It's Magic, You Dope!: The Lost Fantasy Classic Page 5

  "In the flame-pits!” embellished Timtik, his eyes a-sparkle with excitement. “Alive!"

  Lorn went ashy pale. “Timtik. Please!” At her words, he became suddenly subdued and repentant.

  I felt some of their tension, and asked, “What is it, Lorn? For a girl who described death by-hotsy a few minutes ago, you look almost ill."

  Lorn smiled wanly. “It seems that the Kwistians prefer wood nymphs on their menu. They don't always get us, of course, but they're always trying. Sometimes they get a lot at once, and eat them one at a time, fattening up the rest in cells in that dreadful Sark!"

  "Where did you get this information?” I said, puzzled.

  "I think the Thrake told Maggot,” said Timtik. “No one knows how it stops the Kwistians from flying, but it does. Some people say it's really the soul of a maiden who died in a flame-pit, and this is how she gets her vengeance for her awful fate!"

  "Gosh,” I said, impressed, “it must be a handy thing for the wood nymphs, this Thrake."

  "You said a mouthful,” said Timtik.

  "But,” I asked, still at sea, “don't the Kwistians know by now not to fly anywhere near the Thrake?"

  "They don't know where it's at,” Lorn said. “They know only that it's in Maggot's hut. But she keeps her dwelling on the move, so they won't find it. The forest folk are all very glad to have Maggot around."

  Timtik nodded proudly. “She's the oldest, wrinkledest, wisest witch there is. Everyone always says, ‘If the monsters make you holler, Maggot has counter spells, five for a dollar."'

  "Of course,” the wood nymph interjected, brushing idly at her burnished tresses, where they'd fallen across her cheek, “no one knows where she lives, and if they did, no one uses dollars here."

  "But the free word-of-mouth advertising helps her reputation considerably, and she always gets enough things in barter to keep her in health, so she can go on making her hell-brew for the Thrake."

  I pretended to follow most of their dizzying conversation, and trailed along for about ten paces. Then I stopped dead. “Lorn?"

  "Yes?” Her eyes were inquisitive, and she paused.

  "You don't know what this dwelling looks like, currently?"

  The golden-red head shook lightly from side to side.

  "And if you did know, it might still be anywhere in Drendon?” I added, while my stomach growled piteously. She nodded.

  "Then,” I said in annoyed perplexity, jamming my fists against my hips, “how do you know where we're heading?"

  "I don't,” she said brightly. “It's always this way, Albert. We just meander here and there, hoping she's outside gathering herbs or something. Though Timtik can spot her place nine times out of ten."

  Lorn turned back toward our path again, and I could only sigh and go tagging along after her. I couldn't think of an argument with such total illogicality. In a way, I kind of missed the Susan-side of Lorn. Susan wasn't so flashily seductive, but she had a brain on her shoulders, so to speak.

  "Let's hurry,” said Timtik, picking up the pace.

  "It never takes too long,” said Lorn to me. “Maggot sometimes senses our approach."

  I eyed the clustering heavily vined growths through which we were wending our labyrinthine way, and said, in some doubt, “Through this?"

  "She uses magic, you dope!"

  Hot and hungry, and sore of foot, I had suddenly had enough of the faun's impudence. “Halfgoat or not,” I snapped, “you still have a behind I can paddle!” I lunged for him and my hands closed on the breeze of his departure. With a crow of delight, he was leaping away, gurgling his enjoyment. No one can catch a faun in full flight, barring a faunic mishap, and in the tanglewood we trod I couldn't have paced a whale on rollerskates, but I was too mad to act with intelligence.

  Lorn ran after me, as I crashed and plunged through the grasping shrubbery after Timtik. She shouted my name, and grabbed my sleeve just as I broke through an intricately tough tangle of the growths. I found myself swaying giddily on the brink of a short but steep embankment, and then Lorn came up too fast against me and we both went sprawling down the sunny slope through a welter of muskyscented flowers, and slid for a short distance on some sort of glassy-topped substance.

  When I clambered to my hands and knees, I saw that we were on a bright green glossy path, in the midst of thick purplish moss. The moss spread out in all directions, as broad as the surface of a mountain lake, but quite still. Then I noticed that although I could have sworn we'd slid from the base of the embankment there was nothing but more moss between us and the edge of the woods, a good broad jump away.

  Lorn sat up, looked about, then gave a frightened whimper.

  "What is it?” I stared at her, apprehensive. Gone was the self-composure she'd heretofore exhibited. She was squealing and moaning, and biting her lower lip in terror, and wringing her hands. “Albert,” she said weakly, “we're in the mossfields of Sark!"

  "The what?"

  "They surround the castle. Sark is the castle where the Kwistians dwell. That's where this path leads, and there's no getting back."

  I looked at the edge of the path behind us, cut off as smoothly as with a knife, and took a step back from the edge to get a running start for the jump that might take me to the embankment. A distance of path equal to my pace shimmered, faded and vanished. Behind us, the path was self-destructing.

  We could only go forward. To the castle where the parrot beaked flying cannibals were waiting. I was debating the usefulness of sitting down beside Lorn and joining her in a good long cry, when I remembered the faun. “Where's Timtik?” I said, glancing about. “If he's still near the brink, he can tell Maggot, can't he!"

  Lorn's face lighted with the first trace of hope I'd seen since our skid onto the green path. “Of course!” she said. “We can wait here till she figures out some way to rescue us."

  "Timtik!” we yelled together.

  "TIMTIK!"

  The all-enshrouding green growths at the edge of the woods remained unbroken. It was as though Timtik had never been with us at all. The sun beat down upon us, stark and hot. And a few inches at the end of the path made an impatient disappearance, forcing us to move backward, and the instant we did so, even more path evaporated. We were a good thirty feet from the embankment's nearest point.

  "Is that moss as dangerous as it looks?” I said, its alien purple hue having repelled any thoughts I'd had of trying to tread upon it. “What's under it? Monsters? Quicksand?"

  "No one knows,” said Lorn, her voice panicky. “But it's supposed to be death to fall into it. Don't leave me!"

  I hesitated, then took a step onto the soft velvet stuff. It gave, parted, and I oozed downward into black muddy bog to the knees as I swiftly grabbed for the edge of the path. Then, just as Lorn gripped my arms, the soft wet feel of the mud changed, as something slithered in the thick slime, and then sharp burning pain grated on my flesh like razor-scrapes, and I was yelping as Lorn managed to drag me back onto the path.

  I looked down. My legs were spotted with pinkish burns, and a few ugly white blisters. My trousers, shoes and socks were gone wherever the mud had flowed. I had slightly less pants left than go into a pair of Bermuda shorts.

  "It's no use, Albert,” Lorn sighed. “We'll have to either go onward to the castle of Sark, or stay here and fall into that stuff when the path vanishes again."

  "Well...” I said uncertainly, “the moss is sure death ... I guess the castle's our best bet, if only because it'll put off our destruction until we can get help from Maggot, maybe—"

  "I hope,” said Lorn, lovely beyond my wildest dreams, “Timtik gets to Maggot in time."

  "And,” I added with a weak smile, “that Maggot gets to us in time."

  CHAPTER 5

  NOW, shortly before this time (albeit I didn't learn of it in detail until much later from Maggot, who can apparently find out anything she has a mind to) there were things afoot that were going to have extraordinary, if not downright dire, effects on my f
ate. It seems that, at the moment Lorn and I were asprawl on the edge of that weird green path, still confused from our tumble down the embankment, things were happening at that ancient cannibal stronghold, the castle of Sark.

  * * * *

  The green buzzer flashed and crackled.

  Cort, drowsing in the sunlight by the great stone casement of his laboratory, cracked his beak in annoyance and peered at the panel of lights. As his eye ascertained the source of the noise, his insouciance fell away from him like a cloak, and he hurried over to the panel, his long, cruelly taloned index finger punching the Stop button. The buzzing and flashing ceased instantly, and the core of a dull crystal disc upon a squat stone tripod began to coruscate with jabs of cold blue light. Cort passed a hand commandingly above its surface, peered into its depths, and the face of Kwist, the winged emperor, swam into sharp focus.

  "Well?” snarled Kwist, evilly.

  "Wood nymph,” said Cort. “Just now hit the path."

  Kwist wiped a bit of spittle off his beak tip. “How soon is she expected?"

  "Give her about an hour,” said Cort, after a quick mental calculation.

  "I'll have the flame-pits stoked up,” said the emperor, with a blissful glow in his bright yellow eyes. His image faded swiftly, and the crystal went dull and opaque.

  Cort rubbed his hands together gleefully, and hummed tunelessly as he moved to the casement to survey the vista of the purple mossfields. The vista from that high vantage point was a broad one indeed. Not only due to the giddy height of the casement, but also to a salient feature of this strange dimension that made it exceedingly alien to the ordinary topography of Earth.

  * * * *

  "There's no horizon!” I gasped.

  Lorn shook her head. “No, there isn't. Drendon is a perfect plane surface."

  I looked with wonder at the sight I'd just become aware of, the sight I'd been unable to detect in the depths of the forest. Land, moss-covered to the rim of the distant forest, rolled back all directions from where we stood, until it merged by perspective into a solid dark color, which still continued onward and onward. “That's impossible,” I said. “It has to end, doesn't it?"

  Lorn shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. No one has ever been ambitious enough to walk far enough to see."

  "But if this place is a plane, how can it be contiguous with Earth?” I asked, scratching my head.'

  "Well,” said the wood nymph, scowling as she searched her mind for a solution, “it's—it's as though your planet were an orange, and our land were a table on which the orange lay. At the point where the orange touched the table, the two would have a common point of existence."

  I suddenly got the picture. “And Porkle Park is the contact point! The gateway to your dimension!"

  "Right,” said Lorn. “By now, we're probably miles from the park, and centuries from your era."

  "Centuries...” I felt suddenly cold inside.

  "Yes. The farther we get from the park, the farther from that moment when we left Earth. We have no time here as you do there. Your time depends on when, ours on where."

  I puzzled this out slowly. If it were true, it meant that there were an infinity of contact points with Earth, each at a different age of Earth's existence ... “Um ... what time is it now?"

  Lorn frowned, glanced about her, and seemed to be calculating. “Well, Albert, in this direction it's about late eighteenth century, your time. If we had a key, we could arrive on the Earth that touched Drendon at this point, during the French Revolution, I believe."

  "That's better than the flamepits, isn't it? And I can speak a little French ... Voulez-vous—” No, maybe she could speak a little French, too. “How,” I went on, “did Drendon happen to contact Earth in the first place?"

  "It didn't come to Earth. It almost went from it. Remember that orange I mentioned?” I remembered. “Well, it's as though our dimension had once been the skin of that orange. But at the Edict of Banishment, it spread away, leaving Earth except at one point. It's always touched the Earth since then, but always at a different time, and a new point."

  "What was this Edict of Banishment?” I asked.

  "Merlin did it,” said Lorn. “With his semi-scientific thanmaturgics. It was at King Arthur's request. Don't you know your own history?"

  "History? But Arthur is a legend, a myth..."

  "Is Drendon a myth?” asked the wood nymph.

  I looked at the unsetting sun, the horizonless vista, the purple moss and the green path. “I guess not,” I had to admit. Even minus those clues, Timtik's hooves were proof enough.

  "Well then!” said Lorn. “So he banished Drendon."

  "Why?” I asked.

  "The Kwistians, naturally!” she said irritably. “They were spoiling all his knight's fun. It was hard enough slaying dragons and things without having flying men always pricking your horse's flanks with their tridents, and sometimes swiping your lance, or carrying off the maiden you'd ridden for leagues to rescue. So Arthur banished them. Merlin made a powerful spell, and sent the Kwistians and their ilk away from Earth, leaving only one contact-point, in case they should become better behaved, or that Arthur should change his mind. He planned on checking every so often."

  "You say ‘planned’ as though he flubbed up,” I observed, completely fascinated. “What went wrong?"

  "The scheme backfired. The dragons went with the Kwistians, and so did the other so-called mythological entities of Earth, and the knights were left with nothing to fight. So they got lazy, and then Lancelot started giving Guinevere the eye, and things kind of went to pot. Arthur decided to switch back, fast, then. It's better to have a dragon in the garden than a paramour on the porch. But Merlin couldn't do it. In banishing Drendon, he'd weakened himself more than he'd planned—he was part-monster himself, you recall—and in his weak human condition, he couldn't pull a rabbit out of a hat, let alone a whole dimension back from limbo."

  "Funny,” I remarked, “but I don't remember any mention of flying cannibals in the Arthurian Legend. Dragons, yes; them, no."

  "Well, of course not, Albert!” Lorn said scornfully. “When they were officially banished, their names were struck from the rosters of creatures. It was forbidden to even mention them, let alone write their history. So here we are, in Drendon.” She passed a hand before her face, and a lot of her Susan-self shone through her features for a confused moment. “Anyone who ... who enters here has to attune, or perish."

  "Attune?” I asked, although ‘perish’ was the word that bothered me.

  To fit with things here, like ... like me and Timtik.” She held her lovely face between her hands, and closed her eyes tightly, trying to evoke an elusive memory. Then she shook her head and dropped her hands. “The trouble is,” she said with a friendly glance, “the timelessness here gets at your memory, and you find it hard to think of anything that might have happened before..."

  "Then why haven't I changed?” I asked. “I'm here."

  "Oh,” she said nonchalantly, “you will. It just takes a while to readjust to, environment. If the change were a swift one, Timtik and I would have reverted to some sort of Earth-creatures when we showed up at your house. But we weren't out that long."

  "Well why didn't you stay, for Pete's sake!” I moaned, just realizing the opportunity I'd muffed back in my study.

  Lorn was incredulous. “And leave Maggot here alone? She'd go out of her mind without us."

  "Why couldn't she leave with you, then?” I inquired reasonably.

  "Because of the Thrake, silly! She can't leave it and she can't take it away.

  I shook my head, dizzily aware that she was getting me onto one of those conversational merry-go-rounds again. “I give up. This is too much natural history in one dose. Look, Lorn, why don't you and I scoot out of here to the French Revolution? We'll be safer among the jacquerie than with flying cannibals. And Maggot can probably reach us sooner or later."

  "But I have the key to your time, not that on
e.” She held it up for my inspection. “This only works at one point in Drendon, the spot where it touches Porkle Park.” I looked at the little thing, which resembled an undernourished mandrake root and an idea glimmered into life.

  "Lorn ... that thing can talk, right? Well, it's light enough to travel over the moss. We could send a message to Maggot!"

  "What message?” Lorn sighed. "Goodbye?"

  I grimaced in exasperation. “Lorn, how can you be so intellectual in your speech sometimes, and then revert to downright idiocy?"

  "Rote,” said Lorn. “I sound bright when I'm quoting information I've gotten from Maggot, but it's all rote. I can recite, but I can't figure very well. All I just told you about Drendon was memorized fact. I couldn't explain any of it."

  "That's crazy,” I protested.

  "If you know you don't know—"

  "Who,” said Lorn stubbornly, “discovered America?"

  "Columbus,” I retorted automatically, before I had a chance to wonder why she'd asked.

  "How did he travel?” she went inexplicably on.

  "By boat. The Nina, the Pinta, and—"

  "Can you sail a boat?"

  "Well, no...” I admitted.

  "Furl a sail?"

  "No..."

  "Chart a course?"

  "No."

  "Command an expedition? Speak Italian and Spanish?"

  "No,” I said, my replies growing softer by the second.

  "Columbus could!” said Lorn, as though she'd made a point. I stood there on that strange green path, staring into her face for a long moment. Then my frustrated soul wrenched a cry of misery from my heart.

  "So what?" I shrieked.

  "Albert,” said Lorn, with weary patience, “can't you see that your position is exactly like mine? You know Columbus discovered America by boat after getting money from the Spanish queen and you let it go at that. You couldn't explain how he sailed to the west, or what he said to cozen the queen, or where they got the lumber for the ships, or why he picked that time to make his trip, could you?"

  "No,” I said, “I guess not. But—"