Fain the Sorcerer

by Steve Aylett

  ‘We have not been introduced, sir—I am Fain the Gardener.’

  ‘Geoffrey Cubeline.’

  ‘How long have you lived here, Mr Cubeline?’

  ‘Thirty-eight years,’ said Cubeline. ‘All my life.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cubeline,’ said Fain, and travelled twenty years into the past. He stood in the midst of trees. Returning to the terrace, he entered a black cloud of flies which feasted around the bodies of a man and woman who hung chained from a wall, their bellies bursted open in a now dry tumble of black complication.

  Approaching the cottage through the small garden, Fain was startled when the door opened and a young man stepped out with a look of such poison sadness the taste of bile came up in Fain’s mouth and he wished himself ten years back. He stood in the garden hearing the silence of a child, the sound of a family. He took himself back into the night and entered the cottage invisibly, reappearing to pick his way through the darkness. Remembering his new ability to see in the dark, he invoked this as he entered the room of the child who would be Thorn. What happened here on this night?

  The child let out a choked gasp and began to scream. Startled, Fain looked around himself and saw a long mouth in a mirror. It was his own mouth. In order to see in the dark, he had become a giant wolf.

  CHAPTER 21

  In which Fain tries to help

  Fain returned to his own time but had no immediate desire to revisit the crazy old man at the cave. And he was so disturbed by his glimpses of the future that he rarely used that gift again, and sometimes felt a creeping horror when he remembered the insidious forward motion of time which seemed the natural condition. He would later wonder if, since he had the choice, he might set up his life at an earlier time than that into which he had been born. Perhaps at a time when matters were less complicated. With his creeping bent for mermaid reflection, he could no longer abide to eat his magic sardines. He thought of the green gold grotto where the mermaid collected shells as though they were pirate treasure, and pirate treasure as though they were shells. Above all he wished for a place without blame.

  For now, chastened by his faults, he travelled, attempting good deeds and observing the lay of things. He sauntered through the tatty wreck of a battlefield where birds, dogs and worms would suffer no interruption to their meal. He conversed on music with a huge black toad like a leather sack. He observed the chaos around a royal crier hailing the official declaration that all was well as the earth cracked and lava wrinkled toward him. He saw an elephantine monster stamp on a man so hard it left something in the mud resembling a Persian carpet, which a merchant then sold as such. He saw sails of shark fabric, vintage consolation swelling in vineyards and skulls tumbling in silt like conches. He climbed to the summit of a temple that was like a city of many levels, its walls covered with maps and diagrams of heaven. He saw stone idols eroded to facelessness and bound with vines, a dead hero’s sword embedded in scarred fields, the stars grinding across the sky, foreign marble sunken in hot dirt, tyrants spooning cinders from children’s mouths, populations credulous and bovine, and kings with minds the consistency of bread. He visited a land where snow was cinnamon-flavoured for a reason everyone was too guilt-laced to reveal, and a civilisation of honest fear in which people gibbered in cages while lions prowled free. He battled and befriended a giant worm with a vortex for a mouth, and played cards with the Great White Kings of Hell. He travelled twice more through the mirror of Camovine, freeing Glut. He saw knights slugging it out in a pine-pinned clearing for ideas that were not their own. He walked through an empire of warring statues, saw the truth carved into beeswax and eaten, and moths full of gold-dust. On sunned ruins vagabonds sat exalted and with eyes closed.

  One day Fain followed a trail of trees into a village. ‘Welcome to Joisy,’ hailed a young man who was striding away from him. ‘You are welcome in my home.’ The man set about winding a bucket of water from a well.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Fain. ‘Where is your home?’

  ‘I’ll take you there,’ said the man and withdrew the bucket, walking toward a small house. Then he suddenly wheeled about, dropped the bucket and ran off the opposite way, leaving Fain briefly startled but, knowing humanity for what it was, barely wondering. Fain picked up the bucket and entered the house, which he discovered to be adequately furnished but without a roof. Nor was there any wall above any of the doors. Presently the young man entered, smiling. ‘Make yourself at home. I am Tagore.’

  Tagore swerved aside and batted against the wall, then seemed to calm down and prepared a meal for which Fain was grateful. When Fain sat down to eat, however, Tagore stood nervously, apparently awaiting some signal that he could be seated. ‘Won’t you join me?’ Fain asked.

  A woman barrelled into the house and slammed against the table, sitting down opposite Fain. Fain could see a tangle of wires above her head.

  ‘This is my wife, Vellum.’

  ‘Welcome. It seems Tagore will not be sitting with us this evening. He’ll probably have to sleep standing up.’

  ‘You’re puppets,’ said Fain. ‘Made of meat.’

  ‘We’re people, like you,’ said Tagore. ‘But with these things attached.’ Tagore drew a finger down one of the almost invisible wires projecting upward from his head. He did this as though the wire were the edge of a blade. Fain followed the wires upward with his eye, until he was looking at a sky full of clouds. Tagore continued: ‘You’ll find most people here deny it, deny they have no roof, and never look up. They deal with their powerlessness by pretending it’s not the case.’

  ‘While we believe that, since we’re powerless, why deny the truth of it?’ said Vellum brightly.

  Fain threw his sight beyond the clouds and was there as incognito eyes. Hundreds of teal blue dragons wheeled crowing in a dazzling chill. He blinked and shook his head.

  ‘We made the wires too strong to cut,’ Tagore was saying.

  ‘You made them?’

  ‘Hundreds of years ago,’ Vellum explained, ‘we were preyed upon by dragons. Finally, the townspeople lassoed the dragons’ legs in order to control the creatures and thus retain our sovereignty, freedom and independence. It was our grand experiment. The wires were the precise length to add weight to the affair and thus hamper and tire the monsters. Any attack by the dragons, dipping below full height, was forewarned by a slackening in the wires. But the creatures, being on high, unobserved, and given full means, now control the people. The change was stealthy as dust and still denied. And the wires are now too entangled around the people and around the dragons’ talons to ever disentangle, until a person dies and rots away. Then their wires are taken up in fear by a son or daughter. The warning slack in the wires is useless, as we have no shelter.’

  ‘In any case,’ added Tagore, ‘they can take us wherever they want for the attack. One of us will simply be walked out of the village into the wasteland, and never come back.’

  ‘My dragon is gliding a little low,’ said Vellum, standing. ‘I’ll take him to see.’

  Vellum took Fain into the wasteland outside the village. Here she showed him ribbons of clothes on a hutch of sticky bones. Some of the bones were suspended a few feet off the ground, turning on a wire like a weathervane. The wires proceeded into the sky.

  ‘Hasn’t anyone ever rebelled?’ he asked.

  ‘Occasionally someone will try to pull the strings or make themselves sluggish and unmoveable. Most townspeople call it “getting heavy”. It’s frowned upon because it reminds us of our situation.’ Vellum stopped talking abruptly—her wires were gathering and clouding around her shoulders like thread feeding from a loom. As she looked up a dragon swooped down at her, tearing off her head and spitting it into the grass. The monster settled upon the body, bit into it and set about pulling a necklace of meat from the wound.

  Recovering from his shock, Fain materialised at a point which overlapped with the dragon, blasting it aside. He had destroyed his own right arm and blown a hole in the dragon’s belly,
from which garlands of gore were spurting. Fain straddled the dragon. ‘Agree not to attack these idiots! Then you can work together to untangle and unattach the strings.’

  ‘It’s our nature to attack,’ rasped the dragon, ‘and if possible, herd people. These wires give us a direct line to our victims—we know exactly where to find them, whether for a kill or one in a long series of snacks. And in the meantime, controlling their affairs is amusing. We have good hearing. We know if they discuss rebellion. We use what we are given.’

  Fain set fire to the dragon, sealed his shoulder with a scab of black glass and returned to the village. Tagore, in grief and fury, agreed to call the villagers together at the well.

  Fain whispered: ‘You are all aware that these silvery facsimiles of freedom are actually chains. There are several ways to change this situation. Take hold of large rocks and leapt into the bottomless chasm near here, dragging down a dragon with you to their death and yours. Entangle your wires in the winch drum above this well, and wind your dragon down from the sky. Or allow me, Fain the Sorcerer, to change everything, either by appearing in the sky and summoning fire upon the dragons, or travelling back in time to prevent this situation from beginning.’

  Fain expected a debate on the possibilities of each plan: that the chasm option was rash, that the well option could work only one dragon at a time, leaving everyone else open to attack. But in the faces around him he saw no fear: only embarrassment, evasion, or anger directed at him. While refusing him permission to interfere with their problem, they stated it vaguely enough to allow that there was no problem to be solved.

  As Fain took his leave of the village, Tagore bid him farewell. Tagore seemed ashamed for his fellow villagers, but Fain was proud that this one man planned to drag his dragon from the sky, one way or another. He hugged him warmly, and walked away.

  Stymied and exhausted, Fain decided his travels were over.

  CHAPTER 22

  In which Fain encounters a witch

  His head freed from the urn, the old man said ‘Ham is really put in wine?’ or something like that, and added ‘This urn is enchanted, and it falls to you to receive its final three wishes!’

  ‘Three wishes eh?’ Fain said thoughtfully. He could not berate the old man without giving away the fact that he had had wishes from him before. He proceeded with his list. ‘Well, I wish to have the power to effortlessly and instantly make manifest in my immediate vicinity any object I desire, free to my ownership. Secondly, I wish to be able to shapeshift into the shape of any object or animal I wish to, and back again, when I wish to, to my own human form, without dissembling my innards or otherwise wrecking my health. Thirdly, I want to be able to fly, by merely wishing to do so, while retaining my clothing and luggage, without means of a device, and by this I mean the ability to fly upward and also horizontally and at any other angle I choose, at any speed I choose, and not merely falling downward.’

  ‘You choose well, young stranger,’ cackled the old lunatic. Fain walked away, went back in time an hour, walked back and helped the old man’s head out of the urn. ‘Can you really butcher rhyme?’ said the man, or something like that, and then told Fain about the three wishes.

  ‘Only three wishes? Well, I happen to be able to see at great distances as though through the strongest telescope ever created, but observing conversations and certain other scenes in this way can be frustrating, and so I wish to be able to hear at great distances, only at times when I want this power to manifest. Secondly, that the sardines I can currently draw magically from my pockets should instead be replaced by chestnuts. Thirdly, I wish that all my magical powers should be imparted to Princess Aleksa of Envashes, while yet retaining such powers myself.’

  ‘You choose well, young stranger,’ cackled the codger.

  Fain transported himself to a warmer continent and over the next several years raised a blue jade palace beside a blue river. Economy was gone from sight the minute the golden pipes took hold. He gathered knowledge and power objects to equal those of Drake’s sanctuary. He sat in a floating seat like a huge halfnut surrounded by crystal skulls, magic lamps and shrike mirrors, dealing glass tarot onto thin space. Hex, having absorbed all of Drake’s lessons, finally managed to assume his own colour, while retaining the option to blend in. The palace weathered an occasional warm monsoon, Fain taking tea on a jade patio projecting into white air.

  In the one hundredth year of his rule Fain came to hear of a powerful sorceress named Pernicia who was in the habit of making people into statues with a casual switch of her hand. After another two years the witch rode out of a purple-stained sky on a canary yellow lash dragon. As this clasped to a stop on the landing stage of the main library, Fain looked up from his seat at the fireplace. He was now a white-haired, sleek-headed vulture of a man with mild eyes. ‘The Princess looks amazing,’ he thought. ‘Off-course beauty is the wildest.’

  ‘Allow me to finish this chapter,’ he said, returning to his book as the witch dismounted. ‘You should read this: The Adventures of Young Fade. It’s very good.’

  Pernicia was removing her gloves and gazing about at the veins of brilliant metal in the library wall. ‘In hard times good health is retained by safety or daring. You seem to have chosen safety, old man.’

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘This body is a shell.’

  ‘Some shells are beautiful, don’t you think?’ And Fain found himself thinking of the sea off the mermaid beach, tiny transparent creatures living like a tangle of ghosts. A thousands drinking mouths and red pulsing jellyfish like free hearts.

  ‘Well, I’m human only in broad outline now, I’m glad to say. I suppose I should thank you before I kill you.’

  ‘Has it been that bad?’

  ‘Over a century ago I was the simple Princess of Envashes, when suddenly every idle wish I had became manifest. My nurse burst into flames, I found myself transported to the time of my childhood, I flew through the clouds, terrified. I was condemned as a witch, and so I was. I sought out Drake the Adept, but he evaded me. I was forced to seek out Hackler Thorn.’

  ‘How is Geoffrey?’

  ‘Geoffrey? Hackler is well, if a little confused these days. His memories keep changing. But he taught me. He helped me discover who was responsible for these powers. In the quest for my own power I have subjected myself to every inconvenience known to man or woman. I have felt pure might. As I entered rooms, you could hear god’s teeth chattering.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable. And yet here you are in foreign pants and bleating like an angry child.’

  ‘It’s as though all my rages are happening at once. I remember you but I don’t remember you. We once met at the centre of a bridge, going opposite ways.’

  ‘Really? I suppose an extreme demand faces its twin brother in the extreme position of reality.’

  ‘Soon traces of greatness were dissolving in my hands as I discovered the truth.’

  ‘That, being a force of nature, sorcery has no more doubt or answers than a flame.’

  ‘Light doesn’t preach,’ Pernicia agreed. ‘Nor does darkness, nor anything between the two. However, it has glamour. The steps between miracles are never referred to, but style is always allowed to remain. It will have to be enough.’87

  ‘Not for me.’

  Pernicia stood behind his chair. ‘Look at you, so strong and wrong. Salt of the earth.’

  ‘I’ve striven to fail, but …’ Fain looked apologetic.

  ‘Your corpse will have a small brook going through it before anyone realises you’re dead.’

  ‘People have been promising me terrifying consequences for years, and all I get is the same dross.’

  ‘So how would you want it. Would you be turned to a statue, ivy clasped about your naked vitals?’

  ‘The notion is strangely exciting.’

  Pernicia switched the glass of the window to stone so that the place was blotted in darkness, the dragon locked outside. Only the firelight illuminated Fain’s book.


  ‘Now all the strange terrors of my travels seem unreal,’ muttered Fain, looking into the flames. ‘Even boring.’

  Then he remembered the book.

  ‘Ah, I’m almost done. Young Fade finds he must steal a red egg from a gryphon nest atop a mountain—he magics himself directly there, but finds himself inside the egg, surrounded by black jelly. Upon his breaking out, the gryphon thinks he is her chick. He is still in a stupor when she feeds him something terrible, and then pushes him off the mountain edge to teach him to fly. How will he survive such a fall?’

  ‘I know a spell,’ Pernicia whispered, ‘that rids you of all your magic powers but the first you acquired.’

  ‘Ah, the Sultan’s Depth Spell. I know of it.’

  She leaned down. Her kiss left him in astonishment.

  ‘You just received it.’

  ‘What.’

  Pernicia stepped back, triumphant. ‘Try it. Anything.’

  Fain stood, unsteadily. He wished himself invisible, and remained visible. He wished a cage around Pernicia, and there was no cage.

  Only his first gift.

  But what of his last gift? Fain remembered the wording of his request, and the old man’s perversity. ‘That all my magical powers should be imparted to Princess Aleksa of Envashes, while yet retaining such powers myself.’ He repeated to himself: ‘While yet retaining such powers myself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll find you’ve lost all your own gifts, Pernicia, since you received them all at once, and you retain yours only while I yet retain mine.’

  ‘The spell has loosened your wits.’

  ‘You still have your dragon. And I still have one gift. Goodbye.’

  Fain travelled fifty years back, spent a few weeks gathering what he needed from the palace, left Hex in charge, went back another sixty or so years, and began the long journey to Envashes.

  89

  CHAPTER 23

  In which Fain finds the old man