Алексей Пехов - Shadow Chaser

“Honeycomb,” said Marmot, addressing Uncle’s deputy, “throw my bag over here; we can’t let Harold go wandering the streets without a weapon.” Marmot caught the bag when it was tossed to him, rummaged in it, and fished out a dagger in a simple, well-worn sheath.

“Here, take that.”

I took the weapon and pulled it halfway out of the sheath.

“Ruby blood?”

“Canian forgework. Good steel.”

“Ooh, look at that! Just like Alistan’s sword!” the jester exclaimed with an admiring whistle when he saw the red shimmer of the blade.

“Thank you, Marmot,” I said and regretfully handed the knife back to the warrior. “It really is magnificent steel, but it’s too noisy. Don’t you have anything simpler?”

“We’ve got any amount of blades. Here, take mine,” said Lamplighter, handing me a dagger.

“That’ll do,” I said with a grateful nod and fastened the weapon to my belt.

If anything happened, I had a razor in a secret pocket and a bag with a whole arsenal of magical tricks that I’d bought just before I left Avendoom.

“Kli-Kli!” said Alistan, going up to the jester. “Are you sure you haven’t got anything you shouldn’t have?”

The fool looked as if he had been accused of royal treason, and flung open the flaps of his dark cloak to reveal a wide belt with four heavy throwing knives hanging on it, two on the right and two on the left. I couldn’t remember him taking one of them out of its sheath in all the time we’d been traveling.

“That’s it? You haven’t got anything else hidden away?”

“I’m as empty as a bottle of wine in the hands of a drunkard,” Kli-Kli replied in a sincere voice.

“All right,” said Alistan, apparently taking the goblin at his word. “But remember you can get into trouble if you’re too sharp-tongued with the guards.”

“I won’t forget,” said the jester, with an air that made it quite clear Alistan didn’t need to tell him that soldiers had no sense of humor.

The goblin started rooting in his numerous pockets and pulled out a tangle of knotted string. I remembered he had wagered with us that he would work terrible goblin magic with that thing. But so far, all he had for his pains was a crazy jumble of string and knots. Kli-Kli caught my glance and winked merrily.

“Warn me when you want to test that,” I told him. “I’ll cut and run for the next kingdom.”

The jester gave me a glance that said his faith in me was destroyed forevermore and stuck the bundle of string back in his pocket.

“You’ll be surprised yet, Harold, when I let my shamanism loose.”

“Marmot!” said the taciturn Eel, holding out the scabbards containing his “brother” and “sister.” “Take good care of them.”

“Of course, old chap, of course,” Marmot replied, taking the two blades from the Garrakian.

“Come on, Harold, or I’ll expire of the toothache right here on the floor!” the gnome grumbled on his way out of the inn.

“So where are we going?” asked the jester, skipping along beside me.

The goblin’s short little legs were not adapted to the pace that Hallas had set for our party.

“To the barber’s. As if you didn’t know.”

“I know we’re not going to the cobbler’s, Harold. I asked where are we going? We’ve seen lots of barbers in the last hour!”

“Then you’re asking the wrong person, you should try Hallas.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want to die young. He’s a bit out of sorts today, and I don’t intend to ask him any questions.”

“Well, if you don’t want to ask him, just shut up.”

“Ooh!” the goblin exclaimed, offended, and went dashing off to pester Deler with his questions, but the dwarf gave him almost exactly the same answer as I had.

“You know, Harold,” said Eel, speaking for the first time since we left the inn, “I’m starting to get a bit bored with this walk.”

“And you’re not the only one,” I sighed.

We walked round Ranneng for the best part of an hour in search of the right barber. Just how the gnome was going to choose the right one out of all the barbers available was a mystery to us. But all the barbers we had already visited obviously didn’t merit that title.

Hallas’s rigorous standards for the man who was going to pull out his tooth left the disappointed barbers with empty pockets and the gnome with the toothache. Hallas had a whole mountain of reasons for rejecting one barber after another.

This barber’s shop was too dirty, that barber’s prices were too high, a third one had blue eyes, a fourth one was too old, a fifth one was too young. The sixth one was too sleepy, the seventh one was strange, the eighth had a stammer. There was no way to satisfy all the gnome’s petty whims.

As soon as Hallas got close to the next barber’s shop, in some magical fashion his steps grew slower and slower and he started creeping along like a drunken snail, trembling all over. A blind Doralissian could have seen that the gnome was frightened.

“People are looking at us,” the Garrakian muttered.

“They’ve been looking at us ever since we left the inn,” I muttered in reply. “What can we do about it?”

We were a curious-looking group, so people had no qualms about gaping at us. First of all, of course, everyone looked at the goblin—a rare sight in the cities of the kingdom. But as soon as people noticed the gnome and the dwarf, they forgot all about Kli-Kli. You might catch the occasional sight of a goblin, but gnomes and dwarves walking along peacefully side by side was something you never, ever saw.

“Harold, look!” Kli-Kli exclaimed, tugging on my sleeve.

“Where?” I couldn’t see anything interesting.

“Right there!” said Kli-Kli, pointing toward a shop selling vegetables. “Hang on, I’ll just be a moment.”

Before I could even open my mouth, the goblin had dashed off to do his shopping.

“What’s wrong with him?” Deler asked, puzzled.

“Everyone has his own weaknesses,” I answered. “Some don’t like to get their teeth pulled out, and some love carrots.”

Hallas turned a deaf ear to the remark about teeth and uttered an exquisite groan.

“Stop that!” Deler shouted heartlessly at the gnome. “It’s your own fault. You miserable coward.”

“Who’s a coward?” Hallas snapped back. “Gnomes aren’t afraid of anything! It’s your beardless race that are the cowards! Locking yourselves away in our mountains and sitting there trembling like an aspen leaf in the autumn wind!”

“Then why don’t you get your tooth pulled out?”

“I told you, you thickhead! They’re all bad barbers!”

“All right, but why are you dragging that sack around with you?” asked Deler, refusing to leave Hallas alone. “Can’t you just leave it somewhere? What have you got in there anyway, the gnomes’ book of spells?”

“It’s my sack! I’ll carry what I want!”

The gnome and his sack were inseparable. Hallas dragged it around with him wherever he went. Even Kli-Kli hadn’t been able to find out what was in it. Deler was dying of curiosity, he had no idea what it was. And I didn’t know what kind of treasure the gnome kept in the sack, either, but ever since he got it from his relatives in the fort of Avendoom, he had been fussing over his property like a chicken with the very first egg it ever laid.

“Here I am,” said Kli-Kli, crunching happily on a carrot as he walked up to us. “Well then, are we going to get this tooth pulled out, or are we going to wait for it to fall out on its own?”

“What business of yours is my tooth? I’ll do what I like with it!”