Sagaria (22 page)

Unless
…

Once more he halted. His scraggle-bearded jaw dropped.

Unless this boy is the Shadow Master
.

Surely that couldn’t be so. Queen Mirabella had said in her missive that little was known of the Shadow Master, but it had been clear that the invader was a brutal tyrant, a mighty warrior, a great leader of men (or whatever loathsome beings passed for men in the Shadow World). The picture Fungfari had conjured of him couldn’t be further removed from this nervously shuffling adolescent. Where was the gigantic stature? The bleakly terrifying black armor, covered in spikes and protrusions where you least expected them? The evilly glistening broadsword and the vicious, many-pointed morning star? The look of utter remorselessness and base cunning? This boy didn’t look so much ruthless as in need of a restroom.

Still, the Shadow Master could be a master not just of shadows but of disguise. Fungfari’s eyes narrowed. He was going to have to be very careful indeed about whom he trusted.

From one of the flaps on the boy’s strange jacket there suddenly appeared a pink, whiskered nose.

Maybe
that
was the Shadow Master?

Drawing upon every last resource of valor bequeathed to him by his illustrious kingly ancestors, Fungfari resisted the temptation to turn on his heel and scamper back up the stairs. Just as he was admiring his own courage, the girl looked up and saw him standing indecisively there.

“Daddy,” she called.

Oh, yes, the quivering poltroon of a guard had mentioned something about a daughter. A daughter of Fungfari. An eldest daughter, as far as he remembered. This must be her. He thought he’d seen her somewhere or other. She didn’t look much
like a princess, though, not with that stray twig still caught in her tangled hair.

On the other hand, she didn’t look much like anyone who would be called the Shadow Master, either, which was a relief. Too female, for one thing.

“Hurry up, Daddy,” she urged, her voice already becoming petulant. “I want you to come meet my new friends.”

Forcing one foot in front of the other, Fungfari went to the bottom of the grand stairway. A pair of footmen crossed the hall to join him and fell in behind him, each holding up one side of the tail of his robe, as he crossed to join the little gathering in the room’s center. The armed guards fell back respectfully as he approached.

“Do you remember me, Daddy? I’m the Royal Princess Perima, your daughter,” said the girl with a worried expression.

There was such a look of hope and expectancy in her eyes that Fungfari, despite his usual nature, couldn’t bring himself to confound it. “Yes, of course, my dear. We’ve all been so terribly worried by your absence. You must tell me everything about your adventures” – there was a vague movement of his hands – “sometime. And these good people are …?”

“Yes, let me perform the introductions.” She seemed mollified by his welcome. “This handsome cavalier is Sir Tombin Quackford, the Frogly Knight. He displayed enormous bravery and great strategic cunning in saving me from becoming the roasted supper of a worg.”

King Fungfari gasped. It was a doughty warrior indeed who would take on a worg. Sir Tombin made an elegant bow in his direction, taking off his ostentatious hat and sweeping its feather across the mosaic.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” said the King. “You have my royal gratitude for saving the life of my cherished daughter, Permadita.”

“Perima,” hissed a footman from behind his ear. It was one of the stated jobs of Fungfari’s courtiers and servants to compensate for his little moments of absentmindedness.

“Perima, I meant to say. Permadita is an affectionate pet name I often call her in my heart,” said the king, recovering quickly.

The girl’s eyes had become slits, but she persevered anyway. “The smallest of my friends, the one with the … um, whiskers is named Flip. He too was fearless in helping to deliver me from the monster’s vile clutches.”

The furry creature put his head and shoulders over the lip of the boy’s pocket and fix the monarch with a beady and, Fungfari decided, not altogether friendly stare. “Pleased to meet you,” it piped in an insincere fashion. He wondered if it would fit into a standard mousetrap or if he’d have to get the court engineers to cobble together an especially large one.

“And finally,” his daughter was saying with what appeared to be a blush, “here is Sagandran, a boy who’s come all the way from the Earthworld to try to rescue his grandpa from kidnapers believed to be acting in the service of the Shadow Master!”

The boy, matching Permadita’s –
Perima’s
! – shy blushes, took a step forward and gave a little bob of his head that was obviously an uncouth version of a bow.

“The Shadow Master, eh?” said the King. “I’ve just been reading all about him. Ghastly scoundrel, don’t you think?”

“Worse than that, Your Majesty,” mumbled the boy.

“Ah, indeed. Very true. A most unpleasant piece of work. Well, one can only hope that they apprehend him with good speed and administer a touch of the justice he so richly deserves.”

The boy Sagandran looked incredulous. “‘They’? Surely it’s the duty of everyb—”

“We can talk further about the Shadow Master later, Sagandran,” said the princess hastily. “I’m sure my father will be only too grateful to learn how he might better repel the threat of the accursed invader.”

“Ah, yes, quite so,” harrumphed Fungfari. The last thing he wanted was for these scruffs to hang around lowering the tone of his palace. Also, even worse, their very presence might well act as a sort of magnet for the attentions of the Shadow Master. If there was one thing Fungfari could do without, it was the descent of a bloodthirsty army of demonic ghouls upon his kingdom.

“I take it that you must be weary from your long journey and your many hair-raising escapades. I will have a room prepared for you so that you can take some rest.” He snapped his fingers and one of the two footmen scurried away. “I’m sure that the three of you must have urgent business elsewhere if you’re hoping to, ahem, counter the Shadow Master, so I will not detain you here at the Mattanese court longer than you desire.”

“Can’t we at least take a look at the city first?” squeaked the horrible little whiskered one.

“Oh, there’s little to see here in our humble burg,” said Fungfari with an attempt at casual offhandedness. He produced what he intended as a modest, self-deprecating chuckle. “I’m sure you would be bored out of your minds in no time.”

“It looked pretty interesting as we were coming through,” persisted the irritating creature. Fungfari wished someone would step on it – anything to silence its twittering little voice.

“Yes, Daddy,” said Perima, who obviously had never been told that it was
the function of princesses to be seen but not heard. “Do let me show my friends around Mattani for a while, oh do! After all, I wouldn’t be here at all unless they’d risked their lives to save mine. Surely we owe them all the courtesy in the world for that? A grand ceremonial feast, perhaps, or even a regal ball.”

Her father regarded her in dismay. Hadn’t the blasted girl any idea how much courtly minstrels cost? Actually, Fungfari was somewhat hazy about the details, but he’d been reliably informed that the price of even a gavotte was a pretty penny, and for an all-out minuet it was utterly outrageous.

“That will not be necessary, Princess,” said Sir Tombin gallantly. “We are honored enough that we have been able to come to your youthful aid when it was most needed.”

Perima squinted at him. “Just because we’re here in Daddy’s palace doesn’t mean that you have to go all respectful on me.”

“Really, Perima—” began the boy, reaching for her arm.

“Oh, all right then, but can’t you stay here for just a little while at least? Or,” she said brightening, “even better, can’t you take me with you? You’ve seen for yourselves what a bold adventurer I can be. This court isn’t the place for a free spirit like myself.”

The boy called Sagandran looked as if he wholeheartedly agreed, but Sir Tombin was more skeptical.

“Perima, my dear, I’m afraid that decision must be left to your father.”

She stamped her foot. “I am a Princess Royal of proud Mattani,” she declared, the echoes of her voice ringing away around the great Hall of Reception. She drew herself up to her full height, which seemed taller than it should have been. “You, sir, are merely a Frogly Knight.”

Sir Tombin said not a word in reply, but the look he gave her was enough to make her deflate as suddenly as she had become haughty.

“I … I didn’t mean that, darling Quackie.”

The Frogly Knight winced, but Fungfari could see that the apology had been accepted.

If pressed, the King might have admitted that it didn’t really concern him one way or another whether this girl Perima lived or died. On the other hand, there was the matter of his dignity and that of his court and kingdom. It would not do if his direct royal commands were to be publicly disregarded, most particularly by a mere slip of a lass. Order would crumble into chaos. The commoners would get ideas above their station. The veneration for the monarchy would suffer.

“That’s enough, young lady,” he barked. “Go to your room this instant.”

She showed no sign of moving and just glared at him defiantly.

The king gestured and two of the armed men stepped forward.

“Take my daughter to her room.”

One on either side, they seized her arms. Turning her head, she slowly subjected the two men, one after the other, to a sneer of utmost contempt. Fungfari could witness the effect on them.

“Unhand me,” she cried, with that imperious tone back in her voice again. “I shall go to my room of my own volition.”

She marched to the foot of the stairway, the two guards following her with obvious reluctance, then she turned to regard her father with an awful gaze.

“You shall regret this.”

Then she was gone with as much of a flounce as her tattered frock would allow.

The giant frog and the dimwitted youth gaped at each other.

Fungfari tried to keep his voice reasonable. “As you can see, I am a very busy man. A very busy man indeed. Much as I would like to play the courtly host to my daughter’s saviors, I am afraid that is not possible for me. However, I will have a guard show you to your room. My servants must have finished preparing it by now.”

“You sure we can’t get shown around the city?” chirped the verminous specimen from the boy’s pocket. “I’m the great Adventurer Extraordinaire, you know, and I’d really, really like to—”

Sir Tombin raised a hand to quell the interjection.

“Your Majesty is most generous,” he said with another of those deep, flamboyant bows.

“Guard,” called the king.

The guard Fungfari had summoned possessed a face like a boulder-strewn hillside and seemed to have no interest at all in conversation. After a few of their polite questions had gone unanswered, Sir Tombin and Sagandran gave up getting the man to speak and just followed as he led them through a bewildering maze of passageways. Sagandran had been rather unimpressed by the palace from the outside – it had seemed somehow poky and mean – but he had to admit that its interior was truly magnificent. The corridors were resplendent with tapestries, paintings and what were evidently tastefully chosen antiquities. It was Sagandran’s guess that King Fungfari had very little hand in the decoration of his court. Back in the forest Perima had implied the
womenfolk did all the work around here, and Sagandran regarded the elegant opulence of their surroundings as proof of her assertion.

He glanced at Sir Tombin, who nodded at him. The time for discussion of King Fungfari’s treatment of them, and especially of his daughter, was not now – not with the guard so near. The man might be unwilling to speak, but he could most assuredly listen.

Flip was less inhibited. “That Fungfari’s a rotten old—”

Sagandran clamped a hand over his little friend’s mouth so that the rest of the sentence was mercifully no more than a series of stifled squeaks.

They came to a solid-looking door, and the guard drew out an imposing bunch of keys. He selected one and fitted it to the lock.

Sagandran released his grip on Flip’s face.

“… and he’s fat!”

The guard’s face remained carefully impassive as he gestured for them to enter the room. The door closed ponderously behind them, and the thud of it shutting was followed by the distinctive
click
of a lock being turned.

Sagandran grabbed the handle and struggled with it, but the door would not open.

“Locked,” said Flip gloomily. “What else would you expect from such a—”

“We take your point, Master Flip,” said Sir Tombin with finality.

Sagandran was disbelieving. “Why in the world would they want to lock us in?”

Sir Tombin rubbed his brow wearily. Sagandran could see for the first time that his companion was desperately tired.

“To be honest with you, Sagandran, I expected a reception something like this. The people of Mattani are renowned for their distrust of strangers, and none more so than their king – who is, as you so rightly observed, Master Flip, a knave of the most abject scurviness. I can only imagine he instructed his guard to confine us to our quarters for fear that we might abscond with the silverware.”