Sagaria (80 page)

The next Sagandran knew, he was sitting with his back against the chamber wall. It was obvious some time had passed, because his cheeks were wet with tears. Perima was sitting beside him, holding his hand. Samzing stood in front of him, looking down with a concerned expression on his wrinkled face. All Sagandran seemed to be able to feel was grief.

“You don’t have the time for that, you know,” said the wizard. “It’s a luxury you can’t afford – that none of us can afford. We’re relying on you more than ever now.”

“What do you mean?” said Sagandran thickly.

“We’re relying on you to lead us, of course.”

“Lead you?”

“Yes. Now that Quackie’s gone.”

“But I’m no good at leading. The only leading I can do is from one disaster to another.”

Samzing heaved a sigh. “Don’t be such a fool.”

Sagandran felt his eyes narrowing. “Fool yourself.”

“I told Quackie you wouldn’t be up to the job, but would he listen? ‘The boy’s still just a kid,’ I said. ‘Besides, it’s obvious he’s a born follower, not a leader.’ But Quackie was insistent. ‘Listen, my old matey-potatey,’ he said in that way of his. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘if anything happens to me, Sagandran’s the one you should all accept as your leader.’”

“He said that?”

“As sure as my middle name’s Bottomwaddler.”

“It’s what?”

“It’s not something I’m proud of.”

The grief that had been so all-consuming just scant moments ago was already becoming more tolerable. It wasn’t that the pain had gone away, just that Sagandran seemed to have learned how to cope with it a bit better.

“Is that really your middle name?”

“It’s not the kind of lie anyone would tell, is it?”

“And Sir Tombin thought I was capable of leading you all?” Sagandran let his gaze wander around the dimly lit chamber.

“It was,” said Samzing gravely, “his dying wish. In a way. Which is why I say you can’t afford the luxury of grief, not right now. Lock it away in a separate room in your mind until later. It’s vital for the sake of the three worlds that you focus on the task in front of you, Sagandran. If you don’t do that … well, you’ll have betrayed old Quackie’s trust, won’t you? He gave his life because he knew the Shadow Master had to be defeated. If you’re going to give up at the final hurdle, you’ll be wasting the sacrifice that Quackie made. He’ll have died in vain, and that is something I really, really, really do not want my oldest and dearest friend to have done. Do I make myself understood?”

“Yes.”

“Then pull yourself to your feet.”

“And together,” added Perima.

“Eh?” said Sagandran, turning toward her.

“Pull yourself together. As well as to your feet.” Sagandran could see she’d been weeping too, but the gaze that held his own was cold and imperious, the gaze of a princess.

Perima had obviously gotten herself under control – putting away her grief to be examined later, as Samzing had suggested. Well, if Perima could do it, so could he. Sagandran stood.

“Here,” said Samzing. “You’ll need this.”

The wizard reached behind him and produced Sir Tombin’s belt, from which hung the scabbarded Xaraxeer.

“Take it.”

Sagandran took it. Someone had already cut the belt down to size for him, and punched a few extra holes in it. Knowing that he must look clumsy, he fastened the belt around his waist. He was only just tall enough for the tip of the scabbard not to touch the ground.

“Draw the sword,” said Samzing.

“Now?”

“Just draw it!”

The blade came smoothly from the scabbard, and as it did so the room filled with a golden light.

“You see,” said the wizard. “The sword knows its true owner. Quackie was right.”

“I suppose,” said Flip thoughtfully, “that your Webster friend was leading us in the right direction?”

Sagandran looked down at his right jacket pocket. His little friend had forsaken Samzing’s robe for a while. The slight drag of Flip’s small weight was oddly cheering.

“He’s no friend of mine. Never was and now, I think, never will be.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking. He was betraying us by leading us into the arms of the Shadow Knights. Could he not also have been misleading us about the direction we should take to find the Palace of Shadows?”

“Have you seen any other routes we could have taken?”

A moment passed before Flip replied. “No. Just those dark corridors where we met the Shadow Knights.” Sagandran could feel his friend shudder. “And I didn’t fancy either of them. Did you?”

Sagandran chuckled. “No.”

Cheireanna had insisted on staying behind with the floating body of Sir Tombin – to conduct some kind of final rites, Sagandran assumed. It must be a hard thing for her to bear that her goddess had proven so useless when called upon. He wondered if they’d ever see her again.

The companions kept walking. The farther they went, the more frequent the signs that this passageway was in habitual use. Once they passed the bloating corpse of a slave. They didn’t pause to ascertain whether the woman had been killed or had simply died while in transit between the palace and the mines. Most of the time the litter in the corridor was of a less alarming variety – discarded bits of food, occasional pools of dried vomit, abandoned boots and other articles of clothing.

Hardly any paper,
thought Sagandran.
Back in the Earthworld, there’d be candy wrappers, old newspapers, fast-food containers, all sorts of things. The servants of the Shadow Master mustn’t make much use of paper.

As they rounded a new corner in the passageway, the timbre of their footsteps’ echoes changed.

“We’re coming to something,” said Sagandran. He held his torch up high and peered ahead.

They began to move a little more slowly, not knowing what it was they were approaching.

Sagandran let out a great sigh of relief. “It’s the end of this passageway at last,” he reported to the others. “And none too soon.”

Facing them was a staircase made of black marble. The reflections of Sagandran’s torch flickered crazily on the polished steps.

“Look,” said Perima. “See those sconces?”

To either side of the stairway there were sconces mounted on the wall every couple of yards, but there were no torches in them.

“Why should they be empty?” she mused.

“Perhaps,” said Sagandran, “the people only put the torches in when they’re needed. Conservation of fuel, that sort of thing.”

The others gazed at him in blank incomprehension. Clearly the concept of the environmental importance of saving energy was alien to the people of Sagaria.

Samzing shrugged. “More likely they took the torches away to make it all the more difficult for us,” he suggested.

“I can’t follow that,” responded Sagandran, with just a little acid. Irrational though it was, he felt that he’d been snubbed. “We’re not going to climb those stairs any slower by the light of our own torches than we would if the ones on the walls were still there, are we?”

“Perhaps they didn’t think we’d have torches with us,” offered Perima.

“You agree with me then?”

“What?”

“Oh, not about the empty sconces. I mean, you’ve come to the same conclusion I have, that the Shadow Master’s expecting us.”

She hesitated. “Yes, I guess so.”

The others indicated that without realizing it, they’d begun to think the same.

“Webster wasn’t just sent to the slave mines on the off chance,” said Samzing. He dug into one of his numberless pockets and produced his pipe.

Sagandran noticed that it had been a long while since the wizard had done that. Perhaps the almost non-stop rush of events had distracted Samzing from smoking.

“He was despatched there to await our arrival.”

Sagandran briefly explained his deduction that Arkanamon must be aware of the prophecies and be using them as a guide to the party’s progress.

“We had better move with even greater caution than ever,” said Samzing. “Arkanamon will have the advantage at every step from now on. He knows, at least approximately, what we’ll be doing next, but we don’t have that same knowledge about him.”

“But the route we’ve been following is the one predicted in the legends that also say we’ll win,” objected Memo from the wizard’s shoulder. “Surely that gives us the ultimate advantage?”

“So why is the Shadow Master just letting us come to him. I dont get it?” said Perima.

Sagandran could hear the flatness in his own voice as he answered her. “Maybe Arkanamon knows something that we don’t.”

With that ominous thought in the back of their minds, they began to slowly climb the stairway.

At its top was a double door made out of the same near-black wood they’d seen earlier in the coffins of King Brygantra and the gates of the slave mines. Samzing turned the iron handle of one of the doors and peered within.

“No one around,” he whispered back over his shoulder. “This is all a little suspiciously easy, don’t you think?”

“Let’s not grumble until we have to,” countered Flip with a laugh. “I, for one, am happy that we haven’t met a heavily armored party of Arkanamon’s goons.”

Sagandran wished he could take comfort from the remark.

Coming through the doorway, they found themselves in a great hall. Dark red tapestries depicting scenes of carnage hung from the crudely blocked stone walls. A gigantic spherical lamp was suspended from the ceiling; a glowing ball of muddy yellow light was clenched in an extravagantly wrought fist of iron. At the far end of the hall was a throne made again of black wood. It was carved into the shape of a dragon’s screaming face, the tongue extended to form the seat. Two huge rubies were set into the throne’s massive uprights as eyes. The eyes seemed to follow the companions as they ventured across the floor’s bare wooden boards.

“I don’t like the look of that dragon,” said Perima quietly, staring at it.

“Don’t be frightened by its appearance,” reassured Samzing.

Sagandran quietly drew Xaraxeer.

“It’s just a throne,” the wizard continued. “I always believe, the more imposing a throne, the less regal the person who’s chosen it to sit on.”

“So, you’re saying we shouldn’t really be afraid of the Shadow Master?” said Sagandran wryly.

Samzing gave an exasperated snort. “Not exactly,” he admitted. “Wariness should still be our watchword.”

They searched the hall for doors other than the one they’d come in by, Perima efficiently beating the side of her fist on each of the tapestries in case there was something other than stone behind it.

At last, Flip gave a cry of success from behind the dragon throne.

Sagandran felt his legs become more and more reluctant to move as he slowly approached the throne. It was as if something about it had bypassed his brain and was speaking directly to his limbs, making them want to turn and run away. From the corner of his eye, he saw that his friends were similarly affected.

Samzing was the first to acknowledge the effect out loud. “The throne has been imbued with a repulsion spell. It’s trying to push us back from that end of
the hall. The spell can’t do us any harm – it’s just unpleasant, that’s all. It can’t hurt us. Just push against the resistance. We’ll get there.”

“How come Flip wasn’t affected?” asked Perima.

“Who’s to say that he wasn’t?” responded Samzing.

The repulsion spell abruptly disappeared as they drew abreast of the throne, and at last they could walk freely again.

Everyone was breathing heavily except Flip, who greeted them with a wide grin.

“I’ve found the door.”

“And we’re very grateful to you,” said Samzing, solemnly half-bowing.

This new doorway, smaller than the other and single rather than double, opened onto a new staircase. Made of darkly stained iron and barely wide enough to take two people abreast, it spiraled upward into darkness.

“Anyone up there could simply pick us off,” said Sagandran, eyeing it nervously.

Perima spoke up promptly. “But we can’t stay here.”

“True.”

“Would you like me to lead the way?” said Samzing. “I sense, dear friends, that we’re moving into territory where perhaps my magical weapons might be more powerful even than the mighty Xaraxeer.”

Sagandran looked at him skeptically. In truth, Sagandran thought, the wizard didn’t have the appearance of a doughty warrior, with his tangled beard, battered hat, Struwwelpeter hair and his disreputably stained robe. But within the past few minutes he’d acquired a certain gravitas, as if confidence in his own ability to deal with whatever they might meet had been surging inside him.

“I think Samzing’s right,” Perima volunteered.

The wizard flashed her a smile. “Always said the gal had good sense. Come on, let’s not dither around here like hens wondering which of them has laid the egg.”

He headed for the first step.