by Heide Goody
“The Amanni demagogue Nirage collected the heads of the kings and chieftains he conquered, yeah?” piped up Bez.
“It’s nice to have a hobby,” said Lorrika.
Pagnell carefully removed the papers from under the plate. “Collecting hobbies can get out of hand though. You start off with one or two heads then, before you know it, you’re proclaiming a republic which will last a thousand years.”
“I had an aunt who went the same way,” said Bez.
“Founded a republic of crazed fanatics?” said Cope.
Bez shook his head. “Her collection of pottery chickens. Took over the house. My uncle moved out to the shed just for a spot of peace and quiet.”
“A spot of peace and quiet…” mused Pagnell, shuffling carefully through the dried and crumbling papers.
“While this is all fascinating—” Merken interrupted.
“He sat here,” said Pagnell, parking himself on the stool. He scratched at a dark mark on the plate. “This was probably the remains of a cheese sandwich, or something. Never got the chance to finish it. Too busy editing his plans or designing some new, subtle embellishment.”
“Who?”
Pagnell blinked. “Kavda.”
“Kavda the Builder?”
The wizard nodded. “It’s a big old tomb. A big labyrinth. He’d have been overseeing the construction, but would probably need somewhere quiet to do his work without having to traipse back up to the surface.” He waved the parchments and a flaky corner broke off one and drifted away like an autumn leaf. “These are his notes.”
“And would there be a handy map of this maze among them?” asked Merken.
“No. There’s a full map of the lower levels, but not the labyrinth. Still: very encouraging. It might be reasonable to assume Kavda’s cubbyhole here would be on or near the true path through the labyrinth.”
“Perhaps.”
“And look.” He held up one sheet. There was a complex sketch of gutters and tiles in faded ink and, scribbled in the margin, a note: Edging of acid splash pools allowing too much backwash. Remake and refit floors with these channels and run offs if we want to maintain foot-melting efficiency. Ensure all workers wear protective ceramic boots during the alterations. “Here’s a man interested in the finer details. Kavda would have been back and forth through the various levels of the tomb all the time, controlling every aspect of construction. That’s a lot of legwork. Wasteful legwork.”
“You think he put in some short cuts?” said Merken.
“Secret passages?” added Lorrika.
“Exactly,” said Pagnell.
“Er, guys…” said Bez, his voice suddenly tight.
“You think you can find these secret passages?” Merken asked the wizard.
“Maybe,” said Pagnell.
“Guys!” said Bez, louder.
“What?”
Bez held up his ball of twine. He’d been unravelling it for the mile or more they’d already walked, but was still the size of a grapefruit.
“I don’t think we’ll run out before we’ve found the way through,” said Pagnell, entirely missing Bez’s point. Cope had spotted it, too.
The trailing line of yarn was vibrating, twanging like a loose harp string. Cope stepped back fully into the corridor and held her lamp high. Down the long length and into darkness, the string was oscillating.
“Something’s coming,” she said.
The tension and frequency on the string rose. There was the soft slap-slap of wet feet against stone. Cope passed her lamp back to the wizard and drew her longsword. Lorrika took up a position to the side and slightly behind her. She held stubby knives in each hand.
Bez dropped his yarn ball, took out a pad, and started sketching.
“Is that going to help?” hissed Pagnell.
“If we die, no. If we live, you’ll be glad I captured the moment. Keep the lamp steady.”
The ball of yarn rolled on the floor as it was tugged. Two figures stepped into the edges of the lamp light.
Flabby yellow bellies, green webbed feet, poorly made strings of beads about their necks and equally poorly made but nonetheless lethally sharp shell-topped spears slung across their backs, they came.
Grimlocks!
The two creatures were thoroughly intent on the string they were gathering and only looked up as the light shone on their frog faces.
“Yan tan!” squealed one in surprise.
“Tethera pethera!” squeaked the other.
Pagnell pointed and shouted something. Cope swung. The two grimlocks flopped lifelessly to the floor. Cope’s blade sailed harmlessly over the place where their heads had been.
Pagnell scuttled forward and held his lamp high to see if there were any more coming. Cope prodded a grimlock belly with the tip of her boot. It jiggled like jelly but the creature didn’t stir.
“You killed them,” said Merken.
“No,” said Pagnell. “I put them to sleep.”
“Put them to sleep?”
“Yes. Pagnell’s Pain-Free Insensibility. I use it on my dental patients. It’s better than having them screaming while attempting to extract a rotten molar,” said Pagnell.
Cope grunted. The tooth-thieving mage’s true nature was once again revealed.
Merken gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, what a wizard we have in you, Sparkles. We should have the great Abington leading us to our prize, blasting all our enemies with hellfire and lightning. But, no, we have a damned tooth-puller who sings vicious grimlocks to sleep with lullabies.”
“If I may add,” said Bez, waving his sketch about, “a drawing of Pagnell sends the Savage Grimlocks to Beddy-Byes isn’t exactly newsworthy.”
“If I may add something of my own,” said Pagnell tartly, “these vicious and savage grimlocks weren’t about to kill us. This one was gathering string and this one, we observe—” he crouched and picked up a pathetic mess of sticks and string. “—was knitting it. We weren’t being stalked. We were being harvested.”
He was right. The creature had turned several hundred yards of string into a mostly shapeless sheet of ugly knitting. Was it supposed to be a scarf, Cope wondered. No, too wide. A shawl perhaps? In truth, it would probably serve best as a fishing net.
“Now,” said Pagnell. “Unless I have failed to identify knitting as one of the deadly martial arts…”
“Ah, Sparkles was being merciful,” said Merken. “No wonder this damned world is going to ruin.”
“Are there more of them?” asked Lorrika.
“Where there’s one grimlock, there’s hundreds,” said Merken.
“You said you ran into some on the river,” said Pagnell. “And water has clearly managed to seep in here from somewhere. And that could be why we’ve found this tomb to be remarkably … tidy.”
“Grimlocks famous for tidying up after themselves?” asked Lorrika.
“They’re scavengers and thieves,” Bez replied. “They’ll take anything not nailed down – actually they’ll take things that are nailed down, along with the nails – and use it or sell it.”
“Like the journal of Handzame the Unlucky?” Pagnell murmured to himself.
“So there’s a horde of the damned things down here,” muttered Merken. “Planning on putting them all to sleep, Sparkles?”
“No.” He poked a grimlock in the belly. It gurgled but did not wake.
“You shouldn’t touch them,” said Lorrika. “Abington said their slime was poisonous to eat, gives crazy visions and such.”
“I wasn’t planning on licking it,” said Pagnell. “However, we could wake one of them and encourage him – her? Possibly it – to show us the way through the labyrinth. One of the side-effects of the spell is that upon waking the patient is a mite compliant.”
“Oh, and you speak grimlock, do you?” sneered Merken.
“Yan tan figger covada tan,” said Pagnell.
“Ah. Pimper seth a yanerik tan?” smiled Bez.
“Bumfit,” replied Pagnell.
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br /> “Wonderful,” sighed Merken,
Although to Cope the plan seemed a moderately decent one, she suspected when Merken had said “Wonderful” he actually meant something else.
After a spot of rummaging, Pagnell produced a sealed jar of pink crystals. He uncorked the jar and wafted it under what passed for a grimlock’s nose.
The stinking creature sat up with a jolt and a wide-mouthed “Gah!” of disgust. Cope readied her sword to kebab it if necessary.
The grimlock’s protruding yellow eyes rolled drunkenly. Pagnell gripped its slimy, stick-thin arm and muttered intently to it. The grimlock replied sluggishly.
“Yep,” said Pagnell, standing up and dragging the creature with him. “Our friend, Clive, is going to lead us to the exit.”
“Clive?” said Merken.
“An approximation of his actual name.”
“Bumfera!” agreed the grimlock woozily and padded off.
Cope looked at the other grimlock which was snoring gently on the floor. “Are we leaving this one here?”
“No,” said Merken and gestured for her to bring it.
Cope stared at the damp ugly thing, consider her options and then rolled it up in the pathetic and jumbled net of its knitting (belatedly realising its knitting needles were a pair of long bones whittled down for the purpose) and slung it over her shoulder. The grimlock stank like something dredged up from the bottom of a stagnant pond. Undoubtedly what it was.
Cope walked at the rear, unwilling to subject anyone to the wake of the dripping horribleness she carried on her back. Up ahead, the other grimlock, Clive, led the way through the tunnels: left turns, right turns, down steps, all the while jabbering away in its own incomprehensible language. Despite her travels, Cope was not a natural linguist. She had enough trouble grasping the subtleties of one language, never mind subjecting her poor mind to others.
While the tooth-mage conversed with Clive, Merken found a ready audience in Bez in a heartfelt discussion on the general lack of greatness in the world today.
“We live in a world of tiny, petty men,” complained Merken. “Our leaders are faceless and forgettable. No sooner is someone raised up as an exemplar of virtue than they are revealed to be a mountebank, damned degenerate or cad.”
“We are pampered fools compared to those genuine, authentic giants of old,” agreed Bez.
“Where are the giants of today?” huffed the old soldier. “Gone! The wizard Abington was a great man and what do we have now? A damned dentist.”
“I can hear you,” called Pagnell.
“Good! What have you ever done of note, eh, Sparkles? Abington saved the city of Dalarra from plague. What was it, Pipsqueak?”
“Marsh fever,” said Lorrika.
“There,” said Merken. “A city on its knees. Death stalking the very streets. Pauper and noble alike struck down by a disease brought in by – Yarwish traders, wasn’t it, Pipsqueak?”
“That’s what they said.”
“And if not for Abington’s magic and wisdom, who knows what might have happened.”
“Perhaps it might make a suitable subject for one of my paintings,” suggested Bez. “The great Abington stood on the steps of the … of the— What grand building do they have in Dalarra?”
“The Great Meethouse,” said Merken.
“That’s the one. The steps of the Great Meethouse with the sick and the dying, all artfully arranged in the streets, with arms raised in supplication. And Abington with a vial of the cure – what was it—?”
“Drapim,” said Lorrika.
“A common weed,” said Pagnell.
“—A vial of the magical elixir held aloft in Abington’s hand. A ray of sunlight catches the glass and it gleams like a diamond, casting benevolent rays over the grateful populace.”
“Was it like that?” Pagnell asked Lorrika. “The sun’s benevolent rays and all that.”
“Not quite,” said the thief.
Grimlock Clive guide burbled something and led Pagnell down a turning.
“But of course, if we’re talking of great men, we have one of the finest here,” said Bez and slapped Merken on the shoulder.
“Don’t touch me, bard,” snapped the soldier.
“Let us muse on the glory of your victory over Abrelia,” said Bez unabashed. “There’s a story worth commemorating in oils, no?”
“All words,” said Merken. “Nothing but words.”
“You conquered the island with – what? – five words.”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen? Wow. That’s … astonishing. Fifteen words. Such bravery. Such cunning!”
Down a side tunnel, by what reflected lamp light there was, Cope saw a stone arch: two huge uprights and a lintel, very much like the first threshold they had passed through.
“Should we not be going that way?” she asked, but Pagnell and their little guide were trundling on. The wizard acted like he knew what he was doing. Maybe the archway was just an archway. She hurried to catch up with the others. The grimlock on Cope’s back shuffled in its sleep and made a rude noise. Cope tried not to think about which end of the creature the noise might have come from.
“… island of Abrelia stands little more than twenty miles off the coast of Carius,” Merken was saying. “Abrelia was a vassal state to Carius although it was a wholly amicable arrangement. Abrelia’s harbour was large enough to hold almost the entire Carian fleet. Its high cliffs were a challenge to any invader, and when topped with fortified walls, entirely unassailable. When the Satheans planned their attack of Carius, they knew they had to take Abrelia first or be caught far from home at the mercy of the Carian navy.”
Cope’s feet splashed on the floor. The stone was wet, covered with a slow but constant trickle from ahead.
“And the Satheans hired you to help them?” Bez asked Merken.
“That they did,” said the old soldier. “I presented them with a strategy and travelled to Abrelia to implement it. I greased a few palms and managed to acquire a number of accounts and letters from the treasury. One of them – oh, a dull piece of paper it was – detailed how Abrelia was paying Carius the equivalent of twenty gold for every man, woman and child every year. Twenty gold.”
“That’s a lot.”
Merken laughed. “Yes. And if you paint that on the side of a wagon and have a man drive it around the island, soon everyone gets the idea they’ll each be twenty gold a year richer if the Carians were given their marching orders.”
The tunnel was widening, slick and uneven with mineral deposits. The ceiling rose away, beyond the light of their lamps. Cope’s boot slipped on the floor and she trod carefully. This didn’t look right.
“Within the month, the Carian satrap was expelled from Abrelia by the ruling council,” Merken continued. “Carius’ ships were told to leave and all future tribute cancelled. You see—” Merken paused to pontificate, “—twenty gold a year – even the thought of it – is enough to blind the average man to certain truths.”
“What truths?” said Lorrika.
Further ahead, Pagnell called to his grimlock guide. “Uh, Clive. Where are you taking us?”
“Yan a figgotik!”
“Ah,” said Bez.
“Ah?” said Lorrika.
“An error in translation, that’s all,” Pagnell assured them.
“What’s the problem?” Merken demanded.
“We need to turn back,” said Bez. “Now!”
Something glinted darkly in the heights.
“I asked Clive here to take us to the exit,” said Pagnell, starting to back away. “Unfortunately, I didn’t specify which one.”
“Gods. We’re not back at the beginning, are we?” said Merken.
“No. Not that.”
There were other glints in the dark. Sharp edges. Bulging eyes. Cope dropped the grimlock she carried, it landed with an unhappy ‘Umf!’, and she raised her sword. A hundred throats hissed in the darkness. Above them, in front of them, and behind them.
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“Those grimlocks you met on the river,” said Pagnell, whispering even though there was no longer much no point. “I think we’ve found their home.”
Rantallion Merken
1
Evening was falling on Ludens. It would be six bells soon enough, and the Amanni invasion could begin.
Rantallion Merken found himself reflecting, not on the imminent attack, but the grimlocks they had slaughtered yesterday. The stink of grimlock slime clinging to his cloak was a constant and unwanted reminder. Of course, grimlocks had been bigger in his youth. Much bigger. The raiding party they had blundered into at the Yokigiz River yesterday had been squat things, barely more than upright frogs with pointy sticks for weapons. The grimlocks Merken had fought in decades past had been twice the height, built of solid muscle and possessed of animal guile, with weapons which would disembowel the unwary in the blink of an eye. As always, the young had no idea how easy they had it these days.
Despite the grimlock stench, Merken wrapped the cloak tighter about him. The long cloak was scratchy and unpleasant as well as smelly, but it was the only protection against the hot wind which blew in across the plain, sucking the moisture and very life from his lips. Merken hunkered down against a cart wheel and cursed the hard ground, the hot wind, his cloak, grimlocks and anything else which sprang to mind.
General Handzame and a dozen warriors sat along the weed-choked outer wall of the city. In their cloaks, they were indistinguishable, their leader invisible. A fitting metaphor. Handzame was nothing. This was Merken’s battle, his stratagem, perhaps his final sally into the fray.
When the sun had gone, Merken stood, old knees clicking, tired back straining. He turned to the cart and gestured for the driver to pass him one of the clay pots. The rear of the cart was filled with such pots, each stoppered and sealed with wax; each protected from its neighbours by packing straw. Merken hefted the pot, surprised as always by how light the contents felt. Then again, he wasn’t sure how heavy they were supposed to be.
