by Steve Aylett
CHAPTER 3
In which Fain pushes his luck with a real sorcerer
At first the Warlock seemed to be a pillar of innards, and then a rearing black serpent with transparent wings— and finally a fork-bearded skeleton, each bone of which was wrapped individually in its own snakeskin envelope. In the tradition of wizard kings, a living coat of arms was massed on the wall behind him, operative lengths of bone and muscle levering like a water clock. The Princess knelt near to Thorn’s throne, her hands chained behind her.
‘Who let the gardener in here?’ bellowed the cloaked cadaver, and Fain thought the remark appropriate, as the hall’s walls were encrusted with gargoyles so over-elaborate they looked like cabbages. ‘Guards— take this wretch to the bird room and let him rot there.’
Fain was about to protest when he saw that the gargoyles were climbing down from the walls and crouching toward him.
Fain was still wondering about the clothing situation. ‘Next time I’ll have to specify that my clothes go with me from place to place, as well as from one time period to another. Does that magical madman keep landing me in it deliberately?’
Three of the gruesome sentinels took him down a maze of corridors past a hellhound kennel, a torture chamber, a green monster standing idle with an exploded face like a thistle, and a kitchen, and finally into the bird room, a high chamber with dove skeletons flying about the place and stone windows open to the air and sea. Fain was thrown into a domed cage and the door swung closed upon him. Two of the guards departed and the last, a hulking mutant with the scrolled horns of a goat, winched the cage upward to the ceiling. ‘He can pull out your soul like a cork,’ said the creature. ‘You will die more slowly this way. My name is Tefnut. Goodbye.’
‘Wait!’ Fain called out. ‘Give me a coat or shirt for warmth. That long-coat on the wall, perhaps.’
‘Why?’
‘I swear, Tefnut, the instant you give me ownership of that coat, I can reward you with a hundred gold coins.’ For Fain knew he could draw endless cash from his pockets, if only he had any pockets.
‘You’re raving,’ said Tefnut.
‘Very well. Then tell me this—did this cage lay upon the floor a half-hour ago?’
‘You should be in a cuckoo clock, I think,’ laughed Tefnut.
Fain wished himself a half-hour back in time and fell from a point in mid-air, with no cage about him, for at this point in time the cage had yet to be winched upward. He was alone. Fain dressed himself in the coat and set out toward the great hall, stopping off at the kitchen to steal a cabbage. ‘Invisibility would be useful for this lark,’ he thought. ‘I’ll bear that in mind for the next time I meet the old cave-dweller.’ As he arrived at the hall, Thorn was entering by the opposite door, dragging the Princess after him. Fain, with the outer layers of the cabbage shoved over his head, hunched over and shouted something like ‘Master—the hellhounds have escaped, the apes are rebelling, a dragon has decided to bite your face, a tornado is coming, flowers everywhere have unclenched like fists, there’s a fire in the kitchen and everywhere else, and the King has discovered the location of your lair and sent armies against you.’
‘Well, I haven’t got any apes,’ said the warlock, ‘but anyway I suppose I’ll have to postpone my demand for marriage, m’dear.’
‘I’m flattered,’ said Fain, but the warlock was too busy to become enraged. He was giving the order to send out the fleet and guardgoyles were scampering in all directions. Fain grabbed the Princess and soon they were rushing aboard a warship and casting off. ‘Gold coins for everyone in return for not killing me!’ he cried, pulling cash from his pockets and ordering the crew to head toward Envashes. Soon they had left behind Thorn’s island and his departing fleet.
At sunset, Fain met the Princess on deck. ‘I seem fated to be hauled back and forth like cargo,’ she snapped.
‘My apologies, madam,’ he told her. ‘If I had planned ahead, this journey would not have been necessary. What is your name?’
‘Aleksa.’
‘How did Thorn bring you here?’
‘He flew.’
‘Flight, of course! And here I am wishing merely to keep my trousers on!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Fain felt he had squandered his wishes—and now he had to travel by normal means, at a normal rate, for a whole month before he would get another chance to add to his gifts.
And all the while the ship was heading in the wrong direction.
CHAPTER 4
In which Fain provokes the crew
In the middle of the Purge Sea it became clear that the crew hated Fain. He had dressed himself in a silk shirt and some baggy Turkish pantaloons, though he kept his coat on for warmth and for the production of the crew’s wages. He had to haul hundreds of gold pieces from his pockets every morning to keep the monstrous sailors sweet, but the sheer accumulated weight of this bounty soon had the ship riding low in the water. ‘Women are bad luck,’ said the crew, looking at the Princess, ‘as are men who dress like women,’ they added, looking at Fain. They sneered that Fain’s magic was weak compared to that of the mighty Thorn, and complained that they had nothing to eat but fish. Fain warned them to stand back and, announcing that he would give them abundant food by sorcery, conjured hundreds of sardines from thin air. Roaring with indignation, the crew threw him overboard.
Though Fain could swim, he realised that he was sinking like a stone, weighed down by the gold in his pockets. He jettisoned handful after handful of gold but the pockets continually re-filled as he descended through the dark brine. ‘Though it’s extremely useful in a thousand other situations,’ he reminded himself pragmatically as he fell into unconsciousness.
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CHAPTER 5
In which Fain meets a mermaid
Fain awoke in the upturned hulk of a galleon. He had been laid out on a table which floated near to a ceiling which had once been the floor. Boggle-eyed fish peered in through the cloudy windows and only seemed to find his shouting and arm-waving all the more fascinating. There was also a lot of sifting scum which didn’t seem to have any firm idea where it wanted to go. Fain slumped back, feeling useless.
Becoming sleepy and glimpsing black underwater souls, Fain was awoken by a mermaid with scales of green silver, a mother-of-pearl face and golden-ochre eyes. For a day the mermaid sustained the air in the wreck by hauling down the inverted shell of a giant mollusc and upending it inside the cabin. The following morning she took Fain to the beach of a small island.
For weeks Fain lived here. Sleeping on the beach was like being in the palm of nature’s hand. The mermaid showed him seaweed which, when the observer made the small effort to forget that it was seaweed, showed itself to be a ribbon of runes. She taught him to breathe underwater by explaining that it was the same as not breathing when out of water—something millions of mortal men had achieved. They swam over the ember glow of coral reefs. Here trailed the fine biology of lace creatures, varicose jellyfish and honeycomb skeins of yellow which the mermaid seemed to tell him in her slow, low, bubbling voice were part of the sea’s mind. She taught him to see the liquid gold architecture of ocean currents as leaves of art flitted past. Fishes with silver throats poured through the old slimy ship offshore, a galleon forgotten into murk. It looked different to him now, the furred cabin a good dark shell for shy eels and a landscape for snails like walking doorknobs. It seemed books, too, were improved by the sea—dipped into it, even the slimmest plumped up.
But like a fool—indeed so like a fool he was one—Fain found a way to escape this sun trap. Laying in the shallow surf with the mermaid one day, the sea leaving hieroglyphs in the sand around them, he heard her tell of a conch shell through which he could speak into the dreams of any person anywhere. ‘None of my scant magic can transport me across the world,’ he thought. ‘But I can call someone who does have that power.’
As the mermaid looked on with a puzzled smile, he spoke into the shell: ‘Hackler Thorn is so ins
ignificant no-one even bothers to really hate him, and what serves as his brain is a sort of thin gas such as you’d find ghosting in the ribcage of a chicken dead for nine years. So says Fain the Sorcerer!’
Fain retrieved his coat and clothing, kissed the mermaid’s hard glossy head and told her to hide in the sea. He felt something strange in his belly as he watched her broad silver tail slap out of view beneath the green waves. And he was still wondering about it when Hackler Thorn landed on the beach astride a black rose dragon. Today Thorn was spectral and glabrous like a newborn moon-baby. He also had fangs where a milder man would have had eyelashes, and these clicked when he blinked—which was three times during the following exchange.
‘Fain. I am not alone in wondering whether you are a spud. Yours is the stupidity of which men have known by fabulous report alone—until now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It seems idiots no longer mask their identities but boast of their ignorance. I’ve a longstanding policy of clouting such creatures to the grave.’
‘I’ll not fight with you, nor your male equivalent.’
Thorn blinked for the third time, and then produced a grey metal sphere from his saddlebag. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘Some sort of parsnip?’
‘This is a jailhead, used for carrying souls away like kittens in a sack.’ Thorn touched a bung or valve near its underside. ‘Welcome.’
Fain found himself standing in a small room with a hundred other people, up to his neck in murky soup.
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CHAPTER 6
In which Fain swims through human soup
It was a low-domed chamber filled with murky fluid and a hand-picked assortment of gibbering wretches. In the soup up to their necks, they wore hats in a variety of styles. ‘Welcome, newly hopeless,’ said the nearest grey man, who seemed relatively cheerful. ‘And here are your knitting and sewing materials.’
‘What for?’
‘For making hats, of course. One must keep up appearances.’
Fain took the sewing kit. ‘Thank you, kind sir—I hope to outshine every bonnet here. But is not escape the more urgent matter? There must be an entrance to this cell.’
‘Perhaps, but it is not above the soup. And who would want to submerge and see the terrible state our bodies must be in? I have seen occasional matters floating on the surface which I have made an effort not to recognise.’
‘The place has stained his wits,’ thought Fain, and asked aloud, ‘Don’t you find this stinking place unpleasant?’
‘Yes, it’s quite limited. Hackler Thorn is one who has, on balance, lived a fortunate life, and so believes that a so-called “living hell” is a punishment different from the life of an average man. We howl here, occasionally, so as not to make him wonder. But otherwise it is an acceptable domicile. I served Hackler Thorn.’
‘You were in his army?’
‘Not me,’ said the grey man. ‘I spent a short time pouring candles—a very short time, as I was a bartender and my little trick and its solid aftermath were not appreciated. I made the mistake of handing one such undrinkable clot to a thirsty stranger who turned out to be Thorn. Why was a candlemaker working in an alehouse? I had fallen hard because of an artistic enterprise, an innovation whereby I painted portraits in wax so that over time they would become jowled and wrinkled like their subjects. Oh I’m baffled now by my actions—who wants to see such stuff? And so, here I am.’
‘The sooner I accept local custom,’ thought Fain, ‘the longer I shall remain. Not every contract is sealed by waking consent.’
Diving beneath the broth, he swam between the prisoners, many mere stands of bone loosely adrift with pale and soggy meat. Breathing easy as a merman in the murk, Fain saw the inner side of the entry valve, the size of a barrel lid. Grabbing the rim, he pulled himself headfirst toward it.
Fain felt himself expanding like a blowfish and, once he had his bearings, found that he was dropping through the air thousands of feet above the ground.
CHAPTER 7
In which Fain falls from a height of thirty thousand feet
Fain’s belly tipped over as he dropped away from Hackler Thorn’s dragon, which flew on unawares. Wet mist pelted upward and he saw a teal green land tilting several leagues below him.
‘Ah well,’ he thought. ‘We rot to something the size of a penny, then to less. I shall make the process my main priority after I hit the ground. I’ll out-rot the best!’
But then, recalling a fayre stall magician he had seen leaping from a platform with a black star-spangled sheet above him to catch air and slow his fall, he twisted off his coat and tried holding it above him. The arms would need closing up. Fain had just taken out the needle and thread given him by the prisoner when the battering air tore the entire arrangement out of his hands and it flapped into the sky above him.
As the drop accelerated he thought, ‘Next time I meet the old man I must ask for the ability to fly.’ But there would be no next time! And realising the gifts he already had, Fain thought himself an hour into the past. He was still in mid-air, but his stomach rolled as if he had only just begun to fall. The velocity had not transferred into the past—he had simply appeared in mid-air at a standing start, and begun to drop again toward his bloody death. He went back another hour, and the same thing happened. ‘Hardly an improvement,’ he thought. ‘I suppose I could live this way for a while, falling haltingly through the sky and eating an occasional sardine. But eventually exhaustion would claim my attention and I would fail to save myself.’
Then realising that at this rate he would enter the darkness of the previous night, he went back only a minute, feeling the same stop and gradual acceleration downward. Repeating this process, he became better acquainted with the lay of the land below him, an antlike horse and cart on a road, woodland like smoke, and a castle which stood off to the west. He was reminded of Envashes and the Princess. ‘At least those sailors won’t harm her,’ he thought. ‘As they know Thorn values her. Because I rescued her before she was enchanted, I don’t get my reward—but I don’t care as long as she’s impressed.’ After a bit of this, he felt more at home in the air and his body was no longer panicking of its own accord at having nothing to depend on.
Hearing what seemed to be the scream of a woman, he looked up to see the small figure of himself, approaching rapidly. He went back another hour and decided to simply brace himself for a full fall. Perhaps a second before sitting at great speed upon that track next to the forest, he might wish himself five minutes into the past and plump down quite comfortably.
He glimpsed the blur of the road but seemed to be coasting toward the trees, travelling faster, surely, than any surviving man ever had. Touching the treetop, he wished himself an hour back. He began to fall as though he had merely toppled from an upper branch, thereby sustaining only one-hundred-and-eleven breaks to the bones of his body.
CHAPTER 8
In which Fain meets a faceless stranger
Fain lay amid leaves and broken branches on the forest floor, screaming as much as his shattered ribs would allow. A cloaked figure was knelt by him, tipping a small colourless bottle to Fain’s lips. ‘Absentia draft,’ the hooded stranger whispered. ‘A posit tincture, based upon the notion of there being either no creator, or one which is competent and efficient. Either way, the result is much less pain, and extremely rapid healing.’
Soon Fain was riding beside the cloaked man on the wooden seat of a horse-drawn cart. He felt better than he ever had, and for some reason felt no curiosity about the hooded figure. ‘We approach the city of Camovine,’ said the man. ‘Beware the local autarch. He keeps a mirror by which you may travel far, and he would use it to evacuate the town if he could, but a gewgaw lives within, which eats down those who enter and spits them out like apple cores.’
‘I’m hungry,’ said Fain.
‘If I’m hungry I pull up one of the earth’s veins, slit it open and drink from it. What else do you do?’
&
nbsp; ‘Kill a warthog.’
‘Which of itself has drunk from the veins of the earth.’
‘I should have said “try” to kill a warthog. They’re hard to find, and even harder to catch. To kill, perhaps impossible. It’s the same with bears.’
‘I know it is.’
‘So this earth vein business might not be such a crazy idea.’
‘Not crazy at all. Just boring. Lacking adventure, and thus creating no stories. And because it creates no stories, it is a wisdom repeatedly lost and only by chance rediscovered. True wisdom is like that. Not spectacular. This is Camovine. I leave you here.’
‘Thanks for the ride,’ Fain called after the covered cart as it passed into the city. Some sort of celebration seemed to be underway. A hectically happy gatekeeper told Fain he had the good fortune to arrive in the city on the day of Saint ExStrainia’s Festival.
CHAPTER 9
In which Fain offends the Autarch
‘The Festival of Saint ExStrainia,’ the Gatekeeper explained, stepping back apparently so that he could shout all the louder. ‘One day he raised his eyebrows in surprise and they kept on going, flying over his domed head and away like two caterpillars caught in a strong wind.’
‘Hardly seems to justify this level of celebration,’ thought Fain as he entered the frenzied city. Everywhere he looked revellers in green and purple costumes spoke sarcasm from far lands and were sent into fits of sneezing by rare spices. Optimists harassed him with reclamation and others offered to tattoo his eyes so that he would see beauty wherever he looked. But they all danced away before he could respond.
The scent of strong ginger and blue moon tobacco assailed his senses. Dyed ashes stained the air. The streets seemed to have been widened recently, the chalk walls of houses carved into or entire houses destroyed to create open squares. A surfeit of fortune? A procession of old failed instincts merely? But Fain knew that in the heart there is no such thing as exaggeration. A town crier was wagging a bell and crying: