Lex Trent versus the Gods

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘You must have some idea where the crown is,’ Lex said to the tree impatiently. ‘Don’t you take any interest at all in what goes on in the forest?’

The grand old tree regarded Lex disdainfully. ‘Little human,’ it said majestically, ‘human crowns are of no importance to us whatsoever. It’s not here; I suggest you look elsewhere.’

‘But you must have seen where the Goddess put it or at least be able to direct me to the general area,’ Lex insisted.

‘Why should I?’ the tree asked lazily. ‘What’s in it for me?’

‘Well, not getting chopped down by me for a start,’ Lex snapped.

‘Lex,’ Schmidt warned.

At Lex’s last words, the trees surrounding them in the dappled green grove seemed to rustle their leaves in a distinctly threatening way and the light from Saydi’s sun became a little darker. No sane person wants to be surrounded by a group of large, strong, rather put-out enchanted trees when they’re lost in the middle of an enchanted forest. It’s not a happy situation.

‘You do not even begin to possess the strength that would be necessary to damage us, little boy,’ the tree said, evidently less than impressed with Lex’s scrawny frame.

Lex frowned, irritated. Okay, so he wasn’t exactly the bulging-with-muscles type and no teenage girl was ever likely to exclaim in delight after ripping his shirt off. But he was clever. He did have that. And you did need to be clever to lie convincingly.

‘I have a magic axe,’ Lex announced, pleased to note the alarmed rustling from the trees.

‘No you don’t,’ the tree scoffed. ‘Only magical people have things like that.’

‘You know that enchanted ship that flew overhead an hour or so ago?’ Lex asked. ‘I stole it. I’m the one who flew it here. I made a list, you see, of things I’d never done before. Escaping from prison was one of them. So was stealing an enchanted ship. I’ve never cut down a magic tree either.’ Lex eyed the tree before him with renewed interest. ‘Do you think if I cut the bark up into little bits I could sell it back in the Wither City?’ Lex asked, turning to Schmidt. ‘Actually, come to think of it, I might be better off cutting down all these trees and taking them back to the ship and just forgetting about the crown altogether. I bet they’d fetch an absolute fortune. I’ll get started,’ Lex said, shrugging the bag off his shoulders and rummaging through it in search of the nonexistent magical axe. ‘You go back to the ship and get the other axe and then come back and-’

‘No, no,’ the tree said hastily. ‘Look, we don’t know exactly where the crown is. All we know is that the Goddess left it due north from here.’

‘How far?’ Lex asked.

‘Towards the middle of the forest.’

‘Thank you. To show my gratitude for your help I shall spare you,’ Lex said graciously.

‘You are most noble, young Adventurer,’ the tree said gratefully. ‘May your Chronicles fill many shelves.’

Schimdt gawked at Lex as he turned and strode due north out of the glade. How did he do that? Schmidt couldn’t help feeling a little envious. It would be nice to be able to wrap anyone around your finger in that way.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Lex said when Schmidt caught up with him. ‘If only I would use my power for good instead of for evil, right?’

‘Something along those lines, I suppose,’ Schmidt said. ‘You could have been a very fine lawyer, Lex.’

‘Because I’m inwardly contemptible, you mean?’

‘No! Because you’re quick thinking. As it is, you’re the kind of person who gives the legal profession a bad name. The law used to be something noble once. It was what separated us from the animals and the magical peoples. We had rules — certain lines we were not allowed to cross. Lawyers were like policemen. We were like guardians. And then people like you came along and started twisting everything so that justice wasn’t what was being aimed for at all any more. It’s a disgrace! It’s an absolute disgrace, Lex!’

Lex gazed at the old lawyer in surprise. He could tell that Schmidt was already regretting what he’d said. ‘Well, I never got the chance to twist anything,’ Lex said mildly, ‘seeing as I never qualified. There’s only so much damage you can do to the noble legal profession when all you ever do is file papers and make the coffee. So I can only assume you weren’t talking about me. So what is it, Schmidt? Do you have some dirty, dark little secret lurking in your past? How very mysterious. I shall make it my duty to find out what it is.’

‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you,’ Schmidt said dismissively.

Lex opened his mouth to rub more salt into the raw wound when his nose began to fizz and he rummaged desperately for a handkerchief, only just managing to find it and press it over his face before the ferocious sneeze came. Luckily, Schmidt was already stalking huffily ahead, so he didn’t see the nine or ten nasal lice thrashing around in Lex’s tissue. Lex shook them out onto the ground in disgust and then hurried to catch up with the long-legged lawyer.

Apart from the obvious enchanted trees, the only other things they had seen so far were the deer that lived in the forest and the odd fleeting glimpse of woodland spirits flitting between the trees. Both were gentle and neither were likely to pose any threat to them, but still Lex was watchful. It would be very easy to get lost in a place like this and there were stories about the things that lived in enchanted forests. If Lex lost this round he could still win the Game if he did well in the third round. But this was extra special to him now because of the crown. Not only would he get to see and touch a genuine royal crown, but his temporary royalty would mean that his name would be added to the Royal Monument in the centre of the Wither City. That would be immensely satisfying. It would piss Schmidt off for one thing. And it would earn him a kind of immortality. Children had to memorise the names of kings at school and he loved the thought of being partially responsible for the hair-tearing frustration of that exercise.

The Royal Monument was something of an anachronism in a way but it was tradition and people clung to tradition like leeches because it made them feel safer in changing times. Any man who had been a king, even if only for a few minutes, would have his name inscribed on the Monument and passed down through the years. Hundreds and hundreds of years from now, people would look at the Monument, reading through the names and Lex Trent would be there — set in stone at last. Lex was absolutely determined to have the crown for himself and he was more than happy to cheat to get it. He deserved it because he was the only one who would fully appreciate it. It was not just about winning the round now, it was about tasting royalty just for a moment and the immortality that went with it.

They headed on deeper into the forest, towards the centre. Lex was feeling a little uneasy about the prophet. Everyone knew that prophets were dangerous because they could see the future and so were sometimes able to manipulate it. They couldn’t speak so they couldn’t utter spells or enchantments but it was difficult to outwit a prophet when they could see what you were going to do. And then of course there was Jezra who was even more pissed off than the prophet.

The forest itself was not overly dangerous. But it was maze-like and they kept finding themselves getting turned around. It was as if the forest did not want them to travel too deeply inside. And then there was the whistling. A strange, ominous high-pitched whistling that seemed to be coming from something on the forest floor around them. The sound was making the lawyer look distinctly uneasy so Lex didn’t trouble himself to tell Schmidt that the whistling was in fact caused by harmless duckigs — strange little creatures that looked somewhere between a duck and a pig. Lex knew there wouldn’t be anything overly dangerous in the Royal Forest for although the kings rather enjoyed hunting down gentle, harmless deer, they were not favourably inclined towards being butchered themselves…

… Now, usually, Lex would have been quite right about that but, to make the round more interesting, Lady Luck had deliberately chosen a day when she knew that the kings were to hold a royal hunt. Although usually they only hunted deer, today they had the extra special treat of hunting a wicked witch. Lady Luck knew this because that morning she had made a gift of the witch to the kings, knowing full well that they would instantly set her loose in the forest to hunt, for — with the possible exception of taking royal mistresses — there is nothing in the whole world that any king loves more than a good hunt and a grisly kill.

Lex and Schmidt had been in the forest for only half an hour when they saw the kings go thundering past on horses, elephants or rhinoceroses depending on the ethnicity of the particular king. Fortunately, they did not notice Lex or Schmidt — who crouched down to watch from behind some bushes where they could get a good view without being disturbed themselves. But Lex’s heart couldn’t help but sink a little. The kings were all waving huge swords and screaming war cries, but they weren’t even the worst part of it — it was what they were hunting with that concerned him. For the kings were preceded by a pack of rabid draglings. The baby dragons were about the size of large dogs and came in a variety of colours from blue to green to yellow to orange. They were all slavering at the mouth — or at the snout — driven half insane by the maddening scent of the evil witch…

When the last king — a fat one trailing behind on a huge elephant — had loped noisily past them, Lex turned his head to meet Schmidt’s gaze. He felt just as horrified as Schmidt looked, but couldn’t help breaking into a broad smile at the expression on the old lawyer’s face.

‘Why are you grinning?’ Schmidt snapped.

‘Because you’re not! Don’t worry, sir. I won’t let them get you.’ He reached out to pat the lawyer’s hand comfortingly.

Schmidt snatched his hand away and said irritably, ‘Let’s just get on with it.’

So they got on with it — albeit with a lot more caution, for the forest had just become a much more dangerous place and they realised that without even knowing about the witch.

When the kings split up shortly afterwards, it became practically impossible to move about the forest, for as soon as they took a step in any direction they would see a king thundering through the trees up ahead.

‘I think we’d better find somewhere to hide until they’ve passed,’ Lex said reluctantly. He didn’t want to have a repeat performance of what had happened in the sky castle by getting trapped between kings, for he didn’t know that he’d be able to pull another miraculous escape out of his hat this time.

‘Very sensible,’ Schmidt said approvingly. ‘I agree entirely.’

That almost made Lex change his mind and, indeed, he was right on the verge of saying that perhaps they would continue just a little bit further before finding somewhere to hide when a pack of four draglings burst out of the nearby trees, closely followed by a ferocious-looking king on an even more ferocious-looking rhinoceros. The king saw Lex and Schmidt at once, gave a great bellow of anger and raised his sword over his head, screaming about assassins as the whole lot came charging towards them. Lex and Schmidt turned as one and raced into the forest as fast as they could.

They didn’t have much of a head start and Lex knew that the draglings would be upon them at any moment. Attempting to outrun them was quite, quite hopeless. But, as luck would have it, as they stumbled and slid their way down a leaf-covered slope, Lex tripped on a raised tree root, crashed into Schmidt and sent the pair of them rolling down the hill where they landed right beside the narrow mouth of a cave.

‘In here quick!’ Lex exclaimed, heaving the lawyer back to his feet and dragging him into the cave from where they had a perfect view of the king thundering past a bare minute later.

Fortunately, draglings are unable to detect the human scent and so could not tell that Lex and Schmidt had left the path. They were, in fact, a totally ineffectual animal with which to hunt, which was why the kings very rarely caught anything. They liked the draglings because they were colourful and impressive and the sort of creature a king was expected to hunt with. And it was worth it even if it meant they didn’t catch their prey, for although the kings really loved to finish the hunt with a bit of blood and gore, the main attraction for them was that they got to ride along screaming and waving their swords.

Lex and Schmidt watched as first the scaly, lizardy draglings raced past, slavering madly, followed a moment or two later by the wheezing rhino, eyes rolling in anger at the way the insane king in his billowing royal blue robes was sticking his spurred heels mercilessly into its sides. In another moment they had stumped out of sight and Lex said to Schmidt with a smile, ‘If he carries on like that he’s likely to get impaled on the horn of his own rhinoceros.’

Before Schmidt could reply, a voice from the cave behind them made them both jump. It was a sly old voice, practically dripping with greed.

‘Why, it appearth that dinner hath walked right into my cave all by it-thelf.’

Lex and Schmidt turned around and out of the gloom stepped the wicked witch the kings were hunting. She had green skin, long, greasy black hair, a hooked nose with a large spot on the end of it that looked as if it was about to burst at any moment and her almost-blind eyes had a milky white sheen. She slowly smiled, displaying the revolting remnants of her decaying, yellowed teeth, although most of them were missing — which quite possibly explained the lisp. Lex could smell her bad breath from where he stood.

‘ Urghh! ’ he exclaimed in obvious and horrified disgust. As someone who was an absolute stickler for cleanliness, the contents of that rotting mouth were enough to make Lex feel sick. He turned on his heel with the intention of walking straight out of the cave and back into the forest. Better to risk insane kings and rabid draglings than this… But there were bars blocking his way. And when he turned back he realised that they were all around him, trapping them both. The witch had conjured up a cage — one of her gnarled, bent old hands with disgustingly overgrown fingernails was still stretched out towards them. She gave a dry cackle that made the hairs on the back of Lex’s neck stand up.

‘Dinner ith therved,’ she giggled to herself before turning away and promptly starting to build a cooking fire from the sticks and twigs that littered the floor.

‘I thought you said there was nothing dangerous in the forest?’ Schmidt hissed.

‘There isn’t, usually,’ Lex replied defensively. ‘She must be what the kings are hunting.’

‘And you call yourself a lucky person?’ Schmidt snarled. ‘Things just seem to go from bad to worse whenever you’re around!’

‘Oh, settle down,’ Lex said calmly. ‘I have every confidence that I shall be able to talk my way out of this. If you’re extra-specially polite to me, then I just might save your skin as well. Again.’

He turned away from Schmidt and studied the cave. It was always sensible to study your surroundings first — see what might help you and what might hinder you… The cave was a deep one — stretching far back into the rock. There were obviously large trees above it, for Lex could see the thick roots entwined throughout the walls. Sunlight shone in from a hole in the ceiling and it was beneath this that the witch was assembling wood for a fire, attempting to whistle while she worked but — due to her lack of teeth — mostly just spitting on the sticks. There was a large black cauldron behind her, set on top of a metal tripod, presumably to hold it above the flames and, on the floor, were an assortment of rather dirty vegetables, which mostly seemed to be turnips and carrots.

‘How long have you been living here?’ Lex said, for if she had only been set loose in the forest that morning, then it seemed rather odd that she had stopped to collect vegetables and a cauldron from somewhere before finding a place to hide from the kings.

‘A few dayth,’ the witch replied cheerfully, ‘before the Goddeth took me to the kingth.’ She shrugged. ‘All they did wath thet me looth, tho I came thtraight back here and — lo and behold — my dinner came in right behind me. Wathn’t that a fortunate cointhidenth?’

‘Most fortunate,’ Lex replied. ‘But I see you already have quite an assortment of vegetables there to eat. Wouldn’t you rather just make do with them and allow me to reward you handsomely for letting us go free?’

Lex could see at once that this line of reasoning was going to be quite, quite useless. The witch was already shaking her head vehemently. ‘There’th nothing like a good thlab of meat!’ she said gleefully as she pointed a gnarled finger at the pile of wood. A green spark leapt from her filthy fingertip and in a matter of moments caught onto the sticks so that they crackled away cheerfully. ‘Ethpecially little-boy meat — that’th alwayth the juithietht and I haven’t had any in thuch a long time!’

Lex scowled. ‘Not that I suppose it matters much at this stage but — just for the record — I am not a little boy!’

‘You mean you’re a big boy?’ the witch replied, practically salivating at the mouth in anticipation as she dragged the cauldron towards the fire — water slopping over the edges as she did so. ‘Exthellent. Now I than’t have to wait and fatten you up a bit before eating you. Oh, what a featht I thall have!’

‘Skinny as a rake,’ Lex said hurriedly. ‘Not a scrap of meat on me. A walking skeleton would give you a better meal.’

But the witch was cackling to herself and not listening to him.

‘I have a vast array of treasures in my magic bag here,’ Lex announced. ‘You can have your pick of anything in it if you will let us go free.’

‘I thall have everything in your bag little boy, oneth I have feathted on your flesh!’

Lex swallowed. She had a point there. How could he possibly hope to bargain with anything that was inside the bag when it was as good as hers, anyway? He eyed her critically as she sat herself down beside the vegetables and started peeling the carrots with a dirty old knife. Despite being armed, she didn’t look very strong — he might be able to push her over when she opened the cage and then make a break for it. But witches were not like crones — they had dangerous magic of their own and she was bound to have some sort of fail-safe in place to ensure that Lex did not escape. For all he knew she would cast a spell so that he willingly climbed right into the pot himself… Lex shuddered at the thought. He feared he could hear the water bubbling already…

He pulled himself together and desperately tried to think. If anyone was going to eat him, it was not going to be someone with teeth like that. An idea occurred to him and he said, hopefully, ‘You’ll never be able to eat me, you know. Not with those teeth. You can’t possibly chew meat with hardly a single tooth in your head. You’ll find me tough as old boots.’

The witch carefully laid a peeled carrot on the ground. ‘I chop my food into very tiny pietheth. Like thith.’ And she lowered the knife and chopped through the carrot so quickly that in no time at all there was only a handful of bite-sized chunks on the floor. She scooped these up and dropped them into the cauldron with a splash. ‘I can eat you,’ she said with an obscene grin. ‘Jutht ath long ath I cut you up thmall enough firtht.’

Lex swallowed hard. He didn’t like to admit it, but he was beginning to feel a little frantic. Turning his attention away from the witch, he looked at the cage instead, hoping to find some weakness, but the bars appeared to be made of bone and were quite solid. There didn’t seem to be any chance of breaking them or squeezing out between them. It was all beginning to look a bit desperate.

‘Whereabouts do you come from?’ he said. Lex had learnt long ago that, when in doubt, the thing to do was to keep people talking about themselves. Sooner or later they were bound to give you something that you could use against them.

‘What are you doing?’ Schmidt whispered, digging Lex sharply in the ribs. ‘How is making chitchat with her going to help?’

‘I don’t see you coming up with any ideas!’ Lex said irritably, shoving the lawyer away. ‘A fat lot of use you are, just standing there criticising me! Keep your bony fingers to yourself!’ But then his head snapped back to Schmidt and he stared at him for a moment as if he’d never seen him before. Then a grin slowly spread across his face. Schmidt did not like the look of that grin. He didn’t like the look of it one bit.

Lex turned his attention back to the witch, looking at her intently. Just how blind was she? She must have some sight for she was cutting up carrots without any problems and yet her eyes were that milky-white colour so she obviously couldn’t see at all well…

‘I can see there’s no talking you out of it,’ Lex said loudly. ‘You’re going to eat me and that’s that.’

‘That’th that,’ the witch agreed, nodding her head over her carrots. There was a neat little row of them lined up in front of her already.

‘Yes. But what are you going to do about the stick? Cut it up and use it for your spells, I suppose.’

‘Thtick?’ the witch said, looking up suspiciously, her hands stopping their peeling. ‘What thtick?’

‘Why, this one, of course,’ Lex replied, jabbing his thumb at Schmidt. ‘I found him on the forest floor. The kings knocked him off his tree during their hunt and I was going to return him. I mean, it never hurts to make a friend of a magic tree, does it? I knew he had to be from a magic tree because-’ He broke off abruptly because the expression on Schmidt’s face was putting Lex in imminent danger of laughing and it was very important that he didn’t. He pulled himself together, cleared his throat and went on, ‘It’s not every day you come across a walking, talking stick.’

He clapped his hand over his mouth to muffle the snigger as the witch scrambled hastily to her feet and scuttled closer to the cage. She wasn’t quite close enough for Lex to touch her or try and make a grab at her, but she was near enough that he could see the sheen of grease on her green skin and the ever-so-faint glimmer of fear in her milky eyes as she squinted intensely at Schmidt’s tall, skinny frame.

‘That’th not a magic thtick!’ she said at last. ‘Magic thtickth talk.’

Lex looked back at Schmidt. The only words he’d spoken since they were trapped had been whispered ones that the witch clearly had not heard. Lex opened his mouth to order Schmidt to say something but then hesitated. He was himself a natural actor and could embrace any role that was presented to him instantly — as such he knew he could have done a beautiful impression of a magic stick. But Schmidt was a dry old lawyer and was already looking rather panicky at the prospect of trying to pass himself off as anything other than what he was. Perhaps it was better that he shouldn’t talk, for he might somehow end up giving the game away and ruining everything.

‘Can ordinary sticks wave?’ Lex asked, with a pointed look at Schmidt who awkwardly raised his arm and waved it around a bit.

But the witch, although she squinted at them intensely, was apparently unable to see this, for she said, ‘I don’t thee anything. That’th no magic thtick. You’re jutht trying to trick me with an ordinary one!’

She was about to return to her carrots at any moment, Lex could tell. There was nothing for it. Desperate times and all that.

‘Well, come on, magic stick,’ Lex said with an air of impatience. ‘Speak up! Tell her what you are.’

Schmidt scowled at him for a moment before clearing his throat and — looking exceedingly uncomfortable — said stiffly, ‘I am a magic stick.’

The witch gave a great squeal of alarm and Lex — because he couldn’t resist it — said, ‘What makes you a magical stick?’

‘I can walk and talk,’ Schmidt replied through gritted teeth.

Lex allowed himself to burst into laughter. It hardly mattered now, for the witch had clearly been taken in by it and, Lex had to admit, Schmidt’s dry, old voice did sound a bit like the sort a stick might have.

‘The joke’s on you, witch!’ Lex exclaimed gleefully. ‘Even as we speak the magic trees are tightening their roots around your cave. They want their stick back and they’re very angry with you for imprisoning him like this. Soon the roof will cave in altogether!’

With the usual lucky timing that Lex seemed to be blessed with, there was a thundering from above — probably caused by an elephant-riding king going across the roof — and several clumps of mud were shaken loose to land on the witch’s shoulders. She screamed shrilly and suddenly the cage was gone and she was practically pushing them towards the exit.

‘Out, out!’ she gasped. ‘Get out at oneth. Tell the magic treeth to thtop — I’m letting you go! Leave my cave alone!’

A moment later they found themselves back out in the dappled sunlight of the forest floor and the witch was barricaded securely in her cave. They set off in a random direction, eager to be as far away from her as possible. They were a reasonable distance away before Lex allowed himself to burst into laughter — partly because he was genuinely amused and partly because he wanted to add as much as he possibly could to Schmidt’s humiliation. The lawyer was not used to being put in undignified situations and — unlike Lex — he had not already been called all the names under the sun. Referring to him as a walking, talking stick was funny because, as far as Lex was concerned, there was a very large element of truth to it.

He was a little disappointed that Schmidt didn’t rise to the bait, but instead merely stood there in dignified silence, watching him patiently. Lex had a good chortle anyway, determined not to let the lawyer ruin his fun, then he straightened up and said with his most smug expression, ‘You’re welcome!’

‘On the contrary,’ Schmidt replied calmly. ‘ You are welcome.’

Lex shrugged. ‘A team effort, I should say. I was the brains of the operation and you were… well, we all know what you were!’

Still grinning, Lex looked around for the first time, taking in his surroundings and trying to get his bearings. The forest was silent. There was no sound of hooves or hunting horns or screamed war cries. All was quiet once again and it occurred to Lex that perhaps the kings had given up by now and gone home. After all, they enjoyed hunting but not enough to persuade them to miss their lunch, and the midday sun was now high in the sky. Time was flying by and they would have to get a move on if they wanted to get to the crown before the prophet. But… but…

… There had been draglings before. And Lex knew that where there were draglings there would be a dragon lurking about somewhere, and where there was a dragon there was a dragon’s lair, and where there was a dragon’s lair there would be gold. Could there possibly be time to-‘Control your greed!’ Schmidt snapped.

Lex looked at him in surprise. Had he actually been thinking out loud?

‘I can tell what you’re thinking!’ Schmidt sneered at the expression on his face. ‘You’re not very complex, Lex, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re quite right, Schmidt. The crown should be our first priority. But after that — if there’s time, of course — I think I may go dragon hunting.’