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‘Charles hath struck a bargain with the Slarn. Their lives for his willing service and ‘twas a small thing to them to reap so great a gain.’

Meanwhile Marlowe was forcing himself to his knees, and then to his feet , getting his balance. ‘Have to go to my mother,’ he muttered, ‘if she’s still alive. Up there, I found out what was important.’ And he staggered out of there.

The village was still. No work was being done. The Forester People sat cross-legged in rows about Helena’s hut, drawn to sit in vigil as people always are when awaiting the death of a great one. Silence hung on the village like a shroud.

Within the hut, there was a sound, and it was the sound of Helena taking her last slow, rasping breaths while Zoe her sister and Maze her great-great-grand-niece watched and waited.

Maze spoke. ‘Now Giniveer’s alive, you’ll go away with your people?’

‘I’ll sit here until my sister dies,’ Zoe replied, ‘and only then can I make a decision.’

Helena slowly opened her eyes. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘You must go before I die.’

‘No!’

Slowly Helena’s ancient voice regained some of its old power to command. ‘I was wrong to ask you to be Maze’s advisor. There are those in the village who are saying you’re the one. The chosen one who has returned from the dead. You must go now or there’ll be trouble.’

Zoe looked at Maze, perplexed. ‘What’s she talking about?’

Maze was solemn. ‘You’re from the past, from before the Great Exit. People are saying that you’ve returned from the grave. But I want you by me. I know that you won’t betray me.’

As Zoe tried to take this in, Marlowe entered, crossed the red line which marked the area forbidden to men, moved unrebuked to Helena’s bed and knelt by it. ‘Is Zachary back, too?’ Zoe asked.

Marlowe nodded but did not speak. And so in silence, their vigil continued. Helena was in deep sleep now, and her breathing was so slow that there were times they thought she had slipped away into death, until she breathed again.

Marine was busy checking instruments and telltales on the bridge, while Zachary, Meg and the Don watched, and the Wyzen continued to pig out on ships’ biscuits and gruel. Finished with her pre-lift-off checks, Marine turned to the others with a worried frown. ‘She should be able to lift, but…’

Guinevere broke in. ‘I feel more strong than at any time since I was sore wounded. One last thing remaineth to be added unto me. A crystal. It is in the hold.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Meg. For she was suddenly remembering herself bound, waiting to be sacrificed by Looters in the hold of the starship, and the Eldest looking with great interest at an open crate containing a glowing crystal about the size of a human head. ‘Eye of Dark One!’ he had shouted. ‘Dark One speak in my head, Dark One say give blood to my eye!’ and then he had taken the crystal and carried it to where, in front of the fire they had lit in the middle of the hold, the Looters had constructed a sacrificial altar from metallic crates. The Eldest had reverently put the crystal down at the centre of the altar, had made a minute adjustment, and then had nodded his satisfaction. ‘You remember?’ Meg said, ‘the Looters were going to sacrifice us and they found that crystal, and when you guys,’ she said to Zachary and Marine, ‘started firing Slarnstaff bolts at them, they ran out and the Eldest Looter took the crystal with him?’

‘Could’ve been another crystal?’ Zachary said.

But when they went to the hold to look, they found it had not been. There was the crate which had once held the crystal which the Eldest had taken. Meg, Zachary, the Don and Marine stood staring at it. ‘I saw him run out with it,’ Meg said. The image of Guinevere manifested, and Meg turned to her. ‘Can you lift without it?’ Guinevere shook her head. ‘And the last time you can lift is?’

‘At noon tomorrow.’

‘So,’ Zachary said, ‘let me get this straight. It’s situation normal. Everything under control. The one thing we need has been captured by cannibals who are at this moment worshipping it somewhere within a 50 mile radius of where we stand? And there’s nothing we can use instead of it?’

‘Other crystals such as give life to Slarnstaffs,’ Guinevere said, ‘if linked, their powers might work?’

Meg turned to the Don who was instantly on the defensive. ‘I need them!’

‘You give them up or you’ll have to evacuate all your people.’

‘I need them to bring civilization and order to the world.’

‘How oft have I heard that?’ exclaimed Guinevere.

‘You give them up,’ Meg said to the Don, ‘or I don’t marry you.’

The Don did not reply. In the silence, Meg was beginning to tap her foot. She was showing a tendency to smoulder. ‘I’m thinking!’ said the Don.

‘You’d better think pretty fast, buster! The delay is getting somewhat insulting.’

‘No one’s ever paid a bride price like that. They’re worth a kingdom!’

‘And I am worth what?’ Meg’s eyes had narrowed to slits.

The Don sighed, defeated. ‘Everything,’ he said.

They reached Trollcastle without incident, and the Don ordered Ulf to fetch the Slarnstaffs, a task which Ulf delegated to Rocky, who beamed with pleasure and ran off to carry out the order. ‘You and Rocky have patched it up?’ asked the Don, and Ulf, with a giant smile replied, ‘Out on the plain, when all was lost, the boy saved the day like a true Troll.’ He looked at Harold. ‘Him too. They both won their spurs this day.’

When Rocky returned with two Slarn general issue packs full of Slarnstaffs, the Don beckoned him and Harold, and drew his sword, and gestured that they should both kneel before him. They did so, and then he said, touching each of them in turn on their shoulder with his sword, ‘On the report of my faithful lieutenant Ulf, you have both become men this day. I dub you Sir Rocco Costello, and Sir Harold Lewin, worthy knights of the company of Trolls. Now rise.’ And as they did so, the Don turned to Ulf and said, ‘Get Sir Harold a sword and belt. I won’t have my knights ride naked.’

In Guinevere’s feeding chamber, as the Don dropped one Slarnstaff after another into the feeding pit, each addition to the brew was greeted with the bubbling and hissing noise they had grown accustomed to. When only one Slarnstaff remained, he paused, and asked, ‘do you have enough yet?’

‘Nay,’ said Guinevere’s image.

‘And if I feed this last one to you will you then have enough?’

‘Alas, I will not,’ she answered.

The Don turned to Ulf. ‘Get patrols out, find the Looters. We need that crystal they stole.’ Ulf went out, followed by Harold and Rocky, leaving Meg staring at the last Slarnstaff, still in the Don’s hand. ‘We had a deal,’ she said.

‘You heard the Lady Guinevere. If I feed this staff to her it still won’t be enough. But in someone’s hand, it could save us all by noon tomorrow.’ Meg glowered at him. ‘Now do you want to be angry with me, or do you want to help?’

The patrols went out and found no sign of the Looters. The deserted village had seemed like the obvious first place to look, but a house to house search found no one. They widened the search perimeter to no avail, and so, toward the end of day, the search returned to the village. A patrol, led by the Don, and consisting of Ulf, Meg, Zachary, Marine, Harold and Rocky, backed by other Trolls, again began a house to house search. When Ulf, Harold and Rocky entered what used to be the library, they found the smouldering remains of a fire and freshly gnawed bones scattered about. It had not been like this when they first searched, and it meant that the Looters had been here recently. Dirt was scuffed on the floor around the trapdoor which led down into the Looters’ tunnel system and Ulf lifted the trapdoor and took a deep breath. ‘I can smell them down here,’ he said, ‘tell the Don. We’re going to need torches.’

In the forest village, a construction of logs and branches had been built in the centre of the village square. It was Helena’s funeral pyre, as tall as a woman and as long. Flowers were woven into it, and dry grasses of different shades of yellow and brown, and it was a thing of beauty, an offering for a beautiful life which was soon to end. Near it, a burning torch was thrust into the ground, awaiting its moment.

In Helena’s hut, she breathed in, and then out, and then in, and then out, and then … nothing. She had passed from life into death so imperceptibly that Zoe, Maze and Marlowe did not for a moment realize that she was gone from them. ‘Helena?’ said Zoe, and reached out and touched her sister, ‘’lena?’ she repeated, and then wailed, a terrible cry of loss and dereliction, and outside, her wail was echoed by the waiting forest people. They fell silent, and stood as Marlowe came out of the hut carrying Helena’s small frail body, flanked by a solemn Maze and a sobbing Zoe. Maze too felt like sobbing, but the mantle of leadership had fallen on her small shoulders and she knew that the right words had to be said.

‘Our mother is dead,’ she intoned.

‘As all shall die,’ responded the villagers.

‘She has joined the lost ones,’ said Maze.

‘As shall we all.’

‘We remember the Lost Ones,’ called Maze, ‘people of the Ponds, taken to the sky, we remember them!’

‘Those who went to the sky!’ came the response.

‘The Slarn came and took them, and now we remember.’

‘Remember them all!’

‘These are the lost families, these are the Lost Ones.’

Silence fell, and then Maze began to recite, and as she said each name, the villagers responded with the single word ‘gone’ and the response became like a soft gonging sound echoing behind the list of the names of the lost people of Dalrymple Ponds. ‘Abernethy, Adams, Belisario, Brook, Cantarella, Cavanagh, Chung, Clark, Evans, Georgiou, Gauci, Henderson …’

Zoe reacted to Meg’s surname, thinking
Meg, you and your family have been remembered
.

‘Holt, Janek, Kelly, Koch, Kowalevski, Lewin, McGregor, Mencken, Nhu, O’Grady, O’Hara,’ and then she paused before her own name and Zoe’s, ‘Poulos, Pritchard, Quong, Rogers, Stannard, Wright. These are the lost families.’

‘Gone,’ answered the villagers, and now Marlowe stepped down from the verandah of the hut and walked to the funeral pyre in the middle of the square, Maze and Zoe walking on either side of him. He laid Helena’s body on the pyre, and then Maze plucked the burning torch from the ground and handed it to Zoe. Zoe took it, but hesitated. ‘You’re her nearest female kin,’ said Maze, ‘you must do this.’

Blinking back her tears, Zoe thrust the torch into the base of the pyre. The kindling crackled into flame. Night was falling.

Meanwhile in the Looters’ village the raiding party was about to enter the tunnel system and the Don turned to Meg and said, ‘You’re not coming.’

‘I’m sure as hell not staying here by myself,’ she responded with some vigor, and for a split second the Don considered the alternatives, then nodded. ‘I then order you to accompany us.’

Meg smiled in a caricature of obsequiousness and said, in a girly little voice, ‘I hear my master and obey.’

‘No need to go overboard,’ muttered the Don, and led the way down into the tunnel system. The torches were casting an eerie light, bones lay scattered on the floor and on the old brick walls graffiti told of former times: “AC/DC RULES OK?”, “SK8ERS 4EVER” and “GOTHS SUX” read some of them. They passed a human skeleton, dressed in decaying rags and chained to the wall, and Zachary muttered ‘Must’ve been too tough to eat’, and then looked around and said, ‘What was this place?’ ‘Sewer maybe, telephone tunnel?’ Harold said and then the Don told them to be silent. They crept along the tunnel into the darkness.

In the forester people’s village, Helena’s pyre was now a pile of glowing ashes, and Marlowe sat by it, wrapped in his cloak, excluded because of his gender from the women’s mysteries being enacted in Helena’s hut. There, a bowl of ashes slaked with water sat on the floor and around it sat Maze with Zoe on her right hand and some of the older women of the village. Maze solemnly put her hand into the slaked ashes and drew a line from the top of her forehead down over her nose and ending on her chin, and then two more lines, one across her forehead and one across her mouth. The elder woman to her left did the same, and around the circle it went, ending with Zoe, who followed the lead of the others.

‘Tonight is the night of the vigil,’ Maze intoned.

‘Tomorrow the day of the robing,’ the elder women replied.

‘Tonight Our Mother is dead.’

‘With the dawn, Our Mother will live.’

And one of the elder women looked at Zoe, and the look was not lost on either her or Maze. ‘Maze is the Choosen,’ Zoe said sharply, ‘and I stay here only to advise her.’

The elder woman who had looked at Zoe now spoke directly to her. ‘You’re the one who came back from the grave,’ she said, ‘the Twice-Born.’

‘But Maze is the Choosen.’

The elder women looked at her, their ash-smeared faces blank, unreadable. Zoe stood. ‘There is someone older and wiser than us all. I must consult her.’ And she walked out, leaving them to their vigil.

In the tunnel system, the patrol moved deeper into the earth and suddenly from further on they heard the scurrying of feet. Cautiously they crept forward and came around a bend in the tunnel where the walls changed from brick to solid rock. In the distance they could see light, a dim pulsing glow. They moved closer and found themselves at the end of the tunnel and at the entrance to a cavern, so vast and so dark that they could not see its walls or roof, and in the centre of the cavern was the source of the pulsing light. As they watched, hands were momentarily silhouetted against the glow, which became brighter as the fabric shielding the light source was unwrapped to reveal the missing crystal. The hands which had unwrapped it now lifted the crystal and the face of the Eldest was revealed. ‘Dark One!’ he shouted.

And the Looters, unseen in the dark, their voices echoing and re-echoing in the vast chamber, responded, ‘Dark One!’

‘Dark One revealed in light!’

‘In light!’

And then, rushing past the raiding party in the dark came a Looter, who saw them and kept running before they could bring him down. ‘Trollmen!’ he shrieked, ‘Trollmen!’ And the Eldest threw the cloth back over the crystal and hiding it within his cloak he plunged the cavern into darkness once again!

At the starship Zoe came running into the clearing, the hatchway opened for her and she ran inside, calling on Guinevere even before she reached the bridge. Panting and distressed she reached the bridge and Guinevere manifested before her. ‘What ails thee Zoe?’ she said, and Zoe explained. ‘Helena is dead, and the village is divided. Some want Maze for Our Mother and some want me. And I don’t want them divided! I just thought I’d stay on and be Maze’s adviser but suddenly I’m the meat in the sandwich, I…’

‘Stop!’ said Guinevere sternly, ‘and examine thy heart. Dost thou wish to be Our Mother?’

‘It’s … kind of flattering. But I don’t want to take it from Maze! She’s been trained for this since she was born.’

‘And yet there is that within thee which harbors ambition. Look on this screen and see ambition’s fruits.’

The main screen became a swirl of darkness and many colors. Images began to appear and disappear. Maze, dead at Zoe’s feet, with Zoe triumphant. Then the reverse, Zoe dead at Maze’s feet and Maze triumphant. Maze ruling alone. The village derelict and deserted. Possible futures formed and reformed before her. ‘What are you showing me?’ Zoe cried, and Guinevere replied, ‘Possible futures. We stand at a crossroads in Time, and anything may happen. Maze slaying thee, thou slaying Maze.’

‘If there’s any possibility of that I’m not going back. I’ll never do anything to hurt her.’

‘Thou must go back and face thy test. If thou goest not back ‘twill wreak chaos and worse. It must be settled in the next few hours. Now go! Hasten!’

Zoe turned to go but then paused and looked back. ‘You lift off at midday?’

‘Aye, if they find the crystal. With thee or without thee we shall lift at noon. Now go and God speed!’

And with that, Zoe quit the bridge.

In the Looters’ cavern, the Don’s party advanced, holding their torches high and as they came to the centre of the Looters’ meeting place, they were faced with the Eldest, who whipped the cloth off the crystal and glared at them. ‘Why do you come to Dark One’s home, Don Costello?’

‘We come for the crystal in your hands,’ he replied.

‘This Dark One’s Eye. Belong to Human Race. Not for you.’

The Don and his party advanced on the Eldest. ‘The crystal,’ said the Don, ‘we will take it from your living hands or your dead ones. The choice is yours.’

‘You come of your own free will to place where Dark One is strong,’ the Eldest said, ‘and for that your bones will stay here forever.’

‘The crystal. Now,’ said the Don, but as he spoke the Eldest turned and took flight, screaming ‘Kill foods!’ and his followers rushed at the Don’s party from all sides. The Trolls’ swords were out and they were suddenly fighting Looters armed with club and spears, while the Don, Meg, Zachary, Harold and Marine fought their way clear of the melee and ran off in pursuit of the Eldest, leaving the Trolls under Ulf’s leadership to deal with the Looters.

The Eldest shot into a side tunnel running off the cavern, and they ran after him. Harold, who was the swiftest runner of them, took the lead, and then the Eldest, his pace beginning to fail, dodged into yet another side tunnel. Harold was still leading the pursuit into the new tunnel at the end of which was a dim light, shining through what seemed like vegetation. The Eldest reached the end of the tunnel and now stood at bay, silhouetted by the light behind him, and as Harold reached him, the Eldest, holding the crystal in one arm, grabbed him in a choke hold with his other arm, and dragged him through the screen of leaves at the end of the tunnel and out of sight!

The others were only a few yards behind and as they crashed through the vegetation at the end of the tunnel, they found themselves on a narrow rock ledge lit by the rising sun. The ledge was only a few feet wide, and beyond its edge lay a terrible drop into the valley below. The Eldest stood on the ledge, the crystal under one arm, and his other arm holding Harold in a choke hold, and he said, ‘You want Dark One’s Eye? Or you want boy? Which?’ and by way of illustration, he pushed Harold toward the edge of the rock ledge. It crumbled underfoot and stones and earth fell outward and down into the abyss.

Zachary was closest and he muttered to the others, ‘Let me handle this. Slaying isn’t my thing but talking is,’ and he took another step toward the Eldest, speaking very calmly. ‘We want the boy. We want the boy safe and that’s all, okay? No crystal, forget about the crystal. So if you just let him go, let him walk towards us, we’ll back off, no sweat, no one’s going to get violent, and we can all get out of here alive. Everyone behind me, off the ledge, Harold’s going to be coming right along now.’

The Don, Meg and Marine backed into the tunnel mouth as Harold said, ‘we need the crystal.’

Zachary sighed. ‘Harold, who’s running this negotiation?’

‘I’m just saying we could get a better deal. We need the crystal.’

‘And I need you alive,’ said Zachary, ‘because if I blow this and you go over the edge I’m never going to hear the end of it from the women, okay? Now just shut up!’

‘I say we can reason with him,’ said Harold.

Meg, Marine and the Don stood at the tunnel’s mouth, listening. ‘Is the boy stupid?’ asked Marine.

Meg shook her head. ‘No, if anything he’s too intelligent.’

‘Can be the same thing. Please? Permission?’ and she gestured that she wanted the dagger from the Don’s swordbelt. The Don, though puzzled, handed it over hilt first. Marine weighed it in her hand, and seemed satisfied. ‘You think the primitive will let Harold live? ‘

Harold, being too intelligent, had now taken over the negotiation. ‘Now look,’ he lectured the Eldest, ‘you’re all going to die if we don’t get this crystal. Big explosion. Boom! Everyone dead. So if you hand it over we’ll give you whatever you want.’

‘Want Dark One’s eye!’

‘Apart from that. Think.’

Zachary felt like howling with frustration. ‘Harold! He cannot think!’

All this reasoning was getting the Eldest agitated. ‘You want Dark One Eye, you want boy, choose, choose now, Food you get back in tunnel, you go right back, you go to village, you leave me, boy alone, you trust me or boy die now!’ he babbled.

‘Okay! Okay!’ said Zachary, edging backward.

‘Boy die now!’ The way the Eldest said it made it sound as if he liked the idea. It was in his view a good idea, an idea whose time had come. To emphasize his point, he thrust Harold to the brink of the ledge so that Harold was now trying not to look down into the dizzying depths of the valley.

Marine stepped from the tunnel onto the ledge, one hand holding the Don’s dagger at about ear level. ‘Zachary? Duck!’ she yelled and then as he did so, she hurled the Don’s dagger and it thudded into the Eldest’s chest! He fell backward, dragging Harold with him, and Harold reached for the crystal, once, twice, got a grip on it, but he was falling, being dragged by the Eldest into the abyss! Zachary dived forward, got a grip on Harold’s jacket as the Eldest, howling, spun away into the depths, but then Harold’s jacket was tearing away in Zachary’s one-handed grip and Zachary was sliding across the smooth stone of the ledge with Harold’s weight dragging them both off the ledge! Zachary reached down with his other hand to get a grip on Harold’s arm, but his hand was sweaty and Harold’s arm was sliding through his grasp. All this had happened in an instant and Marine was now airborne, diving in to pin Zachary to the ledge, while Meg and the Don were moving in to help. Harold, dangling over the edge, tossed the crystal up to whoever could take it, and used the hand which was thus freed to grab Zachary’s arm. The crystal rose in an arc above the ledge but was going to drop back into the valley! Meg went for it like a fielder and if the Don had not caught her from behind she would have gone off the ledge in her eagerness. Her hands touched it, she juggled the crystal, once, twice, she nearly had it and then it fell from her questing hands and dropped, pulsing light, down into the depths of the valley!