Shadow Chaser (28 page)

Thousands of candles were burning and it was as bright as day. Beside the fountain that had been set in the very center of the hall on somebody’s insane whim, musicians were playing to amuse the gathered guests. There were servants darting about, carrying trays with goblets of sparkling wine. I could hear voices and jolly laughter on all sides.

The lad who had showed us in struck his staff on the floor three times and yelled so loud that I almost jumped out of my skin.

“Duke Ganet Shagor of the House of Shagor! The honorable Milla and Eralla from the House of the Black Moon! Dralan Par!”

“And the jester Krya-Krya, you simpleton!” Kli-Kli shouted, bowing elegantly to the guests.

People turned to look at us and bowed respectfully. The goblin skipped over to me.

“Now what?” I asked him, barely even opening my lips.

“Drink some wine and put on a clever face, and that’s all that’s required of you. I’ll go and get to know the people.”

Before I could open my mouth, Kli-Kli had disappeared among the ladies and gentlemen. Miralissa quickly got talking with a pair of rather tipsy ladies, speaking with surprising expertise about male elves and the intricacies of elfin fashion. She batted her eyelids and twittered away as recklessly as if she was a total fool, and if I didn’t know her, I would never have guessed that this was all just pretense. The ladies listened to her, open-mouthed.

Egrassa walked along a wall hung with ancient weapons with the air of a connoisseur.

“Milord Shagor?”

A man dressed in a doublet of blue and black velvet approached Eel and me. Tall, with a neat black beard, a gleaming white smile, and quizzical brown eyes. His temples were already gray. His features were noble but perfectly agreeable. Lads like that are often used as models for heroes in temple frescoes.

There was something vaguely familiar about his face.

“Whom do I have the honor of addressing?” Eel inquired with just the slightest of bows. According to Kli-Kli, a duke doesn’t really have to bother bending his back at all. I bowed rather more deeply.

“Count Balistan Pargaid. I am delighted that you have accepted my invitation,” the man replied, bowing gently.

“Thank you for your kind invitation to this wonderful reception, count. Allow me to introduce my protégé, Dralan Par.”

A faint nod. Dralans may be nobles of a kind, but they’re not held in very high esteem.

“Do you always accompany the duke everywhere, dralan?” Balistan Pargaid asked, flashing his white smile.

“I like to travel, milord. And a journey with His Lordship is always full of adventures.”

“Is that so?” Another polite and meaningless smile. “I hope that I have not dragged you away from more important business with my untimely invitation, duke?”

“Indeed, no. I was in need of a little diversion.”

The gentle music drifted round the hall and the people on all sides glanced curiously in our direction, but merely bowed politely, without trying to join in the conversation.

“I was not in time to meet you in front of my house, but I have heard that you are traveling with elves. Forgive the indiscreet question, Your Grace, but what is your connection with that particular race?”

Before Eel had a chance to reply, the jester popped out from behind the wide skirts of a lady already well past her youth, who was languidly sipping wine. The goblin was holding a cream bun in each hand.

“Bed,” he said.

“What?” the count asked, blinking.

“My master, may his backside sit on the Sea Cliffs for another two hundred years, travels with elves because they’re good in bed. Pay no attention to the dralan. He just
travels
.”

For a moment I was dumbstruck at such an audacious, bold-faced lie. I think that if the elves had heard what the goblin said, they would have gutted him like a fish, even though he was wearing a jester’s cap. Eel received the news about his preferences with the calm composure of a genuine duke. Balistan Pargaid, on the other hand, chuckled and gave him a knowing look.

“One must have a little variety in one’s life,” said Eel, shrugging his shoulders casually. “Otherwise it simply becomes too boring.”

“Well, naturally. Is this your fool, milord?” the count asked, examining Kli-Kli with interest.

“Is this our master, milord?” the goblin asked Eel in the same tone of voice, and stuffed both cream buns into his mouth, which instantly made him look like a hamster. Kli-Kli thought for a moment, and then spat both tasty morsels out onto the Sultanate carpet.

“My fool is sharp-tongued, but not trained in good manners, please forgive him.”

Kli-Kli made a face and bowed very low to Balistan, almost burying his nose in the carpet.

“I could say that I am glad to be here, if only there weren’t so many stuffed dummies around, dear count,” the jester squeaked.

Count Balistan Pargaid laughed merrily. “Not every man would dare to call my guests stuffed dummies!”

“In case the count has failed to notice, then I must regretfully inform him that I am not a man, but a goblin,” said Kli-Kli, jingling his little bells.

“Duke, your fool is amusing! Let me have him!”

“Don’t sell me for anything less than a thousand gold pieces!” the jester exclaimed. “And don’t forget to give me my share after the deal!”

“I’m afraid, count, that if the duke lets you have his fool, then my lord will become your bitter enemy. Believe me, Krya-Krya is a walking disaster!” I said, deciding it was time for me to open my mouth.

The count laughed again.

Meanwhile the herald struck his staff on the floor and announced more guests.

“Ah, please excuse me, Your Grace, but, you understand, the obligations of a host. We will certainly find time to talk again, will we not?”

“Of course, count. Of course.”

“Duke. Dralan.”

Then all those idiotic bows again. If it goes on like this all evening, my head’s going to fall off for sure.

“I’ll take a stroll to the fountain. Let’s meet by the stairs,” Eel said, and walked away from us.

“Well, what do you make of him? I mean the count.”

“Not now,” the jester hissed out of the corner of his mouth, jumping up and down desperately and jingling his bells. “Can you sense the Key?”

Jingle-jangle! Ding-dong!

“No.”

Kli-Kli grunted, disappointed.

Ding-dong! Jingle-jangle!

“Take some wine. Take a stroll!” Kli-Kli whispered to me, and disappeared into the crowd of Nightingales.

I looked around, but I couldn’t see the elves or Eel. The longer this evening went on, the more wonderful it became.

With a casual gesture I halted a servant giving out drinks and took a glass of sparkling rosé wine from him, wishing that there was something else. I can’t stand that Filand piss-water. One glass is enough to set my insides on fire, as if it had been spiked with poison.

“Would the gentleman like some sweet fruits?” An entire dish of foreign garbage sprinkled with powdered sugar was thrust under my nose.

“The gentleman would like you to clear off,” I growled at the servant.

I started strolling round the hall with a bored expression on my face. People looked askance at me, as if I had brought a half-decomposed cat into the hall and dumped it in the main dish of the evening.

A woman passed me with her skirts rustling, almost rubbing up against me. Her face was hidden behind a veil.

“I beg your pardon, milord.”

“Yes, of course, there isn’t much room. I understand.”

Another couple of steps, and the whole thing was repeated all over again, only this lady dropped her fan at my feet.

“I beg your pardon, milord, I am so clumsy.”

I had to bend down, pick the fan up off the floor, and hand it to her. She smiled sweetly and dropped a curtsey, offering her plunging neckline to my delighted gaze. It cost me an almighty effort to leave milady alone. But if I hadn’t the goblin would have given me the sharp edge of his tongue.

A few steps farther on a third milady appeared beside me, flashing her eyes flirtatiously in my direction.

“What is your name, milord?”

“Take no notice, my dear dralan! I’ll rescue you!” A heavy hand fell on my shoulder and pulled me away. “Pardon my familiarity, but I am only a baron, my domains border on the Border Kingdom, and we are taught to use a sword much earlier than etiquette. Yes, and I think you are no great devotee of etiquette, either! However, allow me in any case to introduce myself. Baron Oro Gabsbarg at your service!”

I bowed reservedly.

He was a huge man, almost as big as Honeycomb, with a shaggy black beard, little black eyes, a red face, and a thunderous voice. What he resembled most was a bear. And like everyone else in this hall, beside his own crest (a black cloud belching out lightning on a green field) he had a brooch in the form of a nightingale pinned to his clothes.

“What do you think of this wine?” my new acquaintance asked me unexpectedly.

I told him the absolute truth.

“It’s swill.”

The baron laughed deafeningly and in his excessive enthusiasm he thumped me on the back, almost fracturing my spine.

“Ah, I like you! I’ve always said if only we had a lot more dralans in our kingdom, soon there wouldn’t be a single namby-pamby left in the nobility. The moment you appeared in the hall, everyone said you were stupid and ignorant. But I can see that’s not true!”

“Who said that?” I asked, trying to get my breath back after the baron’s bearlike blow.

“All of these carrion-eaters,” said the baron, gesturing round the hall without the slightest embarrassment. “What do you think they all do with their time, my dear fellow?” Oro Gabsbarg’s little black eyes glinted in fury. “Tittle-tattle! They don’t have anything better to do. These popinjays who dare to call themselves men pour scent on their handkerchiefs!”

I thought the baron was going to vomit on my doublet there and then.

“Can you imagine it? But I can see that you’re a different kind, better than these puppy dogs,” Oro Gabsbarg boomed contentedly and chuckled into his beard as he winked at me. “Well, didn’t I just save you from those cunning little serpents?”

“I beg your pardon?” I didn’t understand what he meant.

“From those demons in skirts! How did you like the way I shooed them off? The little widows. Their main pastime is dragging a new man into their bed. Well of course, bed is an essential and important business, but before you get round to doing your business, these ladies, who would be better called harlots, will stuff you with poison right up to your … What I was going to say is that all their husbands preferred to be stabbed to death by Wild Boars and Oburs. You must agree, it’s better than putting up with a rotten bitch.”

I nodded in agreement. The baron seemed to be in need of a grateful listener, and he had found one.

“The nobles are getting petty, really petty,” the giant sighed plaintively. “They’re not at all what they used to be. The nobility haven’t had real blood running through their veins for ages; it’s as thin as water. Of course, with the exception of you and me,” he added hastily.

“Of course.”

Despite his loud voice and not entirely elegant manners, I was beginning to like this man.

“How many swords has your duke got?”

Oro Gabsbarg’s question stumped me. How many swords did Duke Ganet Shagor really have? And what kind of swords? The kind you hang on your belt, or the kind you command in battle?

Seeing my confusion, the baron uttered the bearlike roar that was his normal laugh.

“That’s what sitting stuck at Sea Cliffs all the time gets you! Your lands are peaceful, Zagraba’s a long way away, and you can’t even remember how many warriors your lord has!”

“It can’t be helped, my friend,” I said with a shrug.

“Friend?” The baron gave me a curious look. “Yes, why not!”

He grabbed hold of my hand and crushed it in his palm. Thank Sagot, by some miracle my hand was still whole and undamaged after that handshake.

“And how do you feel about the Nightingales, dear fellow?”

“Er-er…,” I began warily.

“You don’t feel anything,” Shadow Harold’s new friend, Oro Gabsbarg, concluded impassively, reading the answer in my eyes. “I confess from the very bottom of my heart,” he whispered, leaning down to my ear, “I feel the same. But mum’s the word, all right? Sh-sh-sh-sh!”

“Then what’s that nightingale doing on your doublet?”

“Oh, you northerners,” the baron murmured wearily. “Times are hard, dear fellow. My ancestral castle of Farahall is not very far away from Zagraba. Of course, there are still the lands of Milord Algert Dalli, Buttress of the Throne and Keeper of the Western Border of the Border Kingdom, but the Firstborn still manage to get through even as far as me. This year alone we wiped out two detachments of orcs, but a third one completely massacred one of my villages and then disappeared into the woods. I have a hundred and fifty warriors at my castle, plus another hundred scattered about in patrols. There aren’t enough swords, the orcs find breaches in our defenses. There are rumors that the Hand of the Orcs is gathering an army. And so, my friend, I’d gladly be a butterfly, never mind a nightingale, if only Balistan Pargaid would give me fighting men!”