but also halving the army.

  That would save him quite a few gold coins. He would have a very large war chest when the time came.

  Before that time came (and he knew without doubt that it would) he had better uses for such coins.

  Chapter Eight

  Christine fumed as she cast around for a new portal site to transport herself to.

  Redmond was getting so built up! It used to be easy to find an alley or the back of a small shop to transport herself into, even as little as six months ago. Now, there was construction everywhere. Huge new buildings that didn’t take to magic well.

  Finally, Christine found that the backdoor to Victor’s coffeeshop was still available. It wasn’t like the International District, where the demons had been closing every portal off. No, it was actually the humans destroying the old portal sites, and no one taking the time to build new ones.

  Progress, they called it.

  Bah.

  Christine stood before the gateway in the Japanese Garden in the Arboretum. Twisted vines had been trained up the sides of a tori gate. To the right stood the path through the northern part of the garden, and just past that was the pond. To the left a grove of bamboo made soft clicking noises as the wind blew through.

  The gate itself had a slight shimmer to it, as though it had been slicked with rain. Fortunately, it had actually stopped raining that afternoon, though it hadn’t gotten warm. Maybe the weather would become more June-like later, but Christine wasn’t hopeful.

  Every other state in the United States has been experiencing warmer than normal weather.

  Not Washington, however. No, they continued to be colder than normal.

  Fortunately, Christine didn’t feel the cold so much. Particularly in her troll form. Even the rain didn’t bother her as much as it once had, not when her water element deep inside her rejoiced at it.

  Still, Christine wore a cute, bright purple raincoat that hung down to her knees, along with her typical human jeans. Underneath the coat, she had on a bright mint-green turtleneck that showed off her curves.

  It had taken her a few years to accept just how zoftig she appeared. Despite the fact that she could have taken any form, her inner troll liked this form the best. Christine just had to accept that she was not human, and that their standards of beauty did not apply to her. It made her look different than Tina as well, and that was a good thing, though usually people did assume they were sisters.

  Keeping her destination now firmly in mind, Christine stepped through the gate and into Redmond. It was actually raining here. Christine pulled her hood up to cover her head, then headed down the busy street to the restaurant where she was meeting Tina for dinner.

  Every Thursday was “girls’ night out.” They tried a new-to-them restaurant, sticking primarily to Seattle at first, then expanding into the suburbs. They’d made some spectacular finds, as well as some restaurants that they couldn’t even be paid to return to.

  Christine was aware that at some level, she was still rebelling against the changeling spell that had forced her to always be the same, to be afraid of going anywhere new, trying anything different.

  Tina felt guilty about how Christine had been used, adopted by the Zimmermans then transformed into a changeling, and so bravely stood at Christine’s side trying everything new as well, despite the fact that she was also shy about doing different things.

  (Although Christine had been the only one of the pair of them to get her hair permed. And now Tina understood what a bad idea it was for either of them.)

  Tina was already waiting at the restaurant when Christine arrived. It was a cute place, with fake license plates hanging on the walls, listing the various dishes. Large booths made out of solid wood filled the center of the restaurant. Colorful flags—they looked like Tibetan prayer flags—hung over the booths.

  “Hi!” Christine said as she slid into the booth opposite Tina.

  Tina looked much better than she had when she’d first “lost” her Destiny. Her pale cheeks held regular color now, and her blue eyes frequently had their old sparkle.

  Though not today.

  Christine sighed silently and kept her own smile bright as she asked Tina, “How are you?”

  She knew something was wrong, and that sooner or later, she’d get a serious earful.

  Then again, that was what friends were for. For Tina to have a bad day and complain, or for Christine to do the same. They also shared their joys, like how much Tina loved Nicky, as well as how Christine enjoyed all her martial training.

  “I’m okay,” Tina admitted, rocking her head from side to side. She wore a cute, lowcut pale red shirt that emphasized just how pale Tina had gotten lately (something Christine wasn’t convinced was healthy) along with a pretty gold chain with a tiny heart in the center, a present from Nicky.

  Christine felt a little bit of relief at Tina’s reaction. If Tina was in a really bad place, she’d either admit it right away, or more likely, would completely deny it until Christine teased it out of her.

  “How are you?” Tina asked, glancing up from the menu and smiling at her friend.

  “I’m good,” Christine said. She was worried about her dad—less worried than Dennis, as she hadn’t really seen anything wrong with Dad. And she hadn’t heard anything troubling in the news of all the planes.

  Her news primarily came from talking with all the travelers who came through the gate. Really, if someone would just listen to her and create a newsletter that just had current events going on in most of the major worlds, they’d make a lot of money from the ex-pats who no longer lived in their particular plane.

  If Christine was being honest, though, most of the ex-pats would never read such a newsletter, let alone pay for it. The humans were the ones who wrote everything down. Christine had frequently bemoaned the fact that most of the other races didn’t even have books for her to read and learn about them.

  As a former librarian, she remained morally offended by the other races’ lack of the written word. Even if she’d had to spend money to translate any works that she did find.

  She considered it one of her greatest personal failings. Despite how much Christine loved books and reading, she wasn’t very good at languages. She’d finally had to admit defeat after learning just a few words in Orcish, Elvish, as well as the most common of the demons’ tongues (because of course each demon race had to have its own language to prove themselves special.)

  “Gosh, everything looks good here!” Tina said as she perused the menu some more.

  They finally agreed on splitting a fried plantain appetizer, while Christine got the pulled pork and Tina got the soup of the day.

  “So how is your training going?” Tina asked.

  Christine could tell that Tina was being deliberately cheerful.

  Still, Christine replied, “Good!” She knew that Tina would build up to her complaint, s
o Christine launched into a description of her latest accomplishment, which had included not only a spinning jump with a swiping blow but landing without falling over.

  After they ordered, Tina told Christine of her latest fight with Nicky about the Pride Parade that weekend. “She just doesn’t understand how I have no desire whatsoever to go and hang out in huge crowds! It isn’t that I’m not proud, or something.”

  Christine nodded in sympathy. That was actually one of the ways in which they were similar. Neither of them found being in large, loud, crowded spaces all that fun. Instead, they liked quieter events with fewer people.

  While Christine had pushed herself to go out more frequently, out to clubs or more disastrously that one dance class she’d taken, it hadn’t been the changeling spell that had enforced that effect. She was just naturally introverted, as was Tina.

  Something they both had to overcome in their respective roles.

  They paused for a short time while the food was served. It was absolutely delicious, the plantains nicely crispy with a good spicy dipping sauce, Christine’s pork well-seasoned. Even the rice was delicious, much better than Christine had had at the overly Americanized Chinese restaurant they’d gone to the week before.

  Since changing into a troll, Christine’s taste buds had gone through a major shift. All bread now tasted like cardboard. Pasta had no flavor whatsoever. Even pizza wasn’t any good. Instead, Christine had shifted her diet into more meat and vegetables. She joked sometimes that what she ate now could be described as, “Dead critter. Fresh veggies.”

  “So how is your magic training going?” Christine asked after a bit, as she always did. Being able to perform magic was so important to Tina. It was like Christine’s ability with ax and stone, so much a part of her that she couldn’t imagine ever doing without it again.

  Tina sighed.

  Uh oh.

  A few weeks before, Tina had complained about how wonky her magic had been that day. Was she still having problems?

  Christine foresaw a really dark future for the pair of them if Tina lost her magical ability.