by Mark Bowsher
The King raised his hand to silence the calls of assent that mumbled around the room as he kept his gaze on Krish.
‘You have only been before me for a few seconds, child,’ began the King. ‘But it is clear to all that there is no gift in your hands. I would advise you to produce one or an explanation with haste, young man.’ The King was still furious from his confrontation with Vira but the distraction Krish was providing seemed to have subdued his rage somewhat.
The sea of eyes from the advisors, the nobles, from the very walls, the chandelier, the ceiling and more than anything from the King himself burned into Krish. Eshter glanced at her staff, which was no longer glowing, and then back to Krish.
‘That is because…’ Krish was trying desperately to think. ‘That’s because… my gift is… a story.’
He wasn’t entirely sure how interested the King was but at least he wasn’t interjecting.
‘A story… about a woman. My mother.’ Krish tried to build up a good story (without involving the devil), but nothing that eventful had ever happened to her. She was just his mother and he loved her. He focused on how she was so determined, how she always pushed him to be more confident and how much she would be missed. But with every word he just felt more and more pathetic.
The King allowed him to speak for a few minutes but he didn’t seem convinced.
‘A charming woman, I’m sure,’ said the King. ‘But the story of her life is hardly entertaining. Put a few jokes in next time. As for your fate: it is hardly a crime to love your matriarch, deluded as it was for you to come here. I find no pleasure in the prospect of punishing you. Get rid of him!’
Guards seized him by each arm.
‘No, wait!’ cried Krish. ‘I have another story!’
‘And I have another hundred or so subjects to get through before I’m utterly bored,’ said the King, walking back to his throne.
‘But-but—’
‘Drag him away quicker, please!’
‘A story about… Bahrtakrit!’
The King turned briskly and faced him. The motion itself was enough to make the guards stop dead in their tracks. The King thought for a moment and then marched up to him. Enraged, he spoke in hushed tones, clearly hoping that even those restraining Krish might not hear.
‘Where have you heard that name, child?’
Eshter approached. She pointed her staff at Krish and ran it through the air in front of his body. The crystal stayed dull. She looked at the King and shook her head.
‘You are no great conjuror,’ said the King. ‘No wizard. You are lying. You know nothing of Bahrtakrit.’
‘I know all about it. All about where your Myrthali came from. About the Empress Benhu’in.’
‘Died of extreme old age long, long ago, a billion worlds away, child. Or so the story goes.’
‘I know how to get more. Lots more.’
‘Where?’
‘I need a sample—’
‘OH!’ The loudness of his voice and the glee in his grin cut right through Krish. ‘I know what your game is now, boy! Don’t need much Myrthali to extend your life to twice its length, do you? You’re not the first, child!’
‘But if I can take a sample—’ Come on! Come on! Just one touch and I can take it all! ‘—I’ll bring back all the—’
‘Why of course you may have some of my Myrthali!’ The words trickled sweetly out of the King’s mouth, infused with an untrustworthy amount of kindness. ‘Have it all.’ He circled Krish and stood before a large font of inmates who looked like they hadn’t been relieved from their shift for weeks. ‘Go on.’ The kind, enticing words caressed Krish’s ears.
Krish approached the font. Slowly it came into view. He could see it!
‘Come on… come on…’
The substance that could save his Mum’s life! The reason he had come all this way! No more than a sandcastle bucket’s worth of Myrthali, but it was enough. More than enough. Nothing more impressive to look at than particularly fine sand, but when you knew the powers it held…
‘Come on…come on, child…’
He just had to extend his arm, reach out his fingers…
‘Take every last grain!’ The room was tense. The King stepped up to the font. ‘Go on!’ The King took a handful of the Myrthali, the Sands of Time. ‘Go on! Take it!’ He was offering Krish the Myrthali as you would offer a puppy a dog biscuit. ‘Go on! Help yourself!’
Krish’s fingers almost touched the Myrthali. He could almost feel a handful in his grip…
The King seized Krish’s extended arm by the wrist and turned his hand over so his palm faced upwards.
‘Go on…’ the King said in a gentle whisper. It was so quiet Krish wondered if anyone else in the now silent chamber could hear him. He waited for the King to drop the Myrthali into his hand. For him to disappear and to never have to look into those cruel eyes again. He waited for a grain, just one single grain to fall from the King’s grip, to brush the skin of his fingertips…
The King violently pushed Krish’s hand away and clutched the fistful of Myrthali to his chest.
‘When you fetch me a pearl from the Night Ocean, bring me the still-flaming feather of a FireHawk and tie a pretty bow around the globe!’
The room roared with laughter and Krish could barely hear the King over the cruel mockery erupting around him. The King chucked the Myrthali back into the font and strolled back to his throne while shouting over his shoulder:
‘And take the crumbs from my dinner table and stamp them into the dirt before him so he knows he is not even worth those!’
And as he was dragged from the throne room, somewhere towards the rear of the chamber, Krish swore he could hear the sweet song of a bird echoing in the deep.
CHAPTER 10
THE BROKEN SCYTHE
Krish, lying on his side, his knees grazed, dirt stinging in a cut on his lip, could only just make out the guards walking away through the dust that had been thrown up around him. He had been so close! One touch and he would have been home! He was furious. Absolutely livid. The image of the King’s mocking him was running on a loop in his head. Krish was not a violent kid but the idea of running up and punching His Royal Highness hard in the face certainly had a lot of appeal right now. And what was that strange sound he’d heard when he’d been dragged out? Like birdsong. A high, sweet beautiful song echoing from somewhere in the throne room. It just didn’t seem to fit in with the whole feel of that dreadful palace.
Maybe the devil was right: he should take his time, get to know this world a little and see who he could find to help him. The idea of spending another minute in this place made him feel sick and he longed for his stupid, boring little world back home. All he wanted to do right now was scoff down the takeaway Dad and Joshi had got the night before, which he’d barely touched, and then collapse into bed. His stupid old bed with the missing slat that he suddenly longed for so much. But lying in the dirt in a heap of self-pity wouldn’t save his Mum or get him home.
Krish picked himself up off the ground and looked away from that accursed palace. He’d been hurled into the dry riverbed that circled it He climbed up to the bank. He had no idea what to do or where to go so he headed back into the town.
He eyed the smokeries hungrily. Cones the size of teepees made of wooden slats rising up from the ground, tied together with dried vines at the pinnacle. Smoke billowed out of the gaps in the slats and the mouth-watering, smoky-sweet smells of the cooking meat poured into the air of the market. A market-seller pulled a curly strip of meat – blackened edges, orange-red in the middle – with long metal tweezers from between the slats. Krish’s stomach gurgled but he was not sure if could eat right now. And what would he do about money?
As he wandered aimlessly, his empty stomach doing all the thinking, he passed a small gathering and saw the rather bad magician again, this time trying to cast a spell on a little wooden chair.
‘Stand back, ladies and gents! Stand back!’ the magician was shouting.
‘This may look like yer ordinary, run-of-the-mill chair but in a few seconds time it’ll be a mighty ’orse and yer’ll be saddlin’ it up and speedin’ off on your way to Alvaris! Behold!’
And in a puff of violet smoke the little chair transformed into… a slightly smaller chair. With a missing leg. The chair then promptly fell over.
‘Oh,’ said the magician. ‘Bugger.’
The crowd laughed and turned to leave, hurling a little loose change at the magician out of sympathy. One little girl even decided to throw the vegetable she was chewing at the magician. It hit the magician on the ear and then Krish swore he saw something fly out of the magician’s finger, carefully aimed at the little girl. The tiniest shimmer of green and moments later the shimmer bloated into a ball of orange with black stripes. Muscular legs shot out of the shape, beating across the dusty ground, and finally there appeared a tail at one end and at the other a fearsome face of long, sharp teeth, whiskers and wild eyes. The mighty tiger reared up, opened its mouth wide and growled silently. Krish couldn’t hear. Nobody could hear. But the vegetable-throwing girl it was growling at heard and screamed. The crowd turned but the tiger had vanished, disintegrated into a scattering of yellow dust that disappeared into the sands covering the ground of the marketplace before anyone else saw it. The girl was pointing at the place where the tiger wasn’t and sobbing uncontrollably. Her parents sighed deeply, shook their heads and dragged her away. Krish turned to the magician and saw her smirk, but seconds later she sighed too and started to pack up her things.
Krish was fascinated by her. When he looked closer he observed that she could only have been a few years older than him. Krish didn’t realise how long he’d been watching the magician pack up until she looked up and caught his eye.
‘What are you staring at?!’ the magician shouted at him. Her eyes large, dark and angry.
‘I, er, I’m,’ Krish said. ‘I’m, I’m just… nothing. Nothing, really.’
She eyed him curiously, her upper lip slightly curled. ‘Bloody idiot.’ She continued packing up. ‘And you look out for them trap markets!’
The magician occupied his mind for quite a bit of his wander across the town. She was clearly secretly rather good, so why pretend to be so awful?
As the stream of people flowing through the streets lessened with the waning sun, Krish realised he’d better find somewhere to sleep pretty soon. And preferably something to eat before he starved to death. He was pushing all thoughts of getting a band of thieves together or finding the Night Ocean or whatever to the back of his mind. Get something to eat and somewhere to sleep and then worry about every other problem you have in the world, he told himself.
Krish came across one of the largest buildings in the town. If you could really call it a building. It was made of huge mud bricks (large quantities of straw mixed in with dried mud and sand), precariously balanced together in such a way that it looked like a light breeze might knock it over at any minute. Hanging outside there was a painted sign of a clumsy-looking farmer reaping his field using an implement with a long shaft which had clearly been snapped in two and then badly fastened back together again with a belt. The sign read ‘The Broken Scythe’ at the top and, farther down, ‘Vacancies’. It looked very much like a sign for a pub, but inside it wasn’t quite how he expected it to be.
Instead of there being lots of people sitting on chairs at regular tables, everybody sat on the floor at low circular tables. They appeared to be drinking hot tea, much of it minty-smelling with steam flying off the top, but most were talking as jovially as if it were beer in their mugs.
There was no sign of anything like a bartender, but in one corner of the room there was a pile of silver teapots next to a line of black metal fire pits, a teapot or two on each slowly coming to the boil. Whoever was in charge of this place couldn’t be far away. Perhaps… yes! If he took a teapot off its fire pit someone would surely say something and maybe that person would be… He didn’t know. Maybe this wasn’t the best plan, but it was all he had. His tummy gurgled at him again as he headed over to the fire pits but his brain wasn’t exactly in gear as he lifted the silver pot off the fire. In a moment he felt it: the red hot metal sent a stab of pain right through him as his skin burned. He dropped the teapot and as he rushed forward to retrieve it from the ground he knocked over the fire pit. The grate fell to one side and ash and hot coals spilled onto the rug. He scrambled around on the floor with more energy than he’d had for hours, trying to get the coals back into the fire pit, but a hubbub had erupted around him. The Scythe’s patrons rushed forward and were grabbing the coals with their sleeves and tossing them back into the fire pit and then shaking their burnt fingers cool in the air while gritting their teeth. There was nothing Krish could do and the rug was catching light…
A roaring voice. The patrons jumped away from the fire pit and then large, leathery hands reached to grab the coals and chuck them back into the pit. The hands’ owner stamped out a small gathering of flames on the singed rug before throwing the grate back onto the fire pit with a great clang.
Krish collapsed onto his knees, the last of his energy sapped by the past few seconds’ misadventure. He had nothing left. As he lost consciousness he looked into the furious eyes of a man with a weather-beaten face…
*
He awoke. His lips were dry and cracked. He had a splitting headache. From the fall? From the lack of food and water? And… The sight in front him was…
He inhaled quickly through his nose as he sat bolt upright. The sight in front of him was the same as the one he’d been faced with when he’d lost consciousness. The weather-beaten-faced man with the leathery hands. Only the angry eyes were now more stern than furious.
‘Well, I hope yer weren’t plannin’ to go anywhere in an ’urry,’ said the man. His face was covered in patches of grey bristles and he had a large, knobbly nose that oddly resembled a ginger root. Krish stared blankly back. ‘I don’t know what yer thought yer were doing but yer destroyed one of my best rugs and yer’ll be workin’ ’ere until yer’ve earned the cost of a new one!’ The man sniffed, scratched his nose and sniffed again.
Krish stared dizzily around. He was in a small, round room piled up with dirty plates and teapots and several wooden butts filled with water, many of the plates and teapots soaking in them. Then he remembered everything. The devil, the palace, the King, the magician with the deep, dark eyes that he couldn’t look away from, even when they scolded him.
‘I said!’ The angry man was still talking to him. ‘Don’t think yer’ll be goin’ anywhere fast!’
Krish looked at the man. He thought. He spoke: ‘What if I keep working? After I’ve made enough to pay for the rug?’ His brain was going full pelt after his impromptu nap. ‘I-I mean if that’s possible. If you need someone. I could cook and clean and you could give me some food and somewhere to sleep and…’
He stared at the man, who was examining him as if he were a whole new species.
‘Yer cheeky little sod!’ The man’s eyes then landed on Krish’s cracked lips. He scratched his nose again. This took some time as there was plenty of it to scratch. He sniffed decisively then picked up a cup made of bone and filled it with water from a butt that contained no plates or teapots. He passed it to Krish and Krish downed it so fast he thought for a second he’d drown himself as the wonderful, refreshingly cool water poured down his parched throat. His lips tingled as he ran his tongue over them to relieve the pain; they felt more like jagged rocks than skin right now.
The man was now using one hand to select lumps of meat and vegetable left on the dishes waiting to be washed up, scratching his nose again with the other. He placed all the scraps on a single plate. He passed the plate to Krish, who ate the cold food so fast that he hardly noticed how different the meat tasted from anything he’d ever had in his own world.
‘Yer one of them orphans?’ said the man. ‘From across The Scar?’
Krish considered this and nodded.
The man thought for a moment and then mirrored Krish’s nod. He wandered around the room, lost in thought, scratching every millimetre of his large, ginger-root nose at least twice. Then he picked up a large box and placed it lengthways on the ground. The refreshing smell of dried mint leaves wafted Krish’s way from the direction of the box. The man sat on the box. Gruff and old though he was, he now looked almost childlike as the box raised him high enough for his feet to dangle off the ground. One side of his mouth curved up a little in what Krish supposed was a lazy smile.
‘Yer know much about ’ygiene?’ the man asked.
‘Hygiene?!’ parroted Krish.
‘Yeah. Cleanliness. Means what plates and mugs and stuff are like for a few seconds ’fore all the germs jump aboard.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Krish knew perfectly well what hygiene and cleanliness meant. He was actually more surprised that anyone who’d ever set foot in this kitchen knew the words’ meanings. ‘You, er, want me to do the washing up?’
‘No,’ said the man, scratching his nose again. ‘I want you to tell me that if I give you room and board for a bit o’ work sweepin’ and such that yer’ll keep yer trap shut if anyone comes sniffin’ around usin’ words like “’ygiene” and “cleanliness”. Particularly anyone… “inspectory”-lookin’.’
The man nodded at Krish knowingly. Krish nodded back, hoping he looked convincing enough.
‘My name’s Tol,’ said the man. ‘I’m in charge ’ere and yer’ll do as I say. Yer’ll clean ’ere for a couple of weeks and then… then we’ll see.’
*
Krish ended up staying at the Broken Scythe for a quite a few days. The wait was killing him. He quickly settled into a slow pace of life and every now and then he’d remember why he was there and a cold feeling would rush through his body as if he’d just woken from a dream to find himself in a very real nightmare. Krish had decided that the best thing to do was to try and ignore all the worries in his head and get on with exploring the town to see what he could discover.
