Chapter 12

Midnight on the mid-summer’s eve in his thirteenth year, Lachlan Quinn, the boy they called the Keeper’s Boy was awakened from a sound sleep by his foster father Cayden MacLeish. With a muttered follow me, the man led the boy out to the meadow behind the cabin at the edge of the Opari wilderness.

Four small fires burned at the cardinal points around a meticulously groomed fairy ring that Quinn had been warned to never to play around—not that he ever had any time to play.

A pentagram was marked out in the center of the ring. Three women sat in the middle of it on an ornate blanket.

As young Lachlan drew close and saw the women clearly, he began to shiver violently. Trolls. Their skin was thickly pebbled and dull green. Their huge eyes gleamed silver in the torchlight.

“Lachlan,” his foster father whispered in his ear, “these three are The Vísdómur- the wise ones. They are troll elders from the Green River Clan. I have made them a bargain for the boon of protection for you.”

He led the boy to edge of the pentagon and waited respectfully for the troll women to finish their chant.

Sensing his terror, the old man kept a painful hold on his neck.