Black Heart, Ivory Bones

The King with Three Daughters RUSSELL BLACKFORD

Australian writer Russell Blackford works as a senior lawyer in the international firm Phillips Fox. He has published numerous stories, articles, essays, and reviews, mainly in Australia, but also in Great Britain and the U.S. His work has appeared in collections, anthologies, and reference books, and in a diverse range of journals and magazines that includes Aurealis, Australian Book Review, Australian Law Journal, Eidolon, Foundation, Journal of Popular Culture, Metascience, and many others. His longer publications include a fantasy novel, The Tempting of the Witch King, Hyperdreams: The Space/ Time Fiction of Damien Broderick, and Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction (with Van Ikin and Sean McMullen).

Trolls are dreadful things, and I am a troll-slayer. What I have seen and done, you can only imagine.

My name is Jorgen. On a spring afternoon I entered the town of Tromsdal, which stood above cold Atlantic breakers. Here, a King maintained his citadel on a sheer promontory, exposed to the sea’s icy winds.

I’d become a wanderer. I thought myself seasoned — a veteran — and there was some truth in that. My hunting bow and broadsword, my strong right arm, had provided me with kings and chieftains to accept my service.

Before dark I reconnoitered the town, checking the narrow, zigzag path to the stony citadel, then found an inn called the Wolf’s Get, built on a low piece of land beside a crossroads. Here I spent my copper coins prudently, for I had no surety that any lord or chieftain of the place would care to employ me.

My supper was a fish stew, accompanied by tough-skinned apples, rindy cheese, and three grainy pieces of black bread. As I finished, the innkeeper approached. Close by my side he stood, a fussy man with gray hair and a stubbly beard. His fat thighs pressed against the edge of the table. Finally, he spoke in a conspirator’s tones. “Are you seeking an audience?”

“Eh?”

“With the King?” He refilled the wine in my goblet, pouring it out from a long-necked clay flagon, then sat beside me on my bench, appraising me unashamedly. What he saw was a windburnt man with glossy brown hair, becoming matted. My face was bony under an ill-trimmed beard — I’d grown wild on the long road. “Perhaps you can settle here.”

My resigned sigh gave away my feelings. “Here, in this town? In Tromsdal?”

“Why not? What more are you seeking?”

So I told him my name — and, with it, the truth. “Tomorrow, I’ll go up to the citadel, and crave audience of the King’s officials.”

There was no reason for a prosperous ruler, one whose kingdom embraced miles of sea and fjord, mountain and forest, to speak with me in person, but wise officials could discern my worth. The wine made me more garrulous, though I was far from drunk on the watery stuff.

“I spent this winter in the battles on the other side of the mountains.” I hesitated for a moment, remembering. “The campaign ended in peace — in peace and disgrace. Can you understand that? I had to move on. The chieftains I served fought and lost. They don’t want me anymore, not me, nor any who did their bloody work.” I silenced my tongue. A trained warrior, I thought, was always worth his keep. I finished the last of my bread. It was grainy in my mouth, but sweet with butter.

“Have you heard about the King’s daughters?” the innkeeper said, still speaking softly, and scratching his beard. “A man like you may be useful.”

As I listened, I had no thought of trolls, of their kingdoms in dark woods, the deep earth, the high mountain ice. I had no thought, as yet, of the blood-feud between trolls and the Bright Ones.

The innkeeper gave me the sparse details of King and Queen, which he seemed to deliver by rote, then the arbitrary prophecy and the magical births, the oddities of enchantment and loss. How many times did I hear this story? Next day, I had it from the King’s chamberlain, a powerful official whom I dared not interrogate, then a briefer version from the King himself, and still other variants from underlings within the citadel. Of course, it piqued my curiosity, this story of a proud and handsome king with three missing daughters, blasted from his sight on an enchanted snowdrift when, by inadvertence, he disobeyed a crone’s prophecy. It made me want to know more — about the daughters, the land, about a king whom such events might befall.

The innkeeper became confused, hopelessly vague, as I questioned him more closely. “You mentioned a Queen,” I said, “a Queen who bore the three daughters. Does she still live?”

“No,” he said uncertainly. He paused to consider it, looking pained with the effort. “There is no queen in Tromsdal.”

“Well, then, what became of her?”

“The Queen?”

“Yes,” I said. “What became of the Queen?” I was long finished with eating, but the innkeeper kept refilling our stone goblets. As I said, it was watery, but it washed away some of my patience.

“There was a queen.”

“I know that.”

“Of course, there was a Queen. She, yet more than the King, wished for children to inherit the kingdom and carry on the royal line.” He finished with a “so there you have it” manner about him, as he leaned away from me, comfortable with the safety of his tale.

“Well, what became of her?” We had been talking quietly, like thieves, but now I spoke aloud. “Is she still alive, my friend? Is she beautiful, as queens should always be? Tell me something about her.” As I watched his discomfort, I laughed suddenly, scarcely knowing what I did. I raised my goblet and tossed back a mouthful. “To the Queen!” Diners in the inn exchanged glances. There were angry looks my way from sealers and prosperous-looking fur merchants.

The youngest daughter, so the innkeeper had said, was of scarcely fifteen years, assuming that she still lived. Even if the Queen had died in childbirth, I reckoned, that was not so long ago, yet this middle-aged man, who (so he told me) had lived in Tromsdal all his life, could not distinctly remember the Queen, nor her fate, nor a time without the current King, or before the Princesses. I shrugged it off as a trick of the mind, for there are men — and women, too — with strange afflictions that way. I went to my lumpy bed, unsatisfied with the tale, but full of zest for the morrow.

As the innkeeper told me, and then a fat-hipped woman next day in the crowded, salt-smelling fish market, the King had sworn a vow — anyone who found the Princesses alive should be granted half the kingdom and choose as a wife whichever Princess he liked.

“They are all very beautiful,” the woman said. There were coarse hairs on her chin, and her mouth curved downward, like a fish’s. “Each is more beautiful than the others.”

I suppressed my barbed retort at so foolish an expression. “And is the Queen beautiful?”

She became as vague as the innkeeper. “The Queen?”

“Is she beautiful? Come now, does she hide her face from her subjects?”

The woman looked baffled.

“What’s wrong with you?” I said.

“She … was beautiful. I think.” She walked to another customer, a boatsman by the look of him, with his front teeth missing. Her back was now toward me.

“What happened to her?”

“I … can’t remember.” She faced me for a moment, but her gnawed thumb and fingers made a small sign to avert witchery. I muttered excuses and left.

When I walked the steep road to the citadel, men at arms challenged me at the gate, but the chamberlain granted me audience. He was old and white-headed, with a thin, whispery voice, his dry hands shaking unless he controlled them. I could see the frustration in his face, the intensity of character and will that told me he was once a man of great presence. He told me the story, the fullest account I heard from anyone. This is how it started.

The King and Queen had been childless. Year in, year out, it wore away at their happiness, like ocean breakers on the cliffs.

One day in early spring, when the sky remained bleak and cold, but the snow had melted from trees and meadows, the King stood high on his keep, the citadel’s innermost tower, with a hooded falcon on his wrist — for he loved all things of the sky. He looked westward over wild ocean, its deep blue water as far as the eye could see, then turned his gaze to the town and fields of Tromsdal, to the long line of coast with its deep fjords, then the untamed forests — and, finally, to the foot-worn road that passed to the east through fields and forests, into a brooding line of mountains. Satisfied in a fashion, but heavyhearted, he released the falcon, watching it climb and dive and wheel in the wide, gray sky. The voice of a crone spoke from behind him. “Why so sad, great King?”

He turned to her — heaven knew where she had come from. How could she have penetrated the citadel’s outer walls and baileys, then entered the keep and climbed its spiral of narrow stairs, without being challenged? The King put such thoughts aside, for he perceived that the crone who stood before him, dressed in beggar’s rags, must be some kind of witch-woman. “You can’t do anything to help me,” he said, “so why should I tell you?”

“I’m not so sure of that. I know your thoughts, my King.”

“Then tell them. But get it right, or you’ll anger me.”

“No fear of that,” she said with a knowing laugh, then closed her eyes, seeming to look inside herself.

“I’m waiting,” the King said.

“You are saddened because you have no heir to your crown and kingdom.”

“You’re a witch. Should I suffer you to live?”

“I am what I am,” the witch-woman said. “Now hearken, to me. The Queen will have three daughters. And yet, great care must be taken with them. See that they do not come out under the open heavens before they are all fifteen years old. Otherwise, they will be taken from you.”

“What nonsense is this?”

“Heed my words.”

In disgust, he averted his eyes — only for a second. When he looked again, she was gone. He searched the sky for his falcon.

My knees hurt on cold tiles. The King remained seated in his high-backed, granite throne.

How do I describe the man, convey his majesty, the vast power that I felt in his presence — power that resided deep in his spirit and body? His hair was like spun gold beneath his jeweled crown. His eyes were deeper gold, set beneath a broad, high forehead. He wore silk robes of fiery red and sky blue, inlaid with runes. When I saw him, I knew straightaway that the King’s veins flowed not merely with the blood of ancient royalty, but with that of the Bright Ones. Well, so we all can say — those beings taught men and women the arts of civilization that made us a match, or more than a match, for the wild beasts. They mingled their blood with ours, lifting us toward the rank of celestials — part of their own strange quest for redemption, which will see them depart one day, to whatever sky they fell from.

Such is the nature of humankind, but that is not my meaning. The King was not like you or me. He was something higher. Yet, even as I wondered at him, I reflected that he could feel loss. “You’re a fighting man?” he said. “You’re a warrior?”

“If you will use me so.”

“Very good.” With a gesture of his palm, he bade me stand, then rewarded me with a smile that left his golden eyes cold, like mountain ice. “You must find my daughters. Your manner gives me confidence.”

“Thank you, my liege.”

“I want to trust you, warrior.”

As we conversed, I kept my gaze to the floor, concentrating upon a scraped tile near his austere throne. But, now and then, I met his eyes directly — long enough to catch his expression or to speak. “Depend on me,” I said clearly. “I won’t disappoint you.”

“I should hope not.” He made a flicking motion, like brushing away a fly. “Many have set out, and failed. None have heard word of my daughters.”

I bent my head further, though my bearing was proud enough.

“You’ll thrive in my service,” he said, “an able man like you.”

“I trust that I am as able as Your Highness believes.”

Again, I dared glance at him, and he gave the ghost of a grin, mostly to himself. “I can recognize ability. Be prudent and loyal, Jorgen. You’ll find my daughters.”

That night, as I slept on a hard pallet in the citadel, I had a dream of trolls in palaces beneath the earth. This was a dream like no other I had known, and I awoke resolved to follow it. Before we departed, I sought out the chamberlain, still thinking of such places — crevices, caves, and pits in the earth — and I asked for a length of strong climber’s rope. Then, as the sun climbed the morning sky, we left with heavy wallets on our shoulders, packed with provisions.

Three of us set out. One of my companions was lean, a bony captain of the royal guard. He had a balding head and a great bristling mustache. Long ago, he’d fought as a sea-raider, and still he had a predatory look — piercing gray eyes, a nose like a hawk, and a weak chin that made him seem more beaky. The other was a stout young lieutenant with a bushy red beard. He was stiff in one leg from an old fall on horseback, but he limped along heartily, as fast as my normal pace. The chamberlain ordered us outfitted with rations, fine new bows and broardswords, fresh shirts and leggings, and tough, warm boots.

There are pretty tales about our quest; some have returned to my ears from across the icy sea. A man may flee vengeance or wrath, but not the distortions of his legend.

On the first day, I left the forest road, taking a deeper path among the ancient trees, sensing — as my dream had suggested — that this was the way to the enchantments that we sought. “Where are you going?” the captain said, standing with his long arms akimbo, head thrust forward and legs planted wide apart. The lieutenant stood at his side, resting his weight on a long, gnarled climbing stick. A bird flapped by, a jet-black crow the size of an eagle. It landed on a yew branch above us, watching and preening.

“Follow me or not,” I said, “this is the path to the King’s daughters.” The crow cawed as if in agreement. I told my dream, and my companions agreed to join me. We pushed on, deeper into the forest and the mountains, encountering many strange beings. There were hairy, black spiders larger than cats, but they scuttled from our path. Wolf howls followed at a distance, those and the lonely cries of a beast I could not name, something huge, I thought, by the loudness and depth of its voice. We saw leathery creatures like bats, with evil teeth set in the faces of men. The songs of birds were all about us, some melodious, others far more harsh.

Many times, we came to long, narrow bridges over deep scars in the land, and these we had to cross — else turn back defeated. Oh, there were adversaries: three bridges were guarded by saber-toothed lions the size of horses; another three by shaggy, grizzled bears as big as small trolls. Finally three dwarfs, each with diabolical vigor and strength, each more powerful than the last. But always we prevailed. I could tell a tale of sinew and iron and blood, of the foes we slew before I faced the trolls.

We hate trolls. They call to the terrors in our souls — perhaps to our guilt, for their crude enchantments have not saved them from our cunning, our engines, from the enigmatic help of the Bright Ones. Fewer and fewer of the lumbering brutes are seen.

The third dwarf was a tiny, bald-pated man, no taller than my hip bone — but he fought like a demon or a wildcat, armed with a double-bladed ax. Finally we overcame him. I sheathed my broadsword, but plucked up the ax, where it fell from his hands under the weight of our blows. Lifting it took a terrible effort. “I’ll split your skull,” I said fiercely. “Tell me where the Princesses are.”

“Spare my life. I’ll tell you.” I made no reply, but stayed my hand. He made a desperate movement, pointing to a narrow winding path that was barely recognizable as such. “There is a bare mound at the end. Atop the mound is a shapeless stone, and under that a pit.” He chuckled to himself, like one demented. “Let yourself down, and you’ll come to another world. There you will find the Princesses.”

I lowered the ax, easier than raising it, and his bald skull split like an eggshell.

The path was long, and always it continued upward. At the end of three days we came to a derelict structure, a stone house, and here we took shelter for the night, while a storm raged in the woods around us. Next morning, the storm had passed; we woke to bird song. My companions hunted for game, while I stayed to guard our wallets, with what was left of our rations. We ate rabbit, cooked over a fire while the lieutenant sang bawdy songs in a fine bass voice and the captain told of journeys on long ships, tales of far lands that he’d seen and plundered. We stayed a second night, then a third, and naught disturbed us.

Finally we set off, at my insistence. I walked in front, then the lieutenant, half walking, half swinging his body around the climbing stick. Last came the captain, guarding our rear, eyes narrowed and sword drawn. After some thousands of paces, we came to the mound, and I cursed the time we’d lost.

Seldom was I glad of my comrades, for often they had fancies of their own — but our battles with lions, bears, and dwarfs were the exceptions. This time was another: the shapeless lump of black star stone was so heavy that it took all our combined strength to roll it over, and then with much grunting and resting and starting again. We grew stinking and short-tempered. It was lucky we were strong. When he peeled his shirt from his sweaty torso, the lieutenant was like a wrestler, with a deep chest and powerful limbs, no matter the crablike tendency in his gait.

Late in the day we finally shifted the stone. Where it had been was a dark pit, deeper than our eyes could see. “Measure it,” the captain said, so I took my length of rope and lowered it into the pit with a cubit of old tree root knotted to its end. Only when we played out the entire length did it reach the bottom.

We retrieved the rope, and anchored it beneath the star stone’s edge. The captain tried it first, putting his foot through a strongly knotted loop that we tied. Minute by minute we played out the rope, lowering him into the pit. We’d agreed to pull him up if he tugged three times. As he descended, we played out far more rope than I had brought with me, but still he descended, even as we wondered at it. His voice grew faint: “Further, yet,” he said. Time passed, the sun low in the sky. Then there was a firm tug at the rope — and two more — so we pulled him up, the lieutenant a fine man for that heavy job. When we dragged the captain out of the pit, he was soaked through and shivering. His thin hair and blond mustachios dripped. “It’s cold and dark.” He wrapped his arms about his chest, rubbing himself desperately for warmth. “It smells of ancient dead things — but that’s not the worst of it. The rope seemed to grow longer with every touch I made against the side of the pit. Then, finally, I came to a lake of freezing water with drifts of ice. In I went with a splash, as far as my neck, then further, and never touched bottom.”

We returned to the deserted house, where we made a crackling fire to warm him, wondering what to do now. There were no bawdy songs that night. The lieutenant and I ate dried beef from our wallets, tough to chew, yet tasty, while the captain tossed and cursed in his sleep.

Next day, he was fit and recovered, something I would never have believed. Encouraged, the lieutenant wanted to try the pit. He passed me his climbing stick, and stripped to make a swim of it. Though he left behind his broadsword, he carried a dagger in his teeth. We lowered him with great difficulty, for he was so heavy, and the captain, wiry and tough though he was, lacked the lieutenant’s burly strength. As the sun journeyed upward, we persevered, and I wondered where all this rope had come from. Then there was a tug at it, and two more.

Glumly, we commenced the still more difficult job of hauling up the lieutenant, cursing the weight. “Heave,” the captain said with each effort, speaking through gritted teeth and putting his back into it. “Heave.” Eventually, the lieutenant’s head emerged — red hair and beard all wet and plastered to him. As he struggled into the noon light, he spit out the dagger on the ground, then his teeth were chattering, his face ashen. Almost, he collapsed when he planted his bad leg.

He revived before the hearth, though his sleep was fevered.

On the third day it was my turn, for we had no other plan. Unlike the lieutenant, I stayed fully clad, with the broadsword at my side and my wallet on my back, trusting in whatever enchantments had guided us. I put my foot in the loop of rope and they lowered me quickly.

Down I went, counting to myself, minute after minute, knowing that the rope I had brought could never be so long. It seemed that hours passed. The pit became colder, and even darker, until my comrades let out a great length of rope at once, and I plunged without warning into thin ice and freezing water, gasping desperately before I sank. Down, down in the water I went — the cold clawing at my heart — spinning on the rope like a child’s top, able to see nothing in the pitch-black, peer though I might. All the while, I held my breath, till my lungs were bursting for air. Suddenly, I was through; my bones were miraculously warm as if in the friendly glow of a fire, and my boots slapped against firm land. It was not so dark now, and far away in the distance, like the first chord of dawn, was a gleam of brilliant light, so I headed in that direction, patting myself in disbelief — at my dry shirt and leggings, my trusty engine in its scabbard. Before long the way grew lighter still, and then I saw a golden sun rising in the sky — yet here I was, leagues (as it seemed to me) below the ground. Soon everything about me was bright and beautiful.

I came to a herd of fat brown cattle, lowing disquietly as I passed, and then to a palace like nothing I’d ever seen. It was larger by far than the citadel in Tromsdal, like a crystal mountain, with steep, straight walls of gleaming yellow quartz. The entrance was unguarded, and I crossed an emerald bridge that arched above a clear, narrow stream. I entered the crystal halls without hearing a sound or meeting a soul. The doorways and ceilings were built for a giant twice my height, and piles of gold nuggets were hoarded in random corners; I wondered at the wealth hidden away in this other world. Finally, I heard the hum of a spinning wheel. When I entered the high-ceilinged chamber, a beautiful young woman was sitting there, dressed all in silk and surrounded by amber light with no specific source. Against the far wall was a great couch with round, satiny pillows, but the woman sat on a polished wooden stool; she was spinning copper yarn. Tall as she was, she seemed scarcely more than a child; her neck was like a swan’s, while her white skin looked softer than down — surely this was one of the King’s daughters.

“What are you doing here?” the Princess said. “What do you want?”

“The King, your father sent me. I’ve come to set you free.”

She ceased her spinning and looked about, her breast heaving with emotion. “If the troll returns, he’ll kill you.”

I was speechless when she mentioned a troll, but not exactly afraid, for I thought my life was charmed.

“He’s a wood troll, larger than a bear. He has three heads.”

“I’ve journeyed all the way from Tromsdal,” I said. “I don’t care how many heads it has.”

She told me to creep behind a big brewing vat that stood in a hall outside.

When it came in, the troll walked so heavily that the solid quartz floor seemed to shake beneath my feet, even a room away, though this must have been an enchantment, for nothing is that weighty. “I smell human blood.” Its voice was like a lion’s roar. I could hear its noses sniffing away at the air. “Human blood and bone,” it said with a different voice, like a honking bird. The third voice was more human, but viciously accusing. “What are you hiding from me?”

“Please, dear,” the Princess said, “don’t be angry. A crow dropped a bone with the flesh still on it. Everything is tainted. When I threw it out, the crow dropped it back. I had to bury it in the rose garden. I fear it’s an ill omen.”

The troll growled suspiciously in a discord of voices, and sniffed some more.

“Lie in my lap,” she said. Her sweet voice was like a songbird’s. Who could resist? “Let me scratch your heads.”

Again the troll growled.

“You know how you like it, and the smell will be gone when you awake.”

Finally, the troll did as she offered. When I heard its three heads snoring in unison, I came out from behind the vat, and into the chamber. As I did so, the Princess freed herself from the couch, bolstering the troll’s heads against a pile of pillows. For long seconds I observed the knuckly, hairy creature. The chamber was full of its musky scent, not wholly unpleasant. I noticed that a great sword rested now against one of the crystal walls, sheathed in a jeweled scabbard, and I walked to it, thinking it a more adequate engine than my own broadsword for what I must do. With all my strength, I tried to lift the troll’s sword, but it was too heavy. Then the Princess kissed me on the lips, and I seized up the murderous engine from its scabbard, swinging it more mightily than I could have imagined. I severed the troll’s three necks in one blow, and its blood flew everywhere. I staggered back — amazed at what I’d done — as the troll twitched, and fell like a tree. Then I caught my breath and examined the monstrous corpse.

It was shaped roughly like a man, though many times larger, with its ugly tusked heads like grotesque masks where they had fallen. One head’s eyes were open, as if to accuse me for my guile. The troll’s gnarled feet and hands were overly big, even for its giant size. It went naked, save for a sword-belt of black leather, but its body was covered with reddish hair half a cubit long. Beneath that its hide was thick and wrinkled, and armored with knobs of ironwood and sinews like tough vines.

No blood had clung to the Princess. She threw her arms about me and covered my face with more kisses. For one moment I held her close to me, feeling the flutter of her heart, the softness of her breast swelling against mine. We’d faced danger, and triumphed. And yet, for a warrior, there was something unseemly about this, slaying a foe in his sleep, however little choice I had of it — for a fair fight would have been unequal; I’d never have stood a chance.

And so, my friends, I became what you see, a troll-slayer.

We humans have reveled in the deaths of trolls. We’ve been more thorough, more zealous than the Bright Ones who gave us the fire, the blades of stone — then the copper, the bronze, the iron and steel — to slay whatever we found threatening or unwanted or ugly. A troll will prey on human flesh when it can. Every village has its story of a three-headed man-eater that hid in the ice, the rocks, the dark forest, stalking the fringes at night, catching children in their beds, until some hero ended its reign of terror.

Yet, more trolls than humans have died.

“We must rescue my sisters,” the Princess said.

“Yes.”

She guided me across a courtyard with a lush garden of roses in full bloom, then along many crystal corridors, and through another huge doorway, this one framed by blocks of amethyst — it led to a high-ceilinged chamber, where the second Princess sat on her stool, tall and fair and beautiful, spinning silver yarn. “What do you want?” she said, sounding fearful and looking about.

“I’ve come to kill the troll,” I said. “We’ll set you free and return you to the King, your father.”

“Hide behind the brewing vat, both of you.” She pointed to the hallway outside. “I’ll deal with the troll.”

Soon, there was a noise like thunder, and the troll entered, a six-headed monster this time, larger than the first. It roared its displeasure, three or four of its voices speaking at once. “I smell human blood.”

Strangely, the second Princess told the same story: “Yes, dear. Don’t be angry. A crow dropped a human bone, with flesh still on it. Everything is tainted. When I threw it out, the crow dropped it back. I had to bury it at last.”

The troll sniffed and growled suspiciously, but she persuaded it to rest its heads in her lap, then let her scratch them. When the brute was asleep and snoring, she carefully bolstered its heads against a pile of pillows as she freed herself. The first Princess and I watched anxiously, having entered the chamber to finish the task. It was no use trying to lift the troll’s sword until both Princesses kissed me on the lips. Although the sword was even heavier than the first troll’s, I swung it mightily, cutting off the six heads in one bloody stroke, like harvesting stalks of wheat. I leant on the sword then, panting, before I lowered the engine to the floor beside its former master. Beneath its hair, the troll’s body was half flesh, half stone; the heavy, razor-sharp blade had sliced right through the stony parts of its necks.

Then the second Princess remembered the third sister. “She is the youngest. We’ll take you to her.”

They led me across another gardened courtyard, through still more corridors, to the largest chamber yet, where the youngest of the King’s daughters sat spinning golden yarn. “Get out,” she said, looking around her. “The troll will kill you all.”

When we insisted on saving her, she ordered us to hide behind the brewing vat just outside. Soon, the troll came in, and I peeked at an angle from the vat to the Princess’s chamber. This troll was a nine-headed beast the size of a house, far bigger than the first two. At its side was a sheathed sword larger than a rowboat, and it dripped with icy water as it walked and grumbled, hooted and howled, growled and roared, all of its voices speaking in unison. “I smell human blood.”

She told the same story as her sisters, and soon persuaded her troll to unloose the scabbard from its belt and let her scratch its heads till it slept. After one kiss from each of the Princesses, I could swing the troll’s sword easily. And yet, I am a warrior; perhaps it was honor that marred my stroke. Perhaps.

“I smell human blood,” each of the trolls had said.

What about the Princesses? What sort of blood did they have?

Closing my eyes, I swung the sword. My blow cleaved eight heads from the troll but missed the ninth, whose bleak eyes opened at the same moment as mine.

The troll lumbered to its feet and it rose far above me, like a storm nimbus, howling at me — a strangely plaintive howl, full of loss, full of anger, pain, and sorrow — and something changed inside me, something shifted. My unnatural strength was gone, and I dropped the huge sword, leaping aside where it fell. For the first time, I knew terror.

As the chamberlain told me the story, the Queen bore the King a girl-child one year after his encounter with the witch-woman. The year after that she had another, and the third year also. The King rejoiced, but never forgot the crone’s words. He kept the Princesses locked within the keep, with a watch of soldiers at the doors.

As they grew up, the three daughters became as I saw them, beautiful, tall, and clever. The King provided them with tutors and playmates, but always these must come to the keep, and the daughters’ only sorrow was that they were not allowed to play under the wide heavens, not even to stand in the open air upon the citadel’s ramparts. For all that they begged and wept, the King resisted: he would never allow evil to fall upon them. Until even the youngest was fifteen years old, his beloved Princesses would never stand in the open air.

Only weeks before I arrived in Tromsdal, mere days before the fifteenth birthday of the youngest Princess, the King was out riding, and the Princesses stood at a window in the keep. Spring had come early. The fields were green and beautiful, alive with thousands of tiny wildflowers, and the three daughters felt they must go out and play beneath the sky, come what evil may — they begged and entreated and urged the seneschal.

“On no account,” he said.

At least, they said, he could let them stand on the highest rampart, under the open sky, where they could best view the sea, the fields and flowers, the rugged coast, the woods and mountains of the kingdom. “Surely,” said the youngest, “no harm can befall us here in the center of my father’s stronghold. Please be reasonable.” It was such a warm and pleasant day, the Princesses were so beautiful and spoke so sweetly, and it was so palpably safe. The King need never know.

“For one minute,” he said. “Only one minute. You must be quick in case your father returns.”

They looked about the kingdom — the dark sea and darker forest, the fields and meadows, the mountains with their distant caps of white-blue ice — safe, as it seemed, from all the dangerous world, and the seneschal congratulated himself. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there came a great drift of snow, hard enough to fling him off balance, so dense that he could not see. In that moment he knew and repented his mistake. The snow swirled, and time seemed to stop. When he regained his footing, the snow had carried the Princesses away.

So I was told it by the beetle-browed chamberlain. Such are the pretty stories they tell in Tromsdal.

“What happened to the Queen?” I said.

But he gave a papery laugh. “They executed the seneschal. The King demands obedience.”

We are pawns for the Bright Ones, human and troll alike; we are merely pawns.

The stumps of the troll’s necks bled icy water, some of it descending on me like bitter rain, while scabs of ice formed about the edges of its wounds, not quickly enough to prevent the outward gushing of life. “You’ll pay for this,” it said. There was darkness in its voice. Imagine a sharp-toothed wolf, like the demon Fenrir who will eat this world. Imagine that a wolf could talk.

The enchantment had fallen from us, but that was of no comfort, for the troll lunged with leathery hands that would have snapped me like a dry twig. I drew my broadsword from its scabbard, but I might as well have used a hairpin. Then the troll howled again, as it staggered and fell, crumbling like a cottage beneath a fallen oak tree. I stepped well back, the Princesses behind my stiffly outstretched arms, as the gargantuan creature went through its death throes. When the troll was finally still, I examined it. Beneath its long, coarse hair, the naked body was more ice than flesh, and the ice began to melt, pooling on the crystal floor of the chamber. The Princesses smothered me with kisses; but it meant nothing, for my heart had frozen against them.

I needed to get out of there, but my terror had gone, and my cunning returned. In one of the rose-scented gardens I found a wooden bucket, three feet high, held together with iron bands — this I filled with as many gold nuggets as I could carry. To haul me up with these, the lieutenant would need all his strength. The Princesses tried to amuse me with sweet talk, but I was silent as we returned to my climbing rope where it still hung in near darkness between two worlds. The first Princess placed her ruby-colored slipper through the knotted loop, we tugged the rope three times, and the captain and lieutenant pulled her up to the surface far above us. We repeated this for each of her sisters, but then I became afraid. I realized that my companions now had the Princesses but no reason to rescue me from the troll world. To test them, I attached my bucket of troll gold to the rope. I scraped handful after handful of damp, loamy-smelling soil into the bucket, adding to its weight, then stepped aside and tugged the rope thrice more, wiping my soiled hands against my leggings as I waited for what might happen.

They lifted the bucket far above me, into the inky darkness, but then they cut the rope. At first I could not see, but heard a bumping and scraping against the pit’s side. Down came the bucket from the region of water and ice, falling at my feet with an awful crack!, hitting so hard that the wood split, and I would have died if it had been me. Now the captain and the lieutenant had their choice of the Princesses, and only two men, not three, need share half the kingdom.

I laughed aloud as I peered in the dim light, feeling around for three big nuggets of the gold. Into my wallet they went. I had to laugh, for the clouds had cleared from my mind’s eye. There was no Queen in Tromsdal. There was never a Queen. These Princesses could not be threatened, for how do you harm the sendings of the Bright Ones, creatures spun from the sky and never born of womankind, creatures that can enchant a mighty troll.

For hours or days, I don’t know how long, I wandered in that underworld, searching for a way out. I returned, at last, to the crystal palace, looking from hall to hall, until I lay down and slept on the ice troll’s bed, ignoring the residue of its smell. In my dream I heard a large rustling sound, greater than the noise of a thousand wings, and I awoke.

Through corridor after corridor, I ran — outside to the field with the cattle herd. There I saw a huge, black crow, vaster in body even than the great, nine-headed ice troll, and with wings one hundred feet across to bear it up. Its feathers had a greenish shine, its eyes were like golden topazes, and it smelt stale, like horse sweat. “You called me in your dream,” it said to me in a mocking voice, harsher than thunder, like cutting through iron with a hardened steel saw. “I’ve come, Jorgen. But you must feed me.”

“If it’s food you require, you could slay an ox.” For such a being, with talons as long as scimitars, this would be the easiest of tasks.

The crow shook its head. “I shall not kill. Yet, I feast on the strength of my enemies. Where are the trolls?”

I finally understood. “I have slain them all, just as you wished.”

“Butcher them for me.” It lifted its head and laughed. “I will not taint myself.”

I fell on my knees. “I have not disappointed you, Bright One,” I said. “The Princesses are safe with the captain and the lieutenant.”

“Stand.”

My companions would threaten the Princesses with their swords, demanding that the King’s “daughters” say they — the captain and the lieutenant — were the ones who slew the trolls. Poor fools, poor fools; no human engines could harm those Princesses.

There was a wrenching of being, and I could see right through the crow as it became ethereal, a twisting thing of smoke, sucking inward, as though time itself ran in reverse — smoke returning to its source in the fire. In a moment the King stood before me. I still knelt, flabbergasted. “Stand,” he said again. “Please stand.” When I did so, he overtopped me by more than a head, unburning flames dancing across his garments. “So you are an able man.”

“What will you do?” Whatever monstrous form he took, he would not endure the taint of killing me directly, but nor could I harm him. He could leave me there to rot, if such were his caprice. “What will happen to my companions?”

“They proved to be treacherous, as I foresaw. I shall order them executed.” How brave to enchant a kingdom with tales of queens and daughters; how fine to become a king!

“And me?”

“You would marry one of my daughters?”

I shook my head. “No.” His creatures, his sendings — whatever they were — for all their beauty, I had no desire to marry one.

“And half my kingdom?”

“I renounce any claim. Will you leave me here?”

“You have served me well. But now I crave troll flesh. Butcher me the trolls, and I will take you wherever you wish. This I vow.”

“You will have your meat,” I said.

“So I foresaw.”

It was a messy business, butchering trolls with my broadsword. Their carcasses contained much bloody flesh, but also hair, bone, gristle, wood, and stone. The icy parts had melted away. As the King, again in crow form, ate his fill of meat, I climbed upon his back. I was covered, by now, in troll blood.

If I return, my death awaits me — some indirect and expedient form of death. There is a sea-dragon in the west of your kingdom, so I was told by a raggedy innkeeper’s daughter. “It’s as big as a ship,” she said. “It’s got ruby flames and emerald scales.” I want no part in its slaying. They say that gold appeases it — well, I have two troll nuggets. The third I converted to coin, to meet my modest needs.

One day, trolls and dragons will be words for nurses to frighten little children. Each season, a human child has less cause to fear the old terrors — the harshness and mystery of forest and mountain, of ice and salt sea, and the wild beasts. Something is always lost.

I climbed on the giant bird, and it spread that hundred-foot span of wings. With a single hop, it took to the air. Higher and higher it flew, speaking no more. We met no resistance from the rock and earth above us. Soon we were over the woods, then the wide, foamy sea, heading for the liquid sun. Westward we traveled, and south.

As twilight dimmed, the crow departed, leaving me — here, with my blood and gold, on a far, dark shore. I had become a witness and a mourner of something lost, something strange to tell — of the terror and the pity, of the ugliness and splendor, of trolls.

In Norse fairy tales the usual enemies are not witches, wolves, or wicked fairies, but trolls — powerful, brutal, semihuman creatures who embody the grim and dangerous aspects of nature. In such tales as “The Three Princesses in the Blue Mountain,” on which “The King with Three Daughters” is based, trolls are deceived and slain with no compunction or sympathy whatsoever. The relationship of humankind to the natural world appears very different at the turn of the third millennium, after a history of ecological devastation; hence, Blackford has depicted a troll-slayer who comes to see his victims in a new light.