by Logan Jacobs
We all ignored him.
“What herb?” I asked.
“Nerisbane,” Marvincus answered. “It looks a lot like a daisy, except that the middle is red instead of yellow. I can show you an illustration later when I show you a map of the area of Kanminar where it grows. I have all the necessary information in my books.”
“Hey, how many minions you sent after this weird daisy thing so far?” Lizzy asked suspiciously.
Marvincus waved his hand in airy dismissal. “Ah, more than the lot of you have cost me this afternoon, let it suffice to say.”
Well, we’d killed five, and possibly disabled six, depending on the medical outcome of the stone one that was still stuck in the wall. Not a huge number, but as a percentage of the magician’s staff, it was probably pretty significant. So if he was willing to risk that much, then he must want this nerisbane herb pretty badly. I wondered what for.
“So, do you accept?” Marvincus inquired with a wicked gleam in his enormous turquoise eyes.
“This sounds like a shitty deal,” Lizzy said.
Ilandere spoke up unexpectedly. “But we have to do whatever it takes for Willobee’s sake.”
The lavender toad croaked its agreement.
“… Do we really though?” Elodette inquired. “I mean, we could just keep him this way, I kind of like him portable and nonverbal.”
“Ah for fuck’s sake, why the hell not,” I sighed. “We’ll do it.”
The audience erupted in cheers.
Chapter Three
When they realized that the excitement was over for the time being, the inn customers started dragging tables and chairs back into place and standing them upright again. They ordered more food and drinks to replace what had been spilled and settled down to chatter about the events they had just witnessed. One of the main topics of conversation was an ongoing debate over whether the fight had been staged, or genuine, as some people were beginning to suspect.
Then, the proprietor of The Cartwheeling Djinn, a small man with a mustache wearing red silk robes and matching slippers, hurried over to my group.
“Oh shit,” Lizzy muttered to me. “Should we skedaddle? We ain’t got no gems to pay him off with, now that Willobee went and lost ‘em all.”
This seemed like a slightly overly accusatory way for her to frame it, given the circumstances, but it was true that we no longer possessed any gold or gems, besides the three necklaces that the women were wearing. Surely we could sell those off if necessary, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
I looked around the room. A lot of the tables and chairs were missing legs. There were five corpses distributed throughout the room and the gore radius for most of them was pretty wide. There was still a stone gnome stuck in the wall which made it pretty obvious how the hole had gotten there.
I still didn’t really understand finances that well, but I didn’t think I could afford to pay for the damages.
The red-robed innkeeper waddled very purposefully right up to my nearest self.
Then, he grinned broadly and stuck out his hand to shake.
A little astonished, I quickly recovered and took his outstretched hand. “Er,” I said. “I’m really sorry about the, ah, mess we made in here--”
After pumping my hand enthusiastically up and down, the innkeeper used his hand aggressively to wave away my apology. “No, no, no, not to worry. We might clean up some more, ah, organic bits-- you know, don’t want to get it in people’s food and drink and all that. But other than that, I like what you’ve done with the place. I really do. I like to think that The Cartwheeling Djinn has always had more of a distinctive aesthetic than the competition, but now, we’ll really leave them in the dust! Tonight has been such a hit, we’ll be the talk of the town, and I think with a few further renovations, we can rebrand this place as a themed establishment and really maintain the sales momentum. What do you think?”
“Uhhh,” I said.
“What a dandy idea,” Lizzy crooned. “And we’re your star attraction, hmmm?”
The innkeeper’s eyes roved from Lizzy’s pretty green-eyed face to her wolf ears and wolf tail to her ballooning cleavage, and he coughed and flushed bright red. “My goodness, yes, of course,” he exclaimed. He ogled Florenia and the centaurs too. “Every one of you is extraordinarily marketable. Extraordinarily! How many, ah, acts like this do you have in your repertoire?”
“They don’t have a repertoire!” Marvincus wailed. Lizzy had finally released him but he continued to hang around dejectedly, I guess he was waiting to show us the maps and diagrams that would lead us to the nerisbane of Kanminar Forest. “They’re not--”
“An infinite quantity,” Florenia replied. “Our acts are not scripted. They’re all improvised.”
“Oho! Marvelous,” the innkeeper said. “Well, uh, let’s talk numbers over a mug, then? I was thinking about one performance a week, with a starting commission of ten percent--”
“Oh, we’re not--” I began.
“We’re not sure yet whether this place suits our tastes, we can be a bit fussy you understand, just imagine the kinda offers we’re fielding all the time,” Lizzy interrupted slyly. “From your competitors and all. So no one’s gonna be discussing any numbers yet, that’s not our policy. First, we stay a few nights. See how we feel about the treatment we get. Then, if everything’s satisfactory, then we might get around to talking numbers, ya know?”
“Oh, yes, of course, I understand completely,” the innkeeper assured her as he bobbed his head. “I shall have our finest suites prepared for you at once. What exactly are your, er, preferences for sleeping arrangements? Simply so that I shall know the number of rooms required, and which rooms to equip with masculine and feminine amenities?”
“Four rooms should do fine,” I said. “One men’s room, one ladies’ room, and three of them, ah, equipped for both genders, if you don’t mind.”
Lizzy and Florenia had both become my lovers almost immediately after I met each of them. With Ilandere, that was a more recent development. I didn’t know whether she’d choose to share a room with one of me tonight or continue to stay in a room with her handmaiden as she usually did, but I wanted to give her the option, just in case.
As for Willobee, I usually gave him his own room, but under the circumstances, I thought it was a better idea for him to stay with one of me. What if a cat got in or something? I didn’t know whether cats ate toads or not, but all kinds of things that weren’t usually safety hazards suddenly became potentially life threatening when one of your friends got turned into a lavender amphibian that could fit in the palm of one hand. I wasn’t sure whether Toad Willobee even retained the use of his natural defense mechanism, his acidic projectile vomit that could eat through flesh and bone. And even if he did, how much vomit could he possibly produce, given his new size? Probably not more than a spoonful.
“Of course, whatever you wish, sir,” the innkeeper agreed with an exaggerated wink as he eyed the four women, probably in an attempt to deduce who was sleeping with whom. “Ah, if you don’t mind my asking, what are your names?”
“I’m Vander,” I said and then pointed to each of my companions in turn. “This is Lizzy, this is Florenia, this is Ilandere, this is Elodette, and… this is… was…. is Willobee. Sort of.”
“That is Willobee!” screeched Marvincus. “In his truest form!”
“And your, ah, brothers?” the innkeeper frowned in confusion as he stared around at the other three of me.
I grinned and said in unison, “All Vander.”
“Oh, I understand now!” the innkeeper said. “It’s your surname. The Vander Brothers. That’s catchy. I like it. Well, I’ll have your deluxe suites ready for you all in a jiffy!” And with that, he bustled off.
“Free rooms and the royal treatment, thanks to me,” Lizzy summed it up.
“We just lied to that man, though,” Ilandere said worriedly. “He thinks we’re going to stay and partner with his business. Won’t he be terribly dis
appointed when we leave?”
“It’s exactly the kind of selfish deception Willobee would practice,” Marvincus snarled.
“Eh, we already handed him some great publicity,” Lizzy said without concern.
“Our next act will be a disappearing act,” Florenia said.
“Okay, Sparkles, show us where your weird fucking daisies are so we can get on with this,” Lizzy commanded Marvincus. “We got bigger fish than you to fry. Much bigger.”
The magenta-bearded Willobee lookalike sullenly led us back behind the curtains of the stage and then out the back exit. In the courtyard of the inn by the stables, he had a wagon parked. It was not a subtle wagon to say the least, and it was immediately obvious whom it belonged to. The canvas covering was dyed magenta with silver stars embroidered on it, and the wooden part was painted gold. I thought it was the most horrifically tacky vehicle I had ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on.
The inside was crowded with an eclectic assortment of objects including wands, crystal balls, guillotines, and shimmering costumes in every imaginable hue and texture. Marvincus unlocked a trunk full of scrolls, sifted through it until he found the scroll he wanted, and handed it to my nearest self while he closed the trunk back up.
Then he lifted up a hollow mask shaped like the head of a unicorn to reveal a stack of books, pulled out the book in the middle, and placed the hollow unicorn head back down over the rest. He flipped through the book until he found the page he wanted, and then he handed it to Lizzy, or to be more accurate she snatched it out of his hands as soon as she saw him pause.
I unfurled the scroll to reveal a map, on a much smaller scale than the one that Lord Kiernan had shown us of the entire kingdom of Ambria. First, I found the pale blotch that represented the desert my companions and I had just crossed with Danazar’s caravan, then I found the dot marked “Bjurna,” and a few miles south of that a large green blotch was labeled “Kanminar Forest.”
Marvincus reached out with a peacock quill that he had produced from somewhere and dashed off a tiny red X just a little ways within the border of the Kanminar Forest blotch. “About a mile in,” he said. “East of that creek that runs from here. Nerisbane probably grows in some other parts of the forest too, but this is the only place I know of that has such a high concentration of patches.”
Another of my selves looked over Lizzy’s shoulder as she examined a detailed diagram of a plant that did indeed look much like a daisy, with some minor differences, such as the red stigma and anthers and the slightly more pointed shape of the petals.
The accompanying description read,
“Nerisbane. Scientific name: bellis atropa. Location: Commonly found in the midwestern and northeastern regions of Ambria. Habitat: Temperate forests with highly acidic soil, prefers shade over direct sunlight. Uses: Contains the compound kirinyet, which, when distilled, can be used to create performance-enhancing drugs that increase speed, strength, stamina, and aggression and enable short-term transfiguration of both the cross-species and mass alteration categories.”
“Any questions?” Marvincus asked stiffly.
“Yeah,” Lizzy said immediately. “What the fuck you want this stuff so bad for, anyway?”
“I use it to equip my bodyguards, obviously,” Marvincus replied. “Once you attain a certain level of greatness, attracting a few enemies here and there becomes inevitable. And gnomish anatomy is not naturally… combat conducive.”
“But you claim to be a god of transgig-- transmic-- transigurnations, don’t you, on your poster?” Lizzy demanded. “So how come you need some kind of drug for that anyway? Why can’t you just snap your fingers at ‘em?”
The lavender toad, cradled in Ilandere’s hands, croaked loudly and contemptuously.
“Well, I mean god in the, ah, colloquial sense,” Marvincus said as he glared at Willobee, “but anyway, why would you think that a god’s powers and the powers of nature could not combine to create something more powerful than either alone? You don’t have to create something out of thin air to be a god. You can manipulate what already exists in ways that are unimaginable to mere mortals.”
“What part of the plant does the compound come from?” I asked. “Do you need the roots or just the petals or what?”
“I need the stems and leaves,” Marvincus said. “The roots are no use to me because nerisbane cannot be planted in a pot or a garden, it does not grow anywhere except for in its chosen natural habitat. If it were less rare or could be farmed, the world might be a very different place.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “So, we bring you back a bushel of this stuff, and then you’ll turn Willobee back to exactly the way he was before, right?”
“Of course,” Marvincus said. “I am a gnome of my word, unlike that toad.”
“Whatever,” Lizzy scoffed. “Hard to take you seriously when you run around calling yourself a god even though you ain’t one.”
Marvincus ignored her. “I shall await you here for three days and three nights. If, by the end of that time frame, you do not return, I shall assume that the forest has claimed you, and Willobee will just have to make the best of his new form, which in some ways is a significant improvement upon his old one, and certainly a kinder fate than he deserves.”
“Well, I’ll go grab some nerisbane and be back in a few hours.” I pointed to a large woven basket in a corner of Marvincus’ crowded wagon. “That a bushel? Can I borrow it?”
Marvincus glanced over and shrugged. “Very well. It is not very expensive, I can afford the loss of it if your arrogance proves… misplaced.”
“I’m coming with you,” Lizzy said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “There are four of me. Two of me will go, and if I lose those bodies, I can easily just replace them. But you only have one body. So I’m not taking you somewhere that supposedly no one comes back out of.”
“It’s just another forest,” Lizzy said. “Humans only fear forests because they don’t understand the wild things there, but I do. I’m one of them. People are probably just getting munched by bears or something. And past a certain time of night, bears run the other way when they see me coming. So let’s just wait a few hours and then head out, and you can just try to keep up with me.”
“I’d really rather go by myself,” I said. “Just in case it’s something worse than bears.”
“Don’t care how much of a badass you are or whether you’re a fucking god, you still don’t know the forest like I do,” Lizzy said stubbornly. “I seen the map too. So I’m going whether you like it or not, all you can choose is whether we go together or not.”
I knew the she-wolf wasn’t bluffing. She was loyal to me, but not necessarily obedient, as Florenia and Ilandere were. And once she set her mind on something she could be stubborn as hell. At the drummer encampment, she had run off to provoke the drummers into a fight against my wishes, and managed to kill half of them and get herself tangled up in a net trap before I caught up with her.
I sighed and gave in. “All right. We’ll go together in a few hours, once it’s dark enough for you to morph.”
“If Lizzy is going to accompany you, then so shall I,” Florenia said.
“Me too,” Ilandere said.
“You two would be useless,” Elodette said rather rudely but not inaccurately, “but I could be of help, so it would make more sense for me to go.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “I want you three to help me by staying here and looking after Willobee. Also, two of me will be staying right here with you. So you won’t even miss me. But Lizzy is going to be in her wolf form, so we’re going to be moving fast. It would just slow down the mission if everyone tagged along.”
Florenia narrowed her hazel eyes and calculated for a moment. I knew she didn’t want to be outdone by Lizzy or for her devotion to me and my quest to be in any doubt, but I knew she also wasn’t displeased by the prospect of just spending the night in one of The Cartwheeling Djinn’s deluxe suites with one of my selves, rather tha
n tramping around the forest in a big group. Eventually she said, “As you wish, Qaar’endoth.”
“I know the forest even better than the wolf does,” Elodette said. “She roams there, but I lived there.”
“You lived in one small forest, I’ve visited a bunch of them,” Lizzy retorted. “And I go alone. You always hung around in a big herd. And--”
“Hey hey hey, it’s not a contest,” I said. “It’s just a matter of where everyone can be the most useful. And Elodette, I’d like it if you could stay here and be available to guard Willobee.”
That wasn’t just a pretext. With only two of me at the inn, if one were to happen to get distracted with Florenia, and the other were to happen to get distracted with Ilandere, well… I didn’t want to leave my little lavender toad buddy unattended in his vulnerable state.
“I’m not a babysitter,” Elodette grumbled, but she shrugged her well-muscled shoulders. “Well, I guess I don’t care who picks your stupid flowers. So if you want me to stay here I will.”
So it was settled. We left a sulking Marvincus in his wagon alone and headed out to wander the colorful streets of Bjurna for a few hours.
We sampled spices, watched fire-swallowers and snake charmers with dazzling talents that nonetheless could not compare to those demonstrated by Danazar’s caravan members during the magical nights of our desert crossing, and admired the towering graceful palm trees and the ancient fortified walls and watchtowers of the city. Ever since Willobee had turned into a toad and the pouch of gems and other gambling winnings that he carried had been lost into thin air, we had no currency with which to buy anything that the venders attempted to push on us, but the women seemed content with just looking and touching, especially since they already had their necklaces, which shimmered even more bewitchingly by moonlight as darkness fell than they had by sunlight during the afternoon.
Eventually we found our way back to The Cartwheeling Djinn, where we were hailed as returning heroes by the other customers, since many of them had been present for our earlier “performance” with Marvincus’ bodyguards. The stone gnome I had stuck in the wall that seemed to have been forgotten by all was by now loudly snoring in a manner reminiscent of Willobee.