Fain the Sorcerer

by Steve Aylett

  ‘Oh yay. Oh yay. The Autarch is well pleased and expects you to feel the same way.’

  A fellow whose costume was tagged with red and yellow knots laughed uproariously at this and Fain approached him. ‘You sir!’ he shouted.

  Now that Fain was closer to the man, he could see that he was sobbing desperately. How had Fain thought he was laughing? But having drawn back a little, the man again seemed to be shrieking in celebration like those around him. It was like a trick picture Fain had once seen of a white vase against a black background, which on a second look changed to two faces opposing each other.

  Fain was standing next to a chiming roundabout of citizens riding candy-coloured horses—the laughing, shouting riders grew gaunt with despair as they hove near, then swept by into public enjoyment again. Fain was feeling more vertigo than he had when he fell from the sky.

  The man in the knot costume bolted down the street and Fain pursued him, finally grabbing the fellow and barging him against a wall. Up close, he could see that the man was in tears of utter despair. ‘In our belltower,’ he sobbed, ‘is the bell of a jellyfish. We don’t know how to organise anything.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘We’re exhausted,’ grated the man, then thrust himself from Fain’s grasp, capering lightly away with a carefree smile.

  Everything was smothered in faded and sickly bunting. On the way to the castle Fain tore some away from a bandstand and the wood beneath was cindered, flaking charcoal.

  The castle’s audience room was all gloom and a vastness of pillars. The Autarch was sat on a vulturine oak throne against a wall hung with dark green velvet. He was a fat man wearing a stellate, mechanical-looking crown and was flanked by several smirking idiots.

  ‘Hail, Your Majesty—I have come to witness your famous antics.’

  ‘You pay me no obeisance?’

  ‘To do so would seem a pointless courtesy. You seem obese enough already.’

  ‘I unfortunately ate my salad days immediately, because I thought that’s what they were for.’

  ‘Of course! How could it be otherwise. I hear tell that you own a very deep mirror. I would like to swim into it as far as I can.’

  ‘Sir, your remarks have amazed us all. And we will devote as many minutes as are required for you to produce the proof.’

  One of the Autarch’s cronies piped up. ‘Rather than speculate, let’s attack the fellow and see what happens.’

  ‘Perhaps we could attack him in an encouraging way?’ another suggested.

  ‘Let him see we understand why he’s startled,’ said a third.

  ‘That’s a plan,’ the Autarch nodded, and turned to Fain. ‘You are to be executed, young man—what do you say to that?’

  ‘It’ll hurt, which will surprise no-one.’

  ‘Surprise? You young scallywag. But truly, in cases like this we can make use of a new distraction.’

  ‘There seems enough distraction outside, Your Majesty, on this Festival day.’

  ‘We have the Festival every day. Ours is a fair and fortunate city.’

  ‘Oh yes? I hear you’ve got a squid in your belltower.’

  ‘You interpret this as a cry for help? Perhaps you are correct. A silent cry, as it must be. The fact is, we are harassed by a particularly pernicious and inconvenient dragon of the fire-breathing, sacrifice-requiring sort. Bring us the dead body of the dragon, and you may explore the mirror you mentioned.’

  ‘Your confidence in me is baseless but I’ll do my best. How old would you say the dragon is?’

  ‘Two thousand years.’

  ‘And how long do the buggers usually live?’

  ‘Three thousand. He’s not likely to just conk out, if that’s what you’re hoping.’

  ‘What do they eat?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘Other than people. A ham sandwich?’

  ‘Rummed honey. But it won’t come to that. He’ll bolt you down that gilded neck like the crack of a whip.’ The Autarch couldn’t stop laughing, but Fain doubted it was real mirth. When the Autarch stepped down and approached Fain, a worry crease like an archery slit appeared on the Autarch’s face; closer still, and a despairing wretch stood there, as much life in his eye as in that of a rocking horse. ‘Here is a map of our kingdom, a mere copy, as it shall surely be burnt. It shows the location of the beast’s cave.’ The Autarch lumbered back again, and these last words were barely coherent amid the liquid splutter of his hilarity.

  30

  CHAPTER 10

  In which Fain fights a dragon

  Spotlessly clean bones were scattered around the cave mouth and from that mouth flowed a grey smoke which was twisting among itself like a crowd of grey squirrels. Fain entered the cave, pushing the barrow before him.

  The cave smelt of sulphur and titanic friction. Fain trundled through snapping wrists and ribs, having to slow and speed up as the light in the cave flared and dimmed in a regular rhythm. Reaching a broad ledge which formed a gallery around the walls of the master pit, he peered down.

  The dragon didn’t look finished. This yellow worm with thirteen wings had tiny human eyes like a whale and many white stalk legs facing the wrong way. It was balled up like a centipede, coal-light heating and cooling between a million wolf teeth as it breathed in sleep.

  Fain tipped the barrow forward, rummed honey pouring like lava upon the beast’s tail. Then he descended to the floor of the pit, took ahold of the honeyed tail tip and hauled it to the dragon’s jaws, pressing it to the cage of teeth. In sleep the monster finally opened the tall maw, and Fain fed the tail in. The dragon began to eat its own tail, as Fain fed more inside. Fain was terrified that at any moment the creature would awake and inflict harsh retribution.

  And when the first of its thirteen wings reached the back of its throat, the dragon’s tiny eyes flipped open—the beast reared up and the twelve remaining wings batted suddenly out like holly leaves. It released the roar of a thousand churchbells.

  Fain scampered up the gallery aside the pit and ducked behind the barrow, raising it like a shield so quickly that it flipped away into the pit. He rose again like a saint as the dragon sucked sparking fire into the furnace of its mouth in preparation to blast him. But instead of fire the dragon vomited a great deal of what it had just eaten—which was in part rummed honey but mostly the yet undigested matter of its own tail.

  ‘And so here I stand,’ thought Fain, ‘his favourite food covered in his fondest dressing. Body, farewell.’

  Then he felt a turmoil of heat broiling around him.

  32

  CHAPTER 11

  In which Fain enters a mirror

  Fain walked empty-handed back into town. He had nothing to show for his quest but a smoking crust of fire-proof matter from the dragon’s own body. Should he add permanent fire-proofing to his gifts? As he entered the Autarch’s court again, he pondered the tally of his requirements.

  The Autarch scrutinised the steaming human ember before him. ‘No skull or other artefact to prove you have slain the dragon? Ah well, many are the friendships forged during an execution.’

  Fain concluded his ruminations. ‘My word,’ he solemnly and quietly decided. ‘Is my bond.’

  ‘Don’t understand me so quickly, Your Majesty,’ he announced aloud. ‘While you’ve been sitting around eating roast larks, I’ve set the dragon alight and slung its remains on a cart which you will find outside. Except a bit of its tail.’

  Everyone convened outside the castle and found a cart upon which the scorched, reduced body of the dragon lay coiled and gruesome.

  Everyone seemed to drop their disguise at once. They were a people who had cried so much that deep vertical channels below the eyes had become an inherited characteristic.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said the Autarch. ‘A stunning kick in the pants for me, of course. I suppose it may become a costly nightmare but you‘ve earned your reward. Quick, laddie—before I change my mind.’

  The Autarch led Fain into a
black and silver chamber at the rear of the castle. It was arrayed with standing mirrors.

  ‘I collect them,’ he said, indicating various acquisitions. ‘This is a torrent mirror—I use it to store past information that may or may not be useful later. It’s like an infinite cupboard. This is a widow glass, a mirror of tears. Tears of sadness, or joy I suppose, depending on your view of widowhood.’ It was a mirror of flowing mercury in which Fain’s image undulated, looking startled. ‘And here’s my marrow glass, which in good condition could replace one’s body while leaving all illness within the glass.’ A rough, scapular sort of bone had grown half out of the mirror. ‘This is the sort of nonsense I have to contend with. It’s too old.’

  He halted Fain beside two tall mirrors which stood facing each other. Both had a blackstone frame of a thousand curlicues as if worms had been casting in liquid jet.

  Fain leaned cautiously in to view one of the mirrors. A recessive tunnel of frames curved away from him. His own reflection was absent. But he saw, halfway down the tunnel, a thin grey arm like a stick, poking out between one reflected frame and another like an insect caught on a window. It quickly withdrew.

  Fain turned to the Autarch. ‘I’m aware nobody has survived this conveyance,’ he said. ‘But what if it spits me out alive?’

  ‘You will be banished from my kingdom.’

  ‘This is your guarantee?’

  The Autarch did not reply.

  ‘Rigid disapproval eh? I had best begin my experiment.’

  Fain stepped between the mirrors. Casting no reflection in the bending tunnel of frames, he stepped forward into the mirror before him and walked down the tunnel, stepping over the frame of each reflected mirror as he went. A glance behind him afforded no clue as to his progress. Turning forward again he was confronted with a chiselled little beast. At first it seemed the creature wore a white helmet designed to simulate the segmentations of a fruit, then Fain saw that its head was all teeth, a white density of interleaving fangs which made up a strange ivory sphere. The arrangement seemed to be constantly revolving and rearranging like the grinding faces of a mill. Its body was a sheaf of grey insectile gears.

  ‘As empires fatten on pretence,’ it said, ‘must you dine upon the scraps of its glamour?’

  Fain felt a whole shadow float up inside him and disperse.

  ‘You surprise me,’ said the gremlin. ‘You may pass.’

  ‘Then you don’t mean to gnaw me down to a chog?’

  ‘No,’ said the gremlin. ‘You are honest and, additionally, fresh-minted from some sort of pledge.’

  ‘What manner of creature are you, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I am now a mote elf called Glut. I was an ironical writer called Glut, ever given to tricks of reflection and a constant avoidance of taking up one position on any matter. For my sins a sorcerer named Drake the Adept made me this mirror’s gatekeeper, where I must see and give credit to the truth of things, and know that such truths exist. Only the honest are granted safe passage. After allowing passage three times, I will be freed. Did Drake know how rare that quality is? Was he that cruel? I have been imprisoned sixty years, and you are the first I will allow to continue the journey.’

  Fain suggested that Camovine might be a more likely prospect now that its citizens had less to evade, but the gremlin was scornful. ‘You’d expect them to accept certain realities. But I’ve found even the most meagre-resourced fellows employ their last gasp to evade those. I remember one who lay on his back with his head raised and used such a gasp to puff his belly up, so for his last few seconds he couldn’t see the horizon. He’d been planning it for years but when the moment came he had to arrange it in a hurry.’

  The mote elf produced a small box of polished tin, lifting the lid to display a space of fizzing red before snapping it shut again. ‘These are veracity spiders, terrible allies of my old trade. They test the truth of a thing by swarming upon it until it is devoured, but taking up the true shape of the thing for a short while. Take them.’ He handed the box to Fain, then pointed with a crop-like arm down the curving tunnel behind him. ‘You will arrive where you wish to go.’

  Fain thanked the imp and began walking down the tunnel. Looking aside, he saw far silverine leagues beyond each frame. Then he tripped, falling into the mud outside the King of Envashes’ palace.

  36

  CHAPTER 12

  In which Fain offends the King of Envashes

  ‘My first audience with the King was about a month after the princess was taken for enchantment,’ thought Fain. ‘I think I am a little later than that now.’ He called to a passing farmer. ‘Tell me—is the Princess here? And if so is she enchanted in any way?’

  ‘Pah! The Princess was stolen away weeks ago by a sorcerer.’

  ‘Thorn?’

  ‘Fain. And she’s not been seen since.’

  ‘Did you say “Fain” took her away?’

  ‘That’s what the King’s expensive new soothsayer has discovered.’

  ‘Really. And what does this soothsayer call himself?’

  ‘Charlie. They gave him a liver and asked that he read the future in it. He declared with absolute certainty that the liver’s former owner would soon die if he or she was not dead already. It gave everyone the shivers. Better proof of magic there never was.’

  Fain entered the King’s court covered in mud and dragon vomit.

  ‘What is this creature?’ the King demanded. ‘How did he get in here?’

  ‘Once again, Your Majesty, I have confounded your great raspberry of a head. And where’s this soothsayer I’ve heard about? Surely not this fellow with the constellation cape and sharpened chin?’

  The soothsayer whirled upon Fain and declared: ‘This is Fain the Sorcerer—he who stole away the Princess!’ 37

  ‘On the contrary!’ shouted Fain with all the ridiculous drama he could summon. ‘You took the Princess, and are Hackler Thorn in disguise!’

  Fain took out the tin box of crimson veracity spiders, opened the lid and threw it at the soothsayer, who seemed paralysed by their swarming attentions. Amid the shrieks of the court he was bitten down until all that remained was a sort of grandfather clock with lungs, four rod-like legs pitching it to the ground and two arms of real human bone. It had a fist-sized dice for a heart and a spinal column of coins. Its face was an ivory fan painted with the false eyes common to butterfly wings. All had noticed that the thing was insincere, a mere reaction, but at court this was the very genius of its camouflage.

  The strange construction began to crumble and dissolve as the spiders died, but before it faded Fain glimpsed a sort of meaty tube like an umbilical cord which fed from it, looped over a candelabrum and descended to the head of the King’s jester. The jester started up when Fain saw him, and a black spike pronged out of its forehead in readiness for combat. ‘Thorn!’ Fain gasped, and in moments was throttling the warlock.

  ‘He has killed our madcap!’ yelled the King.

  ‘Not for the first time,’ Fain bragged, admiring his handiwork before recalling the need to run.

  ‘All well and good for today,’ he thought as he dashed down the entrance galley, ‘but in seeking more gifts I must needs travel back to a time when that annoying fool is alive again.’ And it seemed clear that, just as a punishment in the present undoes no crimes in the past, no matter what changes Fain affected in the past, Thorn would proceed to more or less the same point in the present. Fain could not, after all, change the man’s nature. But he wished he understood the root of it.

  He wished himself into the past, surprising a few guards as he appeared out of thin air a week earlier, sprinting from the palace.

  38

  CHAPTER 13

  In which Fain begins a bar brawl

  Feeling a sudden thirst for ale, Fain walked through the forest and found the old man roasting chestnuts outside the cave.

  ‘You! Idiot!’ he shouted at the man. ‘Have you any ale?’

  ‘Take this jar from
my head and I will—’

  Fain knocked him against the mossy wall, shattering the urn and freeing the man’s head. The man called out some nonsense which sounded like ‘Fan your fear to put with mine!’ or something like that, and then told him about the three wishes. Again Fain pretended it was the first he’d heard of all this. ‘So—three wishes! Well, having thought about it for a second: I wish to be able to become invisible whenever I wish—including the clothes I am wearing at the time I make the wish, old man! Secondly, I wish to have the ability to transport myself from one place to another—with clothing intact! And, thirdly, I want to be able to travel forward in time—while retaining my clothes!’

  ‘You choose well, young stranger,’ cackled the old lunatic.

  Fain immediately wished himself transported to an alehouse he had heard tell of in town. Nothing happened but that he for some reason started walking away from the cave. He stopped, angry, and walked back to the cave mouth. ‘Betrayal old man? What of the power to transport myself from place to place?’

  ‘Simply place one leg in front of the other alternately, young one. Though I confess, I felt sure you possessed this power already.’ ATER

  ‘And let me guess—you also believed I already had the ability to travel forward in time?’

  ‘Are you not constantly doing so?’

  ‘Two gifts wasted!’ Fain thought. Should he slip back in time and get more immediately? How long did the old man have that thing on his head? Days? Weeks? How stupid could a man be? What sort of cheated existence had marooned the old man in a cave from which he dealt such perversity?

  Feeling he could not abide the man any more, Fain strode off to the river, where he washed the dragon grime from his body. Then he went back into Envashes town to visit a barber, where his head was restored to a more human appearance. And finally he went to an inn, where he ordered several meals, paying with the inexhaustible gold from his pockets. He delicately relished the beer as though it were a crime. Satisfied, he leaned back in his chair. A great feeling of lethargy filled him. Must he travel over a thousand years into the future to deal with the dragon? ‘Perhaps,’ he thought momentarily, ‘my word need not be my bond.’ But upon glancing at a mirror, he saw an empty wedge develop across his neck and a skull grinning from his face. ‘My word is my bond!’ he shrieked aloud, and all was well with his reflection and his intent.