The Heart of Glass (18 page)

“Them two inside is all right, then.” The coachman was impassive. “I suppose I’ll be expected to wait here for the time being, seeing as my coach is down that hole, like.” He pulled his cloak closer around his shoulders and folded his ham-like arms.

Marcus stared at him in astonishment. Fingle was as calm as if coaches vanished in front of him every day of the week. “Erm . . . yes,” he said. “That is — I don’t really know.” The wailing grew louder. “I’d better go and see if Marigold and Vincent are hurt.” The coachman’s long leather whip caught his eye, and he pointed to it. “Would that be strong enough to hold me if I climbed down? Would you be able to hang on to the other end? Or we could tie it around a tree.”

Fingle looked affronted. “I’ll hold it. Young whippersnapper like you don’t weigh nothing. Don’t you go getting muddy footprints on the roof of my coach, now. Takes a lot of hard work to get a shine like that.”

As he could think of no answer to this, Marcus silently wrapped the end of the whip around his waist and knotted it. Then, supported by Fingle, he rappelled down. It was only as he dropped level with the coach doors that he saw a large troll spread-eagled underneath. Marcus shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, the enormous figure was still there, and he was forced to admit to himself that he wasn’t dreaming. Or hallucinating. The troll seemed resigned to his position and in no way threatening, and Marcus took a deep breath. “Erm . . . hang on a moment. Don’t move. I don’t want to step on you.”

He landed close to the troll’s head and untied himself. Fingle pulled the long leather whip back up, and Marcus was left face-to-face with Clod. He looked at the troll in disbelief; the troll looked back without even the mildest curiosity.

“Erm . . . well done for saving Marigold and Vincent,” Marcus said at last. The troll blinked. Praise was something he wasn’t used to. Marcus turned to look at the coach; the wailing from inside had changed to a low-level moaning, but when he knocked sharply on the door, there was a startled silence. “It’s me, Marcus,” he called. “Open the door!”

“No! We won’t!” It was Marigold. “We’ve locked ourselves in and we’re not coming out until we’re back in the Five Kingdoms. We’re covered in bruises and there’s salmon paste all over Vincent’s velvet suit and my dress is
ruined
!”

Marcus shrugged. Evidently Marigold and Vincent had survived the fall with no serious injury. As his eyes got used to the dim light, he discovered that Clod’s vast body was neatly pinned down by the wheels; his upper pair of arms, shoulders, and head were free. “If you wriggle this way,” Marcus told him, “you should be able to get out.”

The troll made no attempt to move, and Marcus wondered if he was deaf. “WRIGGLE THIS WAY,” he repeated.

The result was immediate. Instructions, especially shouted instructions, Clod understood. He began to wriggle, and the coach lurched dangerously from side to side — to an accompaniment of shrill shrieks — until at last he was free.

He made no attempt to get up, and Marcus looked at him in exasperation. “Aren’t you going to try to stand?” he asked, and then, as the troll blinked mindlessly, “STAND UP!”

Clod did as he was told, and Marcus took an anxious step back as the monstrous figure loomed over him. “Yug?”

Beginning to appreciate how Clod functioned, Marcus ordered, “Sit down!”

Clod sat, and the ground shook. Further instructions led to his standing up again and stomping to the front of the coach. It took several attempts to get him to pick up the shafts, as orders containing more than four or five words confused him, but once he had grasped the idea, he grinned, showing toothless gums.

Marcus, hardly able to believe his luck, scrambled up onto the coachman’s seat. “Walk!” he commanded, and Clod walked, dragging the coach behind him as if it weighed nothing. Marcus punched the air in triumph. An idea was forming in his head; what had Fingle said? Troll tunnels . . . Could this be a troll tunnel? Or was it a dwarf mine? As Clod continued to stomp steadily onward into the darkness, Marcus felt a growing sense of excitement. Surely this must be a troll tunnel. And if it was, surely he could find Gracie.

The small window at the front of the coach, designed to enable passengers to pass instructions to the coachman, snapped open, and Marigold’s furious face appeared. “Where are we going?” she demanded.

“It’s OK,” Marcus told her. “Don’t worry. We’re going to find Gracie, and then —”

Marigold began to scream. She screamed so loudly that Clod came to a sudden and horrified stop. “I want to go HOME!” she shrieked. “Home, do you hear? HOME!”

“Yug.” Clod picked up the shafts and, in a maneuver that resulted in a great deal of damage to the corners of the coach and the walls of the tunnel, turned around. “Yug.” And he set off at a steady trot. No shouted commands from Marcus could stop him; he had recognized the one word he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, and he was going home. Marcus could only hang on as they rattled their way back over the heaps of rocks and stones at the bottom of the chasm. Clod made no allowance for the comfort of coach travelers.

“Speedy for a troll, isn’t he?” said a cheery voice, and Marcus saw Alf flit down and land on the coach roof. He was immediately jolted off and had to pretend he’d meant to land on Marcus’s shoulder all along.

“Alf,” Marcus said urgently, “do you know where we’re going? And where we are? This is a troll tunnel, isn’t it?”

Alf began to answer, but a particularly large boulder came within inches of tipping the coach right over, and Marcus had to lean perilously far out from his seat in order to bring the vehicle back onto four wheels. The noises from inside made it clear that Marigold had landed heavily on Vincent’s lap, together with a sponge cake.

“You’ll have to shout,” he told Alf. “I can’t hear anything — Marigold’s got a horribly piercing scream.”

“I don’t know where we are!” Alf was squeaking as loud as he could. “Shall I go and have a look-see?”

Another boulder meant Marcus could only nod in reply, and the little bat waved a wing and disappeared into darkness.

He was back within a couple of minutes.

“It’s a dead end ahead,” he reported. “Nowhere to go. Solid rock!”

“We’d better hang on tight, then,” Marcus warned. “He’ll have to turn around, and he doesn’t make any allowances for the coach. We’ll be lucky if there are any wheels left by the time we get wherever it is we’re going.” He took a firm grip on the rail beside him and waited for Clod to make a sudden swerve — but the troll kept thundering onward, his head lowered. Marcus paled. “He’s not going to try to go through, is he?”

There was no time for Alf to answer. The force with which Clod’s head hit the rock jolted every bone in Marcus’s body, and he crouched down and put his arms over his head as thick dust swirled around him. The troll took a step back, then launched himself at the rock for a second time. There was a mighty crash and the thunder of falling stones; Clod gave a triumphant grunt and heaved himself and the coach through the gap.

On the other side, dwarves yelled and shrieked and scattered in all directions. Master Amplethumb, balanced precariously on a ladder, was frozen into shocked immobility as the enormous troll appeared, brushing rubble off his shoulders as if he were merely emerging from a snowstorm. Behind him rocked a large traveling coach, and seated on the driving seat was a scruffy young man covered in dust. Master Amplethumb gulped. A moment later the troll was battering his way across to the other side of the mine; there was a second, less thunderous crash — and he and the coach were gone.

Gradually the dwarves began to pick themselves up and view the damage. One by one they relit their fallen lamps, held them high, and studied the heaps of boulders and the wide, jagged opening in the rock. Master Amplethumb, whose one and only thought was to seize Bestius Bonnyrigg by the neck and hurl him into the deepest dungeon for at least a thousand years, was the last to notice the thick seams of gleaming gold . . . gold, gold, and yet more gold.

G
racie’s ribs were aching unbearably by the time Mullius reached the candlelit corridor leading to King Thab’s royal apartments. Bestius was wheezing badly, and she could see that his face had turned a worrying shade of purple; his eyes were shut tight, and he looked as if he were in acute pain. Ahead of them were huge doors covered in unpleasantly sharp spikes; one was half open, and Gracie had a quick glimpse of a massive room hung with oppressive red velvet drapes. Mullius thrust his way inside, Gracie and Bestius were dropped onto a stone floor covered with animal skins, and the doors were slammed shut. There was the sound of a heavy wooden bar falling into place; Gracie’s heart sank, and a cold, clammy hand clutched at her stomach.
Be brave,
she thought.
Think of Marlon. Think of Marcus. They’re bound to be looking for you. All you need is time for them to get here. Come on, Gracie Gillypot! Make a plan!
She resolutely ignored the question: But will Marcus know where to look?

“Trueheart,” said a gruff voice. “Trueheart . . . Is you real Trueheart?”

Gracie stood up and looked King Thab in the eye. She was surprised to see that he was considerably smaller than Mullius, but no hint of this crossed her face. She took in his mean little eyes and heavy head, and noticed the weakness of his chin and his flabby lower lip. He was staring at her greedily, rubbing his hands together; a goblin was crouched on the back of the throne, and he too was staring at Gracie. Gracie, very conscious of her mud-stained clothes and face and her tousled hair, took a deep breath.
Here goes,
she said to herself, and took a decisive step forward. “My name is Princess Gracie. I understand you wanted a princess to keep you company. Well, here I am.”

King Thab gave an astonished grunt. “Princess? Not Trueheart?”

Gracie nodded. “That’s right. My friend here”— she turned and pointed at the bruised and bedraggled Bestius —“my friend here was bringing me to visit you, so I suggest you thank him and let him go. I understand that was the arrangement?”

Spittle, his eyes gleaming, leaped forward. “May I ask the dwarf — on His Majesty’s behalf, of course — if that is true?”

Before Bestius could open his mouth, Gracie said, “I told you. I’m Princess Gracie, and I’m here of my own free will to pay my respects to the king of the trolls.”

The king’s eyes flicked from Gracie to Bestius and back again. “Princess? Pretty princess?” There was doubt in his voice.

The dwarf struggled to his feet and bowed. “Just as you requested, Your Majesty.”

“But . . .” King Thab shook his head as if he were trying to clear a fog from his brain. “But where Trueheart?”

Mullius began to rumble, and Gracie quickly stepped closer to the king. “I think your servant was confused. . . . Was he looking for somebody else?” She did her best to sound affronted. “He was really quite rough when he brought me here, you know. I didn’t have any opportunity to explain who I was, or what I was doing. But please don’t bother to tell him off — it doesn’t matter, because I’m here now. Would you like me to talk to you? I heard you were lonely, and that’s why you wanted someone to visit you. Or we could play cards? Do you like playing cards?”

King Thab shook his head again, then gave a half smile. “Yes. Am lonely.”

“That’s so sad.” Gracie leaned forward and patted his rough, scale-covered hand. “Why don’t you tell me —” She was interrupted by a growl from Mullius and jumped around to see him staring at the iron box. There was a curious glow surrounding it; with a loud roar, Mullius flung open the lid.

Inside was the heart of glass, now glowing a fierce blood-red; deep in its center beat a steady scarlet pulse. King Thab leaped up and strode toward it, his face alight with excitement.

“Trueheart!” Mullius bellowed, pointing at Gracie. “TRUEHEART!”

“King of Kings!” Thab stretched his arms wide in triumph. “Thab will be King of Kings!”

“NO!” The roar echoed around the cave. “NO!” Mullius Gowk towered over his master. “Mullius! MULLIUS be King of Kings!” With one giant hand, he seized the heart. “End Trueheart’s life!” With the other he seized the trembling Gracie by the arm and dragged her toward him. “End Trueheart’s life NOW!” As Gracie twisted and squirmed and beat at him with her fists, he lifted the heart of glass high above his head . . . and a small black bat hurled itself across the cavern, straight into his face. Mullius staggered, and his hand that held the heart sliced down, missing Gracie by a hair’s breadth. The Old Troll snarled savagely and caught her by her braids to try again; as the silver thread burned deep into his hand, he gave a shriek of agony and threw her from him.