“Our escape, I think you mean,” Humunculus said, pausing in his pacing, “or do you? Was this all a scheme to allow you to escape with no thought for the rest of us? That was it, wasn’t it? You traitor!”
Humunculus leapt across the spectral room and landed with his hands about Aligvok’s throat.
“No!” screamed the wizard.
Humunculus found himself hurled across the room and, in moments, Aligvok was on top of him, his hand poised over the Faerie King’s midriff, exactly where his heart would have been in life.
“You are of no use to me now and I grow tired of your petulance,” Aligvok snarled, “now I will send you to the void!”
For the first time in his existence, Humunculus was terrified. He didn’t know what this “void” was, but it didn’t sound very pleasant. He imagined the parties there would be barely worth attending. The wizard’s hand came down and he flew away, Negstimeaboi’s muscular arm arcing through the air above the Faerie King’s eyes.
“No fight like children,” she growled, standing between the two prone spirits.
But Aligvok had sprung to his feet and, darting through Negstimeaboi’s despairing grip, he ran at Humunculus.
“Master?”
The scene froze.
“Master?”
“Bently? Are you alive? You’re not in here are you?” Humunculus said, looking around for any evidence of his servant’s spirit.
“No, master, I’m here in the real world,” Bently’s thought said, “and it’s raining.”
Chapter 15
Chortley swerved a vicious swing and swung his sword upwards to slash at the troll’s arm. He’d quickly learned that an oblique impact was the only way to hurt them, or at least annoy them. His initial attempts to hack at the trolls had gained him nothing more than a numb arm and a blunt edge, so now he was trying to slice them like 9 foot tall walking hams.
In the midst of the chaos, with screams and bellows of fear from left and right, Chortley didn’t at first notice the raindrops. Then, as if someone had turned a tap, water fell from the sky and the battle stopped as all the combatants stepped back and looked up at the heavens. Blue sky stretched from horizon to horizon but, immediately above their heads, sat a small, fat, raincloud that was currently disgorging huge blobs of salty water into the pass.
The troll Chortley was fighting, his limited curiosity exhausted, raised his club, ready to swing. And froze. Red paint ran down his arm, exposing unprotected grey skin that, as Chortley watched, visibly hardened with, he imagined, the sound of cement setting very quickly as the sun emerged.
The troll cried in frustration and panic. The rain fell, the paint washed away, and the troll army turned to stone.
The Crapplecreekers, who’d been herded into a tight mass by the trolls, cheered, hugged each other and, as is the way of these things, produced small bottles of alcohol seemingly from nowhere.
“I told you we could handle it,” Mother Hemlock said.
Chortley lowered his battered sword. She looked even more exhausted than he felt.
“Where in the hells did the rain come from?” was all he could manage.
Mother Hemlock gestured up the pass. “Where all rain comes from, the sea,” she said, panting as she caught her breath, “or, in this case, the Dead Lake on the other side of the mountains. I helped the water to evaporate quicker than usual, Velicity blew the cloud over us and I made it drop the rain. And a bloody good job we did, too.”
“We did,” Velicity said, her beauty somehow enhanced by her exhaustion, “though it was harder than I’d imagined. I could only just trap the wind and keep the cloud above us, it kept wanting to break free.”
Chortley looked around at the troll statues and sniggered at their pissed-off expressions. “Well, I cannot thank you enough, ladies, you have saved us all!”
“Not everyone,” Mother Hemlock said, gesturing to the forms that lay, as yet unremarked, by most of the survivors, “but, lad, the others are alive because you ‘ad the courage to stick to the task even when you didn’t know what we had planned.”
“Yes, I wondered about that,” Chortley said, “why didn’t you just tell me what you intended to do in the first place?”
“One of us didn’t want to admit that we weren’t sure we could pull it off,” Velicity said, as Mother Hemlock smoldered, “now, I suggest we put a stop to the revelries and find the door to the labyrinth.”
Chortley frowned. “Shouldn’t we give them the rest of the day to get over the battle and make preparations? ” Somehow, it seemed rude to consider arguing with this goddess. Oddly, he didn’t feel inclined to argue with her sister witch, either, but for completely different reasons.
Constructing her most exhilarating smile, Velicity put her hand on his shoulder, causing warmth to spread through his body. “Strike while the iron’s hot, I think, commander. The sooner we’re inside and out of this oppressive heat, the better, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes, of course,” Chortley said, before heading away to find McGuff.
Mother Hemlock gripped Velicity’s arm and pulled her down so she could whisper. “Why didn’t you tell ‘im the real reason you want everyone inside quick? P’raps I ain’t the only one who doesn’t like admittin’ things.”
“Nonsense,” Velicity retorted, yanking her arm out of Mother Hemlock’s grip, “the sooner we get through the labyrinth, the sooner we can go home. I, for one, am sick of the heat and I’d give anything to sleep in a real bed.”
“Well, you’ll ‘ave to tell ‘im at some point and then, maybe, he won’t find you quite so charmin’.”
“He’s got a job to do,” Velicity hissed, “those creatures must be returned to their world or they’ll create havoc in ours. Now, he has a chance.”
Mother Hemlock brought her face to within inches of Velicity’s. “And if he succeeds, what’s his reward? To find the pass closed to ‘im.”
Velicity’s face dropped. “I know, and I don’t like it any more than you do but we must rid the world of those creatures and this is the only way.”
“Not the only way,” replied Mother Hemlock.
“We agreed,” Velicity sighed. “He has a good soul trapped within a mind that has done evil things. Kill the prisoners and we lose him forever. I, for one, don’t want to unleash the worst of Chortley Fitzmichael into the world.”
“You may well see the worst of him when he comes back out of that maze, lass,” Mother Hemlock said, “and we’d better hope we can outrun him because that magic today was a one-time deal. Without water and wind, we’re just two women and, he’s got a sort of army to command, and a temper you could fry bacon with.”
Velicity turned away to watch Chortley as he helped treat the wounded while McGuff organised a burial party. “I only hope we haven’t shown him the light only to shut the door in his face,” she said.
#
“Right, ‘oos in charge ‘ere then?” Gramma said, her voice echoing down the tunnel. She, Libby, Skiver and Captain Minimus, newly co-opted commander of the much depleted city guard, had opened the gate and strode into the exit tunnel to meet with the revolters.
Something about Gramma’s tone had silenced the mob which had, up until that point, been very vociferously describing exactly what they intended to do with the inhabitants of Tinceltown once they broke through the gates.
After a few moments, a ripple formed in the mob, as someone pushed their way through from the back. An angry voice bounced around the tunnel walls. “What’s all this then?”
The front rank parted and a small, ugly, and very cross figure emerged to take up a defiant stance, hands on hips. “Who are you?” he sneered, “All that’s left of the city council?”
“Not exacertly. This here is Liberty Tetchisdottir, she’s the mayor, and that’s Captain Minimus, captain of the guard; and that’s Skiver, I ain’t entirely sure what he does.” Gramma said, gesturing to each in turn.
Skiver turned red with fury. “I’ll have you know I�
�m Minister for Racial Relations!”
“Well, you ‘aven’t done a very good job, in that case,” Gramma said, before turning back to the mob leader, “and my name’s Gramma Tickle, but the likes of you will call me Mistress.”
Gramma watched as the little figure curled his lip. “I care not what you’re called. There is no-one here with the authority to treat with me, I will return when the gates are unlocked and we can discuss your surrender.”
“No you bloody well don’t.”
The little figure stopped mid-stride and turned, unwillingly to face her and the rest of the delegation. His face flushed and his eyes bulged as he fought to regain control of his feet.
“Now then, lad, who and what are you?”
The mob leader wobbled and was suddenly free to move again. “What did you do to me?”
Gramma smiled. “Not much, lad, just an old lady mind trick, I suppose you could call it. I had a word with the part of your brain what cares about whether you live or die. But answer my question or I’ll ‘ave you runnin’ around like a dog with gravy on its tail.”
Badger, sitting behind her and watching all this, considered just how much running around he’d do if he had gravy on his tail. It probably depended on where the gravy had come from and who’d owned it originally.
The mob leader puffed himself up. “My name is Jispa and I lead the resistance.”
“And what, may I ask, are you exacertly?”
“What do you mean?” Jispa said, his eyes narrowing, “I am the leader of the Kobolds.”
Gramma snorted. “Well, you may be their leader but you ain’t no cobbler, lad.”
There was a murmur from the crowd behind, with the shorter members, in particular, becoming agitated.
“It is ‘kobolds’” sneered Jispa.
“That what I said, you’re talking cobblers,” Gramma said, innocently. “Whatever they call themselves, you ain’t one of them. Actually, now that I come to think about it, I reckon I saw some of your mates a few months ago at that big backle by the stones.”
Jispa’s face locked up. “Ridiculous.”
“I don’t think so, lad, you look like a lickle goblin to me.”
The murmur from the crowd grew louder, although now it was the slightly larger figures who were talking amongst themselves and pointing at Jispa, who was looking around nervously.
Recognising that his authority was evaporating quickly, Jispa changed tack. “Well, what if I am? Kobolds and goblins are the same folk, whichever world they come from!”
“He’s from the Darkworld?” hissed Skiver.
The crowd rumbled.
“These folk have been treated badly, they needed a leader!”
“And how lucky you ‘appened to be around, cock,” Gramma said. “No, you’re a lickle stirrer and that’s the truth of it. Sent to cause ructions, I reckon, by that smarmy git we exploded up at yon stones. Aye, that’s the size of it.”
In the stunned silence that followed, Gramma gave herself an imaginary pat on the back. She’d faggled it out all by herself, and even that Jessie Hemlock would have been impressed. A bit.
“As for you lot,” the old woman continued, pointing at the diminutives in the crowd, “you knew all along he wasn’t one of you, and you let yourselves be dragged into this bloody mess anyway.”
And, because she believed in being fair and treating all races equally, Gramma now rounded on the taller constituents. “You dwarfs should be bloody ashamed of yourselves. You can’t tell the difference between a goblin and a kobold? You’ve only joined this shambles because you wanted to see who’d get a kickin’.”
She shook her head and the assembly, as a humanoid, flushed and fidgeted as they awaited the final blow.
“On the other ‘and,” Gramma said, “you little folk ‘ave been treated pretty poorly by the slightly less little people who, for some reason, appear to be in charge. You’ve gone about it the wrong way, following that revolting little oik to the gates of the city, but you ‘ave a real grievance and, since we’re all ‘ere, p’raps we should sort it out.”
The echoes died down and silence fell like a priest’s trousers in a brothel as everyone in the tunnel processed Gramma’s words from their own perspective. The scene would have made an excellent subject for an oil painting by one of those artistes down Varma way, thought the old woman. On one side, a mob of various-sized humanoids each feeling like naughty children caught raiding the biscuit barrel who, expecting a short, sharp box of the ears, seem to have been offered a nibble. On the other side, a smaller group of dwarfs, waiting with uncertainty to hear whether victory had, indeed, been snatched from the jaws of a bloody massacre as it appeared and if it had a sting in its tail. In the middle, a little goblin, afraid to move in either direction and scared to stay where he was.
“Right,” Gramma said, and her audience unfroze, “Captain Mini-whatever, you ‘ave a prisoner, I suggest you lock ‘im up.”
The dwarf huffed, went to open his mouth, saw the look on Gramma’s face, and shut it again. He jangled over to Jispa and grabbed his arm.
“Oh, and I’ll be in to see ‘im as soon as I’ve finished ‘ere. He’d best be in exacertly the condition he is now when I do,” Gramma said to the dwarf as he passed.
Gramma turned to Libby. “Now then, madam mayor, I suggest you open the gates.”
“What?” Skiver blustered. “That gate has controlled access to the little folk for centuries!”
“Then it’s long past time that it didn’t. They built this place, from what I can tell, they deserve to come and go as they please. They ain’t no danger and they’ll show proper respect, won’t they.”
The air shifted as dozens of heads nodded vigorously.
Skiver would have been beside himself if the laws of physiks didn’t make that impossible30. “But we’ll be overwhelmed! It’s only a small city, there’s no room for any more!”
Gramma stared at the dwarf in silence until his red face turned pale. “You could fit a dozen cities in that cavern you had them folk dig out for you. You will open the gates and welcome the little folk, if you know what’s good for you.”
“We will open the gates,” Libby said, smiling, “and share our city with those who did so much to help build it. This is the dawn of a new age.”
Gramma nodded. “But there is one spider in the butter dish,” she said, “some folk have died on both sides, justice must be done for their sakes.”
“Yes, of course,” Libby said.
She strode forward and pointed three times. “You, you and you,” she said, “step forward, please.”
The first pointee to respond was short, had a grey face and long teeth. He stomped forward so that he stood in front of the line. He was joined, moments later, by a female gnome with a pointed hat, a grimy face and a belligerent air. They looked back to see a dwarf glancing behind himself, pointing and shrugging before someone shoved him in the back and sent him half sprawling to stand alongside the others.
“I wish to form a board of justice, will you three act as magistrates, one for each race?” Libby said.
The kobold and gnome nodded, but the dwarf looked behind himself again and shrugged to his friends.
“I think, per’aps, Madam Mayor,” Gramma said, “that there’s a lad in your gaol what would make a fine magistrate. I’m not sure you’ve selected the fastest ferret on the farm with that one.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Libby said, “you are released from your duties, thank you for your assistance.” She shook her head as the obviously relieved dwarf almost fell back into the mob in his haste to divest himself of his obligations.
“Now, open the gates!” Libby commanded.
One of the guards went to obey but Skiver threw himself against the metalwork, gripping one half of the gate with each arm and pulling them closed. “No! It will be carnage! What will our youth do when these interlopers take all the jobs?”
“Pretty much exacertly what they do now, I imagine, cock. Bugg
er all. Only they won’t get paid for doin’ it no longer. P’raps that’ll give ‘em the kick up the arse they, and most of you other lazy buggers, need and you can take pride in your ‘complishments rather than just watchin’ others graftin’. You might want to follow the example of those paleo dwarfs you like to ridicule so much.”
Skiver gripped the gate even tighter, looking for all the world like a dwarf for whom the prospect of an honest day’s work down the mine was worse than being torn apart in front of everyone.
Gramma was just about to get firm when someone brushed past her. She looked down to see Badger casually sidle up to where Skiver was hugging the gates. He paused for a moment, there was a pfftsound, his expression went from very focused to very relaxed and he sidled off again.
With a cry of disgust, Skiver let go of the gate and fell to the ground, retching and rolling on the floor.
“That’ll do lad,” Gramma said, “that’ll do. What a pity you don’t ‘ave longer arms like those kobolds, Mr Skiver, then you’d ‘ave been able to ‘old your nose without fallin’ off the gate.”
Libby beckoned one of the guards over and whispered in his ear. He nodded, then crossed over to where Skiver lay and, before the prone dwarf had recovered, hoisted him one handed, opened the gate and carted him through.
“Now then, all of you is to listen to me,” Gramma shouted, her voice repeating itself as it bounced down the tunnel. “There’s been some bad things done by both sides and many long years of trouble to put behind you. But that’s what the past is; it’s stuff what’s gone and ain’t comin’ back so don’t get hysterical over history.”
Badger put one paw over his face. That was bad even by the rustic standards of Gramma’s humour.
“It’s goin’ to be rough, especially when those dwarfs come back what ran away at the first sign of trouble but then, I expect you lot can ‘andle them,” she said, gesturing to the whole assemblage - dwarfs, kobolds and gnomes, “but let me be quite clear. If there’s any goin’ back to the old ways or any buggeration whatsoever, I will hear of it, I will come back and someone will get the leatherin’ of their life.”
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