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Inga jogged up the hill, shouting, “Did you see that! Did you see that!”

“I know a bard,” Joy said when Inga arrived. “You’re going to have a song!”

“See that?” Malin said, her voice tense. She was not echoing.

She pointed at Wormeye. He’d seen the balloon. He put his hands to his mouth and bellowed in a language Joy hadn’t heard before. Even in the troll’s guttural tones, it had a musical quality.

He was shouting at the balloon.

A further surprise met her, for a voice answered in kind from the balloon. Her hopes soared as the balloon descended. It was the voice of the inventor Haytham ibn Zakwan ibn Rihab.

Inga was still energized from battle. “What the hell is going on?” she said, sounding jaunty.

“Joy!” called Haytham, perhaps in answer. “I am attempting a prisoner transfer.”

“What?” Joy answered.

“You are prisoners of these trolls. I will make you prisoners of the Karvaks. Trust me!”

“What are Karvaks?” Inga said dubiously.

“Nomad conquerors of the steppes,” Malin said.

“How can you manage that?” Joy called up. “Oh, and I am so very glad to see you!”

“I am glad to see
you
!” Haytham called down, and she was delighted to behold his turbaned head and impish smile as he tossed down a rope. “And I can manage this deed because, you see, the trolls and the Karvaks . . . well, they are allies. Luckily my Karvak patron is in Kantenjord as well. I’ve learned Lady Steelfox is in Oxiland!”

“Steelfox?” Joy called back to him, feeling something slide beneath her that was not her footing. “What is she up to?”

“Let’s not fret about details!” Haytham called. “You’re not safe! The trolls aren’t sure about the deal! Climb!” He began bellowing something new in the Karvak language.

Wormeye the troll bellowed back. His troll subordinates were still on their way. Joy sensed the negotiations were not on a sound footing either. “Inga, I need you to climb, so I can get Malin into the ger.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. Will you do it?”

“Okay. What are you and the old guy up there talking about?”

“Um, how crazy trolls are.”

“Okay, fair enough.” Inga climbed.

“Malin, I will jump you to safety, if you do not mind.”

“I do not mind,” Malin said.

Joy got hold of Malin and leaped.

But she’d overestimated her strength. Her chi could not loft them all the way to the balloon. She and Malin plunged again.

Her skill allowed her to lighten their weight, so they didn’t harm themselves in the fall, but they slid down the hillside into a shallow gully where Claymore and Mossbeard waited, nursing their wounds.

“Hey!” said Claymore, and Mossbeard said, “Them!”

“Uh-oh,” said Malin.

They lunged at Joy, and Joy drove them back with a spinning kick. More trolls yelled invectives.

Joy knew Inga would jump down momentarily to help them, giving up her own safety. Joy had to get Malin up to the balloon first.

You are the land, and the land is you
.

She didn’t know how to call upon the Runemark, but she stared at it, willing it to bring strength to her body as it had before. Red light flared in the gulley. New vitality flowed into her, and a determination to use it. Grinning, she leapt again.

This time she nearly overshot. She hit the side of the ger and tumbled inside. She dropped Malin, bowed without really looking at the occupants, and leapt back to the hill to guard Inga’s ascent.

Now Rubblewrack came at her.

She shifted, kicked, blocked, struck. The Runemark kept sending energy into her, power drawn from the Chain of Unbeing somewhere to the southwest, vitality claimed from the draconic essences of the islands themselves. Rubblewrack tumbled, screaming in rage. Joy began to laugh.

Wormeye shrieked, “Runemark! The Runethane has arisen! She must not escape! We must bring her to Skrymir!”

Once again, out the corner of her eye, she saw him prepare to hurl smaller trolls. She braced herself to dodge, but Wormeye’s target was not Joy, nor Inga.

First one, then a second, then a third troll projectile was sent bursting through the canvas of the balloon.

The vessel careened away, dropping fast into the desolate hills. Inga was dragged along with it. She hit a hillside and dropped from the rope, out of sight. With a sickening crunch
Al-Saqr
came to rest. Trolls swarmed after it.

“You have an alliance!” Joy called to Wormeye.

“A treasure like you supersedes all alliances!” Wormeye replied. “Besides, you picked fights with my tumult. You must be brought before Skrymir!”

Her battle-joy had turned to ashes. Half her friends in the world might be injured or dead. The light from the Runemark faded. She was only herself. But she had to help them.

She scrambled over the jagged slopes, trolls bellowing behind her. She reached Inga. The changeling was bruised all over, with a dozen bleeding scrapes dirty with grit. But her wounds weren’t all that had grit. She was already on her knees, and she smiled feebly at Joy. “Well, you gave it a good try,” she said.

“Come on,” Joy answered, helping her up, grateful that Inga forgave her this failure.

They reached the wreck of
Al-Saqr
. Its rent canvas was sprawled against a hillside, impossible to miss. In a rocky streambed the ger lay tipped on one side. The crash itself had been gentle enough that all seemed unhurt. There stood Haytham, gripping a huge brazier from which the smoky form of the efrit Haboob fluttered out like a kite, staring over the hilltops at the approaching trolls. Mad Katta was there as well, the monk standing ready, head cocked as he listened for the creatures’ arrival. Northwing the shaman leaned against him, evidently exhausted from commanding the winds. And Malin rushed up to make sure Inga and Joy were all right.

Another figure was there was well, a striking Kantening woman of some forty years. She wore a narrow-brimmed black cap and a fine gray cloak, and she gripped a longsword as though she’d trained with one since birth.

“So,” said the woman, “this is the Runethane whom we’ve come so far to rescue. I confess you are not the Runethane I was expecting, but I am pleased to meet you nonetheless. I regret we will be needing rescue ourselves. And you must be Inga, the redoubtable changeling.” The woman bowed. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Joy didn’t know what to say.

“Who the hell are you?” Inga asked.

“Inga,” Malin said in a strangled-sounding voice. “Princess . . . Corinna . . . Soderland.”

Inga’s eyes widened, and suddenly she was on her knees.

“Rise, rise, rise,” the woman said impatiently. “We aren’t exactly in the Fortress in Svanstad. But it’s true. I am Princess Corinna.” She sighed. “And won’t grandfather and Ragnar be pleased to learn about this.”

Wormeye the troll, with some twenty of his compatriots, cleared his rocky throat behind them.

“Well, well, well,” was all he said.

The trolls led their captives into the deep mountains, down tunnels and into gorges, up passes and through fissures. The journey took two days, during which gray spires ate more and more of the sky. In the nights, fires blazed from caves, and what had seemed an uninhabited realm revealed itself as the center of a trollish civilization.

“If I survive,” Haytham the inventor said, staring at the fires, “I intend to make great contributions to Mirabad’s travel literature.”

“I can never tell,” Joy said, “if you’re happy or bitter.”

“There’s too much misery in the world for me to ever be entirely happy. And too much wonder to ever be entirely bitter. I sometimes envy those who can take their emotions raw, but I must have the meat roasted and spiced.”

“I am afraid that may be what the trolls will do to us.”

“You may be right! I haven’t seen them eat—unless you count what Wormeye has done, in swallowing my brazier for easier transport. But I have heard them joke about roast human often enough that I’m convinced they enjoy the taste.”

Late the second day, they found out.

They came to the great mountain of the Trollberg, rising just southwest of its subservient human community Jotuncrown. The mountain had no gate, carvings, or statuary, no markers of residence, only a roughly quarried gap tall as ancient pines. Inside, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the humans were grabbed and chained and led deeper in. Soon Joy was able to see the interior was just as rugged as the entrance. There were no crystal towers such as the delven once made, only a series of monstrous caverns lit by vats of green troll-fire and by gaps rent in the mountain rock, pale-blue sky beyond. Here, there, everywhere were hollows in which the detritus of troll life were strewn, giant daggers, mounds of straw, penned goats, treasure bags, cauldrons, roasting spits. Joy tried not to look at those last, for sometimes they were occupied. She wondered why vast animated mounds of rock or earth must eat, for their captors had not done so thus far. But it seemed eat they did. A great reek filled the mountain halls, a mix of meats, dung, soot, moss, pine needles, dust. It made Joy sneeze.

She was initially grateful to enter the last cavern. It had a tunnel leading to the open air, through which passed a clean, cold breeze. The path of the wind divided the chamber into halves, with scores of smooth boulders scattered on one side and a single monumental rock rising on the other. Set into this rock was a chair so big, Joy at first thought it was a small house. It was formed of a blue-white block of ice, inset with priceless gems of all colors. The various crystals all flickered in the green firelight.

Upon this chair sat a gigantic troll, perhaps twenty feet tall when sitting. He was like a miniature version of the mountain, with two dark stony peaks for shoulders and a ruby-eyed summit for a head. The face was gnarled and fissured, with a prominent gash for a mouth. His arms were like promontories, ending in crystal extrusions that might have been claws. His legs were obscured by an axe big as a man, a black weapon crowded with red half-runes along the blade, the marks looking bloody, as though they’d been picked up from the murder of some old codex.

A great, gaping opening lay where the heart would be on a man, leading all the way through the troll-king’s body. A fluttering carpet, swirling with intricate colors, was rolled up and stuffed into the gap.

Joy gasped when she saw the carpet, for she remembered it.

“Deadfall!” she cried.

“I have that distinction,” hummed a voice from the carpet, a thin musical sound that recalled desert winds. “Long has it been since I traveled the Braid of Spice or plunged into the sea to seek out your Scroll of Years. I regret we must meet again in this way, A-Girl-Is-A-Joy.”

Joy forced herself not to glance backward to see Mad Katta’s reaction, for he and the carpet had once been friends.

A triumphant chattering erupted from scores of trolls filling the opposite side of the cavern; they dragged Joy forward first, even ahead of Princess Corinna. Joy kept her right hand firmly clenched.

“Kill her!” cried a troll. “A human child from beyond the sea has invaded our land and taught treachery to our changelings!”

“May I hack her fingers off?” jeered another.

And, “May I spin her head by the hair?” screeched a third, until the whole gallery joined in.

“May I bite?”

“May I boil?”

“Roast?”

“Or fry?”

But the great troll upon the throne of ice and crystal raised a hand with fingers that resembled stalactites, or else stalagmites. A voice filled the cavern; it was not a shout but a sort of sardonic purr. “Winter take your fury, ladies and gentlemen. These are strange, new times; Skrymir Hollowheart says, let us not be hasty. I sense we have an Easterner here, not unlike our friends the Karvaks.”

“I am nothing like them!” Joy shouted, and the trolls around her shrieked and tugged on her chains.

“Do you truly wish to become stew? Be silent. I will speak first with Princess Corinna. After all, she’s your superior in rank.”

Corinna held her chin high as she was dragged before the throne, and though Joy barely knew the princess, it hurt to see Corinna’s dignity scratched.

The troll-king snatched Corinna like a loaf of bread. His stony fingers enmeshed Corinna’s skull. The princess bit her lip but did not scream. Joy’s heart raced. A single squeeze would pop the princess’s head like a cork from a bottle, yet Corinna studied her captor with an icy gaze. Skrymir said, “O princess, with my claws about you I could make Soderland cough up a great ransom. Yet I would rather wipe the contempt from your face and replace it with a portrait of my choosing. First I will scratch your right eye, so that a splinter of troll-stuff will enter it, and you will see the world as we do—that you may comprehend the Trollberg as beautiful. Next, I will with one of my fingernails carve away the window-pane of your left eye, but you will perceive it as no more than the shedding of a wart. All that will be left to you is troll-sight. As we render you to soup you will smile with glee. Thus do I show my love for the Kantenings! The manner of your death will terrorize your people for generations, and in between serving the Karvaks, parents will tell an eventyr about the horrid death of foolish Princess Corinna. But first of all, this will be known to your family in Svanstad. Hold still, my dear.”