Shadow Chaser

6 Friends And Enemies

The black night of the universe and the icy fire of magic. A world within a world, a dream within a dream, a drop within a drop, a mirror within a mirror …

I’ve been here once before.

When was that? An eternity earlier or an eternity later?

Ah yes! I think I remember—it was in the distant future, on that day when Miralissa bound the Key of the Doors of Hrad Spein to my consciousness. On that memorable evening I fell through into the black night of Nothingness, into a dream of a dream, filled with fiery flakes of the crimson flame of Kronk-a-Mor.

But unlike last time, this time I felt cold … very cold.…

My body was racked by agonizing cramps. The only things I could feel were the cold and the pain. But which of these two evils was causing me more suffering? Just at the moment I couldn’t give a rotten damn; all I wanted, with every nerve in my body, was to get out of there to somewhere a bit more welcoming and a bit less mysterious. But this time nothing came of my futile efforts to escape from Nothingness. There was no dark elfess there to help me, I was absolutely helpless and freezing … colder and colder.

Cold-cold-cold-cold-cold …

After a while I had the feeling that a tangle of gluttonous leeches had invaded my stomach, inflicting a pain more appalling than anything I could have imagined. If not for the cold swirling of the sharp, prickly snowflakes, constantly distracting me from the hot coals blazing in my belly, the pain would have driven me out of my mind. There was no question of actually looking at what the Messenger’s talons had done to my stomach: I was afraid I would pass out if I even caught a glimpse of it.

The pain pulsated and increased, doubling and multiplying inside me, like the infinite reflections in the mirror maze of a dream. It unfolded its sharp petals all the way through my body, driving me to the brink of insanity. Now I knew what the most terrible torture of all is.

Through the silent swirling dance of the fiery snowflakes I could hear a regular tapping sound, but it took me a while to realize that it was my teeth beating out a tattoo in honor of the master of this world—the fiery snow, bringer of an icy death.

The wind of the darkness, the wind that had once brought me dreams of the past, dreams of those who were long dead—men, elves, gnomes, orcs, and many other creatures—sprang to life, flinging sharp crystals of icy fire into my face.

I tried to dodge away, or at least protect my face against the snowflakes with my hands, but my pitiful efforts only infuriated the leeches of pain in my stomach. The moment they sensed that I was busy with something else, that I had stopped trying to control them, they started gnawing into my guts, and I howled out in pain and horror.

They pulsated in unison, breathing together, but if you knew that they are not all-powerful, they could be defeated.

But the cold was pitiless, heartless, and indifferent to everything alive. This thing was trying to put me to sleep, to bring me false warmth and peace, to carry my mind off into the river of eternal forgetfulness and dreams that flowed into the sea of Death.

I’m cold! Sagot, I’m so cold!

In the darkness the fiery snowflakes swirled together into a gigantic pillar of flame, falling on my hands and melting, turning into crimson steam.

The black Nothing of magic, the world of dreams and phantoms of the past, has its own, different, laws.

“Greetings, Dancer!”

Just like the last time, I had missed the brief instant when they appeared in front of me. They glided toward me—my old friends, the living shadows, the mistresses of Nothing. I thought of them as First, Second, and Third. Three shadows, three friends, three sisters, three lovers … They hadn’t changed at all since our last meeting and our last dance, which had helped me get out of here the last time. Perhaps I might be able to escape with their help this time, too?

“Hel-lo, la-dies.” My teeth were chattering and words were hard to pronounce.

“Do you not know, Dancer, that some dreams are as dangerous as reality?” There was a note of sadness in Second’s voice.

“D-dreams are d-dangerous?” I recalled all the nightmares about the past that I had seen in the last month. “Yes, I sup-pose I kn-now that…”

“Then why do you summon them to yourself, Dancer? Prophecies and destiny cannot protect you forever.”

First and Third did not say anything.

“I did not wish to ap-pear in your d-dream world,” I said, trying to make excuses. “I d-don’t even know how I ended up here in this cr-cr-crimson snow.”

“You think our world is a dream?” First asked in amazement. “That is a mistake, Dancer. Our world is far more real than yours—it was the first of all to appear. The world of Chaos had served as the basis for thousands of others when your kind started creating and destroying shadows. It is not a dream, and we are not a dream, and you are not in a dream now.…”

“And you are dying, Dancer,” said Third, joining in the conversation. “You are dying because you wander too often through dreams that are too dangerous for you as yet.”

“I d-don’t und-derstand what you…” The cold was lulling my mind to sleep.

“Dreams can kill,” First murmured. “Once you believe a dream is reality, you don’t just see it, you start living in it. And then how dangerous it becomes! The one who did this to you was in your dream—”

“Or you were in his,” said Second, interrupting First.

“That’s not important now. You believed and so you received this wound…”

The Master’s prison is a dream?

The reminder of the wound and the sincere sympathy I could hear in the shadow’s voice made me take a look at my stomach.

I really shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t know why I was still alive. Wounds like that guarantee a quick passage into the light with no chance of ever coming back to see the blue sky.

The leeches of pain started gnawing on me twice as viciously, and I was unable to hold back my scream.

“There, Dancer, now you see how dangerous uncontrolled dreams can be?”

“How d-did … How did I g-get here?”

“We should ask you that—you entered our house of your own free will.”

“I d-didn’t want to come here! I wanted to g-go home!”

“Now our world will be your home forever. In Siala you would have drawn your last breath ages ago. You can only stay alive here.”

“I n-need my world!”

“Your world?” Third began swirling round me, scattering a shimmering curtain of crimson snowflakes. “Why is it better than this one? Can you do this there?”

Third moved close, until she was almost touching me, and I caught a brief glimpse of a woman’s face. Then she merged into me, and I felt a wave of warmth run through my body, and the leeches of pain unclamped their suckers with a rasping groan of disappointment and drifted away into the black night to find a weaker and more accommodating victim.

In an instant Third was beside her sisters again, and I stared in astonishment at the spot where only a second ago there was a terrible, gaping wound.

Nothing. No wound at all. My torn and bloody shirt was the only reminder of the Messenger’s blow.

“Is your world capable of that, Dancer?”

I shook my head in bewilderment. Nobody, not even the Order, can make healthy, unbroken skin appear where there was a hole the size of a man’s fist, gushing blood, with guts spilling out of it. In Siala only the gods can pull off tricks like that.

“Then why are you so eager to go back there?”

“I have b-business to finish,” I blurted out. “And ap-part from that, it’s t-too cold here.”

First laughed, and the snowflakes responded to her laugh by bursting and turning into little sparks. Then they fused together into the ravenous beast whose name is fire, and in an instant it had devoured the black night and surrounded us with a dense cocoon of heat.

The shadows remained as impenetrably black as ever.

“Well then, Dancer, is that warmer?” First asked mockingly.

“Yes…” I didn’t have the strength to feel surprised. Just how omnipotent were these three? And why were they so interested in my humble person?

“Are you staying with us?”

“What d-do you want with me?” I asked, playing for time as I warmed up.

“You are the Shadow Dancer. The first Dancer who has appeared in more than ten thousand years! And you can do things that other people cannot. You still don’t know what you are capable of. We need you, this world needs you, and you will breathe into it the life that has gone to other worlds, thanks to your kind. Without you our home will die!”

“Without me my world will die,” I tried to shout above the vicious roar of the flame. “It’s my duty…”

“Your duty?” Second said sarcastically. “A thief talking about duty.”

“I have to go back and finish a job,” I insisted stubbornly. “I accepted a Commission, and until I carry it out, I am not free to follow my own wishes.”

The shadows put their heads together and started talking quietly. Had I really managed to persuade them? My place was not in this world, a world of emptiness filled with fiery snow or hot flame. Surely they could understand that?

“All right, you can leave,” Second announced. “We have waited for thousands of years, we will wait a little longer. You will come back to us in any case. He who has found the way to the primary world always returns. Now go!”

“Which way?”

“Forward.”

I cast a wary glance at the wall of fire.

“You know that I cannot pass through the fire without you.”

“True. But this time you must pass through without our help. We shall not always be beside you. A djanga with shadows will not always lead you through the traps of the House of Power. The time will come when you will have to fight it singlehanded.”

“The House of Power?” I exclaimed. “You said ‘the House of Power’! And do you know about the Houses of Love, Pain, and Fear as well?”

“Yes, we know.”

“And the Master? Who or what he is? You know about—”

“Yes, we know,” Third interrupted.

“Then tell me. It’s very important!”

“A moment ago you were in a hurry to get away, Dancer, and now you are hungry for information,” First answered my question coldly. “Information must be paid for, are you ready for that?”

“That depends on what you want for it,” I said cautiously. You should never agree to anything until you know what price you’d be asked to pay in return.

“You will have to stay with us.”

“Then your knowledge is not worth a bent penny. I won’t have any use for it here.”

“I’m sorry, but it will be a long time before your world is ready for this knowledge,” Second answered regretfully. “Forward, Dancer, the fire is waiting for you.”

“Good-bye!”

“No, until we meet again, and soon, Dancer! Remember that a djanga with shadows does not always lead along the right road.”

“Remember!”

“Beware!”

They shouted something else as well from behind me, but I could no longer hear what they said. The fire flicked its hissing tongues of flame at me, menacing me.

“You’re mine!” roared the crimson fire.

“You’re ours!” its ravenous tongues echoed.

I’m not much inclined to acting in a crazy, irrational fashion, but the time for it had clearly come now. So it’s not always possible to pass through the flame by dancing with shadows? Well, some other way, then …

The fire scorched my face and my hair started crackling menacingly. The skin started to crack on the hands covering my eyes.

The last time only the djanga, the wild, crazy dance that I’d been whirled into by the three shadows, had allowed me to pass through the flames of this inhospitable world and get back to Siala.

This time I was on my own, face-to-face with the ravenous fire.

“You’re mine!” the wall of heat droned.

“You’re mine!” I barked back.

And without thinking about it anymore, I jumped straight into the oven. The wall roared triumphantly as it embraced me. The pain from the burning unfolded into a crimson blossom, but my clothes and my hair didn’t flare up. The flame was left howling in disappointment behind me. Before the silence came crashing down on me, I had time to realize that I had managed to break through the boundary between worlds without the help of any djanga with shadows.…

My head was buzzing, a herd of hedgehogs had settled in my mouth, the back of my head was throbbing. I hissed louder than a boiling kettle and forced myself to open my eyes. Everything was swimming about, so it cost me a serious effort to understand where I was.

“Good morning!” said a loud voice, and I started.

“Is this what you call a good morning, Eel?” I asked with a wry chuckle.

“At least we’re still alive.”

“How long have we been here?”

“We’ve been stuck in here all yesterday and all night. How’s your head?”

“Don’t even mention it,” I told the Garrakian with a groan. “It’s buzzing like an angry nest of hornets. They belted me pretty hard in the cart.”

“I was starting to get worried. You had a fever and you were talking, but you didn’t come round.”

“I was having bad dreams,” I muttered, recalling the walk along the gloomy corridors of the Master’s prison and the mysterious fiery snow of the primary world of Chaos, which the shadows had said was on the point of death.

A dream! It was only the latest dream in a never-ending sequence of nightmares.

“How are you? You came off worse than I did,” I asked Eel.

“I’ll survive,” he answered laconically.

Well, if a Garrakian says he’ll survive, then he will.

I tried to move my arms, but nothing came of it—some rotten lout had tied them good and tight behind my back.

“Don’t bother,” Eel chuckled, noticing me trying to test the strength of the ropes wrapped around my wrists. “It’s art fiber rope, not that easy to get out of. I fiddled with it for an hour, but it didn’t get me anywhere.”

Art is a kind of tree—stunted, twisted, and nothing remarkable to look at. But when its fibers have been properly processed, they make magnificently strong ropes. You can cut through them or gnaw through them, but you have to be extremely strong or extremely supple to snap them or twist your way out of them.

“Have they stuck us in a cell, then?” I mumbled rather dimwittedly.

I just couldn’t shake off the visions of my dreams. I couldn’t believe that the long walk through those underground corridors and the conversation with the shadows were just a nightmare.

“That’s right. The Nameless One’s supporters don’t seem very keen to invite us to a formal banquet.”

I looked round, trying to get a clearer idea of our place of confinement.

It had gray walls and a little window with bars up near the ceiling, dirty straw on the floor, and a solitary torch on the wall. At first sight it was a perfectly ordinary cell, not a very attractive place for a permanent residence. But there was one thing about it that was strange—in all my life, no one who had been in jail had ever told me that a cell needed to have two doors.

“Is the second a spare? In case the jailers lose the key to the first one?” I asked, trying to joke, despite the roaring that still filled my head.

The first door, which was wooden, and bound with narrow strips of steel, was directly opposite us. The second, which was completely made of metal, was on the left-hand wall of the cell and, unlike the first, it had a bolt here on the inside, not on the outside like any self-respecting prison door.

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

He followed my glance and shrugged his shoulders awkwardly.

“I haven’t got a clue. Better pray to that Sagot of yours, ask him to help us get out of here.”

“I think we’ll be getting out of here soon enough, probably feet first.” I was in a grimly talkative mood. “What are the chances of the squad finding us before the Nameless One’s lads offload their surplus baggage?”

“If we were surplus baggage, they wouldn’t have bothered to snatch us, they’d have finished us off right there in the street.”

“True enough. They need us for something, but how long will that last? Kli-Kli got away, Sagot be praised, and I think enough time has gone by for Alistan and Miralissa to start doing something.”

We heard a cock crowing loudly outside the little window.

“We’re not in Ranneng,” said Eel, “we’re in the country, and Alistan is hardly likely to guess that he should look for us so far away from the walls.”

“What makes you think we’re in the country? Do you think there are no cocks in Ranneng?”

“Of course not, there are plenty, but I came round in the carriage, and before they knocked me out again, I managed to look out the window, and the landscape I saw was definitely not in a city.”

Aha. That’s nice to hear. Now we know for sure that the chances of finding us, in a cellar so far away from the inn, are nonexistent.

“You certainly know how to keep a man’s hopes up,” I sighed miserably.

All we could do was wait, hope for a miracle, and trust in Sagot and any other individuals who might be willing to help us. But the miracle was avoiding us, Sagot apparently couldn’t hear us, and those other individuals didn’t exist (at least, they were nowhere within a league of us). As the sailors from the Port City say, we had run firmly aground.

A bolt clattered and two men came in. The first was a short bald man of about fifty with broad shoulders, a purple nose, and icy blue eyes. He was wearing crumpled, grease-spattered clothes and a crooked grin plastered right across his repulsive face. The second visitor was … Loudmouth.

Alive and absolutely well.

For a second I couldn’t believe it was him, I thought it was some kind of apparition or ghost risen from the grave.

When Eel saw who had come to visit us, his face never even quivered. But his dark eyes narrowed.

“I’ll tear your heart out,” he hissed through his teeth.

“I shall try to be careful and not fall into your hands,” Loudmouth replied very seriously. “My apologies for the inconvenience that you have suffered.”

Still speaking in the same icy voice, Eel told Loudmouth to take his inconvenience and stuff it you-know-where.

“A pity,” the traitor said sadly. “I genuinely regret everything that has happened, but no one can choose his destiny. You have chosen your side and I have chosen mine.”

“And did you make your choice a long time ago?” I asked gloomily, finally spotting what Eel had noticed straightaway—a little ring on Loudmouth’s finger in the form of a branch of poison ivy.

Everything suddenly fell into place. He was the one who told the followers of the Nameless One where we were staying and where the Key was! And he must have helped them to track us down at the Nightingales’ house.

How cunningly this bastard had worked everything! Right under our very noses, and nobody had suspected a thing! How could anyone ever think that a Wild Heart would be a servant of the Nameless One? It would be like saying the sun was green and ogres were charming creatures.

When he said he was going to visit relatives, he’d told his accomplices about us and then gone back to the inn. After that it was all very simple. The Nameless One’s lads broke into the inn and shot the staff, Markauz and the warriors took shelter in the kitchen, and Loudmouth staged his own death and cleared out with his helpers and our Key. Who would ever have made the connection between a Wild Heart and the Nameless One? No one! And we would never have heard about Loudmouth again—he would have disappeared and our paths would never have crossed if the servants of the Master had not taken the Key from him.

“A very long time ago, Harold.” He laughed. “You can’t imagine for how many generations my family has been trying to help the lord return to Valiostr.”

“But you’re a Wild Heart. How could you do it?”

“Harold, I really do like you a lot, but don’t talk to me about the Wild Hearts. I only gave them fourteen years of my life because the Nameless One ordered me and a few others of the Faithful to do it.”

The servants of the Nameless One call themselves the Faithful? Ha!

“And are there many of you among us?” Eel asked in a voice that was monumentally calm.

“Very well, I will answer you, my old friend,” the traitor said with a smile. “You can know that now, and you know why?”

“Because you’ll never get out of this cellar,” said the man with the purple nose, finally opening his mouth.

“Shut up!” Loudmouth snapped at his companion, then addressed Eel again. “There were six of us. The eyes and ears of the Nameless One among the Wild Hearts. Surprised? You’d be even more surprised if you knew their names. I’ll tell you one of them, just for old times’ sake. You remember Stump, Captain Owl’s deputy? He was the leader of our group. Unfortunately the faithful one never returned from the Desolate Lands.”

“It’s a pity that you didn’t stay there with him,” Eel said in a dull voice.

This time the Garrakian was unable to disguise his true feelings. A hedgehog could have seen how shaken he was to discover that traitors had wormed their way into the Wild Hearts. It was unbelievable!

“I would have, if you hadn’t saved my life,” Loudmouth said with a nod. “Well, anyway, that’s all in the past, and we’ll have plenty of time to talk. In the meantime, I just came to visit and find out if there’s anything you need. Give them water.”

The final words were addressed to Purple Nose. Loudmouth walked toward the door, but I called to him.

“Loudmouth!”

“Yes, Harold?”

“Was it worth it?”

“Was what worth it? Fourteen years of life thrown away or serving the lord?”

“The second.”

“You don’t understand and you can’t understand. Not you, or the Wild Hearts, with whose tattoos I defiled my body. For you the Nameless One is evil. Pure, unadulterated evil, and nothing more.”

“My, what a fine talker you’ve become,” Eel muttered.

“You’re used to seeing Loudmouth whining and sleeping all the time, dissatisfied with the entire world, right?” He smiled again. “Loudmouth! If only you knew how sick I am of that name fit for a dog! For fourteen years I was a dog, for fourteen years I barked for your king. I have a name perhaps even more noble than the title that you conceal, Garrakian.”

“Noble birth won’t save you from me.”

“Anything can happen, but it’s not likely,” our enemy said with a frown. “As for your question, Harold, it was worth it. From the very beginning. If not for the Rainbow Horn, the Nameless One would have crushed the Stalkon dynasty long ago.”

“How can anyone hate a dynasty for all those hundreds of years? Your Nameless One really is insane.”

“The Stalkons made him what he is. They took the name of the finest magician of the Order and blackened it in the eyes of the people. Everyone turned away from him, everyone he loved. Including his own twin brother, his wife, and his children! He had no other choice but Kronk-a-Mor and immortality. And now he wants to take his revenge.”

“There’s no one he can take it on. They all died ages ago, and his brother Grok has been lying in Hrad Spein for a long time.”

“This conversation is not going to lead anywhere,” Loudmouth said with a shake of his head, and walked out of the cell.

“Loudmouth!” Eel roared, and I started in surprise.

“Yes?” Amazingly enough, he came back.

“Remember, I’m going to cut your heart out!”

He didn’t say anything, just glared intently at the bound Garrakian through slightly narrowed eyes, grinned crookedly and not very confidently, and went out again.

“Here’s your water,” said Purple Nose, putting two bowls down in front of us.

“And how do you expect us to drink with our hands tied behind our backs?” I asked him.

“Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not my problem. I’m not suicidal and I’m not going to untie your hands. Find yourself another fool for that. But I can give you a piece of advice: You don’t have to drink it, you haven’t got much time left anyway.”

“Why did you drag us all the way here? You could have finished us off in the street.”

“You ask Rizus that when he comes to count your bones.”

Purple Nose started walking toward the door.

“Hey, scumbag,” Eel called quietly to the jailer. The Garrakian’s voice simply oozed the contempt of a superior being for an inferior.

“Scumbag? Did you call me a scumbag?” said Purple Nose, clenching his fists.

He bounded across to the Garrakian, waving his fists in the air. Eel didn’t look away, and Purple Nose couldn’t bring himself to punch him.

“Do you want to know how you’re going to die?” Purple Nose asked with an evil laugh. “Your neighbors in the next cell are going to eat you. I’ll introduce you right now.”

Purple Nose walked across to the metal door and pulled the squeaking bolt open with an effort. Behind it there was a massive forged-iron grille, blocking off the entrance into the next cell. I was unpleasantly surprised to see something that looked like tooth marks on the lower part of the grille. Someone had tried very hard to gnaw their way through to freedom, and I disliked that someone very much indeed. It’s best to give creatures with teeth like that a wide berth.

Preferably at least a league wide.

“I haven’t fed them for three weeks, so there won’t even be any bones left. I’m leaving the door open so that you can enjoy looking at them. Once Rizus has had a talk with you, I’ll be glad to turn the lever in the corridor, the grille will rise, and someone will get eaten, heh-heh!”

Purple Nose gave that repulsive chortle again and left the cell.

“What’s in there, Eel, can you see?” I asked nervously.

“No, but I don’t like this.”

“I should think not, with a stench like that coming out of the place!” I agreed.

The smell coming from behind the grille made me feel a bit panicky. It wasn’t really all that harsh, there was only a slight whiff, but it was quite enough to put me on my guard.

That was the way rotten meat smelled. Carrion. Corpses.

“The sons of bitches have got one of the living dead in there!” I exclaimed in horror.

“We seem to have arrived at the same conclusion.”

I shuddered. To be eaten by a walking corpse brought back to life by the chaotic magic of the ogres that was still floating about above our world. What a terrible death!

Behind the grille it was quiet and dark. Not a single movement …

“If only my family knew how low I have fallen.” Eel suddenly laughed for no obvious reason. “First I joined the Wild Hearts, now I’m behind bars and about to become breakfast for a lump of half-rotten meat! If my father found out, he’d have a stroke.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked in exasperation.

The Garrakian looked at me and laughed bitterly.

“I became a Wild Heart about ten years ago, Harold. The Hearts were my new family, and the Lonely Giant was my new home. I renounced everything in my old life and I became someone for whom I used to have little respect, whom I basically despised. In Garrak we’re not very fond of those you call Wild Hearts. You know why.”

“Who doesn’t know? Once upon a time in the hoary old days of Vastar’s Bargain, the Wild Hearts crushed the Garrakian ‘Dragon.’”

“For the nineteen years of my previous life I bore a different name. I changed my ancestral name, the name that my ancestors bore with pride, for the nickname Eel—what could be more terrible than that for a nobleman?”

I tried not to breathe, tried not to interrupt Eel’s story in any way. According to Marmot, no one in the Wild Hearts knew who he used to be and what he did before he arrived at the Lonely Giant.

He had always kept his distance from the others, always been calm and cool, never talked much, and he was magnificently skilled with the twin blades of the nobility of Garrak. Eel was a mystery. Rock, Ice, Unapproachable, Tight-lip—those were the few nicknames that Kli-Kli had given the warrior.

It was rather surprising to find Eel pouring out his heart to me. He wasn’t in the habit of making sentimental confessions, and some of the Wild Hearts still thought he would take the secret of his appearance at the Lonely Giant with him to the grave.

“My father is a Tooth of the Dragon,” Eel went on. “Do you know what that means?”

A bemused nod was all I could manage. According to a centuries-old tradition, only a close relative of the king could become a Tooth of the Dragon, and that meant that Eel had royal blood flowing in his veins. He was no ordinary little nobleman, not even a duke. He was an archduke, directly in line to inherit the throne if the king’s line should suddenly come to an end.

“My father, Marled van Arglad Das, cousin of the king of Garrak, is already the sixth Tooth of the Dragon in our family. A great honor, thief! The highest honor that can possibly be bestowed on a noble of our kingdom.”

I’ve heard that more than once before. All a Garrakian nobleman needs from life is the supreme glory of preserving the honor of his family line, the ancient traditions of the nobility, and other similar nonsense that I really don’t understand all that well. The noblemen of Garrak are total crackpots when it comes to the words “honor” and “loyalty to the king.”

“I’m the eldest son in the family, so I was due to become a Dragon’s Tooth, too. I was due…” Eel ground his teeth together.

“What stopped you?” I asked cautiously.

He looked at me, and I could see an entire lake of ancient pain splashing about in his eyes.

“What stopped me?” he repeated thoughtfully. He was obviously not there with me, but somewhere very far away, in the past. “Youth, overconfidence, and, I suppose, arrogance … In those days I thought I could take everything from life. The eldest son of a Tooth of the Dragon, the king’s nephew—I had a fine military career waiting for me … I did everything that I wanted to do. I thought I was number one, the best at everything, and many other people thought the same. And anyone who held a different opinion went to his grave after a duel. I was untouchable and far too reckless. The favorite of the nobility, of the women … I! I! I! That ‘I’ was what ruined me in the end.…”

“What happened?”

“That’s not important. It all happened many years ago. I made a mistake, disgraced myself, my father, my family, and my king. And disgrace can only be erased by death. So I died. Ulis van Arglad Das ceased to exist, and Eel took his place.… It was probably the best thing for everybody…”

He snorted.

“That night I died and preserved the honor of my line. No one ever found out that when the moment came, I couldn’t plunge the dagger into my own throat and I remained alive. Nobody, not even my father, and especially not the king, although I think that my younger brother has his suspicions.… I left the country.… No ancestral name, and no way of ever going back to Garrak. I had nothing left, apart from my weapons and the ability to use them. I went to the far side of the Northern Lands and became a Wild Heart. I became that for which I, the first warrior of the Dragon of Garrak, had previously had little love or respect. Here no one asked about my past and … but I’ve become very talkative today,” the Garrakian said, pulling himself up short. “I’m sorry for dumping all of this on you.”

“Forget it.”

“And you forget about this conversation. I should never have started it.”

“But you did start it, after all.”

He paused for a moment.

“I told you because I want to ask you to do something for me,” Eel muttered, and looked up at the ceiling. “If I happen to die, and you survive, give my ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ to my younger brother. He has far more right than I do to carry the ancestral blades of the line of van Arglad Das.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that,” I said after a pause. “The two of us are in the same boat, and we’ll be eaten together.”

“Just promise me,” Eel said.

“All right, I promise.”

“Thank you. I won’t forget this.”

Of course you won’t forget it, I thought. It would be rather hard to forget anything in the amount of time that pitiless Sagra has measured out for us.

Someone twittered behind the grille separating us from the next cell. Eel and I both turned our heads toward the strange sound at the same moment.

“Did you hear that?” I asked the warrior in a voice that was somehow too loud.

“Yes,” he answered morosely. “That’s even worse than hungry corpses.”

Worse than hungry corpses? Hmm! The Nameless One’s followers couldn’t really have stuck a h’san’kor in there, could they?

“Couldn’t you just tell me and not make me even more nervous than I already am?” I asked.

“Look!”

Eel somehow managed to hook an overturned bowl with the toe of his boot and smash it into the grille, sending a shower of fragments flying into the air.

The sparrowlike twittering changed to a menacing hiss, and four creatures threw themselves against the grille from out of the darkness with all the fury and hatred of hungry demons. One of the vile beasts tried to bite through the iron bars, and the mind-numbing grating sound ran round the cell, bringing my skin up in goose bumps. I turned cold and started praying to Sagot that the barrier would withstand those teeth.

The bars held, but there were notches left in them. Those teeth were famous throughout the whole of Siala. They effortlessly reduced the old bones of dead men in graveyards to dust.

“Gkhols, may Sagot save us!” I screeched. “That bastard has tamed gkhols!”

Eel didn’t say anything to me, he was studying the beasts that had come dashing to the bars.

Several long, weary, and rather unpleasant minutes passed. We observed them, and they observed us. The gkhols’ interest, unlike ours, was strictly gastronomic.

Not many city dwellers, coming upon a gkhol somewhere in an open field, would realize just who the spirits of evil had put in their path. They are quite rare now, and can only be found in the most desolate spots in Siala: in old abandoned graveyards and burial sites. They are scavengers and corpse-eaters who prefer human flesh, preferably after it has been lying in the open air for a week or two, but they don’t disdain other carrion. Gkhols, especially solitary gkhols, are cowardly, and so they’re not terribly dangerous for a full-grown man, unless he happens to be stupid enough to fall asleep beside an old burial chamber. But a solitary gkhol will easily kill a child, even a ten-year-old.

The situation changes drastically when the corpse-eaters gather together into a herd after going hungry for a long time. When they are in a state of rabid hunger, the beasts simply go berserk. Every child knows the story of the two knights who set out for some war or other and ran into a dozen gkhols who hadn’t eaten for a year. As you might expect, all that was left of the knights was their armor, and even that had been thoroughly chewed.

So what could two bound prisoners expect? Gkhols who hadn’t had a bite to eat for three weeks wouldn’t leave a single scrap of us behind.

One of the vile creatures had taken a grip on the bars with its little hands and was gazing fixedly at us, and thick, sticky spittle started dribbling out of its mouth.

How come they had managed not to eat each other in there?

The gkhol cast a carnivorous glance at me, leaned his head over to one side, and twittered derisively. He reminded me of a fledgling of some exotic kind of bird. Although, in fact, that idiotic chirping is the only thing that gkhols and birds have in common. Gkhols actually look like very unhappy and fairly harmless creatures, even if they do have a few odd features here and there.

They are small, no larger than a newborn child, with smooth, ash-gray skin, huge bloodred eyes like saucers, a disproportionately large head and small body with a protruding belly, short crooked little legs, long thin arms, and wide-spaced yellow teeth. People who have never seen them before and don’t know what it is they’ve run into are likely to feel sorry for them, or laugh, but certainly not feel afraid.

And that has been the death of many bold fools who have turned their back on such an apparently harmless creature when it was hungry.

“Eat!” one of them said suddenly, looking straight at us. “Eat-eat-eat! Eat! Aha! Eat!”

Like ogres, gkhols carry a few shreds of brain in their heads. The ogres, the only race from the Dark Age to have survived into our times, have degenerated from the most powerful race in Siala, the creators of the first new magic in the world—shamanism and Kronk-a-Mor—into stupid and extremely ferocious monsters. The gkhols, on the contrary, have grown cleverer and cleverer from century to century. But too slowly, fortunately.

They can remember and repeat single words just as well as parrots, and they are a lot more intelligent than the monkeys that can sometimes be found in the show booths on Market Square.

“Eat!” the gkhol said to us one last time, and then disappeared into the darkness.

Two others followed the little talker’s example, leaving the fourth to stand guard at the metal grille. The gkhol grabbed hold of it with his little hands, tugged at it a few times, and then hissed in disappointment.

“Just look at the little lad’s claws,” I said rather nervously.

How could I not be nervous, knowing that any moment Purple Nose could pull that lever and raise the barrier that was the only thing standing between us and a meeting with the gods?

“We ought to get some sleep, Harold.”

I looked at Eel as if he was insane.

“No, I’m absolutely serious. Sleep, there’s nothing we can do.”

“Go to sleep, with neighbors like that? No, thank you!”

“Whatever you say.” He closed his eyes.

This is a guy with nerves of steel. He could probably get to sleep with the Nameless One himself standing behind him.

I took another look at the gkhol standing on guard beside the grille. Demons of darkness! How much of that vile sticky saliva does he have inside him?

Noticing that I was looking at him, for some reason the gkhol started getting nervous, and he twittered. One of his friends immediately appeared out of the darkness to make sure that breakfast was not about to cut and run. Once he was certain everything was under control, he went back into his lair.

“Valder,” I thought, trying to summon the archmagician, “Valder, are you there?”

No answer.

As far as I knew from my dream about the magician’s former life, he really hated these vile creatures, but apparently this time the archmagician had no intention of interfering. A pity; I would have been delighted to see what a dry-roasted gkhol looked like. They’re much more likeable that way than when they’re still moist and alive.

I made a face at the gkhol sentry. He mirrored my efforts and made a face back at me, and I must say that the corpse-eater’s effort was a lot better, and a lot more frightening.

A little more than four hours had gone by since I first made the acquaintance of the charming family of corpse-eaters, and Eel had still not condescended to wake up.

Meanwhile the gkhols had already changed their sentries twice. They deliberately stayed where I could see them, staring with those red eyes, sometimes hissing menacingly, twittering and drooling, checking the metal grille to see if it was edible, and generally making me more nervous than the detachment of corrupt guards who once caught me in a certain count’s treasure house at an inappropriate moment.

Basically, the gkhols amused themselves until they got bored, and then the sentry withdrew into the darkness, but I could still feel the hungry gaze of those ravenous eyes on me.

The sun had been in the sky for a long time, its bright rays were shining in through the little barred window up under the ceiling of the cell and falling on the straw. Time slips through our fingers like golden sand, and no one can slow its pace.

At first I took no notice of the squeaking that came from somewhere above my head. But the gkhols and Eel did take notice. Alarmed by the unfamiliar sounds, the gkhols crowded against the grille, while Eel opened his eyes abruptly, as if he had never been asleep at all.

“Praise be to all the gods!” the warrior murmured joyfully, and his face lit up.

I turned my head to look at the little window.

“Invincible!” I exclaimed.

“Exactly. And that means that the lads have found us!”

“Hey! Is there anybody there?” we heard Marmot’s voice ask.

“We’re here! What took you so long?”

“Why didn’t you hide another ten leagues away? Then we could have spent another week looking for you! Are you alive?”

“Yes!”

“Can you move?”

“Our hands are tied!”

“That’s no problem. I’ll send Invincible down.”

“Find the door!” said Eel.

“That’s what we’re trying to do. There’s a whole heap of the Nameless One’s followers here. We’re just finishing off their patrols. Right, see you soon.”

Something glinted for an instant in the rays of the sun, and then a cobbler’s knife landed blade first, sticking into the straw just behind my back. With a squeak, the ling leapt down intrepidly from the wall, landing in the straw and ambling toward us.

“Now what?” I asked nervously, watching the shaggy rat.

“Now we get the knife.”

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t even move my hands, let alone reach for the knife. This damn rope!”

“Don’t be in such a great hurry, Harold.”

Meanwhile Invincible had darted across to Eel and started gnawing through the rope tying his wrists together.

“Surprised?” Eel chuckled. “Marmot’s taught the ling all sorts of tricks.”

“So I see.”

I took heart, realizing that rescue was close at hand. Soon one of the Wild Hearts would reach the cell and open the door, and we would be free.

The minutes dragged by, and a feeling of alarm crept into my heart. Where had they got to? Had the lads really been spotted and forced to retreat? No, what was I thinking of! Wild Hearts didn’t retreat and abandon their comrades. Any moment the bolt would clank and …

But the bolt didn’t clank. There was no sound at all apart from the vicious hissing of the gkhols, who seemed to realize that their breakfast was about to make a run for it. Invincible gave a squeak of satisfaction and came toward me, and Eel began rubbing his wrists.

“Right, now we’ll fight.” The Garrakian grabbed the knife and sliced through my rope at a single stroke. Just at that moment the lock of the door clanked.

“At last!” I hissed. “Hey, what are you doing?”

Eel dashed back to his old place, grabbing up the ling and stuffing it into his pocket on the way. He put his hands behind his back, setting the knife along his forearm so that it wasn’t visible to anyone else.

“Sit still and don’t move!”

Unfortunately, Eel was right; it wasn’t our rescuers who entered the cell.

Loudmouth, so imperturbable and so unfamiliar, so very different from the character that I was used to, leaned back against the wall farthest away from us, folded his arms across his chest, and fixed his eyes on an invisible point just above Eel’s head with an air of absolute indifference.

Purple Nose stood not far from me and pointed me out to the third man.

“There, Master Rizus, this one’s the thief.”

Master Rizus was short, with shiny black hair and deep-set gray eyes. His thin-lipped mouth and perfectly straight nose indicated a man not given to listening to other people’s opinions, and the unhealthy yellow color of his face put me in mind of the copper plague. He gave off an acrid smell of horse’s sweat, and his rich clothes were badly creased and spattered with mud. He’d probably galloped for a day and a night without stopping in order to view my humble person.

“I shall ask you just two questions.” For a man with such a delicate figure, his voice was exceptionally deep and low. “The way you die will depend on how you answer. Tell me the truth and you will die quickly. If you are stubborn, the gkhols will gnaw on your bones.”

“By your leave, Master Rizus, I will explain everything to them,” Loudmouth put in. “That way we will save a lot of time.”

The man nodded reluctantly and hissed: “But be quick. You have ten minutes while I change out of my traveling clothes.”

He went out.

“Friends…,” Loudmouth began.

“The Nameless One is your friend,” I replied morosely.

“Perhaps so,” said the traitor, not attempting to argue. “In case you have not already realized it, Master Rizus is a shaman and, I can assure you quite definitely, a very good one. He came to Ranneng especially to collect the Key for the Nameless One. I’m sure you can imagine how upset he was to discover that we didn’t have the artifact.”

We said nothing.

“All that Master Rizus wants from you is two honest answers to two very simple questions. If you answer them, I promise that I will kill you myself, quickly and painlessly. And then I shall make sure that you have a dignified burial.”

“And what are the questions, if you wouldn’t mind telling us?”

“I always knew that thieves were more amenable to a deal than other people,” Loudmouth chuckled contentedly. “The first question is: Who killed the shamans who were preparing to attack our group?”

“You were with us then,” I exclaimed in genuine amazement. “So how would we know? Some good people turned up, that’s all.”

“Good people are not capable of killing six of the Nameless One’s best shamans!” snapped Loudmouth. “Now Master Rizus is the only supreme shaman he has left in Valiostr.”

“Loudmouth, your Rizus is crazy. How does he think that we could know who knocked off his best wizards when we were ten leagues away in Hargan’s Wasteland?”

Well, I couldn’t really tell him that the Master and Lafresa were behind it all, could I?

Loudmouth clicked his tongue in disappointment and said regretfully: “Yes, I never really doubted that it wasn’t you, or Miralissa or Tomcat. They’re not up to it; this was done by someone of a much higher class.”

“Then why do you ask?” Eel said.

“Don’t look at me like that, old friend, or you’ll drill a hole right through me. Master Rizus wants to know, and I have to ask. All right, then, the second question is: Where is the Key?”

“Get lost!”

“Let me deal with him,” Purple Nose suggested to Loudmouth.

Loudmouth frowned angrily, but he didn’t say anything.

Eel muttered something very uncomplimentary about the big brute’s mother. The Garrakian’s calculations proved absolutely correct. The quick-tempered executioner immediately forgot about me, grabbed Eel by the sides of his chest, and lifted him up off the floor.

“Why, I’ll tear you to pieces! I’ll—”

But Eel punched the man under the chin with his left hand and threw the knife with his right. It flew through the air and hit Loudmouth in the shoulder. I jumped to my feet and took great pleasure in pounding the traitor with my fists.

Eel appeared beside me, pushed me aside, pulled the knife out of our enemy’s wound, slashed him across the leg below the knee, and knocked him to the floor.

“Rope! Look lively!”

Somehow we managed to tie the wriggling traitor’s hands together with the scrap ends of rope.

I hobbled across to the door and looked out into the corridor.

“All clear!”

“Excellent! Don’t take your eyes off that corridor!”

“For sure. Is he still alive?”

“Yes. Take the mouse from me.”

I put the ling on my shoulder and as my eyes met the Garrakian’s, I read the traitor’s death sentence in them. Eel leaned down over him.

“I promised to cut your heart out, but I don’t have the time for that now. Good-bye.”

He gestured to me to show me it was time to leave the cell. Once we were in the corridor, he closed the door and pushed the bolt home.

“Don’t tell any of our lads about Loudmouth,” he said to me. “Let them think he died back in the inn. They don’t have to know who the wretched villain really was.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t say anything about what I told you about myself, either.”

“Okay,” I repeated.

“And another thing … no one must hear a thing about there being enemies among the Wild Hearts. This is not the time to be spreading alarm. When we get back to the Lonely Giant, I’ll have a word with Owl myself.”

“All right.”

“I’m glad we understand each other,” the warrior said with a nod, and tugged hard on the lever that I hadn’t noticed in a niche in the wall.

A mechanism rumbled somewhere, raising the metal grille and letting the gkhols out. I shuddered, but I didn’t feel sorry at all for the Nameless One’s followers.

“Let’s go,” Eel said laconically, and hurried away without looking back. A guard jumped out of the watchman’s room and the Garrakian wrung his neck with a single deft movement.

The door of the corridor opened and three familiar short figures appeared in the doorway.

“What did I tell you, Hallas?” the smallest one piped happily. “I said I’d find them first, didn’t I?”

“Kli-Kli, is that you?”

“You humans have a strange habit of stating the obvious. Of course it’s me, Harold!”

“You’re the one thing I’ve been missing all this time.”

“And I’m glad to see you alive and well, too,” said the royal jester, making a face. “Oh, look! Gkhols!”

It turned out there was another cell full of the creatures. Apparently Purple Nose was even more of a pervert than I thought, and he bred them for his own pleasure.

The goblin completely forgot about me, went over to the grille with the crazed man-eaters raging behind it, and stuck his finger in, evidently wishing to get to know the vile creatures better. Fortunately for Kli-Kli, he had much faster reactions than the voracious little monsters, so he managed to pull back in time and the greedy jaws closed on nothing but air.

“Eel, your blades,” said Deler, leaning his poleax against the wall and taking the scabbards with “brother” and “sister” out from behind his back.

“You didn’t happen to bring the crossbow, did you?” I asked the dwarf hopefully.

“I did, but Marmot has it, so keep behind us for the time being. Kli-Kli, are you going to stay here?”

“I’m coming. Oh look! A dead man! Eel, did you wring his neck? Why is he looking backwards like that?” the goblin jabbered excitedly.

“Cut the chatter, Kli-Kli,” I growled at the goblin.

“It’s hard work with you fools,” Kli-Kli sighed, turning serious. “Well, are we going then?”

“It’s high time! Our lads have been holding the exit for us,” Hallas wheezed from under his helmet.

The gnome leaped out into the corridor, followed by Deler, then Eel.

Kli-Kli and I walked up a stairway and found ourselves outside the door, beside the gnome, the dwarf, and the man.

Master Rizus was lying there dead, with two black arrows sticking out of his back. Ell was standing there with his face painted black and green and his bow across his shoulder. Elves are not noted for magnanimity to their foes, and they’re not above planting arrows in an enemy’s back if he offers them such a magnificent opportunity.

“How did you manage to get him?” I asked the dark elf in surprise, with a sideways glance at the shaman’s body.

He didn’t look so menacing now. A skinny little man who had met his death from elfin arrows.

“Harold, are you blind?” Kli-Kli asked me mockingly. “Can’t you see how he died? He was shot full of arrows.”

“That’s not what I meant!” I said with a frown of annoyance at Kli-Kli’s slow-wittedness. “I want to know how he managed to kill a shaman.”

“A shaman? Hmm…,” rumbled Arnkh, who had just walked up to us, covered from head to foot in iron. He gave the body a curious glance.

“He could be a hundred times a shaman, Harold, but when I fire an arrow under a man’s shoulder blade without any warning, he forgets all about any shamanism,” Ell explained. “Do you think we fight the orcs’ shamanism in Zagraba with swords?”

“No, I don’t. An arrow from out of the bushes, and the job’s done.”

“Quicker, may the darkness take you!” we heard Marmot shout from somewhere in the distance, and then we heard men shouting and the clash of weapons.

The ringing sounds of swords clashing were suddenly interrupted by screams and howls—Milord Alistan had joined in the battle with his sword of singing steel.

When we darted outside, it was all over. There was a new dent in Alistan’s oak shield and the right sleeve of Marmot’s jacket was torn, but no one had been hurt, which was more than could be said for the enemy. Three of the Nameless One’s followers were lying dead and another was writhing in the bushes, groaning and clutching at his stomach.

Yes, this is no fairy tale. It’s only in fairy tales that men die honorably and silently. In life they usually squirm and howl and bleed a lot. Blood was oozing through the wounded man’s white fingers. He had been stuck as neatly as any pig.

Arnkh’s sword rose and came down again. The man fell silent forever.

“Withdraw!” Markauz ordered when he caught sight of us. “This noise will bring the whole nest of them running!”

So we ran. That is, the jester and I ran. The others withdrew in organized fashion to positions that had been prepared beforehand and were guarded by the Wild Hearts who had not been involved in the fight, Honeycomb and Lamplighter, and a rear line support group consisting of Egrassa and Miralissa, armed with bows. I couldn’t see Uncle anywhere. No doubt the platoon sergeant had been left behind at the inn because of his wound.

I heard shouting behind me, a crossbow bolt whistled through the air, and I took a dive, burying my nose in the ground and almost smothering the ling underneath me. Egrassa and Miralissa, joined by Ell, began returning the enemy’s fire, aiming at the windows and doorway of the building. Three of our pursuers decided to chase after us and try their luck in honest combat, but they each caught an arrow in the chest and ended up stretched out on the ground. That discouraged any more of the villains from sticking their noses out from behind their stone walls.

“Is everyone all right?” Miralissa asked, pulling her bowstring with an arrow on it back to her ear.

Twang!

“If you don’t count my nerves!” said Kli-Kli, as usual taking any opportunity to complain.

“There’s worse to come,” I muttered, getting up off the ground.

“Withdraw to the horses!”

Alistan’s order was never carried out. Something white but, unfortunately, not fluffy took off from the top story of the building where we had been held in the basement for almost an entire day and night.

“Look out!” shouted Miralissa.

I dropped to the ground again, and everyone else followed my example, including the elves. A blinding white disk rustled through the air with a with a whistling sound and crashed into an unfortunate apple tree, shattering it into a thousand tiny chips of wood.

A shaman, darkness take me! There’s another of the Nameless One’s shamans in the house, but Loudmouth told us … Well, never mind what he told us! A fact is a fact: A sorcerer had just flung something rather unpleasant at us, and it was only by good fortune and the will of the gods that he had missed by a good ten yards.

Miralissa was already on her feet; she started whispering and spinning like a top in a spellbinding dance. Ah, if only the elfess had power over the ordinary magic of men and the light elves, instead of shamanism that takes far too long to prepare, then we might have a chance, but this way it’s a game of cat and mouse. Or more like blind man’s bluff in total darkness. Whoever was quickest would win.

Ell and Egrassa concentrated their fire on the window that the disk had flown out of.

“Milord Alistan!” Miralissa’s cousin shouted before he fired yet another arrow at the window. “Get the men away!”

The dark elves’ attention was completely focused on the window. They had totally forgotten about the door, and the Nameless One’s followers immediately took advantage of the fact. Two crossbow men darted outside with the clear intention of making holes in our hides.

“There’s nothing we can do!” said Egrassa, taking another arrow out of his seriously depleted quiver. “They’re yours!”

The shaman could not be allowed to concentrate on a new spell. If the hail of arrows relented even for a moment, a white disk would reduce us all to a bloody pulp.

“Marmot, the crossbow!” I barked, and surprised even myself by jumping up off the ground.

With no hesitation, the Wild Heart tossed me my little darling. Thank Sagot, it was already loaded.

One of the enemy managed to get a shot off first, squatting down and firing at me from a kneeling position. Without aiming. Don’t anybody ever try to tell me that the Nameless One doesn’t have any professional soldiers! The only place you find crossbowmen with that kind of skill is in the army.

I would have caught a bolt in my lung if Alistan had not covered me with his shield—the bolt thudded into this barrier that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I chose the crossbowman who hadn’t fired yet as my target and pressed my trigger.

The crash was every bit as impressive as the shaman’s spell, I can tell you! The poor guy was reduced to a charred firebrand, and the other one, who was hastily reloading his crossbow, had his right arm blown off and his face almost completely burned away. I think the only ones who took no notice of the devastation caused by my shot were Miralissa, who was still whispering a spell, and the elves, who were busy preventing the Nameless One’s shaman from concentrating.

I hadn’t even looked at what my crossbow was loaded with. A bolt with a fiery elemental!

“Marmot, the darkness take you! What did you load it with?”

“That was Kli-Kli!”

“Harold!” the goblin whined. “They all look almost exactly the same!”

“Almost! Surely you can see that there are three red stripes on these?”

“Don’t be so stingy! The bolt may have cost five gold pieces, but this is no time to be cheap.”

When the doorway was suddenly covered with ice and we heard howls of pain, Miralissa finally stopped singing her song and spinning round like a child’s top at a fair.

The elves stopped firing and a white disk immediately came flying out of the window, as if that was all it had been waiting for. It was flying straight at us, and I swear I thought that this was the end!

But then the elfess’s spell took effect, and a green wall flashed up in front of us for an instant. It flashed up and then disappeared, but the disk, either flung back or reflected, went flying back in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, it hit the corner of the house, and not the window where the shaman was hiding.

Fine fragments of stone shot off in all directions, striking down the Nameless One’s supporters who had come darting out of the house. The magic shield protected us against being wounded or maimed.

Yet another disk, and another deflection back toward the house in which our enemy was lodged, but this time a green shield just like ours sprang up in front of the white projectile and it flew off to one side, demolishing a shed standing thirty yards from the building. Our horses whinnied in fright.

Another disk. And another. The Nameless One’s shaman possessed far greater skill than the elfin princess. Our shield sagged and shuddered noticeably with every impact.

“Get away, you idiots! I can’t maintain the defense for very long!” exclaimed Miralissa, pale from the effort.

“I’ll help!” said Kli-Kli, and he started rummaging desperately in his pockets.

“Let’s move back, Kli-Kli,” said milord, reaching out his hand to grab the goblin by the scruff of the neck, but Kli-Kli took a tangled bundle of string out of his pocket and pulled on some inconspicuous little loose end.

The whole structure, woven for so long with such care by the jester, who had promised that he would show us some “terrible shamanism,” instantly came unwoven and then dissolved into thin air in the most magical manner imaginable.

“Oi!” said Kli-Kli, gazing wildly at his empty hands: He evidently hadn’t been expecting this effect. “Why did it do that?”

Miralissa surprised me by pulling me down onto the ground then covering her head with her hands, and shouting, “Get down! Quick!”

The sight of the elfess with her face buried in the dirt was highly persuasive: If she was willing to do what no dark elf would normally do (bathing in mud is not one of the main elfin pastimes), then there was no point in wasting any time on thinking.

I dropped to the ground for the third time in the last two minutes, noticing as I fell that the roof of the building had flown a good five yards up into the air and was falling back into the fountains of roaring flame that were pouring out of all the windows and doors.

Boo-oooom!

An incredibly powerful blast of heat roared past above us. The air was sizzling hot and impossible to breathe. It scorched my throat and lungs. My clothes didn’t protect me, either. The heat licked at my skin, even through my jacket, shirt, and trousers.

I didn’t dare to raise my head until about twenty seconds later. The massive two-story stone house with a tiled roof no longer existed. All that was left was one wall that had survived by some kind of miracle. There were flames still roaring and licking at the stones. A broad spiral of black smoke was rising up into the sky.

Who would believe that could happen? He just pulled on a stupid piece of string, and suddenly there was nothing left! No house, and none of the people inside it, either.

Everybody, including me, was staring at the fire. I got up, dusted myself off, and glanced warily at the goblin.

“I … I … I didn’t mean it!” Kli-Kli jabbered, retreating in the face of our none-too-gentle glances. “I never thought! Honestly! There ought to have been a little fog, that’s all.”

“Fog!” Deler roared. He spat the sand out of his mouth, jabbed his finger toward the ruined building, and asked acidly, “Is that your idea of a little shower?”

“But honestly, I didn’t think that would happen!” the jester said with a guilty sniff. “My grandfather the shaman showed me that when I was little … I suppose I didn’t tie forty-five knots in it after all.”

The little jester’s face was covered in soot and mud and it wore an extremely guilty expression.

“Kli-Kli,” Miralissa sighed, wiping her dirty face with the back of her hand, “if you ever do anything like that again without warning me…”

The goblin started nodding so fervently that I thought his head would fall off his shoulders any moment.

In the distance we heard the sound of people hurrying toward the site of the explosion. It was time for us to get out while the going was good.

“To the horses! Quickly!” said Alistan, throwing his shield over his shoulder and running on ahead toward the spot where the horses had been whinnying only a few moments earlier.

I handed the ling to Marmot and tried to keep up with the captain of the royal guard.

“That was great!” panted Kli-Kli, running along beside me. “You can tell my grandfather was a shaman all right! I certainly showed them!”

There was not a trace of remorse in the goblin’s expression.

“You almost roasted us along with them, you genius!”

“You’re just annoyed because you’re envious of my abilities,” the jester replied.

I snorted derisively. Kli-Kli only pretends to be a fool and a windbag. In all honesty, the goblin is smarter than Master of the Order Artsivus, he just works on his image. But at moments like this I am almost ready to believe that the royal fool really does act the buffoon because he is so witless.

We ran past the smoking ruins of the shed and saw our horses beyond the apple trees. The poor animals were snorting and wriggling their ears in fright, and their eyes were wide with terror.

I greeted Little Bee with a gentle slap on her flank and jumped up into the saddle.

Alistan immediately set the horses to a gallop, and I had to focus all my attention on my riding, to make sure I wouldn’t go crashing into some tree that just happened to turn up in front of me. It was only after we saw Ranneng come into view ahead and we approached the city walls that the weariness came crashing down on me with all the weight of the sky.