The Wizard, the Farmer, and the Very Petty Princess

by Daniel Fox

  They were away from the great room, down halls, behind doors, the battle noises drowned by floors and walls of black stone. They were in some dank room, indistinguishable from any number of other dank rooms they had passed on their way here.

  Willuna and the wizard stood side-by-side, her slim cool hand held lightly in his clammy paw. Before them the once mostly-priest mumbled and groaned some incomprehensible syllables, then turned to her.

  The vow came easy to her. The words had been with her since she'd been a little girl. She said them quietly, her eyes cast down. "Before now, I was nothing but the sweet anticipation of this day. Time begins only now, at this moment, as I join myself with you."

  Beside her, the magician wiped a tear from his eye. Was this an opening? Was there still some humanity left inside him?

  Willuna raised her head and peered around. "Does this seem quite right to you?"

  "What do you mean? It's right in the sense of evil triumphing over good."

  "What I mean is, here we are, a queen and the Most Evil Man Alive getting married and, well…" She waved a hand around the empty room. "Don't you think such an occasion should be a bit more…"

  "Grand?"

  "Exactly! There should be a great hall."

  "I've got one right upstairs."

  "And people celebrating."

  "I can make my minions clap. Calling out our praises might be a bit of a problem."

  Willuna turned to the wizard. "Can we postpone? Just a slight delay while we make more suitable arrangements."

  "Well…" He wagged a finger at her. "I'm not stopping my conquest for this."

  "Conquest? Oh, that." Willuna waved a dismissive hand at the thought of the war going on below. "I'm surprised such an immense undertaking doesn't require more supervision from its evil mastermind."

  "I admit I'm quite close to chewing my fingernails."

  "Go on then. I'll arrange, you pillage. We'll meet up later for drinks. Oh, before you go, have you given any thought to a colour scheme?"

  The magician scratched his head. "Orange and blue?"

  "You are evil."

  The magician started for the doorway. Willuna held up a finger. "Oh, just one more thing," she said. "I'll need a helper or two."

  ***

  The giant unwound. Severed straps curled in the air, snapped like whips. The undead members of its body tumbled apart, pattering to the ground, cracking. Bits and pieces skittered across the courtyard to be smashed by hammers and skewered by swords.

  A battle. A genuine bit of warfare, and he had survived. Idwal was bruised, his arms sore from all that sword-swinging and archery. Clammy sweat clung to him like a second skin. But the lightning-sick smell of fear was leaving him, slicked off him by the breeze that made its gentle way through the courtyard.

  Soon there was only one undead figure left on this side of the mirrors and moat. It still shambled forward, coming to join the battle, dressed in its regal black and grey.

  Idwal saw Anisim start forward. He caught up with the king but Anisim waved him off.

  "It's okay," said Anisim. He stood at the entrance to the courtyard, under the archway, waiting for what remained of his father to come close. "You know farmer, I never got a hug from him. Not even a handshake. You know what I wanted most of all? Just peace. Just a quiet moment that was all my own. Well," he said, tightening his grip on the handle of his sword, "I now give it to him."

  With that, Anisim raised his sword to the level of his dead father's neck and gave it a mighty swing.

  ***

  Bodolomous stood on his stone landing above the great mirror room, watching as Wolf soldiers approached the other side of his magic mirrors to smash them to bits, leaving them black and empty on this side.

  The farmer was there too, pressing a hand against the glass of one of the mirrors, trying to get through. "I quite dislike him," said the wizard. "Right then," he called out, his voice echoing around the room, "send more troops through. Let's get this done, I've got a marriage to get to."

  Nothing happened. Bodolomous took a step closer to the edge and looked down. There were no more of his minions below him. He held up a hand, palm turned up, and muttered a bit of magical this and that. A fireball blossomed above his hand, the flames turning over on themselves. He threw the fireball left, illuminating the room's far corners. No troops. He whipped up another fireball and cast it right. Nothing.

  This wasn't right. He should still have hundreds of minions left. He'd had minions making minions making minions. He hadn't expected a bunch of undead folk to be fantastic warriors, what with the atrophied muscles and goo for brains. He had been depending on numbers. Great big numbers. Numbers with enough digits that it would get tiring trying to write them down.

  Where had his army gone?

  ***

  'Is there no hope for her then?"

  Idwal and the king stood on the battlements, looking out over the flat fields before the castle. Wolf soldiers were moving about in small units, breaking the last of the mirrors and poking at bits and pieces of the undead to make sure they weren't up to causing any more trouble.

  "We don't know that the magician has her," said the king. "I say there's always hope. The fact that I'm the one saying that is reason for hope in and of itself. And, well, I hacked off my father's head today. I mean honestly, who could have seen that coming?"

  A round of grunted cursing made them look down into the courtyard below. A familiar crystal casket was being shoved out of the opening in the ground. It thumped down, choice bits of its occupant jiggling in a most appealing fashion.

  Anisim led the way down through the dwarves. He knelt beside the casket. "She's breath-taking," he said. "Who is she?"

  Idwal put a comforting hand on the shoulder of the nearest miserable dwarf. "This is Snow-Drop," Idwal said. "She was poisoned by her evil step-mother. Who, word has it, was a queen of some place. And also a witch."

  "A queen?" Anisim looked up. "Really? Murderous villain! I'll have words with her."

  "Please good sir," said Cosimo, wringing his cap in his hands, "your farmer friend here, he told us your kiss was magic."

  Everyone in the courtyard turned to look at Idwal. He waved his hands. "That's just what I heard, I swear!"

  ***

  Bodolomous hustled through his great dark castle, feet kicking the hem of his robe out in front of him, calling out for Rotter and the rest of his minions. He really shouldn't have made the castle so big and dark, it was just impossible to find anything.

  Having searched the rest of the halls, the courtyard, the towers and the dungeons, Bodolomous finally made his way to the great hall where his wedding to Princess Willuna was to take place. At least he had that much to look forward to. Head down, wondering if there was some grim dark corner of the castle he had missed, he walked up to the young queen-to-be. He was feeling a bit sheepish. He was going to have to ask her for her helpers back so they could help search for the rest of his missing army. It wouldn't look very powerful or evil, losing platoons of smelly cadaverous soldiers.

  "Ah, princess," he said, "a word if I might."

  The princess gave him a smile. "Isn't it wonderful?" She waved her hands around the room.

  The wizard supposed she had put up some decorations or flowers or something, but he was feeling a bit too embarrassed to look anywhere but at his feet. "Yes yes," he said, "never seen the like. The thing is," he toed the ground, "I'm trying to conduct a slaughter in the next room over."

  "Oh, right! How's that going? Look, we made bunting!"

  "If you must know, the whole laying low of mine enemies has hit a bit of a snag."

  "I really should have my father give me away. It's too bad we ran afoul of that old woman."

  Bodolomous looked up. "Old woman?"

  "That stoning spell she used must be the wickedest bit of magic ever!"

  "That?" Bodolomous sniffed. "Wicked? Ha!" He pulled a stoppered bottle from the sleeve of his robe, gave its faintly glowing cont
ents a bit of a swirl. "I figured that one out in a night!"

  "Impressive," said the princess, nodding. "Although to be honest it's very easy to just copy someone else's-"

  Bodolomous whipped out a second bottle. "Copy? Me? Ha and ha again!" He shook the second bottle. "Done and undone in the very same night. What do you think of that?"

  "That's an antidote?"

  "Of course."

  "Astounding!"

  "You're too kind." Bodolomous smiled and rocked a bit on his feet. He was genuinely getting to like this girl. Seemed like she knew real evil when she saw it. "Now, about my war. It would appear I've run a bit short of…" Looking up, he got his first really good look around the room. His good feelings towards the girl instantly vanished. "You made furniture out of them!" He thrust his finger out.

  His army was here. All of them. They been positioned to form rows and rows of pews, some sitting on the backs of others. And where they'd run out of space for pews, they'd started to fill in the seating spaces as an audience.

  The princess gave him a sickly grin. "Too much?" she said.

  Chapter 21

  Tears dropped from bulbous dwarven noses. The crystal casket lid was raised up, followed by a milk-pale hand. Lips quivering, noses sniffling, the dwarves watched as Anisim drew Snow-Drop to her perfect little feet.

  She looked up at him with her great dark eyes. "You're not a dwarf," she said. "I can tell."

  Watching the dwarves watching Snow-Drop watching Anisim, something suddenly occurred to Idwal. "Sorry," he said, "but your step-mum, she was a bit of a witch, wasn't she? Did she happen to know anything about reflections?"

  ***

  The great dark hall echoed with the wizard's bellows. "It's high time you gave me just a smidgeon of respect!" He turned from Willuna and yelled at the furniture/undead. "Get up you idiots! Go and kill something!" They blinked at him, not moving from their places. The wizard whirled back to Willuna. "What did you do to my wonderful hordes? Make them move!"

  Willuna jutted her chin up into the air. "I'll thank you not to take that tone with me. I am, after all-"

  The wizard howled with rage and clamped a great clammy hand around her wrist. He dragged her behind him, bruising her, pulling her back into the mirror room.

  The magician pulled her to a halt right at the edge of the landing. "Send them through!" he bellowed into her face.

  "I don't have enough words to tell you just how much I refuse."

  "I could kill you!"

  "I'm not afraid."

  "I could torture you."

  "I stand ready."

  And stand she did, poised and regal. She really did feel unafraid then, like nothing he could do would ever touch her again. But then he reached into the sleeve of his robe and pulled out the antidote, the potion that could save her father. The wizard dangled it over the edge of the landing.

  "Send them through, or I promise you your father will remain a bird-stand forever." He shook the bottle.

  "Don't!"

  "Send them through!"

  "Please!"

  "Alas," said the magician, and drew back his arm to hurl the bottle.

  "Hold!"

  Willuna looked down and laid eyes on the most wonderful sight she'd ever seen. Seven dwarves, Anisim, and Idwal were piling through one of the mirrors below. Oh, and that twit from the glass casket too, all cleavage-y and glassy-eyed.

  "What are you all doing here?" said the magician, sounding really rather put out.

  "Your mentor had a step-daughter," said Anisim.

  "I told you I could find him!" said Snow-Drop.

  Willuna stepped back as the wizard squinted, peering down from the edge at the girl below. "You, I remember you. Boy, you certainly grew up."

  "Uh-huh," said Snow-Drop, "mostly my boobs."

  "Give up magician!" called up the king.

  "But I really want to win!" The wizard thrust out an arm. From the hallway behind came his jesters, his last loyal few, bounding and jumping and leaping from the giddy heights of the landing down to the floor below. He grabbed Willuna around her waist and hauled her away, back to the great hall.

  He scrambled to a stop, manhandling the wildcat in his arms. "Right, listen you all!" He addressed himself to the putrid pews. "The wedding's off. So you can all toddle off and return to your hacking and your maiming."

  "Don't listen to him!" said Willuna from back over his shoulder.

  "I made you!" The wizard wagged a warning finger at them. "Each and every one!"

  "Yes! That's right! He pulled you from your sleep, wrenched you from your peace and quiet!"

  "Well, okay, yes, I suppose. Is that what this little mutiny is all about? Fine." The wizard smiled his bestest smile at the undead. "You lot hustle on down to the mirror room, kill the intruders, and voila, you're back in your graves by sundown. Deal?"

  "Oh sure, that was convincing. And after the mirror room it will be 'Oh, could you just pillage this one last tiny little kingdom for me?'"

  The wizard shuffled around, trying to stare the princess in the face, which is not the easiest thing to do when said person is flung over your shoulder. "Will you keep quiet?!"

  "And then after that it will be, 'Oh, dreadfully sorry, forgot about this castle that needs a really good sieging, completely slipped my-'"

  The wizard plunked her down on her feet and clapped a hand over her mouth. Willuna bit it. "It will never end!" she said.

  The wizard made an odd little gesture. A strip from the hem of Willuna's dress ripped itself off and wrapped itself around her head, gagging her. Willuna twisted the magician's ear. Another gesture, and another strip snaked up to tie her hands behind her back.

  "Now hear this! I pledge to every and all undead here today…" He looked over and caught sight of just how much higher the hem of Willuna's dress was. "My goodness," he said, "that's a lot of leg. Ankles are kind of skinny but-"

  Willuna stomped her foot in fury, her face turning a ferocious shade of red under the gag. The wizard shook off his admiration and turned back to the cadavers. "Right," he said. "So, about that eternal peace."

  ***

  The jesters were done, cut apart and twitching on the floor. Idwal and his friends were free to climb the long line of stone stairs up to the landing. To find Willuna and free her. But then the landing above was full of the undead, piling up, pouring over the edge, falling and cracking apart at their feet. Some of them appeared to be decorated with bunting.

  The wizard was up there amongst them, holding Willuna at his side. "The princess has come to weep," he said. "I have come to gloat. And you have come to die."

  There were too many, just too many. They continued to pour over, a deluge, a flood. The enemy circled around, so many of them that their numbers were lost to the darkness in one direction, silhouetted from a distant window in the other. Now even the mirrors were cut off. They were ten, the enemy hundreds.

  Idwal looked up to the landing, saw the princess looking back down, terror in her great round eyes. He of course understood now what it meant to be a hero. He'd hung around Anisim long enough. It wasn't skill with a sword, it wasn't presence on a battlefield. "Hero" and "sacrifice" were the very same word. He wondered if maybe people would sing about him in times to come.

  He pulled his fiddle from its string around his neck. He placed his bow to the strings. And he played. The tune jumped and jigged around the great hall, wiggling its way into the undead's ears. They danced. They sprang. They shimmied and spun and kicked up (and occasionally off) their feet. Their thousands of stomping feet added a thundering bass-line to the fiddle's high tune.

  Above them, the magician raved. He flung another strip from the hem of Willuna's dress to bound the farmer's hands, but the princess gave him a shove, tumbling him back into the hallway behind them to fall on the stone floor. The strip of cloth fluttered down past the farmer's face.

  Idwal led the undead army to the large window at the far end of the room… and then out. The undead follow
ed, tumbling out the window to fall and smash themselves to pieces on the crags and spires of the mountain-sides below.

  And then there was silence.

  Chapter 22

  Gone, the farmer was gone. Willuna stood blinking at the far window, dumb to the world around her.

  The wizard stumbled past her to look down over the edge. Gone, they were all gone, all of his wonderful army, his chance to make his name. A last few leg bones twitched and clicked against the stone floor below, and that was it.

  "I won't have it!" he screamed. He rounded on Willuna. "You! You will still surrender to me, you and the king and your stumpy little friends! Don't move!" he shouted at Anisim and the dwarves below. He whipped out the bottle of antidote and tore out the stopper. He held it over the edge again, tipping it. The liquid inside kissed the bottle's mouth's rim. "How many, eh? How many will pass through your courtyard, cursing your name? How many will see all those people you couldn't save? Say you surrender!"

  Willuna struggled, wanting to scream back.

  "How much is enough?" the wizard continued. He let the potion drip drip drip out to the floor below. "Who could this have saved? A butcher? And this? A stable-hand? Maybe a cook? Tell me! Tell me you yield! Call me your master!"

  He flicked his fingers. The cloth unknotted itself from around Willuna's head and drooped down to the ground. He leaned in close to her, turned his ear to her lips. "Let me hear the words."

  Willuna leaned forward and spoke quietly right into his ear. "You…"

  "Yes?"

  "…are…"

  "Yes? Say it!"

  "…leaking."

  A dark damp spot was spreading on the sleeve of his robes. He reached in and pulled out the flask that contained his version of the stoning potion. It was just a sliver of a crack, looking like a tiny white line of lightning in the glass. It had broken when Willuna knocked him down into the hall. Potion oozed out.