could be said for us, although we were just sitting on their backs. The dryads hardly spoke to us, limiting themselves to brief meaningless phrases, although the little Daughters of the Forest were emphatically polite and affable with Egrassa.
The gobliness Kli-Kli had been pensive and dejected. There was no more of the tomfoolery that had become so familiar. The jester had disappeared. Kli-Kli had become herself, and I wasn’t used to that. To be honest, I sometimes caught myself thinking that I rather missed the relentlessly cheerful fool.
A brief break was followed by more furious galloping through the autumn forest. The huge creatures hurtled along as if they were fleeing from a fire, and we had to hold on tight. They didn’t stop until it was twilight, and I had the impression that our horned steeds could have run without stopping for a couple of days, and the darkness didn’t bother them at all.
The campfire was burning. Mumr was quietly playing his reed pipe. The dryads and the elk had disappeared into the dark forest, leaving us to ourselves.
“Where do they go off to?” asked Eel.
“To talk to the forest,” Egrassa replied after a short pause. “They find out the news, ask for advice, maybe something else as well. I don’t know.… Neither we nor the orcs have ever learned to listen to the voice of the forest. So I can’t really tell you. Maybe Kli-Kli knows more.”
“No, I don’t. I know just as much as Egrassa. The forest’s daughters are the only ones who can talk to it. Well, and the flinnies … sometimes. Our old folks say the goblins used to be able to talk to Zagraba, but that was in the distant past. Zagraba doesn’t speak to us now, the only ones we can talk to are the most gossipy forest spirits.… Too much was lost during the Gray Age.…”
Lamplighter had gone to see how the gnome was, and suddenly we heard him shout: “Hallas is awake!”
Lucky was sitting slumped against a tree, feeling at his bandage. When he spotted us, the gnome gave a crooked grin and then hissed at the pain.
“Who wrapped me up so nice and tight?”
“Lie down,” said Kli-Kli, darting across to him. “You were wounded.”
“Well, since I’m talking and I’m alive, it can’t be too serious,” the gnome chuckled, but he stopped fiddling with the bandage. “Who did this to me?”
“Don’t you remember anything?”
“I do remember something,” the gnome said thoughtfully. “But abyss of the depths! My head’s spinning and my face is all on fire! Why don’t you say something?”
“You’ve lost an eye,” Eel said harshly, deciding not to hide anything. “You were badly hurt. If we hadn’t had help, we’d have sung you the ‘Farewell’ by now.”
Hallas chewed on his lips and thought for a moment.
“Then I was lucky. An eye’s not a head. I’ll get over it somehow.… But where’s Deler? And I don’t see Milord Markauz anywhere, either.…”
“They weren’t as lucky as you were,” said Eel, telling the hard truth again. “They’re dead.”
“Deler … How did he…?”
Eel told him.
“Leave me,” the gnome mumbled after he heard the story, and turned away.
Lamplighter was about to say something, but Eel just shook his head gently. We all went back to the fire, but Kli-Kli stayed with the gnome, despite his request.
“They were very close. It’s strange, really,” Eel said unexpectedly. “When Lucky came to the Lonely Giant, he and Deler very nearly came to blows. And then during a raid Hallas’s platoon was caught in an ambush set by the Crayfish Duke. A magician of the Order led them into it. They were going to string the gnome up, but Deler saved him, almost took him down off the scaffold. After that the gnome got his nickname of Lucky, and he and the dwarf were absolutely inseparable, although never a day went by without them quarreling over something.…”
“Well, you please yourselves, but I’m going to bed,” Mumr sighed. “We’ll be galloping all day long again tomorrow.”
“Egrassa!” I said, taking the Key out of my bag, “I think you’d better keep this.”
The elf looked at the artifact and hung it round his neck without saying a word. Then he asked: “What are they like, Harold?”
“Who?”
“The Doors.”
I thought about it.
“I can’t describe them properly.”
“I understand,” Egrassa said, and suddenly smiled. “No one can describe them. Probably someday I’ll get the chance to go down and see what the master craftsmen of my people created. It’s very beautiful there, isn’t it?”
“Not all the time,” I replied cautiously. “I’m no great lover of beauty that can bite you, if you understand what I mean.”
“They say there are many hoards of treasure. Did you pick up anything for yourself?” Eel asked, and the corners of his mouth trembled in a faint smile of mockery.
“Not very much,” I muttered, remembering the emeralds that I’d lost. “The orcs took everything I brought out of Hrad Spein.”
“My sympathies,” said Egrassa.
I wondered if he was mocking me or being serious.
“Can I ask a question?” I asked, to change the subject.
“Go ahead.”
“Which orc clan has black-and-white badges?”
“Black and white? You must have got something confused. What made you ask that?”
“I saw the bodies of orcs in the Palaces of Bone. They had black-and-white badges on their clothes.”
“That clan hasn’t existed for a long time. They were The Lost. We wiped them out during the Gray Age.”
“The Lost?” Kli-Kli sat down beside us, caught Eel’s eye, and said, “Hallas has gone to sleep. So, The Lost … that was what you said, wasn’t it? Argad’s clan?”
“Yes, goblin, Argad’s clan. We went to great lengths to wipe it off the face of the earth.”
“Why such determination?”
“Argad led his warriors almost as far as Greenwood and we couldn’t tolerate a slap in the face like that. It took us some time, but we managed to defeat them. The last few hundred of The Lost took refuge in the Palaces of Bone, in one of the seven fortresses that served as checkpoints through which everyone who wished could pass without hindrance. It was as if the black-and-whites had gone completely insane; they started attacking everybody, even their own kinsmen. The other clans turned their backs on them, and that played into our hands. We took that fortress, and our shamans fused Argad and his generals into the central tower. Alive. Or that’s what the legends say. Since then very few have been brave enough to pass through that fortress. My forebears rather overdid things, and the spirits of the dead still take their vengeance on travelers.”
“I walked through it,” I said casually.
“You’ve seen Argad?” Egrassa asked, gazing at me incredulously.
“If one of the dead orcs fused into the tower was Argad, then yes.”
“Then you’re lucky, if you managed to walk through that accursed place safe and sound.”
“Or your legends are mistaken,” Eel retorted in a quiet voice.
“It’s just that Harold’s a Dancer, that’s all there is to it,” said Kli-Kli, offering her weighty opinion. “No one else would have got through.”
“Thank you, Kli-Kli,” I answered her sarcastically. “You’ve really convinced me of just how special I am.”
“But you really are special!” she protested. “You’re a Dancer in the Shadows! The great book
“You’re getting monotonous,” I sighed.
“The dryads are coming,” said Kli-Kli, and Sunpatch and Fluffy Cloud stepped out of the darkness into the circle of light.
