She stared eye to eyes with her snakes. Their pupils were a vertical slash.
“Have to be human again,” Old Janny said, reaching for her fork. “Have to take my medicine, even if it’s basilisk.”
Old Janny’s hand slipped past the utensil, to lift her chalice instead. She threw back a swig.
She jerked, and her body rippled. Her eyes bulged. Cheeks puffed out, but she did not spit the drink.
Swallowing, Old Janny aimed an eye into her glass. “What was that?”
The djinn floated to her side. “I should have mentioned it. This is a symphonic tonic.”
“Meaning?”
“A symphony in a bottle. You can attune the melody to your tastes by stirring the tonic and running a finger over the glass.”
Old Janny sniffed her glass. “Smells expensive.”
“The precise ingredients of the tonic cannot be spoken of at a respectable dinner,” the djinn said. “Think of it as distilled music.”
“That sounds soar-over-clouds amazing,” the empress said. She whirled around, her veil still dangling down her neck. Her lips were painted with hieroglyphs. The henna designs of a fox, a measuring scale, and water ripples all stood out dark on the pink of her ear-to-ear smile.
Aja bet servants pressed delicacies to those same lips. The empress had people to powder her plump cheeks. Fit her with that hanging-bird amulet with its silver wingtips. Every day Empress Ryn wore jewelry bright enough to make the sun jealous.
If Aja had sparkled with the same jewels and ate the same food, people would have to respect her. She wouldn’t stoop to stealing such finery, but she had come to the Banquet. She had done what she could. And now she was half snake.
“Ryn, your veil.” The lionman gave a rumbling hiss, then made a choking sound. He pawed at his belly.
“Oh no!” The empress fluttered to his side. “What’s wrong?”
“Didn’t chew my basilisk once.” His claws pierced his robe and scratch his own skin. “Swallowed by accident.”
Third Course, Part II:
A Bellyful of Death
Aja had to bow before the unveiled empress. Asp fingers slid on the carpet, trying to slither toward her. They stayed attached to Aja’s hands and couldn’t reach far enough.
The lionman looked from the kneeling Aja to the empress. He said, “You promised to keep your veil on.”
“Aja is my friend,” the empress said. “How could I hide who I am from my friends?”
A friend, she had called Aja a friend. Aja thought it could be true. It would be, by the end of the Banquet. Aja was too wobbly and squishy to stand.
“Is a snake girl you just met your friend?” The lionman swiped a claw from Aja to Solin. “Is the hexer your friend? Is—Ooof!”
The empress wrapped a wing around him. “Your tummy’s hurting?”
“Like I gulped a bucket of ice.”
Aja glanced at her fingers, the sinuous and the petrified. Let the lionman turn to stone next. Let him die.
Guilt slimed over her. How could she have thought something so cruel? Even if he had called her a snake girl.
With a clopping of goat hooves, Old Janny approached the swordsman and draped an arm over his shoulder. “No stranger myself to having a belly full of poisons. What you have to do is pop your own cork. Flip your flagon. Tickle the dragon.”
“What?” He clenched his stomach.
“Throw up,” the empress said. “Like a mother bird.”
“Touch the back of your throat.” Old Janny made stabbing motions into her own mouth.
The lionman eyed Solin, who tiptoed closer on his crutches. The lionman shivered and reached into his jaws. Taking his paw out again, he frowned.
“I don’t think I can,” he said. “My cat hand’s too wide, and it’s all going numb.”
Aja swiveled around in a coil shape to stand. She would feel awful if he did turn to rock. He was the empress’s friend. Aja had to help him. Even if he said mean things, older brothers did that all the time. That’s what Aja had seen.
“Janny.” The lionman opened his mouth in a spread of fangs. “You do it.”
Old Janny jerked her hand back. “Sorry. I’m allergic to fangs.”
Aja tried to think how to help. She could punch the lionman in the stomach. No, the hiss of her asps warned her that they would bite the lionman. Oh, she had a better idea. A great one.
“Take a feather from Ryn,” she said, “use it to—”
“Look.” He held up his paw. The tips of human fingers stood out among the fur. His claws had changed back into nails. “It’s curing me. I’ll be all right.”
“You won’t be.” Aja lifted her two petrified fingers. Someone had to pay attention to her. “You’ll be stone.”
The empress flapped her wing until a feather shook loose. “Catch it.”
“Yes,” Old Janny said, “scratch your throat with it.”
“Get that basilisk out of you,” the empress said, “or I’ll only have a statue to sing to.”
The lionman slapped the feather between his paw hands and did the deed. He stumbled out of the lamplight, retching.
The djinn held out an urn for him. Between the splatters of vomit, she said, “Mankind is unquestionably the highest form of life.”
The lionman reeled back into view and scooped his sword from the carpet. His hands had changed back to human ones. Eyeing Solin, he stood over the empress. “I feel better already.”
“Your breath smells worse.” The empress stroked his whiskered chin with her sky of plumage. “But you’re still mine.”
“You saved my life, both of you.”
He said it to the empress and Old Janny, not to Aja. And the feather had been her idea. The lionman’s brown and black eyes gazed at the empress with a warm concern, a drippy devotion.
Aja wished the empress had never come. Everyone loved her. That would’ve been bearable if she had stayed far away in her palace. Now she’d arrived at Aja’s city to eat at her Banquet.
Aja didn’t have the stomach for anymore basilisk pâté. Not with the faint sting of vomit in the air. Aja pushed away her plate. She lifted her chalice. Its glass was so thin and delicate that the drink seemed to float. Her snakes twined over it, at last cooperating. The liquid changed hue as it tilted, from yellowish to clear, to red, to emerald. It sloshed with the sound of distant melodies. They reminded Aja of songs performed for royalty on the other side of walled-off gardens.
Aja drank. This time, the music played for her.
Harps plinked around her in a cascade of metal notes. Lutes strummed through the darkness, and panpipes whispered songs of promise from somewhere behind her ear.
She swished the drink, and the music changed from loving to thoughtful. Swirling her glass increased the tempo. Tambourines urged her heart to a faster beat. Bells sang. Metal clappers danced a melody of life too precious to waste.
Aja looked to see how the other guests handled their glasses. Old Janny was rubbing a finger along the rim. She closed her eyes as if hearing bliss.
After Aja wet her stone finger in the drink, she touched the top of her glass. A lone note streamed by like a brilliant ribbon in the wind. It faded into new kinds of music. Strange instruments, an exploration of sound. Horns blared triumph, and strings vibrated with sweet sadness. On Aja’s next touch, drums and feet thundered, and voices exalted to a starry sky.
“Would you care for it louder?” The djinn’s words startled Aja. Flame-light fingers closed on her glass, and the drink steamed.
“Too loud! Too loud!” Aja covered her ears with her hands. Oh, no! Her snakes. Brown scales darted by, but the asps did not bite.
The djinn used tongs to drop ice flakes into the glass. The music softened.
The swordsman was speaking to the empress. He held his scimitar in front of him with both arms. “Between the two of us, we’ve not one free hand. My fingers have locked on the hilt.”
“And now you’re a balding cat! Even cuter,” the empre
ss said.
His face was still a lion’s, but his fur had turned patchy. “Not so bad off. Another minute, and I couldn’t move my arms or anything else.”
“Can you feel this?” She brushed feathers down his arm.
“To the wrist,” he said.
“How about this?” She raised her lips and pecked his neck.
“I shouldn’t be feeling it.” He tried to step away from her hug of wings.
Aja distorted the sight of the two together by lifting her chalice. She motioned to the djinn, who heated the music. It blocked out the sound of the empress’s tinkling laugh.
Aja rolled the drink around her tongue. She only swallowed a few sips. Her venomous asps refused to taste it. That told her something. She shouldn’t drink too much of this tonic. The music might distract her from something important, something dangerous. Aja didn’t trust those around her.
Music stirred her blood with unforgettable flutes and an anger of brass horns. At last she had found the perfect song. Then a hulk shadowed her.
It was the Chef. So tall! He was like a tower sneaking up on her. His right side flashed because he held a fistful of knives. With his free hand he straightened his vest. By the oil beaded on his brow, he must’ve run up the steps.
She set down her chalice in time to hear Old Janny screech.
“What is that?”
“The next entrée,” the Chef said.
A wet thumping approached. Whomp! Whomp! Splurch! A sucking sound, a dragging, it came from the kitchen. Whatever it was blocked all light from the oven fires.
“It’s bigger than a bellyache.” The empress flapped her wings, drifting backward.
The Chef slapped a knife into Old Janny’s hand. He said, “Serve yourselves.”
Side Dish:
OLD JANNY’S TALE
One day I’ll never forget. Was sweeping the floor in the Mindvault Academy. They say hard work improves your character. The toil sure doesn’t do anything good for your back, knees, or hands, and I’d rather have those than good character, which generally seems no fun at all.
Anyway, was sweeping beneath a window. Real crystal in those windows, enchanted, too, so you never have to polish them. Their panes swayed with the gusts instead of rattling. Didn’t have windows near as fine at home. Drippy glass plates with bits of sand in ‘em. Like as not would have to rub them clear of hearth smoke on my day off. Couldn’t expect my laze-about children to do a lick of housework. And my husband had been dead some five years, not that he’d have helped, so good riddance.
Been a mother all my life, or near enough. Mother to my four children and handmaid to an enchantress who was pleasant as a plum when asleep.
Now where was I? Right, sweeping the floor. But it was really the ceiling, since most everything is upside-down in the Mindvault Academy, and gravity is twisted like a corkscrew. Enchantments to make your ears buzz.
My mistress, Enchantress Hiresha, last I heard she was lost at sea. Don’t look at me like that. Ol’ Janny didn’t misplace her. Can’t blame that man either even though he was her guard before he was Ryn’s. Not that you could look at anyone that handsome and blame him for anything. If you think that sword of his is big, should’ve seen his other one. That is, the magic rock blade of jasper. And doesn’t his nose blush as deep a red.
What was I talking about? Sweeping the floors? You sure? Nope. Can’t remember why I’d mention it. My mind is empty as a lye-scoured pot.
But I’ll tell you what I do have. A drink, and a motto. Bottoms up!
Fourth Course:
KRAKEN, FRESH CAUGHT & LIVE
SERVED WITH TICKLER EEL
An arch of red reared out of the darkness. A wet surface, motes of lamplight glistened along its length. It moved in a way no stone should. The front half swung upward, and the thing’s underside was covered with hundreds of blind eyes.
No, not eyes, though they came in round pairs with milky pupils. Their rubbery edges flopped. Aja wondered what sort of monster was this. It smelled like seaweed.
The Chef scuffled around the giant thing. “On a distant coast they eat octopus raw, for the freshness of….”
He retreated into the kitchen.
Octopus, he had said something about octopus. Was this enormous thing part of one? Oh, no. Aja saw it was a tentacle. So this was how the guests of past Banquets had died.
Aja had no more time to choke and flounder among the pillows before the red tentacle curved over her in a death shadow. It would slam down on Aja. Like a falling building it would crush her under its not-eyes.
A man’s voice called out. “Run.”
Her insides melted, her arms and legs froze solid. Run, Aja, run! Even her fingers hissed at her to flee.
She could not move.
Someone moved her. A crutch of polished wood smacked her away. She tumbled off the carpet the moment the thing thudded down.
Platters smashed. Glasses exploded in tinkling showers. Lamps swung on their chains. Forks flashed as they twirled. But she hadn’t been walloped. Not yet.
The tentacle heaved, sliding sideways like a red anaconda. The tip looked much like the tail of a snake, except that it curled upward with spots of suckers. It plowed Old Janny off her four goat legs. Solin flipped clear of the onrush, feet above crutches. The tentacle didn’t end in an octopus head but a stump of fleshy white.
“A single arm,” the lord said, his embroidery glinting from the safety of the shadows, “and still more than we can swallow.”
A fine thing for him to say, Aja thought. He was far away, and everyone else, in danger. A frenzy of teal wings, the empress screeched in a discordant trill. The monstrous arm thwacked her from the air and rolled over her. She stuck to its underside, lifted to be swatted down.
She raised one wing. “I’m caught!”
The swordsman roared and spun, heel lifting up, arms flexing with strain. His scimitar made a blinding streak. It passed through the giant tentacle, lopping it in two. The arm split in a splatter of blue fluid. The half that gripped the empress toppled.
Solin dropped one crutch to catch her, but the swordsman kicked him aside. Before Aja could see more, something knocked her down.
The thicker half of the arm threatened to crush her like a rolling tree trunk. She scrambled over the carpet. Her scaled fingers slipped, could find no hold. Something wet pinned down her leg.
Cold flesh flattened her. All the air squeezed from her lungs, trapping in her cries. Was this how she would die? Not from asp bite or from hunger, but squashed under a giant tentacle. Anything but this.
“Slurp!” A sucker gripped her back in a ring of pain. Her thin robe wouldn’t stop her skin from being stripped from her spine. The arm hauled her into the air, above the lamps. She gasped, and then she did scream.
“Help!”
In the darkness below her, the lord’s pale eyes filled with flame light. He bent, swept up a dropped knife. He’s going to help me.
Aja worried he wouldn’t reach her in time. Even if he did, his knife might cut her trying to pry her free of—
The lord swept past her. The shadows filled in the space behind him like a black cape. He left Aja. He abandoned her and slashed at the suckers trapping the empress. Both halves of the severed arm still thrashed. The other men also fought for their empress. None heard Aja no matter how she wore out her throat screaming.
This Banquet was full of people, and she was alone.
The tentacle swung her downward. Aja jerked her arms up to protect her face. The plush carpet whammed into her. Something cracked. Please, let it have been a plate and not her bones. When the tentacle dragged her back into the air, she saw blood on her arm.
No one would help before she was pounded to jelly. She had only herself.
Reaching behind her, she tried to scratch at the sucker on her back. She realized it would never work. The tentacle had latched onto her leg as well, and another slimy cup sealed on her elbow. Her fingers did not even move how she wanted. Her fangs
extended and plunged into spongy flesh. They throbbed and squeezed venom into her attacker. What a sweet relief.
With a wet popping, the suckers dropped her. She guessed snakes could be good for something after all. She crawled away from the monster’s heaving mass of flesh. The carpet’s silver pattern had changed to islands and savage sea.
She staggered into the far reaches of the warehouse and wrapped her arms around her tender chest. Her nose dripped, and it tasted metallic. The asps tickled her ears with their forked tongues.
Shadows hid her. Swaying lamps illuminated only the area around the magic carpet. Blue blood flowed off the rug’s silver weave. The swordsman chopped the tentacle to torso-sized chunks, but its suckers still pulsed. He asked, “Won’t it ever stop moving?”
“I don’t want to have seen this.” The empress hid her face behind her wing. Half her feathers were ruffled the wrong way.
The Chef returned with two men of clay. The golems set the sliced meat on new plates of brass. The Chef made but one cut to the tentacle himself, after gazing into the darkness toward Aja. She didn’t think he should be able to see her. He removed an enflamed sucker, the one her asps had bitten.
The swordsman kneeled, his scimitar balanced on one knee. His hands were still locked on the hilt. His chest surged in and out. “Chef, you—you worried we’d fall asleep at dinner?”
“The seas ripple with wild magic, a power on which we can dine.” The Chef ladled a sauce over the meat. “The most lavish parties across the Lands of Loam serve seafood to enliven the guests, to free the inner self. Nothing the nobles eat is as potent as raw kraken.”
“Will it make us younger?” Old Janny asked. She cradled the empress. One of her wings was bent backward, perhaps broken.
The empress dragged herself upright, looked around the warehouse. “Where’s Aja? Ah-ja!”
Aja didn’t move from her shadows. It hurt enough just to hold still.
The Chef flourished a hand to the empress, then to the swordsman. “The kraken’s magic will overpower those that came before and fill you with good health. The perfect dish after exertion.”
Magic Banquet Page 5
