The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter

by Natelson, D. J.

  Stephen began outside, to get it over with. He was deep in weaving delicate strands of enchantment when something caught his foot. He stumbled back, fighting to keep the enchantment from breaking. The thing moved under his feet, and Stephen found himself sprawled on the ground, his head aching.

  He climbed hastily to his feet, brushing off his robes. “Look what you’ve made me do—I’ll have to start over!”

  The body on the ground did not move.

  It was not, Stephen ascertained after a moment’s panic, dead. He prodded it with his boot. “Excuse me,” he said. “You’re in the way.”

  The body—Stephen thought it was probably male, though it was too deformed to say for sure—twitched and snorted.

  “Please move,” Stephen said, prodding it again. Maybe he could go around it? No; he had to circle this building several times more, and it would trip over it for certain. Even in the unlikely case that he didn’t, the body might roll over and integrate itself into the wards.

  “What have I done to deserve this?” Stephen asked the world at large as he used his foot to roll the body away from the inn.

  The body’s arm flew out, and something cold knocked against Stephen’s knee. Stephen stopped mid-roll. There was only one thing in the world that felt like that.

  Knowing what he would find, Stephen knelt and shoved up the body’s sleeves. Slim, seamless bands of iron encircled each wrist, too snug ever to remove. The skin had molded itself around each band—like a ring that had been worn for years and years, maybe since childhood.

  “Wake up,” Stephen commanded the body, kicking it in the ribs. “Wake up! Does everyone around here wear iron bands like that? Tell me!”

  The body groaned and opened its eyes. “Go away.”

  “Be more grateful; you’ll freeze to death if you stay out here.” As he said it, Stephen knew it wasn’t true, and knew what allowed the villagers to stay out all night—magic had been sewn into the seams of their clothing, old enchantments, but ones as efficacious as those in his own robes.

  A strange dichotomy: enchanted clothing, iron bracelets—but no enchantments on the town, no enchantments even, Stephen realized, on the inn. Not residual magic, still clinging to the wood. Nothing. No enchanter had ever put so much as an anti-wind enchantment on that building. He was the first.

  “Why do you wear iron?” Stephen asked. “Does everyone in this village wear it?”

  The man goggled. “Of course we do, all of us.”

  “To stave off the madness?”

  The man staggered to his feet. “Who are you, anyway? Let me go.”

  “The innkeepers—do they wear iron also? Tell me!”

  “Leave me alone!” the man yanked his arm away and ran. Stephen let him go. He had his answers.

  No wonder this town stank of poverty, if travelers always stayed in the inn.

  Stephen went back and restarted his outside warding from the beginning. When he had finished, he moved inside, beginning with the cellar.

  The cellar was a damp, unused sort of place, with frozen dirt for a floor. Stephen used his knife to dig a small hole in the corner and buried Pet’s hair, along with enchantments to conceal it from any searchers. That would act as a cornerstone for the warding, tying it irrevocably to Pet’s family.

  Stephen traced the cellar and moved up to the main floor. Pet made several moves to follow him, but each time she was prevented by her mother.

  Stephen moved on to the rooms—the innkeeper’s room first, which she shared with Pet—her father, apparently, never moved from his seat by the fire—and onto the guest rooms. Stephen took care not to look too carefully at any of the companions, and he made sure to face the wall at all times, when going through the room next to his.

  He didn’t need to look. He could smell. It had not been a dream.

  Stephen was halfway through the largest room when the Jolly Executioner sat up in bed and said, “What are you doing?”

  “Warding,” said Stephen. “Don’t distract.”

  “Hmm,” said the Jolly Executioner, adjusting the iron axe that, apparently, he kept at hand while sleeping. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  Stephen grunted and returned his attention to the warding.

  The Jolly Executioner kept his promise. When Stephen returned to the common room, drained but satisfied with his work, the Jolly Executioner was waiting for him.

  “What have you done to them?” he said.

  “Who? What?” Stephen looked around distractedly. Where was that innkeeper? He was famished.

  “What have you done to the company?”

  “Keep it down,” Pops grumbled from his seat by the fire. “Can’t a fellow get any peace and quiet around here?”

  “I hope not,” said the innkeeper, emerging from the kitchen. “Finished, are you? I must say, you have good timing; I just finished your lunch. Pet’s keeping it hot. Pet! The Enchanter wants his food!”

  Pet tottered out, a wooden tray in her sticklike arms and what must have, in Chubblewooble, been considered a feast: potato, smoked ham, and a baked apple. The portion wasn’t enormous, but it was hot, and Stephen wasn’t about to quibble. Frankly, he had expected porridge again.

  “And what about me?” said the Jolly Executioner.

  “Awake, are you?” said the innkeeper. “I thought I heard someone making a racket.”

  “And?”

  “Pet will make you up some porridge; we have an enormous stock—about the only thing of which we have any stock; a most agreeable trader came through not two weeks ago, left us with his entire supply—”

  “I’d like pheasant, potatoes, green beans, corn, a fresh roll, and soup.”

  “So would I,” said the innkeeper. “Have you seen this town?”

  The Jolly Executioner looked pointedly at Stephen, who was halfway through his meal and enjoying it immensely.

  “He,” said the innkeeper, “has done us an enormous favor for practically no payment. Decent food is small thanks, but it’s the best we can do.”

  “The warding.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I saw him.”

  “You can see through that hood? Yes, I suppose you’d have to. Oh! The warding. Quite an interesting story, that—” and the innkeeper told a long, convoluted tale that contained plenty of little complaints about drafts and rodents but no mention of iron or madness. “Hardly any enchanters stop in Chubblewooble, of course—anyone can see that this is not a rich town—and you can imagine how grateful I was that this one finally came by. Keeping this inn warm goes through firewood like you wouldn’t believe and—”

  “That’s enough,” the Jolly Executioner interrupted. “I have enough to do without listening to your ravings—and the Enchanter has finished eating. Don’t argue!”

  “I wasn’t going to,” she sniffed. She picked up her skirts with great dignity and swept upstairs.

  Pet lingered by the entrance to the kitchen, watching.

  “Explain yourself,” the Jolly Executioner said.

  “Why should I? There was nothing in our agreement that said I couldn’t take odd jobs. My warding this inn in no ways hinders the company—it might help, if we’re staying a second night.”

  “What did you do to them?”

  “The innkeepers? I haven’t done anything to—ah. You mean the company. I haven’t done anything to them, either.”

  Stephen looked up at the Jolly Executioner, keeping his face innocently blank. He would have given a great deal to know what the Jolly Executioner was thinking.

  “Last I saw them,” Stephen saw, “they were all asleep in their rooms. I didn’t look closely, but I did have to go everywhere while enchanting.”

  “And you came across nothing unusual.”

  “It smelled like someone had been sick, but I didn’t stop to investigate. I was busy.”

  The Jolly Executioner’s hood remained impassive.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No,” said the J
olly Executioner, in a tone that made it sound like yes. But Pet, who had impeccable timing, brought out his porridge, and he said no more, and Stephen still didn’t know what he was thinking.

  The rest of the company was not so easily put off.

  Miss Ironfist was the first to make her way downstairs. “You look well,” she observed to Stephen. She did not look well. Both her eyes had been blackened and her face was all over pinch marks.

  “Do I?” said Stephen. “I guess I’ve been awfully grungy since Crying, and camping didn’t help much. Good food and clean clothing can work wonders. You yourself might look almost human, except for those marks.”

  “Not only clean but healthy,” Miss Ironfist continued. “Suspiciously healthy. You look like you slept soundly.”

  “For the most part, I did. It was nice to sleep in a bed again—I admit, sleeping on the hard snow never agreed with me. You must have slept deeply, if you just got up—it is nearly two o’clock.”

  “She’s right,” said Granite, who had followed Miss Ironfist in. “You look healthy.”

  “Right as rain,” Whimsy agreed, “if rain is right.”

  “I saw you,” Feedledum rasped, barely able to force out words. Nearly half the company had congregated and—with much whispering—was communicating their suspicions concerning a certain enchanter. “You said you would come back, but you never did.”

  “Did I?”

  “I saw you too,” Arm put in. “You made mystical signs over me.”

  “I certainly did not. I have better things to do in the middle of the night—like sleep.”

  “You were in my room! Do you deny it?”

  “Last night? Yes! This morning—this morning, I was in every inch of this inn, inside and out, erecting wards. The innkeepers saw me, as did the Jolly Executioner.”

  “But you were in my room last night,” said Feedledum. “You spoke to me. I didn’t dream that.”

  Stephen shrugged. “I thought I heard a noise—a sort of thumping—and it disturbed me, so I came to investigate. I found you and Craggy and Weakstomach playing some sort of bizarre game, asked Craggy to stop thumping, and went back to bed.”

  “I’m sure you did!”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “That’s enough,” said the Jolly Executioner, who had been watching in silence. “I have already discussed this matter with the Enchanter, and it has been resolved to my satisfaction.”

  “Your satisfaction!” Arm cried. “He enchanted us!”

  “He isn’t hurt!”

  “Look at him—you can see the guilt on his face!”

  “I didn’t enchant you,” Stephen protested. “Even if I’d wanted to, how on earth would I go about enchanting twenty people at once? And how idiotic would I have to be to leave myself the only one unaffected? Why you all went mad—or whatever happened—last night, it had nothing to do with me.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Granite asked quietly. “You always hated Weakstomach. You hated the way he saw right through you—don’t think no one noticed your reaction to taking those eyes. You’ve been planning to get back at Weakstomach for that, and now he’s dead.”

  Stephen had half-expected this, and managed to maintain his enchanterly calm. “Indeed,” he said. “Indeed, I did not know that. His death is certainly tragic, but it has nothing to do with me.”

  Dead! He had known it, deep down, had known the inevitable result to that much vomiting. That was why he had taken such care not to look at Weakstomach while he had been warding the room.

  Dead! What an undignified way to die. The innkeepers would longer remember what a mess he’d made than they would his face.

  Dead! If Stephen understood correctly, that meant three men had died under the Jolly Executioner’s leadership, in the space of a month. Stephen had been busy fearing monsters and accusations of going rogue; it hadn’t occurred to him that he should also be afraid of following the Jolly Executioner’s orders. Following orders felt almost law-abiding.

  “That’s enough,” said the Jolly Executioner. “I will not have anyone accuse my enchanter.” Ah, so that was why he had changed sides. “Innkeeper! We will not stay a second night. There is a body in one of the rooms. Dispose of that, and we will consider the accounts even. Granite, Miss Ironfist—get the others. Twitch—find Tinkerfingers and prepare the horses.”

  Stephen slipped quietly away amidst the flurry of movement. He stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

  “Hello,” said Pet. “What is it?”

  Stephen frowned at her. He would have preferred to say this to the innkeeper. “Do you know why we came to Chubblewooble?” he asked.

  “To stay in the inn,” said Pet. “You’ve been traveling.”

  “Yes, but do you know why?”

  “I heard them talking in the common room last night, but it sounded like nonsense.”

  “They’re bounty hunters,” said Stephen, “hired by the king. They saved my life, and in return I enchant for them. They ride from place to place, looking for monsters to slay. The Jolly Executioner is especially keen on killing monsters. He has a giant double-headed battleax made of such pure iron that it cut through enchantments. No wards or illusions or fits of madness can touch him when he holds that axe.”

  Pet’s eyes had grown wide at this (somewhat hyperbolic) exposition. “But—there aren’t monsters around here, are there?”

  “I know a lot about magic,” Stephen went on, “and a lot about wards. I’ve lived and worked as a traveling enchanter for fifteen years. I know how to read wards—how to place and remove them, how to recognize what’s wrong with them, and what they do.”

  Pet nervously pulled a bowl of risen bread dough from a cupboard and began shaping it into rolls. She didn’t look at Stephen.

  “I was tired when I first came, and then I was holding iron. But there was no mistaking it when I went around warding the inn; it had never been enchanted before. And I met a man in the street, who wore iron bracelets around both wrists, and had been wearing them for years. He was not mad—or not mad in the way produced by magic.”

  “They’re not stupid, I guess,” said Pet. “Maybe they’ve learned to protect themselves, like we have. I’m glad.”

  “Running water grounds magic,” said Stephen, “and stops magical creatures from crossing on their own—and the ferryman won’t help you. Iron bands stop said creatures from coming too near, from feeding. Merchants come and stay in the inn, and the inn has food, but the merchants never come back, and the town starves.”

  “I think your leader is ready to leave,” said Pet. “I wouldn’t want you to be late. He’s pretty mean.”

  “I made a deal with your mother, but the inn is your future. I did what we agreed; I warded the inn; no enemy of yours will be able to enter this place.”

  “I really think he’s going to be mad, unless you hurry.”

  “You gave me your hair,” said Stephen, “and your name. Either would have done, but I used both—just in case. No enemy of spirit or flesh will cross this threshold. But I added a second enchantment: none of your family will be able to leave this inn while you are still enemies of the townsfolk.”

  Pet spun to face him, bread dough clenched in each hand. “What?”

  “You have plenty of food, and visitors come. But I don’t really want you leaving. At least here, your magic is contained by running water on two sides, and impenetrable landscape the third.”

  Pet stared at him, her lips parted, no words emerging.

  “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth—but it was either that or tell the Jolly Executioner, and he would have killed you.”

  “Enchanter!” the Jolly Executioner bellowed, right on schedule. “Get out here—we’re leaving!”

  “You’d better go,” said Pet, “before I tell Mother what you said.”

  “I’m going,” Stephen promised, “and I won’t be back.”

  VIII

  It’s easy to do nothing when you ought to do something
<
br />   When the something is something you ought to do

  And the nothing is nothing you ought not do.

  The company continued north. Travel was slow; the company was in dire need of rest and healing—only the Jolly Executioner and Stephen had escaped injury in Chubblewooble—but the Jolly Executioner refused to stop in any more towns. This was, Stephen suspected, less to do with fear over another Chubblewooble, and more to do with the Jolly Executioner’s increasing desire for speed.