The Sorceress and her Lovers

by Wesley Allison

  “What magic?” wondered Iolana. “Magic on me?”

  “Oh, it’s all over you,” said the sorceress. “It’s like you’ve been dipped in it.”

  “Pretty,” said the dragon.

  “You’ve been doing something you shouldn’t,” continued Senta. “And I don’t just mean spying from outside doorways.”

  Iolana’s eyes widened.

  “Nothing happens in this house that I don’t know about. Now, let’s go on out and enjoy our tea. But first thing tomorrow, you and I are going to have a little visit all our own.”

  Chapter Eighteen: The Machine

  “So, what’s for breakfast?” asked Senta, strolling into the Dechantagne Staff dining room. The governor was present as were the three household children, but Mr. Staff and Mrs. Dechantagne were not.

  “What are you doing here?” asked the Iolanthe.

  “Oh, I invited her to breakfast,” said Iolana.

  “Are we going to see you every day now?” asked Augusts Dechantagne. “I don’t mind, but you didn’t show us any magic tricks yesterday and I really think you ought to.”

  “I’ve already made your lizzies disappear.”

  They looked around and sure enough, all of the household servants seemed to have found some other place to be.

  “They weren’t done serving my eggs,” he complained.

  “Allow me,” said Senta. “Uuthanum.”

  Platters of food flew in through the doorway from the kitchen and circled the table. As they did so, serving spoons flew up to intercept them and dish out their contents onto the diners’ plates. When all had been served eggs, white sausages, fried potatoes, and bacon, the flying dinnerware returned to the kitchen.

  “That was ace,” said the boy with approval.

  “I don’t suppose it’s as impressive as turning your mother to stone…”

  “I heard about that,” said Iolana. “It didn’t really happen, did it?”

  “It wasn’t me and I wasn’t there to see it. You’ll have to ask your mother.”

  Iolana looked at her mother, whose fork stopped just before reaching her mouth.

  “Yes. Zurfina did turn your Auntie to stone. It was very upsetting, too.”

  Senta ate from her own plate that had been filled along with the others.

  “So, what have we all been up to this morning?

  “I’ve been working on my bug collection,” said Augie. “Iolana’s just been reading.”

  “She does that all the time,” said Terra.

  “And you don’t like to read?”

  “I will when I get bigger.”

  “Speaking of reading,” said the sorceress. “I read some of your poetry, Iolana.”

  “It’s not very good,” said the girl. “I’m sure there won’t be a second printing.”

  “I thought it was some of the best poetry I’ve ever read.”

  “Well, thank you,” Iolana said, brightening. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Just how much poetry have you read?”

  “Yours may have been the first.”

  Iolanthe took a sip of her tea and then stood up. A lizzie practically flew from the other room to pull out her chair. “I need to get to the office. Did you want to see me about something?”

  “Not at all.”

  The governor looked momentarily startled. “Well, then. Good day.”

  Senta talked pleasantly with the children as they all finished their breakfast. She told them about Bangdorf and Brech City and listened as they recounted their activities and stories of their friends. When they had finished the food and were still sipping tea, Augie brought up a topic that had clearly been simmering in his brain for some time.

  “What did it feel like to get shot?”

  “Painful,” Senta replied. “All in all, I don’t recommend it, if it can be avoided.”

  The boy stared into his cup.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m sure I’ll have to take a military post. All the Dechantagne men do. I’m not too keen on getting shot, but I guess if you can stand it, I can.”

  “If you’re in a colonial regiment, you’re more likely to get eaten by a dinosaur than shot,” said Senta.

  “That doesn’t sound any better,” said the boy. “I don’t guess I’d mind getting eaten if I was already dead, but they figure poor Warren was probably still alive while he was getting eaten.”

  “Stop it!” yelled Iolana. “Stop talking about it. It’s horrible.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t horrible,” he replied.

  “You know I was almost eaten by velociraptors when I was nine,” said Senta. “Your father saved me, Augie.”

  “Really? I never heard that story.”

  “Yes. I got off in the woods chasing after Bessemer. It was woods then. I guess it was about the corner of Bainbridge Clark Street and Fourth Avenue now. I wasn’t watching what I was doing and they surrounded me. One of them actually jumped up on me. Then your father showed up and shot them all, quick as a biscuit.”

  “Was he nice?” asked Terra. “He doesn’t look nice in his picture and I can’t remember him.”

  “He died before you were born,” said Iolana.

  “That’s why I can’t remember him.”

  “He was always very nice to me,” said Senta. “He was very handsome too. He was sort of like Mr. Baxter, only without the red hair.”

  “So what are your plans for today, children?”

  “Iolana has to teach us writing today,” said Terra. “Only DeeDee isn’t coming over because of her mother.”

  “DeeDee?”

  “Chief Inspector Colbshallow’s daughter,” offered Iolana. “She, her mother, and her grandmother have gone visiting today.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, Augie, Terra, but Iolana will have to cancel your class today. She has important business with me.”

  “Yes!” cried Augie. “I’m going to go get Claude and Julius.”

  “What am I going to do?” asked his sister.

  “You’ll come too,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “You can be the princess and we’ll be your soldiers.”

  “Take Esther with you,” said Iolana. “She’ll see that Terra stays safe, no matter what.”

  “Esther?” wondered Senta.

  “Esther is Iolana’s pet lizzie. She got her when she was small enough to fit in a hat box. The lizzies don’t even take care of them then. They’re just more animals running around and getting into things. Iolana’s got her trained up and behaving proper.”

  “Now that you have your plans in place, you kids go along your business, and your cousin and I will get to mine.”

  Iolana and Senta walked out of the dining room, though the foyer and out onto the front portico. The sun was still on its way up the sky, but it was still quite warm. Taking the girl’s hand, the sorceress led her over to a group of wicker chairs that looked out over the west garden.

  “So, do you want to tell me where all this magical residue came from?”

  “Do I still have it one me? I took a very long bubble bath last night.”

  Senta smiled. “You can’t wash it off.”

  “I expect it’s from the Result Mechanism.”

  The smile left the woman’s face, replaced by a frown. “What about it?”

  “I knew it was somehow magical, but I didn’t know what to do. I wrote Bessemer asking him to help me, but I don’t even know if the letter can reach him where he is. I haven’t gotten word back.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what happened,” said Senta.

  “I wanted to see how it worked, so I started it up. I played with it for a while, running some mathematical calculations through it just for fun, but then… it came alive.”

  “What do you mean ‘came alive’?”

  “It started moving on its own and it grew a head. It had eyes. It was looking at me. How is that possible?”

  “Hmm. It’s the magical residue—the same stuff you have all over you. It’
s been sitting in magic soup for years. First Professor Calliere used it to run off Kafira-knows-how-many spells and then Smedley, um, Wizard Bassington did the same thing. Each time they did, it pulled magic from the surrounding area and it gathered around that infernal machine. Things sitting in magic can be affected in strange and powerful ways. When I was on the way to Tsahloose with your father, I saw a creature that was affected by years of magic.”

  “The Unterirdisches Esser,” said Iolana.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I’ve read Mr. Wissinger’s book six times.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read in it,” said Senta. “Mr. Wissinger makes me look like Kafira’s little sister.”

  “But the Unterirdisches Esser…”

  “Yes. It was a dinosaur—maybe something like a polacanthus, an otherwise ordinary animal, but it was left underground in magical residue for a long time and changed into a monster. I’m betting that something like that has happened to that machine. And we have to fix it.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. Now, shall we take a walk out to the peninsula?”

  “I could drive us in the cabriolet,” Iolana offered.

  “In the what now?”

  “The cabriolet. It’s a small steam carriage. I’m allowed to drive it.”

  “Well you shouldn’t be allowed,” said the sorceress. “Those things aren’t safe. Why don’t we just walk to town square and we can take the trolley.”

  “How did you get here in the first place?” wondered Iolana.

  “I flew, of course,” said the sorceress.

  They began walking down the sidewalk of First Avenue toward Town Square.

  “So, have you seen Bessemer lately?” Senta asked.

  “Two months ago, almost to the day.”

  “How was he?”

  “I don’t know. He’s bigger than the last time I saw him,” said Iolana. “I mean he was bigger when he wasn’t disguised as a man.”

  “If he let you see him in both forms, you must be special to him.”

  “You miss him, don’t you?” asked Iolana.

  “Of course I do.”

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “So you must have a lot of friends,” said Senta.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, you’re Mrs. Government’s daughter. There have to be loads of people wanting to suck up to you to get on her good side.”

  “They might if my mother gave two figs about who was nice to me. No, I really have only one friend—Willa Tice. Well, two friends. Her brother and I get on too.”

  “I think I know their family. They’re Zaeri? You don’t have any friends of your own faith?”

  “You’re not a Zaeri-hater, are you?” demanded Iolana.

  “Of course not! My best friend is a Zaeri, and besides, I happen to be one quarter Zaeri myself.”

  “All right.”

  “We both have friends who are Zaeri,” Senta pointed out. “Do you suppose there’s something in their religion that makes Zaeri nicer than Kafirites?”

  “I think it has more to do with the shared experience as refugees that the particular Zaeri we know have in common,” said Iolana.

  “Maybe you’re just too smart,” said Senta.

  “That has occurred to me. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m an atheist.”

  “How can you be an atheist?” wondered Senta. “You see these priests with their magic powers. If they didn’t get them from God or Kafira, where did they come from?”

  “You have magic powers. Where did they come from?”

  “I have no argument for that,” said the sorceress.

  They reached the corner of First and Pine and Iolana stopped dead in her tracks.

  “What is it?”

  The girl nodded her head toward the trolley stop. “Speaking of not-too-nice Kafirites.”

  Sherree Glieberman, Talli Archer, and Questa Hardt waited at the trolley stop.

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Sherree Glieberman has tormented me for almost three years, but I’m sure she does it out of love. The other two are part of her not-so-little Hate Iolana Staff Club.”

  “Watch this,” said Senta. “Uuthanum.”

  Talli Archer let out a scream, easily heard over half of Port Dechantagne. The other two girls turned to look at her and then they both screamed. The three turned and ran, Sherree toward the gate in the emergency wall, while the other two ran toward the corner of Bay Street. When Talli and Questa realized that they were running the same way, they glanced at each other and both screamed again. Talli turned and ran cater-corner across First Avenue and Bay, while Questa ducked into a side alley.

  “What did you do to them?” asked Iolana.

  “They look hideously ugly.”

  “No, they look exactly the same.”

  “Well, they look hideously ugly to each other. Not to anyone else and not to themselves.” Senta smiled. “I suppose I should have asked you first. I could have just turned them into something—like buitrerapters maybe. I do that all the time.”

  “How long will the spell last?”

  “Oh, seven, eight years.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Relax,” said Senta. “Ten minutes tops. The next time they see one another, they’ll be back to normal.”

  Iolana giggled in spite of herself. “I guess that’s less than they deserve.”

  “We’re here by the gate and it’s not that far. Why don’t we walk the rest of the way?”

  They passed through the great gate in the emergency wall, the structure that was built to protect the first colonists from attack by dinosaurs and lizardmen. Back then entire colony could once be found huddled out onto the peninsula beyond, but now Port Dechantagne stretched miles in any direction outside its boundaries. Senta’s own house was six miles from the gate. They stayed on the sidewalk, as the streets were full of smoke-blowing steam carriages. Even the chugging machines got out of the way for the trolley though, or at least out of the way of the triceratops that pulled it. At Seventh and One Half Avenue, Senta dodged across the street and started down the hill.

  “The building is back up that way,” said Iolana, catching up with her and pointing to the north.

  “We need to stop by the shipyard.”

  The area around the docks was filled with activity. A ship was being unloaded with a massive crane. Two more vessels were docked next to it and three more waited in the center of the bay. The area was swarming with people and lizzies, almost all of whom were dockworkers of one sort or another. The humans began to stop working and stare as they noticed the Drache Girl in their midst. The lizzies by contrast, began to slink away.

  “Hey you!” called Senta. “I need to hire some of you lot for an hour.”

  Iolana called out in the lizzie tongue that they were in need of several workers for a short while. She added that they would be paid a full day’s wage. A few reptilians moved toward them, though they stayed closer to the girl than to the sorceress. Senta pointed to three.

  “You’ll do. Come along.”

  Senta walked up the slope of the hill with Iolana and the three lizzies following behind. It wasn’t far to the massive two-story structure that housed the Result Mechanism. A brick structure, with only a single door on the lower level, the building was topped with a half-raised roof and large, dirty windows all along the upper level. The sorceress turned and waited for the others to catch up. Iolana stepped close to her, but the lizzies held back a few feet.

  “So your mother doesn’t know about your antics with this monstrosity?” she pointed toward the building with her thumb. “I would have thought she knew…”

  She paused as an extremely loud bellow came from the nearby dinosaur pens.

  “I would have thought she knew everything that goes on in her house.”

  “Well, she does know quite a bit,” said Iolana. “Just not everything. She has the major-domo Kayden and Nar
sa, her dressing maid, both spying on the rest of us for her.”

  “So?”

  “I think she suspects that Narsa also spies on her for Auntie Yuah, but she has no idea that all the information she gets from Kayden is filtered through me. I also have Izza, Zandy, Garrah, and of course Esther watching everything.”

  “So you, your aunt, and your mother have all the household lizzies spying for you?”

  “No, most of the kitchen staff and Tulla, the nanny, all spy for Augie.”

  “Who spies for your father?”

  “I don’t think he bothers with any of it,” said Iolana. “Though lately it has occurred to me that Esther might be passing some of my intelligence to Terra.”

  “Isn’t she about five years old?”

  “She’s seven and a half and she’s very smart.”

  “I said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m glad I’m not one of your family. Now, I want you to wait here with the lizzies until I call for you. Verstehen sie?”

  “Ich kann natürlich verstehen. Ich bin kein idiot.”

  Senta walked to the door and touched the padlock hanging from the hasp.

  “I have a key,” called Iolana.

  The sorceress shook her head as the lock came undone of its own accord. Tossing it aside, she opened the door and went in. The windows just below the sloped roof made it almost as bright inside as it was outside. In front of her was the machine. The side facing her had a bank of levers and switches. Walking anticlockwise around, she saw the slot from which a paper stuck and just beyond that, the firebox. Except for the clicking of a few switches deep inside the mechanism, there were no sounds. Except for a pulley here and a gear there, there was no movement. At last Senta reached the far end. Suddenly a large square mechanism rolled forward and two green lights burned.

  “So you are awake.”

  A gear whirled and steam sprayed from a release valve.

  “You’re not at all like I remember you. You seemed much bigger then, but I suppose that’s because I was only nine.”

  The whole machine shifted, as if it was stretching.

  “Well, you have something now that you didn’t have then, don’t you. What would you call it? Animas, I suppose.”