Forward the Mage

by Eric Flint

  "Which is?" queried the mage.

  "The abasement of Ozarine imperialism!" cried the first.

  "The overthrow of the decrepit Groutch regimes and all their gangrenous cohorts!" added the second.

  "The humbling of the haughty Ecclesiarchs!" hallooed the third.

  "Justice for the poor and downtrodden!" came the fourth.

  "The reunification of all the divided Groutch lands under the rule of a free people!" exclaimed the fifth.

  "A nation once again!" boomed the sixth. This was apparently something in the way of a sansculottes toast, for the half dozen incendiaries rose to their feet as one man and slurped their tea noisily.

  "Churlism!" cried Zulkeh. "Outright murkery! I will have no part in—"

  "Oh, shut up, you old fart!" snarled Magrit. "They aren't churls—not proper ones, anyway, though Joe knows they're on good enough terms with murks all over Grotum. Just a band of happy lads pursuing an innocent enough hobby."

  She cut short Zulkeh again. "And you didn't let me finish, windbag! I was just going to add that you want to get your hands on the Rap Sheet because it'll, like as not, tell you who your enemies are."

  Zulkeh frowned. "I fail to follow your logic, madame. How can this Rap Sheet aid me in my quest? Oh, I admit, 'tis a puissant relic, a Rap Sheet, but still and all one of precise and limited powers. On this all tales and legends agree, that whosoever possesses a Rap Sheet will instantly know all evidence pertaining to felonious and subversive activities which is in the possession of any police agency anywhere within the range of the relic's powers, which range is reputed to be great but not universal. But how does this aid me? Surely, were my enemies known to the authorities, they would already have been apprehended and their identity and crimes made known to me by these selfsame authorities!"

  "Is he really that stupid?" demanded the second.

  "Like I said," growled Magrit, "he lives upside down. Zulkeh, how have you survived so long in this cold and cruel world? Enemies so powerful as yours are presumably great criminals, who have not yet been apprehended because the authorities are involved in some elaborate scheme to ferret out their grand design."

  "Yes, yes," mused Zulkeh, "this is sensible."

  "Unfortunately," continued Magrit, "you yourself are likely to be squashed in the course of this scheme's unfolding, should you take no steps of your own, for it is well known that your authorities in today's world care less than a fig about the fate of ordinary citizens."

  "I am hardly an ordinary citizen!" protested Zulkeh. "But yes, yes, I see your point. Oft have I noted the parlous state of the contemporary temporal powers."

  "And finally," concluded the witch, "do you really think that the authorities have the competence to foil this scheme—whatever it is—hatched by your unknown and potent enemies?"

  "Certainly not!" exclaimed the mage.

  "Well, then?" The witch peered at Zulkeh intently. "Are you in, or not? And can we proceed without these constant philosophical quibbles?"

  Zulkeh considered, then nodded his head. "I am with you, madame."

  Magrit now looked at Greyboar and Ignace.

  "That leaves you two," she said. "We won't be able to steal the Rap Sheet without your help, for reasons that'll become clear in a minute. However, I'll admit there's no real reason for you to do it."

  Greyboar scratched his chin. "Well, we do owe you a job."

  "Not one like this!" cried Ignace. "Choke one of your rivals, sure. Throttle a customer what owes you money, sure. But this? Steal a Rap Sheet from the Cruds? Take on the whole damn Imperial Republic of Ozarae? Get mixed up in Joe business?"

  "It's a bit much," agreed the witch. "And if you don't want to do it, I'll understand. I'm sure I can find some suitable little chore for you instead."

  Greyboar cracked his knuckles. The windows rattled. "But you say you won't be able to steal the Rap Sheet without us?"

  Magrit shrugged. "No, probably not. Les Six have already agreed to try to fill in for you, if you don't come in. But—well, they're solid lads, but they're not the world's greatest strangler."

  Greyboar gazed at Ignace. "My agent makes all the business decisions," he said mildly.

  All eyes turned to Ignace. After a second or so, the little agent looked away. His face grew red, his cheeks puffed out. For a full minute, while silence filled the room, Ignace subjected the various objects cluttered about to a fierce and glowering inspection.

  Suddenly, he threw up his hands, exhaling mightily.

  "All right! All right! We'll do it!"

  For a split second, a strange expression crossed Magrit's face. For just that moment, the horrid harridan seemed—soft?

  "Are you sure?" she asked. "I'll say it again, this is a lot more than the favor you owe me."

  Ignace glared at her.

  "It's got nothing to do with that, and you know it! Even if we didn't owe you a favor, we'd go along."

  He now transferred his glare to the strangler.

  Greyboar shrugged. "You know what chance she'll have, with the Cruds bringing a Rap Sheet to Grotum. There's never been much I could do for her, except that one time we got her out of the police station."

  "And much thanks we got for it, too!" shrilled the agent. His face was now beet red.

  Greyboar smiled ruefully. "Gwendolyn's always been hard to please." He looked at Magrit, nodding. "We're in."

  "Good. Now let me get to the practicalities of the thing. You'll understand why I needed all of you to get the job done."

  * * *

  Then did the witch Magrit present to the assembled party the outlines of her scheme, the which your narrator will briefly summarize:

  The Rap Sheet was kept in a small room, deep in the bowels of the Ozarine Embassy. This Embassy was no modest edifice, but an ancient castle, perched high on a crag overlooking the city of Prygg and its harbor. The sole entrance to the castle was a drawbridge and portcullis, guarded by a large company of soldiery.

  Within the castle, the room wherein the Rap Sheet was kept was fiercely protected. Entry to the room required passing through, first, a guard room wherein rested at all times the elite of the Embassy's troops; second, yet another chamber in which dwelt some unknown horror; and finally, the Rap Sheet itself, which relic was guarded by bizarre glyphs and wards, the which could only be dispelled by great magic.

  "You now see," concluded Magrit, "why we need all of you together. Greyboar can deal with the soldiers in the guardroom. Zulkeh can handle the magic guarding the Rap Sheet. And all of you together, let's hope, can handle whatever horror it is that dwells in the chamber between. Any questions?"

  Greyboar spoke. "I see a couple of problems. First, the soldiers. The ones in the guardroom—what are we talking about here? A half dozen or so?"

  Magrit nodded.

  "That's a piece of cake. But how about the soldiers at the main gate? Must be a couple of hundred at least, if it's like every other Ozarine Embassy." Greyboar grimaced. "That's a wee much. And what about the drawbridge and the portcullis? Mind you, I've got a way with opening doors"—Ignace grinned—"but a whole drawbridge? I don't know." He flexed his enormous hands, gazed down at them. "I don't know."

  "Our job, this," stated the first.

  "You'll not be needing to worry about the main entrance," added the second.

  "You'll be taking a different route," explained the third.

  "Coming up from below," elaborated the fourth.

  "Through the artist's tunnels," detailed the fifth.

  "Paul Gauphin's tunnels," specified the sixth.

  "Gauphin?" exclaimed Zulkeh. "He lives yet? I had thought the man dead!"

  "No, he's still alive," said Magrit. "He just travels around so much to so many exotic and far-off lands that everybody always thinks he must have died. Actually, he's been back in Prygg for several years now. Keeps himself exclusively to the tunnels he's dug all over the city. Says it's primitive, inspires him."

  "Known throughout Pryggia as the Under
ground Artist," added the first.

  "But how can he help us?" asked Ignace.

  The second coughed. "Well, it's a bit delicate, this, but you see Paul's—how I shall I put it?—well—"

  "He's a lecher," interrupted the third.

  "A profligate," added the fourth.

  "A satyr," chipped in the fifth.

  "A two-legged goat," concluded the sixth.

  "The point is," explained the first, "that the Ozarine Ambassador's wife is a most attractive young lady—"

  "As is the wife of the Consul," said the second.

  "And the wife of the Chargé d'Affaires," added the third.

  "And the wife of—"

  "Stow it!" bellowed Magrit. "We don't need another of your laundry lists. The fact is, Zulkeh, that almost every Ozarine official anyone's ever met has a gorgeous teenage wife—barely pubescent, most of 'em—'cause they're all a lot of lechers. Would-be lechers, I should say. Big difference between them and Paul Gauphin is that he can keep it up."

  "You should know!" piped up the salamander. A teacup went flying. The evil amphibian darted for a mousehole.

  "A wallet!" yelled Magrit. Then, turning back to her audience:

  "The point is, that the Underground Artist has dug tunnels into every bedchamber in the castle, including that of Rupert Inkman himself, the chief of station."

  "Wherein lounges his girlfriend," explained the second.

  "No Ozarine lass, but a Pryggian minx." This from the third.

  "Fair in form and limb," commented the fourth.

  "But foul in mind and spirit," countered the fifth.

  "A rotten collaborator," stated the sixth, "providing comfort if not much aid to the Ozarine oppressor of the Groutch masses."

  This last bid fair to start another round of canaille toasts, but Magrit intervened.

  "Can we keep to the subject?" she demanded. "Anyway, that's how you'll get in—Paul'll lead you through his tunnels right into Inkman's bedroom, which abuts directly to the guardroom."

  Greyboar coughed. "Still a bit of a problem here, Magrit. The girl's likely to be there, along with this Inkman fellow. We are doing the job at night, I assume?" Magrit nodded. "Well, then, they'll both be there. And while I certainly don't mind throttling a Crud, the girl—" He fell silent, then spoke again, in a stony voice. "I don't choke girls."

  "It's true," confirmed Ignace. "It's a sticking point with him. A lot of business it's cost us, too," he groused.

  "Who said anything about choking girls?" asked Magrit. "Or Rupert Inkman, for that matter. They'll both be gone. We're doing the job tomorrow tonight—during the wedding reception for the Princess Snuffy and the Honorable Anthwerp Freckenrizzle III."

  "Scion of Ozar's fifth-wealthiest plutocrat!" exclaimed the first.

  "Soon to be married to the youngest daughter of the King of Pryggia!" cried the second.

  "It's the social event of the season!" proclaimed the third.

  "Precisely," said Magrit. "Relax, Greyboar. I've timed this escapade so that just about everybody in the Embassy's going to be stinking drunk in the ballroom, all the way across the castle from where you're doing your business. Satisfied?"

  "But will this Gauphin fellow agree to help us?" asked Ignace. "I mean, I don't see why he should. It's a bit risky for him, and I don't see where he gets anything out of it."

  "Nonsense!" stated the fourth. "He'll gain the respect and admiration of the toiling poor of Pryggia, who'll certainly pass word of his deed through every hovel and garret of the city."

  "Though, 'tis true, this respect and admiration won't translate into purchases of his paintings," commented the fifth.

  "Which are priced beyond the reach of the common folk," elaborated the sixth.

  "But whose displeasure, should he fail in his patriotic duty, will certainly be felt in the galleries and salons where his paintings are bought by the stinking rich," developed the first.

  "The which salons and galleries will, every one of 'em, be picketed by the irate plebeian citizenry," predicted the second.

  "Not to mention torched to the ground," foresaw the third.

  "Gauphin's effigy burned in the public square," presaged the fourth.

  "His name cursed by the masses," divined the fifth.

  "Himself hunted like a dog through the—"

  "Enough!" bellowed Magrit. "You've made the point. He'll help us. Now—any other questions? If not, let's—"

  "A moment, madame," spoke Zulkeh. "I find myself distressed by an aspect of your plan."

  "What's that?"

  The wizard frowned. "As I understand it, the individuals now present who will actually participate in this enterprise consist solely of myself, my apprentice, Sirrah Greyboar and his agent. Am I correct?"

  "Right on the mark," agreed Magrit.

  Darker still grew the mage's frown. "Yet meseemeth that the individuals who stand most to gain from our adventure consist of yourself and these—these half-dozen disreputes here. At least, in a proximate sense."

  "Right again," said Magrit.

  Black as night was the sorcerer's frown. " 'Tis most unseemly, madame!—most unjust! Those who gain the most should not eschew the peril! Nay, fie on such witless notions! Did not the supreme philosophe Aristotle Sfondr—"

  "Oh, shut up, you old fart!" roared Magrit. "I didn't say that we wouldn't be playing a role! We just won't be along on your part of the escapade. The four of you will need a diversion. Sure, and there'll be a wedding reception going on, and the booze'll be flowing like a river, but the Ozarine didn't get where it is by having stupid and careless officials. We've got to make sure that the attention of every single Ozarine and Pryggian muckymuck—not to mention their goons!—is riveted to the reception floor."

  "We're going to crash the party!" hallooed Les Six in unison.

  "I beg your pardon?" queried Zulkeh.

  "You heard 'em," said Magrit, grinning widely. "Me and Les Six—and Wittgenstein, he's going to be the star of the show!—are going to attend the reception, representing, so to speak, the little people."

  "Who've been most rudely excluded from the event," complained the sixth.

  "For fear their gaucheries will disturb the tranquility of high society," explained the first.

  "A fear well-founded!" cried the second.

  "Indeed so!" agreed the third. "A most boorish lot, your unwashed toilers!"

  "Not up on the finer points of etiquette, sad to say," contributed the fourth.

  "Certain, in their crude ignorance, to behave improperly," elaborated the fifth.

  "Here's to bad manners!" roared the sixth. This was apparently something in the way of a lowborn toast, for the six dregs of the earth raised their teacups in unison, pinkies politely extended like so many small cannons, and slurped noisily.

  "I see," mused Zulkeh. His brow cleared. "A cunning stratagem, madame! For if there exist any on the face of the earth most suited to the task of turning a royal wedding reception into a shambles—a public scandal!—it is yourself and this canaille."

  Magrit and Les Six nodded in acknowledgement of what was, actually, not a compliment. Then did Zulkeh's brow unclear, resuming its former furrowed darkness.

  "And what of Sirrah Wolfgang, here? What is to be his part in the episode?" demanded the mage.

  "Well, actually," responded Wolfgang, "I'm not playing any part in the affair—directly, that is to say."

  "Then why are you here?" The wizard appeared most aggrieved.

  "Well, to begin with, I'm the one who found out about the Rap Sheet. Just got here yesterday with the news. But that's a small thing. What's more important is the key role I play now." Here the giant exuded a vast smugness. "I'm the consultant, you see."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "The consultant—the expert adviser." Then, seeing no comprehension on the wizard's face, the lunatic elaborated.

  "You need expert advice on something like this, man! I mean, the whole idea's crazy—stealing a Rap Sheet from under
the noses of the Cruds under cover of bashing a gala event! Who but a madwoman would come up with such a scheme? Who but madmen would agree to participate? And who then better to serve as your expert consultant," he concluded with pride, "than a demented bedlamite escaped from an insane asylum. At your service!"

  Here Wolfgang rose and took a bow, then said: "And let me say—speaking from a lifetime of applying my twin powers of madness and amnesia—that in my capacity as expert consultant I approve wholeheartedly of the plan. It's crackbrained! Nutty as a walnut grove! Deranged beyond belief!"

  He resumed his seat. "So it's bound to come off swimmingly."

  The wizard did not seem entirely satisfied with this explanation. Indeed, to put it more accurately, Wolfgang's words appeared to reopen in his mind the entire question of participating in the exploit. But the witch Magrit was, as the gentle reader has perhaps already deduced, a fearsome bully, and she soon quelled the mage's incipient revolt. Then did she command the various persons present to retire for rest and refreshment, for the adventure ahead promised great exertions for all concerned.

  The assembly dispersed, all going their separate ways. Yet, strangely enough, the lunatic Wolfgang arrested the dwarf as Shelyid was going out the door.

  "A moment of your time, little one," said the giant.

  Shelyid frowned, glanced at the back of his master, even now receding down the stairs.

  "Oh, but, sir," apologized the gnome, "I can't talk now—I have to go get the master's sack from downstairs where we left it and—"

  "Bother the sack!" interrupted the lunatic. "You'll have time enough. I just wanted to ask you—have you ever been on an adventure before?"

  "Oh no, sir!" exclaimed Shelyid. "I'm just a dwarf, a miserable dwarf. I've never—" Shelyid paused, gulped. "Well, actually I'm real scared, although not as scared as I would have been a few weeks ago, maybe, but still—" He paused, gulped again, then said softly: "I just hope I don't let everybody else down."

  "You'll do fine!" boomed Wolfgang. "Why, you've the makings of a daredevil, you do!"

  "You think so?" asked Shelyid, not with any great conviction. "Uh, sir."