The Amazing Stick Of Power Part Two
I woke up.
This, I discovered, was a mistake. I still haven’t gotten over the
brief period in my life when getting up was a good idea and so I have
a tendency to wake up, spring out of bed and bask in the glory of the
day until the day brings it’s unique and inspirational challenges.
I bounded out of bed, slipped on an old pair of trousers, hit my head
on the dressing table, and wished I’d been more careful when
undressing. I was beginning to get the impression that this wasn’t
going to be the greatest day I’ve ever had.
I was almost correct.
My name is Maximilian W Stark, I’m universally referred to as Mill,
and theoretically I’m a research historian. Up until fairly recently
this was less theoretical and more actual, as I was being paid
regularly for this. However, I was kicked out of the university for
reasons I’d rather not go into, but will probably come up later. Since
then I’ve been making a poor living as a private historian, which is
very much like a private detective but with less beautiful broads,
etched glass doors, untreated floors, colt 45s and hard-boiled
monologue; and more broad-spined books, stained glass windows, stone
flaws, blunderbusses and soft boiled eggs. I’ve identified missing
manuscripts, proved myths as fiction, proved fiction as fact, fact as
fiction, and fiction as myth. I’ve never yet proved a myth as a fact,
and since down this road is the reason I was kicked out of the
university, I’m going to leave that well alone.
The knock at the door.
There was a reason I woke up, I was fairly sure it was there
somewhere, There was somebody up the door.
Somebody at the door.
Somebody at the door.
I get worried when words toll dramatically, it means a story is
getting involved and I dislike stories. I live in Knot, which is a
city by a reef that’s closely linked to bits of garlic (Actually, it
isn’t, but I haven’t managed to put a ‘Clove Hitch’ joke in yet, and
it was getting annoying). Knot is a city in the Kingdom – it’s the
capital, actually – which is just one of many tin pot republics in the
Land of Lore, aka Fairyland. Stories happen around here. No kid goes
into the woods wearing red unless they really hate their grandparents,
pork prices are sky high, and you can get enough beans for tuppence to
feed a family of nine for a month. Women live in shoes, trolls live in
swamps and under bridges, and all castles have spindly towers. The
last thing I need is a story, but since I’m neither a hero, a villain,
a brother or a step-mother, I’m relatively safe.
I hurriedly got dressed and opened the door to greet a man in a
six-foot tin can with a four-leaf-clover painted on it.
It was a lucky knight.
“You are hereby summoned to the queen’s presence” he declaimed.
“It’s not Christmas yet,” I replied, “shouldn’t she wait?”
The knight, it seems, isn’t in the mood for jokes, and whilst I fought
knights for a couple of weeks, it was a while ago, and so I am dragged
to the castle. Well, not so much dragged. I was, to be honest, quite
looking forward to seeing why the queen wanted a research historian at
short notice.
We walked to the castle. Or, rather, I walked while the Knight rode a
horse in a bowler hat. I’d heard of these specially trained horses, a
breed carefully trained after a fashion which had apparently been
popular hundreds of years ago, and had just been rediscovered. This
training was to bond with their rider to the point where were the
rider to be killed or injured, the Horse would dedicate it’s life to
revenge upon the person who did the deed.
Once inside the castle grounds, I was led to a wing of the palace,
then to a door. Looking at the door, I asked the knight for a coffee
and something to eat, as I realised the next bit may take some time.
He nodded and went off to find some while I walked though the dark,
foreboding door into the dingy room beyond. The door slammed behind
me.
I was in the exposition room.
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