The Young Sorceress

by Wesley Allison

  “Come on, Geert!” called the boy. “If we can get him back to the lodge, we have healing draughts for him.”

  The young man pushed Wissinger aside and took his place with the wounded man.

  “We’ve got him,” he said to the girl. “You need to get out of here.”

  “Right,” she replied. “You have fire wards, I trust?”

  “Yes,” he said, now thirty feet down the alley. “Good luck.”

  The girl grabbed Wissinger by the shoulder. Even though he was several inches taller than her, it seemed as though he was looking up at her. “You stay with me.”

  She took three steps back out into the street, stretched her hand out into the smoke filled air, and said “Uuthanum uluchaiia uluthiuth.” Another gigantic ball of fire shot down the street, but this time it ignited the thick black smoke. The buildings burned. The very air burned. It was as close to the Kafirite description of Hell as Wissinger ever wanted to see. He could hear people screaming close by and further up the street.

  “Gott in Himmel!” he cried, as what had once been a man, but now was nothing but a torch ran past him. He hoped it was one of the Reine Zauberei. He wouldn’t have wished such a fate on anyone else.

  “Come on then,” said the girl. She led him down the alley after the others, but turned down a different direction. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Um, I… I’m a friend… of Zurfina.”

  “Huh,” she said with a frown.

  “Are you her daughter?”

  “Kafira no,” she said. “I’m her apprentice, Senta.”

  “I’ve never seen magic like that before.”

  “Well, it was no Epic Pestilence, but it was all right.”

  They hurried down one alley after another, finally crossing another fairly large street. The girl stopped at the corner and looked at Wissinger.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “More or less,” he said.

  “We need to get to the train station.”

  “I think I know the way.”

  In the distance they could hear bells and whistles. The writer thought he could still hear screaming as well. He started off in what he thought was the right direction. She followed along with him. They both hugged the buildings on the right side of the road. In the previous seven days he hadn’t familiarized himself with all the buildings and establishments—St. Ulixes was a big city, but he had learned the general lay of the land near the depot. After a rather round about path through crowds of trogs, they arrived at the station steps.

  “When is the train for Birmisia?” Senta asked the clerk at the window, after noting that a train was already sitting on the loading platform, its engine spewing a cloud of steam along its sides.

  “One leaving in forty-five minutes and another leaving tonight at ten.”

  Wissinger looked over the clerk’s shoulder at the clock on the wall. It was 11:15.

  “Do you need a ticket?” Senta asked him.

  “No, I have a Second Class ticket.”

  “Good enough,” she said.

  A flash of light right in front of him momentarily blinded Wissinger, and he jumped back with his hands over his face. When he realized that nothing had actually struck him and that his eyesight was returning to normal, her peered between his fingers. Senta was sprawled across the station platform, a look of confusion across her face. Turning around, the writer came face to face with Von Grieg.

  The Freedonian wizard looked like he had been fired out of a cannon. The skin on the right side of his face was blackened and his right ear had been charred away. His hair was gone too from that side of his head. His suit had several large burn marks and a hole in his right sleeve was still smoking.

  “Uuthanum rechthinov uluchaiia,” he muttered, waving toward the fallen girl.

  A bolt of electricity shot from him. She raised her hand, reflecting much of the energy into the sky, though it still knocked her several feet. She swung her hand through the air, like she was swatting invisible flies, and then threw something toward the wizard. In a puff of smoke, right next to him, a gigantic bird appeared.

  The bird was unlike anything that Isaak Wissinger had ever seen before. It stood eight feet tall and with its long pointed tail, stretched out to almost twenty-five feet in length, cloaked in brilliant dark blue and turquoise feathers. Instead of a beak however, it had a large mouth full of dagger-like teeth. The creature’s head tilted to one side and its eye examined Von Grieg, exactly as the writer had seen robins examining earthworms. With a sudden motion, the beast’s mouth snapped shut on the wizard’s face, and one foot came up to disembowel him with a frightening upturned claw.

  Von Grieg didn’t make a sound, though several bystanders screamed and the great bird made a gurgling shriek before picking several bites from the human carcass. It had only time for a few though, before it disappeared in a puff of smoke exactly like the one that had brought it.

  “What in God’s name was that?” Wissinger asked.

  “That was a utahraptor,” said Senta, climbing to her feet. “You’ll get used to them if you spend much time in Birmisia.”

  She bent down and picked up her carpetbag from where it had fallen. Opening it up and looking inside, she gave a sigh of relief.

  “Thank Kafira’s left tit,” she said.

  Wissinger wondered if her blasphemy would go unchallenged, but everyone one else seemed to be busy screaming or running away. Those who were waiting for the train quickly boarded. The writer saw this as an opportunity and took the young sorceress by the elbow. She allowed herself to be guided aboard. They took seats next to each other in the closest car.

  “Uh oh,” said Wissinger.

  Smoke covered a good portion of the sky and apparently someone had decided that the perpetrator of the conflagration had to be brought to justice. An entire platoon of Brech soldiers in crimson coats were marching toward them. They were followed by what could only be termed an angry mob.

  “Premba uuthanum tachthna,” Senta said, and pressed her palm against the wall. The train suddenly lurched forward and slowly began accelerating. Their car was well past the station before the soldiers reached it, but Wissinger was still worried that the train might be waylaid and he and the young woman would be dragged out into the street and shot. It wasn’t until they were completely out of the city that he at last breathed a sigh of relief.

  Chapter Fourteen: All Your Fault

  Augie Dechantagne came running through the parlor and like a freight train. “Mama! Mama! I shot a velociraptor!” He dived toward the couch, landing not on his mother, but instead in the lap of Cissy who sat next to her.

  “You did what?”

  “I shot a velociraptor!”

  Yuah’s eyes shot daggers at the boy’s uncle, who followed him into the room, and who was in turn followed by a lizzie burdened with at least six assorted rifles and another with several large canvas bags slung over his shoulder. “He’s not even three years old.”

  “Don’t get yourself worked up,” said Radley Staff. “I didn’t give him the weapon. I simply let him look through the sights and pull the trigger while I held it.”

  “Quite appropriate,” said Iolanthe from her seat across the room, her eyes glued to the paper in her hand. “A Dechantagne man must be proficient in firearms.”

  “You should have seen the blood shoot out!” continued the boy. “How many did we get again, Uncle?”

  “Only four,” said Staff, who then turned to the lizzies. “Put the gear away in my den.”

  “I hope you at least made sure the guns were unloaded in the house,” said Yuah.

  “I certainly hope you didn’t.” Iolanthe at last looked away from her paper. “What’s the point in having rifles if they aren’t ready to be used?”

  “Yuah is right,” said Staff. “Safety first. But the best way to be safe is to ensure the children have a good working knowledge of firearms and know when and when not to touch them.”

  “Rea
dy for a nap?” Cissy asked the boy. “Sister is already asleep.”

  “I’m hungry,” said the boy. “Can I get a biscuit?”

  “Go get one from the kitchen,” ordered his mother. Then she stood up. “I certainly can use a nap. I shall see you all at tea.”

  Making her way up the long sweeping staircase, Yuah snapped her fingers at Narsa, who followed her into her bedroom and helped her remove her day dress and then unfasten her corset. Waving for the lizzie to go, she unfastened her own hip bag and draped it over the chair, before stretching out on the bed.

  “What are you still doing here?” she called, seeing the lizzie out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, it’s you again.”

  It wasn’t Narsa hovering just outside Yuah’s bedroom door, but Cissy. She seemed to be making a habit of hovering outside doors.

  “What do you want? I’m not doing anything.”

  “I whatch you,” said Cissy.

  “Yes, yes,” replied Yuah. “Go ahead and ‘whatch’ me.”

  * * * * *

  Baxter stared down at Odval’s grave. He had carried her body all the way back across the island to bury her in the little meadow just above the rocky shore where he had first found her. He hadn’t gone to so much effort when his own mother had died. He had only known the Enclepian woman for a few weeks, but her death hurt him more than any other, of the many deaths that had touched him in his life. He knew in his head that he was pained less for her loss than the selfish realization that he would now be all alone on the island, but his heart hurt just the same. He hadn’t loved her. He had barely known her. But he was going to miss her.

  The neatly piled earth looked like a new grave, but there was something missing. The naval officer spent the day looking for just the right stone to serve as a marker, carefully placing it just above the edge of the mound. He didn’t write on it though. It was too much effort to carve, and for that matter, he didn’t know enough about her to know what to say. He skirted the edge of the meadow, along the rocky ridge, and found several dozen small white flowers, which he picked and placed in a pile next to the stone. Nodding in approval, he turned and walked back toward his home by the little lake. He wondered just how long it would be his home.

  * * * * *

  Late afternoon on the third day of his train ride from Mallontah to Birmisia, Isaak Wissinger slept with his face pressed against the cool glass of the window. He started awake when the young sorceress sat down beside him.

  “Sorry to wake you,” she said. “I wish you would have taken my bed at least one night.”

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  “I got you a sandwich,” she said, handing him a bundle wrapped in old newsprint.

  “Thank god,” he said, unwrapping it and taking a huge bite. “Thank you. I thought you spent the last of you money on our dinner yesterday.”

  “I did. Don’t tell anybody, but I nicked it from the trolley.”

  “It’s fortunate that you didn’t get caught.” The writer was surprised at himself, but he didn’t feel at all bad about eating a stolen sandwich, filled with delicious hard salami and cheese.

  “Yes, well, I actually don’t have much experience at thievery.”

  “All evidence to the contrary…”

  She grinned. He quickly consumed the rest of the sandwich before the thought that perhaps he should offer some of it to her even entered his mind.

  “Tell me again about how you met Zurfina,” she said.

  “I already told you.”

  “Yes, hence my use of the word ‘again.’ But I think you left something out.”

  He had indeed left out of the story the fact that Zurfina had been sans clothing and had been intent on making love to him. It wasn’t the type of thing that one discussed with a lady, certainly not with a girl.

  “I flatter myself to think that she chose to help me because of my writing,” he said, switching to the not altogether comfortable subject of himself.

  “She does have a soft spot for artistic types,” said Senta. “But I never heard of you, honestly. I did like what you wrote in your tablets.”

  Wissinger grabbed at the waistband of his pants, where he had kept the tablets tucked beneath his shirttails, only to find them gone. A feeling of panic shot through his bowels.

  “Don’t worry. They’re safe. They’re in my carpet bag.”

  “Are you sure that’s safe enough?” he asked, noting that she didn’t have the bag with her.

  “Oh yes. I have so many magical wards on that bag that Zurfina couldn’t even get into it.”

  “You didn’t do all that to protect my writing, did you?”

  “No, I have my very valuable copy of The Contracting Universe in there.”

  “Oh yes,” said the writer. “I read Dodson when I was your age too.”

  “Thirty minutes for Port Dechantagne,” called the conductor, as he passed through the car. “Thirty minutes for Port Dechantagne.”

  “What are you going to do now that you’re here?” asked Senta. “Have you thought about a place to stay?”

  “Honestly, no.”

  “We have some space at our home, but as it’s really Zurfina’s house, I can’t offer. Still, she seems interested in you, so maybe she won’t mind.”

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate in any case. I’m sure they have someplace for indigent immigrants.”

  “There’s a family named Wissinger in Port Dechantagne,” said Senta, scrunching her forehead in thought. “His name is… Zossef, I think. I don’t remember what her name is. She scurries away every time I come near. Do you suppose you’re related to them?”

  “I had a grandfather and an uncle named Zossef, and a couple of cousins, I think, so it’s possible. Are they from Freedonia originally?”

  “Probably. Seems like almost all the Zaeri in Birmisia are.” She got up from her seat. “Why don’t you wash up a bit? I’ll get our things.”

  Forty minutes later Wissinger stepped down from the train and turned to help his young companion. She had given him back his tablets, but had refused his offer to carry her luggage for her. She followed him down onto the station platform and took his proffered arm.

  As he surveyed the area, the writer couldn’t help but notice the strange behavior of the people of this new land. Many were at the station to greet arriving friends, relatives, and business associates, but as soon as they did so, they rushed them away. In just a few minutes the entire area was as devoid of people as it would have been had no train arrived at all. He had an idea why this was, which was confirmed when he and his companion rounded the station building.

  Standing in the street awaiting them were two dozen armed men. The six in forefront wore blue uniforms and tall helmets, while the rest wore khaki pants and shirts. All were carrying rifles except the two blue uniformed men in the lead. Both were quite a bit taller than Wissinger, one with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves was relatively thin, and the other built like a brick wall.

  “You’ve done it this time,” said the sergeant. “You’re under arrest Senta.”

  “What for?” asked the young sorceress.

  “I don’t know. How about murder, wholesale destruction of property, and mayhem for starters?”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” said Wissinger. “She was attacked by the Reine Zauberei. They’re wizards—very, very bad ones.”

  “Yes, I know who they are. Who are you?”

  “My name is Isaak Wissinger.”

  “The writer?”

  “I stand corrected,” said the girl. “See there, you are famous after all.”

  She turned her attention back to the leader of the armed band. “Look Saba. I don’t feel like getting arrested right now. Why don’t you drive me home in your nice steam carriage and I’ll take a bath, change clothes, and turn myself over to the police later.”

  “I’ll take you home, but I’ll wait for you, and you’ll come back to the station with me.”

  “All right, but somebody needs
to help out Mr. Wissinger.”

  “I’ll do it,” said the very large man. “I know the Wissingers.”

  “What about us?” asked one of the men in khaki.

  “I guess you don’t have to die for your country today,” said the sergeant. “Take a sweep through Lizzietown just to show the flag. Then you can all go home.”

  The girl pulled the writer to her and kissed him on the cheek. Then she walked away toward a parked steam carriage, in lock step with the police sergeant. The other men in uniform parted before them.

  “Right then,” said the big man, stepping up next to Wissinger. “Come along. We’ll take the trolley.”

  A very few steps away was a small covered area with several benches, designated as the trolley stop. Here were two reptilian locals, filling several large cement planters with flowers. The aborigines were much more massive than the trogs of Mallontah—taller, more powerful looking, and more frightening too. As Wissinger waited for the trolley, he compared his heavy-set companion with the nearest lizardman. The creature was scrunched down just enough to stand an inch shorter than the man, but it was obvious that if he allowed himself to do so that he would be at least a bit taller. The writer wondered just who would prevail if the two of them were to come to blows, and then a quick glance in the reptilian’s eyes convinced him that the beast was thinking the exact same thing.

  “Are they dangerous?” asked Wissinger, nodding toward the workers.

  “Can be,” replied the man. He tugged down his stiff leather collar, revealing an ugly scar across most of his neck. “By the way, I’m PC Eamon Shrubb.”

  “Nice to meet you. Um, Isaak Wissinger.”

  “I read one of your books, you know.”

  “Really? Which one.”

  “The Man who Loved his Gardener.”

  “Oh. And how did you find it?”

  “I enjoyed some of it.”

  “Which part didn’t you? Enjoy, I mean.”

  “The first hundred pages were a little slow.”

  When the trolley approached down the track, Wissinger almost fled. It was pulled by a giant three-horned monster, with a huge gaping, beaked mouth. Even though he managed not to run, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing was even real until the creature stopped, the trolley car it pulled directly in front of Wissinger, Shrubb, and three others who had joined the queue.