The Murdstone Trilogy

  Philip cannot remember the significance of the Fourth Device. Never mind. It’ll make sense, sooner or later.

  Lyrical account of Pocket’s travels across the Plain of Wraith and into the Forest of Mort A’Dor. A sort of pastoral idyll after all that violence: golden light filtered through leaf-canopy, shadow deer startled away, glow-vines at dusk. He arrives at a glade and chuckles the cart-pony to a halt. He’s weary and so is the pony. He clambers down and gathers the materials for a fire. While it crackles into life he feeds the pony clump-nuts from his satchel and turns her loose to graze. The moon, in its green phase, rises above the trees. The stars choose their constellations and settle for the night. Pocket roasts coney meat on a skewer and washes it down with two measures of barleybrew from his flask. Yawning, he creeps beneath the cart and wraps himself in his blanket. He hums himself asleep to the sweet refrain of an ancient Greme lullaby.

  And never wakes up again because his throat has been slit.

  Philip jerked back.

  Whatwhatfuckingwhat?

  Read that again.

  Christ, yes. Pocket had killed himself off. His pale little body touched by the first light of morning. Blood pumped onto the leaf-litter. A blue-breasted death-warbler perched on his stiffened left thumb. The cart smashed to kindling. The Fourth Device stolen.

  Who killed him? No idea. Just happened like that out of nowhere.

  End of chapter.

  Jesus wept. Philip stared at the screen as if hoping that his dead inkage might find life and change its mind.

  But no.

  He sat fumbling anxiously at the remnants of his facial hair. This was just about the last thing he’d expected. Pocket was indispensable, surely. Dark Entropy owed much of its enormous success to his voice. That he should hand over the narrative to this other bloke was pretty rum; that he should gratuitously top himself and rule himself out of any further part in the action … well, that was plain perverse. Shocking. Mind you, what a bloody stroke to pull! Philip imagined millions of readers doing just what he had done: come to a shocked halt, mewling expletives. It was a wibbler that would make ’em sit up straight, and no mistake.

  (Which it did. Several months later, Adelaide Pinker, writing in the Guardian, will admit that ‘like all admirers of Dark Entropy, I mourn the demise of the garrulous Greme. I confess to having felt angry, almost betrayed, by his dispassionately described demise. But what a stroke for Murdstone to have pulled! To have killed off his narrator halfway through what we must now confidently expect to be a trilogy. It’s as if Dickens had murdered David Copperfield three hundred pages in. Or as if, halfway through The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is wiped out by a hit-and-run driver while crossing Park Avenue. There is something almost self-destructive in taking such a risk. But it may be that like all great writers Murdstone needed to slough off one persona to explore another. And the narrative voice he develops in the second part of Warlocks Pale is an extraordinary achievement. Whether this voice is that of the author himself or a character in his continuously surprising history of the Realm is one of the brilliantly teasing questions that make us wait thirstily for the final part of the Murdstone Trilogy.’

  That same weekend, the Mail on Sunday will embark on a series of stories about the drink- and drug-fuelled misadventures of Marcus Dalloway, the pint-sized actor who played Pocket in the movie version of Dark Entropy.)

  Philip read on. It continued to astonish him that he had transcribed this tale through the long watches of the night without remembering any of it. So he was surprised when, eighty or so pages from the end, the narrative set off in a completely unexpected direction. Well, not completely; Philip had read Pocket’s earlier hints correctly. Warlocks Pale finds its final focus within the grubby, addled Shire of Vedno.

  Keepskite is indeed in possession of the Amulet. Morl has learned this. He has discovered that not only is Trover Mellwax, stealer of the Amulet, alive, but has thirty-two, not thirty-one, manifestations.

  His thirty-second is a small pink island in The Middle Sea. Morl’s Sea-Swelts sever its anchor chains and tow it back to the Thule where it is tethered on the Dimensionless Table of Morl’s hastily reassembled necromantic laboratory. For two days it defies form. On the third day Morl manages to clone cells from a finger posing as a sandbar and phases them through the Morph Scrambler until he gets something he can work on.

  It’s Mellwax’s nineteenth manifestation: a young Morven female with the luminous innocence typical of her species. The calm and graphic description of her torture at the hands of Morl and his Swelts – worthy, Philip thought, faint and dry-mouthed, of Louis de Bernières – goes on for several pages. Eventually her agonies yield an imago: of herself being brutally rear-swived by Keepskite, of his dirty fingers relieving her of the thong-hung Amulet while, eyes clamped shut and senses closed down, she simulates gratitude.

  All of which left Philip most uneasy. Despite the cool restraint of the prose, this was hardly suitable material for younger readers. Then he laughed at himself. What was he thinking? He had a new readership now, one that was – anatomically, at least – adult. He no longer had to concern himself with what children felt. It was ridiculous that he hadn’t fully understood this before, hadn’t allowed himself that glorious sense of release. He did so now. Then returned to the text.

  The last section of Warlocks Pale took the form of a classic chase. Or race, rather. GarBellon the Sage has also discovered the whereabouts of the Amulet, and he, along with Cadrel and Mesmira and a brave (if quarrelsome) band of Gremes and Porlocs, set out on a hazardous expedition to the wilds of Vedno. At GarBellon’s insistence, their route takes them across Turbid Hoag, the frightful lake haunted by mirages and patrolled by poison-finned Slankers, and thence into the unmapped harshness of the Vednodian foothills.

  Absorbed as he was in Pocket’s action-packed miniepic, Philip couldn’t help noting that Cadrel’s character had undergone a subtle change during this second part of the story. He had become harder; even, occasionally, arrogant. Less sympathetic. It was rather puzzling. But perhaps this was understandable, after all he’d been through. Or perhaps, like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, he’s had to turn his back on youthful lightness of heart to harden himself for kingship. Regrettable, yes, but maybe necessary.

  Hmm. Fits the blueprint in a slightly more interesting way. Let the editors sort that one out.

  Meanwhile Morl, at the head of a cohort of Battle-Swelts, approaches Vedno from the opposite direction, across the wasteland of Shand’r Ga and through the mazy vales of lexical rocks known as Wylselph.

  And it is Morl who wins the race. His army penetrates the wormy labyrinth of the Vednodians while Cadrel’s oarsmen yet labour to propel their boats through the deliquescent off-shore sands of the Hoag.

  Then, just as it seems inevitable that the Evil One has the Amulet within his grasp, Pocket pulls off a bravura set piece.

  The Swelts, thirsty after their arduous trek in heavy armour, and before Morl can stop them, guzzle their fill from the Font of Zydor. The resulting party is an orgy of maudlin camaraderie punctuated by random acts of violence and primitive song. (Philip is reminded of a long-ago occasion in Worthing, when he’d stumbled upon – and quickly fled – a host of bikers who’d descended on the Sussex coast to get off their faces on beer and magic mushrooms.)

  The sound of the Swelt bacchanal awakens Keepskite, who has been sleeping off the previous day’s binge in his squalid grotto overlooking the Font. After a horrified survey of the nightmare below, he takes flight; but not before Morl has spotted him.

  Pursued by the magnificent necromancer, Keepskite flees through the narrow convoluted rock tunnels known only to Vednods. As he runs, the Amulet grows heavier against his greasy chest, slowing him, seeming to yearn for his pursuer. Twice, thrice, Morl hurls lethal bolts of Transformational Hex at his shadowy quarry, but misses; they strike rock fragments from the walls which turn into metallic earwigs that clatter and squeal away into the darkness.

/>   Slick with sweat and electrical with panic, Keepskite emerges onto a broad ledge that overhangs a dizzying precipice. The brooding day is full of roaring because, to the left, the ledge disappears in the seething waters of a cataract that hurtles from the plateau above and plunges to the Tarn of Gorn, far, far below.

  Moaning fear, Keepskite staggers towards the waterfall. He knows what he hopes Morl does not know: that the ledge continues behind the curtain of water and gives unto a perilous flight of rough-hewn steps which, in turn, lead to a lower complex of caverns and passages.

  However, the desperate Vednod takes only a few paces then stops, letting out a whinny of terror.

  First Cadrel, then the Sage emerge from the shadows of the cataract. Smiling grimly, Cadrel unsheathes Cwydd Harel. Keepskite turns back, then cringes against the rock face as Morl steps out onto the ledge. With an offhand gesture, Morl pinions Keepskite to the rock with mind-forged manacles. The prince and the necromancer gaze at each other with blazing eyes.

  There then follows an exchange of compulsory Sword and Sorcery banter. Philip hurried through it.

  After a final curse, Morl raises his arm and unleashes a massive charge of Hex at Cadrel; but the prince uprights Cwydd Harel in front of him and deflects the bolt. The deadly energy ricochets skywards, striking a cruising garfulture; the unfortunate bird is transmuted into a pig, which plummets, screaming, to its death on the rocks that rim the Tarn. However, so powerful is the strike of the Hex on the magickal sword that its shock renders Cadrel unconscious and he falls.

  Morl aims his hand again to deliver the coup de grâce but reels back, howling, as every cell of his body is jiggled by a blast from GarBellon’s periaptic staff. By a tremendous act of will, the Dark Necromancer reconfigures himself and faces his Ancient Foe.

  The Sage, age-old, straggle-bearded, his white robes besmirched and torn, looks no match for the still-athletic Antarch resplendent in his green and silver battle-gear; but Philip knew who he’d put his money on.

  Pocket’s prose takes on tremendous pace and swing as he describes the final duel between Good and Evil. Murdstone now dimly remembers how furiously the inkage had writhed onto his monitor, how his fingers had jittered frantically over the keyboard transcribing it.

  The battle is by turns physickal, metaphysickal, psychologickal and magickal. In one particularly vivid paragraph, the two wizards become a black alligator and a white crocodile locked in a savage embrace full of claws and teeth amid the teeming waters of the cataract.

  ‘Stone me,’ murmured Philip, ‘it’s Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. He’s nicked that. Can’t have, though …’

  At last a roar of triumph sounds above the booming of the waterfall. And it is Morl who has prevailed, victorious but hideously changed. A terrible asymmetry has befallen him. He moves in a series of lurches, as though his legs are at odds with themselves. His once handsome face is disfigured; the left side of it is now puckered, silvery, scaly, like scar tissue grown over burned flesh. The eye that glares out of it is orange and lidless. His left shoulder is humped up close to his ear, of which only a vestigial stump remains, and his right hand has congealed into a set of hooked and leathery talons.

  The triumphant smile which further distorts the necromancer’s face disappears when he realizes that he and Keepskite are alone on the ledge. Cadrel and Cwydd Harel have vanished, and with them the Amulet of Eneydos. Hissing with rage, Morl approaches the shackled and gibbering troglodyte. His eyes blaze blue and orange. He extends his claw toward the Vednodian and utters the words of the Withering Cantrip; instantly, permanent night fills the orbs of Keepskite’s eyes and his testicles shrivel to pips.

  Philip’s mouth was suddenly very dry. He scrolled down to the last half-page of the text.

  Morl turns and hobbles across the ledge until he stands at the very edge of the precipice. He raises his unequal arms; for an instant it seems that he might launch himself suicidally into space. Then he lifts his face and howls a curse so dark, so savage, that its echoes form a black cyclone that gathers Morl into itself and roils away across the wilderness of Vedno.

  The End.

  Well. Philip hadn’t known what to expect of Pocket’s nobble, but it certainly hadn’t been this strangely disturbing hybrid.

  It would do, though. Yes, by God. It would certainly do. Defeating expectancy wasn’t something that happened every day. Quite the opposite.

  He could see the cover quotes now:

  ‘Strangely disturbing’ Victor Hireling, the Sunday Times.

  ‘Elegant, horripilant, perverse’ Dyana Kornbester, NY Review of Books.

  He sat staring at the screen for several minutes.

  Then another thought came upon him like sunrise in a major key.

  Pocket had ended Warlocks Pale with a cliffhanger – almost literally so. Morl deformed and crazed and whirled away. Cadrel in possession of the Amulet, presumably. GarBellon dead. (Or was he? No sight of a smashed and water-bloated corpse.) Nothing finally resolved.

  So …

  Go careful, Murdstone. Be delicate. Nothing so untrustworthy as hope.

  But it was obvious. Undeniable.

  He stood up and left the room and patrolled his cottage, touching walls and furniture as if for luck or reassurance.

  Why, though?

  They’d done a square deal, eyes and bollocks in hazard, him and Pocket.

  The Greme would give him a nobble, a flaky ledger. He would give the Greme the Amulet.

  End of story.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  It was still unresolved.

  There was more.

  A third volume.

  Had to be.

  Why?

  He was in the kitchen, staring at the electric kettle as though such a thing was inconceivable, never previously witnessed.

  Because Pocket had got the bug.

  He’d have no immunity against it, of course, being the first of his kind that’d been exposed to it. Hadn’t known that once you start flaky ledgers there’s no stopping. That the desire for admiration – even from worlds you despise – becomes an addiction, once it’s granted. Becomes feverish when it’s removed.

  Pocket would want, need, to go on.

  The little bastard had become, unwittingly, innocently, due to force of circumstance, a nobblist.

  Yes!

  Philip was, he realized, acutely hungry. At that instant an ugly clamour rent the air: the cack-handed campanologists of Flemworthy’s bleak Victorian church summoning the sad and the elderly. So it must be Sunday. Damn! Then he remembered, joyously, that Denis had recently taken to opening the Gelder’s for weekend breakfasts. Philip found himself salivating at the thought of Denis’s version of the Full English: black pudding with sweet and sour pomegranate sauce, kedgeree with pineapple, and wild boar and mint sausages, all washed down with a pint of Guest Ale.

  He returned to the study and copied Warlocks Pale onto a new memory stick, then clicked on Outlook Express. He typed MINERVA in the address box, wrote ‘Will this do???’ and attached the text. He waited for the Outbox to clear, then left.

  He was halfway along the lane when a worrisome memory struck him.

  Don’t you go rambly.

  He returned to Downside and wrote ‘Starving. Gone to the pub. Back in an hour. Thanks. Brilliant. PM’ on two sheets of paper. He put one on the floor of the lavatory and the other in front of the fireplace. Then he hastened unto his breakfast.

  12

  On his return, Philip discovered Pocket Wellfair standing motionless in the living room.

  ‘Pocket,’ he exclaimed, a touch too heartily. ‘My dear chap! I hope you haven’t been waiting long.’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘Have a seat, have a seat. Can I get you anything? Glass of water?’

  ‘I’m fair set as I am, thankee.’

  It seemed to Philip that the Greme was a little out of sorts. The twinkle in the old eyes had dulled, and there was a hint of pu
tty in the colour and texture of his face. On the other hand, he’d added a colourful accessory to his costume; a jaunty red and white kerchief was knotted around his neck. This Bohemian touch was encouraging. It strongly suggested that Pocket had recognized his literary calling and had decided to dress accordingly.

  ‘Listen, Pocket. The nobble is brilliant. Amazing.’

  ‘Twill do, will it?’

  Philip nodded ironically, belched richly. ‘Yes, it’ll do. You have an enormous talent, you know. Enormous. You’re a natural.’

  ‘That’d be a compliment, would it, among your lot?’

  ‘Absolutely. But listen, I have to ask you this – why on earth did you kill yourself off halfway through? It shocked me rigid.’

  ‘I didn’t kill meself. Some other bugger did.’

  ‘Well, yes, of course. In terms of the actual story. But I mean … well, as the narrator, the storyteller. Why you suddenly decided to become someone else. Use a different voice. Adopt a different point of view.’

  The Greme stood with his head cocked slightly, as if listening to something faint and far away.

  ‘I got bored,’ he said finally. ‘And I’m getting bored again, with all this jibber-jabber. So, business, Murdstone. The Amulet.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Philip said amiably. He took off his jacket and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. Then he paused, and smiled, and said, ‘So, when are you planning to start the next one?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The next book. The next flaky ledger. Nobble.’

  ‘What in a pig’s arse are you flabbering about now?’

  ‘Well, you obviously intend to write another one. I assume that’s why you left the last one unresolved. Unfinished. On the edge. To Be Continued. Hmm?’

  Pocket Wellfair’s eyes narrowed. ‘I hope your head hasn’t come unlatched, Murdstone. I do hope and trust you’re not about to frolic me about again.’ He raised his right hand and extended two fingers. ‘Cos if you do, I’ll send a wibbler up your jacksie that’ll turn your teeth upside down. Then I’ll do your eyeballs and empty your scrote.’