Lex Trent versus the Gods Page 21

  Schmidt sighed and turned back to the crone. Lex saw him whisper something in her ear. At once she stopped crying, looked up at Schmidt as if seeing him properly for the first time and, to Lex’s astonishment, hugged him!

  ‘Oh, Marvin,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Marvin?’ Lex repeated. ‘You two don’t know each other do you?’

  Schmidt said nothing but Lex could tell from his face that he was feeling very uncomfortable indeed.

  ‘Oh, my Gods,’ Lex gasped, as a horrific thought struck him. ‘That’s not your mother is it?’

  ‘Of course she’s not my mother,’ Schmidt snapped. ‘Now shut up so I can find out about this crown.’

  ‘Don’t let him kill my cats, Marvin! Don’t let him do it!’

  ‘No one’s going to touch your cats, Matilda,’ Schmidt said. ‘Just tell us where the crown is and we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about, anyway,’ Lex said irritably. ‘What’s the crown to her but a shiny thing? She probably doesn’t even realise what it is. She can’t make herself a queen with it, so what use is it to her?’

  The crone wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve, glared at Lex and then leant up to whisper something to Schmidt. The lawyer frowned and then nodded. He straightened up and looked at Lex. ‘She needs to keep the crown.’

  ‘Why?’ Lex demanded.

  ‘You don’t need to know why,’ Schmidt replied impatiently.

  ‘Well, it’s irrelevant anyway because she’s not keeping it. There’s a prophet out there,’ Lex said, looking at the crone. ‘And he can sense magic. So wherever the crown is hidden, he’ll find it eventually without any help from you.’

  The crone gave a startled yelp at that and turned imploringly to Schmidt. ‘Matilda,’ he said, ‘perhaps you could just let Lex put it on for a few seconds and as soon as he’s done he’ll take it off and give it straight back to you. How about that?’

  ‘That’s no good at all!’ Lex said before Matilda could reply. ‘I want to keep it! Do you know how beautiful those things are meant to be?’

  ‘How does Matilda know you won’t just take the magic crown from her if she shows it to you?’ the crone demanded.

  ‘Because I promise you that won’t happen,’ Schmidt said.

  ‘But this isn’t fair!’ Lex wailed. ‘It doesn’t belong to her!’

  ‘Well, she did find it and by your definition I would have thought that would constitute full legal ownership, Lex,’ Schmidt replied sharply.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Lex said, unwilling to waste any more precious time. ‘All right, she can keep it. Just get her to take me to it quickly before the prophet finds it.’

  ‘It’s still in the house,’ Schmidt said.

  ‘Where?’ Lex stared round suspiciously. There just wasn’t anywhere the crown could possibly have been hidden in the tiny space, unless it was on the crone herself. Lex grimaced with distaste at the idea of having to strip search the old woman.

  ‘She buried it. It’s in the floor.’

  With a decided lack of good grace, the crone squatted down in the centre of the mushroom ring and started scrabbling around in the soft mud. Lex looked on, horrified as she slowly uncovered the crown.

  ‘She buried it in mud?’ he groaned.

  ‘Why? What does it matter?’ Schmidt asked. ‘You can still put it on for a second even if it’s not clean, can’t you?’

  ‘But I want to see how beautiful it is. I’m not putting it on my head like that,’ Lex said, staring at the misshapen lump of mud the crone was offering him. ‘It’ll have to be washed.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so childish, Lex. What does it matter as long as you win the round?’

  ‘If I’m not allowed to keep it, I at least want to see it,’ Lex snapped, snatching the dirty crown from the crone. ‘Now where can I clean it up?’

  ‘There’s a water pump outside,’ the crone said. ‘Matilda is not supposed to use it but she can show you where it is.’

  Lex gave a curt nod. This whole business was really starting to wear on his nerves. It was an undignified way to be crowned. It would have been much nicer if he’d found the crown in the quiet, sun-speckled glade as Lady Luck had intended instead of having to dig it out of a crone’s muck before washing it at some miserable little pump. But the development with Schmidt had been interesting. Very interesting indeed. Although it had naturally hurt to be hit in the face, Lex was glad he had succeeded in making Schmidt lose his temper, making him lose control. It might be useful for the future. People were easier to manipulate when their control wavered like that. And guilt was always a useful thing to have tucked away somewhere. Lex’s curiosity was even more aroused by the revelation that Schmidt knew this crone. Lawyers were not generally on speaking terms with magical peoples. It was frowned on by the Law Society, so this was another thing that Lex carefully filed away under Potential Leverage.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MUGGETS AND WHISKERFISH

  The water pump was in the centre of the fairy godmothers’ village. Their own guide had disappeared when they walked out of the crone’s hut, probably frightened off by all the shouting. They were being watched with curiosity from various windows, but no one came out to take a closer look or to protest at the free use that was being made of their pump. Lex shooed away some loitering duckigs and then knelt down on his knees beside the pump. He deliberately made a show of washing his mouth out, spitting bloody water onto the grass and noting with satisfaction the rather mortified expression on his employer’s face. Then he set to work cleaning the crown.

  When he had finished, the three of them stared at it, enthralled, for several moments and the fairy godmothers in their cottages went to fetch their glasses so they might see it better from their windows. Lex had already known that the royal crowns were made from something even more beautiful and valuable than gold, but he hadn’t known what exactly. Now he clearly saw that the crown was made out of star-silver. The Gods made these crowns out of the stars themselves, imbuing them with an ineffable majesty and beauty that gold would never have been able to achieve. Lex couldn’t take his eyes off it. He wanted to be able to look at it always. There was no way he was ever giving this back to the crone; no way. They would have to prise it from his cold dead fingers first. It was simply shaped with no jewels or gilt adornment of any kind - it simply didn’t need any. Now that it had been washed, the silver shone softly in Lex’s hands, dappling his face with starlight. Lex could see his wavering reflection in the crown’s surface as if he was looking into a clear, still unicorn lake. This was what he lived for - this, right here. The moments when he came face to face with beauty like this.

  After they’d been gazing at it for a few moments, the crone began to fidget restlessly and started whining about getting ‘her’ crown back, so Lex stood up with a sigh, shushed her and then prepared to lower the crown onto its rightful place on his head. He froze in surprise when a madman burst from the trees, waving his arms and chasing a herd of startled-looking duckigs before him.

  ‘Don’t put it on!’ the figure shrieked. ‘Lex, don’t put it on, it’s bewitched!’

  ‘What’s wrong with Lucius?’ Schmidt asked in surprise.

  ‘Ha! He’s too late, as usual,’ Lex said with a grin as his brother sprinted towards him.

  ‘You’re too late, Lucius. I already found the—oompf!’ He broke off as Lucius crashed into him and the two of them went rolling over on the grass, the crown flying out of Lex’s hand.

  ‘You idiot!’ Lex snapped, snatching it up again. ‘You’re too late; I’ve already won. I found it first.’

  ‘Lex, please listen to me,’ Lucius begged, still very much out of breath. ‘The Gods are cheating!’

  ‘Well of course they are; they want to win.’

  ‘The crown is bewitched. It’s a trap!’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s a trap! I overheard Jezra talking with the Judge. He’s bewitched the crown with some kind of poison to take you o
ut of the running. He made the Judge keep the prophet back so that you’d find the crown first. Oh Gods, Lex, you have to believe me; I’m not making this up!’

  ‘All right, calm down, I believe you,’ Lex said calmly.

  ‘You do?’ Lucius beamed up from where he was still sprawled on the ground. He had been sure that Lex would think this was some kind of ploy - that his greed would overturn his common sense and he’d crown himself anyway. ‘Thank the Gods.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Lex examined the crown in his hands thoughtfully. ‘But is it really bewitched?’

  ‘Lex, I swear I overheard Jezra saying that—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I already said I believe you,’ Lex said, waving his hand dismissively.

  ‘Then you understand it’s a trap?’

  Lex glanced at his brother disdainfully. He noticed he still had Zachary tucked under his arm. The ferret was hanging there resignedly. ‘Of course it’s a trap, Lucius; that’s not the issue. The issue is working out exactly what the trap is.’

  ‘But . . . I just told you . . . ’ Lucius stammered.

  Lex sighed. ‘Jezra would have realised that you overheard him.’

  ‘No, no,’ Lucius protested at once. ‘I was careful not to be seen. He told the Judge he realised he wasn’t going to win. He said all he wanted now was to hamper you.’

  ‘How can you be fooled so easily?’ Lex sneered. ‘This is the God of Wit and Daring. He’s not going to accept defeat that easily. Trust me, he’s still playing to win and if you overheard him it’s because Jezra wanted to be overheard. It was a part of his plan.’

  ‘Well, what difference does that make, anyway?’ Lucius said.

  ‘Jezra tricked the Judge,’ Lex said patiently. ‘He got the prophet out of the running before the round had even begun by making up this story about the crown being bewitched. He ensured that you overheard what he’d said so that you would run and tell me not to put on the crown. That much is clear. There’d be a stalemate and you and I would get an equal number of points for this round. A bold lie to frighten me out of winning the crown. If he knew you had overheard and were going to warn me, then he’d have no need to actually bewitch the crown, see?’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ Lucius said.

  Lex ignored him. Of course Jezra knew that Lucius knew. He had anticipated Lucius’s loyalty; he knew the message would be passed on to Lex. And he knew that Lex knew his brother was a terrible liar and so had to be telling the truth. So Lex should be able to put the crown on safely . . . but there was that slight danger that Jezra himself might have been even cleverer than that and also anticipated Lex working out his scam, in which case the crown might be dangerous after all. Lex looked at the beautiful thing in his hand. He just had to put it on. The chances were that this was nothing more than a lie that Jezra had cleverly arranged for Lucius to deliver, for he must have let Lucius overhear deliberately. The whole thing had to be a bluff. Lex glanced at Schmidt. ‘Well, you only live once, don’t you, sir?’ And before anyone could stop him, he lowered the crown onto his head, ignoring the others’ yells of warning.

  Nothing happened.

  Everyone was staring at Lex in silent apprehension. A grin slowly spread across his face. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘What did I tell—’

  And then, without any warning at all, Lex turned into a fish. A whiskerfish, to be precise - with a small, blue, spotted body and long, ridiculous whiskers that fanned out from his face. For a moment everyone stared at the thing, thrashing around in the grass on top of a pile of Lex’s clothes, the crown having rolled off a little distance. Schmidt was the first to recover. He picked Lex up and ran to the nearest fairy godmother cottage with him - dropping him several times because he was thrashing so hard and almost treading on him once. He barged straight into the cottage, past the indignant fairy godmother and dumped Lex into the sink, which he quickly filled with water.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing, young man?’ the fairy godmother said irritably from behind him.

  Schmidt turned around in surprise. It had been a long time since anyone had addressed him as ‘young man’.

  ‘Isn’t it self-evident, madam?’ he snapped. ‘My friend poisoned himself with whiskerfish poison and was suffocating out there.’

  ‘Yes, but you might have knocked before barging in,’ the godmother said huffily. ‘It doesn’t do to forget our manners over these things.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Schmidt said wearily.

  Lucius appeared in the doorway then and pushed past the irate godmother to rush over to the sink. ‘Oh, is he okay?’ he asked, wringing his hands. ‘Is Lex all right, Mr Schmidt?’

  ‘He’ll live,’ Schmidt said dryly. ‘But for the next couple of weeks his life is going to be rather difficult, I’m afraid.’

  The Goddess of Luck was not at all happy with Jezra over the whiskerfish incident. She was furious at the attack on her player and furious that Jezra had managed to bewitch the crown behind her back. Jezra was pleased to have caused her Ladyship inconvenience, but of course the plan had not worked as well as he’d hoped, for the whiskerfish poison he’d used was not lethal and Lex had still won the round. So really there wasn’t anyone who was all that happy about what had happened. Except, perhaps, for Zachary. When Schmidt had asked the fairy godmother if she had anything with which they could transport Lex back to the ship, she had grudgingly given them a small plastic bag and Schmidt had scooped Lex up in this and given the bag to Lucius to carry. Unfortunately, they had only gone a few steps from the cottage before Zachary leapt up and punctured the bag with his sharp carnivorous teeth so that water started pouring out and Lex had to be rushed back to the fairy godmother’s sink again, much to her tight-lipped irritation.

  Then Schmidt and Lucius had an argument over whether Zachary had been truly trying to eat Lex or not.

  ‘He only has a ferret brain,’ Lucius whined. ‘He can’t understand. He probably thought Lex was lunch, or something. ’

  ‘Well, just keep an eye on him, would you?’ Schmidt snapped. ‘He’s been a ferret for so long he probably can’t remember being human. If he got hold of Lex he could kill him instantly.’

  When they got back to the ship, Schmidt found a large transparent plastic container in the larder that had been used to store spider snacks. He tipped these out, filled the makeshift tank with water and poured the water from the plastic bag into it so that Lex fell into the tank where he could swim about agitatedly.

  ‘What’s going to happen to him?’ Lucius asked anxiously, pressing his nose against the side of the tank to stare in at his brother.

  ‘For the next week or so he’ll alternate daily between his usual charming self and this . . . little fish.’

  ‘But what are we going to do?’ Lucius cried, wringing his hands again.

  ‘Oh, stop flapping, Lucius! There isn’t anything we can do,’ Schmidt said impatiently. ‘We’ll just have to wait for it to wear off. In the meantime, do you know anything about caring for whiskerfish?’

  It was an aggravating thing to have to spend one day as a fish and one as a human, but the real problem of it was that whiskerfish needed to eat at least once every couple of hours and - as they had no teeth whatsoever - they needed soft, mushy food. But although Schmidt turned the larder inside out looking for seaweed, flotsam or sea cucumbers, he was unable to find anything of the sort. It was all starting to look rather serious because whiskerfish absolutely had to eat once every two hours or they’d starve to death. Lucius volunteered to mash up some bananas he’d found and put them in the tank, but whiskerfish-Lex wouldn’t touch them and it looked, for a worrying few moments, as if he was not going to survive . . .

  But then Schmidt found a box of muggets. Now muggets, as any fisherman knows, are made from a mixture of leech brains, jellyfish legs, maggot eggs and octopus tentacles, and are the best fishing bait ever created. They were seafood - of a type - and they were soft. It was also their only chance. So Schmidt dropped one into the tank, praying to the Gods that
Lex would eat it. As it turned out, muggets were apparently divinely delicious to whiskerfish and Lex gobbled the thing up in no time. Based on Schmidt’s calculations, they had enough to last two weeks as long as they were careful. The problem, though, was that whilst this mixture was perfectly delicious and sustaining to the whiskerfish, to humans it was a mildly poisonous combination that the human body was incapable of digesting - not that any sensible person would ever try, for the muggets tasted as disgusting as they looked and smelt.

  Because Lex needed to be fed every two hours as a fish, Schmidt and Lucius took alternate night shifts. Then, on the days when Lex was human again, they caught up on some sleep whilst Lex spent most of the day throwing up over the side of the ship. He was always worse in the mornings, when the remnants of muggets he’d eaten the day before were still undigested in his body. Within twenty-four torturous hours he would just be starting to feel like he was merely ill as opposed to dying when he would turn back into a fish that gobbled muggets all day.