The strange woman held up a pale hand … and passed it before their faces, weaving a complex pattern in the air. Silvery sparks trailed from her fingers. The Purejoies’ faces, amazed at first, suddenly took on expressions of dull acceptance.
“Oh, yes, the nanny,” said Mrs. Purejoie in a flat voice. “Come in, please, we’ve been expecting you.”
Dr. Purejoie nodded mechanically, and said, “Yes, of course, the nanny,” and stepped aside. The strange woman smiled a sinister smile and glided past them into the house …
Moving Home
Sooz craned her neck back and looked up. Up, up, and up at rows of battlements, parapets, pinnacles, gothic arches, buttresses and the rest of the twisted metal and stone that was the Iron Tower of Despair. She was openmouthed with amazement. It was a work of utter brilliance. Well, except that it was pink.
Sooz was standing in front of the massive vaulted entrance of the Tower, called the Gates of Doom. Great gargoyle skulls of molded iron adorned the arch of the gates. Pink gargoyle skulls now, of course. Their heads drooped or lay to the side, and their eyes were shut, as if they were asleep. But why would you have sleeping gargoyles over your front door? Very odd, thought Sooz. The gates themselves were carved with the writhing forms of what looked like tormented souls in some kind of crazy alternate dimension.
Cool! thought Sooz.
Behind her stood Gargon and Agrash. Her Goblin pack—now named Our Lady of the Dark’s Royal Goblin Guard—were busy trashing the amusement park that had been set up by the fairies. And having fun doing it. There was nothing a Goblin liked more than mindless vandalism. Though in this case, not so mindless. Sooz was determined to get rid of all the pinks and whites, the strawberry and lime. Time to put some Dirk back into it, so the cheesy amusement park had to go. In any case, she wasn’t sure whether she could have stopped the Goblins from their looting and smashing and bashing even if she wanted to. It’s what Goblins did. Let them have their fun. Well, for now. Maybe she could educate them later. Give them some culture, teach them how to behave properly. She looked back at them, cavorting and leaping and whacking and smacking. But it would take time. Lots of time.
So far though, things had gone well, the previous occupiers having been driven off easily. Gargon had gone in first. All he’d had to do was extend his wings, raise his taloned hands, and give one of his great sulfurous roars. The pink-ribboned fairies, the human kids and their parents—they’d all fled almost immediately, screaming in terror. A few “security guards” looked like they were going to stand firm, but when the Goblins came up, they took to their heels too.
And now here she was in front of the Iron Tower of Despair. She turned to Gargon.
“Can you open the gates?” she asked.
“They open only to Dark Lord … or Lady. Just walk up to them, my Queen,” said Gargon.
At that Sooz paused, a worried look on her face. If she walked up to the gates and they didn’t open, then Gargon and Agrash would know she wasn’t really a Dark Lady or a Dread Queen of the Night at all. And then … what would they do to her? She turned and glanced at Gargon and Agrash. They were talking.
“How did Hasdruban and his crew open the Gates of Doom then?” asked Agrash.
“Doesn’t look like they did,” said Gargon. “Dark Lord … Dirk … say it was indestructible. Gargon not really believe him—he was not known for truth telling, after all—but Gargon think maybe he was telling truth, after all.”
“Ah, that’s why they painted it pink, then,” said Agrash. “That was the best they could do.”
Gargon nodded. Sooz stared at the gates, unsure as to what to do. Agrash went on.
“That means everything inside is still as it was! The Dark Library, the spell books, the Storeroom, the Dungeons of Doom. Everything. That’s great, there’ll be weapons in there and stuff our Lady can use!”
“Yes, good, very good!” said Gargon excitedly.
“So,” said Agrash, turning to Sooz. “What are we waiting for, my Lady? Shall we get in there and find out what’s what?”
Sooz began to panic. But there was nothing else to do. She took a step toward the Gates of Doom.
Suddenly, all the pink gargoyle skulls began to twitch and jerk, as if they were waking up! Several of them yawned with a metallic grating sound. A few shook their heads, and then they were all looking down at her—and doing a kind of pink-metal double take. Then one of them turned to another and spoke!
“That’s not the Dark Lord,” it said in a rasping, metallic whisper.
Sooz’s jaw dropped. Talking pink-metal gargoyle heads!
“Is it a Vampire? No, wait, it’s, it’s … No, it’s a girl!”
“What do you mean, a girl?” said one of the heads.
“Yes, it’s a girl! A human girl! What’s going on?” rasped another.
“I don’t know, but she has the Ring,” said yet another.
“What, how did she get that?” scraped the first.
“Maybe she slew the Nameless One and took the Ring?” one of them screeched.
“A little girl? No, surely not. Anyway, the Dark Lord must be alive—if he were slain, the Ring would melt away,” said another.
“That’s true. Did she steal it then?” said the first.
“No, no, it is not possible for anyone else to wear the Ring, unless it was freely given by the Sorcerer Supreme himself,” said another pink skull.
“Then the Dark Lord must have … you know, given the Ring to … to a little girl,” said the first.
“Indeed,” grated a pink skull. There was a pause, as if they were thinking. After a few moments, the first skull said, “Well, in that case …”
In unison, they spoke, brazen and loud.
“Welcome, Queen of the Night and Dark Lady of the Iron Tower. You may enter your domain, gifted to you by the Dark Lord in Exile!”
With that the great doors began to open, with a sound like a thousand Goblins scraping their nails down a blackboard. Sooz could hardly believe it!
She looked behind. The Goblins had paused in their vandalism, drawn by all the noise, and they were staring at her, any lingering doubts now completely dispelled. Then they all knelt. Agrash and Gargon, noticing this, knelt too.
“All hail Sooz, Dark Lady of the Tower,” they chanted.
Sooz had to admit, she really liked all the hailing and honoring. It made her feel important. She walked forward with a swagger, Agrash and Gargon in tow.
Just behind her, she heard one of the skulls mutter, “Hey, maybe this means we’ll get this hideous pink paint removed at last! Back to black, hopefully.”
“Ha, don’t be so sure. She may be the Dark Lady but she still looks like a little girl to me—have you any idea what human girls are like? She’ll probably put pink ribbons in our hair!” said another.
Sooz turned around angrily, hands on hips, and said, “FYI, pink gargoyle dudes, I’ll have you back in black before you can say Rumpelstiltskin!”
“Rumpled what skin?” grated the gargoyle.
“FYI? What … What is she saying? What does that stand for? I don’t understand,” said another.
Sooz blinked for a moment. Rumpelstiltskin? Where had that come from?
“Is she telling us to say Rumpel whatsit whenever someone arrives at the Gates? You know, like a watchword or something?” ground out a gargoyle.
Sooz sighed. “Just forget it, pink gargoyle thingies. The important thing is that you’re not going to be pink for much longer, okay?”
“That’s good news!” said a gargoyle.
“Great. Thank you, my Lady,” said another.
“Do you think maybe we could get a custom paint job? You know, like maybe green ears, or blue hair. Oooh, oooh! I’d like red eyes! Red eyes would be cool!” one of them rasped.
This was too much—they were driving her crazy! “That’s enough!” she shouted, stamping her foot. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Gargon looked up at the chattering gargoyles distast
efully. “Dark Lord had trouble with them too, my Lady,” he said.
Shaking her head, Sooz turned back to the portal of the Tower. Before her yawned empty blackness. Steeling herself, she crossed the threshold. When she put her foot down, a dull light sprang forth from the floor of the Tower, illuminating her way. She looked at her feet in wonder. As she walked, she left a trail of glowing footprints, enough to see by. Looking back, she saw them slowly fading behind her.
How cool! she thought to herself. She jumped up and down. The footsteps glowed even brighter! She looked back. Agrash and Gargon didn’t leave a trail; only she did. She ran around in a circle, laughing while Gargon and Agrash stood watching indulgently.
She was in a large, circular chamber. The floor and walls were of a glossy ebony blackness, and they gleamed when the light fell on them. It was beautiful. Many doors were set into the walls.
“Where do they go?” said Sooz, turning to Gargon and Agrash.
Agrash was staring around in amazement. “I don’t know, my Lady, I was never allowed into the Tower,” he said.
“Yes, he was not worthy,” said Gargon with a grin. Agrash scowled. He pulled out his filthy handkerchief and blew his nose, inevitably spraying snot all over the place. As his snot fell on the ebony floor it hissed and burned away in a moment, leaving it as pristine as before.
“Wow, self-cleaning!” said Sooz.
“Yes, my Lady. ‘No dust can ever settle in this Tower, no scratch ever mar its perfection,’ Dark Lord often say. And those doors—they lead to many rooms, many corridors and passageways. No one has mapped them, not even Dark Lord himself,” said Gargon. “But ahead lies Great Hall, the Great Hall of Gloom, and his … your Throne, Your Dark Majesty.”
She turned to look in the direction Gargon indicated, but it was wreathed in shadow. So she ran up and down a bit, hopping and jumping. This threw up enough light for her to make out a magnificent staircase of black ebony, sweeping up to a pair of great doors. The banisters of the staircase were made of some kind of precious metal, something similar to silver, but not as bright. In a way, it was more lovely than silver, for it gave off a kind of moonlike radiance when the light struck it.
“Moonsilver,” said Gargon. “Very hard to get.”
Sooz looked back at him. “Is it actually from the moon?” she said, awed by the sheer fantastical nature of the place. She’d thought the outside was impressive—well, the inside was even more so! Dirk went up another notch in her estimation.
“Yes, from moon,” said Gargon.
“Which one?” asked an equally awed Agrash.
“Dark Moon of Sorrows, of course,” said Gargon.
Sooz began to walk up the stairs. Each step, a good forty feet wide, glowed with light as she stepped upon it. At the top, she came to a huge door, carved to look like a dragon’s head. Iron bars formed rows of teeth. As she drew near, the doors began to creak open—the lower half of the door falling downward, like a drawbridge, the top half moving up, the whole effect being that of a great, fanged dragon mouth opening.
Sooz stepped onward.
Into the Great Hall of Gloom.
It was dark, very dark. A light flared up—revealing a tiny statue in a little alcove. It looked like an old bearded man holding a staff in one hand, the end of which gave off a small jet of flame.
The floor was made up of massive slabs of glistening black marble, inlaid with a fine tracery of Moonsilver that glowed in the lamplight so that a soft radiance melted up off the floor to bathe her in its beautiful glow. She paused for a moment. She couldn’t help herself, reaching into her AngelBile bag she took out her little mirror to check out how she looked in this silvery light.
“Heh, heh,” she chuckled to herself. She looked really beautiful, but not in that magnificent, terrible, Dark Queen kind of way that the Ring made her look, but in a gentler kind of way. A melancholy kind of way … Hmm, a bit too Emo if you ask me, she thought, as she snapped the compact shut. Still, it wasn’t bad!
She stepped farther—another lamp blazed up. And then she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. It was one of those statues again, in the alcove of another great pillar—and it was moving! As she drew near, the statue reached into its stone robes, pulled out a match and struck it. Then it lit the end of the staff it held and a flame sprang up. At that, the statue again became inanimate. She looked at it more closely. Every statue was the same, of what looked like an old bearded wizard, holding a staff, carved out of white marble.
“Dark Lord’s joke. They are statues of White Wizard,” said Gargon. “‘Hasdruban Lamps,’ he calls them.”
Sooz smiled at that. It did sound like something Dirk would do. Behind her she noticed Agrash get a book out of his leather pouch, and, with a dirty, stained goose quill, write something in it.
“You can write! I didn’t think Goblins could write,” said Sooz.
Agrash nodded smugly. “Oh yes, I can write. But most Goblins can’t. They haven’t got the brains for it; not like me.”
Agrash cocked his head, as if struck by a thought. “I wonder if Gargon can write,” he said mischievously.
Gargon snorted. “Gargon cannot write it is true, but on other hand, Gargon can tear little Goblins in half, in a second!”
Agrash gulped, his face turning a lighter shade of green.
After several minutes walking the length of the Great Hall of Gloom, Sooz neared the end. There, on a raised dais of inlaid black marble, sat a massive throne. It was made up of hundreds of skulls.
“Throne of Skulls,” said Gargon reverently.
Sooz drew near for a closer look, trying to figure out what the skulls had been carved out of. But the more she looked, the more realistic they appeared. And then it dawned on her.
“Ugh, they’re real!” she yelped.
“Of course, my Lady,” said Gargon. “Aren’t they magnificent?”
Then the skulls wailed, a terrible wail of awful loneliness, a haunting moan, as of lost souls crying in some benighted wilderness.
Sooz and Agrash leaped back in horror. Gargon chuckled. “Don’t worry, my Lady, they do that from time to time. You get used to it.”
Sooz looked up at him. He nodded at the Throne. “You must sit on Throne, my Lady,” he said.
“Why?” said Sooz. “I know I’m a Goth, but it’s a bit much. I mean, those skulls—they’re real! Not only that, they’re not quite dead either, for goodness’ sake!”
“I know what you mean, Dark Queen Sooz, but goodness has nothing to do with it. You’ve got to stamp your authority on the Tower and on us, your people. That means sitting on your Throne,” said Agrash.
Gargon nodded. “What Agrash say,” he added.
Sooz wrinkled up her face in disgust. “Well, if I must, but if I’m taking over, then goodness is going to have something to do with it. Things are going to change around here!” she said, stamping her foot on the floor.
Agrash raised a snot-drenched eyebrow. “Goodness, eh? Well, good luck with that, because that’s not what we do,” he said.
Gargon turned on Agrash. “That sound like maybe Agrash not agree with my Lady! Maybe you not follow orders,” he said leaning down toward Agrash and scowling.
Agrash recoiled in terror. “No, no, of course not. I’m just saying. You know, I mean … I would never … it’s just, it’s just not going to be easy, that’s all.”
“Huh,” grunted Gargon suspiciously. “Remember—our Lady is Queen. We swear oath of obedience!”
“All right, keep your … keep your scales on,” he replied. “I mean, do we have to do what we’re told, even if it means … well, you know, doing good?”
Gargon blinked for a moment, unsure. “Well … well, yes, I suppose we do,” he said.
“Well, okay then, as long as we’re sure,” said Agrash, looking over at Sooz.
She was staring up at the Throne. She’d been listening with interest and now she knew she had to sit on that throne. She had to make sure they would obey her.
Or else she would end up with blood on her hands, and she didn’t want that. She noticed that at each corner of the dais, a large lidded, closed eye had been carved into the marble. It really was a freaky throne! With a sigh, she stepped up onto the dais. The front of the Throne actually came up to her chest. It was obviously built for somebody huge, someone as big as Gargon. Bigger even. She was going to have to climb up.
She put a foot gingerly on one of the skulls. It moaned and she lost her footing. Then she reached for another, and tried to pull herself up. “Owwww!” it wailed.
She shook her head in disgust. She couldn’t do this. It was just too horrible. She turned to Gargon and looked up at him beseechingly.
He looked back. His scaly brow furrowed in puzzlement. Then he got it.
He stepped forward and carefully picked Sooz up. Tenderly (for a hideous monster from another world) he placed her on the Throne.
“Thank you, Gargon,” she said as she stood on the Throne, patting him on the back of one black taloned hand.
Nobody had ever shown Gargon any affection. Not ever. Gargon blinked at her like a lovesick mooncalf for a moment. The scaly reptilian skin on his face seemed to flush pink. He spluttered in embarrassment and glanced over at Sooz, but luckily she hadn’t even noticed. She was staring at the skulls.
Gargon looked over at Agrash. He was standing there, arms folded, looking back at Gargon, a wry smile on his warty little green features. He made a face at Gargon, mocking him for his softness.
Gargon growled at him and drew a taloned finger across his throat, his meaning clear.
Agrash grimaced and put his hands up in a placatory gesture. “Don’t worry, Gargon,” he whispered, “I won’t say a word, honest. Never, I promise.”
“Shut up, fool!” said Gargon loudly.
Sooz looked up. “What was that?” she said, her reverie broken.
“Nothing, my Lady, nothing,” they both said in unison.
Then Sooz sat down, or rather lay down, drawing her legs up under her, cautiously resting her elbow on an arm of the Throne. There was plenty of room for her to stretch out. As she sat, the skulls gave out a sigh, actually like a sigh of welcome relief, as if they were pleased that someone that wasn’t too heavy occupied the Throne.
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