Detective Nicely Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf (23 page)

Highbury finally left and we both let out a sigh. We did another bigger sigh for the continual folly that is the lot of the people of Widergard. This last one was joined by a sneeze in my left ear.

‘What a little sweetheart,’ said a small, deep, yet familiar voice. ‘I get soaked to the skin and then hang around, freezing to death in a storeroom, while some jerk-off with more cheekbones than is strictly necessary on anyone’s face gives some mouth-jabber straight out of the
Boy’s Own Book of Bigotry
, and not once did he even mention the pixies.’

And from my shoulder hopped Wilmer. ‘Old Races, pah, what does he know about Old Races? He wouldn’t recognise a brownie if he found one asleep in his milk in the morning.’ Wilmer’s wet pointed hat hung limply from his head, and he wore a miniature trenchcoat tied tightly round his fat gut. Into the belt was thrust a small but very sharp-looking fruit knife. He shook himself to get rid of excess rainwater.

‘Wilmer!’ I said, with relief.

‘The same.’ He bowed low to us both and then poked his tongue at the door, accompanying it with a rude gesture involving one finger and a bent elbow.

‘A pixie,’ said Thelen, slightly incredulous.

‘Yeah, how about an introduction to the lady, fat boy?’ said Wilmer.

‘How about you cut us free first?’ I replied.

‘Sure, I can help you with these here ropes.’ The pixie set about the ropes with his effective blade, humming an old pixie song as he worked:

‘Harden, harden, harden hamp,

I will neither grind nor stamp,

If you’d given me better gear,

I’d have served you many a year,

Thrift may go, bad luck may stay,

I shall travel far away.’

The first of my ropes fell away from my feet and I could feel some blood returned to where blood has every right to be.

‘So that’s the good news. The bad news is: I can’t do much about your pointy-eared pal out there. Slightly punching above my weight.’ Wilmer wielded his knife expertly, continuing his somewhat disjointed story as he went about the ropes around my arms and chest.

‘So, I says to Arito, “I smells burning”, and he says, “Must be supper”, and I says, “Don’t smell like no supper to me, not unless you’ve taken to cooking the bedroom.” He goes to the bedroom door and then whoosh: the wall blows in before he gets there!

‘I have to help us disappear double quick, which is something of a knack that us pixies have – don’t ask, as it’s a union thing. Anyway, Arito, he says: “I think maybe we should stay disappeared for a while, but you find that Nicely Strongoak, he should know we are safe, and warn him ’cos these same characters as set the fire in our hole, they might well be after him.”’

Wilmer finished my ropes and set to on Thelen’s as I massaged some life back into my hands and feet.

‘So look for you I did, and find you I did – eventually. Which, I guess, could easily be construed as a perfect case of locking the cattleshed door after the dragon’s eaten your cows, seeing the mess you is now in, but you are a hard dwarf to track down, even with pixie power! All over the Citadel I flies and then end up here! It’s a good job I had a good sniff of you back in Little Hundred – and your aftershave is so distinctive – or I would have lost you completely, and then where would you have both been, huh?’

The little guy could talk the four feet off a fell beast and then persuade him to take up embroidery.

Finally Wilmer had finished his knife work at last and now Thelen and I were both stretching tired and aching limbs.

‘Wilmer,’ I finally managed to interrupt his flow, ‘you have already done enough to keep you in nectar for life, but, if you want to go for tonight’s big, Top-of-the-Tree, once in an elf’s lifetime prize, I need to ask a couple more favours. Can you get back to Arito, double quick? Ask him to contact Ralph at the Citadel Guard – he knows who I mean. Tell Arito to warn Ralph to expect something big, very big, on the civil disorder front. It will appear as if it’s gnomes responsible, but it won’t be, that’s very important; they are not gnomes doing this – no matter what it may look like!’

The pix saluted and made as if to go.

‘Hang on, there’s more. Ralph needs to contact Joss Corncrack at the
Citadel Press
and tell him the whole story, how certain factions are trying to stir up trouble for political ends. Joss needs to blow the whole thing sky-high. Take pictures of all the mess being caused by these Surf Elves and their friends, and if he can persuade them to get a scroll out on the streets, telling all, in less time than it takes a pixie to sneeze – no offence – we might still be able to keep the Citadel from falling apart.’

‘Can do, Fat Boy.’ One last salute and Wilmer turned, and then he was – gone. I must have blinked once and there he was – back again.

‘Almost forgot, there was another message for you from Arito as well. He said you would understand: “There ain’t no such elf!” Make sense to you? ’Cos it don’t mean diddly to me.’

‘It’s beginning to, Wilmer. The fog is lifting, even if the path’s not clear. Now go with our thanks, a lot depends on you!’

‘I’m out of here. Just one thing, see if you can do something about pretty boy next door, will you? We got a problem child there. And I would prefer it if whatever you came up with involved a spank and the swallowing of a lot of teeth.’ Wilmer tipped his hat to Thelen and was gone for good.

‘Neat trick,’ said Thelen.

She was still in a pretty bad state, feeling a lot worse than yours truly, as she had been bound for some time before my abortive rescue attempt. I got to my feet, not a moment too soon.

The door opened and in stepped Highbury. His mouth formed an ‘O’ of surprise and then he made as if starting to speak. I knew it was probably going to be some prolonged fable. It would probably mention ‘Sons of Stone’ a few times and maybe other stuff about race and such, and to be frank I had been powdered, half-drowned, beaten, maced and bitten and I was not in the mood for it. I wrapped his stomach around my fist and I will not say it did not feel good. I half caught him as he fell, and I did it again. That felt even better. Next I took his long straight nose and spread it all over his face a bit. This had the effect of sending him out of the storeroom, past his astonished compatriots and bursting through the beach hut door into the night and onto the wet sand. Handing off the other elves with closed fists, I followed him at speed. He was coming to on the strand and just drawing his shooter. I kicked it right into the ocean. It took the shine off my shoes, but it was some terrific kick.

Highbury shook himself around. The rain fell in sheets, making the night even darker, but could not wash off the blood pouring down his face. His eyes were murderer blue as he shakily got up, sand clinging to his fancy uniform.

‘You should not have done that, dwarf.’ The blood had reached his mouth, outlining those perfect teeth like a goblin’s mouthwash. ‘Now you are going to see an elf lord angry – very angry.’

The sudden flare caught my gloom-accustomed vision by surprise. An elf lord unmasked! I’d read all about that. I stepped back blinded, vaguely aware of the other elf lights behind me that had joined the party. I knew that these eldritch pyrotechnics were mostly for show, but it was a good show, and despite myself I was impressed.

‘Amateur hour,’ shouted Thelen, suddenly by my side and thrusting a convenient length of hardened driftwood into my bruised but ecstatic mitt, ‘what better way to advertise their whereabouts?’

Thelen was right, they were like burning torches, even in the rain-filled night, while we might as well have been wearing invisibility caps. She didn’t bother with any light show, she just got on with business and we proceeded to wreak some havoc with our land-and-sea-forged weaponry while they stumbled around in the dark trying to get to grips with our unhampered violence. I brought two of the away team down with axe-like swings to the knees that had kneecaps snapping like popping corn. For the home team Thelen was darting around in the sheets of rain like a will-of-the-wisp on Moondust, wielding her bleached branch like a quarter-staff and cracking skulls like it was going out of fashion.

The numbers game was not on our side though, as further Surf Elves soon turned up from other parts of the beach, and we soon found ourselves standing back-to-back on the sodden sand as the ring of light tightened around us. Any moment one of them was going to remember the rest of the shooters in the beach hut and then our goose was not just cooked, but well rested and ready for carving.

‘Sorry, Nicely,’ shouted Thelen, still keeping the Surf Elves well out of grabbing distance with her twirling staff.

‘Hey, don’t be!’ I shouted back, brushing water from my face. ‘I haven’t had this much fun since I did door-keep duties at the Cross-dressing Goblins’ Midwinter Ball and refused entry to a Hobgoblin queen in a tiara. How was I to know she wasn’t in drag? Now that was a fight!’ I caught a slight elf lad on the calf and sent him limping away.

‘Oh, I’m not worried about the brawling – just remembered I never did teach you how to surf.’ She punctuated her speech with a tremendous backswing that sent another elf flying back to the Hidden Lands. I landed a blow on an unprotected noggin that floored the elf but left me with a broken weapon. Fortunately I spotted a dropped sword in the surf and grabbed at it. A few swings of this gave them all something to think about.

Finally I heard the sound of a shooter bolt being pulled back, cutting through the wind and rain. It was beginning to look like our dancing days were over. The blast, though, went over our heads and I heard a familiar loud booming voice curse in a language I didn’t understand, before an elf screamed as if falling from a very great height.

‘Very nasty, very nasty. You all should know better,’ shouted the still unplaced voice.

This was accompanied by what sounded like a mad swarm of angry bees, if bees came in luminous blue and darted and stung elves faster than the eye could follow. The elves were completely distracted now and thrown into ten different types of confusion.

‘Curse you to the blackest Pit of Tallengore, dwarf!’ screamed Highbury through the storm and rain, as he batted off the stinging blue bees.

And then the surrounding lights and sounds were lost, like fireflies consumed by a dwarfsmith’s furnace. Suddenly all the world was bleached white and a new voice, booming with authority and completely drowning out Highbury, cried out, first in elvish and then in common speech: ‘I think this has all gone on long enough.’

What happened next is hazy. It was like a physical assault – perpetrated via the eyeballs. I was blinded, staggering a bit and my head felt split, as if by an axe. We were led out of the rain and I remember Thelen’s voice, asking something in elvish, and then a one-sentence answer in the common tongue: ‘She awaits.’

At some point I was separated from Thelen: cool cloths were placed on my eyes; the sounds of many elvish voices, worried and concerned. Then I found myself on the back of a horse, of all things. Me, on the back of a horse! What age was this? I would have laughed, if the pain had let me. The horse sped through the rain. Time passed. It felt faster than my Dragonette with the ragtop down. I could hear the rain falling around me, but somehow we were not getting wet. Then finally, strong arms lifted me from the saddle and I was carried somewhere warm that smelled of every good thing you can remember from your childhood and every good thing you wanted when you was all grown up. Finally a deep brown voice I recognised said, ‘Drink this, Master Dwarf, I seem to remember you have a taste for it.’

‘Grove!’ I said, swallowing the Tree-friend’s gravy. ‘Thanks, that’s as good as I remember. I thought I recognised your voice on the beach, but what are you doing here? And where is here exactly?’ I tried to get up, but was pushed firmly down again. ‘Take these bandages off me, will you, I can’t see a thing!’

‘Ho hum, I think perhaps not. No, indeed not. You would be well advised to have these dressings on a good while longer, oh yes.’

Another recognisable voice joined in: ‘He’s right, Nicely. I have added a powerful lotion of my design, but it needs a few hours to take away the sting.’

‘Tolly? Is that you?’

‘Indeed it is.’

‘Those blue stinging things … that wasn’t down to you, was it? That wasn’t actual wizardry, was it?’

Tolly laughed, with only the smallest trace of malevolence. ‘Actual wizardry, in this day and age? Surely not?’

‘Have either of you seen Thelen? Is she safe?’

‘Safe, oh yes. Very safe,’ Grove said. ‘A fine fighter that one, very fine. I’d forgotten just how invigorating physical violence can be.’ He laughed his rolling Tree-friend laugh. ‘I haven’t felt quite this young in an age.’

‘I still say that you didn’t need to throw him that high,’ said Tolly.

‘Need? No. But want? That is a different mater entirely.’

‘Would either of you please assist with some explanations?’ I said tersely, before I started hitting folk again.

Grove and Tolly, however, were gone, but another voice – elf this time – said: ‘She is safe, she is with her mother.’ Well, there’s a relief – I’d been taken home to meet the family. I was distinctly ill prepared for house calls, though.

Then we were moving again. More horse transport; hadn’t these elves heard about the steam engine? Then I half-walked and was half-carried, not unkindly, through tunnels that distinctly shouted ‘underground’ to my dwarf nose. The drink had eased the pain, but I still wanted to speak to Grove. I had a lot of questions that I thought he could help me with. It would have to wait, as I felt a seat arm pressed into my hand, solid and welcoming. And another voice, female, quintessence of elf, texture of polished gold, neither young nor old, spoke to me: ‘Please sit down, Master Detective. You may remove the cloths now. Your vision should be restored, do not be concerned. The elf-light is never permanent.’

Carefully I did as she said and opened my eyes. Coloured after-images danced before me and then settled down. I could see I was in a room, sparsely furnished, the curtains drawn and only one shaft of early-morning sun let through to light the interior. I realised that the storm must have subsided. I’m quick like that.

The room had a feeling of not having been lived in for a long, long time. At one end, seated on a high chair, her back to the window, sat the elfess. She spoke again: ‘Please excuse the curtains, I find the sunlight trying after all this time. Also I think perhaps this is better for your vision – no?’

I nodded my approval.

‘It is not many who chance to see an elf lord unmasked.’

‘Highbury?’

She laughed, a forest stream. ‘No, I do not mean one of these latter-day elves, I mean a true elf lord from the Hidden Lands, the one who came to your rescue along with Grove and the wizard.’

‘We weren’t doing too bad.’

‘No, Master Dwarf, you were not doing that bad.’ A pause. ‘Do you know who I am?’

I thought about it for a while. ‘I believe I do. Can’t say I’m any too sure of the proper form of address, though.’

That passed her by, she seemed to drift for a moment. ‘I knew your famous forefather.’ The change in tack caught me for a moment. ‘Do you know of whom I speak?’

I shuffled in my chair slightly awkwardly, like a youngster caught stealing pies. Then I said: ‘There were rumours, legends, but many families lay claim to that kinship.’

She laughed again. ‘And many may be right. How do you say it now? He got around.’ This time I shared her laughter.

‘He looked rather like you, there is no doubting the family resemblance. And he was courageous and resourceful – characteristics you also appear to have acquired. He was devoted to me, and I, I for my part was, was very … fond of him.’

‘This is all very pleasant, my lady, but it’s history.’

‘Not for me, Master Detective, not for me.’ She brought herself back to the present with an effort – who knows what ageless paths she walked at other times? I had heard of the curse of the elves. How the memories of all those ages, those countless years of experience could overflow from wherever they were housed within those miraculous minds and begin to leak into everyday life, causing problems that the demented would pity if they only could.

Rising now with all the ease of apparent youth she walked behind her chair, resting lightly on its carved back. Her face was still in shadow when she spoke again. ‘I suppose you know why I am here?’

‘The dead elf?’

‘Yes. The dead elf.’

‘So, a dead elf?’ I could see us playing this game until the sun had gone down again.

‘A number of very influential people have been in contact with me, not least a wizard and a Tree-friend of your acquaintance, both of whom have made personal requests for my help. You have made some important friends, it seems, as well as important enemies. I do not lightly take the Sea Path back from the Hidden Lands to Widergard after all this time. Although, I must admit it is interesting, yes interesting, to see how things have altered.’

‘How about the dead elf?’

‘Your forefather was also very much to the point.’ She walked slowly towards me and for the first time I saw her face lit by the dawn light. For a minute I almost stopped breathing, the resemblance to Thelen was remarkable; plus, of course, the experience of a fair fraction of the age of the planet. ‘This is a difficult tale to tell.’ She changed vein again in a manner I was beginning to find just a trifle annoying – but I was not about to hack off an elf queen.

‘Let me first tell you another story, Master Detective. Do you know anything concerning evolution?’

‘Not over-informed, though I do seem to be picking up a bit of late.’

‘A wealth of new evidence concerning the evolution of the Peoples of Widergard is coming from discoveries of fossils found in the furthest south.’

‘The furthest south, who would have thought it?’

‘Who indeed? I am afraid all the rather colourful stories of our origins may indeed be nothing more than stories.’

‘Even the ones the elves tell?’

‘Yes, even the elves do not hold all the secrets.’

‘Then why isn’t this all making the daily scrolls?’

‘It might not be expedient.’

‘I never thought expediency was top priority for the parchment pushers – circulation’s more the thing.’

‘Perhaps some pressure has been applied.’

‘Ah, pressure!’

‘It is, of course, election year.’

‘Of course. And what is so incendiary a story that this pressure is necessary?’

‘That we – and by that I mean all people of Widergard – we may have had our beginnings in a rather undistinguished and now sadly vanished ape-like ancestor that once roamed the grasslands of the furthest south, scraping a living eating nuts and berries.’

‘Yes, that would be a story.’

‘So, strangely, it looks as if the furthest south may turn out to have some claim as being the ancestral home of all the peoples of Widergard.’

‘Not west! Or north or east, but south?’

‘Yes, scholars have found the fossil bones of a number of upright tool-using creatures. Two of the earliest forms of these creatures share similar characteristics, but one is a smaller, more graceful form, whilst the other is much larger, more robust. These creatures are thought to have travelled from the south to explore the northern lands. The gracile form is not thought to have tarried here long, but walked across a landbridge that once linked these lands to the Hidden Lands themselves. Once there, in its unique environs, they evolved to become the elves. Some of the most robust forms stayed in the forests of Widergard where they became the Tree-friends, whilst others of their kin journeyed further north, and in the harsh climate of the mountains evolved to become the trolls.’

I whistled quietly.

This was going to go down big with the Citadel Alliance Party.

‘Meanwhile in the south there arose the line of men. An early form of man, larger and more brutal, left the south first and in the colder climate of the north and east evolved to become the goblins.’

‘That’s going to please Petal.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing. I’m sorry, please continue.’

‘Next there arose the true men, many of whom remained in the south, although others again took the northern road. Coming to the lands already inhabited by trolls and goblins.’

‘And the gnomes?’

‘The gnomes seem to be a very recent branch of the Tree of Widergard. It is said that there is a race of gnomes in the furthest south, who consider themselves to be nothing other than smaller men.’

‘Interesting. Assuming that nobody still has the slightest idea of anything concerning the pix and the fey, that still leaves one outstanding matter.’

‘Yes, Master Detective: you dwarfs.’

‘As you say, us dwarfs.’

‘It would be simplest to think of you as a primitive off-shoot of the earliest elves.’

I had to treat myself to a snort – elf queen or not, this was not going to go down well with the Brothers either.

‘But here all the recent theories appear to come unstuck. Were the dwarfs instead descendants of the robust creature that was cousin to the gracile elves and gave rise to the Tree-friends and trolls? However, there is no fossil evidence yet found to link the dwarfs to any of the other evolving creatures of the furthest south. No evidence of the dwarfs at all until they appear, as if by magic, in the hills of the north.’

‘Which strangely matches the dwarfs’ own stories of their origins.’

‘Yes, perhaps your old stories really are old, even by elf standards. There is a theory that the dwarfs evolved in the farthest east, from a totally different ape-like creature, and that it is from the east that the dwarfs migrated to the Northern Mountains – perhaps because of an influx of primitive goblins. This would mean that the whole of evolution has occurred twice; that the random chance that has produced intelligence and consciousness has happened in two separate branches of ape-like creatures. In the same way that evolution has led then to the evolution of all the different races of Widergard.’

‘A chance, you say?’

‘That is how the scholars refer to it. An accidental event in the makeup of the body; nothing more than a mishap – a sport – but oh, what a mishap, to gain so much from so little. And who is to say that such accidents are still not occurring? Master Detective,’ she looked straight at me. ‘The elf you knew as Truetouch, he was not exactly as he seemed.’

I cut her off to save anybody getting too excited by all the suspense. ‘I suppose that was because he was a man, one Leo Courtkey.’

Her voice showed surprise. ‘You knew?’

‘Only pieces, it only just came properly together, because that’s just the kind of dragon-hot detective I am! I did have worries that I’d not managed to find a picture of Leo in his racing days. Of course, as a rider, he was generally the right size and build for a Wood Elf, but I could not make all the proper connections at that time, not without Arito’s knowledge. It’s still hard to believe; after all, I met him, talked with him, he seemed as much an elf as any I’ve met, more so than some.’

‘I know, I have seen him, albeit dead; elvish, but not an elf.’

‘Doesn’t that just wet on the wizard’s fireworks!’

‘If you want to come down to the mortuary, Master Detective, I can show you. As you may be aware, hair does not continue to grow after death …’

‘Yup, just a myth.’

‘There is, however, some contraction of the skin, though, that produces a similar effect, and I can assure you Master Detective, elves do not have dark roots.’

‘Oh Leo, a bottle blond! But what about his ears and those cheekbones and more importantly his general, well, elfishness?’

‘Reformational knife work to enhance the ears, cheekbones and some other, less noticeable, minor points. And as for the rest, well, it would be nice to think that there was something in his ancestry that could explain it; elvish blood that just needed some chance meeting of parents to be expressed, but the possibility is too remote. We checked. Leo Courtkey, it seems, was something akin to one of these “sports” the scholars talk about.’

We both let the implications sink in. It was enough to make a seer drop-kick his crystal ball. I couldn’t help but think of the elf in the linen summer coat with the winning smile. Poor lonely Leo, I hope you were happy back there as Truetouch, for a while at least. The speech by Highbury came back to mind. ‘An abomination,’ I said out loud.

She misunderstood me. ‘Who knows? Man is unique amongst all the races of Widergard. The shortest-lived and yet the most fecund. They are the stuff of evolution. Who can tell what their fate might be? It is, perhaps, a terrifying thought.’