by Rhys Hughes
“I have raced across the land on my trusty mount,” the fellow continued, and for the first time Frith noticed the horse that had wandered into the nearby derelict cottage. “I have braved the rigours of the rock trolls of Bismal, the evil harpies of Dask and the centaurs-with-attitude who roam the steppes of the Chilly Extension. My tuned sword protected me, as it will protect you.”
“Um!” Frith saw the blade leaning against a stump and covered his mouth with a grimy hand. The sword blazed lilac and crimson and gold and seemed to radiate security and justice. It was surely a magical blade...
“Whoever holds it is safe from all dangers,” coughed the knight, rolling his eyes for dramatic effect. “It was forged by Glissando, the legendary Chromatic Swordsmith of Skale. See how the colours shift through the whole spectrum? As moody and cold as the harlots of Pock, and a mite less itchy. But I, fool as ever, laid it aside to take a drink and was bitten by a snake.”
Frith noticed the gaping hole in the armour over the knight’s heart and nodded. He knew the snake who lived in the well. Slimy, he called him. An enormous speckled amber serpent with topaz eyes and green lips, the bite of Slimy was said to be incurable...
“You want me to complete your mission?” Tears of joy coursed down Frith’s dirty cheeks. He thought about his drab life back at the village, where his stepfather forced him to work with the pigs. “Then I will leave at once!” He picked up the tuned sword and held it up to the light. “What is the name of this mighty blade? And how do I get to the King’s Palace?”
“The blade is called Nigel,” the knight wheezed. “An heroic name from the distant past. As for the safest way to the Palace, that is along the Royal Highway. However, you will have to take a much more dangerous shortcut to arrive there on time. Listen to my directions...”
The knight began to gurgle and Frith had to place his ear close to the man’s mouth. Spittle splashed his eardrum. He listened intently and then nodded again. When the knight expired, he closed the puffy eyelids and thrust Nigel into his belt.
Entering the abandoned cottage, he rummaged through the ancient artifacts until he found a pen, paper and inks. Knowing full well that he would soon start to forget them, he wrote down the knight’s directions. In careful letters, he wrote:
Cross the Plain of Delirium to the Aching Desert, turn north onto the Vicious Veldt as far as the Riverbed of Screams. Follow the Riverbed towards the Scalding Sea as far as the Marsh of Manic Mushrooms. Cross the Marsh on the Boardwalk of Bones until you reach the Land of the Insane Imps. After skirting the Moor of Malevolence, enter the Coniferous Forest. On the other side of this Forest lies the Palace.
Frith spent the next hour with an old battered dictionary, discovering the meaning of words such as “vicious” and “malevolence”. He was surprised to find that only “coniferous” meant anything relatively harmless. It seemed that until he reached this forest, his journey would be one of torments, ordeals and dark adventures. He was delighted.
He had always wanted to travel. And now he had the chance to prove himself a hero as well. No doubt Marjoram, the beautiful auburn haired daughter of Corvus the Blacksmith, would be suitably impressed if he managed to succeed in his quest. Perhaps she would even consent to marry him or, at the very least, spend a night with him naked and oiled. Or if not Marjoram then surely her sister, Coriander...
Cheered by such thoughts, Frith took hold of the horse’s harness and led the beast back outside. He knew how to ride, although he was no expert, and so had little difficulty mounting the snorting animal. Eventually, he even managed to get it going and headed out towards the east, in the direction of the Plain of Delirium.
As he rode, the grasses and weeds grew longer and the land began levelling out on all sides. Soon he came to the vast undulating plain that he had often been warned about. The Plain of Delirium was notorious for its eldritch visions that shimmered in the air; ghastly forms that hovered in front of a traveller and mouthed silent obscenities. Rumour had it that a mighty war in ancient days had distorted the fabric of spacetime, trapping the souls of those who had fought in it. These wraiths chattered at Frith now and called out to him, replaying the same motions over and over again, like the antics of an inebriated mummer.
Knowing these phantoms to be wholly insubstantial, Frith spurred his reluctant steed into their midst and, head down, pressed forward. He cast his mind back to what little Ancient History he had learned in the village. Once, long ago, men and women had flown through the air in machines and watched flickering pictures on glass boxes. Frith was glad that magic in his age was limited to Goblins, Witches and Bugaboos.
Before long, despite his desperate attempts to cling to sanity, the spectres of the Plain began to take their toll on Frith. His breathing grew increasingly shallow and his vision blurred. His subconscious mind, unable to cope with this onslaught, had decided that a state of delirium might be the most acceptable way out of the situation. This was how the Plain had earned its name. Although its horrors were immaterial, they were capable of inducing madness. The Plain, so it was said, was full of the bones of travellers who had turned into frothing lunatics and had wandered in circles until hunger and thirst had come for them with unsheathed claws.
Determined not to join the ranks of his predecessors, Frith decided to fight back. Although he knew that it was a worthless gesture, he drew his sword and swung savagely at the ghosts who crowded in on either side of his mount. And as he swung, Nigel began to sing, a melodic burst of defiance in sonata form that led first to a fast syncopated boogie rhythm and then to an impressive counterpoint for sixteen voices.
As the unearthly music changed key, Frith noticed that the spectres were retreating in confusion. Their insults and sarcastic references began to be replaced by a concerned mumbling. As Frith cut a rainbow arc in the air before him, he saw that the spirits were terrified of the blade. What the knight had said was true: Nigel was capable of protecting all those who wielded him.
Holding the sword in front of him, Frith urged his horse to greater speed and laughed as the massed columns of gibbering phantoms fled in horror, their bony hands outstretched in supplication, their eyeless sockets pleading, their strange tattered rags trailing behind them in the warped atmosphere.
Thus did Frith first discover the power of his blade, and it was a discovery that was to aid him greatly in the days that followed. He soon became especially careful to keep Nigel by his side at all times. The tuned sword struck fear into the shrivelled hearts of all those who tried to attack him. And it would always sing a different song when it lopped off the limbs and heads of demons and ghouls, as if to show off the extent of its repertoire.
When he had finally crossed the Plain of Delirium and had reached the Aching Desert, Frith took out his little piece of paper with the knight’s directions on it and studied it for a minute. Then he headed north towards the Vicious Veldt. The Aching Desert was a barren wasteland where even the scorpions feared to tread. It had earned its name because of the curious groans it emitted whenever anyone trod on it. Frith, in fact, had heard that the entire desert was a single sentient being that completely turned over in its sleep at night, burying alive any traveller unlucky enough to be present on its surface and exposing the bones of any traveller who might have ventured onto its vermilion sands in the past.
He was, therefore, more than a little keen to reach the Vicious Veldt before nightfall. But as he crested one scimitar shaped dune and gazed across a sandy hollow at another, he beheld a curious sight. A caravan was making its way across the ridge with painful slowness, a collection of carts piled high with precious metals and jewels and pulled by men with the heads of beasts. And highest of all, sitting atop the silks and satins of the largest cart, a woman with hair as dark as night flicked a dragonhide whip over each bronzed flank.
“Hello there!” Throwing caution to the wolves of daring, Frith approached the woman and reined in his horse beside her. She coiled her whip around her arm and gazed down at him wi
th hooded eyes. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance?” he ventured. She smiled in return and licked her lips. She was wearing a cloak of feathers, but when she stood up and let it fall from around her shoulders, Frith’s throat went dry. With the exception of a few well placed amethysts and two whorls of filigreed silver, she was completely naked. Frith’s nostrils flared as he caught the sandalwood scent of her ebony skin.
“Well thank you,” she crooned through a hotly moist mouth. “I am the Princess Jadella of the Land of Golden Tears. Perhaps you have heard of me? I was travelling back to my kingdom, but these fools managed to get me lost as usual.” She indicated the man-beasts vainly struggling in their harnesses. “I have been sweltering in this desert all day. Who are you?”
“I am a virgin. I mean, a hero...” gasped Frith. He attempted to control his mounting excitement. A real Princess? He glanced at the sun. “It does not seem that you will be able to get these carts out of here before sunset. I suggest that you abandon them. Come with me and I will transport you to safety.”
“Leave my treasure? Never!” The Princess pouted and Frith’s heart fluttered. “How could I possibly return home without my treasure? My father would have me boiled alive. It is partly his treasure too, you see. He merely loaned it to me. I needed to appear fabulously wealthy on my trip around the world. We are not a rich kingdom really. Now tell me, could you really let me be boiled alive? Could you?” Once again her tongue caressed her sensuous lips. “After all, there might be a reward in it for you...”
Frith was off his saddle in an instant, lending his strength to the gasping hybrids who wrestled with the weight of the caravan. But after only ten minutes or so, he shook his head. “It is just too heavy,” he said. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and coughed the sand out of his lungs.
“Oh, come now.” The Princess had also dismounted and was setting up an enormous parasol in the desert. “You said you were a hero. Surely you can do better than that?” She spread silks out on the ground and lay down in the shade, fanning herself with languid strokes. Her eyes twinkled and she parted her legs a little. “I mean, what is the world coming to, if heroes give up so easily?” She poured herself a goblet of wine from a jug. “Some people are simply not interested in rewards...”
And so began a three hour farce in which Frith tried every means his dehydrated brain could think of to shift the overladen caravan. He tried tying his horse to the carts, he tried levering pieces of wood from the sides of the cart under the wheels, he tried unloading the caravan and using makeshift pulleys to amplify the force. He even tried prodding the men-beasts to greater efforts with the tip of his sword. Blood gouted orange from the sides of men-bulls and men-rams and men-pelicans, but it was all to no avail. The hideous creatures were utterly exhausted.
Finally, as the sun began to go down, he grasped the Princess’ arm and gestured at the horizon. “It is no good. We have to leave this instant. If we stay, we will probably no longer exist in the morning. Take your men-beasts with you, if you have to, but forget about the treasure. It is as good as lost already. Maybe in a year or so it will resurface again...”
But the Princess twisted her arm free of his grip, took hold of his hand and pulled him down on top of her. Frith was astonished by her strength. She rolled him over so that he lay underneath her with his arms pinned down by her knees. As the sun started to bleed into the horizon, the little eddies of sand near his ears rustled in an ominous way, grain whispering against grain. “I think you should reconsider,” he said. “It is almost night.”
With admirable efficiency and minimum fuss, the Princess managed to remove most of Frith’s clothing while holding him helpless. When she reached his right shoe, she noticed for the first time that the front part had been sheared off, and also that one of his toes was missing. “What happened there?” she demanded.
“A minor accident.” He tried to shrug, but in his present circumstances it was difficult. “While crossing the Plain of Delirium, I lashed out at the wraiths with my sword. At one point, I became so over-eager that I missed the phantom and sliced off my little toe instead. It was nothing much,” he added. “After all, I am a hero.”
With a knowing smile, the Princess bore down on him, enveloping him in her musky sweetness. He began to lose all sense of urgency, although the sun had all but disappeared and the stars were coming out with terrible brightness. He gave himself up to her, to her full lips, her ardent sighs, her athletic passion. Yet he was disturbed by the sudden lowing of a man-bull as the sands shifted beneath it and he knitted his brows in consternation. “Your servants? Where do you get them from?”
“Those? Oh, I make them. From my lovers...” She smiled in the starlight and he saw the little knife glitter in her hand. He tried to rise but she was too strong to resist. And so there seemed nothing he could do other than accept his fate. For some reason, he did not feel too concerned about the prospect of becoming one of her deformed slaves. He only hoped that she would give him the head of a noble animal. He had no great desire to become a man-goldfish or a man-slug...
When he awoke, he thought at first that she had encased him in the body of an elephant or a whale. And then he decided that she had set up a tent and dragged him into it. There were no stars. The only illumination came from Nigel; a pale, unhealthy blue-green glow. He felt his head and realised that he was still human. A pain frayed the ends of his nerves somewhere between his legs. He reached down and what he felt there brought a tear to his eye.
Standing up, he realised that the roof of the tent was made of sand. Suddenly, the truth dawned. The Aching Desert had turned over in its sleep again and had buried the Princess and her entire retinue. He had been protected by Nigel in a bubble deep below the surface. The bubble was a perfect sphere five metres in diameter. The inner surface of the bubble consisted of seething particles of desert.
As he hacked his way to the surface, Frith also realised the extent to which his magical blade was prepared to aid him. Although it was more than willing to preserve his life, it would do nothing to prevent physical injuries. Once again, he felt between his legs and groaned. At least he had lost his virginity first, he told himself. It was a small consolation. He supposed that the Princess had intended to turn him into an asexual creature. A man-amoeba perhaps? Obviously she had just started the operation when the Aching Desert had swallowed her up...
Reaching the surface, Frith gulped the pure clean air of a new day and gazed around. There was no sign of the Princess, her caravan or her monstrous lackeys. Nor was there any sign of his horse. They had all been buried under mountains of malicious sand. Frith felt sorry for the horse. He had planned to call it Swift Arrow and adopt it. He knew that his compulsive habit of naming objects, animate or inanimate, was a childish one, but he could not help it. At any rate, it did not matter now. Swift Arrow was as dead as the corpse of a garrotted coffin salesman.
Somehow, he knew, he would have to acquire alternative transportation if he was to reach the Palace of King Popkin in time. Limping, he made off towards the Vicious Veldt. Much to his annoyance, Nigel started to sing again, a high soprano madrigal that threatened to slip over the edge of the sound spectrum. Frith felt sure the blade was having a wry joke at his expense.
Towards midday, he reached the Vicious Veldt. And it has to be said that nothing of particular note happened here, except for a brief encounter with an ugly gnome who stole all of Frith’s teeth before Frith could cut it in two with a single stroke of his sword. It was not until late afternoon, when he reached the Riverbed of Screams, that Frith finally understood the enormity of the task he had taken upon himself.
The Riverbed of Screams divided the landscape like a Caesarian scar on the belly of Mother Earth. Dry and cracked, it exuded an appalling stench of decay. It did not, however, scream. Once it had been a river made of human souls and then it had screamed. Yet it had long since dried up and now it merely complained at odd intervals or tutted disapprovingly. From the dry Riverbed itself, ske
leton arms protruded like a dog’s dream of a forest. These arms belonged to once-rotund souls now desiccated to mere sinews and bones.
Following the course of the Riverbed on foot, Frith was careful not to approach it too closely. Frequently the skeletal arms beckoned to him or made rude gestures. He resisted the temptation to reply to these taunts. Occasionally, the Riverbed muttered a platitude at him and he squinted bravely. “It wasn’t like this in my day,” said one creaking voice. “And you still had change from a groat,” replied another. Frith shook his head and tried to ignore these less than controversial maxims.
Eventually, however, he grew tired and stopped to rest on the riverbank. He could see a great gout of steam on the horizon and caught a whiff of goulash, evidence that he was nearing the Scalding Sea. He propped his chin on his hands and reflected on how quickly his life had changed. He was confident that King Popkin would arrange for him to be fitted with artificial teeth, an artificial toe and whatever else was possible. He was also certain that his statue would grace the City Hall in the Capital, standing next to the marble champions of former ages.
As he mused thus and threw back the last of Princess Jadella’s wine (which had conveniently survived along with him in the bubble) he was startled by a rasping voice. This voice was like a sponge ground into crushed velvet, or like sand poured over a mouse. Naturally, it came from the Riverbed of Screams. A skeletal hand with more authority than its brothers and sisters was waving wildly at him. Frith knew that this was a skeleton with more authority because it wore a large diamond ring on its third finger. The other hands were unadorned.
“Well?” Frith cast a cynical eye at the hand and half-drew Nigel from his scabbard. “I suppose you want to entice me closer so that you can pull me in to my doom?” Frith had no idea what sort of doom lay waiting in the Riverbed of Screams but he guessed that an eternity of having to listen to distinctly unfunny anecdotes formed at least a part of it.