by Eric Flint
They would open the gates and Pucorl would drive to the central square, and then slip across into the netherworld. Not back to his place, but to that part of the netherworld that matched this place.
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The sun was bright as Pucorl, with Annabelle, Roger, Wilber, and Doctor Delaflote shifted. The sun dimmed as though it was behind a cloud, but it wasn’t. The sun was still there, glowing yellow in a blue sky, but a bit dimmer. The town too was dimmer, and the houses were shorter, to suit the size of the people who were mostly kobolds. There were others of the magic world here, some with names of legend, some with no name that any living human would know. The arrival of Pucorl in their midst was a shock for them and the Landdísir of Donauworth. In truth, she was the Landdísir of Donauworth before Donauworth was Donauworth, back when it was a fishing village and a crossing point before Christianity got to this part of the world. Her name was long since forgotten by any living person, but she was the mistress and mother to the kobolds of Donauworth and the other fey of the area. Her name was long and complex and not something she was willing to share, but a thousand years before, when the villagers offered gifts at her shrine, she was called Mareike ves Landdisir.
Talks with Mareike were complicated by the fact that she was miffed that she had been forgotten, and not at all pleased with the Catholic church, which had enforced the forgetting. Her priestesses had been murdered by Christian mobs.
“I think we are going to need Raphico for this,” Wilber told Roger a few minutes in.
“I think we are going to need Tiphaine,” Roger said.
“Let’s wrap this up and go get them both.”
There was also the fact that while the kobolds were Mareike’s children, they weren’t the most obedient of children. There was some question as to whether she could command them to behave, even if she wanted to.
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Even with the inclusion of Tiphaine and Raphico, the negotiations took the rest of the time they were in Donauworth and were still ongoing when they left. What was in place was more like a framework for the individual households of Donauworth to make their own deal with the kobold of their house or the river spirits for fishermen, that sort of thing.
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What the twenty-firsters, and especially Pucorl, got out of the deal were several barges, including a large purpose-built, flat-bottomed enchanted barge for Pucorl. They needed the enchantment for two things.
One because the barge without enchantment wouldn’t last the trip down the river. It was too flimsy and, as it turned out, a lot of fish found the resin-soaked cloth that was its skin absolutely delicious. The demon who inhabited the barge managed to make the little fishes leave it alone by making the barge seem a large hungry predator, which was what the spirit they called to the barge was—a kraken from the sea next to Themis’ lands. It had gotten caught up in the battle for Paris, and was looking for a new body.
The first thing the kraken, who chose to be called Joe Kraken, did was demand that the poles that pushed the barge along the river be replaced. Not good enough, not flexible enough, according to Joe Kraken.
Instead . . .
“That’s kind of creepy,” said Jennifer, as she watched the workmen attach the leather and canvas tentacles with their leather suckers to the bottom rear of the barge. There were ten of the things, eight that were ten meters long and a half meter thick at the base, and two that were fifteen meters long and a meter wide at the base.
“That’s not the half of it,” Roger said, pointing at the back of the kraken barge where they were installing—also at the kraken’s insistence—a beak made of wrought iron, a leather tongue embedded with “teeth,” and a gullet that went into the body of the barge. The kraken would be able to eat.
Once the new tentacles, mouth and so on were added, they re-did the enchantment. As they had learned with Pucorl, repeating the enchantment process let the kraken migrate into its new additions to its body.
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Roger, Jennifer, Annabelle and Wilber watched as workmen with poles levered the newly modified barge onto greased wooden rails and slid it down into the river. It was thirty feet long with a flat area for the first twenty-two feet and an eight foot long, ten foot wide cabin in the back. The front had a liftable ramp that could carry Pucorl and was how he would drive onto and off the barge. The cabin in the back was eight feet tall with a slightly curved roof, so that rain would poor off. It had two eyes, one to either side, and there were a matching pair below the waterline, so that Joe Kraken could see the bottom of the river. Behind the eyes and in the back were the tentacles, eight thirty feet long, and two forty-five feet long. And they writhed as Joe was slid down the rails to the river.
A tentacle grabbed a bush and pulled it out of the ground, then tossed it away. Jennifer shuddered.
Once in the water, the tentacles were mostly hidden. The bases of the upper ones could be seen, but they quickly bent down into the water and the water roiled with their movement. Joe Kraken twisted about, using his tentacles to shift the barge back and forth, then pushed out into the middle of the river, scooted over to the far bank, and turned back. A tentacle came out of the water and grabbed a tree, then flexed, pushing the barge quickly down the river. Then the barge turned and crossed the river again. Back on this side, a tentacle grabbed a rock for purchase, and they could almost see that it was doing the same thing underwater.
Jennifer shuddered again. “Creepy.”
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The next day, Joe Kraken was still learning his body configuration. Jennifer and Roger were aboard, sitting on the roof of the cabin. Jennifer was there to examine how her design was working. Roger was there in case someone wanted to take the barge away from Jennifer. The Danube was not the safe, policed river of the twenty-first century.
They were two miles downriver from Donauworth when one of the two longer tentacles came up out of the water and grabbed a cow. The cow was pulled against, which moved the barge, then was picked up and pulled beneath the river. Its subsequent fate was unclear because of the muddy water but almost certainly not good.
“Oh, that’s really creepy,” said Jennifer. She glared at Roger, standing next to her. “How do you know that . . . that thing won’t use one of us for a snack next time?”
“It’s not mine.” Roger was wondering the same thing himself. “Hey, Joe. You’re not supposed to eat the wildlife.”
Joe didn’t answer.
“Joe Kraken, answer me.” They knew that the kraken could hear them. It had microphones and speakers in the cabin and outside it, as well. The silence made him nervous. He didn’t want to be on a sea monster that had gone rogue.
He reached up and grabbed Themis. “Excuse me. Could we get a little help here?”
Whenever the titan wasn’t present in person, she could talk to Roger through the sword—and on those occasions she was something of a mind-reader.
“Ordered by whom?”
Roger was still not satisfied. “But that cow belonged to somebody. We’re not going to make ourselves real popular if our demon-possessed river barge is lunching on livestock and pets as we go along.”
And she was gone.
After Roger explained the gist of the conversation, Jennifer shook her head. “It’s still creepy. You’d better give the thing its instructions now, though, before we run across an
y more domestic munchies.”
“It’s not listening to me.”
“Then call Pucorl.”
“Why me?” He was practically whining by now.
“Never mind.” She called Pucorl. “Pucorl, you need to talk to your barge. It’s ignoring us. And it’s eating the local livestock.”
“Do I have to?” complained a deep fog horn of a voice through the external speakers, clearly in response to Pucorl’s instructions. But at least it was speaking though the speakers.
“Kraken,” said Roger. Then, in the vague hope that personalizing the creature might be of help, he asked, “Joe?”
“Joe,” the speaker agreed.
“Don’t eat any more cows, Joe. Or a horse. Or a sheep. Or a pig. Or a goat. Or a dog.” Each was accompanied by a mental image. “Or . . . I guess that’s enough.”
“You didn’t tell him to stay away from cats and chickens,” said Jennifer.
“Who cares about chickens? And I don’t like cats.”
“Well, we have a cat with us. And if Joe eats Leona, much less Kitten, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
“Then you tell him.”
Jennifer did, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she was getting through, so she called Wilber.
✽ ✽ ✽
Wilber called Joe by way of his built-in crystal set. And to clarify, he sent it a list of animals with their images. Then he called Jennifer back. She put her phone on speaker so Roger could hear.
“Squid brains are really different from human brains. They don’t have voices at all, and they barely have ears. They communicate with colored patterns on their skin. It’s a language and a way of thinking that’s so strange it gives me fits, in spite of my magic.
“But we put in speakers and microphones, and it does talk.”
“Yes, but I’m not so sure how much it understands. That’s why the pictures.”
Jennifer had to be satisfied with that.
Location: North Bank of the Danube at Donauworth, Germany
Time: Dawn, September 19, 1372
One last time they brought Joe Kraken up onto the shore and repaired the pentagram. The pentagram was made of river plants and fish parts from the Danube, ground into a paste and blessed by Monsignor Savona and the local priests. The latter based on the notion that a kraken in the Danube would be a bit safer if the priests of Donauworth were involved. Joe Kraken, the boat, was a complex combination of magic, twenty-firster technology, and courtesy. Joe Kraken, the demon, was contacted by the twenty-firsters before they reached Donauworth. When it became clear that the twenty-firsters would have to have a specialized boat built to spec, Joe was asked what he would like in his new body. As it turned out he could communicate with them through their cell phones, and communicate reasonably well with Pucorl.
Sort of. It was a bit like talking to a three year old. His calling name was discussed too. Kraken because he was a sea monster, and Joe after Joe Louis, because he was a fighter. Especially now that he had tentacles to punch with.
Joe Kraken wanted four eyes, two permanently fixed on the boat’s pilot house. That way he could see without having to constantly heave himself above the surface, and two more painted on the sides below the waterline. Happily, the pilot house eyes didn’t need to be the size of Joe’s own eyes. That would have been beyond the skill of the local glassmakers.
In front of the pilot house was a long and wide flat surface that Pucorl would ride on, and inside the body of the boat was a leather sack that had openings in the bow and stern. That was an experiment to see if Joe Kraken was able to use it like a squid’s bladder to propel itself through the water. Not use the bladder itself—it was much too small—but somehow make it work as a surrogate.
Roger didn’t ask too many questions. The less he had to contemplate what was happening at the barge’s bottom, the better. Jennifer was right. It was really creepy.
But it worked.
Chapter 4—Vienna
Location: Danube River, Approaching Vienna, Austria
Time: 7:25 AM, September 22, 1372
Two and a half days after leaving Donauworth, Joe Kraken saw the walls of Vienna. He stopped the barge and grabbed a couple of rocks on the riverbottom to hold him in place.
Joe Kraken didn’t own his body. Roger was the kraken’s master—his pilot, it might be better to say—but the creature itself was owned by Pucorl. The twenty-firsters had received payment from Pucorl before the kraken was invited into the barge. That meant that Pucorl could land on it, even if it was slightly out of place.
Over the last couple of days, Joe Kraken had experimented with his bladder and was learning to use it to propel himself through the river water. But it was easier to use his tentacles to hold himself steady.
Pucorl said, “I see Vienna.”
Annabelle answered, “Yeah, me too.” She was sitting on Pucorl’s roof, enjoying the cool breeze as they floated down the river. The rest of the party were on fifteen river barges, enchanted partly by sea spirits that Themis introduced to them, and partly by Danube River sprites. They carried the cargo and some of the horses. Other horses and their riders rode along the banks on either side of the river, scouting their path. Having the barges to rest the horses meant that they could switch off and keep their horses fresh. It still delayed them, but not nearly as much.
After the brief stop, Joe Kraken pushed off and used his jet to shift out to the center of the river as Pucorl used his speakers to let the outriders know they were in sight of Vienna.
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Wilber Hyde-Davis looked up, then back down at the computer screen. The spell he was working on could wait. He closed Merlin and climbed out of Pucorl, but his mind didn’t let go of the spell. It was to enchant a printing press, but spells were more complicated than simply calling a demon into a thing. The shape of the thing mattered. The demon mattered. And, finally, the way it was called mattered. It was the combination of all three things that made a spell work. And that last one, the manner of the calling, was subtly important to the results. It was also something that demons did to each other, on what amounted to an instinctive level. They did it automatically, like people breathing, or the beating of their hearts, or eating and digesting. And that made it difficult for the demons to understand why what they did affected the magic.
The spell in question was an example of that. It used a rope to hold a bag of ink, and the demon was supposed to move the rope like an arm and ink the press after each page was printed. But making a rope into an arm involved more than tying the rope to the press and calling a demon. The demon had to be fitted into the whole contraption in the right way, because the rope by itself lacked the definition needed to become an arm or tentacle.
The spell was for a printer in Paris. Wilber would receive a sum of money deposited in the new Royal Bank of France. He still wouldn’t be able to spend that money anywhere but France, since as of now there was not much in the way of international banking. But the twenty-firsters had—without wanting to—introduced the concepts of fiat money, fractional reserve, and so on. They didn’t have any of the details, but they did know that Banque de France was the national bank of France in the twenty-first century and that it controlled monetary policy and was part of the European Central Bank, sort of. They knew that the money wasn’t gold or silver, but paper notes that weren’t even backed by gold or silver, and they knew that printing too much money was a bad thing. That information was enough to get things started. So Wilber and all the twenty-firsters had accounts in the Royal Bank of France. They weren’t the only ones. Bertrand had an account, and so did Pucorl and several other demons.
It wasn’t important in the here and now, but like the other seeds of knowledge the twenty-firsters dropped in their time in France, it was continuing to have an effect even after they were gone. And they were seeing that effect because of the communications link provided by Pucorl, Merlin, and especially Themis and the links she provided.
“What’s up?” Wil
ber asked Joe.
Jennifer had her eyes shaded with a hand. “I can see what I think is the tower of Saint Stephen’s cathedral ahead.”
“What’s going on?” Leona meowed.
“We’re apparently in sight of Vienna,” Wilber told her in cat. Then he climbed the ladder to the landing on the roof of the cabin. Halfway up the ladder, he turned and saw the tower. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
Location: Archducal Palace, Vienna, Austria
Time: Two Hours Past Dawn, September 22, 1372
The scout had dust on his boots and dirt on his cloak as he burst into the throne room. “They’re here! We spotted that enchanted barge of theirs.”
“Good.” Archduke Albert III of Austria looked to Karl von Richter, his new chief counselor. “Do you think we will be able to succeed?” By now the events in France were well known from one end of the Danube to the other. Bargemen had brought the news that the twenty-firsters were building a new kind of river barge that would be enchanted by a tame demon almost a week ago. The plans were in place.
“I don’t know, Your Grace. We can but try.” The counselor looked at the starling on his shoulder.
It looked back and said, “Remind them.”
The counselor laughed. “Swift is unimpressed by royalty and wishes me to remind you again that these are people of great power, with strong alliances. We must be careful of them. Don’t offer them insult!”
“Human royalty,” Swift clarified.
“Shush. Don’t be rude.”
“We remember, Swift,” Archduke Albert told the starling. He shook his head. Karl was his favorite teacher at the university of Vienna. The university was started by Albert’s older brother Rudolph the same year that Rudolph died.
After the veil between the worlds was rent and demons started appearing in the world, the interest in magic in the university had increased. Then, with the news out of Paris—especially the paper by Gabriel Delaflote on the proper means of summoning an informational demon or familiar to teach one magic—Karl summoned Swift to a starling. Since then, they had been studying magic and picking up rumors from the netherworld.