The Good, the Bad and the Smug

by Tom Holt

  “Excuse me,” said Mordak.

  Blue scowled, then held out her hand to Green, who passed her the tongue. “Be quiet,” Blue said. “We’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Then there was a long interval while Green and Brown gesticulated irritably, and Blue said, “It’s no good you waving at me, I can’t see you”; since she also had the ear, her words had no effect, and the other two carried on with their hand-signals. Then Blue gave Green the ear and said, “Give me the eye.” Then Green gave her the ear, and she gave Green the tongue, and Green said, “Certainly not, it’s Tuesday.” Then Green gave Blue the tongue, Blue gave her the ear, and Blue said, “It’s not, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it, dear?” Green sighed and gave Brown the ear. “It’s Wednesday,” Blue repeated, and gave Brown the tongue. Brown gave Blue the ear and said, “I know.” Blue took back the tongue, gave Green the ear and said, “She says it’s Wednesday.” Then she gave Green the tongue and took back the ear, and Green said, “Dulcie always has the eye on Wednesdays.”

  Mordak picked a chunk of charcoal out of the grate and wrote EXCUSE ME on a scrap of paper he found lying on the floor. Then he got up, walked over to Green and held up the bit of paper so she could read it.

  “Would you please not interrupt?” Green said.

  Blue waved her hands angrily. “I wasn’t talking to you, dear,” Green said. “There’s a rather tiresome young man here. He’s waving a piece of paper at me, but his writing’s so bad I can’t read it.”

  Mordak nodded, went away, leaned the paper against the wall and wrote his message again, in big bold capitals. Then he showed it to Green, who said, “We’re rather busy. Come back later.”

  Mordak sighed. I HAVEN’T GOT MUCH TIME, he wrote. I NEED TO ASK YOU SOMETHING.

  “He says he hasn’t got much time and he needs to ask us something,” Green said. Blue shook her head vigorously. Brown opened the bag looped over her shoulder and took out some knitting. “It’s not convenient right now,” Green said. “Can you come back on Wednesday?”

  Mordak turned the piece of paper over. IT IS WEDNESDAY, he wrote. PLEASE?

  Green sighed. “Oh, very well,” she said. “What do you want?”

  Mordak had run out of space on the bit of paper. So he turned to Blue and said, “Would you be kind enough to give the ear to the lady in the green dress? Thank you.”

  Blue shook her head. “Oh,” said Mordak. “Why not?”

  Blue mouthed something. Fortunately Mordak was a competent lip-reader. “No,” he said, “it’s Wednesday.” Then he turned back to Green and said, “You couldn’t possibly spare me a scrap of paper, could you?”

  “No.”

  Efluviel’s head was starting to hurt. She’d heard vague stories about the three omniscient sibyls of the north ever since she was a child, and had often wondered why the Elves went to all the trouble of reading books and building astrolabes and observatories rather than just coming here and asking. Served her right, she decided, for doubting the wisdom of her elders. Mordak meanwhile was rummaging in his right sleeve; he found what he was looking for, and turned back to Blue.

  “If you give the ear to the lady in green,” he said, “I’ll give you a biscuit.”

  Blue hesitated for a moment, nodded, and unplugged the ear. Mordak handed over the biscuit (it was one of the three the innkeeper had sold them, for breakfast), as Green installed the ear. “It won’t do her any good, you know,” she said. “It’s not her turn for the tooth till Friday.”

  Mordak took a deep breath. “I need to ask you a question,” he said.

  “We gathered that,” Green said icily. “Well, don’t just stand there gawping. What do you want?”

  “Well,” Mordak said, and launched into a full account of the human sudden-access-of-wealth crisis. He hadn’t got far when Green help up her hand and said, “Just a moment.”

  “Yes?”

  “This is all about the past, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so. But—”

  “So sorry,” Green said. “I’m the present. If it’s the past you want, you need to talk to Dulcie.”

  Mordak closed his eyes, but only for a moment. “Which—?”

  “In the brown worsted.”

  “Ah, right, thank you. Um, would you mind?”

  Green clicked the tongue, then took it out and gave it, along with the eye and the ear, to Brown, who gave him a sad little smile and said, “How can I help you, young man?”

  “Well,” Mordak said, and started all over again. When he’d finished, Brown said, “Yes, I know.”

  “You do?”

  Brown gave him a patient look. “Of course. This is the Fount of all Knowledge. I do wish people would take the trouble to read the sign.”

  “So you know all about the—”

  “Oh yes. Now, how can I help you?”

  Mordak took a deep breath. “I need you to tell me what’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry.” Brown smiled at him. “That would come under the present. You need to ask Elsie about that.”

  “Mphm.”

  “In the green tweed.”

  “Thank you.”

  Brown extracted the complete set of organs and handed them to Green, who installed them and said, “Yes?”

  Mordak took a moment to phrase the question. “In the light of the sequence of unusual events which I’ve just described to the other lady, can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Of course,” Green said briskly. “It’s really perfectly simple. What’s happening is—Installing wisdom updates, please wait.”

  “What?”

  “Installing upgrade 1 of 1,377. Do not discontinue enquiry until all upgrades successfully installed. Please wait.”

  The floor was quite comfortable to sit on, once you got used to it. Efluviel was just about to doze off when Green abruptly said, “Upgrades complete,” fell over, got up again and pressed the ear, which had started to come loose, firmly back into place. “It does that sometimes,” she said. “Who are you?”

  “You were about to tell me about—”

  “What? Oh yes.” Green paused for a moment, then stood up very straight and began to recite: “There is one who is the key. He is not of this world. He that is the key has forsaken them, and hides behind the sugar-spangled hole. In his absence, the hole is open and we are not ourselves. I think that more or less covers it,” she added, relaxing and massaging her neck. “So nice to have met you. Any time you’re passing.”

  “Thank you,” Mordak said. “That’s quite unbelievably helpful. So, what am I supposed to do about it?”

  Green’s smile was almost a grin. “You seek a future course of action.”

  “Future.” Mordak sighed. “Her in the blue?”

  “Lottie.”

  “Thank you so much,” Mordak said. Green took out the ear and the tongue and handed them to Blue, who said, “But it’s Wednesday.”

  “Is it still? Gosh. Look—” Mordak realised what he’d said. “Listen,” he amended, and he went through the whole thing all over again. And when he’d finished, he added, “So what do I do?”

  Blue thought about it for a very long time. “Well,” she said eventually, “it’s perfectly obvious. What you need to do is, ah, a-a-a tchoo!” And she sneezed, and the tongue shot out of her mouth like a bullet, through the half-open door.

  There was a moment of absolute silence. Then Efluviel stood up, stretched her aching back said, “It’s all right, I’ll go.”

  It took her a long time to find it, by the last rays of the setting sun, some fifteen yards from the door. She picked it up, held it pincered between forefinger and thumb, and carried it back into the cottage. “You were saying?”

  “Oo idyut,” Blue mumbled. “Ot ave oo un oo it?”

  “Sorry,” Efluviel said, “it landed in a clump of nettles.”

  “Urts.”

  “That’s too bad,” Mordak said soothingly. “Is there
anything—?”

  “Ock eef.”

  So Efluviel went back outside again and scrabbled out in the gathering dark until she found a couple of big, juicy dock-leaves. She kept one for herself and rubbed the other on the tongue with as much vigour as she could bring herself to apply. “Better?”

  “A bit.” Blue glowered at her through the eye, which was emerald green and slightly bloodshot. “Honestly, you two have been nothing but trouble ever since you showed up here. Now, what was it you wanted?”

  “You were about to tell me,” Mordak said, “what I can do, about all the weird stuff.”

  “Oh, that. Really, I’d have thought it was self-evident, to anyone with a bit of common sense. You must find the one who is the key before it’s too late, and then you must put everything right.”

  Mordak waited for a moment, but there wasn’t any more. “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Put everything right.”

  “That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

  “I see. And the one who is the key. Where will I find him?”

  “At the place where he is.”

  “Of course, how silly of me. And his name?”

  Blue stared at him for a moment, then giggled. “Quite,” she said. “Now then, unless there’s anything else—”

  Mordak smiled at her. “No, thank you, that’s quite enough to be going on with. Thank you so much for your time, you’ve been quite incredibly helpful, I shall tell all my friends to come here as often as possible. Goodbye.” He walked to the door, opened it, shoved Efluviel through it and turned back. “Oh, and by the way,” he said. “It’s actually Monday.” Then he slammed the door behind him and started to run.

  With a frown that threatened to crack his newly acquired face down the middle, the Dark Lord stared at the sheet of parchment in front of him, and sighed until the Black Tower shook.

  Three days now, and the new body, he had to admit to himself, wasn’t turning out quite as he’d have liked. Immeasurably better than no body at all, no question about that, and after a thousand years of disembodiment there was a strong case to be made for being grateful for anything he could get. Nevertheless.

  He shooed the reservations out of his conscious mind and concentrated on the pictures. They too were not quite right; nearly there, and he was as firmly convinced as ever that Evil needed a logo, a single visual image that put across the message, instantly, viscerally and at a net saving of a thousand words, the moment you saw it. Nearly there, but not quite. He’d read all about logos while he was, um, indisposed, and he could appreciate that as a weapon in the battle for hearts and minds—

  Yes, fine. They needed a logo. But maybe not one of these.

  A stray gust of wind, slanting in through the arrow-slit, lifted the paper a little and made it dance. The Dark Lord extended his hand and pressed it down on the table. It was nice–oh, so nice–to be able to do things like that again, instead of having to transmit a telepathic order to the Captain of the Guard to send a platoon of goblin stormtroopers up the six hundred and fifty flights of stairs that separated the guardroom from his eyrie, just to pick a stray bit of paper up off the floor. Also, it made him feel silly; and once a Dark Lord starts thinking like that, you might as well tell the lads to pack up and go home, because the end was very near. The alternative–chasing round the room as a non-dimensional force of pure energy trying to read a document as it fluttered through the air–was only marginally preferable. Yes, it was good to have hands again, even if they did come at a price.

  He’d tried explaining about the need for hearts and minds to the goblins, who’d looked at him and said, yes, great for a curry; except for Mordak, of course. Ah, Mordak. Now there was a goblin who actually got it. Mordak had been a hundred and ten per cent behind the idea of a logo, except that his suggestions tended to be along the lines of red hands, scary staring eyes and all that sort of thing. Negativity, that was Mordak’s problem. Even he, so enlightened in many ways, was still inclined to see Evil and Good purely in terms of black and white.

  Mordak, he knew, wasn’t going to like any of these. The rose, for instance, or the oak tree; the Dark Lord could picture him now, scowling thoughtfully and carefully not saying, “What’s all that supposed to be about, then?” Or the dove. Mordak would take one look at that and say, “This bloke can’t draw vultures worth a toss.” He’d have a point there, mind; it was a very wobbly dove, and the things sticking out of its shoulders might have been wings, or maybe the poor creature was on fire; who gave a damn, really? Just rotten drawing, if you asked the Dark Lord.

  He sighed again, and was just about to impale the parchment on the for-filing spike when he noticed a fourth image, one which he couldn’t remember having seen there before. If so, it was odd, because the fourth image was far and away the most striking. He drew the parchment close to his nose and squinted at it.

  The fourth image was essentially a pair of concentric circles; a fat one in the middle, and a thinner one surrounding it. What was it? Could be several things. An archery target, for not particularly ambitious goblin marksmen (plenty of those) or a partial solar eclipse. Or—

  He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt-front. A circle inside a circle; it definitely reminded him of something he’d seen recently, but what was it? It’d make a damn fine logo, he was sure of it–a wheel within a wheel, suggesting intrigue, chicanery and dark goings on; an outer circle and an inner circle, implying division, polarisation, us against them, concepts at the very heart of Evil; also, a very precise fried egg. And who in the world doesn’t like fried eggs, apart from the Elves, who practically live on salad?

  Where had he seen it before? Mordak might know. Mordak knew a surprisingly large amount of stuff. But (he recalled with a sigh) Mordak was off on some quest somewhere, and a long way away by now. A disembodied force of pure energy would be able to zip through the ether and into his mind in an instant, no matter where he was; the fortunate owner of a new (well, new-to-you) corporeal body couldn’t face the thought of all those stairs, let alone bumping around in a badly sprung carriage on roads like potato furrows. Not that he was having regrets or anything. Perish the thought.

  A circle within a circle. Definitely familiar.

  There was a knock at the door–he had a door now, which was wonderful. “Come in,” he said.

  “Officer of the day reporting as—” The goblin soldier froze, then whipped out his sword. “Gnasz, Burgk, get up here quick. There’s a sodding Elf in the chief’s room.”

  The Dark Lord sighed. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Shut it, Elf.” The goblin had backed up against the wall, his sword held out in front of him in trembling hands. “Soon as the lads get here, you’re goulash, capisce?”

  Iron boots were clumping up the stairs. The Dark Lord took off his spectacles and laid them on the table. Obviously, the changeover was going to take time, he appreciated that. Not to mention almost superhuman patience.

  The arrival of two more goblin warriors seemed to put new heart into the duty officer. He took half a step forward and brandished his sword a little bit more purposefully. “Sergeant,” he said. “Get that Elf.”

  “Um, Chief—”

  “Are you disobeying a direct order? I’ll have your guts for—”

  “Chief.”

  A tiny flicker of doubt inside the duty officer’s small, round head. He lowered his guard just a little, while the sergeant leaned forward and whispered something in his shoulder-length-lobed ear. “Oh,” said the duty officer.

  The sergeant gave the Dark Lord a sheepish grin. “Sorry about that, Boss,” he said. “He’s new.”

  “So I gathered,” the Dark Lord said, as the duty officer cringed against the wall. “Also, he doesn’t bother reading the memos.”

  “Can’t read, Boss,” explained the sergeant. “Wrong sort of eyes, see.”

  Well, of course. Goblin logic. There’s a subspecies of goblins who can’t see things pro
perly if they aren’t moving, so naturally it’s from them you recruit your staff officers and administrative grades. “Get out,” he said, not unkindly, and the soldiers withdrew. He could hear them clump-clumping down the stairs, and the duty officer’s voice exclaiming, “He’s a what?”

  The Dark Lord shook his head sadly. The exceptionally difficult and dangerous piece of Dark magic that had made it possible for him to regain a physical shape had been known hitherto only to a forgotten sect of cake-worshippers far away in the jungles of the south, and where they had learned it from they had long since forgotten. There was nothing in the actual code of the spell to suggest that it had originally been Elvish magic, and it was all so long ago that the Dark Lord had clean forgotten about the Elf-sorceress Gluvior and her experiments with eternal life; rotten luck, in a way, that the cake-botherers’ spell had turned out to be hers, and worse still that she’d only perfected it when she was seventy-six and nearly crippled with arthritis. Still. Even so. A body is a body is a body, and that was all there was to it.

  Apart from the dreams—

  A light flared inside the Dark Lord’s labyrinthine brain. That was where he’d seen it before.

  He scrabbled for the parchment and looked at it again. A circle within a circle. He closed his eyes, but the after-image remained, as though he’d been staring at the sun. A circle surrounding a circle. A circle encompassing a void. An abyss.

  His old body, the one he’d lost after the war, when he was cast down by those annoying princes of the West, hadn’t been troubled by dreams, since it never slept. It was only since he’d come to live in the reconstituted mortal shell of bloody Gluvior that he’d experienced sleep (which wasn’t so bad) and dreams (which were). And it was in those dreams, those beguiling, horrible episodes, unreal and more than real, that he’d seen the void encompassed by the circle. Not just once, but every single time; no sooner had he closed his eyes and drifted away into temporary synthetic death, than there it was–a great bloated ring standing unsupported between heaven and earth, its glistening brown fabric sparkling with innumerable white crystals, its contours rounded, its scent strangely mouthwatering, and in the centre… In the centre, the void, the abyss, empty yet not empty, rather a window looking out on to strange, terrible, wonderful things, as a voice in his head chanted, Look not for too long into the doughnut, lest the doughnut look into you.