Search for Dastardly Part 5

Adrian refrained from commenting on the unusual brass hat that his horse was wearing when they left the palace, allowing the gnome to remove it while appearing incredibly guilty. As the others descended the steps, the knight began to strip down.

'What is that?' Renda gasped.

Nuff winced. 'I don't know if it's legal.'

'What?' Adrian said. 'Haven't you seen a guy in casual clothes before?'

Gone was the bulky armour that Renda had become accustomed to seeing. Underneath, the knight wore puffy brown pants and a striped tunic – and that wasn't even the biggest crime. Small ruffs encircled Adrian's neck and sleeves, throwing his sensibly groomed hair into sharp relief.

'Are you supposed to be from the middle ages or something?'

Adrian produced a strained grin. 'Look who's talking, Ms Rogue.'

Renda absent-mindedly brushed the front of her leather one-piece and straightened her greaves. Adrian strapped the armour onto the side of Sal's saddle.

'We need to keep moving, people,' Waory said. He failed to avoid Renda's harsh gaze.

***

Not far from the markets, the streets of the city were eerily quiet. Cobbled spaces echoed every step of the motley group's passage on their way to the library, and Adrian's horse became uneasy.

'Where are all the citizens?' said Renda.

'We've already lost a ruler in the past year,' Waory said, without answering much. 'There's concern and even fear.' They approached the library's columned entrance. 'It sounds ridiculous, but I think a storm is brewing.'

At this the other humans involuntarily looked upwards into the clear sky. A seagull streaked past.

'He's being metaphorical,' said Nuff. The group stopped under the shadow of the tall building, all marble and sand colours.

'You go in with the others,' the knight told Renda. Sal had stopped short of getting too close to the library. 'I need to sort something out and I'll be up in a second.'

Renda nodded and followed Waory through a private gate. After she was out of sight, the knight walked into a side alley that they had passed on the way.

'Who is it?' he shouted. He might have heard a thump before everything else went dark.

***

Inside the maze of shelves that made the first floor of the library, nothing but the sound of a solitary beetle scuttling across the ground reached the ears of Renda, Nuff and Waory. Eventually they found their way to the main librarian's desk on a wall of the huge space, but even Nuff, whose people were used to navigating twisted tunnels underground, could not quite remember in which direction the doors were.

As Renda reached out for the bell on the counter, the advisor shook his head knowingly. Before her hand had come within an inch of it, a tall, gaunt man appeared behind the desk – so quickly he might have risen out of the ground. He put his hand to his lips and hissed, 'shhh.'

'Mr Parch?' Waory said softly. 'We need to look at a special book...'

Nuff jumped up and heaved himself onto the counter. 'The Illuman book. Probably has a creepy eye on the front.'

Mr Parch proceeded to shush the gnome.

'Speak quietly,' whispered Waory. 'There are enough big words in here for everyone without you adding to them.'

Mr Parch tipped his head to the advisor and began to speak. His mouth seemed more to hint at the words than produce them, as if he were projecting his thoughts calmly and precisely to the visitors' ears without vibrating the air in between.

'We called it the Book of Too Much Knowledge.'

Renda, on the other hand, whispered louder than how most men spoke on a regular basis.

'We must use its knowledge.'

Before Mr Parch raised his arm a third time, Waory nodded and waved behind them. 'I'll come with you.'

Waory and the librarian marched around a row of shelves to the group's left without glancing back.

'Where'd our shining knight get off to?' Nuff asked.

'He said that he would follow us in,' Renda said. 'I wouldn't blame him for getting lost in here.'

***

Adrian was woken by a bucket-full of water being dumped on his head. From the feeling in his nose and cheek, he had been flat on the ground for a while. Now his arms were tied around the back of a chair and his legs strapped to the floor.

'This is original,' he muttered.

'Quit yappin',' a high pitched, raspy voice said. Its owner ventured into the knight's vision, and was – rather appropriately – a rat faced man. This one though, as opposed to a recent nuisance in Adrian's past, was not a kobom, just a dirty human.

'What now, Fred?' said Adrian's dust-coloured kidnapper.

'I told you, I'm not Fred,' said another voice, deeper and in some way familiar to the knight.

'Who are you? What do you want?' Adrian said.

The dirty man opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the other stranger who chuckled mirthlessly.

'Don't you recognise me?'

A second man, bigger than the first but not overly so, made his way into Adrian's field of view. The face took a moment to register with the knight because some elements were simply wrong. Overall however, it resembled an odd acquaintance of his, recently deceased.

'I'm called Dastardly, and you're going to tell me why.'

The knight spluttered for a moment, dumbfounded. 'Who are you really? Dastardly is dead, and this is a loco prank.'

The man walked closer to Adrian, who felt the need to punch the not-quite-right visage square between the eyes. 'You are Sir Adrian of the Clockwork City. I am somehow involved with you, commercially, I think...'

'You're insane.'

'Maybe not that far, but certainly a few sticks short.' The man smiled at Adrian. 'I only started remembering all this the other night.'

'Mr Dastardly...' the dirty man said.

“Dastardly” turned back suddenly. 'Just Dastardly,' he said. He continued his unhinged spiel. 'This chump I don't know. Or at least, I don't think I have any ongoing contracts with him...'

***

'You are aware,' the librarian insinuated as the group looked at the twisted script in the Book of Too Much Knowledge, 'that there are parts to a person that aren't physical?'

The others nodded passively as he continued.

'First of all, the book says that someone is hunting this man.'

'We already know that,' said Renda. 'Krotar is mad.'

'But,' Mr Parch intoned, 'to find him, this Krotar will have to get both remnants.'

The halls of the library were silent while the visitors tried to understand.

'Remnants?' said Nuff. 'What remnants?'

'Your friend's face and soul have been separated from his body.'

Renda once again failed at whispering. 'You've lost me. Are you saying that there is more than one part of Dastardly out there?'

'That's what the book says. One part is very close, whereas the other resides in –'

'The Troll Underworld,' Waory read out. The woman and the gnome glanced at him.

'Um,' he said, 'the Land-Regent mentioned the Troll Underworld just before he poisoned Mr Medieval, but there isn't one iota of information about it here in the library.'

'What about in this book?' the gnome said.

Mr Parch closed the Book of Too Much Knowledge without ceremony.

'This book is to be burned,' he susurrated. 'We do not call it The Book of Ooh, Come and Read as Much as You Want.'

'Right now?' Waory said. 'But we need to find where the freelancer went!'

Renda grasped the librarian's arm in a firm, not entirely threatening way.

'If we can't get to Dastardly first, Krotar will turn this land upside down in search of him.'

'I hate to be devil's advocate here, but we haven't even seen this “Krotar”,' said Nuff.

The mercenary turned her head askew, still holding on to Mr Parch.

'Just a minute...' she said. 'One part of Dastardly is close, and Adrian hasn't returned yet.'