“Why, certainly.”
“Even so the laws of conduct. When I laughed but now had you laughed with me, we must have spent half the night tumbling and playing awing through these light airs. For we be winged, you and I; have too much in us of the light elements, Fire and Air, to be restrained from joy by the troubles of the earthbound court.”
“What’s wrong with the court?”
“What’s not? The worst and heaviest of the shapings; all’s confusion, and the King’s Radiance fears some deadly doom. And so, farewell; I’m for a new master.”
“Wait a second!” cried Barber. “I’d like to get to the palace, and I’d like still more to see you again. How do I go about it?”
“Ask the wind—or your Malacea.” And off she went, at a speed he could not match.
CHAPTER XVI
Which direction he should take was left pretty much in the air, Barber thought, wishing there were someone around to appreciate the pun. If the fay were bound away from the court it would not do to follow her; and from what he had learned of the singular geography of Fairyland, it seemed probable that if he followed her back track he would reach some very interesting place, but not the one he was looking for. The thing to do was think in terms of his environment—“lay aside those stiff mortal thoughts,” as Malacea had advised. What would a Fairylander do?
Use the wand, he answered himself, letting it slide from his hand. It fell, not straight down but sliding and twisting down an invisible gradient like a falling leaf, as though trying to hold itself in one direction. Barber did a power dive in time to catch it before it reached the treetops and slanted up again, holding the loop of the wand loosely in a crooked forefinger. “All right,” he ordered it, “suppose you show me the way.”
The wand thrust itself out, flatly horizontal, and Barber flew along in the direction it indicated. Beneath him the forest began to thin out in clumps and groves, then altogether wore away into a rolling plain, with only a tree here and there, black in the waxing light. Now outcroppings of rock began to jut through the grass of the plain, growing in size and frequency till Barber found himself flying low over a rugged crag country, which presently sprang up in peaks as angular as the mountains of the moon. Not a sign of the smooth parkland and monstrous potted trees that he remembered.
Off ahead the sky was lightening. The country below, now all gorge and precipice, threw up a tor that stood with scarred sides across his line of flight. On its top, black against the Prussian-blue gloom that precedes sunrise, something good, too regular in outline to be the work of nature. A castle—ugly and squat in contour, with thick unpierced curtain walls and disproportionately small towers at the angles, like a prison. A Dracula castle—no, that would have the fascination of the weird, something Gothic out of Aubrey Beardsley, while this was as hideous as a factory town. The wand led him straight to it, and as he planed in for a landing at the gate he saw Oberon’s blue-and-gold oriflamme hanging listlessly from a staff.
The gate was heavy wood, bound with metal in a finicking and tasteless design. It was locked; there was no answer to either Barber’s shout or his hammerings, but when he thought of the wand again and applied it, the gate creaked grudgingly just wide enough to let him enter. He found himself in a courtyard with a little dry grass sticking up through cobbles, and the first thing he noticed was the slobbering hobgoblin with overlarge knee joints who had admitted him. The second was Oberon, Titania and Gosh, coming down the steps of the donjon.
As they crossed the bailey Barber had full time to note that, if he had changed during his journey, there was still more pronounced a change in them, and all for the worse. Oberon looked older and balder, with a hunched and gnarled appearance hard to put a name to; one of those things you were sure you saw till you looked straight at it, when it vanished. Titania’s pale glory of complexion had become a dead white, the ruffles at her neck were a little askew and the gold broidery of her sleeves tarnished. The good-natured impishness of Gosh’s face had given way to a fixed malignant sneer, as though he could not wait to grow up into a ruffian and a killer.
And as with master, so with man. The train that followed the royal pair was an assemblage of crapulous horrors, not a winged fairy in the crew. Some limped, some had gargantuan hands or chins, some tails, and all deformities. Barber recognized Imponens with difficulty; the acrobatic philosopher was hobbling along on a cane, with the corners of his mouth drawn down, and only just lifted his foot out of the way as a huge centipede scuttled from under the feet of another of the crew.
The King stretched out his neck and scrooged up his eyes, peering at Barber as though he could not see well. “No, tell me not,” he said. “Memory’s as good as ever, a faculty independent of mutations, which does not decay. Ha, I have it—you’re the latest changeling, Barber.”
“Just back from the Kobold Hills, at your service, and reporting complete success.” He managed a salute with the wand. Around the King the court burst into squeaks and murmurs and Oberon almost smiled.
“Well done, then; you have our favor. Success were needed at this pass, sorely needed. Even a tiny gobbet goes far to restore our joy.”
“Joy is but the absence of pain,” croaked Imponens, but Barber had already begun with: “Is this your new palace?”
“Aye,” said Oberon, “though we had not the planning oft. Come, we’ll change tales and wring each other’s vitals—” He reached out to take Barber’s arm and lead him toward the frowning keep, then drew back. “You have the Metal about you. Leave it by the gate, my lord Barber; ’twill at least be some barrier to the bugs and bewitchings that now do plague us.”
Barber put his sword just inside the gate as directed and followed the King. The “my lord” was a new form of address but jangled a pleasantly responsive chord somewhere in his mind. Within the castle their footsteps went echoing through great passages of undressed stone, taller than those of the Kobold Caverns, but almost as dank. There were spiderwebs everywhere, and less pleasant insects crawling about. When they came to a great hall whose walls bore faded and moldering tapestries, Oberon dismissed the court with a word and led on, up a circular stone staircase to the battlements. The dawnlight was growing and a chill wind had come up with it, that wrenched at their bodies as Barber told his story.
“So she saw in you the destined redbeard,” said Oberon, when he had finished. “ ’Tis a thing to think on; must ask Imponens, whose counsel in such affairs is never less than good, though somewhat vinegar’d with pessimism of late. Yet it could be, and being solve the sorrows of—”
Something hit Barber violently in the back, tumbling him right through one of the crenels in the battlement. He had one glimpse of young Gosh’s snarling face, heard Oberon’s startled shout, and the wind whistled past as the toothlike rocks below swam up to receive him.
There was a heart-stopping instant of terror before Barber remembered and spread his wings. They bore; he leveled out in a long sweeping catenary, and beat his way back to the parapet. Oberon was trying to get at the boy, who was wrapping himself in Titania’s skirts for protection. Barber made a quick estimate of speed, distance and windage, fluttered his wings twice for altitude, and glided in.
Gosh saw him coming, and left his hiding place to run, but Barber swooped in, swinging the wand with both hands like a bat, to bring it across the boy’s shoulders. If it broke every bone in the young imp’s body he would be only too pleased.
The wand met only the slightest resistance. Then Gosh was not there, and Barber, thrown off balance by the strength of his own blow, swept into a stumbling landing.
“Whither went he?” cried Titania. “You villain, you puling thrip, if you’ve destroyed him, I’ll—”
“You’ll do precisely nothing, madam,” Oberon cut in. “An he were destroyed, ’twere a bad world rid of worse rubbish, but ’tis not so. There he stands, by power of the wand and ’s own character given his proper form at last.”
He pointed to the battlement beside Titania, a
nd the others, turning, saw a crocodile about a foot and a half-long, which opened its jaws to emit a feint sound like “Urk!” and started across the paving at a brisk clockworky waddle.
Titania snatched up the reptile. “Poor Chandra!” she said, contriving in some odd manner to be both pathetic and ridiculous without in the least losing her character of queenliness. “Oh, I could smile to see them die that bring these shapings on us.” She coddled the thing in her arms like a baby and Barber was surprised to see two big tears oozing from its eyes along its scaly face. “I—” began Titania, when the memory of a legend clicked in Barber’s brain. Absurd where he came from, it was probably true here. “Drop it quick!” he shouted, “it’s going to bite!”
Titania did not quite drop the animal, but as she half-jerked it away its teeth met with a snap, half an inch from her nose. “Gramercy for your warning, philosophic Barber,” she said.
Barber bowed: “If I may offer a suggestion to Your Resplendency, you can keep your little playmate very comfortable till he gets his shape back by putting him in a pan of water and a rock he can crawl out on. Your Resplendency can feed him once or twice a week on chopped raw meat.”
Titania gazed at him suspiciously for a moment, then, “I’ll do it, straight,” she said, and hurried for the stairs, holding her pet at arm’s length, with its legs revolving. Oberon chuckled; Barber somehow could not find her distress very funny.
But the King was plucking him by the sleeve. “We’ve matters of state to confer on,” he said. “Harkee, my lord Barber, I do count you a true man.”
“I hope—”
“Tush, take it not amiss; we’re surrounded by treacheries in these evil times. Why, the very cockingwenches play at Judas—Hold, where were we? I have’t; these villain shapings—secret of statecraft is let nought distract . . .” His voice trailed off and he paced the paving, hands behind back, wagging his head to and fro, then turned suddenly and gripped Barber hard by both elbows.
“I’m in some sort an usurper,” he declared fiercely. “Make the worst of it; say I seized the throne and the lady. She loved me true and I her; we mutually do still, I swear it. Will you hold me the less for that?”
“Why, no, of course not,” said Barber, mystified, but supposing this was what he ought to reply.
“Well then, what would you? My lady’s gay and fives for pleasure in herself and those about her. Under her regiment we had a realm here like your own mortal world in its laws physical, save for slight changes such as lacking the power of iron . . . Look how yon bat sails widdershins around that tower—another presage of disaster!” He flung out an arm to point, then turned to Barber again:
“So it was all gaiety, high pleasure and good converse at court, but beyond it, misery—rievings, slayings and black magic, hideous things done, as you have traces of among your own people. Is’t not so, you’ve heard some tale how they met on a mountain with bloody rites?”
“Like voodoo at the Walpurgis Night?”
“Aye: and they’re good history of the black days ere I wedded Titania and ’stablished a new sovranty. But these anarchies and nightmares, I put them down with the strong arm—I. With the aid of Sylvester and the giving of my heart’s best blood, I made a great conjuring that may not be repeated; set the laws fundamental of this realm so that happiness should be our constant companion. ’Twas not enough; there are those whose only happiness lies in their own aggrandizement.”
He stopped and looked out across the waste of rock. The sun had reached the horizon now and was throwing level ruddy beams across pillar and buttress and spire, but it drew no answering fire from those heartless cold pitches of frozen lava. They lay inert, highlights and shadows alike gray and deadly. Barber cleared his throat. “Do you mean those laws of conduct I’ve heard about? I wish—”
“Aye. Conduct. There’s the key—would you not say? Sylvester and I, we sublimated in a manner the laws natural to these others, so that none could give joy, for example, without receiving it in turn—set a rein on all furious passions . . . Mistake . . .” He turned and gripped Barber by the arm again. “Good Barber, will you make alliance with an old man and old king whose web is near spun?”
“What, me? Why? I thought I was working for you, sir. What—”
“So, let it slip.” Oberon passed a hand across his forehead as though to brush something away. “I had not meant to ask you so early. Let it slip; my mind is all adossed. We’ll to bed and treat with Imponens present, who can see deeper into a millstone than most.”
He led the way to the stairs and whistled for a servant. The one who came had the big head and pop eyes of an idiot and teeth that hung over his lower lip. He breathed with his mouth, blowing little bubbles.
The room to which this creature led Barber was tall, but narrow, with a single high window and rusty damp-streaks down the walls. The bed was hard, and Barber, who had never tried to sleep in wings before, found such difficulty in arranging his limbs that he had no more than closed eyes when he was awakened by a strident “Krawk!” and looked up to see a big black bird on the window sill with moonbeams streaming past it. Somewhere below in the castle a bell was tolling with muffled, slow persistence.
Barber’s head ached and his mouth held a taste like the hangover from a three-day drunk, but there seemed little use in trying to sleep any more, as both bird and bell kept up their noise. He dressed in a foul mood; “Krawk!” said the bird as he handled each garment, cocking its head and inspecting him with embarrassing thoroughness. He thought of flying up and shooing it away, but the room was hardly wide enough for the spread of his wings, so he compromised by yelling “Beat it!” and went down the hall.
Oberon and Titania were seated at breakfast as in that other hall, but there were no winged fairies visible and the correct frog footmen had disappeared. Instead there was a throng of the exaggerated people he had seen the night before; they stumbled over one another trying to serve the King and Queen, and the bell in the background donged steadily. The King looked up at Barber’s entrance.
“A chair of pretense, ho! for Barber!” he called, and motioned to a place by his right at the table. It was forthcoming after a little commotion, and Barber sat down to breakfast whose flavor was not improved by the sight of a pair of cockroaches holding a conference in the center of the table. Oberon waited courteously enough till he pushed away his plate.
“Now let’s to business,” said the King. “Here be deep matters. A weird lies on us—implacable, no escape within our—” his eye caught the cockroaches—“within our—faugh! What foulness! Imponens, unriddle this matter of our good cousin, Barber. What is’t we wish to say?”
“Doubtless that we gave ourselves to delight while the Enemy to strivings, Your Radiance. But ’twill not mend a broken bone to see where it’s fractured.”
“Pox on your counsel of despair. Are we dogs to lick in gratitude the punishing hand? No; we’re as foul as those that challenge this fair land an we not challenge them in turn.”
“But, Your Radiance, we lack the power—” Imponens began to protest, but Oberon cut him short: “And have we not here one that possesses all means needful? Our Barber, our war-duke and champion, who’ll not be bound by—”
Titania cleared her throat. “My Lord,” she said, “you do but rant and wander from the purpose. Look, Barber, here’s what he would say, these witcheries my Lord King put down when we were united, they have made a great resurgence.”
Barber managed to get a word in edgewise. “Will you pardon me if I say I don’t understand? Whom are you talking about? Who’s responsible for these troubles?”
There was a silence. Titania and Oberon looked at each other, and it was the brownie philosopher who finally spoke: “You pose, Sir Barber, the question of the ages, one ineluctable. For if I answer in detail: the kobolds, then you are well answered, since those cattle did grievously vex this realm in ancient days, and you yourself are but come from hindering a new vexation. Yet, ’twill not be the kobolds, ne
ither; for their two excursions are separated by so wide a gap as memory can barely bridge, and in that interval they have been the best of subjects and citizens, cheerful, apt to every task, and I make no doubt will be again, now that you have knocked down their high pretensions.
“Shall I say the fays, then, for deserting the court? Nay; they’re lighthearted aerial creatures who give and receive pleasure, will be a joy wherever the laws of Oberon run.
“Those who bring these shapings on us? At the moment, my art tells me it may be those Princes of the Ice which erst were our good friends and well-wishers. Yet if they be destroyed their ambition will but pass to other hands and in the end be unconquerable. What boots it, then, to struggle—”
Titania rapped sharply on the table with her knife. “I’ll not hear such traitorous doctrine!” she cried. “Give him no thought, Barber; we live in today and not i’the ages, whereas ’tis every philosopher’s maggot to imagine himself thinking for eternity. Here’s the present problem: someone, it may be those Princes of the Ice our lick-pudding counselor thinks, has found the gap in the laws that guard this land. By constitution its physical forms are somewhat unstable; well then, these enemies who seek to rule raise spells to produce shapings and still more, till our whole surrounding is gone hideous. Our joy fled with the fays who cannot bear such ugliness; they hope to cramp us and drive us with unpalatable circumstance till we even break our own laws of conduct, the reign slip from our hands, which they hope to seize.”
“And what if they did?”
“Our death, perhaps; but in any case the tempestuous anarch disorder which my very dear Lord and King saved us from so long gone. This is what you must keep us from now, good Barber.”
Fred Barber sat back in his chair of pretense and looked from King to Queen. The picture was becoming clearer, but: “Why must it be me? What’s the matter with Oberon?”
“My own curst laws!” The King brought his fist down on the table. “They hold for all—no violences. Do I break ’em, I’ve let in the forbidden thing, we have the old days back. Yet here’s a scoundrelism will hear no argument but sharps.”
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