Joint contest winners: Rehannah & TZWRD
The whistle didn't sound as Sadie expected. When Mr. Graves, or rather Joe Albuquerque, put it to his lips and blew, she had braced herself for a shrill blast. Instead, it gave a loud "Baaa!"
Duckham fell forward out of his chair. He had been resting his forearms on the table, until it vanished. Suddenly the Ministry inquisitor sprawled face-down on the floor. As he pushed himself up onto hands and knees, he heard another "Baaa!" behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he had only enough time to see a furry blur charging toward him, head down. He rolled out of the way. The charging goat narrowly missed, its hooves clattering and sliding on the floor tiles, the smell of its fur filling the interrogation room.
Weedom screamed when the table turned into the goat. He tried to get to the door, but the goat charged that next - with splintery results. The door stood up to two more blows from the goat's bony head before it gave way, landing on a surprised Millbray who had come running to see what was the matter. The three men picked themselves up, panting, cursing, whimpering, and checking each other for serious injuries, as the sound of the goat's scampering hooves faded around a distant bend in the corridor. It was only when Duckham realized that he had lost the suspect's wand that they noticed the suspect had gone as well.
Sadie started laughing the moment they apparated outside the Hog's Head pub. She kept laughing, supporting herself on Joe's arm, all the way to the shabby back parlor that had been held in readiness for them. On the way there, Joe paused to hand the whistle over to the proprietor, along with a fair tip and a word of thanks.
"That was the least thing I would have expectorated," Sadie gasped as she regained control of herself. She used the hem of her veil to wipe her eyes. "Leaf it to old what's-his-neume..."
"Yes," Joe agreed, while rummaging through a bulging carpetbag for his next disguise. "He can be a clever fellow, when goats are involved. Do you know, that whistle is made out of a goat's ankle bone? Instead of a pea inside, it's got a tiny bezoar..."
"Spanking of cleverness," said Sadie, "that Graves disgust worked awfully whelk, considering how fiddle time you had to perspire it."
"Oh! well," Joe admitted, bashfully, "it wasn't really that hard. Graves and I have crossed paths before. It's easy to pick up details about people who really annoy you."
Sadie's eyes widened. "I my have pricked up a derail about him myself."
Joe looked up at her from a selection of monogrammed jumpsuits - he had been trying to decide whether to become a pool cleaner or an exterminator - and by his look he managed to say, "Yes?"
"Did you ewer get a goad look at the chap who nickled this?" Sadie opened her fist and showed Joe the dull, heavy, silver ring she had taken from Uncle or Aunt Leslie's house. Where it might otherwise have held a jewel setting, the ring flared out into a flat, circular stamp with a raised insignia decorated with a complex design.
After staring at the ring for a moment, Joe finally took notice of Sadie's question. "The skinny youngster?" He shook his head. "Too busy hiding from him in that bank vault. Why?"
"He and your fiend Grades could be relegated to each other," said Sadie.
"You saw a family resemblance, did you?"
She nodded. Joe stroked his chin thoughtfully. When he put his hand down, he was suddenly wearing a Fu Manchu beard. "I guess I'm relieved," he said, rummaging more deeply in his carpetbag. He came up a moment later with a dog catcher's uniform.
"Released?" Sadie repeated, inaccurately. "Whiz?"
"Why?" Joe translated. Sadie nodded.
"Because," he went on, "I was starting to wonder if he was Bette Noir's boy - seeing that he inherited her bank vault and all. And given his apparent age, she would have had him around the time Bette and I were trapped in that Egyptian pyramid."
Sadie's eyes and mouth all said, in unison, "Oh."
"I thought he might have been my son," Joe added, by way of unnecessary explanation. After saying it, he fell silent, the better to concentrate on his new disguise. He also sat a bit lower in his seat. Sadie could not tell whether this showed his relief or his disappointment. She could understand another reason Joe might have been thinking along those lines: their young nemesis shared Joe's gift for disguise.
Sadie had almost put together a little speech of encouragement, which she knew wasn't going to come out right thanks to the lingering effects of the misspell on her, when a hand pulled aside the curtain at the entrance of the parlor and a familiar face looked in.
"Iguana!" Sadie exclaimed, beaming behind her veil.
Joe turned toward the doorway with a delighted grin. "You made good time," he said. But his grin faded when he saw the grim, tired look on Ilona's face.
"You have it?" she said, sitting down heavily across the table from Joe.
Sadie opened her hand again. Ilona snatched the ring out of it and held it close to her eye. She seemed to study it for a very long time, neither moving nor speaking, while Sadie fidgeted and Joe changed his disguise. At one point Ilona looked as if she might smile, but soon afterward a frown creased the center of her brow. Finally, she let the ring drop onto the table with a surprisingly loud thud.
"That's almost the best fake I've ever seen," she said.
Sadie's high spirits plummeted. "I bet your parson?"
Ilona turned her scrutiny toward Sadie, reading her features through the sheer fabric of her veil. Then she shook her head and said, "You've been had. Either Uncle or Aunt Leslie planted that fake, or he never got the real one in the first place..."
"Or I made the swatch," Sadie said, completing the thought for her. Her voice trembled with outrage. "Word you like to church me? Or maybe you shed frisky Joe here..."
"We have to eliminate the possibilities until we are left with the truth," said Ilona, refusing to retreat from Sadie's hurt feelings. "We know this Lee Shore person, whoever he is, took the real ring from my uncle. We know he used it to compel a worker at the Ministry to deposit a barrel of suiCider in Bette Noir's bank vault. We know he works with Uncle or Aunt Leslie, who has plans for the suiCider, and that he has been in contact with Il Comte di Bestemmia. What we don't know is whether Leslie planted the fake ring to fool Il Comte, or whether Lee Shore gave Leslie the fake and kept the real ring. We also don't know what happened between the three of them after you got away. So, really, any of them could have it."
"Il Comet was trying to stale this ring form Leslie," Sadie growled, "unlit I stole it fist."
"He clearly has plans to use the ring to force people to his will," said Ilona. "He was supposed to speak at a political rally in Venice, but he had to call it off. I'm sure if he had the ring, the rally would have gone forward..."
"...and Il Comte would be on his way toward world domination," Joe guessed.
Ilona nodded. "Since he didn't show up to speak, we can probably rule out Il Comte. That means either Uncle or Aunt Leslie fooled him..."
"Food us broth," Sadie muttered.
"...or Lee Shore fooled Leslie."
"In either case," said Joe, "they will start using the ring soon enough. With that vault under constant watch, they won't be able to go forward with Operation Death by Aromatherapy. But if it's true that no one can resist commands sealed with that ring, it won't be long before they move on an even nastier plan."
"The question is," said Ilona, "How will we know what their plan is before it's too late?"
The cheerful fire in the hearth behind Sadie suddenly flared green. With a loud puff of warm air, a roll of parchment sailed out of the fire, over Sadie's head, and onto the table in front of her.
"It's from Harry," said Sadie, untying the ribbon from around the parchment.
"Who?" said Joe, taking the parchment from her. "Oh! It's from Harvey!"
"That's wart I sad," Sadie sighed.
As Joe scanned the letter, his grin faded and his face became blank. With dead, hollow eyes he handed it over to Ilona. The same thing happened to her as she read it in turn.
"Er," said Sadie. "Is ever-think all ripe?"
Joe, meanwhile, had pulled several blank pieces of parchment out of his bag and begun writing at a furious pace. As soon as Ilona handed the letter back to Sadie, she began digging through her handbag for a quill and ink bottle.
Sadie squinted at the letter. Something was not quite right about it. The words swam before her eyes, their spelling changing fluidly. Any word she focused on would be spelled differently the next time she looked at it. She decided it had to do with the misspell. Muttering a dire curse under her breath, she began at the beginning and tried reading it again. The effort was so great that she had to move her lips. Before long she was reading aloud, with great difficulty and many oral spelling mistakes:
"To Wham It May Concert: This is a text of our new regiment. At your eeriest convent, please cupid this better to fire people of your acquittal and sand it to them by the fattest means at your deposition. Remonstrate to tile the better with a robin and steal it with an extract relic of the steal on this better. We recompense the following spill..."
Before Sadie could read further, she was interrupted by the voices of Joe and Ilona. They had finished copying the letter, word for word by memory, and tying them with a ribbon. Now each of them gave five wand flicks and, with each flick, repeated the word Xerosigilus. Wax seals appeared out of nowhere, securing all the ribbons on the letters with an insignia nearly identical to the one on the fake ring Sadie had stolen. The letters shot, one by one, into the fire, disappearing in explosions of green sparks and flame.
"...Xenophilius," continued Sadie, slightly shaken. "Then tun out your pickets and picket-books..."
Joe and Ilona turned out their pockets.
"...and through ever-think but the monkey into the neatest five..."
Except for their coins (which remained heaped on the table), Joe and Ilona threw all their belongings into the fire. This included the contents of Ilona's handbag and the disguises remaining in Joe's carpetbag. They watched the flames with blank expressions.
"...Then stamp by for furrier destructions," Sadie added, reaching the end of the letter. "Your obstinate servant, Lee Snore, esq."
In spite of her growing concern at her friends' behavior, Sadie could not seem to stop reading the letter before this. Now she sat and fidgeted, torn between an overwhelming urge to do as the letter commanded, and a terrifying need to do something about the wrongness unfolding all around her. The former was about to win the point, as her hands crept closer to her own handbag. But then the fire gave off a loud popping noise, and something thumped loudly on the stone floor under the grate. It rolled out into the room, sounding like a large marble. This distraction was enough to give Sadie a moment to think.
The sound of stone rolling across stone came to a halt beneath the table, close to Sadie's end. She looked down. About half a meter from her foot lay the object that had fallen out of the fire. Sadie had never seen anything quite like it...
A crystal finger.
She knelt down beside her chair and placed her hand close to the perfectly shaped, life-sized artifact. It seemed to beckon to her somehow. And it didn't give off any heat, either. Sadie picked it up and found that it felt quite cool in her hand. Then, moved by what impulse she did not know, she stuck it into her right ear...
And the memory of the chain letter, that had lingered in the back of her mind, suddenly fuzzed into a tangle of nonsense. She looked down at the parchment again and realized that she couldn't make out a word. She tried to say, "That's odd," but what came out of her mouth sounded - to her unstoppered left ear - more like, "Znrf'g bvv." She was so shocked that she immediately plucked the finger out of her ear...and the urge to comply with the letter's commands returned.
Finger in: freedom. Finger out: compulsion. Finger in: a total loss of spoken and written language. Finger out: back to the comparatively mild, magically-induced dyslexia that had been troubling her all day. Finger in left ear, for a change: the dyslexia suddenly disappeared. Sadie forgot herself for a while, then happened to look down when something touched her foot. It was that crystal finger again. How did it get down there? She picked it up, considered throwing back into the fire, then shrugged and popped it into her right ear.
Whoa. Sadie looked around the room. Ilona and Joe were both seated, looking blankly across the table at each other, waiting for further instructions. By the heft of her handbag, Sadie had emptied all her portable belongings into the fire. This hinted that she had sent five copies of the chain letter, too. But for this crystal finger in her right ear, she would be in the same zone of blank mental readiness as her two friends.
She snapped her fingers in front of their faces, but they didn't blink. She touched their arms, spoke their names: no response.
Sadie huddled back into her chair and shivered. "I'm on my own," she tried to say, but what she actually said was, "F'w kmubh zprav shlug." She decided not to think her thoughts out loud any more. So, silently, she told herself three things. First: She must never put the finger in her left ear again. Second: She would risk taking it out of her right ear only when she really needed to communicate with someone. Third: It was probably up to her to save the world. So she'd better find out what it needed saving from...
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #157 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: What gift from way back in Chapter 141 should Merlin use next? (A) Karl's survival satchel. (B) Some of Anatoly's defensive tattoos. (C) Another dose of Endora's Liquid Skill. (D) Harvey's inflatable wall. (E) Subito's Turbo Gum. (F) Boccachiusa's Peekaboo Kit.
CONTEST: Butcher, baker, candlestick maker, tinker, tailor, cobbler, sailor... choose any "old world" craft or trade, and describe something strange and different that could be made by combining their wares with a bit of magic.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
154. Gnome Warfare
Contest winner: Dragonic
Runner-up: Sir Read-a-Lot
Using his wand to join the edges of the monkey skins, Sir Lionel Niblet put the finishing touches on his new all-weather cloak. It was both practical and stylish, with a warm layer of fur facing inward and a suede-like suppleness facing out. He examined it approvingly, then slipped it on. The fit was perfect. He should have been a tailor. "If I ever find my way out of this horrid valley," he thought aloud, "I'll have found my true calling, at least."
Round about his campsite were the trappings of his new life, since his broomstick had rammed into an invisible wall high above the island. The broom, still held together by a few splinters, had barely managed to slow his fall into this long, deep cut between two parallel mountain ridges. It had been a hard landing, but survivable - except his broom was completely shattered now. Without it, he had no way of scaling the sheer sides of the ravine. So he had turned his thoughts toward survival.
Uncounted weeks had passed. The stream that ran along the bottom of the ravine had provided him many suppers of fish, clams, and snails. The small animals that lived among the trees had supplied plentiful meat, pelts, and bones from which he had made fishhooks, needles, knives, and other tools. He hadn't needed weapons really; a well-aimed stunning spell had often served to bring down his prey, at least long enough for him to go to work with a bone knife. Apart from a few wild cats, who left him alone as long as he laid scraps out for them, Sir Lionel was the apex predator of this isolated valley.
When he could spare time from matters of survival, Sir Lionel had thought but briefly on the life he left behind. There was little point in regretting his loss. He hoped his friends would do well without him. He reproached himself for the foolishness of setting out on this flight through unfrequented skies without telling anyone where he was bound. He worried just a bit about the outcome of the business deal that had been at the end of his planned, but uncompleted, journey. How had it gone on without him?
But mostly, he had wondered about that invisible wall in the sky. Who had put it there? The how was obvious: by magic, of course. But the why still eluded him.
After a midday supper of roasted fowl washed down with fermented yam juice, Sir Lionel spent an hour going over his gear. He now had several coiled lengths of braided thong, slippers and gloves made of woven plant fibers, and a dozen magically-sharpened picks fashioned from large animal bones and small rocks. His supply of leaf-wrapped, salted meat and bladders of yam vodka filled a skin bag he had made a week ago. He was ready. He would begin his ascent of the eastern ridge the next morning. Perhaps this time he would make it to the top. Then, at least, he could look at what lay in the next valley, beyond the mysterious barrier that had halted his broom.
The night fell, cold and damp. Sir Lionel was glad of his new cloak. Before the sky grew pale above the eastern ridge, he put on all his gear and began his long hike up the forested foothills. The first stab of daylight found him crawling over a scrubby pile of scree. His camp, invisible amid the trees behind and below him, would have looked tiny from this distance. He rested for a few minutes, then scrambled onward.
The day passed quickly. The sun seemed to plunge suddenly behind the western ridge - though its light did not die so quickly at this height as it seemed to do from the bottom of the valley. Sir Lionel wedged himself into a cleft and settled down for the night, eating and drinking sparingly and with deliberate slowness in spite of his ravenous hunger and thirst. Stiff, painful muscles disturbed his rest throughout the night, and woke him early in the morning. He stretched himself thoroughly before resuming his climb.
The valley now yawned below him, dark and distant and threatening. Sir Lionel tried not to look down when he could help it. When he did catch a glimpse of what lay behind, he sensed that he was covering less distance today than on the day before. The top of the ridge seemed just as unreachably distant as ever. He needed to pause more often, sucking in great breaths that never seemed to satisfy his need for air. With great weariness and a growing sense of failure, he rested for a second night, this time on a wide ledge, and slept deeply for the first time in several days.
He was nearing the end of his supplies, and the end of his third day of climbing, when Sir Lionel suddenly found himself tumbling over the other side of the ridge. He might have fallen to his death if an invisible wall hadn't caught him with a bruising matter-of-factness. He leaned his weight against it, resting full-length against apparent nothingness over the vast, misty canyon before him.
Unlike the valley he had come from, this one appeared to be inhabited. At any rate, several columns of smoke rose from the dark mass of trees below.
After hours of sidling along the unseen barrier, looking for a way through it, Sir Lionel spotted a broad ledge covered in the rubble of a long-past rockslide. Fortunately, two of the larger rocks that leaned together to support much of the pile lay directly beneath the barrier. Throughout the next two days, he dug out pieces of rock. His food and drink nearly exhausted, his gloves and hands similarly shredded, he finally cleared an opening between the two large stones and crawled through it. Now he was inside the magical wall that apparently shielded this valley from the outside.
His descent went more quickly than the ascent. This was partly the result of gravity, partly of the somewhat gentler slope on this side of the ridge, and partly of necessity. Sir Lionel was literally starving, and parched into the bargain, when he reached the first stream. He immediately stripped off his cloak and plunged into the water. He drank deeply, then with some difficulty speared a fish and ate it raw, skin and all. He left only fins and bones behind as he drank again and dug for tubers.
His first night in the new valley was filled with strange and disturbing sounds. Different birds shrieked here. Somewhere not far enough away, a cat roared and a monkey screamed. A huge snake slithered by him in the darkness, ignoring him in its search for smaller prey.
Late morning found him gazing down at a surprising discovery. Below a long, waist-high wall of unmortared stone lay a broad, tree-shaded compound. Its thatched roofs and walls of mud-caulked timber held only a faint air of primitiveness. The place was well-organized, with a large central building surrounded by smaller huts, some of them suspended above the ground on stilts. Smoke rose from chimneys of every building except the ones on stilts. The ground around the huts had been cleared and swept, and an unmistakable cistern stood behind the main building, connected to the nearby river by a silvery pipe and a hand-operated pump.
This was no native village. Based the magical barrier around the valley, as well as the curious sparks that floated out of several of the chimneys, Sir Lionel knew that sorcery was involved.
Seeing no one moving about the compound, Sir Lionel lifted himself over the stone wall and hurried on tiptoe toward the nearest building. He flatted himself against it and edged around the nearest corner, searching for signs of activity.
He almost gasped aloud when he found himself looking through an unglazed window at three men who, fortunately, were not looking in his direction. Seen in profile, they seemed to be intent on something out of Sir Lionel's field of view. He shifted to the other side of the window to get a better look. Now he saw what the three men were watching.
It was a pen, fenced off by a single strand of wire. This didn't seem like much of a fence at first glance, but Sir Lionel soon noticed a few odd things about it. First, it glowed slightly with a blue radiance that made his head ache. Also, it gave off a curious hum that set his teeth on edge - until he looked away from it, that is. Then he saw, beyond it, group of ugly little gnomes, huddled together and shivering, though they grinned madly all the same. On the opposite side of the ring surrounded by that glowing, humming wire, stood another gnome - a curiously still, composed gnome. It did not seem at all inclined to giggle, dance, or pull faces. It simply studied its kinsmen as if committing their features to memory.
The image chilled Sir Lionel to the bone. This was distinctly un-gnomelike behavior. It stirred a memory in the back of his mind - the memory of a rare disease that sometimes afflicted these magical garden pests: Mad Gnome Disease. A gnome that acted like a sane, balanced person was clearly, dangerously insane. And that insanity could spread instantly from one gnome to another, should the infected gnome bite or scratch the normal one. The results could be a fast-spreading epidemic of intelligent, organized, and ferocious gnomes - gnomes who could easily turn against any wizards and witches who crossed their path, and attack them with deadly savagery.
Sir Lionel's suspicions were confirmed when the mad gnome - that is, the seemingly sane one - launched itself toward the three trembling ones, biting and scratching and yowling. A moment later, all four gnomes stood together, looking up at the three wizards with expressions of calm cunning.
The wizard on the left shivered. "That's all I need to see," he said. "One or two dozen of these blighters ought to be enough to bring the entire Wizengamot to its knees."
"I should think so," agreed the wizard on the right in a thick, middle-European accent. "Let's discuss terms. If you'll come with me, Willibald here will, er, secure the specimens while we talk."
Sir Lionel ducked around the back of the hut just in time. Moments later, two of the wizards came out of the door a few feet beyond the window. He listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps, his mind reeling at the thought of weaponized gnomes. It was the most monstrous trade in living creatures that he had heard of, notwithstanding the unforgettable scandal of Wizard Stafford-Fume and his wands made with a core of living bowtruckles. Suddenly Sir Lionel wished he had his young friend Spanky at his side, armed with two wands and a long habit of dueling practice.
"Aye, old son," Sir Lionel whispered, almost as if in prayer. "Where are you when I need you?"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #156 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which magical creature will we see next? (A) A wereyak. (B) A merhag. (C) A fruit troll. (D) Other _____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a common cliche, giving it a slight magical twist. Example: "That really takes the pumpkin pasty!" (Instead of: "That really takes the cake!")
Runner-up: Sir Read-a-Lot
Using his wand to join the edges of the monkey skins, Sir Lionel Niblet put the finishing touches on his new all-weather cloak. It was both practical and stylish, with a warm layer of fur facing inward and a suede-like suppleness facing out. He examined it approvingly, then slipped it on. The fit was perfect. He should have been a tailor. "If I ever find my way out of this horrid valley," he thought aloud, "I'll have found my true calling, at least."
Round about his campsite were the trappings of his new life, since his broomstick had rammed into an invisible wall high above the island. The broom, still held together by a few splinters, had barely managed to slow his fall into this long, deep cut between two parallel mountain ridges. It had been a hard landing, but survivable - except his broom was completely shattered now. Without it, he had no way of scaling the sheer sides of the ravine. So he had turned his thoughts toward survival.
Uncounted weeks had passed. The stream that ran along the bottom of the ravine had provided him many suppers of fish, clams, and snails. The small animals that lived among the trees had supplied plentiful meat, pelts, and bones from which he had made fishhooks, needles, knives, and other tools. He hadn't needed weapons really; a well-aimed stunning spell had often served to bring down his prey, at least long enough for him to go to work with a bone knife. Apart from a few wild cats, who left him alone as long as he laid scraps out for them, Sir Lionel was the apex predator of this isolated valley.
When he could spare time from matters of survival, Sir Lionel had thought but briefly on the life he left behind. There was little point in regretting his loss. He hoped his friends would do well without him. He reproached himself for the foolishness of setting out on this flight through unfrequented skies without telling anyone where he was bound. He worried just a bit about the outcome of the business deal that had been at the end of his planned, but uncompleted, journey. How had it gone on without him?
But mostly, he had wondered about that invisible wall in the sky. Who had put it there? The how was obvious: by magic, of course. But the why still eluded him.
After a midday supper of roasted fowl washed down with fermented yam juice, Sir Lionel spent an hour going over his gear. He now had several coiled lengths of braided thong, slippers and gloves made of woven plant fibers, and a dozen magically-sharpened picks fashioned from large animal bones and small rocks. His supply of leaf-wrapped, salted meat and bladders of yam vodka filled a skin bag he had made a week ago. He was ready. He would begin his ascent of the eastern ridge the next morning. Perhaps this time he would make it to the top. Then, at least, he could look at what lay in the next valley, beyond the mysterious barrier that had halted his broom.
The night fell, cold and damp. Sir Lionel was glad of his new cloak. Before the sky grew pale above the eastern ridge, he put on all his gear and began his long hike up the forested foothills. The first stab of daylight found him crawling over a scrubby pile of scree. His camp, invisible amid the trees behind and below him, would have looked tiny from this distance. He rested for a few minutes, then scrambled onward.
The day passed quickly. The sun seemed to plunge suddenly behind the western ridge - though its light did not die so quickly at this height as it seemed to do from the bottom of the valley. Sir Lionel wedged himself into a cleft and settled down for the night, eating and drinking sparingly and with deliberate slowness in spite of his ravenous hunger and thirst. Stiff, painful muscles disturbed his rest throughout the night, and woke him early in the morning. He stretched himself thoroughly before resuming his climb.
The valley now yawned below him, dark and distant and threatening. Sir Lionel tried not to look down when he could help it. When he did catch a glimpse of what lay behind, he sensed that he was covering less distance today than on the day before. The top of the ridge seemed just as unreachably distant as ever. He needed to pause more often, sucking in great breaths that never seemed to satisfy his need for air. With great weariness and a growing sense of failure, he rested for a second night, this time on a wide ledge, and slept deeply for the first time in several days.
He was nearing the end of his supplies, and the end of his third day of climbing, when Sir Lionel suddenly found himself tumbling over the other side of the ridge. He might have fallen to his death if an invisible wall hadn't caught him with a bruising matter-of-factness. He leaned his weight against it, resting full-length against apparent nothingness over the vast, misty canyon before him.
Unlike the valley he had come from, this one appeared to be inhabited. At any rate, several columns of smoke rose from the dark mass of trees below.
After hours of sidling along the unseen barrier, looking for a way through it, Sir Lionel spotted a broad ledge covered in the rubble of a long-past rockslide. Fortunately, two of the larger rocks that leaned together to support much of the pile lay directly beneath the barrier. Throughout the next two days, he dug out pieces of rock. His food and drink nearly exhausted, his gloves and hands similarly shredded, he finally cleared an opening between the two large stones and crawled through it. Now he was inside the magical wall that apparently shielded this valley from the outside.
His descent went more quickly than the ascent. This was partly the result of gravity, partly of the somewhat gentler slope on this side of the ridge, and partly of necessity. Sir Lionel was literally starving, and parched into the bargain, when he reached the first stream. He immediately stripped off his cloak and plunged into the water. He drank deeply, then with some difficulty speared a fish and ate it raw, skin and all. He left only fins and bones behind as he drank again and dug for tubers.
His first night in the new valley was filled with strange and disturbing sounds. Different birds shrieked here. Somewhere not far enough away, a cat roared and a monkey screamed. A huge snake slithered by him in the darkness, ignoring him in its search for smaller prey.
Late morning found him gazing down at a surprising discovery. Below a long, waist-high wall of unmortared stone lay a broad, tree-shaded compound. Its thatched roofs and walls of mud-caulked timber held only a faint air of primitiveness. The place was well-organized, with a large central building surrounded by smaller huts, some of them suspended above the ground on stilts. Smoke rose from chimneys of every building except the ones on stilts. The ground around the huts had been cleared and swept, and an unmistakable cistern stood behind the main building, connected to the nearby river by a silvery pipe and a hand-operated pump.
This was no native village. Based the magical barrier around the valley, as well as the curious sparks that floated out of several of the chimneys, Sir Lionel knew that sorcery was involved.
Seeing no one moving about the compound, Sir Lionel lifted himself over the stone wall and hurried on tiptoe toward the nearest building. He flatted himself against it and edged around the nearest corner, searching for signs of activity.
He almost gasped aloud when he found himself looking through an unglazed window at three men who, fortunately, were not looking in his direction. Seen in profile, they seemed to be intent on something out of Sir Lionel's field of view. He shifted to the other side of the window to get a better look. Now he saw what the three men were watching.
It was a pen, fenced off by a single strand of wire. This didn't seem like much of a fence at first glance, but Sir Lionel soon noticed a few odd things about it. First, it glowed slightly with a blue radiance that made his head ache. Also, it gave off a curious hum that set his teeth on edge - until he looked away from it, that is. Then he saw, beyond it, group of ugly little gnomes, huddled together and shivering, though they grinned madly all the same. On the opposite side of the ring surrounded by that glowing, humming wire, stood another gnome - a curiously still, composed gnome. It did not seem at all inclined to giggle, dance, or pull faces. It simply studied its kinsmen as if committing their features to memory.
The image chilled Sir Lionel to the bone. This was distinctly un-gnomelike behavior. It stirred a memory in the back of his mind - the memory of a rare disease that sometimes afflicted these magical garden pests: Mad Gnome Disease. A gnome that acted like a sane, balanced person was clearly, dangerously insane. And that insanity could spread instantly from one gnome to another, should the infected gnome bite or scratch the normal one. The results could be a fast-spreading epidemic of intelligent, organized, and ferocious gnomes - gnomes who could easily turn against any wizards and witches who crossed their path, and attack them with deadly savagery.
Sir Lionel's suspicions were confirmed when the mad gnome - that is, the seemingly sane one - launched itself toward the three trembling ones, biting and scratching and yowling. A moment later, all four gnomes stood together, looking up at the three wizards with expressions of calm cunning.
The wizard on the left shivered. "That's all I need to see," he said. "One or two dozen of these blighters ought to be enough to bring the entire Wizengamot to its knees."
"I should think so," agreed the wizard on the right in a thick, middle-European accent. "Let's discuss terms. If you'll come with me, Willibald here will, er, secure the specimens while we talk."
Sir Lionel ducked around the back of the hut just in time. Moments later, two of the wizards came out of the door a few feet beyond the window. He listened to the sound of their retreating footsteps, his mind reeling at the thought of weaponized gnomes. It was the most monstrous trade in living creatures that he had heard of, notwithstanding the unforgettable scandal of Wizard Stafford-Fume and his wands made with a core of living bowtruckles. Suddenly Sir Lionel wished he had his young friend Spanky at his side, armed with two wands and a long habit of dueling practice.
"Aye, old son," Sir Lionel whispered, almost as if in prayer. "Where are you when I need you?"
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #156 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Which magical creature will we see next? (A) A wereyak. (B) A merhag. (C) A fruit troll. (D) Other _____ (write-in candidate).
CONTEST: Describe a common cliche, giving it a slight magical twist. Example: "That really takes the pumpkin pasty!" (Instead of: "That really takes the cake!")
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
153. Margarine Headache
Contest winner: greyniffler
Runner-up: Benjamin Ng
The hard-faced men in one of the more brutish, back offices of the Ministry of Magic had ways of making people talk. Or, given a suspect like Sadie, who had vast resources of shtumness to draw upon, they had ways of keeping people waiting.
Sadie began to sweat during her sixth hour in a row of holding her fists clenched. The ring of Count Matthias was in one hand. In her other fist was the bone whistle Joe Albuquerque had given her. Nothing could compel her to show either item to her interrogators. But they were equally determined to know what she knew.
She still hadn't had a moment of privacy in which to blow the whistle. She wondered whether she would, anyway. She wasn't exactly sure what would happen if she did.
For the eighteenth time since they rescued her from the footnotes of a self-updating report on the number of breeding pairs of augureys in Hertfordshire, the crack interrogators of the Office of Magical Documentation and Records swapped position - most likely a strategy to wrong-foot her. It hadn't worked six hours ago; far less would it work now that Sadie had gotten to know them so well. This time it was Duckham who walked out of the room, while Millbray stood up to pace and Weedom stepped in and took the seat Millbray had just vacated. If they kept this up, Sadie thought, she might pass out from dizziness.
"Are you ready to make a statement?" Weedom asked with a clipped voice and a tight-lipped, joyless smile. He regarded her with shooting-glass eyes and patted a roll of parchment spread open before her, its corners weighted down and a quill and inkwell standing nearby.
"I would like a drink of waiter," Sadie said quietly.
"I don't take your meaning," said Weedom, with the tiniest hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
"My meaning," said Sadie, "is as plan as the noise on your face."
Drat, she thought as she heard herself speak. Will that misspell never wear off?
"Are you feeling quite well?" Weedom asked with a fair semblance of concern.
"No," she said, digging her knuckles into her temples. "I feel a margarine headache coming on."
Weedom coughed, then replied in a strangled voice, "You might feel butter after a full confession." Behind him, Millbray sneezed loudly and retreated from the room. The door did not close quite fast enough to cover his explosive laughter.
"Have you always had this way with words?" Weedom asked sweetly.
"Only sincere I - oh, dart! - only since my little occident in your filling system." Sadie hoped he would conclude that she had fallen afoul of a poorly cast check-spell. She wasn't about to explain that she had been hexed by her pursuers, who seemed to have gotten away. The less these sad little men knew, the better for all concerned.
"And will you, at last, explain what you were doing there?"
"Just having a larch," she said, taking little care to rein in her sarcasm. "Nothing quilt like a stole down memory lance - particle when it belongs to the buoyed politic. We three-silkers are drowned to it like months to a flame."
Weedom held her with a level gaze for some moments, then shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't buy it." The truth is: he didn't understand a word of it.
"I wand my want back," Sadie blurted, unwittingly saying all the words she meant but not in the right order. "I have a sight to rend one Patronus - "
"Sister," said Weedom, "you won't want to risk casting advanced spells in your condition. The laws you've already violated are nothing compared to Spellman's 67th Essential Inference, and I quote: 'Chaotic cadences conjoined in casting contrapoise crossbinding cataplexes on sequentially staged spells...'"
"To say nothing of Tybalt's Second Law of Transfiguration," said Duckham, sidling into the room. A sound like whimpering laughter came in with him, cut off by the closing of the door. Weedom jumped up and dutifully began to pace while Duckham sat down.
"Wish is?" Sadie prompted.
Duckham raised his eyebrows with the self-righteous hauteur of one who has done his homework, and knows who hasn't. "When attempting to transfigure an object into something else whose name rhymes with the original object, the strength and permanence of the transfiguration are increased sevenfold. Corollary: If a spell goes off because of incorrect rhyme or fumbled delivery, the magical consequences are seven times as serious."
"Ridiculous," said Sadie, surprising herself with her perfect pronunciation. "Magic is beyond languish. (Oh, carp!) How does it master whether the spell rhythms or not?"
"It matters," said Duckham, as smugly as ever, "because the spell-caster thinks it matters. What is significant to the magic user is significant to the result."
"None of this is revenant," said Sadie, "to casting a Pantalones charm."
"No?" said Duckham, raising only one eyebrow this time.
"Try it," Weedom barked, as he turned at the end of the room, "and see if we don't charge you for reckless spell-casting and endangering the" - he coughed - "buoyed politic."
"Change me?" Sadie snorted. "You? Who do you thick you are? This is a burial gown for expired froms and mementos, and you're nothing but grape diggers..."
"Since you bring that up," Duckham cut in, looking at Weedom, who nodded his assent. "There seems to be nothing for it but to turn you over to Mr. Graves."
For some reason, Sadie felt like making a gulping sound. Due to her misspelling problem, she said "Golf!" instead.
Weedom opened the door a crack and said to the wheezy giggling outside, "Send for Mr. Graves." The giggling stopped, this time before the door shut.
"I take it you know of Mr. Graves," said Duckham, who had continued to study Sadie's face throughout this exchange.
"I'm not sugar," said Sadie. "What deportment does he work for?"
Duckham shook his head as if in regret. "It were better to say: What department works for him?"
Already there came a soft knock at the door. Weedom opened it, admitting a man both strange and familiar to Sadie's eyes. Very tall, very thin, a bit gray at the temples, with small, even features and a looseness of gait that suggested very limber joints, he looked - Sadie realized with a stab of panic - like a middle-aged Chat Noir.
"Mr. Douglas Graves at your service," he said, offering his hand toward her.
Mesmerized, Sadie did not think what she was doing until he gave her hand back without the whistle that had been in it.
For a moment, Sadie felt horror and despair. Then the mysterious Mr. Graves winked at her, and she knew him at once to be the man she had last seen only hours ago, disguised as a Swiss Guard. She didn't have time to wonder whether this latest disguise revealed the true face of Joe Albuquerque or merely a man Joe had chosen to impersonate. She had only enough time to realize that whoever owned this face was probably Chat Noir's father, before Joe Albuquerque raised the whistle to his lips and blew.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #155 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Who is Chat Noir's biological father? (A) Joe Albuquerque, who under all his disguises looks a lot like Mr. Graves. (B) The real Mr. Graves, who is Joe Albuquerque's secret nemesis. (C) A completely different person, related to Uncle or Aunt Leslie.
CONTEST: What happens when Joe blows the bone whistle?
Runner-up: Benjamin Ng
The hard-faced men in one of the more brutish, back offices of the Ministry of Magic had ways of making people talk. Or, given a suspect like Sadie, who had vast resources of shtumness to draw upon, they had ways of keeping people waiting.
Sadie began to sweat during her sixth hour in a row of holding her fists clenched. The ring of Count Matthias was in one hand. In her other fist was the bone whistle Joe Albuquerque had given her. Nothing could compel her to show either item to her interrogators. But they were equally determined to know what she knew.
She still hadn't had a moment of privacy in which to blow the whistle. She wondered whether she would, anyway. She wasn't exactly sure what would happen if she did.
For the eighteenth time since they rescued her from the footnotes of a self-updating report on the number of breeding pairs of augureys in Hertfordshire, the crack interrogators of the Office of Magical Documentation and Records swapped position - most likely a strategy to wrong-foot her. It hadn't worked six hours ago; far less would it work now that Sadie had gotten to know them so well. This time it was Duckham who walked out of the room, while Millbray stood up to pace and Weedom stepped in and took the seat Millbray had just vacated. If they kept this up, Sadie thought, she might pass out from dizziness.
"Are you ready to make a statement?" Weedom asked with a clipped voice and a tight-lipped, joyless smile. He regarded her with shooting-glass eyes and patted a roll of parchment spread open before her, its corners weighted down and a quill and inkwell standing nearby.
"I would like a drink of waiter," Sadie said quietly.
"I don't take your meaning," said Weedom, with the tiniest hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
"My meaning," said Sadie, "is as plan as the noise on your face."
Drat, she thought as she heard herself speak. Will that misspell never wear off?
"Are you feeling quite well?" Weedom asked with a fair semblance of concern.
"No," she said, digging her knuckles into her temples. "I feel a margarine headache coming on."
Weedom coughed, then replied in a strangled voice, "You might feel butter after a full confession." Behind him, Millbray sneezed loudly and retreated from the room. The door did not close quite fast enough to cover his explosive laughter.
"Have you always had this way with words?" Weedom asked sweetly.
"Only sincere I - oh, dart! - only since my little occident in your filling system." Sadie hoped he would conclude that she had fallen afoul of a poorly cast check-spell. She wasn't about to explain that she had been hexed by her pursuers, who seemed to have gotten away. The less these sad little men knew, the better for all concerned.
"And will you, at last, explain what you were doing there?"
"Just having a larch," she said, taking little care to rein in her sarcasm. "Nothing quilt like a stole down memory lance - particle when it belongs to the buoyed politic. We three-silkers are drowned to it like months to a flame."
Weedom held her with a level gaze for some moments, then shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't buy it." The truth is: he didn't understand a word of it.
"I wand my want back," Sadie blurted, unwittingly saying all the words she meant but not in the right order. "I have a sight to rend one Patronus - "
"Sister," said Weedom, "you won't want to risk casting advanced spells in your condition. The laws you've already violated are nothing compared to Spellman's 67th Essential Inference, and I quote: 'Chaotic cadences conjoined in casting contrapoise crossbinding cataplexes on sequentially staged spells...'"
"To say nothing of Tybalt's Second Law of Transfiguration," said Duckham, sidling into the room. A sound like whimpering laughter came in with him, cut off by the closing of the door. Weedom jumped up and dutifully began to pace while Duckham sat down.
"Wish is?" Sadie prompted.
Duckham raised his eyebrows with the self-righteous hauteur of one who has done his homework, and knows who hasn't. "When attempting to transfigure an object into something else whose name rhymes with the original object, the strength and permanence of the transfiguration are increased sevenfold. Corollary: If a spell goes off because of incorrect rhyme or fumbled delivery, the magical consequences are seven times as serious."
"Ridiculous," said Sadie, surprising herself with her perfect pronunciation. "Magic is beyond languish. (Oh, carp!) How does it master whether the spell rhythms or not?"
"It matters," said Duckham, as smugly as ever, "because the spell-caster thinks it matters. What is significant to the magic user is significant to the result."
"None of this is revenant," said Sadie, "to casting a Pantalones charm."
"No?" said Duckham, raising only one eyebrow this time.
"Try it," Weedom barked, as he turned at the end of the room, "and see if we don't charge you for reckless spell-casting and endangering the" - he coughed - "buoyed politic."
"Change me?" Sadie snorted. "You? Who do you thick you are? This is a burial gown for expired froms and mementos, and you're nothing but grape diggers..."
"Since you bring that up," Duckham cut in, looking at Weedom, who nodded his assent. "There seems to be nothing for it but to turn you over to Mr. Graves."
For some reason, Sadie felt like making a gulping sound. Due to her misspelling problem, she said "Golf!" instead.
Weedom opened the door a crack and said to the wheezy giggling outside, "Send for Mr. Graves." The giggling stopped, this time before the door shut.
"I take it you know of Mr. Graves," said Duckham, who had continued to study Sadie's face throughout this exchange.
"I'm not sugar," said Sadie. "What deportment does he work for?"
Duckham shook his head as if in regret. "It were better to say: What department works for him?"
Already there came a soft knock at the door. Weedom opened it, admitting a man both strange and familiar to Sadie's eyes. Very tall, very thin, a bit gray at the temples, with small, even features and a looseness of gait that suggested very limber joints, he looked - Sadie realized with a stab of panic - like a middle-aged Chat Noir.
"Mr. Douglas Graves at your service," he said, offering his hand toward her.
Mesmerized, Sadie did not think what she was doing until he gave her hand back without the whistle that had been in it.
For a moment, Sadie felt horror and despair. Then the mysterious Mr. Graves winked at her, and she knew him at once to be the man she had last seen only hours ago, disguised as a Swiss Guard. She didn't have time to wonder whether this latest disguise revealed the true face of Joe Albuquerque or merely a man Joe had chosen to impersonate. She had only enough time to realize that whoever owned this face was probably Chat Noir's father, before Joe Albuquerque raised the whistle to his lips and blew.
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #155 +++
You can help decide what happens next in The Magic Quill! Simply leave a brief comment (up to 150 words) answering the following Survey and Contest. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest answer that Robbie likes best, will turn up in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: Who is Chat Noir's biological father? (A) Joe Albuquerque, who under all his disguises looks a lot like Mr. Graves. (B) The real Mr. Graves, who is Joe Albuquerque's secret nemesis. (C) A completely different person, related to Uncle or Aunt Leslie.
CONTEST: What happens when Joe blows the bone whistle?
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