The Outsorcerer's Apprentice

by Tom Holt

  “Platoon.” He identified the speaker. A mammalian biped, with pink hands and face and shiny black feet, the rest of him sort of runny green and brown. God, presumably. “By the left, quick march!”

  Why God felt it necessary to shout quite so much, he wasn’t quite sure; but He did, and beyond question, He knew best, so that was fine. Meanwhile, there was the sheer ecstasy of walking (first one foot, then the other, isn’t it really fortunate I have two of them, or this would be really difficult), followed by the sublime bliss of stopping, standing at attention, standing at ease, right wheel, left wheel, then more walking, then more stopping, oh brave new world. With each lungful of air, he seemed to absorb terabytes of new, exhilarating information, about himself, about the world, about being a soldier, everything. Within an hour (time; oh, don’t get me started about time, isn’t it just the greatest?) he found it almost impossible to remember what it had been like before, in the dreams, before, when he’d been—

  Oh, ick!

  —When he’d been a tooth, for crying out loud. (With the tip of his tongue he explored the insides of his mouth. One of these days you’ll have teeth of your own, and then you’ll understand. Well, quite.) If it hadn’t been for the overriding need to maintain discipline in the ranks, he’d have laughed, for the sheer glorious triumph of evolution, of the ascent. I teach you the Supertooth. Teeth are something to be overcome.

  Then they went into a sort of cave thing, where a lot of very kind people gave them things; clothes (green and brown runny, just like God’s), a bottle for water and a handy penknife and boots for their feet (they didn’t fit very well but never mind, the Lord giveth) and a steel bucket thing to keep their heads safe, and a thing called a rifle, the purpose of which was to be explained later, and then they were marched into another cave, where 90 per cent of their hair was cut off, and then back outside again for more marching and wheeling and standing at attention, doing God’s work, trembling at His wrath and basking in His approval. He thought; this is life! Oh, wouldn’t it be grand if it were to last for ever and ever.

  Then God spoke to them and told them what their purpose was to be; and he listened carefully, and when the general idea had sunk in, he thought, oh well, can’t have everything. But what the heck, it’s still a million million times better than being a tooth; and if God wants me to go out there and get those goblins, that’s good enough for me. As for this King Mordak, whoever he was–well, wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.

  God called them to attention one last time, and then they were off. The excitement, the anticipation, the sense of purpose were almost more than he could bear. He concentrated hard on making sure he kept in step–apparently God set great store by everybody moving their feet at the same time; he wasn’t entirely sure what was so great about that, but it had to be vitally important, or why had God spent so long teaching them how to do it? The sound of his boots on the rock floor of the tunnel was so different from the sounds he’d heard in dreams. He could feel it, right up into his skull.

  I don’t ever want to be a tooth again, he thought.

  Abruptly, the tunnel turned to the left, opening into a wide chamber, and in front of him he saw a great chasm, at least fifty yards across, spanned by an impossibly narrow stone bridge. On the exact middle of the bridge stood a man. He was tiny and very old; he wore a brown warehouse coat, he was holding something in his left hand, and on his head was a cap. Behind him, on the far side of the bridge, stood a tall young man eating a veal and ham pie.

  “Sorry, lads,” the old man said. “You cannot pass.”

  “Two ranks,” roared God, and they lined up on the edge of the chasm. “Present arms!”

  The old man looked very sad, but he stayed where he was. “Front rank kneel,” God thundered. “Take aim.”

  He knew all about that, thanks to God. On the far end of the rifle was a little pointy bit that stuck up. You looked at it through a hole in a thing on the near end. Then you lined up the sticky-up bit with what you wanted to kill.

  “Sorry,” the old man repeated. “But you cannot pass. More than my job’s worth if you do.”

  “Ten rounds rapid,” yelled God; and the young man at the other end of the bridge ducked behind a rock and ate a Snickers bar. “Fire!”

  The noise boomed and rattled off the walls and the high roof of the cavern, surged down into the abyss and came welling back up again. The echoes chased each other round for a while and died away. The old man was still there.

  “Now then, lads,” he said. “There’s no call for that sort of thing.”

  God was staring at him, then back at the Dragon’s Teeth, then back at the old man, as if He couldn’t believe what He saw. He shook his head; then, with a roar that seemed to fill the whole cavern, He grabbed a rifle from one of the Teeth and charged out onto the bridge, yelling, “I’ll get you, you horrible little—” The old man raised his hand, and God stopped dead. “What?” God bellowed.

  “Sorry, sir, but that’s far enough. Can’t let you go any further, I’m afraid. Orders, see. I’m sure you understand, being a military man yourself. Thirty years in the service I was, you know, service corps, digging latrines, mostly. Sorry, sir.”

  God hesitated, His eyes fixed on the old man’s upraised hand. It was agony to watch Him. It was as though an invisible hand of incredible power was pushing Him against an invisible wall. Eventually, with a great twist and wriggle of his shoulders, He drew his bayonet, fixed it to the muzzle of his rifle and took a great stride forward. The old man stayed exactly where he was, and did something with the small grey box in his right hand. There was a deafening boom; the bridge cracked and gave way precisely where God was standing, and fell away into the abyss. For a split second God seemed to hang in the air; then, with a great cry of Oh shi—he fell.

  The Teeth watched Him fall in dead silence. If you stare long enough into the abyss, a wise man once said, sooner or later the abyss stares back into you. Maybe, just this once, it winked.

  The old man was having trouble keeping his balance. He danced a couple of little steps one way, then wobbled, then danced back again, his arms flailing; he toppled backwards, lost his footing, lashed out with his arms and managed to hook one hand over the edge. “Art!” he shouted. “Run for it, Art!” And then he lost his grip, and was gone.

  The young man emerged from behind his rock, walked slowly across the bridge to the point at which it had broken away, and stood for a long time, looking down. Then he ate a macaroon.

  They took the bag off John the Lawyer’s head, and he blinked.

  Much to his surprise and disappointment (because he’d always taken pride in despising machismo and shallow heroics) he wasn’t scared at all. He wanted to be, because he’d long ago figured out that fear is a beautifully designed, magnificently efficient function of the survival instinct; but he couldn’t do it. An overriding curiosity overwhelmed him, as soon as he saw the short, wide man sitting in the chair in front of him. Imagine how Richard Dawkins will feel on the Day of Judgement, when he stands before God; something like that.

  “You’re the wizard,” he said.

  A businesslike nod of acknowledgement. “And you’re the nosy bloody lawyer asking all the inconvenient questions.”

  To extend the analogy, think how Professor Dawkins will feel when an archangel steps forward and presents him with his Best Atheist award. “Thank you,” John said. “And if you wouldn’t mind having that carved on my tombstone, as far as I’m concerned that’s quits and no hard feelings.”

  The wizard looked at him for a moment, then grinned. “You’re a smart boy,” he said. “You don’t belong in a dump like this, working for Elves. What if I were to tell you that somewhere, over the rainbow, there’s a better place, where a man like you could really fulfil his true potential?”

  Suddenly, John realised why he wasn’t scared. Not an execution; an interview. “Where you come from, you mean.”

  The wizard nodded very slightly. “Go on.”

  “T
he place where you send all the things they get and make for you over here. The wooden planks, the dragonmeat. The shining rocks.”

  “Go on.”

  “The place,” John continued–the water was getting shallow, but he knew he had to keep swimming–“on the other side of your magic portal, the one that looks like a doughnut.”

  The wizard shook his head. “Is a doughnut. Well?”

  “Which,” John said, “was rather a smart move. You inculcated into these people a superstition about food with holes in, so they’d avoid it like the plague. Even the thought of it makes them feel sick and panicky, apart from a few perverts, but there’s always one or two, isn’t there? Anyway, it means there’s practically no chance of anybody going through your magic portal by accident, finding out about the other place and giving the game away.”

  The wizard looked like he was doing mental arithmetic. “You figured all that out for yourself.”

  “Yes. With a bit of help from the Elvenhome archives.”

  “Not really.” The ghost of a smile. Of course, you only tend to get ghosts where something has died. “Oh, the Elves have all the data to figure it out, they’ve been sitting on it for thousands of years, but it’d never occur to them to read any of it. Records are for keeping, that’s all. Dwarves and goblins are too stupid–well, maybe not this King Mordak, I get the impression he’s nobody’s fool, shame really, but in any event he’s not the sort to go nosing about in dusty old files. And humans–well, I’ve worked damned hard to make the humans around here what they are today. Of course, I didn’t expect anything like you.”

  John decided to risk it. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I should think what tipped the balance was when the Elves gave you a job. It got you away from the peasants and the jolly woodcutters, put you somewhere where you had to use your head for something more than just a hat rest, and at the same time installed a chip on your shoulder the size of a medium mountain. Yes, put like that, I guess I should’ve predicted that someone like you was bound to happen, sooner or later.” He stopped; something was bothering him. “What do you mean, a few perverts?”

  “Sorry? Oh, right. Yes, but there aren’t many of them. A couple of dozen, here and there.”

  “With doughnuts?”

  “And bagels and sort of breakfast-cereal things. Obviously they keep very, very quiet about it.”

  “You know about them.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” John said proudly. “It’s my job to know that sort of stuff.”

  “I want names,” the wizard snapped. “Names, addresses, everything.”

  John smiled. “No problem,” he said. “Always delighted to cooperate with the authorities.” He hesitated. The words and in return seemed to hang in the air between them, daring one of them to be the first to say them.

  “And in return,” the wizard said. “Well?”

  “Let’s see. First, you don’t have me killed.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Money? Or how about a job?”

  The wizard smiled. “I thought the idea was to sue me for every penny I’ve got.”

  “Plan A, yes,” John replied. “But that was before I knew you might be hiring. Also, it never occurred to me, I must confess, that I’d have a bargaining chip. I assumed you knew about the doughnut underground and the fried onion ring.”

  The wizard may have growled softly. “Well, there you go,” he said. “You’d like to come and work for me, then?”

  “Oh, I should say so. Sounds to me like this over-the-rainbow place of yours has got a lot to offer, if it’s where you come from.”

  The wizard raised an eyebrow. “Flattery?”

  “Always. But what I meant was, it sounds a bit less, well, provincial than here, if you follow me. I figure there’s two sorts of places, ones which export raw materials and ones which import them. I wouldn’t know anything about the latter, never having been to one, but I’m prepared to bet they’re a lot more fun. For someone like me, at any rate.”

  “You have good instincts,” the wizard said. “Yes, I know, you’re a lawyer. But there’s a lot of lawyers over here, and none of the rest of them have ever made difficulties for me.”

  “They’re Elves.”

  “True.” The wizard frowned thoughtfully. “So how am I supposed to know if I can trust you?”

  John shrugged. “Do you seriously expect me to try and answer that question?”

  “Correct answer. All right, I suppose I could use you.”

  “I gather that’s what you’re best at.”

  “Careful. Well, it’s that or have your throat cut, and then what good would you be to anyone? When can you start?”

  John thought for a moment. “Now,” he said.

  “Splendid. In that case, welcome to the team.” The wizard opened a drawer of his desk, took out a hat, and threw it to John, who caught it awkwardly in his left hand. It was a strange hat; its brim didn’t go all the way round, but stuck out in front, like a tongue. The letter W was embroidered on the front in gold thread. “You can begin by doing a little job for me.”

  “That’s nineteen,” Buttercup said, “plus five for going no trumps on a triple star, plus fifteen for the eight of cups rebated, doubled for going out blind, and ten for the rubicon makes eighty-eight, which makes—” She paused to do the sums in her head. “Forty-six thousand nine hundred and fifteen to me and twenty-six to you. Play again?”

  Turquine shrugged. “Why not?”

  The spider, which had spent the last five hours trying to climb the opposite wall, gave up and went to sleep. Buttercup shuffled the pack. She’d found it in the last wolf’s cottage but six and tucked it away in a deep pocket in her pinafore, where the Elf who searched her had neglected to find it. “Right,” she said, having dealt nine cards each. “I call trumps, so we’ll have swords, fives and eights are wild, threes reverse the order, sevens and twos mean miss a go, fours and nines reversed, tens count as fives. My lead.”

  Turquine examined his cards. “What did you say this game was called?”

  “Easy-Peasy,” Buttercup replied. “I used to play it a lot with my gran when I was a kid.”

  There were, she had to admit, worse places than the wizard’s dungeons. They were dry, clean and sweeter smelling than any of the inns and taverns in the area, and the food was remarkably good if you liked dragon (Buttercup had decided she did, especially the dragon and onion pie with chives and coriander). On the other hand it was still a dungeon.

  Turquine played the six of coins. “Hatstand!” Buttercup said, laying out her cards. “Sixes and fours over nines. So let’s see, I make that twenty-seven, doubled because we’re in Sagittarius—”

  “I know,” Turquine said. “Let’s jump the guard.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  “Let’s lure the guard in here under false pretences, bash him silly and escape.”

  She smiled at him. It had taken long enough, heaven only knew, but no man worthy of the name can put up with being taken apart at cards by a girl indefinitely. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “How do you go about that, exactly?”

  Actually, the guard was quite nice, for an Elf. He seemed genuinely concerned when Buttercup yelled out that Turquine was having some kind of seizure.

  “I’m a medical student, as it happens,” he said, peering in through the bars without getting quite close enough. “I’m just doing this to pay my tuition. What are the symptoms?”

  “He’s twitching a lot and making funny noises, and he’s not breathing.”

  “You don’t say.” The guard squinted. “Hold on, I’ve got my textbooks in my bag upstairs. Twitching and not breathing, you say?”

  “And he’s gone very pale.”

  “Really? He looks quite normal to me.”

  “Pale compared with how he usually is.”

  “Ah, right. Won’t be two shakes. Watch him carefully, if you wouldn’t mind. This could be one for the journals.”

  “
This isn’t going to work,” Turquine muttered from the floor. “He’s an Elf. They don’t give a damn.”

  “Ssh, he’s coming back. Well?” she asked. “Any ideas?”

  “Could be Flimbromel’s Syndrome,” the Elf said, turning a page. “Only then he’d be starting to go blue around the lips. Any sign of that?”

  “I don’t think so. But he’s stopped twitching.”

  “Heavy sweat? Traces of foam dripping from the nostrils?”

  “Not as such.”

  “Well, it can’t be Ydrail’s palsy then. Temperature?”

  Buttercup laid a hand on Turquine’s forehead. “Ooh, he’s burning up.”

  “What? Oh sod, that rules out Elroon’s Disease.” He frowned. “You sure there’s no foam? Just one or two flecks would be enough.”

  “Sorry, no foam. Oh look, he’s started twitching again.” She nudged Turquine savagely in the ribs, and he twitched a couple of times. “Is that good?”

  “Not sure.” The Elf was running his finger down a column of index entries. “Twitching might mean it’s acraural dyslepsia, except humans don’t get that. Otherwise, we’re left with goblin fever, and if it was that he’d be dead by now. Unless he’s been eating garlic recently.”

  “No, no garlic.” She looked up at the Elf. “Maybe it’s something that’s not in your book.”

  “Unlikely, it’s the ninth edition. Unless—” Suddenly his eyes lit up. “He’s a knight, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Been in contact with dragons lately?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God, it could be dragonpox. Twitching, high temperature, pale, not breathing. Hold on, pages 3,667 to 3,671. Ah, here we are. Dragonpox.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Couldn’t be better, actually. Everyone says it’s bound to come up in the exam this year. Here, would you mind moving away from the door a bit, I can’t quite—”

  Turquine’s boot got him on the point of the chin, and he fell just right, with the keys on his belt in easy reach. “Bastard,” Turquine said, lugging him into the cell and locking the door. “I could’ve been dying in there.”