Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [81]
Simna hopped deftly aside. “Hoy, watch what you’re doing, you putrefying little relic! Who the Gwerwhon do you think you are?” To Ehomba he added, “He’s stinking rotten drunk. By the look and sound and smell of him, he’s been that way for some time.”
Bracing his scrawny back against the wall, the man rose to an approximation of a standing position. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Don’t you know who I am?”
“No,” Simna growled as he tried to listen and watch both ends of the stygian street at the same time. “Who are you, you walking pile of fossilized spew?”
Frowning uncertainly, the man drew himself more or less up to his full, unimpressive height. “I am Knucker. Knucker the Knower.” The precarious smile essayed a tentative reappearance. “I know everything.” He focused on Ehomba. “Ask me a question. Go on, ask me a question. Anything.”
“Maybe later.” Gently gripping the fluttering leaf of a man by his shoulder, the herdsman managed to get him turned up the street. “My friend is right. We have to go now.”
“Sure, why not?” Knucker the Knower was nothing if not agreeable. “Come on, ask me something. Anything.”
Irritated and wary in equal measure, Simna kept pace with Ehomba. “What’s the name of my maiden aunt on my mother’s side?”
“Vherilza,” Knucker replied without hesitation. “And her sisters are Prilly and Choxu.”
The swordsman blinked, the potential invisible terrors of the night momentarily forgotten. “How?—by Grenrack’s beard, that’s right. He’s right.” Gripping the emaciated figure by one skinny arm, the swordsman thrust his face close to that of the sad figure. “How did you know that?”
“Knucker knows.” Once more the man pressed his finger to the side of his nose, but when a worried Simna drew back, the tottering drunkard only sniggered anew. “Knucker knows everything. Go on, ask me another.” Like a thirsty supplicant in search of rain, he spread shaky arms wide. “I know everything!”
Together, Ehomba and Simna half dragged, half carried the lightly built frame around the corner. Up the street they could see a single light burning through the darkness: the identifying, welcoming emblem of the boardinghouse. Simna redoubled his efforts.
“Come on, Mister Know-it-all. Only a little ways farther to go and then you can explain yourself.”
“What’s to explain?” Head wobbling on his neck as if at any moment it might fall off, Knucker turned to the smaller of his three saviors. “I know everything. Nothing more, nothing less. What part of that don’t you understand, you insipid little conscript in the army of the avaricious?”
Gritting his teeth, Simna ignored the insult and concentrated on dragging the feeble corpus up the side street. Trying to keep their charge awake and alert for another couple of moments, Ehomba ventured another question.
“How long before we reach that boardinghouse up the street?”
“I’m not the right one to ask that question.”
Simna let out a derisive snort. “I thought you knew everything.”
“So I do, but I ain’t the one that’s going to delay your arriving. Maybe you better ask it.”
“Ask him?” Searching both ends of the street, Simna saw nothing. “I don’t see anything.”
“Not himsh—‘it,’” the Knower corrected him, slurring his words.
The swordsman was about to fetch the incoherent drunk a blow to the side of the head when something immensely large and vital appeared directly in their path. Behind him, Ahlitah snarled sharply. The apparition that had materialized to block their path wore no clothes, no shoes—and, more frighteningly, no face.
XIII
Unmoving and silent in the middle of the deserted street, they stared at the phantasm. Despite its lack of a countenance, it conveyed the unmistakable impression of staring back. Ehomba leaned over slightly to whisper to the swaying, shaky enigma who called himself Knucker.
“Okay, you know everything. What is that?”
Lachrymose eyes fought to focus on the forbidding specter. As before, the drunkard did not