The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  “If you can’t tell me that cure, suggest another,” Fiona said furiously.

  “You might try throwing a party for all the peasantry,” said the silvery voice, diminuendo. “There is this party game called Postman’s Knock . . .”

  Then the voice and the fog were gone, and the omniscient magic mirror (which, as it happened, could be consulted only once in any three days) was again no more than a mirror.

  Resisting her urge to give the silver a vicious kick, Princess Fiona left the room and climbed the eight flights and three spirals of stairs to the Great Boudoir. There she found Queen Kate placidly sewing hair shirts for the peasantry, who generally used these royal gifts to repair the roof of their hovel.

  “Oh dear,” said the Queen when Fiona had told her tale. “You’re such a trial to me, sometimes I think you must have been changed for a goblin when you were a baby, that’s all I can say, well you brought it on yourself, going out without your warm shawl . . .”

  Fiona was used to being called a changeling in the course of any and every scolding, though in fact the local goblins were notoriously choosy. Several times, and with good reason, the peasantry had abandoned their ill-favoured son Dribble (Court Mathematician) outside known goblin caves, and each time he had been politely returned.

  “Well,” said her mother, coming to the point as she occasionally did: “I can see I still have to clear up your messes after you, just like when you were a baby, let me see, I know I put it somewhere, yes, here it is . . .” She pulled a dusty and unsavoury looking object from a cluttered drawer. “There you are, you just put this in your hair like a good girl, something my stepmother gave me once, a poisoned comb . . .”

  Fiona hastily retreated a pace or two.

  “. . . just you put it in your hair and there you are, you stay asleep like the dead for ten years or a hundred or whatever, until Prince Right comes along and takes the comb out of your hair and kisses you and all the rest of it, nothing like outliving your troubles, that’s what my mother always used to say . . .”

  But Fiona was already on her way to ask the advice of Grommet. She found him in the Great Pantry, testing the quality of the King’s best wine with his usual conscientiousness. When he had recoiled from her appearance and listened to her story, he recalled his position as Chief Palace Torturer and made a slurred suggestion.

  “Down in, um, down in one of the Great Torture Chambers, um, can’t remember exactly which one, there’s a, mmm, very nice iron mask. Very nice indeed. Good, um, workmanship. You might like to wear it . . . ?”

  “Thank you,” said Fiona coldly.

  The next day, heart hardened by the bedtime discovery that her affliction was by no means confined to hands and face, she set about a systematic programme of being kissed by the entire reluctant population of Altrund – even the all too aptly named lad Dribble. Every one of them, it seemed, was either despicably lacking in moral worth or unfairly endowed with it. In the afternoon, after a lack of success with several sheep, she waylaid a wandering friar. The friar denounced her both before and afterwards as a sinful temptation sent by the devil; Fiona considered this to be undue flattery.

  On the second day she gathered, compounded, infused, and drank no fewer than sixty-four traditional herbal remedies, whose taste varied across a wide spectrum from unpleasant to unheard-of. An omen presented itself when the word NARCISSUS was found written in frogspawn across the palace forecourt, but no decoction of this plant’s flowers, leaves, stem, or root had the slightest visible effect. The day’s only success was scored by a mysterious and forgotten elixir found in the Great Medicine Cabinet: the dose remaining in the phial sufficed to remove one medium-sized wart from the back of the princess’s left hand. This was hailed as a great stride forward by almost everyone, except Fiona.

  On the morning of the third day, a more than usually appalling dwarf arrived at the palace. He boasted a squint, a bulbous nose, a club foot, a humped back, a cauliflower ear, and all the other impedimenta so fashionable among dwarves. Moreover, his complexion bore a startling resemblance to Fiona’s.

  “I’ll riddle ye a riddle, my maiden fair,” he said to the princess, leaping and capering with repulsive agility. “I’ll riddle your warts away with riddling words, that I will, and ye must riddle my name. If ye riddle it not aright, then ye must be mine forever. Will ye riddle me this riddle, fair princess?”

  At this difficult juncture the King came into the Great Reception Room to inspect the visitor. “Why, Rumpelstiltskin, old chap,” he cried.

  “Bah,” said the dwarf, and left in considerable dudgeon.

  The afternoon wore on; the sun sank in the sky; and the Court Mathematician, stationed in the topmost tower of the palace, presently came running down to announce the sighting of four princes in the distance. When sent aloft to count again, he corrected this estimate to two. Sure enough, three princes came riding up to the Great Door and took their turns to blow the Great Horn which had hung there since the rusting of the Great Knocker.

  Fiona’s spirits sank lower as once again the King and princes sat about the table. Would it be worst to endure a husband steeped in gore, like the first prince; or one glistening with greasiness, like the second; or one who like the third was simply wet?

  Unwrapping his burden, the soldier prince slammed an iron bowl down on the table. Something slimy and dark red bubbled within, and a fearful, mephitic stench expanded to fill the room. “I bring as my gift the hot blood from a dragon’s heart, slain by my own staunch sword this very morn! Let the princess sup deep ere it cools, and all her ills shall be healed.”

  “Let the bowl be covered lest it cool too soon,” the King suggested, with all the dignity possible to a man firmly clutching his nose.

  The second prince unveiled an exquisite golden chalice studded with costly gems. Little blue flames flickered over it; there was a yet more choking and paralyzing reek. “Let not the fair princess’s lips be sullied with horrid gore,” said this prince, already speaking with the air of a favourite son. “Here is fiery brimstone and quicksilver torn at colossal expense from the heart of the Smoking Mountain! Let its cleansing fire now burn this affliction from the maiden’s skin.”

  “Excellent,” the King said manfully through paroxysms of coughing. “Now it merely remains—”

  “Excuse me,” said the third prince, producing a thick roll of parchment.

  “Oh yes,” said the King. “Sorry.”

  “Let not these crude and crass remedies defile the sweet princess either within or without. I bring the Master Cantrip of Purification, prepared by myself from the most authentic sources. Let the princess but listen to its nineteen thousand stanzas – of a wondrous poetry withal, fit to charm the very soul from the body – and doubtless the bane which lies upon her shall melt away and be gone like the snows of, ah, last winter.”

  For some reason Fiona found this prospect the most depressing of the three.

  At the table there was a hot altercation as to whether the dragonblood or brimstone should be tested first; even the poet agreed half-heartedly that his nineteen thousand stanzas should be allowed to come as a climax rather than be squandered too early in the proceedings. Fiona herself was stationed by the mirror so that her wartless and undeniably attractive reflection could maintain the princes’ enthusiasm at a decent level. Admiring her profile out of the corner of one eye, she was struck by a sudden thought.

  Thanks more to the resources of the Great Library than those of the Acting Royal Governess, the Princess Fiona had had an excellent classical education.

  “Very well,” the King was saying. “Let blind Chance make the choice between you: let the Fates guide my unseeing finger.” He stood, clapped the fingers of his left hand over both eyes, and waved the other hand in mystic arabesques. It came to rest pointing unerringly and confidently at the second, or merchant, prince. “So be it!” said the King when he had made a great show of peeling the fingers from his eyes. “Now, as to the method of application—”<
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  The stench of brimstone was alarmingly strong. But the princess had discovered that when one is about to be forcibly cured of warts in mere minutes, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. She reached the end of her train of thought, nodded, murmured “Narcissus” under her breath – and leant to touch lips with her own morally identical image in the mirror.

  For an instant shadows flitted in the room, and Fiona felt an unmistakable tingle. Rapidly the mirror filled with fog; she had never before seen warty fog.

  “Oh fie,” said a silvery but exasperated voice. “You guessed.”

  When the fog cleared Fiona saw that her image was thoroughly encrusted with warts; so, interestingly, were the images of the King, the princes, the walls, and the furniture. Rubbing her once again lily-white hands with satisfaction, she stood and moved towards the table.

  “Father,” she said sweetly, “I have some good news for you.”

  King Fardel turned, gaped, closed his eyes, and moaned faintly. The princes appeared momentarily speechless.

  “Alackaday,” she cried, “the royal word of my father the King must prevent my marrying any of you good and noble princes. Only the curer of my affliction may seek my hand. Oh woe!” Fiona was beginning to enjoy herself.

  “I do not remember those particular words,” said the merchant.

  “You left before he’d finished,” she reminded him.

  “All’s well that ends well,” said the King tediously, “and no doubt some simple quest on the sound cash basis I originally suggested—”

  “Oh woe!” said Fiona, injecting as much agony into her tones as she could. “The royal word of my father the King may not be lightly set aside. It is my doom to travel now to the College of Sorcery, there to learn which mighty enchanter has lifted my curse from afar – and thus earned my hand in marriage.”

  “Now wait a minute,” the first prince said.

  “But perhaps wiser counsels may be found over good food and good wine,” said the princess in softer tones. “I shall summon the Master of the Revels, the Palace Butler, the Steward of the Royal Cellars, the Court Jester, the Chef to the King’s Court, the Royal—”

  “All right,” said the King, brightening somewhat. “He’s in the Great Pantry, I believe. Wiser counsels, yes, over food and drink and merriment . . .” Again he studied the second prince and seemed to be inwardly calculating.

  “And I could still read you my lovely cantrip,” the third prince was saying wistfully as Fiona slipped out of the room.

  She sent Grommet to the men with quantities of wine; she retreated to her room, changed clothes, and picked up a bundle of necessities she had had packed for some little while; she made her stealthy way to the normally disused Great Stables. There was no difficulty at all in choosing between the three steeds there. The huge fiery stallion which constantly rolled its eyes and foamed at the mouth looked more inclined to devour princesses than carry them; the asthmatic and broken-backed donkey reminded her too much of its owner. Bowing at last to the King’s whim, she saddled the stout gelding with the richly bejewelled harness and set off. There was an inn not far outside the valley, the Prancing Prince; Fiona thought she could reach it before dark.

  Near the pond she reined in and dismounted.

  “Thanks for the hint,” she called. “About Narcissus.”

  A croak answered her. “Don’t mention it; a mere afterthought. Noblesse oblige.”

  “I have a proposition for you,” said Fiona. “I’m off to the College of Sorcery to enrol as a student witch, and I’ll be needing a familiar. Talking cats are ten a penny, but a talking frog, now . . .”

  “Pint of fresh milk every day and it’s a bargain.”

  And so the princess and the frog rode out of the tale together, and lived happily ever after.

  A Pair of Lovecraftians

  TENDER IS THE NIGHT-GAUNT

  Peter Cannon

  Cults are there to be spoofed, and what better cult is there than the work of the American weird-fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft? (Answers in a plain brown envelope, please.) The first of our Lovecraftians is Peter Cannon (b. 1951), an American writer resident in England. He has written extensively about Lovecraft and his work, so knows what he’s talking about. Several of his stories are reworks of Lovecraft in the style of P.G. Wodehouse, and three were collected as Scream for Jeeves (1994). He has since written several more, but for this anthology he turned his hand to emulating F. Scott Fitzgerald. You don’t have to have read either Lovecraft or Fitzgerald to enjoy the following story, but I’m sure it would help your sanity if you did.

  “Already with thee! tender is the night

  Gaunt, faceless flutterer, in cold damp flight.”

  – “Ode to a night-Gaunt”

  I

  Three times Rosemary Hoyt dreamed of Dick Diver at the large, proud, rose-coloured hotel on the French Riviera, about halfway between Marseilles and the Italian border, and three times was she picked up on suspicion of unlawful loitering while still she paused on the pleasant shore below it. All reddish and rugose he blazed in her memory, with his soft, dull brown eyes and his somewhat probosidian nose. There was never any doubt where to find its nearest rival – at the circus or the zoo. His voice, with some faint Irish melody running through a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals, wowed the world-weary. Mystery hung over erudite Richard Diver (AM Yale, MD Johns Hopkins, degree in neuropathology Zurich) like poor children around a Christmas tree; and as Rosemary stood sunburned and shivering on the beach at sunset there swept up to her the poignancy and suspense of an almost-empty bank account, the pain of lost virginity, and the maddening need to locate the Ladies’.

  At length, sick with longing for that marvellous psychiatrist, nor able sleeping or waking to drive him from her mind, she asked the concierge at Gausse’s Hôtel des Étrangers whether or not he had checked out.

  “I am afraid so, Mademoiselle. He and Madame left nearly a month ago.”

  “For Paris?”

  “No, Mademoiselle, for dreamland.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I am not sure, Mademoiselle. Maybe I forget.”

  While she could ill afford it, Rosemary fished a 500 franc note out of her purse.

  “Merci, Mademoiselle. Now I remember. You must descend the 700 steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber.”

  “Is that near here?”

  “About 5 miles away, on the road to Cannes.”

  II

  As she stood in the green-litten vegetable garden, feeling lousy from the moon-wine at lunch, Nicole contemplated the less-than-marvellous guest list; then she went on through a cabbage patch to a little menagerie where cats and zoogs were making a medley of spitting and caterwauling noises. From there she descended to a balustraded parapet and looked down 700 feet to the River Skai. Through a telescope she could see Dick waterskiing in his transparent black lace drawers lined with flesh-coloured cloth, a curious garment which had provoked complaints from silly milksops in Provençal.

  So they had left Provençal and rented a villa above hilly Ulthar, where according to an ancient and significant law no man may kill a cat but a cat may kill a zoog even in the off season. The villa and its grounds, made out of a row of little green cottages and neatly fenced farms, encompassed a circular tower of ivied stone, once the modest Synagogue of the Reformed Ones. It afforded a splendid view of the quaint town itself, with its old peaked-roofed bars, overhanging upper-storey casinos and numberless brothels, and narrow cobbled streets slippery with zoog blood.

  Presently Dick tumbled over the balustraded parapet, slippery with sweat from the well-nigh vertical climb from the river below.

  “Nicole,” he gasped, “I forgot to tell you that I invited King Kuranes, the Lord of Ooth-Nargai and the Sky around Serennian.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  “I’m going to invite some ghouls too. I want to give a really hideous, noxious, detestable party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there’s bay
ing at the moon and grave-robbing and babies snatched from cradles and replaced with changelings. You wait and see.”

  “I’ll tell governess to lock the nursery door.”

  At seven o’clock that evening he came out to greet his first guests: the patriarch Atal, who had been up the forbidden peak Hatheg-Kla in the stony desert and had come down again alive but was still in therapy; and the perfumed and powdered priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its flaming-pink decor was the most popular dive in the Six Kingdoms.

  “This had better be good, Richard dear,” said Nasht.

  “Yes, Saturday’s our biggest night at the club,” added Kaman-Thah.

  “You boys make yourselves at home,” said Dick. “You’ll find gourds of moon-wine on the ivory dais in the circular tower.”

  “Moon-wine?” said Atal, mumbling in his beard. “Don’t know about moon-wine. Had my share and more already today. How about a cup of water?”

  To resume Rosemary’s point of view it should be said that, by the time she reached the villa after getting lost in Ulthar, the guests were gathered on benches around a long diorite picnic table on the high terrace. Stout black men of Parg in maids’ uniforms were serving the meat course. Dick smiled from his golden throne at the table’s head then pointed his nose decisively at Rosemary, saying with a lightness seeming to reveal a grandfatherly interest. “I’m going to save your virtue – I’m shall seat you between Atal, who’s 301 and Old Kranon, the burgomaster.” Nith, the lean notary, Shang, the blacksmith, Thul, the cutter of stone, and Zath, the coroner, all looked disappointed. Rosemary noticed she was the only woman present.

  “Thank you, Dick. I know you’re a gentleman of the old school,” she said. “Not like those pushy zoogs. While I was walking through the enchanted wood one of them nipped loathsomely at my— Well, talk about fresh!”