The Outsorcerer's Apprentice (10 page)

A funny-looking tree. In a forest. Well.

Yes, but it was something, a tiny scrap of straw to cling to.
If
he could find the tree, and
if
his phone was still there, and
if
it was still working, he stood a reasonable chance of getting home. If not, he’d be stranded here for ever and ever. Put like that, he didn’t have much choice. Funny-looking tree, here I come.

“
T
hat’s a five and a three makes eight,” said King Mordak, sliding his counter across the squares with his foreclaw, “which means I pass Go, collect two hundred gobbos, thank you, and, yes, I think I’ll buy that. How much is it?”

The first goblin-dwarf summit in three thousand years was at a crucial moment. King Drain opened his eyes, closed them again, wiped beer out of them and blinked. “Three hundred and fifty.”

“That’s fine,” Mordak said. “Now, that means I’ve got all the black ones, so I think I’ll build three dungeons on Arak-Zigar and a Dark Tower on Arathloom.”

“Snot.”

Drain was taking it pretty well, all things considered, given that things weren’t exactly going his way. After forty-six hours of play, Mordak had all the green ones, the blue ones, the red ones, the yellow ones and now the black ones, while Drain had the Sewers of Snoria and the Waterworks. Still, as Mordak kept reminding him, there was still everything to play for.

“My go.” Drain glugged a big mouthful of beer and shook the dice. “Two anna one. Bollocks.”

Mordak counted on his claws. “All right,” he said. “That’s the Enchanted Groves of Plorien with three dungeons and a tower, so that’s one thousand, three hundred gobbos.”

Drain hiccuped and fumbled with his money. “I only got nine hundred.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mordak said, “I’ll take the Sewers of Snoria and your return-unexpectedly-from-the-dead-free card, and we’ll call it quits.”

“Righto,” said Drain. “Your go.”

Mordak left the dice where they lay. “Let me get you another drink,” he said.

“Yeah, sure. Great beer, this.”

“It should be,” Mordak said pleasantly, filling his cup. “It’s from the plunder we took when we stormed your fortress at Gorm’s Deep and slaughtered the entire garrison.”

“Ah,” said Drain. “That’d explain it.”

“And that cup,” Mordak went on, “is the garrison commander’s head. Right, here we go, oh look, double six.”

Three moves later, Drain’s head slid forward onto his beard-cushioned chest, and he began to make a noise like the death of hemp sacking. Mordak waited a little while, then carefully tugged on the string around the dwarf’s neck, on which hung the Great Seal. Mordak melted a little sealing wax by breathing on it, blobbed it at the foot of a long, densely written scroll of parchment, then applied the seal. Job done.

Having put everything back where it should be, Mordak leaned back in his chair (the ribcages of his enemies creaked ominously under the strain) and sighed deeply. No doubt about it, war was easier. That, presumably, was why nobody had bothered trying peace for a thousand years. War, however, didn’t work. Whether peace would be any better was anybody’s guess, but it had to be worth a try.

To pass the time, he read through the treaty that Drain had just unconsciously put his seal to. There was going to be hell to pay when the terms were announced, from both sides. When he’d first come up with this plan, he’d intended to screw the dwarves to the floor and give nothing in return; fortunately, wiser counsels had prevailed. Instead, he’d put in six key concessions on the goblin side, the sort of things he’d have resisted fang and claw if they’d done real negotiations. Nobody on either side would believe for one moment that Mordak would’ve included anything like that in a
forgery
. Besides, Drain would have to be able to tell his people he’d won something, or they’d shred him and crown someone else. The four really
key
key concessions, on the dwarf side, were all that really mattered; everything else he could live with. And so, he reflected with pride, could about thirty thousand goblins, ditto dwarves, who otherwise wouldn’t have had the option.

Even so. All this not-fighting made his skin crawl and his scalp itch. It wasn’t right. Or, rather, it wasn’t natural (and it was that distinction, so recently recognised, that kept him awake at night) and he couldn’t help wondering what had got into him lately. Thoughts seemed to explode inside his head, suddenly and devastatingly; they took his mind hostage and dragged it away to strange places where everything was bewilderingly different, and when at last they let it go and it wandered home, there was still that lingering doubt–St’k’hm syndrome, the head-shrinkers called it, the phenomenon whereby the hostage becomes emotionally attached to and dependent on his captors. Well, maybe. Goblins weren’t in the habit of hearing voices inside their heads–other people’s heads, yes, because a suitably adapted enemy’s skull makes a super-duper loudspeaker–and there were times when he wondered if he wasn’t going, you know, a bit
odd
. But he’d secretly consulted a leading Elf nerve specialist,
who’d told him that he was perfectly normal, for a goblin (the question he’d asked was,
Am I sane or am I crazy?
, and the Elf had grinned as he replied; but that, of course, was perfectly normal for an Elf); so that was all right.

Drain’s snoring turned into a sequence of grunts, which culminated in a ferocious snort, which woke him up. Mordak quickly rolled up the treaty and tucked it away under his chair out of sight, then grabbed the beer jug. “Refill?” he said.

Drain squinted at him through bleary red eyes. “What?”

“More beer?”

Drain frowned, and winced. “Maybe not,” he said, and reached a shaking hand towards the dice. “Whose go is it?”

Mordak shook his head. “Game’s over.”

“It is?”

“Yup. You won, remember?”

“Did I?” Drain rubbed his eyes with two peach-stone knuckles. “Course I did. Right.”

“And we’ve sealed the treaty,” Mordak went on, “and had a nice drink, and it’s probably time you were getting back, before your lot start to fret.”

Drain nodded. “Load of bloody worrywarts is what they are,” he said. Then he pulled a doubtful sort of face. “Did we seal the treaty?”

“Oh yes.” Mordak produced it from under his chair. “There you are, look. Your seal, right next to mine.”

Drain groped under his breastplate for his glasses and stuck them on his nose. “So it is,” he said. “Right. Good. Glad that’s settled. Um, did I—?”

“Drive a hard bargain? I should bloody well say so.” Mordak did his best synthetic scowl. “I’m going to be in so much trouble when my lot get wind of this. Still, so long as you and I understand each other, what can they do?”

Drain shrugged. “Kill you, I guess.”

“Well, yes, there’s that.” He closed his hand tight around the scroll. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

Drain snatched the scroll from him and put it on the table, next to the game board. “Don’t you dare,” he growled. “Don’t even think about backing out now.” Then he hiccuped, and sat back in his chair, holding his head in his hands.

“All right,” Mordak said, “if that’s the way you feel, I guess I’ll just have to deal with the consequences and to hell with it. I’ll see to it you get your copy in the morning.”

Drain groaned, stood up and sat down again. “You’d better,” he whimpered. “And keep the bloody room still, can’t you? How’s a dwarf supposed to stand up if the stupid room keeps wobbling about?”

“It’ll stop in a minute,” Mordak replied. “It’s just minor seismic activity. Earthquake,” he translated.

“Oh, one of those. Fair enough.” Drain closed his eyes for a moment. “Good game, that. Where’d you get it?”

“It’s a human game originally, I think,” Mordak said. “I had my people tinker with it a bit, but basically—”

“Clever bastards, the humans,” Drain growled. “You know what? Once we’ve done the Elves, we ought to do the humans, too. I don’t trust clever bastards.”

Indeed. And there, Mordak reflected, in a nutshell is the problem with this whole coalition. The dwarves are savages and their leader is an idiot. On the other hand, the legacy of centuries of free collective bargaining between the dwarf miners’ union and the mine owners was the best trained, equipped and experienced army in the whole of the known world. So the choice was; have these people as your enemies, or make them your friends and stab them in the back later. The humans had a word for it:
politics
.

“Splendid idea,” Mordak said, “I’ll make a note of it.”

“Good man.” The dwarf straightened his knees and rose
slowly but surely to his feet. “Good man. And no hard feelings, eh?”

“No hard feelings.”

“That’s the spirit. Good game, too.” He staggered a few steps towards the door, swayed, stopped, looked back. “Here, Mordak.”

“Hmm?”

“You sure I won?”

“Would I lie to you about a thing like that?”

When he’d finally gone, Mordak unrolled the treaty scroll on the table, smoothed it out and read it from beginning to end. He winced five times, and closed his eyes twice. How can it be, he asked himself, that you can have something that nobody wants, that makes everybody on both sides very angry, but which is quite obviously the right thing to do? The world can’t possibly work like that, can it?

His left hand was itching like mad; he rubbed it, but it didn’t seem to help. There was a small red swelling in the web of skin at the base of the sixth and seventh claw. He knew what that was all about; another one about to come through. No big deal, except that goblins tend to get their blood claws in early adolescence, and Mordak was a hundred and six. Still, late claw development was by no means unheard of. He put some sulphur-paste-and-mercury cream on it to take the swelling down, and forgot about it.

“
L
et me stop you there,” Buttercup said firmly, lifting the cloth off the top of her basket. “Now, we both know you’re not really a little old lady, in fact you’re a horrible, smelly, incurably stupid wolf, and this can only turn out one way. Unless,” she added brightly, “we find a way to break the mould, overcome the limitations of our stereotypes and work together to resolve this situation so it doesn’t end in blood on the grass. So,” she went on, as the wolf made a faint whimpering noise, “in this basket I’ve got a bouncy yellow ball, a rawhide bone, a soft toy that goes squeak when you chew it and a generous helping of Doggybix Chicken Crunch. And,” she added, “a hatchet. So, it’s up to you. Which is it going to be?”

“Um,” said the wolf helplessly. “All the better to see you with, my—”

“Oh come
on
,” Buttercup snapped, grabbing the bouncy yellow ball and throwing it at the wolf, who ducked. “Don’t you understand? You
don’t have to say it
. We can—”

“Yes I do,” mumbled the wolf.

“—dawn of a new era in human/wolf, sorry, what did you just say?”

“I got to,” said the wolf. “Not up to me, see? Got to do as I’m told or it’s—”

“Yes? What?”

Painfully and carefully, the wolf mimed a ferocious human scowl. “
Bad
,” it said, in a voice two octaves deeper than usual. “
Bad boy
.”

Buttercup looked at it. “If you don’t say the words, someone will be
cross
with you?”

The wolf nodded eagerly. “Very cross. Bad boy. All the better to hug you with, my dear. Wrf.”

“Who’ll be cross with you?”

The wolf backed away, shaking its head. “Can’t tell. Mustn’t tell. Very bad.”

“Look, you stupid creature, I’m trying to
help
—” Too late. She must’ve got too close and triggered some instinctive reflex; the wolf sprang, missed her as she swerved out of the way, and landed in a heap on the ground with Buttercup’s axe head socket-deep between its eyes.

“
Dammit
,” Buttercup yelled, and gave the dead wolf a kick in the ribs with her dainty little foot. Then she discovered that a tear had somehow found its way onto her cheek. She wiped it off with her sleeve. “Damn,” she said, and put the stuff back in her basket.

Quite a good haul from the cottage, including a fine electroplate teapot and five spoons, a set of lace doilies and a wooden carving of a pig inscribed
A Present from Innsbruck
. She dumped them in her basket and slammed the door behind her.

“Buttercup? Are you all—?”

“Not now, William. Just not now, all right?”

The woodcutter’s head drooped. “Sure,” he said. “I was just passing, and I thought—”

“Go away.”

He looked so sad as he plodded away, trailing his axe behind him through the leaf mould, that she called him back. He bounced towards her like a happy dog. “Yes?”

“Here.”

His eyes shone. “For me?”

“Well, yes.”

“Hey. Um. What is it?”

Buttercup forced a smile. “If you squeeze its little tummy,” she said, “it makes a squeaking noise.”

“Hey. Oh, wow, so it does. This is so cool.”

“That’s fine, William. You enjoy it. Somewhere else, please.”

“Thanks, Buttercup, you’re the greatest.”

She waited until he’d gone, and the squeaking noises had been subsumed into the gentle murmur of the forest. Then, from the bottom of her basket, she took a small grey rectangular object, like a thick, undersized roof tile.
You
, she thought,
it’s all your fault
.

Quite why she was so sure, she had no idea. But it was so obvious. Something was wrong, so very wrong; the world can’t possibly work like this, it’s insane. And the grey tile thing clearly wasn’t from around here, she had no idea what it was for or even what it was made of–not wood, not metal, not clay or bone or anything like that–but, equally clearly, it was for
something
, because a hell of a lot of work had gone into making it, not to mention a hell of a lot of cleverness—

Too much cleverness, in her opinion. She hadn’t shown it to anyone, needless to say. She knew exactly what the reaction would be. That’s a wizard thing, it must belong to Him, don’t touch it, you’ve got to give it back. Fair enough; except she happened to know that it didn’t belong to the wizard. It belonged to the prince, the handsome but incredibly irritating young man who, in his spare time, when he wasn’t hunting, practising falconry and chatting up gormless young peasant girls,
ran the country
. Was, not to put too fine a point on it, the Government. Was therefore at least nominally
responsible for how things were run around here. Whose fault, therefore—

She shook her head. Much as she’d like to believe it, she couldn’t. He just didn’t look the type, somehow. Not that she had the first idea what The Type was supposed to look like; just not
that
.

In the distance she could hear music; the Elves, most likely, doing whatever it was Elves did. Nobody knew, far less cared. That, of course, was a large part of the problem. Nobody gave a damn, so long as things went on more or less the same way as they always had–her father and uncles, planing down trees into forty-foot planks; the woodcutters, felling lumber and killing wolves; the Elves, floating around being ethereal and snarky. Spring flowers all year round. The occasional earthquake. The way things had always been, as long as anyone could remember. The way things should be. Maybe.

Behind her, she could hear the sound of galloping hooves. She frowned, and started to count under her breath. Seven, eight, nine,
thump
. She nodded, turned round and walked back along the path.

“Ah,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

He was lying on his back, directly underneath the overhanging branch that everyone else who rode through the forest knew all about. Close nearby, a milk-white horse was nibbling primrose leaves.

“Ooh,” he moaned. “My head.”

“Should’ve looked where you were going,” she said crisply. “Now then, about the balance of payments deficit—”

“Help me up,” he said pitifully. “Please.”

She grabbed his hand and yanked him upright. He winced and flexed his arm. “Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t let your horse eat that, it’ll get colic. I’ve been thinking, and though every single wolf I’ve killed in the last
six months has had a teapot and a big box full of tea, nobody around here grows the stuff, the climate is completely wrong, so presumably it’s all imported. Which in turn implies—”

“Tea?”

“Yes, you know,
tea
. Just add boiling water and serve. Except, if you’re a wolf, how can you drink the stuff? Can’t hold the cup, can’t get a claw through that little itsy-bitsy handle. So why—?”

“You’ve got tea in this godforsaken country?”

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

The prince looked stunned. “I asked the palace kitchens, and they looked at me as if I was mad.”

“Ah,” said Buttercup, “but you’re not a wolf, are you? That’s my
point
. My dad and my uncles don’t use the stuff, the woodcutters don’t drink it, and neither do the little old women gathering firewood, the poor but honest shoemakers, the Elves, the goblins or the dwarves. And that’s about it, there isn’t anybody else.”

“Yes, there is—” the prince started to say; then a thoughtful look passed over his face and he fell silent.

“So,” Buttercup went on, “obviously it’s worth someone’s while to freight in tea all the way from Mysterious Cathay or wherever the hell it comes from, just for the wolf market. And, since the wolves don’t make anything or perform any useful services they can provide to the tea importers by way of exchange, presumably they pay for the tea in hard currency. Which means, “she went on, after a quick, deep breath, “you’ve got large amounts of cash leaving the country but no significant exports, which must mean that any day now you’re going to have one mother of an exchange rate crisis, leading to massive devaluation of the florin, galloping inflation and fiscal collapse. Well? Are you listening to me?”

“The wolves have tea?” the prince said. “Do you think they’d sell me some?”

Buttercup grabbed him by the ear and pulled his head down until they were nose to nose. “
Yes
,” she said. “The
wolves
have
tea
. And it’s
wrong
.”

“Um.” He tried pulling away gently, but she had a thumb and forefinger of iron. “Look, would you mind not—? Thank you. Ow.” He straightened up and took a long step back. “No one told me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re supposed to be in charge. You ought to—”

“Yes,” he said gently. “I know. And I’m
trying
.”

The anger seeped out of her like oil from a Land Rover. “Try harder,” she said, but her voice was practically the coo of a dove. “And if you want tea, I’ve got some.”

“You have?”

“Plenty.”

“Good God. Would you possibly consider—?”

“Two florins a pound.”

“Done.”

She blinked twice.
Two florins
. She believed in the existence of two florins in the same way as she believed in the sea: never seen it, never expected to, just sort of took it on trust that it was out there somewhere. “Um, all right. How about a nice teapot?”

“Excuse me?”

“To make the tea in. Tea’s not much use without a teapot, is it?”

“Er, no, I suppose not. You’ve got a—”

With a shy smile she threw the cloth off her basket. “There you go,” she said. “Solid, um, silver, not a mark on it, five shillings and I’ll throw in the spoons. Well?”

He shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “Um, thank you.” His hand was feeling for a pocket that wasn’t there. Then he remembered, and took the purse from his belt. “Now, just a—”

“The florins are the thin shiny yellow ones,” Buttercup said helpfully.

“Ah, yes, right. I knew that.”

“Of course you did. The shillings are the slightly thicker silvery ones with the thistle on the back.” And your face on the front, she didn’t add. “So, five of those ones and two of those ones, all right?”

“Sure. There you go. Sorry, you were saying.”

“Was I?”

“About the wolves. And the balance of payments deficit.”

“So I was. Um.”

“And the answer to your question,” the prince went on, his hand tightening around the box with the tea in it like a vice, “is that we get large amounts of hard currency from the wizard in exchange for, well,
stuff
, so although there are localised imbalances in some sectors, overall there’s a slight net foreign exchange surplus which we’re applying towards regearing our sovereign debt position vis-à-vis King Mordak and the dwarves. Or at least,” he added ruefully, “that’s what they keep telling me. OK?”

She nodded. “Yes, fine.”

There was a yearning look on his face that would’ve melted a heart of stone. “You wouldn’t possibly have any coffee, would you?”

“Any what?”

“Ah. Never mind,” he said bravely, “tea’s just fine. All they’ve got up at the palace is either wine or beer, and I don’t really like any of that stuff. Gives me a headache.”

“The woodcutters make a sort of posset out of fermented birch sap,” Buttercup heard herself say. “Mind you, it’s not very nice.”

“It sounds horrible.”

“It is.” A long moment passed, silent apart from the distant violins of the Elves. “You said you were looking for me.”

“What? Oh yes.” He stopped and frowned. “What’s that awful noise?”

“Excuse me?”

“Over there somewhere. Sounds like—” He stopped dead and didn’t finish the sentence.

“Oh, that’s the Elves. They do that.”

“Really? Why?”

“We don’t like to ask.”

“Ah. Do they do it a lot?”

She nodded. “All day and all night. They do shifts. It’s cultural or something.”

She had a horrible feeling she was blushing, which was something she simply didn’t do. But then again, she’d never met anybody quite like him before, someone with money. It spoke to something deep inside her, and its voice couldn’t be stilled. One day her prince would come; she’d known that all along, resigned herself to it, built her entire life alongside it, like the people who build villages on the lips of dormant volcanoes. But, of all the things she’d expected or dreaded her prince would be, she never thought he’d be
rich
. Princes tended not to be, in these universally threadbare parts; probably because of the screwed-up economy and kingdoms dividing because of dragon slayers, and all that. You could tell them apart from the woodcutters by their white horses and the fact that their hand-me-down clothes were brighter colours and embroidered with frayed gold thread. This one, however, had a purse practically bursting with florins. That put a completely different complexion on it. She smiled.

“You wanted to see me about something,” she prompted.

“Yes, right.” The smile seemed to be causing difficulties with his speech, so she switched it off. “I was wondering.”

“Yes?”

“Can you cook?”

It took a moment for her mental spin doctors to swing into action. Then they assured her that honesty and down-to-earth
practicality were refreshingly different, tending to reinforce the view that this prince wasn’t like the others. Which was a good thing. Even so. “Yes,” she said.