The Boy Who Didn't Want to Save the World
Page 14
‘Oh,’ said Blart. ‘It’s a shame they’re called dwarves, then, isn’t it, because that makes everybody think that they’re small.’
‘Which they are,’ agreed Capablanca. ‘But they’re very sensitive about it. You must on no account give a dwarf the impression that you think he is short. They are liable to become violent. In tense situations it is always best to keep an eye on your shins. When attacked by a dwarf, the shins are the most vulnerable area. The kicks from their boots will only bruise, but real injuries can be sustained if they use their axes.’
‘But aren’t they on our side?’ said Blart. ‘Why should we be worried about them attacking us?’
‘Dwarves are on nobody’s side,’ explained Capablanca. ‘They are the most unreliable and unpredictable of creatures. But they may be on our side once they know about Zoltab, for the dwarves have reason to hate him. At least, as much on our side as a dwarf can be, but until then they might be a little hostile. We will after all be breaking into their homes.’
‘Can’t we do without a dwarf?’ asked Blart.
‘No,’ replied Capablanca firmly. ‘Now we have lost the map a dwarf is absolutely necessary. They are now our only hope of finding the Great Tunnel of Despair. There is nobody in the world who knows more about tunnels than dwarves do. That’s where they spend their lives – underground, digging tunnels and mining precious metals and jewels. Come on, push.’
The stone was a little bigger than the previous one. By the time they finally got it to roll to one side, both Blart and the wizard were very red in the face.
‘Blast,’ said Capablanca. For under this stone was nothing except more grass and a large collection of surprised insects.
They continued walking and the wizard would exclaim when he saw a dwarf stone. He saw six more dwarf stones, each of which turned out to have nothing more than moss underneath it. By the time that Capablanca pointed out his ninth dwarf stone Blart, whose patience levels were not high, was becoming distinctly unhappy.
‘There’s no such thing as dwarves,’ he told the wizard. ‘You’ve made them up.’ And then a greater doubt bubbled up in his head. ‘I bet there’s no such thing as Zoltab and there’s no such thing as the Great Tunnel of Despair either. You are just a mad old man who makes up stories and keeps people from their pigs.’
It was late afternoon and the sun was sinking and reddening as Blart spoke these unpleasant words. It should be said in his defence that this was a particularly difficult time for him, as this was the hour of the day he used to feed the pigs, and in his mind was the happy image of them munching away on their swill. And here he was pushing over stones.
Capablanca didn’t appreciate Blart’s sensitivity so all he said was, ‘Heave.’
They pushed the latest stone as hard as they could and then, when it didn’t move, discovered that they could push a little bit harder after all, and the stone wobbled a little and then a little more and then finally tumbled over. Blart had seen enough in the way of flattened grass and surprised insects that day, so he didn’t even bother looking at the ground that had been exposed.
He changed his mind, however, when Capablanca shouted, ‘Eureka!’
For there, under the stone, was a trapdoor.
The wizard pulled the door open and both of them looked into the hole that was exposed. It was dark.
‘Right,’ said Capablanca. ‘What are we waiting for?’
It was at this moment that Blart realised he suffered from claustrophobia.
Chapter 30
Claustrophobia is the fear of enclosed spaces. Blart explained to Capablanca that he was suffering from it. Capablanca explained to Blart that he didn’t care, and threatened him with dire consequences if he didn’t get in the hole immediately. After a few reluctant moans, Blart obeyed.
‘Remember not to mention the word “small”,’ Capablanca reminded him.
Blart eased himself further down into the hole and then he stopped.
‘I can’t touch anything with my feet,’ said Blart. ‘I don’t want to go any further.’
‘Let me help you,’ said Capablanca kindly, bending down and pushing Blart’s head with all the strength he could muster.
Blart was forced to let go.
‘Aaaaarraarrgghh!’ he screeched as he dropped into the hole and accelerated towards the centre of the earth. He kept screeching until he landed with a thud.
Blart checked his body to see if any of it was broken or missing. It all seemed to still be there. Then he felt something sticky underneath him, and he was just wondering what it was when he realised that there was an awful smell and the sound of something breathing. Looking up, he saw a pair of gleaming diamond-shaped eyes fixed upon him.
‘Murderer!’ accused the owner of the eyes.
‘Guuh,’ said Blart incomprehensibly.
‘You have killed my daughter Acrid.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ said Blart.
‘I just watched you jump on her,’ said the voice, ‘and now she’s dead.’
Blart began to get an uneasy sensation about what the gooey-feeling thing was underneath him.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he said hopelessly.
‘Wasn’t you?’ said whatever it was indignantly. ‘My daughter Acrid, granddaughter of Noxious, great-granddaughter of Obnoxious, lies beneath you dead. Tears well up in the very soul of my being as I remember her. A young and beautiful dwarf. A dwarf with a wonderful future. A daughter with a luxuriant beard who attracted suitors from every one of the Seven Gargantuan Mines.’
‘A beard?’ said Blart. ‘Your daughter had a beard? Nobody wants a daughter with a beard.’
Blart was certainly in error on this point. Both male and female dwarves grow beards, and it is the prime factor in determining their sexual attractiveness. A male dwarf will travel for many miles to find a female dwarf with a fine fluffy beard.
Still, Acrid certainly wasn’t attractive any more. She was mainly goo seeping out from under Blart’s bottom.
‘Vengeance shall be mine. Oh, Acrid, daughter of Yucky, granddaughter of Noxious, great-granddaughter of Obnoxious …’
Dwarves are very keen on their family trees, which means that whenever a person is mentioned by name at least three of their ancestors (four on special occasions) have to be mentioned too.
‘… your killer shall perish.’
Gradually Blart’s eyes became accustomed to the dark. Very dim lights revealed a room decorated almost entirely in silver – a silver ceiling, a silver floor, a silver carpet, a silver chair and a silver axe! A silver axe that Yucky the dwarf was raising above his head and obviously intending to bring down with great force on the top of Blart’s skull.
Blart squirmed backwards. Yucky seemed much bigger and more menacing than the three feet that he actually stood.
‘Prepare to die,’ said Yucky. ‘I, Yucky, son of Noxious, grandson of Ob—neeeeeeeeeagh!’
Capablanca landed with a splat right on Yucky’s head, turning him instantly from a vengeful wronged father into a smelly and sticky goo just like his daughter. If only he hadn’t insisted on reciting the names of his ancestors he might well have had just enough time to cleave Blart’s skull in two, which goes to show that you should never boast about your family.
‘You just killed a dwarf,’ said Blart.
‘Did I?’ asked the wizard, rather surprised.
‘Yes,’ answered Blart. ‘You’re a murderer.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Capablanca, feeling the goo under his bottom and experiencing the sickening feeling of sitting on a dead dwarf.
Blart shook his head in disgust.
‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ insisted Capablanca. ‘And just at the moment we’ve got the whole world to save. This is no time for sentimentality.’
‘I would like to stand in silence for a minute to remember him,’ protested Blart, who had never seen the wizard so discomfited and was determined to extract the maximum amount of embarrassment from the situation.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Capablanca.
And so the two questors stood in respectful silence over the goo that used to be dwarves. Actually, due to the low ceiling, it was more of a respectful stoop.
‘Don’t mention this to anyone,’ ordered Capablanca when the minute had elapsed. ‘It won’t go down well. Now follow me and head towards the sound of digging.’
‘Ow,’ said Blart as he banged his head on the roof.
Blart and Capablanca passed through the silver tunnel, down the silver steps, across a silver river and over some silver boulders. They banged their heads so often that after a while the bumps on their head developed bumps of their own.
And all the while the sound of digging grew louder and louder.
Presently a dwarf appeared out of the murky gloom, trudging along with a sack on his back which he dropped in surprise on catching sight of the questors.
‘Greetings to you, oh dwarf,’ said the wizard quickly, ‘from Capablanca, Grand Master Wizard of the Order of Caissa. I come to seek your leader on a matter of great importance. Know ye only that this matter regards Lord Zoltab.’
The dwarf’s eyes bulged and his nose flared.
‘D-d-d-don’t s-s-say that n-n-name,’ he eventually stammered out.
‘I do not say it lightly,’ said Capablanca. ‘I know what Zoltab did to the dwarves many years ago and –’
‘Y-y-you s-s-said it ag-ag-ag-ain,’ pointed out the dwarf.
‘But I do for a reason,’ insisted Capablanca. ‘For I know what was done to you and I have come to ask for your assistance in preventing the return of Zo— er … the evil one who is even now on the verge of being freed by his Ministers and minions. Take us to your leader, then we can get on with saving the world.’
The dwarf made a head movement which might have been a nod of agreement or a shake of refusal or indeed the beginning of a quaint dwarf folk dance. It was impossible to tell.
‘Look,’ snapped Capablanca, ‘I haven’t got time for all this shaking. If you don’t pull yourself together then we might as well all go home, put our feet up and let the world be doomed.’
‘What did Zoltab do to the dwarves?’ Blart whispered to Capablanca.
‘N-n-no,’ cried the dwarf as yet again the dread name was mentioned. His shaking began all over again.
‘Look what you’ve done,’ Capablanca said to Blart in exasperation. ‘Let us move out of earshot until he has calmed down.’
They both moved a little down the tunnel to where they could still see the dwarf but he could no longer hear them.
‘What did Zoltab do to the dwarves?’ repeated Blart as soon as they were at a safe distance. Whatever it was, reasoned Blart, if his name had an effect like that then what he did must have been incredibly evil and well worth knowing about.
‘Do to them?’ replied Capablanca. ‘He shrank them, of course.’
‘Shrank them?’ said Blart. ‘But they’re dwarves.’
‘Yes,’ said Capablanca, ‘but dwarf didn’t always mean small. A long time ago it meant tall.’
‘What?’ said Blart, who really wasn’t getting this bit.
Capablanca glanced at the dwarf. He wasn’t shaking quite as much but he was still not able to talk.
‘Before Zoltab’s brief reign,’ continued Capablanca, ‘there lived a race of extremely tall men called dwarves. Some of them stood up to eight feet high. They sided against Zoltab when he attempted to take power, but before he could be encased in his underground prison he managed to unleash some infernal power to shrink every dwarf and all their offspring by half. Nobody could work out how he’d done it, not even the other lords, so the effect couldn’t be reversed. Now the dwarves had always been extremely proud of their height and were deeply ashamed to have become so small. It was then that they left the surface of the earth to hide their shame in the gargantuan mines. Over time everyone else stopped using dwarf as a term for tall and elegant and instead used it as a word meaning short and stubby.’
‘Oh,’ said Blart, his forehead creasing in the attempt to understand. ‘So dwarf used to mean tall but now it means small.’
‘Exactly,’ said Capablanca, ‘unless you are talking to a dwarf in which case the whole question of size shouldn’t be mentioned.’
Blart was really doing very well here, as he was getting to grips with two of the fundamental laws of linguistics: that language is arbitrary and that meaning changes over time.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Blart.
Or perhaps not.
Blart and Capablanca relapsed into silence and bump-rubbing whilst they waited for the dwarf to calm down.
Eventually, the dwarf regained control of himself. He approached Blart and Capablanca warily.
‘I am Porg, son of Stench,’ he said. ‘Follow me. And don’t utter that word again.’
‘What word?’ said Blart, displaying once again his superb memory skills. ‘Oh you mean Zo— ow.’
Capablanca hit Blart smartly over the head.
The dwarf picked up his bag and led them back the way he had come. They continued walking through silver tunnels and caverns, passing increasing numbers of dwarves who stared at them open-mouthed. However, Blart noticed that Porg tugged three times at his beard on entering each new cavern and this sign seemed to reassure the other dwarves that things were all right, though it presumably didn’t do his chin much good.
Blart now felt very tired and hungry. He had not eaten since breakfast and he had been walking non-stop. Between stomach rumbles he produced a series of loud yawns and sighs. It may have been to hide these repulsive noises that the dwarf embarked on a song.
‘I’m Porg, the dwarf son of Stench the dwarf
And I dig all day for silver.
I’m Porg, the dwarf grandson of Pong the dwarf
And I dig all day for silver.
I’m Porg, the dwarf great-grandson of Gag the dwarf
And I dig all day for silver.
I’m Porg, the dwarf great-great-grandson of Sour the dwarf
And I dig all day for silver.’
Neither Blart nor Capablanca had ever heard a worse song. Blart had regularly been exposed to that well-known tear-jerking ballad, ‘The Piglet and the Cleaver’, as sung by his grandfather, but this was far worse. Blart was contemplating clubbing Porg the dwarf to death with his own axe when the tunnel suddenly widened, the damp air suddenly lightened and they came upon a silver door. In front of it stood two guards with extra-large axes.
‘Halt in the name of Squat, Emperor of the Silver Dwarves. Who goes there?’ both dwarves said at exactly the same time without even looking at each other. A particularly useless skill that must nevertheless have taken ages to practise.
Porg explained why Blart and Capablanca wanted to see Emperor Squat.
‘I’ll see if he’s in,’ said one of the guards, and he turned the doorknob. The door didn’t move.
‘Haven’t they oiled it yet?’ the second guard asked. ‘They’re a law unto themselves in Repairs.’
The second guard added his weight and then Porg joined in. Finally Blart and Capablanca put their shoulders against it too and, after one huge heave, the door gave way. Predictably, the force they had all applied could not be withdrawn, and they tumbled into the room, landing together in a big heap.
‘Uuuummmooorrrrppppuuuummmmpppphhh,’ is the most accurate rendering that I can manage of the noise they made.
Emperor Squat woke up.
‘What? What?’ he said.
The dwarves and Blart and Capablanca untangled themselves and stood up to face the emperor.
Emperor Squat studied his visitors and in response they studied him. What Blart and Capablanca saw was a very fat dwarf indeed with an extraordinarily bushy beard. Indeed, so fat was Emperor Squat that his throne was a wide as it was tall. What was more the Emperor was on the point of bursting out of his silver robes – his legs bulged through his stockings, his belly protruded through his shirt and even his crown seemed a tight fit.
‘No,’ said Squat.
‘Yes, you are,’ said Blart.
‘Who dares contradict me in my own throne room?’ demanded Squat, who had a deep voice and was fond of using it.
‘Me,’ said Blart.
‘Kill him,’ ordered Squat.
‘Sorry, it wasn’t me. It was him,’ Blart added, pointing at Capablanca. ‘I got muddled.’
‘Kill them both,’ decreed Squat. ‘Just to make sure.’
The guard indicated a door marked ‘EXECUTION WITHOUT TRIAL’ at the side of the room. Blart stared at it in horror, and gained a belated understanding of the importance of the thoroughness of judicial process.
And so once again it seemed as though the whole world lay at the mercy of the infernal Zoltab and his Ministers and minions as the last hope of humanity faced extinction.
Chapter 31
‘Ex-ex-excuse me, Emperor Squat,’ began Porg nervously. ‘B-b-begging your pardon, I did bring the strangers here for a reason, and loath though I am to intervene on behalf of anybody who has insulted Your Bulkiness, I must tell you that they have come about …’ And here Porg twitched his beard in that particular way which indicated Zoltab.
‘What about him?’ the Emperor demanded.
‘They think he’s coming back.’
‘Coming back? He can’t come back. He’s in an underground prison at the bottom of the Great Tunnel of Despair. Don’t you know anything?’
‘But not for much longer,’ interrupted the wizard. ‘I am Capablanca, First-Class Wizard and Bar. I have travelled far and wide and studied for many years at the Cavernous Library of Ping. I –’
‘Enough,’ cried Squat, holding up his hand. ‘I will hear your story, Wizard, even though wizards are not always welcome in these parts, but I will not hear it without my court. It is beneath my dignity. Guards, tell the court to come in. And bring the Ambassador too.’
‘But the fewer people who know about this the better,’ protested Capablanca.
‘I have spoken,’ decreed Squat, pointing out the obvious.