Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey (41 page)

“The twins won’t be coming back, Gloranda.”

“Did they go to find another bat?”

“No, Gloranda. They are dead.”

This is too much for Gloranda, who flies up into the air and cries out: “Come see Pomp! She is funny!” She then floats down and sits beside Pomp. “What is ‘dead?’”

But Pomp doesn’t respond. She is silent, waiting for something.

And something comes. It is big, like an ocean, but comes in many small parts, like drops of water. A buzz of wings sounds out here, then there, then here again. The buzz becomes a low throbbing as a few small groups of fairies appear over the hills all around her.

“Tell us a joke, Pomp!” one yells.

“Do some tricks!” shouts another.

“Dance! Dance!” orders a small group.

“This is
not
going to be easy,” Pomp says.

“Sure it is!” Gloranda says. “You’re funny!”

“But this is serious, coz’,” Pomp says to Gloranda. Gloranda falls on the ground again, laughing.

“Tell us more!” jibes a silver-haired, freckle-faced sprite.

“I am telling you, this isn’t funny!”

Which is funny to the fairies. Some of them laugh so hard they fall from the air into a heap of giggles.

“Oooo!” Pomp shakes her fists in frustration.

The fairies shake with laughter.

Pomp knows it is hopeless to talk. Words will only make things worse. She needs action.

She looks at Gloranda, still on the ground, holding her sides, barely able to breathe through her smile.

Then Pomp knows what to do.

Quickly, with a series of intentionally clumsy movements to keep them laughing, she traces a circle in the dirt around Gloranda. Gloranda stops laughing long enough to see what Pomp is doing. She reaches out to touch one of the sigils, but Pomp slaps her hand. Gloranda falls again on her back in hysterics.

Pomp draws. Pomp remembers. Not everything, but maybe enough. She feels something in the air, an unpleasant tingling that makes the hairs of her neck stand up, like flying through a ghost.
She draws some more, remembers more, again feels the sorrow of losing Doribell, the pain of Ilsie’s absence.

Then, the circle is complete. Or almost complete. She isn’t completely sure. Only Gloranda’s actions will tell if she got it right. And Gloranda will stay on the floor laughing if Pomp continues to draw.

So she sits. And waits.

The laughter dies down. A few bored fairies at the edge of the crowd fly off. Some punch each other in the shoulder for no good reason. Others make fun of Pomp.

Pomp simply waits.

Eventually, Gloranda recovers from her fit and stands up in the middle of the circle. She takes a step toward Pomp, but her left leg is stuck. It is rooted to the floor so securely that she thinks Pomp has pulled a trick on her, which she has. Gloranda pulls and yanks and almost spins in a circle, but her ankle doesn’t go that way. She tries to fly, but her wings won’t work. She jerks against gravity and gravity jerks back.

Now it’s Pomp’s turn to giggle. Then she remembers why she is here, that she has serious business.

“I told you,” Pomp says to Gloranda, “Doribell and Ilsie are dead! Mowler killed them!”

Gloranda thinks her cousin is still joking. “Dory and Ilsie are away to play, back another day!” A few of the remaining fairies respond with laughter.

Pomp paces, it’s so hard to think sometimes, think of what to do, what to say!

“Gloranda. You are stuck, right?”

Gloranda tries again to free herself.

“Stuck, all right.”

“Mowler’s spell stuck you there!” Pomp says.

“No, Pomp’s spell stuck me here.”

Pomp pulls at her own hair in frustration. There seems to be very little left to try. How will she ever get through to them?

“Remember Cimbri!” she calls out to the crowd. “Remember Cimbri!”

“Huh?” says one fairy after another.

“What is remember?” one calls out.

“Remember is . . . no, never mind . . . I can’t explain . . .”

She paces even more frantically, fluttering her wings in worry. Time is running out!

She thinks she has one last chance.

“Cimbri is saving us! Pomp is saving us! Mowler attacks! Fight Mowler!”

The crowd, somewhat agitated, looks around for the miscreant wizard. They have heard of him, heard that he is unhappy and angry since he left Faerie. He likes to snatch fairies away from their home.

But Gloranda isn’t believing it.

“Pomp isn’t saving us,” Gloranda says. “Pomp is talking. I’m bored of talking.”

“Me too!” someone says in the crowd.

“Let’s go find some fun,” says another.

“No, wait!” Pomp yells in her tiny voice. It is lost among the buzzing of wings as the fairies, all except Pomp and Gloranda, begin to take off.

“Wait!” Pomp says in a little voice.

“Wait!” she squeaks.

“
WAIT
!” she booms louder than any noise she thought she could make. Her voice sounds different now, too.

“
WAIT
!” the voice booms again. It isn’t her voice. Many voices, actually. Many loud voices falling on them from above.

Like a shadowy wheel, something dark made of twelve flying somethings circles overhead.

“Whoo, whoo, wait!” the many voices call out.

The Armory owls are descending on the fairies.

“Well, that’s interesting,” says one fairy.

“And fun!” says another.

“No fun!” the quorum of three-faced owls bellows below. “Pomp is saving us! We must fight Mowler! To arms!”

“To arms!” the mustered fairies respond to the call, “To arms!”

Pomp, mission accomplished, flies on.

She navigates herself to the Armory, now empty of owls, who were too busy marshaling troops to guard an empty grove of trees. She prepares to make the transition to the mortals’ world. She
remembers, all too well, the smoke and confusion that met her last time. She holds her breath and plunges forward.

Pomp flitted through the shredded veil between worlds, first catching mere glimpses of the mortal realms, like windows into the world of men, then emerging fully into it. She had to find Heraclix as quickly as possible. She knew that he wasn’t at Vienna, but supposed that he would be coming back before too long. So she headed back along the road toward Bozsok, intending to return to Szentendre, where she had left him.

The fires had extinguished themselves a long time ago, but the place still reeked of smoke. A recent rain exaggerated the stench even more, swelling the air with ashen memory. The trail leading up to the Serb’s castle was quiet. The ghosts had all burned up. The only sound came from a single raven cawing high above among the scorched tree limbs.

Pomp would have ignored the bird outright if it weren’t for the glint of something caught in the dim sunlight. It shimmered near or
on
the bird; Pomp couldn’t quite tell which. She had never heard of a shiny raven before, and she found it odd enough to distract her, momentarily, from her quest to find Heraclix.

It was small for a raven. On close examination it proved not much bigger than a common crow. But this bird was far from common. Its thick beak was made of pure silver, as were its eyes, and it wore a crown—a very familiar looking crown, one Pomp had seen in a much larger size in a much more Hellish place.

“You’re an ugly bird!” Pomp said.

It turned to her with fiery eyes blazing.

“Go, go away!” it said.

“Why should I?” Pomp said.

“Kill, kill, die!” the bird-demon warned.

“But you’re just a bird!” Pomp taunted.

“No!”

“Not a bird?” Pomp asked.

“No!”

“Do you have a name then, un-bird?” Pomp mocks the creature.

“Caw, caw, phony!”

“Cacophony?”

“Caw, caw, phony!”

“How appropriate.”

The bird-that-is-not-a-bird’s attention suddenly turned away from Pomp. Something was moving below. Something large. There was no secret to its arrival. Branches snapped, then fell to the ground in its wake.

Caw-Caw-Phony pushed off its perch, gliding momentarily, then diving almost straight down.

That breathing from below, the raspy intake of air, Pomp knew that rasp.

“Heraclix!” she yelled.

“Kill! Kill! Die!” Caw-Caw-Phony squawked.

Pomp dove after the bird, which was diving straight for the golem below.

“Heraclix!” Pomp yelled again. She hoped her friend could hear her.

“Caw! Caw! Ph—” the devil-raven stopped short.

Pomp nearly flew into the creature’s back, it had stopped so suddenly. She also nearly skewered herself on the scimitar blade that protruded from the bird’s back. A glowing yellow-green ichor dripped from the tip of the blade.

Heraclix brought the sword down, Caw-Caw-Phony still skewered on the curved instrument.

“It is . . . dead?” Pomp asked.

“Devils don’t die, Pomp,” Heraclix said. “They just go back to the bottom of the worm-pile to recirculate through eternity.”

She hovered there with a puzzled look on her face.

“And it’s good to see you, too,” Heraclix smiled.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Mortal humor.” He flipped the raven’s carcass off the blade. Somehow, the crown stayed attached to the bird’s head.

“Pomp, my friend,” he said, wiping the blade off on a patch of grass. “We need to get back to Vienna. And on the way, you and I have much to discuss.”

“More talking?” Pomp said, exasperated.

“More talking,” Heraclix said.

C
HAPTER
28

A
map of the Holy Roman Empire lay spread out on a desk between Major Von Graeb and Emperor Joseph. The northern edge of the map sagged over the precipice of the too-small desk’s edge. Several wooden chits, each signifying a military unit, were scattered across the map, the largest clump near the precarious northern edge. Von Graeb moved a small group of chits from the hanging edge, on his left, to the far right corner opposite him, where the emperor stood.

“That’s what we need.” He slid the majority of the pieces back to their original location, then pointed to the meager remainders at the southeastern edge of the map, “And that’s what we have.”

“It does seem a rather disparate concentration,” the emperor agreed with him. “but our spies in Prussia have noted a threat.”

“I’d call it a desperate concentration myself. And isn’t it odd that we have never, not once, heard from our spies in the Ottoman lands?”

“They have been rather quiet,” the emperor said.

“Excuse my boldness, your Majesty, but they have been utterly silent. They have not reported back in . . .” Von Graeb paused “. . . months.”

“In any case,” the emperor said, “there’s no sense discussing what has or hasn’t happened. You have an immediate need.”

“A need,” a third voice said from a shadowy doorway, “that I intend to fulfill.”

“Viktor!” the emperor said in surprise. “I thought you were in Saxony . . .”

Othman and Fahtma were both sick of marching. Othman, being as large as he was, felt the burn in his legs even more. His Agha had ordered him to lose weight many times. Now that they were on the march toward the borders of the empire, he had no choice but to shed the pounds.

Fahtma, in better condition, had no better of an attitude. “Ptah! What ever happened to the crusades, when the infidels came to
us
to be slaughtered?”