Shadow Chaser Read online

  “Master Pito,” said Mumr, leaning on his huge bidenhander, “how about some beer?”

  “Why, certainly!” the innkeeper said keenly.

  “And a bath to go with the beer,” Uncle put in.

  “And a piglet,” Honeycomb added.

  “Everything will be ready in literally five minutes!” said the innkeeper, dashing to give instructions to the staff.

  When we were all fed and refreshed, I walked to the farthest table, leaned back blissfully against the back of a chair, and hesitated for a moment before taking out the plans of Hrad Spein. I hadn’t been able to study the maps of the deep labyrinth of burial grounds properly. But now at last I had a free moment to take a close look at the scrolls that I had worked so hard to get.

  “Harold, stop poring over those papers. You’ll have time for that later. Are you coming with us?”

  “Where?” I asked, looking up at Kli-Kli.

  “To take Hallas to the barber.”

  “We’re not seeing him off on his final journey. What do you need me for?”

  Kli-Kli moved up close, looked around conspiratorially, and whispered, “Deler says the gnome’s terribly afraid. We might have to hold him.”

  “Then take Honeycomb,” I said, trying to get rid of the jester. “He’s big enough to restrain five gnomes.”

  “Honeycomb won’t lift his backside off his bench now,” the goblin said in a disappointed voice. “Arnkh, Lamplighter, and Marmot are going off for a walk round the city, the elves and Alistan aren’t here to ask—they’re busy searching for provisions for the next stage of the journey. And Loudmouth and Uncle will swig beer until they burst. Who else can I ask but you?”

  “Eel,” I said, nodding in the direction of the swarthy Garrakian.

  “He’s already coming with us.”

  “And you don’t think he’ll be enough?”

  After the long journey I wasn’t exactly burning with desire to go anywhere.

  “Come on, Harold! Deler especially wants you to come.”

  I snarled at the goblin, but I still picked the papers up off the table, wrapped them in drokr, and put them back in my bag.

  “Let’s go!” Hallas hissed when Kli-Kli and I walked over to him.

  “Harold,” Miralissa purred, “don’t forget to leave your crossbow at the inn.”

  Name of a h’san’kor! I’d completely forgotten about my little darling!

  I really didn’t want to part with the expensive and very necessary item. Without my crossbow hanging at my back I felt naked and defenseless.

  “And leave your blade as well,” said Ell as he watched me hand my weapon to Uncle.

  “Yes, Harold,” Uncle confirmed, “you’ll have to forget about the knife, too.”

  “We’ll give you something a bit less obvious. How about a fork?” Kli-Kli giggled.

  “But why do I have to leave the blade?” I asked, ignoring Kli-Kli’s jibe and looking at Miralissa’s yellow-eyed k’lissang.

  “It’s longer than allowed.”

  I was reluctantly obliged to leave the knife in Uncle’s care, too.

  “Honeycomb,” said Marmot, addressing Uncle’s deputy, “throw my bag over here; we can’t let Harold go wandering the streets without a weapon.” Marmot caught the bag when it was tossed to him, rummaged in it, and fished out a dagger in a simple, well-worn sheath.

  “Here, take that.”

  I took the weapon and pulled it halfway out of the sheath.

  “Ruby blood?”

  “Canian forgework. Good steel.”

  “Ooh, look at that! Just like Alistan’s sword!” the jester exclaimed with an admiring whistle when he saw the red shimmer of the blade.

  “Thank you, Marmot,” I said and regretfully handed the knife back to the warrior. “It really is magnificent steel, but it’s too noisy. Don’t you have anything simpler?”

  “We’ve got any amount of blades. Here, take mine,” said Lamplighter, handing me a dagger.

  “That’ll do,” I said with a grateful nod and fastened the weapon to my belt.

  If anything happened, I had a razor in a secret pocket and a bag with a whole arsenal of magical tricks that I’d bought just before I left Avendoom.

  “Kli-Kli!” said Alistan, going up to the jester. “Are you sure you haven’t got anything you shouldn’t have?”

  The fool looked as if he had been accused of royal treason, and flung open the flaps of his dark cloak to reveal a wide belt with four heavy throwing knives hanging on it, two on the right and two on the left. I couldn’t remember him taking one of them out of its sheath in all the time we’d been traveling.

  “That’s it? You haven’t got anything else hidden away?”

  “I’m as empty as a bottle of wine in the hands of a drunkard,” Kli-Kli replied in a sincere voice.

  “All right,” said Alistan, apparently taking the goblin at his word. “But remember you can get into trouble if you’re too sharp-tongued with the guards.”

  “I won’t forget,” said the jester, with an air that made it quite clear Alistan didn’t need to tell him that soldiers had no sense of humor.

  The goblin started rooting in his numerous pockets and pulled out a tangle of knotted string. I remembered he had wagered with us that he would work terrible goblin magic with that thing. But so far, all he had for his pains was a crazy jumble of string and knots. Kli-Kli caught my glance and winked merrily.

  “Warn me when you want to test that,” I told him. “I’ll cut and run for the next kingdom.”

  The jester gave me a glance that said his faith in me was destroyed forevermore and stuck the bundle of string back in his pocket.

  “You’ll be surprised yet, Harold, when I let my shamanism loose.”

  “Marmot!” said the taciturn Eel, holding out the scabbards containing his “brother” and “sister.” “Take good care of them.”

  “Of course, old chap, of course,” Marmot replied, taking the two blades from the Garrakian.

  “Come on, Harold, or I’ll expire of the toothache right here on the floor!” the gnome grumbled on his way out of the inn.

  2

  THE GNOME’S TOOTH

  “So where are we going?” asked the jester, skipping along beside me.

  The goblin’s short little legs were not adapted to the pace that Hallas had set for our party.

  “To the barber’s. As if you didn’t know.”

  “I know we’re not going to the cobbler’s, Harold. I asked where are we going? We’ve seen lots of barbers in the last hour!”

  “Then you’re asking the wrong person, you should try Hallas.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t want to die young. He’s a bit out of sorts today, and I don’t intend to ask him any questions.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to ask him, just shut up.”

  “Ooh!” the goblin exclaimed, offended, and went dashing off to pester Deler with his questions, but the dwarf gave him almost exactly the same answer as I had.

  “You know, Harold,” said Eel, speaking for the first time since we left the inn, “I’m starting to get a bit bored with this walk.”

  “And you’re not the only one,” I sighed.

  We walked round Ranneng for the best part of an hour in search of the right barber. Just how the gnome was going to choose the right one out of all the barbers available was a mystery to us. But all the barbers we had already visited obviously didn’t merit that title.

  Hallas’s rigorous standards for the man who was going to pull out his tooth left the disappointed barbers with empty pockets and the gnome with the toothache. Hallas had a whole mountain of reasons for rejecting one barber after another.

  This barber’s shop was too dirty, that barber’s prices were too high, a third one had blue eyes, a fourth one was too old, a fifth one was too young. The sixth one was too sleepy, the seventh one was strange, the eighth had a stammer. There was no way to satisfy all the gnome’s petty whims.

  As soon as Hallas g
ot close to the next barber’s shop, in some magical fashion his steps grew slower and slower and he started creeping along like a drunken snail, trembling all over. A blind Doralissian could have seen that the gnome was frightened.

  “People are looking at us,” the Garrakian muttered.

  “They’ve been looking at us ever since we left the inn,” I muttered in reply. “What can we do about it?”

  We were a curious-looking group, so people had no qualms about gaping at us. First of all, of course, everyone looked at the goblin—a rare sight in the cities of the kingdom. But as soon as people noticed the gnome and the dwarf, they forgot all about Kli-Kli. You might catch the occasional sight of a goblin, but gnomes and dwarves walking along peacefully side by side was something you never, ever saw.

  “Harold, look!” Kli-Kli exclaimed, tugging on my sleeve.

  “Where?” I couldn’t see anything interesting.

  “Right there!” said Kli-Kli, pointing toward a shop selling vegetables. “Hang on, I’ll just be a moment.”

  Before I could even open my mouth, the goblin had dashed off to do his shopping.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Deler asked, puzzled.

  “Everyone has his own weaknesses,” I answered. “Some don’t like to get their teeth pulled out, and some love carrots.”

  Hallas turned a deaf ear to the remark about teeth and uttered an exquisite groan.

  “Stop that!” Deler shouted heartlessly at the gnome. “It’s your own fault. You miserable coward.”

  “Who’s a coward?” Hallas snapped back. “Gnomes aren’t afraid of anything! It’s your beardless race that are the cowards! Locking yourselves away in our mountains and sitting there trembling like an aspen leaf in the autumn wind!”

  “Then why don’t you get your tooth pulled out?”

  “I told you, you thickhead! They’re all bad barbers!”

  “All right, but why are you dragging that sack around with you?” asked Deler, refusing to leave Hallas alone. “Can’t you just leave it somewhere? What have you got in there anyway, the gnomes’ book of spells?”

  “It’s my sack! I’ll carry what I want!”

  The gnome and his sack were inseparable. Hallas dragged it around with him wherever he went. Even Kli-Kli hadn’t been able to find out what was in it. Deler was dying of curiosity, he had no idea what it was. And I didn’t know what kind of treasure the gnome kept in the sack, either, but ever since he got it from his relatives in the fort of Avendoom, he had been fussing over his property like a chicken with the very first egg it ever laid.

  “Here I am,” said Kli-Kli, crunching happily on a carrot as he walked up to us. “Well then, are we going to get this tooth pulled out, or are we going to wait for it to fall out on its own?”

  “What business of yours is my tooth? I’ll do what I like with it!”

  “The Large Market’s not far from here. There’s bound to be a barber there,” Kli-Kli suggested.

  The Large Market really was large. No, that’s not right. It was immense! An immense space with an immense number of goods on offer. And there were more people than you could count striding along between the rows of stalls.

  “Buy a horse! Genuine Doralissian bred! Just look how gracious she is!”

  “Apples! Apples!”

  “The finest steel of the north! The finest blades of the south!”

  “Buy a monkey, good sir!”

  “Thief! Stop that thief!”

  “Catch him!”

  “Best quality Sultanate carpets! Moths can’t touch them!”

  “Hey! Be careful, that’s Nizin Masters porcelain, not your granny’s old clay chamber pot!”

  “Sunflower seeds!”

  “Milord, our establishment has the finest girls in this part of Valiostr! Come on in!”

  “Mama! I want a biscuit!”

  “Stop shoving!”

  “Reins, bridles, saddles! Reins, bridles, saddles!”

  “Get your pies here!”

  The hubbub was worse than at the gates when we were trying to get into Ranneng. Eel was saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear him because a fat woman was howling in my ear and holding a fish up under my nose that was at least a month old and had a stupefying stench. I brushed the tradeswoman aside and dashed to catch up with the others.

  Hallas, whose brain had obviously been completely addled by the pain, led us into the thick of a crowd of people watching a fairground show right in the middle of the market. The gnome had never been known for his courtesy toward others, and now he elbowed his way through the crowd, stepping on feet and swearing coarsely like a longtime inhabitant of the Port City. In just a few seconds the popularity of the race of gnomes plunged to an all-time low, well below prices for manure.

  Somehow we managed to make our way through the crush and then Kli-Kli couldn’t resist climbing up on the stage, turning a cartwheel, standing on his hands, grabbing a flaming torch out of the juggler’s mouth and sitting on it, jumping up and climbing a post to the high wire, walking across to the other post, spitting on the strongman’s bald patch as he was lifting a weight, and then swanning off to thunderous applause.

  “Still amusing yourself?” I asked the goblin gloomily when he caught up with me.

  “And you’re still mumbling to yourself and expecting the worst, are you?” said Kli-Kli, giving as good as he got. “You have an idiotic outlook on life, Harold! Let’s get going, or we’ll get lost in this crowd.”

  The goblin went dashing on ahead—his small size made it easy for him to weave his way through the crush. People stepped on my feet twenty times and made at least ten attempts to foist things I didn’t want on me—from a sponge to a mangy, squealing cat that was on its last legs.

  Some inexperienced thief tried to slip his hand into my pocket, but I dodged aside and held Lamplighter’s dagger against his stomach, then pressed the young lad back against the wall of one of the shops.

  “Who’s your teacher?” I roared at the pickpocket.

  “Eh?” Cold steel against your stomach doesn’t really encourage clear thinking.

  “I said, who’s your teacher, you young pup?”

  “Shliud-Filin, sir!”

  “Is he in the guild?”

  “Eh?”

  “Are you having difficulty hearing me? If so, you’ll never make a good thief!”

  “Yes, my teacher is in the guild, sir.”

  “Then tell him to show you who you should rob, and who you’d better leave alone until you have a bit more experience!”

  “A-all right,” said the lad, petrified. “Are you not going to call the guard, sir?”

  “No,” I barked, putting the dagger back in its sheath. “But if you come near me again … You take my meaning?”

  “Yes.” The lad still couldn’t believe that he had got off so lightly.

  “Then clear off!”

  I didn’t have to say it again. The unsuccessful pickpocket darted away from me like a startled mouse and was lost in the crowd in a moment. I watched him leave. In the distant days of my youth I used to clean out punters’ pockets until I was picked up by my teacher For, who taught me the mysteries of the supreme art of thievery.

  “Harold, are you planning to stand here much longer?” asked Kli-Kli, bounding up to me. “We’re all waiting for you! And who was that young lad you were having such a relaxed conversation with?”

  “Just a passerby, let’s go.”

  Deler, Eel, and Hallas were waiting impatiently for us in a small open area free of trading stalls.

  “There’s a barber’s!” said Deler, jabbing a thick finger toward a shop. “Forward, Hallas!”

  “Forward? Do you think I’m a horse, then?” The gnome really didn’t want to go.

  “Go on, go on,” I said, backing up the dwarf. “You’ll see, you’ll feel better stra—”

  I gazed hard into the crowd and never finished the phrase. Over beside the rows of horse traders, I’d caught a glimpse of a painfully
familiar figure. Without thinking twice, I went dashing after Paleface, paying no heed to my comrades’ howls of surprise. My eyes could still see the face that I’d spotted just a second before. I had to catch that man, no matter what, and dispatch him into the darkness if I got a chance.

  Along the way I almost knocked a tradesman off his feet and tipped over a basket of apples. Taking no notice of the abuse from all sides, I pulled my dagger out of its sheath and held it with the blade along my forearm, so that the weapon would be less obvious to the people around me, and I ran over to the spot where I had seen my old acquaintance just a second earlier.

  “What is it?” asked Eel, springing up beside me like a shadow. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “Yeah,” I answered, without taking my eyes off the crowd. “A ghost. But, unfortunately, a live one.”

  “Who was it?”

  “An old enemy,” I said gloomily, putting the dagger away in its sheath.

  “There are so many people here … you could have been mistaken.”

  “Yes…,” I said after a pause, and ran my eyes round the market again. “I hope I imagined it…”

  But I couldn’t have imagined it! That man had been far too like the hired killer Rolio. As we walked back, I kept glancing round all the time, but I didn’t spot anyone who looked like Paleface.

  The gnome and the dwarf had disappeared, and the goblin stood alone, hopping from one foot to the other.

  “Harold, what’s happening to you? Are you well?” Kli-Kli asked, looking solicitously into my eyes. “Who was it you saw that sent you galloping across the market like a herd of crazed Doralissians?”

  “Oh, no one. It was a mistake. Where have Deler and Hallas got to?”

  “The dwarf dragged the gnome into a barber’s shop,” Kli-Kli answered. “And what kind of old acquaintance was it, if he deserves your knife blade under his ribs?”

  “Paleface,” I replied tersely.

  “Oh!” the goblin said, and paused. He had heard plenty about this character. “Did he see you?”

  “You know, my friend, that’s the very question that’s bothering me. I hope not, otherwise there’s trouble in store, and not just for me. The character that Rolio works for would be glad to finish us all off.”