The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “I had surmised as much,” said the Magus dryly.

  “Yes, of course you had, being a magician and all that. Well, since we all seem to be going in the same direction, what do you say we mount up and go ahead while I make my explanation.”

  “That’s agreeable with me,” said MacCullen. “Let’s go, Frithkin. By the way, Sir Knight, I am the Magus MacCullen. This is my assistant and familiar, Frithkin.”

  “Happy to make your acquaintance, Magus. Frithkin? Not a Christian name, I think?”

  “No, my lord,” said Frithkin. “Fey. Faerie. I am an earth elemental, my lord. A goblin.”

  “Really? Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a goblin before. Met a tree elemental once – a dryad named Naaia. Very nice girl. Most beautiful green hair you ever saw. I guess I’m pretty much of an elemental myself, eh? Mostly steel and air, eh?” He chuckled sadly.

  “I don’t believe you gave us your name, Sir Knight,” the Magus said pointedly as the three mounted their animals and moved on down the road.

  “Well, that’s the sad part about it,” said the Empty Knight. “You see, I don’t have a name, really. I’m not quite all here, if you see what I mean. I mean to say, I don’t know who I am. I’m just – well, sort of here, if you see what I mean.”

  “Um,” said Magus MacCullen thoughtfully. “How long has this been going on? I mean – tell me everything you can remember, from the beginning. As a white magician, I may be able to help you.”

  “Would you really?” There was a rather pathetic note of joy in the Empty Knight’s booming voice. “That’s awfully good of you. What do you need to know?”

  “Begin at the beginning, as far back as you can remember. I think I know what has happened here, in a general way, but I need more evidence before I can decide what to do about it.”

  Magus MacCullen was in the center of the little party, with the Empty Knight on his left and Frithkin on his right. The goblin leaned over and whispered, in a voice that the knight couldn’t hear, “Ask him why he tried to spit you on that pig-sticker of his.”

  “Later,” the Magus whispered. “He’ll get to it in time.”

  The Empty Knight was silent for several minutes. Then he said: “I can’t seem to remember.” His voice was gloomy. “I’ve just been touring the countryside for – I don’t know how long. Weeks? Months? Years? I can’t remember. Time just keeps moving on. Always does, I suppose. But still I keep looking.” He sighed. “I go from castle to castle, from town to town, looking. It seems like a long time in some ways, but maybe not so very long. Of course, I don’t eat, and that’s pretty handy, for I haven’t any money. Haven’t had for a long time. Not ever, I think. Fortunately, someone is always ready to give Roderick food and a stable. Nobody’d let a horse starve. I always tell people that I’ve taken an oath not to take off my armor until I’ve fulfilled my vow – which is perfectly true. And since I only stop one night, I can tell them I’m fasting that day – which is true, if misleading. It gets lonely at times, but knight errantry is a lonely job, anyway. I’m not complaining, you understand. I just go on looking.”

  “Looking for what?” the Magus asked cautiously.

  “Why, the magician, of course. Didn’t I tell you? No, I guess I didn’t. Well, that’s who I’m looking for. The magician.”

  “Which magician?” Magus MacCullen asked. “Not just any old magician, I gather.”

  “Oh, rather not!” said the knight. “No, indeed. You see, that’s where I made the mistake about you. I asked for food and lodging for my horse at that castle back there. The Count du Marche welcomed me and asked my name. I gave him the old wheeze about my being under a vow not to reveal my name or doff my armor until I’d fulfilled my quest. I said I couldn’t tell him anything about the quest, either, you understand. Can’t tell a fellow you’re just out to catch yourself a magician, can you now? Anyway, I asked him if he’d seen any magicians lately, and he said he had, that you’d just left, as a matter of fact. By George, I thought I’d got him this time. But no. Turned out to be only you. Still, maybe you can help me find him.”

  “Maybe, Sir Knight,” the Magus said agreeably. “Why are you looking for him?”

  “Why, he’s the one who did this to me, whatever it is he did. Nasty trick, I call it, leaving a man just a shell of his former self, as it were.”

  “Oh, you remember that, do you?”

  “Well, no,” the Empty Knight said after a short pause, “I can’t say I really remember it. I just know it.”

  “I see. What does this magician look like? Do you know his name?”

  “No. I don’t know his name. No. But he looks . . . Hmmm. Well. Now, you know, that’s awfully odd, but I really don’t know what he looks like.”

  “Tall or short? Young or old? Haven’t you any idea?” asked the Magus.

  “Well, now, you know, I don’t.” The knight laughed hollowly. “Isn’t that funny? I mean, come to think of it, I haven’t the foggiest notion what the fellow looks like. None at all.”

  “Then how do you know I’m not him?” asked Magus MacCullen.

  The Empty Knight turned, and Magus MacCullen saw nothingness staring at him from the darkness beyond the bars of the visor of the helm. Then the knight faced forward again. “Well, because you’re not at all like him, you see,” he explained. “I mean, I don’t know what he looks like, but I know what he doesn’t look like, if you follow me. I’m quite certain I shall recognize him when I see him.”

  “Good. But if I were you, Sir Knight, I wouldn’t go around trying to run a lance through every magician I came across. Some magicians are very touchy about that sort of thing and have a tendency to cast a fast spell that wouldn’t do you any good. Besides, what if you kill the man you’re looking for? He couldn’t undo the spell if he were dead.”

  “That’s so,” the Empty Knight said complacently, “but I wasn’t going to run you through, you know. I’m an expert with a lance; I was just going to catch your robe with the point and hoist you into the air. Then, if you’d turned out to be the magician I was looking for, I’d have you at my mercy, and you’d have had to take the spell off before I’d have let you down.”

  “Suppose he just threw another spell? Changed you into a toad or something?”

  “Oh, that. Well, he couldn’t, you see. I’ve got a protective spell on me. Very powerful. I’m proof against any magic spell except the one that will restore me to what I was before. Whatever I was. I wish I knew, but I can’t remember for the life of me. If I have any life. You don’t suppose I’m dead, do you? That would be a cruel joke to play on a fellow. But I think I’m alive. Don’t you?”

  “I’m pretty certain of it,” said the Magus. “Look here, do you mind if I try something? I want to check on that protective spell.”

  “Certainly,” the knight said agreeably. “If you think it’ll be of some help, go right ahead.”

  “Not just yet,” said MacCullen. “I’ll let you know. Where are you headed now?”

  “Oh, wherever you’re going, my good Magus. It doesn’t make a particle of difference to me. A knight errant doesn’t care where he’s going; he just goes, you know. I’ll tell you what: in return for your help in finding this magician or getting rid of the spell on me or whatever it is you can do, I’ll go along with you and protect you from danger. How’s that?”

  Magus MacCullen looked at Frithkin, and the goblin whispered softly: “Go ahead, Master; take him up on it. He may be of some use to us, and, after all, he won’t cost much. It’s not as if he was a regular knight, who’d expect to be fed the best foods, poured the best wines, and given the best bed, and expect somebody else to pay for it into the bargain. Here we’ve got a perfectly good knight, cheap. Remember, Master, we’ve got a long way to go to the Convention, and this fellow may come in handy in a pinch.”

  “You’re right, of course,” said the Magus. He liked to think that he could take care of any danger himself, but there was no use letting pride keep him from
taking advantage of a good thing.

  “Very well, Sir Knight,” he said aloud, “that’s a bargain. You go along with us and protect us from evildoers, and I, in turn, will do my best to relieve you of that spell, either by finding the person who laid it on you and forcing him to remove it, or, failing that, solving the spell and nullifying it myself. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough, my good Magus!” the Empty Knight boomed happily. “Let us go forward, then! We shall seek adventure and take it as it comes! Comrades three, whatever may befall!”

  “Oh, brother!” muttered Frithkin under his breath.

  II

  “Frithkin!” bellowed Magus MacCullen. “Where the devil are you?”

  “Right here, Master Magus,” said the goblin voice from the next room. “I’ve got the wine, just as you ordered.”

  “Then bring ’em in. I’m thirsty as Satan himself.”

  “I’m opening them now,” said Frithkin, dexterously plying a corkscrew. He shivered a little and told himself he was lucky to have the great MacCullen for a master. Only a very powerful sorcerer could speak of His Satanic Majesty with such familiarity and get away with it.

  They were lucky, Frithkin thought, to have found rooms in an inn at this hour of the evening. After dark, many inns bolted their doors and kept them bolted, and the three travelers had, in fact, come to the door of the inn just as it was about to be locked.

  In the gloom, Magus MacCullen had peered up at the sign over the door and said: “What is it? The Archangel Michael?”

  Frithkin, whose eyes could see as well in the dark as in the daylight, had said: ‘No, Master. It’s the George and Dragon.”

  The Empty Knight had said: “How can you tell? They’re both pictures of a knight in full armor sticking a dragon with a lance.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Frithkin agreed, “but the Archangel Michael has wings and St George doesn’t. Shall I knock, Master Magus?”

  “If you please, good Frithkin.”

  The goblin got down off his mule and rapped solidly on the door of the inn. Footsteps were heard from within, and a panel in the door flew open. A woman with a beak nose that looked small only in comparison to Frithkin’s, and who looked as though she could bite the head off a crocodile, snapped out: “Who might you be and what d’ye want at this hour?”

  “Is this the George and Dragon?” Frithkin asked mildly.

  “That’s what the sign shows, don’t it?” snarled the woman. “What d’ye want?”

  “I think I want to speak to George,” said Frithkin.

  “What? What? Who?”

  “Never mind,” said Frithkin.

  “We desire food and lodging for ourselves and our mounts.”

  “ ‘We’? Who’s ‘we’?”

  “My masters and I,” Frithkin answered. “Sir Roderick the Black and the Magus MacCullen.”

  The woman paled visibly. She peered out, trying to see the face beneath the hood that effectively shadowed Frithkin’s features. “Who? Roderick? And a magician?” She essayed a feeble smile which did not go well at all with her features. “Why didn’t ye say so, good sir? Come in! Come in and welcome! I meant no harm, sir. No harm at all. There’s sometimes robbers and thieves about. But I meant no harm, gentle sirs.” And she had opened the door while she pattered out her apologies.

  While Magus MacCullen went upstairs to inspect the rooms, Frithkin and the Empty Knight had taken the animals back to the stable under the guidance of a stable boy who looked as though he had been frightened out of his sleep by the harridan who had answered the door.

  “My lord,” Frithkin whispered in an aside to the knight, “I hope you don’t mind my calling you Sir Roderick. I had to give her a name; it would have taken too long to go through that rigamarole about the vow. I needed a name of some kind, and the first one that came to mind was the name of your horse.”

  “Perfectly all right. Wonder I didn’t think of it myself, long ago. Black horse named Roderick made you think of Sir Roderick the Black, eh? Very clever, my dear Frithkin. Of course, even if it had occurred to me, I couldn’t have told a lie. Not chivalrous, you know. But that doesn’t apply to you, naturally.”

  “No, my lord. We goblins are free from that particular limitation – though we have others.”

  Within twenty minutes, everything was secure. MacCullen had ordered wine, Frithkin had obtained it from the now obsequious landlady, and was now drawing the corks with a practiced hand. He took two brass goblets from the saddlebag which he had brought upstairs after taking his and the Magus’ from the mules, put the goblets on a tray with the wine bottles, and brought them in to Magus MacCullen.

  “Where is our vacuous protector?” the Magus asked, pouring.

  “Down in the stable, Master Magus. He says he prefers to stay with his horse. No point in wasting a bed on him, he says. Perfectly comfortable in the hayloft, he says.” The wine bottle gurgled pleasantly as the goblin poured himself a drink.

  “Good. That’ll give us a chance to discuss this problem and turn it to our benefit if possible. What do you think of our knightly friend?”

  “Not much brains,” said the goblin, sipping at his wine.

  The Magus glowered. “None at all. You saw the inside of that helm. What would you expect? According to my analysis – which, I admit, is only tentative – this knight has been partially disembodied. Part of his spirit is still in his body somewhere; the rest of it is activating that suit of steel. Neither by itself is a whole man. How does that fit in with what your nose tells you?”

  Frithkin gently stroked that magnificent member with thumb and forefinger. “All I can tell you, Master, is that somebody put a black spell on him – and a real whopping powerful one, too. Then someone – maybe the same person, but I doubt it – put a white spell on him, which has partially, but far from completely, counteracted the black one. Laid over the whole is the protective spell he spoke of. It seems to be a pretty refractive spell, too. Strong and tough. The texture is smooth and the structure coherent. Whoever wove that protective spell knew what he was doing.”

  “So,” said the Magus thoughtfully. “Three different spells, involving from one to three different sorcerers.”

  “I’d say two, Master, though there might be three.”

  “One black magician and at least one white one, you think?”

  “That’s the way it smells to me,” said the goblin.

  “He doesn’t know who he is, and hasn’t got sense enough to care,” said MacCullen. “Did you notice his shield? A field sable. In other words, somebody took his escutcheon off and painted the shield black. And that black surcoat he wears. Someone didn’t want him to find out who he was, so they got rid of every bit of identification. But if that’s the case, why not just kill him and be done with it? There’s something very screwy going on here, my dear Frithkin, and I want to get to the bottom of it. Besides which—” He smiled broadly behind his flaming beard. “—if our voided friend is returned to his rightful condition, it is likely that he’ll reward us handsomely.”

  “True, he seems like a good sort,” Frithkin said, blinking his great eyes slowly and solemnly. “But how do you know he has enough money to reward us, even if he wants to?”

  “His armor, dear boy. Black enamelled, inlaid with gold and with red enamel. Armor like that isn’t cheap. It looks pretty dingy now, but that’s because he hasn’t been able to polish it. Mark my word, that lad has riches in his own right, and if we can help him regain them we’ll be well rewarded.”

  “How do you propose to go about it?” Frithkin asked.

  “There are two ways to approach the problem,” the Magus said. “We cannot analyze the spells from the evidence obtainable from Sir Empty alone; we need the complete evidence. The rest of what we need can be obtained from only two sources: the knight’s body or the sorcerer who enchanted him. We have to find one or the other – preferably both.”

  “Succinctly put, Master, but it gets us nowhere,” said the goblin. “Either
one of ’em could be anywhere. We can eliminate Heaven and the Nether Regions, but that still leaves us all Christendom and Faerie to search. And that’s an awful lot of territory, Master.”

  “If we combed it inch by inch, it would be an impossible task, I agree,” said MacCullen. “Therefore, we must use our brains. First, the body. No clues there. It could be anywhere, as you say. It could be lying somewhere in a coma, in a vault, say, or even buried somewhere with a protective spell cast on it. Or, it might be working as a slave somewhere – that’s a likely idea.”

  “Why?” asked Frithkin.

  “Because all the qualities that the Empty Knight has would be missing from the spirit left in the body; the bravery, the initiative, the ambition, the determination, and part of the intelligence. It would retain the memory, of course, but that wouldn’t do it much good. What good is memory if you haven’t got the ability to put it to use? In that condition, he – whoever he is – would make a fine slave. Especially if he’s big and strong, which, judging from the size and build of the armor, he is.”

  “That narrows it down a bit,” the goblin agreed, “but we can’t go around checking every slave and serf in Christendom and Faerie.”

  “Obviously not.”

  “So that leaves the magician,” Frithkin continued. “And we can’t go around trying to check every magician in Christendom and Faerie, either.”

  “True enough,” agreed the Magus. “But it so happens that we know where every magician will be in two months’ time.”

  Frithkin slapped the palms of his bony hands together. “The Convention!”

  “Precisely. Any sorcerer, magician, warlock, or other practitioner of the Art who doesn’t show up at the Convention is automatically deprived forever of his powers, and all his spells are nullified. He’ll be there, all right, and our hollow friend can identify him. If he doesn’t come, of course, the spell will vanish and we can take credit for that. We can’t lose, Frithkin.”

  “I don’t know . . .” the goblin said doubtfully. “That law applies only to mortals, you know. What if the enchanter is one of the Faerie folk, like myself, who just naturally have certain powers, instead of having to study for them, as you mortals do?”