Search for Dastardly Part 4

The gnome watched the knight and the tough, plucky girl dismount their horse upon arrival at the palace. After they had ascended the wide steps, he procured a large hemisphere, hollow and covered in rubber alternating with chunks of metal.

Nuff then approached the horse. 'Easy there,' he mumbled. 'Just need to see what I think you've seen.'

He scrabbled his way onto the back of the beast – which was visibly irritated but probably hoping he would feed it another apple. When he placed the hemisphere like a cap on its head, he produced another device from his cavernous coat. This one resembled a glowing window lined with brass tubing.

'I knew it!' he said, not a second later. 'This knight was with Dastardly.'

Nuff then leapt onto the cobbles below and replaced the window device inside his clothing. He was halfway up the stairs himself when he turned to notice the hemisphere still on the horse's head.

Damn it, he thought, before shaking his head. Just leave it there.

Following the other two, the gnome opened the gigantic doors by leaning hard against them. The effort required by someone his size was diminished by the fact that he didn't need as much of a crack to squeeze inside.

Voices were coming from the far side of the entrance hall. Nuff went towards the throne room to eavesdrop.

***

Waory was almost finished telling Adrian and Renda about the events of the previous day, before he detailed what had happened since.

'When the Land-Regent killed the freelancer, I couldn't just stand by. Despite what you may think, servants have a lot of power under the laws of the plains.'

'What use is that?' Renda said.

Adrian grinned amiably. 'I think my bold friend here means: what did you actually do?' Renda raised an eyebrow.

'The Civil Authorities realised the more power that the workers have, the less likely you are to have a situation were, say, a trusted advisor plans to usurp the throne. I used the law to arrest Sirus for murder, and it worked.'

'They didn't think that you were trying out usurpation for yourself?'

The advisor shook his head. 'The investigators were brought in, everything went swimmingly...'

Adrian paced across to the vacant throne. 'Okay, so why did the Land-Regent act so rashly? I thought he was chosen for his cool head.'

'We aren't sure, but the investigators did a search of his quarters in case they might have leads, such as another country paying to have Mr Medieval killed.'

The knight stared back at the advisor. 'They found something, didn't they?'

'They found a book that had been missing from the library.'

'That's it?' Renda spat. 'A stolen book?'

Waory shook his head again, like some pantomime character. 'We're drifting off topic here. The reason I needed you to come was because of Mr Medieval's body.'

'Just get to the point.'

'At first we thought it might have something to do with the Land-Regent's poison, but –'

The advisor was suddenly on the receiving end of two dangerous glares.

'His face has disappeared, his clothes are missing and we can't find his identification papers, happy now?'

Renda and the knight swapped puzzled looks.

'So you can't actually confirm that it's him that died,' said Adrian. 'Is it possible that this was all a set up, or a trick?'

The man attempted to appear pensive but came off as stroking an imaginary beard. 'I saw the freelancer die on the balcony, there's no doubt about it.'

Having chosen the best time to make a grand entrance, the gnome joined the circle of people by the throne.

'We could use the book to find out what's really going on,' he said. 'Sorry to barge in like this, the name's Nuff.' Nuff Sed turned to Adrian. 'I saw you get off that airship yesterday, the one my cousin Plen was piloting.'

Before the knight had fully registered this, Nuff continued speaking.

'I'd bet all of my gold on that book being an Illuman relic.'

'The dark artefacts?' Waory said, apparently shocked. 'The Illuman artefacts were destroyed some time before the first World Congress.'

Adrian snapped his fingers. 'That's the connection, it's all there in the library.'

The knight began to elaborate while the others stared on dumbly.

'The research papers didn't describe them, but the author witnessed Illuman relics causing madness to those who used them “too greedily”. Waory – this book probably did the same thing to the Land-Regent that the glass shard did to Siy before we met him.'

'May I see this shard?' the gnome said. Adrian rummaged about in the satchel by his waist, suddenly remembering the night he'd shown some entirely different objects to the dead freelancer. When he found the shard, he passed it sideways to the gnome.

'Interesting,' said Nuff. 'It's like something out of a fairytale.' He pointed to the writing. 'Did you notice this?'

The knight shrugged. 'Yeah, it says “d'Aseere”, but I couldn't find what that means.'

'This does get us somewhere,' said Nuff. 'Not very helpful though, if you don't want to go mad.'

'Hang on, just hang on everyone,' Renda said, holding her arms up defensively. She looked down at the gnome. 'You said we could use this Illuman book to find out what's going on.'

'Theoretically, yes,' Nuff replied. 'As far as I know, the Illuman relics' purpose was to inform their creators of things they could not otherwise know.' He indicated Waory. 'Your Regent was probably using the book to get ahead on a commerce deal, or something.'

Adrian shivered. 'If we are to read this book to find out what happened to Dastardly –'

'And hopefully stop Krotar and Nius from turning the land inside out,' Renda added.

The knight continued. 'We had better make this quick. Waory, can you requisition the book?'

'I recommend that we pay the Library a visit. Let's get going.'