by Dave Freer
Tom shrugged. Buildings changed. Or at least this one did. “The tower must be changing again. Growing.”
Indeed, the laboratory was now the size of a ballroom.
“Hey man. Getting pretty spaced out in here,” announced the bull-headed Demon Prince Hariselden, from a hammock in the corner. He was being waited on, hand and foot as it were, by half a dozen pink sylphs clad in skimpy pansy dresses. One of them was polishing his foot-talons, another brushing his long luxuriant hair, one kneeling with a silver platter, set with a filigree basket of red grapes, and a crystal champagne flute into which one was pouring bubbly pink liquid, one peeling grapes, and the final one languidly wielding a peacock feather fan.
Tom immediately worried that the raven, who detested demons, and this one in particular, might get into what could only be a losing fight. But the demon might have been invisible for all the attention it got. Instead the raven flew off to the corner, about some business of his own. “What’s going on?” asked Tom, not thinking of trickery questions, then realizing he should have.
But he got a straight answer none-the-less. “Like, that stuff was sucking the magic out of this place… and now it is pouring back. But more than came out. High energy stuff, cat. There are sparks jumping out of the walls. The magicians outside are getting really scared and preparing to come down in force. They’re busy putting on nano-proof waders. “He looked at the jar and intoned eagerly: “Magic shiltz you carry…”
“No. Pickles. You offered to help us if we brought pickles,” said Tom
“The significance of the pickle!” said Hariseldon, gleefully. He snatched up the jar with an impossibly long arm and cracked it — and then poured half of it down his throat, pickle juice and all. Then he tossed a pickle each to the pink pansy sylphs… And his appearance changed too… a wolfish man with a mane of wild hair and billowing black-and pink smoke, flashing with of chrome and a thunderous roaring he yelled: “I like smokin’ lightin’… heaving metal chunder!” And he made his words true as he raced out of the laboratory, followed by spinning, dancing shrieking pansy maenads.
“Do you think they can defeat the mages?” asked Alamaya, after they left.
Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt it, but it buys us time.”
“Time to do what?” she asked.
“Time to do what this famulus always does,” said Tom. “Clean up the mess. Find Old Grumptious.”
“Old Grumptious?”
“Master Hargarthius,” explained Tom. “And the Witch Emerelda.”
Alamaya gave him an enchanting gurgle of laughter. “Most of the time, knowing my God-mama, I’d say ‘try in bed’. But now…?”
“The study. Or a captive,” said Tom. He avoided even thinking ‘Or dead.’ Instead he called out. “Hey, Raven. We’re going out.”
In reply they got a noisy gargling noise from the far corner.
“Weird bird,” said Alamaya. “What’s it doing?”
“Eating something in one of those jars. Probably something it shouldn’t,” said Tom, with an accepting shrug, born of long experience with the raven. “Come on, let’s go.”
“I’ll just fill the atomiser,” said Alamaya, and did.
They went forth with the super-hooom broom and the mist of Conifirsoul to do battle against the grey goo in the halls of a tower that literally seemed to be growing behind them. It was also magnificently clean, even if it reeked of a devastated pine forest. In the distance, Tom could hear metallic booming music and a lot of screaming.
“Hmph,” said Master Hargarthius, looking around in the moonlit darkness, attempting to untangle himself from the Witch Emerelda. “I have dedicated a fair part of my life to researching other dimensions. I… was expecting something bigger.”
“As the actress said to the bishop. I think we have ended up, unless I am much mistaken, inside a smart car,” said the witch.
“What are you doing in my car?” asked a nervous female voice, from the near darkness beneath them.
“Yes,” said another male voice, breathily. “We’ll call the cops.”
“We can’t call the cops, Johnny,” said the woman. “Dylan would…”
“We’re just leaving,” Emerelda informed the dismayed couple. “As soon as I work out where the door is. Ah.” The light came on and she could see that they were occupying very little space on top of a plump blond and a balding man, suitably dressed for the sport they’d plainly been engaged in. “In flagrante delicto.”
Hargarthius struggled out of the door. He offered her a hand, untangling her limbs and making her way out, with a brief contact with the horn, that caused palpitations beneath her. It was plainly a popular — at least at night — little side road for couples wanting a bit of un-interrupted peace and quiet. “So,” said the magician, looking around. “You know this flagrante delicto place well?”
“I’ve been there before, if not in this precise locality,” admitted Emerelda.
“Charming place. The rain so is lovely and warm. And the swamp lights on those distant poles are fascinating. I wonder how they get the demons to hold it so still? So, what do we do now?”
“Well I don’t think those two would appreciate being asked for a lift. So I think we walk towards the lights.” The lights turned out to be from an approaching vehicle.
“A horseless chariot! I have always wanted to examine one,” exclaimed the magician. “Why has it got those decorative blue and red lights on the roof? How do they color the swamp gas like that, and make it flare with such regularity?”
“You can ask the officer when he stops.”
The policeman wound down his window and peered at them in the side mounted light. He blinked. Perhaps he wasn’t used to seeing a red haired woman of somewhat fuller figure wearing her black-sequined gown walking in the rain with a straggly white-bearded man, his robe embroidered with stars and moons, and a tall pointed hat on his head, on his patrols. Still his: “What in hell are you doing out here in your bathrobe, grandad? And can’t you afford a better class of working girl at your age?” was probably not the best choice of words any law-enforcement officer has ever made.
As Emerelda drove them back towards the lights of civilization she did her best to explain that, really, the officer was quite correct in thinking the translation spell was disrespectful bad language. She wasn’t sure how well newts heard or understood, but at least they didn’t use firearms very well. She was mildly amused at being taken for a working girl. She’d retired years ago.
They left the police cruiser in town with its windows open to keep the newt damp until it recovered, and flew off on someone’s yard-broom, which at least meant they could fly above the clouds to the home she maintained here. It was a fairly normal apartment, but Hargarthius enjoyed the lights, and the water-features in the bathroom. He was rather sorry to leave it, when she told him she had the spell ready for the interdimensional transfer.
They arrived — as she’d planned, some distance from Hargarthius’s Tower, next to a little copse on a hillock.
Even so, looking at it from the edge of the copse, they were still not far from the army encamped around it. “I’d guess that the entire might of Ambyria is massed against us,” said Hargarthius.
“Yes. I think that would be very accurate,” said Emerelda. “Mind you, it seems a lot of effort, considering the size of your Tower.” She pointed. It was a small, squat building now. At this distance they could barely see it, and it was almost dwarfed by the pavilions of Ambyria’s kinghood, and indeed the siege-engines that had been brought along. It was not at all what it had been when she’d arrived there to see if she could find Esthetius’s brain.
He sighed. “It was largely a magical construct. They’re sucking the magic out of it.” He grimaced. “It wasn’t much of a place, but it was all I had. Well, I suppose we had better disguise ourselves and go in search of that boy and your ‘cat’.”
She looked at the remains of his tower. At the army assembled around it, and knew that s
he still had to go in. It was not likely that she’d succeed in finding Alamaya, or that she would escape undetected. That would probably mean getting killed. “Why are you going, Hargarthius?” she asked quietly.
“Hmph. I suppose because I have to,” he answered retreating into his grumpiness.
“You could walk away. There are other countries, and you’re still an able magician. There’s not much left there,” she said.
“Hmph. I can’t just leave the famulus. He was more of a cat than a boy. Annoying, under your feet, but I ended up… well, being used to him, more than most of the boys that were ever in service there. He caught mice well. He was more useful than most boys. More useful than princesses, for that matter,” he said loftily.
“I’ve a duty to that one, and she’s a Tindrell and a Corvin.”
“Well, that’s your business,” said Hargarthius. “The house of Corvin seems to have been a disaster for Ambyria for the nearly forty years. Do nothing but primp about court, get married and die.”
It was true enough, but she felt obliged to defend the girl. “That’s a bit harsh, seeing as they’re cursed to do that.”
“The girls could have stayed unmarried. Her mother was a weak figurehead, interested in clothes and pleasing herself, and by all accounts this one seems the same.”
That was not unfair either, Emerelda admitted to herself. “Give her a chance. She’s been cosseted to death. And at least Alamaya has shown a bit of rebellion and, I believe fought off foes with your boy. The Corvins were great rulers once. First in war, first in hardship, honourable to the death. And being a cat has probably taught her a few things.”
He pointed at the army’s tents. “And that lot probably would eat a cat. Which is another reason to rescue them, if we can. It was a risky disguise, Emerelda.”
The old curmudgeon was fond of the boy, in his odd way, although he’d never admit it, realized the witch, but all she said was: “She did it to herself, by accident. Well, a sort of accident. With ontogenetic reflux liquid.”
“Dangerous stuff,” said the magician.
“You’re telling me. I ended up with a minotaur, not a handsome young stud,” admitted Emerelda. “Anyway, I suppose we will need to be quite careful about changing our shape or appearance. I imagine the Chief Wizard will have his little sycophants looking for us trying to escape, so they’ll expect magical disguises. I have some make-up in my purse, but clothes I should have thought of.”
“They may be confused by us going the wrong way, rather like those two,” said Master Hargarthius, pointing. Approaching the copse were two people, walking with studied insouciance — one was young woman who had, by appearances, recently been a milkmaid, before taking up the new and more lucrative profession of washer-woman, doing some scrubbing for the army. The other a man-at-arms, a sergeant, by the looks of him. It was their intention to reach the privacy of woods, to spend some time with nature.
As newts they were able to get very close to it, and had no need of their clothes, which were non-magical and at least roughly the right size for Hargarthius and Emerelda.
“The beard has to go,” Emerelda informed the magician, taking a pair of scissors out of her shoulder-bag.
He clutched onto it. “Absolutely NO. What’s a magician without a beard?”
“Less recognisable? Look, let me just trim it.”
That, he very reluctantly let her do. As she cut it an inch off his chin, she reflected that it would teach him a lesson. At his age he ought to know better than to trust a woman with scissors.
“You look a lot younger,” she said, soothingly, as he felt for his absent beard. It was true too, even if that was merely sixty instead of ninety.
“A magician is not supposed to look young,” he protested. “I spent years cultivating that beard. I used to have to dye it white.”
“Well,” she said, reaching into her purse. “Now I’m planning to dye it black. And then I will add a bit of makeup to ease those wrinkles.”
“Knowledge lines,” he muttered. But he didn’t stop her.
A little later a sergeant-at-arms, and a washer-woman possibly of flexible virtue — because she was definitely bulging out of that blouse — set off toward the army encampment. The spear on the scowling black-bearded sergeant’s shoulder probably wouldn’t stand close scrutiny — It was a real spear-head on the end, and the runes on the staff were somewhat disguised with dirt. Her shoulder-bag wouldn’t stand examination either, for that matter, but then, why would anyone be looking. As they walked closer, something very odd began to happen.
The tower — which was barely twenty feet high, perhaps three squat levels… started to grow.
It did not grow in direct proportion, but rather with a bulge around the middle. But it was now at least forty foot tall, looking rather like a very pregnant woman with a thin short leg, a huge bulging midsection… and a tiny little upper story…
It did make approaching the army and the tower a lot easier. Everyone was now looking at that, not at arbitrary sergeants and washerwomen. There was a lot of shouting and chaos going on, as is typical of most military campaigns, at that well-known usual stage, when the plans go awry. You’d think soldiers would be used to it by now, thought Emerelda.
And then a strange and terrible sound echoed across the camp. Well, strange and terrible for Ambyria. About normal for a bunch of bikers.
Emerelda realized there was something noticeable about her and Hargarthius — most of the washerwomen, camp-followers, sellers of useful bric-a-brac to take home (because even if there wasn’t any loot, mama or the girlfriend or both would be expecting something) quite a few soldiers, and a lot of horses, were going the other way, as fast as possible.
The sound of demonic full-volume song came booming out of the tower.
“Like a true denatured chili’
We were burn,
Burn to the Vi…illie!”
It echoed out over the hills and valleys, and the tower continued to grow — still perched on its narrow little stalk — but growing wider and taller.
Order began to sound out of chaos, with trumpets and marshals and heralds — some of whom were yelling “All mages to the Chief Wizard. All mages to the Chief Wizard.”
“What do we do now?” asked Hargarthius. “I hope my tower doesn’t fall over.”
“I suppose,” said Emerelda, “We could go to the Chief Wizard. I’d guess that’s the Demon Prince loose in your tower.”
“Undoubtedly. I’d guess that my famulus must, therefore, also be in there. The binding spells on the demon where placed by him,” said Hargarthius, sounding hopeful.
She hated to shatter those hopes, but the truth might serve better: “The grey goo may well have freed him.”
“Well then I hope Prince Hariselden devours the Chief Wizard before they bind him.” He sighed. “But he shouldn’t be too much trouble for any one of half a dozen mages that Kolumnus has on his staff.”
“It seems like they’re having trouble or they wouldn’t be calling for help,” said Emerelda.
“Sergeant-at-arms. You’re supposed to be massing the footmen for the attack on the lower door,” shouted someone who was doing his best attempt at trying to be in control.
“But officer,” said Emerelda. “He is supposed to be guarding me. On orders from Duke Karst himself.”
“Oh,” Then he took in her appearance. “Who are you?” A considerable amount of doubt, mixed with caution was voiced in that question.
“Oh, this is a disguise. I’m one of the Chief Wizard’s staff. I’m going to him now, as soon as I get to my broom.” She pointed to several brooms and a carpet lofting towards the now very high tower-top. “We were incognito, watching, in case the occupants attempted to flee magically. No word of anyone getting out?”
“No, Ma’am,” said the officer, respectfully. “The orders were to wait until the magical gel solidified. We did lose one knight before we had to pull back… I’d better get on. Sergeant, report to your post
as soon as you’re done.”
Hargarthius managed to say: “Sir.” Instead of simply turning the man into a newt.
“Now all we need is a broom,” said Emerelda.
“A carpet,” said the Magician firmly. “I can manage a levitation spell without any fancy factory installed spell-work in the weave. Of course it is different getting it to go far.”
In spite of the circumstances it was enough to bring a twitch of humor to the Wickedest Witch’s lips. Male mages didn’t ride brooms. It was too phallic, apparently. Well, respectable witches didn’t ride ever carpets either. Emerelda had never found them as comfortable as a broom, or a swan or even a hippogriff. “You rode on a broom with me in that other dimension,” she pointed out slyly.
“Hmph. That was there, not outside my own tower, which seems to be growing out of hand.”
It was. It was a good two hundred feet tall by now, and the stone-work looked new. And it was still balanced on a narrow, short little stalk.
Fortunately, the nearest knight’s pavilion provided both a birch-broom and a small carpet to satisfy both of them.
CHAPTER 19
UP, UPPITY, ONTO THE RING OF FIRE
They made a good cleaning team, reflected Tom as he and Alamaya followed in the demon’s wake, with the building growing steadily behind them.
They found the skull just short of what Tom hoped would be the Master’s study — the ever-changing geography of the house was confusing. He couldn’t even follow his nose because it all smelled of conifirsoul. It was definitely a skull, but Tom was honestly not sure if it had belonged to Mrs Drellson or not.
It was now merely a dry skull, lying there.
“It’s probably the one that haunted your kitchen,” said Alamaya, with a shudder.
“Mrs Drellson. The housekeeper. I knew her well. She was only mostly bad,” said Tom, regretfully. It seemed everything familiar was getting destroyed. First the Tower, then the cheese, and now Mrs Drellson.