Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

The last of the ten Wild Hearts was sitting under a spreading apple tree, clutching a massive bidenhander with both hands. It looked to me as if the two-handed sword was too heavy for this short and apparently not very strong man. There was a golden oak leaf on the hefty black handle of the sword.

“Is he a master of the long sword?” I asked the goblin in disbelief.

“You can see the handle, can’t you? Of course he’s a master, unless he stole that lump of metal from someone.”

“But that thing weighs more than he does!”

“No it doesn’t,” the goblin objected. “But it is heavy, that’s true. I checked that myself.”

“Don’t tell me you tried to pinch the lad’s sword!”

“Naah, I just wanted to know how much it weighs. There was a real crash when I couldn’t hold it any longer and dropped it on the dwarf’s foot.”

I didn’t answer; I was busy studying the man. He wore a funny hat that looked like one of the cathedral bells.

“He’s called Mumr. But everyone calls him Lamplighter. Oh no!”

Kli-Kli’s final phrase was not addressed to me. Lamplighter had taken out a little reed pipe, set down the bidenhander, and was about to play.

“Anything but that!” the goblin wailed.

Mumr blew, and the pipe gave out an excruciating, hoarse screech. The jester howled and pressed his hands to his ears. If there had been any dogs nearby, they would certainly have started howling, or died in torment.

“I’m going to throw this at him!” Kli-Kli said, grinding his teeth and shaking the stub of the carrot in his hand.

“Hey, Uncle!” Deler called to the leader of the Wild Hearts. “Tell Mumr to shut up!”

“That’s right!” Hallas agreed, raising the bottle to his mouth.

“Let me get some sleep, will you?” Loudmouth muttered sleepily, turning over onto his other side.

Without interrupting his game of dice, Uncle found a small stone beside him and flung it at Lamplighter. In order to dodge the flying missile, Lamplighter had to break off tormenting his poor whistle.

“You ignoramuses,” he said, annoyed. “You don’t know a thing about music!”

“And that’s what it’s been like all week, Harold,” Kli-Kli said, taking a deep breath.

“And, of course, you know about Miralissa,” he said. “It doesn’t take a wizard to see that your interest has been awakened. La-la, she is something, isn’t she?”

“Jester, you must be hallucinating. I think these Wild Hearts have bopped you one time too many.”

I hadn’t noticed Kli-Kli reaching into my unguarded bag. Now he was holding one of the little magical bottles in his hand, one that contained a dark cherry colored liquid with gold sparks floating in it.

“Put it back,” I roared at the goblin, but it was too late.

Kli-Kli nimbly dodged my outstretched arms, dashed across to the gnomes, who had finally loaded the cannon, and flung my magical purchase. The bottle tinkled as it broke against the barrel of the cannon. There was a bright crimson flash, and the weapon disappeared.

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 dashing 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.

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 scum! They think their made-up titles 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 shifting impatiently from one foot to the other as he waited for me in front of a pair of massive 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 nobles in the kingdom if they were packed in good and tight. And wouldn’t I love to see that. But seriously, the space was quite big enough for rehearsing military parades. At least there would be more than enough space 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 nobody 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.