“Some run, some freeze, and others lose their minds and attack. If you make a threat in the troll village and someone calls your bluff, you’ll have to light someone or something on fire. When you do that, they’ll panic. Even if you manage to throw a bunch of those vials, they’ll tear you to pieces.”
It had been more than twenty-four hours since Will had last slept, and he was getting close to snapping as desperation and anxiety ate at his nerves. “Do you have an idea, then? I’m running out of time.”
“We’ll do it my way. Let me do the talking and do everything I tell you.”
“What’s your way?”
“We’ll be nice.”
Will’s jaw dropped. “When have you ever been nice? To anyone?”
“I’m always nice when I know I can’t win in a straight fight.”
“Not that I’ve seen,” countered Will.
“That’s because I was a badass. You probably never saw me around anyone I couldn’t whip, but this is one place where I always mind my manners.”
“Your manners are only matched by your excessive modesty and humility,” quipped Will.
“You really have a mouth on you, boy,” replied the ring.
“I learned from the best.” He was too tired to argue, though. “Let’s do it your way.”
He was dressed lightly, wearing only a single layer of cloth, an undertunic. He might have gone bare-chested, but the insects dissuaded him from doing that. On his head, Will wore the antler hat that Arrogan had made from the horns of the fae lord, Elthas. It didn’t have any magical properties, but since trolls couldn’t distinguish the differences between humans, it served to identify him. They didn’t know that Arrogan had died, so the antlers made them think he was the same man they had been dealing with for decades.
And the same one who had run out on the last deal without paying them their bonus cask of wine.
He had actually given them more wine than promised, but because it had all been in a single rundlet cask instead of in two separate quarter casks, the trolls had thought he had cheated them. Arrogan had had some choice words for him over that blunder.
Will hoped today’s gift would help clear up the misunderstanding. The two butts of ale were huge compared to the rundlet cask he had brought before, and apparently size mattered. A butt was roughly equivalent to seven rundlets, so he was bringing fourteen times the volume of ale as he had of wine.
“You’re sure you can talk them into this?” asked Will nervously as they marched eastward away from the stagnant lake.
“You brought two whole butts of ale, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’d say we have a fair chance, but don’t do anything weird like pointing at their dicks like you did last time. There will be a lot more of them in the village, and while Lrmeg wasn’t interested, you never know when you’ll come across a troll pervert.”
“That was an accident,” protested Will.
“Mm hmm, is that what you tell your wife?” said Arrogan, finishing with a wicked cackle. Will didn’t respond, so the ring continued to tease him. “Remember when you came back from Barrowden with a pregnant girl? You could come back from this place by yourself but still have to explain to your mother why you’re pregnant. I’m sure Erisa would get a kick out of that.”
Will shuddered, remembering the horrifying details of how trolls reproduced by breaking off a piece of themselves inside a partner. If the partner was a troll, the flesh would combine and a new troll would grow like a tumor. If the partner wasn’t a troll, the piece left behind would simply grow into a twin of its troll parent, consuming parts of its host until it was big enough to violently erupt from the ‘mother.’
“Can we talk about something else?”
“As long as it’s interesting. You know I get mean when I’m bored.”
Obviously, thought Will. “I have a question about Selene.”
“Leave me out of your marital problems.”
“No, about something she told me. When Aislinn gave us our half an hour together, we found out that she had only been through six months of time, while I’ve had a whole year pass by. Do you know where she could be?”
“Holy hell!”
“What?”
“Shut up, let me think,” said Arrogan. Will waited patiently, walking in silence, until finally the ring began muttering to itself. “That sneaky, conniving, wily bitch, that’s how she’s keeping Lognion from finding her.”
“How?”
“The heart-stone enchantment creates a bond that can enforce the master’s will even across the boundaries between dimensions, but it won’t easily cross multiple planes, and if there’s a temporal difference the connection gets even more muddled.”
“That clears up everything for me,” said Will snidely.
“Don’t be an ass. Of course it doesn’t. There could be any number of planes that have a temporal difference like that, but I only know of a few. The real key is that I know a lot about her past, which narrows things down considerably.”
“Aislinn’s past?”
“No, Selene’s, you idiot! Yes, of course, Aislinn’s past. Her teacher was from another world, one which Lognion couldn’t reach even if he knew which one.”
“And you’re about to tell me, right?”
“I’m not sure that would be safe,” said the ring cautiously.
Will didn’t feel like taking no for an answer. “She already told me about it and described everything. She even has a friend there; his name is Sylandrea. So you might as well explain the rest.”
“Sylandrea? She told you she was friends with an elf?”
He remained silent, waiting to see if Arrogan would reveal anything else. After a moment, the ring sighed. “Damn it. You only knew the name, didn’t you?”
“And you fell for it,” said Will, trying to ignore the painful ache in his chest. He had learned the name in what he had thought to be just a dream. Now it was apparent that he had actually travelled astrally. And my hope that I was just imagining her with someone else is getting thinner all the time. Whatever the truth was, he still had important questions. “If Aislinn decided to do something, like trying to keep her for good—is there a way for me to get there?”
“Nothing is impossible, but this might as well be. You could try to sneak aboard an elven trading vessel in Trendham, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Plus, you’d have to wait a long time; they only show up there every four or five years. They’re also very wary of that sort of thing and their magic is nothing to sneer at.”