Ink Black Magic

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Bracing herself for something truly horrible, Kassa followed his gaze, looking up above her head.

  It was truly horrible.

  ***

  A rose-coloured bat detached itself from the swarm of flying creatures and flapped slowly down towards Egg. As it neared him, it transformed into human shape. He was utterly unsurprised to see that it was the apricot-bearded representative of the Harvestmoon Order of Warlocks who had attempted to recruit him a few days ago.

  Was it really only a few days ago?

  “Ah, Egfried,” the young warlock said pompously. “Our High Poppinpoose, Master Tribalchio, bids you greetings.”

  “You’d better get your High Poppinpoose down here,” said Egg.

  “That would be most irregular,” said the warlock. “Anything you wish to say to the High Poppinpoose can be related through me…”

  “Do it,” Egg demanded in a loud voice. “And while you’re at it, bring down the Masters of any other Orders, too. I know there’s not just one of you up there.”

  The apricot-bearded warlock stared at him in utter astonishment. Clio, Sean and Aragon stared at him, too.

  “Did I say you should take your time about it?” Egg asked.

  The apricot-bearded warlock transformed back into the rose-coloured bat and flapped up to the circling birds, bats and insects. Whatever he said to them caused quite a commotion. There was a lot of squawking and ruffling of feathers.

  Clio left the others and came over to Egg. “When did you get so confident?”

  He grinned weakly at her. “It’s easy, really. I just pretend I’m Kassa and I can handle anything.”

  ***

  Vice-Chancellor Bertie hung upside down from clawed feet, his skin sallow and ghoulish beneath a pointy black beard. His body was shrouded by a tattered cape of dark gold tweed. His arms were folded peacefully over his chest. He looked dead. Just as that thought flitted across Kassa’s mind, Bertie’s eyes snapped open. The lids slid aside to reveal pupils that glowed with an intense silver light. Bertie’s lips parted slightly, revealing a set of pointed, brilliantly white teeth.

  “This can’t be good,” Kassa decided. She meant to get herself out of the confined space of the cupboard as quickly as possible, but Vice-Chancellor Bertie moved first and he moved fast.

  Kassa had never seen him move so speedily before, not even when he was trying to avoid Parent Discussion Night. She did not, in fact, see him move at all. One minute he was hanging upside down, his eyes glowing silver, and the next he was standing in the doorway of the cupboard, blocking the exit.

  Singespitter hissed. Vice-Chancellor Bertie made a nasty whining sound in the back of his throat.

  Kassa tried to back away, but her calves rubbed up against the Great Reversing Barrel. “Why am I the only one who doesn’t get transformed into a dark and evil creature?” she complained. “I could do with a pair of fangs right about now.”

  Bertie and Singespitter eyed each other off, both ready to pounce.

  Nervous for herself as well as them, Kassa rummaged in her pouches in the hope of finding something useful. She had left her best knife in Aragon’s upper leg, but she still had a few blades somewhere … including a sword, now she came to think of it, although she had no idea where the doomed blade of Dathazarrr had got to. She must have dropped it somewhere.

  Resisting the urge to bring something magical out of her pouches, Kassa’s fingers closed instead around the bright white pearl that she had extracted from Lord Sinistre’s crown. She held it up desperately, hoping to distract Bertie. “Shiny thing?”

  He looked at her and the dangerous expression vanished, becoming earnest and familiar in an entirely wrong way. “Kassa, be careful with that.”

  It was not Bertie, though it was his voice. The intonation was all wrong. The expression on his face was wrong, too. It belonged to another face. “Quillsmith?” she said. “How are you doing that?”

  “With great difficulty,” Egg’s other half said through Vice-Chancellor Bertie’s mouth. “I can’t speak for long, the others are busy gawping at Aragon and the warlocks, but they might decide to check on you soon.”

  “I thought you had gone over to their side?”

  “I need them to think so. They want me to take the leadership from Ladybird. For the time being, I have to go along with this invasion plan and prove I’m more competent at it than she is.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. As long as you don’t actually go through with the invasion.”

  “I hope that won’t be necessary.”

  “You hope?”

  His eyes — Vice-Chancellor Bertie’s eyes under Quillsmith’s control — kept following the bright white pearl. “Kassa, be careful with that.”

  She frowned, flicking it back and forth between her fingers. “You said that before. What’s so special about it?”

  “Don’t you know what it is?’

  “A piece of Harmony, I assumed.”

  “Not a piece, Kassa. That is Harmony.”

  She stopped, staring at the brilliant white gem. “What?”

  “Our entire world is contained within that ball.”

  “I thought you were … well, I didn’t think where you were. Another dimension, or a world far away. I didn’t think you were just very small.”

  “We prefer to think of you being unnaturally big.”

  “I bet you do. So that’s why you called us the outsider world. Why are you telling me this? What makes you think I won’t just grind this bauble under my heel and put paid to this little invasion of yours forever? Baubles and I do not have a fantastic history together.”

  “Light Lords aren’t the only ones who live in Harmony,” said Quillsmith. “There are thousands of innocents living here. You met some of them. I know you would protect their lives as fervently as you protect those of your own people.”

  Kassa sighed. “You know me too well. “

  “Give me time, if you can. Once my leadership is established, we can make some kind of accord.”

  “As long as the other Light Lords don’t insist that you invade Mocklore first.”

  Quillsmith smiled and left. She could see his expression fading from Vice-Chancellor Bertie’s face.

  “Wait a minute,” Kassa said suddenly. “What the hell do you mean, Aragon and the warlocks? What is Aragon doing with warlocks?” There was no answer. Kassa held the little pearl that was Harmony between thumb and forefinger, leaning over to stare into the depths of the Great Reversing Barrel. “So tempting,” she sighed. “Why do I have to be such a trustworthy person? Even the villains trust me.”

  There was a snarl from Vice-Chancellor Bertie, or possibly from Singespitter. The two leaped at each other, hissing and spitting. Kassa half-turned towards them, just as Bertie flung Singespitter bodily at her.

  He was quite a heavy sheep, especially with the extra weight of the wings and giant claws. He slammed into Kassa’s side, throwing her over the Great Reversing Barrel. They both landed on top of it with a crash.

  Vice-Chancellor Bertie had built the Great Reversing Barrel with magical properties in mind, not sturdiness. The wood cracked under the combined weight of Kassa and the projectile Singespitter. They both landed flat on the floor, surrounded by split panels of wood. The tiny pearl which was the city of Harmony was still clutched tightly in Kassa’s hand as she burst through the Great Reversing Barrel.

  Several things happened all at once.

  ***

  Singespitter sat up. He brushed splinters from his arms and legs and checked to see how Kassa was. She was unconscious. She was dressed all in white, her hair a soft pink colour, and the cupboard around them was also blindingly bright. There were no shadows, no hints of darkness at all, certainly no draklight. Harmony, he thought, recognising the similarity between this new brightness and the images he had watched in the scroll. Have we gone to it or has it come to us?

  He picked a few splinters from Kassa’s hair and prodded her neck to make sure it was not b
roken. Slowly, he gazed at his hands. They were pink, and more creased than he remembered. They were actual human hands. He was human again.

  “Bloody hell,” he said aloud, the first words he had physically spoken in four and a half years.

  ***

  Later study by a postgraduate class led by Vice-Chancellor Bertie sorted through the various theories and decided that three vital events had occurred a split second after the accident involving the Great Reversing Barrel:

  1) The magical influence which had, four and half years earlier, transformed Singespitter into a sheep, had now been Greatly Reversed so that he was again a human (although the four and a half years as a sheep had aged him approximately 25 human years). This was the most undeniable of the outcomes, and caused little in the way of debate.

  2) The Draklight Condition (sometimes referred to by scholars as the Draklight Plague or the Spreading Draklight) was Greatly Reversed, turning it into a Harmonylight Condition, which had much the same effect and formed a dome which covered a similar area, only now all the people within the dome were swamped with peace, love and light instead of darkness, violence, morbidity and velvet. The only real debate concerning this issue were the various different names for the conditions, every student coming up with a new way of describing exactly what had happened, using more and more words until the introductory essay of the Philosophy of Magic II (advanced) course metamorphosed into a six-page definition of what the draklight had done, and how it had been transformed when the harmonylight took its place. All lyric poets and people with a tendency towards metaphor were forcibly banned from taking that particular course.

  3) Kassa’s apparent genetic immunity to mind control of any kind was Greatly Reversed, rendering her entirely under the control of the wave of peace, love and light that had flooded the white dome of harmonylight. This was the most controversial issue, hotly debated by scholars. Even an article by Kassa herself, written only a few months after the event, failed to solve the issue. It was unbelievable that the ultimate agent for chaos had, however briefly, been an agent of Harmony.

  ***

  As Singespitter leaned over to pick further splinters from Kassa’s face and hair, she opened her eyes and stared at him with a soft, dazed expression. “You’re human again,” she said with a smile. “How does it feel?”

  He shrugged, not comfortable with speech yet. How was she? That was the important question.

  Kassa’s shoulders relaxed as she lay among the broken remains of the Great Reversing Barrel. “Isn’t the world wonderful?” she breathed.

  Singespitter let his head fall into his hands. Something was wrong, with the world and with Kassa. He didn’t have the faintest idea what to do about it.

  All this, and he was wearing a sheepskin coat. Whatever strange force was at work here had a warped sense of humour. “Bastards,” Singespitter said aloud.

  ***

  Four master warlocks gathered around Egg. They were the High Poppinpoose of the Harvestmoon Order, the Grand Duchydor of the Silversigil Order, the Sublime Goanna of the Lizardblood Order and the Fat False Idol of the Bronzfetish Order. All four of them were talking very loudly, and not listening to each other.

  Egg had attempted to update them on what had happened in the hope that they might put the information to some practical use, but they were not listening to him either. The rest of the warlocks, including the apricot-bearded one, were huddled some way away, trying not to get involved. After several minutes of all this, Aragon joined the group of master warlocks, adding his angry voice to Egg’s. Nothing was anywhere near being resolved.

  Clio and Sean sat on the grassy bank, left out of things. It was getting dark and cold, which was quite creepy because this made it harder to see where the edge of the dome of draklight began.

  “We can’t go to sleep,” Clio said quietly. “We just can’t. The dome might expand again and swallow us up.”

  “We could move further away,” Sean suggested .

  “It might swallow us up anyway,” she said. “I’m so tired. I just want to be back in my own little bed, arguing with Lemissa about whether the window should be open or shut. I’m sick of all this.” She stared at the dome of draklight, shivering. “I wonder where Lemissa is now.”

  “I wonder where Kassa is,” said Egg, joining them. He had given up on the warlocks, who were being constructively unhelpful. Aragon was still trying to explain to them that the draklight phenomenon was not a mass hallucination caused by sea slugs, the most popular theory among the Lizardbloods and Silversigils.

  The lesser warlocks were being oddly practical, and had lit some campfires on the far side of the Highway. One apprentice came over to ask shyly if Egg, Sean and Clio would like something to eat.

  Lord Sinistre, still strapped to his chair, had already been carried over to the campfire and was being fed, although he had plaintively requested that his baked potato be cut into small flower shapes, and were they sure they didn’t have any poached caviar?

  Egg, Clio and Sean were just heading across to the campfires when the dome of draklight exploded, turned inside out and started glowing a brilliant white.

  Egg staggered as something within him burned cold and dark and powerful. His head ached furiously. Everyone else stared at the newly white dome.

  “Oh gods,” said Aragon Silversword in a strangled voice. “What has she done now?”

  Drak was still there, and Cluft, but both cities were now unrecognisable. Everything within the dome was whiter than white. It stood out brilliantly against the dusk that had fallen around ordinary Mocklore. When a few straggling travellers crossed the border, their shabby, colourful clothes transformed into pale silk and gleaming samite instead of black velvet and satin.

  “One plague replaced with another,” said Aragon. His voice was heavy with having seen this sort of thing happen before.

  The master warlocks started arguing again, their theories becoming even more outlandish.

  Clio stared at the dome of harmonylight for exactly half a minute, then turned towards the campfires of the warlocks. “I’m hungry.”

  Sean shrugged, and followed her. Egg remained for a few moments, wondering why the transference of the dome from draklight to harmonylight had affected him so closely. He pushed that thought aside as one of many things to ask Kassa about when she returned, then went to join Clio and Sean. All three of them were handed bowls full of sausages and boiled peas, which were surprisingly tasty.

  After a while, Aragon joined them. “Warlocks aren’t what they used to be,” he said in a sour voice.

  “Should we be worrying about Kassa?” Clio asked with her mouth full.

  Aragon smiled thinly, accepting a bowl from one of the younger warlocks. “I suppose you think I should be dashing in there to save her, like one of those ballads of epic romance. Trust me, that never works out well. Unless she actually gets herself killed, she’s better off with the rest of us out from under her feet.” He glared over his shoulder at the squabbling master warlocks. “Doesn’t look like the problem will be solved from the outside. Maybe Kassa can make a difference from in there.”

  “But you tried to stop her,” said Egg.

  Aragon chewed a particularly knotty piece of sausage, and swallowed. “Of course I did. It would have hurt her feelings if I hadn’t made the effort.”

  Egg was thinking. “If the harmonylight is here and Drak is still here, where did the draklight go? Did it swap places with the harmonylight?”

  “How would we know?” said Aragon.

  Egg slapped himself on the forehead. “Ow.” he reached down to his belt and pulled out the harmony scroll that Singespitter had given him for safekeeping. “I’m an idiot. We can just look.”

  He unrolled the scroll, and stared at what it showed him.

  Harmony was still technically in one piece: bright marble, garden views, people in white floppy clothes. Wherever the draklight had gone, it was not there. This had proved to be something of a problem for a city w
hich ran entirely on magic.

  Without the harmonylight, the essential magic of the city, Harmony was dead. There was no movement there, no life. The white-clothed people of Harmony had ceased to move. They looked like statues, frozen in place. Some of them had familiar faces, which made it worse somehow.

  Egg rolled the scroll up and laid it to one side. His hand was shaking. “No one’s doing this, are they? There aren’t any villains to fight. It’s just a colossal natural disaster.” He tried to laugh, and couldn’t. “The harmonylight is a threat to our world, but the lack of it killed theirs. It’s so random.”

  “Villains are easier,” Aragon agreed. “People are predictable. They have needs and weaknesses. A catastrophe is just a catastrophe. The best thing you can do is stay out of its way and try to repair the damage afterwards.”

  “It’s not good enough,” Egg said fiercely. “People are dead and more are going to die. I wish I had the power to fix it, to stop bad things happening.”

  Aragon looked amused. “You sound like Kassa.”

  “Kassa doesn’t think power should be used,” Egg said, trying not to sound as disgusted as he felt.

  “I know. You sound like Kassa did before she knew what she was talking about. Sometimes the cure is more dangerous than the disease.” Aragon motioned towards the bickering master warlocks. “Look at that lot. As long as they argue, they’re harmless. Can you imagine what might happen if they actually tried to use magic? Would you trust them to save the world?”

  “There should be a better way of doing things,” Egg said stubbornly.

  “Won’t argue with you there,” said Aragon. “If I was in charge of the universe, things would be much better organised.”

  The master warlocks argued into the night. The High Poppinpoose of the Harvestmoons (puce and chartreuse polka-dotted beard) was of the opinion that none of this was happening, that it was a mass hallucination of all the wild mice in the area and that the problem would be solved by strangling all the mice.