Complete short fiction, p.56
Complete Short Fiction, page 56
And indeed, over the following months, Lixal and his newfound thaumaturgical skills did prosper. He enlivened countless local feuds with the sudden provision and subsequent recusal of nasal grotesqueries, and created a giant efflorescence so like a starfish on the end of one old woman’s nose that she completely rewrote her will in favor of a nephew she had not previously favored, who happily passed on a percentage to Lixal, who then rewarded the old woman’s good sense by returning her proboscis to its natural (if only slightly less unlovely) state. On separate occasions, he used the Exhalation to banish three mad dogs, one dauntingly large and aggressive tree-weasel, and two husbands and a father who had all taken violent issue with Lixal’s use of the Pseudo-Philtre on their wives and daughters, respectively. (Two wives and two daughters, because one of the cuckolded husbands also had a comely daughter slightly past the age of consent. Lixal had made sure of this last—he was scrupulous that his amatory coercions should be used only on adults, another of his many traits that he felt was deserving of greater admiration than it received.) And the belittling cantrip had also been employed in several cases where his other methods could not prevail, enabling Lixal to find escape and even reward when he might otherwise fail in one or both areas. He began to develop no small reputation in the environs through which his troop traveled.
Thus, one evening, in a town called Saepia, a committee of local grandees led by Saepia’s aldermayor approached Lixal at the conclusion of the troop’s nightly show with a request for his assistance. He invited them to drink a glass of stock wine with him and discuss their needs. After a string of successes in surrounding towns, Lixal felt secure in what he had to offer, and thus in what he was empowered to charge.
“We could not help admiring your demonstrations tonight,” the aldermayor opened, clutching his many-pointed ceremonial wool hat in his hands in the submissive manner of a tardy schoolboy. “Nor could we help to be impressed by the arguments of your colleagues, Kwerion and Reverend Ferlash, as to the value to a town like ours of being forward-thinking in regard to the benefits of your advanced knowledge.”
“By the way, speaking of such aids to fortune, is it true that those apothecarical potions will allow me to satisfy my wife?” asked one of the grandees shyly. “If so, I would like to buy some from your colleague Kwerion. My lady has a powerful appetite, if you know what I mean, and I often despair of being able to keep her from looking elsewhere for sustenance.”
“Oh, Kwerion’s potions could no doubt help,” Lixal assured him. “But if you will send your wife to me to be examined, as a personal favor I will give her something to curb those hungers—and I will not charge you a single terce! Is that all you good folk wished, then?” he asked as the local grandee stammered his thanks.
“In fact, there is another matter,” said the aldermayor. “Small and insignificant to the great and powerful Lixal Laqavee, but large and ruinous to such as ourselves, and to the resources of our small backwater. A Deodand has taken up residence in the local cuttlestone quarry, and we can no longer work the crystal beds there, which had long been source of the greatest part of our revenue. To add to the indignity, not only does his presence inhibit the quarry’s workings, but also he sallies forth at intervals to steal our town’s babies from their cribs or seize unwary citizens walking home by night. He then takes these unfortunates back to his cavern and devours them. We have sent several doughty hunters after him, and he has defeated and digested them all. It has cast a pall over even the smallest activities in Saepia’s usually vibrant civic life.”
“And you would like me to rid you of this vile creature?” said Lixal, thinking cheerfully of the Thunderous Exhalation of Banishment. “Easily done, but owing to the danger of the work, even to a trained and experienced practitioner of the mystical arts such as myself, the price will not be insignificant.” And he quoted them an amount in gold that made the grandees blanch and the aldermayor fretfully detach one of the wool horns from his ceremonial hat.
After a great deal of bargaining, they settled on a slightly lower amount, although it was still as much as Lixal would have expected to make over the next half-year in the ordinary course of things. He pleaded weariness that evening, wanting a chance to study and memorize the banishing spell, then bade them goodnight with a promise to meet them in the morning and solve their problem.
The next day, after a leisurely breakfast with the grandee’s wife, whose curative visit had run long, Lixal made his way from his wagon in the troop’s camp—he now had one all to himself—to the aldemayor’s house, a humble but well-constructed building in the domelike local style. That gentleman stood waiting in the road with an even larger swarm of townsfolk than had accompanied him the previous night. Lixal greeted them with casual nonchalance and allowed himself to be led up the hill toward the cuttlestone quarry behind the town.
He was left at the edge of it, without guides, but with directions toward the Deodand’s cave. Lixal made his way across the floor of the silent quarry, noting with interest the tools dropped as though their users had simply run away and never returned, which had likely been the case. Dispersed among these discarded tools were the bones of both animals and people, most of which had been snapped in half so that their marrow could be accessed. The quarry itself was hung with early morning mist that mostly blocked the sun and made it hard for Lixal to see what was around him, which might have made a less confident man nervous, but he knew it took only a heartbeat to shout the single, percussive syllable which enacted the Thunderous Oath. After all, had he not been surprised by that cuckold back in Taudis, so that he had only begun to speak the word as the ax was already swinging at his head? And yet was not he, Lixal, still here, while the ax-wielder was doubtless shivering miserably in the snows of uttermost Ultramondia, wishing he had thought twice before assaulting the Dire Mage Laqavee?
“Hello!” he called now, tiring of the walk. “Is anyone here? For I am a lost traveler, plump and out of shape, wandering helplessly in your abandoned quarry.”
As he expected, a dark form came toward him out of the mists, in no great hurry, lured by the promise of such an easy meal. The Deodand, in the manner of its kind, looked much like a man except for the flat, sooty black of its skin and the bright gleam of its claws and fangs. It stopped now to inspect him through slitted, bile-yellow eyes.
“You exaggerate your own plumpness, traveler,” it said disapprovingly. “Except for that moderate roll of fat around your middle I would not call you plump at all.”
“Your eyes are as faulty as they are inhumanly strange,” cried Lixal. “There is no such roll of fat. I described myself thusly merely to lure you out so that I might dispose of you without wasting my entire morning in search.”
The Deodand looked at him curiously. “Are you a warrior, then? I confess you do not resemble it. In fact, you have the slack, well-fed look of a merchant. Do you plan to end my reign of terror here in Saepia by offering me better employment elsewhere? I confess that I feel an urge to explore other places and to eat newer, more exotic people.”
Lixal laughed in scorn. “Do not be impertinent. I am no simple merchant, but Lixal Laqavee, the Dire Mage in Late-Evening Blue. If you do not know my name already, you will have ample time to reflect on it with rue in the cold place to which I will send you.”
The Deodand moved closer, stopping only when Lixal raised a hand in warning. “Strange. I have never heard of such a magician as yourself, and other than that small talisman on your wrist, I see no evidence of power about you. If I wrong you, please forgive me, but you do not strike me as much of a wizard at all. Could you be mistaken?”
“Mistaken? Can you mistake this?” His irritation now become something closer to blind rage, Lixal waved his hand and uttered the Thunderous Exhalation of Banishment in his loudest and most impressive voice. The sky rumbled as if in terror at the great forces employed and a flash of light surrounded the Deodand as though lightning had sprung out of the creature’s carbon-colored pores. But the next instant, instead of shrinking into utter vanishment like a man falling down an endless well, as all the previous men and beasts struck with the Exhalation had done, the Deodand suddenly came sliding toward Lixal as rapidly as if the foul creature were a canal boat dragged by a magically superanimated donkey. Lixal had time only to throw his hands in front of his face and give out a brief squeak of terror, then the Deodand smacked to a sudden halt a scant two paces away from him as though the creature had run into a soft but inflexible and unseen wall.
Lixal looked between his fingers at the Deodand, whose hideous aspect was not improved a whit by close proximity. The Deodand looked back at him, an expression of bemusement on its cruel, inhuman features.
“A strange kind of banishment,” it said, taking a step back. A moment later it leaped at Lixal, fangs bared. Whatever had prevented it from reaching him before stopped it this time as well: the Deodand bounced harmlessly back from him. “Hmmm,” the creature said. “Your spell seems to have worked in reverse of the way you intended it, drawing me toward you instead of exiling me.” The Deodand turned and tried to walk away but could not get more than a step before it was again brought up short. “I am held like a leashed moon circling a planet, unable to move away from you,” it said in frustration. “But that talisman on your wrist seems to prevent me reaching you and completing my earlier intention, namely, to destroy you and eat you.” It frowned, hiding its terrifying pointed teeth behind a pouting lower lip. “I am not happy with this state of affairs, magician. Release me and I will go my way without molesting you further. You have my word.”
Lixal stared at the creature, who was so close he could smell its sour, feral scent, the odor of bones and rotting flesh that hovered in its proximity like the morning fogs that hung over the quarry. “I . . . I cannot,” he said at last. “I have not the capability to undo the spell.”
The Deodand made a noise of disgust. “As a both a wizard and Deodand-slayer, then, you are close to an utter failure. What are we to do now?” A look of calculation entered its yellow eyes. “If you cannot release me in the conventional way, you must consider removing your bracelet and letting me kill you. That way, at least one of us will live his life out the way the spirits of the void intended.”
“On the contrary!” said Lixal, piqued. “Why would I permit you to kill me? You may just as easily kill yourself—I imagine those sharp claws will work as efficaciously on your own jugular as mine. Then I can go on with my own life, which has much more to recommend it than your skulking, marrow-guzzling, baby-stealing existence.”
“Clearly we will not easily find agreement on this,” said the Deodand. “A thought occurs to me. Have you offended another wizard lately?”
Lixal thought immediately of Eliastre and the impression of dissatisfaction he had displayed at their parting, but was unwilling to broach the subject to the Deodand after such a short acquaintance. “Anything is possible in the rarefied yet contentious circles in which I travel. Why do you ask?”
“Because if so, it is likely that even death will not release us. If this misfiring of your incantation is the result of thaumaturgical malice, it may well be designed so that even if one of us dies, the other’s fortunes will not improve. For instance, I am compelled to be in your vicinity. If you die and become motionless bones, it is quite logical that I will be compelled to remain in the spot where you fell. Similarly, should you achieve the unlikely result of killing me, the corpse would probably still adhere to your person no matter where you traveled. The material shells of my tribe decay loathsomely but extremely slowly. In short, you would spend the rest of your life dragging my rotting corpse behind you.”
Lixal closed his eyes in disgust and dismay. “Eliastre!” he said, and it was a bitter curse upon his tongue. “I know this is his hand at work. He has treated me shamefully with this trick and I will have revenge on him, somehow!”
The Deodand stared at him. “What name is this?”
“It is the name of one we apparently must visit,” Lixal said. “That is our only hope to escape our unpleasantly twinned fate. Come with me.” He grimaced sadly. “I think we must steer clear of Saepia as we leave these environs. The townspeople now will have several reasons not to love me, and I will tell you honestly that they never cared much for you.”
LIKE TWO climbers bound by a rope, Lixal and the Deodand made their way through the forest and back to the camp outside town where the traveling troop was still ensconced. The players would have been at worst indifferent to the arrival of Lixal in other circumstances, but his companion filled the whole camp with unhappiness.
“Do not move,” shouted the apothecary Kwerion. “A terrible beast pursues you! Throw yourself down on the ground and we will do our best to slay it!”
“Please offer the creature no harm,” said Lixal. “Otherwise, and in the doubtful circumstance that you destroy it, I will be condemned to drag its stinking, putrefying corpse around with me for the rest of my natural days beneath our dying sun.”
When Lixal had explained what had befallen, the rest of the troop was much amazed. “You must find a sorceror of great power to help you,” said Kwerion.
“Or a sympathetic god,” suggested Ferlash, who was having trouble keeping amusement off his face.
“Surely someone as clever as yourself will find a solution,” said a girl named Minka, who had replaced the young woman who had given Lixal the bracelet in the role of the troop’s primary educational dancer. Minka had of late expressed a certain warmness toward Lixal, and though she was clearly disappointed by this latest turn of events, she seemed determined at least to keep her options open. “Then you will find your way back to us.”
“In any case,” Kwerion said authoritatively, “you must embark on your quest for salvation immediately!”
“But I think I should prefer to remain with you—the troop is headed back toward Catechumia soon,” Lixal said. “I would appreciate the security of company. I will find some way to incorporate the Deodand into our presentation. It will be a sensation! What other troop has ever boasted such a thing?”
“No troop has ever performed while infected with the Yellow Pestilence, either,” said Ferlash. “Novelty alone is not enough to promote attendance, especially when it is the novelty of horrid mortal danger, and is accompanied by such a dreadfully noisome and pervasive odor of decomposing flesh.”
The rest, even Minka, seemed to agree with the false priest’s objections, and despite Lixal’s arguments and pleading he and the Deodand were at last forced to set off on their own toward distant Catechumia with nothing more in the way of possessions than what they could carry, since the troop also saw fit to withdraw their gift to Lixal of his private wagon, as being inappropriate for one no longer appearing in their nightly dissemination of knowledge to the deserving public.
Lixal Laqavee’s first night in the wilderness was an uncomfortable one, and the idea that he was sleeping next to an inhuman creature who would happily murder him if it could did not make Lixal’s slumbers any easier. At last, in the cold hours before dawn, he sat up.
The Deodand, which did not seem to have even tried to sleep, was visible only as a pair of gleaming eyes in the darkness. “You awaken early. Have you reconsidered letting me take your life and now find yourself eager to begin your adventurous journey into That Which Lies Beyond?”
“Unequivocally, no.” Lixal built the fire back up, blowing until it filled the forest dell with reddish light, although the Deodand itself was still scarcely more than a shadow. He had no particular urge to converse with the ghastly thing, but neither did he want to sit beside it in silence until sunrise. At last, Lixal reached into the rucksack that contained most of his remaining possessions and pulled out a box which unfolded into a gaming board of polished wood covered with small holes. He then shook a handful of nail-shaped ivory spikes from a bag that had been inside the box and began to place them in holes along the outer edge of the board.
“What is that?” asked the Deodand. “An altar to your god? Some kind of religious ritual?”
“No, far more important than that,” Lixal said. “Have you ever played King’s Compass?”
The glowing eyes blinked slowly—once, twice, three times. “Played King’s Compass? What do these words mean?”
“It is a contest—a game. In my childhood home in the Misty Isles, we play it for amusement, or sometimes as a test of skill. At the latter times, money is wagered. Would you like to learn the game?”
“I have no money. I have no need of money.”
“Then we will play for the sheer pleasure of the thing.” Lixal extended his arms and set the game down an equal distance between the two of them. “As for the distance that perforce must always separate us, when you wish to reach out and move your pieces I shall lean back a compensatory amount, allowing you to manipulate the spinari.”
The Deodand stared at him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What is a spinari?”
“Not ‘a spinari’—it is plural. One is called a ‘spinar’. The collective refers to these pale spikes. For every one you move to your right, you must move another to your left. Or you may choose to move two in the same direction. Do you see?”
The Deodand was silent for long moments. “Move one to my right . . .? What is the point of it?”
Lixal smiled. “I will show you. You will learn it in no time—in the Isles even the youngest children play!”
BY THE time they reached Catechumia they had traveled together nearly a month and played several hundred games of King’s Compass, each of which Lixal had won handily. The Deodand was somewhat literal in its employment of strategy and had trouble understanding Lixal’s more spontaneous decisions. Also, the concept of bluffing and feinting had not yet impinged on the creature’s consciousness in the least. Still, the Deodand had improved to the point where the games were now genuine, if one-sided, and for that at least Lixal was grateful. The life of a man tethered to a living Deodand was bound to be a lonely one, and so his had proved in these last weeks. Solitary travelers fled them without even stopping to converse on the novelty of Lixal’s situation. Larger groups often tried to kill the Deodand, the reputation of whose kind was deservedly dark, and such groups bore scarcely more good will toward Lixal, who they deemed a traitor to his species: more than once he was forced to flee with the creature beneath a hail of fist-sized stones. Twice the barns in which they had taken refuge for the night were set on fire with them inside, and both times escape had been no certain thing.
