by Rob Summers
Chapter 9: Tactful Handling of Problem Guests
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,
And lost to life and use and name and fame.
Then crying “I have made his glory mine,”
And shrieking out “O fool!” the harlot leapt
Adown the forest, and the thicket closed
Behind her, and the forest echo’d “fool.”
-Tennyson
“So you see they had nothing to do with this,” Bob said, referring to his unlucky relatives. “They’re not Magi and they’re not innkeepers, so you ought to let them go.”
“Too late, Bob,” Junior replied with a smile. Already Bob had noticed that, like some cheesy car salesman, this man liked to call him by name frequently. “Deirdre here is our newest recruit, and as for her parents, well, they’re supposed to be snoozing comfortably in a tree trunk by now, that is, if Viv can pull it off.”
Bob did not know what this meant, but it sounded chilling. He glanced at Deirdre and caught a taut expression on her face.
Junior had noticed too. “Not to worry, baby. It’s just a sleepy spell. Viv borrowed some kind of juice from Master Merlin, and she’s been itching to try it on someone besides him. Wants to see if it works anywhere and not just in his tower with his tree.” He turned again to Bob. “But what I want to know, Bob, is whether this is a Magi inn?” Bob nodded. “Then where’s the sign? Deirdre, you ever see a wooden sign hanging out front?”
“Yeah, it said ‘Wizards’ Inn’ on it.”
“Well, they’ve hidden it then.” Junior laughed. “Man, you guys are so amateurish. Did you think you could disguise this place just by hiding the sign? We’re the pros, and we can tell an inn from a mile away. Burris, just shout out the window to Dreiser and tell him to call back the squads that went to check the other houses. Tell them we’ve got the right place here.”
While Burris was doing this, Junior sat down on the couch beside his captive. “Now, let me explain to you, Bob, what’s about to happen. We’re going to push all the way to the end of this road to where the Magi are being evacuated, and when we get there—oh man, when we get there, we’re going to annihilate them. We’re moving fast, a lot faster than they could plan for, and so we’ll hit them when they’re unorganized and weak. It’ll be our biggest victory so far. Hey, Deirdre, come sit down by me!”
When she came to him with a smile, he pulled her close to him and put his arm around her waist, which she accepted.
“But there are a lot of Magi around this inn, Bobberino,” he went on, “and we have to finish some business with them first, and especially with one that Viv wants, so the question is, pal, where are they?”
Bob smiled and said nothing. Now that he was here, he was not as afraid as he had thought he was going to be. Junior was more disgusting than scary.
“Tor?” Junior called. The medieval goon came near, hand on his sword hilt. “Now we don’t want to hurt you, Bob. After you tell us, we let you go. And since you’ll be smart enough not to come back here, you don’t ever have to know how the story ends.”
A muffled voice spoke from across the room: “The promises of the wicked are all lies.”
Junior’s head jerked around and he stood up, releasing Deirdre. “Damn that thing!” He went to the old thug named Burris and took his pistol from him. With a low current of swearing, he pulled the mirror from where it had been facing the wall and fired into its surface from inches away. The shot was very loud indoors and Junior was suddenly surrounded by smoke. He cursed again and kicked the mirror down. Bob could see its smooth and unharmed surface. Junior laid the pistol down on the mantel, picked up the mirror, and carefully placed it against the wall as before. As he walked back to Bob, he forced a smile.
“I knew it wouldn’t break, Bob,” he said. “At least I thought so, and I just wanted to test it. Now I’m going to cut you some slack. We’re going to talk friendly. I’ve got some great people for you to talk to. Tor, tie up Bob and go get me my Doubtful Duo.”
While Bob was submitting to having his ankles bound and his wrists tied together behind his back, Meph came in. The older man was about to speak to Junior but paused when he saw Bob and smiled.
“Not so tough now, are you?” Meph said.
“Spangles!” Bob cried. “I’ve still got your hat and staff if you want them. They’re in my bedroom closet. And your pointy shoes are hanging from a nail on the wall.”
Meph’s lips trembled. He turned to Junior. “I’ve got the kid bringing hot food, plenty.”
“Good to see you, Meph. Pizzas, right?”
“Yeah, pizzas and soft drinks. It would have been beer but they have some idiotic law here that won’t allow a nineteen year old to buy.”
“Ha, well if they can’t get high, our boys will stay focused. Man, am I hungry! Well, what else? How’s the hunt coming? Did Cat show up yet? Wait a minute, here come Josh and Andy. I know you like your own methods, Meph, but I already called for these two. You’ll want to be here for this. These guys are priceless. I use them all the time to talk to prisoners.”
The two Rebels who had entered with Tor, must, Bob thought, be the ones Junior had called his Doubtful Duo. They were youngsters, certainly no older than their early twenties and maybe younger still. With happy anticipation, Junior pulled light chairs near the couch for them to sit on, facing Bob. He motioned to Deirdre, and she left the couch. When Josh and Andy had taken their places directly in front of Bob, they introduced themselves in a friendly, easy way. The redheaded boy with the glasses was Andy. The thinner boy with brown hair sticking straight up and a soft, almost mournful expression was Josh.
“Need to know where the Magi are,” Junior murmured to them. Then he crossed the room and turned to watch.
The boys looked at each other. They turned to look at Bob.
“It’s about the Magi,” Josh began in a dreary tone.
“What about them?” Andy said, his own voice chipper and playful.
“You know they can’t last long where they are. Lord love them, they’re in need of food and medical help. What’s to become of them?”
“Tough!” Andy said cheerfully. “They brought it on themselves. They could have stayed in the Realm and helped us instead of heading out on this road, plainly trying to join up with enemy forces. I’ve got no pity for traitors.”
“I do, I pity them.” Josh turned large wet eyes to Bob, then away again. “But if we could just help them. If there were only some way.”
“Right, and then they’d live to fight another day. We can’t have that.”
“Oh, but Andy, what if we remove the west portal just before we move on? Take it out forever? They’d be trapped here and would never find their way to join the enemy. So there’s no need to kill them. Let them live.”
Andy shook his head. “Sounds too easy to me. Must be a hole in it somewhere. You’re figuring there’s no gem in this inn, I get that. So just yank the gem from the next inn west and that closes the road? Yeah, that’s true, but I don’t know. What do you think, Bob?”
Bob was surprised to be asked. He answered nervously. “I think that’s OK.”
“Bob thinks it’s OK,” Josh said to Andy with a tremor in his voice, as if Bob’s opinion carried great weight.
“Still, it’s easier to kill them. It’s a lot less trouble.” Andy leaned back and looked at the ceiling as if considering. “OK, OK. I guess we could call a truce to take care of the wounded. Is that what you were going to say, Josh?”
“Oh, Andy, I don’t want any more bloodshed. Let’s ask Junior to call a truce.”
“The Magi won’t trust us.”
At this, Josh’s long face clouded. He thought for a long time.
“Josh doesn’t know what to do,” Andy said at last. “Any ideas, Bob?”
Bob felt confused. Why were they asking him? What was this about? “Of course, they don’t trust
you,” he said. “I don’t trust you.”
“I just mean we need some sort of guarantee, some pledge of faith, or the whole thing falls apart. If you could just come up with something, some way for us to bring this off and end the bloodshed. But what’s the answer?” Andy shook his head sadly. “I’ve got to say it’s impossible.”
“It can’t be impossible, can it, Bob?” Josh asked. “Look, what about Cat?”
“What about him?” said Andy.
“I feel almost sure they’ve got him as a prisoner, the Magi do.”
“Well, so do I. That’s practically a given. So what? Oh, wait a minute. I think I see what you mean. Bob, help me with this. Couldn’t we…? No, what are we saying here? We get Bob to…?”
“To call the Magi out of hiding,” said Josh. “Couldn’t our captured squad member Cat be our guarantee of good faith? The Magi have him as a hostage, and…and wouldn’t that work?”
“Would it, Bob?” Andy asked earnestly.
“This is all crazy,” Bob said with irritation.
“Oh, is it?” Josh said, disappointment in his tone. “What’s wrong with it, Bob? What do we need to change?”
Bob tried to rub his nose on his shoulder because his hands were bound, but he could not reach. “It’s nuts. They’d never come out to you, and even if they wanted to, they can’t because of the spell on the Wandering Wood.”
The Doubtful Duo did not reply but sat still and expressionless. It registered with Bob that he had just told them where the Magi were. Just like that. His heartbeat increased and his cheeks burned. But wait, maybe he hadn’t told them. Wandering Wood was his private name for the place and could mean nothing to the Rebels. Oops, except for the sign. What an idiot he had been to put that sign out there. He felt sick.
“Not that it will do you any good to know that!” he spat out.
Across the room Junior turned and whispered something to Meph. Then he said aloud, “Andy, Josh, keep it up. Let’s hear some more. Find out what he means that it won’t do us any good.”
Josh leaned forward and placed a hand on Bob’s shoulder. “We won’t take advantage of that little slip, friend,” he said. “Really, it’s kind of fortunate that you said it, because now we know where to find them to talk about that truce, get them some help. Do you realize that some of them may be on the point of death, what with the cold they’ve been through and their exhaustion? We’ll help them just in time.”
“You can’t do anything,” Bob said, shrugging off Josh’s hand. “They can’t come out to you, and you can’t go in to them. A Mage put a spell on that wood so enemies of the Magi can’t enter it while Magi are in there. So just stop talking. It’s all baloney.”
“Lordy, we didn’t know about that spell,” Andy said. “I guess that settles it then. Man, there’s nothing we can do. No truce.”
Josh sat back and exhaled. “No truce,” he echoed, and Bob heard in his voice what was almost a sob.
“Man, oh man, what can you do when a Mage locks things up like that?” said Andy.
Both sat silent. Junior pushed Tor on the shoulder. “Get out there and check that wood. If they’re there and you really can’t get in it, then call back all the squads and surround them.”
As Tor hurried out, Bob looked to Junior’s face, to Meph’s, to Deirdre’s. They all looked a little triumphant, like people just fighting back broad smiles. He had goofed completely. He tried to tell himself that the Magi’s hiding place would have been discovered in the morning regardless. Maybe it made no difference.
Vivien Wizardbane walked in. At least, Bob felt it had to be her, unless this Rebel band included two striking blondes. She was followed closely by two of the younger Rebels and, more at a distance, by Pyro, whose clothes were not yet dry. The arsonist grinned at Bob in satisfaction, bad teeth showing through his whiskers.
“How’d it go?” Junior asked Vivien.
“Not sure yet,” she said with a pout. “They may wake in an hour or two. The ointment made me sleepy just from handling it, but that’s not necessarily the same thing as a millennium spell. The old man would know.” She flung herself down in an easy chair. “What are you doing? Have you found him yet?”
“Remember that sign we saw by the path on the way from the portal?” Junior replied. “We think he’s near that sign, him and the others. Baby, he won’t last long.”
“I want him alive,” Vivien said intensely. “Alive, mind you.”
“Of course, we want them all alive,” Junior agreed with a glance at Bob. “Josh and Andy were just working it out with the innkeeper here that he’s to be the middle man in a truce. Not one more person gets hurt. The Magi have got Cat as the guarantee of our faith. Not a bad plan, huh?”
Vivien looked at Bob with neither amusement nor interest. Junior’s game, it was clear, was not hers. Hers involved Dave and Marci. Bob winced again to think of whatever she had just been doing with them and a hollow tree.
Pyro drew Junior aside to have a quiet word with him, and while they talked, Bob had a moment to collect his thoughts. This talk of a truce was all mixed up. If all the Magi came out of hiding and were fed, then who would guard their hostage, the Rebel named Cat? And even if Cat were properly guarded, would Junior care enough about the fate of one Rebel to refrain from murdering the many Magi? What did the Magi really have to offer him in return for their lives? Why would he feed and care for them in return for nothing, nothing at all?
“You’re just trying to confuse me,” he said to the Duo. “You haven’t said what it is you want from the Magi. All you want is them dead.”
“No, no,” Josh said, looking pained. “You’ve misread this whole thing. We just want to keep these Magi in the wood from deserting to the enemy. If they’ll stay here or go back where they came from, then we’ll leave them alone.”
“Junior said he would annihilate the Magi at the end of this road,” Bob said, wishing he could point a finger in Josh’s face.
“We are really tough on the enemy in battle,” Andy said, “and there’s a battle coming at the end of the road. But you don’t think that…? Josh, Bob thinks we’d massacre a few helpless Magi that had put themselves under our protection. He—he really thinks that.”
“My God, you don’t, do you, Bob?” said Josh, wide eyed. “How are we going to get them food and medicine if you think that? We’ve got to make this work, and you’re the key player. You’ve got to tell them about our truce offer. If they hear it from you, they’ll take it seriously.”
“I told you it doesn’t matter,” Bob said. “I told you the spell keeps them in.”
“Well, yeah, but….” Andy looked to Josh with a crooked smile.
“But what?” Bob demanded.
“Only that what one Mage has done another can undo,” Andy said. “There’ll be a Mage or two in that wood with Merlin who can take that spell right off.” He leaned forward and added in the silkiest of whispers. “Look, Bob, I really ought to tell you that you’re in a little danger here. Junior is having one of his bad nights when he gets real fed up with delays. When he’s like this, he can make bad decisions that he regrets later. But if you just go down to the wood and have a little talk with them and bring off this truce, then I think Junior will be your friend.”
“Nobody’s a truer friend than Junior,” Josh added quietly.
Bob thought trying this almost made sense. What harm could it do? The Magi would hear the truce offer and reject it. He would save his own skin at least for now. It felt low and dirty to even repeat the Rebels’ words to the Magi, but they were the Rebels’ words and not his own, that would be clear to everyone. Besides, once he would begin talking with Clark or whoever, he could ask whether the Magi really did have the Rebel named Cat as their hostage. If they did, then maybe some kind of deal could be worked out. The Magi were both discovered and surrounded. If they could somehow talk
their way out of this…
“You could be the hero of the hour—” Josh was beginning to say.
Whump! All heads turned toward the far wall where the mirror leaned. Tor approached it and, gingerly prodding its top edge with the end of his sword, tipped it onto its back. In the wallpaper behind where it had stood was a bullet-sized hole.
“Zounds, I hate conjured mirrors,” Tor said.
“Fools despise wisdom,” replied the mirror.
“Shut that thing up!” Junior yelled.
“Truth does not belong to the fierce and the loud,” said the mirror serenely. It began to sing.
I know a long delight, a thing
More pleasing than my life, a good
More lasting than my coffin’s wood…
Junior picked it up and threw it out the window that the Rebels had broken when entering the room. Though it landed with a thump, there was no sound of glass breaking.
“Oh, he’s mad now,” Andy said, turning back to Bob with a frightened face. “Junior could use even torture at a time like this. Just tell him you’ll go over near the wood and give this a try.”
“Buddy, we’ve done all we can for you,” Josh said. “Tell him you’ll try it.”
“Jesus, man, we don’t want you to die,” Andy whispered.
Bob looked at the bullet hole in the wall. That, he thought, is just how life is. Everything comes back at you eventually. Nothing goes away and stays away. What goes around comes around. He almost smiled, for now he was thinking in aphorisms, like the mirror. But he could not smile, not really. For he knew he would not voluntarily leave the inn again, certainly not on the errand these two weasels were describing. With that realization, he felt himself falling into something like a chasm, the certainty that he was about to reveal himself as a non-collaborator. He tried to keep in mind that they were going to kill him regardless of whether he cooperated with them or not. Only now maybe they would drop the pretense about it.
“Damn you,” he said very quietly. Louder, he added, “I won’t call out the wizards.”
“I know you won’t,” Andy said in smooth agreement. “How could you? They’re your friends. But let’s go back over it again.”
“It can’t hurt to think it through,” Josh added.
As Josh went on speaking, Tor came in hurriedly and, going straight to Junior, spoke to him in a low tone. After a moment Junior stepped near to the Doubtful Duo and interrupted. “Sorry, boys, but we haven’t got all night. Turns out that wood really is conjured like Bob said. Tor says the boys can’t get into it. It keeps dumping them back our direction like a revolving door. So let’s try this another way. Meph? You ready to give Bob hell?”
“I’ll just need to set up first, Junior,” the older man replied.
“Oh, yeah, right. Well, make it quick.”
Hell apparently took time for preparation. The gray bearded man had to darken the room, set up burning candles at the compass points, and walk about intoning spells in Latin. At last, still chanting and with all the others expectantly quiet, he seated himself in front of Bob with his knees almost touching Bob’s. Meph’s eyes were closed as he chanted on and on and on, occasionally shouting a few syllables louder than the others. Of these, Bob recognized only the name Lucifer. The effect was oppressive. Bob began to feel afraid, as if Meph’s words were indeed calling in some very repulsive visitors. He began to feel it best to interrupt Meph, even if he would be physically hurt for doing so. He was on the verge of saying something.
“Look!” Meph opened his eyes and suddenly pointed at the wall behind Bob’s left shoulder.
Bob looked back over his shoulder. What he saw was gone almost as soon as he saw it. For a split second a hideous little face had emerged from the wall, its eyes on him. During slow seconds he realized that it had been gray, contorted with hatred, demonic. He tried to look back to Meph but kept twisting his head around to look at the wall again. He did not like the idea of that face being behind him.
“He will get you,” Meph said, “unless I restrain him.”
“So restrain him!” Bob said in fright.
“I will—if you will go to the wood and talk to the Magi for us.”
Bob looked behind him again. Still nothing. He was trembling.
“Answer,” Meph said, “or I will call him again.”
“It took an awful long time for you to call him the first time,” Bob said, fighting to keep his voice level, “and then all he did was peep at me. Is that all you’ve got?”
“He wants you,” Meph replied.
“So what?” Bob tried to smile. “I mean, I’ve seen Magi create a fire ball and call down lightning and all kinds of things like that, and you, you little phony, all you can do is show me a face for half a second. Man, you’re pathetic.”
“You will do my will,” Meph said angrily.
“Get out of here,” Bob said firmly. “Neither devil nor wicked mortal may stay in my inn!”
Junior turned one of the lamps back on. “Damn good try, Meph, but we’re out of time. We’ll have to drop the idea of luring the Magi out.”
“I know that,” said Meph, “but I’m not through with this boy. I’ve got a score to settle with him.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him,” Junior said. “Everybody get ready for action outside. Pyro, what have you got?”
“It all has to do with fields of fire, boss. We have to make sure we don’t shoot each other. Beyond that, it’s easy. That wood is only a couple of acres.”
“Great. Make it happen.”
“Damn lucky it’s the Fourth,” Meph said, rising. “Nobody will even be curious about the noise.”
The Rebels began to check their arms. Even Josh and Andy brought out pistols, checking them with an easy, practiced manner. No one needed to explain to Bob that the Wandering Wood would soon be singing with bullets.
Another Rebel, one of those who had come through the portal from Africa, entered the crowded room, his robe loose, dark, and falling almost to his ankles.
“Junior, the portal is closed, it’s gone!”
Junior did not look upset. “Which one, the west one?”
“Yes, Junior,” the man said excitedly. “We had made it appear and were guarding it, and then even though none of us said the words, it just disappeared. We tried the appearance words again, but it just won’t show up.”
Junior mulled this over. “That explains why we couldn’t find a gem in here. There isn’t any gem to find. And now somebody’s removed the gem from the next inn, the one in Africa. Take them both away, and the portal goes. But wait, didn’t you leave anybody to guard the inn in Africa?”
“No, sir. We just burned it like the others.”
“Right, and like we did all the ones we’ve passed coming from the other direction. But those gems we’ve passed along the way are still there. We knew we had to leave them in the foundations so we’d have an escape route if….” Junior seemed suddenly aware that everyone in the room was listening intently. “OK, listen, the other portal, the east one we came through, it’s located kind of right beside that little wood where the Magi are holed up, right?”
The black robed Rebel did not know. Burris, however, spoke up. “That portal is inside the wood, boss.”
“OK, now hold steady on that.” Junior’s fleshy face was sweating. “Wait a minute, everybody. Uh, Pyro, Viv, come with me. Let’s go check on that.” He turned at the door. “Everybody stay steady while we come up with a solution on this. Kind of get everybody grouped up here at the house and ready to move. Make sure everyone’s pulled in that’s patrolling or anything, except the guards around the wood. Deirdre, you’re with me, come on. We can use your brains on this one, doll.”
The leaders left the room.
During the next fifteen minutes the inn filled with Rebels. Since no orders had been given concerning the prisoner, Bo
b sat among them unharmed and little noticed. Ordinarily, he supposed, they would have at least threatened him, if not much worse, but now they were much too preoccupied. The talk in the living room was all dreadful speculation. One man said their road had now become a dead end. Those who knew better corrected him. As long as the spell remained on the Wandering Wood, this was worse than that. Someone used the word marooned. Bob began to understand that, to those used to traveling Magi roads, this lack of access to portals must indeed seem like being marooned on some deserted little rock of an island. They who had passed freely from century to century and from continent to continent were now imprisoned in one time and place.
Young Saul said that the burning of the African inn must have caused its gem to fall out of a collapsing foundation wall. Others began to agree, but the hulking Mouser roared this down.
“We left that inn unguarded,” he said, “and you can bet some stinking Mage came in through the far portal and yanked the gem out to cut the road.”
“That would mean abandoning their own,” said Asher, “the ones who didn’t make it through.”
“That’s right!” Mouser said. “They could see we were about to push through and massacre them, so they cut their losses. It’s what any of us would do,” he added, looking around at the band of cutthroats.
Bob had to look down to hide his smile. As if the Magi could be counted on to behave like this bunch!
“It’s what Nineveh would do,” Asher conceded.
“What I want to know,” Saul said nervously, “is why we’re still sitting here and not out there right now filling that damned little wood with hot lead. If we just kill them all, we’ll damned sure get the one who’s casting the spell, right?”
Mouser cursed him for an idiot. “That’s exactly what we can’t do! Killing a Mage won’t take his spell off. Why do you think Junior and Pyro went into a huddle? Because we don’t want to shoot the only one who can reverse the spell, that’s why.”
“You know,” Larry said slowly, “the Magi could have planned this. This could be a trap.”
“What do you mean?” Mouser demanded.
“Looks to me like they set up that spell on the woods so’s they’d close up behind us, and then they pulled the gem from the inn in Africa in front of us.”
Mouser held up a hand for silence while he nearly split his broad forehead thinking about that one. “No, you’re half right, Larry, because they planned this all right, but just to stop us from going any farther on the road. They couldn’t mean to trap us because they’re trapped with us, see? They’re not going back the other way into that blizzard, that’s for hell sure, and so you know they wouldn’t make a plan to trap us that keeps them near us. What kind of trap is that? They’ve got no way to attack us here, and they’re starving. Meanwhile, we’re not going to suffer from lack of supplies because we’ve got plenty of money. We can just wait them out until they beg us for help, and they can’t hurt us because they’ve got no power.”
“Yeah, they don’t,” said old Burris, speaking for the first time. “I say they don’t, the Magi. But there’s others.”
Mouser turned on him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Burris was slow in answering. “The Golden Legion,” he said in a low voice.
The big man’s face was a study, a cross between anger and fear. “Hell,” he said.
“I heard them once,” Burris went on in a tone of low excitement, his wild eyebrows bobbing. “I don’t say that I seen them, I’ve never claimed that. I only heard them. This was years and years ago. Nineveh wanted to go for a little trip on the Majestica Road. You remember the one that we used to take to go to old Florence by way of Gamma Moon Base and Terre Haute? Do you remember how you could go past old Florence to Popondetta if you wanted to, but nobody ever did? Well, it turned out Nineveh knew that if you just kept on—Popondetta, Osaka, Roaring Camp, Venus Port—and took one more side portal, you’d come to someplace he’d never been before. Maybe nobody alive had ever been there by portal except old Nehushtan, who had told him about it.
“He took me along for protection.” Burris patted his gun holster. “But boys, when we came through that last portal, it wasn’t dusk! Boys, it was early morning, and how that happened I’ll never figure out. I know you’ll say one looks pretty much like the other if you got no compass, but I could feel the difference. It felt fresh like evening never does. Anyways, it wasn’t long before we could see the sun was rising. I was pretty shaken up, I don’t mind telling you, but I don’t think I showed it so Nineveh noticed. We walked a ways through a desert until we were on the outskirts of a city or what was left of one. I never found out where it was, but it was good sized. Everything was burnt off and there wasn’t a living soul. But right away then we heard the Legion’s song. It seemed to be coming out of the sky and it was everywhere. Powerful. Powerful! Like they’d just chewed up all their enemies and spit ’em into hell. Oh, I can’t tell you what it was like, but it made me gut sick with fear, and I cut and run. I forgot about Nineveh, didn’t give him a thought, and run for the portal behind us. That was the longest, damnedest quarter mile I ever run. When I got there, I yelled for it to open, tore through it, and landed on my face in the back room of a bar in Venus Port. I was so glad to be there I just about kissed the beer-soaked floor.
“Then I hear this thump, and I look and here’s this guy laying on the floor beside me, all panting and played out, and who was this? It was Nineveh, boys. All the time I was running he’d been right behind me, and I’d been so scared I didn’t know he was following me. And he looks at me with his eyes big, and when my breath slowed down so I could talk, I says to him, ‘Freddy….’ Some of us who’d been with him from the start still called him that back then. I says, ‘Freddy, what was that?’
“ ‘Burris,’ he says, ‘you just been at the end of time.’ Just like that, he told me he’d took me to the Goddamn end of the world! And he says, ‘That was the Legion, Burris.’ I asked him what he’d wanted to go there for? He said he just wanted to see if it was true, what he’d heard from Nehushtan. He said he wasn’t ever going there again. He didn’t know what city it was we seen burned, but he said he thought they was all like that then, at the end of time, all the cities all over the world, and maybe everybody dead, or maybe not everybody. But boys, he said Nehushtan told him that, when they come into the world, the Legion will hunt their enemies down all the Magi roads to the beginning of time. I didn’t ask him who their enemies was, because I knew it was us.
“Well, here we are in this exposed position, boys, and I’m not one to say they’re coming for us tonight, and I’m not saying they aren’t either.”
“We should leave,” someone said. Bob turned and saw it was Spangles, who the Rebels called Meph, his face white with fear. It occurred to him that Spangles was probably the only Rebel present besides Burris who had heard the song of the Legionnaires. On the day he had heard it from Herr Stringer’s stick-wand, it had changed him into a desperate, fleeing maniac.
“Right, and go where?” Asher said to Meph with a sneer. “Don’t get panicky, old man. I don’t think this is a trap, but if it is one, this innkeeper here would know about it. Why don’t we just ask him?”
All eyes turned to Bob. He welcomed this moment, because for the last minute or so he had been dying to have a chance to say something without interruption. He even felt he knew how to say it so that none of the Rebels, perhaps not even Spangles, would know what he had said.
“Jooo-leee!” he said loudly (drawing it out like whew-wee). If I were you, I’d tell a dog to find a stick that smells like me, and then I’d hold a cell phone against it with the mute off.”
Asher and all the others stared at him. “What the hell kind of answer is that?” Mouser said.
“It’s a good answer,” Bob said with a grin. “And also the Captain’s spell should be undone and
the door to Jane’s place opened.”
“What?”
Bob repeated it all, loud and clear.
In the dark Wandering Wood Julie still held her cell phone pressed to her ear. “Bob was just talking,” she said to Clark. “It sounded important! I think he wants us to do some things.”
“Do what?” Clark asked.
“Oh, it just sounds stupid, but—is your dog around?”
Clark whistled softly and Looper bounded to him.
Julie found Looper’s head and patted it. “Good boy! Uh, Clark, could you get him to fetch a stick that’s somewhere around here and has Bob’s scent on it?”
He laughed. “Go get what she says,” he said to Looper, and the dog ran off. “He’ll get it if there is such a thing,” he added.
“But I wonder if the stick is outside the Wandering Wood,” she said worriedly.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Captain Hagley’s spell was only for people, so Looper can go wherever he wants. If there’s a stick around here that Bob so much as breathed on in the last month, Looper will find it. I just hope he doesn’t get shot. Now what’s this about?”
“I don’t know what it’s about! I’m just doing what Bob said. The stick is probably the one he told me about that he lost before I started coming here. That was some sort of super stick that Herr Stringer loaned to him, but I don’t really understand what it is. Anyway, besides that he said he wanted a Captain’s spell undone. I guess he means Captain Hagley’s spell on this wood. And I think he wants the portal open.”
“Is he crazy? I’m not going to take the spell off this wood. What for?”
“Well, he can’t say what for with Rebels all around him, can he?”
“There is no way. You can’t have understood what he meant.”
Junior, Vivien, Pyro, and Deirdre were seated in a circle in the close quarters of the foremost compartment of the Zareen Porto-Deck, which hovered several inches off the ground in the inn’s front yard. All four were enjoying drinks from a tiny, built-in bar while a music system played Tom Jones’ What’s New Pussycat?
Junior reached to a control box standing up from the floor near his swivel chair and toyed with a switch. “See, Deirdre? I turn this switch and you can’t see through the walls. Flip it again and it’s clear and you can see the inn. I’ll bet you’ve never seen anything like that.”
Deirdre had not and said so calmly. Junior was not satisfied with this, however, for he was more comfortable with the sort of girl who would acknowledge his impressive talk with wide eyes and giggles. This kid never giggled. Or maybe she did sometimes but just wasn’t too impressed by the Porto. He hoped she wasn’t the kind to get upset about the paper trash and empty food containers spread around the floor, or the half-full vodka bottle lying against the wall. He wondered for a moment why he himself didn’t care. Why had he let the interior become such a sty? When he got back to the palace, he promised himself, he would detail some slaves to clean it out.
Of course, that was the whole problem: how would they get out of here and back to the palace? After the first assault of anxiety, he had decided to clear and relax his mind by talking about the Porto or whatever else, and this he had been doing for several minutes.
“Yeah, buying this Porto was entirely my own brainstorm,” he went on, “because we needed something that would go on any terrain, would fit through the portals, is super quiet, and that you can live in. This bad boy is powered to last for months without a recharge, and how do you like the climate control? Is the temperature comfortable for you? I picked it up for cheap in New Denver and brought it back to the palace to show Dad.”
“You got some skis in here you want to sell?” Deirdre asked, for with the walls now translucent, they could see that a three-dimensional advertisement for skis had appeared outside the Porto’s wall.
Junior was not sure whether she was being sarcastic or not, which was worse than being sure that she was. He grinned and plunged ahead. “No, no, if you agree to let the dealers show those threed ads, they give you a break on the price. Actually, I thought I’d outsmarted them because we were going back in time to other centuries, and so we’d lose the satellite feed, but they’ve got some kind of taped backup system for if the feed stops.”
“Bummer,” Deirdre said. “Does it have a bathroom?”
“Sure it does. Oh, you need it? Go into the back compartment there and you’ll find the facilities in the far corner. Its walls aren’t see-through. Oh, and watch out you don’t trip over that robot lying on the floor. It’s a butler that came with the Porto, but one of the boys broke it with a hammer. They broke the little air cycle too, that comes with this outfit. And we started out with a bunch of communicators, but they’re all lost or broke. Damn, they break everything.”
The transparent wall that separated the two compartments was covered by a curtain except for where a doorway appeared on the left. When Deirdre had disappeared through the door, Vivien hissed out a sigh. “What did you bring her here for?”
“Recruitment, baby. We need fresh blood.”
“Funny how fresh blood, to you, is almost always something young and curvy. Seems to me you should be spending your time finding a way to break the spell on the wood.”
“Yeah, it’s a tight situation,” Junior said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Sure, we could steal some cars and drive all the way to Cincinnati to use the portal there, but we might get police on our tail and we’ve got all these guns to hide. Seems like every time some of us have tried to travel cross-country like that, we’ve got caught or shot at or some damn thing. The boys are just too careless. But Viv, isn’t there a Border Mage in this group that’s in the woods? That Canadian bum you love so much?”
“You mean Clark Devon, and don’t expect that I’ll forget anything you say tonight,” she said icily.
“OK, I’m sorry. I’m a little on edge, all right? The point is, he can take this spell off, right?”
“He can. But why would he? Do you want me to call him to the edge of the wood? I can get him to talk, but I don’t think I can control him.”
“Just wait until daylight, Junior,” Pyro said, “and point out which one he is to us. We’ll start shooting them all except him and keep shooting until he takes the spell off.”
“Yeah, that’ll work,” Junior said with relief.
“It will, boss. I’ll have the boys climb trees near the wood and pick them off from above. It’s a small wood, so they’ve got no chance. Even if he won’t give in, we’ll just shoot him last, and I don’t think this kind of spell will work if they’re all dead. It’s supposed to protect people from their enemies—live people that is, not dead ones.”
“Right! Good thinking,” Junior said happily. “So we just wait. Maybe get some sleep. But I better go calm the boys down, now that we’ve got a plan.”
“I’m staying here,” Vivien said crossly, “and take the trollop with you. I don’t want her here.”
The trollop had had no actual need of the facilities. Deirdre had just wanted to snoop in the rear compartment of the Porto. Now that she was in it, she felt Junior might have warned her about more than the broken robot. While she had been with the others, the curtain between the compartments had prevented her from seeing the shocking mess back here. In the front compartment, despite the trash spread around, you could at least see the ground beneath the transparent floor, but here a jumble of rubbish covered the floor. Closer examination showed her that she was standing on a mixture of disposable food containers, empty bottles and cans, papers, articles of clothing, and items such as flashlights and pens. Even coins. The smell was bad. She was no great advocate of cleanliness, but surely Junior could have had some of his men throw all this out a door long before it built up so.
At her feet was the robot, its silvery head dented deeply, no doubt by some drunken Rebel who delighted in attacking the helpless. One of
its arms had subsequently been removed, all but a few wires. What for? She was disappointed because she would have liked to see it functioning. Would it have been like robots in the movies? Would it have talked, saying funny things?
She stepped over the robot to examine more closely the only piece of furniture in the compartment. Just by the tiny closet-like bathroom stood a disheveled bed, no doubt the love nest of Junior and Vivien while on this trip. Their open suitcases, both on and off the bed, served for wardrobes. It occurred to her for the first time that this Porto-Deck was only for those two, while the rank and file slogged along on foot through heat and cold and slept where they could. And yet, wherever they slept, it probably smelled better than in here.
The Porto-deck’s glitter was not gold. Deirdre was young but not naïve, so she now had to wonder whether the marvelous palace Junior kept talking about would live up to his descriptions, or whether it existed at all. But she mused that, even if it did not, the various places Junior claimed to visit were known to be both real and sensational enough to suit anybody. In his chatter since they had entered the Porto, Junior had already mentioned his frequent, lengthy stays at Las Vegas and the Riviera.
She wanted things that would slake her thirst for excitement. That was why she had insisted on coming with her parents that evening. She had seen the effect that fascinating chair of Bob’s had had on her mother and had guessed that something highly unusual was going on in the old house. A fortunate guess, for she had apparently hit the jackpot of riches, time travel, magic, and crime without consequences. Furthermore, her parents were conveniently tucked out of the way somewhere, she hoped not in too much pain. Of course, she did not trust Junior, but then she did not trust any of her high school age friends either, her partners in various small crimes, and that had not kept her from having plenty of fun with them. This had to be way better. If she could only go away with Junior, and if even a small part of what he was promising would be true, then this would turn out to have been the luckiest night of her life. She would not go on to spend her life helping her father manage an orchard! To get away, to paint her own reality, she was willing to put up with a little floor rubbish or even a lot.
The door opened behind her.
“Are you done?” Vivien said sharply.
“Sure am.”
“Then get out of here. Junior’s waiting for you outside.”
“Yes, mom.”
As she tried to pass by, the tall woman stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You’ll call me Vivien Wizardbane or never speak again.”
With a glance of fear, Deirdre pulled loose from her and went out hurriedly. If she was going to leave here with Junior, she thought, then she would soon have to come up with some way to get rid of the blonde bitch.
Julie took the stick, wet with Looper’s slobber. “Thanks, boy.”
“So what have you got there? Let me have it,” Clark said. “Hmm. I can’t really see it, but it just feels like an ordinary stick. So you’re supposed to hold this to your phone? What’s it going to do, chat with Bob?”
“I don’t know, it’s just what he said to do!”
“If it belonged to Stringer, then maybe it’s conjured,” Clark said. He held the stick to his ear for a moment. “Oh man!”
“What is it?”
“Now I get what he’s up to. I see it. But what about the west portal? The Rebels will want to go that way where there’s no cold weather.”
Julie did not understand the point of the question but replied that she had heard the Rebels saying that the west portal was gone.
“Well, that’s it then. They’ll be coming this way. Is Jane still nearby? Jane?”
“Yes, Mr. Devon?”
“Go open the portal, all right?” He gave the stick back to Julie, saying, “Some Mage taught Jane a few Kreenspam phrases, so she can use her portals. While she’s at it, you go ahead and do what Bob said to do with this, and I’m going to take the spell off the woods that’s keeping the Rebels out. And I better have the dwarfs take the spell off that guy they captured. Once we open the portal, he can go too. Sure, the Rebels could open it for themselves, but let’s make it easy for them.”
Mouser’s big, strong hands were around Bob’s neck. “So your girlfriend has seen Legionnaires? Were they here? When?”
For the moment Bob could not remember when. “A few days ago,” he gasped. “Out by the big oak. Four of them.”
“And the Magi, they’ve set some kind of trap for us? How’s it work? How do we get out of here?” He shook Bob. “How do we get out of here?”
“The east portal! The spell’s about to come off the wood. Any minute.”
“The hell it is! Why would the Magi do that? What’s their game?”
Tor whacked Mouser on the shoulder, diverting him. “He’s lying. He just wants us to run out of here so he can get away. Listen, Mouser, did you ever hear of the Legionnaires attacking any of us, ever? They never do, and tonight’s no different. Break the innkeeper’s damned neck if you want, but don’t get the boys all worked up and scared. You either, Burris, with your tall tales. Junior will get us out of here, and we’ll go home.”
Mouser released Bob’s neck. “Tor, you don’t even believe in the Legion, but I do. What if they’re near us? What if they come after us right here?”
“Do you hear anything?” Tor challenged.
Mouser paused and listened. “Hell, no. So maybe we’re OK.”
Tor had no chance to continue the conversation. The telephone was still covered by Junior’s suit jacket, its receiver still hanging by its cord down between the couch and the little table. When the Song broke forth loudly—and wonderfully to Bob’s ears—its source was unidentifiable to the Rebels, though clearly coming from within the room. Those sitting on the floor jumped to their feet.
“They’ve come!” Meph wailed.
Junior, Pyro, and Deirdre had just walked onto the front porch, when the door opened and a crowd of Rebels burst out, knocking them aside. Only Meph paused, grabbing Junior by the front of his shirt and demanding, “Did you get the way to the portal open?” But he did not stay for an answer; he let go and ran on with the others across the yard and down the Ghastly Path. When they had all passed and the way to the front door was clear, Junior walked slowly and warily in, followed by the other two. They could hear the Song coming from the living room. Bob Himmel was visible through the doorway, still tied up and seated on the couch. He looked at them and smiled.
The noise seemed to clutch at Junior, threatening him, making it hard to breathe. “What is it?” he asked tightly. “What in the name of God is it?”
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Pyro said. “I’m not gonna listen to that.”
“Yucch!” was Deirdre’s response, her pretty lips twisting as if she had tasted tar.
With no more words spoken among them, they retreated out the front door. On the porch, Junior took a few deep breaths and steadied himself. He had had about enough of this place. Nothing had turned out predictably at this inn. What a bad night.
“That’s some kind of spell,” he said to the others. “It’s like a stink bomb to keep us out of there, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s working. Deirdre, honey, you come with me. I’ve got to round up the boys and get them to stop panicking. Pyro, you stay here and do the usual with the inn.”
“What about the prisoner?” Pyro asked.
“The usual. Don’t be long about it.”
“And the two in the tree?”
“Damn, I forgot about them. I don’t care. Give them the usual.” Junior remembered himself and his voice softened as he turned to Deirdre. “You know what that means? That means Pyro gets them out of there, wakes them up, and sends them on their way home. They’re Deirdre’s folks, right, Pyro? She’s leaving home now, but we’ll be good to them for her sake.”
“And Bob is my stupid cousi
n,” Deirdre said. “Don’t give him the usual.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Junior agreed enthusiastically, for he had suddenly realized that the girl was smarter than he had thought, that she knew what ‘the usual’ really meant. “Of course, I was forgetting he’s your cousin, doll. Pyro, get him out of there before you burn it. Treat him good.”
“Right, boss,” Pyro said dryly.
“Let me stay with Pyro, Junior?” Deirdre wheedled. “Just for a little while?”
“No, baby, I got things for you to do. Come on now.”
As he led her away, he felt sure that she knew what was really coming for her parents and cousin.
Julie and the others, anticipating the Rebels retreat along the Ghastly Path, had gotten into some of the depressions between the hummocks in the Wandering Wood, and had kept their heads down. This was well, for despite the darkness and their fear some of the Rebels had paused long enough to shoot some rounds in their direction before racing through the portal. Now a few minutes had passed, and Julie watched the Porto-Deck gliding almost silently down the path toward them, its interior faintly lit.
“That’ll be Viv and Junior,” Clark whispered to her as the box-like specter came nearer. “They’ve lost their army, so they’ll leave too. That was a great trick Bob thought of, and it could be used again sometime if we can just keep it hushed up about how it was done. Other Magi have sticks like that we could use. Would you be sure to not tell anyone?”
“Sure, I’ll keep it a secret,” Julie said. She was thinking of Bis’ words, that future Mage history books would only record that the reason for the Rebel retreat was a mystery.
“As soon as they’re through the portal, we’ll close it,” he said.
“Good, then we can go back to the inn.”
She had been holding the stick and her cell phone together. Now she pushed the stick through her belt and spoke into the phone.
“Bob? Are you OK?”
Pyro found the prisoner where he had left him. The tall boy stopped rubbing his nose on the couch arm and looked up with a smile.
“I was hoping that would be Julie coming in,” Bob said. “What’s the matter, don’t you like the music?”
Pyro hated the sound, whatever it was, and his face, he concluded, must show it. Now was the time to stab the boy through the heart, get outside as quickly as possible, set the inn on fire, and then go find Junior. Though the portal had not been opened yet, and therefore no escape route was available, he was not much worried that the burning of the house would attract attention and bring the local authorities down on them. He had seen no cars pass on this back road this evening, and the only two other homes in the area had been reported empty. Maybe the inhabitants of the one down the road had gone off to see a fireworks display somewhere? Whatever. The owners of the other were stuffed in the sycamore nearby. Sure, a fire was a little risky, but Junior was willing to chance it, so why not?
Pyro drew his knife and stood thinking. The boy looked him in the eye.
“You knife proof as well as fireproof?” Pyro asked.
“No,” the innkeeper admitted. “You’re going to kill me this time.”
Still missing his lovely revolver that Bob had thrown out of the yard, Pyro placed the tip of the knife against Bob’s chest. “Tell me first what that noise is.”
“It’s the Golden Legion,” Bob said.
Pyro’s grip on the knife handle loosened. He backed up a step and looked up at the corners of the room as if expecting to see Legionnaires burst through the walls. Breathing became an effort. He instantly decided not to murder the prisoner, not while he was being watched—for he seemed to feel the Legionnaires’ eyes upon him. No, instead he would burn the place down on him and so be far away when the prisoner died.
But first, from long habit, he looked around the room for anything valuable and portable to make off with. Nothing but a particularly classy chair that was too cumbersome to carry. He looked again at the prisoner.
“What have you got on you? You give me something valuable, I’ll let you live.”
“I’ve got two dollars,” Bob said.
“Right, well what’s that?” Pyro pointed to a bulge in Bob’s jeans pocket, but the boy didn’t seem to understand. “That there! What have you got?”
Still holding the knife, the Rebel shoved his left hand into Bob’s pocket and withdrew a huge gem.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot I had it,” Bob said.
Pyro had one moment for it to register that he had in his hand an inn gem and that it was very, very dangerous to be touching it. Then his skin seemed to burn and shrink on his bones. His last thought was that, if he had only known, he would have pulled the gem from Bob’s pocket with the hearth tongs. He fell to the floor.
Bob looked down on Pyro’s face, which now resembled an unwrapped mummy, the head and beard hair fallen out, the skin taut and leathery on the prominent bones of the skull, and the lips drawn back from the bad teeth. Though he felt he might throw up, he could not look away. Suddenly the Song stopped and a few seconds of silence ticked by.
“Bob? Are you OK?” said Julie from the dangling receiver.
From the intentionally darkened interior of the Zareen Porto-Deck, Junior could see nothing ahead but a hint of the far off, gleaming arch of the east portal. The Porto, not built for speed, seemed to be inching toward it at no more than a walk as he steered it down the path through the narrow space between the trees. A little scouting had already showed him that the other Rebels seemed to be missing from the area, even the guards around the wood, which suggested that they had all gone through the portal. And why else would the portal be visible? They’d just been in too much of a panic to close it behind them. If they really had gotten through, he told Vivien and Deirdre, it showed the pathetic weakness of the border spell that had been put on the wood. How long had it lasted—an hour? Some trap that was.
To test his theory that the spell had faded, he was about to attempt to enter the Wandering Wood. He turned on the Porto’s single headlight.
“There’s the sign,” he said, pointing it out to the others, “the one Bob or somebody put up. That’s where the wood begins. Well, here goes. We’re headed in, and if we get confused and turned around, we’ll know the spell is still on.”
The Porto left the path and scraped through some tall brush. After a few moments, he turned off the headlight in order to be able to see the fainter light of the arch, and found that it had come closer and more of it was visible.
“So no spell!” he said cheerfully as he stopped the Porto. “We don’t have to wait till morning and shoot up the woods to get out of here. We’re headed back. Deirdre, sweetie, now you’ll get a chance to see what it’s really like to be a Realmer. We’re going home to the palace. Dad’ll be back by the time we get there. He’s been kind of sick and spacey the last few years, and a couple months ago he headed off to try another hospital. But hey, they’ll have him fixed up by now. He’s a tough old guy. I want you to meet him.”
“I thought you were going to round up the men and finish this job!” Vivien said sharply.
“Yeah, yeah, but I don’t think I can get them to come back here now, not if they think there’s any chance of getting caught again between a missing portal and a border spell. They’ve had a little scare and need to mentally regroup. It’s understandable. This place is loony tunes, Viv, it’s not our style. Too remote. No side portals anywhere along this part of the road. Kind of claustrophobic. So, baby, we’re going back to civilization.”
“So you’re giving up?”
“Take it easy, beautiful.”
“He’s knocked out, helpless, and three quarters dead, and you still can’t catch the old man,” Vivien said to him scornfully. “Freddy is going to hear about this.”
“Don’t call him Freddy!” Junior said. “He’s Nineveh to you. Damn it,
give me some peace so I can think about our next moves. Forget about Merlin.”
“Don’t call him that! He’s the old man.”
Junior paid no attention to this. “Let’s see, if the boys went through this portal, that puts them in merry old England again and deep snow. They’d march for the other portal, and that takes them to the Himalayas.”
“And half of them die of the cold,” Viv said.
“What’s the matter with us?” Junior said, ignoring her. “Why did we burn those inns behind us? They could have been shelter for the boys on this—on this trip home.”
Vivien was on her feet, repeatedly slapping the glass, her rings making clacking sounds against it. “You said the Magi are in this wood—he’s in this wood! He could be right outside, a few feet away.”
“Yeah, well there’s a bunch of other Magi out there, too, and I’m not going to mess with them. Maybe you’d like me to drop you off?”
“You’re so funny! Now do something, or I’ll spend the rest of my life making you wish you had!”
Her cheeks burned and she was tense as a hissing cat. Junior saw that she felt herself to be at some overwhelming crisis in her life, but the nature of it eluded him.
“Viv, will you calm down? What is it? The old man’s almost dead like you say, so what’s to worry?”
“Almost! You fool, what is almost to me?”
“Anyway, if you want to finish him off, then why’d you say you wanted him taken alive?”
“So I can kill him! Do you think I’d leave that to someone else, someone who might not make completely sure of him?”
“God, you’re worked up.”
“Don’t you see that if he isn’t dead, he’s going to wake someday?”
“Viv, a thousand years from now. That’s what you said.”
“Yes, and then what? He can travel through time without the limitations of the portals. He’ll find his way back, he’ll care for nothing but to get his revenge on me.” She paused and touched a slender finger to her gold earring shaped as a dragon’s head. “He’ll come back for this. He won’t rest till he gets it back.”
“Yeah, how come you didn’t get both of them?” Junior asked.
“Because I couldn’t reach to the other one when he was inside the tree! He’ll come back for it—to find me and to—to put out my eyes, to strike me with plague, to cast me into a foul dungeon!”
He took her by the shoulders and forced her down into her chair. “Don’t be a wimp,” he said roughly. “Nobody plays our kind of game unless they’re ready to take some major risks. You can’t win big unless you risk big. So just keep a pistol handy and shoot his friggin' head off—did you ever think of that? Just pull yourself together. We’ll leave soon.”
She sat quietly for a few moments with her lips trembling. “Soon? What are you waiting for?”
“Pyro. He’s supposed to catch up to us. Maybe I should go back and pick him up.”
“Yes, do as you please.”
As he began to back up the Porto, they heard the noise of something thumping against the low, glass roof. Deirdre stood with wide eyes and pointed upward. “What’s that!”
Junior could see nothing, so he turned up the interior lights, revealing to them the underside of a large, four-footed creature with lithe body, trailing wings, and a sharp, hooked snout. The roof was low, the creature very close.
“Shoot it!” Vivien screamed.
Junior shrugged. “I can’t, I don’t have a gun. It’s just a griffin, it can’t get in. Must be a pet of one of the Magi.”
“There’s another one!” Deirdre said, pointing to it behind the first.
“Forget Pyro,” Viv shrieked. “Just get us through the portal before more of them land on us!”
Junior did not argue but reversed direction again and applied what little speed the vehicle had toward reaching the gleaming arch ahead, scraping along over bushes and around trees. Deirdre was still standing and now stepped toward the door.
“No, baby!” he shouted. “Don’t get out. I know this machine’s slow, but we’re safe inside. The glass is super tough, won’t break even if you shoot it. If you run for the portal, those griffins will catch you. Deirdre!”
He tried to grip the control stick with one hand and grab the girl with the other, but his reach wasn’t long enough. The girl had hesitated at the door. He stopped the Porto again.
“Don’t stop for her!” Viv shouted, jumping to her feet. “Go on, you knave! She doesn’t want to go with us, she’s trying to escape.”
“No she isn’t. You don’t want to stay here in Podunkville, do you, Deirdre? Just because Pyro might have gone a little hard on your relatives? You heard me tell him to let them go, so if anything’s happened, he was disobeying orders, right? Come on, you want barrels of money. Travel, baby, to all the slickest places in the world. No rules, no police. Power and classy clothes and everything you ever wanted! Come sit down, and as soon as we’re through the Portal, I’ll fix you a drink.”
Though she had opened the door, Deirdre stopped and half turned to him. A little smile hovered at her mouth. But Vivien stepped to her and, with a terrific shove, sent her flying out the door to land on her back.
The tall blonde closed the door and turned to him. “Enough of her. Let the griffins eat her. Now get us out of here.”
Junior obeyed.
The Porto had disappeared through the gleaming gate, the griffins abandoning it at the last moment. In the darkness Deirdre was helped to her feet by a young woman with a British accent who spoke to her gently.
“The Rebels are all gone, Miss Bernard. You’re safe now. Miss Julie Beckerhof told us who you are, that you’re the innkeeper’s cousin. Excuse me for just a moment.”
Her comforter turned to address the single word “Ebsaranu!” in the direction of the portal, and it disappeared.
For several seconds Deirdre stood staring at where the portal had been, and then expressed herself in a string of fierce, crackling expletives.
“What’s the matter,” said the English girl. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m stuck in Rayburn County!”
Julie entered the wreck that was left of the inn, crying freely as she looked around at the broken windows, the smashed living room door, and the slashed and overturned furniture. Even if the redemption period were not ending today, the inn could not be maintained. She and Bob could never afford to fix all this damage.
Entering the living room, she found the ruin of the hearth, more broken windows, and Bob sitting on the floor. He had obtained one of the Rebel’s knives, had used it to somehow cut the rope binding his wrists, and now was sawing through the rope around his ankles. His wrists were chafed red where the cords had pinched them. A few feet behind him lay a body, its upper half covered by a chair throw, leaving visible its legs, garbed in black and skeletally thin.
Bob noticed she was staring at it. “I knew people would be coming, so I covered Pyro up as fast as I could,” he said. “He’s got to be buried. Maybe we can leave that to the dwarfs or somebody.”
“Oh, Bob, you didn’t kill him?”
“No, he just had an accident. If the mirror were still here, it’d say something appropriate about the quirky little results of greed.”
She looked around for the mirror, saw it was gone, and decided not to ask.
“Are the Rebs all gone?” he asked brightly. “Really? Every one of them?”
“Yeah.” She sank down beside him. “And that blond woman pushed Deirdre out of their trailer or whatever that floating thing is, so we got her back.”
“Well, things can’t go all our way,” he said. “That reminds me, I better go check on Uncle Dave and Aunt Marci. You got the Magi coming back in here, don’t you?”
“Sure, but we haven’t got much to offer them. No food. Broken glass everywhere. It’s not an inn anymore.”
He
did not argue with her assessment. “Just get them back into their beds. I don’t even want to think about what happens tomorrow morning.” He cut through the last of the rope, freeing his legs. “The Rebels said the west portal is gone, and we can’t send the Magi east because it’s all snow and burned down inns in that direction. Look, don’t tell any of them that they might be stuck here. Just let them get some sleep.”
She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “I won’t tell.”
He stood. “OK, Vivien supposedly put my aunt and uncle in a hollow tree, so I’m out to the sycamore in the side yard by the road. That’s the only hollow tree that I know of around here that’s big enough. God, I hope Uncle Dave and Aunt Marci aren’t just body parts in there!”
On the way out he passed the Magi staggering in. Not seeing Deirdre with them, he stopped Clark and asked him about her.
“Oh, your cousin who dresses like a Rebel?” Clark said. “She got a flashlight from her parents’ car and is looking around for them.” As Bob started out of the house, Clark stopped him with a hand on his arm. “This probably isn’t the time for this, but I’ve been getting the oddest impression about your cousin.”
“Like what?” Bob said, though fairly sure of what was coming.
“I may be crazy, but I think she has the makings of a Mage.”
Bob groaned at this and moved on.
In the side yard, he found Deirdre by the sycamore. She was shining her flashlight beam into the great, vertical crack in its trunk and carrying on a spirited conversation with her parents, who, though still within, were not only alive but wide awake.
“You got in there,” Deirdre insisted, “so you have to be able to get out.”
“I tell you, we’re wedged in! We can’t move,” her father said shrilly from within the tree. “Are you going to call the authorities or aren’t you?”
Deirdre snorted with amusement. “You’re both too fat. If we put you on a diet, eventually you’ll be able to get out, like Pooh.”
“You’re grounded for a year!” her mother shouted.
“Not so loud, Marci,” said Uncle Dave. “You’re deafening me.”
Bob patted Deirdre on the shoulder to get her attention. “Don’t call the police or anybody,” he said to her. “I’ll just go get my chainsaw.”
“Bob Himmel!” Uncle Dave cried angrily. “I’m holding you responsible for everything. You’re the one who started inviting lowlife types in here. Now it looks like the house is a gathering place for gangsters. And I don’t want any sick jokes about a chainsaw or anything else.”
Bob, who had been serious, fetched his chainsaw from the singed shed on the other side of the house. When he returned and yanked the saw’s cord, its noise helped to mask the tandem screams of his aunt and uncle. Deirdre cheerfully held the light for him while he carved away pieces of trunk bordering the crack, while avoiding flesh. After some minutes, he and Deirdre were able to pull Marci out, though leaving behind a little of her clothing and scrapings of her skin. With that much space cleared, extracting Uncle Dave was easier.
Neither Dave nor Marci felt like talking anymore; they simply collapsed. While they lay gasping on the lawn, Deirdre went to bring the car to them. Then, with much trouble, the young people succeeded in propping them in the back seat. As Deirdre got in to drive them home, Bob leaned in to say some parting words to his aunt and uncle.
“Just think,” he said grinning, “at five this afternoon this inn will be yours!”
The interior overhead light was on, so he was able to see their glares of hatred.
As the Bernards’ car disappeared out the driveway, another car pulled in. Surprised and curious, Bob went over to the driver’s side to see who it was. Even before Logan Alberti had stuck his head out the window, Bob caught the entrancing smell of pizza. When Logan’s head popped out, he grabbed the undersized boy by the back of his neck and hauled him out through the window opening, banging up his arms and legs in the process.
Logan crumpled down onto the grass. “I didn’t do anything!” he whimpered. “I just brought some pizza and drinks.”
Bob twisted his skinny arm behind his back and marched him into the house.
A few minutes later, every sleepy Mage was gorging himself on pizza, for Logan had brought so many that they had filled his car’s back seat. Bob and Julie enjoyed themselves bringing the hot food to their guests in their beds, waking some of them with the delightful smell.
Meanwhile, Logan was sitting out in the back yard, tied to a chair with the same ropes that had been used on Bob, and gagged. While all the Magi were eating or falling back into their first peaceful sleep in many days, Bob stepped out back to check on the boy. This proved wise, for Logan had become so frenetic that he had tipped himself over and was trying to rub away the stick which Bob had thoughtfully duct taped to the side of his head. But as he dragged him upright, Bob was pleased to see that Herr Stringer’s stick was still firmly taped to the boy’s ear. The chair was, of course, the Siege Perilous.
Logan seemed about played out, his face streaked with tears and his chest heaving. His groans and grunts were getting weaker. It occurred to Bob that, given enough time, this might even kill him. So after he had checked him one more time for weapons, unburdening him of a small knife he had missed the first time, he tore the duct tape off, taking some of Logan’s long and greasy hair with it. Then he began to untie the ropes. In a few minutes the boy was free and crawling toward his car. He managed to get in and drive away toward town.
As Bob had requested, the dwarfs had somehow disposed of Pyro’s desiccated corpse, but not before bringing Bob the inn’s gem, rescued from the arsonist’s clutching, skeletal hand. The ruined hearth was no longer a proper place for it, so he took it to the basement. Halfway down the stairs his steps slowed. Somehow, what with the chaotic events of the night and his own weariness, he had forgotten until now that he would find the corpse of the old man Johns below. Standing on the cement floor, he pulled the short chain that turned on the bare bulb in the ceiling. Yes, there lay Mr. Johns on the low stone shelf where he had intended to sleep.
But the old man would not stay dead! His shirtfront was red with blood where Tor had stabbed him, but his chest rose and fell. Bob smiled sleepily. Mr. Johns must have indeed died, just as Tor had said, but had been revived by the power of those stones. He must have at least seemed dead while being searched but perhaps had been breathing again before Tor had closed the basement door.
Bob had intended to thrust the gem into a crack between two of the stones in the hope that this would cause the portal west of the inn to reappear. But the old man was lying across the spaces between the stones, and he did not want to disturb him. He looked at Johns’ relaxed, serene face, at the tiny twin reflections of the light bulb in his glasses’ lenses, and considered what a lucky fellow he had been to be murdered while lying on magic, life-giving stones. The lucky stiff!
It occurred to his tired mind that not one—not one!—of his guests had died in the inn during the night, and stayed dead. Kim’s baby and Mr. Johns would leave the inn alive. Furthermore, no one had slept on the floor, and all had been fed. He was tired, so tired that surely he had missed something? Hadn’t he broken the innkeeper’s rules somehow? No. He went back over them in his mind, and he had kept them all. He was an innkeeper still.
Mr. Johns made a louder sound of inhaling and awoke.
“Why, Bob!” he said with a smile, “Good morning. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, sir. I just have the inn’s gem here and wanted to get it working again.”
When Johns stood up and gestured an invitation toward the stones, Bob pushed the gem into the widest gap available.
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “I’ll let you sleep now. Do you feel all right?”
“I’m fine,” said the old man, glancing down at his stained shirt.
“You’re a lucky guy,” Bob said, “to get stabbed like that while you happened to be lying on magic stones that bring creatures back to life. That’s got to be the sweetest break in the world.”
“Oh, no, you’ve misunderstood,” said Johns. “You think the power traveled from the stones to me, but it was the other way around. You see, I’ve slept on them before, many years ago, and it was my sleeping on them then that imparted to them their reviving quality which lasts to this day.”
Bob laughed nervously, not from disbelief but something like fear. “Well, OK, but—who does that make you?”
Johns laid a hand on his shoulder. “No one you need to trouble yourself about. Why don’t you get some sleep? You’ve done very well and deserve some rest.”
“Yes, sir. May I get you some pizza first?”
“Thank you, I’ll have some.”
When Bob had served Mr. Johns and had gone back upstairs, he found that Julie had prepared a bed even for him: a pillow and a blanket laid on the back of a cabinet that the Rebels had overturned. As soon as he had made sure that she had rigged up something similar for herself, he kissed her woozily and went to bed.
