The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant (15 page)

“The dream is finished, Flam,” she said, looking up at me with a face that showed every hard moment she had ever lived.

I wanted to comfort her, but I did not know how.

“Countess,” I said, and took a step forward.

“Countess,” she said, and laughed in a way that drilled my heart more thoroughly than Sirimon could have.

“Come walk with me,” I said. “Let's get some air.”

“Get away from me,” she said.

Her response angered me greatly. I left her there and went to walk the corridors, talking to myself as if I were Durst. Passing the large oval mirror outside of the library, I caught a glimpse of a fool, jawing away, dressed in my old rags, his hair undone and wild. I knew now what I had looked like years earlier to the inhabitants of those towns I had visited and been evicted from. I needed to get a hold on reality, and so decided to go to the palace attic and do some dusting. I trudged up the long flight of steps, assuring myself that work was the cure for my woes.

I threw back the door of that hidden sanctuary, and saw instantly that the moth had visited. The creature had cleaned the place out completely, leaving not one candelabrum, not the slightest feather from the eagle decoration that had been made for the holidays five years earlier. All of the old objects I had so scrupulously cared for over the years were gone.

“No,” I said, and the word echoed out to the far reaches of the empty expanse. Then it struck me that the moth had devoured my very title. The gardens no longer needed bats, the things in the attic did not require dusting, and as for my Monday proclamations, I had been making them long before I ever came to Reparata. At least when I was the High and Mighty of Next Week, the promise of the future always loomed ahead, calling me on. Now, all that was left was the past.

When the moth began devouring the very marble structure of the palace, Ringlat, Chin Mokes, and the Chancellor of Waste hatched a conspiracy to do away with it. Many of the others had agreed to help them. As it was put to me when they attempted to conscript me into their plot, “Ingess is not in his right mind. We have to save him again.” I was told that Saint-Geedon had been chosen, because of his skills as an assassin, to form a plan to strike the insect down. What was I to do but agree?

I had often wondered what the link was between the professions of hired killer and chef, because Grenis had made the transition from one to the other almost overnight when he chose Reparata as his home. After I watched him create the bomb, though, I no longer had any questions. The outer casing of the device was made from a thick crusted peasant bread called Latcha, which was a main staple of the farmers in the surrounding countryside. Through a small hole he cut in the top of the loaf, he dug out the dough, leaving it as hollow as a jack-o-lantern. Next came a strange mixture of chemicals and cooking powders, each of which he measured out in exact amounts. To this he added boxes of nails and pieces of sharp metal. For the finishing touch, he asked Pester to bring him the vanilla.

“What does that do?” I asked.

“For sweetness,” he said.

To create the fuse, he pan-fried over a low fire a long piece of string in some of the same ingredients that were used in the main course. When the string had cooled, he inserted one end into the bread, replaced the cap of crust he had cut, and then garnished the outside with radishes cut into florets. We gave him a round of applause to which he clicked his heels and nodded sharply.

The moon couldn't have been brighter the night we put our plan into action. It had been decided that we would lay the trap outside the walls of the palace so as not to chance destroying anymore of the quickly diminishing structure. Just beyond the gates, there was a deep moat that ran the circumference of Reparata. We crept cautiously out across the drawbridge, which, since there was little threat of invasion in those times, was always left down.

Ten yards off the bridge, and twenty yards to the surrounding tree line, we heaped up a pile of whatever belongings still remained to us. Those who had nothing to give removed curtains from the few rooms that had not been visited yet by the moth. Within this hill of things, we planted the bomb, and then ran the long fuse over to the tree line where we took up positions, hiding in the shadows at the edge of the woods.

There were more than twenty of us in the group. Because I was nervous that Ingess might discover our treachery or that we might fail, I didn't notice that the countess was among the conspirators until we stood beneath the trees. She had somewhere gotten a set of men's clothing and her hair was tied back.

“Frouch,” I whispered, “I didn't know you were part of this.”

“I hope that bomb blows the damned bug to tatters, the same way it did my life,” she said. There was an edge to her voice I had never heard before.

I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off and lit a cigarette. I meant to ask her what I had done to make her cross with me, but just then the Philosopher General whispered a duet of, “Behold, the floating hunger.”

It flew slowly out past the open gates of Reparata, its wings quietly beating the air. The powder it threw off caught the moonlight and created a misty aura around it. Its antennae twitched at the scent of curtain silk, gown muslin, old shoes, strings of pearls, and the deadly loaf at their center. When it landed with the lightness of a dream feather and began to dine, Saint-Geedon turned to Frouch and nodded. She flicked the ash off her cigarette, puffed it hard three times and then put the burning end to the tip of the fuse. The tiny spark was away in an instant, eating the treated string faster than even the creature could.

Frouch licked her lips, Ringlat rubbed his hands together, and the Chancellor of Waste wheezed excitedly as that dot of fizzling orange raced toward explosion. When it was exactly halfway to the heap where the moth was busy vanishing an old topcoat, who should appear at the palace gates but Ingess dressed in full battle armor and mounted on Drith, his nag of a warhorse. The moment we saw him there, it was obvious he had finally come to his senses and decided to slay the creature as his subjects had begged him. He drew his long sword, pointed it at the moth and then spurred the old horse in the flanks.

As His Royal reached the middle of the drawbridge, the spark reached the loaf. We braced ourselves for apocalypse but all that followed was a miserable little pop, weaker than a champagne cork, and the issuance of a slight stream of smoke. The moth flapped upward in a panic, unharmed, but this sudden motion frightened Drith and he reared on his hind legs, throwing Ingess from his back and into the deep waters of the moat.

The ridiculous course of events left me standing with my mouth open wide. Everyone was stunned by the misadventure.

Then Frouch yelled, “He'll drown in that armor.”

She took two steps past me, but I saw that someone else had already begun sprinting toward the moat. It was Durst, and I had never seen his lumpen form move with such speed in all the years I had known him. He did not hesitate at the edge, but awkwardly formed his hands together into an arrowhead in front of him, kicked up his heels in the back, and dove into the water. At the sight of this, we all started running.

I don't know how he found him in the dark at the bottom of that moat, nor do I know how he lifted him to the surface and brought him to the bank. Ringlat and I reached down and pulled His Royal up onto dry land. Pester and Chin Mokes did the same with Durst. In seconds we had Ingess's helmet off, and much to my relief found that he was still faintly breathing.

“He's alive,” yelled Ringlat, and the assembled company shouted.

Frouch helped us remove the rest of the armor as the others gathered round Durst, patting his head and slapping him on the back. I stole a look at him in the middle of my work and saw that he had lost his spectacles. When I noticed he was no longer bent by the weight of his twin, I had a feeling he would not be needing them.

Whereas the night had brought a miraculous opportunity to the Philosopher General, His Royal had not fared so well. We freed him of his armor, but no manner of nudging, tapping, massaging, could wake him from unconsciousness. My fear that he had been too long underwater without air seemed now to be a fact. Still, we gathered him up and brought him back inside the palace. The structures of the buildings were no longer sound because of the work of the moth, so we carried one of the last remaining beds out into the courtyard and laid him on that. Then we gathered around him like dwarfs around a poisoned princess in a fairy tale and waited with far too much hope than could reasonably be expected.

The other members of the court who were not part of our ill-fated plot now came out of the palace to join us, bringing reports of what little remained in the wake of the moth. Ingess's fortune was now completely gone, the food stores, with the exception of an old pot of moldy cremat, were thoroughly decimated.

“The place is as empty as my heart,” said the Illustrious Seventh, who in her ripped tunic from yesteryear was looking none too illustrious.

We stayed in that courtyard through the remainder of the night and the following day, standing around, watching His Royal's every faint breath. From off in the distance came the occasional sounds of some piece of the architecture crumbling and falling with a thunderous crash, having been undermined by the moth's earlier dining. I witnessed with my own eyes the fall of the eastern parapet. It slouched and fell, tons of marble, like a sandcastle in the surf.

When the young ones began to complain of hunger there was nothing to give them. None of us had been at Reparata long enough to forget that feeling of utter need. Frouch and some of the others discussed possibilities of where to find food, but nothing came readily to mind. Then Ringlat removed his Bishop's robe, throwing it to the ground. Beneath, he was dressed in the black costume of the highwayman. He borrowed a scarf from one of the ladies and tied it around his face just beneath his eyes.

“Flam,” he said. “If I'm not back by nightfall, you will have to think of something else.” We watched him run across the courtyard to where Drith stood drinking from a small fountain. With one leap, he went atop the back of the horse and landed in its saddle. Grabbing the reigns, he spun the mount to the left, whipped it and gave it his heels. The old nag responded and, together, they were off like a shot through the gates of Reparata.

The day was as long as any I have ever witnessed. The afternoon dragged on as our expectations of His Royal's recovery grew more faint than his breathing. When things became almost intolerable and some of the very young had begun to cry, the Chancellor of Waste gathered them all together and, borrowing some small objects from the crowd (my pipe, a pocket watch, a knife), began juggling. Occasionally, he would allow one of the things to hit him on the head before he caught it and sent it back into the cycle. This drew some laughter from the children. For we who were older, the transformation of the chancellor himself, from fatuous ass to merry buffoon, was marvelous enough to bring a smile in spite of the predicament our king was in. He juggled, acted idiotic, and performed pratfalls for hours, until he finally slumped down onto the ground in exhaustion. The children ran to him and, climbing upon his back, used him as a boat while he slept.

“What are we going to do?” Frouch asked as we stood together at twilight, staring down at Ingess, whose condition hadn't changed all day.

I shook my head. “I'm lost,” I said.

“We can't stay here any longer,” she told me and I wasn't sure by the tone of her voice if she was talking about the entire court or just the two of us.

There was no time to question her about this because, just then, Ringlat came charging across the drawbridge on Drith. With one hand he clutched the horse's reigns and with the other he held tightly to a bulging cloth gathered up at one end and thrown over his shoulder.

“Dinner,” he called as he leaped down from his mount. When he spread the cloth out at our feet, we saw it was filled with all manner of food.

“It seems the lord provides, Bishop,” I said to him as everyone crowded around to take something.

“In this case, the lord taketh away. Righteous robbery, Flam,” he said. “That road to Enginstan always was a favorite of mine.”

“In broad daylight?” I said.

He shrugged, “I wouldn't make a habit of it, but it seems my reputation still lives. When all I demanded was food, they were more than happy to comply. How many do you know who can claim to have been robbed by Ringlat and lived to tell of it? Something to pass down to their grandchildren.”

“You're a generous man,” I told him as he searched around for where he had dropped his bishop's robe.

There was just enough to eat in that sack to quiet the children and calm the adults. The last crumb of the last loaf was finished just as night settled in. We knew the moth was about, because as soon as darkness was upon us we could hear pieces of the palace coming down. I called for everyone to gather in close to Ingess in case any of the surrounding facades might give way. It was cold and we huddled together on the ground, a human knot around His Royal. The answer to the question I never got to ask Frouch earlier was answered when she took a place beside me and leaned against my shoulder. I put my arm around her and she closed her eyes.

Some slept but I stared numbly into the dark and listened to the destruction of Reparata. It was just after I was sure I heard the southern colonnade drop into the reflecting pond that Pester stood up.

“It's coming for us,” he screamed in a shrill voice, pointing up above with his missing finger.

I looked up at what I at first mistook for the moon, but soon saw was the moth, slowly descending from a great height. The powder was falling toward us, and I roused everyone as quickly as possible so as to have them escape its ill effects. Groggy and scared, the company moved quickly back away from Ingess, since it appeared precisely there that the moth would land.