The Fallable Fiend

by L. Sprague DeCamp

  These moral arguments did not much concern me, since I was but a temporary resident of this plane. But I did wish better to adapt myself to the ways of the Prime Plane, to make my sojourn as painless as possible. I took up the vegetarian diet with Maldivius.

  “A capital idea, Zdim,” quoth he. “I once practiced such a regimen myself, but Grax was so insistent upon flesh that I weakly gave in to him. Let us both follow Voltiper’s prescription. It will also abate our expenses.”

  So Maldivius and I ceased to buy meat at Chemnis and contented ourselves with bread and greens. Then the wizard said: “O Zdim, the Sibylline Sapphire tells me that Bagardo’s circus is coming to Chemnis. I shall go thither to witness the show and, incidentally, to put forth discreet inquiries for a successor to my whilom apprentice. Bide you here.”

  “I should like to see such a show, sir. I have been here for a month without stirring out of this ruin.”

  “What, you go to Chemnis? The gods forfend! I have it hard enough, keeping on the good side of the townspeople, without your scaring them out of their wits.’

  Since there was no help for it, I saddled up the mule, watched my master out of sight, and returned to the sanctum.

  ###

  Hours later, a sound distracted me from my reading. It seemed to come from above. Whereas the brass lamps did not strongly illumine the ceiling, I could easily see that a large, quadrilateral hole had appeared in the plaster. How the intruder lifted that oblong of plaster out of the way without breaking it or arousing me sooner I know not. The burglarious sleights of Prime Planers are too subtle for the simple, straightforward mind of an honest demon.

  I sat, watching. Demons have the advantage over human beings of being able to remain truly motionless. A Prime Planer, even when he tries to hold still, is always moving and fidgeting. If nought else gives him away, the fact that he must needs breathe several times a minute will. The fact that we can change color, too, gives Prime Planers exaggerated notions of our powers—as the belief that we can vanish at will.

  A rope came dangling down through the hole, and down this rope came a small man in dark, close-fitting garb. By happenstance, he had his back to me as he lowered himself. His first brief glance failed to note me, sitting quietly in my chair, matching my background and not even breathing. Like a frightened mouse, he scuttled on soundless soft shoes to the stand holding the Sibylline Sapphire.

  Instanter, I was out of my chair and upon him. He snatched the gem and whirled. For a heartbeat we confronted each other, he with the gemstone in hand and me with fangs bared, ready to tear him apart and devour him.

  But then I recalled Voltiper’s insistence on vegetarianism and Maldivius’ orders to follow Voltiper’s dietary advice. Such being the case, I could obviously not devour the thief. On the other hand, my master had given me express commands to eat any flagrant robber.

  Given these contradictory orders, I found myself palsied as surely as if I had been packed in ice and frozen stiff. With the best intentions, I could only stand like a stuffed beast in a museum while the thief darted around me and out, drawing from his wallet a tube full of glow-worms to light his way.

  After I had earnestly pondered these things for several minutes, it occurred to me what, belike, Maldivius would have wished me to do, had he known the full circumstances. This would have been to seize the thief, take the Sapphire from him, and hold him against the wizard’s return. I think this was very clever of me. Of course, Prime Planers are much quicker of wit than we demons, and it is unfair to expect us to be so nimble-witted as they.

  Alas, my solution came too late. I ran out of the maze and raced up the cliffside stair. By this time, however, there was no sign of Master Thief. I could not even hear his retreating footsteps. I cast about to try to pick up his odor but failed to strike a definite trail. The gem had gone for good.

  ###

  When Doctor Maldivius returned and learnt the news, he did not even beat me. He sat down, covered his face with his hands, and wept. At last he wiped his eyes and looked up, saying: “O Zdim, I see that commanding you to cope with unforeseen contingencies is like—ah—like asking a horse to play the fiddle. Well, even if I be ruined, I need not compound my folly by retaining your bungling services.’

  “Mean you, sir, that I shall be dismissed back to my own plane?” I asked eagerly.

  “Certes, no! The least I can do to recover my loss is to sell your contract. I know just the customer, too.”

  “What mean you, ‘to sell my contract’?”

  “If you read the agreement betwixt the Government of Ning and the Forces of Progress—as we Novarian wizards call our professional society—you will see that indentures are explicitly made transferable. I have a copy here somewhere.” He fumbled in a chest.

  “I protest, sir!” I cried. “That is no better than slavery!”

  Maldivius straightened up with a scroll, which he unrolled and held to the lamplight.

  “See you what it says here? And here? If you mislike these terms, take the matter up with your Provost at the end of your indenture. What did this thief look like?”

  I described the fellow, mentioning such things as the small scar on his right cheek, which no mere Prime Planer would ever have noticed during a glimpse by lamplight.

  “That would be Farimes of Hendau,” said Maldivius. “I knew him of old, when I dwelt in Ir. Well, saddle up Rosebud again. I am for Chemnis the night.”

  The wizard left me in no very pleasant mood. I am a patient demon—infinitely more so than these hasty, headstrong human beings—but I could not help feeling that Doctor Maldivius was treating me unjustly. Twice in a row he had laid all the blame for our disasters on me, when it was his fault for issuing vague and contradictory orders.

  I was tempted to use my decamping spell, to flit back to the Twelfth Plane and bring my complaints before the Provost. This spell is taught us ere we leave our own plane, so that we can return to it on the instant when threatened by imminent destruction. It is not to be used frivolously, for which use the penalties are severe. The fact that a demon can vanish when human beings are about to slay him has given Prime Planers overblown ideas of our powers.

  The decamping spell, however, is long and complicated. When I tried to run over it in my mind, I found I had forgotten several lines and was therefore, trapped on the Prime Plane. Perhaps it is just as well, for I might have been convicted of frivolous use of the spell and sent back to the Prime Plane under sentence of several years of indenture. And that had been just too dreadful a fate.

  ###

  Maldivius returned next morning with another man. Mounted on a fine piebald horse, the other man was clad in dashing, gaudy-style compared with the somber, patched, and threadbare garments of my master. He was a man of early middle age, thin in the legs but massive in arms and body. He shaved his face but seemed to be fighting a losing battle against a thick, heavy, blue-black beard. Golden hoops dangled from his ears.

  “This,” said Maldivius, “is your new master, Bagardo the Great. Master Bagardo, meet Demon Zdim.”

  Bagardo stared me up and down. “He does look sound of wind and limb, albeit ‘’is hard to judge an unfamiliar species. Well, Doctor, if you’ll show me the paper, I will sign.” And that is how I became an indentured servant of Bagardo the Great, proprietor of a traveling carnival.

  III

  BAGARDO THE GREAT

  “Come with me,” said Bagardo. As I followed him, he went on: “Let me get your name right. Zadim, is that it?”

  “Nay, Zdim,” I said. “One syllable. Zdim son of Akh, if you would be formal.”

  Bagardo practiced the name. I asked: “What will be my duties, sir?”

  “Mainly, to scare the marks.”

  “Sir? I understand not.”

  “Marks, rubes, shills are what we circus folk call the customers who come to gawp.” (Bagardo always called his establishment a “circus,” although others alluded to it as a “carnival.” The difference, I learnt, was t
hat a true circus needs must have at least one elephant, whereas Bagardo had none.) “You will be put in a traveling cage and introduced as the terrible man-eating demon from the Twelfth Plane. And that’s no lie, from what Maldivius tells me.”

  “Sir, I did but carry out my orders—”

  “Never mind. I’ll try to give more exact commands.”

  We came to where the track from the temple joined the road from Chemnis to Ir. Here stood a large, iron-barred cage on wheels, like a wagon. Hitched to the wagon, grazing, were a pair of animals like Maldivius’ mule, save that they were covered with gaudy black-and-white stripes. On the driver’s seat lolled a squat, low-browed, chinless creature, naked but for his thick, hairy pelt, like a man and yet not like a man.

  “Is all well?” said Bagardo.

  “All’s well, boss,” said the thing in a deep, croaking voice. “Who this?”

  “A new member of our troupe, hight Zdim the Demon,” quoth Bagardo. “Zdim, meet Ungah of Komilakh. He’s what we call an apeman.”

  “Shake, fellow slave,” said Ungah, putting out a hairy paw.

  “Shake?” said I, looking a question at Bagardo. “Like this, does he mean?” I twitched my hips back and forth.

  Bagardo said: “Clasp his right hand in yours and squeeze gently whilst moving the hands up and down. Don’t claw him.”

  I did so, saying: “I am gratified to make your acquaintance, Master Ungah. I am not a slave, but an indentured servant.”

  “Lucky losel! I must swink for Master Bagardo till death us part.”

  “You’re better fed than you ever would be in the jungles of Komilakh, you know,” said Bagardo.

  “Aye, master; but food is not all.”

  “What, then? But we can’t argue all day.”

  Bagardo threw open the door of the cage. “Get in,” he said.

  The door closed with a clang. I sat down on a large wooden chest at one end of the cage. Bagardo swung up on the driver’s seat behind Ungah, who clucked and shook the reins. The wagon lurched off to westward.

  The road zigzagged down a long slope into the valley of the Kyamos River, which runs from Metouro across Ir to the sea. Another hour brought us in sight of Chemnis at the rivermouth. This is a small town by Prime Plane standards, but a busy one, for it is the main port of Ir. Over the roofs I saw the masts and yards of ships.

  On the outskirts, a cluster of tents, gay with pennons, marked Bagardo’s carnival. As the wagon turned into the field, I saw a score of men laboring to strike these tents and pack them into wagons. Others hitched horses to these wagons. The clatter and shouting could have been heard leagues away.

  As my cage-wagon drew to a halt, Bagardo leapt down from his perch. “Ye idiots! Loafers! Idle witlings!” he yelled. “We should have been ready to roll by now! Can you do nought without me to command you? How shall we ever reach Evrodium by tomorrow night? Ungah, cease your insolent grinning, you bare-arsed ape! Get down and get to work! Let Zdim out; we need every hand.”

  The apeman obediently descended and opened my door. As I issued from the cage, some of the others looked at me askance. They were, however, used to exotic creatures and soon returned to their tasks.

  Ungah busied himself with lashing a sheet of canvas around a bundle of stakes. He handed me one end of the rope and said: “Hold this. When I say pull, pull!”

  On signal, I pulled. The rope broke, so that I fell backward and got my tail muddy. Ungah looked at the broken ends of the rope with a puzzled frown.

  “This rope seems sound,” he said. “Must be you’re stronger than I thought.”

  He tied the broken ends together and resumed his task, warning me not to exert my full force. By the time we had the bundle lashed and stowed, the main tent had come down and the workmen were cleaning up the last pieces of equipment. I could not but marvel how, despite the frightful confusion that had obtained before, everything was packed up at last. Bagardo, now mounted on his horse and wearing a trumpet on a cord around his neck, waved a wide-brimmed hat to emphasize his commands:

  “Yare with that harness! Siglar, run your cat wagon up to the gate; I’m putting you at the head. Ungah, put Zdim back into his wagon and pull into line . . .”

  “Back you go,” said Ungah to me. When I was in the cage, he untied the lashings of a pair of canvas rolls on the sides of the roof, so that the canvas fell down on both sides of the wagon. Since the ends of the cage were solid, I was cut off from the outside.

  “Ho!” I cried. “Why are you shutting me in?”

  “Orders,” said Ungah, tying down the lower edges of the curtains. “Boss would not give Chemnites a free show.”

  “But I am fain to see the countryside!”

  “Be at ease, Master Zdim. When we get into open country, I’ll pull up a corner of your sheets.”

  Bagardo blew a shrill tucket. With a vast noise of cracking whips, neighing horses, clattering hooves, jingling harness, creaking axles, shouts, curses, warnings, jests, and snatches of song, the wagons lurched into motion. I could see nought, so for the first hour I settled into a digestive torpor, lolling and swaying on the wooden chest.

  At length, I called out to remind Ungah of his promise. At a halt to breathe the horses, he untied the forward lower corner of one curtain and tied it up, affording me a three-sided window. I saw little but farmers’ fields, with now and then a patch of forest or a glimpse of the Kyamos. The road was lined by a dense belt of spring wildflowers, in clusters of crimson, azure, purple, white, and gold.

  When a bend in the road permitted, I saw the rest of the train before and behind. I counted seventeen wagons including my own. Bagardo cantered from one end of the line to the other, making sure that all went well.

  We followed the road by which I had come to Chemnis. We climbed to the plateau whereon the temple stands, since the vale of the Kyamos here narrows to a gorge. The horses plodded slowly up the grade, while the workmen got out to push.

  When we reached the plateau and passed the jointure with the path to the temple of Psaan, the road leveled and we went faster. We did not continue towards Ir but turned off on another road, which bypassed the capital to the south. As Ungah explained, we had milked Ir lately and her udder had not had time to refill.

  We had covered less than half the distance to Evrodium when night descended upon us. The wagon train pulled off the road on an unplowed stretch of flatland, and the seventeen wagons formed a rough circle—for defense, Ungah told me, in the event of attack by marauders. The cook’s tent and the dining tent were set up inside the circle, but the other tents were left in their wagons.

  We ate by yellow lamplight at one of a number of tables in the long dining tent, together with fifty-odd other members of the troupe. Ungah pointed out individuals. Half were roustabouts—workers who did such chores as erecting and striking the tents; harnessing, driving, and unhitching the horses; fetching food and water to the beasts; and carrying off their dung.

  Of the rest of the company, half—a quarter of the total—were gamesters: that is, men who, for a rental fee, accompanied the carnival and plied their games with the public. These games entailed wagers on such things as the roll of dice, the turns of a wheel of fortune, or the location of a pea beneath one of three nutshells, all nicely contrived for the undoing of artless marks.

  This left a mere sixteen or so performers, who appeared before the audiences. These comprised Bagardo himself, as ringmaster; a snake charmer; a lion tamer; a bareback rider; a dog trainer; a juggler; two clowns; three acrobats; four musicians (a drummer, a trumpeter, a fiddler, and a bagpiper); and an animal handler who, clad as a Mulvanian prince in turban and glass jewels, rode around the ring on the camel. There were also a cook and a costumer. These last, together with the snake charmer and the bareback rider, were women.

  The company was more versatile than this list implies. Most of these folk doubled at other tasks: thus the snake charmer helped the cook to serve repasts, while the bareback rider—a buxom wench clept Dulnessa—
assisted the costumer in cutting and stitching. Some roustabouts, seeking to work their way into better-paying jobs, betimes took the stead of performers when the latter were sick, drunk, or otherwise out of action.

  After dinner, Ungah took me the rounds of the carnival, presenting me to individuals and showing me the exhibits. These included the camel, the lion, the leopard, and several smaller beasts such as Madam Paladné’s snakes.

  Ungah approached one long cage on wheels with caution. I sensed a distinctive odor about the cage, like that of Madam Paladné’s serpents but stronger. Ungah pulled back the curtain.

  “ ’Tis the Paaluan dragon,” he said. “Go not close, Zdim. It lies like dead thing for a fiftnight; then when some unwary wight comes too close: snap! And that is end of him. That’s why Bagardo has trouble getting the roustabouts to service the brute; have lost two men to its maw in last year.”

  The dragon was a great, slate-colored lizard, over twenty feet long. As we neared the cage, it raised its head and shot a yard of forked tongue at me. I stepped close, trusting in my quickness to leap out of harm’s way if it snapped. Instead, the dragon extended that tongue again and touched my face with a caressing motion. A wheezy grunt came from its throat.

  “By Vaisus’ brazen arse!” cried Ungah. “It likes you! It knows your smell as that of fellow reptile. Must tell Bagardo. Belike you could train the creature and ride about ring on it with the rest of parade. It seems stupid, and nobody had dared to meddle with it since Xion was et; but black wizards of Paalua train these beasts.”

  “It is a mickle of a monster for me to handle alone,” I said doubtfully.

  “Oh, this one only half-grown,” said Ungah. “In Paalua, they get twice as big.” He yawned. “Back to wagon; am fordone with today’s stint.”

  At the wagon, Ungah took a pair of blankets out of his chest and handed me one, saying: “Straw in bottom of the chest, if you find the floor too hard.”

  ###

  The next day’s sun had set when we came to Evrodium. The caravan’s halting place was fit by torches and lanthorns, which shone on the eyeballs of a swarm of villagers standing about the margin of the lot.