Treachery of Kings

by Neal Barrett Jr

  Thus, Maddigern, and the bare, unmistakable vision of DeFloraine-Marie were, for but a moment, lost and unseen. And, if he was wrong, if this cunning magician could peer behind Finn's screen, he would find out quickly enough and pay for this deceit.

  A moment, an eternity, passed. A slow and agonizing moment for Finn, who wandered in his thoughts through lovely vistas, dancing streams, and a near-insufferable parade of puffy clouds. At no time did he dare meet the seer's penetrating eyes

  Oberbyght looked curiously at Finn, as if there was something he was trying very hard to see. Finally, he set down his mug and blew out a gentle breath.

  “There is little need for me to tell you that near every turn you have taken since you graced us with your presence here has been a wrong turn, Finn. I swear I do not know how you do it. The odds are a man plays the fool only half of the time, but you have managed to overcome that.

  “You have become, ah, acquainted with the King's wanton whelp, the Princess DeFloraine-Marie, though I've yet to learn how… “

  “Now that was no fault of mine.”

  “Every fellow who trips on a woman's gown says the same. Don't bore me, Finn. You didn't trip very far, but I doubt it was because you didn't try.

  “And good Dostagio… not a bright fellow, but none of his kind is. Still, he was useful to me.”

  “I didn't kill him, damn it all!” Finn came off his stool, sending it clattering to the stone floor. “Why would I do a thing like that?”

  “Sit, Master Finn…”

  The words barely brushed the edge of his mind, but Finn felt their fiery kiss. And, more frightening still, he knew the seer hadn't spoken at all.

  Finn didn't bother to sit. He leaned wearily against the cold wall, getting his breath again.

  “I know you didn't murder Dostagio. You haven't done anything but drop from your damned balloon and stumble about, causing chaos everywhere you go.”

  “I've done nothing of the kind—!”

  Oberbyght raised a restraining hand. “Your presence is all that was needed, Finn. Why the Fates have done this thing, I cannot say. The point is, you have stirred up a pot that was already bubbling here. You have tossed in the peppers, and we don't like peppers in our stew. You have muddied the broth, you have soured the sauce… “

  “Are we cooking something? I fear you lost me with the sauce.”

  “Do not try my patience. I have let your japes, your waggery, your wit, your foreign-tainted quips go by more than once without plucking out an eye or perhaps some manly part. Do not push. Merely listen, do I make myself clear?”

  Finn didn't answer. His mouth was too dry for that.

  “There are dark events here, deadly deeds, dreadful schemes and dangers undefined. It is not your business to know of these things. Still, I tell you that a dire drama unfolds in Heldessia Land. All this palace is a stage, and every creature an actor on it.

  “You aren't even in the play, Finn, yet you've mucked about through every act, tossing in your own bloody lines, knocking over the sets.

  “Before your innopportune arrival, the brew was only a'simmer, bubbling a bit, but no real threat. Now, the pot's boiling over, the curtain's going up, the game's afoot.

  “Damn you, Finn. Why didn't you and your Mycer and your loathsome machine simply stay where you belonged? We don't need your kind here!”

  Finn waited. Understanding at last, that even when this fellow was done, when all the sauce was finished, all the lines spoken, all the villains dead, he might simply start all over again.

  “Well, do you intend to sit there, staring at me like a loon? You always have something to toss in the kettle, whether it's worthy or not.”

  Finn heard a peculiar sound, then looked past the seer to a bookshelf swelling with the weight of ancient tomes, tracts, royal acts and boring decrees. Even as he watched, a stack of homilies groaned, and tumbled to the floor.

  “May I ask a question? You won't drill me with a spell?”

  “Certainly not. What do you think I am?” “You won't like me asking it again. Will Letitia be harmed?”

  “I gave you the answer to that.” “Your pardon, but that's not so.”

  “All right. She won't be harmed. Next question, Finn.”

  “When I was at the Fractured Foot, you could have knocked me silly then. Why did you let me go?”

  “I miss sometimes. Not often, but I do. If I had crisped one of those fat Snouters, every farmer in town would be screaming for my hide. I do a good business in agricultural spells. I don't have to, but it's expected if you're in the magic trade. What else?”

  “I don't guess you mind if I ask, for you know what I've seen. I'd like to hear about the Deeply Entombed.”

  Obern Oberbyght grinned, a grin of such dimension that his chubby cheeks swelled and his eyes squeezed shut. His lips disappeared, and every tooth was on display.

  “That, my foolish friend, is the question I've been waiting to hear. It isn't that I'm slow, or dense, or feeble in the head, for none of that is true. The question was ever there, and I could have pushed it some, but I have a sense of order, of the end, of the termination of events. I wanted you to come to it on your own.”

  Finn felt a sudden chill. “When the sauce is done. When it's time for Act Three.”

  “Exactly, you have it now!”

  Obern Oberbyght sprang to his feet, quicker than Finn imagined the fellow to be. He thrust both his hands out wide, encompassing the invisible sky. The room began to tilt, waver, quiver and shake. Red veins of lightning scurried across the floor, scampering like frightened spiders, drunken centipedes.

  Everything melted, everything oozed. Time ran down the walls like syrup, with the sound of sleepy bees.

  Finn threw up or threw in, he couldn't tell which. He floated, bobbled, pitched dizzily about somewhere or somewhen…

  And, when the world stopped spinning, he opened his eyes and stared at the sky, at the endless dome of golden light that stretched out longer than forever overhead…

  Not exactly endless, Finn decided, and clearly not the sky. More like a great, colossal, impossible bell…

  FIFTY

  ONE CAN BE JAILED, LOCKED UP, CLOSELY CON- fined,” said Julia Jessica Slagg. “I see how this might happen when one point of view simply clashes with another, no harm in that.

  “Still, to shackle, fetter, bodily restrain one's adversary, that is improper to every extent. That is damned impolite!”

  “It is,” Letitia said. “I'd be the first to agree, for I am under severe restraint myself. At least I won't strangle now, for that poor fellow has freed my neck, but that will do little good if my arms and my legs fall off. I'm afraid Maddigern didn't fully follow the seer's advice. I am still quite tightly bound.

  “Julia, I don't like to complain, but if you could possibly hurry over there… “

  “… and talk a great deal less, I know. Finn tells me this all the time. What no one seems to understand— including the learned Master Finn—is that I am a superbly functioning mechanical device with a quick and cunning brain. Unlike Newlie folk and humankind, I can perform a multitude of functions and speak at the same time.”

  “How is your eyesight, Julia? Can you see that my arms and legs are a ghastly shade of blue? Can you—Julia, are you listening to me?”

  “Listening, but not talking, you'll note. That was your complaint, I believe.”

  Letitia sighed. Julia, she knew, was doing the best she could. Perhaps, if she had not severely bitten, slashed, maimed the Badgie guards who tried to catch her, they would not have hung her by her tail in a cage.

  “Still,” she muttered beneath her breath, “I can't fault her for that. She was trying to help me get away.”

  That was the thing about lizards, or at least such a unique and marvelous lizard as Julia Jessica Slagg. Other lizards Finn had made swept up debris, kept a musket clean, and stamped out perfect little biscuits at a very rapid pace.

  None of these devices had a brain, so none
was encumbered with the power of reason and speech, and an ego the size of—

  “… well, in truth, the size of Finn's, for I fear she mirrors him in a startling number of ways.”

  Oh, Finn, my dear, I am not complaining, for I love you just the way you are, and I pray you are well and I know we'll soon be together again

  “I don't know that at all,” she said, certain her flesh was turning from blue to a horrid shade of gray. “But I will not think of you in any other way!”

  “Letitia. Letitia Louise.”

  “What?” Letitia looked up with a start. Julia's iron cage was swaying rapidly back and forth on its chain, drawing bizarre shadows on the wall.

  “Julia, what are you doing? If you strike the wall with that thing, those louts will be in here on us in a minute!”

  “I am not overly concerned about that. Those primitive brutes are certain that seer left a few horrid spells about, and I doubt they care to come in here and see.

  “And I must tell you it is no great feat to calculate the force of the swing of this object with the motion of the body within—that body being me. I shame myself, Letitia, for not having thought of this before. The solution was right there behind me, and I simply didn't see it until now.”

  “Behind you? Whatever are you talking about?”

  “My tail, Letitia. My own lovely tail. Those savages hung me securely by my tail. All I have to do is bite it off, you see. Even a Badgie should have thought of that.”

  “Oh, Julia, are you certain that's the right thing to do?”

  “Are you certain you want to get out of this blasted cell?” Julia said, twisting, twirling madly within the iron enclosure, as the thing swung perilously close to the ceiling and the wall. “Are you still intent on keeping your limbs intact?”

  “Yes, of course. They're very essential to me.”

  “Patience, then. Don't distract me anymore. Not that it's likely anyone could.”

  Letitia watched, holding her breath, refusing even to glance at her limbs. She was certain that Julia would careen into the wall at any time, and bring Maddigern or his minions rushing into the room, dreadful spells or no. Her very worst fear—next to hopping about on stumps—was ever encountering those creatures again. Even the promise of Oberbyght's wrath wouldn't keep them away if Julia smashed her cage against the wall

  A sudden, peculiar noise brought her out of her thoughts. She stared at the swinging enclosure, at the silver snout and the bright ruby eyes, at the iron claws that struggled to wrench the bars apart.

  Then, at once, the whole of Julia appeared, golden scales aglow as she slithered forth to freedom again.

  Not entirely the whole of Julia, for a goodly portion of her tail still hung within the cage, a sad, long appendage, a rather ridiculous sight.

  “I hope you'll forget what you saw here, Letitia,” Julia muttered, in harsh and gravelly tones. “Symmetry, order, elegance and grace are properties essential to my being, to the purity that was meant to be. Without the integrity of the whole, I have no beauty, no balance, I am simply not me.”

  “Please, I won't look. Just come down from there now!” “Only another moment. If I don't get this thing now, I never will.”

  Grasping the cage firmly in her foreclaws, her incomplete afterparts dangling in midair, the lizard used her strong iron teeth to slice the cords that held her tail captive within the cage.

  Letitia heard the bonds snap and breathed a sigh of relief as Julia's nose appeared, the severed part hanging limply in her jaws.

  “Hi god id,” Julia muttered, or words to that effect.

  LETITIA COULD NOT RECALL A MORE ACONIZINC pain, as the blood flowed back into her limbs like a rush of liquid fire. And, when it was done, she felt as if all her strength had drained away with the pain, as if there was nothing left of her at all.

  “I understand the concept of suffering,” Julia said, “but only in a distant sort of way. If you don't mind me saying, we do not have a lot of time for you to experience this feeling, Letitia. You're going to have to put it aside and get on your way.”

  Letitia had an answer to that—several, as a matter of fact, but she kept them to herself.

  Finn, ever the cunning craftsman, had constructed his greatest triumph in such a manner that every part of Julia, large or small, interlocked with strength and flexibility with the next. Once a part was rejoined with the others, the whole was as good as new. Julia could only vaguely comprehend that this system did not work as well on humans or Newlie folk.

  Julia walked off her kinks, stretching her legs, whipping her tail about. Letitia took one cautious step after the next, swallowing the pain that lingered there, then started all over again.

  To a spider on the wall, a curious fly, Julia and Letitia must have seemed a peculiar couple in a most bizarre dance.

  And, when the dance was done, Letitia felt she might, in time, function once again. It was then that Julia Jessica Slagg waited in the shadow of the door, waited for Letitia to make very worrisome sounds within the room, sounds that might attract a Badgie in the hall.

  When the door opened, the Badgie saw Letitia, apparently bound in a stool across the room. Then, he glanced at the cage where the fierce, mechanical horror ought to be, and wondered, for an instant, why it wasn't there.

  Wondered, for a blink, and then ceased to wonder or worry at all. …

  THE OTHER ONE WILL LIKELY BE BACK,” LETITIA said. “He'll expect to find his friend.”

  “And he will,” Julia said, scrambling about, iron claws a'rattle on the hard stone floor. “He simply won't be where he was, and he won't be feeling too well.”

  “They'll go right to Maddigern, you can count on that. We don't have much of a start, Julia, and I'm a bit concerned about my legs.

  “I hope you didn't hit him too hard, Julia. I know what he did, but I don't want anyone hurt. Not too badly, anyway. Unless you can't avoid it, of course. When it comes to that, I suppose those brutes have it coming, there's not much question of that. They weren't too gentle with us, you know. The Mycer folk have a saying: ‘Strike me once and I'll strike you back. Strike me twice and they'll find your bones in a phlack.’”

  “What's that?”

  “Sorry. It's a Mycer word. Means a hole, a pit, a very deep well. It also means if you're really feeling down, one could say you're in a blue phlack. It comes from the sound an egg makes when you drop it on the floor. Phlack! Like that. The Mycer tongue is very descriptive, you know. I could tell you a number of words that—”

  “Letitia, you're rambling, raving, running off at the mouth. Believe me, I know. You're worried, concerned, completely strung out, and I don't blame you for that.

  “I don't know where that seer took Finn. I'm trying to sniff him down. I cannot tell you how many creatures have walked these halls and left their foul scent. Well, I could, but there's no sense in that. Just stay close and let me try.”

  “I don't care for that seer,” Letitia said, running a hand through her hair, glancing warily down the dim hall. “You can't tell what a sorcerer will do. They're as sly as they can be.”

  “I guess that's part of the trade. People don't want some simple, plain-speaking fellow they can trust. Not if he says he's a seer.”

  “That's so true. You couldn't depend on a magician like that. …”

  THE TRAIL WAS SO THICK WITH THE SMELLS OF countless passersby, that more than once Julia was certain she would never find Finn's path. The sorcerer himself had passed this way a hundred times before, but not, it seemed, with Finn.

  “You're lost, aren't you?” Letitia said, for the Mycer folk have keen insight into the emotions and fears of all creatures, even one of the mechanical persuasion with a shrewd ferret's brain.

  “Not lost, really. I know where I am. We're not looking for me, we're looking for Finn.”

  “You know exactly what I mean. Don't play your silly lizard games with me.”

  “Actually, the lizard game is the only one I know. I should think you
'd be aware of that.”

  Letitia glared. “Stop it, right now. When you get like this you drive me out of my mind. Find Finn. That's all you have to do!”

  “Ah, well, of course. Beings with wheels and springs inside instead of gooey things should keep silent and out of the way unless they're called upon to—Get down, Letitia, now. Not that way—over here!”

  Letitia scurried quickly after the lizard, her heart in her throat. Crouching down in shadow, pressed against the cold wall, she could hear them now herself. Badgies, more of them than two, jabbering at one another in the harsh, clacking tones of their native tongue.

  “They don't have to be quiet, they know we're here. Do something Julia, please!”

  “They know where we might be, that's not the same as knowing where we are. Left, I should say. The odds are quite good they'll follow the hallway to the right.”

  “Wrong,” a voice whispered from the dark. “That's exactly what they won't do. They must be total idiots where you come from, Mycer, to listen to an ugly hunk of scrap. This way, and don't ask me any stupid questions; we don't have time for that!”

  For a moment, Letitia was too startled to move. Then, getting her wits about her, she knew she had very little choice than to do what she was told. Thus, she followed the slender figure of the King's daughter into shadow, and didn't look back. …

  FIFTY-ONE

  HE HAD TO TOUCH IT, THEN TOUCH IT AGAIN. And even then he could scarcely believe it was real.

  Wait, think, use your head, Finn. Just because you see something, just because you can touch it, doesn't make it real

  He closed his eyes, opened them again, lay perfectly still. Not much help. The thing was still there, still chill to the touch. It loomed above him, impossibly far, impossibly high, there was no end to it at all. Only that couldn't be, nothing could be as big as that, certainly not a bell. Where would you cast the damned thing, how could you haul it up here…