Bronwyn's Bane

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  The swearing felt so good she repeated it, nothing terribly blasphemous this time. “Damn, damn, double damn, triple damn. Damn!” It formed a sort of syncopated rhythm, and she repeated it several times, then dropped the words and hummed it. It had a galloping sound to it. She kept humming and tried once more to get past her own door, skipping to the sound as if she were playing horse, pretending to gallop. Still in the doorway. Damn, again! Surely her magic was as strong as this dumb spell. If she could dance a sea serpent and a full-rigged ship around on the sea, she ought to be able to dance her way past a piddling illegal spell. But she tried again with no better results and stopped, catching her breath and blowing out of her nose like the horse she was imitating. Once more, she thought, and I’ll give up. I’ll go back and get murdered, I guess.

  She closed her eyes this time, and hummed her oath, and galloped forward, humming. Something rustled again, down the hall, and she thought she heard a squawk. Her eyes flew open. Nothing moved at the distant end of the hallway, but the end was about a forearm’s length less distant than it had been before.

  * * *

  “Eh? You, is it? Does your mother know you’re out, lad?” Gilles Kilgilles roused himself to ask. He was leaning heavily on one elbow planted in a puddle of wine on the table. His right cheek dripped transparent pink where it had lain in the puddle during the nap Jack had just interrupted. His Lordship appeared as well-lubricated as he had on the previous night.

  “I very much doubt that she does, great lord, since she is many leagues across the sea. But I can assure you she would approve.”

  “Would she? Oh, well then. Glad to hear that.” His elbow slid a fraction further across the table and he sat up straighter, shaking his head and wiping the wine from his cheek.

  “Why are you here so late, Your Lordship?”

  “Midnight snack,” the man answered, righting his overturned cup, and raising it to his lips. Withdrawing it he stared at it in distaste before turning it upside down again. “Damn poor wine these days,” he said. “Worse than the other food. Doesn’t last at all.”

  From the door by which Jack had entered they heard a faint scuffling.

  “Big rats for such a new castle,” he said conversationally, sliding cautiously onto the bench beside the crazy lord.

  “Very big indeed,” Kilgilles said with a wryness that was absolutely sane. “Man-size, I’d say.”

  “You suspect evil doings of other men even here in the Emperor’s court?” Jack asked with his most boyish innocence. Kilgilles nodded. “But you are an important nobleman. If you suspect evil doings, why do you not investigate?”

  Milord Kilgilles smiled. “If a man investigated every evil doing in this country, he wouldn’t have time to eat—which wouldn’t be a great loss nowadays—sleep, or drink.”

  “Speaking of eating,” Jack said, “do you know by any chance where the fruit is stored?” But before the man could answer, a soft shush-shush noise whispered up the hallway, and he felt the strangest urge to leap to his feet and imitate the sound. But it stopped. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  Kilgilles deliberately turned his head and stared the opposite way. “Hear what?”

  The noise started again, six beats worth. “That,” Jack whispered, clutching Bronwyn’s shield to him.

  “Boy, I hear nothing and neither do you. I am here to win Loefwin’s ear and help him turn this magic-forsaken Empire into a place at least habitable for all of us. I can’t risk it by getting involved in palace intrigues or with things that go bump in the night.”

  “But, Great Lord, if these noises are unlawful, is it not correct for you to order them to desist in the Emperor’s name?” He held out the shield, helpfully. “I have here the spell-breaking shield of Princess Bronwyn. If you hold it before us, no unlawful witch spells can get us, I think.”

  “You have an overabundance of imagination, boy. It is as foolish to fear magic spells in the palace of the Emperor of Greater Frostingdung as it is to fear attacks from sea serpents in trees.”

  The shush-shushing shush-shushed closer. The thud of Jack’s heart in his ears measured its approach, and far off he heard a groan and a faint squawk.

  Then, to his amazement, Gilles jumped to his feet and cried in a voice older and deeper than his own, “Coward! I should disown you!”

  Kilgilles sat back down again and sighed, in his own voice. “Oh, how I wish you would,” then jumped back up again and commanded with a firmness that left no room for dispute, “You have been offered a thing of power as an ally. Seek out the disturbance, or I vow on your mother’s head, you will never sleep or eat after sundown again.”

  The sternness went out of the voice, the steel out of the body, and Kilgilles dipped his head in Jack’s direction and held out his hand to accept the shield. “It seems I am at your service.”

  “Whatever you say, Crazy Lord,” Jack said, his eyes rolling a little, in spite of himself.

  They crept cautiously down the hall toward the juncture of the corridors leading to the guest wing and the entrance chamber containing the fountain. Gilles seemed brave enough once you got him going. He strode boldly ahead, the shield before him, and Jack held on to the tail of his tunic so as not to be out of range of the shield’s protection.

  They stopped and surveyed all three halls. The darkest area was behind them, Jack noted with relief. He was even more relieved to hear Kilgilles burst into unmaniacal laughter, and as the young lord pointed down the hall toward the guest chambers, Jack peered around the man’s middle to see what amused him.

  “What’s so funny?” Carole demanded. She looked like a demon, her brown eyes wide and staring, her hair coming out of its braids and her borrowed nightdress tangling around her legs. Her forehead gleamed with perspiration and she was panting, as if she’d run a great distance, but she made no attempt to come closer to them.

  “Nothing, my lady. It is only that we are so pleased to see you instead of…” He started towards her, and Jack bravely stepped out from behind him and stopped, unable to move any further.

  “Hey!” he cried.

  “I was just going to warn you not to come here,” Carole said. “Now we’ll all be caught. There’s a spell on this hall. I was trying to dance my way out of it.”

  “Nonsense,” Gilles said, still striding forward. “Here, take my hand. You’re just frightened.”

  “Take my hand too, Great Lord,” Jack said, “And we can all leave. Do you not see? There is a spell upon this hall, as Carole says. But Princess Bronwyn’s shield protects you.”

  “Eh?” He looked at both immobile children and asked suspiciously, “This isn’t a game you two are playing with me, is it?”

  “Give me the shield and see for yourself,” Carole suggested.

  He handed it to her, and walked in place for a moment before he reached for the shield again. “Curious. Well, I suppose if we’re to make any progress, we’ll have to walk with the shield in front, touching each other, like the chap with the goose and all the children trailing behind that Teeny Fittroon used to tell me about. But you know, I still don’t understand how a spell could get in here. There are iron bands all around and—”

  This time the noise was not muffled. Anastasia squawked and trumpeted, and the terrified pounding of her wings rushed at them from the entrance hall, along with her human voice crying, “Help! I am being assassinated!”

  They grabbed onto each other awkwardly, and charged forward in ragged unison. Their close formation made them vulnerable, despite the shield, a disadvantage that didn’t occur to them until Anastasia squawked another warning.

  She was perched atop the fountain, her wings fanning furiously. Bristling, snake-armed creatures surrounded the pool and the water boiled with invisibles. “Jack! Carole! Run, my friends! They have taken Lady Rusty and I am as good as slain! Save yourselves! The door! The door!” Abruptly, invisible forms obscured hers.

  Jack, attempting to follow her advice, forgot the spell of the guest hallway and
flung himself around. No magic stood between him and freedom, just the iron-bolted door. He grappled with the lock and heard Carole scream and Gilles swear and with the eyes any gypsy worthy of being pursued by the law carries in the back of his head, he saw the monsters turn from Anastasia to attack her friends. The lock gave and he heaved, and fell sprawling into the snow. Before he could scramble to his feet, something like a bear with pincers for paws and a bad case of mange and something else like a boar with scales and a lion’s mane fell upon him.

  * * *

  “Welcome to the Anarchy of Miragenia,” the former snake said with a self-congratulatory smirk at having fooled her. As a man, he was tall and dark and had a hawk’s nose and a rabbit’s eyes. He had made a far handsomer snake.

  “Well, that’s more like it,” Bronwyn said. “Do you give all your visitors such a pretty escort?”

  “Your pardon, great lady, may you live forever,” the man with the basket said. “But may I speak freely?”

  “I should say not!” Bronwyn replied. But the man was well aware of her curse, as he ought to be, since he was, she was now certain, one of the people responsible for it.

  “Thank you. Know then, that even were it not for your noble birth, lofty stature and astounding beauty, we should have sent an escort to guide you to us. For if we have provided you with a curse, you have likewise provided us with one.”

  “Me?” Bronwyn asked, very pleased with the idea of her cursing someone else. “Well, yes, actually, I do have these secret powers…”

  The serpentine Mirza bowed again, “What my uncle means to say, great lady, is that you curse us in that you are obviously a dissatisfied customer.”

  His uncle directed a cuff in the general direction of the lower wrappings of the nephew’s head bandage. “Fool! It is not for you to interpret to our guest what I say. Have you such a short memory that you fail to recall that it is not she who is the customer? She is rather…” He paused, pulling his stringy beard while puzzling over how to express himself. Then, fanning his hands outward in a gesture that requested acceptance of the inevitable realities, he said, “You are, dear lady, in a manner of speaking, returned faulty merchandise. We at Mukbar, Mashkent and Mirza Magicks are proud of our long and illustrious reputation, and the quality of our work is guaranteed. That is how we have managed to maintain our success for fifteen centuries. We should have been devastated had you chosen to go to one of the gouging purveyors of shoddy goods who unfortunately are able to exist in this, our noble Anarchy, as well as honest merchants like ourselves. We wished to help you personally with your problem and thereby back up our product. That is why Mirza donned his alternate guise and provided you with an escort who could charm and amuse you, while steering you safely past those dishonest sellers of items of no worth.”

  “Do you understand now, great lady?” Mirza asked.

  “Perfectly,” Bronwyn said. “I suppose now you will send me back for retooling or whatever the proper procedure is for dealing with faulty merchandise? Perhaps you can replace me with a changeling and my parents won’t know the difference.”

  “Your Highness jests,” the old man said. “As you well know, there is nothing wrong with Your Highness but an insignificant curse, purchased from my incompetent nephew a decade and some years ago by an old customer of ours. The fault lies not with you but with the curse. When this imbecile had it created, he neglected to include the specifications for release from the spell. The inclusion of such a release is, as any performer of card tricks knows, implicit in the structure of the central spell. Most magic items must be limited to three uses, likewise the term of service of a djinn. Other spells revert with a kiss, the last stroke of midnight, or during the dark or the full of the moon. It is essential to have these clauses,” the old man said, looking pointedly at Mirza, who attempted to look shamefaced. “Otherwise the power is endlessly drained by obsolete spells. The omission of the formula is a sin before the makers of magicks and a serious commercial error—and reduces the longevity and durability of the spell. You understand, we are men of manifest integrity and commercial dignity in this house or we would not admit this to you.”

  “I’m thrilled to hear it,” she said drily, a tone which was not at all difficult to achieve since she was so thirsty her tongue felt like a pillow stuffed with straw.

  “We naturally are prepared to do whatever we can to remedy the matter,” Mirza said.

  “Please don’t trouble yourselves,” she said, though inside she was desperate to ask what they meant by “prepared to do what we can.” What did that mean? If they hadn’t made the curse right to begin with, could they just take it back and fix it? Somehow Mirza’s tone didn’t promise quite that much. What then? Was she stuck with leaving as she’d come? Had she braved the perils of the desert and seven-league blisters just to go home lying again? They couldn’t do that! It couldn’t be true. She wanted to demand answers, but they had cursed her too well.

  “Never mind about me,” she said bravely, “You needn’t feel obligated on my account. And don’t worry about your reputation. I’d never say a word.”

  She would, but no one would believe her. She knew she wouldn’t be able to resist trying to tell people about the monkey and the snake and the dromedaries, but she also knew that everyone would laugh at such tales. She couldn’t even tell Jack and Carole about Miragenia so they’d know what it was truly like, with its dust and heat and perfumes and cooking smells and the way the sounds all blended into a roar in one’s ears and the colors that all shifted to a blur in front of one’s eyes till one’s gorge rose, hot and acrid at the back of the tongue, and the special Miragenia spell that made the world start whirling and the ground rise up to meet—

  “Catch her, son of a she-donkey!” the uncle cried, springing forward as Bronwyn crumpled to the ground.

  “Surely she will crush me if I do,” the nephew protested, and indeed, already he was too late for the Princess lay as peacefully at their feet as if she were in her own bed.

  “Unconscious giantesses on the threshold are bad for business,” the uncle said.

  “But it would be one way out of our dilemma if she were to die,” Mirza pointed out. Not that he would have dreamed of harming the girl, but if she should conveniently choose to pass into genteel nonexistence rather than cause them further problems, surely her demise would be to the Profit of all. On the other hand, she was a pleasant child and would be a woman worth trading one’s entire harem to possess when she was grown. They had seen the sand blowing hotly in her wake all night long as she marched toward them, even in her sleep, and her lies were most entertaining and charming. Perhaps if she could not be cured, she might consider the possibility of becoming a merchant? In her present state, she possessed excellent potential.

  “Is it not odd,” he asked aloud, “that a nobly born girl should travel so far alone and girded for battle? Is this a custom of her country, Uncle?”

  Uncle Mashkent shook his head, and walked from one end of the girl to the other, as if pondering how to lift her without rupturing himself. “It comes to me that she travels thus to protect herself from those who would slay her because she is accursed, and also because she is of a warrior line. What was it she called herself when we observed her in the pool when first the ship landed the four wayfarers in Suleskeria? Wind—”

  “Wyndy,” he said. “She said she was Wyndy the Warrior. But that was not the name I gave the gremlin when I charmed him into the magic box.”

  “There were one or two other important things you failed to give that gremlin, and no wonder. If you cannot remember the true name of the Princess Bronwyn Rowan even after you have contributed to what most certainly will be her ultimate destruction, how can you expect your minion to do so? This Wyndy is obviously a diminutive, a nickname. Now stop distracting me with your ignorance and help me roll her onto the weaving carpet, so that we may remove her from the heat of the sun.”

  “Yes,” Mirza agreed, sighing as he pulled Bronwyn to one side
while Uncle Mashkent tucked the carpet under her as far as it would go. This was the standard procedure for transporting unconscious ladies in carpets, and Mirza scarcely had to think as he assisted, though the lady’s size made the transfer to the rug somewhat more awkward than usual. “It is too hot for our little Wyndy, I fear. Perhaps a seedcake and sherbet by the pool—”

  Uncle dropped the girl’s feet and stared at him. “What did you say, inept one?”

  “I but commented on the heat of the day and suggested refreshments might—”

  “No. You said hot, wind and seed. Very significant words—very portentous. Ah well, it is said that true wisdom flows from the mouth of simpletons and now I believe it, though I too knew there was a sound business reason for appeasing this one beyond our usual policy. She is the one! She has come at last! Our Profit is assured!”

  “What?” Mirza was baffled, but his uncle motioned impatiently for him to pick up the carpet at Bronwyn’s head and straighten it, which he did. They led the girl-laden rug inside the shop, where it knocked over several copper pots and unrolled a bolt of cloth suitable for making cloaks of darkness. Mirza opened the door in the back of the shop that led to his uncle’s home, and they conducted her through the doorway from the dim crowded store into a yard full of birds and flowers and a clear, still pool of water the color of the finest turquoise stone. With a reverence usually reserved for strings of cash, Uncle Mashkent bade the rug to settle down with its burden.

  Facing his nephew with a satisfied smile he said, “Do these words mean anything to you, foolish one, or do they not?

  “‘When the hot winds of war stride across the desert and blow away the seeds of disenchantment, then shall prosperity come to the tent of Mashkent.’“

  “Uncle, you’ve been using oracles again!” Mirza scolded, wagging his finger at the old man over Bronwyn’s body. “That practice is only to their profit, you know, and not to ours.”