by Max Anthony
Bunty pondered for a moment. While he agreed that children should not be held accountable for their parents’ crimes, he also felt that the King’s laws should be upheld even where he disagreed with them.
“So you thought to sneak into my dungeon, steal my keys and put yourself in a cell in place of your children?”
“This was my hope!” cried Skulks. “My children are everything to me and more!”
“Very well. It is my feeling that you’d hoped to steal my keys and free both yourself and your children, though I can’t blame you for wanting to do so. Given your noble intentions, how about I place you in their cell and let your children free? That way I can be sure I am doing my duty as keeper of this dungeon.”
“I would be forever grateful if you were to do so!”
“And will your children be adequately cared for if you are taken into captivity?” asked Bunty, mindful that he didn’t want to let children free in order for them to become pocket-pinching urchins.
“Their dear, sweet granny will look after them, for their mother passed away many years ago.”
“Let us find your children, then. And no monkey business, or I’ll put you all in cells!”
By now, Skulks was getting concerned, for he knew that the Warp and the Weft could not be contained by a normal prison door and he worried that they might be in a special holding area which would betray them as being more than mere Casks children.
“Two children, is it?” asked Bunty.
“Yes, two children. Both about ten years old.”
“Follow me. I know which cell they are in.”
Bunty led Skulks through more rooms, before pointing to a cell door on a far wall.
“They’re in there,” he said, striding across with his bunch of keys. He opened the door confidently and beckoned Skulks over.
“I’ll stand here while you speak to your children. Then I’ll let them go and you can stay.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Skulks. “Your kindness is greater than you know!”
Bunty was an honest half-man, half-giant and saw little harm in a prisoner swap. He also knew that there were no paper records of who was down here, so he was unlikely to get caught.
The cell was unlit, apart from a faint glow coming from outside the door. Even so, Skulks could see clearly and there, sitting upon a hard wooden bench, were the Warp and the Weft. They were both awake and looking at him.
“Daddy!” cried the Warp
“Daddy, I knew you’d come for us!” cried the Weft.
Having heard this joyous reaction as he waited outside the cell, Bunty knew that he was doing the right thing.
Both Warp and Weft hugged Skulks, so pleased to see him that they didn’t even attempt to pick his pockets.
“Now then children, your daddy has agreed with the nice man outside that I will stay here in the cells and you must go home to your granny’s house, which you will remember is Number 24 Flotsam Lane.”
“Daddy, you can’t leave us again!” they cried in unison.
“But I must. I will plead my case to the King and I’m sure he will release me soon!”
Giving him a tight squeeze, the Warp whispered into his ear, “He’s stolen our magic from us! You need to find a large black gem somewhere with the King. Bring it to us!”
The voice of the dungeon keeper came into the cell. “It’s time to be off, children. I am sure the King will be merciful towards your father.”
Effecting to weep and wail, the Warp and Weft allowed themselves to be led away from the prison cell, while Bunty turned the key in the lock, trapping Skulks within. Sure that the enormous man would be as good as his word, Skulks waited patiently for some time. He didn’t want to escape his cell until he was sure that the Warp and the Weft had been led to safety. They were very old and had certainly lived as eventful a life as he, but he’d never come across a time when they’d had their magic stolen and hoped it was something he could easily resolve by finding the black gem they’d mentioned.
After almost an hour, Skulks could hear footsteps outside, followed by a loud voice warning the prisoners to keep their racket to a minimum. The footsteps stopped outside his cell and the hatch over the door’s grille was pulled back. Bunty’s eyes looked through.
“I took them out of the palace and into Casks. They seemed to know where they were going.” Skulks thought the conversation was over, but the dungeon keeper continued after a moment.
“Very polite children. What did you say they were called?”
It was a genuine question, but it caught Skulks momentarily on the hop.
“Erm…Ferty and Heathen,” he blurted out.
“Nice children,” the giant said. “I hope the King lets you go free.” With that, he closed the hatch and left Skulks in darkness.
Sixteen
Feeling somewhat guilty for tricking the dungeon keeper, Tan Skulks waited until the footsteps had faded into the distance before he let himself out of his cell. He closed the door and locked it behind him, hoping to buy himself the time he needed to burgle the King’s quarters. He made his way carefully back through the dungeon, up the steps and through the helpfully signposted door he’d first entered. He remembered seeing a flight of stairs leading upwards and went that way, making his way up without pause. He remembered there being five floors to the palace in this particular section and decided to lean on experience by heading straight to the top floor.
There were guards here and there, but the hour was late and most of them were tired and lax in their duties, thinking of warm beds rather than the safety of their king’s valuables. Skulks even came across one guard who was standing up, yet deep in slumber. This was something Skulks had not experienced before and he spared a moment to wonder how the man stopped himself from falling over. His musings were interrupted by the sight of the guard’s packed lunch, which was in a box by his feet. Helping himself to three chicken sandwiches and a piece of fruit, Skulks left the sleeping man to continue the dereliction of his duties in peace.
After a time, Skulks found himself on the highest floor of the palace, confronted by a door entwined with magical trickery. He studied it, for someone had clearly spent a lot of time and effort to place these wards about it in order to dissuade unwanted entry. There was a Ward of Zapping, a Sigil of Burning, a Hex of Freezing and numerous Signs of Exploding. Skulks’ eyes traced other traps placed upon the door, which would have taken him an inordinate amount of time to remove. There was enough power to fry, shock, chill and explode a regular small army.
“What a thoroughly unpleasant door,” said Skulks to himself as he climbed out of an adjacent sash window that had no traps at all. He used his Wielding powers to glue himself to the outer palace wall as he shuffled along to a window on the other side of the door. He jiggled it free and entered, safely past the door. Treating himself to a happy stretch, he then crept along the corridor he found himself in. Sounds reached his ears and he stopped to listen. They were groaning sounds.
“The dungeon is below,” thought Skulks. “Why are there groaning sounds up here?”
As he advanced, the groaning sounds became louder and were accompanied by retching noises.
“A pox on this weak shell!” came a voice from somewhere ahead, which Skulks recognized as belonging to King Meugh. There was a particularly guttural retching noise, followed by the sound of fluids being projected onto a hard surface.
Doing his utmost to remain unhidden, even if the demon-Meugh were using a powerful seeing spell, Skulks nudged open the door from behind which the noises were coming. His concerns that King Meugh might be lying on his bed staring directly at the door were unfounded, for the room was empty of all bar furniture. The furniture was magnificent, as befitted a king who was determined to waste as much of his subjects’ money as he could extort from them via an unfair tax system. Skulks was more interested in the doorway leading from this bedroom, rather than the furniture. The door was ajar and a light was visible inside. Making as little noise as pos
sible, Skulks looked through the gap and saw King Meugh slumped face-down over the privy, his skin a distinct shade of green.
“Of course!” thought Skulks in enlightenment. “King Meugh ate the beef as well!”
Skulks was correct, for the poisoned beef which had seen the demise of Wibnius Ploot had also been ingested by King Meugh. While the demon itself was too powerful to be killed by poison, the body it was inhabiting most definitely did not appreciate the experience. In a different situation, the demon would have cast aside Meugh’s husk and found itself a new body to inhabit, or even just assumed its natural form. For now, it needed to look like King Meugh in order to bring its plans to fruition, and that meant suffering much unpleasantness as Burning Arse Wort coursed through its veins, dictating the frequent expulsion of fluids from both ends.
Pleased to take advantage of the situation, Skulks performed a quick search of the room. A tiny jade case, worth a good number of Scroats in itself, contained a hefty black gem of a sort Skulks had not seen before. It was the size of his thumb nail and surely the item he had come to claim, so he stashed it in a safe pocket concealed in his tunic. Not one to let an opportunity to steal slip through his fingers, Skulks also removed several fat gold rings from a table, which he’d seen the demon Meugh wearing to dinner the previous evening.
With the room cleaned out of its pocket-sized collectibles, Skulks was left with a moral dilemma, the conclusion to which he’d been putting off since he entered the room. In the bathroom, King Meugh still had his back to Skulks, for the demon remained crouched over the privy bowl, trembling and shaking.
“Am I an assassin, or a thief?” Skulks asked himself. “As the head of Hardened’s Office of Covert Operations, am I required to kill enemies of the state?” The answer to this one was not easy for him to contemplate. While Skulks was well-equipped to be an assassin, he chose to follow what he thought was a more honourable path, that of the thief. Even though it was not unusual for Skulks to leave dead bodies in his wake, he was always able to justify the killings to himself, which was all he needed to remain content that he wasn’t a mere gutter-born murderer.
In the end, it took little to convince himself that killing a demon wasn’t much of a moral dilemma at all and that international relations would thank him for it. As he plunged a dagger-sword deep into King Meugh’s back, Skulks told himself how much better Casks would be without its vile monarch. The dagger went deep, piercing the demon’s wards easily as it had been designed to do. The severed wards flared up over Meugh’s body as the blade ignored them, cutting flesh and organs.
With most demons, this one blow would have been sufficient to dispatch it whence it came. The demon inhabiting Meugh’s body was made of sterner stuff and as the dagger-sword stabbed into it for a second time, it unleashed a great booming roar, shaking the walls and cracking the privy pan. Skulks was thrust backwards, out through the bathroom door, where he smashed into the far wall, breaking two ribs and an expensive mirror.
Knowing at once that it was time to leave, Skulks dived out of the bedroom door and back into the corridor as a series of heavy thumps rattled the furniture in the room behind him. King Meugh had stationed no guards in his own quarters for he required privacy in order to scheme aloud. This was fortunate for Skulks, as it allowed him to open the sash window again and scale the outer wall to the courtyard below. Once grounded, he concealed himself and made his way gingerly out into Casks, with his two broken ribs as yet un-knitted.
With his body battered and sore, it took Skulks a few minutes longer than normal to reach Number 24 Flotsam Lane. He entered by a second-floor window and came downstairs, whistling a merry tune as if he’d just that moment got out of bed. There was no sign of Lula Grindy or her supporters, but there were two children waiting for him in the sitting room. He could see the concern in their eyes as he entered, but already he could feel his wounds healing. As far as he knew, a Wielder hadn’t died in a long time. They needed to be killed outright or they’d be fully healed in a few days, begging the local sausage vendor for a line of credit.
“Did you get it?” asked the Warp. For some reason it was habit for her to speak first.
“Get what?” asked Skulks, already feeling improved enough to toy with them.
“Our gem, silly!” said the Weft.
“This gem?” asked Skulks, producing the item he’d recently stolen.
“Yes!” they both cried at once. “Give it! Give it! Give it!” they clamoured, eager to have their magic returned to them.
Reaching over with it, Skulks made a play of fumbling and pretended to drop it on the floor, watching as their faces fell in dismay. Deciding that perhaps the joke had run its course, he handed it over to the Warp, who popped it into her mouth and crinkled her face as she attempted to swallow it.
“Water!” she gasped, as the Weft dashed off to fetch her a cup from the tap.
Shortly, the gem was swallowed and Skulks watched as the wards upon them, which he’d only just noticed were gone, flared up brightly, with bands of light joining the two wizards.
“That’s better!” said the Weft, pulling his fingers to make a cracking sound.
“Stop that!” demanded the Warp. “You know I hate it when you pull your fingers!”
The Weft pulled two more of his fingers, each making the same cracking sound. Skulks didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a full-blown argument, so he changed the subject quickly.
“So how did you two get caught then?” he asked. “And how did you lose your magic?”
With the argument forgotten immediately, they responded, tripping over each other as they told Skulks what had befallen them.
“Well, we were on our way to Burden to help Queen Happy.”
“She’s under attack by the nasty King Warmont!”
“We’d just been attacked by some smelly men and then this demon appeared when we were near the walls.”
“It was about yea big and thin. Very fast.”
“We cast spells on it, but they did nothing. We’ve never seen the like of it before!”
“Then it grabbed us and there was a sucking noise as it took all of our magic away!”
“Well, not quite all. We hid a little bit away from it.”
“Then it popped us in a sack and brought us here.”
“We overheard King Meugh talking about us. He was going to try and use our magic for himself.”
“We need to get to Burden!”
“If King Meugh manages to capture it, he’ll have three kingdoms to his name!”
“Imagine that! Three kingdoms ruled over by a demon!”
“It wouldn’t be long till he conquered all of Rhult!”
“Then Ko-Chak and Treads would surely follow!”
Skulks felt this was all a bit melodramatic for he thought the Meugh-demon too stupid. Powerful and evil it might be, but he didn’t think it capable of becoming such a large threat.
“So why do I need to come to Burden?” he asked. “I have freed you as agreed. Furthermore, I now work for Hardened. My office chair will be getting cold and my to-do tray getting full. I should return there as soon as possible to fulfil my duties as head of the Office of Covert Operations.”
“If we get to Burden, we wizards will be able to stop King Meugh taking the city. Therefore, you’ll be doing your duties for Hardened.”
“After all,” said the Weft slyly, “your office chair and to-do tray will wait for you to return to them.”
They knew Skulks’ weaknesses and had correctly ascertained that he had little appetite to return to his office and to-do tray.
“But I have a Wizards’ Convention to attend! The city will be packed full of these babbling law-breakers!”
“The Wizards’ Convention is more than four weeks away. Burden is a twelve-day trip from here if we make haste. I am sure that Queen Happy will be ever so grateful for your assistance.”
“Yes,” said Weft. “So grateful that she’ll give you passage on her fastest ship
to get back to Hardened in time for the Convention, in order that you might keep those pesky wizards in line.”
Skulks was chewing his lip, a sure sign that he was wavering. “And what if King Meugh sends his thief-demon after you again? You’ll need a thief to stop it.”
The Warp and the Weft exchanged glances. “You’re right! We’d hate to be captured for a second time and if King Meugh got hold of our magic he would definitely be strong enough to conquer Rhult!” While this latter was true, the Warp and the Weft had spent many hours in their cell discussing how they could combat the demon if they encountered it again. They were confident that next time it would not find them such easy prey.
At this point, Skulks had convinced himself that a trip to Burden was the best course of action, fulfilling as it did the duties of his office and his moral obligation to assist the Warp and the Weft. On top of that, Skulks was a sucker for excitement and the thoughts of fighting demons on the way to Burden had reeled him in.
As Skulks and his companion wizards set off from Grindy’s safe house, the demon Meugh was thrashing in agony in its room. A thorough stabbing by Skulks’ magic blade had not improved its humour and the poison continued to ravage its body. The demon also felt heartily annoyed that it was unable to stop soiling its new velvet trousers. Added to this, the wounds in its back were refusing to heal and it was having to expend a large amount of its power just to perform basic functions such as breathing. The body of King Meugh looked ghastly for it had effectively been killed for a second and third time and if any of Casks’ citizens had seen it up close, they would have known at once that something was not right with their king.
So, the demon was weakened but not yet defeated. After a time, it was recovered sufficiently to spare the magic to bring forth one of its brethren. Though not as powerful as the demon Meugh even in his weakened state, the new demon was well-suited to the task it was commanded to perform, for it had successfully performed this same task recently. Grinning to itself, the thief-demon left the palace, exiting through the same sash window that Skulks had used earlier. It dropped lithely to the flagstones, unconcerned by the near seventy-feet drop. It lifted its nose to the air and sniffed. Catching the scent of something, it followed in the direction of its prey. It was daylight now, which made it harder for the demon to remain unseen. It kept to the back streets of the city to avoid prying eyes and prying ears and only had to kill two people who happened upon it accidentally.
