green-skinned lout that if he doesn’t give me the remedy, I won’t answer for myself!”
Kli-Kli gazed at the gnome with his blue eyes and said with a very doubtful air, “I’m not so sure you’ll like the goblin remedy for a toothache, Hallas.”
“Can’t you just tell me, Kli-Kli?”
“You won’t use the method anyway,” said Kli-Kli. “And I’ll simply have revealed a goblin secret for nothing.”
“I promise that I will use your method this very moment!” said the gnome, struggling desperately to hold himself back from wringing the goblin’s neck.
A broad smile split Kli-Kli’s green face from ear to ear, making him look exactly like a wickedly contented frog.
I worked away even more desperately with my bridle, holding Little Bee back until I was beside Lamplighter, and the goblin and the gnome were ahead of me. My brilliant maneuver did not go unnoticed by Marmot, Deler, and Arnkh, who repeated it precisely. Hallas and Kli-Kli were left on their own: None of us wanted to be caught between the hammer and the anvil.
“Remember, you promised to use the goblin method,” the prankster reminded the sick man. “Well then, in order to cure a sick tooth, you have to take a glass of ass’s urine and hold it in your mouth for an hour, then spit it out over your left shoulder, preferably into your best friend’s right eye. Your toothache will disappear instantly!”
Hallas gave the goblin a baleful glance, spat juicily on the ground under the hooves of his horse, and urged it on. I think Kli-Kli was rather upset. Like everyone else, he’d been expecting thunder and lightning.
“Tell me, friend Kli-Kli,” I asked the downhearted goblin. “Have you ever tried that remedy yourself?”
The jester looked at me as if I were demented: “Do I look like an idiot, thief?”
I just knew he was going to say something like that.
* * *
“Behold and tremble, Harold,” said Honeycomb.
“I am trembling,” I said, with my eyes glued to the Fountain of the Kings.
And what a sight it was! I’d heard a lot about this fountain before, but this was the first time I’d ever set eyes on it.
The huge column of water fifty yards high was regarded as one of the sights of Ranneng. The fountain took up the whole square; its roaring jets of water soared way up into the sky, and then fell back down to earth, shattering into a watery haze that shrouded the entire area. The droplets of water and the rays of the sun merged in a passionate embrace to create a rainbow bridge that sliced the sky above the square into two halves and came diving back down into the fountain.
Those in the know said that when the dwarf master craftsmen created this miracle they had a little help from the Order. It takes magic to produce a rainbow that appears out of the spray every day of the week in any weather. It looked as if I could reach out my hand to touch the seven-colored miracle and feel all the airy fragility of this bridge in the sky.
“Magnificent.” Arnkh sighed contentedly, catching the fresh spray on his face.
Late June and the first half of July had been so hot that even a hardened warrior like Arnkh had taken off his beloved chain mail a couple of times during our journey. And for someone from the Border Kingdom who has been used to wearing armor almost since the day he was born, that is a very serious concession indeed.
Fortunately, over the last few days the heat had abated a little, but it was still hot enough to make me worry about my brains boiling in my skull. So it was sheer bliss for our group to stand beside the fountain, where the air was so cool, fresh, and clean.
“No halt here!” Alistan announced without even glancing at the marvelous sight.
So much for our rest. When I thought about the long journey under the summer sun waiting for us after Ranneng, I felt really bad. In the name of a h’san’kor, what was wrong with the weather this year?
“What’s wrong with you today?” an