“Ow!” he said. “Help! Spare me!”
Henwyn had been just about to discard his broken sword and snatch up Mr Chop-U-Up. It was a far more fitting blade for the Lord of Clovenstone, he thought, and it would easily split Knobbler’s head in half, war-bucket and all. But although he was the Lych Lord now, he was still Henwyn as well, and Henwyn wasn’t the sort of person who cut down unarmed and wounded enemies, even if they were goblins. Wouldn’t it make a change, he thought, to begin my reign with an act of mercy?
Don’t! warned the Lych Lord part of him, the cold, greedy voice of the Stone Throne in his mind. Goblins respect strength, not mercy.
“Don’t!” yelled Skarper, fighting his way free of Yabber and Libnog and running towards the bridge, with some idea of tackling Knobbler from behind. “You can’t believe anything goblins say! Except this, obviously. . .”
“Don’t!” warned Eluned, waiting behind Henwyn at the bridge’s end. “I know that goblin! I’m sure I do! Not his size or strength, but that whining voice! ‘Spare me!’ Oh, slay him, Henwyn, for he is the very one that betrayed my father with that cowardly trick at Porthstrewy all those years ago!”
Henwyn reached out and lifted the bucket off Knobbler’s head, revealing his sweaty, pain-strained face.
Those jutting fangs. . . Those yellow eyes. . . That nose patch. . .
“Oh,” said Eluned, quite surprised. “Oh, no, it isn’t him at all. My mistake.”
“I think I am the goblin you is thinking of, actually, my dear,” said a voice out of the shadows behind Knobbler. Old Breslaw, whom everybody had forgotten, hobbled towards the bridge, batting Skarper aside with a shrewd blow from his teaching mallet. “It was me that tricked your daddy and let the Blackspike Boys inside his castle, Princess,” he said, as he stepped on to the bridge. “Last fight I was ever in. Cowardly, did you call it? Well, I takes that as a compliment. I’m clever, see, and clever folk are always cowards. Just ask young Skarper here. Why should we risk these bulging brains of ours when there are big, brainless lunks like Knobbler here to do the fighting for us?”
“Who are you calling brainless?” asked Knobbler, confused.
Breslaw’s teaching mallet fetched the king a vicious clout on the back of the head. Knobbler’s eyes crossed, and he toppled sideways off the edge of the bridge.
“All right, lads,” called Breslaw, to the confused goblins clustering behind him. “Let’s send these softlings to the lava too, and then the Stone Throne will be mine, and won’t we have some fun, terrorizin’ and rampagin’ and stuff?”
“You shall not pass!” said Henwyn, trying to retrieve that Lych Lord tone of voice which had come so easily to him before. He took a step backwards towards the Stone Throne, hoping he could sit down on it again before this latest goblin worked out that he couldn’t do magic without it. But it was an uneasy feeling, walking backwards on that spindly bridge, above that deadly drop. He turned, and as he did so Breslaw snatched Mr Chop-U-Up and drove it into Henwyn’s back.
Eluned shrieked. Skarper and the sorcerers howled, struggling against the strong goblin paws which held them back. Henwyn went down on his knees, down on his face on the narrow bridge.
As a boy in Adherak he had always imagined that he would be wounded once or twice when he was a hero; it was only to be expected with all those battles and things, and a scar or two was part of the look. He had just never imagined that it would hurt quite so much, or that quite so much red blood would come gushing out of him. Dizzily, he raised his head and saw Eluned at the bridge’s end, white hands outstretched towards him. He saw the Stone Throne waiting. If he could just climb on to it all would be well; the powers of Clovenstone would heal his hurt and give him the strength to defeat this traitorous goblin. But the throne looked so far away; the steps that led to it seemed so steep and high; and now Breslaw was stepping over him, stopping to look down at him, lifting the bloody sword.
“Oh, won’t I have some fun when I’m the Lych Lord?” the goblin chuckled. “But I’d better finish you off first, my lovely. I may be only a poor old goblin, but I know better than to turn my back upon a foe.”
But he had done exactly that, for he was forgetting Eluned. Henwyn’s magic was definitely wavering now, and the princess felt more like her old self again. She ran at Breslaw from behind. She drew her knife, but it had been transformed along with her clothes and was now just a diamond-studded toy; a piece of royal jewellery. She tossed it aside and leapt at the hatchling master, wrapping an arm across his throat, biting his ear, clawing at the paw that held the sword.
Breslaw grunted, swore, writhed. He stumbled; he jabbed a bony elbow backwards into Ned’s chest and she lost her grip on him; he ducked and flung her forward over his head, and she shrieked as she followed Knobbler off the bridge’s brink. Her shining hair swirled upwards as she fell.
“No!” cried Henwyn – but there was nothing he could do about it, and Breslaw, chuckling some more, turned back to him.
Then, out of his hiding place among the pillars, like a mewling scarlet arrow, little Nuisance came shooting. He whirred twice round Breslaw’s head, while Breslaw slashed wildly at him with Mr Chop-U-Up. All the new jewels of the dragonet’s skin shone. He seemed to glow from inside like a tiny paper lantern. Suddenly he backed in mid-air and hung in front of the old goblin to breathe a hot, bright belch of flame into his face.
“My nose!” screeched Breslaw, letting go of Mr Chop-U-Up and clapping his hands to his face. “My toes!” he added, as the sword landed on them. Hair on fire and hopping blindly backwards, he veered off course over the bridge’s edge, hung horrified in the hot air for an instant, and was gone. For a long time the sounds of his fall could be heard as he went tumbling and sliding away down the branching flues, until at last there was silence, and then a faint brief brightening of the light that came up the shaft to show that the old hatchling master had plunged at last into the lava lake.
Henwyn watched it fade. Then he noticed, beyond the fallen sword and Breslaw’s scattered toes, eight dark claws clutching the edge of the bridge.
“Help!” said Knobbler, dangling there.
“Help!” called Eluned, clinging to his ankles, which she had managed to grab hold of as she fell.
“Get off!” growled Knobbler, kicking his feet. Eluned shrieked and clutched at his trousers, which came down, revealing huge, pink, frilly flannel underpants that made her shriek again.
With a great effort Henwyn forced himself closer. He did not really want to help Knobbler, but there was no way to save Ned without saving the goblin too, so he took hold of Knobbler’s hairy wrists and heaved.
Skarper struggled against his batch-brothers. “Let me go!” he grunted. “I’ve got to help!”
They fought for a bit, but they were not sure what they were fighting for now that neither Knobbler or Breslaw was around to tell them what to do, and Skarper managed to drag himself towards the bridge. There they all caught sight of Knobbler, the princess dangling from Knobbler’s trousers and Knobbler’s startling pants. In amazement they let go of Skarper, and he broke free of them and ran across the bridge to help Henwyn. After another moment Fentongoose, Prawl and Carnglaze were there too. Between them, puffing and gasping and panting, they heaved first Knobbler and then Ned to safety. While the goblin king struggled to pull his trousers up, the three sorcerers stared at her in wonder. They were used to seeing friends who had grown old, but they’d never seen one who had grown young before.
Skarper, meanwhile, went scrambling over them all. He grabbed Mr Chop-U-Up and scampered with it up the steps of the Stone Throne. Nuisance was perched on one of them, looking almost as startled as Breslaw by the fire he’d breathed. Two curls of smoke still leaked from his nostrils, but he was fast returning to his ordinary colours and when he tried to breathe more fire only a few damp sparks came out. Skarper stepped carefully over him and stood before the throne itself. Even with
out sitting on it, he could feel its power. It looked comfy, despite being made of stone. “Sit down on me,” it seemed to say. “Sit, and you shall be King Skarper; Skarper the Great; Skarper the lord of a thousand ravaged lands.” I could be the new Lych Lord, he thought, and he saw for a moment all the ruined miles of Clovenstone restored, rebuilt, and all the men and goblins of the wide world doing as he told them.
But in the end, he just wasn’t that greedy. He didn’t want to tell people what to do. He didn’t want castles and kingdoms. He couldn’t be bothered with all that. “I like a quiet life,” he said, as he swung Mr Chop-U-Up at the throne. “Peace and quiet, and a little hoard of my own. Is that too much to ask?”
A shard the size of his head sheared off the top of the throne. Cracks like the shadows of winter branches spread across the rest. A thin, high scream rang through the Keep, and the floor shivered and the goblins who had been gawping at Knobbler’s pants all turned and started scrambling over one another to get down the stairs.
“Skarper, no!” cried Henwyn, looking up and seeing what he was about. “My throne!”
“Silly,” said Princess Ned, looking fondly at him. “Let him smash it. You are much nicer when you’re not being the Lych Lord.”
“But all that power!” said Henwyn, and despite his wound he rose and stumbled towards the throne, making ready to run up the steps and stop Skarper. “All my magic!” he groaned. “The gifts I gave you. . .”
“They were not really yours to give,” said Ned. Already her golden hair was greying and the lines were returning to her face, and she could feel her joints growing stiffer and the weight of her years settling on her again as the little magics which Henwyn had worked on her unravelled. It was like a door into summer closing, and tears ran down her face and caught in the little laughter lines, but she said, “Let him smash it, Henwyn.”
“Let him do it, lad,” said Fentongoose, who was busy ripping strips off his robes to help Prawl bandage Henwyn’s wound. “The world’s best off without it.”
A great wave of anger rushed through Henwyn. If I’m not a hero and I’m not the Lych Lord, what am I? he thought. Perhaps I’m just a cheesewright after all. Then he looked down at all the blood that was puddling around his feet and he thought, Perhaps I shall soon be nobody at all. . .
And he sank to his knees on the bridge, and watched while Skarper smashed the Stone Throne to pieces, and the pieces scattered down the dais steps and went tumbling and echoing back down the shafts into the lava lake.
The screaming sound grew louder as the throne shrank. The shaking in the floor was worse. Cracks were spreading up the chamber walls. Skarper struck the stump of the throne a last great blow which shattered it into shards and broke the blade of Mr Chop-U-Up in seven pieces. A big section of the chamber wall collapsed, and there was the moon looking in at them, and the Lych Lord’s comet arched above it like a wry eyebrow.
“I think we should probably get off this bridge,” said Prawl uneasily.
“I think the whole Keep is falling down!” shouted Carnglaze.
Skarper had been hoping the shaking and cracking would stop when the throne was gone. Instead, it seemed to be getting worse. One of the spines which rose from the Keep’s top cracked and the topmost half came crashing down and smashed to pieces on the metal floor.
They helped Henwyn up and made their way off the bridge. As Skarper hurried across to join them the bridge cracked and dropped in pieces down the flue, and the pinnacle where the throne had stood began to crumble too. Nuisance, startled from his perch on the steps, circled among the falling splinters for a moment before fluttering down to settle on Henwyn’s shoulder and tug at his cloak.
“The eggs!” remembered Skarper.
“What eggs?” asked Fentongoose.
“Nuisance’s brothers and sisters,” said Henwyn. He struggled free of his helpers’ hands and tried to stand, but he sagged, and Ned had to catch him to save him from falling. “We promised!” he said. “We can’t just leave them here to be crushed!”
“Yes we can,” said Skarper, but he knew Henwyn was right. He was an egg-born thing himself, and he could not help but imagine those poor mewling hatchlings trapped inside their too-thick shells, liable at any moment to be smashed flat by falling debris. He shoved the three sorcerers towards the stairs. “Halfway down you’ll find an open door into a sort of mews. There’s a hammer on the wall to smash the eggshells open with. Nuisance will show you the way. . .”
They hurried off, with the dragonet swooping and squeaking above their heads. Skarper ran back to Henwyn, and together he and Princess Ned helped the wounded would-be hero down the stairs. Behind them they heard more of the Keep’s horns fall, and shards of glass and fragments of stone came bounding down past them.
On the lower levels greedy goblins were still running from room to room, weighed down with necklaces and plush curtains and ivory statuettes. They were too busy filling their pockets and squabbling amongst themselves to pay any heed when first the sorcerers and then Skarper, Ned and Henwyn came rushing by, but Skarper shouted at them, “Get out! Run! The Keep is falling!” The floors heaved, and the dark jagged shapes of falling masonry flashed past the windows. For a while Skarper kept catching glimpses of the three sorcerers hurrying down the stairways in front of him, but Henwyn could only move slowly, and soon the Sable Conclave were far ahead. Then there came a terrible lurch – a wrenching feeling, as if the whole Keep were twisting – and when the awful noise subsided and the swirling dust had thinned they saw that the stairs below them had collapsed. They looked down the dark shaft of the stairway, filled with dust and the long moans of warping flues.
“It’s not really a stairway any more,” said Henwyn.
“It’s not really any sort of way,” agreed Skarper.
“Unless we want to jump. . .” said Ned.
They looked at one another, and decided that on the whole they didn’t.
“What do we do?” asked Henwyn.
“I don’t know!” said Skarper.
And then he did.
They turned and started up again, and went off the main stair along side-ways choked with rubble and the bodies of goblins who’d killed each other fighting over trinkets. Coins and bits of jewellery and strings of pearls lay strewn there too, but there was no time to stop and pick them up. The floor was listing like a ship in steep seas. With all the dust in the air it was hard to see much, but at last Skarper found what he’d been looking for: an arched doorway leading outside. They emerged on to a high rampart which had not yet fallen, although half the parapet had gone and the rest was crumbling. A massive catapult squatted there, with a pile of great rocks still heaped beside it. Skarper scrambled past it and peered out between the collapsing crenellations.
With all this commotion going on, he thought, those cloud maidens were sure to be around.
“Hello!” he shouted, looking up into the sky, and jumping up and down to attract the attention of anybody looking down. “Cloud maidens! Cloud girlies! Here we are!”
“Help!” cried Ned, catching on.
“Help!” agreed Henwyn weakly. “Help! Over here, good ladies!”
“Come on, you vapour-faced puffs of wind!” hollered Skarper. But over the tremendous racket of the disintegrating Keep he doubted anyone could hear him, and the only clouds he could see in the sky above were clouds of dust.
A crack as black as midnight and as spiky as a winter thorn came creeping across the stonework between his feet. The rampart sagged. The great war machine behind him groaned as the stones beneath it tipped and shifted. Pieces of battlement fell away, revealing a giddy view down towards the Inner Wall and the roofs of the towers far below. I’ve got even further to fall this time than I had when they shot me out of the bratapult, he thought. It’s going to take ages. . .
“Skarper!” shouted Ned behind him. He looked round, hoping to see the clou
d maidens’ cloud descending. What he saw instead was the princess struggling to wind the capstan of the war machine.
“Skarper! Help her!” Henwyn yelled, struggling to help her himself, but hampered by his wound.
“Oh no!” said Skarper firmly, guessing their stupid plan.
Just then a sizeable chunk of what he was standing on decided not to be there any more. He leapt on to what remained of the rampart, and ran to help his friends. The catapult seemed not to have suffered much during the Keep’s long slumber. The hide hawsers which powered it were as stiff and strong as if they’d just been fitted. Grunting and sweating, the three companions wound the capstan until the great throwing arm was pulled right back, then climbed into the cup.
The edges of the rampart were crumbling quickly now, like a giant cake being nibbled by hungry invisible mice. The catapult stood upon an island, a wobbling pillar of stone. As the pillar cracked at the bottom and started to topple, Skarper leaned out of the catapult cup and hit the release handle.
The throwing arm sprang upright, crashing against the frame. The catapult slid off the toppling pillar and fell down, down, while Skarper, Ned and Henwyn went hurtling in the opposite direction: up and out into the howling spaces of the sky.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. . .!” they said.
Far below them, Prawl, Fentongoose and Carnglaze had reached the main gate; any goblins who might have thought of stopping them or making trouble were scared off by Nuisance and the little swarm of screeching, new-hatched dragonets which flapped and whirred around the sorcerers’ heads, wings still wet from the egg. But most of the goblins were fleeing anyway, and did not so much as notice the members of the Sable Conclave. Outside the gate a storm of shattered stonework was coming down like a bombardment, with goblins darting and dodging through it as they fled the Keep. A huge stone sculpture of the winged head squashed a running Growler and burst into splinters which rattled at the cracking walls.