The Outsorcerer's Apprentice

by Tom Holt

  With a sudden jolt of horror, Benny remembered the chunks of glowing yellow rock that lit the corridors. “Oh God,” he whispered. “I’m going to die.”

  “Yes, sir,” the old man said. “Eventually. Everyone dies eventually; well, nearly everyone.” For some reason, the corner of his lip twitched; private joke, maybe. “But you should be good for another seventy-odd years, sir, provided you stay here. Not if you go back, though. That’d be a very bad idea.”

  “What?” Benny felt as though the inside of his head was full of water. “I don’t—”

  “It’s the YouSpace field, sir,” the old man explained. “Very clever, that Professor Van Goyen, he really knew his stuff. Got a built-in bioelectrical stasis compensator, see, keeps you safe from harmful radiation while you’re within the effective area of the YouSpace effect. Once you leave it, though…” He made a very sad face. “But so long as you stay here, you’ll be fit as a fiddle, sir. So that’s all right.”

  Benny’s eyes opened wide. “Uncle—”

  The old man nodded. “He’ll be just fine,” he said. “He used magic, see. Magicked up a personal bioshield, very impressive bit of conjuring, young Art says, more his line than mine, if you see what I mean. He can come and go as he likes and no harm done. Not you, though, sir. Sorry, but there it is.”

  There was a very long silence. Then John said, “Does that mean the job’s off, then? If you’re staying?”

  “I’m stuck here,” Benny said. “For ever and ever.”

  The sharp hissing noise proved to be Buttercup, sucking in air through her teeth. “Oh come on,” she said. “Pull yourself together, for crying out loud. It’s not so bad here, is it?”

  “But it’s…” Benny hesitated. A certain degree of tact, he decided. After all, this was their home. His too, now. “It’s a bit of a shock,” he said. “I’ve been trying so hard to go home, and now I’ve sort of won, but it turns out I can’t go after all. It’s just a bit unfair, that’s all.”

  “Unfair.” Turquine yawned. “Let’s see. You’re the absolute ruler of a relatively prosperous kingdom, with enormous personal wealth. Those two attributes alone are enough to pretty well ensure you’ll find true love.” He turned his head and smiled at Buttercup, who beamed back at him “And with John here and Buttercup and me running things, you won’t have to do any work, so you’ll have both the time and the money to do whatever the hell you like, always provided it doesn’t involve food with holes in. Thanks to you, all the people in your kingdom will shortly be getting ludicrously rich, so you’ll be incredibly popular and everyone’ll love you, including the goblins and the dwarves, which I would find seriously weird, but maybe you’re a bit more cosmopolitan in your outlook, I don’t know. And there’ll be universal peace, now the goblins and the dwarves have stopped fighting, and they’ll be too busy sniggering at the Elves from now on to want to fight them. So, how’s it looking? Yeah, it’s a real bitch. If I were you, I’d write to someone about it.”

  Benny nodded slowly. “There’s that, I suppose,” he said. “I’ll just miss my uncle, that’s all. He’s all I’ve got.”

  “All you had,” Buttercup said briskly. “And that’s what you want to go back to, leaving all this behind. Give me strength.”

  Suddenly, Benny laughed, and carried on laughing until everyone was looking at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes, I think you’re probably right. Stuff the unicorn. And stuff home.” He grinned, so wide he nearly unzipped his head. “I think I’m going to like it here.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Buttercup said. “If I’d thought you were going to be stuck here rich, all-powerful and miserable, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night.” She looked round, then stood up. “What are we all doing sitting here surrounded by smelly dead dragons when we could be somewhere nice?” she said. “Come on. It’s haggis night at the King’s Head. You can buy us all dinner.”

  Something she’d said made the tall young man look up and grin. “Sure,” Benny said, “provided you order the most expensive thing on the menu. I insist on that.”

  “There’s only haggis on haggis night,” Buttercup said. “And it’s twopence. But there’ll be other times.”

  “It’s a deal,” Benny said, and then he paused, and turned to John. “Looks like you’re wrong,” he said. “Money is everything, after all.”

  But John shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I used to, but I’ve changed my mind. I realised, there’s something so much more beautiful and wonderful in this world than money, and it’s going to be mine, and nobody will ever be able to take it away from me.”

  “Really?” Turquine said. “What?”

  John picked a scrap of dragon fat off the sleeve of his robe. “The look on the Elves’ faces when they find out they’re intimately related to King Mordak and his goblins,” he said. “In fact,” he added, “I think I’ll go and tell them right now. So long, everyone. And thank you. Ever so much.”

  And he walked away singing into the sunlight.

  Gordon opened his eyes.

  He saw a golden half-moon of sandy beach and a dark blue sea, bathed in the early afternoon light of a cloudless tropical sky. The warmth of the sun made his face tingle. He sank to his knees and roared like a bull.

  How long he crouched there he had no idea; but, some time later, a simple bark canoe drew up and dropped anchor, and the fishermen got out and asked him if he was all right.

  Gordon glared at them. “Where is this?” he asked.

  They smiled at him. “Vanuatu,” they said.

  Well, he reflected, as he trudged along the beach towards where the fishermen told him there was a town, my fault. I was in such a rush, I didn’t have a clear idea in my mind of where I wanted to go, and for some reason YouSpace saw fit to land me here. Not to worry. There’s got to be a bakery somewhere, and then I can get back and make those bastards pay.

  There was indeed a bakery, a very fine one, best in the islands, just off the town square in Luganville. Unfortunately, it was closed for a week during the John Frum festival, and when they said a week they really meant a fortnight. He could, of course, get a boat to Porta Vila, a mere two hundred miles away, and try there, but—

  “Forget it,” he said. “Where’s the airstrip?”

  Fortuitously there was a single-engine Cessna available for private charter. Yes, there was a bakery on New Caledonia, or New Zealand wasn’t all that much further. Also, in New Zealand there were many excellent banks, which would be only too happy to arrange the transfer of the eye-wateringly huge cost of the flight from his main current account in Zurich. New Zealand it was, then. Hop in.

  An hour and a half into the flight, the engine began to falter. That’s all right, the pilot said, they do that. It faltered some more, and the pilot started to frown. No, he assured Gordon, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, I had the plane checked over before we set off, nothing could possibly go wrong.

  Gordon glanced out of the window; nothing but blue, blue sea in every direction. The engine coughed, stalled and started again. The pilot had gone as white as milk. Absolutely nothing in the whole wide world to be concerned about, he said, frantically flicking toggles and hauling on levers, there’s a pair of crackerjack new mechanics they’ve got now at Luganville, an old boy and his young nephew, they really know their stuff, if there’d been anything the matter they’d have spotted it straight away, no worries. Then the engine stopped dead, and inside the cockpit there was the most eerie silence Gordon had ever heard.

  “Oh dear,” the pilot said.

  But it was fine, he went on, because look, over there, see, there’s an island; not on the maps, but there’s dozens of little islands out here that nobody’s bothered to chart yet. Piece of cake to just glide in to land, then radio for someone to come and pick us up. All a bit of a laugh, really. How they’ll tease me about this afterwards in the Planters’ Club bar on Bora Bora.

  For some reason, Gordon wasn’t laughing, though it did
occur to him to ask if the old mechanic’s nephew had a hearty appetite. The plane drifted on, light and graceful as thistledown, and gradually the island grew from a dot to a shape to a great green-brown slab that filled the windscreen as it rushed towards them ridiculously fast.

  The island had a long, level beach, sheltered by a massive coral reef. The pilot put the plane down on the beach with scarcely a bump. He turned to Gordon and grinned, then picked up the radio. Stone dead.

  It was perfectly all right, the pilot said. He had a tin box full of distress flares, and light aircraft like his own passed within sight of the island practically every week. All they’d have to do was listen out for an engine, and when they heard one, let off a flare or two. Meanwhile there was a good supply of emergency rations–freeze-dried chicken casserole and Snickers bars–in the overhead locker. It’ll be more like a tropical beach holiday than being stranded, the pilot assured him, you’ll be sorry to be rescued, trust me.

  The flares box was gone. The overhead locker wasn’t empty: it contained freeze-dried chicken casserole packaging and Snickers wrappers. But that’s crazy, the pilot said, he’d checked them both just before he took the plane in for its pre-flight service.

  “I don’t understand it,” the pilot said, “it just doesn’t make any sense. There can be no rational explanation.”

  “Oh shut up,” Gordon said, and set off to walk up the beach.

  He’d gone a fair way, maybe as much as half a mile, when he suddenly got the unpleasant feeling that he was being followed. He turned and found himself facing a dozen men, tall and muscular-looking, armed with spears and blowpipes, and naked apart from white linen aprons and lace caps.

  Gordon rolled his eyes. “Oh come on,” he said. “Give me a break.”

  The men looked at each other. “He speaks the holy tongue,” one of them said, in perfect English.

  Gordon shook his head. “Sorry, guys, not interested,” he said. “Whatever it is, I’m not buying.”

  “He came from the great silver bird,” said another. “And he speaks the language of the Book.”

  Hm, Gordon thought. Even so, best not to jump to conclusions. He put on a big smile and advanced towards them. They flinched but held their ground. “Gentlemen,” Gordon said. “I wonder, could you possibly tell me where this is?”

  The men exchanged puzzled glances. “This is the world,” said one of them.

  “Sorry? This island is called The World?”

  “What’s an island?”

  Oh boy, Gordon thought. “Quite,” he said. “From that, I take it, you believe this is all there is and there isn’t anything else. No other places, I mean.”

  They stared at him as though he wasn’t making any sense. “There’s this world,” one man said, “and the other world. The one you come from.”

  “Where He came from,” another said. “Where She is, and they speak the language of the Book.”

  Gordon turned the smile up a little. “Well,” he said, “it’s been a pleasure, but I really ought to be getting back now. Have a great day and, um…”

  “No.” The tallest of the men shook his head. “You must come with us.”

  Gordon looked at him, and then at the spears, which were now all pointing in his direction, and reflected on the fact that the men were between him and the Cessna, and that if there was anything fit for human consumption on this loathsome crumb of rock, these people either had it or knew where to find it. “Of course I will,” he said, and allowed them to escort him off the beach and into the jungle.

  The settlement, which they reached after half an hour of not unduly arduous walking along well-beaten paths, was made up of a dozen or so longhouses of classic Melanesian form, timber-framed with low overhanging eaves, which Gordon immediately identified from recollections of some TV documentary. When they politely ushered him inside, however; familiar, yes, very, but also about as wrong as it could possibly be.

  “Welcome,” said one of the men, “to the House of the Book.”

  History was one of Gordon’s least favourite subjects, and furniture was another; but even he had no trouble at all identifying what he saw as archetypical mid-Victorian interior design. On a round three-legged occasional table, flanked by huge potted palms, he saw a book. He moved towards it, but a hand gently restrained him.

  “One hundred and seventy-four winters ago,” the man said, “a great ship was wrecked on the reef. All the people aboard were drowned except one man, a holy man, who brought with him two books. He lived just long enough to teach us the sacred language, and to read the holy words. Then he made us promise to live our lives according to the Book, and then he died.” The man paused for a moment, then continued: “He neglected to say which of the two books was the holy one, but it wasn’t too hard to figure it out. One of them was called the Bible, but it turned out to be nothing more than a history of war and politics in a faraway land of which we know little, so clearly it wasn’t that one. The other one, however—”

  He pointed at the spine of the book on the table. Gordon narrowed his eyes and peered, and read: Mrs Beeton’s Household Management.

  “In the Book,” the man went on, “we found divine wisdom to guide us in every aspect of our everyday lives, from making a béchamel sauce to turning sheets side to middle. We knew at once that this was indeed a book to live by, with truly practical wisdom for every eventuality of our lives. Trusting in its holy precepts, we have prospered and flourished, so that we know that She is watching over us, Her apron protecting us, Her duster and wooden spoon comforting us. So long as we obey the true scriptures, our soufflés will rise, our sauces will not burn and our pots and pans will be spotless.” He paused for a moment, visibly moved, then went on, “For a hundred and seventy-four winters we have lived thus, observing the Guidance, trying to be worthy. Now you have come, the first stranger to pass the reef. You speak the sacred tongue, your skin is the same unappetising shade of pinky-grey as His who first brought us the Book.” He stopped and looked Gordon in the eye. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  The man pursed his lips. “Presumably She sent you to see how we’re getting on, or admonish us for our transgressions, or lead us forth into the Promised Scullery or something. So…” He shrugged. “What?”

  “Actually…” Gordon hesitated. “Let’s see,” he said. “A hundred and seventy-four years since you last saw a stranger, right?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Fine.” He glanced at the Book, then went on, “I am indeed sent by Her to guide you in the Way. Now, the first thing I need you to do is bake me a plate of doughnuts.”

  “Of course.” The man turned and barked a series of orders to his acolytes in some language Gordon didn’t recognise. “The sacrament will take a while to prepare. In the meantime, can we offer you refreshment?”

  Gordon shrugged. “What’ve you got?”

  “It is the twelfth hour of the fourth day of the ninth Course,” the man replied. “The plat du jour is therefore mutton broth with dumplings followed by terrine of pork with new potatoes, garden peas and celeriac.” He frowned. “I thought you’d have known that.”

  Gordon smiled. “Just testing,” he said. “Let the, um, sacrament be brought forth.”

  Actually it was really rather good, though the mutton was goat, the potatoes were some sort of grey tuber, and the celeriac was probably a variety of seaweed. Presumably something had got lost in translation somewhere. On the other hand, the gravy was just right. He was finishing up seconds of the terrine when three tall men in aprons came in carrying a tray.

  “Behold,” the man said. “Doughnuts.”

  Gordon looked at them. “Excuse me,” he said. “Where’s the holes?”

  “Holes?”

  “Doughnuts have holes in the middle.”

  He’d said the wrong thing. The man gave him a savage look, then crossed to the Book and turned the pages. “Behold,” he said. “Her Word.”

  Oh snot, Gordon thought. “Ah well,”
he said, “that’s really the reason I’m here, you see. The Book is, well, it’s a bit out of date, to be honest with you, a touch behind the times in places. I’ve been sent to bring you up to speed on the changes. Such as doughnuts.”

  The man looked at him blankly. “Changes?”

  “That’s right,” Gordon said, nodding vigorously. “Let’s see, what you’ve got there is probably the third or fourth edition. Since then—”

  “There can be no changes.” The man’s face had altered dramatically, and the acolytes were crowding forward. Some of them had flint knives, and others had heavy rolling pins. “Her word is immutable, and all change is deviance. The punishment for deviance—”

  “Now hang on,” Gordon said assertively. “I’m from over there, I came on the big silver bird, I speak the sacred tongue. If I say there’s going to be changes, there’s going to be—ouch.”

  He woke up in a small stone-walled barn. A thick rattan cable attached his ankle to the wall. Beside him was a gourd of water and a plate of cold roast pork with chutney, green beans and unidentified grey-tuber dauphinoise; prison rations, presumably, though in fact he’d had worse at the Dorchester. Opposite him sat the pilot, gnawing the last scraps off a chicken leg.

  “Bastard,” the pilot said. “You had to be clever, didn’t you?”

  Gordon sighed. “They’re lunatics,” he said.

  “Yes, well.” The pilot bit off a chunk of his crusty wholemeal roll. “They’ve got us down as tempters sent by the Great Abomination. You had to go and piss them off, didn’t you? And now it looks like we’re going to be stuck here in this barn for the rest of our lives, tethered to this wall, eating this really rather excellent…” He hesitated. “You want the rest of that pork?”

  “Yes.”

  “Selfish git. Anyway, it’s all your fault.”

  Gordon wiped his finger through the last of the dauphinoise sauce and licked it. “We could escape,” he said doubtfully.