Sagaria

by John Dahlgren

  When the Lime Jello Pudding thought struck, it was with a ssssspppplatttt. It was so noisome and loud, Flip thought that his eardrums might never recover, and even if they did, they would do so before his stomach did.

  Casspol, the bigger and fractionally more brutal of the two Shadow Knights, never had a chance. Robes, armor, weaponry, bones, blood, guts, flesh and all, he was instantly rendered into the same consistency as the Lime Jello Pudding thought that had crashed down upon him. Almost every last pulverized shred of him was squirted straight downward through the cracks in the mud by the force of the impact. All there was left, as the Lime Jello Pudding wobblingly reconstituted itself, was an unpleasant odor that almost immediately dissipated.

  “Such is the fate of all who dare tempt the wrath of the Adventurer Extraordinaire!” cried Flip, trying to keep the tremble out of his squeak.

  The remaining Shadow Knight, Tanktite, was staring down aghast at himself. The few blobs of his comrade in arms that had failed to be hammered into the ground had jetted sideways to coat Tanktite’s front in a thin, oily iridescent layer of slime.

  His face a terrible green and red mask, he turned toward Flip, the architect of this sudden devastation. Swinging his sword in a whistling arc, he raced toward his small tormentor.

  “Die!” was the solitary word that came from his lips before his brain realized that it was no longer connected to the rest of his body.

  While his body collapsed with an ungainly crash, his helmeted head kept going, bouncing and rolling until it came to a soggy halt at the base of the wall, directly beneath Flip.

  Flip looked up and saw the Frogly Knight regarding the gore-smeared blade of Xaraxeer with an expression almost of regret.

  “Wow,” said Flip. “That was quick.”

  “You spared me having to deal with the other of this craven pair likewise,” said Sir Tombin sadly, “but I would rather have had to slay neither. I have no taste for killing, even when the dead are as vile as these two were.”

  Flip’s spirits, which had been bubbling, slowly sobered as it dawned on him that he had deliberately taken a man’s life. Sir Tombin was right. That was never a cause for jubilation. If one crowed about it, laughed about it or triumphed in it, then one was no better than the Shadow Knights themselves. Once again his stomach jerked queasily, and he looked around for somewhere discreet to throw up.

  He was distracted from his nausea by the Lime Jello Pudding.

  “Always glad to be of service,” it said to Flip with what he supposed was a grin, “but I’m one of those ideas a person can’t have more than once …”

  And who would want to? thought Flip feverishly.

  “… so, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”

  With a sort of protoplasmic nod to each of the companions in turn – even to Memo, who had at last found the courage to poke his head out of Samzing’s pocket – and with something that might have been a bow, but might just have been a structural malfunction, toward the saved girl, the Lime Flavor Jello Pudding turned away and lurched off in a torrent of vaguely lavatorial sucking noises. Soon it was lost to them over the brow of a small upwelling of the land.

  Flip discovered that he’d been holding his breath for rather too long a time and, trying to make it as unobvious to the others as possible what he was doing, he let it out before he fainted. The girl they’d saved was looking at him with the kind of adoring gaze he wished Jinnia could be taught.

  “There, there,” Sir Tombin was saying to her comfortingly. “You’re all right now. You’re among friends.”

  It was obvious to Flip that she comprehended not one word of what Sir Tombin had said. Even so, the tone of Sir Tombin’s voice was communicating itself to her, and still she regarded Flip with a disconcertingly stark devotion.

  “What’s your name, child?” added the Frogly Knight, affectionately pushing a hank of her greasy hair back from her forehead.

  Hearing the question in his voice at last, she turned away from Flip and looked up at the wearily smiling face of Sir Tombin.

  “You don’t understand a thing we’re saying to you, do you?” he said gently.

  Her face remained blank.

  “That’s all right. It’s not important.” He cupped her chin in his webbed hand and smiled more broadly at her.

  She must have liked what she saw in his eyes, because she threw her arms as far as they would go around his ample belly and hugged him.

  “Just a child,” said Sir Tombin to Samzing, his voice betraying the fact that he was near tears. “Just a child.”

  “We must take her with us,” declared the wizard. “She can ride Snowmane. Perhaps we’ll be able to find her parents, if she has any, or at least someone who knows her and is willing to take her in.” He too had a certain catch in his speech that bespoke strong emotion.

  Sir Tombin tried again. “We’re your friends,” he said to the girl. “It’s dangerous here. You must come with us.”

  “Maybe she’ll follow us if we just start to walk,” suggested Flip.

  “Good idea,” said Sir Tombin, nodding.

  He patted the girl clumsily on the shoulder, and mimed himself walking toward the wall, where Flip stood.

  Her mouth formed a little “o” of pleasure as she looked back toward the one she obviously regarded as her savior. Letting out a little giggle that was almost frightening, coming as it did from her tear-stained face, she ran to him, her arms open. Before he knew it, she had scooped him up from his perch and was holding him next to her cheek.

  “Steady on, steady on,” said Flip nervously, wriggling in her grasp.

  Samzing laughed. “You’re her hero, Flip,” he said. “Might as well enjoy it while you can.”

  Sir Tombin was looking down at the armor of the Shadow Knight he’d beheaded.

  “The rest of you,” he said, “take the girl back to our fireside and introduce her to Snowmane, will you? There’s something I have to do first. I’ll be with you in only a few moments.”

  Glancing at him, Flip saw distaste and determination chasing each other across Sir Tombin’s broad face.

  “Yes,” he said, suddenly fathoming what the Frogly Knight was about to do. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

  When they got back to where they’d been sitting, they discovered that the paltry fire Sir Tombin had lit had gone out. Snowmane was delighted to see them, and the strange, dirt-streaked girl was equally glad to see the stallion, With a whimper of joy she put Flip down on the ground (with, he noted sourly, a distinct lack of ceremony) and ran to the horse, putting the side of her head against Snowmane’s big, muscular shoulder.

  “Guess you’ve suddenly become yesterday’s hero, Flip,” said Samzing sardonically. “Women are like that, you know,” he added and smiled.

  Within a few moments, Snowmane evidently decided that while this newcomer wasn’t Perima, she was an adequate substitute for the time being. His big lips slurping, he licked her outstretched palm.

  Huh, thought Flip. Samzing’s right. Women!

  A clanking noise came out of the darkness. Sir Tombin had accomplished what he set out to accomplish. Flip turned to watch as a tall, armored figure of what looked, to all intents and purposes, like a Shadow Knight emerged from the gloom. In one steel-gloved hand, it held a green tunic and a hat with a feather longer than a man’s arm. Sir Tombin had done his best to clean the worst of the gore off the armor with the dead man’s robe, which he’d discarded, but a smear of dark blood still besmirched the silver breastplate.

  Neither Samzing nor Flip were disturbed by the apparition, having guessed Sir Tombin’s plan, but the girl was plainly terrified. Cowering against Snowmane’s flank, she put her fist in her mouth to smother a scream.

  It must be like a nightmare for her, thought Flip, forgiving her for the slight she’d delivered. She thought the Shadow Knights were gone from her life for good, or at least for a while, and now apparently one of them still lives and is seeking her out.

  With a gre
at display of nonchalance he trotted over to Sir Tombin’s suited figure and looked up at it.

  “Greetings, Sir Tombin,” he said in a friendly manner, glancing over at the girl to make sure she could see his lack of concern.

  She slowly lowered her hand, but still looked ready to turn and flee at the slightest provocation.

  “Zort varam?” she said, pointing at the armored knight.

  “Padano nim vada,” squeaked a new voice. Memo. Flip could see a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles peering out of Samzing’s robe and deduced that the memorizer must be behind them.

  The spectacles turned toward Sir Tombin and himself.

  “She asked if you were a Shadow Knight,” the memorizer explained. “I told her you weren’t, that you were a friend. That we are all her friends.”

  “You understand the language she speaks?” exclaimed Samzing.

  “Yes,” said Memo, twisting around to stare up at the wizard’s face. “She speaks a crude and old-fashioned form of the ancient language, Tamshadi. It was the original tongue shared by Sagaria and the Shadow World, when Tamshado belonged to both. According to the books in the library at Qarnapheeran, it has been extinct for many hundreds of years. Obviously, the books are wrong.”

  “And you learned it from the books?”

  “As much as I could, yes. There was a phonetics guide in one of them, but I’ve no doubt my pronunciation must sound pretty barbarous to her. Still, as you’ve seen, she and I can understand one another.”

  “Then,” said Sir Tombin, his voice sounding echoey from within the dead Shadow Knight’s helmet, “ask her who she is and where she comes from.”

  Memo let loose with a jabber of conflicting syllables while Flip noticed, with a sort of sick fascination, that the helmet Sir Tombin wore wasn’t actually joined onto or articulated in any way with the neck of the suit of armor. The edge between the two was jagged, where Xaraxeer had sheared through it.

  Gulp, he thought.

  The girl responded to Memo with a similarly incomprehensible stream of sounds. After she’d gone silent, he turned to his friends again.

  “She tells me she doesn’t have a home of any kind. She did have once, but she has no idea how long ago that was. One day, the Shadow Knights came and seized both her parents and dragged them off to the slave mines, unless they simply slaughtered her parents somewhere out of sight – she doesn’t know which. The mines are where the Shadow Master gets all the metal he needs for his armor and his weapons. The Shadow Knights took all of the grown-ups in her village except the ones who were too old, whom they slew where they stood. The children of the village turned and fled – as far as I can make out there were about half a dozen, but there are a few words she uses that are unclear to me. Since then, they’ve been running, hiding from the Shadow Knights and living off the land as best they can, which as you can imagine is not very well. The Shadow Knights have been picking them off one by one, so now this girl – her name’s Cheireanna, she tells me – now she’s the last one left. She’s completely alone in the world, as you can see.”

  “Imsha,” the girl put in.

  “She says thank you to all of us,” Memo translated.

  “Well,” said Sir Tombin after a silence, “she’s no longer alone. She has gained some friends once more.” He bowed deeply. “Welcome among our company, Cheireanna.”

  “Imsha?” she said hesitantly.

  Memo said a few quick words to her and her whole body relaxed against Snowmane. A smile crept with increasing confidence across her grimy face.

  “Fre-end,” she said. “Cheireanna fre-end.”

  “I think you have a little explaining to do, my friend,” said Sir Tombin as they continued along the dreary road. They’d rested for a couple more hours, Flip dozing fitfully and Samzing dozing comprehensively and noisily while the Frogly Knight sat awake, alert for danger, Cheireanna resting against him. Now Flip was sitting on Sir Tombin’s armored shoulder, having decided that he’d had enough of the wizard’s pockets for now.

  “What do you mean?” he asked Sir Tombin.

  “We’re very grateful that you solved our minor dilemma so, well, spectacularly. I’m particularly thankful to you for having reduced my onerous task, so my spirit is only heavy with the weight of having killed one Shadow Knight, rather than two. But what I’m questioning, my spunkily diminutive comrade, is your method.”

  “Ah, yes, I was going to explain that.”

  “Then explain away, dear boy.” Sir Tombin gestured magnanimously with an open hand at the bleak roadway ahead of them as if there were countless invisible listeners just waiting to hang on to Flip’s every word.

  “Er, yes, well. It’s complicated, you see.”

  “Explanations usually are. Especially yours.”

  Flip thought longingly of Samzing’s nice stuffy pocket. Getting lint up his nostrils would have been a small price to pay to be spared this moment.

  “Um, you remember when we were confronting all those thoughts in the limbo between the worlds?”

  “Only too vividly. Pray continue.”

  He’s enjoying this, thought Flip savagely. That rotten amphibian’s enjoying it.

  “Well, they all started vanishing, one by one, even the sardine, and—”

  “The sardine?”

  “The one with the, ahem, the—look, the one you couldn’t seem to take your eyes off.”

  “Ah, that comely mermaid, you mean?” Sir Tombin smiled wistfully.

  “Yes, she was rather a dish, as I recall.”

  A fish, more like, thought Flip, but he decided it was wiser not to say so.

  “The only one that was left behind was the Jello Pudding, you see, and I started feeling sorry for him.” Flip swallowed. “I mean, it wasn’t his—er, its—fault that he—er, it—was so hideous. He was born that way, wasn’t he?”

  “Conceived that way, anyway.”

  “Exactly. No one has control over what they look like when they come into this world—ah, whatever world it is they come into. Looking like him, it was obvious anyone in their right mind would run a mile rather than have a thought like him. He was going to be stuck in the void forever if nobody rescued him. Like I say, I felt sorry for him.”

  “So you decided to have that thought?”

  “You got it in one, Sir Tombin. I know I shouldn’t have, but, well, I sort of did.”

  “You do realize you put yourself in great danger? That thought could easily have been as evil as it looked, Flip.”

  “Well, yeah, but I’m the Adventurer Extraordinaire, you see,” said Flip with attempted sangfroid, “and I’m supposed to face down countless nameless dangers with never a fear for my own safety.”

  “And in doing so, you imperilled us all? And thereby our mission? And thereby Sagandran and that sweet girl, Perima?”

  Flip thought it was stretching plausibility a bit describing Perima as sweet (not to mention stretching one’s luck if she ever heard you saying it), but again he held his peace.

  “And,” Sir Tombin took a deep breath before speaking his climactic accusation, “thereby the fate of the three worlds? You did all of this on your own initiative?”

  “Um, yes.” Flip wished there were pockets on a suit of armor, so he could tuck himself safely out of sight for a while until things had cooled down. All there was, though, was polished, articulated steel. “That’s more or less the picture, yes.”

  Sir Tombin drew another huge breath and the Shadow Knight’s armor clanged and jangled. “Well, Flip, all I can say is that—”

  “Yes?”

  “—I’m prouder of you than I ever thought possible. That so much courage could fit into someone so small is almost inconceivable. I am humbled to call myself your friend.”

  Sir Tombin tramped on a few paces in silence. Flip, who’d privately come to the conclusion that he’d been something of an idiot for taking the thought on board, no matter how fortunately things had turned out, could hardly believe what Sir Tombin had just said.r />
  “What it goes to show,” continued the Frogly Knight, having obviously spent the moments of silence chewing the matter over in his mind, “is that there’s truth in the old adage: a kindly act will always repay you well. You, Flip, acted out of the purest goodness of heart, with a kindness I wish I could find it in myself to emulate, when you took in that poor, isolated, repulsively ugly thought. And you were repaid by it coming to your rescue in your hour of need. This is a pleasing reminder that there is indeed justice in the world.”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” said Flip casually. “As I said, I’m the Adventurer Extraordinaire, after all.” He wished he had fingernails to blow on.

  “Only,” added Sir Tombin quietly, “don’t become insufferable because I said that or I’ll dunk your head in the nearest cesspit, you understand?”

  “Ah, yes, Sir Tombin.”

  “Extraordinaire or not, I can’t stand uppity people. Especially when they’re, not to put too fine a point upon it, rodents.”

  “I think you’ve got your message through, Sir Tombin.”

  “Good.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE CITY OF FEAR

  seem to be arriving somewhere,” said Sir Tombin. With Flip on his shoulder, he had got a little way ahead of Samzing, who was leading Snowmane. Cheireanna was sitting bolt upright on the back of the horse and looking around intently, as if certain that Shadow Knights might leap up and attack them at any moment. While they waited for the wizard to catch up, Sir Tombin and Flip looked at the collection of buildings that had been revealed as they came over a little hill. Small houses jostled together on either side of narrow, crooked streets. There was no sign of life, except the flicker of candlelight through cramped windows here and there.

  Cheireanna’s eyes widened as she saw the little settlement. “Zort Xoqua,” she said in a low voice.