Svelt

By Chris Whyatt

Landos. A vibrant, multispecies metropolis inhabited by a kaleidoscope of characters. Dwarves and trolls usually maintained a respectful distance, but when a clandestine union produces a miraculous outcome, Landos is divided and the rulers act swiftly…and harshly. That was then. And now, will the committee ever stop squabbling and attend to the needs of the city? Will the good(ish) citizens of Landos ever realise that their true leader is an imbecile? Will the brew-swigging patrons of trendy troll bar, The Hard Rock Cave, ever hold an intelligent conversation? Unlikely. Even a somewhat despondent evolution gave up (and that was before the beer was introduced). Svelt loved to venture into the city when he wasn’t working on the farm—usually without any incident—but this time would be very different. A murdered wizard, a beautiful elf, a strange map. In addition to fighting against time, Svelt must also escape the clutches of a deadly messenger, follow the directions of a mischievous observer, and even avoid the surprisingly short, incompetent arm of the law in his reluctant pursuit of the mysterious artefact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528997331

Chris Whyatt

Chris Whyatt was born into abject gravity during sixties London... totally against his will. It was some years later, working on a building site in the middle of nowhere, battling against the wind and rain, he realised the obvious. He must have been switched at birth (his exotic parents clearly didn't like the look of the one they had been naturally blessed with), and there is a sultan out there, somewhere, who should have been a construction worker.After initial in-depth research followed by years of written requests, the charlatan still refuses to relinquish his falsely attained sultanic position. Chris Whyatt (temporary name) strongly believes (hopes and prays) people eventually see the error of their ways and do the decent thing. It's only been fifty-four years, after all. So, until such time, we shall all have to put up with the inane stream of literary madness.Talking of which, here's the boring bit.He mainly writes humorous fantasy - this is by no means a promise, though, and he reserves the right to pen whatever comes into his strange little mind with no prior warning. You have been not warned.

Book preview

Svelt

Chris Whyatt

Austin Macauley Publishers

Svelt

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Prologue

Back Again

New Avenues

The Home of Buggers

Singe and Spice

The Wizard’s Bane

Trough Luck

Undercover Overcoat

Breakfast Serial

Flora and Flounder

From Bar to Bars

Building Bridges

To-Toll Con-Troll

Tombs and Tomes

Baring Wall

Bluebells and Boulders

Crossword Clues

Dates with Death

Bread and Water

Breakthroughs

Revelations

Make Ends Meet

Messages

About the Author

Chris Whyatt was born in 1967 in Hackney, London, into abject gravity. After a brief spell as a professional street urchin, he turned his attention to the construction industry. His first foray into writing was an epic sci-fi adventure set on a space station. It was a bestseller. One copy made, (due to an era-related lack of photocopiers) one copy sold… to his mum. He then took a short break from writing due to expectant fan pressure—approximately thirty-eight years—before picking up the baton again. He is utterly convinced that he was switched at birth, and that there is a sultan out there somewhere, who should have been a scaffolder. The Middle-Eastern charlatan never came forward.

Dedication

My hero in life, Lawrence Lol Whyatt.

A fighter to the very end.

Copyright Information ©

Chris Whyatt (2021)

The right of Chris Whyatt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528997324 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528997331 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

Thanks to:

Good friend, great writer, Rob Gregory.

I sincerely hope this book rewards him in some way, at least. But either way, I definitely owe him a pint of Doom Bar… and possibly a bag of peanuts.

If only he lived at the proper end of the world… and in the correct dimension.

Prologue

A very wise man once said: ‘It is a fact that all libraries, everywhere, are interconnected through time and space’.

Libraries can be described in vastly different terms amongst the endless kaleidoscope of beings. A pure-white chamber housing millions of microscopic data-spheres may well be classed as such. As might an ancient cave full of paintings, for example.

Death has remained the same for thousands of years. By a remarkable coincidence, so has the ability to die. If you had at least one friend in life, they would most certainly be there to greet you in the mist, and you could happily frequent the places you enjoyed whilst alive. Carry on as normal, as it were. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that ghostly beer, and hog roast, doesn’t exist. If you were nasty to others in life, or just simply unlucky enough not to have any friends, then Death would personally see to it that you would soon have thousands. Whether you liked it or not.

The way humans deal with a mortal ceasing to exist in the tangible world, is all that has changed. The Ancient Triangulans used to share their tombs with wild animals. Leopards, crocodiles, even hippos… baboons. Contrary to belief, a baboon, very wisely, spends most of its time on the ground. There is but one reason—and one reason only—to climb a tree in a baboon’s eyes, and that is to enjoy the panoramic views… to observe.

As a Triangulan, if you could bring a wild creature back into existence from the tomb you were very powerful indeed.

Shajar-wah was one such creature… a baboon. Re-animated by an extremely powerful sorcerer, in a very old… a very special… library.

The huge rock hurtled through the vast emptiness of space. Its velocity wasn’t tangibly apparent, unless you happened to be strapped to the front of it.

Emptiness may not be the correct word. Space isn’t empty, it’s merely stretched out. If you threw a huge net over the whole thing and then shrunk it down to the size of a pin head, then we would all have a fairly serious parking problem.

The rock was predominantly blue in colour, which made it quite difficult to walk across. So, unless you happened to be of the magical, miraculous, or winged variety, it was best to stick to the green and brown bits. The red and yellow bits were not spoken about. The rock was also roughly spherical in shape, which was extremely useful when it came to preventing stuff from falling off. Nobody on-board, however, was quite certain of how it all worked. The current passengers were vaguely aware that something was going on up there, due to various arcane scripts and drawings which had been passed on through the ages. The general consensus, though, was one of: ‘It’ll all sort itself out and everything will be fine. The bun would still rise tomorrow morning and the loon would illuminate the night’.

There was one bright spark who was not so easily pleased. His name was Albert Sonny and he worked as a cook’s assistant in the Old Town. He noticed that if you threw an egg into the air, it had a horrible habit of not floating gently upwards. Consequently, he had been sacked from many kitchens. One day, Albert decided that he would figure the whole thing out on a piece of parchment. It was probably for the best… his omelettes were terrible!

This is not Albert’s story, though. At least, not yet…

Back Again

It had been a long, bumpy, two-hour journey from the farm to the outskirts of the city. Luckily, Svelt’s bottom—which was made of rock—couldn’t really go numb. In fact, the cart seat was waving a metaphorical white flag.

This is fine, Mr Reep, he said to the old farmer driving the cart.

Are you sure, Svelt? I can take you all the way in if you like. It’s no trouble.

I always walk from here, thank you, sir, insisted Svelt.

Okay my boy, enjoy yourself.

Svelt was over thirty years old, but everybody felt compelled to call him ‘boy’ or ‘son’. He wondered if it was because of his youthful looks… but settled for his lack of height instead. He jumped from the cart, landing precariously close to a ditch, and watched it rumble away—the cart, that is, not the ditch. In the near distance, he could see the first rooftops which marked the outer boundary of the city. He was back again.

It was a pleasant summer afternoon, but Svelt Hamfist couldn’t help feeling all alone in the world. In fact, he was exclusively alone, as he was, in many ways, quite unique. Yes, he knew a handful of people that he called ‘friends’, as well as many familiar faces who acknowledged him from a distance, but he was still very much alone.

As a general rule, most species fail quite spectacularly to get along with each other. This is particularly evident in the case of trolls and dwarfs. Nobody really knew how it happened—troll spoke to dwarf, which was severely frowned upon; dwarf and troll then dated, which was absolutely unthinkable. The next piece of the puzzle almost caused a major war! The miracle outcome of their subterranean love, being… Svelt. It is quite difficult to imagine what the result of a union between the two aforementioned species would actually look like… picture a flexible wall, about dwarf height and you’ve pretty much got it. His parents were banished for their sins, which was the only real option at the time, otherwise, outbreaks of anti-species violence across the city would have surely followed. Svelt never saw them again and were it not for a kindly farmer and his wife, that may well have been the end of him too. The city officials, and society in general, agreed to the unusual adoption—both in principle and in body—but Svelt was not permitted to take on the name of a human. In addition, although he could work on the farm, his new parents were warned to keep him away from the city.

That was a long time ago…

Dwarfs and trolls now tolerated each other and there was a new, general wave of acceptance amongst the varied species of the city. This was encapsulated by the phrase: ‘We are what we are, so let’s try really hard not to bludgeon each other to death’. And so, it came to pass. Both the council and the pry-minister agreed, that Svelt had been punished enough for merely existing and was now able to walk freely in the city.

He ventured in every couple of months for a few well-earned days off, and with one round and fifty sense in his pocket he could do almost anything he liked. He gave a satisfied, relaxed sigh and headed towards The City of Landos.

Landos was the capital city of Anglost. It was not in the centre of the borderless island—being closer to the southeast—but it was generally believed to be where the first truly civilised way of life began. Currency, trading, places to stay, places to eat and drink, rules, laws and many other basic, but important advancements had arisen there and spread outwards from the tiny metropolis. The main reason the original settlers had picked that particular spot was because it was a small island in itself. Completely surrounded by a wide river, the settlers had first to risk traversing its treacherous waters to reach their promised land. Once they had succeeded in crossing the river, they quickly discovered that the island had everything required for them to be self-sufficient. They also believed it would be easy to defend if the need ever arose… and it did… a lot!

The River Tame was the natural border to which the outskirts of the city now almost reached. It also dissected Landos roughly in half. Four toll bridges had been built by way of access, situated at the main compass points. Hundreds of small tracks, roads and pathways led to the outskirts from all areas of the countryside, but there was only one main carriageway. This ran from the city centre northwards, three quarters the length of the country. There were several other smaller cities much further north and the carriageway linked them all together providing a vital trade route. In the middle of the country they made fine metals and earthenware. Way to the north, they produced luxury materials made from wool and skins. They also blended forms of alcohol which were produced using completely unique methods, creating a much smoother finish in comparison to the industrial-strength beers, and crude wines, that were fashioned in Landos. The river also offered access to the open sea and some trade routes to countries far away had been established, but this was still very much a work in progress. A few brave foreigners had actually settled in the city, which added to the already wonderful cosmopolitan atmosphere. Of course, there were still areas of Landos which were very rough around the edges—the ‘edges’ being the adopted name of a very shady area of East Landos. Generally, though, the citizens felt that they were heading in the right direction, which was just as well, because the city wasn’t listening to back-seat drivers anyway.

The city was run by a council committee—at least on a day-to-day basis—but the final say on all proposals and laws they put forward came from the pry-minister… Victor IV.

New Avenues

The Committee of Council Servants was in full session. They held meetings at various intervals to discuss issues concerning The City of Landos. The group consisted of ten members, each representing various sectors, such as education, law and business. Certain members also acted as the official spokesperson for their species or ethnic group. All were considered to be at the top—or close to the top—of their particular field, and therefore, they were trusted to put forward intelligent proposals and solutions on behalf of the public. Communal voting had been scrapped long ago, as it had turned out to be unreliable, time-consuming, expensive, corrupt, and quite often extremely violent. As a result, it had been decided by an earlier committee that a small group of the richest, most influential, well-connected and famous people