The Great Chimwazle had never seen such a welcome sight. “Halt!” he cried, flicking his whip at Polymumpho’s ear to command the Pooner’s attention. “Stop! Cease! Here is our refuge!”
Polymumpho stumbled, slowed, halted. He looked at the inn dubiously and sniffed. “I would press on. If I were you.”
“You would like that, I am sure.” Chimwazle hopped from the cart, his soft boots squishing in the mud. “And when the Twk-men caught us, you would chortle and do nothing as they stabbed at me. Well, they will never find us here.”
“Except for that one,” said the Pooner.
And there he was: a Twk-man, flying bold as you please around his head. The wings of his dragonfly made a faint buzzing sound as he couched his lance. His skin was a pale green, and his helm was an acorn shell. Chimwazle raised his hands in horror. “Why do you molest me? I have done nothing!”
“You ate the noble Florendal,” the Twk-man said. “You swallowed Lady Melescence, and devoured her brothers three.”
“Not so! I refute these charges! It was someone else who looked like me. Have you proof? Show me your proof! What, have you none to offer? Begone with you, then!”
Instead, the Twk-man flew at him and thrust his lance point at his nose, but quick as he was, Chimwazle was quicker. His tongue darted out, long and sticky, plucked the tiny rider from his mount, pulled him back wailing. His armor was flimsy stuff and crunched nicely between Chimwazle’s sharp green teeth. He tasted of mint and moss and mushroom, very piquant.
Afterward, Chimwazle picked his teeth with the tiny lance. “There was only the one,” he decided confidently, when no further Twk-men deigned to appear. “A bowl of hissing eels awaits me. You may remain here, Pooner. See that you guard my cart.”
* * *
—
Lirianne skipped and spun as on she walked. Lithe and long-legged, boyish and bouncy, clad all in grey and dusky rose, she had a swagger in her step. Her blouse was spun of spider-silk, soft and smooth, its top three buttons undone. Her hat was velvet, wide-brimmed, decorated with a jaunty feather and cocked at a rakish angle. On her hip, Tickle-Me-Sweet rode in a sheath of soft grey leather that matched her thigh-high boots. Her hair was a mop of auburn curls, her cheeks dusted with freckles across skin as pale as milk. She had lively grey-green eyes, a mouth made for mischievious smiles, and a small upturned nose that twitched as she sniffed the air.
The evening was redolent with pine and sea salt, but faintly, beneath those scents, Lirianne could detect a hint of erb, a dying grue, and the nearby stench of ghouls. She wondered if any would dare come out and play with her once the sun went down. The prospect made her smile. She touched the hilt of Tickle-Me-Sweet and spun in a circle, her boot heels sending up little puffs of dust as she whirled beneath the trees.
“Why do you dance, girl?” a small voice said. “The hour grows late, the shadows long. This is no time for dancing.”
A Twk-man hovered by her head, another just behind him. A third appeared, then a fourth. Their spear points glittered redly in the light of the setting sun, and the dragonflies they rode glimmered with a pale green luminescence. Lirianne glimpsed more amongst the trees, tiny lights darting in and out between the branches, small as stars. “The sun is dying,” Lirianne told them. “There will be no dances in the darkness. Play with me, friends. Weave bright patterns in the evening air whilst still you can.”
“We have no time for play,” one Twk-man said.
“We hunt,” another said. “Later we will dance.”
“Later,” the first agreed. And the laughter of the Twk-men filled the trees, as sharp as shards.
“Is there a Twk-town near?” asked Lirianne.
“Not near,” one Twk-man said.
“We have flown far,” another said.
“Do you have spice for us, dancer?”
“Salt?” said another.
“Pepper?” asked a third.
“Saffron?” sighed a fourth.
“Give us spice, and we will show you secret ways.”
“Around the tarn.”
“Around the inn.”
“Oho.” Lirianne grinned. “What inn is this? I think I smell it. A magical place, is it?”
“A dark place,” one Twk-man said.
“The sun is going out. All the world is growing dark.” Lirianne remembered another inn from another time, a modest place but friendly, with clean rushes on the floor and a dog asleep before the hearth. The world had been dying even then, and the nights were dark and full of terrors, but within those walls it had still been possible to find fellowship, good cheer, even love. Lirianne remembered roasts turning above the crackling fire, the way the fat would spit as it dripped down into the flames. She remembered the beer, dark and heady, smelling of hops. She remembered a girl too, an innkeeper’s daughter with bright eyes and a silly smile who’d loved a wandering warfarer. Dead now, poor thing. But what of it? The world was almost dead as well. “I want to see this inn,” she said. “How far is it?”
“A league,” the Twk-man said.
“Less,” a second insisted.
“Where is our salt?” the two of them said together. Lirianne gave them each a pinch of salt from the pouch at her belt. “Show me,” she said, “and you shall have pepper too.”
* * *
—
The Tarn House did not lack for custom. Here sat a white-haired man with a long beard, spooning up some vile purple stew. There lounged a dark-haired slattern, nursing her glass of wine as if it were a newborn babe. Near the wooden casks that lined one wall a ferret-faced man with scruffy whiskers was sucking snails out of their shells. Though his eyes struck Chimwazle as sly and sinister, the buttons on his vest were silver and his hat sported a fan of peacock feathers, suggesting that he did not lack for means. Closer to the hearth fire, a man and wife crowded around a table with their two large and lumpish sons, sharing a huge meat pie. From the look of them, they had wandered here from some land where the only color was brown. The father sported a thick beard; his sons displayed bushy mustaches that covered their mouths. Their mother’s mustache was finer, allowing one to see her lips.
The rustics stank of cabbage, so Chimwazle hied to the far side of the room and joined the prosperous fellow with the silver buttons on his vest. “How are your snails?” he inquired.
“Slimy and without savor. I do not recommend them.”
Chimwazle pulled out a chair. “I am the Great Chimwazle.”
“And I Prince Rocallo the Redoubtable.”
Chimwazle frowned. “Prince of what?”
“Just so.” The prince sucked another snail and dropped the empty shell onto the floor.
That answer did not please him. “The Great Chimwazle is no man to trifle with,” he warned the so-called princeling.
“Yet here you sit, in the Tarn House.”
“With you,” observed Chimwazle, somewhat peevishly.
The landlord made his appearance, bowing and scraping as was appropriate for one of his station. “How may I serve you?”
“I will try a dish of your famous hissing eels.”
The innkeep gave an apologetic cough. “Alas, the eels are…ah…off the bill of fare.”
“What? How so? Your sign suggests that hissing eels are the specialty of the house.”
“And so they were, in other days. Delicious creatures, but mischievous. One ate a wizard’s concubine, and the wizard was so wroth he set the tarn to boiling and extinguished all the rest.”
“Perhaps you should change the sign.”
“Every day I think the same when I awaken. But then I think, the world may end today, should I spend my final hours perched upon a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand? I pour myself some wine and sit down to cogitate upon the matter, and by evening I find the urge has passed.”
“Your urges
do not concern me,” said Chimwazle. “Since you have no eels, I must settle for a roast fowl, well crisped.”
The innkeep looked lachrymose. “Alas, this clime is not salubrious for chicken.”
“Fish?”
“From the tarn?” The man shuddered. “I would advise against it. Most unwholesome, those waters.”
Chimwazle was growing vexed. His companion leaned across the table and said, “On no account should you attempt a bowl of scrumby. The gristle pies are also to be avoided.”
“Begging your pardon,” said the landlord, “but meat pies is all we have just now.”
“What sort of meat is in these pies?” asked Chimwazle.
“Brown,” said the landlord. “And chunks of grey.”
“A meat pie, then.” There seemed to be no help for it.
The pie was large, admittedly; that was the best that could be said for it. What meat Chimwazle found was chiefly gristle, here and there a chunk of yellow fat, and once something that crunched suspiciously when he bit into it. There was more grey meat than brown, and once a chunk that glistened green. He found a carrot too, or perhaps it was a finger. In either case, it had been overcooked. Of the crust, the less said, the better.
Finally Chimwazle pushed the pie away from him. No more than a quarter had been consumed. “A wiser man might have heeded my warning,” said Rocallo.
“A wiser man with a fuller belly, perhaps.” That was the problem with Twk-men; no matter how many you ate, an hour later you were hungry again. “The earth is old, but the night is young.” The Great Chimwazle produced a pack of painted placards from his sleeve. “Have you played peggoty? A jolly game, that goes well with ale. Perhaps you will assay a few rounds with me?”
“The game is unfamiliar to me, but I am quick to learn,” said Rocallo. “If you will explain the rudiments, I should be glad to try my hand.”
Chimwazle shuffled the placards.
* * *
—
The inn was grander than Lirianne had expected, and seemed queer and out of place, not at all the sort of establishment she would have expected to find along a forest road in the Land of the Falling Wall. “Famous for Our Hissing Eels,” she read aloud, and laughed. Behind the inn a sliver of the setting sun floated red upon the black waters of the tarn.
The Twk-men buzzed around her on their dragonflies. More and more had joined Lirianne as she made her way along the road. Two score, four, a hundred; by now she had lost count. The gauzy wings of their mounts trilled against the evening air. The purple dusk hummed to the sound of small, angry voices.
Lirianne pinched her nose and took a sniff. The scent of sorcery was so strong it almost made her sneeze. There was magic here. “Oho,” she said. “I smell wizard.”
Whistling a spritely tune, she sauntered closer. A ramshackle cart was drawn up near the bottom of the steps. Slumped against one of its wheels was a huge, ugly man, big-bellied and ripe, with coarse, dark hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He looked up as Lirianne approached. “I would not go up there if I were you. It is a bad place. Men go in. No men come out.”
“Well, I am no man as you can plainly see, and I love bad places. Who might you be?”
“Polymumpho is my name. I am a Pooner.”
“I am not familiar with the Pooners.”
“Few are.” He shrugged, a massive rippling of his shoulders. “Are those your Twk-men? Tell them my master went inside the inn to hide.”
“Master?”
“Three years ago I played at peggoty with Chimwazle. When my coin ran out, I bet myself.”
“Is your master a sorcerer?”
Another shrug. “He thinks he is.”
Lirianne touched the hilt of Tickle-Me-Sweet. “Then you may consider yourself free. I shall make good your debt for you.”
“Truly?” He got to his feet. “Can I have the cart?”
“If you wish.”
A wide grin split his face. “Hop on, and I will carry you to Kaiin. You will be safe, I promise you. Pooners only eat the flesh of men when the stars are in alignment.”
Lirianne glanced up. Half a dozen stars were visible above the trees, dusty diamonds glimmering in a purple velvet sky. “And who will be the judge of whether the stars are properly aligned for such a feast, or no?”
“On that account you may place your trust in me.”
She giggled. “No, I think not. I am for the inn.”
“And I for the road.” The Pooner lifted the traces of the cart. “If Chimwazle complains of my absence, tell him that my debt is yours.”
“I shall.” Lirianne watched as Polymumpho rumbled off toward Kaiin, the empty cart bouncing and jouncing behind him. She scampered up the winding stone steps and pushed her way through the door into the Tarn House.
The common room smelled of mold and smoke and ghouls, and a little leucomorph as well, though none such were presently in evidence. One table was packed with hairy rustics, another occupied by a big-bosomed slattern sipping wine from a dinted silver goblet. An old man attired in the antique fashion of a knight of ancient Thorsingol sat lonely and forlorn, his long white beard spotted with purple soup stains.
Chimwazle was not hard to find. He sat beneath the ale casks with another rogue, each of them appearing more unsavory than the other. The latter had the stink of rat about him; the former smelled of toad. The rattish man wore a grey leather vest with sparking silver buttons over a tight-fitting shirt striped in cream and azure, with large puffy sleeves. On his pointed head perched a wide-brimmed blue hat decorated with a fan of peacock feathers. His toadish companion, beset by drooping jowls, pebbled skin, and greenish flesh that made him look faintly nauseated, favored a floppy cap that resembled a deflated mushroom, a soiled mauve tunic with golden scrollwork at collar, sleeve, and hem, and green shoes turned up at the toe. His lips were full and fat, his mouth so wide it all but touched the pendulous lobes of his ears.
Both vagabonds eyed Lirianne lasciviously as they weighed the possibilities of erotic dalliance. The toad actually dared to venture a small smile. Lirianne knew how that game was played. She removed her hat, bowed to them, and approached their table. A spread of painted placards covered its rough wooden surface, beside the remains of a congealed and singularly unappealing meat pie. “What game is this?” she asked, oh so innocent.
“Peggoty,” said the toadish man. “Do you know it?”
“No,” she said, “but I love to play. Will you teach me?”
“Gladly. Have a seat. I am Chimwazle, oft called the Gallant. My friend is known as Rocallo the Reluctant.”
“Redoubtable,” the rat-faced man corrected, “and I am Prince Rocallo, if it please you. The landlord is about here somewhere. Will you take a drink, girl?”
“I will,” she said. “Are you wizards? You have a sorcerous look about you.”
Chimwazle made a dismissive gesture. “Such pretty eyes you have, and sharp as well. I know a spell or two.”
“A charm to make milk sour?” suggested Rocallo. “That is a spell that many know, though it takes six days to work.”
“That, and many more,” boasted Chimwazle, “each more potent than the last.”
“Will you show me?” Lirianne asked, in a breathless voice.
“Perhaps when we know each other better.”
“Oh, please. I have always wanted to see true magic.”
“Magic adds spice to the gristle that is life,” proclaimed Chimwazle, leering, “but I do not care to waste my wonderments before such lumpkins and pooners as surround us. Later when we are alone, I shall perform such magics for you as you have never seen, until you cry out in joy and awe. But first some ale, and a hand or three of peggoty to get our juices flowing! What stakes shall we play for?”
“Oh, I am sure you will think of something,” said Lirianne.
*
* *
—
By the time Molloqos the Melancholy caught sight of the Tarn House, the swollen sun was setting, easing itself down in the west like an old fat man lowering himself into his favorite chair.
Muttering softly in a tongue no living man had spoken since the Gray Sorcerers went to the stars, the sorcerer commanded a halt. The inn beside the tarn was most inviting to the casual glance, but Molloqos was of a suspicious cast, and had long ago learned that things were not always as they seemed. He muttered a brief invocation, and lifted up an ebon staff. Atop the shaft was a crystal orb, within which a great golden eye looked this way and that. No spell nor illusion could deceive the True-Seeing Eye.
Stripped of its glamour, the Tarn House stood weathered and grey, three stories tall and oddly narrow. It leaned sideways like a drunken wormiger, a crooked flight of flagstone steps leading upward to its door. Diamond-shaped panes of green glass gave the light from within a diseased and leprous cast; its roof was overgrown with drooping ropes of fungus. Behind the inn the tarn was black as pitch and redolent of decay, dotted with drowned trees, its dark oily waters stirring ominously. A stable stood off to one side, a structure so decayed that even dead Deodands might balk at entering.
At the foot of the inn’s steps was a sign that read:
TARN HOUSE
Famous for Our Hissing Eels
The right front Deodand spoke up. “The earth is dying and soon the sun will fail. Here beneath this rotten roof is a fit abode for Molloqos to spend eternity.”
“The earth is dying and soon the sun shall fail,” Molloqos agreed, “but if the end should overtake us here, I shall spend eternity seated by a fire savoring a dish of hissing eels, whilst you stand shivering in the dark and cold, watching pieces of your body ripen and rot and tumble to the ground.” Adjusting the drape of his Cloak of Fearful Mien, he gathered up his tall ebony staff, descended from the palanquin, stepped into the weed-choked yard, and began to climb the steps up to the inn.
The Book of Magic Page 45
