Lex Trent versus the Gods

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lex and Schmidt came across no more kings as they made their way through the forest, confirming Lex’s belief that the hunt was probably over by now. But they did meet a couple of fairy godmothers who were out picking berries now that the forest was safe again. Their faces fell when they saw Lex, thinking that he was going to start pestering them for wishes (as any normal person would have done) so when he asked them where the crown was hidden, they were only too happy to point him in the right direction to get rid of him. Lex had no interest in wishes. What was the fun in simply being given something? The satisfaction came to a large extent from earning the thing… or, as in Lex’s case, from pinching it. He smiled, hoping that Lucius and the prophet might stumble across a fairy godmother themselves and be slowed down, greedily thinking of things to wish for.

When they came across a third fairy godmother, Lex made a show of whining about wishes first in order to convince the godmother to take him straight to the clearing where she knew the crown to be. He smiled as she led them on, keeping his eyes fixed on her neat grey bun. Apart from the slight detour with the witch, he had made good time. The others were certain to have ensnared themselves in traps or run into trouble with the kings and draglings and Lex was sure that they would not have been able to extricate themselves anywhere near as smoothly or quickly as he had done. He was bound to get there first. So with these happy thoughts going through his head, Lex was clearly somewhat less than impressed to walk out into the clearing to find that the crown… had already… gone. The colourful banners were there, hanging from the surrounding trees, the velvet cushion where the crown had sat was there but there was nothing else.

‘Where’s the crown?’ Lex said stupidly.

‘Someone got here first,’ Schmidt said with a smirk. ‘Serves you right for being so cocky.’

‘It’s not cockiness,’ Lex snapped. ‘We’ve made very good time. No one could have beaten us!’

‘The prophet left before we did,’ Schmidt said with a shrug. ‘You underestimated him.’

Lex shook his head impatiently. He knew he had taken the prophet’s head start into account. The prophet was blind and dumb and as such he would not be able to get help from the forest’s inhabitants. His precognitive ability would have helped him to some extent but he would still have had to circle the crown for some time before managing to zero in on it. This round should have been the easiest one for Lex since stumbling across the crown in the vast forest would be largely dependent on luck. And Lex was lucky even without the Lady.

‘It wasn’t the prophet,’ he said.

‘Lucius then,’ Schmidt suggested.

Lex didn’t even deign to respond to that, the notion was so ridiculous… although… it was true that his brother had managed to get to the broken mirror in the sky castle first and it wasn’t like there was a riddle to solve this time. All he needed to do was put the crown on his head and surely even Lucius could manage that? Just as Lex’s horror began to mount at the thought that his brother might actually have somehow beaten him, the fairy godmother bent over something on the ground beside the bare cushion and muttered an irritated exclamation.

‘What is it?’ Lex asked sharply.

‘I’m afraid I know where your missing crown has gone,’ she said glumly, turning around with a necklace in her hand.

Lex peered at the thing, at first thinking it was made of large misshapen white beads but on a closer look realising that it was, in fact, made out of small skulls.

Lucius very quickly became lost inside the forest. Because he was wandering through the outskirts he was never even aware of the hunt that was taking place in the thick of the wood and he was not overly afraid for his own safety because of the duckigs. Lucius was familiar with the creatures, having raised them on the farm and so he knew that they would not stay very long anywhere where there might be predators. Anyone who had ever had anything to do with duckigs knew that wherever the strange animals lived was likely to be one of the safest places on the Globe. They knew when danger was coming and they would always be gone before it got there. So he wasn’t scared for himself. But he was terrified for Lex. With the prophet being held back, Lex was bound to reach the crown first and Lucius knew that he wouldn’t think before putting it on. For all his supposed shrewdness, he would walk right into the trap, driven by that unquenchable greed. Unless Lucius could get there in time to stop him, Lex was going to be in very serious trouble indeed.

Lucius had no idea whatsoever about how to go about finding the crown. He needed help. He didn’t trust the enchanted trees or many other magical creatures for that matter. But there was one magical people he knew he could trust implicitly and that was the fairy godmothers. He knew they were said to take up their retirement in the forest. He therefore had no choice but to find one and implore her to help him. They were kindly old ladies and he was sure they would not let him down. But he had not seen any yet. Lex would probably stumble across them without even trying but Lucius wasn’t lucky like that. He needed to find their village. And the only way he could think to do that was to follow the duckigs. The duckigs liked people, and the fairy godmothers were bound to feed them sometimes. The creatures were therefore likely to stay as close to the fairy godmother village as they could and the more duckigs he came across, the nearer he must be. He had to reach that crown first, he had to! Otherwise, Lex’s lust for power and riches might be the death of him sooner than he’d thought.

Lex stood and regarded the fairy godmother village. It was quaint in a boring kind of way. The godmothers liked their neat, pretty little thatched cottages and every house in the glade seemed to be exactly the same… except for one, huddled miserably on the outskirts. It seemed to be mostly made out of mud and sticks with a feeble patch of what looked like weeds growing outside in sharp contrast to the neat rows of flowerbeds the godmothers favoured.

‘She doesn’t realise she’s a crone,’ sighed the fairy godmother.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Schmidt said, staring at the pathetic hut.

‘She calls herself Matilda. She thinks she’s a retired fairy godmother like us. From what we’ve gathered, we think her enchanter dispossessed her for some reason and she’s been alone ever since.’

‘I thought crones couldn’t survive without an enchanter?’ Lex asked.

The fairy godmother shrugged. ‘Matilda barely survives. She’d have died within a week in most forests but this one is kept safe for the kings to hunt in. She’s quite unbalanced of course. We don’t want her anywhere near us but we haven’t been able to get her to leave. It’s the most dreadful shame because that horrible little house of hers really spoils the neighbourhood and she goes through our rubbish at night, pinching things-’

‘I don’t suppose it occurs to any of you just to give her the things you throw away?’ Schmidt snapped irritably.

The fairy godmother gave him a startled look and went on hurriedly, ‘Crones are attracted to shiny things — I expect that’s why she took the crown. She probably just stumbled across it when she was out looking for berries.’ ‘Well, we won’t need to bother her for long,’ Lex said breezily, reaching his hand out towards the fairy godmother for the skull necklace.

‘For all you know she’s already put it on and made herself Queen,’ Schmidt said. ‘In which case, you’ve already lost.’

‘Crones can’t be royal,’ Lex said dismissively. If Schmidt had known anything about royalty he would have known that only humans could be kings and queens.

‘Well, at any rate I doubt she’s going to hand something like that over to you just because you ask her to.’

‘Whoever said anything about asking?’ Lex said with a nasty smile. ‘Trust me, she’ll hand it over.’

‘I should warn you,’ the fairy godmother began hesitantly. ‘Matilida is… not like other crones-’

‘Madam, she could be Queen Japunzel herself for all I care,’ Lex said firmly. He was going to get that crown if he had to wrestle the old crow for it himself. ‘Are you coming?’ he asked, looking at Schmidt.

The lawyer hesitated and then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’ll wait here. But be civil to her, Lex.’

‘I’m always civil,’ Lex replied. He wrapped the grotesque skull necklace around his wrist, walked up to the house, found the front door and went straight in without bothering to knock. After taking no more than a couple of steps inside he’d already managed to tread on about three disgruntled cats who shot out of the hut, hissing. The remaining cats regarded him moodily from their various perches.

Lex stopped in astonishment once he was inside. He had never seen a house quite like it. Crones liked small spaces, they liked strings of skulls and creepy, grinning masks and more cats than windows. And this one was no different but she had clearly tried to make the hut seem like a fairy cottage and the clash of the two decors was more than a little disturbing.

What light there was came from the large hole in the pointed roof and one small window set high up in the wall. There were the usual skull-strings but these had been painted with sap from the cherry-drop tree to make them pink and sparkly. A thick, matted spider web served as a substitute for a lace doily in the middle of the table upon which stood a vase with a couple of dead roses in it. There was a bed the crone had managed to get from somewhere, presumably a fairy godmother chuck-out for it was clearly old and worn and very, very lacy. The crone’s basket was perched on top of the bed, though, for crones did not like sleeping on mattresses — they would have to lie down straight then and their bent backs seemed to be more comfortable if they curled up in a basket. There were net curtains over the window but, like the bed, they were now so filthy as to be almost black. There was a mushroom ring in the middle of the room and in the centre of this sat Matilda herself. The fairy godmother had been right. Matilda was clearly not like other crones.

Physically she was much the same as all the others — an old lady with matted grey hair, a bent back and more than a few warts. But, at an angle on her grey head, was an old bonnet that she had clearly taken from one of the godmothers’ trashcans and a grotty old apron was tied around her waist. There seemed to be a cat sleeping in the front pocket. The rest of her clothes looked as if she had simply smeared cherry-drop sap all over them in an effort to make her outfit more colourful. The result was a sickly sweet smell that mixed with the other odours of cat, old mud and decaying flowers in the tiny hut.

‘Matilda doesn’t do princesses and coaches any more, dearie,’ Matilda rasped when she saw Lex silhouetted in the doorway. ‘Matilda is retired. You must take your pumpkin elsewhere.’

‘I don’t have a pumpkin, you blind old woman!’ Lex said irritably, unimpressed with being mistaken for a princess by anyone. ‘I just want that crown you pinched from the forest. Where is it?’

‘Matilda doesn’t steal,’ the old crow sniffed huffily.

Lex walked over to the bed and tipped the grubby blankets in the crone’s basket out onto the floor, ignoring her squeal of protest. He looked through them with his boot and then kicked them away into a corner once he was satisfied the crown wasn’t there. Then he turned the bed over and did the same with that as more cats shot out of the hut in alarm. He tried not to touch anything more than he had to, for it was clear that no cleaning ever went on here. The crown wasn’t in the bed but where else could it be hidden? There wasn’t anywhere to hide such a thing in a tiny, empty hut like this. Lex tried to control his frustration. He tried to prevent a snarl from curling his lips. But he could feel his anger mounting. He had had just about enough of old women for one day. And if this one hadn’t interfered, he would have won the round long ago.

‘I know. It’s in the walls, isn’t it?’ Lex said with sudden maliciousness.

He stood back a little and kicked as hard as he could at the mud wall. It crumbled around the edges of where Lex’s foot had struck it, dust rising up in a cloud and bits of twig and stone falling to the floor in a heap. It was clear that a few good kicks from Lex would be enough to bring the entire wall down. The crone was on him at once, tugging at his shirt and screeching in his ear. ‘Do not wreck Matilda’s home!’ she wailed. ‘It took Matilda so long to build! No one else would help her!’

‘Then tell me where the crown is, you stupid old crone, and I’ll stop destroying your house!’

‘Horrible boy has no right,’ she sobbed. ‘No right! The crown belongs to Matilda!’

Lex aimed two more really hard kicks at the wall and this time he broke right through so that the wall partially crumbled in on itself and light shone into the hut. The crone screamed at him but still she wouldn’t tell him where the crown was. The prophet wouldn’t need anyone to tell him where it was for he’d be able to sense the magic in it. He’d be circling in on it even now whilst Lex wasted time messing about with this infuriating old woman. Jezra’s opinion of Lex as a player would be diminished. He’d wonder why he ever went to such trouble to try and procure him. Gods would no longer argue over him and his name would never be etched in stone. And he would have won ages ago if it hadn’t been for this vile, pathetic, thieving old crone.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

Lex turned to see Schmidt’s lanky frame in the doorway. The noise from the destruction of the wall had drawn the lawyer down to the hut. He had to bend almost double just to get inside. Lex ignored him. Time was precious and they had wasted more than enough as it was. So Schmidt didn’t like his methods. Fine. That was why Schmidt would never be a winner like Lex was.

‘Tell me where it is or I’ll pull your whole house down!’ Lex shouted, turning back to the crone.

‘I’ve had enough of this!’ Schmidt snapped, striding into the room and pulling Lex roughly away from the weeping old woman.

‘Oh, get off me! Do you remember what happened last time you tried to protect a crone? She attacked you with a pair of walking sticks! She’s a thief! She stole my crown! I thought you frowned on stealing, Schmidt?’

‘Whatever else she is, she’s an old lady and you will respect her for it!’

‘Respect her for it? Respect her for it? Why should I respect her just for being old?’

‘Because she knows things about life that you couldn’t possibly understand, you arrogant brat!’

‘Oh, spare me!’ Lex said angrily, throwing the lawyer off.

‘You’ll be an old man one day, Lex. It’ll come quicker than you think and you might regret all this then.’

‘I don’t intend to ever be old!’ Lex snapped. ‘I want to die young! I have it all planned out — I’m going to die suddenly, extraordinarily, doing some daring, villainous thing! I’m not content to just drift towards a slow, undignified death like you are!’

‘You know, if it wasn’t for your brother I would have thought that whoever brought you up did a very poor job of it indeed and clearly had no manners whatsoever themselves,’ Schmidt said spitefully.

‘My grandfather had impeccable manners!’ Lex shouted and then cursed himself for rising to such obvious bait.

‘Yes, well, I’m forced to believe you since Lucius must have got his manners from somewhere, although I suppose he might have just read about them in books.’

‘Lucius!’ Lex sneered. ‘If my grandfather was alive today, Lucius would be just as much of a disappointment to him now as he was when we were growing up, because my grandfather was an Adventurer and a storyteller and he liked excitement like I do! And I am quite sure that he would have detested you, Mr Schmidt, because you are quite the most boring, uninteresting man I have ever met in my life.’

‘Yes, perhaps you’re right,’ Schmidt said calmly. ‘But if you really were the favourite, as you claim, I find it odd that Lucius was the one who cared for your grandfather when he became ill.’

That was the nub of it, really. One might think that his parents dying at such a young age, and then his grandfather succumbing to a horrible illness just a few years later might have changed Lex. But the truth was that he had always been this way. He had always had a terrible thirst for adventure as well as a generous dose of selfishness that must, by very definition, accompany all the truly great Adventurers. You can’t be ‘ truly great ’ if you let family ties and responsibilities hold you back. Lex knew it, and his grandfather had known it. Alistair Trent might have come back to raise his grandsons but that was only because there was no one else. He had not been around whilst Lex’s father was growing up. Adventurers had to be selfish if they were to be any good, but no one ever seemed to be able to understand that. And Schmidt had no right to criticise Lex for leaving when his grandfather became ill. No right at all! What did Schmidt know about it? What did he know about what life had been like back then — how intolerable it had all been?

Lex glared ferociously at the old lawyer. ‘So Lucius blurted out our life story, did he? He always did have a loose tongue. Yes, I left home when my grandfather became ill and I’d do it again. Do you know why? Have you seen the way old people are treated? They’re treated like imbeciles half the time. If people aren’t outright rude then they’re condescending and patronising and that’s worse! I left because I couldn’t stand the sight of it a moment longer. He wouldn’t have wanted us to see him that way. It was… it was undignified!’

‘But, Lex,’ Schmidt said softly, ‘surely you’re not saying that old people deserve a modicum of respect are you?’

Lex opened his mouth to give some clever retort but then froze and glanced at the crone with a scowl, realising that he’d contradicted himself. ‘No, I’m not,’ he sniffed. ‘My grandfather was better than everyone else but this crone deserves nothing from me. And I’m warning you now that if you say one more word about him I’ll put that enchanter’s hat back on and turn you into a ferret, too!’

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ the lawyer said mildly. ‘The hat will probably kill you next time you use it.’

‘You’re bluffing!’ Lex scoffed.

‘Perhaps. But you can’t be sure, can you?’

‘I’ll risk it! It would be worth it!’

Schmidt shrugged. ‘Go outside and I’ll get the crown for you.’

‘Oh, will you?’ Lex sneered. ‘Smuggle her out the back door and into the forest, more like. I’m not letting that old woman out of my sight for a second!’

‘Then you’ll never get the crown,’ Schmidt said simply.

Lex laughed. ‘How little you know me. Crones love their cats, don’t they? There were some here a minute ago. I’m going to go out and start skinning them and when she’s fed up with listening to the screams of her dying pets then perhaps she’ll tell me where the crown is.’

Predictably, Matilda started the most ear-splitting wails at Lex’s words — he’d never heard anything like it.

‘Gods, is it really worth all this upset?’ he asked, throwing up his hands. ‘If you just tell me where the crown is, all this would be over!’

He shook her just a little to reinforce his point, ignoring the protesting clicks of bones that came from the old woman’s body. But within moments, Schmidt had grabbed him by the arm, spun him round and smacked him hard across the face. Lex staggered back a few steps out of pure shock. Then the lawyer and the thief stared at each other for a moment in surprise, ignoring the screeching of the crone.

‘Well,’ Lex said at last, reaching up to wipe blood off his lip, ‘which of us is being civilised now?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Schmidt said, and to be fair he looked it. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.’

‘No, but I bet it felt good, didn’t it?’ Lex asked, smiling to show the blood on his teeth.

The lawyer winced. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘But you just don’t know when to hold your tongue. You can’t treat people like that.’

Lex shrugged. ‘Go ahead and smack me around. It’s happened before and I’m sure it’ll happen again. I’ve never pretended to be one of those strong, muscled types, so I can’t stop you from hitting me if you want to, but if you think it’s going to shut me up in any way or stop me from doing whatever I need to do to win, you’re wrong.’

Schmidt sighed and turned back to the crone. Lex saw him whisper something in her ear. At once she stopped crying, looked up at Schmidt as if seeing him properly for the first time and, to Lex’s astonishment, hugged him!

‘Oh, Marvin,’ she sobbed.

‘Marvin?’ Lex repeated. ‘You two don’t know each other do you?’

Schmidt said nothing but Lex could tell from his face that he was feeling very uncomfortable indeed.

‘Oh, my Gods,’ Lex gasped, as a horrific thought struck him. ‘That’s not your mother is it?’

‘Of course she’s not my mother,’ Schmidt snapped. ‘Now shut up so I can find out about this crown.’

‘Don’t let him kill my cats, Marvin! Don’t let him do it!’

‘No one’s going to touch your cats, Matilda,’ Schmidt said. ‘Just tell us where the crown is and we’ll be on our way.’

‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about, anyway,’ Lex said irritably. ‘What’s the crown to her but a shiny thing? She probably doesn’t even realise what it is. She can’t make herself a queen with it, so what use is it to her?’

The crone wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve, glared at Lex and then leant up to whisper something to Schmidt. The lawyer frowned and then nodded. He straightened up and looked at Lex. ‘She needs to keep the crown.’

‘Why?’ Lex demanded.

‘You don’t need to know why,’ Schmidt replied impatiently.

‘Well, it’s irrelevant anyway because she’s not keeping it. There’s a prophet out there,’ Lex said, looking at the crone. ‘And he can sense magic. So wherever the crown is hidden, he’ll find it eventually without any help from you.’

The crone gave a startled yelp at that and turned imploringly to Schmidt. ‘Matilda,’ he said, ‘perhaps you could just let Lex put it on for a few seconds and as soon as he’s done he’ll take it off and give it straight back to you. How about that?’

‘That’s no good at all!’ Lex said before Matilda could reply. ‘I want to keep it! Do you know how beautiful those things are meant to be?’

‘How does Matilda know you won’t just take the magic crown from her if she shows it to you?’ the crone demanded.

‘Because I promise you that won’t happen,’ Schmidt said.

‘But this isn’t fair!’ Lex wailed. ‘It doesn’t belong to her!’

‘Well, she did find it and by your definition I would have thought that would constitute full legal ownership, Lex,’ Schmidt replied sharply.

‘Oh, all right,’ Lex said, unwilling to waste any more precious time. ‘All right, she can keep it. Just get her to take me to it quickly before the prophet finds it.’

‘It’s still in the house,’ Schmidt said.

‘Where?’ Lex stared round suspiciously. There just wasn’t anywhere the crown could possibly have been hidden in the tiny space, unless it was on the crone herself. Lex grimaced with distaste at the idea of having to strip search the old woman.

‘She buried it. It’s in the floor.’

With a decided lack of good grace, the crone squatted down in the centre of the mushroom ring and started scrabbling around in the soft mud. Lex looked on, horrified as she slowly uncovered the crown.

‘She buried it in mud?’ he groaned.

‘Why? What does it matter?’ Schmidt asked. ‘You can still put it on for a second even if it’s not clean, can’t you?’

‘But I want to see how beautiful it is. I’m not putting it on my head like that,’ Lex said, staring at the misshapen lump of mud the crone was offering him. ‘It’ll have to be washed.’

‘Oh, don’t be so childish, Lex. What does it matter as long as you win the round?’

‘If I’m not allowed to keep it, I at least want to see it,’ Lex snapped, snatching the dirty crown from the crone. ‘Now where can I clean it up?’

‘There’s a water pump outside,’ the crone said. ‘Matilda is not supposed to use it but she can show you where it is.’

Lex gave a curt nod. This whole business was really starting to wear on his nerves. It was an undignified way to be crowned. It would have been much nicer if he’d found the crown in the quiet, sun-speckled glade as Lady Luck had intended instead of having to dig it out of a crone’s muck before washing it at some miserable little pump. But the development with Schmidt had been interesting. Very interesting indeed. Although it had naturally hurt to be hit in the face, Lex was glad he had succeeded in making Schmidt lose his temper, making him lose control. It might be useful for the future. People were easier to manipulate when their control wavered like that. And guilt was always a useful thing to have tucked away somewhere. Lex’s curiosity was even more aroused by the revelation that Schmidt knew this crone. Lawyers were not generally on speaking terms with magical peoples. It was frowned on by the Law Society, so this was another thing that Lex carefully filed away under Potential Leverage.