Fain the Sorcerer

by Steve Aylett

  ‘I have something very particular to say to you,’ said Drake finally one day, petting a snake banded black and yellow like a wasp. ‘Seagulls forget soldiers. The present is stronger.’

  ‘Your personality’s lacy enigmas are doing my nut in, master.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But objectivity will not tell all.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It lacks emotion. Therefore it doesn’t have all the information. We disagree on many things because we see them as they are. The emotional half has dried out in you, your brief happiness almost forgotten. You and Thorn are not so unalike. And I would not have you die having grown only one wing.’

  ‘You’re scaring me. What do you mean?’

  ‘Our time together is done. I grant you this curse and blessing: the day you truly see yourself for the fool you are, your fondest wish will be granted.’

  Drake unlocked a mirror, and Fain stepped through into Envashes forest. He travelled back to a time before his previous visits to the old man, and approached the cave.

  66

  CHAPTER 19

  In which Fain is finally a man of his word

  ‘My queen to your rook nine!’ (or something like that) cried the crazy old man after Fain smashed the urn. ‘This urn is enchanted, and it falls to you to receive its final three wishes!’

  ‘So,’ said Fain. ‘Three wishes eh? Well, I wish to be able to travel instantly forward in time to any point in the future I choose, while retaining my clothing and baggage. Secondly, I want to know where Hackler Thorn is at any time. Thirdly, I wish to be able to transport instantly to any place in this world that I choose, when I choose to do so, while retaining my clothing and baggage.’

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

  Buying a store of rope and canvas, Fain travelled a thousand years into the future, finding himself immediately surrounded by dicehearts. They sped around him, belching smoke behind them and honking with laughter. And looking closer, Fain saw that human beings were trapped within them all. They were compropede captives, being sped to judgement! Fain could barely breathe. He wished himself forward another fifty years and time clenched the three thousand teeth of silence. He was standing in a landscape of human skeletons in papery snow. Broken towers crowded a gloomy horizon. He transported himself to the dragon’s cave, and lit a torch. ‘Next time I should state a wish to be able to see in the dark,’ he thought. The creature’s ribcage was clean and still in the dead cavern, its doglike skull sad in the flickering light. He wished fire upon the skeleton and it burned, then he extinguished the fire. Roping the corpse into the canvas, he encircled the neck with his arms and wished himself above, then wished himself more than a thousand years back in time. Then he wished himself near to Camovine town. He left the dragon beneath a tree and wished himself into town, buying a horse and cart. Riding back to the dragon, he loaded it into the cart and set off again.

  Seeing the expected figure appear over nearby trees, he dismounted and walked to the leafy clearing where the crumpled youth lay screaming, having sustained one-hundred-and-eleven broken bones. Pulling up the hood on his cloak, he knelt over the young man, administering absentia draft and explaining all the while what he was doing.

  Soon the younger Fain was riding beside him on the wooden seat of the cart. ‘We approach the city of Camovine,’ Fain told him. ‘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 the young 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?’

  ‘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.’

  Leaving the young man at the city gate, Fain rode to an inn and lodged there a while. Presently he fetched the cart from the stable and took it further into town, waiting near the palace until he spotted the scorched figure of his younger self walking in. He brought the cart up to the palace entrance, removed the canvas from the coiled and gruesome skeleton of the dragon, and walked away, hearing delight and commotion behind him.

  ‘Finally,’ he thought with relief, ‘my word need no longer be my bond.’

  69

  CHAPTER 20

  In which Fain tracks Hackler Thorn through time

  ‘Sand dunes really took a climb,’ the old man seemed to say after Fain released him from the urn. ‘This urn is enchanted, and it falls to you to receive its final three wishes!’

  ‘Three wishes you say?’ Fain said thoughtfully. ‘Well, I would like to be able to see great distances, clearly, by bringing only the image close to my visual perceptions as though I were looking through the most powerful telescope ever created.’ Fain had inspected a telescope at Drake’s sanctuary, and hoped that the old man would understand. ‘Secondly, I wish to be able to see in the dark, and by this I do not mean to be able merely to see the darkness, but to see in the darkness as though it were illuminated, though without conflagration. Thirdly, I wish that the sorcerer Thorn shall never enter the kingdom of Envashes or be there by any means.’ For Fain knew that this was the scene of Thorn’s abductions of the Princess and his several strangulations at Fain’s own hands.

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

  Fain travelled back in time and then a hundred miles distant. He stood in dry wasteland at the base of a thousand-foot-high palace. It was a slender white wedge, the sky above it shimmering like silk.

  Entering through a round door, Fain found himself in what seemed to be an abandoned cottage. Murked, unreadable wall portraits tilted at him.

  There were no rooms above the cottage, the palace spike a solid decoy. Knowing the tricks of warlocks, Fain upended the heavy kitchen table and pushed it inward—it was a door leading to a stone flight of spiral stairs. Descending, he emerged into a strange chamber. Fain felt afraid of this room which was decorated from floor to walls to ceiling like a chessboard. On a small round table stood a bowl arranged with black flowers and white berries. The room had the odour of valerian. Fain passed through this, opening a tall triangular door onto a vast hall of meat. The slurry floor gave way beneath him and he fell further into a puzzle palace of trick perspectives and cut diamond masonry which resulted in pain rooms, chambers which gave him a poison headache within moments of entering. Here was useless furniture made of precious stones glued with human blood, and dark bronze statues with irregular panels removed to display innards of rose quartz and iolite. The infinite scintillations of the carpet hooked his eye and made him almost forget his purpose.

  Finally, descending a grand staircase carved from whalebone, Fain reached the centre of the Cathedral of Knots. A throne was set at the bottom of several such staircases like a tiny stage in an amphitheatre. Today, Thorn looked like a giant insect hung with cutlery. A pearlhandled claw glinted in uterine light and Thorn had cast a spell against Fain, which Fain solidified inches before it hit—a flower like an orange boil clattered to the floor.

  When Thorn opened his jaws it drew taut the twelve wires which were strung between them, and these he strummed and plucked with his complicated claws in lieu of speaking normally. ‘You were not invited,’ he said.

  ‘I apologise,’ Fain told him. ‘What’s the reason for all these boring staircases?’


  ‘Invisibility traps. It’s incredibly difficult for an invisible intruder to walk down stairs.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Fain with interest. ‘I suppose it’s because even if they’re not blind, they can’t see where they’re placing their own feet.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘What’s this building made of? Bacon?’

  ‘Marble! And it’s a palace!’

  ‘This underworld of yours appears to have been carved from apricots. And your throne—some sort of sugar fondant?’

  ‘Solid rose quartz.’

  ‘Ah! ’

  ‘And now that you are assured my stronghold is inedible, see what trouble your so-called civilisation will give you if I turn your head translucent.’

  ‘Do your worst, Thorn. I don’t think they’ll find more than a brain and hinges up there: all facts. I notice your mouth opens sideways.’

  ‘I’ve noticed it too. An unfortunate side-effect of m’villainy.’

  ‘Yes—what’s that all about?’

  ‘Decomposition has disguised the grandest betrayals these many years.’

  ‘So, the king burns on his throne like a torch in its niche. And jade gryphons guarding gold? Sickly taste!’

  ‘Your sentences have a hydrochloric structure to ’em. You assure me they do not conceal some glamour or cantrap?’

  Fain found himself inside a block of ice, and set about conjuring heat as he observed the blurred entrance of a trapdoor servant, black dumb fire behind its eyes. It was a walking bat monster, its musculature like red cobwebs, such as Thorn would later employ en masse. Thorn had stood, advancing with stretched jaws. ‘I am a sword polished with ashes.’

  Fain transported himself into the cottage kitchen and another forty years into the past. Upending the table again and pushing through it, he made his way to the chess room and felt a bad flicker of sensation. Thorn was seated at the small white round table. Today he was a gaunt albino with a silver half-moon blade arcing from the back of his head like a rudder. Fain seated himself opposite, on a garden seat woven from white metal. On the table was a cut white ivory diamond the size of a duck egg, each facet engraved with the face of a different insect. The room was filled with the scent of headache trees and everythyme. There was no triangular door.73

  Fain had learned from the mermaid the million colours of water, none of which had a name. Looking at Hackler Thorn, he said, ‘Your luck is grey.’

  Thorn’s face twitched like a cat’s ear. ‘At least you’re honest.’

  ‘Is that really the least? I seek the truth, when there isn’t anything better to do. Which there never is, Lord Thorn.’

  ‘“Lord Thorn,”’ Thorn repeated, savouring the words. ‘I like that.’ Looking up, Fain saw a chandelier of black crystal which hung like a widow spider.

  ‘This prejudice against skulls and shadow,’ said Thorn. ‘Both are necessary aren’t they?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Fain. He was glad to have one of his own arguments expressed.

  ‘Life is quantum entanglement, a red labyrinth of delays and repeated perplexities. I was an innocent once, but now I’m reformed. And you, with that bog of shadows you call a mind. Who the hell are you?’

  Fain saw Thorn’s face prowing out, beginning to change, and instantly wished himself in the cottage kitchen. Above, he wished himself another fifty years back. The kitchen seemed quite orderly, the portraits of squires and maidens quite legible, and there were devices and pieces of meat on the table. Fain swept them off, upended the table and walked at it, breaking his nose. Staggering outside into a bright garden clogged with roses, he saw Thorn standing near a stone basin which tumbled a fountain of fresh water. Today Thorn was a skeleton full of meat and a head bound in human skin. Fain realised abruptly that this was Thorn simply presented as human. The warlock wore a black cloak decorated with triangular autumn leaves and red heart snails. He was bending to examine the earth. ‘Oh yes nature trots out the dandelions, big deal.’

  ‘Mr Thorn,’ Fain called.

  Thorn straightened up, frowning. ‘Who are you? And my name’s not Thorn.’ He bent to examine a rose. ‘Another tag of slithering formulae.’ He stood, and kicked it from the earth.

  ‘No sense in that,’ said Fain. ‘You may as well fight against your own gums.’

  ‘Your nose is bleeding. And anyway, maybe I will. I happen to hate my own gums, why not? Squatting there while I do all the work. It’s bad enough I’m trapped in this skull and viewing the world through these crooked teeth. And look—the garden is filthy with petals!’

  Fain laughed, and because he did not want to offend the man, who was standing directly in front of him, he laughed from both sides of his mouth while keeping the middle closed—the effect was apparently not what he’d hoped for, as the man looked suddenly startled and incredulous.

  ‘I could arrange to have you bitten by a gnome,’ the man told him.

  ‘Not much fun.’

  ‘Fun? When you inspire indignation you know you’re alive.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Fain emphatically. ‘Someone who loves the world cannot remain unstirred.’

  The man seemed unconvinced. ‘These verbal trinkets clink in your own wind. Let’s sit over there, I’ll explain something to you.’

  Fain glanced back at the simple, towerless cottage as the man who would be Thorn led him to a terrace rich with broken capillaries. Here was the stone image of a wingless lion and the earthenware feet of a missing statue. A garden table bore a book bound in red leather. Tea stains made the yellowish tablecloth resemble the pelt of a giraffe. As they sat down, Fain perceived Thorn’s heart perched like a bulbul in a calcium birdcage. Fain looked beyond him at the box-hedges, and behind a green metal gate, a garden of fountains and swans and cherry mint breezes. Here and there through the garden moved giant snails with the heads of crocodiles. The tile lizard was sunning itself, glued to Fain’s shoulder.

  ‘You are as suspect as surgeon water,’ said the man, ‘whoever you are. But I can cope with that. I was born with a head for my own personal use, and free will—of a kind. Take a gander at this.’ He opened the book with a thump. ‘If a book’s not big enough to creak it’s worthless to a professional scholar.’75

  ‘Does a truth require the death of so many trees to be stated once?’

  ‘Listen to this: “Are they stars or holes in the trees? Are they truths or holes in the lies?”’ Then he sat back, pleased with himself.

  ‘I’m with you so far.’

  ‘So far you idiot? I just explained the universe!’

  ‘Most people build on the obvious to make a point. You seem to have run out of steam.’

  ‘Steam is it? I’ll kill you!’ The man threw himself across the table at Fain, who vanished and reappeared near an ivy-twined pillar nearby.

  ‘It’s such a beautiful day—must we fight? I’ve looked forward to meeting you. I want to understand things. Did you write this book?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Then these are not your own thoughts. Tell me your own thoughts.’ Fain gestured to a pair of skeletons hung by manacles from an overgrown wall. ‘For instance, these fellows look a bit pasty. What’s the story behind those?’

  ‘Pasty? They’re skeletons. Pastiness is the least of their concerns.’

  ‘What’s the greatest then?’

  ‘Their lack of usefulness, I suppose. The people who ran them are gone—why must these remain?’

  ‘Perhaps some creatures re-use such skeletons the way certain snails take up residence in the shells of their dead comrades.’

  ‘Let us hope. Meanwhile, you may have noticed these giant snails with the heads of crocodiles.’ The man led Fain into the larger garden. ‘I call them Vetifers—though, like all animals, they do not respond. But will we as a people ever take the hint and stop putting names on animals? I don’t think so.’

  ‘They look quite cute. Are they dangerous?’

  ‘They differ from crocodiles in that they are much, much f
aster.’

  ‘But they’re hardly moving.’

  ‘Crocodiles spend most of their time completely motionless. Therefore these creatures, though moving very slowly, are much, much faster than crocodiles. Aren’t you, Tony?’

  The particular Vetifer which the man had turned to address lashed suddenly at him and he leapt back, laughing.

  ‘Not such a laugh when you’re chained to a floor staple. I keep these things to get me over a fear from childhood. Guess what happened to me.’

  ‘Pounced upon by eight screaming chimps?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then I don’t want to know,’ said Fain, and realised too late that the man had been referring to the werewolf encounter of his infancy. Careful not to curse himself, Fain tried to veer the conversation back on track. ‘However, childhood has always interested me. What of your parents?’

  ‘Gone. And my servants are fish with training wheels—see?’

  Fain looked to a pavilion at the far end of the garden, where indistinct devices moved in circles. ‘Alright.’

  ‘Tiny bells line their stomachs to alarm upon escape. I envy them— they grew with no illusions of safety or protection.’