Shadow Prowler

18. THE COUNCIL

I could glimpse the jester’s figure up ahead of me, so I wasn’t going to get lost in the immense labyrinth of corridors and stairways. But I had to hurry to keep up with Kli-Kli in his gray and blue leotard. Well-trained servants in livery opened the doors for the goblin to admit him, and therefore me, into the inner sanctum of the royal palace.

My desire to tear the little green mischief-maker’s head off was gradually fading, but my new friend decided not to tempt fate and he kept his distance from me. And basically he was right. The joker certainly deserved a good thump.

I swerved round a corner, trying to catch up with the goblin, and came nose-to-nose with a bevy of court matrons taking their aging little daughters for a stroll. Without even stopping, the jester bowed with an irreproachable technique worthy to be included in all the textbooks on etiquette, and skipped straight through this unexpected barrier of wide skirts.

I smiled politely at the ladies, but failed to make an impression. Or rather, I made precisely the opposite impression to what I had intended. The ladies wrinkled up their high-society, aristocratic little noses as if I reeked of the cesspit.

In actual fact, they were the ones who stank. Their aromas were so pungent that I almost fainted. The scum! They think their made-up titles and phony airs make them stink less than those of us who have to struggle.

“Your Excellency!” the jester called to me from the far end of the corridor. “How long do I have to wait for you, duke?”

When they heard that I was a duke, the ladies suddenly changed their opinion about my own humble person. The wrinkles on the little noses disappeared, and coquettish smiles appeared on the little faces. They weren’t at all disconcerted either by my less than elegant garb or the bruise on my face. I was a duke, and an aristocrat can get away with anything.

I scowled and dashed on by. Who needed them anyway? Life is complicated enough without adding a woman to the chaos.

The goblin was shifting impatiently from one foot to the other as he waited for me in front of a pair of massive white doors with gold inserts showing an obur hunt. There were six guardsmen standing rigidly to attention beside the doors. While I was walking toward them, the jester managed to pinch one of the men in gray and blue on the leg, stick his tongue out at another, and then try to grab yet another man’s sword from him. The goblin was basically making as much mischief as he could. The soldiers in the guard of honor didn’t turn a hair, but I could quite clearly read in their eyes the desire to flatten the little snake just as soon as the watch was changed.

As soon as he saw me getting close, Kli-Kli stopped his comic antics and pushed open the doors. “Harold, keep your wits about you, now,” he squeaked in a merry voice.

Easily said. It was the first time I’d been in the throne room. It was huge-so huge that it could accommodate all the nobles in the kingdom if they were packed in good and tight. And wouldn’t I love to see that. But seriously, the space was quite big enough for rehearsing military parades. At least there would be more than enough space for the cavalry.

The windows were huge, too. They ran from the square black-and-white tiles of the floor all the way up to the ceiling. Somewhere far, far away in front of me was the king’s throne with two guardsmen frozen beside it in a guard of honor. Apart from them there was nobody in the hall.

“Didn’t you tell me the king was hauling his courtiers over the coals?” I asked Kli-Kli, and then immediately shut up.

My voice, amplified tens of times, echoed all the way round the hall. There must have been some magic involved. Even if you spoke in a whisper, anybody anywhere in the throne room would hear you.

“Well, what if I did? You never know what sort of things a jester might say.” The goblin giggled. He listened to the resounding echo and then began doing something which, in his own goblin opinion, was extremely important: He lifted up his left foot and started skipping on his right one from one white square on the floor to another, trying not to step in the black ones.

We walked the entire length of the throne room like that: the goblin hopping on one leg, and me walking at a moderate pace, trying to resist the powerful temptation to break into a run and strangle the light-hearted villain. The jester hopped as far as the throne, which, I must say, didn’t look at all special against the general background. There were no gold castings, no rubies the size of a tiger’s head. None of those rich and extravagant whimsies for which both of the Empires were so famous. The emperors there try to outdo each other in their display of luxury. Our own glorious Stalkon, may he sit on this throne for another hundred years, preferred to put his gold into the army, not into gorgeous playthings of dubious value.

Paying no attention to the mute guards, the jester climbed up onto the throne, picked up the royal scepter (which looked more like a heavy staff, the kind you could easily use to beat off attackers) off its velvet cushion, and jumped back down onto the floor.

“Don’t hurt yourself now,” I jibed, which earned me a contemptuous glance.

Kli-Kli did put his new toy back on the cushion though, only he added the stump of the carrot to it. He stepped back, holding his head on one side, like an artist admiring the work he has created, and then, pleased with the result, he beckoned me onward. At the very end of the hall there was another pair of doors exactly like the ones through which we had entered so recently. The jester kicked them as if he were the master of the house.

“After you!” he said, gesturing for me to go through.

I found myself in the room to which Frago Lanten had brought me the time before. I already knew everyone there, so no introduction was necessary. I bowed politely. When I looked up, I was looking straight into sparkling golden eyes. We acknowledged each other and looked away.

“Enough of that, Master Harold,” said the king. “Let’s leave your dubious etiquette to my courtiers. Have a seat. What took you so long, Kli-Kli?”

“Why ask me?” the jester asked, pulling a sour face. “It’s so hard to get Master Harold to move… It took me at least fifteen minutes to persuade him to come.”

I choked on my indignation at this barefaced lie, but controlled myself and decided to ignore the king’s jester.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I muttered.

This time Stalkon didn’t look anything at all like a genial innkeeper in a sweater and soldier’s trousers. I thought the expensive clothes and the narrow ring of the crown on his head suited this man far better.

“Master Artsivus has informed me that your endeavors have been crowned with success,” said the king.

Artsivus frowned. He was obviously out of sorts. One of my friends used to have an expression like that when he was tormented by constipation. I just hoped that the archmagician had a different reason for his bad mood. He gave me a look that wasn’t exactly the friendliest, but he didn’t say anything.

“Yes, Your Majesty, I have completed all the preparations for our… er… little undertaking.”

“I have many questions. Would you be so kind as to tell us once again what has happened to you?”

The king’s wish is the law. I sighed and for the umpteenth time that week started telling the story of my adventures, only on this occasion I kept nothing back. Well, almost nothing. I didn’t say a word about Valder this time, either.

Halfway through my narrative, my throat finally dried up and I began talking more and more quietly. Noticing this, Stalkon clicked his fingers casually, and the attentive jester poured me some wine. I kept my eyes on him to make sure there was no laxative in the glass. Then I went on with my story.

Artsivus merely raised an eyebrow every now and then, usually when he heard something for the first time. Something I had kept secret from him during our ride in the carriage. The most interesting thing was that no one interrupted me and my listeners were not bored by my interminable story. But everything comes to an end sometime, and eventually I was able to sigh in relief and wet my throat once again with the remarkable wine from the king’s cellars.

“A fine kettle of fish,” said Kli-Kli, the first to break the silence.

“You put it too mildly, fool,” Alistan Markauz blurted out. This time he was dressed in an ordinary guards’ uniform. The famous armor that had become a legend among the warriors of Valiostr must have been taking a rest that day. “The kettle is boiling over, my dear jester, and we can only hope that we won’t get scalded. Forgive me, Your Majesty, but despite all our secrecy the forthcoming expedition has become known to our enemy.”

“Not only to our enemy,” Miralissa purred. “You are forgetting about the Master.” For a moment I wondered how such a sinister sentence could sound so pleasant. The race of elves were known to have good voices. Where had I heard that bit of wisdom?

“Have you heard of him before?” the king asked the elfess.

“No.”

“The archives will not be of any help to us, either,” the Rat added morosely. “The royal sandmen have searched for days and found nothing.”

“Not exactly nothing,” Stalkon objected. “They have found something.”

“Ah,” the captain of the royal guard said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “That’s nonsense.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Artsivus.

“You see, Your Magicship, as we were plowing through the old chronicles, we came across the interrogation of a certain Djok Imargo. The man whom everyone knows under the name of Djok the Winter-Bringer. He claimed that he had been deliberately framed for the murder of the Prince of the Black Rose, which was committed by the Master’s henchmen. Of course, no one could find any Master, nobody had ever even heard of him, and Djok was handed over to the elves.”

“Did he tell you anything about this, Lady Miralissa?” the archmagician inquired.

“I’m sorry, milords, but I don’t know that piece of history very well,” Miralissa said with a shake of her head. “And in addition, it was an internal matter of the House of the Black Rose, so the House of the Black Moon did not intervene. I will ask Ell. He is one of the elves accompanying me, from the House of the Black Rose.”

“Very well. Let us consider the Master to be perfectly real and just as dangerous as the Nameless One-if not more dangerous. After all, we still don’t understand what it is he wants,” said the king.

“A retarded ogre could understand what he wants,” Kli-Kli objected. “He doesn’t want the Horn to fall into our hands.”

“There are many who do not wish to see the Horn return to the world. Even the Order is among those who regard it as too dangerous, but unfortunately it is essential. Do you have the papers with you, Harold?” Artsivus asked.

I nodded reluctantly. It had cost me much effort to obtain them, and now I didn’t really feel like handing the plans of Hrad Spein over to the Order. Not even on a temporary basis.

“Would you please let me have a look at them?”

There was nothing I could do but reach into the bag and hand the papers to the archmagician. He began studying the maps, moving his lips occasionally when he came across lines that he found interesting.

The others began waiting patiently for the archmagician to condescend to share his observations. But just then the doors of the room swung open and the lieutenant of the palace guard whom I already knew came in.

“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but the gnomes are outside…” The lieutenant looked a little crestfallen.

“And what is it that they want, Izmi?”

“They say that a goblin remarkably similar to your jester stole their, or rather, your cannon, as soon as they managed to repair it.”

“How can that be?” Like everyone else, the king could not really understand how little Kli-Kli could have made off with the huge, heavy cannon.

“The gnomes say he used a spell and the cannon simply disappeared.”

“Kli-Kli, is this true?”

“Well, not exactly,” the jester muttered, studying the toes of his boots.

“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?” the king roared.

“Well then, it’s true,” the jester muttered, acknowledging Lieutenant Izmi’s accusation. “I only wanted to try out one of the spells from Harold’s bag.”

“You tried it, and now I’ll have to pay for it! Who’s going to settle matters with the gnomes?”

The jester maintained a polite silence, pretending to be very, very ashamed. No one believed in Kli-Kli’s repentance, of course.

“Try to smooth this matter over.”

Having received this impracticable order, the poor lieutenant did not hesitate for an instant, but found the inner strength to nod and set out to do battle with the gnomes. The assignment he had been given was dangerous and difficult. Not to mention impossible.

“Listen here,” Artsivus said, clearing his throat. The archmagician had not taken the slightest notice of the unpleasant incident that had just taken place. All of his attention had been focused on the old papers. “There’s something very interesting here…”

The master of the Order read out the riddle in rhyme that had interested For so much. But unlike my teacher, the archmagician had no need to reach for a dictionary; he had complete command of the original language of the orcs and elves-ancient orcish.

“I can say straightaway that one quatrain is the most absolute and blatant piece of plagiary that I have ever seen in my life,” the jester put in as soon Artsivus finished reading.

“And which one is it you don’t like?” the archmagician asked in surprise.

The jester declaimed in a singsong voice:

In serried ranks, embracing the shadows,

The long-deceased knights stand in silence,

And only one man will not die ’neath their swords,

He who is the shadows’ own twin brother.

“That’s from the Bruk-Gruk.”

“From the goblins’ Book of Prophecies?” Miralissa inquired. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve never been more certain in my life. It’s definitely from the Bruk-Gruk. Only, some learned scribes have altered the rhythm.” The goblin seemed about to burst in his indignation that someone had dared to corrupt a great goblin prophecy.

“What book are you talking about?” Alistan asked. Like me, he had never heard of any Bruk-whatever book.

“My dear count,” said Kli-Kli, his voice oozing venomous disdain. “You really ought to set your sword aside and take up reading. The Bruk-Gruk, or Book of Prophecies, was written by the insane shaman Tre-Tre three and a half thousand years ago. It is an account in verse of the most important and crucial events that will take place in the world of Siala for the next ten thousand years. For instance, it foretold the appearance of the Nameless One. And there are lines about the Forbidden Territory, too, although the Order took no notice of them in times gone by.”

Artsivus frowned even more darkly at these words from the goblin, but apparently decided it was below his dignity to argue with a jester.

“My grandfather was a shaman,” Kli-Kli went on. “And he trained me, too. However I was not born to be a magician. But I do remember the Book of Prophecies by heart, and so I recognized the quatrain immediately.”

The jester’s voice positively rang with pride. I think his shaman grandfather would have been no less proud of his grandson. Memorizing an entire book written by some crazy madman-that definitely requires persistence and talent.

“And what was the quatrain in the original?”

Tormented by thirst and cursed by darkness,

The undead sinners bear their punishment.

And only one will not die in their fangs,

He who dances with the shadows like a brother.

“That’s not so smooth. I liked the first version a lot better,” I said, letting him know my opinion of the poetry of the goblins.

“Oh, just look at you! The great connoisseur of literature and art! That was written by the great insane shaman Tre-Tre!” said Kli-Kli, trying to put me in my place.

“That’s pretty obvious.” This time I didn’t intend to let the jester have the last word.

“But then we don’t steal other people’s prophecies and transform them into neat little verses,” the goblin snorted, and turned his back on me.

My ignorance of the literary masterpiece by a goblin shaman who gorged himself on magic mushrooms had finally convinced the little jester that I was basically illiterate.

“By the way, Kli-Kli, what is that prophecy about?” Stalkon asked.

“It’s called ‘The Dancer in the Shadows.’ I could recite it for you in full, but that would require a couple of hours.”

Oho! It seemed like the old shaman didn’t know when to stop! Whenever he wrote a poem, it was at least two hours long!

“And in brief?”

“Er-er-er…,” said the jester, wrinkling up his forehead. “Let’s put it this way. It’s a prophecy about a man who makes his living from an iniquitous trade, but who has decided to serve the good of his homeland. There are all sorts of things in it, but in the end he will attain salvation for the peoples of Siala and halt the advance of the enemy. Salvation comes from the Mysterious Stone Palaces of the Bones. That means Hrad Spein, in case anyone didn’t understand,” said Kli-Kli, casting an expressive glance at me. “It’s a prophecy about you, Harold. Well, I never thought I’d meet a real live hero out of the Bruk-Gruk.”

“Stop telling fibs,” I said dismissively. I didn’t like the idea of becoming the hero of some goblin prophecy made up by an insane old shaman. “I don’t believe in stupid fairy tales. That Tre-Tre of yours got something confused, or he ate something that disagreed with him. And why does it have to be me? As if there weren’t plenty of people plying iniquitous trades!”

Well, let them try to guess the meaning of some useless fairy tale if they want to! What’s important is that I don’t believe in the insane ramblings of shamans driven crazy by charm-weed, but you can’t expect too much from a goblin, especially if he happens to be the king’s fool.

“All right then, ‘The Dancer in the Shadows’… Interesting… I tell you what, Kli-Kli, you write out this prophecy on paper for me, and I’ll familiarize myself with it when I have the time,” said Artsivus.

“A toy-oy-oy,” a deep voice said behind my back, and a man jumped forward into the center of the room.

His respectable shirt was dirty and stained, his trousers were crumpled, and the hair on his head was a genuine disgrace, a bird’s nest.

“I want a toy,” the man said, then he flopped down on the floor and banged one foot on it.

The eldest son and former heir.

No one really knew what it was-a punishment from the gods or something that just happened-but King Stalkon the Ninth’s eldest son, a man the same age as myself, had the mind of a four-year-old boy. Naturally, he would never be able to claim the throne, which would have to pass to the younger prince, who also bore the name Stalkon, like all the men in this dynasty.

The older son had been given several nannies to care for him, and he lived in his own childish, fairy-tale little world, which was probably very happy, without any of the pain, dirt, and blood of the real world.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep? Where are your nannies?” the king asked his son. I sensed an unusual tenderness in his voice.

“Rotten beasts!” That was all the prince had to say about his governesses.

“I’ll take him,” Kli-Kli intervened. “You come with me, Stalkosha, come on. I’ll give you a toy.”

“A toy?” The king’s eldest son bounced up onto his feet and stomped after the jester, who had already slipped out through the door.

There was an awkward silence in the room.

“Please accept my apologies.”

“Come now, Your Majesty.” The elfess’s yellow eyes flashed in understanding. “You are not to blame.”

“Then who is, if not me? The gods?” There was a clear note of bitterness in the king’s voice.

No one answered him.

I could understand the man. When, for no particular reason, a healthy twenty-year-old heir is suddenly transformed into an idiot with the reason of a four-year-old child and all your hopes are dashed, it must be appalling. And frightening. As appalling and frightening as being an orphan alone in the streets. Stalkosha, at least, had people who cared for him. Some of us weren’t so lucky. But our king had always had the reputation of a strong man. After all, he had survived even that. And if he hadn’t completely recovered, at least he never showed his grief. There were rumors that the young prince had been damaged by magic. But what kind of dark wizardry it was and who had worked it, the rumormongers never got a chance to say. The king’s sandmen shut the talkative lads’ mouths by dispatching them forever to the Gray Stones-or perhaps to even more distant places.

“So, it’s a prophecy about you, Harold,” said Stalkon, finally breaking the heavy silence.

“I very much doubt that, Your Majesty.” I really didn’t believe in the goblin’s tall stories. “An unfortunate coincidence and nothing more.”

“It can hardly be about our dearest thief,” said milord Alistan, supporting me. “Thieves don’t end up in prophecies. The best a thief can hope for is to end up in the Gray Stones.”

Artsivus also paid little attention to the goblin’s fairy tale. The Order is very old-fashioned in this regard, and it pays no attention to any prophecies at all unless they were created by magicians from the tower.

“Lady Miralissa, can you tell us what this Selena mentioned in the poem is?”

“Selena? That’s ancient orcish, the first language of this world, unless you count ogric. But a very strange dialect. If one uses a bit of imagination, it could simply be a play on words. In the old language ‘sellarzhyn’ is ‘moon’ and ‘ena’ is ‘purple.’ A purple moon? It’s the first time I’ve come across the word. It is not mentioned in our Annals of the Crown.”

“So there’s a purple moon in Hrad Spein,” Kli-Kli giggled as he returned to the room. Somehow he seemed to find this fact extremely amusing.

“That is only my provisional translation,” Miralissa said with a barely noticeable frown. “We need to do some work on the documents before we can understand exactly what is what.”

“And the work will be done, do not doubt it. Harold!” said Artsivus, turning to me. “You don’t object if I take this document, do you?”

I shrugged indifferently. Why not? I remember verse pretty well, so he could take it; maybe the Order would dig something up.

“That’s excellent,” Artsivus said delightedly, handing the rest of the papers to the goblin so that he could pass them on to me.

Kli-Kli gave a humorus curtsey in the finest tradition of the ladies at court, crossed his legs, and sat down, holding up the papers. I put them away in my bag, paying no attention to the fool, which didn’t seem to upset him very much. In any case, he pulled a face that only I could see and went back to the carpet.

“I have another two questions. What are the halls of the Slumbering Whisper and the Slumbering Echo?”

“I don’t know, Harold. In Zagraba we have legends about many terrible things to be found in the Palaces of Bones, but I have never paid any attention to them. And I have never heard anything about such halls in Hrad Spein.”

“And what are the Kaiyu?”

“More precisely the blind servants of Kaiyu,” the elfess corrected me. “That is yet another tale that has lived on for over a thousand years. It came into being at the time when we began fighting the orcs in the Palaces of Bone. In order to protect the graves of the elfin lords against defilement, our shamans summoned creatures from distant worlds, so that they would guard the peace of our dead forever. This is a very, very old legend. No one has been down to those levels for hundreds of years, and our records about Kaiyu contradict each other.”

“You are setting out tomorrow morning,” said the king. “Lady Miralissa and her companions will lead the expedition through the Forests of Zagraba. Alistan, you are in command. Try not to be detained anywhere and to get back as quickly as possible. As soon as spring comes and the snow in the pass melts, the Nameless One will set out from the Desolate Lands.”

“My king, perhaps we ought to send several thousand troops to the Lonely Giant as reinforcements?”

“Pointless. The Wild Hearts will not be able to hold out in any case. And the regular army will only get in their way. The Lonely Giant is merely a small dam, and it will burst under the combined pressure of the Desolate Lands. The border has always held only because of the bravery of the Wild Hearts and the aggressors’ inability to unite. Sending the army there, Alistan, would mean risking the very life of the kingdom. You understand that yourself. We’ll send a hundred Beaver Caps and the Jolly Gallows-Birds from two ships. They will help the Wild Hearts to hold out for as long as possible. A week, two at the most, so that I’ll have time to prepare the counterattack. Closer to winter we’ll have to send another thousand soldiers.”

“My father and the other heads of houses intend to send about three hundred archers to help you,” said Miralissa.

“Yes?” The king was not the only one delighted by this news. “Please convey my gratitude to your father, milady.”

I chuckled. It might seem to many that three hundred archers are a mere drop in the ocean… Well now, that’s true, just as long as they’re not elves. But three hundred elfin archers can reap the enemy in a deadly harvest. It was more than eight hundred years since Filand fell out over something or other with the light elves of I’alyala, but everyone still remembered how less than thirty elves had routed the heavy cavalry of the Filanders. Hitting the joints in the armor and the eye slots in the helmets, firing twenty arrows a minute, the handful of elves forced four select legions of cavalry, four hundred men, to retreat. Or rather, only two hundred men actually managed to retreat. The same number were left lying on the ground.

“We shall pass through Valiostr, cut across the Iselina, and enter the forests from the side of the Border Kingdom,” Miralissa said.

“Those are dangerous parts,” Markauz said with a frown of disapproval. “That’s orc territory.”

“But that is where our nearest entrance to the Palaces of Bone lies; we would have to travel through the Forests of Zagraba for another three weeks to reach the other entrance,” said Miralissa, adjusting a strand of ash-gray hair that had come loose from her tall hairstyle. “So we shall have to take the risk, just as the previous expeditions did.”

Alistan Markauz said nothing, but it would have been obvious to a hedgehog that he was not very pleased at the prospect of making his way to Hrad Spein through the forest of the orcs. Neither was I. My preference would have been to stay at home and drink wine.

“I think that you will reach the goal of your journey in a month. That is, you should arrive during the first days of August,” Artsivus declared.

“That is if there are no unforeseen circumstances,” Stalkon objected.

Everybody understood what kind of unforeseen circumstances he was talking about-the kind that had prevented the first two groups from completing the expedition.

“I hope that everything will go well. And while we are on our expedition, the army will have to be made ready. Not too much hope can be placed in our undertaking.”

Count Alistan was not really all that keen on setting out on the journey. And his reluctance was quite understandable. Not only would he have to pass the time in the company of a thief, he had to leave the king without his protection, too.

“You know that I am already doing everything I can,” Stalkon retorted irritably. “But there are still too few of us anyway. Catastrophically few. What are a few tens of thousands against the countless hordes from the Desolate Lands? King Shargaz has sent us his apologies, but he will not send us a single soldier. All the forces of the Borderland are now beside the Forests of Zagraba; the orcs are running wild. The Border Kingdom is expecting an invasion and they will need every soldier. By the way, Harold, I have heard everything that I wanted to hear from you. You are free to go. I don’t suppose matters of state are of any great interest to you. Kli-Kli, take our guest and show him his room, his things, and all the rest of it.”

Realizing that the conversation was at an end, I got up, bowed, and followed the jester out of the room.

“Follow me, Dancer in the Shadows.” The depth of seriousness in the jester’s voice was ominous.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why?” asked the goblin, peering at me innocently.

“Because I don’t want you to!”

“Oh,” the jester said considerately. “Then I won’t.”

We walked back through the massive throne room and out into the corridors of the palace.

“What would you like to see first? Your temporary quarters or a new friend?”

“What new friend?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

I had to walk for quite a long time. First we went out of the building and past the garden, which was now almost empty-the only Wild Heart still there was Loudmouth, already on his fourth dream, if not his fifth.

“Kli-Kli,” I said as we walked along, “these Wild Hearts, where are they from?”

“The Lonely Giant, of course,” the goblin snorted.

“No, I don’t mean that,” I snorted back. “What unit of the Wild Hearts?”

“Oh! Apart from Arnkh, they’re all from the Thorns. Arnkh’s from the Steel Foreheads.”

The Thorns… Now I really felt that my skin was safe. And there were any number of stories about the skill of the Thickheads, as the other soldiers called the Steel Foreheads.

Eventually the jester led me to a outbuilding standing quite a long way from the palace. Or to be absolutely precise, the goblin led me straight to the stables. There was a smell of fresh hay and dung (also fresh, as a matter of fact). The horses in the stalls peered out curiously at the uninvited visitors. Every now and then one of them would reach its face out toward us in the hope of getting a treat.

There were about fifty horses here. Elegant Doralissian steeds, imperturbable draft horses, the powerful war horses of Nizina that seemed so terrifying to the ignorant…

“Here, let me introduce you,” said the jester, putting his hand on the muzzle of a large ash-colored mare. “This is Little Bee. She’s yours now.”

“Oh, yes?” I asked uncertainly.

“What’s wrong, Harold?” Kli-Kli asked with a frown. “Don’t you like the king’s gift?”

“What makes you think I don’t like it?” I asked, stroking the Nizin breed horse behind the ear when it reached its head out toward me. “I like it very much. It’s just that I’m not very good at riding them.”

“Mmm, all right, I’ll teach you today.”

I gave the jester the same look I would have done if he’d asked me to kiss a poisonous snake.

“Calm down, Harold. I really can help you. It’s fairly simple. Little Bee’s clever, she’s been trained. And what’s more, she’s a war horse, or a war mare, or a steedess… Well, you know what I mean… Here! Give her a treat.”

Kli-Kli took out a huge red apple from somewhere and handed it to me.

Little Bee happily crunched the treat and her amicable expression became even more kindly. I found it hard to believe that she was a war mare… Damn it! Now I was doing it, too!

“Come on, I’ll show you your room,” said Kli-Kli, tugging at my sleeve. “Your things are there, by the way. A dwarf brought them, together with the ring.”

So Honchel had already brought the things I hadn’t been able to collect on the evening when I bought them from him. I meekly followed the king’s jester, realizing that he wouldn’t leave me alone today and I’d have to put up with him until tomorrow morning, when I would happily wave good-bye to the little green goblin.

“By the way, we need to go to the armorer and pick out a decent sword and some chain mail for you.” Kli-Kli was simply bursting with the desire to do something.

“Now that’s one gift I don’t need,” I said, shaking my head.

“So what’s wrong this time?”

“I need a sword like a drowned man needs a noose. I don’t know how to use it anyway. These are all I need, my dear jester,” I said, slapping my hand against the short blade at my hip and sticking my crossbow under the nose of the king’s fool.

“Well, you know best,” he said, too lazy to argue with me. “Then we’ll choose you some armor.”

“I’m not Alistan Markauz, Kli-Kli! I don’t intend to carry the work of an entire mineful of gnomes around with me.”

“Don’t get nervous. We’ll find you some light, safe armor.” The goblin was not about to give up this time.

“I don’t need it. It’s awkward moving about in chain mail.”

“Harold!” The jester pointed one finger at me and pronounced his verdict. “You’re a boring, tedious fellow.”