over to the healers, I’m feeling a bit shaky.”
Mumr leaned on his bidenhander and got to his feet. Without speaking a word, the Garrakian offered him his shoulder and led him toward the healers bustling around the wagons. Kli-Kli and I were left on our own.
“Come on, Dancer, I’ll show you something,” the jester called out to me.
“Where are we going?” I asked him suspiciously.
“Come on, you won’t regret it.”
There was nothing to do, evening was drawing in, and I didn’t think we would be going to Zagraba today, so I followed the goblin. Kli-Kli walked over to a hoist beside the wall.
“Where are you going, greeny?” asked the man who was loading stones for a catapult into the hoist.
“Would you be so kind, my dear man, as to raise the two of us up onto the wall together with these most remarkable stones that match the color of your face so well?” Kli-Kli asked.
“What?” the worker asked, wide-eyed.
“Can you hoist us up, blockhead?”
“The steps are over there!” said the man, jabbing a dirty finger toward the wall. “Use your legs, I’ve got work to do, I’ve no time to be giving you a lift as well.”
Kli-Kli stuck his tongue out at him and stomped off angrily to the steps that led up onto the top of the wall.
“Kli-Kli, can you tell me why I should climb twenty yards up a wall?” I asked the goblin.
“It would spoil the surprise. Have you ever regretted listening to what I say?” The goblin was already climbing briskly up the steps.
“Yes,” I replied quite sincerely.
I followed him anyway. It was an easy climb, because the steps wound round the wall. The palace courtyard sank lower and lower below us, and the men, the horses, and the wagons all shrank.
“Tell me this,” I asked Kli-Kli as he ambled along in front of me. “Where did you learn to handle throwing knives so neatly?”
“Why, did you like it?” asked Kli-Kli, glowing at this unexpected praise. “I have just as many hidden talents as you do, Dancer.”
“You don’t say?”
“I’m a jester,” he said, and shrugged. “Throwing knives is no harder than juggling four torches or doing a triple reverse somersault.”
“You’ve got a tough job, old friend,” I laughed.
He stopped, looked down at me, and said in a serious voice, “You can’t even imagine how tough it is, Harold. Especially when I have to look after fools like you!”
“So you’re the one who’s looking after me!”
“There, that’s human gratitude for you,” said the goblin, raising his hands imploringly to the sky. “Wasn’t I the one who saved you from that dog’s teeth?”
“Well, yes,” I had to agree.
“And today? Today, whose knives stopped the orc’s ax?” the goblin went on as he completed another turn of the stairway.
“Yours,” I sighed.
“Oh!” said the goblin, raising one finger didactically without turning to face me. “That’s exactly the point. Are you thieves all like that?”
“Like what?”
“With such a short memory for the good things that other people do for you.”
“All right, calm down, Kli-Kli. I remember that I owe you for one time.”
“What do you mean, for one time!”
“You saved me from the dog, and I saved you from the river, so I still owe you one rescue,” I chuckled.
“Maybe I know how to swim, and I was only pretending?” Kli-Kli suggested, narrowing his eyes cunningly.
“Well, then you really are a fool.”
“All right, I admit it, I can’t swim. And by the way, we’re here.”
I hadn’t realized that I was on the wall. It was broad, with immense battlements, loopholes, and blue sky. The walls gave no protection from the wind up here, and it blew straight into my back. I could imagine what it was like being up here in winter or during a storm. Invincible crept out from under my jacket and clambered onto my shoulder.
“So what was it you wanted to show me?” I couldn’t spot anything interesting up there, just a catapult, a few bowmen standing watch, and one craftsman, reinforcing the stones of the wall.
“Look over that way!” said Kli-Kli, dragging me across to a loophole and almost pushing me off the wall in his enthusiasm. “Over here!”
The castle stood on a low hill, and the view was magnificent. Out there, beyond the castle’s earthen ramparts and three moats, beyond a small river with a lazy current and a field about three hundred yards across, overgrown with scrubby bushes, the forest started.
Zagraba.
The massive wall of trees gazing back at me from the far side of the river was magnificent and beautiful. A forest whose size rivaled the whole of Valiostr. It stretched on for thousands of leagues.
There before my eyes was the land where the gods had walked at the dawn of time, the kingdom that had existed in Siala before the times of the Dark Age, when orcs and elves had not even been heard of. The mysterious, fabulous, magical, enchanting, and also bloody, terrible, and sinister Forests of Zagraba.
How many legends, how many myths, how many endless stories, riddles, and mysteries were hidden beneath the green branches of the forest country? How many beautiful, outlandish, and dangerous creatures roamed its narrow animal tracks?
The beautiful towns of the elves and the orcs, the famous foliage and the labyrinth, the abandoned idols and temples of vanished races, the remains of the cities of the ogres, almost as old as time itself and, of course, the wonder and the horror of all the Northern Lands—Hrad Spein.
“My homeland,” Kli-Kli declared in a ringing voice. “Can you just feel that smell?”
I sniffed the air. There was a cool, fresh smell of forest, honey, and an oak leaf crushed in the palm of your hand.
“Yes.”
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” I answered quite sincerely.
The immense carpet of green stretched out in front of us all the way to the horizon, disappearing into the evening mist.
Zagraba seemed to be endless. I screwed up my eyes, and for a moment I thought I could see the majestic summits of the Mountains of the Dwarves wreathed in violet haze and propping up the sky. Of course, I only imagined it; the great mountains were hundreds of leagues away and impossible to see from there.
“Why do they call it the Golden Forest?” I asked Kli-Kli, who was pressed right up against the loophole.
“Golden-leaf trees grow there,” the jester said with an indifferent shrug.
“It’s getting dark, let’s go back,” I said, casting a last glance at Zagraba. “I don’t want to break my legs on the way down.”
Twilight was creeping up on the castle and torches were lit in the courtyard. There were not many men there, the bodies of the dead had already been unloaded from the wagon and carried away. I couldn’t see Eel, or Alistan, or Miralissa.
“Now how can I find our group? I don’t intend to go wandering all over the citadel like a fool.”
“We’ll think of something,” Kli-Kli said cheerfully.
An old man in a baggy, shapeless robe came up to us:
“Master Harold, Master…”—a brief pause—“… Kli-Kli?”
“That’s right.”
The old man gave a sigh of relief and jerked his head.
“Follow me, they’re waiting for you.”
