“What are you doing?” Onion said.
“It never does any good,” Halsa said. “I should have brought an axe.”
“Let me try,” Onion said.
Halsa shrugged. Stupid boy, she thought, and Onion could hear her perfectly. “Go ahead,” she said.
Onion put his hand on the door and pushed. It swung open. He looked up at Halsa and flinched. “Sorry,” he said.
Halsa went in.
There was a desk in the room, and a single candle, which was burning. There was a bed, neatly made, and a mirror on the wall over the desk. There was no wizard of Perfil, not even hiding under the bed. Halsa checked, just in case.
She went to the empty window and looked out. There was the meadow and the makeshift camp, below them, and the marsh. The canals, shining like silver. There was the sun, coming up, the way it always did. It was strange to see all the windows of the other towers from up here, so far above, all empty. White birds were floating over the marsh. She wondered if they were wizards; she wished she had a bow and arrows.
“Where is the wizard?” Onion said. He poked the bed. Maybe the wizard had turned himself into a bed. Or the desk. Maybe the wizard was a desk.
“There are no wizards,” Halsa said.
“But I can feel them!” Onion sniffed, then sniffed harder. He could practically smell the wizard, as if the wizard of Perfil had turned himself into a mist or a vapor that Onion was inhaling. He sneezed violently.
Someone was coming up the stairs. He and Halsa waited to see if it was a wizard of Perfil. But it was only Tolcet. He looked tired and cross, as if he’d had to climb many, many stairs.
“Where are the wizards of Perfil?” Halsa said.
Tolcet held up a finger. “A minute to catch my breath,” he said.
Halsa stamped her foot. Onion sat down on the bed. He apologized to it silently, just in case it was the wizard. Or maybe the candle was the wizard. He wondered what happened if you tried to blow a wizard out. Halsa was so angry he thought she might explode.
Tolcet sat down on the bed beside Onion. “A long time ago,” he said, “the father of the present king visited the wizards of Perfil. He’d had certain dreams about his son, who was only a baby. He was afraid of these dreams. The wizards told him that he was right to be afraid. His son would go mad. There would be war and famine and more war and his son would be to blame. The old king went into a rage. He sent his men to throw the wizards of Perfil down from their towers. They did.”
“Wait,” Onion said. “Wait. What happened to the wizards? Did they turn into white birds and fly away?”
“No,” Tolcet said. “The king’s men slit their throats and threw them out of the towers. I was away. When I came back, the towers had been ransacked. The wizards were dead.”
“No!” Halsa said. “Why are you lying? I know the wizards are here. They’re hiding somehow. They’re cowards.”
“I can feel them too,” Onion said.
“Come and see,” Tolcet said. He went to the window. When they looked down, they saw Essa and the other servants of the wizards of Perfil moving among the refugees. The two old women who never spoke were sorting through bundles of clothes and blankets. The thin man was staking down someone’s cow. Children were chasing chickens as Burd held open the gate of a makeshift pen. One of the younger girls, Perla, was singing a lullaby to some mother’s baby. Her voice, rough and sweet at the same time, rose straight up to the window of the tower, where Halsa and Onion and Tolcet stood looking down. It was a song they all knew. It was a song that said all would be well.
“Don’t you understand?” Tolcet, the wizard of Perfil, said to Halsa and Onion. “There are the wizards of Perfil. They are young, most of them. They haven’t come into their full powers yet. But all may yet be well.”
“Essa is a wizard of Perfil?” Halsa said. Essa, a shovel in her hand, looked up at the tower, as if she’d heard Halsa. She smiled and shrugged, as if to say Perhaps I am, perhaps not, but isn’t it a good joke? Didn’t you ever wonder?
Tolcet turned Halsa and Onion around so that they faced the mirror that hung on the wall. He rested his strong, speckled hands on their shoulders for a minute, as if to give them courage. Then he pointed to the mirror, to the reflected Halsa and Onion who stood there staring back at themselves, astonished. Tolcet began to laugh. Despite everything, he laughed so hard that tears came from his eyes. He snorted. Onion and Halsa began to laugh, too. They couldn’t help it. The wizard’s room was full of magic, and so were the marshes and Tolcet and the mirror where the children and Tolcet stood reflected, and the children were full of magic, too.
Tolcet pointed again at the mirror, and his reflection pointed its finger straight back at Halsa and Onion. Tolcet said, “Here they are in front of you! Ha! Do you know them? Here are the wizards of Perfil!”
Neil Gaiman’s most recent novel, the international bestseller The Graveyard Book, won the prestigious Newbery Medal, given to great works of children’s literature. Other novels include American Gods, Coraline, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys, among many others. In addition to his novel-writing, Gaiman is also the writer of the popular Sandman comic book series, and his books Coraline and Stardust were recently made into feature films. Gaiman’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including my own The Living Dead, By Blood We Live, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Most of his short work has been collected in the volumes Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and M is for Magic. His latest book is a hardcover edition of his poem, Instructions, illustrated by Charles Vess.
Most Americans have probably heard someone say, “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you,” referring to New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. It’s just taken for granted that handing over your money to a con man who offers to “sell” you such a famous landmark would be the ultimate example of gullibility. Believe it or not though, this old cliche is based on a real scam that was perpetrated over and over again on naive immigrants whose heads were filled with exaggerated notions of America as a land of opportunity. Con artists would memorize the routes of the beat cops and then set up signs saying “Bridge for sale” when they knew the police would be out of sight. Police repeatedly had to evict people who had been swindled and were attempting to charge tolls for crossing “their” bridge. As newcomers to the city gradually become more sophisticated, the con died away, but lived on in movies such as Every Day’s a Holiday and even in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (“Bowery Bugs”).
Our next tale, about a gentleman’s club for con artists, provides a new twist on this old idea, albeit one involving a much grander bridge and a much grander swindle.
How to Sell the Ponti Bridge
Neil Gaiman
My favorite rogues’ club is the oldest and still the most exclusive in all the Seven Worlds. It was formed by a loose association of rogues, cheats, scoundrels, and confidence men almost seventy thousand years ago. It has been copied many times in many places (there was one started quite recently, within the last five hundred years at any rate, in the City of London), but none of the other clubs matches the original Rogues’ Club, in the city of Lost Carnadine, for atmosphere. No other club has quite so select a membership.
And the membership of the Lost Carnadine Rogues’ Club is particularly select. You will understand the kind of person who makes it to membership if I tell you that I myself have seen, walking or sitting or eating or talking, in its many rooms, such notables as Daraxius Lo (who sold the Kzem a frog-bat on a holy day), Prottle (who sold the palace of the King of Vandaria to the King of Vandaria), and the self-styled Lord Niff (who, I have heard it whispered, was the original inventor of the fox twist, the cheat that broke the bank at the Casino Grande). In addition, I have seen Rogues of interuniversal renown fail to gain admittance to even discuss their membership with the secretary—on one memorable day I passed a famous financier, in company with the head of the Hy-Brasail mafia and a preeminent prime minister on their way down the back stairs
with the blackest of expressions upon their faces, having obviously been told not even to think about returning. No, the ones who make it into the Rogues’ Club are a high bunch. I am sure that you will have heard of each of them. Not under those names, of course, but the touch is distinctive, is it not?
I myself gained membership by means of a brilliant piece of creative scientific research, something that revolutionized the thinking of a whole generation. It was my disdain for regular methodology and, as I have said, creative research that gained me membership, and when I am in that part of the cosmos I make a point of stopping off for an evening, taking in some sparkling conversation, drinking the club’s fine wines, and basking in the presence of my moral equals.
It was late in the evening and the log fire was burning low in the grate, and a handful of us sat and drank one of the fine dark wines of Spidireen in an alcove in the great hall. “Of course,” one of my new friends was saying, “there are some scams that no self-respecting rogue would ever touch, they are so old and classless and tired. For example, selling a tourist the Ponti Bridge.”
“It’s the same with Nelson’s Column, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Brooklyn Bridge, back on my home-world,” I told them. “Sad little con games, with as much class as a back-alley game of Find the Lady. But look on the good side: Nobody who sold the Ponti Bridge would ever get membership in a club like this.”
“No?” said a quiet voice from the corner of the room. “How strange. I do believe it was the time I sold the Ponti Bridge that gained me membership in this club.” A tall gentleman, quite bald and most exquisitely dressed, got up from the chair in which he had been sitting, and walked over to us. He was sipping the inside of an imported rhûm fruit, and smiling, I think at the effect that he had created. He walked over to us, pulled up a cushion, and sat down. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said.
My friends introduced themselves (the gray-haired deft woman, Gloathis; the short, quiet dodger Redcap) as did I.
He smiled wider. “Your fame precedes each of you, I am honored. You may call me Stoat.”
“Stoat?” said Gloathis. “The only Stoat I ever heard of was the man who pulled the Derana Kite job, but that was . . . what, over a hundred years ago. What am I thinking? You adopted the name as a tribute, I presume.”
“You are a wise woman,” said Stoat. “It would be impossible for me to be the same man.” He leaned forward on his cushion. “You were talking about the sale of the Ponti Bridge?”
“Indeed we were.”
“And you were all of the opinion that selling the Ponti Bridge is a measly scam, unworthy of a member of this club? And perhaps you are right. Let us examine the ingredients of a good scam.” He ticked off the points on the fingers of his left hand as he spoke. “Firstly, the scam must be credible. Secondly, it must be simple—the more complex the more chance of error. Thirdly, when the sucker is stung he must be stung in such a way as to prevent him from ever turning to the law. Fourthly, the mainspring of any elegant con is human greed and human vanity. Lastly, it must involve trust—confidence, if you will.”
“Surely,” said Gloathis.
“So you are telling me that the sale of the Ponti Bridge—or any other major landmark not yours to sell—cannot have these characteristics? Gentlemen. Lady. Let me tell you my story.
“I had arrived in Ponti some years ago almost penniless. I had but thirty gold crowns, and I needed a million. Why? I am afraid that is another story. I took stock of myself—I had the gold crowns and some smart robes. I was fluent in the aristocratic Ponti dialect, and I am, I pride myself, quite brilliant. Still, I could think of nothing that would bring me the kind of money I had to have in the time by which I needed it. My mind, usually teeming and coruscating with fine schemes, was a perfect blank. So, trusting to my gods to bring me inspiration, I went on a guided tour of the city . . . ”
Ponti lies to the south and to the east, a free city and port at the foot of the Mountains of Dawn. Ponti is a sprawling city, on either side of the Bay of Dawn, a beautiful natural harbor. Spanning the bay is the bridge, which was built of jewels, of mortar, and of magic nearly two thousand years ago. There were jeers when it was first planned and begun, for none credited that a structure almost half a mile across could ever be successfully completed, or would stand for long once erected, but the bridge was completed, and the jeers turned to gasps of awe and civic pride. It spanned the Bay of Dawn, a perfect structure that flashed and shone and glinted in myriad rainbow colors beneath the noon sun.
The tour guide paused at the foot of it. “As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, if you will examine closely, the bridge is built entirely of precious stones—rubies, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, chryolanths, carbuncles, and such—and they are bound together with a transparent mortar which was crafted by the twin sages Hrolgar and Hrylthfgur out of a primal magic. The jewels are all real—make no mistake about that—and were gathered from all five corners of the world by Emmidus, King of Ponti at the time.”
A small boy near the front of the group turned to his mother and announced loudly, “We did him in school. He’s called Emmidus the Last, because there weren’t any more after him. And they told us—”
The tour guide interrupted smoothly. “The young man is quite correct. King Emmidus bankrupted the city-state obtaining the jewels, and thus set the scene for our current beneficent Ruling Enclave to appear.”
The small boy’s mother was now twisting his ear, which cheered the tour guide up immensely. “I’m sure you’ve heard that confidence tricksters are always trying to play tourists for mugs by telling them that they are representing the Ruling Enclave, and that as the owners of the bridge they are entitled to sell it. They get a hefty deposit, then scarper. To clarify matters,” he said, as he said five times each day, and he and the tourists chuckled together, “the bridge is definitely not for sale.” It was a good line. It always got a laugh.
His party started to make its way across the bridge. Only the small boy noticed that one of their number had remained behind—a tall man, quite bald. He stood at the foot of the bridge, lost in contemplation. The boy wanted to point this out to everybody, but his ear hurt, and so he said nothing.
The man at the foot of the bridge smiled abruptly. “Not for sale, eh?” he said aloud. Then he turned and walked back to the city.
They were playing a game not unlike tennis with large heavy-strung racquets and jeweled skulls for balls. The skulls were so satisfying in the way they thunked when hit cleanly, in the way they curved in great looping parabolas across the marble court. The skulls had never sat on human necks; they had been obtained, at great loss of life and significant expense, from a demon race in the highlands, and, afterward jeweled (emeralds and sweet rubies set in a lacy silver filigree in the eye sockets and about the jawbone) in Carthus’s own workshops.
It was Carthus’s serve.
He reached for the next skull in the pile and held it up to the light, marveling at the craftsmanship, in the way that the jewels, when struck by the light at a certain angle, seemed to glow with an inner luminescence. He could have told you the exact value and the probable provenance of each jewel—perhaps the very mine from which it had been dug. The skulls were also beautiful: bone the color of milky mother-of-pearl, translucent and fine. Each had cost him more than the value of the jewels set in its elegant bony face. The demon race had now been hunted to the verge of extinction, and the skulls were well-nigh irreplaceable.
He lobbed the skull over the net. Aathia struck it neatly back at him, forcing him to run to meet it (his footsteps echoing on the cold marble floor) and—thunk—hit it back to her.
She almost reached it in time. Almost, but not quite: the skull eluded her racquet and fell toward the stone floor and then, only an inch or so above the ground, it stopped, bobbing slightly, as if immersed in liquid or a magnetic field.
It was magic, of course, and Carthus had paid most highly for it. He could afford to.
“My point, l
ady,” he called, bowing low.
Aathia—his partner in all but love—said nothing. Her eyes glinted like chips of ice, or like the jewels that were the only things she loved. Carthus and Aathia, jewel merchants. They made a strange pair.
There was a discreet cough from behind Carthus. He turned to see a white-tuniced slave holding a parchment scroll. “Yes?” said Carthus. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand.
“A message, lord. The man who left it said that it was urgent.”
Carthus grunted. “Who’s it from?”
“I have not opened it. I was told it was for your eyes and the eyes of the Lady Aathia, and for no other.”
Carthus stared at the parchment scroll but made no move to take it. He was a big man with a fleshy face, sandy receding hair, and a worried expression. His business rivals—and there were many, for Ponti had become, over the years, the center of the wholesale jewel business—had learned that his expression held no clue to his inner feelings. In many cases it had cost them money to learn this.
“Take the message, Carthus,” said Aathia, and when he did not, she walked around the net herself and plucked the scroll from the slave’s fingers. “Leave us.”
The slave’s bare feet were soundless on the chill marble floor.
Aathia broke the seal with her sleeve knife and unrolled the parchment. Her eyes flicked over it once, fast, then again at a slower pace. She whistled. “Here . . . ” Carthus took it and read it through.
“I—I really don’t know what to make of it,” he said in a high, petulant voice. With his racquet he rubbed absentmindedly at the small crisscross scar on his right cheek. The pendant that hung about his neck, proclaiming him one of the High Council of the Ponti Jewel Merchants’ Guild, stuck briefly to his sweaty skin, and then swung free. “What do you think, my flower?”
“I am not your ‘flower.’ ”
“Of course not, lady.”
Way of the Wizard Page 30
