The Price of Magic

by Wesley Allison

  “Yes, mammary glands, I see them now,” said the lizzie, rising to his feet, “but you have neither a very large bottom, nor a long tuft of hair.”

  Senta ran a hand over her head. She was still wearing her blond hair in a man’s short style, parted on the side and razor-cut around the ears and neck. Of course, since she wasn’t wearing a dress, she didn’t have on the bustle that recent dress styles were requiring to be larger than ever.

  The lizzie brushed himself off and then bowed.

  “I am Khastla, the god’s most trusted. You should follow me. We will take the road of guests.

  The red-caped male led the human and the dragon up a path paved with shiny river stones. It wound up the hill, sometimes approaching the main road and sometimes veering farther away. Finally it led to a small but beautiful gate in the cyclopean fortress wall. It was not as large as the main gate, but was lined with two beautifully carved statues of Bessemer.

  The fortress had been completely rebuilt from the ruin it had been when Senta had been there before. Inside the walls were numerous tall buildings, constructed with smooth façades, but featuring many window boxes filled with flowers. Between the buildings were flowerbeds, walkways of colorful pebbles shaded with fruit trees covered in blossoms, and fountains which sprayed out water that was collected into little gutters that wound in and out to feed the plants. Hundreds of lizzies were working, cleaning, polishing, and gardening.

  “This is all quite lovely,” said Senta.

  Zoey gave a dismissive snort, sending a little smoke ring out of her right nostril.

  “Pease follow me,” said Khastla. “The god has chosen the finest accommodations for you.”

  He led them to a large three-story structure with a double door of heavily polished wood. Inside they found a spacious room decorated with mosaics on all four walls. A large stone hearth sat in the center of the room, with funnel-shaped device reaching down from the ceiling over it, obviously designed to vent the smoke from the fire. Around it were arranged two plush couches, and three large padded chairs with matching tuffets. Though the couches looked just like those found in any Brech home, the chairs were just slightly odd, a little too short, a bit too deep, and much too large for a human.

  “These come all the way from Mallontah,” said Khastla proudly pointing first at the couches, and then the chairs, “and these were made by our finest craftsmen.”

  “Very nice,” said Senta.

  “This is nice,” said the dragon, shooting across the room and curling up in one of the chairs. “Much nicer than we have at home.”

  “Szarine! Your guests are here!”

  A female lizzie appeared from the back doorway. She was lightly built for a lizzie and her skin, olive with lighter green stripes down her back, was remarkably unblemished.

  “Helloo,” she said with a bow.

  “She has been specially trained to take care of human needs,” said Khastla, “and clearly she speaks your language, though I suppose that’s not really necessary in your case.”

  “Yes, well it’s appreciated.”

  “I will leave you in her care now, and I will notify you when Great Yessonar returns.”

  “He’s not here now?”

  “No.”

  “Well, where is he?”

  “Great Yessonar visits his people all over Birmisia. At this moment he is in Tsahloose, where they are rededicating a temple to his great name.”

  “Like I said, full of himself,” said Zoey.

  Khastla bowed and left.

  “Would you care to bathe while I prepare you a human meal?” asked Szarine.

  “Just to be clear,” said the dragon. “We’re talking about a meal for humans, and not a meal of humans. Not that it would be a deal breaker.”

  “I will bathe, thank you,” said Senta.

  The lizzie servant led the sorceress up a short staircase to the large bathroom. Like the similar room that Senta had used in the lizzie city-state of Tsahloose some years before, it featured a great tub perpetually refilled. It was about seven feet long and five feet wide, which by human standards made it remarkably spacious. Four or five humans could easily have used it at once. Unlike any other lizzie bathroom, this one featured a toilet. It was clearly designed for human use, not only because of its dimensions, but because lizzies used their gardens for that purpose. Looking down into it, Senta saw that it was an open space beneath the seat that dropped down almost ten feet to a channel of constantly flowing water.

  Szarine set out a pile of fluffy towels for her use and then exited the room. The sorceress undressed and slipped into the cool water. Though she was an even six feet tall, Senta could not touch the bottom even on her tip-toes, without dunking her head. She observed that the four square stone spouts provided a continuous flow of water into the tub, which spilled over the top and ran down to a drain cut with four long grooves from a one foot square piece of stone.

  Reaching up from the pool for her bag, Senta retrieved her bottle of Allmed Hair Beautifier. Pouring some of the shampoo into her hand, she worked it into her hair with one hand while the other held onto the side so that she didn’t have to constantly tread water. Feeling movement by her feet, she opened one eye and looked down. The coral dragon had slipped into the water so smoothly that there hadn’t been a splash. Senta dived deep and rubbed her head with both hands to rinse off the suds. The dragon swam around and around, quicker than any fish.

  After climbing out of the pool, Senta returned the Hair Beautifier to her bag. Then she began pulling items of clothing from it. The small carpetbag, her only piece of luggage, was no larger than an average purse. It was quite remarkable, even if few noticed it. If one were to crawl inside the tiny bag, a feat that not even Senta could have accomplished because of the small opening, one would find more than fifty square feet of storage capacity. It also had the handy feature of all the contents being handy—that is readily available when an item needed to be withdrawn.

  Senta donned the many layers of undergarments that were the common bane of Brech women, including a truly huge hip bag. She then put on her white day dress, with black collar and trim, and black draping around the bustle. She paired it with a white boater featuring a black ribbon.

  As the sorceress was preparing to leave the bathroom, she noticed that next to the stairs leading down was another set leading upward. Curious, she took the second stairway up to a sleeping chamber. Unlike typical lizzie accommodations, this room had a fireplace along a wall, and a four poster bed just to the right of it. There was also a wardrobe, dresser, and several small tables, as well as another large chair of the type on the floor below. She realized that the building was actually a split-level. The bath was half a floor up from the parlor—quite an architectural feat, considering the flow of water—and the bedroom was half a floor up from it.

  There was another staircase leading upward on the other side of the room. Senta crossed over and climbed it. At the top, she found a large room, in its center a huge pile of pillows. Large folding wooden doors opened onto an extremely spacious balcony.

  “The top floor is yours,” she told Zoey, as she passed through the bathroom on the way back downstairs.

  In the parlor, she found Szarine awaiting her.

  “Conn these whay,” she said, with a wave.

  “Come along, Zoey,” Senta called as she followed the lizzie.

  In the next room was a long table. It was roughly oval in shape, but had been made from a section of a massive tree trunk, cut on a bias to achieve its elongation. The edges still had the tree’s bark. The whole thing was polished until it was as smooth as porcelain and as shiny as the surface of a still lake. In the center of the table was a tall lit candle, and arranged around it were several platters of food. At each end, a place setting had been positioned with a wooden plate and a silver knife and fork, the latter clearly the work of human mass production.

  “Seat and I wheel ssserf you,” Szarine declared.

  Senta took her pla
ce and a moment later, Zoey climbed into hers. The lizzie dished onto their plates the contents of the platters. As she did so, she described in her halting Brech what each dish was. There was some kind of bird, cooked over a fire—quite overcooked, in fact. And there were boiled potatoes and slices of fruit, both of which were salted just a bit too much. The most appetizing dish was a small fish, gutted and then steamed. Senta found that by combining a slice of the fruit with a bite of fish on her fork, she ended up with something passably edible. Zoey seemed to have no problem with any of it, and ate everything that the sorceress didn’t.

  “Thank you for the meal,” Senta told Szarine, who hovered close to the table waiting for her two guests to finish.

  “It wasss assestaval?”

  “Most delightful.”

  “Less salt for the soft-skin,” said the dragon.

  The lizzie bowed.

  “I don’t think we’ll need you anymore tonight,” Senta told her.

  Szarine bowed again and then left.

  “That was truly horrible,” said Zoey.

  “But you ate everything.”

  “Of course I did. I’m a dragon.”

  Senta reached into her bag and withdrew a jar of home-canned peaches that Hero had given her. Taking a fork with her from the table, she stepped back into the parlor and stretched out on one of the couches. Unscrewing the ring and then prying the lid off the fruit, she speared one and brought it to her mouth, savoring the sweetness of it.

  “You were expecting him to be here, weren’t you?” asked Zoey. “You’re brassed off that he wasn’t, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not,” Senta replied. “He’s important and has his own life.”

  The dragon curled up in a chair.

  “You’re not even a little miffed? I mean he could have been here for you.”

  “He’s busy. If I ever really needed him, he would be there for me. As it is, we’ll relax and be pampered by his lizzies for a few days, and then when he gets here, we’ll have a fine old visit.”

  “If you don’t starve first.”

  Senta finished her dessert and then made her way up to the bedroom. The bed was fitted with fine Mirsannan sheets covered with a heavy black leather blanket. Stripping naked, she slipped beneath the sheets and passed into sleep, walking only briefly when Zoey slipped in beside her.

  The next morning, Senta slept in quite late, only getting up eventually because the heat from the dragon’s body drove her out. She slipped from under the leather blanket, her body covered by a sheen of sweat. After a bath in the cool water, she dressed in the same white and black day dress, having only worn it for an hour or two the day before. When she came downstairs, breakfast was on the table—the same menu that they had been served the night before, though to be fair, there was less salt.

  Zoey didn’t come down to eat, which was a bit of a surprise. But then, now that Senta thought about it, it was a surprise that she had been in bed with her. She was out of her sleep cycle. Going back up to check on her, the sorceress found the dragon gone. On the very top level, the wooden doors that led to the balcony were open. She must have gone flying or to find some live prey. Senta wasn’t worried. Bessemer had flown off on his own when he had been much smaller than Zoey.

  “I’m going to look around,” she told Szarine, as she headed out the front door.

  Senta made a circuit around the inside walls of the fortress, examining the construction and trying to reconcile the way that it now looked with what it had been when she had last been there. It was almost impossible. It was so different. Wherever she went, the lizzies stopped and watched her. Sometimes they moved away from her. Few allowed her to get very close and almost none came close to her.

  One of the few that did was a female just over six feet tall, with a deep olive head and back and an asparagus-colored belly. She quickly interposed herself in front of Senta as the sorceress was watching a group of gardeners planting.

  “What’s this then? Sembor uuthanum.”

  “I am Szim,” said the lizzie, now that Senta could understand her.

  Senta’s face showed no more recognition than it had before.

  “We met in Tsahloose.”

  The memories hit Senta like a slap to the face. While in the Tsahloose, seven years before, she had chosen a lizzie almost at random to serve as her tour guide of the city. One could argue that subsequent events had played a large part in starting a war.

  “Szim. Yes, I remember you.”

  “You saved my life,” said Szim. “You kept me from being sacrificed to Hissussisthiss.”

  “I remember.”

  “From that day until now, I have dedicated my life to the new god—Bessemer.”

  Senta couldn’t help smiling, hearing the magic translate her childhood playmate’s name. She was used to hearing the lizzies call him Yessonar.

  “You look exactly the same,” said the lizzie. “You have changed your paint and feathers, and cut the tuft of hair on top of your head, but otherwise you look just like I remember you.”

  “Well, it hasn’t been all that long, really.”

  “It has been a long time. I hadn’t yet had my first mating, and now, if they have survived, I have offspring old enough to tame.”

  “Yes. Me too,” said Senta. “Come along. You can be my tour guide again.”

  They spent the next hour walking through the gardens as Szim pointed out the buildings. There was of course a temple, as well as guesthouses, dormitories, and public baths. There was an outdoor amphitheater and a building, the word for which didn’t quite translate, but that as close as Senta could determine was a sort of museum.

  “Which building do you live in then?”

  “Like most of us who have taken up permanent residence,” said Szim, “I live in the complex below us.”

  The sorceress well remembered the portion of the great underground that she had seen on her previous visit, including a massive auditorium, a vast underground cavern that must have occupied a good portion of the interior of the mountain behind, and numerous rooms cut out of the bedrock of indeterminate purpose.

  “Is it safe there?”

  “Yes, all of the horrible monsters that lived there are gone now. The god killed most of them. Warriors killed the others. It took almost three years to exterminate the hordes of giant spiders. Now it is completely safe and quite pleasant in some places.”

  A loud hissing brought their attention to a group of four lizzies. As they hissed they pointed at Senta and gesticulated wildly.

  “What’s their problem?”

  “They are from Tsahloose, as many here are. Among some, you are remembered less than fondly.”

  “There seem to be relatively few places I’ve been where I’m that well liked. I could get a complex.”

  “Most of Tsahloose respects you for bringing us a better god,” said Szim. “There are those who resent the change though, even if they have accepted Bessemer.”

  “There always are. Errosu uuthanum tijiia.”

  A huge spectral human hand appeared in the air in front of the lizzies, first curling up into a fist, and then extending the index and middle fingers. It was a rude gesture that the lizzies couldn’t appreciate, yet they cowed and hurried away. That was enough for Senta.

  The sorceress and the female lizzie finally reached the area furthest back in the fortress, actually tucked into the side of the mountain. The façade of a building reached out into the garden, but it was clear that most of the rooms in the complex would have had to have been carved from the solid rock. Just atop the first floor of this unusual structure was an open-air patio, surrounded by hanging buckets of green leafy plants. As Senta looked up, the occupants of the patio were looking down at her.

  These were lizzies like she had never seen before. They were large and their skin was bumpier and darker than other lizzies. It was their dress rather than their physical traits though, that most made them seem different. They were covered not just with paint and feather
s, but with actual clothing—not pants and shirts, but something like skirts and capes with hoods. The clothing was brightly colored, striped and spotted like Senta had seen in picture books showing tigers and leopards of Xygia, but the texture of the skins indicated that these were from Birmisian animals—dinosaurs. These lizzies also wore more jewelry than was common with the reptilians of her acquaintance, made of animal bones and claws mostly.

  There were about a dozen of these strange lizzies looking down at Senta. They began hissing loudly—what for their kind would be shouting. They bobbed their heads up and down and flushed their dewlaps.

  “What’s with them?” wondered the sorceress.

  “They are from the city-state of Xiatooq.”

  “I’ve never even been there. Why are they so brassed off?”

  “They’ve never seen a human before,” said Szim. “Their land is very far away to the southeast, too far away for even Tsahloose to trade with. They have only traveled all this way to meet the new god.”

  “They should enjoy it while they can,” said Senta.

  “What?”

  “Not having humans invade their land. It’s really only a matter of time, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Ten: St. Ulixes

  “First class cabin for two to St. Ulixes.”

  “Not taking your personal train, Your Lordship?” asked the man behind the glass.

  “It’s not my personal train,” said Radley Staff. “It belongs to M&S Coal, and our engineers have taken it south to survey possible mining areas.”

  “As you say, Your Lordship.”

  Staff looked at his daughter, standing next to him, and sighed.

  “It’s not likely to get any better,” said Lady Iolana Staff. “It will continue until the day you die.”

  Staff took the tickets that the clerk slid though the opening in the window. He waved the two household lizzies that had arrived with them, to load the luggage onto the train. Once they had done so, he gave them change to take the trolley back to the house, though he doubted they would actually use it. Then he and his daughter boarded.