by Tom Holt
The human had gone a very odd colour. Curious. A thought crossed Mordak’s mind, and he filed it away for further consideration.
“This is stupid,” the human protested. “Nobody told us. We didn’t know.”
She gave him her salt-on-a-slug look. “Presumably you came across the relevant regulations when you thoroughly acquainted yourself with our legal code before you came here.” She paused, then added, “You did do that, didn’t you?”
“Read all your laws? No, of course not. We thought—”
She cleared her throat again. “Failure to read, mark and inwardly digest the legal code before taking up residence in the Realms is itself an offence. But, of course, you knew that, obviously.”
“No. How could I possibly—?”
“It’s all there,” she said firmly, “in the legal code, which you are assumed to have read.” She waited just long enough for hope to ebb away in his heart, then went on: “However, my department doesn’t deal with failure-to-read, so it’s not for me to bring charges. Now then, you’ll be notified at least twenty minutes in advance of the time and place of the tribunal, at which point you’ll have an opportunity to choose your weapons for the actual hearing: sword, axe, mace, flail—”
The human backed away until he came up against a wall. He stopped and slid down it until he was sitting on the floor.
“—assuming,” she went on, “that you intend to plead not guilty. Well, I think that’s everything for now. Have a nice day.”
She turned to leave, snapping her fingers at Mordak without looking at him—a nice touch, he had to admit, though the human didn’t actually see it because he had his head in his hands. Then he looked up. “Just a minute,” he said.
“Well?”
“Assuming I plead not guilty?”
“That’s right.”
“How about if I confess? Say I did it?”
“In that case, you’d be liable to a fine of one shilling and threepence,” she said crisply, “payable in weekly instalments spread over five years.”
“I confess. I did it. I’m guilty.”
“Together,” she went on, “with confiscation of the unauthorised device.”
“All right.” He pulled a tragic face. “Except, we need it. We get all our food and stuff online. We’ll starve.”
“Confiscation pending the granting of the appropriate permit,” she said smoothly, “which costs a penny three farthings and usually takes forty-eight hours to process.”
“Right. And then what?”
“You can have your device back.”
There was a long silence, during which the human blinked forty-seven times. “Just to recap,” he said eventually, in a rather small, dry voice. “You take it away, I give you a penny three farthings, two days later I get it back.”
“Yes.” She gave him a thin smile, inside which perishable food would probably stay good indefinitely. “We’re not unreasonable, you know. We just uphold the law.”
The human was fumbling in his trouser pocket. He dredged up two silver pennies. “Here you go,” he said, waving them at her. “For the whatsit fee.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t accept it.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t have change.”
The human whimpered, turned out his pockets onto the floor, scrabbled wildly and found a halfpenny and a farthing. She took the coins, counted them and wrote him a receipt. “Now, then,” she said. “That just leaves the device.”
She gave him a receipt for that, too. Then Mordak loaded the strange glass thing—like an empty picture frame, but with thick black string hanging out of it—into the trollskin bag he happened to have with him. Ten minutes later they were outside and walking very fast towards the mountains.
“Piece of cake,” Tinituviel was saying. “Did you see me back there? I was so good. I had him eating out of the palm of my—”
“Yes, quite,” Mordak said. “Just one thing.”
“The look on his face when I started on about trial by combat. I thought he was going to have a little accident. Honestly, humans are so pathetic.”
“Indeed,” Mordak said. “Don’t you think that was odd?”
“Mind you, what can you expect from—in what way odd?”
Mordak skipped a couple of paces to catch up with her. “Well,” he panted, “think about it. We daren’t just slaughter the lot of them, because of the Vickers weapon. Right?”
“Well, yes. Hence all that nonsense. Worked, though, didn’t it? Of course, I never doubted for one moment—”
“They’re safe from an entire army,” Mordak said, “but you and all your bureaubabble scare him witless. What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Oh, don’t be so—” She stopped dead, and he nearly cannoned into her. “Explain.”
“All right.” Mordak put down the sack and sat on a rock. “Here’s what should have happened. You made your threats. He laughed in your face. Piss off, spiky-lugs, he should have said, or we’ll drill you full of small holes.” He frowned. “That’s what should have happened. But it didn’t.”
Her lips parted, then came together again.
“What I think is,” Mordak went on, “they’re protected, by that old fool and his ghastly machine, but they don’t know it. Like I said. Odd.”
She thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “All right,” she said, “so what? Doesn’t matter. We’ve got the Stone of Snordor, which means adios prophecies, get lost, Nameless One, you lose and we win. Result.”
But Mordak only shook his head. Then he pulled the glass thing out of the bag and peered at it closely for a bit. “Have we, though?”
“Have we what?”
“Got the Stone of Snordor. Come on, you know more about this than I do. What’s it supposed to look like?”
“Well, you know. A stone. Sort of stone-shaped.”
“Heavy?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’d assume it would be heavy. I mean, it’s one of the leading characteristics of stones. Hard, too, I bet.”
“Well—”
Mordak picked the thing up easily in one hand, and with the other drew his claw across the back, ploughing a deep furrow. “And, of course, there’s the inscription. Mustn’t forget that.”
“The—”
“Runes carved all round the edge,” Mordak went on, peering carefully. “Which no one has ever been able to decipher, of course, but unmistakably runes. You’ll know all about that from reading about it in the books.”
She wasn’t looking at him. “Well, of course.”
“Absolutely. Well, they’re not here.”
“What?”
He held the thing under her nose. “Rune-free. In fact. No carvings of any sort. And it’s not heavy, and I can scratch the back with my nails. This isn’t it.”
“But—”
“I haven’t got a clue what this thing is, but it’s not the Stone of bloody Snordor. You jumped to conclusions. You got it wrong. Admit it. All that bloody performance for nothing.”
She went stiff as a board and cold as ice. “It was your idea.”
“My idea to bluff our way in there and pinch the Stone, yes. Based on the assumption that the Stone was there in the first place. Which turns out not to be the case.” He sighed and put the thing back in the bag. “Or maybe it is, I don’t know. All we do know is, this isn’t it. And if we haven’t pinched the Stone, we haven’t derailed the prophecy. Which means the Nameless One—yes, what is it?”
She looked round. Standing over Mordak with a rather vacant smile on his lips was a human. He wore weird clothes and funny white shoes, and he didn’t seem the least bit afraid of goblins. “Excuse me,” he said, “I wonder if you can help me. I seem to be lost.”
They looked at him. He carried on smiling.
“Just a minute,” Mordak said. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed Tinituviel by the arm and dragged her out of the stranger’s earshot. “Who the hell is that?”
/> “I don’t know, do I?”
“He’s strange.”
“Human.”
“Even for a human he’s strange.”
“Dress sense isn’t everything.” She smiled at him. “You should know that, of all people.”
Mordak pretended he hadn’t heard. “A human encounters a goblin in the wilderness. What does he do?”
“Runs away.”
“Right. Is he running? Not really. Furthermore, a human encounters a goblin and an Elf having a chat in the wilderness. Does he register surprise, or does he see things like that every day?”
The Elf shrugged. “Maybe he’s a bit funny in the head. Anyway, he’d harmless enough, surely.” She glanced at him, then squeezed Mordak’s wrist and pointed. “Look!”
The human had pulled the Not-The-Stone out of the bag and was looking at it. There was curiosity on his face, sure enough, but not at the thing itself. On the contrary.
“Wait here,” Mordak said.
“Like hell I will.”
They went back to where the human was kneeling. He’d sat the thing upright and was gazing at it. “Excuse me,” Mordak said.
“Yes?”
“This may sound like a silly question, but do you know what that is?”
The man nodded happily. “I think I do,” he said. “I think it’s a Kawaguchiya all-in-one touchscreen desktop with a five-hundred-gig hard drive and an eight-gig memory. A bit old-fashioned, but a good basic bit of kit.”
“You’ve seen one before.”
“I must have done. In fact, I may have had one at some stage, but I honestly can’t be sure.”
Mordak peered at him. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”
The man shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t think I am, but I have no way of knowing.”
Tinituviel nudged Mordak in the ribs. “Funny in the head,” she whispered.
Mordak scowled at her, then wiped the look off his face and replaced it with his nearest approximation to a friendly smile. The man seemed to take it in his stride. “That thing,” he said. “What does it do?”
“Oh, most things,” the man said. “Good, basic workhorse. Nothing fancy.”
“Most things?”
The man nodded. “Just a bit slower, that’s all. Of course,” he added, “it does need to be plugged in first. It’s a desktop, you see, not a laptop. Got to be connected to the mains.” He scratched his head. “You know,” he said, “I’m almost certain I had one of these. It does seem terribly familiar.”
Mordak drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “When you say it does most things—”
“Pretty much everything you could want, really. Provided you’re patient. I mean, it’s no flying machine. Just a solid, everyday all-rounder.”
Mordak nodded. “It can’t fly, but it can do everything else.”
“Mphm.” The man nodded. “Anyway, I was wondering. Could you possibly tell me the way to the Tower of Snorfang?”
“Behind you.”
“Excuse me?”
Mordak pointed. The man turned round, then said, “Ah, that tower. That’s it, is it?”
“Yes. You, um, don’t seem very impressed.”
The man shrugged. “It’s a tower block. I’m fairly sure I’ve seen lots of them.”
“Where you come from.”
“Wherever that is. Yes, I suppose so. Thanks ever so much.” He waved his hand in a friendly fashion, then turned and walked towards the tower.
“Nutcase,” Tinituviel said.
Mordak didn’t reply. He knelt down and put the thing back in its bag, taking care to buckle the flap down tight.
“Don’t tell me you believed any of that. He’s a loon. Look at him.”
The man was strolling down the path to the tower, apparently without a care in the world. Mordak stared at his back for a moment, then shrugged. “He says this thing will do everything except fly. You know what this means?”
She nodded. “He’s a nutcase. I just told you.”
“That’s how they did it,” Mordak said. “The Vickers weapon. This must be how they conjured it up. And now we’ve got it.”
Tinituviel was looking doubtful. “And anyway,” she said, “didn’t I hear him say you had to do something to get it working?”
“Connect it to the mains,” Mordak replied. “But we can do that easily enough.”
“Mains water or mains drainage?”
Mordak shrugged. “We’ll try both,” he said. “Come on. We’ll have this thing up and running in no time, you’ll see.”
BOOK FOUR
Love, Orctually
Mr. Bullfrog (that wasn’t quite his name, but close enough) was actually quite nice once you got to know him. He could turn his heat down to pleasantly warm, and he could shrink himself so that he fitted in an armchair. It turned out he’d never had tea before, but he took to it straight away, which showed he must be a fundamentally decent person.
Mr. Bullfrog explained that he lived next door—vertically, not horizontally—and he’d been meaning to pop round and introduce himself for some time. When Barry asked him what he did, he replied with some sort of confused rigmarole about having been down there since the First Age, which presumably meant he was retired. Pat made a point of thanking him for all the free heating and hot water, and he said, not a bit, think nothing of it, and if you want it a bit hotter or cooler, just say the word. He apologised about having made such a fuss, but explained that he was always a bit cranky when he’d just woken up.
It was so nice to have someone new to talk to. Barry and Pat Lushington were quite fond of each other; after nearly thirty years of marriage they still got on remarkably well. But there hadn’t been an awful lot to talk about since they’d arrived in the Realms, apart from all the things that didn’t work or weren’t as they were supposed to be, and there wasn’t really anything to do except talk to each other, sit in silence or drink until it went away. A new friend—and it didn’t take long for them to decide that Mr. Bullfrog, though a bit quaint in some respects, was definitely Their Sort.
For a start, he was a good listener. He seemed genuinely interested when they told him about how Amy was doing so well as a freelance website designer, and there was no trace of the usual glazed look when they showed him the photos of the grandchildren: Alistair (three) and Rachel (eighteen months). His eyes glowed red with fascination as Barry told him all about the ins and outs of the phosphate game, and he asked several questions which demonstrated that, although he clearly didn’t understand a word of it, he was paying close attention throughout. He was thrilled to bits when they called up Google Streetview on the laptop and showed him where they used to live, and after Pat finished telling the story of how the carpet fitters had done the whole of upstairs with the wrong carpet you literally could’ve heard a pin drop.
“If you don’t mind me saying so,” he said, “I can’t quite see why you left such an extraordinary, wonderful place and came here.”
Barry and Pat looked at each other; then both of them started talking at the same time. Pat told him about property prices, local taxes and water rates, traffic congestion, frequency of refuse collection, Eastern European tradesmen and gangs of feral youths letting down tyres and kicking over dustbins, while Barry did his thing about quality of life, the rat race, stress levels, the good life, doing a bit of gardening and room to actually breathe. They finished at more or less the same time, and Mr. Bullfrog looked at them both and nodded, and they just knew that he understood. Then Barry tentatively asked if Mr. Bullfrog played golf, and Mr. Bullfrog frowned and said he’d never heard of it, but he’d be delighted if Barry would teach him, and it was simply perfect—
“The truth is,” Mr. Bullfrog said, with that disarming simplicity of his, “I’ve been asleep down there for a very long time and I feel I’ve probably been missing out on things rather. It would be so nice to have some company from time to time.”
Pat took that as an invitation to ask personal questions
, which Mr. Bullfrog didn’t seem to object to in the least. He’d been married, a long time ago, but sadly Mrs. Bullfrog had passed away—Pat couldn’t quite piece together what had happened to her, but it was something to do with falling off a bridge during an argument with some ghastly sounding character who was either a policeman or a college lecturer, and talking about it was clearly upsetting the old boy, so Pat discreetly changed the subject. What he’d done before he retired remained equally vague, but Barry was fairly sure he’d been some sort of heating engineer, while Pat was convinced he must have been something in local government. Mr. Bullfrog was reticent at first on the subject of politics, but once he got going his views turned out to be firmly and sincerely held and pretty much in line with the Lushingtons’ own. This fellow Mordak, for instance—Barry and Pat didn’t know who Mr. Mordak was, but they picked up from context that he was some sort of prime minister—fresh ideas and a new perspective were all very well, but change for change’s sake—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Mr. Bullfrog always said (here Barry nodded enthusiastically and Pat offered him another ginger biscuit) and the old ways had worked well enough for as long as Mr. Bullfrog could remember, and he knew it was all too easy to be hard on young people nowadays, but all this free healthcare and statutory sick pay and trolls’ rights, it doesn’t do people any good in the long run, cossetting them and wrapping them in cotton wool. It’s a harsh, goblin-eat-Elf world out there, and you’re doing them no favours encouraging them to think otherwise—
Faint alarm bells rang in Pat’s mind. True, it was so refreshing to meet someone who was so obviously on their wavelength; but she knew Barry, and once he got started on politics there was a danger of him getting over-excited, and maybe Mr. Bullfrog didn’t want to hear thirty cogent reasons for bringing back the birch for spitting out chewing gum on the pavement. She gave her husband a warning smile and changed the subject. Did Mr. Bullfrog, she asked, have any hobbies?
Apparently not; in fact, the concept seemed so strange to him that he had trouble grasping it.
“Things you do for fun,” Pat explained. “What you do in your spare time?”
