Shadow Prowler

by Alexey Pehov

  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.