by Eric Flint
"The Fool, reversed. Foretells of major problems arising from reckless, impulsive action."
Another card. The policemen were now buried from sight.
"The Tower, reversed. Predicts the calling down of a disaster which might have been avoided. Unnecessary suffering. Self-undoing."
Great squeals of fear and pain emanated from beneath the growing pile of cards. The wizard drew another card.
"I shall now predict my own future. Ah—excellent! The Six of Swords! Indicates that some obstacle has been overcome and progress can now be resumed."
The wizard stretched out his hand and scooped up the knot of squirming constables onto the card. With a quick flick of the wrist, he flung them into a corner of the room. As they left the tabletop, the policemen resumed their normal size. Not to their great satisfaction, however, judging from the bellows of displeasure with which they greeted their landing on the floor.
The lieutenant scrambled to his feet and began to speak. He was immediately interrupted by the wizard.
"Silence, dolt!" oathed the mage. "You desire to oversee my studies, do you? Well, then, be silent and observe!"
And so saying, the mage reached out and drew forth one of the books leaning against the buildings on the desk. He slammed the book down flat on the table. The clapping sound caused the desk top to shimmer. A moment later, the previous objects were seen to have vanished, replaced by several others. In the brief glimpse they were allowed, the constables saw an oddly shaped, multisided object, a bowl containing a cactus, a corked bottle and a glass, and—suddenly, a horde of hideous reptiles began to emerge from a drawing pad lying beneath the book. Lizards, newts—it was difficult to say. In the blink of an eye, the reptiles were racing about in a circle, appearing and reappearing, squirming about in a most nauseating manner. The lieutenant and his men became dizzy.
Their discomfort soon passed, however, driven away by a greater unease. For the circling reptiles were picking up their pace. In but three seconds, their individual figures had vanished in a swirling scaly maelstrom.
A moment later a new form—indistinct in shape, but strange and fearful in its aspect—materialized above the desk, wavering like a flame in the wind. The officer moaned. The squad of constables herded together in a corner, lowing in fear.
"Officer, let me introduce you to the devil KKR," said the wizard. "I have summoned it to assist me in my investigation of the King's dream." The devil glowed a bit brighter. A cackling sound came from its—mouth?
"Devil!" spoke the mage. "Do you have anything to report regarding King Roy's dream?"
"Not a thing."
"Explain yourself!" demanded the mage. "I have given you ample time to investigate the matter."
The devil—sneered? It was difficult to say—but certainly unpleasant.
"Kiss off, Zulkeh. I'm not one of those puny devilkins you've been summoning with the hexes of Hieronymus Sfrondrati-Piccolomini. So don't try that tone with me! Besides, we've got orders from the top—from the CEO himself. King Roy's dream is off limits."
There came the impression of a satanic leer.
"Then again, I might be open to a little insider trading. Against all the rules, of course—but what's the point of being a devil if you can't make a little on the side?"
Zulkeh frowned. "And what would you demand in exchange? An eternal soul, I assume?"
KKR howled with laughter. The constabulary huddled yet closer in the corner. The officer's face was white as a sheet.
"Oh, Zulkeh, you are such an incorrigible romantic," cackled the devil. "An absolute throwback! A pure medievalist! No, no, my dear mage—souls aren't worth a thing in these modern times. Progress, progress! Nowadays, I only deal in commodities. Bulk commodities."
"Bah!" oathed the wizard. "I do not possess bulk commodities, evil dullard! Look about you—do you see any such mundane trivia?"
"Well, as a matter of fact—" The devil flared an ominous purple, like the sky before a hurricane. A great bloodshot eye emerged from its vague form, waving about on a stalk. The eye fixed its gaze on the policemen in the corner, who, for their part, bayed in fear and distress.
"There's always a good market in pork bellies."
The constables stampeded from the room, trampling their superior underfoot. They blundered up the staircase and into the entry hall above, stumbling over mummy heads, and jammed themselves—all six at once—out of the front doorway. A moment later the king's officer leapt to his feet and raced out. In a few seconds all trace of the Royal Constabulary had vanished.
* * *
Neither on the next day nor on any day that followed did a messenger come from King Roy to inquire of the wizard Zulkeh. Then, two days before he was to return to the Royal Palace, the mage arose from his chair and summoned Shelyid to his presence.
"Shelyid," he spoke, "I have determined the true state of things."
"Oh master! You have discovered the secret of the King's dream!"
"Nay, dwarf, I have not. And therein lies the mystery—for, of itself, the secret of King Roy's dream should long since have yielded itself up to my science, the which is superb in all fields and without equal—here I eschew false modesty—in the art of divination. Yet I have failed, failed utterly, to unveil it."
"Oh." After a moment, the apprentice assumed a mien of cheerful consolation. "Don't feel bad, master. After all, even a mighty sorcerer such as yourself can't always succeed."
"Bah!" oathed Zulkeh. "You are impertinent, gnome!" The wizard glowered fiercely. "Dolt of an apprentice! Product of idiot loins!"
Shelyid cringed before his master's fury, groveling at his feet. "Please, master," he whimpered, "I won't do it again."
"See to it that you do not!" A deep sigh issued from the wizard's lips. "But then, perhaps you are not to blame. Oft do I forget me that error is the result of intelligence misapplied. Thus, where intelligence is absent, we are confronted not with error but with the natural, if repugnant, behavior of the common brute."
"Thank you, master," bubbled Shelyid, pleased to have escaped a thrashing.
"But now, Shelyid, attend me closely, and ponder upon my words, each and every one of them. For the concepts which I am about to unfold are wondrous in their construction, impeccable in the geometry of their logic."
"Yes, master!" The dwarf knitted his brows in preparation for thought.
"We begin with the major premise, to wit, that I am peerless in the art of divination. It is thus in the nature of things that there exists no dream which—all other things equal—I cannot decipher through the application of my powers. Is this clear?"
"Oh yes, master!"
"Good. Let us now move to the minor premise, to wit, the fact that I have, nevertheless, failed in the task of unveiling the meaning of King Roy's dream. Is this clear?"
"Oh yes, master!"
"The conclusion follows as night from day. All else is not equal. Why have I been unable to discern the secret? Clearly, because I have been prevented from doing so."
"But by whom, master?"
"Yes! Precisely! Well done, Shelyid! You have instantly penetrated to the heart of the matter. By whom, indeed? The answer is clear—by my enemies."
"Enemies, master?" queried the dwarf, confusion and alarm writ plain upon his face. "I didn't know you had any enemies."
"Neither did I, dwarf. But enemies I clearly have. And most puissant enemies, to boot, for not only have these fiends succeeded in preventing me from discovering the import of the King's dream, they have, as well—the villainous rogues!—kept their identity, nay, even their existence, hidden from my sight, the which resembles clairvoyance in its precision. But—ha! I have foiled their plot! Yea, verily, I have uncovered the foul schemers!"
The wizard paced to and fro, gesticulating with great vehemence. "Yet here confront we now a difficulty, Shelyid, for though my grasp of thaumaturgy is, as you know, equaled by none, yet there exist certain minor and esoteric branches of science which remain, if I may indulge in met
aphor, outlying provinces not yet fully incorporated into the empire of my intellect. Of these, of these few—mere handful, in fact—does foety include itself."
"Foety, master? What is foety?"
"It is the study and lore of foes, Shelyid, including within its compass such fields as antagonology, enmitics, opponent psychology, developmental feudery, vindictrism, oppugnatic calculus, and, of course, the applied arts—revenge-work, table-turning, and so forth."
For some moments did the mage stand silent, motionless, poised in deep thought.
At length he spoke. "Well! There is nothing else for it, Shelyid. The true man of wisdom recognizes as well his limitations, few and meager though these be. My skills in foety have remained dormant, lo these many years, having as I do no foes, due to my invariant courtesy of manner and demeanor. Yet foes it now appears I have, and powerful ones. I shall need assistance. So. Let us be off!"
"Off, master?" queried Shelyid, a hint of anxiety creeping forth upon his simian brow. "Off where?"
"To Prygg, of course. Where else? There does the witch Magrit dwell, and there is none on earth who has her mastery of foety. And well 'tis for her sake, the vile harridan, for rudeness and intemperance have made her a host of enemies. Indeed, were it not for my well-known forbearance, I should number myself among them. As it is, the encounter will not be pleasant, indeed, may even be fraught with danger."
"Danger, master?" cried Shelyid, the hint of anxiety now grown to full stature.
"Of course, danger! What did you think? And not just from Magrit! Nay, much more, for the road to Prygg is long and oft perilous, replete as it is with savage beasts and diverse odd-fellows, ruffians and the like."
Then did the dwarf cry out in anguish, blubbering most pathetically, calling upon his master to leave him behind, extolling the cleanliness and order of the domicile which would await the sorcerer upon his triumphant return from great deeds of renown, if left to the loving care of his loyal apprentice during the mage's absence. But it was to no avail. Indeed, for his pains the dwarf was most soundly chastised by his master.
"And thus I command you, unworthy wretch, prepare the necessities of our journey," concluded the wizard's reproof. Grumbling, but now obedient, the dwarf set about his newfound task. As the mage and his apprentice possessed but little in the way of clothing, toiletries, and other such paraphernalia of human existence, the gathering together and packing of these items took but a moment.
"We can go now, master," piped Shelyid, depositing two small haversacks on the floor. "We're all packed."
Zulkeh frowned. "Do you trifle with me, gnome?"
"No, master," protested Shelyid. "Of course not."
"See to it that you do not. Hasten then and attend to the packing of the necessities of our journey. This I have already bade you do, and I am not pleased by your sloth in carrying out my command."
"But, master" whined Shelyid, "we are packed. See—here are our bags. I put everything in them: your spare robe, your other pair of socks, and all my stuff. That's all we have."
"Bah!" oathed Zulkeh. "I am in no mood for bumptious jests! What do I care for these trifles? Again, I command you—pack the necessities of our journey!"
"But what are they, master?" queried the puzzled dwarf.
"My instruments, dolt! What else? My scrolls! My tomes! My talismans! My artifacts!"
"H-how many of th-them do you w-want, master?" stammered the dwarf, his rapidly glazing eyes roving about their quarters, noting the many thousand scrolls heaped untidily upon workbenches and shelves, the stone figurines and clay tablets scattered about the floor, the thick leather-bound tomes of great weight stacked precariously hither and yon, the vials, beakers, jars, jugs, amulets, talismans, vessels, bowls, ladles, retorts, pincers, tweezers, pins, the bound bundles of sandalwood, ebony and dwarf pine, the bags and sacks of incense, herbs, mushrooms, dried grue of animal parts, the bottles of every shape and description filled with liquids of multitudinous variety of color, content and viscosity, the charms, the curios, the relics, the urns of meteor dust, the cartons of saints' bones and the coffers of criminals' skulls, and all the other artifacts of stupendous thaumaturgic potency crammed into every nook and cranny of every niche, room, closet and hallway in the death house, not excluding the heavy iron engines in the lower vaults.
"All of them, of course!" spoke the wizard. "Everything. Not a single item necessary to my science can be left behind—and they are all of them necessary, for I am not in the habit of collecting useless trivia."
Most piteous were Shelyid's moans.
CHAPTER V.
A Dwarf's Travails, and the Wizard's Comments Thereon. The Dwarf Succeeds. An Imminent Departure, Forestalled by a Gnome's Subterfuge. A Pathetic Scene!
Long were the labors of the dwarf Shelyid which ensued, following his master's clarification of the task at hand. For, 'twas not simply the immensity of the actual collection and storage of the mage's possessions which faced the apprentice. Early on, as the small mountain of said possessions began to pile up in the wizard's study, it occurred to the dwarf that he had no vehicle, no vessel, within which to stow these objects for transport.
This realization come, Shelyid pointed out to the wizard the vast disparity between the hillock of objects to be conveyed and the small size of their haversacks. The dwarf then proposed, as a solution to the quandary, the ruthless elimination of all possessions not absolutely necessary to the wizard's work. Indeed, the diminutive apprentice waxed eloquent. He extolled the sorcerer's great powers of mind, the titanic scope of his intellect, the oceanic breadth and depth of his spirit, all of which, argued the gnome, led to the inexorable conclusion that so puissant a thaumaturge as Zulkeh required, in actual point of fact, no more in the way of possessions than his staff—which he would, naturally, wish to carry himself—and his spare robe and extra pair of socks.
The mage was not convinced. Indeed, he now waxed most eloquently himself. He excoriated the apprentice's feeble powers of mind, his stupefying lack of wits, the oceanic formlessness and viscous sludge of his spirit, all of which, contended Zulkeh, led to the inexorable conclusion that so sullen an apprentice as Shelyid required, in actual point of fact, the application of the wizard's staff to his backside. Theory here led at once to practice.
The dwarf now properly chastened, Zulkeh ordered him to manufacture some suitable sack in which to stow the possessions in question. And so did the apprentice set about this newfound task.
Here, as well, his labors were long and arduous. For the wizard himself possessed no cloth of a size sufficient to make such a sack. Thus was Shelyid perforce required to descend into the catacombs, gravely disturbing, your narrator is pained to relate, the slumbers of the dead. For the apprentice did tumble out of their eternal resting place many a skeleton and many a mummy, seeking, by the collection of their burial shrouds, to amass together a quantity of cloths out of which he could manufacture the great sack.
Alas, these labors seemed in vain. The dwarf was no more nimble-fingered than he was nimble-witted. His attempts at cutting and sewing, not to mention the more subtle of the tailoring arts, were inept in the extreme. Of course, this proved to be something of a boon. For the dwarf was, by virtue of his clumsiness, blessed with a most educational lecture on the part of his master. Zulkeh sat in his chair in the study, observing the gnome at his work, and lightened Shelyid's labors with a lengthy monologue on the subject of bungling and botchery, opening up to the dwarf's understanding various theoretical and historical subtleties of the question which had heretofore escaped Shelyid's attention, this, though the subject itself was actually one of the more frequent of the mage's topics of discourse.
Then, the sack at last stitched and knotted together, in a most crude and unsightly fashion, the apprentice discovered that his labors not only seemed to be, but were in actual fact, in vain. For no sooner had but the fourth part of the mage's belongings been stuffed into the sack than this would-be conveyance ripped at a dozen places, disgo
rging its would-be contents back onto the floor of the study.
In fairness to the dwarf, it should be said that the fault lay not with his seam-manship. Indeed, his rough-hewn seams were the only places where the sack did not rip. The fault lay rather in the fact, now obvious to the slow-witted Shelyid—especially with the wizard's accompanying and most lucid exposition on the related subjects of idiocy and cretinism to assist him in his reasoning—that the moldy and worm-eaten shrouds of the long dead are not, all things considered, the most suitable material out of which to forge a sturdy traveling sack designed to carry objects not only of vast multitude and great collective weight, but sporting many sharp points and edges as well.
"But master, I don't have anything else to make a sack from," whined the dwarf.
"Bah!" oathed the mage. Zulkeh rose from his chair and stalked over to a shelf, from which he drew forth a book and a box.
"Thoughtless lout!" The mage extended the box to Shelyid. "Have you forgotten this?"
Shelyid gingerly took the box.
"But, master, you told me never to open this box. So I don't know what's in it."
"Do not attempt to excuse your ignorance with ignorance, wretched gnome! Of course I forbade you to open the box, for it contains nothing less valuable than the hide of a guthfish."
Shelyid's brow furrowed.
"What's a guthfish?"
"Lazy dwarf! The nature of said magical piscoid is recounted in this penetrating volume by the Potentates Laebmauntsforscynneweëld, The Guthfish of Grotum, its history and natural philosophy."
The wizard now extended the book.
"Had you but read this tome—instead of lolling about in idleness—it would have opened up to your understanding the divers uses of the creature's hide as well as the strange and wonderful characteristics thereof."
"But, master, you told me never to read that book, lest I should be felled in my mind—actually you said the cluttered pit which passes for my mind—by the subtle and cunning things which are contained therein."