Myth-Chief

THIRTY

We made it back to town fifteen times faster than we had left it. The soles of my feet were bruised and torn from running over rocks, and I had enough stitches in my side to make a quilt, but we didn't have a choice. The mob was only yards behind us. Matfany turned as we crossed the main square and headed up the road leading to the castle.

"Bar the doors!" I bellowed, as we passed the guards.

They sprang to grab hold of the enormous portals, but they were too late. The throng of angry Swamp Foxes burst in behind us, flinging the gates open until they smacked against the inner walls. Adrenaline gave me a kick in the rear. I kept running, almost into the arms of another gang of protesters who were still marching up and down on the steps of the castle itself.

Guido took point. At the sight of the sign-bearing Foxes ahead, he put his shoulder down and plowed into them like a linebacker. They went flying. Matfany trotted up the stairs in his wake. I followed the white tip of his tail into the blackness of the castle hall.

I had to hand it to the guards on duty. They were on the ball. The doors opened as he reached them, and boomed shut as Tananda nipped through them. The guards threw down the bar, a piece of bronze-bound wood as large as an I-beam.

"Where can we go?" Tanda asked.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The mob started pounding on the doors. The guards looked alarmed, but they mustered in a line facing the portals.

"Those can't hold forever. What's the most defensible room in this place?" I asked Matfany.

"The throne room is the most protected place," Matfany said. "Stands to reason, as that is the seat of government ..."

"Let's go there!" I said. "Which way?" "We can't go into the throne room, Mister Aahz," he said.

"What? Never mind!" I said, as he started to give me another one of his pedantic replies. "Don't be so squeamish about the privileges of royalty. Which way is it?" He pointed. I ran down the hall to the inlaid double doors that towered over my head.

The guards flanking them saluted Matfany as we got closer. I ignored them, and grabbed for the bronze handles. I lugged. I pulled. I twisted. I put one foot on the frame and hauled.

"Unlock them!" I bellowed.

"They're not locked, Mister Aahz," Matfany said. "I tried to tell you. The Old Folks won't let me in. They don't like me."

"What the hell, you're in charge!"

Matfany shook his head. "You just don't cross the Old Folks. They've been against my taking over the government pretty much from day one."

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

"We can't stay here," Guido said. "Dose doors will not withstand forever against a thousand people. What's the next safest place you got?"

"The dungeon's safe. So is the treasury."

"Do they have a second way out?" I asked.

"Well, of course not. sir," Matfany said. "That wouldn't make any sense."

"We'd be trapped there?"

"I'd say so."

"Will converting the Old Folks to your government stop those people out there from protesting against you?" I asked.

"Well, possibly ..." Matfany said.

I interrupted him. "Then the only thing we can do to stop all the chaos is to talk to the Old Folks. We have to convince them that we're doing the right thing for the kingdom."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Mister Aahz," Matfany said. "They're a little tetchy."

"So am I!" I roared. "They can't keep blocking you out of the showpiece of your castle. They have got to stop interfering with my—your ability to make money for the country. And I have no interest in being torn apart by an angry mob."

CRASH!

The castle doors slammed inward.

"Down with Matfany!" the crowd bellowed.

"We gotta move," Guido said.

"End of discussion," I said. "Where can we go?"

"Out the back way," Matfany said. "If you're so fixed on speaking to the Old Folks, that's the best suggestion I can make."

The guards formed a line across the hallway, spears pointing toward the advancing mob. Matfany led us around a corner. He pulled open a humble-looking door and ushered us into a narrow, damp-smelling spiral stairwell. Guido jammed the door closed behind us. There were no lights, but Tananda took care of that with a little spell she probably used for burglary (one of her many sidelines). The pale golden glow surrounded us as we wound downward into the servants' quarters.

The white-clad staff in the kitchen jumped in surprise as their prime minister went tearing through with a Pervert, a Trollop, and a huge, crossbow-bearing Klahd at his heels.

"Flying inspection," he told them as he passed. "You all are doing very well. Mmm, that smells delicious," he added to a gray-haired old male stirring a pot.

"Thanks, Prime Minister," they chorused.

"Forget the soap," I snarled. "We need to get. out of here."

"Courtesy is never misplaced, Mister Aahz," Matfany told me reproachfully. "Down here, now. We'll go out through the gardens."

We hurried out through the rear door of the kitchens, out past a stinking heap of garbage, through the herb garden and out into a wide green expanse lined with gracefully swaying trees. I hurtled down the broad stone steps heading for the gate at the rear of the extensive grounds and immediately sank up to my ankles

"What is this?" I bellowed. The green lawn swirled around my calves.

"Why, it's swamp, sir," Matfany said. "We are Swamp Foxes. This is our heritage."

"You can't run in this... muck! You can't even walk!"

"If you want to run, you need to stick to the hummocks."

"Why do the kings and queens live like this?" I asked, outraged. "You could fill all that in and have great, rolling meadows! This isn't a garden, it's a compost heap. You've got nice dry streets in town!"

"Dry land is for tourists, sir," Matfany said. He trotted ahead of me as lightly as a feather. Grumbling, I picked myself up and followed in his footsteps. Contrary to what I thought when I first sloshed out into the yard, there were solid lumps in it. His stride was a lot longer than mine was, so I missed my footing more than once. My dapper clothes were soaked and striped with green goo by the time we got to the rear of the property. Guido didn't say anything, but I could see by the look on his face what he thought of having his beautiful, pin-striped suit redecorated by Swamps "R" Us. Tananda, the only one of us with magikal talent, tripped lightly over the meadow like a soap bubble. I wished I could go back in time and shoot Garkin again for taking away my powers.

The sun was going down. Thanks to Tananda's light spell, we were able to see where we were going. I almost wished we couldn't. Matfany led us under low-hanging tree branches and over ridges of stone, but all of the land underfoot was wet, wet, wet. Stinging insects took advantage of the fact I had to pay more attention to my footing than swatting them to wriggle under my scales. Guido and Tananda, whose soft skins were more vulnerable than mine, scratched and slapped at their own insect hordes.

"How much more of the World of Mildew do we have to cover before we get there?" I asked, heaving each leg laboriously out of stinking humus. I slapped at a cloud of gnats that was gnawing on my neck.

Matfany negotiated a foot-wide bridge over a gurgling stream. "Their domain is deep in the marshlands."

"So, when you die you don't go to the gates of heaven, you go to the fens?" I grinned, hoping someone would get the pun.

Matfany regarded me solemnly. "To our ancestors, this is our bit of heaven."

The next branch he let go of hit me in the face. Some people just don't appreciate good humor.

"Aahz, we're bein' followed," Guido muttered in my ear.

"Who's back there?" I asked. I didn't ask how he knew.

Guido had survival training from a number of special organizations including the Mob. and well-honed instincts.

"Can't say yet." He touched his breast pocket. "I saw a shadow as we went over the last hill. Somethin' low-slung with lots of legs. Kinda looks familiar, but I can't place it yet. I'll tell Tananda we oughta be ready to rumble."

Once Guido mentioned it. I started to feel eyes on the back of my neck. In the undergrowth. I thought I saw glowing eyes following our every move.

Pervects don't believe in ghosts. If we have an afterlife. I guess we feel that it's none of anyone else's business. As far as I know none of my ancestors has bothered to come back and tell any of its descendants what it's like. And. if heaven's not a place of unlimited comfort, wealth, food, booze, sex, and entertainment. I'm not sure I care. Outside of Perv, things are different. I know Klahds believe in disembodied spirits, evidence notwithstanding. This was the first place I had visited where the nonliving existed side by side with the living as if there was little difference between the two states.

The trees opened out a little, revealing more extensive stretches of green sludge. Now there seemed to be signs of habitation. In the twilight I saw the outlines of houses, some grand and stately, others no more than shacks. They all shimmered in a haze of blue I put down to the gigantic moon rising just above the line of trees.

"Who lives there?" I asked, pointing to one of the elaborate mansions.

"No one," Matfany replied.

"Okay," I said, caught in my own linguistic trap. "Who occupies it?"

"That'd be the third Lord Protector of the Marshes," Matfany said. "He lived about fifteen hundred and twenty years ago. Most of his family is there, too."

"How about that one?" I pointed at a falling-down shanty with smoke curling out of the spindly chimney.

"Last king but two. Cornelius V never had much use for fancy things. Fishing's good, that's all he cares about."

"And who are we going to see?" Tananda asked.

"Whoever will talk to us," Matfany said. "Keep an eye out for the fox fire. That's where they'll be."

"What's fox fire?" I asked.

We stepped through an arching avenue of mangrove trees that blotted out the moon. I kept close to Tananda's light. The footing was tricky. It looked like there was only one path that didn't dump pedestrians into the soup. Matfany jumped from hummock to tussock to slippery, moss-covered rock. I heard a curse and a splash behind me, which meant Guido had missed at least one of them. All of us, except the prime minister, had gotten soaked numerous times.

We emerged on the other side. I had to squint at the blinding blaze of blue light that filled the clearing ahead. "That's fox fire," Matfany said.

Glimmering figures began to rise out of the ground until I felt like the only unlit candle on top of a birthday cake. In outline they were Swamp Foxes, but when I stuck a hand through one, all I felt was the dank, cold air.

"And those are the Old Folks."