Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

  “You barely flinched when Vlad took a chunk out of your cranium!”

  “I can see vhy that vould be confusing,” said Bartleby, “but ve have more pressing matters than necromantic physiology at the moment.”

  “Oh, no,” Sloot moaned.

  “He said physiology,” whispered Myrtle, “and Arthur isn’t here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He was in my head for a couple of decades. I’ve always got a sense of where he is.”

  Having neither been possessed by a philosopher nor turned into a demon, Sloot was at a loss to discern why Myrtle and Arthur were still linked. Then again, Myrtle had experienced both of those phenomena, and may not have understood the link either. It didn’t really matter. Whatever the explanation, Myrtle clearly wasn’t holding the clean end of the stick.

  The shinggg of a blade being drawn from its sheath drew Sloot’s attention to the fact that Franka was still vexed about Constantin’s bones. The violent crackling that resulted from Bartleby tipping his head to one side expressed his continued displeasure in the same matter.

  “I’ll pull your still-beating heart from your chest,” Franka sneered.

  “I’d be truly impressed if you could,” Bartleby hissed.

  “Stop it, the both of you!” growled Myrtle. She was visibly straining with the effort of keeping her teeth from going all pointy, snarly, dog-who’d-seen-another-dog-it-hadn’t-met. Strangely, it didn’t make Sloot any less attracted to her. He found that deeply troubling, but then again, he would.

  In the moment of awkward silence that followed, a winged imp shot out of the flaming brazier with a ferocity that left no doubt who had the right-of-way just then. It collided with a shelf, which wobbled a bit.

  “Careful,” grumbled one of the books on the shelf. It gave a little stretch, repositioned itself, and went back to sleep.

  “Sorry,” said the imp. He picked himself up, straightened his glasses, and started leafing through some papers from his satchel. “Right then, which of you is at least a seventh-level Black Knight, a Ceremonial Warlock, or a subscriber to the Soft Cheese of the Month Club?”

  Sloot took comfort in the fact that, for once, he wasn’t the only one staring at everybody else in the room without a clue as to what was happening.

  “Hmmm,” said the imp. He pulled a clay tablet from his pocket that had angry-looking sigils all over it, and studied it over the tops of his glasses. “This is the Upper Level of the Wizard’s Tower, Castle Ulfhaven, Ulfhaven, Carpathia, is it not?”

  “Yes,” said Nicoleta.

  The imp consulted a glowing rune on his wrist. “Right time, right place. And you are members in good standing with the Serpents of the Earth, are you not?”

  “Not exactly,” said Roman.

  “Not exactly?”

  “It’s a gentler way of saying ‘no.’”

  “Ah,” said the imp. His face went all wrinkly with the effort of thought. “Bit of a pickle, I’m afraid. I’ve been sent with certain information that can only be divulged to a seventh-level Black Knight, a Ceremonial Warlock, or a subscriber to the Soft Cheese of the Month Club.”

  “I’m a Keeper in the Skeleton Key Circle,” Franka said.

  “Oh, all right,” said the imp. He produced a little leather-bound book from his satchel and consulted it. He frowned. “It says here you’re equivalent to a fifth-level Black Knight. Close, but no cigar.”

  “We receive complimentary Christmas baskets from the Soft Cheese of the Month Club.”

  “Every year?”

  Franka nodded. “Our union negotiated it about thirty years ago.”

  The imp consulted the clay tablet again and frowned. “Sorry, not quite good enough. It does specify monthly subscriber, right here on the ticket.” He pointed to a squiggle on the tablet that looked to Sloot like a dagger who’d been taught to smile, and had to assume that the imp was reading it correctly.

  “Hang on a second,” said Myrtle, shaking her head. “Who are you? What’s this all about?”

  The imp gave Myrtle a quizzical look, pointed to the blue-green flames erupting from the brazier, and then shrugged in lieu of saying “duh.”

  “What sort of spell were you casting with that thing?” asked Myrtle of Bartleby.

  “Good qvestion.” Bartleby turned to Nicoleta.

  “We were trying to find out whatever we can about the Serpent of the Sky,” said Nicoleta. “I wasn’t sure what sort of answer we were going to get.”

  “A redacted one,” said the imp. He patted his satchel. “It’s all in here, but the legal representatives for the Serpents of the Earth are accomplished lobbyists in the realm of metaphysical informational exchange. If your request had been pertinent to anybody else, my office probably would have given it the old rubber stamp and sent it along to fulfillment.”

  “Fulfillment?”

  “Fulfillment. It’s generally up to them whether this sort of thing returns as a cryptic riddle, a puzzle to be solved, some beast or another that must be defeated before its treasure may be unlocked ... you get the idea. However, since the alleged Serpent of the Sky falls under the auspices of the Crankley-Lavamurder Act of the 457,692,113th Infernal Legislative Session, the delivery had to be notarized.”

  “And that’s why they sent you,” said Sloot.

  “Naturally,” said the imp. “I am a notary, after all.”

  He really didn’t need to add that last bit. All Infernal imps are notaries. Everybody knows it.

  “There’s got to be a way to work this out,” said Nicoleta. “We put forth the proper request, don’t we have rights or something?”

  The imp rolled on the floor, laughing until he wept. Having no other recourse, everyone else in the room waited with varying degrees of patience until he’d finished.

  “Thanks,” he wheezed at last, “I needed that. Oh, boy! You managed to squeeze ‘proper request,’ ‘we’ve got rights,’ and ‘there’s got to be a way’ into the same breath! That’s going to put me way ahead in the office pool!”

  “I’m glad you’re amused,” said Nicoleta, who clearly wasn’t. “What about bribery? I’m sure we can do some bribery.”

  “As an agent of the Infernal Bureaucracy, I am strictly forbidden to refuse a suitable bribe. Do you have any kittens? I’m famished.”

  “No!” shouted Nicoleta. In life, an inordinate number of her wizard’s robes had kittens on them. She loved kittens. As far as she was concerned, feeding kittens to a notary was right out.

  “Oh.” The imp grimaced and rubbed his stomach. “Look, if you’ve got nothing I want, I’m afraid—”

  “Bartleby, do the last bit of the incantation, would you?”

  Bartleby muttered a few words in conjunction with a bit of wand-waving, and the blue-green flames sputtered abruptly and died out. True to Nicoleta’s word, Constantin’s bones were still in excellent condition. Well, excellent for a pile of old, bleached bones, anyway.

  “If bribery won’t work,” said Nicoleta, “how are you with threats of violence?”

  “I admire your spirit,” said the imp, who then winced at having said that to a ghost. “Oh, sorry. Anyway, I’m afraid you’ve misread the situation. I don’t need the flame portal, I’ll just teleport out the old-fashioned way. Ta ta!”

  The imp stood there, or rather continued to hover in mid-air, occasionally flapping his wings. He quickly adopted an expression of incredulity.

  “Ahem. Ta ta!”

  Nothing.

  “Perhaps you didn’t notice that this is a wizard’s tower,” said Nicoleta. “You think you can teleport in and out of a wizard’s tower without a portal?”

  The Serpent of the Sky

  “Do your worst,” the imp had said.

  There was an uncomfortable moment. Uncomfortable for everyone but Franka, who rather seemed to enjoy it. That made the moment even less comfortable for everyone else in attendance. But there occasionally comes a time when threats of physical violence must be made good, or no
one will take you seriously when you threaten to torture someone. That was the sales tactic taught to Little Loyalists before they went door-to-door selling cookies, possibly where Franka had learned it.

  There was further discomfort when it became debatable who was enjoying it more: Franka, or the imp.

  It turned out that the imp was very well-versed in the art of sarcasm and trash-talking. “Oh, well, if anything's going to get me to talk, you'll not find it between those ribs. Honestly, did your granny teach you torturing?”

  Eventually, the imp relented. It wasn’t clear to Sloot whether he did so because he could no longer withstand the torture, or if some requisite amount of time had lapsed. Evil beings that they were, imps were sticklers for the rules. In any case, he told them that the Serpents of the Earth were converging at the Carpathian border to summon the Serpent of the Sky at the new moon.

  “I’ve got a fairly good idea where they’ll do it,” said Sloot.

  “Don’t worry yourself, Sloot,” said Nicoleta. “It shouldn’t be too hard to work out the location. They’ll need to form a very wide circle around an altar.”

  “There’s one near the castle that Mrs. Knife’s guards are keeping near the border. I’ve seen it!”

  “What? There’s no castle near the border.”

  “Well, not in the proper sense,” Sloot admitted, “but that’s what they called it. It’s actually more a pile of rocks where a bunch of zombies are milling about.”

  “There vas a place just like that vhere I used to hang out vhen I vas a kid,” said Bartleby. “Our parents vere alvays vorried ve vere up to no good.”

  “And look at you now,” said Roman with a smirk.

  “It could be anywhere, really,” said Nicoleta. “Well, anywhere in the Old Country, if our theory about Mrs. Knife is correct.”

  “Er, pardon me,” said Sloot, “but I’m fairly certain I know where it is.”

  “Really?”

  “I can’t see why I’d want to lie about something like that.”

  “No, it’s just ... well, to put it plainly, you haven’t been very ... useful of late.”

  “Oh.”

  “No offense.”

  No offense was the thing that people said when they knew very well they’d just said something offensive, but they didn’t want to come off as the sort of person who was in the business of hurting other people’s feelings. It was a very eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too thing to say, and it almost never had the desired effect of leaving the target unoffended.

  “Just because you haven’t seen what he’s been up to,” said Myrtle, winding up for a good telling off, “doesn’t mean that he’s not been useful! Sloot’s got a great deal more on his plate than you do. What was it you were doing before he arranged for Bartleby to help you with your magic?”

  “You can’t talk to me like that in my own tower!”

  That was just the beginning of a veritable vortex of unkind words, drawing everyone into it and arming them with vitriol. Tipsy uncles running off at the mouth with ill-informed political opinions at holiday dinners rarely manage to divide people so efficiently. It was a good thing that there were no amateur historians on hand, not only because this was a dark chapter best lost to the ages, but because amateur historians inexplicably feel qualified to extol the merits and follies of anything happening in the past, present, or future. It would have been fuel for the fire in this case. Amateur historians should always be encouraged to stick to commentating on the past, and even then, only among themselves.

  “Enough,” said Roman. “As cathartic as all of this might be, we may be short on time here. Does the new moon happen soon?”

  “Tonight,” said Bartleby. “Ve should hurry.”

  The speed of Bartleby’s reply sent several quizzical stares in his direction.

  “Vhat? I alvays know the lunar cycles. Every good verevolf vatcher does.”

  “You’re a werewolf watcher?” asked Myrtle.

  “Vhat, I can’t have a hobby?”

  “All the more reason you should trust me,” said Sloot. “Really, I’ve seen the place you’re describing! I thought they were going to have a bonfire or something, but this makes more sense! Well, not sense, exactly. It suits the purpose, though.”

  Theories abounded regarding how they could make it there in time. Myrtle could teleport there, but she couldn’t summon anybody else; and while her demonic powers gave her an edge, the general consensus was that the greater assembly of Serpents of the Earth would have the upper hand. Sure, she could summon Sloot if Roman would loan her his skull, but he’d be roughly as useful as a bag of wet hair if it came to a fight, which it most certainly would.

  To be fair, bags of wet hair are not entirely useless. Just ask the Arts Council of Salzstadt, or rather, the zombies now holding seats on the board thereof. At least a quarter of the modern art exhibits in the Museum of Ministry of Propaganda Approved Art have included, or consisted entirely of, bags of wet hair.

  They ultimately decided on a portal. The challenge there was that it was up to Bartleby to open it, given that there were living people among them who wanted to remain such when they arrived. Nicoleta was still agitated the entire time that she was talking Bartleby through the incantations, which Sloot felt may have had an effect on the outcome.

  “It’s three hundred feet off the ground!” shouted Nicoleta. The space beyond the shimmering hole in the air gave the tower a view that any realtor worth her salt could have sold for a fortune.

  “Ve’re three hundred feet off the ground,” said Bartleby. He made a face that said “duh” in the inflection of one of the cool kids who never let you sit with them.

  “Flaptybum’s Eleventh Geographical Rune was specifically designed to—”

  Boom! Whiz! Bang! Whatever Flaptybum’s Eleventh Geographical Rune had been specifically designed to do, Nicoleta’s lecture about it seemed less important in the moment than ducking out of the path of a volley of smoking yellow bolts of noxious energy that flew in from the portal. Most of them splattered harmlessly upon the walls and ceiling of the tower, but one smashed a pedestal that had a particularly nasty-looking book chained to it. The book hit the floor and started wriggling out from beneath the detritus that landed atop it.

  “No!” shouted Nicoleta. “The Tetrapocrypha! Don’t let it open!”

  Roman, in a burst of unexpected work-in-lieu-of-delegation, threw himself atop the book.

  “You’ll have to try harder than that!” shouted Bartleby. He returned fire through the portal, smoky purple screaming skulls blasting forth from the tip of his wand. He erupted into a fit of villainous laughter that could only have been the product of a lifetime of rehearsal.

  While it was possible that the magic being fired into the tower would have no effect on the dead, Sloot didn’t want to break his heretofore unblemished record of staunch risk aversion. He dropped to the floor and tried to make himself as flat as possible. He might have even tried sinking into it a bit, had years of exposure to magic not seeped into the stones and made the floor resist that sort of thing.

  “It’s like they were ready for us,” said Nicoleta. She was standing directly in the line of fire, and a series of glowing red projectiles passed straight through her with no effect.

  Sloot kept his head down anyway. Despite their lack of effect on Nicoleta, he didn’t know for sure that the red ones wouldn’t hurt him. Then there were the yellow ones. And Bartleby’s purple ones. Some green ones started appearing as well. As time went on, a veritable rainbow of magical projectiles pummeled the inside of the tower.

  Sloot wished that he could help. Not with the problem at hand, mind you, that was far beyond his comfort zone. Instead, he kept his head down and lamented the fact that there were no ledgers that he could save the day by balancing. What else could he do, other than get shot up by potentially dangerous magic?

  “We’ve got to do something,” Myrtle shouted over the din of magical warfare.

  “Got my hands full at the
moment,” shouted Roman, who was barely able to keep the pages of the Tetrapocrypha together.

  “They’re coming!” shouted Nicoleta.

  “What? Who’s coming?”

  “Goblins!”

  Sloot crept forward. While the prospect of getting shot by a magical projectile was scary, an advancing congress of goblins was scarier still, to say nothing of an advancing congress of goblins that he couldn’t see. Sneaking a peek, in this case, was a calculated risk that could serve as an incremental reduction in Sloot’s overall level of terror.

  Sloot’s calculations could not have been more wrong. Even considering the occasion of his own violent demise, He’d never seen a congress of goblins so nightmarishly huge. They were piling on top of each other, a putrid, unwashed mass of miscreations swarming upward toward the portal.

  “Stand aside,” growled a voice from behind them. It cleared a path with the efficacy of a magic spell, though it was not spoken by a wizard.

  “Vlad!”

  “I told you to stop the Serpent of the Sky!” She lumbered forward in her red steel armor, crouched behind a tower shield that was nearly as tall as her. If Sloot wasn’t mistaken, it was the same armor and shield she’d used at the Fall of Salzstadt. The shield had only blocked arrows that day, but now the magical projectiles were bouncing off of it as well.

  “That’s what we were trying to do,” said Nicoleta. “The plan has gone awry!”

  “So it has.” Vlad stood at the portal, bracing her shield against her shoulder and looking down on the swarming congress of goblins rising up toward her.

  “Wait a minute,” said Sloot, to no one in particular. “If Vlad is here, then that must mean that … oh, dear.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Myrtle.

  Vlad said nothing, just waited. She was mouthing something silently to herself. Most people might not have picked up on it, but Sloot’s mastery of numbers left him in no doubt that she was counting down, though he couldn’t have guessed why.

  “Spymaster!” Vlad shouted.

  “Yes, Your Dominance?”

  “Do something about our guest in the dungeon.”