“Do you know what it is she wants?”

“I have my suspicions.”

But before he could elaborate, a slithering sound reached our ears, and the troll-lights at the end of the row flickered, then went out. I went very still like a rabbit that’s scented a fox; but the King straightened, eyes searching and head cocked, listening. Hunting.

“Three,” he murmured. “No, four.”

Four sluag. My hands and feet went cold, my pulse thundering in my ears. I’d never heard of sluag hunting together, but why else would they converge like this? Unless someone had sent them…

The magic encasing Martin dissolved, and I mouthed, “Sluag,” at him. He nodded once, and picked up his discarded spear. The tip of the weapon trembled.

Barooom. One of the sluag called out; then another answered, Barooom.

“I hear you,” the King said, then he lifted his arms. The bookcases around us shot back, row after row sliding away as though they weighed nothing, their momentum carrying them even as the sluag’s power melted away the King’s. Several of them toppled, and a squeal of pain rang in my ears as one of the creatures was crushed.

We stood in the middle of a large empty space, devoid of anything but the books that had fallen off the shelves, the only light that which hovered over the two trolls. But it was flickering.

The King picked up a volume and glanced at the title. “Tax law.” He smiled, and the book burst into flame, first the silver of magic, but then the yellow and red of natural fire took over. A shadow moved between two fallen shelves, and their balls of light winked out.

Martin stepped closer to me, twitching with every shiver of motion in the shadows, but the King seemed unaffected. Unafraid. Lighting several more books on fire, he tossed them in a circle around us, creating a perimeter of flame.

A stinger flashed out from the darkness, whipping toward the King’s face, but he batted it aside with his spear and laughed. “You’ll have to do better than that, vermin.”

The sluag shrieked and lunged, its white bulk surging toward the troll even as I sensed motion behind us. I screamed a warning, but the King was already moving.

With impossible speed, he launched the spear in his hands at the first sluag, the force of the blow driving the point through its maw and out the other side. Whirling, he snatched the weapon Martin clutched, and slammed it into the body of the creature attacking from the rear, catching the fleshly stalk of its stinger and wrenching it from its throat.

The sluag writhed, slimy body slamming back and forth in its death throes, but he calmly approached it and pulled the weapon from its flesh with a nauseating slurp.

The flames were burning low, their paper fuel nearly exhausted, and I watched their glow diminish with growing trepidation. There was a third – I could hear it moving through the stacks – and not even the King of the trolls could see in the dark. The building shuddered, and a cloud of dust rolled over us as part of a wall tumbled in, the calls of at least two more sluag audible over the smash of rock hitting the marble floor.