Authors: Alexey Pehov
“And what’s all this got to do with Harold?” asked Mumr, puzzled.
“Oh, it’s hard work talking with you fools,” said Kli-Kli, stamping his foot and pretending to be angry. “We can say that Harold bound the demons, can’t we?”
“Not me, the magicians of the Order bound the demons.”
“That’s not important,” said Kli-Kli, brushing aside my objection. The jester was riding hard on his favorite hobbyhorse—the prophecies of the crazy magician Tre-Tre, may the light be a curse to him!
“Did the Order bind the demons with your help? It did! Has the sign come to pass? It has! Was there a purple bird in Hargan’s Wasteland? There was, and not just one, either!”
“If goblins call those flying monsters birds…”
“It’s a literary expression, my lad. You don’t know a thing about art. So, was there a bird?”
“Have it your own way,” I sighed. I couldn’t be bothered pointing out to this cocky small fry that the creatures spawned by the Kronk-a-Mor used by the Nameless One’s shamans should be called nightmares, not birds. “Okay, so there was.”
“Right! And you have a name now, don’t you?”
“Aha! Ever since I was a child. They call me Harold.”
“Pah, you’re hopeless! Are you really a total numbskull or just pretending so well that I can’t tell the difference? I’m not talking about the name you were born with, I mean the name you were granted from above. Dancer in the Shadows—that one! You agreed that I could call you that. And so you accepted the name.”
Yet again I cursed the day when I told Kli-Kli that he could call me that. The only reason I did it was to make the little pest leave me in peace, but instead he started yelling out loud for all to hear that the sign had been fulfilled. And now I could expect more, equally stupid goblin prophecies.
“And what prophetic sign do you have lined up next?” I asked the goblin scornfully.
“Next?” The jester screwed his eyes up, gave me a cunning look, and declaimed:
When the crimson key departs
Like water soaking into sand
And the Path is lost in mist
There is work for a thief’s hand.
He meets at night with Strawberry
But who will be helped by the key?
“Right,” I said, and couldn’t help laughing out loud. “It’s like I’ve always said: Your crazy shaman Tre-Tre ate too many magic mushrooms for breakfast.”
“Let’s have a few less unjustified insults, if you don’t mind!” said the goblin, baring his teeth at me. “Tre-Tre was my people’s greatest shaman! Artsivus and his Order can’t hold a candle to him.”
“Maybe not, but I’d rather let someone else decide that. Have you even figured out what that little jingle of yours is all about? I didn’t understand a thing.”
“That’s because you’re a fool,” the jester reminded me yet again. “It’s a prophecy, so you get to understand it when it happens. But it’s about to happen any minute, because the crimson Key has departed. Or to put it in normal language, someone has walked off with our artifact.”
“That Key of yours? Is it crimson, then?” Lamplighter asked.
“Well, no…,” said Kli-Kli, confused by the question. “It looks more like it’s made of crystal.… All right, Harold. Go and fill your belly, you and I have got a job to do.”
“I only have one job to do, Kli-Kli, the one I swore on Tomcat’s grave to finish. I’m going to get the Rainbow Horn, hand it over to the Order, grab my honestly earned loot and charter of pardon, and start living the good life. Nothing else concerns me, unless, of course, it happens to be a threat to my life or a chance to pick up some money.”
“But we do have a job to do,” Kli-Kli said very seriously. “Mumr and Eel are going to relieve Marmot and Egrassa.”
“I don’t see the connection. What’s that got to do with me?”
“In the first place, you can give Marmot his ling back.…”
“I can do that here,” I said, interrupting the goblin.
“In the second place,” Kli-Kli continued imperturbably, “Miralissa has asked you to take a look at the house and say if you can get inside and filch the Key from under the very noses of the Master’s servants.”
“Filch it? From under their noses?” I asked like an echo. “Me?”
“Yes, you! You’re our thief, aren’t you?”
There was nothing I could say to that. I picked the mouse up off the pillow, put him on my shoulder, and said: “Let’s go. Do you know the way?”
“Honeycomb came back this morning and told me. Eel’s coming along. Lamplighter, are you with us, too?”
“Yes.”
“All right then,” I said to the goblin as I walked out of the room. “But there’ll be no strolling round the city until I get my breakfast.”
“You’ll get your breakfast. Master Quidd laid the table ages ago.”
* * *
Birds were singing their song of summer joy, flowers were blooming, the sky was blue, the grass was green, the sun was shining. If I could have forgotten that the Key had been stolen from right under our noses and we still didn’t know what had happened to Loudmouth, it would have been a wonderful day.
“Do we have a long way to go?” I asked the goblin.
“Not very,” the jester muttered.
He was holding on to my sleeve with his right hand and hopping along on one foot, amusing himself and all the passersby. I couldn’t tear myself free, because the jester had a grip on my shirt sleeve like a tick on a dog’s ear, so I had to try persuasion. But my polite and heartfelt request to stop playing the fool and walk on two feet like normal people was refused. Then I tried to ignore the hopping goblin; after all, I couldn’t fight him in the public street, could I?
“How far is not very far?” I asked my companion after another unsuccessful attempt to tear my sleeve out of his tenacious fingers.
“About an hour,” Kli-Kli replied indifferently, and hopped over a stick lying on the ground.
I groaned.
“We’re going to the southern part of the city on Motley Hill. It’s quite a walk to get there.”
“For some it’s a walk, for some it’s an excuse to skip about and play the fool,” I remarked.
But Kli-Kli was all set to hop on one foot for the entire hour. “I’m so sorry they didn’t give us the carriage today,” the king’s jester quipped, hopping neatly over a puddle.
The little creep had lied. It was no more than twenty minutes from the inn to our destination.
The street leading up Motley Hill was an incredibly steep climb. By the time we reached the region where the big cheeses lived, I was drenched in sweat. But at least, Sagot be praised, the goblin finally let go of me.
“We could take a ride down the hill,” the jester murmured dreamily when we were almost at the very top.
I followed the direction of his eyes. There was an old, dried-up cart standing outside one of the houses, with wooden chocks under its wheels to stop it accidentally taking off down the hill and crushing some unfortunate pedestrian.
“Don’t even think about it!” I warned him.
“You don’t understand a thing about lucky finds, Harold. A fool, there’s no other word for it. Just look at that hill. We’d go flying along like a hurricane.”
“I don’t like this little idea of yours.”
“What little idea? Flying along like a hurricane?”
“The idea that
we’ll
go flying along like a hurricane. You may have decided to commit suicide, Kli-Kli, but there’s no need to go tangling other people up in your crazy plans.”
“Harold, you’re a real bogeyman. Relax, there’s no danger. Why bring up the subject of suicide?”
“Because, my little muttonhead, that hill is more than four hundred yards long! We’d get moving all right. And we’d pick up speed, too! Fly like a hurricane!” I said in a squeaky voice, teasing Kli-Kli. “But how are we going to brake, my little peabrain? Our bones would be scattered halfway across Ranneng!”
“Oh!” the jester said thoughtfully when he’d pondered my arguments. He glanced regretfully at the carriage. “I didn’t think about that.”
“Now who’s the fool and who’s the wise man?”
“You’re the fool, I’m the wise man. Even a boneheaded Doralissian can see that. By the way, we’ve arrived, that’s the manor over there.”
The manor standing right on the very top of the hill looked about half the size of the king’s palace, but I couldn’t really see it properly from where we were standing. Most of the building was hidden by the thick crowns of the trees growing in the park around it.
The private area was surrounded by a tall gray wall with quaint little steel figures all along the top. I wasn’t fooled by their appearance—first and foremost they were a barrier of spikes to prevent anyone climbing in over the wall. Their role as decoration was strictly secondary. And I had no doubt that after the spikes there would be dogs or garrinches or guards waiting for us inside. Maybe even all three of them.
The steel gates were covered with images of birds. Birds flying, birds singing, and doing all sorts of things. When I looked closely at them I realized they were nightingales. So whoever lived in this nest of vipers was a nobleman from the House of Nightingale.
“Impressive!” said Lamplighter, looking at the house appreciatively. “What do you think, Harold?”
“Difficult.”
“How do you mean?”
“Difficult to get out of.”
“But you’re a master of your trade, aren’t you?”
“Right … but that doesn’t make the job any easier. Where are Marmot and Egrassa?”
“Probably pretending to be trees, and that’s why we can’t see them,” Kli-Kli suggested. “They’re hiding, Harold, hiding. Or do you think that two handsome fellows walking round and round a house wouldn’t attract any attention?”
“Well, if they’re hiding, you can look for them. I’m not going to play hide-and-seek.”
Naturally, the goblin didn’t find anyone. If an elf doesn’t want to be seen, then he isn’t. And the Wild Hearts, especially their scouts, have always been famous for their camouflage and their ability to hide even where it seems impossible. Marmot and Egrassa emerged like two phantoms from the clumps of bushes growing along the wall surrounding the mansion. I would never have thought that two sturdy warriors could have been sitting in there.
“You’re late.” That was how Marmot greeted us.
“I should think so. Even a h’san’kor would have trouble finding you!” I said, handing the joyfully squealing ling to his master. “Have you found out who the house belongs to?”
“No. How about you?”
“No,” Eel replied. “Is everything quiet?”
“As a graveyard. At least, no one has left the house through these gates, but about an hour before dawn seven men went in. You’re welcome to use our little lair. It’s good cover, very convenient, and it’s not visible from the road. There’s a perfect view of the gates.”
“Good luck,” taciturn Eel said to the others, and started walking toward the bushes. He slipped in through a narrow gap and the branches immediately hid him from view.
“Come on, Harold. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb hanging around here,” Kli-Kli said.
I followed him in, comforting myself with the thought that until Miralissa found out whose house this was and she and Alistan came up with some way of getting into it, there was nothing for me to do. It made no difference whether I lay around here or sat around at the inn. True, there was no pestiferous Kli-Kli at the inn, but Miralissa
was
there. I would have been happier to be with the elf than an annoying clown. Ever since Valder’s ghost saved me from the red flyer in Hargan’s Wasteland, the dark elfess had been eyeing me with great interest. I hadn’t told her or anyone else that I had the spirit of a dead archmagician living in my head. And after what happened at the wasteland I had pretended to be a complete fool, claiming I had no idea what had happened or how I’d been saved.
During the night Marmot and Egrassa had created a magnificent shelter. If you looked at the bushes from the road, you couldn’t tell they’d been touched, but inside there was a cozy green lair with trampled branches and grass, quite big enough for two men. Of course, there were four of us, not two, but Kli-Kli was not very big, and I huddled up a bit and we fitted into the observation post quite comfortably.
Lamplighter immediately stretched out on the ground, picked a stalk of grass, put it in his teeth, and started staring through the branches at the clouds drifting across the sky. A fine occupation for a man who wants to fall asleep.
Eel set to work observing the gates leading to the house and Kli-Kli and I were the only ones left suffering from boredom. The fidgety goblin couldn’t sit still for a moment, and the longer we stayed in our hideaway, the more fidgety he got.
The goblin counted the clouds floating past, too, but he soon got fed up with that, and less than five minutes later he started squirming about, kicked me in the side, and crawled over to Eel.