“Softly, softly,” protested Prince Rocallo. “My head is hazy from the ale, and harsh words make it ring.”
“Oh, will you fight a wizard’s duel?” Lirianne clapped her hands together. “What grand magics shall we see?”
“The innkeep may protest,” said Rocallo. “Such contests are the bane of hospitality. When swordsmen duel, the only damage is some broken crockery and perchance a bloodstain on the floorboards. A pail of hot water and a good elbow will set that aright. A wizard’s duel is like to leave an inn a smoking ruin.”
“Pah,” said Chimwazle, jowls quivering. A dozen rejoinders sprang to his lips, each more withering than the one before, but caution bid him swallow every syllable. Instead he jerked to his feet, so quickly that it sent his chair crashing to the floor. “The innkeep need have no fear on that account. Such spells as I command are far too potent to be deployed for the idle amusement of hatless trollops and feigned princes. The Great Chimwazle will not be mocked, I warn you.” And so saying, he made a hasty retreat, before the scarlet-and-black sorcerer could take further umbrage. A fat white spider and a line of cockroaches scuttled after him, as fast as their legs would carry them.
* * *
—
The fire had burned down to embers, and the air was growing cold. Darkness gathered in the corners of the common room. The rustics by the hearth huddled closer, muttering at one another through their whiskers. The golden eye atop the staff of Molloqos the Melancholy peered this way and that.
“Do you mean to let the cheat escape?” the girl asked.
Molloqos did not deign to answer. Soon all the veils would fall away, he sensed. The fraud Chimwazle was the least of his concerns. The shadow swords were here, and worse things too. And it seemed to him that he could hear a faint, soft hissing.
The landlord rescued him from further inquiry, appearing suddenly by his elbow to announce that his room was ready, should he wish to retire.
“I do.” Molloqos rose to his feet, leaning on his staff. He adjusted his Cloak of Fearful Mien and said, “Show me.”
The innkeep took a lantern off the wall, lit the wick, turned up the flame. “If you would follow me, dread sir.”
Up three long flights of crooked steps Molloqos climbed, following the landlord with his lantern, until at last they reached the upper story and a heavy wooden door.
The Tarn House’s best room was none too grand. The ceiling was too low, and the floorboards creaked alarmingly. A single window looked out across the tarn, where black waters churned and rippled suggestively beneath the dim red light of distant stars. Beside the bed, on a small three-legged table, a tallow candle stood crookedly in a puddle of hardened wax, flickering. A chest and a straight-back chair were the only other furnishings. Shadows lay thickly in the corners of the room, black as the belly of a Deodand. The air was damp and chill, and Molloqos could hear wind whistling through gaps in the shutters. “Is that mattress stuffed with feathers?” he asked.
“Nothing but honest straw at the Tarn House.” The innkeep hung his lantern from a hook. “See, here are two stout planks that slide in place to bar the door and window, so. You may rest easy tonight, with no fear of intruders. The chest at the foot of the bed contains an extra blanket, and may be used to store your garments and other valuables. Beside it is your chamberpot. Is there anything else you might require?”
“Only solitude.”
“As you command.”
Molloqos listened as the innkeep made his descent. When he was satisfied that he was alone, he gave the room a careful inspection, tapping on the walls, checking the door and window, thumping the floorboards with the butt of his staff. The chest at the foot of the bed had a false bottom that could be opened from beneath, to give access to a crawlway. Doubtless that was how the thieves and murderers crept in, to relieve unwary travelers of their goods and lives. As for the bed…
Molloqos gave the mattress a wide berth, seating himself instead in the chair, his staff in hand. His last few spells were singing in his head. It did not take long for the first of his visitors to arrive. Her knock was soft, but insistant. Molloqos opened the door, ushered her into the bedchamber, and slid the bar in place behind her. “So we are not disturbed,” he explained.
The dark-haired woman smiled seductively. She pulled the ties that closed her robe, then shrugged it off her shoulders to puddle on the floor. “Will you remove your cloak?”
“As soon remove my skin,” said Molloqos the Melancholy.
The woman shivered in his arms. “You talk so strangely. You frighten me.” Gooseprickles covered her arms. “What do you have in your hand?”
“Surcease.” He stabbed her through the throat. She sank to her knees, hissing. When her mouth opened, her fangs gleamed in the half-light, long and pointed. Her blood ran black down her neck. A leucomorph, he judged, or something stranger still. The wilds were full of queer things now: mongrels fathered by demons on Deodands, spawn of succubi and incubi, mock men grown in vats, bog-born monsters made of rotting flesh.
Bending over her pale corpse, Molloqos the Melancholy brushed her hair back from her cheek and kissed her; once upon the brow, once upon each cheek, deeply on the mouth. Life left her with a shudder and entered him with a gasp, as warm as a summer wind in the days of his youth when the sun burned brighter and laughter could still be heard in the cities of men.
When she was cold, he spoke the words of Cazoul’s Indenture, and her corpse opened its eyes again. He bid her rise, to stand sentry while he slept. A great weariness was on him, but it would not do to be taken unawares. He would have other visitors before the night was done, he did not doubt.
He dreamt of Kaiin, shimmering behind its high white walls.
* * *
—
A chill hung in the night air as Chimwazle slipped from the inn through a side door. A grey mist was rising off the tarn, and he could hear the waters stirring down below, as if something were moving in the shadows. Crouching low, he peered this way and that, his bulbous eyes moving beneath his floppy cap, but he saw no sign of Twk-men. Nor did he hear the soft ominous trill of dragonfly wings.
They had not found him, then. That was good. It was time he was away. That there were grues and ghouls and erbs out in the wood he did not doubt, but he would sooner take his chances with them than with the necromancer. A few brisk licks of the whip, and his Pooner would outrace them all. And if not, well, Polymumpho had more meat on him than Chimwazle. Grinning ear to ear, he loped down the rocky hummock, his belly wobbling.
Halfway down, he noticed that his cart was gone. “Infamous Pooner!” he cried, stumbling in shock. “Thief! Thief! Where is my cart, you lice-ridden lump?” No one gave reply. At the foot of the steps, there was nothing to be seen but a sinister iron palanquin and four huge Deodands with flesh as black as night, standing knee-deep in the tarn. The waters were rising, Chimwazle realized suddenly. The Tarn House had become an island.
Fury pushed aside his fear. Deodands relished the taste of man flesh, it was known. “Did you eat my Pooner?” he demanded.
“No,” said one, showing a mouth full of gleaming ivory teeth, “but come closer, and we will gladly eat you.”
“Pah,” said Chimwazle. Now that he was closer, he could see that the Deodands were dead. The necromancer’s work, he did not doubt. He licked his earlobe nervously, and a cunning ploy occurred to him. “Your master Molloqos has commanded you to carry me to Kaiin with all haste.”
“Yessss,” hissed the Deodand. “Molloqos commands and we obey. Come, clamber on, and we’ll away.”
Something about the way he said that made Chimwazle pause to reconsider the wisdom of his plan. Or perhaps it was the way all four of the Deodands began to gnash those pointed teeth. He hesitated, and suddenly grew aware of a faint stirring in the air behind him, a whisper of wind at the back of his neck.
Chimwa
zle whirled. A Twk-man was floating a foot from his face, his lance couched, and a dozen more hovering behind him. His bulging eyes popped out even further as he saw the upper stories of the Tarn House a-crawl with them, thick as tarps and twice as verminous. Their dragonflies were a glowing green cloud, roiling like a thunderhead. “Now you perish,” the Twk-man said.
Chimwazle’s sticky tongue struck first, flicking out to pull the small green warrior from his mount. But as he crunched and swallowed, the cloud took wing, buzzing angrily. Yelping in dismay, the Great Chimwazle had no choice but to flee back up the steps to the inn, hotly pursued by a swarm of dragonflies and the laughter of a Deodand.
* * *
—
Lirianne was vexed.
It would have been so much easier if only she could have set the two wizards to fighting over her, so they might exhaust their magic on each other. That the ghastly Molloqos would make short work of the odious Chimwazle she did not doubt, but however many spells that might have required would have left him with that many fewer when the time came for her to tickle him.
Instead, Molloqos had retired to his bed, while Chimwazle had scuttled off into the night, craven as a crab. “Look what he did to my hat,” Lirianne complained, snatching it off the floorboards. Chimwazle had trampled on it in his haste to depart, and the feather was broken.
“His hat,” said Prince Rocallo. “You lost it.”
“Yes, but I meant to win it back. Though I suppose I should be grateful that it did not turn into a cockroach.” She jammed the hat back on her head, tilted at a rakish angle. “First they break the world, and then my hat.”
“Chimwazle broke the world?”
“Him,” Lirianne said darkly, “and his sort. Wizards. Sorcerers and sorceresses, sages and mages and archmages, witches and warlocks, conjurers, illusionists, diabolists. Necromancers, geomancers, aeromancers, pyromancers, thaumaturges, dreamwalkers, dreamweavers, dreameaters. All of them. Their sins are written on the sky, dark as the sun.”
“You blame black magic for the world’s demise?”
“Bah,” said Lirianne. Men were such fools. “White magic and black are two sides of the same terce. The ancient tomes tell the tale, for those who have the wit to read them correctly. Once there was no magic. The sky was bright blue, the sun shone warm and yellow, the woods were full of deer and hare and songbirds, and everywhere the race of man was thriving. Those ancient men built towers of glass and steel taller than mountains, and ships with sails of fire that took them to the stars. Where are these glories now? Gone, lost, forgotten. Instead we have spells, charms, curses. The air grows cold, the woods are full of grue and ghouls, Deodands haunt the ruins of ancient cities, pelgranes rule the skies where men once flew. Whose work is this? Wizards! Their magic is a blight on sun and soul. Every time a spell is spoken here on Earth, the sun grows that much darker.”
She might have revealed even more, had not the pop-eyed Chimwazle chosen that very moment to make a sudden reappearance, stumbling through the door with his long arms wrapped around his head. “Get them off!” he bellowed, as he lurched between the tables. “Ow, ow, ow. Get off me, I am innocent, it was someone else!” Thus shouting, he went crashing to the floor, where he writhed and rolled, slapping himself about the head and shoulders while continuing to implore for assistance against attackers who seemed nowhere in evidence. “Twk,” he cried, “twk, twk, wretched twk! Off me, off me!”
Prince Rocallo winced. “Enough! Chimwazle, cease this unmanly caterwauling. Some of us are attempting to drink.”
The rogue rolled onto his rump, which was wide and wobbly and amply padded. “The Twk-men—”
“—remain without,” said Lirianne. The door remained wide open, but none of the Twk-men had followed Chimwazle inside. Chimwazle blinked his bulbous eyes and peered about from side to side to make certain that was true. Although no Twk-men were to be seen, the back of his neck was covered with festering boils where they had stung him with their lances, and more were sprouting on his cheeks and forehead.
“I do hope you know a healing spell,” Rocallo said. “Those look quite nasty. The one on your cheek is leaking blood.”
Chimwazle made a noise that was half a groan and half a croak and said, “Vile creatures! They had no cause to abuse me thus. All I did was thin their excess populace. There were plenty left!” Puffing, he climbed back onto his feet and retrieved his cap. “Where is that pestilential innkeep? I require unguent at once. These pinpricks have begun to itch.”
“Itching is only the first symptom,” said Lirianne with a helpful smile. “The lances of the Twk-men are envenomed. By morning, your head will be as large as a pumpkin, your tongue will blacken and burst, your ears will fill with pus, and you may be seized by an irresistible desire to copulate with a hoon.”
“A hoon?” croaked Chimwazle, appalled.
“Perhaps a grue. It depends upon the poison.”
Chimwazle’s face had turned a deeper shade of green. “This affront cannot be borne! Pus? Hoons? Is there no cure, no salve, no antidote?”
Lirianne cocked her head to one side thoughtfully. “Why,” she said, “I have heard it said that the blood of a sorcerer is a sure remedy for any bane or toxin.”
* * *
—
“Alas,” Chimwazle said, relieved. “Our plan is foiled. Back to the common room, then. Let us reconsider over ale.” He scratched furiously beneath his chin, groaned.
“Why not break the door down?” asked Lirianne. “A big strong man like you…” She squeezed his arm and smiled. “Unless you would rather give pleasure to a hoon?”
Chimwazle shuddered, though even a hoon might be preferable to this itching. Glancing up, he saw the transom. It was open just a crack, but that might be enough. “Rocallo, friend, lift me up onto your shoulders.”
The prince knelt. “As you wish.” He was stronger than he looked, and seemed to have no trouble hoisting Chimwazle up into the air, for all his bulk. Nor did the nervous trumpet notes emitted by Chimwazle’s nether parts dismay him unduly.
Pressing his nose to the transom, Chimwazle slid his tongue through the gap and down the inside of the doorframe, then curled it thrice around the wooden plank that barred the way. Slowly, slowly, he lifted the bar from its slot…but the weight proved too great for his tongue, and the plank fell clattering to the floor. Chimwazle reeled backward, Prince Rocallo lost his balance, and the two of them collapsed atop each other with much grunting and cursing while Lirianne skipped nimbly aside.
Then the door swung open.
* * *
—
Molloqos the Melancholy did not need to speak a word.
Silent he bid them enter and silent they obeyed, Chimwazle scrambling over the threshold on hands and feet as his fellows stepped nimbly around him. When all of them had come inside, he closed the door behind them and barred it once again.
The rogue Chimwazle was almost unrecognizable beneath his floppy hat, his toadish face a mass of festering boils and buboes where some Twk-men had kissed him with their lances. “Salve,” he croaked, as he climbed unsteadily to his feet. “We came for salve, sorry to disturb you. Dread sir, if you perchance should have some unguent for itching…”
“I am Molloqos the Melancholy. I do not deal in unguents. Come here and grasp my staff.”
For a moment, Chimwazle looked as if he might bolt the room instead, but in the end he bowed his head and shuffled closer, and wrapped a soft, splayed hand around the ebon shaft of the tall sorcerer’s staff. Inside the crystal orb, the True-Seeing Eye had fixed on Lirianne and Rocallo. When Molloqos thumped the staff upon the floor, the great golden eye blinked once. “Now look again upon your companions, and tell me what you see.”
Chimwazle’s mouth gaped open, and his bulging eyes looked as though they might pop out of his skull. “The girl is cloaked in shadows,” he gasped, �
��and under her freckly face I see a skull.”
“And your prince…”
“…is a demon.”
The thing called Prince Rocallo laughed, and let all his enchantments dissolve. His flesh was red and raw, glowing like the surface of the sun, and like the sun half covered by a creeping black leprosy. Smoke rose stinking from his nostrils, the floorboards began to smolder beneath his taloned feet, and black claws sprang from his hands as long as knives.
Then Molloqos spoke a word and stamped his staff hard against the floor, and from the shadows in a corner of the room a woman’s corpse came bursting to leap upon the demon’s back. As the two of them lurched and staggered about the room, tearing at each other, Lirianne danced aside and Chimwazle fell backward onto his ample rump. The stench of burning flesh filled the air. The demon ripped one of the corpse’s arms off and flung it smoking at the head of Molloqos, but the dead feel no pain, and her other arm was wrapped about its throat. Black blood ran down her cheeks like tears as she pulled him backward onto the bed.
Molloqos stamped his staff again. The floor beneath the bed yawned open, the mattress tilted, and demon and corpse together tumbled down into a gaping black abyss. A moment later, there came a loud splash from below, followed by a furious cacophony; demonic shrieking mingled with a terrible whistling and hissing, as if a thousand kettles had all come to a boil at once. When the bed righted itself the sound diminished, but it was a long while before it ended. “W-what was that?” asked Chimwazle.
“Hissing eels. The inn is famous for them.”
“I distinctly recall the innkeep saying that the eels were off the menu,” said Chimwazle.
“The eels are off our menu, but we are not off theirs.”
The Book of Magic Page 47
