Part 25 (1/2)
What in the name of the Nameless One had possessed me to buy a transport spell from Honchel? (Does carrying a mountain of things seem too much like hard work? Nothing could be simpler! Break one little bottle against your load, and it simply disappears. Break another, and it appears again.) I'd been keeping that magic for Hrad Spein. Just in case I stumbled across any old heaps of diamonds or emeralds. Farewell, treasures of the dead! I've inherited the gnomes' cannon instead.
A shocked silence hung over the garden. Even Eel stopped twirling his swords. But the silence didn't last for long. It was shattered by the insane howling of the furious gnomes. Kli-Kli didn't bother to wait for their retribution; he came das.h.i.+ng back to me at full tilt, bells jingling.
”Harold, stop dawdling!” Kli-Kli exclaimed. ”Follow me, I'll take you to the king.”
And so saying, the goblin disappeared through a door. I was seething with fury, but there was nothing I could do except follow the little blackguard.
18
THE COUNCIL
I could glimpse the jester's figure up ahead of me, so I wasn't going to get lost in the immense labyrinth of corridors and stairways. But I had to hurry to keep up with Kli-Kli in his gray and blue leotard. Well-trained servants in livery opened the doors for the goblin to admit him, and therefore me, into the inner sanctum of the royal palace.
My desire to tear the little green mischief-maker's head off was gradually fading, but my new friend decided not to tempt fate and he kept his distance from me. And basically he was right. The joker certainly deserved a good thump.
I swerved round a corner, trying to catch up with the goblin, and came nose-to-nose with a bevy of court matrons taking their aging little daughters for a stroll. Without even stopping, the jester bowed with an irreproachable technique worthy to be included in all the textbooks on etiquette, and skipped straight through this unexpected barrier of wide skirts.
I smiled politely at the ladies, but failed to make an impression. Or rather, I made precisely the opposite impression to what I had intended. The ladies wrinkled up their high-society, aristocratic little noses as if I reeked of the cesspit.
In actual fact, they were the ones who stank. Their aromas were so pungent that I almost fainted. The sc.u.m! They think their made-up t.i.tles and phony airs make them stink less than those of us who have to struggle.
”Your Excellency!” the jester called to me from the far end of the corridor. ”How long do I have to wait for you, duke?”
When they heard that I was a duke, the ladies suddenly changed their opinion about my own humble person. The wrinkles on the little noses disappeared, and coquettish smiles appeared on the little faces. They weren't at all disconcerted either by my less than elegant garb or the bruise on my face. I was a duke, and an aristocrat can get away with anything.
I scowled and dashed on by. Who needed them anyway? Life is complicated enough without adding a woman to the chaos.
The goblin was s.h.i.+fting impatiently from one foot to the other as he waited for me in front of a pair of ma.s.sive white doors with gold inserts showing an obur hunt. There were six guardsmen standing rigidly to attention beside the doors. While I was walking toward them, the jester managed to pinch one of the men in gray and blue on the leg, stick his tongue out at another, and then try to grab yet another man's sword from him. The goblin was basically making as much mischief as he could. The soldiers in the guard of honor didn't turn a hair, but I could quite clearly read in their eyes the desire to flatten the little snake just as soon as the watch was changed.
As soon as he saw me getting close, Kli-Kli stopped his comic antics and pushed open the doors. ”Harold, keep your wits about you, now,” he squeaked in a merry voice.
Easily said. It was the first time I'd been in the throne room. It was huge-so huge that it could accommodate all the n.o.bles in the kingdom if they were packed in good and tight. And wouldn't I love to see that. But seriously, the s.p.a.ce was quite big enough for rehearsing military parades. At least there would be more than enough s.p.a.ce for the cavalry.
The windows were huge, too. They ran from the square black-and-white tiles of the floor all the way up to the ceiling. Somewhere far, far away in front of me was the king's throne with two guardsmen frozen beside it in a guard of honor. Apart from them there was n.o.body in the hall.
”Didn't you tell me the king was hauling his courtiers over the coals?” I asked Kli-Kli, and then immediately shut up.
My voice, amplified tens of times, echoed all the way round the hall. There must have been some magic involved. Even if you spoke in a whisper, anybody anywhere in the throne room would hear you.
”Well, what if I did? You never know what sort of things a jester might say.” The goblin giggled. He listened to the resounding echo and then began doing something which, in his own goblin opinion, was extremely important: He lifted up his left foot and started skipping on his right one from one white square on the floor to another, trying not to step in the black ones.
We walked the entire length of the throne room like that: the goblin hopping on one leg, and me walking at a moderate pace, trying to resist the powerful temptation to break into a run and strangle the light-hearted villain. The jester hopped as far as the throne, which, I must say, didn't look at all special against the general background. There were no gold castings, no rubies the size of a tiger's head. None of those rich and extravagant whimsies for which both of the Empires were so famous. The emperors there try to outdo each other in their display of luxury. Our own glorious Stalkon, may he sit on this throne for another hundred years, preferred to put his gold into the army, not into gorgeous playthings of dubious value.
Paying no attention to the mute guards, the jester climbed up onto the throne, picked up the royal scepter (which looked more like a heavy staff, the kind you could easily use to beat off attackers) off its velvet cus.h.i.+on, and jumped back down onto the floor.
”Don't hurt yourself now,” I jibed, which earned me a contemptuous glance.
Kli-Kli did put his new toy back on the cus.h.i.+on though, only he added the stump of the carrot to it. He stepped back, holding his head on one side, like an artist admiring the work he has created, and then, pleased with the result, he beckoned me onward. At the very end of the hall there was another pair of doors exactly like the ones through which we had entered so recently. The jester kicked them as if he were the master of the house.
”After you!” he said, gesturing for me to go through.
I found myself in the room to which Frago Lanten had brought me the time before. I already knew everyone there, so no introduction was necessary. I bowed politely. When I looked up, I was looking straight into sparkling golden eyes. We acknowledged each other and looked away.
”Enough of that, Master Harold,” said the king. ”Let's leave your dubious etiquette to my courtiers. Have a seat. What took you so long, Kli-Kli?”
”Why ask me?” the jester asked, pulling a sour face. ”It's so hard to get Master Harold to move. ... It took me at least fifteen minutes to persuade him to come.”
I choked on my indignation at this barefaced lie, but controlled myself and decided to ignore the king's jester.
”Thank you, Your Majesty,” I muttered.
This time Stalkon didn't look anything at all like a genial innkeeper in a sweater and soldier's trousers. I thought the expensive clothes and the narrow ring of the crown on his head suited this man far better.
”Master Artsivus has informed me that your endeavors have been crowned with success,” said the king.
Artsivus frowned. He was obviously out of sorts. One of my friends used to have an expression like that when he was tormented by constipation. I just hoped that the archmagician had a different reason for his bad mood. He gave me a look that wasn't exactly the friendliest, but he didn't say anything.
”Yes, Your Majesty, I have completed all the preparations for our ... er ... little undertaking.”
”I have many questions. Would you be so kind as to tell us once again what has happened to you?”
The king's wish is the law. I sighed and for the umpteenth time that week started telling the story of my adventures, only on this occasion I kept nothing back. Well, almost nothing. I didn't say a word about Valder this time, either.
Halfway through my narrative, my throat finally dried up and I began talking more and more quietly. Noticing this, Stalkon clicked his fingers casually, and the attentive jester poured me some wine. I kept my eyes on him to make sure there was no laxative in the gla.s.s. Then I went on with my story.
Artsivus merely raised an eyebrow every now and then, usually when he heard something for the first time. Something I had kept secret from him during our ride in the carriage. The most interesting thing was that no one interrupted me and my listeners were not bored by my interminable story. But everything comes to an end sometime, and eventually I was able to sigh in relief and wet my throat once again with the remarkable wine from the king's cellars.
”A fine kettle of fish,” said Kli-Kli, the first to break the silence.
”You put it too mildly, fool,” Alistan Markauz blurted out. This time he was dressed in an ordinary guards' uniform. The famous armor that had become a legend among the warriors of Valiostr must have been taking a rest that day. ”The kettle is boiling over, my dear jester, and we can only hope that we won't get scalded. Forgive me, Your Majesty, but despite all our secrecy the forthcoming expedition has become known to our enemy.”
”Not only to our enemy,” Miralissa purred. ”You are forgetting about the Master.” For a moment I wondered how such a sinister sentence could sound so pleasant. The race of elves were known to have good voices. Where had I heard that bit of wisdom?
”Have you heard of him before?” the king asked the elfess.
”No.”
”The archives will not be of any help to us, either,” the Rat added morosely. ”The royal sandmen have searched for days and found nothing.”
”Not exactly nothing,” Stalkon objected. ”They have found something something.”
”Ah,” the captain of the royal guard said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ”That's nonsense.”