"And so it continued for many days, with the king making both days and nights hideous with his pipes and then fleeing away whenever Vuum sought to retaliate. At length even the iron strength of the troll began to fail, and he contented himself with lurking in the mouth of his cave, hurling stones and insults at his tormentor. Fusinian took cover when the stones came whizzing over, and the insults bothered him not a whit.
"At last the troll called across the ravine: 'O King, if you would fain have your wife again, then agree to fight me man to troll! I will wrastle, or box, or fence, or fight with spears, axes, clubs, or knives, or duel at a distance with the longbow or the crossbow or the sling or the twirl-spear. Can you think of any more ways for us to settle our difference?"
" 'Since I am the challenged party/ quoth Fusinian, It is mine to choose the weapons. And I will not wrestle, or box, or fight with swords, spears, et cetera, because I know your strength and hardihood all too well. But I will undertake a fair contest with you.'
" 'And what might that be?'
" 'We shall have a foot race, in your own caverns. We shall start at the entrance, and run back along the main corridor, and around the big loop, and out to the entrance again.'
"After some argument over details, the troll agreed that this was a fair contest. Then Fusinian said: 'Now, as to terms. If you win, I will go away and leave you in undisturbed possession of the Marvelous Caverns and of Thanuda. If I win, you shall yield me Thanuda and depart forthwith from my kingdom.'
"Again they argued, but when Fusinian began to blow up the bag of pipes, Vuum quickly assented. Then Fusinian said: 'Not that I mistrust you, my good troll, but to make sure that there occur no untoward event when I am in your cave, you shall bring Thanuda to the bottom of the ravine and leave her there whilst we stage our contest. My men have orders, in case of treachery on your part, to take the woman and flee, not even trying to rescue me.'
" 'But what about treachery on your part, my lord King?'
" The mere fact of my being within your reach takes care of that,' said Fusinian. 'You could squash me like a bug if I played you false.'
"So Fusinian descended to the bottom of the ravine, and Vuum did likewise, carrying Thanuda on his shoulder. And then the troll took Fusinian on his shoulder, and bore him up the cliff again to the mouth of the cave, and Fusinian said afterwards that the journey on this stinking monster's scaly shoulder was the hardest of all his trials to bear. But at last they reached the cave, and the troll gave Fusinian one of the little lanthorns lit by captive glowworms that he used to illumine the darkness, whilst he took another one. Then Fusinian put his head out of the cave and called down to his wife:
" 'All right, dear, you may give the signal.'
"So she called up: 'Ready! Set! Go!' and Vuum and Fusinian were off like the wind, or as nearly like the wind as they could in the darkness of the cave, with its uneven floor and the stalactites and stalagmites to dodge.
"Being a' small man and fast on his feet, Fusinian knew he could get off at the very start faster than his lumbering antagonist, who was a fine runner once he got going but slower to reach his best speed. And sure enough, Fusinian found himself bounding along two paces ahead of Vuum. Vuum had the advantage of knowing the Caverns better than Fusinian, who had not been there in a decade, and he began to gain upon Fusinian. But then he ran his head into a stalactite, so that it broke off and huge chunks of limestone rained down upon him. Being a troll, he was not gravely hurt, but the accident threw him off his stride and enabled Fusinian to gain another pace upon him.
"Now, Fusinian knew from his study of the map of the cave that in the main loop, whereof he had spoken, there was a narrow place. And when he got to this strait, he turned his body sideways and nimbly slipped through. But Vuum, following him, got stuck. He must have known about this narrow place, but it would seem that he had never tried to see if he could pass through it. Fusinian paused to call back a few choice insults, whereupon the troll, roaring savagely, tried even harder to push through the strait but only jammed himself in more tightly than ever. As you can see, trolls are not a highly intelligent race, ranking somewhere near the ape-men of Komilakh in this regard.
"And so Fusinian reached the entrance once more and called up to his men—some of whom had come around to the top of the cliff above the cave—to drop a rope down into the ravine. And when Fusinian got his breath back, he let himself down by the rope and seized Thanuda in a loving embrace. Then they climbed to the other side of the gorge, and the king called upon the witch Gloe to perform.
"Gloe had been bringing her cauldron to a boil and putting into it the eye of a newt, and the toe of a frog, and other unwholesome substances. And she uttered a mighty spell and incantation, so that the sky darkened, and a cold wind blew, and rain fell, and the air was filled with the rustle of unseen wings, and a foetor as of the Pit filled the air. And she pointed her wand at the entrance to the cave, and a bolt of lightning flashed from the cloud overhead and struck the side of the mountain— but not the cave entrance. She tried again, and the lightning struck the other side. For an hour she aimed her wand and spoke the words of power, and each time the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed, but never could she seem to hit the mouth of the Marvelous Caverns. When the thunder was not crashing, they could hear the bellows of the trapped troll inside the Caverns.
"Then the thunder cloud wafted away, and Gloe collapsed in exhaustion, without having once struck the target. And whilst Fusinian and Thanuda and the warriors stood about in a daze, half deafened by the thunder and wholly soaked by the shower, a deep rumble was heard.
The earth trembled and moved, and the cuff crumbled with a mighty roar, and the entrance to the Marvelous Caverns vanished in a roaring slide of rock and gravel, and the air was filled with choking dust Some of the other side of the ravine gave way, too, and had not Fusinian snatched his queen away from the brink, they would have fallen with it As it was, the ravine was now half filled with rubble, and no trace of the Caverns or of the troll could be seen, save a peculiarly sticky green fluid, which oozed out from between the rocks.
"So that was the end of the Caverns and of Vuum, and they returned to Kortoli City rejoicing. Then Gloe demanded the post of court magician, and Fusinian refused on the ground that she had not in fact slain the troll by her levin bolts, which had all gone awry. The coming of the earthquake at that opportune moment, he said, had been a happenstance. Gloe, on the other hand, maintained that even if her lightnings had not gone into the cave and struck Vuum, they had so disturbed the balance of natural forces as to bring about the earthquake. Hence, she had really performed her part of the bargain, even if not quite the way she had intended.
"The dispute waxed bitter, for Fusinian was too just a king to order Gloe summarily suppressed for dunning him. At last Thanuda suggested that they bring in an impartial outsider to arbitrate. So they put the question to the theocrat of Tarxia, who decided in favor of Gloe. Since Doctor Aichos was ripe for retirement anyway, it looked as if the change could be effected with the least possible disturbance. But Gloe had not enjoyed her new post a fiftnight when she caught a phthisic from some other courtier and died in three days. So Aichos' retirement proved only temporary after all.
"Thanuda assured her consort that Vuum had done nothing worse to her than to make her play draughts with him by the hour. But presently it transpired that she was with child. And when the child was born, it was bigger and more robust than any child ever seen in Kortoli. Moreover, as it grew, its skin developed a rough, scaly appearance, not unlike the hide of a crocodile.