Lucius suppressed the squeak of horror that rose in his throat. He draped Zachary around his shoulders and scuttled down the side of the ship as fast as he could, taking great care all the while to ensure the scheming Gods above didn’t see him. Once he was on the ground, he tucked the ferret under his arm and ran down the emerald path towards the Royal Forest as fast as his legs would carry him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘You must have some idea where the crown is,’ Lex said to the tree impatiently. ‘Don’t you take any interest at all in what goes on in the forest?’
The grand old tree regarded Lex disdainfully. ‘Little human,’ it said majestically, ‘human crowns are of no importance to us whatsoever. It’s not here; I suggest you look elsewhere.’
‘But you must have seen where the Goddess put it or at least be able to direct me to the general area,’ Lex insisted.
‘Why should I?’ the tree asked lazily. ‘What’s in it for me?’
‘Well, not getting chopped down by me for a start,’ Lex snapped.
‘Lex,’ Schmidt warned.
At Lex’s last words, the trees surrounding them in the dappled green grove seemed to rustle their leaves in a distinctly threatening way and the light from Saydi’s sun became a little darker. No sane person wants to be surrounded by a group of large, strong, rather put-out enchanted trees when they’re lost in the middle of an enchanted forest. It’s not a happy situation.
‘You do not even begin to possess the strength that would be necessary to damage us, little boy,’ the tree said, evidently less than impressed with Lex’s scrawny frame.
Lex frowned, irritated. Okay, so he wasn’t exactly the bulging-with-muscles type and no teenage girl was ever likely to exclaim in delight after ripping his shirt off. But he was clever. He did have that. And you did need to be clever to lie convincingly.
‘I have a magic axe,’ Lex announced, pleased to note the alarmed rustling from the trees.
‘No you don’t,’ the tree scoffed. ‘Only magical people have things like that.’
‘You know that enchanted ship that flew overhead an hour or so ago?’ Lex asked. ‘I stole it. I’m the one who flew it here. I made a list, you see, of things I’d never done before. Escaping from prison was one of them. So was stealing an enchanted ship. I’ve never cut down a magic tree either.’ Lex eyed the tree before him with renewed interest. ‘Do you think if I cut the bark up into little bits I could sell it back in the Wither City?’ Lex asked, turning to Schmidt. ‘Actually, come to think of it, I might be better off cutting down all these trees and taking them back to the ship and just forgetting about the crown altogether. I bet they’d fetch an absolute fortune. I’ll get started,’ Lex said, shrugging the bag off his shoulders and rummaging through it in search of the nonexistent magical axe. ‘You go back to the ship and get the other axe and then come back and-’
‘No, no,’ the tree said hastily. ‘Look, we don’t know exactly where the crown is. All we know is that the Goddess left it due north from here.’
‘How far?’ Lex asked.
‘Towards the middle of the forest.’
‘Thank you. To show my gratitude for your help I shall spare you,’ Lex said graciously.
‘You are most noble, young Adventurer,’ the tree said gratefully. ‘May your Chronicles fill many shelves.’
Schimdt gawked at Lex as he turned and strode due north out of the glade. How did he do that? Schmidt couldn’t help feeling a little envious. It would be nice to be able to wrap anyone around your finger in that way.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Lex said when Schmidt caught up with him. ‘If only I would use my power for good instead of for evil, right?’
‘Something along those lines, I suppose,’ Schmidt said. ‘You could have been a very fine lawyer, Lex.’
‘Because I’m inwardly contemptible, you mean?’
‘No! Because you’re quick thinking. As it is, you’re the kind of person who gives the legal profession a bad name. The law used to be something noble once. It was what separated us from the animals and the magical peoples. We had rules — certain lines we were not allowed to cross. Lawyers were like policemen. We were like guardians. And then people like you came along and started twisting everything so that justice wasn’t what was being aimed for at all any more. It’s a disgrace! It’s an absolute disgrace, Lex!’
Lex gazed at the old lawyer in surprise. He could tell that Schmidt was already regretting what he’d said. ‘Well, I never got the chance to twist anything,’ Lex said mildly, ‘seeing as I never qualified. There’s only so much damage you can do to the noble legal profession when all you ever do is file papers and make the coffee. So I can only assume you weren’t talking about me. So what is it, Schmidt? Do you have some dirty, dark little secret lurking in your past? How very mysterious. I shall make it my duty to find out what it is.’
‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you,’ Schmidt said dismissively.
Lex opened his mouth to rub more salt into the raw wound when his nose began to fizz and he rummaged desperately for a handkerchief, only just managing to find it and press it over his face before the ferocious sneeze came. Luckily, Schmidt was already stalking huffily ahead, so he didn’t see the nine or ten nasal lice thrashing around in Lex’s tissue. Lex shook them out onto the ground in disgust and then hurried to catch up with the long- legged lawyer.
Apart from the obvious enchanted trees, the only other things they had seen so far were the deer that lived in the forest and the odd fleeting glimpse of woodland spirits flitting between the trees. Both were gentle and neither were likely to pose any threat to them, but still Lex was watchful. It would be very easy to get lost in a place like this and there were stories about the things that lived in enchanted forests. If Lex lost this round he could still win the Game if he did well in the third round. But this was extra special to him now because of the crown. Not only would he get to see and touch a genuine royal crown, but his temporary royalty would mean that his name would be added to the Royal Monument in the centre of the Wither City. That would be immensely satisfying. It would piss Schmidt off for one thing. And it would earn him a kind of immortality. Children had to memorise the names of kings at school and he loved the thought of being partially responsible for the hair-tearing frustration of that exercise.
The Royal Monument was something of an anachronism in a way but it was tradition and people clung to tradition like leeches because it made them feel safer in changing times. Any man who had been a king, even if only for a few minutes, would have his name inscribed on the Monument and passed down through the years. Hundreds and hundreds of years from now, people would look at the Monument, reading through the names and Lex Trent would be there — set in stone at last. Lex was absolutely determined to have the crown for himself and he was more than happy to cheat to get it. He deserved it because he was the only one who would fully appreciate it. It was not just about winning the round now, it was about tasting royalty just for a moment and the immortality that went with it.
They headed on deeper into the forest, towards the centre. Lex was feeling a little uneasy about the prophet. Everyone knew that prophets were dangerous because they could see the future and so were sometimes able to manipulate it. They couldn’t speak so they couldn’t utter spells or enchantments but it was difficult to outwit a prophet when they could see what you were going to do. And then of course there was Jezra who was even more pissed off than the prophet.
The forest itself was not overly dangerous. But it was maze-like and they kept finding themselves getting turned around. It was as if the forest did not want them to travel too deeply inside. And then there was the whistling. A strange, ominous high-pitched whistling that seemed to be coming from something on the forest floor around them. The sound was making the lawyer look distinctly uneasy so Lex didn’t trouble himself to tell Schmidt that the whistling was in fact caused by harmless duckigs — strange little creatures that looked somewhere between a duck and a pig. Lex knew there wouldn’t be anything overly dangerous in the Royal Forest for although the kings rather enjoyed hunting down gentle, harmless deer, they were not favourably inclined towards being butchered themselves…
… Now, usually, Lex would have been quite right about that but, to make the round more interesting, Lady
