The bed started its piteous, juddering sobs once more.
All at once there was silence again, but this time the silence of peace.
“What happened?” said Sir Tombin.
“Oh, the effects of the speech tinsel wore off,” said Samzing airily. “Clever stuff, isn’t it? I wonder why I made it in the first place.”
He regarded the purple bag ruminatively, as if contemplating the wisdom of giving the junk another dose.
“I think we’d better be on our way,” said Sir Tombin firmly. “Keep the rest of it for another time, eh? Save it. Never know when a dash of speech tinsel won’t come in handy, if you understand me.”
Samzing gave a little shrug of agreement and stowed the bag away in his robe. By now it was almost evening, and soon they’d have to start looking for somewhere to spend the night. As they picked their way through and around the ever more numerous piles of trash, Sagandran was uneasily aware of being the focus of angry, jealous, accusatory or betrayed gazes. Guiltily, he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him, as if that hid him from the sight of all the broken toys, appliances and furniture.
At last, they came to a place where the ground was relatively clear. Lots of broken wooden boxes formed a ring, as if they were waiting to watch a sporting event. The boxes were far more pleasant to look at than the rest of the contents of the Great Junkyard, and they smelled better too; except when a breeze swept the stench of decay across the great plain of garbage in their direction, it was almost possible for the companions to forget where they were. A piece of foul-smelling paper flew right into Sagandran’s face.
“Yuck,” he said and was just about to throw it aside when he noticed something. It appeared to be a very old “wanted” poster. It was hard to make out the picture, but it reminded Sagandran of a wolf or perhaps a fox. The text had been almost worn away over time and bleached by the sun for centuries, but finally, with some difficulty, he made it out.
“Who is or was this Captain Rustbane?” Sagandran asked, cleaning his face with the sleeve of his jacket.
“Hm,” Samzing mused. “Yes, I think I’ve read about it somewhere. It’s more of a Sagaria legend, really.”
“I remember reading about him too – in a history book,” Sir Tombin added. “A real knave of the most unspeakable ill repute, that fellow was. According to the legend, Rustbane, who was a pirate captain, was apparently killed by a hamster.”
“Actually, I think it was a lemming,” Samzing said. “Anyway, throw that thing away, Sagandran. It must have germs on it. I’m sure you can read about it in a book somewhere.” Sir Tombin looked around him. “Not ideal,” summarized Sir Tombin, dropping his backpack to the ground and encouraging the rest to do the same, “but considerably better than it could have been. We’re making good speed, even if that may not seem to be so. Tomorrow, we should be able to cross the Junk Mountains and be on to the Never Plains. By then we’ll be almost to the city of Qarnapheeran, and then …”
He stopped, reluctant to say the name of where they’d go after that. The Shadow World. Even the thought of it was frightening. The name sounded among them as clearly as if Sir Tombin had spoken it, sending a sense of despair deep within them.
“We’ll have to face it when we get there,” said Sagandran stoutly. “The more we try to banish the idea from our minds now, the worse the reality will be.”
“At least we’ll all be facing it together,” murmured Perima quietly.
Flip had climbed down the back of Sir Tombin’s cape to stand on the ground. “One for all and all for one,” he cried proudly. “Didn’t I read that somewhere?”
Sagandran, despite the solemnity of the moment, grinned at his little friend. “I think you probably did.” It wasn’t until much later, waking briefly in the night, that he wondered how a rodent from Mishmash could have gotten hold of a copy of an Earthworld novel, let alone read it.
Sir Tombin coughed shyly. “Firewood,” he said. “I need some volunteers to gather firewood, and don’t” – he raised a webbed hand in admonition as Perima, Sagandran and Flip moved to obey – “even think of breaking up any old bits of furniture to burn, do you hear?”
Astonishingly, there proved to be trees standing amid the long rolling foothills of the Junk Mountains. Quite a few had given up the struggle to survive in soil that must have been polluted many times over by the centuries’ accumulation of trash, so it didn’t take too long for Perima and Sagandran to find a big armful of dead branches apiece.
When they got back to the camp, Flip was just arriving from another direction. He was staggering under the weight of something he’d found, but was bright with a grin of satisfaction.
“What in heaven’s name is that?” said Samzing.
“Treasure,” said Flip. “There’s all sorts of treasure out there, if you have the wits to see it for what it is.”
“That’s not treasure,” said Samzing, stooping to peer at the object the rodent was carrying. “It’s a rusty old tin can.”
“Right,” said Flip, “and wrong. It’s a rusty old unopened tin can.”
“I’d leave it unopened if I were you,” said Sir Tombin with a chuckle. “Whatever’s in there is probably a century or two old. You’re likely to give yourself food poisoning just thinking about it.”
“Imagine the smell,” said Perima, dumping her load of wood and sitting down. “You really are the most revolting little creature, Flip.” She reached across and rubbed the fur on the top of his head to take the sting out of her words.
Flip giggled. “I’m going to keep it anyway.” He lugged the can over to Sagandran’s open bag and, grunting with the strain, heaved it in.
“You’re just giving Sagandran extra weight to carry,” said Perima more severely.
“Oh, it’s all right,” said Sagandran, seeing Flip’s sudden crestfallen look. “It can’t be heavy. I don’t mind.”
Sir Tombin soon had a fire going, but they had nothing to cook on it. They ate the last of the stale bread and apples from Snowmane’s saddle bags, trying to persuade themselves that the food was delicious and filling. Samzing went into a long monologue about the gastronomic wonders to be found in Qarnapheeran. If his intention had been to take their minds off the gnawing pangs of hunger, he failed miserably.
“Oh, shut up,” Perima snapped at him eventually. She was investigating the apple core in her hand, as if just staring at it might make it more appetizing.
“Groig hmffle dreumhh,” said Flip’s muffled voice from inside Sagandran’s backpack.
“Translate, please,” said Samzing drily.
Flip popped his head out.
“I’ve nearly finished getting this can open,” he said proudly. “I’ll bet you whatever’s inside it is going to be really scrumptious, you’ll see.”
“How?” said Sagandran.
“By tasting it, of course,” replied Flip, pausing on his way back into the pack.
“No, I meant, how are you getting the can open?”
“With my teeth, how else?”
“Doesn’t it, well—?”
“We grow tough teeth in Mishmash,” said Flip. He made it sound as though his teeth were ready to challenge their teeth to a fight any day.
“It’s a long way to the nearest dentist,” remarked Perima to the empty air.
“Fusspot,” mumbled Flip, vanishing again. “Women. Hon-est-lee!”
“You know,” said Sir Tombin, looking nervous for once, “I really think perhaps we ought to ask our diminutive friend to desist from this enterprise. We have no conception of what may reside within that aluminum container he is so assiduously endeavoring to perforate.”
It took Sagandran a moment to interpret this statement in his mind. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I think you’re right. It could be a sort of Pandora’s box, releasing plague and pestilence, just for starters.”
“Who’s this Pandora?” asked Perima pointedly.
Before Sagandran could begin to explain, there was a high sque
al of triumph from the interior of his backpack.
“Done it.”
The stillness that followed was heavy with disappointment. Then, “It’s empty,” said Flip, sounding cheated.
He rolled the open can out of the backpack in front of him.
“If it was empty,” said Perima, “how come it weighed so much more before you opened it?”
Flip looked at her, then looked at the can again and scratched his head.
“Maybe it wasn’t so empty after—” he began, then his jaw dropped.
“Huh?” said Sagandran, also staring.
A little cloud of green smoke they hadn’t noticed before, just next to the open flap of the backpack, was slowly growing, its color slowly darkening. As they continued to watch, it began to swirl and change shape until suddenly, as if it had always been that way, it was a tiny man, almost exactly the same height as the can was. The lower part of his body was still a waft of smoke, but the upper part was clad in a green robe made of some material that it was hard to focus on. He had a small, somewhat untidy goatee which was extended at the chin into a knotted curl, and he wore a battered turban with an incongruously large, dull-faceted jewel in its center. An air of disreputability hung about him, which was even thicker than the smoke.
He looked around at each of the companions in turn and yawned, then made a clumsy bow.
“At your service you will find me, and I can grant you wishes three. For as I’m sure you all can see, I am the djinn of this can of, uh, well, I guess it could have been tea.”
“Was that supposed to be a poem?” said Sagandran, amazed not so much by the abrupt appearance of a djinn in their midst as by how appalling the verse was. It seemed he’d become sufficiently inured to the strangeness of Sagaria that the magical was becoming commonplace; but bad verse was bad verse, wherever you were in the three worlds.
The djinn, looking embarrassed, put a hand up to his turban and fiddled with it, much as Sagandran often saw Perima fiddling with a lock of her hair.
“At poetry, alack, alas, I was the last djinn in the class,” he explicated. “When other djinns had meter gotten, I still was rhyming something rotten.”
“Is it possible for you to not speak in rhymes?” said Perima, wincing.
“Well, ne’er say do and ne’er say die, but for a fair maid, I can try,” announced the djinn chivalrously. “Oops. Dammit. Rhymed again.”
“About those three wishes?” said Samzing languidly, as if he were only mildly interested.
The djinn turned toward him. “For your orders I’m athirst, so who will make me wish the first?”
“Me, me, me,” cried Flip and began jumping up and down. “A gooseberry! No, wait, wait! The biggest gooseberry in the world.”
“If that is your command, master.” The djinn began murmuring in some strange language. There was a sudden poof of smoke. On the ground in front of them lay a …
“Dry little raisin?” Flip exclaimed.
“Well, ahem,” the djinn began.
“What kind of a lousy djinn are you anyhow?”
“Well, as you’ve noticed, I’m just a tin-can djinn, master.”
“Well, you can consider yourself a canned djinn from now on.”
“Well, master, if you’ll allow me to explain. I can grant only small, insignificant wishes. So, your wishes have to be in proportion, you see.”
“So, that means you cannot conjure up the biggest, most magnificent palace in the world for me?”
“Um, no, more like a shabby-looking outdoor lav. Without a door of course … and, er, walls.”
“More like a hole in the ground, you mean?” said Flip, narrowing his eyes.
“That about sums it up,” admitted the djinn with a shameful bow. He grasped at the turban to stop it from falling off his head.
“This stinks!” Flip spat on the ground.
“Well, the can did,” the djinn amended. “It was wonderful to be released from that smelly can. You can imagine, thousand-year-old fish sauce that …”
“I meant you stink!” Flip said. “I should never have opened that rotten can in the first place.”
“Now, now.” Sir Tombin diplomatically intervened when it looked like it might soon get violent – and extremely so. “Just two questions, Mr. Djinn.”
“Yes, Master?”
“Can you take us to Qarnapheeran?”
“Um, not as such. I could try to move the little master.” He jerked his head in Flip’s direction. The djinn tried to ignore Flip’s glare. “But he would have to assist me.”
“You mean he would actually have to walk a few yards himself?”
“Er, yes, but I would cheer him on all the way,” the djinn said eagerly.
“All right, next question: can you kill Arkanamon for us? The necromancer who dwells in the Shadow World?”
“Arka-who?”
“I think we get the picture here,” Samzing said with a sigh. “What exactly can you do?”
“Well, practical jokes have been my strongest suit, I’ve always thought. Extremely loud and fake farts have been my specialty.”
“So, you know nothing about the Shadow World?” Perima asked.
“I was too hungover the day we had the lecture to go to it, and none of my classmates would lend me their notes afterward.”
“All of the others got sent off to live in beautiful cut-crystal bottles and serve great monarchs and mighty treasures. They can spout epic poetry to make your head spin, but me? When it came to graduation day and I was the only one who hadn’t passed, the dean of the djinn university said I was good for nothing except guarding junk. So they stuck me in a rusty old can and put me here in the Great Junkyard, but not even the junk wanted to release me. I’ve been stuck in that accursed can ever since.”
“Until I came along,” said Flip bitterly. “You’re not the only natural-born loser around here.”
“You know,” said Perima thoughtfully, “we’re going to the Shadow World anyway, with or without your help, and we’re going via Qarnapheeran. Why don’t we take you along with us? At Qarnapheeran, maybe you’ll be given a second chance to study for djinnhood. That would be something to boast about to the other djinns, that you’d learned your craft at Qarnapheeran, no less.”
“But I’ve already lied and told them I took a postgraduate degree in djinnery at Qarnapheeran,” moaned the djinn. “I told you, I’m a swindler.”
But there was a trace of hope in his voice.
“Yes,” said Sagandran, cashing in while the going was good. He didn’t think he could bear any more of the little spirit’s histrionic misery. “You could come to Qarnapheeran with us. It’d be a tonic to have you with us.”
Perima frowned at him.
“Djinn and tonic,” he explained to her. “Get it?”
“I already had,” she said sourly, her frown remaining.
“Do you mean that?” said the djinn in a thin, tremulous voice.
“Of course we do,” Sir Tombin replied. He looked around at the others with an expression of resolute cheerfulness. “We’ll be glad to have you along.”
The djinn pulled himself half-upright. “But what use would you have for me?”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll think of something,” said Perima with a smile.
Suddenly the djinn, back on his feet again, was smiling as well. Sagandran thought he’d never seen a grin so all-encompassing.
“You won’t have to go back into that old can either,” said Samzing, rummaging in his robe. “I think I have, I could have sworn I had … ah yes, here it is.”
The wizard produced a big, shining green bottle.
“Here’s a new home for you, and it’s the right color too.”
Sagandran had never suspected that crusty Samzing could be so sentimental. It worried him.
The djinn clapped in delight. “It’s beautiful. At last, a real home.” He stared up at Samzing with something akin to worship in his eyes. “Finally, a home that doesn’t reek of rotten fish.�
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“There’s one condition attached to my giving you this, this palace,” said Samzing, his eyes twinkling.
“What’s that, oh master?” said the djinn adoringly. “Anything. Anything!”
“That you never again speak to us in that atrocious rhyme of yours.”
“Done. It’s a blessing. I’ve always hated having to think up verse the whole time. It’s an obligation placed upon us djinns, you know, but now you’ve released me from it. Oh, thank you, master. Double thank you.”
“And the next time your bottle is opened, I would very much like to hear your most loudest and most drawn out, er, farticus maximus.”
“Oh really? You will be very impressed. I will exceed myself. Well, that’s settled then. Please let me have a look at my new home.”
“Go right ahead,” Samzing said mildly.
The djinn slowly dissolved into a wisp of green smoke and, with the sound of an inverse burp, vanished into the neck of the bottle Samzing held. The wizard produced a cork from somewhere and sealed the bottle with an air of finality.
“There,” he said. “Now we can have a bit of peace.” He tucked the bottle back into his robe.
“What a stroke of good fortune you happened to have an empty bottle with you,” said Perima. “And how very kind of you to give it to him.”
“Um,” said Sagandran, eyeing the wizard suspiciously. “What used to be in that bottle?”
“Ah, that’s not important,” said Samzing. “It contained something that I sometimes use as an ingredient when making certain kinds of potions. All you need to know is that it was empty when we needed it to be. Well, almost empty anyway.”
“What was in it?” Sagandran persisted.
The wizard coughed.
“What?”
“There’s nothing actually wrong,” the wizard said, looking up at the stars, “with the smell of rotting egg fumes. Is there?”
CHAPTER 9
QARNAPHEERAN
he early dawn was still cold and gray. Morning fog floated ghost-like around the piles of junk. Sir Tombin was sleeping fitfully, but the others were all awake; they looked as if they’d spent as restless a night as Sagandran had. He wasn’t sure if it was fear of the Shadow World that had so disturbed his slumber or just the chill of the night – probably a mixture of both. He shook his head annoyedly. He could remember having nightmares, but already their details had evaporated.
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