The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter
Read The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter Online
Authors: D.J. Natelson
The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter
D.J. NATELSON
ALSO BY D.J. NATELSON
The Fifth Tunnel
The Mages of Swallowgate House
Copyright © Deborah Jeanne Natelson, 2013
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
The cover fonts are Flamingo and Lutin_Paniquangoisse. Interior book font is Book Antiqua. Cover is by D.J. Natelson. Cover image is a creative commons image by Flickr user sammydavisdog.
They say crime doesn’t pay.
I say, how do they know?
Stephen was not a criminal
. It
was not an easy thing, when one
was an enchanter in a kingdom where magic was stringently monitored when not outright illegal. One really had to work not to be a criminal—and Stephen worked. He limited himself to strictly legal magic and charged the strictly legal prices and always, always paid his taxes on time.
The judge listened to this recitation without interest, occasionally tugging on one end of his enormous, bristling mustache. “Yes, yes,” he said. “That’s all irrelevant. What do you say to the specific charges of impersonation and bedazzlement?”
“Fabrication,” Stephen responded promptly, waving one lazy hand as if to dismiss the whole silly matter. “I would never do such a thing. Of course,” he added generously, “I’m not blaming my accuser. I suppose these charges could be an honest mistake.”
“Hmm.” The judge frowned and leafed through his notes. “No, no chance of mistake here. This account is quite clear.”
“But you see,” said Stephen, “it doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical. Even if I had, for some bizarre reason, wanted to impersonate your darling mayor (and I certainly did not), and even if it were legal to do so, I couldn’t. Glamour is fairy magic, not enchantment.”
“We only have your word for that.”
“Isn’t it common knowledge?”
The judge glared. Stephen held his hands up in appeasement. “Look, Your Honor, I’m sorry about this mess, I really am, but it has nothing to do with me; I didn’t do it. Maybe if I could meet my accuser—”
“Your accuser,” said the judge, smoothing his mustache, “has requested anonymity—as you know.”
“It couldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Your accuser,” the judge continued meaningfully, “has submitted a sworn statement before this court. Scribe!”
The scribe—a thirteen-year-old who, apart from a profusion of acne and lack of mustache, look astonishingly like the judge—stood, cleared his throat, and read aloud: “I, a citizen of this Kingdom, in concern for the town of Crying, do herein relate what I did witness on the night of December the twenty-eighth in the center of Market Row in front of the bakery.”
Stephen tried to picture the location. He had been in Crying less than an hour before his arrest, and hadn’t been impressed. It had struck him as poor, ugly, and cold.
“Hidden in the shadows,” the scribe read, “I did observe a robed and cowled figure in the manner of an enchanter, who did make mystical signs and speak strange words and by foul magic transform himself into the exact likeness of the honorable Lord Mayor. When I did witness this magic, and knowing my duty, I did confront the simulacrum with his crime, whereupon he did bend me under a vile compulsion and command that I forget all I had seen.” The scribe bowed and sat, absurdly pleased with himself.
Stephen drew a handkerchief from his sleeve, sneezed into it, and blew his nose. “That is all nonsense,” he proclaimed after several industrious seconds. “Not realistic at all. When I enchant something, I do it correctly, and that bedazzlement was clearly a botched job.”
“You admit to knowing illegal compulsion magic?”
Stephen hesitated for a long moment, hovering between honesty and safety. “All I meant,” he explained at last, “was that I did magic properly, not that I did that particular kind of magic. Besides, knowing about bedazzlement isn’t illegal, only actually bedazzling people.”
That last sentence had been a mistake. The crowd, which had hitherto remained respectfully quiet, rumbled to life. Every citizen of Crying—with the notable exception of the mayor—was present. There was nothing better to do on a frozen winter’s evening, and this was fine entertainment. Even before Stephen had finished speaking, his audience began offering suggestions to the judge:
“Burn him!”
“Hang him!
“Behead him!”
And, worst of all: “Exile him!”
This last tasteless suggestion came from a woman, and not remotely the kind of woman who belonged in a village like Crying. Her skin was too soft for the biting winds, her profile too smooth, her hair too clean. She was beautiful, in a dark, sultry kind of way, beautiful enough that Stephen thought,
Cheater
.
He knew magic when he saw it.
The crowd continued to shout at him. Several small boys became excited and jumped up on chairs, and an elderly lady fainted—although that was probably from the overwhelming stuffiness of the room. Outside, the temperature had fallen below freezing, but the courtroom was heated by four fireplaces and stuffed well beyond capacity.
Only Stephen, bound at the wrists with silver and iron, shivered.
“I have never bedazzled anyone,” Stephen said above the roar of the crowd. “I am familiar with the theory of it in order to avoid performing it by mistake, and to protect myself. When I said I did magic correctly, it was only to convince you that I could not possibly have bedazzled my accuser to forget because his accusation means that he would not have forgotten because he had to remember to accuse me. Because he remembers, he has not forgotten, which means I didn’t make him forget, which means I am not guilty.”
Stephen should have known better. The people of Crying were simple folk, unable to follow this kind of logic—even if they had listened to it before shouting “Liar!” and “What do you take us for?”
Stephen dabbed his nose and wished his head would clear up. He couldn’t think.
How he hated colds.
“Look,” he said, his hoarse voice cracking as he struggled to raise it. No one listened. “Listen, I didn’t impersonate anyone! I wasn’t even here on the twenty-eighth—I arrived this morning!”
“What’s this?” The judge banged his gavel for quiet. “Are you claiming to have an alibi?”
“Not as such. That is, I was traveling by foot. So you could go to the town I came from and ask them when I left—I stayed at the inn—and I couldn’t have come any faster if I’d wanted to—Crying was right in my path, which was why I stopped here—that was my only reason; I thought I’d stop for supplies and maybe a nice, hot meal.”
“But you’re an enchanter.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It’s obvious you’re an enchanter. You’re wearing official blue enchanter’s robes.”
“Yes! I’m an enchanter!”
“So why would you need food?” The judge sat back smugly, and if he had settled the case.
“I’m still human!”
“Then why not conjure up some food? Why spend your money when you could enchant yourself a ten-course dinner?”
“Because that’s not possible!”
“It seems to me,” the judge went on, “that you haven’t yet told us your real reason for coming to Crying.”
“What reason? To work here? In this little town? My work is worth more than the pennies you could pay.”
It was not his greatest moment of diplomacy, and the crowd wouldn’t quiet no matter how much the judge banged his gavel.
Then Beauty spoke a second time, her voice cutting through all the other noise: “So what you’re saying is, someone paid you to come and impersonate the mayor.”
“No, no, no!”
It was no good. No one was listening to him anymore. Much more of this, and they’d start throwing things. He huddled back in his chair and shivered and sweated: cold from iron, hot from the crowd, and tired of both.
Nothing to do but wait. The people would shout themselves out eventually, and then they’d have to let him go. He had done nothing wrong.
The Judge gave up on his gavel and instead conferred with the three guards who had held Stephen before his trial. In the normal way of things, they were the local butcher, blacksmith, and shopkeeper, but they had taken their temporary jobs to heart. Smith and Shopkeep each took hold of one of Stephen’s arms and hauled him upright. Butcher trailed a little behind, in case Stephen tried anything.
Stephen wished they’d let go of his arms. He wanted to blow his nose again.
“So,” Stephen said cheerfully as he was led out of the courtroom and down creaking stairs, “does this mean my trial has been postponed?”
The guards glanced at each other and said nothing. Butcher strode ahead to open a door, and Stephen found himself in a small, dirty room with only one window: very long and thin and easy to open but far too small to crawl through.
Stephen was pushed inside and left alone. Several minutes later, Butcher returned with an armful of blankets and a chair. He tossed the blankets at Stephen and disappeared again, only to return with wood and flint. Stephen, who had already wrapped himself in the blankets, gratefully scooted near the fireplace. Butcher shot him a nervous look, but did not object.
“Will you be staying here and guarding me, then?”
Butcher grunted.
“I won’t be any trouble. I hope to be out of here soon—I didn’t do it, you see.”
“Doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I reckon I could beat you up if you tried anything, and you won’t be able to do anything about it, not with those manacles on.”
“Are you likely to beat me up?”
“Not if you behave yourself. I’d rather get through this night warm and cozy, and if that means keeping you comfortable too, I don’t mind. The wife thinks I’m mad to care how a wizard feels.”
“An enchanter.”
“Same difference—men who do magic. It’s not natural, but it’s useful.”
“It’s not the same at all! Wizards and witches evocate spells and brew potions; enchanters enchant and bedazzle; sorcerers perform rituals. We’re nothing alike. Saying we’re alike is like saying that cooks, butchers, and farmers are all the same because they deal with food! Or like—” Stephen went on in this strain for some time. Butcher didn’t seem to mind; he finished preparing the fire and then sat back in his chair.
“—enchanters are far superior to sorcerers or wizards, especially the watered down battle-wizards you see scurrying around for the king!”
Butcher looked pointedly at Stephen’s manacles. “Doesn’t look like it,” he said. Then, as an afterthought, “My nephew has a bit of magic in him.”
“Really,” said Stephen. “You must be so proud.”
“A more useless boy never lived.”
There seemed nothing more to say after this. Stephen lay down and spent the next several hours drifting in and out of sleep, waking only to roll his other side toward the fire and blow his nose. Blood was coming out in equal quantities with mucus by now, and in Stephen’s dreams he listed the various dangers of a foreign magic-user getting hold of your blood.
Stephen must have eventually fallen into a deeper sleep, because when he awoke, the world had the quiet, still feeling of two or three in the morning. Butcher was asleep, slumped in his chair, and the fire had burned low.
Stephen sat up. As he did, he spotted a large, wooden bowl beside him. Inside was a hand-sized loaf of bread, chips of dried apple, cheese, and a chunk of lamb that, upon sampling, Stephen found to be of an unexpectedly fine cut. Beside the bowl lay a flask of wine.
Not prisoner fare. More the sort of thing a butcher’s wife might give her husband when he was forced to spend an uncomfortable night with a dangerous prisoner.
And Butcher had, in an unaccountable act of kindness, left the food for Stephen.
No; not unaccountable. Stephen rather thought he knew the reason for it. Even in this uncivilized place, a man like Butcher would feel the need to give a condemned prisoner a good last meal.