by Tom Holt
“The household cavalry ride wolves, Your Grace. So, no horses. Not till Tuesday.”
She sighed. “Fine. Get me a winged lizard. Now.”
(After all, she said to herself, how hard can it be? The wraiths fly the horrid things, and they aren’t even there. And the lizards were held to be sentient and telepathic, and anything that could read her thoughts could be brought to a keener appreciation of its own shortcomings and made to do as it was damned well told. And it was that or walk, and it looked like rain.)
The sentry looked at her. “Are you quite sure about that, your excellency? Only, they can be a bit—”
“Now.”
The sentry didn’t smile, let alone grin, but there was something about the enthusiasm with which he trotted off to obey her orders that made her wonder if the investigation couldn’t wait till Tuesday after all. But it was too late now, of course. An Elf doesn’t back down or show nervousness in front of a goblin. And if a wraith could do it—She’d watched them, showing off; look, no hands—
“Here you go, miss.” The goblin was back, leading her trusty steed on a very long rein. It looked like two earthworms grafted onto each end of a turtle, with vast leathery wings added as an afterthought, probably using non-standard parts. She looked at it. It looked at her and winked. The goblin pushed the reins into her hands, saluted and backed away, with the sort of utterly fixed expression on his face that could only mean that, if he relaxed just one muscle, he’d collapse into fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Then a voice spoke to her inside her head.
The relationship between a wraith’s steed and its rider is one of the greatest and most complex mysteries in all the Realms. It begins at the moment the lizard hatches, and ends—who knows when? Death is only a staging point on that shared journey. It is more than mere symbiosis. It constitutes a joining of minds and souls at a level so profound that if you were to ask where does one end and the other begin, all you would achieve would be to show how little you knew and understood. It is a welding, a mingling, a blending that simplifies rather than complicates. It is beyond dependency and love. It can only be the rejoining of two parts of one whole that should never have been sundered in the first place.
Hello, gorgeous, said the voice.
She sighed. “Pack it in,” she said aloud. The lizard sniggered, and nuzzled her thigh with its nose. Do you want to ride me, it said, not in her head but in the very recesses of her soul, worst luck. I think I’d like that very much.
She closed her eyes, counted to ten, picked up a fair-sized rock and bashed the lizard’s head with it. Ooh, said the innermost fibre of her being, you can do that again, any time you like.
She whimpered. But what the hell. The walk would do her good. She tied the reins to the massive bronze knocker of the great gate, hitched up her socks and started to walk towards the distant eaves of the forest.
She hadn’t gone more than a few yards when a horrible tearing noise, followed by a crash, made her stop and spin round. The lizard was trotting after her, dragging one of the Black Gates behind it on the end of its rein. Wait for me, said the quintessence of her existence.
“Go away.”
Can’t. We are joined. Nothing will ever part us. Talking of which, what are you doing after you get off work?
Elves don’t swear or scream or have hysterics or burst into floods of tears. When confronted with the inevitable, they proceed with a cold, calm dignity, together with a steely resolve to take it out on the next member of an inferior species unfortunate enough to cross their path. “Fine,” she said. “If I’m stuck with you, I suppose you’d better make yourself useful. Oh, come on,” she added, as the lizard sank to its knees and wiggled its hindquarters, “you can do better than that. Here, twist your head round a bit more, so I can stand on it.”
She was wearing her four-inch stiletto heels. Unfortunately, the lizard really liked that.
The flood of pink goo subsided to a steady flow, then a trickle. When he judged it was safe to do so, Mordak cautiously let go of the iron ring, then the Science Officer’s ear. “Well, then,” he said. “That’s all right.”
“Say what?”
“I think it’s stopped now,” Mordak said, slowly and clearly. “Crisis over.”
Brave words. He had no idea what volume of the stuff had washed past him and gone down the ventilation duct, but he had an idea it was going to be sticky underfoot in Levels Thirteen to Twenty-seven for a day or so, and he didn’t want to think about what would happen to productivity if the stuff had managed to find its way into the winch mechanism or the elevator shafts. The smell, likewise, was going to take quite a bit of getting used to. Still, as far as he could tell at this stage, there was no irreparable harm done; and they’d managed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that creating a female goblin was impossible. Which advanced the sum of goblin knowledge one tiny step further, and good science is never wasted.
“What the hell’s that?”
The Science Officer was pointing up the corridor. Unfortunately his newly enlarged ear was blocking Mordak’s view. He folded it down out of the way, and saw—
“Oh, darn,” he muttered.
The first and most obvious thing was the sheer size. Twice the height of the tallest goblin he’d ever seen, taller even than a human or an Elf, and monstrously broad in the shoulders, chest and thighs. Gigantic muscles knotted under the coal-black skin, and the legs were straight and unbowed, the knees unknocked, so that it strode rather than scuttled. The only really goblin thing about it, in fact, was the tusks, and the little red piggy eyes.
“What are those things on its front?” Mordak whispered. “That can’t be right, surely.”
“Cayenne pepper,” said the Science Officer. “you just can’t be too careful with that stuff.”
The monster advanced on them, stopped and looked down at them, blinking confusedly. Then, with a lunge so quick that Mordak never knew it was coming, it grabbed the Science Officer round the throat, lifted him off the ground, held him up, nose to snout, and bared its dreadful teeth. It growled, and its voice was as deep and menacing as an earthquake.
“I want my mummy,” it said.
“You,” the jailer said, “on your feet. Jump to it.”
John the Lawyer woke up out of a dream in which he was suing the Creator of All Things for product liability and opened his eyes. “What?”
“Your lucky day,” the jailer said. “You’re going home.”
An icicle pierced John’s heart. “Now just a minute. Let’s not be too hasty.”
“Out.”
And ten minutes later he was, bathed in harsh, unfamiliar sunshine and cursing fluently under his breath as the sentries lifted their crossed spears to let him pass. As he started off down the long road to the forest, he heard a ghastly shriek directly overhead and instinctively ducked as a huge flying creature shot through the sky, briefly blotting out the sun before dwindling, arrow-swift, into a dot on the far horizon. Maybe he imagined it, but he was sure he heard the echo of a woman’s wailing voice carried back to him on the breeze; the ghost of a plea to, for pity’s sake, slow down, the last dying susurration of bad language. He slicked back his hair, which had been ruffled by the slipstream, and trudged onwards.
If optimism and pessimism are defined in terms of glasses half empty and half full, John was a dry martini. He blended the harsh gin of realism with six parts of the rich, sweet vermouth of hope, and if he ever considered it, revelled in the contradiction. Thus he knew in his heart of hearts that even with the time he’d spent in King Drain’s dungeons he hadn’t clocked up enough billable hours this month to meet his target and avoid the sack. But the month still had one day to go, and who knew what that day might hold? Answer: twenty-four hours maximum, and the shortfall in his hours was twenty-seven. But the Realms are a strange place, teeming with dark and gorgeous wonders. There were caves under the mountains and dappled glades under the Marshmallorn trees where Time was reputed to stand still. If he h
appened across one of them and managed to find someone to sue while he was there, he’d be laughing.
Intriguing, to find a human at the dwarvish court. Humans and dwarves didn’t mix much, outside of business dealings. The reason why was, of course, implicit in everyday speech. You look up to people you fear and respect (Elves, say) and down on those you despise and, well, belittle. The fact that a dwarvish five-year-old could arm-wrestle a six-foot human into blubbering submission or carry a sack of coal that humans would need a cart for was neither here nor there. Dwarves were short, therefore inferior and funny. One of John’s daydreams was being instructed by the Heirs of Snorin in a class action against the whole of humanity, for defamation and aggravated looming.
He stopped in a small glade of willow beside a silvery brook, sat down on a big rock and took off his shoe. As he suspected, the sole had worn through. Time for a new pair, except maybe this wasn’t a good time for major capital expenditure, if he was going to get fired from Thanduil & Gluvien. On the other hand, if he lost his job he’d need to find a new one, which meant interviews, for which it’s essential to look smart, well dressed and prosperous. He put his hand in his pocket and came up with four silver pennies and a goblin zlotyl. Awkward.
And then he caught sight of something that made him think; whoa there, steady on. For on the bank of the quicksilver stream, in the middle of a patch of grass gilded by bars of sunlight lancing through the overhanging trees, he saw a pair of shiny black boots, practically new, just lying there.
Did he just do that? A wishing-grove, maybe, where all you have to do is ask and it shall be given to you. A million gold florins, he thought hopefully, and waited. Nothing happened. Ah well. The boots, however, looked to be just his size.
He hopped up, scampered over and grabbed the nearest boot. It was so heavy he could barely lift it. Then it kicked him in the chest.
He toppled backwards and sat down in the brook. He was soaking wet, but hadn’t even noticed. All his attention was fixed on the boots, which were moving. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, scrambling to their feet.
“Do you mind?” said a voice.
It was high, faint, cracked and somehow far away, and in it John could hear unquenchable malice, endless sadness and distinct annoyance. “You’re a wraith,” he said.
A black cloak appeared from behind a thorn bush, swirled briefly in the air and settled to define a humanoid shape. Unseen hands lifted a hood and pulled it into place. “What of it?”
“What were you doing?”
“Sunbathing, if you must know.”
“With your boots on?”
“My feet burn easily. Look,” the voice added irritably, “I don’t need to explain myself to you, thank you very much. And leave my stuff alone, all right?”
John shook his head. “Wraiths don’t sunbathe.”
“How would you know?”
A valid point, actually. “They just don’t. They’re creatures of shadow and darkness who abhor the sunlight. Everybody knows that.”
“Bigot.” A twig bent sideways, then relaxed. “First you help yourself to my stuff, then you insult me.”
“Sorry,” John said quickly. “Obviously I don’t know very much about wraiths. No offence intended.”
“Fine. Now, would you mind turning around, please?”
“What? Why?”
“Because,” said the voice, “I’m about to put my bra and knickers on. So if you wouldn’t mind.”
John turned red as a beetroot and spun round so fast he nearly fell over. “You’re a—”
“Yes. We do exist, you know.”
“I thought it was just men.”
“Yes, well, you would. All right, you can turn round again now.”
John stayed where he was. “I really don’t mean to be offensive,” he said. “The truth is, you’re the first wraith I’ve ever met.”
“There’s a surprise.”
“Don’t be like that,” John said, and slowly turned round. The black cloak was closed again, but a brightly coloured silk scarf shot up like a firework from behind a fallen log and wound itself round an invisible neck. “It’s all come as a bit of a shock, that’s all. That’s probably why I keep putting my foot in it. My name’s John, by the way. John the Lawyer.”
“Charmed, I’m sure. And now I really think I ought to be going.” The hood turned, first left, then right, then left again. “All right,” the voice said icily. “What have you done with it?”
“What?”
“My horse. Where is it?”
“What horse?”
A sigh that seemed to come from deep inside his own soul. “Yes, all right, I know. Let’s all go and rag on the wraith. Out of sight, she won’t mind. All terribly amusing and let me assure you I’m grinning all over my face, but can I please have my horse back now? I’m late as it is.”
“I haven’t seen any horse,” John protested. “Honest.”
“Did you just say honest?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say your name was?”
John sighed. “Now look who’s doing the stereotypes. I would never, ever, steal a horse. Never.”
“You tried to take my boots.”
“I thought they were empty.”
“Sure. And you were going to walk a mile in them, just so you could understand me better.” The black cloak seemed to slump a little. “You haven’t seen my horse, then.”
“No. Sorry.”
“Bloody thing’s probably wandered off somewhere. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Would you like me to help you look for it?”
The hood swayed from side to side. “It’ll be back in the Black Stable by now, eating its head off. Which means I’ll have to walk. Sod it.”
“Where are you headed?”
The tip of the hood dipped south-east.
“Me, too,” John said. “Mind if I walk with you?”
“Suit yourself, as the tailor said to the mirror.”
John blinked. “Did you just make a—?”
“Yes. We do that, too.”
“Gosh.”
It was mildly disconcerting, walking along beside an animated cloak, but John decided he didn’t really mind. “So,” he said, “how long have you been a wraith?”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Just curious.”
“I couldn’t actually say,” the voice replied. “Since about the middle of the First Age, I think. I don’t know how long that is in years. I sort of lost count after twenty thousand.”
“You’re over twenty thousand years old?”
“At least.”
You don’t look it, John managed to stop himself saying, just in time. “I’m twenty-six,” he said.
“There, now.”
Actually, once you got used to it, the voice wasn’t unpleasant at all. “So,” he went on, “you work for King Mordak.”
“He’s the Dark Lord of the Wraiths these days, so, yes, I suppose I do. Though I’m not what you’d call exactly front line. More sort of support and administrative.”
“Ah.”
“Personnel management, that sort of thing. Inhuman resources.”
“That must be an interesting job.”
“Not really, no,” said the voice, as a gust of wind lifted the skirt of the Black Cloak, revealing the tops of the empty boots. “So it’s just as well there’s so little of it to do. Mostly I just loaf around and amuse myself.”
“Fair enough,” John said. “I’m not sure it’d suit me, but each to their own.”
“Fact is,” the voice went on, “I seem to spend most of my time shopping. I know it sounds awful, but I really do like clothes.”
“Well, you would. Sorry, was that an insensitive remark?”
The shoulders of the cloak rose and fell. “Don’t see why. Of course, I’ve got to wear all this tatty old rubbish for work. But that’s no reason why I shouldn’t pamper myself a bit in my free time.”
“Why not?
” John said. “Live a little. So, what’s King Mordak really like? I’ve never met him, but he sounds—well, different, for a Dark Lord.”
“I’ve never met him either,” said the voice. “He doesn’t seem to hang around Admin much, for some odd reason. It’s just conceivable, I suppose, that he might have more important things to do. Ouch,” added the voice. “Stone in my boot,” it explained.
“Lean on me, if you like.”
“Better not. Frostbite.”
“Ah.”
So the Black Cloak sort of folded itself on the ground, and a boot separated itself, waggled about in the air, then went back the way it came. “I hate walking,” said the voice. “There are some species who do it for fun, but that’s just weird.” Both boots were back on the ground, their toecaps visible under the Black Hem. “I hope that stupid horse does find its way back home. I’ll be in ever so much trouble if it gets lost.”
“Oh?”
“The thing is,” the voice said diffidently, “I’m not really supposed to borrow horses from the Black Stable, and specially not for shopping. They’re reserved for the executive grades and above. I’m just junior admin.”
John nodded. “Because you’re a female, presumably. Typical.”
“No, because I’m younger than everyone else in the department, and promotion is strictly on an undead-men’s-shoes basis. Think about it,” she added, and John said, “Oh.”
“Quite. There are times when I’m tempted to pack in the Service and get a job in, well, you know.” The voice was silent for a moment. “The World.”
“I see. Doing what?”
“Well—no, it’ll sound silly.”
“Try me.”
“What I always wanted to do,” said the voice, “ever since I was a little girl, was modelling.”
“Ah.”
Sigh. “I told you it was silly.”
“Not a bit of it,” John said briskly. “You can be whatever you want to be. It’s just that some things take an extra little bit of determination and resolve.”
“Oh, I’ve got those.”
“Well, then, there you are.” John thought hard for a moment. “Here’s what you do. You get two dozen eggs and some flour and a quart of milk—”