The Dark Lord's Handbook (37 page)

The orcs raised him above their heads and fell in behind Zoon as he stalked from the chamber. The passage they went into was dark and wet. Stuff that wasn’t water, and smelled gross, dripped from the ceiling onto his upturned face. He couldn’t see where they were going but could see the ceiling turn and dip. They were going down and soon they were in what seemed to be a labyrinth of tunnels. Morden recognised the design from the Handbook. A hero could get lost for an age in tunnels such as these. The wet walls made them hard to mark, and the subtle turns and dips made it impossible to tell what level you were on or what direction you were facing. In no time, Morden had lost all sense of where they were and, even if he could have struggled free, he had no idea which way was out.

Eventually he heard a heavy grating sound as a door was pulled open. He was unceremoniously dumped onto the floor which, like everything else, was cold, slime covered and hard. Soon after he was naked except for a loin cloth and the pendant round his neck. The latter surprised him. Surely they would have taken that as well? But when fingers had grasped it they had recoiled and left it hanging. Morden hoped Zoon wasn’t watching, but it seemed the lich had left his minions to do the stripping.

When they left and dragged the door shut, he was left alone in total darkness. There was no sound except the dripping from the ceiling. After a what seemed an age, but was more likely a minute or so, faint specks on the ceiling provided the dimmest of light. All that did was confirm to him the dire situation he was in: trapped in an admittedly spacious cell, one devoid of furniture or company, in a maze under a temple that was meant to be his, usurped by a Dark Lich he had assumed was dead and buried centuries ago. Well, buried; Zoon was clearly dead in a weird way.

And yet he was still here. Zoon could have had him ripped limb from limb. It was the only comfort he could hang on to as all else lay in ruin in his mind. His dreams of conquest, domination and getting the girl were nothing now. No one knew where he was, and even if they did it wasn’t as though they would be straining to come and rescue him. Maybe Stonearm, but no one else. Certainly not Griselda.

How could it all have gone wrong so fast? The Handbook had promised him that he was going to be a Dark Lord. He was going to build a fortress, raise an army and lay ruin the world. He would have dominion over everything and bend all to his will, and yet here he was, naked in a dungeon.

Then he had a thought, one he recognised immediately as ridiculous, which was that it wasn’t fair. It was ridiculous because of the many things he had learnt from the Handbook one was that nothing was fair. Indeed, the sense of fairness was one to be avoided and exploited. A sense of fairness made people do the stupidest things. The mistake he had made was believing everything he had read. He’d obviously been taken as a sap by the Handbook and was the means to get it back to Zoon.

But that didn’t make sense either. If the Handbook had wanted to find Zoon, then why hadn’t Grimtooth come here? He could have delivered the lich his robe at the same time. And his hand for that matter. It was far too convoluted a road to take.

Luckily Zoon was making mistakes. Leaving him alive was the biggest. It was grim now, but while he was alive there was possibility. Though he could feel the word ‘hope’ practically begging to be used, as a Dark Lord he knew that hope, like fairness, was a crutch for the weak minded. Faith and hope wouldn’t get him out of this.

Then another odd thought struck him. Zoon had been a Dark Lord. He had read the Handbook and presumably learnt something from it. There was one lesson that came to mind that would explain Zoon’s curious behaviour. What if he thought Morden was a hero?

Morden’s laugh echoed off the walls.

Him a hero? Now that was funny. It did make some sense though. Zoon would know, much as Morden did, that killing a hero was nigh on impossible. Could it be that Zoon didn’t even want to try to in case he incurred some unbelievable consequence? There may have been an earthquake, or something, and Morden could have escaped in the chaos. Rather, wouldn’t it be better to make sure he was alive and well, and safe somewhere? Like a dungeon cell in a labyrinth?

Except Zoon didn’t seem to think he was alive and well. Mostly dead, he had said. It was a curious thing to say. Thinking back, had the strain he had seen in Zoon been him trying to fight the urge to monologue? The Handbook had warned about waxing lyrical and giving everything away. If Zoon thought he had a hero in front of him, the urge to monologue must have been tremendous. But he had let slip this one thing. What did it mean?

If only he hadn’t flown off from the fleet then none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t have got shot, stranded and ended up here.

Was that it? If he hadn’t got shot. Morden’s hand drifted to his side where the bolt had hit him in the ribs. It had healed over now but was still tender. The scar was more a welt and quite raw and sore. Thinking about it, he had lost a lot of blood lying on that beech. When he had come round the sand had been soaked. A normal man may have bled to death.

Then there was the way that everything seemed to shrivel and die around him when he walked through the jungle. And the fish. And the birds for that matter. And the orcs kept a good distance as well. In fact, the only things that had got close to him without obvious ill effects were Zoon and his minions, and they were already dead, or undead, or more dead, or whatever it was they were.

So he was undead? Or more dead?

That couldn’t be it. Zoon had said, mostly dead. There must be something left alive inside him. He didn’t feel like a zombie. He had no urge to stagger around, arms outstretched, searching for warm brains to eat.

So part of him had died? What did that leave? What if it was the dragon in him that had died? That would explain why he couldn’t change any longer. But then the amulet still seemed to have some power in it. His hand went to his amulet; it felt cool. He’d had it all his life and he had never taken it off. The only time it had been removed had been by that captain at the ambush when he had discovered for the first time he was more than a man. He was also a dragon. He was a Deathwing. Surely a single bolt could not kill a dragon?

It was all very confusing. Whatever had happened, what was fact was that he was stuck here in a dungeon with a Dark Lord upstairs pretending to be him, which was somewhat ironic as Morden had to admit to himself that he had been pretending to be Zoon.

For the first time in what had been a sleepless few days, Morden felt suddenly tired. Though the floor was hard and covered in goo, it was all there was so he scraped clear an area of stones that looked less bumpy than elsewhere and lay down. Perhaps if he slept he would wake up back on his ship and all this would have been a bad dream. As the thought occurred, he gave himself a mental slap. He had to banish such weak thinking. It was stupid hope trying to disguise harsh reality. He slid into an uncomfortable sleep knowing that when he woke it would not be in a cabin but in a dungeon. That was all right, though, because he was still Morden Deathwing, Dark Lord.

Chapter 40 Boxes of Stuff

Just remember: they are all morons.

The Dark Lord’s Handbook

Chancellor Penbury’s study was normally a place of meticulous order. The Chancellor liked to think it was a reflection of his own mind. The centrepiece was a vast polished mahogany desk with an ink well and pen holder to one side, and one of the very latest and most accurate time pieces on the other. The walls were laden with books ordered by subject and author according to his own classification system; most were Only Editions, being the work of the world’s greatest minds. Several he had penned himself, principally on economic power and political systems, covering such topics as ‘Interest rates and their use in regime change’ and ‘The price of bananas? Who would have thought it?’

Today though, the Chancellor surveyed a desk and floor strewn with boxes. The boxes (some were closer to being small trunks) were mostly still closed and secured with padlocks. Each had a slit in the top through which papers could be pushed and a small notebook attached by a thin chain to the lid. They looked like ballot boxes that were emerging in some of the newer democracies.

(Democracy: a brilliant invention, that Penbury wished he had thought of, whereby citizens could voice their political will on pieces of paper, that actually gave them little or no choice, that were then deposited in a sealed box which, when opened elsewhere, were emptied onto the nearest fire and ignored while the politicians brokered real power between themselves. Genius.)

On each box, written on a slate embedded into the lid, was written a big number. In the general population most could count as far as their digits, or the sheep in their flock. Penbury only knew a handful of people who knew the correct word for the size of the values written here, and they were all bankers and Council members.

Several of the boxes had been opened; one on the desk in front of the Chancellor, the others to either side of his chair. The keys had been lost and so the padlocks lay broken having succumbed to Penbury’s efforts with a crowbar he normally used to open cases of wine.

On the other side of the desk in the visitor’s chair was an unusually fidgety Birkenfeldt. He had arrived, along with his boxes, an hour ago. A matter of urgency he had said. That Birkenfeldt thought that anything was urgent was odd. Birkenfeldt was a fastidious banker who never got flustered, not even by Penbury.

Penbury reached out and thumbed through the notebook attached to the box on the desk in front of him. It was filled with accounting, though not with the precise and clear columns that Penbury had learnt in his youth; these were barely understandable. Shorthand had run wild; corrections were rampant, and many figures were unintelligible.

“So let me be clear,” said Penbury, fixing Birkenfeldt with his eyes. The banker pushed himself even deeper into the soft leather of the chair. “All these boxes are full of loan papers?”

“Uhm, no.”

“They aren’t?” Penbury arched an eyebrow quite consciously to emphasise his surprise. “I thought you just said they were?”

“Well, yes, in as much that they represent a transfer of funds and/or equivalent assets, from one party to another with some form of repayment schedule and securities, sometimes assurances, sometimes insurances, often with capital assets held against such vehicles, though often case with other parties having already assured, insured or otherwise made good, as best as they can ascertain, all that is contained within the schedule, note, bond or mortgage.”

“So really,” said Penbury in as measured a tone as he could manage, “you have
no idea
what is in these boxes?”

Birkenfeldt scrunched his nose. Penbury had only seen him do that once before, at the man’s wedding when he had been asked if would take his bride forsaking all others. Cutting one’s options was something a money man did not like to do. It could have been nerves as well, and given the current situation, it seemed the more likely.

“No,” admitted Birkenfeldt weakly.

Penbury leaned back in his chair and let the scale of what he was being told sink in.

“Allow me to recap, so I am clear. After our little get together when it came to light that there had been a massive increase in lending, mainly to aristocrats and royals, you thought you would dig a little deeper and this is what you found: the most bizarre financial process ever practised at an all encompassing, even institutionalised level, that until now you were unaware of taking place?”

Birkenfeldt took a second to reply. Penbury knew the man always counted to at least three before answering any loaded question to give his rapier like intellect an eternity to consider all possible options.

“Yes.”

“Incredible.”

“Indeed,” said Birkenfeldt, “but also quite ingenious.”

It had been a while since the Chancellor had lowered himself to the level of having to perform actual financial transactions; he worked more at the strategic level. He thought he had been aware of every financial practice, both legal and otherwise, known to man. That was until Birkenfeldt had turned up with his boxes.

“Go on,” said Penbury by way of encouragement. Any explanation, no matter how weird, was welcome.

Birkenfeldt cleared his throat. “As you know, the vast majority of finance works on confidence.”

Penbury nodded. There were men he would lend to and require nothing but a handshake, whereas there were others who would have to offer up their first born as hostage as a guarantee and even then they were likely to welch.

“It seems that about ten years ago, someone, it’s not clear who, came up with an idea of how to bring forward profits from loans and mortgages that relied almost entirely on confidence. What he seems to have done is take a loan from party A and sell it on to party B at a discount. Party B is quite happy because he has effectively bought a repayment amount for less than its value, so over time he will register a profit.”

Birkenfeldt paused for breath, sufficient time for Penbury to interject a question. “But what about the person who gave the loan? Surely they are squeezing their margin?”

Birkenfeldt nodded. “Indeed. But here is the clever bit. Rather than wait ten years for the loan to be repaid – he got less than the full amount by selling it on – he got it now. And that meant two things. He could make an accounting entry showing a big fat profit, make his bosses happy, get a bonus, and he could use the money to invest in ways that gave a better return than the loan would have.”