Mocklore Box Set (Mocklore Chronicles)

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “We’ll see,” she muttered, thin-lipped. “Daggar, light a fire.”

  Daggar protested, shocked by this ruthless attitude. “Yer not really going to…” His voice faded away as Kassa looked at him, but he tried again, gallantly. “But he’s not in his right mind…”

  Kassa just kept looking at him, her single visible eye glinting with a certain golden ruthlessness. Daggar went to light a fire.

  Lady Talle smiled slowly. “I think I will give the King of Anglorachnis a personal gift,” she mused. “A token of our new friendship. Kassa Daggersharp’s head on a spike should be more than suitable.”

  “But you don’t have her head,” pointed out Griffin. “Or any of her.”

  “Not yet,” murmured the Lady Emperor. “But soon…my champion will end her life and bring her silver to me. Aragon Silversword will not fail the Empire.”

  Griffin regarded her skeptically, but said nothing. Lady Talle had not heard from her so-called champion in a long time. She would never admit, even to herself, that she was beginning to worry about his loyalty.

  And she needed the silver. It was a matter of pride now. The King and Queen of Anglorachnis would not be impressed by an impoverished Empire. Lady Talle was relying entirely on the honesty of a man who had betrayed one Emperor already.

  It was at this point that she, the ultimate image of grace and beauty, began chewing her nails.

  Aragon Silversword awoke with a thudding pain in his chest. His mouth felt gritty, and he had that strange creeping feeling in the back of his head that you always get the next morning after something which you can’t remember. He looked around, and saw that Kassa was wearing a black leather eyepatch. That did not bode well. “What happened?” seemed a more urgent question than “Where am I?” He attempted both, then sat back to wait for a result.

  “Go on, Kassa,” said Daggar. “Tell him what happened.”

  “You changed sides,” she said shortly.

  The pain in Aragon’s chest increased as he sat up. “When did I do that? Why did I do that?”

  “I imagine it seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said succinctly.

  Aragon looked down at himself, and noticed that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Then he saw the witchmark. A spiral within a spiral, burned into the flesh over his heart. It throbbed. Painfully.

  Aragon knew what it was. When he was Imperial Champion, he had made it his business to poke his nose into every corner of the Empire. Even if he had been outside fashionable circles for two years, he knew the legends concerning the acceptance of a pirate’s mark, particularly if that pirate was of witchblood as Pirate Kings and Queens often are. “What have you done to me?” he said hollowly. Under the circumstances, he felt it to be a reasonable question.

  Kassa even sounded different. She was somehow more confident, more charismatic than she had ever been before. She was more powerful. “You swore allegiance to me with that mark,” she informed him confidently. “You pledged your honour to me. And you are an honourable man, are you not, Aragon?”

  “I’m a traitor,” he muttered.

  “Not any more,” she said firmly. “You can not betray me. You are my liegeman now. You have no choice in the matter.”

  His grey eyes met hers. “Are you so sure about that?”

  She whispered, “You are bound to the Daggersharp until you die, or I die, or the world ends.”

  “Well now,” said Aragon darkly, “I’m not sure at the moment which of those I might prefer.”

  Queen Hwenhyfar of Anglorachnis was a pallid, ineffectual woman. This was largely as a result of too many hours indoors reading that particular genre of epic poetry known as ‘bodice-rippers’. Due to an overly romantic nature, she tended to wear coronets of flowers and sway slightly.

  Her husband, King Durraldo the Terribly Brave, was a hero-king and had seduced many foreign queens in his youth. It was for this reason that he knew the right sort of precautions to take about making sure his own wife stayed firmly un-seduced by anyone.

  Firstly, he refused to let her have a champion of any kind as that sort were always lusting after pale, romantic ladies of royal blood. Secondly, he chose the Queen’s bodyguards personally. They were all very able, healthy, smelly soldiers of over sixty. A white beard, sharp sword and body-odour problem almost guaranteed you a job in the Royal Household of Anglorachnis.

  As an additional measure, a large collection of grim-faced priestesses and noblewomen had been selected as the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. They scared off all of her would-be seducers, including the King, most nights.

  For her own part, the Queen was largely unimpressed with her husband, who was a full foot shorter than most heroes of epic romance claimed to be, and tended to lounge around the castle wearing smelly leathers instead of stately robes. Should a suitable candidate and opportunity come along, she was pretty well ripe for seduction.

  The silver carriage of the Royal House of Anglorachnis left the glittering city and headed shakily towards the spidery bridge which was officially the border between the mainland and the Mocklore Empire. There were few people crossing the border that day, or any day, come to that. Every now and then one or two desperate refugees or escaped criminals would attempt to emigrate to Mocklore, but after a few days they usually emigrated back.

  It was raining. The Queen sighed and sniffed into her hanky. The King shuffled about on the velvet seat and threw darts at a large target held by a nervous page. The Minister of Foreign Affairs slyly flicked through a scroll of erotic pictograms. The chief priestess-in-waiting carved her name in letters three inches deep in the side of the carriage with a wickedly curved holy dagger. Behind them, a hundred Spider-Knights marched in perfect formation, passing a bottle of troll brandy back and forth between them.

  Halfway across the spindly bridge, the carriage jerked to a halt with a clatter. The King stuck his nose out to see what was happening, and the Queen peered out of the window on the other side. Ahead of them, a rider had come out of the fog. He rode a black winged thing which growled and nickered impatiently.

  The rider dismounted and came forward, and the black winged thing behind him simply vanished, as if it was no longer needed. The man was tall, lean and dark with a black eye-patch and a long, ragged cloak. His doublet underneath the cloak was purple velvet, which the King noted with relief. This was obviously the Mocklorn ambassador.

  The ambassador bowed suddenly, and his dark face was lit up by a wicked grin. The Queen sighed dreamily to herself. Then the ambassador walked forward, boots clicking, to greet the King. “My name is Reed Cooper,” said he, in the smoothest of voices. “Please, allow me to escort your Majesty and your beautiful Queen to the city of Dreadnought.” He flicked a politely smouldering glance in the direction of the Anglorachnid queen, who blushed all over.

  16

  Ghosts and Epic-poetry

  The silver ladder unfolded silently as Kassa read the label aloud. “Magic One Way Escape Route. Do not bend.”

  The ladder unfolded as far as the cave roof, and kept going. A tunnel opened up to let it through.

  Aragon regarded it suspiciously. “Just where is this going to take us?”

  “Out,” said Kassa with a shrug. “It’s this or the mermaids.”

  “Fine,” he said abruptly, and started climbing.

  Kassa reached out a hand to stop him. “Aragon, you’re clanking.”

  He glared down at her, and opened one of the pouches on his belt, showing her that it was full of silver coins. Then he closed it again, very deliberately.

  “So much for wanting nothing from me but my kind regard,” said Kassa icily.

  Aragon stared blankly back at her and then continued up the ladder, hand over hand through the tunnel until he was out of sight.

  Kassa put a hand on Daggar’s silver-reinforced shoulder. “This is a one-way ladder, remember. An exit, not an entrance. If you want to come back here, you’ll need to go through the mermaids and the goblins and the trolls again.”
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  “No fear,” Daggar grinned. “I’m not greedy.” He had hitched a long silvery rope to his barrow-load of treasure. “Just as much as I can carry, right?”

  “Hmm,” said Kassa doubtfully. She had strapped her sword to her back, and was wearing her mother’s ring. The black leather eyepatch was still in place, and she had tied a shining silver thingummy around her neck. It was vaguely shaped like a boat.

  Daggar’s cheerful face creased slightly. “What is that thing? I thought you were leaving the silver here.”

  “Not this piece,” said Kassa. “This piece comes with me. Are you ready or what?”

  “Aye,” said Daggar cheerfully. “Just in time for the full moon. I can hand over my ten percent to the Profithood, and retire to a sunny island somewhere.”

  “Full moon,” said Kassa thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that mean it’s time for Braided Bones?”

  “What does it matter?” said Daggar over his shoulder, starting to climb the vertical tunnel. “Makes no difference to us now, we’ve got the treasure.”

  “It might make a difference to your lady friend,” Kassa pointed out.

  Daggar looked slightly sick. “Let’s just leave the area quickly, shall we? I don’t want the Hidden Army coming after me for their pound of flesh.” He practically leaped up the ladder. The rope harness around his waist tightened and the barrow-load began to lift slightly. After Daggar disappeared over the top, the silver wheelbarrow was hauled swiftly up by invisible hands.

  A few pieces of silver were dislodged as the barrow tilted, and Kassa only just avoided being brained by a solid silver trinket box. Grumbling, she continued up the ladder, ignoring the fallen box as it crashed to the cave floor.

  If she had looked more closely, things might have turned out differently. Engraved on the lid of the fallen box was a small inscription. All it said was ‘Pan-dorah’, which was Olde Trolle for ‘Do Not Open on Pain of Glints’. The clasp had smashed when it hit the ground, and the lid was slightly ajar. Inside, something began to lurk.

  The first thing Kassa noticed as she clambered out of the magic tunnel was that Daggar and Aragon were standing very still, surrounded by the Hidden Army. Singespitter was on his knees, pawing through Daggar’s collection of silver goodies. Zelora Footcrusher had the stone gargoyle in a sling over one shoulder and Aragon’s icesprite rapier in the other hand. She was looking vaguely cheerful.

  Kassa tried to climb back down the ladder, but Zelora lunged forward just in time to catch a handful of dark red hair. She hauled Kassa bodily out of the tunnel, which chose this moment to vanish completely.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said Zelora Footcrusher.

  It was nearing dusk. Soon it would be evening, and then dark. At some unpredictable stage between the two, the moon would rise. Did the full moon begin tonight or tomorrow night? Kassa couldn’t remember. She glared at Aragon, remembering that he had been the first out of the tunnel. “You could have warned us we were being ambushed,” she said darkly.

  “I wasn’t in the mood,” replied Aragon in a chilly tone of voice. It was obviously going to be some time before he stopped being angry about the witchmark.

  His animosity was likely to last for the rest of their lives. Or until the world ends, thought Kassa ruefully.

  “March,” snapped Footcrusher, and her men jostled the three captives into line.

  As they marched onwards, Kassa noticed that there were no caves anywhere to be seen. The hills and mountains were bare. “They will be here,” said Zelora in a sharp voice, as if she had heard Kassa’s thought. “Soon.”

  The Hidden Army made camp. As the invisible campfire was laid, the sky began to darken. Somewhere beyond the cloudy greyness, the moon was beginning to rise.

  “The moon, Kassa,” said Daggar suddenly in a strangled voice. “My time’s up. The Profithood…”

  “Shut up,” Kassa whispered fiercely. The invisible campfire gave off little warmth, but she was hot all over. Angry, and she didn’t know why. She would never again be denied her freedom, tied up like a dog… These thoughts did not belong to her, although they sounded vaguely familiar. She knew only that she was going to have to escape.

  The black clouds broke, and light filled the dark night sky. Daggar caught his breath in a strangled yelp. “It is the full moon!” he cried out.

  “Be quiet,” Kassa hissed. “There is more at stake now than your feeble life!” Daggar looked at her, his wide brown eyes mournfully hurt, and Kassa wondered what she had meant by that. She felt strange, and her throat itched with a prickly warmth. She looked down, and realised that the silver thingummy around her neck was glowing. She could not remember now why she had picked it up from the pile of surplus jewellery when she had been so determined not to take any silver away with her.

  Somewhere beyond the invisible light of the campfire, Zelora Footcrusher screamed.

  “Now,” cried Kassa, not knowing what her brain had in mind. It was as if some force had taken over her mind and her body. She reached up and flung the silver thingummy away from her, away from the invisible campfire.

  “Bloody hell!” squawked Daggar as the thingummy expanded with a pale light, forming a huge, a vast shape. It was a ship. A pirate ship. A witchy pirate ship. A shimmering ghost of a witchy pirate ship. And it hovered above the sandy grass, waiting for its Captain.

  “Help Daggar get his silver aboard the Splashdance,” snapped Kassa to Aragon, and when he hesitated she made a fist and held her ring close to his face. Its very proximity made the witchmark over his heart burn again, and he turned reluctantly to obey her command.

  The Hidden Army could do nothing, as their leader had given no direct orders. Zelora Footcrusher currently stood helpless, bound by a torn sling to her recently-restored pirate husband. Braided Bones looked down at her placidly, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  Aragon took this frozen moment as an opportunity to snatch his sword from Zelora’s grasp.

  Abruptly the shock wore off, and Zelora Footcrusher caught Braided Bones about the ear with a mighty blow. “Thirteen years!” she bellowed. “Thirteen stinking bloody years! Not even a farewell, just a note. Gone to Sea!”

  Her left hook knocked him unconscious, and Braided Bones dropped like a felled tree. Because of the sling which still bound them together, Zelora fell with him. She struggled out of the tangled bindings angrily and continued to kick the unconscious body of her husband. She hadn’t even noticed the loss of the sword.

  Aragon and Daggar hefted the barrow-load of silver on to the deck of the ghostly ship and climbed aboard. Kassa was already there, looking strange, glowing in the pale light. “Are you planning to remove his curse too?” asked Aragon dryly. “It seems to be your specialty.”

  “I think their marriage might be more successful if I leave that curse right where it is,” replied Kassa distantly.

  “Good luck to them,” said Daggar, almost wistfully, but mainly relieved. “I wonder which will kill the other first.”

  Zelora looked around now, seeing the ghost-ship for the first time. She began shouting orders.

  “Go!” said Kassa desperately, and at her word the ghost of the Splashdance began to slide above the grass.

  As they moved away, a little man with spectacles and a humorous hat emerged from the trees. He ran after the ship and grabbed on to a rope, desperately trying to hurl himself aboard. “You can’t go without me!” he begged. “Please!” He managed to scramble over the side, dropping on to the deck.

  Immediately, Aragon had a sword at the little man’s throat. It was actually Bigbeard’s sword, taken from Kassa when she wasn’t looking, but he had no wish to put his own recently-restored sword to such a menial task.

  “Who the hell are you?” demanded Kassa in an imperious, unpleasant voice which made Daggar squirm.

  “Please,” gasped the little man. “I’ve been looking for you for so long. I write ballads.” And then, because his exertions had been all too much for him, he fainted.
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br />   Durraldo the Terribly Brave, King of Anglorachnis, would have been far more suited to a career in accounting or stamp collecting rather than kinging. But despite his natural inclinations towards golf and jigsaw puzzles, no one could say he had not tried to do his duty as a hero-king. He had travelled to distant lands, vanquished fearsome beasties (crocodiles, mostly), seduced foreign queens and discovered lost cities (which he promptly re-hid for tax reasons) before returning home to Anglorachnis and settling down with a queen of his own.

  With all his wanderings and philanderings, King Durraldo the Terribly Brave had thus far managed to avoid Mocklore, or ‘that blight over the spindly bridge’ as it was known in Anglorachnis. On the other hand, a female Emperor was something of a novelty and his wife had jumped at the suggestion (by the long-suffering Anglorachnis Ambassador in Mocklore) of a royal visit.

  As the King moved over on the velvety carriage seat to make room for the Mocklorn Ambassador chappie, he happened to notice that his wife was looking uncommonly bright-eyed and flushed today. Perhaps she was coming down with some form of plague, he mused to himself, mildly concerned.

  After the King returned to gazing out the window, Reed Cooper smiled his killer smile at the hotly-blushing queen who nearly fainted with excitement. Cooper winked at her once and then settled back in his seat, feeling cheerful. This was much better. No more tedious hours playing maidservant or bath attendant—he was an Ambassador now. Travel, danger, excitement and a plentiful supply of beautiful women to make eyes at. It was almost as good as being a pirate again.

  The King of Anglorachnis never imagined for a moment that there might be anything untoward going on between his wife and this Mocklorn fellow. Everyone knew that queens were always seduced by champions, never ambassadors.

  A sudden bucket of cold water woke the little interloper, and Kassa repeated her question in an even scarier voice than she had used before. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded, pronouncing each word with venomous care.