Magic Banquet (7 page)

“Your breath smells worse.” The empress
stroked his whiskered chin with her sky of plumage. “But you’re
still mine.”

“You saved my life, both of you.”

He said it to the empress and Old Janny, not
to Aja. And the feather had been her idea. The lionman’s brown and
black eyes gazed at the empress with a warm concern, a drippy
devotion.

Aja wished the empress had never come.
Everyone loved her. That would’ve been bearable if she had stayed
far away in her palace. Now she’d arrived at Aja’s city to eat at
her Banquet.

Aja didn’t have the stomach for anymore
basilisk pâté. Not with the faint sting of vomit in the air. Aja
pushed away her plate. She lifted her chalice. Its glass was so
thin and delicate that the drink seemed to float. Her snakes twined
over it, at last cooperating. The liquid changed hue as it tilted,
from yellowish to clear, to red, to emerald. It sloshed with the
sound of distant melodies. They reminded Aja of songs performed for
royalty on the other side of walled-off gardens.

Aja drank. This time, the music played for
her.

Harps plinked around her in a cascade of
metal notes. Lutes strummed through the darkness, and panpipes
whispered songs of promise from somewhere behind her ear.

She swished the drink, and the music changed
from loving to thoughtful. Swirling her glass increased the tempo.
Tambourines urged her heart to a faster beat. Bells sang. Metal
clappers danced a melody of life too precious to waste.

Aja looked to see how the other guests
handled their glasses. Old Janny was rubbing a finger along the
rim. She closed her eyes as if hearing bliss.

After Aja wet her stone finger in the drink,
she touched the top of her glass. A lone note streamed by like a
brilliant ribbon in the wind. It faded into new kinds of music.
Strange instruments, an exploration of sound. Horns blared triumph,
and strings vibrated with sweet sadness. On Aja’s next touch, drums
and feet thundered, and voices exalted to a starry sky.

“Would you care for it louder?” The djinn’s
words startled Aja. Flame-light fingers closed on her glass, and
the drink steamed.

“Too loud! Too loud!” Aja covered her ears
with her hands. Oh, no! Her snakes. Brown scales darted by, but the
asps did not bite.

The djinn used tongs to drop ice flakes into
the glass. The music softened.

The swordsman was speaking to the empress.
He held his scimitar in front of him with both arms. “Between the
two of us, we’ve not one free hand. My fingers have locked on the
hilt.”

“And now you’re a balding cat! Even cuter,”
the empress said.

His face was still a lion’s, but his fur had
turned patchy. “Not so bad off. Another minute, and I couldn’t move
my arms or anything else.”

“Can you feel this?” She brushed feathers
down his arm.

“To the wrist,” he said.

“How about this?” She raised her lips and
pecked his neck.

“I shouldn’t be feeling it.” He tried to
step away from her hug of wings.

Aja distorted the sight of the two together
by lifting her chalice. She motioned to the djinn, who heated the
music. It blocked out the sound of the empress’s tinkling
laugh.

Aja rolled the drink around her tongue. She
only swallowed a few sips. Her venomous asps refused to taste it.
That told her something. She shouldn’t drink too much of this
tonic. The music might distract her from something important,
something dangerous. Aja didn’t trust those around her.

Music stirred her blood with unforgettable
flutes and an anger of brass horns. At last she had found the
perfect song. Then a hulk shadowed her.

It was the Chef. So tall! He was like a
tower sneaking up on her. His right side flashed because he held a
fistful of knives. With his free hand he straightened his vest. By
the oil beaded on his brow, he must’ve run up the steps.

She set down her chalice in time to hear Old
Janny screech.

“What is that?”

“The next entrée,” the Chef said.

A wet thumping approached.
Whomp! Whomp!
Splurch!
A sucking sound, a dragging, it came from the kitchen.
Whatever it was blocked all light from the oven fires.

“It’s bigger than a bellyache.” The empress
flapped her wings, drifting backward.

The Chef slapped a knife into Old Janny’s
hand. He said, “Serve yourselves.”

Side Dish:

OLD JANNY’S TALE

One day I’ll never forget. Was sweeping the
floor in the Mindvault Academy. They say hard work improves your
character. The toil sure doesn’t do anything good for your back,
knees, or hands, and I’d rather have those than good character,
which generally seems no fun at all.

Anyway, was sweeping beneath a window. Real
crystal in those windows, enchanted, too, so you never have to
polish them. Their panes swayed with the gusts instead of rattling.
Didn’t have windows near as fine at home. Drippy glass plates with
bits of sand in ‘em. Like as not would have to rub them clear of
hearth smoke on my day off. Couldn’t expect my laze-about children
to do a lick of housework. And my husband had been dead some five
years, not that he’d have helped, so good riddance.

Been a mother all my life, or near enough.
Mother to my four children and handmaid to an enchantress who was
pleasant as a plum when asleep.

Now where was I? Right, sweeping the floor.
But it was really the ceiling, since most everything is upside-down
in the Mindvault Academy, and gravity is twisted like a corkscrew.
Enchantments to make your ears buzz.

My mistress, Enchantress Hiresha, last I
heard she was lost at sea. Don’t look at me like that. Ol’ Janny
didn’t misplace her. Can’t blame that man either even though he was
her guard before he was Ryn’s. Not that you could look at anyone
that handsome and blame him for anything. If you think that sword
of his is big, should’ve seen his other one. That is, the magic
rock blade of jasper. And doesn’t his nose blush as deep a red.

What was I talking about? Sweeping the
floors? You sure? Nope. Can’t remember why I’d mention it. My mind
is empty as a lye-scoured pot.

But I’ll tell you what I do have. A drink,
and a motto. Bottoms up!

Fourth Course:

KRAKEN, FRESH CAUGHT & LIVE

SERVED WITH TICKLER EEL

An arch of red reared out of the darkness. A
wet surface, motes of lamplight glistened along its length. It
moved in a way no stone should. The front half swung upward, and
the thing’s underside was covered with hundreds of blind eyes.

No, not eyes, though they came in round
pairs with milky pupils. Their rubbery edges flopped. Aja wondered
what sort of monster was this. It smelled like seaweed.

The Chef scuffled around the giant thing.
“On a distant coast they eat octopus raw, for the freshness
of….”

He retreated into the kitchen.

Octopus, he had said something about
octopus. Was this enormous thing part of one? Oh, no. Aja saw it
was a tentacle. So this was how the guests of past Banquets had
died.

Aja had no more time to choke and flounder
among the pillows before the red tentacle curved over her in a
death shadow. It would slam down on Aja. Like a falling building it
would crush her under its not-eyes.

A man’s voice called out. “Run.”

Her insides melted, her arms and legs froze
solid.
Run, Aja
,
run!
Even her fingers hissed at her
to flee.

She could not move.

Someone moved her. A crutch of polished wood
smacked her away. She tumbled off the carpet the moment the thing
thudded down.

Platters smashed. Glasses exploded in
tinkling showers. Lamps swung on their chains. Forks flashed as
they twirled. But she hadn’t been walloped. Not yet.

The tentacle heaved, sliding sideways like a
red anaconda. The tip looked much like the tail of a snake, except
that it curled upward with spots of suckers. It plowed Old Janny
off her four goat legs. Solin flipped clear of the onrush, feet
above crutches. The tentacle didn’t end in an octopus head but a
stump of fleshy white.

“A single arm,” the lord said, his
embroidery glinting from the safety of the shadows, “and still more
than we can swallow.”

A fine thing for him to say, Aja thought. He
was far away, and everyone else, in danger. A frenzy of teal wings,
the empress screeched in a discordant trill. The monstrous arm
thwacked her from the air and rolled over her. She stuck to its
underside, lifted to be swatted down.

She raised one wing. “I’m caught!”

The swordsman roared and spun, heel lifting
up, arms flexing with strain. His scimitar made a blinding streak.
It passed through the giant tentacle, lopping it in two. The arm
split in a splatter of blue fluid. The half that gripped the
empress toppled.

Solin dropped one crutch to catch her, but
the swordsman kicked him aside. Before Aja could see more,
something knocked her down.

The thicker half of the arm threatened to
crush her like a rolling tree trunk. She scrambled over the carpet.
Her scaled fingers slipped, could find no hold. Something wet
pinned down her leg.

Cold flesh flattened her. All the air
squeezed from her lungs, trapping in her cries. Was this how she
would die? Not from asp bite or from hunger, but squashed under a
giant tentacle. Anything but this.

“
Slurp!”
A sucker gripped her back in
a ring of pain. Her thin robe wouldn’t stop her skin from being
stripped from her spine. The arm hauled her into the air, above the
lamps. She gasped, and then she did scream.

“Help!”

In the darkness below her, the lord’s pale
eyes filled with flame light. He bent, swept up a dropped knife.
He’s going to help me.

Aja worried he wouldn’t reach her in time.
Even if he did, his knife might cut her trying to pry her free
of—

The lord swept past her. The shadows filled
in the space behind him like a black cape. He left Aja. He
abandoned her and slashed at the suckers trapping the empress. Both
halves of the severed arm still thrashed. The other men also fought
for their empress. None heard Aja no matter how she wore out her
throat screaming.

This Banquet was full of people, and she was
alone.

The tentacle swung her downward. Aja jerked
her arms up to protect her face. The plush carpet whammed into her.
Something cracked. Please, let it have been a plate and not her
bones. When the tentacle dragged her back into the air, she saw
blood on her arm.

No one would help before she was pounded to
jelly. She had only herself.

Reaching behind her, she tried to scratch at
the sucker on her back. She realized it would never work. The
tentacle had latched onto her leg as well, and another slimy cup
sealed on her elbow. Her fingers did not even move how she wanted.
Her fangs extended and plunged into spongy flesh. They throbbed and
squeezed venom into her attacker. What a sweet relief.

With a wet popping, the suckers dropped her.
She guessed snakes could be good for something after all. She
crawled away from the monster’s heaving mass of flesh. The carpet’s
silver pattern had changed to islands and savage sea.

She staggered into the far reaches of the
warehouse and wrapped her arms around her tender chest. Her nose
dripped, and it tasted metallic. The asps tickled her ears with
their forked tongues.

Shadows hid her. Swaying lamps illuminated
only the area around the magic carpet. Blue blood flowed off the
rug’s silver weave. The swordsman chopped the tentacle to
torso-sized chunks, but its suckers still pulsed. He asked, “Won’t
it ever stop moving?”

“I don’t want to have seen this.” The
empress hid her face behind her wing. Half her feathers were
ruffled the wrong way.

The Chef returned with two men of clay. The
golems set the sliced meat on new plates of brass. The Chef made
but one cut to the tentacle himself, after gazing into the darkness
toward Aja. She didn’t think he should be able to see her. He
removed an enflamed sucker, the one her asps had bitten.

The swordsman kneeled, his scimitar balanced
on one knee. His hands were still locked on the hilt. His chest
surged in and out. “Chef, you—you worried we’d fall asleep at
dinner?”

“The seas ripple with wild magic, a power on
which we can dine.” The Chef ladled a sauce over the meat. “The
most lavish parties across the Lands of Loam serve seafood to
enliven the guests, to free the inner self. Nothing the nobles eat
is as potent as raw kraken.”

“Will it make us younger?” Old Janny asked.
She cradled the empress. One of her wings was bent backward,
perhaps broken.

The empress dragged herself upright, looked
around the warehouse. “Where’s Aja? Ah-ja!”

Aja didn’t move from her shadows. It hurt
enough just to hold still.