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.
Showing posts with label Uncle Radu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uncle Radu. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Saturday, December 27, 2008
135. The Spy Who Jinxed Me
Concepts contributed by Dragonic, greyniffler and Linda Carrig
The house-elf looked in at the bathroom door and uttered the filthiest oath it knew - which translates into English as "Socks!" The steady drip of water from the pipe that ran along the ceiling was falling on the floor that the elf had mopped not half an hour ago, while the bucket that he had placed under the drip stood bone-dry, eight inches away from where the drops were falling. The creature grumbled as he mopped up the puddle and repositioned the bucket so that each drop fell in its center: TINK . . . TINK . . . TINK. Then it went about its previous errand of picking bits of ash and dust off the priceless Persian rug in Master's study, which had to be done by hand, speck by speck.
The house-elf grumbled about this, too. He liked to grumble, actually. He grumbled about the absurdity of Master's explanation of why Carpet had to be picked rather than swept - something about the sweeper causing wear and tear on the rug's ancient, delicate fibers - when it was manifestly obvious that Carpet was of the flying variety. Anyone could tell this by the way it kept wrinkling in the middle or curling on the edge, at just the right time and place to trip a body up. And the way Master anchored it down with heavy objects, like the ornate marble lampstand, and the enormous alabaster vase - formerly a spittoon, now home to a flourishing umbrella tree that already sported an unripe crop of walking sticks. And yet, these things often moved from one place to another when no one was in the room; and on one memorable occasion, the wing chair on the corner of the rug nearest the window had fallen into the hearth and started to burn, all by itself. The elf nodded and grumbled with satisfaction as it crawled around, picking barely visible specks out of the rug. Carpet was alive enough - and Master's spell barely kept it asleep. Running a sweeper over it would probably tickle it awake. Then, no doubt, one would see more exciting disturbances than a singed chair or a crop of walking sticks rattling in the tree where there was no wind whatsoever.
When the rug was finished, and all the fibers had been smoothed down from north to south, the house-elf walked out of the study in search of its next job: straining fish droppings out of the aquarium, which were then to be spread with exquisite care over the . . . "Braces and garters!" cursed the house-elf, spotting the puddle on the bathroom floor as it hurried past. Once again, the bucket was nearly dry, this time over a foot away from where the water was falling. Why would someone move it? The house-elf's grumble turned into a snarl as it scrubbed the tile dry and put the bucket where it belonged.
This done, the snarling house-elf cleaned the fish tank and spread its dreck in a thin, consistent layer over the roots of Mistress's favorite plants in the garden. Nearest the house was the barnacle tree, whose barnacle-like fruit opened in late summer to reveal a newly hatched gosling. Below that, along the gazebo path, was Mistress's raskovnik patch, a type of grass whose blades could open anything closed or locked, and which treasure-hunters had all but picked to extinction. Close to the wall at the bottom of the garden lived a flowering fern whose blossom opened one night each year and brought good luck to whoever picked it. And finally, wiping the fish dreck off his hands, the house-elf passed through the postern gate and spent a good hour combing the fleeces of a grove of borometz plants as they baaed and grazed and swayed on their stems.
His snarling subsided to a grumbling as the house-elf circled round the side wall of the garden to the kennel, where it let out the simurgh for its three-times-a-day exercise. The creature barked and chased its tail gaily, getting the lead tangled up with the elf's legs, before launching itself into the air on powerful wings and flying up and down the length of the garden, snapping at birds in flight and marking each chimney it passed. The house-elf sighed at this, but as this was rather an improvement on grumbling, one might suppose the simurgh's behavior cheered him up. Fortunately, he had a very long lead on the beast, so he was eventually able to reel it in and take it indoors for its bath.
He rolled his eyes as they entered the bathroom. Once again, the leaky pipe was dripping on the floor. This time, however, there was no need to wonder who would move the bucket out from under the leak. It was the leak that had moved, half a yard closer to the toilet since the elf had last gone by.
There was no point in clearing it up now. With strength belying his small size, the house-elf engaged the simurgh in a heroic struggle and, at last, succeeded in wrestling the great winged dog into the bath. The simurgh dripped miserably, its rejoicing considerably dampened, as the elf shampooed it, combed it for fleas, toweled it dry, and brushed it all over. Then, with a furtive look over his shoulder, the house-elf banished the simurgh to its kennel with a snap of his fingers, a loud POP, and an abruptly silenced yelp of surprise. This left another mess for the house-elf to clean, and for once he forgot to mutter as he mopped up spilled bubble-bath, feathers, and dog hair.
An hour later, the house-elf lay face-up along the top rung of a tall stepladder, trying to find the leak in the ceiling pipe and fix it. He loosened connections - got squirted in the face - tightened connections - hammered - screwed and unscrewed the brackets that held the pipe up - caulked - tried everything he knew how. The leak only seemed to drip when he wasn't looking for it. He gave up, lined the floor with buckets from one end to the other, and went off to cook supper.
As soon as the house-elf left the bathroom, a tiny voice said something like, "Whew! I thought we'd had it back there!" It was very muffled, so one can't be quite sure. The pipe on the ceiling began to rattle, shake, and bang around in its brackets. Condensation flew in all directions. Water squirted out of every joint. Something inside the pipe made a slow, laborious progress toward the ell above the toilet tank. Then it rattled around the ell with even more violence. Finally the water in the toilet tank gave a "plop" - something in the water gave a fishy cough - someone in the tank said, "Thanks for the ride" - and the porcelain lid over the tank began to lift slowly off.
A pair of eyes peered out through the gap under the lid. No one was around. The lid rose higher, and beneath it rose the head and torso of a young woman wearing a wetsuit. A demure veil covered her entire face below her eyes. Her eyes, however, were anything but demure.
Slowly and silently, the catfish burglar climbed out of the toilet tank, unconcerned by the fact that she couldn't possibly fit inside it. She unzipped her sweatsuit, tossed it back into the toilet tank, and replaced the lid over it. Under the wet suit, she had worn a black, form-hugging leotard that looked virtually identical to the wetsuit. The form it hugged was firm yet feminine. She moved gracefully, silently, with an alert, listening look in her eyes. Before she reached the door, she knew there was no one in the corridor outside; so she darted directly into the nearby study and began a methodical search of the desk.
Her ears perked up: voices approaching. Seconds later, a barrel-chested man with a bushy beard swept in with a younger, leaner woman on his arm. From her perch in the walking-stick tree, concealed by her leotard that had taken on the same pattern of colors and shadows as the branches around her, the burglar recognized the woman and almost gasped.
"But my dear niece," said Bushy Beard, "I still do not understand - why the urgency? You were going to inherit it from me by and by. Rather soon, I should think."
"You know I would never ask this but in the direst emergency," the woman replied. "Please, Uncle Radu, do not ask me to explain what need this is. All you must know is that it exists."
Radu shook his head. "But you, Ilona? Even you would use this?"
"It will work if you give it to me freely," said Ilona. "I do not need to wait for the inheritance."
"That is not what I mean. Can anything be so urgent? I ask you. You, who entrusted it to me with the strongest warning that it was never to be used!"
The younger woman started to reply, hesitated, and cast her eyes downward in shame.
For some reason, this was all the persuasion Uncle Radu needed. He opened the humidor on the bookcase behind his desk and pulled out a slender cigar. Peeling the label off, he revealed a silver ring that he now removed and handed to Ilona. Then he bit the end off the cigar, snapped his fingers, and used the flame on the tip of his thumb to light the cigar, puffing firmly.
"It is yours from now on," the old man said. "I am too old and weak to shoulder such a responsibility. I hope - I hope you will consider any other way to do the thing that you must do. This artifact tries you, tests you always. Once it finds your weakness, it will push there, harder and harder. I fear that once you start using it . . . "
"Everything will be fine," said Ilona. She kissed her uncle three times. "Thank you, Uncle."
Sadie waited until they had left, then had a fit of coughing that rattled the walking sticks in her tree. Before the house-elf could come in and investigate the disturbance, she had climbed out the window above the desk. Climbing down the smooth wall of the house, swimming across the inky, icy moat, and scaling the slimy wall that surrounded the moat were no problem for the catfish burglar; but after jogging four kilometres over uneven terrain in the darkness of an overcast night, she had a twisted ankle and a stitch in her side, and she almost missed the camp. Spanky caught her just in time to keep her from plunging off a cliff into the swift river.
"Did you get it?" he asked.
"I got there too late," Sadie reported miserably.
Spanky looked stunned. "What happened?"
She was about to tell him when Ilona came out of the tent, carrying a cup of chocolate and a plate of biscuits. Ilona faltered at the sight of the hatred in Sadie's eyes.
"Well?" cried Spanky.
"She got out of there fast, didn't she?" Sadie said acidly.
"Who got out of where?" Spanky said, looking from one woman to the other in befuddlement. "What are you talking about? Ilona and I have been right here ever since you left."
"Then there must be two of her," Sadie said, plunging through the tent door and jogging Ilona's elbow into the bargain. "And the other her has the ring," her receding voice added, before a slamming door (in the two-bedrom bungalow inside the tent) cut off any further conversation.
Ilona gave a cry of dismay and spilled the chocolate on the ground. "What can she mean? How would I...? I mean, even if I could, why would I...?"
Spanky gathered his wife under his arm and ushered her inside. "Nevermind," he said. "It's all coming together now. We know only one person who could pull off a caper like this: Joe Albuquerque. Only, he wouldn't. But I would be surprised if dear Joe didn't know someone else who could. Where did you stow that floo powder, dear?"
Meanwhile, camped just across the river and a few dozen yards upstream, another Ilona Spankison relaxed into a chair and began to peel her face off. A new face emerged from beneath the old one - a face whose owner Joe Albuquerque didn't know existed. Which was too bad, really, considering that they had more than talent in common. The slender, smooth-faced young man admired the signet ring on his finger with a bitter smile. He didn't spend much time admiring it, though. He had work to do.
Dear Mr. Fistley, he wrote, Please have a barrell of suiCider transferred into jumping juniper casks, to ensure the potion is continuously stirred, and delivered to Gringotts Vault 1036. Mention my name at the front door, and the goblins will take the casks from there. Then forget all about this matter. Destroy this letter immediately. Cordially, Lee Shore, esq.
The young man grinned as he dripped a wafer of sealing wax on the letter and embossed with the signet ring, knowing that even if the letter went astray, he could not be touched. His real name, after all, was not Lee Shore.
It was Chat Noir.
+++ A NOTE FROM ROBBIE +++
Perplexed? All right. Go back and look at The Magic Quill chapters titled "Titus Fistley," "Madrigal Unchained," "The Catfish Burglar," and even farther back to "The Bette Noir Affair" and "Meet Joe Albuquerque." Don't despair at not remembering all this. I wouldn't remember it either, if greyniffler and Linda hadn't brought it all up in the discussion on TMQ #133. It took me a while - yes, me! - to track down the details of the chapters they were referring to. So if I can do it, so can you!
In the meantime, enjoy this DOUBLE CHALLENGE, by which you can help determine the shape of TMQ Chapter 137...
SURVEY: Which previous Magic Quill villain is Chat Noir working for? (A) Minimillian. (B) Il Comte di Bestemmia. (C) Avarice Exion. (D) Bette Noir. (E) Uncle or Auntie Leslie. HINT: Don't worry if they're supposed to be dead.
CONTEST: Supposing that some wizards share the same religious practices as many Muggles, name and describe a particular sin, saint, miracle, or shrine that is especially significant to churchgoing wizards.
[Originally posted 4/20/08]
The house-elf looked in at the bathroom door and uttered the filthiest oath it knew - which translates into English as "Socks!" The steady drip of water from the pipe that ran along the ceiling was falling on the floor that the elf had mopped not half an hour ago, while the bucket that he had placed under the drip stood bone-dry, eight inches away from where the drops were falling. The creature grumbled as he mopped up the puddle and repositioned the bucket so that each drop fell in its center: TINK . . . TINK . . . TINK. Then it went about its previous errand of picking bits of ash and dust off the priceless Persian rug in Master's study, which had to be done by hand, speck by speck.
The house-elf grumbled about this, too. He liked to grumble, actually. He grumbled about the absurdity of Master's explanation of why Carpet had to be picked rather than swept - something about the sweeper causing wear and tear on the rug's ancient, delicate fibers - when it was manifestly obvious that Carpet was of the flying variety. Anyone could tell this by the way it kept wrinkling in the middle or curling on the edge, at just the right time and place to trip a body up. And the way Master anchored it down with heavy objects, like the ornate marble lampstand, and the enormous alabaster vase - formerly a spittoon, now home to a flourishing umbrella tree that already sported an unripe crop of walking sticks. And yet, these things often moved from one place to another when no one was in the room; and on one memorable occasion, the wing chair on the corner of the rug nearest the window had fallen into the hearth and started to burn, all by itself. The elf nodded and grumbled with satisfaction as it crawled around, picking barely visible specks out of the rug. Carpet was alive enough - and Master's spell barely kept it asleep. Running a sweeper over it would probably tickle it awake. Then, no doubt, one would see more exciting disturbances than a singed chair or a crop of walking sticks rattling in the tree where there was no wind whatsoever.
When the rug was finished, and all the fibers had been smoothed down from north to south, the house-elf walked out of the study in search of its next job: straining fish droppings out of the aquarium, which were then to be spread with exquisite care over the . . . "Braces and garters!" cursed the house-elf, spotting the puddle on the bathroom floor as it hurried past. Once again, the bucket was nearly dry, this time over a foot away from where the water was falling. Why would someone move it? The house-elf's grumble turned into a snarl as it scrubbed the tile dry and put the bucket where it belonged.
This done, the snarling house-elf cleaned the fish tank and spread its dreck in a thin, consistent layer over the roots of Mistress's favorite plants in the garden. Nearest the house was the barnacle tree, whose barnacle-like fruit opened in late summer to reveal a newly hatched gosling. Below that, along the gazebo path, was Mistress's raskovnik patch, a type of grass whose blades could open anything closed or locked, and which treasure-hunters had all but picked to extinction. Close to the wall at the bottom of the garden lived a flowering fern whose blossom opened one night each year and brought good luck to whoever picked it. And finally, wiping the fish dreck off his hands, the house-elf passed through the postern gate and spent a good hour combing the fleeces of a grove of borometz plants as they baaed and grazed and swayed on their stems.
His snarling subsided to a grumbling as the house-elf circled round the side wall of the garden to the kennel, where it let out the simurgh for its three-times-a-day exercise. The creature barked and chased its tail gaily, getting the lead tangled up with the elf's legs, before launching itself into the air on powerful wings and flying up and down the length of the garden, snapping at birds in flight and marking each chimney it passed. The house-elf sighed at this, but as this was rather an improvement on grumbling, one might suppose the simurgh's behavior cheered him up. Fortunately, he had a very long lead on the beast, so he was eventually able to reel it in and take it indoors for its bath.
He rolled his eyes as they entered the bathroom. Once again, the leaky pipe was dripping on the floor. This time, however, there was no need to wonder who would move the bucket out from under the leak. It was the leak that had moved, half a yard closer to the toilet since the elf had last gone by.
There was no point in clearing it up now. With strength belying his small size, the house-elf engaged the simurgh in a heroic struggle and, at last, succeeded in wrestling the great winged dog into the bath. The simurgh dripped miserably, its rejoicing considerably dampened, as the elf shampooed it, combed it for fleas, toweled it dry, and brushed it all over. Then, with a furtive look over his shoulder, the house-elf banished the simurgh to its kennel with a snap of his fingers, a loud POP, and an abruptly silenced yelp of surprise. This left another mess for the house-elf to clean, and for once he forgot to mutter as he mopped up spilled bubble-bath, feathers, and dog hair.
An hour later, the house-elf lay face-up along the top rung of a tall stepladder, trying to find the leak in the ceiling pipe and fix it. He loosened connections - got squirted in the face - tightened connections - hammered - screwed and unscrewed the brackets that held the pipe up - caulked - tried everything he knew how. The leak only seemed to drip when he wasn't looking for it. He gave up, lined the floor with buckets from one end to the other, and went off to cook supper.
As soon as the house-elf left the bathroom, a tiny voice said something like, "Whew! I thought we'd had it back there!" It was very muffled, so one can't be quite sure. The pipe on the ceiling began to rattle, shake, and bang around in its brackets. Condensation flew in all directions. Water squirted out of every joint. Something inside the pipe made a slow, laborious progress toward the ell above the toilet tank. Then it rattled around the ell with even more violence. Finally the water in the toilet tank gave a "plop" - something in the water gave a fishy cough - someone in the tank said, "Thanks for the ride" - and the porcelain lid over the tank began to lift slowly off.
A pair of eyes peered out through the gap under the lid. No one was around. The lid rose higher, and beneath it rose the head and torso of a young woman wearing a wetsuit. A demure veil covered her entire face below her eyes. Her eyes, however, were anything but demure.
Slowly and silently, the catfish burglar climbed out of the toilet tank, unconcerned by the fact that she couldn't possibly fit inside it. She unzipped her sweatsuit, tossed it back into the toilet tank, and replaced the lid over it. Under the wet suit, she had worn a black, form-hugging leotard that looked virtually identical to the wetsuit. The form it hugged was firm yet feminine. She moved gracefully, silently, with an alert, listening look in her eyes. Before she reached the door, she knew there was no one in the corridor outside; so she darted directly into the nearby study and began a methodical search of the desk.
Her ears perked up: voices approaching. Seconds later, a barrel-chested man with a bushy beard swept in with a younger, leaner woman on his arm. From her perch in the walking-stick tree, concealed by her leotard that had taken on the same pattern of colors and shadows as the branches around her, the burglar recognized the woman and almost gasped.
"But my dear niece," said Bushy Beard, "I still do not understand - why the urgency? You were going to inherit it from me by and by. Rather soon, I should think."
"You know I would never ask this but in the direst emergency," the woman replied. "Please, Uncle Radu, do not ask me to explain what need this is. All you must know is that it exists."
Radu shook his head. "But you, Ilona? Even you would use this?"
"It will work if you give it to me freely," said Ilona. "I do not need to wait for the inheritance."
"That is not what I mean. Can anything be so urgent? I ask you. You, who entrusted it to me with the strongest warning that it was never to be used!"
The younger woman started to reply, hesitated, and cast her eyes downward in shame.
For some reason, this was all the persuasion Uncle Radu needed. He opened the humidor on the bookcase behind his desk and pulled out a slender cigar. Peeling the label off, he revealed a silver ring that he now removed and handed to Ilona. Then he bit the end off the cigar, snapped his fingers, and used the flame on the tip of his thumb to light the cigar, puffing firmly.
"It is yours from now on," the old man said. "I am too old and weak to shoulder such a responsibility. I hope - I hope you will consider any other way to do the thing that you must do. This artifact tries you, tests you always. Once it finds your weakness, it will push there, harder and harder. I fear that once you start using it . . . "
"Everything will be fine," said Ilona. She kissed her uncle three times. "Thank you, Uncle."
Sadie waited until they had left, then had a fit of coughing that rattled the walking sticks in her tree. Before the house-elf could come in and investigate the disturbance, she had climbed out the window above the desk. Climbing down the smooth wall of the house, swimming across the inky, icy moat, and scaling the slimy wall that surrounded the moat were no problem for the catfish burglar; but after jogging four kilometres over uneven terrain in the darkness of an overcast night, she had a twisted ankle and a stitch in her side, and she almost missed the camp. Spanky caught her just in time to keep her from plunging off a cliff into the swift river.
"Did you get it?" he asked.
"I got there too late," Sadie reported miserably.
Spanky looked stunned. "What happened?"
She was about to tell him when Ilona came out of the tent, carrying a cup of chocolate and a plate of biscuits. Ilona faltered at the sight of the hatred in Sadie's eyes.
"Well?" cried Spanky.
"She got out of there fast, didn't she?" Sadie said acidly.
"Who got out of where?" Spanky said, looking from one woman to the other in befuddlement. "What are you talking about? Ilona and I have been right here ever since you left."
"Then there must be two of her," Sadie said, plunging through the tent door and jogging Ilona's elbow into the bargain. "And the other her has the ring," her receding voice added, before a slamming door (in the two-bedrom bungalow inside the tent) cut off any further conversation.
Ilona gave a cry of dismay and spilled the chocolate on the ground. "What can she mean? How would I...? I mean, even if I could, why would I...?"
Spanky gathered his wife under his arm and ushered her inside. "Nevermind," he said. "It's all coming together now. We know only one person who could pull off a caper like this: Joe Albuquerque. Only, he wouldn't. But I would be surprised if dear Joe didn't know someone else who could. Where did you stow that floo powder, dear?"
Meanwhile, camped just across the river and a few dozen yards upstream, another Ilona Spankison relaxed into a chair and began to peel her face off. A new face emerged from beneath the old one - a face whose owner Joe Albuquerque didn't know existed. Which was too bad, really, considering that they had more than talent in common. The slender, smooth-faced young man admired the signet ring on his finger with a bitter smile. He didn't spend much time admiring it, though. He had work to do.
Dear Mr. Fistley, he wrote, Please have a barrell of suiCider transferred into jumping juniper casks, to ensure the potion is continuously stirred, and delivered to Gringotts Vault 1036. Mention my name at the front door, and the goblins will take the casks from there. Then forget all about this matter. Destroy this letter immediately. Cordially, Lee Shore, esq.
The young man grinned as he dripped a wafer of sealing wax on the letter and embossed with the signet ring, knowing that even if the letter went astray, he could not be touched. His real name, after all, was not Lee Shore.
It was Chat Noir.
+++ A NOTE FROM ROBBIE +++
Perplexed? All right. Go back and look at The Magic Quill chapters titled "Titus Fistley," "Madrigal Unchained," "The Catfish Burglar," and even farther back to "The Bette Noir Affair" and "Meet Joe Albuquerque." Don't despair at not remembering all this. I wouldn't remember it either, if greyniffler and Linda hadn't brought it all up in the discussion on TMQ #133. It took me a while - yes, me! - to track down the details of the chapters they were referring to. So if I can do it, so can you!
In the meantime, enjoy this DOUBLE CHALLENGE, by which you can help determine the shape of TMQ Chapter 137...
SURVEY: Which previous Magic Quill villain is Chat Noir working for? (A) Minimillian. (B) Il Comte di Bestemmia. (C) Avarice Exion. (D) Bette Noir. (E) Uncle or Auntie Leslie. HINT: Don't worry if they're supposed to be dead.
CONTEST: Supposing that some wizards share the same religious practices as many Muggles, name and describe a particular sin, saint, miracle, or shrine that is especially significant to churchgoing wizards.
[Originally posted 4/20/08]
121. Madrigal Unchained
Contest winner: greyniffler
Concept contributed by ralucacoldea
Spanky’s tale continued...
“While Mulligan the house-elf kept my wand pointed at me, Ilona went behind him and untied the hagmaid and Zichri Goode. She also checked the condition of the surviving RMB agents, but everyone was unconscious, perhaps in an enchanted sleep.
“I kept the house-elf’s attention on myself by staring him in the eye. I had learned this trick during one of my earliest RMB cases, something to do with a gargoyle guarding a doorway, a gargoyle that could move and attack you, except it was frozen as long as you looked it in the eye. I held Mulligan’s eyes in an unblinking stare; he could not look away. After a minute of this he started to shake slightly, either from fury or from weakness. I have seen people faint after a minute of my basilisk stare.
“When Ilona was done, I told Mulligan I wanted a plate of grapes and cheese cubes. He took advantage of being freed from my gaze, and used my wand to conjure up an enormous spiderweb to keep me pinned to my chaise longue. Then he went away to fetch the food.
“Ilona knelt beside me and started to pick through the strands of spiderweb. She still hadn’t said anything since Minimilian had gone off to play golf. I finally broke the silence.
“’What is this artifact, then?’ I asked. ‘The one your old boyfriend keeps going on about.’
“Ilona glared at me for a moment, then snorted. ‘Boyfriend indeed,’ she said. ‘We are distant cousins. Our families have never agreed. We knew each other at school, where I learned never to turn my back on him.’
“’Sweet school-days,’ I said bitterly. ‘What memories you must share!’
“’He was Professor Lukavij’s star pupil,’ she said, ‘because of his interest in dark magic. It wasn’t an altogether scholarly interest, either. He used his knowledge to fill the school with curse-traps, poisoned pajamas, and cruel illusions. He encouraged the ghosts and poltergeists to reach for higher levels of disruptiveness, and kept letting dangerous plants, creatures, and magical objects fall in the way of unsuspecting students and even teachers. No one blamed him because he seemed so sweet and cheerful and honest, and because his family gave a lot of money to the school.’
“’I know the type,’ I growled, glancing with a pang at the corpse of Sid Shmedly.
“Ilona nodded and went on: ‘Minimilian takes pleasure in other people’s discomfort. Everything he did was meant to cause either pain or chaos. He broke up friendships. He gave people bad dreams. His pranks caused injuries that, in one or two cases, led students to withdraw from the school. The teachers complained, but Lukavij did nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Merlin’s friends from Durmstrang hadn’t become lost in Gringotts because of misleading directions Minimilian gave them – though they weren’t in school at the same time.’
“’This is all very interesting,’ I said, struggling against the cobweb but unable to move my arms. ‘But...’
“’The artifact,’ Ilona said, still picking at the web. ‘Yes. I was getting to that. His family and my family both have claims to the castle where you lived during your Moldovan Worm Control assignment. The castle used to belong to a great nobleman who served the king of Moldova, Stephen the Great and Holy, Stephen the Third. This nobleman was also a wizard, and an ancestor of both Minimilian and me. Mind you, this was in the fifteenth century, so that makes us very distant relatives...’
“’Point taken,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
“’Who are you talking to?’ squeaked a gravelly, and heavily accented, voice at my elbow. I flinched, painfully hitting the edge of a silver tray with my elbow. Grapes and cheese cubes flew up in the air and rained down on my head, becoming stuck in the spiderweb, which (fortunately) helped to conceal the progress Ilona had made in unpicking it.
“’Excellent,’ I said evasively. ‘Now, since I’m all tied up here, perhaps you would be so kind as to feed me.’
“For the next little while, the house-elf picked grapes and cheese cubes out of the cobweb and stuck them in my mouth with his dirty little fingers. I chewed silently, listening to Ilona’s story which, I knew, only I could hear.
“’This wizard nobleman, whose name was Matthias, had a signet ring that he kept hidden somewhere in his castle. It was the type of wing used to make an impression in wafer seals, the kind that nobility and royalty used to sign important documents. Matthias had ensorcelled his seal so that anyone receiving a letter from him must obey what the letter said.’
“’A ring of power,’ I said around a mouthful of cheese.
“The house-elf raised his eyebrows inquiringly. I told him I needed something to drink, and he went away to fetch it.
“Hurriedly resuming her unpicking of the spiderweb, Ilona continued: ‘A ring of royal power, yes, and it was meant for King Stephen. But Matthias kept it for himself, and used it to incite conflicts among his rivals, and to build up his own power. But in the year 1499, Matthias was thrown from his horse and died. His twin sons did not agree as to which of them should inherit. In the resulting battle the castle was burned, the ring lost, and the family divided down to this day. Minimilian thinks the ring belongs to him, and if he gets it, he could use it to turn countless people into his willing or unwilling slaves.’
“’He also thinks you have it,’ I added. ‘He thinks I helped you steal it from “his” castle.’
“Ilona’s face darkened with anger. ‘The ring has a spell on it. Only the rightful owner can touch it. It cannot be stolen, only given freely. However, the castle ruin also has a spell on it; no descendant of Count Matthias the Second can enter it uninvited. The second count’s brother, who considered himself Count Stephen, saw to that.’
“’So you,’ I said, ‘are descended from...’
“’Count Matthias II,’ Ilona said. ‘Minimilian descends from Stephen, Matthias’s twin brother.’
“’And Matthias was the rightful owner of the ring?’
“’His father had given it to him shortly before he died. But somehow it was returned to its hiding place, which only the father knew. The story told in my family is that Matthias II tied it up in a handkerchief and gave it back to his father for safekeeping. No one knew where Matthias I hid it after that.’
“’So you,’ I said, ‘are the rightful heir.’
“Ilona nodded. ‘Unfortunately, Count Stephen was the older of the twins. The family’s castle, lands, and title rightfully belonged to him. He wanted the signet ring as well, but Matthias II did not want him to have it. Matthias was no better; he wanted the title and wealth and power for himself, as well as the ring to help him get more. But Stephen wouldn’t let him come within a mile of the castle, where the ring was hidden. They negotiated and argued and published pamphlets of propaganda, and finally they met in battle. Both brothers were killed, the castle was burned down, and the surviving forces ended up in a stalemate.
“’Finally a truce was called, the king intervened, and the family property was divided down the middle. Stephen’s children inherited all the family’s holdings on the east side of the Prut River, Matthias’s on the west. The king was probably wise to do this, though no one liked him for it at the time. In practice, it meant that nobody could use the ring to develop absolute power. Stephen’s heirs were left with a ruined castle containing a magic ring they could not touch. If Minimilian has killed enough of his cousins, he may be the last surviving heir to the castle. Meanwhile Matthias II’s heirs, including me, are entitled to the ring but can’t enter the castle to get it. I am the oldest child in my generation of the family, so...’
“I choked. By now Mulligan had returned, and was trying to drown me by pouring a jug of wine down my throat. Some of it went down the wrong pipe, so I went into a fit of coughing and turned my face away. The wine continued to pour from the jug and ran down my shirt. Mulligan laughed, shaking the last drops out of the jug. His laughter turned into a growl when, controlling my cough reflex enough to croak out one word, I said: ‘More.’ The house-elf narrowed his eyes at me, then took the jug and stomped off.
“’So you took advantage of me,’ I said hoarsely.
“’I didn’t even know you lived in the castle until you invited me there,’ Ilona said vehemently. ‘I already loved you by then. Finding myself inside the forbidden castle, finding the ring, were like a sign from heaven. It was meant to happen.’
“’And yet you kept this secret from me,’ I said, trying to speak louder but only getting hoarser in the process. I had another fit of coughing.
“In spite of my obvious anger at her, Ilona kept picking me free of the spiderweb. ‘I gave the ring to my Uncle Radu, who is the oldest living heir of Matthias II. It will probably come back to me some day. Until then, I didn’t want to concern you with it. I intend never to use it.’
“’So you couldn’t give the ring to this Minimilian fellow, even if you wanted to,’ I said, more calmly.
“’Nor is it that I would if I could,’ she agreed. ‘My aim, and that of my uncle and most other members of my family, is to keep this ring from being used by people like Minimilian. And I think anyone who uses it would, in time, become like Minimilian. So we hide it, and do not use it.’
“’Your uncle could write to this midget and tell him to let us go,’ I suggested.
“’I would never ask it of him,’ said Ilona. ‘It would be better for us both to die.’
“’And what about these people?’ I asked, gesturing toward the slumbering survivors of Silver’s party, as well as Goode and the hagmaid. ‘Are you prepared to pay with their lives, as well?’
“Ilona looked like she wanted to slap me. ‘Are you saying I should...?’
“’No,’ I said, catching her hands in mine — which, I now noticed, were at last free of the giant cobweb. ‘I am only asking if you are prepared.’
“Ilona swallowed heavily. Before she could respond, the house-elf reappeared, waddling under the weight of a wooden keg over half the length of his body. His eyes grew to the size of saucers when he saw that my hands were free. He dropped the keg and reached for my wand, which he had tucked into the string he wore as a belt. Before he could reach it, Ilona tackled him. The house-elf shrieked and went down, hitting his head on the wine cask and instantly going limp.
“Using my wand, Ilona blasted the remaining spiderwebs off me. Then I took the wand and began to revive my people, pausing sadly over the bodies of the dead. I tied up the house-elf, overcoming my fury just enough to dress the wound on his head. Then I sat down again and waited for my reviving spells to take full effect. Zichri Goode was already starting to wake up.
“Before my reinforcements were ready, however, Minimilian returned — unexpectedly soon, for someone who was supposed to be playing eighteen holes. He limped into view from behind a box hedge, his robes torn and burnt, dragging his own bag, which was missing several clubs.
“’Dashed inconvenient,’ he said, cheerfully enough. ‘The dragon under the sixth green ate my caddy. Tried to eat me, too. Seems to have lost a few teeth in the...’ He dropped the bag as the scene before him registered in his mind. ‘I say,’ he said, but he didn’t get a chance to say what he was saying before I stunned him with my wand.
“’Your tonic seems to have worn off,’ I said as Minimilian fell back into the box hedge. The branches caught him and held him upright. I resumed trying to revive my friends, who had started falling asleep again. I wondered just what this little angel-devil-man had done to them. A potion? A spell?
“As Ilona checked under Zichri Goode’s eyelids, and I pinched the leg of a first-year RMB agent who responded by kicking in his sleep, the tables turned again. I paused in the middle of a particularly vicious pinch when I felt the tip of a wand at the back of my neck.
“’No,’ said a familiar, sweet voice. ‘I am not out of my tonic. I am always careful to reapply the Mr. Shmedly’s nectar when it wears off. Drop your wand, raise your hands, and turn around.’
“I did as I was told. But when I turned to face Minimilian, he looked worried for the first time.
“’Why are you smiling?’ he demanded.
“’Look behind you,’ I said.
“’I’m not as stupid as...’ Minimilian froze in mid-sentence.
“The hagmaid had risen to her feet behind him, and was now stroking his beautiful, golden hair. With each touch of her hand, the serenity of the little man’s face turned more and more into horror.
“’Pretty little baby,’ the hagmaid cooed. ‘Scrumptious little baby! Madrigal is so hungry! Madrigal is on a low-child diet but...oh, if only...just this once...’
“I plucked the wand out of Minimilian’s trembling hands and said, ‘Go for it, Madrigal. No one here will tell.’
“Minimilian screamed and ran, tumbling over his own golf sack and rolling to his feet again. The last time I saw him, he was running flat-out toward the sixth hole of his golf course, dragon or no, with Madrigal the hagmaid pounding along behind him.”
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #123 +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: What character, concept, or storyline from a past edition of The Magic Quill should be revived or revisited?
CONTEST: Describe a magical weather occurrence.
[Originally posted 7/1/07]
Concept contributed by ralucacoldea
Spanky’s tale continued...
“While Mulligan the house-elf kept my wand pointed at me, Ilona went behind him and untied the hagmaid and Zichri Goode. She also checked the condition of the surviving RMB agents, but everyone was unconscious, perhaps in an enchanted sleep.
“I kept the house-elf’s attention on myself by staring him in the eye. I had learned this trick during one of my earliest RMB cases, something to do with a gargoyle guarding a doorway, a gargoyle that could move and attack you, except it was frozen as long as you looked it in the eye. I held Mulligan’s eyes in an unblinking stare; he could not look away. After a minute of this he started to shake slightly, either from fury or from weakness. I have seen people faint after a minute of my basilisk stare.
“When Ilona was done, I told Mulligan I wanted a plate of grapes and cheese cubes. He took advantage of being freed from my gaze, and used my wand to conjure up an enormous spiderweb to keep me pinned to my chaise longue. Then he went away to fetch the food.
“Ilona knelt beside me and started to pick through the strands of spiderweb. She still hadn’t said anything since Minimilian had gone off to play golf. I finally broke the silence.
“’What is this artifact, then?’ I asked. ‘The one your old boyfriend keeps going on about.’
“Ilona glared at me for a moment, then snorted. ‘Boyfriend indeed,’ she said. ‘We are distant cousins. Our families have never agreed. We knew each other at school, where I learned never to turn my back on him.’
“’Sweet school-days,’ I said bitterly. ‘What memories you must share!’
“’He was Professor Lukavij’s star pupil,’ she said, ‘because of his interest in dark magic. It wasn’t an altogether scholarly interest, either. He used his knowledge to fill the school with curse-traps, poisoned pajamas, and cruel illusions. He encouraged the ghosts and poltergeists to reach for higher levels of disruptiveness, and kept letting dangerous plants, creatures, and magical objects fall in the way of unsuspecting students and even teachers. No one blamed him because he seemed so sweet and cheerful and honest, and because his family gave a lot of money to the school.’
“’I know the type,’ I growled, glancing with a pang at the corpse of Sid Shmedly.
“Ilona nodded and went on: ‘Minimilian takes pleasure in other people’s discomfort. Everything he did was meant to cause either pain or chaos. He broke up friendships. He gave people bad dreams. His pranks caused injuries that, in one or two cases, led students to withdraw from the school. The teachers complained, but Lukavij did nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Merlin’s friends from Durmstrang hadn’t become lost in Gringotts because of misleading directions Minimilian gave them – though they weren’t in school at the same time.’
“’This is all very interesting,’ I said, struggling against the cobweb but unable to move my arms. ‘But...’
“’The artifact,’ Ilona said, still picking at the web. ‘Yes. I was getting to that. His family and my family both have claims to the castle where you lived during your Moldovan Worm Control assignment. The castle used to belong to a great nobleman who served the king of Moldova, Stephen the Great and Holy, Stephen the Third. This nobleman was also a wizard, and an ancestor of both Minimilian and me. Mind you, this was in the fifteenth century, so that makes us very distant relatives...’
“’Point taken,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
“’Who are you talking to?’ squeaked a gravelly, and heavily accented, voice at my elbow. I flinched, painfully hitting the edge of a silver tray with my elbow. Grapes and cheese cubes flew up in the air and rained down on my head, becoming stuck in the spiderweb, which (fortunately) helped to conceal the progress Ilona had made in unpicking it.
“’Excellent,’ I said evasively. ‘Now, since I’m all tied up here, perhaps you would be so kind as to feed me.’
“For the next little while, the house-elf picked grapes and cheese cubes out of the cobweb and stuck them in my mouth with his dirty little fingers. I chewed silently, listening to Ilona’s story which, I knew, only I could hear.
“’This wizard nobleman, whose name was Matthias, had a signet ring that he kept hidden somewhere in his castle. It was the type of wing used to make an impression in wafer seals, the kind that nobility and royalty used to sign important documents. Matthias had ensorcelled his seal so that anyone receiving a letter from him must obey what the letter said.’
“’A ring of power,’ I said around a mouthful of cheese.
“The house-elf raised his eyebrows inquiringly. I told him I needed something to drink, and he went away to fetch it.
“Hurriedly resuming her unpicking of the spiderweb, Ilona continued: ‘A ring of royal power, yes, and it was meant for King Stephen. But Matthias kept it for himself, and used it to incite conflicts among his rivals, and to build up his own power. But in the year 1499, Matthias was thrown from his horse and died. His twin sons did not agree as to which of them should inherit. In the resulting battle the castle was burned, the ring lost, and the family divided down to this day. Minimilian thinks the ring belongs to him, and if he gets it, he could use it to turn countless people into his willing or unwilling slaves.’
“’He also thinks you have it,’ I added. ‘He thinks I helped you steal it from “his” castle.’
“Ilona’s face darkened with anger. ‘The ring has a spell on it. Only the rightful owner can touch it. It cannot be stolen, only given freely. However, the castle ruin also has a spell on it; no descendant of Count Matthias the Second can enter it uninvited. The second count’s brother, who considered himself Count Stephen, saw to that.’
“’So you,’ I said, ‘are descended from...’
“’Count Matthias II,’ Ilona said. ‘Minimilian descends from Stephen, Matthias’s twin brother.’
“’And Matthias was the rightful owner of the ring?’
“’His father had given it to him shortly before he died. But somehow it was returned to its hiding place, which only the father knew. The story told in my family is that Matthias II tied it up in a handkerchief and gave it back to his father for safekeeping. No one knew where Matthias I hid it after that.’
“’So you,’ I said, ‘are the rightful heir.’
“Ilona nodded. ‘Unfortunately, Count Stephen was the older of the twins. The family’s castle, lands, and title rightfully belonged to him. He wanted the signet ring as well, but Matthias II did not want him to have it. Matthias was no better; he wanted the title and wealth and power for himself, as well as the ring to help him get more. But Stephen wouldn’t let him come within a mile of the castle, where the ring was hidden. They negotiated and argued and published pamphlets of propaganda, and finally they met in battle. Both brothers were killed, the castle was burned down, and the surviving forces ended up in a stalemate.
“’Finally a truce was called, the king intervened, and the family property was divided down the middle. Stephen’s children inherited all the family’s holdings on the east side of the Prut River, Matthias’s on the west. The king was probably wise to do this, though no one liked him for it at the time. In practice, it meant that nobody could use the ring to develop absolute power. Stephen’s heirs were left with a ruined castle containing a magic ring they could not touch. If Minimilian has killed enough of his cousins, he may be the last surviving heir to the castle. Meanwhile Matthias II’s heirs, including me, are entitled to the ring but can’t enter the castle to get it. I am the oldest child in my generation of the family, so...’
“I choked. By now Mulligan had returned, and was trying to drown me by pouring a jug of wine down my throat. Some of it went down the wrong pipe, so I went into a fit of coughing and turned my face away. The wine continued to pour from the jug and ran down my shirt. Mulligan laughed, shaking the last drops out of the jug. His laughter turned into a growl when, controlling my cough reflex enough to croak out one word, I said: ‘More.’ The house-elf narrowed his eyes at me, then took the jug and stomped off.
“’So you took advantage of me,’ I said hoarsely.
“’I didn’t even know you lived in the castle until you invited me there,’ Ilona said vehemently. ‘I already loved you by then. Finding myself inside the forbidden castle, finding the ring, were like a sign from heaven. It was meant to happen.’
“’And yet you kept this secret from me,’ I said, trying to speak louder but only getting hoarser in the process. I had another fit of coughing.
“In spite of my obvious anger at her, Ilona kept picking me free of the spiderweb. ‘I gave the ring to my Uncle Radu, who is the oldest living heir of Matthias II. It will probably come back to me some day. Until then, I didn’t want to concern you with it. I intend never to use it.’
“’So you couldn’t give the ring to this Minimilian fellow, even if you wanted to,’ I said, more calmly.
“’Nor is it that I would if I could,’ she agreed. ‘My aim, and that of my uncle and most other members of my family, is to keep this ring from being used by people like Minimilian. And I think anyone who uses it would, in time, become like Minimilian. So we hide it, and do not use it.’
“’Your uncle could write to this midget and tell him to let us go,’ I suggested.
“’I would never ask it of him,’ said Ilona. ‘It would be better for us both to die.’
“’And what about these people?’ I asked, gesturing toward the slumbering survivors of Silver’s party, as well as Goode and the hagmaid. ‘Are you prepared to pay with their lives, as well?’
“Ilona looked like she wanted to slap me. ‘Are you saying I should...?’
“’No,’ I said, catching her hands in mine — which, I now noticed, were at last free of the giant cobweb. ‘I am only asking if you are prepared.’
“Ilona swallowed heavily. Before she could respond, the house-elf reappeared, waddling under the weight of a wooden keg over half the length of his body. His eyes grew to the size of saucers when he saw that my hands were free. He dropped the keg and reached for my wand, which he had tucked into the string he wore as a belt. Before he could reach it, Ilona tackled him. The house-elf shrieked and went down, hitting his head on the wine cask and instantly going limp.
“Using my wand, Ilona blasted the remaining spiderwebs off me. Then I took the wand and began to revive my people, pausing sadly over the bodies of the dead. I tied up the house-elf, overcoming my fury just enough to dress the wound on his head. Then I sat down again and waited for my reviving spells to take full effect. Zichri Goode was already starting to wake up.
“Before my reinforcements were ready, however, Minimilian returned — unexpectedly soon, for someone who was supposed to be playing eighteen holes. He limped into view from behind a box hedge, his robes torn and burnt, dragging his own bag, which was missing several clubs.
“’Dashed inconvenient,’ he said, cheerfully enough. ‘The dragon under the sixth green ate my caddy. Tried to eat me, too. Seems to have lost a few teeth in the...’ He dropped the bag as the scene before him registered in his mind. ‘I say,’ he said, but he didn’t get a chance to say what he was saying before I stunned him with my wand.
“’Your tonic seems to have worn off,’ I said as Minimilian fell back into the box hedge. The branches caught him and held him upright. I resumed trying to revive my friends, who had started falling asleep again. I wondered just what this little angel-devil-man had done to them. A potion? A spell?
“As Ilona checked under Zichri Goode’s eyelids, and I pinched the leg of a first-year RMB agent who responded by kicking in his sleep, the tables turned again. I paused in the middle of a particularly vicious pinch when I felt the tip of a wand at the back of my neck.
“’No,’ said a familiar, sweet voice. ‘I am not out of my tonic. I am always careful to reapply the Mr. Shmedly’s nectar when it wears off. Drop your wand, raise your hands, and turn around.’
“I did as I was told. But when I turned to face Minimilian, he looked worried for the first time.
“’Why are you smiling?’ he demanded.
“’Look behind you,’ I said.
“’I’m not as stupid as...’ Minimilian froze in mid-sentence.
“The hagmaid had risen to her feet behind him, and was now stroking his beautiful, golden hair. With each touch of her hand, the serenity of the little man’s face turned more and more into horror.
“’Pretty little baby,’ the hagmaid cooed. ‘Scrumptious little baby! Madrigal is so hungry! Madrigal is on a low-child diet but...oh, if only...just this once...’
“I plucked the wand out of Minimilian’s trembling hands and said, ‘Go for it, Madrigal. No one here will tell.’
“Minimilian screamed and ran, tumbling over his own golf sack and rolling to his feet again. The last time I saw him, he was running flat-out toward the sixth hole of his golf course, dragon or no, with Madrigal the hagmaid pounding along behind him.”
+++ DOUBLE CHALLENGE FOR TMQ #123 +++
To help choose the direction of the next few chapters of The Magic Quill, visit the Discussion Forum, or send Robbie feedback. The survey answer with the most votes, and the contest entry (or entries) Robbie likes best, will be featured in the chapter after next. [EDIT: This discussion is now closed.]
SURVEY: What character, concept, or storyline from a past edition of The Magic Quill should be revived or revisited?
CONTEST: Describe a magical weather occurrence.
[Originally posted 7/1/07]
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