TOM

by Dave Freer

  “Ugh.”

  “She didn’t worry you when you were a cat,” said Tom.

  “I seemed to be missing a part of me then.”

  “Anyway, she was defending the tower. Us.”

  “Oh. Yes. That is different, you know. Loyalty calls for loyalty. We’d better put her somewhere safe, until she can be buried with honor,” said Alamaya, and she picked the skull up.

  She wasn’t being in the least sarcastic. Tom had taken to sarcasm. It was natural cat behaviour. Maybe going through the insecurity of gnomeland had changed the Princess. She was… different somehow. He didn’t mind honouring the skull, but he’d rather have had it spitting green lightning and telling them to work faster and harder, and to scrub the cracks between the stones properly. That might not be nice, but would at least be familiar. But all he said was: “I think that’s the study.”

  It was, but it too had been afflicted by the magic being drawn out. It was merely a small untidy room full of books and fuzzy grey goo. The eerie vastness of it was lost. Even the books were just books. The poor flying carpet was rolled up on the edges of the little room - and very dull. The room — as they hooomed and ConiferSouled it, was growing and changing — but it didn’t reveal a magician or a witch.

  “I’m going to need some more ConifirSoul,” yelled Alamaya above the hooom. “And do you see much point in getting all of the goo out? We should just go on.”

  “No point in leaving it behind us. It might creep out and get us. Besides, if Mrs Drellson’s skull taught me anything it’s that there is no point in doing half jobs,” answered Tom, going on sucking. “Just give me another minute and we can go back to the lab. Master Hargarthius kept ordering more ConifirSoul. There must be eighteen bottles of it back in the lab.”

  “We could try your master’s bedroom first. This is my God-mama we’re talking about, and it is the next room,” said Alamaya.

  It was. It was also empty, although getting the door open was difficult. The cracks proved to be jammed — from the inside — with torn sheet.

  “I guess this was where they went to. But unless the goo devoured them and didn’t even leave bones…” Alamaya left that hanging.

  “It left the skull,” pointed out Tom.

  That cheered her up. “Then they escaped. Magic I suppose.”

  “What now?” asked Tom. “We’re beaten without them.”

  “We do not admit defeat,” said Alamaya lifting her chin. “The skull of Mrs Drellson would have us finish the job, so we will. As soon as we have more ConifirSoul.”

  So they walked the now immense distance to the lab.

  “Did you close the door?” asked Alamaya as they got there.

  “No. I left it open so the raven could get out.”

  “Well, it’s closed now,” she said, opening it and stepping through before he could advise caution.

  But there proved no need for that caution. The laboratory was high-roofed and huge now, but silent. There was no sign of trouble, or even of the raven.

  “I wonder how he got out?” asked Tom.

  “Maybe there’s a new window. Where would be a good place to put the skull?”

  “Pick a spot,” said Tom, looking around, warily walking about, to check the extent of the new larger area for a magician to fill with debris, foul smokes, and flying glass.

  “Next to my royal grandmother, I think,” said Alamaya walking to the Raven’s favorite perch, the bust of Athena. Then she said… “Eugh. Tom. Come and have a look at this.”

  So Tom did. As a semi-feral young cat he’d seen a few lamb carcasses that the crows had been busy with, and been hungry enough to scavenge some of the remains. He knew the look of dagger-beak marks in soft tissue… like a brain.

  Estethius’s brain had been dragged out of its vat. The raven had devoured the frontal lobes and a fair bit of the rest.

  They weren’t going to be asking any more questions of the evil magician. Not without necromancy, or re-animating raven droppings.

  “So that’s what he was eating,” said Alamaya.

  “It might have eaten him too,” said Tom, warily. “Because he’s not in here, and he never ever closed a door behind him.”

  “Birds don’t,” said Alamaya.

  “Any more than cats do,” said Tom. “Mrs Drellson’s skull and Old Grumptious, they were forever lecturing me about it. Except for the pantry door. That they always said to leave open.”

  “And did we ever find out why! So, what do we do now?” she asked.

  “Well, talking of the pantry, and if we’re going to die or whatever… the goo is obviously still shutting off the top of the tower, so we might as well go get some food and not die hungry. And I’d love a drink of milk.”

  Alamaya blinked. “So would I. And I’m not fond of milk. Well, I didn’t used to be. I only drank some as a cat because I was thirsty. Now even thinking about it is making my mouth water a bit.”

  So they went down the long passages toward the kitchen. Which had become kitchens, large, lofty, with multiple fire-places and spits hung with strange black implements.

  The grey goo was a small puddle by the far door.

  The pantry door was still there. Unfortunately so was a large, and largely naked knight, fumbling though his armour.

  Emerelda rapidly became aware, as they headed towards the tower, that once again they were heading in the wrong direction to be unobtrusive. Witches, magicians, warlocks, wizards — the magical establishment of Ambyria — were all deserting the tower. Some on wobbly brooms, and some on burning carpets. And some were just jumping, which wasn’t going to end well, unless they had very good ground-softening spells.

  One of them would be all right, because he hit Hargarthius’s slow-rising carpet.

  Moments later, before she had a chance to see what happened to her co-conspirator, she wished for ground-softening spells herself. She should have thought of the speed of travel blowing her hood back. The blast from the Chief Wizard blew the bristles off her broom and sent it spiralling out of control.

  Fortunately, the tower expanded just then and let her make a crash-landing onto a scene of chaos. Unfortunately, it was still stone and a hard landing, even if cushioned by a large gelatinous blob of magic-devouring furry grey goo. Half the roof was on fire — or at least dancing with wild hoops of flame, and the air reverberating with:

  “The ghost pepper went down, down, down,

  And the flames burned higher!”

  Emerelda struggled to her feet as, on the far parapet, Hargarthius pulled himself up. His carpet had been sluggish, and bombed by a second person — but the lower line might have been a safer approach.

  He was trading spells with four mages… while busy rising on a carpet with a burning fringe.

  And then she lost sight of him in the wall of fire that surrounded her. She tried to raise a defensive spell… and failed.

  She realized she was splattered with sticky goo from her landing. She ripped the stolen cloaked and hooded washerwoman’s clothing off, and used it wipe the muck away. The stuff was terribly magically draining. She stood there in the remains of her underclothes, as maniacal burning agonized-shrieking pansy maenads whirled around her in a circle of fire. She just couldn’t muster the energy for the magic she needed…

  And then a swooping broomstick came over the flame wall.

  Hargarthius’s control was erratic, possibly because he was flying one handed — the other wielding his staff from which he sprayed a shower of ice crystals. Or possibly because he was a rotten flyer. It didn’t really matter. He was there and she gratefully sat on the shaft behind him and they made a wobbling ascent.

  “I thought you didn’t approve of broomstick-flying for men?” she said, holding on tight.

  “They’re faster than carpets. And someone had left one on the parapet. I lost the carpet to some fat wizard. Anyway, I think one has to move with the times,” said the magician loftily.

  “Where are the times going?” she asked.
<
br />   “The other end of the tower. The broom is struggling to fly. And I have an out-of-hand demon to deal with.”

  At least he had the tact, wisdom or mere luck not to say anything about weight, reflected Emerelda. And she had the tact not to mention the fact that he knew broom-flying spells.

  They swayed and lurched toward the roof…

  And out of the flames stepped the handsome figure of the demon prince: “Did you think I would leave you frying, when there’s room on my broom for two!” crooned Hariseldon. Then he sniffed. “Oh man. That’s so emotional. I’m a demon. We’re not set up to deal with this kind of thing. It’s like, un-demonic to cry.”

  Hargarthius was quick enough to realise there was no need to try binding. Instead he asked the demon, almost politely: “Just what is going on here? What made the tower grow?”

  “Like those cool cats sucked the magic eating stuff into the inverse-universe, so instead of drawing magic out of everything it touched, it was drawing it out of those mages and their spell-gel. Only, see, only way back here is through the portal and that’s like closed, man. So it all went into the place between, where this place is. Where it grows from. And all that power poured into this place. Like, you should see what it did to the pansies. Hot babes, man!”

  “Do you understand any of that?” Hargarthius asked Emerelda.

  “Other than I think he means your Tom and my God-daughter — the cool cats, I gather — did it, no, not really.” She wondered whether she was strong enough to constrain the demon, let alone battle with it, because it was plainly free. If the other mages felt as exhausted as she did, no wonder they fled and failed.

  The demon prince yawned — a terrifying sight — had it not been accompanied by: “Sorry. Man. I’m tired. I think I’ll just have a little lie down and catch some rays, and chill with a bit of their burnin’ luurve.” The pansies were burning lethargically. An agile witch could have jumped over the ring of flames around them, now.

  Hargarthius tugged what was left of his beard. “Demons do not like sunlight,” he said.

  Hariseldon shook his head — suddenly wearing a broad-brimmed hat — at them. “Dude, that is like so yesterday. Now sunshine almost always makes me say hi.” And he wondered placidly away, ignoring them, spreading himself out and changing into a vast daisy, surrounded by wilting pansies, their painted faces turned worshipfully inwards.

  “And now?” asked Hargarthius, quietly speaking to Emerelda.

  “And now I think we go downstairs, before we have to deal with him, and find out what your famulus and my God-daughter have been up to,” said Emerelda. “I think the tower-top is safe enough for now.”

  So they made their way down the wide stair, avoiding the occasional sad furry lumps of magic devouring gel.

  The magician sniffed. “ConifirSol. That boy has been cleaning again. He likes the stuff. The way he goes through it, I’d swear he drinks it. Still, that is better than my last famulus. He drank everything.”

  It did indeed smell rather strong in the new vast halls of the tower. Emerelda was wishing it slightly less vast, with the amount of bruising her crash-landing had given to her derriere. “Where do think they might be?”

  “Hmph. Probably in the kitchen,” said Hargarthius. “The boy has a relentless appetite.”

  The knight had plainly been in search — besides of more clothing, which right now for him seemed to consist of two dish-towels — for weapons to defend himself. He had a long, thin dagger in hand as he stared at them “Princess Alamaya!” he exclaimed, just as she was getting ready to turn him back into a green frog. It seemed that his brush with the grey goo had cured that.

  “Yes,” said Alamaya, relaxing slightly. She recognized him as one of the royal guard. She was, oddly, for the first time in her life mildly irritated by his lack of respect. Perhaps being out of Borbungsburg castle had made her more aware of these things. It wasn’t that the guards and knights and courtiers didn’t go through the forms and appearances of respect, normally. But their posture and tone were just not what they were when dealing with Duke Karst. Suddenly, that really annoyed her. She was the Corvin! The last surviving member of the royal house. “Why do you not bow, Sirrah?” she asked.

  His answer was a lunge with the misericorde in his hand. “A Borbung!” he shouted.

  Alamaya barely avoided being skewered. The blade sliced across her side, as she dived sideways, and rolled… against the wall. Standing over her he prepared to strike again, his face a vicious mask of hatred and triumph. “We knew you were here, bitch. Now I will kill you. A-Borbung!”

  Only his lunge plunged the dagger into Tom, basically as Tom thrust between them and hit him with the broom.

  Tom knew the sensible cat-thing was to set his broom to drubbing the knight, and to run. Conjuring a mouse wasn’t going to do much.

  Only he wasn’t prepared to be sensible and catlike.

  The shock of being stabbed numbed the pain. Briefly.

  It disordered his senses quite a lot. He saw both Alamaya and somehow, the snow-leopard blurring into and out of each other, and heard her voice rather like a roar, cry as she sprang up and grabbed his broom: “You will die for that, traitor. I swear by the raven. By my ancestors’ noble name…”

  “Spell…” said Tom weakly.

  And someone came running at a loping trot. A short, spare, hook-nosed man, with ragged salt-and-pepper hair. He was barefoot, in badly-fitting, too-big clothes… with a sword. “I’ll deal with him, granddaughter. You see to the boy.”

  Alamaya recognised the shade she had summonsed.

  King Uther’s portrait still hung in the halls of Borbungsburg Castle, even if he had vanished. It wouldn’t have mattered. He looked like every other Corvin noble: Hook-nosed, dark haired, sharp eyed. She might have wondered why her grandfather’s ghost was wearing such odd clothes but she was too busy kneeling next to Tom, pressing him down as he tried to stand up.

  He coughed some bloody spittle, possibly from biting his tongue. “Need… need to go. ‘way. Alone.”

  “Shut up and lie still,” she said, knowing all too well the cat instinct to crawl away and die.

  “Hurts…”

  The stab wound in his chest bled. Alamaya forced herself to be calm, to hold back the tide of rage at the man who had stabbed him and her grief, and to simply prop his head on her knee. “I’m going to try and stop the bleeding and get help.” He was dying and she knew it and was terrified by it. But now was not the time to allow fear or sadness to take over.

  Emerelda heard the shout of: “A Borbung!” echoing up the stairs and started running. So did Hargarthius.

  They both arrived out of breath, gasping in the kitchen.

  Too late.

  Too late for the Borbung knight anyway.

  King Uther looked at them. “What took you so long?” he asked, his bloody sword in hand.

  “God-mama! I need help!” called Alamaya, very much in human form now, and dressed in the famulus’s robe, or part of it. Tom wore a kilt of the rest, and some blood. Emerelda was relieved that it seemed to be coming out of him, not the girl.

  Emerelda was no magical healer, but she’d seen a few wounds in her time. She also knew which side of the body the heart was on. There was a fair chance that he’d missed getting that stabbed, but there were still arteries to be cut. He might just recover — people did. He might have a chest cavity filling with blood. Or he might not. It was hard to tell, and medicine lagged far behind in this world. “We’ll get him to a healer, dear. They have some good physicians back in America. The Tindrell cousins have connections.”

  “Hmph. You’re not allowed to die, boy. There’s still a mess to be cleaned up here.” Emerelda was surprised to see a tear trickling down Hargarthius’s cheek.

  “Master?” said Tom, weakly. “Is that you?” He blinked his eyes to try and focus on the black-bearded face.

  “Yes. It was very undignified to have my beard cut and dyed, but necessary. Now you are to recover spe
edily or I may change my mind about promoting you from famulus to apprentice.”

  “Apprentice…?” asked Tom.

  “Hmph. Yes. Time I passed my skills on. All these stairs will kill me. Come now Emerelda. Prepare that interdimensional transfer.”

  “I hope I have the strength. That gel took it out of me, even briefly.”

  “You must. You MUST. He got stabbed to save my life,” said Alamaya. “Or I must try. I’m not very good at it yet. Of course I can activate a return-spell if you’ve got one.”

  “You can talk me through it,” said Hargarthius.

  King Uther intervened. “You will do that, Emerelda. This is a Royal command. Instruct Old Grumptious here. He’s a powerful, if self-taught magician.”

  “What did you call me?” said Hargarthius drawing himself up.

  Uther simply stared at him. “Get on with it. They can’t get in the lower door. It’s got a portcullis now. I had just been to check on it when this Borbung tried to kill my Grand-daughter. I’ll go and have a look from the tower-top to see what is happening out there. The boy was good to me. Fed me and talked to me.”

  “You?” asked Hargarthius.

  The king looked down his long nose and said: “Nevermore. Do you know what it is like to have only one useless word to communicate with? Now get on with it. But I was trapped in that form until I killed Estethius, to fulfil my oath. Now get on with it before I notch your other ear.” And he walked off.

  Chief Wizard Kolumnus closed his eyes. He had a blinding headache, and felt magically as weak as a new-born kitten. The Demon Prince and his maenad entourage had played their weapon against him and his mages. They’d stayed safe in the bound of the gel, and bombarded the roof-top with deafening sound, and flame. Added to the fact that somehow the spell was going wrong, drawing magical power out of those setting it in motion, and the disconcerting fact that the tower was getting taller by the second had made some of his staff, and those he’d co-opted, desert. Some of them.

  Others had died instead.