“Couldn’t you get a message to them?” I asked the goblin, hoping the shaman would work a miracle for me on the spot.
“How? Ask a little bird, or a moth? Things like that only happen in fairy tales. Come on, let’s get some sleep. We can talk as much as we want tomorrow. It’s almost midnight.”
Nightmares are the bane of my life. And after Hrad Spein there wasn’t a night that passed without some beastly horror descending on me. That night I dreamed I was back in the room with the ceiling moving down, only this time there was no hole in the floor, and all I could do was run from one corner to the other, waiting to be flattened.
I woke up. Judging from the moon, there were still about three hours to go until dawn. The torch left by Olag had gone out, and no one had thought to replace it with a new one. Four campfires were blazing away merrily in the clearing, and the obelisk was giving off quite enough light for me to see the orcs lying around here and there. The only one not sleeping was the one tending the fires.
Everyone was asleep, and it would have been a magnificent chance to escape, if not for Shokren’s cursed magical circle. I wondered if Glo-Glo could have broken the orc shaman’s magic, if he didn’t have the mittens on his hands. I’d been pondering a crazy idea for two days, thinking about freeing the old goblin from his magical shackles. Unfortunately, on closer inspection, the locks holding the mittens on the goblin’s hands had proved to be pretty tricky, and there was no way I could ever get them open with an ordinary sliver of wood. I needed some thin piece of metal, and neither I nor Mis nor Glo-Glo happened to have a little trinket like that. There was nothing I could do but wait for a stroke of luck that would allow me to open the miniature locks.
Purely by chance, I happened to glance at the remains of our meal, and my jaw dropped open. Sitting there on a piece of fried salmon was a dragoatfly. And nearby there was a flinny, struggling to open the tightly closed top of the flask of wine. My heart started pounding furiously. Whatever I did, I mustn’t frighten him off!
I cautiously propped myself up my elbow and whispered, “Hey, flinny!”
He jumped and swung round, pulling out his miniature dagger. The dragoatfly also abandoned its meal and flew across to its master, trembling slightly. Unfortunately, this flinny was a stranger and he didn’t look anything at all like Aarroo g’naa Shpok. Even the little fellow’s curly hair was black, not gold.
“Push off, beanpole!” the flinny said, waving his ridiculous little weapon menacingly.
“I didn’t think flinnies were thieves.”
“I’m no thief!” the lad exclaimed resentfully. “This food doesn’t belong to anyone!”
I clicked my tongue reproachfully. “It belongs to me, and you know that perfectly well.”
“Oh, all right!” the flinny growled irritably, mounting his dragoatfly.
“Wait!” I whispered hurriedly.
“What do you want?” he asked rather impolitely, but the dragoatfly stopped and hovered in the air.
I struggled desperately to find the right words. “I want you to take a message for me.”
“No way!” the little squirt snorted. “I don’t want anything to do with your lot!”
“I’ll pay!”
“No way! What could a prisoner have that’s worth anything, when the orcs search him five times a day?”
But the little rotter was still in no hurry to fly off. He waited. Just in case I might suddenly manage to find something.… And I did find something. Shokren had missed the gift from the dead elfin king. Perhaps he hadn’t sensed it, or perhaps the ring didn’t have any magical powers, and the heartbeat in the black diamond was just some kind of trick. Whatever the reason, the ring had been on my hand all the time, hidden under my glove. But now I would have to part with it.
It was a shame to let the precious thing go when I’d had it for such a short time, but at least now I could put the dead king’s gift to good use. I remembered Kli-Kli saying that flinnies were crazy about all sorts of rings. I took the glove off my hand and even now, in the light of the white obelisk and the cold moon, the little light was still flickering in the depths of the stone, following the crazy rhythm of my heart.
“Oo-oo-ooh!” the flinny exclaimed in a surprisingly shrill voice.
The little creature couldn’t take his eyes off the ring. I sat down, and the dragoatfly landed at my feet. I took the ring off my finger and rolled it in my hand, allowing the black diamond to catch the sparse rays of moonlight and transform them into a spectacular display of icy flame. I think the flinny was in a state of absolute ecstasy.
“Is that valuable enough for you to do a simple little job?”
The lad pulled himself together enough to nod, but he didn’t take his eyes off the prize.
“I am Iirroo z’maa Olok of the Branch of the Lake Butterfly. What do I have to do for this?”
“Can you free us and lead us away without the orcs noticing anything?”
“No,” he said with a sigh of regret. “Perhaps there is something else I can do for you?”
The flinny was politeness itself.
“I will give you the ring, if you will deliver a message.”
“Agreed! What is it, who is it for, and where are they?” the little news peddler rattled off.
“Fly to the Eastern Gates of Hrad Spein, find Egrassa of the House of the Black Moon or Milord Alistan Markauz, and tell them that that Harold is alive, and a prisoner of the Firstborn. The orcs also have the Horn, and they are taking me to the Labyrinth. And also tell them where you met me. Is that clear?”
The flinny repeated every single word like a parrot. I nodded and put the ring down on the ground. The dragoatfly immediately landed on the precious item, and the flinny, hurrying in case I changed my mind, tied the ring to the belly of his little flying mount.
I watched all the details and, to be quite honest, I felt a bit nervous. The doubts gnawing at my heart were perfectly understandable—the lad had been paid in advance, but would he do the job or just fly straight home, and then laugh with his relatives at how smartly he’d diddled one of the beanpoles?
Something must have shown in my face, because the flinny cast a quick glance at me and chuckled sympathetically.
“Relax, man. We always do the job, that’s professional etiquette.”
What damn fancy words he knew! Well, if it was “professional etiquette,” I definitely could relax.
“They might not be at the gate.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” the flinny said with a nonchalant shrug. “I’ll look around for them. How long ago could they have left?”
I reckoned it up.
“Three or four days.”
“Excellent! Good health, man!”
“When will you reach the entrance to Hrad Spein?”
“At noon today,” the flinny replied. Seeing my look of amazement, he chuckled. “We have our own little secrets when it comes traveling round Zagraba, otherwise the news we carry would be too old to have any value.”
“Hurry, flinny.”
“Don’t teach a cock to crow, man! What you have given me is priceless, so, out of simple politeness, after I find your friends, I’ll warn the right people. Forward, Lozirel!”
Before I could even ask who the flinny had decided to warn, the dragoatfly had disappeared into the night sky, bearing away the tiny little rider and my great big hope.
“Let’s hope the flinny will find your friends and they can get us out of this in time,” said a voice behind me. I started and swung round.
Glo-Glo was gazing at me with a mocking smile. The old goblin had been awake all the time I was talking to the flinny.
In the thieves’ profession, one of the indisputable virtues is being able to wait. On the roof of a building, in a dark, dusty cubbyhole, up to your throat in shit—it doesn’t matter where you are or who you’re waiting for, but if you’re patient, you’ll always be lucky. So after the flinny flew off, I tried to put him out of my mind, otherwise the time would have dragged catastrophically slowly.
Four days went by, and the orcs still weren’t thinking of leaving. The Firstborn didn’t pay any attention to us, except for Olag checking to make sure we weren’t getting up to anything, and Fagred casting dark glances in our
