Free Troll Mountain: The Complete Novel by Matthew Reilly Page A

pressed against its sloping walls.
    The mountain wind was the only sound.
    The triangular walls of the cell were perfectly cut, made of hard polished stone without a chip or a notch. The cell was perhaps seven feet high but only four feet deep. The brink yawned before Raf, rimless and railless. Out of the rear wall of the cell poked many tiny bronze spear-tips which prevented a prisoner from leaning against that wall. 
    Just sitting hunched over in the upside-down triangular hole was uncomfortable enough, but the combination of the spear-tips and the deadly drop meant that Raf had to sit essentially motionless.
    He looked up, whispering in the darkness. “Bader! Bader! Can you hear me?”
    A moment of silence. Then:
    “I hear you.” The voice, once haughty and proud, was listless and flat.
    “What happened to you and your party?”
    “We made our case to the Troll King and the dirty beast imprisoned us for our trouble.”
    “What of the other members of your party?”
    A pause. The mountain wind whistled.
    Bader said, “So far as I can tell, only I remain. Every now and then, the trolls take a prisoner away for eating or sport. We can hear their gleeful shouts when they gather on the Winter Throne Hall. They leave us here to wither and lose all energy. Then, when we are weary from hunger and thirst, they take us. Once taken away, no prisoner ever returns.”
    Raf swallowed.
    He spent what remained of that night curled up in his uncomfortable stone hole, staring out at the westward view: beyond the snow-capped peaks of the Black Mountains, he saw the vast northern plains. In other circumstances it would have been beautiful.
    At length, dawn broke.
    Around mid-morning, they came for him.

THE GREAT HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING
    OVERHEAD VIEW

Chapter 18
    After he stepped off the elevator, Raf was pushed by a pair of guards through a dark horizontal tunnel that delved into Troll Mountain.
    He heard shouts and cheers from somewhere.
    At the end of the tunnel he came to a fork—he could go up, presumably to the Winter Throne Hall, or down.
    He was shoved downward.
    The cheering became louder. As he proceeded down a steep passageway, Raf heard a series of dull thunk s followed by a chanting of “ Grondo! Grondo! ”
    A rush of fear shot through Raf’s body. Where were they taking him? What had he got himself into?
    Then Raf turned a corner and suddenly he found himself standing inside the upper reaches of the vast space that was the Great Hall of the Mountain King.
    His breath caught in his throat.
    Raf stood at the top of a staircase that wound in an elegant spiral down the outside of a gargantuan stone column. (While the immense column appeared to be an addition to the hall, it—and the three other mighty columns holding up the ceiling—had actually been cut from the mountain itself. Similar spiral staircases wound around the flanks of the other columns.)
    In the center of the immense space was a high pyramidal podium on which stood the Troll King’s throne, far larger than the one up on the Winter Throne Hall. A horde of perhaps two hundred trolls was gathered at the foot of the throne, thronging around a pair of trolls who were engaged in combat, cheering and shouting at every blow.
    And sitting on the throne, flanked by what appeared to be his sons, his cronies, and a pair of hobgoblin jesters, biting down on a meat-covered bone, contentedly lording over the scene, was the Troll King himself.
    *
    As Raf was led down the spiral staircase, the two fighting trolls continued their battle, hitting each other’s shields with their hammers. Then the bigger troll disarmed the smaller one and broke his wooden shield with a lusty blow and the crowd chanted ever louder, “
Grondo! Grondo!
” The big troll started unleashing more blows on the now-defenseless smaller one, knocking him to the ground and pinning him, before turning to the king.
    A hush fell over the hall.
    All eyes turned to the Troll King.
    One of the hobgoblin