by Dave Freer
“Er,” said Tom again, looking for a place to run.
“I want to fit a safety belt to you,” said Master Hargarthius, holding out a broad sash.
That sounded a good thing. Safety. Just what he needed. Perhaps it would help him fly, or magically make the ground soft.
It appeared — once it was around his waist, that all it did was to attach him to one of the big iron handles on the trunk. Tom was fumbling at it, when Master Hargarthius sat down in front of the trunk and the raven hopped onto it. As usual the mage was muttering.
And then… plunging.
Down…along with Tom and the carpet and the trunk. Even the raven.
“Fly,” screamed Master Hargarthius.
Tom just screamed.
The Raven said: “Nevermore,” in a funereal croak, as they stopped falling just short of the ground and began an undulating flight, some few inches above the rocks. Tom wrestled with the belt, desperate to jump. Sneezed. And sneezed some more. The reason for that was the cloud of dust coming out of the carpet, as Master Hargarthius belaboured it with his staff. It rose rapidly. Tom didn’t want to be free of the belt, any more. In fact he was rather glad of it. They were higher than the tower now, heading east into the full face of the rising moon. Then their transport hiccupped and dived again, as the Master both yelled some more and beat some more dust out of it, until it came up again.
The raven did nothing more than sharpen its beak on one of the iron studs on the trunk. It paid no attention to the erratic hops into faster flight, or to the near crashes with the rocky ground.
It was all very well for the raven, thought Tom. It could abandon carpet and fly off. Tom knew perfectly well that the only way he’d fly would be straight down, and that landing on his feet would do him not a bit of good.
Eventually the carpet, well beaten by now, settled into a wobbly flight across the darkened landscape, prickled by occasional villages with sparks of light from fires or candles through their shutters. There were, for in-flight entertainment, bats. And an unexpected mountain, and some cold, dank cloud. Even terror got to the stage where Tom was able to admit to himself that he was cold, uncomfortable, and in need of the garderobe. By the time the carpet touched down, light as a feather, at the other end of their journey, he was too miserable to notice.
Which in itself was a mistake, but not one he could go back and fix. He missed the wonders of the aerial view of Borbungsburg Castle, and the sight of Master Hargarthius falling over one of his own tassels as he alighted, and falling on top of a startled mage-guard, knocking them both to the ground. The raven, it was true, did try and tell Tom. But there is a limited amount Tom could immediately understand from ‘Nevermore’. The first the huddled, half-frozen Tom knew of the entertainment was a great deal of shouting and some fairly loud blows and even louder pyrotechnical explosions. It might have gone on from there, but a broomstick arrived and added a third person, and a cat to the mixture.
The cat seemed capable of sorting it all out, by the hissing and startled yells from the mage-guard and Master Hargarthius, so Tom did what a good famulus always ended up doing under the circumstances. He took the trunk off the carpet, rolled the carpet up, and then picked up Master Hargarthius’s slightly dented pointy hat, and sat down with the raven to watch.
“Nevermore,” said the raven, as the matter resolved itself into a woman wearing a long black cloak, green robes, and a wild and wind-swept mass of improbably red hair, an angry Master Hargarthius, and the ornately uniformed man that he was stiffly apologizing to. And the cat. The cat, grey and sleekly flat-sided, with black-tipped ears and a tail, twitched its tail a few times and came over to Tom and the raven. She sniffed curiously at Tom — and then walked off, as cats will do, giving her opinion of cat-boys by lifting her tail very high.
Tom wondered if she knew he could read her tail expressions. But then, being a cat, she probably didn’t care. Master Hargarthius called to him to come along smartly, which he was glad to do. There might be a garderobe somewhere. And besides, something large was flapping in out of the darkness. It was big enough to get the raven to fly ahead, rather than using him, or Master Hargarthius, or the trunk Tom was struggling to carry as a mode of transport. That suggested it would be a good idea to leave the mage-guard to his next arrival. So they did.
It was Tom’s first experience of quite so many humans. Humans, even bathed ones, stank. He’d smelled them around the village, even before he’d had to get used to Old Grumptious’s particular peculiar odour. Tom suspected it was because they never gave themselves a good bath with their tongues. It just wasn’t practical, Tom knew from his own efforts. Their tongues were too wet and too soft. But he hadn’t been prepared for the sheer stench of them en masse. Human smell with added perfumes and scents… and a solid undertone of laboratory smells. He was quite dizzy with it all by the time the small liveried man led them to the door of the room they had been assigned, and Tom could put down the carpet, the trunk, and ask the way to the garderobe.
The quarters themselves were not what Tom was accustomed to, or what his master wished to be accustomed to. There was only one room, for a start. Only one four-poster bed. Tom looked longingly at it, but, he had a good idea that was not going to be his lot. He wasn’t wrong, either.
Sleeping on a straw pallet was no novelty to Tom. Trying to sleep through old Grumptious’s snoring was. He was fairly tired the next day, when a bell ringing dolorously in the distance woke them.
“Up, lazy boy!” said Master Hargarthius, plainly well rested and ready to go. “That’s the bell to call us to break our fast.”
They proceeded, without a wash, which Mrs Drellson’s skull would have beaten him for, and which Tom was getting quite used to, himself (both the washing and the beating), to a vast hall, where there were long tables, and, to Tom’s stomach’s relief, food was being served. Platters were being carried out and set on the tables, where the castle’s visitors were attacking them with all the decorum and delicacy of starving wolves.
That was fine by Tom, even if the noise and smell were even worse than the village marketplace. The noise wasn’t helped by a quartet of musicians in a little hanging gallery, adding to it. Tom still found human music confusing and not nearly as meaningful and melodious as a good caterwauling. The raven shared his opinion and flew up and deposited something in the Krumhorn player’s instrument. None of the feeding mob, bar Tom, even noticed the change in the noise level.
Tom had just finished shoving a chunk of hot bread into his mouth, to keep company with the ham and smoked fish in there already, and was reaching for the small-beer when things went rapidly to the worse, thanks to the raven. It was really making itself entirely too much at home here. It speared a quail egg with its beak, and flapping clumsily snatched a kidney off someone’s knife-point and then flapped up to the dais… and landed on the back of the empty central chair. It was a large ornate chair of some black wood, and the raven was perched on the top of the carving there… which was a crown… on the head of a raven.
The crowd stopped in a shocked silence as the raven tossed the egg up into the air, and ate it in one gulp. And then took a big peck out of a slightly bloody devilled kidney.
The musicians desperately did their best to fill the sudden silence — three of them with the viol, lute and hoboy, the fourth with uncontrollable retching. A guard flapped frantically at the raven who took to the wing, and with a defiant “Nevermore” flew out of the hall.
Tom was just relieved it hadn’t come back to the two of them.
The dining hall gradually returned to the sound of brave magic-workers doing valiant battle with food, and winning, but now it was laced with whispered traces of gossip, that plainly weren’t meant for Master Hargarthius’s ears. Two bits recurred more than others. Firstly variants of: “A bad lot, should have burned him along with the tower and his master,” and magicians and witches alike agreeing with that sentiment. And secondly: “It’s an omen. A sign. A raven on the raven thron
e.” But no one quite agreed what it was a sign of.
Of course there were the more exotic theories about it being the princess’s kidney, and one of her eyeballs rather than a quail’s egg. But Tom rather doubted those. He’d seen the raven take them. It was possible the princess’s kidney and eyeball — both of which the raven would cheerfully have eaten in Tom’s experience — had been put in the food, but it would have taken more skill than the raven normally showed in choosing what it ate.
Tom ate, and ate, and ate and hoped the flying carpet could cope with the extra weight. He was somewhat concerned about the raven, which surprised him. It was a familiar menace. A familiar familiar. And who knew what the magician might get next?
Then a couple of heralds came in, tooted their horns, and the crowd were instructed to proceed to the Throne room, where Duke Karst wanted to address them all.
This plainly was no time to delay, by the way the various wizards, sorcerers, hags, magicians, warlocks, enchantresses and witches left the mostly empty platters and headed en masse for a side door, being held open by footmen. This led into a long passage, in which the crowd gradually spread out. Tom had the feeling it spread away from him and his Master, particularly. The hallway was hung first with tapestries and then portraits. The last few all had markedly aquiline noses, barring one.
Tom found it odd that he recognised the face in that one, even though it did not have a raven dropping hanging from the nose as was so frequently the case in the laboratory in the wizard’s tower.
“Who is she?” he asked the Master.
“Hmph. Queen Athena. No better than she had to be.”
That was a puzzling statement. How did you get to be better than you had to be? But Tom had no more chances to ask annoying questions because they had arrived in the Throne room. It was suitably regal, enough so to impress even Tom. The ravens fluttering about were not, in Tom’s opinion, a decorative thing, even if they were on flags and fluttering rather feebly in the breeze that leaked through the upper casement windows.
The throne on the raised dais stood in solitary splendour, a huge artwork in onyx and silver, empty. One tier lower stood a very ordinary chair with an extraordinary man sitting in it.
Duke Karst, the Regent, was tall and broad, with a scarred cheek, a black spade of a beard, heavy brows, and a blaze of white hair in among his dark locks. He looked like he hadn’t been at breakfast, because he’d already had his fill of babies before dawn. His expression was grim, and he seemed to be staring at each and every person in that hall in turn. It was enough to ensure absolute silence. In short, he appeared to be the perfect model of an evil and a rather angry usurper.
And he sat there and said nothing.
Eventually someone broke the silence. It wasn’t Duke Karst. It was the wild scarlet-haired witch they’d had a collision with, the night before. Tom saw the aristocratic-nosed cat peering out from under her hair — it was plainly draped around her neck. “Well, Duke Karst. This is much earlier than I like to get up. What’s all this about? And where is Alamaya? I tried to go and see her when I arrived last night. I have my duties to see to.”
“That’s why I have called you all together here. I considered imprisoning and torturing the lot of you until I get an answer. I still like that idea. But the royal council of mages has prevailed… for now. Not for long.” He stood up and slammed one meaty fist into his palm. “Princess Alamaya is missing. Magic was involved. Guards and servants were killed. Find her. Return her to the castle unhurt and there will be rich rewards… fail, and things will start getting worse, rapidly.”
The flame-haired witch was the only one who did not seem horrified — either by the disappearance or their alternatives. “Tell us the details. How long since this happened?”
“Two weeks.”
“And you’re only telling us now?”
Tom realized that at least some of those in the dining hall must have known.
The duke glared at her, and she glared straight back. He sighed. “We have been searching and investigating in all possible ways, from raids and spies, to augury and necromancy. It was thought best to keep it a secret. But now we’re trying other avenues. All the soothsayers, and augurers say that she is alive and well, but they cannot find her. That speaks — along with the mysterious disappearance, despite the best of magical wards — of a powerful magic-worker.”
Tom was at least absolutely certain that it wasn’t Master Hargarthius. He’d have noticed a captive princess in the magician’s tower, he was sure. He’d have had to clean up after her and feed her.
By the way that the other mages edged away from his master, Tom was probably the only one there who believed that.
“I wouldn’t trust that lot to divine the color of my hair,” said the Scarlet-haired witch. “Let’s have them in here, Karst, so that we can find out what they’ve done, so we know where to start.”
“You’ll start by finding her!” roared the Duke. “Get out of here, all of you! You too, Emerelda.”
It plainly wasn’t a good time to argue, so they went. It seemed even Master Hargarthius was aware of the fact that he was prime suspect. He kept his mouth shut, and walked. He was, Tom thought, the only one. The hallways carried sound well, and every other person there was discussing the matter, working on the principle of accusing everyone else first so it couldn’t be them. One of the themes of these accusations seemed to be history repeating itself. Tom knew better than to ask about it just then. Tom and Master Hargarthius went to the room, packed up — which didn’t take long as the trunk had not been unpacked. Tom wondered if they’d be flying back without the Raven, but as they were about to open the door, there was a loud rat-tat-tat at it. Master Hargarthius stepped back, took his staff in hand and said: “Open it boy.” He was plainly braced for new trouble, and making more of it if need be. But it was only old trouble, in the shape of the raven pecking at the door.
It flapped up to the trunk, landed awkwardly on one foot. It had to, because the other foot clutched a piece of foot-ware. A small black slipper, liberally seeded with small pearls and ornamented with a pattern in sapphires. At the time of course Tom didn’t know what it was, and assumed that it was the raven indulging in its occasional taste for something glittery. Master Hargarthius, however, obviously recognised it, and snapped at Tom to close the door. He then took the slipper from the raven, which let him have it without even attempting to peck the reaching old hand.
Master Hargarthius turned it over in his hands, examining it. “A Princess’s slipper,” he said, nodding his head, thoughtfully. “I suppose it would be no use to ask where you got it from?”
“Nevermore,” said the Raven.
“Hmph. Well, I shall take it with me. It could be very useful. And Duke Karst is likely to wish to kill us, even without the crime of slipper-theft.”
He opened the trunk. It appeared at first glance to contain an awful lot of nothingness. Tom was very irritated because carrying it had not been easy. But then the magician muttered a cantrip, reached into it, and somehow slid out a drawer full of magical paraphernalia. So much of it, that Tom had to wonder what was left in the laboratory. He put the slipper in there. “Hmm. I suppose seeing as it is daylight, and people have a bad habit of shooting arrows at magicians on flying carpets, we had better have some sort of cloaking.” He closed the drawer, which vanished. He opened another and pulled out two gray-white fabric slabs, which he handed to Tom. They were surprisingly light for their size.
“What are they, master?” asked Tom.
“Hmph, questions, always questions. They’re Nornstrom cloud cloaks.” He closed the drawer, and the trunk, and straightened up. “Well, let’s go. Take the trunk and the carpet, Boy. With any luck we’ll avoid bumping into that witch Emerelda again.”
But plainly they did not have that sort of luck. She was on the tower of Borbungsburg castle, with her cat and her broomstick when they arrived, Tom hot and panting. And then, abruptly, they weren’t. They vanished.
/> “Dratted new-fangled invisibility cloaks,” said Master Hargarthius, crossly. “That woman! Money to burn. Showing off her Hell-Hell Bane accessories. Just you wait until they hit rain.”
Tom didn’t like the safety belt any more this time — especially knowing what was coming. But, by the looks of the guards, running away was not much of an option either. So he put up with it. He hadn’t died last time.
But it wasn’t any better this time. Borbungsburg Castle stood on the crest of a hill above Borbungsburg. A small swearing, screaming cloud hurtled toward the pointy rooves of the town, and only stopped just in time to narrowly avoid being a red rooftop mist. Or a rooftop missed. They did collect a weathervane, which nearly knocked Tom off in the process of being knocked off itself. The weathervane could have been very useful, as it showed which way the wind was blowing, which was the opposite way to which the bouncily flying cloud was moving.
The bumpy flight caused Tom to bitterly regret that breakfast. The moving-in- the-wrong-direction-not-terribly-high-in-the-sky cloud caused the arrow that ‘thunked’ through the carpet and into the chest’s wood. Tom gathered by the background swearing and spell-casting — and the bucking flight, that Master Hargarthius was doing something about it. But he was too busy throwing up to care if they were used as arrow-targets. For a while, anyway, death seemed preferable than continuing to fly.
That, inevitably, did not last.
There were times when Alamaya was a lot less certain that escaping Borbungsburg castle had been as good an idea as it seemed at the time. Oh, it was true her wicked fairy Godmother was as bad as everyone had always implied. And it was true that she let Alamaya have fun… with boys and strong drink and parties. The tail, however, did put certain constraints on just how much fun she could have, and the witch had made it clear that that was there to stay. “It’s genetics, Alamaya. You ought to have been a lot more careful. You’re a Tindrel on your grandmother’s side. The cat is still strong in our line. You make mistakes and you’ll pay for them.”