He looked back the way they had come. Nothing stirred in that direction. With few other choices, he decided to keep walking into the ruined town. Assuming that he was simply separated from the others, he guessed that his best bet was to look for them at the great rock that stood at the heart of the city. Or, failing that, to find a way through the ruins, and look for Caewen and Dapplegrim on the open hillside beyond.
He trod a careful way along the old street, looking left and right into gaps in the ruins when he passed them, but saw nothing. He had to thread around some large, dangerously leaning buildings, which made him cautious. After he had walked for some minutes, there was still no sign of the others. He started to walk more carefully, and listen with his good ear. As he stepped lightly on the dirt and stones he did eventually catch a noise: like footsteps and something else… a jangling, as if of bells? It was a faint noise, far off and dimly ringing in the spaces between ruins. It was impossible to know where the noise was coming from. The echoes were too complex.
When the boy came upon the space at the heart of the ruins he was immediately taken aback. So much so that he hesitated and almost didn’t go into the open square at all. Here loomed the huge standing stone, though it looked somehow different to the others. As if perhaps it were a natural spur of stone that had been carved rather than a rock that had been hoisted up on end and set into the soil. Old letters and strange symbols writhed over the lower half of the stone, weathered and age-worn. But it was not the carven stone that drew his eyes. Below the stone there was a wood slab of a table, seemingly fresh-laid with earthenware pottery of a brilliant ruddy glaze. Two massive candles burned steadily at each end of the table and two elaborately carven chairs sat on the far side of the whole assembled sitting.
It looked as if someone had made ready the place for a great meal, but there were no people anywhere in sight, no food, no ovens and no indication who or what had put this table here. In his imagination he thought about how this was the sort of thing that happened in bogle-tales. A brave child would go and sit in one of the chairs and be joined by some Fayree Queen who would make sweetmeats and candied plums appear, and then probably other wonderful magical things would happen.
Or the child might end up a part of the feast if the Fayree Queen was of the more bloodthirsty sort.
Either way, he was in no way going to sit in one of the chairs, nor even go near the table. This thought was redoubled when he noticed that the footsteps and bells were starting to resolve into a noise from one of the nearby ruined arches. He backed away.
As he watched, a strange figure entered the square. It was an old man, bent-backed, pucker-lipped with veins visible in his throat, and a straggle of hair like rank old straw. He wore ruinously old finery, furs and velvets all spotted with holes and rot. On his head was a tarnished crown. Beside him walked an equally old and bent woman in ragged queenly regalia. They both wore fur-trimmed cloaks that trailed muddily along the ground after them. And stranger still, both the ancient king and queen were bent down shorter than the tabletop they approached. Even if they had been standing up tall and straight they couldn’t have stood much above the boy’s own height.
Neither of the odd pair even cast a glance in his direction as they entered. They walked straight to the table and sat down in the high-backed chairs, muttering and clearing their throats as they did. Behind them now followed two similar looking creatures, though these two were younger. They were less wrinkled and their skin was less dusty and veined with age. These two were dressed also in rotten old clothing, but rust-stained armour too, so that they looked like they might have been retainers or perhaps little-folk knights a long time ago, fallen on hard times.
But the oddest thing about this procession was what the taggers-along carried. They both had a tall branching stick each, like a parading pole for a flag, except that the top of the sticks formed a crown of branches. It looked like both of the poles had been cut and polished entirely from a whole young tree. Hanging from the branches were two dozen or more copper-and-glass constructions that looked something like lanterns. Bells and grey ribbons streamed from the crooked branches, so that the whole affair looked like a rippling mass of cloud with lightning intermittently visible in flashes within.
The two attendants thrust their lantern-tree poles into cracks between rocks near the table, bowed low to the old king and queen, then departed in as much a hurry as they could manage.
The king now raised his hooded eyes and looked for the first time at the boy. He stared right at him, pinning him where he had been lurking in the shadows.
“Hullo, little one.”
“Good-day,” replied the boy, uncertain. “I’m sorry to have intruded.”
“Oh, nonsense and flummery. You have not intruded. We have invited you here. We put the invitation into your thoughts. You were summoned to court and you have thusly come.”
“I see.” He didn’t feel as if he had been somehow invited. “Well, then, thank you, sir and lady.”
The king laughed and squinted. With a jittery hand he rubbed spittle off his lips and hacked out several more short laughs. His bulbous nose shone oily. His teeth when they showed between his lips were sharp and curved.
“Uh,” the boy murmured, softly. Then building a little noise in his throat: “If I may ask, sir… uh…” he glanced at the queen but she was slumped and seemed to be staring at the empty plate before her. “Have you chanced to see a young woman and horse? Well, that is, a thing that is sort of a horse.”
“Oh they are about. Here and there. I’ve sent them walking about the place. It’s you I wanted.” His big round eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who I’ve invited and when a king invites you to dinner you ought be a touch more, hrmmm, well… thankful.”
“Dinner. I don’t know if I have time, sir.”
“You have time. I assure you of it.”
He stood uncomfortably in the ruined stone court, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. What should he do now? Looking at the old hunched-up ‘king’ gave him chills. He looked around. It seemed as if he could simply walk away, go out one of the archways or wander away into a gap in the ruins: only he had the distinct feeling that he would end up back here again no matter which way he went.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Hrmmm? Yes, boy?”
“Are you a King of Boggarts? I’m sorry if that’s an impolite question. I don’t know how to talk to kings. And you don’t seem to have many people about. I wondered if you were king of things that will come out after nightfall?”
The king laughed again and this time it was a full belly-laugh. The laughter subsided. “Maybe I’ll keep you for a jester if you should fail to amuse in other ways.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m no Boggart, nor king of night-creatures. I look akin to a Boggart to you?”
“Maybe,” confessed the boy. “I’ve never seen a Boggart. Only heard of them in stories, and you have a frightening air to you, and so I thought, well, that is, um.”
“Not a Boggart,” spat the king. “My people are among the tribes of the Dweorgh, though you might know us as Dwerugh, Dwery or Dwarfie Folk. Mine is the Tribe Ablach. Though I was overthrown and cast out by my nasty nephew, I am a king still, and I am King of the Ablach.” He snuffed, dramatically. “I am that, I am. Call me King Truvallarch Murthu Urmund the Urlfingullarach.”
That would be difficult to remember. “Would it be pleasing to you if I call you just, king?”
He shrugged. “If that suits your simple tongue. Ah. My loyal knights-of-the-axe return and they bear a great feast. Silence, boy, silence now.”
The two retainers were padding towards them down yet another of the narrow ways that lead to this courtyard beneath massive carven stones. They seemed such broken-down and ruined creatures, but wore their expressions heavily, arranging a haughty look across their wrinkled brows.
Now what?
The boy had to hide his surprise when he saw what the creatures were carrying. They had platters holding pitifully poor looking black bread, acorns, red toadstools and badly butchered wild woodland creatures: squirrels, foxes, a badger’s head, a hacked-up haunch of a young fallow deer. They put the platters down with great ceremony. One of them then vanished and fetched back a pitcher of an awful brown and sudsy liquid, which was poured out liberally into the waiting red clay goblets, over-foaming the rims.
The king eyed the feast unenthusiastically. “Blah. Hrrm. A king deserves more than this. Don’t you think boy?”
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose so? I know it to be so.” He started to mutter under his breath and waved a hand with fingernails so thick and hoary and curled that they looked like claws. He passed the hand this way and that over the food. A weird shimmer appeared on the air as if the feast was covered in a gauzy silk blowing on the wind.
“Now,” said the king. “Here is where you live or you don’t live.”
“What?”
“Either you please me in this or you join my subjects.” He waved that same claw-nailed hand at one of the tree-poles with their swaying yellow-glowing lanterns. “Ghost-catchers boy. I like to keep those who disappoint me, and those who betray me, close for all of time. Can you hear their little voices screaming and pleading. “Oh, king, old glorious king! Oh, king! Please, we are sorry! We never meant to betray you! Let us go free! Please! Please! You’d think they’d have been as respectful in life, but no. Blah.”
“No,” said the boy honestly. He heard no such voices, but he did look at the uncanny lights in the lantern-things with a touch more worry and trepidation. He supposed it was possible that an uncanny king might trap shades in little ghaist-gaols. And that might also explain why the white and ghostly hunters were afraid to come into this valley. If this ugly little creature could bind ghosts then even walking ghaists of some power might not be safe around him.
“Well,” answered the withered old king. “I can can hear them. And believe you me, they plead and they plead. Disgusting.”
“Oh,” he replied. “What is it you want me to do then?”
“Cook for me. You are my baker and broiler, roaster, pigeon-potter and pie-encruster today. I can feel you’ve a greater hunger in you than those other two. Or, at least a more natural hunger… that horse-creature is hungry, but I’ll not eat his cooking. Flesh and blood and darker foods.” He shook himself. “But displease me in this and you’ll join my subjects in a little glass house all for your own glimmering soul. Please me, and you and yours will go freely on your way. I avow to it, on my word as a king.”
“Alright.” It was starting to seem that this lonely king was mad. That he had no courtiers or followers or subjects made more sense every moment. “The problem is, though, sir, I don’t have any skills at the hearth or cookpot. I’m not a good choice for a cook.”
“Are you simple, boy? Simple! The food is already made. Look! It is here before us. You need only cook it with words. All my memories are grey and they have had the juices sucked out of them. I can hardly remember the taste of anything but musty stewed weasels, boiled badger hanks and wild greens. Describe for me the finest of feasts. Think of it. Imagine it. Taste it yourself in your mouth. Then the magic upon this table of plenty will do its work.” He leaned back in his chair. “It requires only your instruction. Hrmm. And we shall see how good a cook you are.”
His wife, the queen, finally stirred. She looked at her husband with bleary, confused eyes. “Are we dining, dear?”
He patted the back of her veiny hand with a gentle gesture. “Yes, my love.”
“I am hungry, dear. It won’t be the same ol’ grub will it? Don’t think I could eat another sparrow’s egg.”
“Well…” he cocked one eye at the boy, “That all depends, doesn’t it? That’s for our cook to prove or fail himself upon. He needs to clear his throat and, hrm, and speak to his hunger.”
The boy had never really experienced rich food. But he had smelled the roasts, gravies and dumplings in the drink-house, the meat pies and fresh crusty bread smells from meals that richer folks of the village were able to eat on the feast days. And he had heard taletellers weave their stories about the great feasts of lords and ladies. True, he didn’t know what roast swan with a crust of apple, almond and raisin actually tasted like, but he didn’t think these two knew either. He decided that he could imagine what such a taste might be, and that would hopefully be good enough. Assuming the king wasn’t just plain mad. He took a deep breath and he started to describe a grand and magnificent feast. “The first course are duck’s eggs, poached in vinegar made from the red grapes of the vine grown in deep red soil, and seasoned with ginger, honey, yellow-spice and pepper.”
“Ah,” said the king. “That sounds delightful.” He reached into a spray of weirdly churning and flickering hues that suddenly played upon the table above the food platters. From it he lifted a delicate bowl of blue bone-pottery filled with steaming bright yellow cooked eggs. He picked one out, split it open between his dirty fingernails, sniffed at the blue-grey yolk and popped it into his mouth. He chewed it thoughtfully. “Not without merit. Hrm. Here, love, try one of these.” He offered the bowl to his wife and she reached for it hungrily.