by Tom Holt
He contemplated the problem, turning himself into Aristotle in the hope that the transformation might assist his powers of reasoning. During the past two weeks, metamorphosis had been virtually his only occupation, and had kept him moderately amused. He had always rather wanted to know what various characters from history and fiction really looked like, especially the girls described by the poets. He also took the trouble to assume the shapes of all his likely assailants - Wotan and Alberich and Loge so as to be able to recognise them instantly, and had frightened himself half to death in the process.
The outward shape of Aristotle seemed to inspire him and he went through the various ways in which he could sell gold for money without actually getting involved himself. Having dismissed the notion of putting an advertisement in the Classified section of the Quantock Gazette, he hit upon what seemed to be an acceptable notion. Armed with a large suitcase, he commanded the Tarnhelm to take him to some uninhabited vault in the Bank of England where he might find plenty of used banknotes. On arrival, he filled the suitcase (more of a small trunk) with ten- and twenty-pound notes, then started to materialise gold to a roughly equivalent value. By the time he had finished, his forehead was quite sore with rubbing and the floor of the vault was covered in exquisite treasures. He removed himself and the suitcase and tried the equivalent banks in France, America, Australia and other leading countries (for it would be unfair if only one or two countries suddenly found themselves linked to the gold standard). With the immense wealth he gathered in this way, he opened a large number of bank accounts in various names - a terrifying business, full of unforeseen complications - and bought himself the house he had always wanted, a huge and extremely attractive manor house near Taunton, which happened to be for sale.
As he had anticipated, no mention was made by any of the financial institutions with which he had done business of the sudden disappearance of large sums of money or the equally unexpected appearance of a fortune in gold. The price of the metal fluctuated wildly for a day or so, then went considerably higher than it had been for some time. Intrigued, Malcolm revisited his favourite banks, invisible and carrying two suitcases. All the gold had gone, and there were plenty more banknotes, neatly packaged up for ease of transportation. In the National Bank of Australia there was even a piece of card with ‘Thanks; Please Call Again’ written on it, propped up on a shelf.
Now that he was a multi-millionaire on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Malcolm turned his attention to furnishing his new house. It seemed likely that he would have to spend a great deal of time in it, on his own, and since money was no object, he decided to have the very best of everything. It was obvious that he could not risk appearing there in his own shape - what would Malcolm Fisher be doing buying Combe Hall? - and so he designed for himself a new persona to go with his new life. In doing so, he made a terrible mistake; but by the time he realised what he had done, it was too late.
It was simple carelessness on his part that caused the trouble. He had been so excited at the prospect of owning Combe Hall that he had gone to the estate agents who were handling the sale in his own shape. He was shown into an office and asked to wait while the senior partner came down to see him, and as the door opened to admit this gentleman, Malcolm caught sight of his own, original face in the mirror and realised his mistake. He commanded the Tarnhelm to change him into someone else, but did not have time to specify who. To his horror, he saw that the face in the mirror was that of the Most Handsome Man; but the estate agent had seen him now, so he could not change into anything less conspicuous. He had stuck like it, just as his mother had warned him he would.
Thus it was that Malcolm found himself condemned to embark on his new life with the face and body of Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer, also known as the Most Handsome Man. He could not help remembering the pigeon’s warning about this, but it was too late now. Not that Malcolm objected in principle to being the most handsome man who had ever lived; but the sight of ravens (or crows, or blackbirds; he was no ornithologist) filled him with horror.
Meanwhile, he fleshed out his new character and by deviousness and contrivance of which he had not thought himself capable acquired the necessary documents and paperwork. In order to give his new self a history (multimillionaires do not simply appear from nowhere) he had to Tarnhelm himself at dead of night into the computer rooms of half the public records offices in the country, and since he knew next to nothing about twentieth-century machines, he accidentally erased the life histories of several hundred people before getting the result he wanted. Finally, however, he ended up with everything he needed to be Herr Manfred Finger of Dusseldorf, the name and identity he had chosen. Again, the German aspect was ill-advised and unintentional; he had wanted to be a foreigner of some sort (since in Somerset it is understood that all foreigners are mad, and allowances for eccentric or unusual behaviour are made accordingly) and had chosen a country at random. That he should have chosen Germany was either yet more carelessness or else the Ring trying to get its own back on him for making it do good in the world. He was not sure which, but was inclined to the first explanation, as being more in keeping with his own nature.
Herr Finger was soon familiar to all the inhabitants of Combe, who were naturally curious to know more about their new neighbour. As local custom demanded, they soon found a nickname for the new Lord of the Manor. The various members of the Booth family who had owned the Hall from the early Tudor period onwards had all been known by a variety of affectionate epithets - Mad Jack, or Drunken George - and the periphrasis bestowed on Malcolm was ‘that rich foreign bastard’. Such familiarity did not, however, imply acceptance. Although it was generally admitted that Herr Finger was not too bad on the surface and no worse than the last of the Booths (Sir William, or Daft Billy), it went without saying that there was something wrong about him. He was, it was agreed, a criminal of some sort; but whether he was an illegal arms dealer or a drug smuggler, the sages of Combe could not be certain. The only thing on which everyone was unanimous was that he had murdered his wife. After all, none of them had ever seen her in the village . . .
‘And what time,’ said Wotan, ‘do you call this?’
Loge, his hands covered in oil, climbed wearily off his motorcycle and removed his helmet. ‘It broke down again,’ he said. ‘Just outside Wuppertal. Plugs.’
Wotan shook his head sadly. Admittedly, it had been on his orders that the immortal Gods had traded in their eight-legged horses and chariots drawn by winged cats for forms of transport more suited to the twentieth century, but he expected his subordinates to be both punctual and properly turned out. Cleanliness, he was fond of asserting, is next to godliness.
‘Well, you’re here now,’ he said. ‘So what do you make of that?’
Loge looked about him. There was nothing to see except corn-fields. He said so.
‘Well done,’ growled Wotan. ‘We are unusually observant this morning, are we not? And what do you find unusual about the corn in these corn-fields?’
Log scratched his head, getting oil on his hair. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘It looks perfectly normal to me.’
‘Normal for August?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘It’s June.’
Loge, who had spent an hour wrestling with a motorcycle engine beside a busy autobahn, did not at first appreciate the significance of this remark. Then the pfennig dropped. ‘It’s two months in advance, you mean?’
‘Precisely.’ Wotan put his arm around Loge’s shoulder. ‘Good, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘It’s bloody marvellous, considering the weather they’ve been having this year. And why do you suppose the crops are doing so very, very well? In fact, why is everything in the world doing so very, very well? Answer me that?’
Loge instinctively looked up at the sky. Thunder-clouds were beginning to form.
‘Someone’s been interfering?’ he suggested.
‘Correct!’ Wotan shouted, and the first cla
p of thunder came in, dead on cue. ‘Someone’s been interfering. Now who could that be? Who on earth could be responsible for this new golden age?’
From his tone, Loge guessed that it couldn’t have been Wotan himself. Which left only one candidate. ‘You mean the Ring-Bearer?’
‘Very good. The only force in the Universe capable of making things happen so quickly and so thoroughly. But isn’t that a trifle strange in itself? Wouldn’t you expect the Ring to do nasty things, not nice ones? Left to itself, I mean?’
Loge agreed that he would.
‘So you would agree that anyone capable of making the Ring do what it doesn’t want to do is likely to be a rather special person?’
Wotan had picked up this irritating habit of asking leading questions from the late and unlamented Socrates. Loge hated it.
‘In fact, someone so remarkable that even if he didn’t have the Ring he would present a serious danger to our security. And since he does have the Ring . . .’
Wotan was trembling with rage, and the rain was falling fast, beating down the standing corn. ‘We have to find him, quickly,’ he roared. ‘Otherwise, we are in grave danger. To be precise, you have to find him. Do you understand?’
Loge understood, but Wotan wanted to make his point. ‘And if I were you, my friend, I would spare no effort in looking for him. I would leave no stone unturned and no avenue unexplored. And do you know why? Because if you don’t, you might very well find yourself spending the rest of Eternity as a waterfall. You wouldn’t like that, now would you?’
Loge agreed that he wouldn’t, and Wotan was about to develop this theme further when it stopped raining. The clouds dispersed, and the sun shone brightly, pitching a vivid rainbow across the blue sky.
‘Who said you could stop raining?’ screamed Wotan. ‘I want lightning. Now!’
The sky took no notice, and Loge went white with fear. Everyone has his own particular phobia, and Loge was terrified of fish. As a waterfall, he would have salmon jumping up him all day long. He would have prayed for rain if he wasn’t a God himself. But the sky remained cloudless.
‘That does it!’ Wotan smashed his fist into the palm of his left hand. ‘When I’m not even allowed to rain my own rain because it damages the crops, it’s time for positive action.’ He stood still for a moment, then turned to Loge.
‘Are you still here?’ he asked savagely.
‘I’m on my way,’ Loge replied, jumping desperately on the kickstart of his motorcycle. ‘I’ll find him, don’t you worry.’
Loge sped off into the distance, and Wotan was left alone, staring angrily at the sun. Two coal-black ravens floated down and settled on the fence.
‘Nice weather we’re having,’ said Thought.
For some reason, this did not go down well. ‘Any result?’ Wotan snapped.
‘Nothing so far, boss,’ said Memory.
‘Where have you been looking?’
‘Everywhere, boss. But you know we can’t find the Ring-Bearer. We can’t see him, or read his thoughts, or anything like that.’
‘God give me strength!’ Wotan clenched his fist and made an effort to relax. ‘Then what you do, you stupid bird, is go through all the people of the world, one by one, and when you find one whose thoughts you can’t read and who you can’t see, that’s him. I’d have thought that was obvious.’
Thought looked at Memory. Memory looked at Thought. ‘But that’ll take weeks, boss,’ said Memory.
‘So what else were you planning to do?’
The two ravens flapped their wings and launched themselves into the air. They circled for a moment, then floated over the world. All day they flew, sweeping in wide circles across the continents, until Memory suddenly swooped down and landed beside the banks of the Rhine.
‘Stuff this,’ he said to Thought. ‘Why don’t we ask the girls?’
‘Good idea,’ said Memory. ‘Wish I’d thought of that.’
‘It must have slipped your mind.’ The two birds took off again, but this time they flew only a mile or so, to a spot where, about a thousand years ago, a certain Alberich had stopped and watched three beautiful women swimming in the river. The ravens landed in a withered tree and folded their wings.
Under the tree, three young girls were sunbathing, and for them the Sun Goddess had saved the best of the evening light, for she was their friend.
‘Flosshilde,’ said one of the girls, ‘there’s a raven in that tree looking at you.’
‘I hope he likes what he sees,’ replied the Rhinedaughter lazily.
Wellgunde, the eldest and most serious of the three, rolled onto her stomach and lifted her designer sunglasses.
‘Hello, Thought,’ she said, ‘hello, Memory. Found him yet, then?’
The ravens were silent, ruffling their coarse feathers with their beaks, and the girls giggled.
‘But you’ve been looking for simply ages,’ said Woglinde, the youngest and most frivolous of the three. ‘It must be somewhere.’
‘I’m always losing things,’ said Flosshilde. ‘Where do you last remember seeing it?’
‘You sure it’s not in your pocket?’
‘You’ve put it somewhere safe and you can’t remember where?’
Wotan’s ravens had been putting up with this sort of thing for a thousand years, but it still irritated them. The girls laughed again, and Memory blushed under his feathers.
‘If you don’t find him soon,’ yawned Flosshilde, combing her long, golden hair, ‘he’ll slip through your claws, just like clever old Ingolf did. By the way, fancy Ingolf being a badger!’
‘He’ll get the hang of the Tarnhelm and then no-one will ever find him,’ purred Woglinde. ‘What a shame that would be.’
‘Good luck to him,’ said Wellgunde. ‘Who wants the boring old Ring, anyway?’
‘Dunno what you’re being so bloody funny about,’ said Memory. ‘Supposed to be your Ring we’re looking for.’
‘Forget it,’ said Woglinde, waving her slender arms. ‘It’s a lovely day, the sun is shining, the crops are growing . . .’
Memory winced at this. Flosshilde giggled.
‘. . . And it’s been so long since Alberich took the beastly thing that we don’t really care any more, do we?’ Woglinde wiggled her toes attractively, in a way that had suggested something far nicer than measureless wealth for thousands of years. ‘What do we want with gold when we have you to entertain us?’
‘Save it for the human beings,’ said Memory.
‘I wonder what he looks like,’ said Wellgunde. ‘I bet you he’s handsome.’
‘And strong.’
‘And noble. Don’t forget noble.’
‘I never could resist noble,’ said Woglinde, watching the ravens carefully under her beautiful eyelashes.
‘We came to tell you that we’d heard something,’ said Thought. ‘But since you’re not interested any more . . .’
Wellgunde yawned, putting her hand daintily in front of her mouth. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We’re not.’ She turned over onto her back and picked up a magazine.
‘Something interesting, we’ve heard,’ said Memory.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Flosshilde, smiling her most dazzling smile. ‘Tell us if you must.’
Even Wotan’s ravens, who are (firstly) immortal and (secondly) birds, cannot do much against the smiles of Rhinedaughters. But since Memory was bluffing, there was nothing for him to do.
‘I didn’t say we were going to tell you what we’d heard,’ he said, archly, ‘only that we’d heard it.’ It is not easy for a raven to be arch, but Memory had been practising.
‘Oh go away,’ said Flosshilde, throwing a piece of orange peel at the two messengers. ‘You’re teasing us, as usual.’
‘You wait and see,’ said Memory, lamely, but the three girls jumped up and dived into the water, as elegantly as the very best dolphins.
‘We know something you don’t know,’ chanted Flosshilde, and the Sun-Goddess made the water sparkle aro
und her floating hair. Then she disappeared, leaving behind only a stream of silver bubbles.
‘I dunno,’ said Thought. ‘Women.’
The ravens flapped their heavy wings, circled morosely for a while, and flew away.
By a strange coincidence, a few moments after Flosshilde dived down to the bed of the Rhine, three identical girls hopped out of the muddy, fetid waters of the River Tone, at the point where it runs through the centre of Taunton. A few passers-by stopped and stared, for the three girls were far cleaner than anyone who has recently had anything to do with the Tone has any right to be. But the girls’ smiles wiped such thoughts from their minds, and they went on their way whistling and wishing that they were twenty years younger. Had they realised that what they had just seen were the three Rhinedaughters, Flosshilde, Wellgunde and Woglinde, they might perhaps have taken a little more notice.
CHAPTER FIVE
One of the things that slightly worried Malcolm was the fact that he was becoming decidedly middle-aged. For example, the ritualised drinking of afternoon tea had come to mean a lot to him, not simply because it disposed of an hour’s worth of daylight. He had chosen half-past four in the afternoon as the best time for reading the daily papers, and from half-past four to half-past five (occasionally a quarter to six) each day he almost made himself feel that he enjoyed being extremely nice and bored stiff, for he knew that all the good news that filled the papers was, in one way or another, his doing.