The Christening Quest

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  “I am Timoteo, adventurer, raconteur, and traveler of great renown. I seek not to be rude, dear lady, merely to comment that your degree of erudition about matters in Gorequartz seems unusual for a person of such a rustic background.”

  “I have not always lived here nor have I always appeared as I do now. In part my current condition is due to that same evil King of whom I speak, he who holds your niece, my dear Prince.” She paused dramatically. “For you see, your niece could not possibly be the firstborn daughter of this King. He had a daughter by his first wife, the true Queen of Gorequartz. I am that child.”

  “What race did you say these people are?” Carole whispered to the merchant.

  “A superior and magical one,” Effluvia said in a voice that overrode her.

  “They would be,” Carole muttered to herself.

  “They slew the sorceress who ruled there, gave the backward denizens of the land productive employment in the crystal mines, and avenged the Rainbow God, the Grand Prismatic, the Many-Hued, serving him with devotion and sacrifice which he has handsomely repaid over the years by granting his favorites great prosperity and an elevated form of civilization.”

  “About your tail, though,” Rupert prompted. “What about that? Do all of your people possess tails?”

  “Of course not. No one else is so honored because no one else is guardian of this valley and particular handmaiden of the god. The tail is part of my present form, a gift spell placed upon me by my benefactor, the High Priest of the Grand Prismatic. My father would have had me slain but the High Priest, an admirer of my late mother, preserved me from death and gave me this form that I might serve the god with my life and essence until such a time that he called me to a higher, more public sort of task, fitted to the wisdom and grace I have obtained while performing my humble duty in exile.”

  “That was very decent of the High Priest,” Rupert said, “But I don’t understand why he needed to save you. If you’re the King’s daughter, and he wanted a daughter badly enough to convince the Miragenians it would be profitable to have my niece passed off for his own child, why did he try to kill you? Didn’t your mother have anything to say about that?”

  “She would have had, but, alas, for her, she did not say so quickly enough. The King is desperate for a male heir, someone suitable to take his place so that a secular person may sit upon the throne of Gorequartz, disputing the judgment of the divinely inspired priests. As the King has the army, the situation is very difficult for those who serve the god truly and lovingly. When my mother bore me, my father was greatly disappointed, and when by the time I was seven years of age she had no other issue, he was beside himself with rage. I was playing innocently in the garden one day when I overheard him telling his steward that he would either have to offer my mother up to the god, making it possible for him to take a new wife, or else my mother would have to agree to follow an old custom of my people, sacrificing the child of unsuitable sex so that the divine would know they had made a mistake and supply a more appropriate offspring.

  “Naturally, this shattered my young life. I couldn’t think what to do. I could not go to my mother, for surely my father would be there, speaking to her, and I was afraid of him. Mother and I had made many pleasant trips through a secret passage to the temple, however, where I played with the crystal prisms and blew bubbles on the rainbow pipes while Mother confided with the High Priest in his chambers. The High Priest had always been kind and good to me, more like a father than the King. In my distress, I ran through the secret passage and found the good man. I told him what my father had said, and that I knew my mother would want me to have his protection. He kept me hidden there in the temple until the day when he was called upon by the King to send Mother to join the god. Tender of my youthful sensibilities, he told me he had an important task for me and that he would use great magic to make me fit for it, child though I was. Thereafter he sent me here in this shape to guard this valley and here I have remained.”

  “But if the King doesn’t want a girl baby, why didn’t the new Queen import a son?” Rupert asked.

  “I suppose none were available—especially none that look like the King. He’s the kind of man who notices those things. If the new Queen is barren, someone else’s daughter will at least give her a few years to bargain with until she can conceive a son—”

  “Or sacrifice my niece to save her own life,” Rupert said, shaking his head in disbelief at such barbarism.

  “Unless your niece is as fast with her feet and tongue and as well-connected as Lady Effluvia here,” the merchant said with admiration.

  Carole said nothing, but stood, grasping her fur robe around her, and hobbled toward the door.

  When she had been gone for some time, Rupert wrapped his own robe about him and ducked outside to look for her. She had found her still-damp clothing drying beside the hut and was pulling on her leggings.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked in a low voice he hoped would not penetrate the skin hanging over the door.

  “Anywhere, as long as it’s away from here. Effluvia’s furry tail isn’t the only one she has that stinks. Do you really think she’d help Bronwyn’s child when she’s as good as admitted she’s already sacrificed her own mother?”

  The skin slipped aside and Effluvia’s snout poked out, sniffing. “That’s easy enough for you to say. You obviously have no concept of higher responsibilities than mere family loyalty. I have my own destiny to fulfill, my own obligation to the god. Even at an early age I knew it transcended being a mere brood mare for the royal line, as my mother was, poor thing. And I do wish to help this niece of yours, dear Prince. I wish very much to help her escape the fate I almost fell prey to. Tomorrow I shall personally guide you all through my valley and to the temple where my benefactor, I’m sure, will aid you even as he has me.”

  On that note, she popped back inside, leaving Carole fuming and Rupert staring thoughtfully off into space. Carole couldn’t tell whether or not he believed in Effluvia’s self-proclaimed compassion, but she did not. It was out of character.

  “That creature burns me up,” a familiar voice said from atop a rocky ledge just above the roof of Effluvia’s hut. “Who does she think she’s fooling?” Carole looked up, hoping to see Grippeldice, since by now the hidebehind pill should have started to wear off. Instead the dragon, after her thorough bath in the river, resembled nothing more than a rain shower as her run-off pattered on the roof.

  “Ah, Grippeldice,” Rupert said cheerfully, speaking to the dripping ledge.

  A stream of steam mixed with flames warmed his left side, boiling the vegetation behind him. “What’s the matter with her?” Rupert asked, rubbing his face. The air was redolent of hot skunk.

  “She’s jealous and angry,” Carole answered, “and tired of being invisible, no doubt.” She scratched her head and regarded the ledge, frowning. “You don’t suppose that hidebehind pill might have fermented after all these years and gotten stronger instead of weaker, do you? Surely not. Still, I must ask Rusty—”

  “What’s she jealous about?” Rupert asked, a hint of satisfaction marring the tone of innocent concern he strove to project.

  “What? Why, that you’ve taken up with and—as nearly as I can tell—been taken in by Effluvia. Don’t ask me to intervene, either. I agree with Grippeldice.”

  “I can explain it all, I promise you,” he said, and gazed up at the dripping wind steaming and streaming around them in its aggrieved fashion. “But please tell my dragon everything is all right and that, if only she’ll be patient and help us a while longer, we should be in Gorequartz tomorrow.”

  Carole translated, then shook her head. “She says not if Effluvia is going with us. Grippeldice will have nothing to do with that woman. You’ll have to choose between them.”

  “Can’t you reason with her?”

  Carole shrugged. “I’d rather reason with you, since personally I feel that Grippeldice is the one showing sound judgment. You may no
t have noticed but those are skunk skins wrapped around you in such profusion. That woman has no compunctions about betraying anyone and has as good as bragged about it. What makes you think she’s not going to buy her way back into her father’s favor by seeing to it that if he sacrifices Bronwyn’s baby, he can include us and make a family affair of it?”

  “I think you’re exaggerating,” Rupert said stubbornly. “It doesn’t sound to me as if he’d have her back on any terms. I agree that she may have something up her sleeve but if we keep our wits about us…” His voice trailed off, giving way to a discreet and supposedly crafty look.

  “That’s what I like. A definite plan,” Carole said.

  “Have you a better one?”

  “Certainly. Let’s climb aboard Grippeldice right now and have her take us to Gorequartz.”

  “I can’t think how that would help, except to shorten the journey and to soothe Grippeldice’s feelings. If Effluvia has the influence she claims, she can help us. If not, we will be in no worse straits in her company than we would be going as uninvited strangers into what I can only presume from its customs must be a rather hostile culture. If the priests oppose the King and realize that an impostor child has been substituted, it may well be to their benefit to help us, to let the baby return with us.”

  “I can’t believe Effluvia is interested in helping anyone but herself.”

  “No, perhaps not, but, on the other hand, it probably matters little to her if, while helping herself, she helps someone else in the process. That, my dear cousin, is what diplomacy is all about. To convince the other party that one’s own best interests serve them even better than their own.”

  “Very well then. I’ll let you explain that to the dragon,” Carole said, and returned inside.

  * * *

  Without the dragon’s cooperation, the walk through the valley took most of the next day, and Carole’s spine itched every step of the way. She wished Grippeldice had remained in sight. The dragon’s protective presence would have been a practical sort of comfort, but the beast had clearly departed ahead of them. Very sensible of her. Any witch with a modicum of self-respect would have done the same thing. Or better yet, persuaded the beast to take her aboard as a lone passenger and gone to fetch the baby without the rest of the tiresome party. Of course, Rupert could be right in his wishful thinking that Effluvia would somehow prove herself more help than hindrance, but, oddly, it was less the Prince’s optimism than Carole’s own dead-certain conviction that the skunk-woman was going to betray them that kept the witch pacing behind the others, starting at rustlings in the trees, peering into shadows, and listening closely to every change in conversational timbre that might indicate the moment had arrived to muster her own magic to their defense.

  Because however muddle-headed her royal cousin might be at the moment, he was family and he had saved her life. He was, on the whole, a very decent young man. She was growing quite fond of him. Nevertheless, she felt he needed the benefit of a more suspicious nature to keep him from falling prey to wistful thinking and misplaced idealism. The merchant definitely had a suspicious nature, but would hardly fill the bill, since he was one of the very persons Carole felt Rupert needed to be suspicious of. Therefore, she could no more leave him to the mercies of the various unscrupulous parties with whom he was choosing to involve himself in this escapade than she could leave Bronwyn’s baby to the tender mercies of her infanticide-prone foster parents.

  Her resolve wavered badly at times, however, for the going was rough. The merchant insisted on rattling off lurid descriptions of the countryside at every other tree. She reminded him that he no longer had the so-called travel log and didn’t need to keep up the accompanying prattle, but he shrugged and grinned at her infuriatingly and said he had gotten into the habit and who knew but what he might not find another log? He wouldn’t want to be ill-prepared. But the worst thing was that Effluvia led them on a circuitous path through the valley, “protecting” various sites along the way with her nauseating scent.

  The first of these was another innocent patch of the pain-killing flowers.

  Rupert stepped gently over them but Effluvia made a disgusted sound in her throat. “Too bad that by the time I return they’ll have died. I gathered for drying that other batch your little friend would have defiled yesterday, Prince, but I have no use for any more now. Oh well. The worst thing is that the Miragenian pigs should have them.” And with that, before the merchant and Carole could step around the flowers, Effluvia imperiously held her hand aloft, waved them aside, raised her tail, and proceeded to make it most expedient for them to circumvent the patch by a field’s length. The flowers wilted on their stalks with barely a whisper of protest.

  They were dead before Rupert could so much as open his mouth, but he looked back at the flowers with a stricken expression. “If you weren’t going to use them, I don’t see what difference it would have made to let them live a day or so more,” he said.

  “You have no idea how depraved some people are. They use such magic to relieve them of pain they’ve obviously brought on themselves. The most disgusting thing about the Miragenians is that they use absolutely no sense of discernment about their clientele. They’ll sell to anyone who pays them, regardless of worth or station in life.”

  “I see,” Rupert said politely, but he walked half a pace ahead of her and said little until they reached a rocky cliff. Here, too, Effluvia raised her tail.

  “You will note on our immediate left and for some distance above us rock of the finest kind, with its stunning blue-gray striping casting long and sturdy shadows onto the leafy forest floor.” The merchant enthused but finished unceremoniously with a , “Phew!” He had failed to notice that the rock was about to be protected. When he could breathe again he asked, “Your pardon, lady, but why do you think anyone would want to steal any of this stupid rock, with or without your stinking it up?”

  “Stinking it up, indeed! A lot you know,” Effluvia told him. “That rock you so stupidly refer to as stupid will be chiseled into an entirely different formation by the time I return if I don’t properly safeguard it. A small fragment of it in the pocket of a delegate to the god is enough to send the most cowardly and whining sacrifice staunchly to his death. Before I came to this valley there was a heavy black-market trade in pieces from this stone. I am proud to say I have successfully put an end to that. This cliff has not lost one chip since I arrived.”

  “It seems to me people who practice a religion involving human—er—delegates to the gods would prefer to have those delegates go calmly,” Rupert said. He was trying very hard to be, or at least sound, broad-minded.

  Effluvia gave him a small, knowing smile having all the charm of green mold on his breakfast toast. “You know nothing of our magic. True, the priests keep some few pieces of the rock on hand for specially favored prisoners. My mother may have been granted it as a boon in honor of her long friendship with the High Priest, for instance. But a sacrifice without fear and pain is really only half a sacrifice. To extract the most benefit, the delegate should feel the maximum amount of fear and mental chaos before the god sunders his body from his spirit. Fear and pain have great power, as does the fascination and dread they arouse in onlookers. Our priests are able to condense and use that power to the greater glory of the god and the magic of Gorequartz.”

  She spoke with a faraway look in her eye, her head tilted, the small smile growing vaguer and softer, as if she were remembering a particularly entertaining ball she had once attended, or an athletic event of some sort. Rupert shuddered.

  Later that afternoon, Effluvia protected a spring whose water could inspire love, and the gemstones in it, which could ease grief. A mountain pasture, whose grasses could guarantee inner peace for as long as a blade could be chewed, was her next target. By the time she finished with the pasture, chewing its grasses would ease nothing but the necessity to chew anything the rest of one’s life. By evening, the magical and wondrous places in the forest were cl
oaked in a miasma of bad odor. Effluvia looked heartily pleased with herself.

  She graciously extended her protective powers to include them when they camped that night, halfway up a mountain pass. Before any of them could utter a word of protest, the skunk-woman paced around them, enclosing them in a circle of stench. Carole scooted closer to the clean smell of the campfire and tried not to inhale. Rupert hunkered beside her, making himself as small as he could. He shivered slightly in the cold, thin air. His nose twitched uncontrollably and he looked miserable.

  “Enough to choke a horse, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “You’ll notice we saw only magic things. No magic beasts,” Carole replied with as little movement of her mouth as possible. “If she tried her nasty business on a unicorn, she’d be punctured in a thrice. Mum’s friend Moonshine would never stand for her polluting any of the streams he cleanses with his horn. And you know what Grippeldice thinks of her.”

  “Yes,” the Prince said. “Of course, she did have a hard childhood, still…”

  The merchant Timoteo, already curled by the fire for sleep, opened his eyes long enough to look imploringly heavenward and then back to Carole, who nodded slightly, patted Rupert’s forearm, and assumed her own sleeping position. Little space remained between her and Timoteo but Rupert squeezed himself into it, something Carole did not appreciate since he left no place for Effluvia but next to her, where the skunk-woman’s unfragrant tail twitched ticklingly near the witch’s nose all night.

  * * *

  Effluvia proved a more helpful companion the following day. They reached the bottom of the pass by noon, the river less than an hour later. They followed the river upstream around a sharp bend, beyond which it spilled from a sizable tunnel carved into the mountainside. A long, wooden boat was tied near the tunnel’s entrance. Effluvia immediately climbed into it.