The Book of Magic

by George R. R. Martin

  * * *

  —

  Lirianne made a pouty face and said, “The hospitality of the Tarn House leaves much to be desired.”

  Chimwazle was edging toward the door. “I mean to speak firmly to the landlord. Some adjustment of our bill would seem to be in order.” He scratched angrily at his boils.

  “I would advise against returning to the common room,” said the necromancer. “No one in the Tarn House is all that he appears. The hirsute family by the hearth are ghouls clad in suits of human skin, here for the meat pies. The greybeard in the faded raiment of a knight of Old Thorsingol is a malign spirit, cursed to an eternity of purple scrumby for the niggardly gratuities he left in life. The demon and the leucomorph are no longer a concern, but our servile host is vilest of all. Your wisest course is flight. I suggest you use the window.”

  The Great Chimwazle needed no further encouragement. He hurried to the window, threw the shutters open, and gave a cry of dismay. “The tarn! I had forgotten. The tarn has encircled the inn, there’s no way out.”

  Lirianne peered over his shoulder and saw that it was true. “The waters are higher than before,” she said thoughtfully. That was a bother. She had learned to swim before she learned to walk, but the oily waters of the tarn did not look wholesome, and while she did not doubt that Tickle-Me-Sweet would be a match for any hissing eel, it was hard to swim and swordfight at the same time. She turned back to the necromancer. “I suppose we’re doomed, then. Unless you save us with a spell.”

  “Which spell would you have me use?” asked Molloqos in a mordant tone. “Shall I summon an Agency of Far Dispatch to whisk us three away to the end of the earth? Call down fire from the sky with the Excellent Prismatic Spray to burn this vile hostelry to the ground? Pronounce the words of Phandaal’s Shivering Chill to freeze the waters of the tarn as hard as stone, so that we may scamper safely over them?”

  Chimwazle looked up hopefully. “Yes, please.”

  “Which?”

  “Any. The Great Chimwazle was not meant to end up in a meat pie.” He scratched a boil underneath his chin.

  “Surely you know those spells yourself,” said Molloqos.

  “I did,” said Chimwazle, “but some knave stole my grimoire.”

  Molloqos chuckled. It was the saddest sound that Lirianne had ever heard. “It makes no matter. All things die, even magic. Enchantments fade, sorceries unravel, grimoires turn to dust, and even the most puissant spells no longer work as they once did.”

  Lirianne cocked her head. “Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  “Oho.” She drew her sword and gave his heart a tickle.

  * * *

  —

  The necromancer died without a sound, his legs folding slowly under him as if he were kneeling down to pray. When the girl slipped her sword out of his chest, a wisp of scarlet smoke rose from the wound. It smelled of summer nights and maiden’s breath, sweet as a first kiss.

  Chimwazle was aghast. “Why did you do that?”

  “He was a necromancer.”

  “He was our only hope.”

  “You have no hope.” She wiped her blade against her sleeve. “When I was fifteen, a young adventurer was wounded outside my father’s inn. My father was too gentle to let him die there in the dust, so we carried him upstairs and I nursed him back to health. Soon after he departed I found I was with child. For seven months my belly swelled, and I dreamed of a babe with his blue eyes. In my eighth month the swelling ceased. Thereafter I grew slimmer with every passing day. The midwife explained it all to me. What use to bring new life into a dying world? My womb was wiser than my heart, she said. And when I asked her why the world was dying, she leaned close and whispered, ‘Wizard’s work.’”

  “Not my work.” Chimwazle scratched at his cheeks with both hands, half mad with the itching. “What if she was wrong?”

  “Then you’ll have died for nought.” Lirianne could smell his fear. The scent of sorcery was on him, but faintly, faintly, drowning beneath the green stink of his terror. Truly, this one was a feeble sort of magician. “Do you hear the eels?” she asked him. “They’re still hungry. Would you like a tickle?”

  “No.” He backed away from her, his bloody fingers splayed.

  “Quicker than being eaten alive by eels.” Tickle-Me-Sweet waved in the air, glimmering in the candlelight.

  “Stay back,” Chimwazle warned her, “or I will call down the Excellent Prismatic Spray upon you.”

  “You might. If you knew it. Which you don’t. Or if it worked. Which it won’t, if our late friend can be believed.”

  Chimwazle backed away another step, and stumbled over the necromancer’s corpse. As he reached out to break his fall, his fingers brushed against the sorcerer’s staff. Grasping it, he popped back to his feet. “Stay away. There’s still power in his staff, I warn you. I can feel it.”

  “That may be, but it is no power you can use.” Lirianne was certain of that. He was hardly half a wizard, this one. Most likely he had stolen those placards, and paid to have the roaches glamoured for him. Poor, sad, wicked thing. She resolved to make a quick end to his misery. “Stand still. Tickle-Me-Sweet will cure your itch. I promise you, this will not hurt.”

  “This will.” Chimwazle grasped the wizard’s staff with both hands, and smashed the crystal orb down on her head.

  * * *

  —

  Chimwazle stripped both corpses clean before tossing them down the chute behind the bed, in hopes of quieting the hissing eels. The girl was even prettier naked than she had been clothed, and stirred feebly as he was dragging her across the room. “Such a waste,” Chimwazle muttered as he heaved her down into the abyss. Her hat was much too small for him and had a broken feather, but her sword was forged of fine, strong, springy steel, her purse was fat with terces, and the leather of her boots was soft and supple. Too small for his feet, but perhaps one day he’d find another pretty freckly girl to wear them for him.

  Even in death the necromancer presented such a frightful countenance that Chimwazle was almost afraid to touch him, but the eels were still hissing hungrily down below, and he knew his chances of escape would be much improved if they were sated. So he steeled himself, knelt, and undid the clasp that fastened the dread wizard’s cloak. When he rolled his body over to pull the garment off, the sorcerer’s features ran like black wax, melting away to puddle on the floor. Chimwazle found himself kneeling over a wizened toothless corpse with dim white eyes and parchment skin, his bald pate covered by a spiderweb of dark blue veins. He weighed no more than a bag of skin, but he had a little smile on his lips when Chimwazle tossed him down to the hissing eels.

  By then the itching seemed to be subsiding. Chimwazle gave himself a few last scratches and fastened the necromancer’s cloak about the shoulders. All at once, he felt taller, harder, sterner. Why should he fear the things down in the common room? Let them go in fear of him!

  He swept down the steps without a backward glance. The ghost and ghouls took one look at him and moved aside. Even creatures such as they knew better than to trouble a wizard of such fearsome mien. Only the innkeep dared accost him. “Dread sir,” he murmurred, “how will you settle your account?”

  “With this.” He drew his sword and gave the thing a tickle. “I will not be recommending the Tarn House to other travelers.”

  Black waters still encircled the inn, but they were no more than waist-deep, and he found it easy enough to wade to solid ground. The Twk-men had vanished in the night and the hissing eels had grown quiescent, but the Deodands still stood where he had seen them last, waiting by the iron palanquin. One greeted him. “The earth is dying and soon the sun shall fail,” it said. “When the last light fades, all spells shall fail, and we shall feast upon the firm white flesh of Molloqos.”

  “The earth is dying, but you are dead,” replied Chimwazle, marve
ling at the deep and gloomy timbre of his voice. “When the sun goes out, all spells shall fail, and you shall decay back into the primeval ooze.” He climbed into the palanquin and bid the Deodands to lift him up. “To Kaiin.” Perhaps somewhere in the white-walled city, he would find a lissome maid to dance naked for him in the freckly girl’s high boots. Or failing that, a hoon.

  Off into purple gloom rode Molloqos the Melancholy, borne upon an iron palanquin by four dead Deodands.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Andy Duncan made his first sale, to Asimov’s Science Fiction, in 1995, and quickly made others, to Starlight, Dying For It, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, as well as several more sales to Asimov’s Science Fiction. By the beginning of the new century, he was widely recognized as one of the most individual, quirky, and flavorful new voices on the scene today. His story “The Executioner’s Guild” was on both the final Nebula ballot and the final ballot for the World Fantasy Award in 2000, and in 2001 he won two World Fantasy Awards, for his story “The Pottawatomie Giant,” and for his landmark first collection, Beluthahatchie and Other Stories. He also won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2002 for his novella “The Chief Designer.” His other books include an anthology co-edited with F. Brett Cox, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, and a nonfiction guidebook, Alabama Curiosities. His more recent work includes a World Fantasy Award–winning novella, Wakulla Springs (written with Ellen Klages), a Nebula Award–winning novelette, “Close Encounters,” and a second collection, The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories. A graduate of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in Seattle, he was born in Batesburg, South Carolina, now lives in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, Sydney, and is an associate professor of English at Frostburg State University. His website is https://sites.google.com/​site/​beluthahatchie/.

  As the funny and folksy story that follows demonstrates, if you’re the Devil’s son-in-law, and the Devil is mad at you, you’d better hope you have some powerful friends willing to help you out…

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  ANDY DUNCAN

  “My name is Pearleen Sunday, and this is the story of how I—”

  Hold up! Hold up right there! This is my story, Sunday, and I’ll tell it my own way.

  “The stories you tell, Petey Wheatstraw, aren’t fit for mixed company, or for any decent folk.”

  My, my, my, aren’t we particular. You tell your stories your way, to the company you please, and I’ll tell mine mine, to mine. And if this story ain’t mine, why, then, no story is. After all, I was the one did all the work.

  “Fine. Tell it, then. But don’t stretch it out of all recognition, the way you do, with whales in ponds, and farmer’s daughters, and talking dogs that walk into bars, and such as that. Stick to the facts, to the whats and the whos and the wheres.”

  I’ll stick to something, all right, if you don’t hush. Hmm, well, let’s see. Where to start? You got to admit, there’s more options this go-round than usual.

  “You could start where I come in.”

  Yes, and then it’d be your story, wouldn’t it? Right back where we started. No, I think I better start it as far away from you as I can get. And since you grew up in a dime museum in Chattanooga, without even the cost of admission to look at yourself, I reckon my story starts in the upstairs parlor of the finest mansion in New Orleans. Yes, ma’am. Who’s that brownest-eyed, tallest, finest-looking man, in a tailored suit of Eye-talian cloth that fits him like a queen fits a flush, with a Cuban thigh-rolled cigar in one hand and a snifter of muscadine brandy in the other, and posed like he was a framed work of art in the big leaded glass window of the upstairs master bedroom, where he looks down and down and farther down yet upon St. Charles Avenue, the main street of the Gulf, where the streetcars are more posh than the Ritz, and even the panhandlers are ex-mayors who have moved up in the world? Why, it’s Petey Wheatstraw, that’s who! With the most beautiful Frenchwoman in the Crescent City on his arm…

  * * *

  —

  “Baby, please!” said Petey Wheatstraw. “Believe me, I understand the fascination, but don’t make me slosh my brandy.”

  “Oh, mon amour, how can you be so calm, when my lover Alcide will be at the door à tout moment maintenant, his anger hot, his swordsteel cold and sure?”

  Petey barked what he was pretty sure was a mocking and superior laugh and gulped the last of his brandy with his best approximation of insouciance, which was perhaps the least of the words he had learned from Madeline. “I ain’t studying about old Al,” he said, and hurled his depleted snifter into the fireplace with a most satisfying smash. The remains of five snifters now glittered beneath the grate like the ashes of the gods; he’d soon have to order another set. With the hand now free, he caressed Madeline’s cheek, her tear-streaked powder wet and granular on his fingertips, and said: “Al ain’t got nothing on Petey. Who’s Al’s father-in-law, huh? I ask you.” He softly kissed the tip of her nose, the hand-daubed beauty mark on her left cheek, the covered-up actual beauty mark on her right cheek. “Hold this,” Petey said, and handed her the cigar, on which she took a deep drag while he kissed her neck more intensely, up and down. “Besides which,” he added, between kisses, “any fool gets between me and my favorite stereotypical nineteenth-century Louisiana mistress, why, that’s one fool gone get his gumbo separated from his ya-ya, don’t you worry your mon cher about that.”

  “Oh, Petey!” Madeline gasped in ecstatic surrender, and pressed herself against—

  Petey, you are stretching your story already. Besides, this ain’t no under-the-counter book.

  Oh, fine then! I reckon we’ll just skip to the wild-eyed, sword-wielding Creole kicking down the boudoir door.

  “Do not defy me, Wheatstraw!” cried Alcide. He slashed a pornographic arras for emphasis. “I will free Madeline from your loathsome clutches, or die in the attempt.”

  “Cool your jets, Al,” said a lounging Petey, his Eye-talian loafers crossed atop the writing desk. “If you’d been here ten minutes ago…and at half past noon…and at eight and eight-thirty this morning…why, you’d have seen my clutches ain’t so loathsome to the lady after all.”

  “Please, Alcide, leave us!” cried Madeline, who clutched a drape around herself to emphasize her nakedness. “You do not know this one’s power. He will kill us both!”

  Alcide ignored her to advance on Petey. His poised sword gleamed. “I warn you for the last time, you fiend! Stand and fight!”

  In reply, Petey lifted one hand to his lips and blew a loud raspberry.

  Alcide snarled and lunged, put his sword through the back of the chair where Petey had been a moment before. Only a wisp of smoke and a sulfurous stench remained. Alcide slid the blade from the upholstery. A plume of cotton came with it.

  “I’d be faster, if not for all the hard liquor and sex,” said Petey, from over his shoulder. Alcide whirled and slashed the air where Petey had been.

  “I expected more from a hero of folklore,” said Petey, who now was overhead, lying on the ceiling. Alcide leaped and stabbed the spot where Petey had been. Plaster dust speckled his shoulders as he landed on his feet. He looked about, wild-eyed.

  “How long before you give up?” asked Petey, who now sat cross-legged atop the sideboard.

  The answer, it turned out, was twenty minutes, after which Alcide gasped with exhaustion, the room’s furnishings were wrecked, and the miasma of brimstone was so thick that Madeline, having long since dressed and done her makeup, flung open the windows to let some of it escape.

  “Face facts, Al,” said Petey, between bites of banana. “Your lady has traded up.”

  “Impossible,” gasped Alcide, with the French pronunciation.

  Madeline turned from the windows and dusted her palms together. “Allez-vous, Alcide,” she said. “Amscray.” She made shooing motions. “Beat it.”

  “You even speak
like him,” Alcide said, his lip curled in disgust. “He has eaten your soul, this filth, this demon from Hell.”

  Madeline shrugged. “I kinda like him,” she said.

  With his last strength, Alcide lunged once more. He ran Madeline through the heart with his sword and killed her instantly. Before she even could slump to the ground, Alcide, too, was dead, Petey having torn off his head.

  “That was pretty extreme!” cried Petey. He regarded his bloody hands with horror. “And what am I doing up here?”

  Always afraid of heights, Petey grabbed at a nearby chimney and hung on for dear life. His Eye-talian shoes scuffled for purchase on the steeply pitched roof.

  Far below, on the sidewalk in front of the building that should have been Petey’s Garden District home, stood a young woman in black tights and Goth makeup, surrounded by a group of people in shorts and T-shirts. They drank from filtered water bottles. They posed beneath selfie sticks. Petey had never heard of selfie sticks, but even in his terror, he knew instantly what they were.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “I’m up here! Someone help me!” But the tour group was oblivious.

  “This hotel,” said the costumed guide, “marks the site of what was once, in the nineteenth century, the finest private home in New Orleans. According to legend, it was so fine that the Devil himself made it his home, and took a local woman for his lover. But the Devil had a human rival for Madeline’s affections, a local man, and one night, the triangle erupted in terrible violence. The Devil killed his rival and his faithless lover, dragged their bodies to the roof beneath the full moon, and devoured them.”

  “Ewww,” Petey said, nose wrinkled.

  “From that night on,” continued the guide, “the Devil was trapped on the roof, and the home was uninhabitable.” She stumbled, slightly, on the word uninhabitable. It took her two tries. “Every night, phantom figures reenacted that awful confrontation from long ago. Finally, the so-called Devil’s Mansion was razed to the ground. Today the site is occupied by one of our finest small hotels. Suites start at one hundred and nine dollars, plus taxes and fees, though some restrictions apply. And now, let’s proceed to the next stop on our Bloody New Orleans Tour of Horror!”