What the Troll Said

Chapter 11

WHAT THE TROLL SAID

CHAPTER 11

"What else did she say?"

"That I should remember the Weirdlings of the Wood when I come once more into my power."

The Troll nodded his head. "I see." He took a sip from his cup. He coughed once.

"My power? What power?" Morgan scoffed.

"Take seriously all that she has told you. It is well known that the Silver Hind is the true oracle of our time. In fact, It is rumored that she is likely the second most powerful magician in all the known lands within the Circle."

Morgan frowned. "Then who is the first?"

The Troll smiled. He waved her away.

The three companions were back with the Troll. The Troll himself and Morgan were sitting around a fire that Egon had got going and talking. The dwarf wasn't sitting with them. He was busy with something else. Nearby in the area, he had found a broken down, horse drawn wagon, complete with a hitch and harness and even a tarp for a cover and now he was making repairs on it, restoring it to working order. He had thought that if he could put it back together, then they could hook it up to Filian later on and getting around to wherever they were going next would be that much easier and oh! So much more comfortable...for the two of them, anyway.

Filian was off on her own, further down by the side of the stream, dipping her feet in the water and sulking.

The Troll's eyes were on the moon, low near the tree tops and ready for the sunrise. He cleared his throat. "Now, for your final task."

Morgan nodded. "The third thing that you need."

"Yes." He took a stick from the ground and began to draw a diagram in the dirt beside the fire. After a moment, the nature of the drawing became clear.

"That's a map of the city." Morgan nodded at the drawing.

"Do you know this area?" The Troll pointed to a part of it.

"I've never been. But I know how to get there. Oric and I..."

"Oric?" The Troll glanced up.

Morgan smiled. "The cook. At the orphanage."

The Troll leaned back. "Ah...the cook?" He lifted his eyes to the sky. "I see."

"Yes, I've been with him a few times to the market to buy things for the orphanage. We had never gone as far as that other area, but I know where it is."

"And you know what is there?"

"Yes, I do. That's where most of the commoners live. All the people who work in the shops and the butchers and the bakeries nearby in the market."

"Good. I want you to go now to a certain house in that area." The Troll gave her an address. "You'll remember it?"

"Yes." Morgan repeated the address back to him.

"When you get there, you will see someone in the house, a child, a girl. You will bring her to me. Alive." The Troll leaned in. "Do you understand?"

Alive?

Morgan took a breath in and there seemed, of a sudden, a knot in her stomach, like her chest had twisted up and the worm she had just swallowed was trying to chew its way out through her belly.

Things were cloudy and unclear in her mind, but they had become less so for just a second and then...it was gone. In its wake, these words were filaments across her mind like ships in the dark, back and forth, back and forth: