Writers of the Future Volume 34

by L. Ron Hubbard

  As the Solognian herald had demanded of them, the lord mayor and the head of each of the guilds were present in the town square. They regarded the Solognians and their reptilian mounts with equal dread.

  “Why, no, my lord,” the mayor said. Ordinarily, he looked plump and prosperous, and his wife dressed in the height of fashion. Instead, his clothes appeared to have been fashioned from scratchy, noisome gunny sacks belted with rope. Angelo applauded their initiative. “We have nothing better than what we send up to the citadel.”

  “It’s the best place in the realm,” the master of the millers’ guild said. “We’re proud of that.”

  “We send them our very best work,” the master goldsmith added, smiling nervously. He had to wear his chain of office, despite it drawing the greedy eye of their visitor. “It is to honor our lady regente.” He bowed to Angelo, who dipped his head slightly in return.

  Francour looked as though he wanted to snatch the ornate chain. He balled up his fist instead and held it under the merchant’s chin.

  “I marry your regente tomorrow. Bring all of your gold and silver to me as gifts for that happy celebration! Go back and bring it all forth, now! I demand it, as your new lord and master!”

  The master smith hesitated. He cleared his throat, and nervously stroked the necklace.

  “But, your grace,” he said, with an oily bow. “By the laws of our land, as my new liege I owe you every copper of my taxes, but my merchandise is my property. Surely you don’t mean to confiscate that which I own.” He spread out his hands. “There are some who would say the same might happen to your own merchants’ representatives, if they cross the border into Enth, to trade with us, should such a thing become known. The practice might even spread to other lands, and anarchy would ensue.”

  Francour gaped like a fish, his mouth opening and closing.

  “That is true, your grace,” Angelo said, trying to look demure. “The rule of law is important. To suspend that would prove … difficult.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want to set a precedent, would we?” the condestable said, cocking her head at the prince. “What would your esteemed father say, your grace, if you were to suspend the rule of law?”

  Francour grumbled. He balled up his fists, but his lackeys prevented him from lunging forward to use them on the guildmasters. These days his complexion never seemed to dim from red fury.

  “You will show honor to me as your new liege! I expect wedding presents! And send me some decent food for the feast!”

  “Of course, your grace. Those will come from our very hearts, I assure you, your grace!” The guildmasters shot Zoraida sympathetic glances as they departed, with Angelo riding pillion behind Francour on his krilla.

  Ha-ha! Angelo thought. Time to make it worse yet.

  As he and Francour landed in the courtyard, he rubbed his hand over the whitstone in his staff. The mystic stone had shrunk by a third already, but he had no choice. Instead of just seeing, they must feel this one.

  Screaming erupted from the kitchens at the rear of the castle. The frantic noise spread, followed by hissing and clattering. Servants erupted from the door and fled past them.

  “What now?” Francour demanded, then gasped. “By all that is sacred!”

  Out of the door came a wave of black, shiny-shelled cockroaches the size of hen’s eggs. The flood of insects poured out onto the stone paving. A host of them made for Francour’s mount. They crested over it, making the winged snake leap about, biting at its own tail. It took off into the sky, followed by the other krilla.

  “Come back here!” Francour yelled, then batted at the ones that started to climb his boots. The other Solognians batted at the gigantic insects, shrieking in fear. Even though it ate away at his stone further, he made the roaches nip at their victims. The newcomers fled, batting and stamping on their small attackers. They scrambled over one another to reach higher ground, as if to escape the insects.

  Crack! The whitstone in Angelo’s staff split with an audible report. Angelo stared, horrified. He had to stop, lest it crumble away entirely. Hastily, he gathered what energy he could, and let it flow out through his hands. The wave of roaches receded and seemed to melt away, down into the cracks between the paving stones of the courtyard.

  “Fire and lightning!” Francour swore, as the last insect disappeared. “Does that happen often?”

  Angelo stood demurely on the steps, the only one left in the courtyard, letting the waves of roaches bump up against the skirts of his robe as if they were of no moment. “Only once a day, my lord. Usually there are more of them, you know.”

  “Once a day?” Francour repeated, eyes wide with disbelief. “This place is insane! The wedding will take place tomorrow! Then, I can leave this place under a governor. You will return with me to Sologne.”

  “As you wish, my liege,” Angelo said. “May I return to my quarters to prepare?”

  “Anything!” Francour shouted.

  Angelo curtseyed, and retreated to the regente’s private quarters.

  So he was to be carried off to Sologne, he thought as he stumped up the stairs. Well, if nothing else, then Francour still would not have captured Zoraida. He glanced out of the arched window of the regente’s chamber toward his tower, to reassure himself that the protective blue cloud was in place. To his horror, it was gone.

  “Well, what’s been happening?” Zoraida asked.

  Angelo spun. The young regente sat in her dressing table chair, one knee up on the arm.

  “My lady, you can’t be here!” Angelo sputtered.

  “I have to know what is happening to my people!” Zoraida said. “I have been watching, but I have to do something! I cannot believe how terrible everything looks, everywhere. What is with all these spider webs?” She kicked at the nearest, a huge, wispy octagon clinging between her bed and the wall. Her foot passed right through. “Oh! They’re not real.”

  “My lady, I must protest,” Angelo said, lowering his voice. “The tower was the safest place in the realm for you. You must return there immediately.” He took her arm and urged her toward the door.

  Zoraida shook loose from his grasp. “I am not afraid of that donkey. You will save me and all of my people. You have the power to defeat this monstrous brat! Call up a windstorm! Flood the castle and wash them away! Strike him dead with lightning!”

  “I cannot!” Angelo exclaimed, wringing his hands around his half-ruined staff. “I’m not a real wizard, regente!”

  The words were out before he could stop them.

  She eyed him as if she had never seen him before. Angelo felt his heart sink into his borrowed boots. Her voice dropped to a dangerously quiet tone.

  “What do you mean by that, Angelo?”

  He bowed his head. The truth had at last come out, as he knew one day it would.

  “I am but a humble illusionist, my liege. Your father was satisfied with my skills. So far they have been adequate to my position. Unfortunately, I can’t call down the lightning or cause a chasm to open in the earth, as dearly as I would love to do that for you. I would work any wonder you wished, if only I could!”

  “But, all those things you do? The pixies? The grand fireworks?”

  “What I do, I do very well,” he admitted. “But they’re not great workings of magic. I can fool the eye, the ear, even the hand. I change the seeming, not the substance.”

  “Oh.” That small syllable cut through to his heart.

  “You must hide, my lady,” Angelo said. “He means to marry you tomorrow! I mean, me. Go back, now, before …”

  “Before what?”

  To Angelo’s horror, the Solognian prince was at the door. Francour looked gleeful. Angelo longed to have the power of the lightning, if only to strike the expression from his face. The invader stalked into the room and circled the two.

  “Well, two delectable treasures!
I don’t know which one to kiss first. Which of you is the real Zoraida?”

  “Me, of course, my lord!” Angelo said, at once. Francour grabbed him by the arm. Angelo began to create a physical illusion to hide his mustachios, but Francour cast aside his staff before he could complete the illusion. He pressed his lips to Angelo’s. As the wizard feared, the Solognian got a mouthful of beard. Francour shoved him away, sputtering.

  “A hairy face! That is disgusting! So, this must be my promised bride!” He seized Zoraida and bent his mouth to hers. She promptly chomped down on his lower lip. He punched her in the side of the head, so she let go and fell dazed to the floor. Francour hauled her up by one arm. “Yes, that is the Zoraida I remember. We will be married now, and you shall return with me to my father’s kingdom. As for you,” he said, kicking Angelo in the side as the wizard’s disguise failed, “to the dungeons with you! To the most remote cell, to await your execution! Impersonating the sacred person of the heir to the throne, humiliating me and my people and,” he added, shuddering, “making me kiss you!”

  “No, your grace!” Angelo begged, falling to his knees. “I am a creature of the light! Do not shut me in the darkness!”

  Francour let out a bark of cruel laughter. His men seized Angelo and dragged him along the corridor. The prince led the way down the three flights of dank stone stairs to the dungeon.

  “They told me there was treasure here,” he said, signing to the shamefaced jailor to open the banded wooden door at the very end of the cavern. “Just like all the other lies here, there was nothing. Now, you can have all the treasure to yourself.”

  Francour’s men threw him into the cell, then slammed the door on him before he could spring up and escape. Angelo heard the key turn in the lock. He peered through the pinhole-sized opening in the door. The prince grinned at him.

  “Never let him out,” the prince told the jailor. “In fact—” He snatched the key and snipped it in half with a metal pincer. “There. No more interference. No more illusions. Now, I shall claim my bride!”

  Angelo turned away as the light receded. All preparations had been made for the next day, so there was no reason to delay. Zoraida would no doubt be thrust into a gown and cloak, decked with flowers and tied up by Francour’s minions so she could not escape. She would be married against her will.

  Fortunately, the court wizard mused, feeling his way toward the rear wall of the cell, Francour is oh, so predictable. Yes, the notch in the brick was exactly where he had made it. A little digging in the clay helped to dislodge it. Carefully, now, he admonished himself. Wrapped in a tiny scrap of silk was a fragment he had chipped from his whitstone, to be left here in case of need. He let it rest in his hand, letting it absorb what energy he had in him. Sitting on a hank of decaying straw scattered on the cold stone floor in the dark, he drew from his imagination, the storybooks he had read, and songs he had heard from the troubadours—the dark stories, the ones that had always frightened him as a child.

  Drucella wore a pendant upon which he had once used the Law of Contagion so he could see what she saw. He reached out to that.

  As he had surmised, everyone in the castle had been forced at swordpoint to the chapel. Drucella stood close to the altar. Zoraida kept turning toward her, her eyes desperate. Francour held her arm firmly. He had tied her hands behind her back.

  The royal chaplains, the Priest and Priestess of Life, protested the haste.

  “This is not a willing union,” the priestess said. “The woman must accept the man.”

  Francour drew his side dagger and held it to Zoraida’s throat. “She accepts me. Say it, woman, or your servants will die one by one.”

  “No, your serenity,” Rafello said. “We will die for you.”

  “No,” Zoraida said. She tossed her head. “I consent. I brought us to this pass.”

  Francour pointed the knife at the priest. “Begin. Get it over with.”

  The priest looked angry, but he had no choice.

  “May all who wish to celebrate gather here now!” he intoned, holding his arms high.

  Angelo let power flow from his eyes, his ears, and his heart, filling the room with ghostly figures, their faces drawn from the catafalques and paintings that lined the chapel.

  “By the light, that is the eleventh regente, Milagra!” the priestess gasped, pointing at a small figure with long braids that brushed the ground. Her hand flew toward a towering figure with shoulders twice the width of his waist and a massive jaw. “And the thirtieth, Octavio the third, and …” She paled, swayed and fell to the ground. Her acolytes rushed to her aid, but half the guests fled the hall, screaming in horror.

  “Spirits?” Francour demanded, lowering the point of his knife. “This castle is haunted?”

  “My ancestors,” Zoraida said, her eyes flashing, though she looked frightened. “They come to protect me.”

  “From me?” Francour’s voice squeezed down to a stripling’s squeak.

  But that was only the beginning of Angelo’s imaginings. He touched the back of Francour’s neck with cold and clammy fingers that made the prince jump. The memorial plaques on the walls seemed to sway, and ghostly music rose from the choir stalls, even though no singers or musicians sat there.

  “Continue!” Francour bellowed.

  Then, spiders the size of dogs dropped from the ceiling on webs like silver rope, reaching for the Solognian nobles. They quailed, hunching their backs to avoid the monsters. Shapeless ghosts swooped through the room, passing through the humans and leaving behind only a cold touch. Bats flew, shrieking, to chivvy out those with any courage left.

  “I’m going home, my liege!” one of the Solognian nobles shouted.

  “I, too!” echoed another. They ran for the door.

  “Cowards!” Francour shouted, his face as red as a beet. He snarled at the priests. “Continue!”

  By then, only Drucella and Rafello remained. Still, Francour held his would-be bride at the altar. The priest and priestess fought to make themselves heard over the wailing and ghostly music.

  Angelo cudgeled his brain for more and more horrifying images and sensations. Go away, curse you! he thought.

  He felt burning in the palm of his hand as the stone gave up spark after spark. With a cautious forefinger, he prodded the tiny fragment of whitstone. It had dissolved into powdery sand. The illusions in the chapel began to fade.

  No, not yet! he pleaded with it. He channeled all the energy in his body into the stone, feeding it. All the horrors must continue.

  He hung rotting faces in every corner of the chapel. He made the stones beneath Francour’s feet shake. He loved Zoraida as if she was his own child. She counted upon him. All he had he owed to her and her father. If it cost him his life, he would drive away this menace. He painted the complexion of one long dead over Zoraida’s beautiful face, eyes hollow, skin dripping from her bones.

  At last, Francour broke, dropping her arm. “I cannot stand this place a moment longer!” he shrieked.

  That is all I needed to hear, Angelo thought. The blackness of the cell moved in and overwhelmed his vision.

  Angelo? Grandee Wizard, wake up!” a child’s voice demanded. “Master? Master!”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, put this in his hand,” Drucella’s voice insisted.

  The only sensation Angelo felt was in his right palm, a smooth—stone?—shaped like half an egg. His whitstone! Greedily, he drew from it, drinking its power, feeling the warmth flow, until he had an arm, a body, feet, another arm, and a head, all of them aching. He fed on the stone’s energy, though the egg shrank in his grasp. The burst of magic flowing from it jolted him back from the very edge of death.

  With a gasp, Angelo opened his eyes. He was propped on the stinking, cold stone steps of the dungeon, surrounded by his apprentices, all wide-eyed with worry. The top of the silverwood staff rested in the palm of his ha
nd. He drew it up to look at it, puzzled as to the gap at the top. Then, his muddled brain puzzled out what he was looking at. The great whitstone that he had had for decades was reduced to a mere grain of sand. Ah, well, he would have to find another. He found his voice at last.

  “Is Zoraida all right?”

  Drucella nodded. Her usually perfect hair was scattered over her shoulders, and she had tears in her eyes.

  “It’s over,” she said. “They’re leaving. Can you stand?”

  Angelo felt as weak as a wilted leaf, but he chuckled. “To watch them leave? I can fly!”

  This whole nation is a madhouse!” Francour kicked his steed in its scaly flanks. The shrieking krilla rose into the air, and the rest of his minions’ beasts with it. “I leave it to decay under its own rot!”

  The castle staff cheered as the Solognians flew eastward in the overcast sky.

  “They will come back,” Zoraida whispered. She trembled in Angelo’s arm. “I don’t want to see him again. He is insane.”

  “I think that will be highly unlikely,” Angelo said. He had looked to the north the moment he had found a window to look out of. The cone of blue light in the distance was gone. He clutched the last minute fragment of whitstone in his palm. It would hold together for one more message, and one final great illusion.

  I am no warrior, Angelo thought, guiltily. I have no stomach for this. But Zoraida must be safe.

  He sent his will toward the north, pointing toward the rising Solognian force. Those, my dear friend. They threaten my nest. Will you take them?

  The thought came back with a hearty chuckle. Krilla are my favorite food.

  In his hands, Angelo sculpted the semblance of a plump white dove, and threw it into the air. It rose up among the circling winged snakes and their riders.