The Sea of Trolls - Farmer Nancy (читать книги онлайн без TXT) 📗

They ate surprisingly good pastries, meat pies, and flummery—the best kind, with nutmeg and cream. Thorgil went into raptures over each new dish. “I had no idea things could taste so good!” she exclaimed. “This is all so delicious!”

“Is she all right?” whispered Queen Glamdis to Jack.

“Just crazy in a new way,” Jack whispered back.

They left early in the morning, as dawn reddened the hall of the Mountain Queen. Glamdis and her family accompanied them down the long tunnels to the bottom of the mountain. For a people who had haunted Jack’s nightmares so long, he was surprisingly sad to leave them. “I can’t believe one of you bit off Tree Foot’s leg,” he said as they came out to the cold, windswept courtyard at the beginning of the U-shaped valley.

“Believe it,” said Fonn. “Humans and trolls have been at war for a long time. We have a truce for the moment, to honor Olaf One-Brow, but we battle for the same lands. When winter ruled the earth, so did we. Now summer comes on and we are weakened. But we will never give up.”

“And neither will we,” Thorgil cried. She was dressed in wolverine fur with smart little boots and a new sword at her belt. “To refuse battle would do neither of us honor.”

“We will meet at Ragnarok,” said Fonn gravely.

“At Ragnarok!” shrilled Thorgil.

Bold Heart, who was perched on Jack’s shoulder, cawed and shook his head.

“I give you these parting gifts,” said the Mountain Queen, signaling to a young lout. He brought out cloaks of a material Jack couldn’t identify. They shimmered like the light off a glacier, and they smelled sharp and sweet at the same time. “They’re made of silk we harvest from the spiders that live in our forests,” the queen said.

How do you get silk from a spider?thought Jack, who only understood how to shear sheep.

“You may have noticed the curtains in our halls. They’re of the same substance, strong enough to withstand the heaviest storm and light enough to wear comfortably. This silk has the property of taking on the colors around it. These cloaks will hide you from the dragon.” Glamdis held up the garments. They were long and roomy. The hoods would easily conceal a face. Jack saw their color shift from ice white to the dark blue of the Mountain Queen’s dress.

“Thank you, Great Queen—I mean, Mother,” said Jack, bowing. “This is indeed generous.”

“I’m deeply honored,” said Thorgil, bowing as well.

“Don’t go near the rocks on either side of the valley. Walk next to the river. Travel by dark. Hide by day. When you reach the forest, go north around the field of flowers. The elk have made trails. You should come out on the fjord and meet your friends.”

Jack was dressed in his marten-fur coat and the cowskin boots that gripped the ice. He carried Olaf’s sun stone for Skakki and the bottle of song-mead from Mimir’s Well for Rune in a bag around his neck. Thorgil wore the little silver hammer she’d been given by Olaf. Both of them had sacks of provisions and various weapons.

Last of all, the queen gestured to Bolthorn, who came out with Jack’s staff wrapped in cloth. “You take it,” Bolthorn said, holding it out as though it were a poisonous snake.

“I thought about casting it into the chasm beneath my window,” said the queen. “Then I thought about keeping it from you. It’s the staff of a fire wizard. I last saw one when Dragon Tongue visited, and I can’t tell you how much trouble hecaused. Still, it would be unworthy to steal from a guest. You may take it home with you, but be warned. If you ever return with thatin your possession, you’ll find out right away whether we trolls bite off legs.” She grinned, showing her dainty—but businesslike—fangs.

“I promise,” said Jack, bowing again. He hefted the staff. It had turned black, but it wasn’t burned. It had called out flame from the heart of Jotunheim and, in the process, had gone beyond fire to something harder and stronger. Jack felt a faint thrumming in the wood when he put his hand on it.

They said farewell then, thanking the Jotuns again for their generosity. Jack hugged Golden Bristles as best he could, given his short arms and the boar’s huge neck. “Good-bye, piggy,” he said. “I wish you could come along, but you wouldn’t find much welcome in Middle Earth.” The troll-boar whuffled and nuzzled Jack’s hair.

Then Jack, Thorgil, and Bold Heart set off down the U-shaped valley to the distant forest. For a while they could hear Forath singing a farewell whale-song. I wish she wouldn’t do that,Jack thought. It makes me feel so dreadfully sad.They turned after a mile and looked back. The ice mountain seemed unmarked. They couldn’t make out any windows, turrets, walkways, or doors. It was as though the Jotuns had folded themselves inside and all the glaciers and ice crags were deserted.

“This cloak smells weird,” said Thorgil. They were tucked into a deep side channel of the river. They had to lie on a sandbar crusted with ice. The wind scoured the ground just above their heads, but they were hidden from the dragon. Jack had shared out meat pies and cider.

“It’s made of spider silk. Maybe spiders smell weird. I’ve never been close enough to tell,” he said. Bold Heart was huddled against him, pecking meat shreds from Jack’s hand.

“I keep expecting the cloth to be sticky.”

“Just don’t walk through a swarm of flies.”

“This is so boring,” Thorgil fumed. “Why can’t we go out in daylight if the cloaks can hide us?”

“The queen had some reason for telling us to lie low.”

“The dragon can’t see us. There’s nothing else out here. You can see for miles.” Thorgil balled up her cloak and jammed it into the sand.

The dragon had been visible for some time as a puff of smoke by day and a red fire at night. Occasionally, she spread her wings and floated over the valley, looking for prey. So far she hadn’t got anything.

I wonder if she’s laid more eggs,Jack thought. He felt vaguely guilty about killing her brood, but they hadn’t had a choice.

“I’m bored,” said Thorgil. The new Thorgil was almost as annoying as the old one. She no longer fell into mindless rages—though she was perfectly capable of getting angry—but she was filled with a thirst for new experiences. She had missed so much in her former life that every rock and clump of moss enthralled her. She wanted more and more and more entertainment, to make up for lost time. Sitting with her for hours was sheer torture.

“Why can’t we find out whether the dragon can see us?” she complained. “We could always run back here.”

“Because,” Jack said for the tenth time that day, “once the dragon notices us, she isn’t going to give up. She’ll check every nook and cranny.”

“Bold Heart could talk to her. Tell her we taste bad or something.”

“She’s not going to believe him,” Jack said. Bold Heart had revealed—and Thorgil had translated—that he’d told the dragon she had a rival at the other end of the valley. He’d worked her into such a rage, she’d sailed off to do battle. Then he’d incited the green dragonlet to kill his sisters.

“I suppose not,” grumbled Thorgil. She felt for the rune at her neck.

Jack watched her with a sick feeling of loss. “You can’t take it off, you know,” he said. “Once removed it can never be returned.”

“You’ve told me that about a thousand times. I’m never going to take it off. It makes me feel safe.”

I know,thought Jack sadly. He smoothed the feathers on Bold Heart’s head. The crow nibbled his fingers. The wind whistled and howled, and from a great distance they heard the dragon scream. She did this regularly, whether from rage or merely for exercise Jack didn’t know. It was when she was silent that they had to worry.

“I’m bored. Tell me a story,” said Thorgil.

Jack had gone through his entire collection in the days they’d spent crossing the valley. He’d told her all of Father’s gory martyrdom tales and all of the Bard’s sagas and even all of Lucy’s bedtime stories. He’d described every inch of the farm and every rock on the beach back home. He was almost reduced to introducing her to the black-faced sheep. He stood up and looked over the edge of the embankment.