The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World

by Brian Stableford

  “What’s the matter?” asked Helen.

  “Sore fingers,” he said, with a wry grin. “Too much guitar playing.” He reached for the knot by which Helen had tied the sword to the saddle, but she pushed his hand away and quickly worked it loose with her own fingers.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “I’m not much off an enchantress, but sore fingers shouldn’t be difficult.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Ewan.

  But she took his hand in hers, and said: “Hold still.” Then she chanted: “Bruises fade and cuts seal, strength return and flesh heal.”

  But nothing happened. The weals on Ewan’s fingertips, and the swellings around the knuckle-joints, would not yield.

  “Healing power and magic true,” Helen tried again, “make these hands as good as new.” But that didn’t work either.

  “The cuts were made by magic strings,” said Ewan. ‘Perhaps they can’t be undone so easily. They’ll heal, in their own time. Not to worry.”

  Helen did worry. She knew the wounds weren’t serious—but they were wounds nevertheless, a penalty exacted by the spell of which they were the instruments. There might yet be more. She looked, uncomfortably, at her own hands, which had gripped the hilt of the sword. They were unscathed—so far.

  “Look!” said Ewan, pointing.

  Helen’s heart skipped a beat. But it wasn’t Zemmoul, rising already. Ewan was pointing to a weathered wooden post to which were attached two rusty shackles. It was close to the edge of the pool, about equidistant from the falls and the outflow.

  “No prizes for guessing what that’s for,” said Ewan, dryly.

  “Before the war,” said Helen, “people lived in the woods close by. They didn’t want Zemmoul coming out on hunting expeditions, so…”

  “They used to keep him fed,” Ewan finished. “I know the theory. Young girls, I suppose.”

  “Actually, no,” said Helen. “It was a matriarchal society. And besides which, it’s said Zemmoul preferred. …”

  “All right,” Ewan interrupted. “I get the idea. The whole picture. That’s why I’m the bait.”

  Helen shrugged. “The luck of the draw,” she said. “There are monsters and monsters.”

  “We’d better make a move,” said Ewan. “Wynkyn seemed to think that we oughtn’t to waste time now.” So saying, he went over to the weathered post and sat down. Helen followed him and tried to fit one of the shackles around his foot. The locking mechanism was rusted away entirely, though, and it wouldn’t close.

  “I don’t think we need bother,” said Ewan. “I’ll just pretend I’m nicely secured—just to reassure the monster that all’s well. How big did you say he was?”

  “Very,” said Helen. “Can’t say exactly. No one’s clapped eyes on him for more than a hundred years.”

  “If it’s that long since he last had his favourite food,” muttered Ewan, “he’s going to be very, very hungry.”

  “Think how delighted he’ll be to see you. Isn’t it nice to be popular?”

  Ewan smiled weakly.

  Helen moved back a step, looked at Ewan carefully, as if trying to decide whether the monster would think him a tasty enough morsel, and waved the sword experimentally.

  “I’ll be behind this rock,” she said, pointing at a boulder some eight or ten feet away from the post.

  “It’s rather a long way, isn’t it?” he answered, nervously.

  “I’m very quick on my feet,” she assured him. “And Zemmoul’s reputed to be a trifle sluggish.”

  Ewan watched her retreat to take up a position behind the boulder, out of sight. He worried about the distance for a minute or two, and then—for a change—wondered whether a sword so light could possibly stop a large and

  determined monster. It was all very well to smite its skull in order to try and reveal a small gem embedded therein, but quite another to kill it instantaneously. He told himself that there was no point in worrying, but this didn’t stop him.

  He turned his attention to the water, watching the treacly ripples wandering slowly away from the cascade and smoothing themselves out.

  How on earth, he thought, did I ever get mixed up in all this? I’m a scholar, the son of an instrument-maker, not a wizard or a hero-prince. Why couldn’t some other poor fool have catalogued King Rufus’s mouldy old library?

  Why me? he asked the empty air. Why me? The empty air didn’t answer. It came to Ewan in a flash of insight that even in everyday life not all questions have answers.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sirion Hilversun strode into the council chamber of the palace at Jessamy. He wore the full regalia of his profession—a black silk cloak embroidered with every magical sign ever thought of, and a great pointed hat that made him seven feet tall. He also wore an expression which would have made the brightest day seem decidedly stormy.

  As it happened, the only person in the council chamber was Prince Damian, who was wrestling unsuccessfully with a crossword puzzle. (Bellegrande was still away “seeking foreign aid,” Alcover had gone to one of the smaller states in the Western Empire, famous for its casinos, “to study modem financial theory,” and Hallowbrand had gone to a food fair in Heliopolis. Coronado had a diplomatic headache.) Prince Damian could be forgiven for the terrible shock and sense of disaster that overwhelmed him when he glanced up from twenty-six down to be confronted by the wrathful wizard. He would have ran away had he been able, but his legs had somehow acquired the texture of jelly. He quivered instead.

  “You pusillanimous pestilence!” roared Sirion Hilversun. “What have you done with my daughter?”

  Damian, who thought that “pusillanimous pestilence” must be an incantation designed to turn him into something horrid, could find no answer.

  The roar, however—penetrating to the deepest corridors of the palace—attracted others to the council chamber. The first to arrive was the queen, who somehow failed to recognize the enchanter—an amazing feat, considering that appearances were, for once, in no way deceptive.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded the queen, in her most imperious voice. “How did you get in?”

  “By broomstick,” snarled Sirion Hilversun.

  “Oh,” replied the queen, nonplussed.

  Damian, meanwhile, was still quivering so hard that his teeth began to chatter. He clamped his jaws shut and tried to control himself.

  Rufus Malagig IV threw back the door and entered, apparently ready to lose his temper, but he pulled himself up as soon as he saw the enchanter. He, at least, had no trouble in recognizing the visitor.

  “Magister Hilversun!” he exclaimed, with false warmth. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

  He stepped forward to shake the enchanter by the hand, but was interrapted by Damian, who called out: “Watch it, dad! He’s gone crazy, or something.”

  The king stopped, unsure whether he ought to clip the prince round the ear for outrageous rudeness (not to mention sloppiness of expression) or to try and placate the enchanter (who did, he now noticed, have a faint hint of madness in the gleam of his eyes). He hesitated. In the meantime, Coronado arrived, clutching his forehead melodramatically. In the end, the king could manage nothing more regal than: “Er… to what do we owe… er…er…”

  Sirion Hilversun didn’t wait for him to finish. “I have come,” he said, in a voice whose steadiness suggested monumental self-control, “to find out what your son has been playing at, involving my daughter in the most powerful spell the world has ever known.”

  “Oh,” said the king, weakly. “Has he really?”

  Coronado, realizing that this was no time for headaches, stepped forward briskly. “Do I understand, magister,” he asked, “that you have only just discovered what has been going on?”

  “You niggardly nincompoop!” said the enchanter, with feeling. “Do you think for one moment that I would have permitted my daughter to tamper with the legacy of Jeahawn the Judge?”

  “Ah!” said the king, expressively (al
though just what he was expressing, no one was quite sure).

  “Don’t stand there braying like a jackass!” shouted the enchanter. “I want an answer. Where’s my daughter?”

  “I don’t know!” retorted the red-faced Rufus, who had never been referred to as a jackass within the precincts of his own palace before. (Not, at any rate, to his face.)

  “Should we know?” asked Coronado, smoothly.

  “She went to Ora Lamae,” snarled the enchanter. “To make sure that he”—here his finger stabbed out at the quailing prince—“was playing the game properly. He’s here. Where’s she?”

  “Ah!” said the king, again, too late to stifle the sound.

  “Oh,” said Prince Damian, somewhat crestfallen.

  The queen, who had caught up by now with the tide of events, gathered the prince to her bosom and extended her protective arms around him, despite his attempts to wriggle free.

  “I fear,” said Coronado, in tones of deepest regret, “that Prince Damian hasn’t been anywhere near Ora Lamae. And perhaps, before we lose ourselves once again in a storm of accusations, insults and exclamations, I could be permitted to make one or two pertinent observations. … Thank you.

  “Firstly, the choice of the questions forming the last will and testament of your enchanter friend was your daughter’s. We did not understand what was happening and we still do not.

  “Secondly, we have no knowledge whatsoever of the circumstances of the young lady’s disappearance. The prince’s… ah… emissary, sent out yesterday to fulfil the second demand, relating to the lamia in the Forbidden City, has not yet returned. As it is now rather late we had begun to fear that he never will return. If anything has happened to him—and, for that matter, to your daughter—then I would respectfully suggest that the fault lies not with us, but entirely with your daughter.”

  The enchanter moved his extended index finger so that it now pointed at Coronado. For a second or two, he hesitated between blasting Coronado from the face of the Earth and trying to figure out this whole bewildering affair. A second or two was enough to tip the balance in favour of the latter alternative. Coronado, not fully realizing how close he had come to extinction, swallowed hard.

  “Who disenchanted Methwold forest?” asked the enchanter, his voice now level. “Ewan,” said Coronado.

  “The prince’s… substitute?”

  “Yes,” the prime minister confirmed.

  “And he went to Ora Lamae? And hasn’t returned?”

  “Quite,” said the prime minister.

  “None of this was your idea?”

  “None.”

  “Why did you take your question from the will?”

  Coronado shrugged. “Ewan was looking for the answer to the first question in the library. He found the document. We assumed that we were supposed to follow the whole thing through. What else could we think?”

  Sirion Hilversun lowered his accusing finger. “None of this is chance,” he murmured. “None of it. It was planned. Long, long ago. Even the loss of my memory was planned, so I couldn’t interfere. I should have realized … I should have thought….” He looked up, suddenly, at the ring of faces staring at him. In a voice that was low and quiet, he said: “Jeahawn Kambalba was my mother’s brother. We’re related by blood. His power… still exists within us. Helen, too.”

  “I see,” said Rufus Malagig IV, who didn’t see at all, but felt compelled to say something.

  “We thought we were setting up a marriage,” murmured Sirion Hilversun. “I thought to establish a future for Helen, no doubt you had your reasons, too. But we weren’t. We were being manipulated. We were setting up a spell. A powerful spell.”

  “Actually,” said Coronado. “It’s more of a chapter of accidents, really.”

  “And who do you think governs accidents?” snapped the enchanter, but not very viciously.

  Coronado shook his head in mute disbelief.

  “Why?” asked the enchanter. “Why did you want the marriage?”

  “We wanted to bring you back to Jessamy,” confessed the prime minister. “The kingdom is bankrupt. We needed your magic to save us.”

  The enchanter laughed out loud. There wasn’t much humour in the laugh. “My magic! Save a kingdom! I’m all but helpless, you pack of fools. I’m finished. I couldn’t save a kitchen garden.”

  “Oh,” said the king, dully.

  “It was all for nothing, then?” said the prince, fighting free at last from the maternal clutch.

  “Not for nothing,” said Sirion Hilversun. “For Jeahawn the Judge. For his legacy to the magic lands… the last of his spells.” He stopped, and half a minute dragged by while no one could find anything to say. Then the enchanter roused himself again, and said: “Well, what do we do now?”

  “What can we do now?” countered Coronado. “Apart from waiting and hoping?”

  “I need your help,” said the enchanter, flatly.

  “What for?” The answer came not from Coronado but from the king.

  “To save Helen. What else?”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked the prime minister.

  “Come with me.”

  “To the magic lands? To Ora Lamae?” Coronado queried. “Yes.”

  “If I thought for one moment,” said the prime minister, smoothly, “that there was any help we could offer, then I would offer it. But you must realize that we are only ordinary people, despite our titles. We know nothing of magic or spells or enchantment. We sympathize with your difficulties. But there isn’t really anything we can do to help.”

  “What you mean,” said the enchanter, “is that you no longer think you stand to gain anything.”

  “I assure you…” Coronado began.

  “What about the boy?” interrupted Sirion Hilversun. Turning to the king, he added: “It might be your son. It should be your son.”

  “But it isn’t,” Coronado intervened, quickly. “And that demonstrates, I think, how wise we were not to permit the prince to risk his life. Ewan’s a good boy. … I like the lad. But we have to look at this thing realistically. The probability is that he’s dead. He volunteered for this task. No one forced him. In fact, I myself recommended very strongly that he shouldn’t go to Ora Lamae. The king and I both wanted to end the matter, on the grounds that it was too dangerous. The fact that the boy hasn’t returned merely serves to affirm that we were right. I don’t believe that we have any further responsibility in this matter. Your daughter chose to play a very dangerous game, and tried to involve us as well. I see no reason why we should now offer to risk our lives because she may have placed herself in peril. It’s only common sense that we should disengage ourselves from the matter entirely. I see no other reasonable course.”

  “Or to put it another way,” said Sirion Hilversun, “you’re a coward.”

  “Not at all,” said Coronado, quite unworried by the accusation. “I’m a politician.”

  The enchanter turned his steady gaze upon Damian. “What about you?” he said. “This boy’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”

  “Not exactly a friend,” said Damian. “Don’t like him much, to tell you the truth. Too clever by half. Anyhow, I never wanted to marry your daughter.”

  The enchanter raised his lightning-spitting finger again, but only used it for a gesture of pure contempt. He looked at the king, then. “Do you really think that your kingdom is worth saving?” he asked. “For him? And for him?” He pointed, in turn, at the prince and at the prime minister.

  “I’ll go with you,” said the king, quietly.

  Prince Damian went white, and Coronado all but reeled with the shock.

  “Sire,” said the prime minister, “I must advise you most strongly–-“

  “Shut up!” said the king. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “But, Rufus!” protested the queen. “Think of….”

  “I am thinking,” said the king. “I’m thinking that I’m sick of politics and all this worthless chicanery. I’m think
ing that it’s my fault that the boy’s out there. It may not have been my idea, but I’m the king, damn it, and it’s my responsibility. To hell with advice! I’m going! If there are any horses left in Jessamy, fetch two. If not, fetch donkeys. But move! I mean you!”

  Coronado gulped. It was not the prime minister’s job to fetch horses (let alone donkeys) but this did not seem to be the right moment to point that out. Coronado moved.

  The king extended a hand to Sirion Hilversun, who accepted it in a firm clasp. “Let’s go, magister,” he said.

  “Yes, your majesty,” said the enchanter, his eyes burning as brightly as they had in twenty years and more.

  The sun crept nearer to the horizon and was met by a fanlike array of cirrus clouds, which turned pink in its evening glow. The sky up above seemed, by contrast, a much deeper and clearer blue. And somewhere above the western horizon, shining like a beacon, was a single evening star. The air was very still and heavy, and rather warm for the time of year. The sound of the waterfall seemed to Ewan strangely dull and muted—but it was, at least, a real and natural sound. The deadly silence of Ora Lamae was one oppression that he didn’t have to tolerate while he waited.

  Helen, meanwhile, was thinking about the lamia and her company of halflings. The snake-woman and her cohort, she realized, had been just as trapped by the enchantments which lay upon the Forbidden City as the people who went in mortal terror of them. The spells that formed the units of Jeahawn Kambalba’s will were not so much destroying them as setting them free. Zemmoul, she believed, would be no exception. He would rise from the murky depths of his own cold prison in response to the ritual offering… and he would meet the edge of the magic sword. Perhaps, she thought, dragons and their kin wait all their lives for heroes to put an end to them. Perhaps, if the truth were known, that’s why they behave so strangely in respect of hoards of gold and pretty girls, neither of which can hold any particular attractions for them.

  It was an interesting thought.

  The sun retired modestly behind the feathery fan of cloud, which was advancing on a high breeze to cloak the western sky with radiant pink light, as if a great flock of flamingos was flying there.