by Adam Roberts
‘We have saved ourselves many days’ walking,’ said Belend, ‘and we have slipped past Sharon’s guards. These hills grow into the mountains of Moider!, ahead; and if we press on we shall arrive at the very lair of Sharon himself, the Evil One.’
‘We are near to the end of our quetht,’ said Lüthwoman. ‘But how thall we prevail upon Tharon when we come to him? How thall we compel him to give up the Thellmi?’
And Belend had no answer to this question.
They made their way up into the higher ground, and the Unpleasant Mountains rose starkly before them. These mountains, bare of vegetation and black with volcanic sand, surrounded the terrible land of Moider! which Sharon had claimed as his own.
Belend and Lüthwoman thought they had seen enough water, and been drenched and chilled enough, for a lifetime; yet that night, as they huddled together in a hollow of black sand, they were thirsty, and wished for moisture.
‘If we are thucthethul in our quetht . . .’ Lüthwoman began.
‘Thuck-what?’ interrupted Belend.
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ she said, slapping him lightly on his manly chest. ‘All I’m thaying ith – if we return to Blearyland with the Thellmi – thall we marry?’
‘Of course, my darling.’
‘And live together?’
‘Yes; for I could no more be parted from you than parted with my own heart.’
‘Where thall we live?’
‘I shall build us a great house in the forest, equidistant between your home and mine. It shall be a mighty timber structure, three stories tall, with many chambers; and it shall be beside a forest lake, fringed with poplar and elm.’
The thought of this pleased Lüthwoman. ‘And how will the interior be decorated?’
‘The what?’
‘The interior.’
‘Well,’ said Belend. ‘I really hadn’t given it much thought, to be honest. Some open pine, I suppose. Antlers over the fireplace. That sort of thing.’
‘I wath thinking,’ said Lüthwoman, ‘cuthionth.’
‘Cushions?’
‘Yeth. And three piethe thuites. With throwth.’
‘Srows?’ said Belend, growing confused.
‘No – throwth. And a floral pattern on the wallth. A bit of chrome in the kitchen, perhapth.’
‘You’d like that?’ said Belend, a little aghast.
‘Oo yeth, I like a bit of chrome in my kitchen. Flowerth everywhere. And bowlth of dried bloththom. Do you like the thought of that, my darling?’
To this Belend replied, ‘Yes, my love – anything that makes you happy.’ And his words provoked a flutter in Lüthwoman’s dress; and in the moonlight one of the Bugs of Truth flew out. It caught Belend’s words in the air, and gobbled them down, such that Belend heard himself saying instead ‘It sounds so appalling that it makes me want to gouge my scalp with daggers or squeeze cacti under my armpits, anything to take my mind off the thought of it.’
And Lüthwoman leapt to her feet in outrage and hurt, crying ‘Belend! How could you be tho unfeeling!’
And Belend leapt likewise, and said, ‘Never mind that now! We’ve lost another of the Bugs of Truth – that’s two down, and only one to go. Catch it, quickly – they’re too precious to lose!’
But leap and grab as they might, the Bug of Truth escaped them, and flew high in the air to flutter away eastwards.
‘That leaves only one Bug of Truth,’ said Belend. ‘We’d both better be careful not to utter anything untruthful, or we’ll have none of the critters left at all.’
But Lüthwoman was still in a huff about Belend’s hurtful comment; and she insisted she sleep alone in the hollow of black sand, and that Belend sleep ‘over there’ on top of the mound of sand, and added that ‘if he thought he wath getting any tonight’ then he had ‘another thing coming’.
In the morning they were reduced to licking the dew from the bald rocks of the Unpleasant Mountains. And they trekked on, and made their way towards a gap between two peaks. ‘On the far side of that,’ Belend said, ‘is Cirith Connoli, the tower in which the evil Sharon resides.’
They walked all day, trudging through the dark sand, and they walked on into the cool evening; and by midnight they had passed over the shoulder of land. And on the far side they slept. And in the first light of dawn they saw before them the mighty tower of Cirith Connoli, tall and slender, like a great black stick of celery reaching into the sky. I mean, ridged and stiff like celery; not moist or sprouting little green leaves like celery. Obviously. But I just thought I’d make that absolutely clear. Wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstanding.
‘Perhaps,’ said Belend, his throat parched and stomach empty. ‘Perhaps we should have brought a sack, or something, filled with provisions, some food, a canteen of water.’
And Lüthwoman nodded. ‘Well,’ she said, resignedly, ‘we’ll know for nectht time.’
And they picked their way down the side of the Unpleasant Mountains, and approached the base of the tower.
The tower was guarded by Sharon’s personal bodyguard of Orks; and a cohort was stationed at the main entrance.22 Belend and Lüthwoman snuck up behind a great boulder and peered round the edge of this to spy out the area. ‘How can we creep past those guards?’ Belend asked. And after asking this question he looked around, and said, ‘Lüthwoman? What do you – Lüthwoman? Where are you?’
And he looked forward and saw Lüthwoman walking in plain sight up to the guards. And he did say, ‘Oh crikey,’ and hurry from behind the boulder to catch her up, calling ‘Lüthwoman! Wait for me!’
And Lüthwoman, Princess of Elves, stood proud before the gate, and said ‘I am Lüthwoman of the Elveth of Taur-ea-dorpantth! Thith ith Belend of the Landth of Men. We have come to thpeak with your mathter, Tharon! Take uth to him!’
And the Orks were greatly surprised and clustered around the pair, prodding them with spears and growling in their own dialect, Orkockney. ‘Wos your game? Nah! Yuravinalarf, intcha? Leave it aht!’ and so on.
And they hustled Lüthwoman and Belend into the tower and dunked them in a dank dungeon. In addition to being dank this dungeon was also dark. And dinky. Here they clung to one another, and Belend asked his love ‘Why did you walk up in plain sight like that?’ And she replied, ‘I thought it would be a good idea. Anyway, we’re inthide now, aren’t we?’ And he did say, ‘Inside a dungeon.’
Sharon kept Belend and Lüthwoman in the dungeon for three days and three nights; and he fed them only spoiled meat; and they drank only what they could scrape from the cold stone of the walls. But after a time he became curious as to why they had come, unarmed and alone save for one another, to his tower. So he had them taken from the dungeon and brought before him.
And so it was that Belend and Lüthwoman beheld the giant eyeball of Sharon; and it was a little shrunken from its glory days, but still it was a giant globe of evil. Although the white portion was rather scuffed, and bloodshot like a child’s red-crayon drawing of winter trees, and dented. And he had been placed by his underlings upon a special dais.
The great Lidless Eye of Evil did laugh and say ‘Whom have we here? An Elf woman and a mannish, um, Man? What brings you to my lair?’
‘An age ago,’ said Lüthwoman, ‘you thtole the Thellmi of Emu. We have come to retrieve it from you.’
At this Sharon laughed again, heartily. Or eyebally, I suppose, if you want to be strictly literal about it. ‘Indeed I did steal the Sellmi!’ he crowed. ‘And I have no wish to return it. Why should I? It is mine, and I relish the power it gives me. Do you see this?’
And around his spherical body Sharon wore a chain of black gold.23 And pendent on his chain was a slice of the sacred Sellmi itself, cut from the whole Sellmi, and with a circle hollowed out from its centre so that it could be threaded onto a chain. Lüthwoman and Belend gasped with horror when they saw it – for only a creature of the lowest evil would desecrate so sacred object as the Sellmi by slicing a sliver from it, and then hollowing out the
middle, such that it became a mere hardened circle of rind. Yet did this ‘Thing’ possess some of the power of the sacred Sellmi.
‘You have mutilated the Sellmi!’ cried Belend.
‘Ach,’ said Sharon, dismissively. ‘It’s only a sliver. The rest of the Sellmi is intact; I am keeping it for my future purposes. You see, the magic of the entire Sellmi is too potent, even for a being such as I – it being created by the Creator himself. Trying to use the entire Sellmi for my magic ends was like trying to paint a three-foot-by-three-foot picture using an entire fir tree as a brush. But this way I wield the power of the whole artefact in miniature. Much more manageable. I can produce mini-artefacts chipped from the whole, fitted to this world in which we live – Upper Middle Earth is of course a lesser creation than Asdar. This slice that I wear now contains enough magic to serve my purpose; and when that magic is exhausted, I shall cut another sliver from the whole. I call this magic Thing a “Tiny Morsel”, or “TM” for short.’
And Sharon laughed again with great gusto.
And Lüthwoman did shudder at the evil of Sharon; and Belend moved to comfort her, but was prevented by the milling Orks shoving him back with their weapons.
‘Where ith the retht of the Thellmi?’ demanded Lüthwoman.
‘Why should I tell you?’ said Sharon. ‘My wish now is that you be executed horribly and painfully by my Orks. What good, therefore, will the knowledge of the Sellmi’s whereabouts do you?’
‘Where ith it?’ pressed Lüthwoman.
‘It is in a safe place,’ mocked Sharon. ‘In a room in my domain. This is a room with two entrances, or exits, yet not a room you would ever want to enter – for, even if you knew its location, the key to the door is your own flesh, and you would leave the room quite changed from how you entered it.’
And Belend and Lüthwoman puzzled over this riddle.
‘Yet,’ said Lüthwoman, ‘if it ith a room in thith tower, we may yet find it.’
At this Sharon only laughed.
‘Take us there!’ demanded Belend. ‘Take us to the Sellmi!’
And Sharon laughed loud and long at this presumption. ‘Your bravery is matched only by your foolishness!’ he declared. ‘Take you to the Sellmi? Never – you shall never know where it is, for the Sellmi will be mine for ever!’
And as the Evil Lord spoke these words, the final Bug of Truth stirred in Lüthwoman’s pocket, and came to life. It crawled out and flipped into the air, catching Sharon’s words as they were spoken: a great lie from a great liar, yet the Bug of Truth gobbled them in flight, and Sharon instead said:
‘The Sellmi is in the belly of the Pig of Doom, which terrible creature I keep in a great pit behind the tower. I feed this beast on my enemies, and upon any Orks that displease me – they are thrown, alive and screaming, into the deep pit, and the Pig of Doom devours them with great chompings; and in the belly of this terrible creature I keep the incorruptible Sellmi beyond the reach of my enemies.’
And the Orks were astonished that Sharon had revealed this secret, for not even his closest lieutenants had been privy to the true location of the Sellmi. And Sharon, paranoid in his fear and possessiveness, had thought no room in his castle safe enough from theft, and so had fed the remainder of the Sellmi to his monstrous Pig. But he was horrified at what he had said, for it had not been his intention.
‘Why did I say that?’ Sharon cried. ‘What came over me? Curses! – but look! Look! A Bug of Truth! Kill it, smash it, crush it—’
And the Orks ran in circles, and flailed in the air with their weapons, hoping to slay the Bug of Truth and so please their master; but the bug was agile, and flapped out of reach; and it flew high through an open casement and flew to the north. And there, eventually, it found a pleasant field, and burrowed into the soil; for it had devoured an unusually large lie, and had within itself food for a long time.
But Sharon’s rage was kindled now.
‘You worms!’ he cried. ‘How dare you trick me into revealing the true location of the Sellmi! How dare you! I had planned to kill you quickly and cleanly, here: but now instead I shall fulfil your request – I shall take you to the Sellmi, and instead of a quick death you shall meet a terrible and painful demise at the jaws of the Pig of Doom!’
And at this news Belend did tremble, and Lüthwoman moan. Because, after all, nobody looks forward cheerily to the prospect of being eaten by a giant pig. Nobody I know, anyway.
When Sharon had put the sacred Sellmi inside the Pig of Doom he knew that the magical artefact could not be corrupted or digested inside the pig’s gut: for the Sellmi, being not of this world, cannot be consumed by it. On the contrary, he knew the Pig would hold the Sellmi in a safe and hidden place, and that when the pig died he could cut open the pig’s belly and retrieve the artefact. But he had not planned on revealing this secret place to anybody, and now he was bitter and angry.
He ordered his Orks to seize Belend and Lüthwoman, and decreed that they be cast into the great pit to be devoured by the hideous pig. And to them he said, ‘Your end is fitting, for you came seeking the Sellmi, and you shall be taken to it. Let you not, therefore, complain.’
And Belend did stand as proudly as he could, bearing in mind that he had Orks hanging off him and poking him in the small of the back with spears and so on, and replied: ‘I do not complain, Lord of Darkness, for I am content to die by the side of my love.’
And Lüthwoman looked over to him and said, ‘Aah, that’th thoo thweet.’
And Belend did blush a little, and look at the floor, and say, ‘Well, it’s true.’
And Lüthwoman said, ‘I love you too, my neatumth-thweetumth.’
And Belend said, ‘Love you, gurgly-tum.’
And Lüthwoman said, ‘My little love-monkey.’
And Belend said, ‘My tweaky little—’
But at this point Sharon intervened, shouting, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake throw them to the pig. Jeesh, it’s enough to make even an eyeball vomit.’
So Belend and Lüthwoman were dragged down the stairs and out of the Cirith Connoli; and in the wasted land behind the tower was a great and deep pit, and at the bottom of this a monstrous pig, large as a whale, well, maybe one of the smaller breeds of whale anyway, a dolphin whale or a small killer whale or something like that. And it snuffled and grunted, and picked over the bones at the bottom of its pit, and eagerly awaited its next meal.
The Fifth Part of the Tale of Belend and Lüthwoman
There is no Fifth Part of the Tale of Belend and Lüthwoman. There is, however, a sixth, should you still be interested.
The Sixth Part of the Tale of Belend and Lüthwoman
And so it was that Belend and Lüthwoman were hurled into the pit of the Pig of Doom. They fell far, for the pit was deep, but their landing was cushioned by the layer of muck at the bottom of the pit, the precise nature of which was something into which they, neither of them, had any desire to enquire too closely.
Orks lined the rim of the pit, looking down, jeering and yelling; and Sharon himself stared down upon them from the top of his tall tower.
The Pig of Doom, scenting new food, came trotting over towards the newcomers; but Belend got proudly to his feet and held forth his hand in a ‘halt!’ posture.
‘Stop!’ he called. ‘Pig! Before you devour us, listen to my words. For I am Belend, of the royal line of Prorn, and I have spent my life wandering the forests of my native land, befriending bears, deer and pigs wherever I have found – ow!’
And he did say ‘Ow’ with great force and sincerity, because the Pig of Doom had bitten off his hand and swallowed it, as a morsel.
Lüthwoman screamed, or to be precise thcreamed, to see this; and Belend fell to his knees, and clutched at his stump. And he said: ‘What do you think you’re doing? For crying out loud, there’s plenty of time to eat us, there’s really no need to be so impatient, ow, ow, owww.’
And the Pig of Doom heard the words. In all his long years in the deep pit, nobody had ever spok
en to him as if he were a rational creature. But, as it happens, he was such a creature, very intelligent animals, pigs, actually. And he heard the words, and felt a bit sheepish, rather than his usual piggish. And he held back from devouring the rest of Belend for a little space.
‘Hell’s bells, that stings,’ said Belend, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his stump by wrapping his shirt around the wound in a sort of ball of cloth. ‘Ouch, ow, ow, ow, ow,’ he added.
‘Sorry,’ snorted the Pig.
‘Couldn’t you even let me finish my sentence? I mean, what’s the bleeding hurry?’
‘Got a bit carried away,’ said the Pig. ‘Sorry. Only they usually feed me Orks, and Orks taste yucky, frankly, between you and me. I got a bit overexcited, to be honest. You look just so much tastier than my usual fare. People think I’ll eat anything, and actually I will, pretty much, but that doesn’t mean I lack all sense of culinary pleasure. Quite the reverse. Actually, do you know what I really fancy?’
‘What?’ asked Belend, although his tone of voice implied somebody not happy with the cosmos and he spoke snappishly.
‘Truffles. Oo I’d love a truffle right now. You got any truffles on you?’
‘No,’ said Belend and he looked at his partner. ‘Have you got any truffles on you, dear?’
‘Thorry,’ said Lüthwoman. ‘No.’
‘Ah well,’ said the Pig.
‘Ith it true,’ asked Lüthwoman in wonder, ‘that you carry the thacred Thellmi in your belly?’
The Pig’s face assumed a pained expression. ‘Yes, that’s perfectly true. It’s not at all comfortable, I don’t mind telling you. Sharon chucked it down here a while ago, and I gobbled it down without thinking twice. But I can’t seem to digest it. I can feel it as a sort of jagged lump, about here.’ And he tapped one of his flanks with his left back trotter.