The Outsorcerer's Apprentice

by Tom Holt

  Drain hesitated. In his mind’s eye he could see ninety-seven generations of his ancestors, looking down at him from the gates of Nargoprong, waiting for him to screw up. The entire future of dwarfkind rested on the choice he was about to make. And if he should fail—He steeled his heart, lifted his head and in a loud, clear voice said, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with F.”

  Mordak blinked. “Eff?”

  “You heard me.”

  Mordak breathed out slowly through the three slits just above his upper jaw that served him as nostrils. Eff, he thought, for crying out loud. “Fire.”

  “No.”

  Eff. Apart from fire, what was there in the Great Hall that began with F? Soldiers, lots of soldiers, in armour, holding weapons. And that was about it. He racked his brains for abstruse military terminology. “Phalanx?”

  “Phalanx,” Drain said smugly, “begins with a P.”

  Mordak’s eyes widened; two of them, anyway. “Does it?”

  “Yes. Look it up.”

  Which left just one more guess; and if he guessed wrong, the five hundred year war would be over and he’d have lost. By the terms of the armistice (which he’d proposed, argued passionately for in the teeth, the yellow, split-ended teeth, of furious opposition from every single goblin clan chieftain under the Mountain) the dwarves would then be entitled to vacant possession of the entire network of mines, from Drubin’s Gate to the Nazerbul. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Eff, for pity’s sake. By the rules of the contest, thrashed out over the course of two years by five hundred negotiators from each side, he wasn’t allowed to look round, to see what Drain could see. He had to rely on his memory and, Thun preserve us, his imagination.

  Flames? Fighters? Wasn’t there some sort of rare, obsolete throwing-axe whose name began with F? No, howled a little voice inside him, it’s nothing like that, it can’t be. Remember, Drain’s a dwarf. Dwarves are devious.

  The dwarf-lord cleared his throat. Time was passing. If Mordak didn’t answer in five seconds, he’d lose by default.

  All right, Mordak thought desperately. The rules say it’s got to be something he can see from where he’s standing; but he knows he daren’t lose, so it can’t be anything I might possibly guess. What, within the parameters of the rules and, as a dwarf would define it, the truth, would he know I’d never ever say?

  Suddenly he relaxed, and knew that he’d won. Put like that, there could only be one answer.

  Mordak smiled, revealing all his teeth. “Friend,” he said.

  Drain went white as a sheet. “Sorry. Didn’t quite catch—”

  “Friend,” Mordak repeated, loud and grimly clear. “That’s the answer, isn’t it?”

  “Um,” said Drain. “Best of three?”

  “Friend,” Mordak boomed, and his voice ricocheted off the vaulted roof like catapult shot. “Well?”

  Twenty thousand dwarves and twenty thousand goblins held their breath. Then Drain mumbled something to his shoes. It sounded like ymblmbl. “Say again?”

  “Yes.”

  It was one of those trigger moments; when the destiny of the Three Races hung on a tiny detent, like the slim steel spur lodged in the nut of a spanned crossbow that keeps the string from slamming forward and launching the arrow. It would only take the smallest pressure to release it; some fool drawing a sword or nocking an arrow on a bowstring, or dropping a clattering spear on the granite floor. The last time two armies of this size had been this close to each other under the Mountain, the battle had lasted three days and there had been just one survivor, and they’d had to hire in outside contractors to clear away the dead.

  “Just to clarify,” Mordak said. “That means I’ve won.”

  The dwarf didn’t speak. Mordak hadn’t expected him to. As soon as Drain admitted defeat, the dwarves would come out swinging; a fraction of a second later, the goblins would retaliate in kind, and forty thousand sentient beings would set about the congenial task of turning every living thing in the Great Chamber into pastrami. It was probably just as well, Mordak told himself, that I’ve prepared for this moment.

  “Tell you what,” Mordak said, “let’s call it quits.”

  The dwarf’s head snapped up. “You what?”

  “Let’s do a deal,” Mordak said, and his voice seemed like it was coming from a long way away and belonged to someone else. “Your lot can have all the mine workings south of this room, and we’ll have everything to the north. Well?”

  Imagine how you would feel if forty thousand and one people were staring at you, convinced you’d gone off your head. But at least they weren’t shooting. “Just like that?”

  “Yup.”

  “We’d have all the mines south of this room, and you’d have all the mines north—?”

  Mordak nodded. “That’s the general idea. So?”

  Drain lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “But you won.”

  Mordak nodded. “So I did,” he hissed back. “And in two minutes, unless we can pull this off, these idiots are going to start slaughtering each other. Not to mention,” he added with feeling, “us. But if we do this deal, they’ll all be so bewildered and confused they won’t know what to do, which means you and I can slip away quietly, and maybe just possibly we’ll both still be alive this time tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  The dwarf had spoken automatically, because anything a goblin says to a dwarf has to be contradicted immediately. “Hang on,” Drain said. “That’s not such a dumb idea.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “But—”

  The inner conflict raging inside the dwarf’s small, round head was fascinating to watch; like a fight to the death between three goldfish. “But that’d mean peace.”

  “Good heavens, so it would. There’s a thing. Still—”

  “No,” Drain whispered nervously, “no way. They’ll tear me limb from limb.”

  “Not,” Mordak hissed, “necessarily. Just stop and think, will you? What does peace actually mean?”

  Behind him, Mordak could hear twenty thousand goblins starting to mutter. “I don’t know, do I?” Drain said helplessly. “There’s never been—”

  “Peace,” Mordak said, quickly and urgently, “means no more fighting. Also, it means an end to the ruinous expense of training, equipping and supplying two ridiculously large armies, which is bleeding both of us white. It means an opportunity to stand down the armed forces, fire the existing generals and get new ones who aren’t actively plotting against us, recruit and train up a decent professional standing army to replace the useless, sloppy, bolshie bunch of draftees we’re both lumbered with, and take a bit of time and a bit of care to get ready for the next war—”

  “Ah!”

  “—At the end of which, our combined forces will have wiped the Elves off the face of the Earth. That’s what peace means. Well?”

  “Ah.”

  Mordak allowed himself a brief, happy grin. “Thought you’d get the hang of it,” he said, “a bright fella like you.”

  He’d won. He knew it. Goblins and dwarves hated each other; of course they did. But everybody hated the Elves; and why not? Bunch of stuck-up, supercilious, patronising, bleeding-heart-liberal-intellectual tree-huggers, it made his blood boil just thinking about them. If peace was what it took to nail every last Elf to a tree by the tips of its pointy ears, it was a small enough price to pay. And Drain might be thick as three lead bricks, but he had to see that, too. Didn’t he?

  “Done,” Drain said. “You got yourself a deal.”

  “Thanks,” Mordak said. “Friend,” he added. That got him an extra special dwarven nasty look, but he felt he deserved a little self-indulgence.

  He let Drain do the speech; and, to be fair, the little chap did it pretty well. He talked about new beginnings and a bright new dawn for their children and their children’s children, about understanding and reconciliation and kicking twelve kinds of shit out of the Elves; and by the time he’d finished
forty thousand battle-hardened warriors were standing around with stunned expressions on their faces, and five centuries of war were suddenly over, just like that—

  I did that, Mordak thought. And then he thought; why did I do that?

  Well, he told himself afterwards, as he sipped a well-earned margarita from the jewel-encrusted skull of his predecessor (the gemstones picked out the words WORLD’S BEST BOSS; goblin craftsmanship at its finest), obviously I did it so that we can go after those bastard Elves and sort them out once and for all. And then he played a little game; substitute dwarves for Elves and Elves for dwarves, and see what difference it makes.

  None whatsoever.

  Yes, but—He frowned. Fine. First we deal with the Elves. Then we can break the alliance and sort out the dwarves, after they’ve done most of the hard work annihilating the pointy-ears. Put like that, it made perfect sense. One thing at a time, and only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Yes. Of course.

  And was that the real reason? No. Thought not.

  What’s got into me? He scowled at his drink and put it down. While we’re on the subject of things that only fools do, how about lying to yourself? Other people, fine, no problem; yourself, no. The real reason—

  Was that the war was stupid. The war meant that 75 per cent of the goblin workforce was fighting the war, costing him money, when they could be working down the mines, earning him money; sure, the war was about who controlled the mines, but so long as it lasted, ownership was irrelevant, because practically nobody was working down there. Also, a hell of a lot of goblins were getting killed, and maybe that wasn’t such a good—

  He cringed. He was starting to sound like an Elf. No, worse than that (because Elves had no problem with wars so long as they weren’t actually doing the fighting). He was starting to sound like a human.

  Yuck.

  After we’ve done the Elves and the dwarves, he promised himself, the humans are definitely going to be next. Absolutely. No question.

  His predecessor was grinning at him. As well he might; Ugrok had been a good, traditional, uncontroversial Goblin King, loved and respected by his surviving subjects. A robust approach to diplomacy and a fine head for military strategy (and here it was, empty; Mordak reached for the bottle and poured himself a large brandy) He’d never have made peace with the dwarves, just because some wizard—

  No, we won’t go there. Mordak sighed. Too much thinking made him dizzy, and right now the room was slowly churning round and round. Keep it simple, he told himself, keep it real, keep it goblin. The only reason I just ended the war was so I can start it again. Put like that—

  Put like that, it was silly; also, it wasn’t true. But not to worry. A goblin needs truth, the old saying went, like an Elf needs intestines. With a conscious effort, he turned his attention to more important things; like, for example, how to screw the dwarves to the floor over this new treaty without actually breaking it. That was more like it. North and south of the Halls of Udrear; he was quite proud of that one, given that the richest veins of The Stuff lay directly underneath the Halls, and therefore weren’t covered by the terms of the agreement. Of course, Drain was too stupid to realise that. Or was he?

  Slowly and carefully, Mordak devised a plan of campaign. It was, he told himself with pride, typically goblin; cunning, vicious and morally bankrupt. Much more like it. His self-esteem restored, he drained his brandy, waddled into the kitchen, dumped his empty mug in the headwasher and strolled out through the Royal Mews to take the evening air.

  Which was particularly fine tonight. Mordak’s sensitive nose easily discerned the various trace elements–sulphur, magnesium, a dozen different isotopes of silicon; in spite of everything, he’d managed to keep Shaft Nine in full production 24/7, and by the smell of it they were bringing the day shift’s production to the surface right now. He wandered across to the pit head to see for himself, and was rewarded with a view of sixteen large wooden trolleys, drawn by captive dwarves, laden with rough-hewn blocks of glowing yellow rock.

  Ah, the glory of it. Mithuriel, the Elves called it; blastein, in Dwarvish; to the goblins, it was simply The Stuff–a hard grey rock that, under certain circumstances, shone with a pure yellow light. Kings and archpriests slaughtered each other for a peanut-sized chip of it to place on their crowns. Dragons sat on it, trolls ate it (but there you go), Elves wrote scratchy sounding violin sonatas to celebrate its ethereal beauty; and the wizard bought it, top dollar, cash on the nail and keep it coming. Forty-five gobbos a ton. You could buy a lot of war with that sort of money.

  He watched them load the raw blocks into the derrick, then strain against the bars of the capstan that turned the winch that swung the crane up and into the soot-black hole in the middle of the huge diamond-encrusted golden-brown circular Portal set into the back wall of the cavern. A moment later, the crane basket came back empty, and that was it. For some reason, Mordak found it vaguely unsatisfactory, as though there should be rather more to it than that. Like, what did the wizard actually do with a hundred and seventy tons of The Stuff; where did it go to, and what exactly lay on the other side of the black hole, beyond which no goblin had ever ventured? Not venturing, however, was an express term of the contract, on pain of forfeiture of a nine-figure sum. So; no venturing, or else.

  There were theories, of course. Professor Magluk of the Goblin Institute of Alchemy had postulated that the black hole led to a transdimensional interface, in effect a sort of hiatus hernia in the gullet of space/time, and that there must be some unique property in The Stuff that allowed it to pass through the interface without being subject to quantum disruption, in accordance with Ngyuk’s Third Law, or otherwise the wizard would end up with a teaspoonful of irradiated grey ash for his money, which was improbable—On the other hand, Academician Snatbog of the Goblin Association for the Advancement of Science had recently made a very good case for arguing that the black hole was in fact the imaging chamber of a functional teleportation device, presumably powered by an artificially created quantum singularity, with the power to transmute matter into energy and, by folding the fabric of the continuum back onto itself into a sort of Mobius paper chain, transport inanimate objects across the boundaries of alternate universes (in accordance with multiverse theory) to a preordained location. They were both good theories, and Mordak would have liked to have seen them taken further. Unfortunately, being goblins, Magluk and Snatbog had sought to resolve their differences by means of a duel to the death, in the course of which both of them had perished, so the question was, for the time being, unresolved.

  She looked at him. He looked at her. The horse shuffled a bit and ate a nettle.

  She’d heard the two words all her life; handsome prince. They went together so closely it was hard to think of them being used separately. Ugly prince or handsome woodcutter simply wouldn’t mean anything. And, at some point in her early childhood, a vague mental image had coalesced in the back of her mind; a tall, blond, curly-haired young man with a small nose, big ears, a white horse and a perpetual cheesy grin. The truth was, she’d never really liked handsome princes in stories. They were too easy, too convenient. The girl, stupid or spineless, gets herself locked up in a tower, put to sleep for a hundred years, poisoned with a magic apple; but not to worry, because some day, just in the nick of time, her prince will come and he’ll take care of everything; all she has to do is look fragile and decorative. To a girl who’d spent her eighth birthday prising the gold fillings out of the upper jaw of the dead witch she’d just brained with the kitchen hatchet, the picture didn’t seem right. Besides, she didn’t like curly hair on men, and horses made her sneeze.

  “Gesundheit,” he said.

  But this prince was different. He was − well, let’s not use the H word, not when there’s terms such as cute, gorgeous, well fit and so forth, which haven’t been devalued by a lifetime of negative connotations. True, he was tall, and his fair hair was a bit curly, and his horse was indisputably white. Other than that, he was nothing
like the soppy halfwits of her imagination.

  “Excuse me,” he said (and his voice was soft and surprisingly deep; the handsome princes in her head all squeaked like hamsters) “I’m not from around here. Would this be the Forest?”

  On either side of the track, the trees crowded round, their spindly heads swaying in the gentle breeze.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Ah, fine, that’s all right.” He was scowling at the box in his hand, as if it had done something wrong. “Can’t seem to get a signal, for some reason. Are you local?”

  “What?”

  “Do you live round here?”

  Dammit, she was going to blush. She tried to fight it, but it was no use. “Yes,” she said.

  “Splendid, maybe you can help me. My name’s—” Was it her imagination, or did he glance down at the back of his hand, “Florizel, and I’m the new prince. What I mean is, my father’s just become king, so I’m sort of going around the place, checking stuff out, just a sort of preliminary fact-finding initiative, kind of thing. You know.”

  Odd. Handsome princes wandered around the place all the time, but they were hunting or hawking or exercising their horses, they didn’t find facts. She’d always assumed they had people for that. “Oh,” she said.

  “That’s right,” said Prince Florizel. “And sounding out local people in, you know, local communities. Seeing what their concerns are, what they want from their public services, all that. Schools, infrastructure, integrated transport networks.” He was trying to stuff the little grey box into his tunic, but there wasn’t a pocket where he was trying to put it. “Anything you’d like to, you know, put on the agenda?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is there anything you feel the government ought to be doing that it isn’t?”

  Government. Now there was a word. She’d never heard it, but she knew what it meant. So, apparently, did he. But that was all wrong, she thought. We don’t have government, we have kings and handsome princes and pretty, airheaded princesses with wicked stepmothers. And as for infrastructure—