Sagaria (44 page)

“Hey, you,” she called in a lazy voice.

One of the guards relaxed just a little. “You mean us?”

“No one else around, is there?” She flounced her skirt a little, and strolled nearer. “You two new in town?”

The one who’d relaxed gave a small honk of laughter and glanced toward his colleague. “I guess you could say that, yes.”

“Thought you might be. Those are the dumbest-looking clown suits I’ve ever clapped eyes on.”

The other Shadow Knight stiffened further, but his companion just laughed again.

“Why you here, big boy?” said Perima.

Watching, Sagandran could hardly believe it. She was
flirting
with them.

“We serve the greatest master this world has ever seen, the Lord Arkanamon.”

“Never heard of ’im. Anyway, that wasn’t what I asked you. I said, why you here?”

The sterner of the two Shadow Knights replied, “We’re hunting for a boy. You seen him?”

“I seen lotsa boys,” said Perima with a knowing giggle. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“He’s with a girl. About the same age as he is. We’ve, ah …” he twitched his head involuntarily toward the interior of the Tunnel of Love. “We’ve just heard about her.”

“We-e-ell,” drawled Perima, “if he’s with a girl already, it’s not likely he’d’ve caught my eye, is it?”

“How old are you, young miss?” It was the friendlier of the two.

“Old enough.”

“Hm.”

“She pretty, this girl?”

“Nope. Not that we’ve been told. Just a squitty-faced little brat.”

Sagandran, hiding behind the building, thought this was going to be the end of Perima’s charade. Would be unfortunate for the two Shadow Knights, of course, who’d find themselves bruised and beaten by a spitfire of fury, but it would be even more unfortunate, in the slightly longer term, for his and Perima’s hopes of saving the Rainbow Crystal.

But Perima didn’t skip a beat. “Sort of a hoity-toity, snotty, nose-in-the-air kind of brat?”

“That’s what this Lamarod buffoon said. The sort you’d like to flush down the lavatory as soon as look at her, were his exact words.”

Another scream punctured the air. Perima gave an almost invisible flinch, but otherwise carried on as if she’d heard nothing.

“Oh, I know the boy and girl you mean. The boy’s kinda spotty and chinless and the girl swanks around the whole time looking down her nose at everyone
like she was a princess or something?”

The two Shadow Knights glanced at each other.

“Sounds like them,” said the friendlier one. “You got any idea where they are?” He leaned forward. Although his smile didn’t change, it was clear he’d pick Perima up and strangle the information out of her if need be.

“Sure. I just saw ’em hanging around the front of the Hotel Chortle.” She pointed in the diametrically opposite direction. “Your quickest way, the streets being all crowded an’ all, is to go down that way.”

The two Shadow Knights shuffled their feet and exchanged meaningful looks.

“You quite sure, girl?” said the frowning one threateningly.

“Sure I’m sure.” Perima’s stance, with one hand on a forward-thrust hip, conveyed to the guards that she wasn’t in the slightest fazed by the intensity of their interest, and was just wondering why they were being so boringly solemn. “If you see ’em, take that smarmy girl down a peg or two for me, will ya?”

“We should really check with—” began the sterner one, glancing again toward the gaping mouth of the Tunnel of Love.

“By the time we’ve done that, they’ll be long gone,” said the other, obviously keen to get moving. Sagandran wondered how fast the Shadow Knights would be able to run in their armor.

His question was swiftly answered. The two warriors abruptly reached an agreement and took off in the direction that Perima had indicated. They moved with incredible speed, but they didn’t run. Instead, they floated with their feet just a couple of inches off the ground. Their silent progress was eerie, terrifying.

As soon as they’d disappeared, Perima was turning toward Sagandran’s hiding place and beckoning to him urgently.

“They won’t be long, is my guess,” she said as he rushed up to her. She seemed to be more out of breath than he was. He didn’t like to imagine what she’d been keeping pent-up behind the casual demeanor she’d displayed in front of the Shadow Knights. “If we’re going to do this, we’d better be quick.”

They darted into the Tunnel of Love. The place looked no different from when they’d last been here, but Sagandran would have sworn that it did. Funny how a complete shift in one’s own state of mind could make somewhere seem so changed. The posters of spooning couples, the big pink, bulgy heart-shaped balloons, the paintings on the ceiling showing cute little tweety bluebirds; all that he and Perima had laughed about as being both engagingly kitsch and, for that very reason, rather romantic was now enough to make him shudder, because of the contrast between its sugariness and the dreadful things that Arkanamon’s henchmen were doing to Mayor Lamarod, out of sight.

But not out of earshot. Another cry of anguish came echoing down the tunnel toward them.

Sagandran braced himself. “Right. Here goes everything.”

As he dashed into the gloom of the tunnel, which once seemed seedily welcoming but was now just ominous he was aware of Perima keeping pace beside him.
Of course
, he realized with a sudden queasy feeling in his empty stomach,
we’re going about this the wrong way. We should have somehow armed ourselves before going on the attack
. He couldn’t imagine what they might have found in the way of weapons in Wonderville of all places, but even a pair of the giant candy-sticks they’d seen could have served as clubs. Anything. Instead, all they had were their bare fists and their wits.

They rounded a corner and skidded to a halt. Luckily, the people in front of them were too engrossed in their own activities to hear or see anything else.

Three Shadow Knights, two of them holding flickering torches, stood and watched like spectators at a Punch and Judy show while a fourth picked up the mayor from the floor and threw him with hideous force against the wall. It was obvious that he’d done this many times already. The light of the torches reflected fitful galaxies from the Shadow Knights’ shining armor. Lamarod’s peacock-hued clothes were in tatters, and blood was running down his face from an awful wound on his bald scalp. One of his hands flapped crazily, the wrist broken. Tears were making weird patterns out of the blood on his cheeks. His eyes squeezed shut in agony as he slammed against the wall, and another of those piteous wails was jerked from his lips.

He collapsed forward, face first onto the floor.

“I told you,” he moaned. “I’ve told you everything I know. They wanted to come into the city, into my Wonderville, but when I told them they had to leave all their worries in the box by the gate they refused. The last I saw of them they were heading back into the Everwoods. I was glad, tell you the truth. A nastier-looking pair of cockroaches I haven’t had the misfortune to encounter in a very—”

Lamarod’s voice erupted into a
whoof
as a kick from the Shadow Knight took him in the ribs.

He’s seen us
, Sagandran suddenly realised. Lamarod has seen us! That’s why he’s telling the Shadow Knights that cock-and-bull story all over again – so we’d know he was directing the hunters away from us.

“Was there anyone else with them?” asked another of the Shadow Knights languidly. He didn’t look up as he spoke, just nonchalantly cleaned under his fingernails with the point of a small dagger, seeming to have little trouble seeing what he was doing in the flickering light from his companions’ torches.

“N–No,” whined Lamarod, trying but failing to push himself up onto his hands and knees. “Oh, wait a moment.”

“Yes?” said the Shadow Knight who’d been beating him, and taking a pace forward, he prepared to deliver another of those brutally powerful kicks.

“They had a horse. A white horse.”

“That was all?”

“There was no one else, just those two kids and the horse.”

At the second attempt, the mayor was able to get himself up to a crouch. To the Shadow Knights, his eyes must have seemed to be roaming aimlessly, but he was staring straight at Perima and Sagandran.
Go away from here
, his tormented gaze seemed to be imploring them.
Get away as quick as your legs will carry you. I’ll hold out as long as I can, but
—

The next kick took him in the stomach, rocketing him back against the wall again.

The Shadow Knight who’d kicked him turned to the other three. “I think this scumbag has told us everything,” he said in a conversational tone. He had a sunny smile on his face. “We’re not going to get anything more out of him because there’s nothing more to get.”

“You reckon he’s telling the truth, Tomaq?” said the one with the dagger, not looking up from his fingernails.

“I’d say so. He’s no hero. He’d betray his grandmother if it’d save his own miserable hide.”

“Might as well kill him then?”

“That’d be fun, a pleasant little diversion, but I don’t think the Master would thank us for it. The Master wants every able-bodied person he can muster, so he can suck the life power out of them and then stick them in his slave mines.”

“The Master need never know?” It was a question anticipating only one answer.

“The Master finds out everything in the end.” The Shadow Knight named Tomaq tugged a sobbing Lamarod upright. “A pity for you, in a way,” he continued to the mayor, as if the two of them were merely discussing the weather. “Death would have been the easier way out.”

Sagandran and Perima slunk silently behind a loveboat that was left standing crookedly on its rail. They could see a thin strip of dark floor under the boat, nothing more. Then that strip became erratically lit as the Shadow Knights drew nearer, their torches bringing relief to the gloom. The only sound of their progress was the scrape of Lamarod’s heels along the floor as he was dragged toward the tunnel entrance. Like the Shadow Knights out in the square, these men moved in eerie silence just an inch or so above the ground.

They paused beside the loveboat, and Perima and Sagandran stared wildly at each other through the shadows, certain that their hiding place had been discovered.

But the pause was only so that the Shadow Knights could resume their argument.

“I still say we should kill him.”

“No,” said Tomaq flatly.

“But—”

“Are you willing to risk the wrath of Arkanamon?”

“I told you, he need never know.”

“And
I
told you, he always does know. I think I understand my master’s ways better than most. I’ve been at his right hand long enough.”

“Hah!”

Sagandran expected the men to move on, but they tarried a little longer, unspeaking.

Then Lamarod’s tormentor spoke again. “Our orders were clear: seize the boy. That’s all we’re to do.”

“He’s long gone.”

“They can’t have got far. This fat fool says they were here yesterday.”

“Then we should be searching the forest. A boy, a girl, a white horse – how hard can they be to find?”

“It worries me that the others are no longer with them. All the reports from our spies say the two brats had a couple of older people with them. The worgs said the same. What could have happened to them?”

“You believe the reports?”

“Why not?”

“They also say one of the fellow travelers was a giant frog. You believe that too?”

Tomaq’s voice sounded a little hesitant for the first time. “That may have been a transcription error.”

“Anyway,” resumed the knight with the dagger, “for all we know, the boy and girl could have taken up with the rest as company for the road. When the two we’re after headed for Wonderville, maybe they went their separate ways. Who knows? Who cares? They aren’t important to us.”

A different voice chipped in. “Maybe the worgs ate ’em.”

“Could be,” assented the dagger-wielder. “Their instructions were the same as ours: catch the boy. If they killed the other two they wouldn’t have thought it worth mentioning. Then, of course, those idiot creatures let the little swine escape.”

There was the clank of an armored shrug. “What can you expect with worgs? They’re hardly over-endowed in the brain department, are they?”

The four Shadow Knights chuckled, a sound like chains being dragged along a long-deserted corridor. Sagandran felt like his spine was trying to tie itself in a knot.

“We’d better get going,” said Tomaq. “Report back, then get the search underway in the forest.”

“If I never see that damned forest again, it’ll be too soon,” grumbled the fourth Shadow Knight, the one who’d not spoken before.

“Too right,” agreed the dagger-wielder. He uttered a string of expletives, only a few of which Sagandran recognized.

Then the Shadow Knights were moving again. Lamarod’s legs came into view under the loveboat, the heels trailing.

Perima and Sagandran waited a few minutes longer, not daring to move until they were certain the Knights had really gone. Finally, they unkinked themselves and stood up, peering cautiously over the top of the empty loveboat.

“Sir Tombin and Samzing are alive,” whispered Sagandran. “Flip must be with them. They’re safe.”

Perima dampened his spirits. “Unless that Shadow Knight was right and the worgs killed them.”

“Doubt it. The last we saw of those worgs, they didn’t exactly exude victory, did they?”

She nodded slowly. “I hope you’re right.”

They dropped to the floor as one and crawled out from under the loveboat. It felt curiously liberating to be standing out in the open tunnel again, but at the same time unsettling. Should the Shadow Knights for some reason return, Perima and Sagandran would be stuck out here in clear view, defenseless.

“We’ve got to get as far from Wonderville as we can,” breathed Sagandran.

“Or maybe we should stay in the city,” said Perima thoughtfully. “If they’re concentrating the search on the Everwoods, Wonderville might be the safest place to be.”

Sagandran spoke decisively. “No. Wonderville’s a trap, a prison. Once the Shadow Knights fail to find us in the forest, they’ll be back. They may even decide to conduct the hunt in both places simultaneously. Our best chance is to make ourselves scarce.”