Shadow Chaser

by Alexey Pehov

  “I think I can play the role of a nobleman successfully, my lady,” the Garrakian said dispassionately.

  I gave a sigh of relief and nodded gratefully.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Harold,” Kli-Kli said with a menacing frown. “You’ll still have to go to the reception.”

  “Kli-Kli is right,” Miralissa confirmed. “You’re the only one who can sense where they are hiding the Key.”

  “But Lady Miralissa, you said you could sense that the Key was in Ranneng.”

  “I can tell that it is in Ranneng, but only you can point out the precise spot.”

  I sighed. “During a reception, servants wait outside for their masters.”

  “Yes, and that’s why you will not be a servant.” The goblin’s blue eyes glowed in triumph. I was afraid even to ask what brilliant ideas the fool had gotten into his little green head this time.

  When he realized that I wasn’t going to ask who he wanted to turn me into now, Kli-Kli said: “We’ll make you a dralan.”

  “Kli-Kli, all the high-society people will have steam coming out of their ears if he has a dralan with him.”

  It’s no secret that those who once used to root about in the mud and now bear a noble title are not much liked by those who inherited their titles from their noble forebears.

  “That will only make everything all the more amusing.” The little green fool will do anything for the sake of amusement.

  “What do we have to do at the reception?” I asked, bowing to the inevitable.

  “Drink sparkling wine, eat pheasants, and make intelligent conversation about the weather.”

  “Not that, Kli-Kli! What do we really have to do?”

  “You have to try to find out where Pargaid is hiding the Key. Don’t worry, Miralissa says that as soon as you’re close enough, you’ll feel your connection with it.”

  Well, if Miralissa says so.… But I’m afraid the dark elfess is wrong this time. Why didn’t I feel the Key when we had it?

  “I just have to find out where it is?”

  “Yes. I don’t think you’ll be able to take it with so many people around,” the elfess said.

  Well … I’d pulled off trickier jobs than that in my young days, and I’ll manage to steal this thing one way or another.

  “There is one other little problem, Tresh Miralissa. Paleface could come back at any moment, and he knows what I look like. Did Lamplighter manage to find out anything about where Rolio went off to?”

  “The assassin left the city in great haste along the southwestern highway. We must hope that he will not come back in time for the reception.”

  “You will have to take the risk, thief.”

  I wish you could take it, Milord Alistan. This is an absolutely wild adventure! If you ask me, it would be easier to take the manor house by storm.

  The next day I was simply unbearable, and I made Kli-Kli regret his brilliant idea of turning me into a dralan. But Miralissa and the goblin completely disregarded my argument that a commoner who had only recently been promoted to high society didn’t need to learn all this stuff.

  I never realized that being a nobleman was so complicated. Only someone with noble blood flowing in his veins could possibly keep all those absolutely stupid and unnecessary things in his head.

  I learned the correct way to pick up a wineglass, bow, behave at table, pay compliments, maintain a significant silence, challenge someone to a duel, and to discuss eternal philosophical themes, horses, hunting with falcons, military parades, jousts, heraldry, and all sorts of other trash that has no place in the daily life of a self-respecting master thief. By the end of the day the excessive load of superfluous knowledge had given me a splitting headache.

  Duke Shagor’s coat of arms happened to be a hedgehog on a field of purple, and the effort of trying to make sure I wouldn’t make an absolute fool of myself turned me as prickly as an entire herd of my noble lord Eel’s heraldic beasts. By the end of it all, the mere sight of Kli-Kli was enough to set me hissing and spitting like an angry tomcat, but even so he and Alistan kept hammering the knowledge into my head—it turned out that every dralan had to know all the ancestors of the lord who had granted him his noble title.

  A family tree is no joke, I can tell you. Remembering who married who, when, how, what for, and how many little children they had, and then who married who, when, how, what for, and so on to infinity …

  Eventually I got Eel’s new relations totally confused and I mixed up his grandaunt, the most benign Duchess de Laranden, with the second cousin of his grandnephew by his sixth half sister, who was married to the uncle of his mother’s twelfth sister via the father-grandmother-grandfather line. Kli-Kli spat in annoyance and said I was hopeless if I couldn’t remember such a simple little thing and stomped off to the kitchen, leaving Arnkh and Lamplighter, who had been splitting their sides with laughter while I suffered the torment of my training, to make fun of me.

  “If I had that many relatives, I’d run away from home!” Arnkh gasped through his laughter.

  “You did run away,” Mumr reminded the man from the Border Kingdom.

  That set Arnkh laughing even louder, and he almost spilled a mug of beer on his chain mail as he wiped away his tears.

  An hour before we had to leave I suddenly got the shakes and started walking from one corner of the inn to the other, like a garrinch in a cage. I had the feeling that we were tempting fate with all our subterfuges and all this was not going to end well. “I swear by Sagot, we’re going to run into big trouble,” I thought. “And all thanks to Kli-Kli, may the orcs catch him!”

  “Marmot,” I said to the Wild Heart who was training his ling, Invincible, “did you see where the jester got to?”

  “Take a look in your room; I think he was doing something in there.”

  Well, of course the considerate goblin was preparing my costume for the reception. I still hadn’t seen my gala outfit. Kli-Kli had refused point-blank to show it to me, obviously out of concern for the state of my nerves. All the other characters in the masquerade had already been given their new clothes: green vestments for the Wild Hearts, with a gray hedgehog on a purple field sewn on the chest; Eel was decked out in a very expensive noble’s outfit with a tall starched collar and wide, dark brown sleeves; and Egrassa had already changed into a blue and yellow tunic embroidered with a black moon—the symbol of his house.

  I found Kli-Kli frantically trying to shoo a fly away from his bowl of cherries.

  He looked so ridiculous I couldn’t help asking, “Don’t you ever get tired of playing the fool?”

  “That’s my job, Harold,” the goblin sighed. “If I didn’t play the fool, I’d still be at home, in Zagraba, studying to be a shaman.”

  “You don’t regret it, do you?” I asked, taking a handful of cherries.

  “Not really … Everything that happens is for the best. And anyway, if I wasn’t here, who would protect you?”

  “Me? Are you telling me that you protect me?” We’d been through this conversation a hundred times or more.

  “Well, who does, if not me? You’re only still alive thanks to me,” the jester said, puffing himself up proudly.

  “The things I have had from you, my little green prankster, include prickly thorns across my backside, cold water in my bed, a stupid prophecy, and the false title of a dralan, with a fancy peacock’s outfit—a gift from the duke—to go with it. And by the way, where is my costume? I’d like to take a look at what you ordered for our obliging innkeeper to pick up for me. What am I wearing to the reception?”

  “Ah!” said the jester, taking my point. “You’ll soon see.”

  “Soon? Why not right now?”

  “We still have one important thing left to do. Follow me, Dancer in the Shadows, and you will have your final lesson.”

  “You can go into the darkness! Is there no end to all this?” I asked furiously. “You tormented me all day long with that heraldry of yours. It’s enough to drive the Namele
ss One crazy, let alone an ordinary thief. That’s enough lessons for today!”

  “You’re not an ordinary thief. You’re a master thief,” said the jester, pointing his finger at me. “And I must at least show you how to dance in respectable company.”

  Every idea Kli-Kli has is crazier than the last one.

  “Why not teach me to deliver babies, too? Dralans don’t get invited to dance. And anyway, I know how to dance without any lessons from you.”

  “Yes, you do, some djanga or galkag or whatever.” Kli-Kli gulped down a cherry, screwed up his left eye, took aim, and spat the stone out the window. “But noblemen’s dances are quite different altogether. Come on, you don’t want to mess things up just at the wrong moment, do you?”

  I groaned, not for the first time that day, but there was nothing to be done and I had to tramp after the jester into the large open hall, cursing the day that had brought the two of us together.

  All the Wild Hearts were gathered in the hall. Even Bass was there. He was frowning in puzzlement at the soldiers’ rather strange servants’ costumes but, fortunately, he didn’t understand a thing.

  “Hey, Deler!” Kli-Kli called. “Come over here!”

  The dwarf broke off his quarrel with Hallas and waddled to us without hurrying. In his bodyguard’s outfit he looked like a cow in the uniform of the Heartless Chasseurs.

  “What do you want?”

  “Listen, Deler, for the sake of the common cause, do us a favor.”

  “Well?” he said, squinting suspiciously at us as the idea penetrated that a favor is something you do for nothing—and dwarves don’t like to do anything for nothing.

  “Put your arms round Harold.”

  Deler’s face turned gray.

  “What do you…? Kli-Kli, you’re a friend of mine, but … I could punch you in the face—”

  “You fool, Deler! This is a dancing lesson.”

  “A-a-ah!” the dwarf drawled as the light dawned, and he took off his bowler hat and ruffled up his ginger hair. “Then I’m too short for this; you need Honeycomb.”

  “Honeycomb,” Kli-Kli growled, knitting his brows. “Honeycomb is such a great bear, he’ll flatten Harold’s feet.”

  “Well, Arnkh then.”

  “Arnkh?”

  “Why not? I agree! This should be very amusing!” the bald warrior chuckled, getting up from the table.

  Amusing? Somehow I didn’t share this old war dog’s passionate enthusiasm for launching into a dance.

  “That’s just wonderful! Right then, Arnkh, put your arms round Harold. Put your hands on his waist. On his waist. You know what a waist is, don’t you? That’s it! Now Harold, why are you standing there like a statue? You do the same. Right! Your backs! Hold your backs straight. What kind of paralytics are you, may the orcs take me! That’s it! Now watch what you have to do.”

  The goblin performed a short series of intricate and absolutely bizarre steps.

  “All right?” he asked when he got his breath back.

  “It reminds me of a Doralissian jumping around after someone tipped red-hot coals down his trousers,” said Hallas, expressing the general opinion.

  The gnome’s final words were drowned in laughter.

  “Why, you dolts! This is the most fashionable dance there is right now!” said Kli-Kli, trying to shout above the laughter.

  The laughter turned into a loud roar.

  The jester snorted in annoyance and turned his attention to me and Arnkh.

  “Don’t just stand there as if you’re frozen solid. Do what I do. Follow the count!”

  I felt like an absolute idiot.

  “And … One-two-three, one-two-three! Make the steps more distinct! Three … Straighten that back! Two-three! Harold, don’t drag your foot! One-two-three!”

  Arnkh crushed the toes on my right foot, and we almost fell down when Kli-Kli speeded up the rhythm.

  Everybody just kept laughing. Lamplighter took out his reed pipe started playing a tune for us. Master Quidd came to see the free show. The elves came down into the hall. Then Alistan showed up. Our beloved count had a very pleased expression on his face. Well, naturally; it’s not every day that you see the likes of this.…

  “One-two-three. Lift that foot higher. One-two-turn-three!” Kli-Kli just kept going, never falling silent for a moment. Arnkh stepped on my foot again, and I hissed in pain.

  Finally it was over, and I caught my breath.

  “Kli-Kli, why did you have to teach Harold to dance?” the elfess asked the goblin curiously. “After all, you know that Balistan Pargaid absolutely detests dancing, and there won’t be anything of the kind at the reception.”

  “Ah, you—”

  “Harold, I had to cheer you all up and raise the spirits of our troops!” the goblin whined, as if his feelings were hurt. “What are you so angry about?”

  I controlled myself.

  “Harold, you only have a quarter of an hour left to get changed,” Eel reminded me.

  The warrior was already decked out in his costume. A real duke, I swear by the light! Thanks to Miralissa’s magic, his face had become less swarthy for the time being. His black hair had turned lighter, and now no one would ever have guessed that Eel was a Garrakian.

  “Bah! Eel! We could crown you king of Garrak, dressed like that!” Honeycomb exclaimed admiringly.

  Eel’s cheek twitched at those words.

  “Kli-Kli, where are my clothes?”

  The goblin peeped out warily from behind Bass, trying to assess his chances of living to a decent old age, then made up his mind and blurted out: “Let’s go, then.”

  “Where are you going?” Bass asked casually.

  Ell suddenly appeared in front of Snoop and offered to escort him to his room. He laughed, got up, and followed the elf. Kli-Kli led me back to our room. My clothes were laid out neatly on the made-up bed. I cast a skeptical eye over them, turned to the jester, and growled. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” the goblin replied hastily. “What is it you don’t like this time?”

  “Those aren’t clothes, they’re a peacock’s feathers!”

  “All dukes are a bit like peacocks. These are perfectly normal clothes for noblemen. Not to mention dralans. Those lads like their outfits to be splendid.”

  “Alistan doesn’t dress like that!”

  “Alistan is the captain of the king’s guard, not a dralan who has been invited to a formal reception.”

  “I’m not a dralan, and you know that perfectly well! And apart from that, I can’t even imagine how to put all this on!”

  “We’ll soon manage that,” Kli-Kli declared boldly, and started rummaging through the expensive rags with his tongue hanging out.

  When the goblin led me across to the mirror, I was struck dumb. I was wearing a blinding white silk shirt with narrow sleeves and a lacy collar, under a dark plum velvet doublet with gold buttons and a high collar. And on the right side of my chest there was a coat of arms skillfully embroidered in silver thread: a plow turning over the soil in a field.

  The breeches were rather tight, and therefore not very comfortable. High boots with an embroidered design, a belt that was one-and-a-half hands wide, a dagger of singing steel in an expensive sheath, with a handle of bluish ogre-bone—this absurd finery was topped off with a long satin cloak with a black lining, three ruby rings, a wide-brimmed hat with a green plume, and a massive plaited gold chain. If I fell in a river wearing that chain, there was no way I would ever surface again. Eel’s costume was a lot richer than mine, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

  I looked at Kli-Kli and he opened his mouth to share his impressions with me.

  “Not a word!” I said, cutting him short.

  “But I—”

  “Shut up!”

  “All right, Harold.” Kli-Kli submissively folded his little hands together like a priest of Silna.

  To my mind I looked like a scarecrow in a vegetable garden. I could h
ave gone off and started scaring crows straightaway. Clothes like this were definitely not for me.

  “And how do you like my little outfit?” asked Kli-Kli, pulling off his cloak and spinning round on the spot.

  The goblin had dressed himself up in something made out of scraps of blue and red and stuck a cap with little bells on his head.

  “Colorful.”

  “Then it’s just what’s required!”

  When we walked down into the hall of the inn, strangely enough no one laughed at my outfit.

  “May the gods be with us. Let’s go.” Miralissa caught my glance of surprise and explained. “I’m going with you; I have to check the house for magical traps.”

  She had changed her usual gray and green elfin scout’s outfit for a very stylish purple silk dress with a black iron brooch shaped like the moon. Her invariable braid of ash-gray hair had been transformed into a tall hairstyle in the fashion of Miranueh, and round her neck she was wearing a string of smoky-yellow topazes, which harmonized beautifully with the color of her eyes. From a professional point of view I can say that a set of stones like that would buy five years of good living, spending money like water on daily sprees and drinking sessions … but if you looked at her with an unprofessional eye, she looked absolutely stunning.

  “Take this,” she said, handing me the ogre bracelet. “When Balistan Pargaid asks Eel about the bracelet, you be there and give it to him.”

  “What?” I asked in amazement.

  “It’s no great loss, it has no value for us. But this is a chance to get close to the Key, if you can win our count’s favor.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” I said with a frown. “Why should I have the bracelet, and not Eel?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  “The carriage is ready, Lady Miralissa,” said the innkeeper, darting across to us.

  “Thank you, Master Quidd,” the elfess said with a gracious smile. “You have been a great help to us.”

  “Don’t mention it, I do it for my deceased uncle’s sake. You took revenge for his soul, and my entire family is indebted to you.”

  “Remember, Harold,” the elfess told me as we walked to the magnificent carriage with a team of six Doralissian horses that Quidd had somehow managed to find, “we shall be in the house of a servant of the Master.”