The Monsters of Stephen Enchanter (10 page)

“Craggy can make you a new one in the next town,” Tinkerfingers said.  “Or reforge that one.  Craggy
is
still alive, isn’t he?”

“Last I saw,” Stephen said.  “But then, I didn’t look.”

“I did,” said Youngster.  “He’s fine.  We were sent to get you—and the horses, and Medic’s bags.  Stop scratching.”

All the time they had been talking, Tinkerfingers had industriously scratched at his hand.

“It’s itchy.  Let me put out this fire, and I’ll be ready to go.”

“It’s only itchy because you keep scratching it.  What’d you do, dip your hand in poison oak?”

“I’d have a job finding some in the middle of winter.”

“Get bitten?”

“There’s no bump.  It’s nothing.”  Tinkerfingers dumped liberal amounts of snow over the fire.  “Come on, I’ll need your help herding all these horses.  What was the Jolly Executioner thinking?  Is everyone too badly injured to walk?”

“Oh, no,” said Youngster.  “They’re all blind.”

This took a great deal of explanation, none of which reflected positively on Stephen—who rode on Noble Steed and tried to ignore them—and lasted the entire trip back to the bowl.

Tinkerfingers’s scratched his hand every chance he got.

By the time they reached the site, nearly all the company was up and about and clearly not blind.  Only those severely injured—mostly from burns, although whether said burns were caused by the Beast of Quag or Stephen’s own magical explosions or hot steam from vaporizing snowmen was hard to say.  Stephen immediately left Youngster and Tinkerfingers to their own devices and made a beeline to the remains of the Beast of Quag.

The corpse reeked of acid and burning flesh.  Stephen could feel intense heat radiating from it, as the chemicals that allowed it to breathe fire combusted and ate away at the body. 

Fairy creatures.  They had the most ridiculous designs, and couldn’t possibly exist without liberal quantities of magic.  At least it’d eat itself away into a tidy funeral and—at this rate—probably into a deep grave.

Stephen’s heavy clothing, so useful against the freezing weather, now protected him from the dying heat of the monster.  Even so, he veered clear of the body and went to the head, which lay several feet distance.

“You’re too late,” said Weakstomach, looking over his shoulder.  “Not even you can salvage anything from that.  It’d burn you up.”

“Don’t you have anything useful to do, Weakstomach?”

“I don’t like that name; don’t call me it.”

“Tell me your real name, then.”

“Come up with another—one which isn’t rude.”

“No.” Stephen approached the head carefully.  The mouth was mostly closed, and he have to lever it open to get inside—but to do that, he’d have to stand nearer to the body than he liked.  On the other hand, he could see the stump of the tongue hanging out the back of the head, where Youngster had severed it.  It’d be the work of a moment to get it free.

Stephen nudged the head with his toe, turning it to a more suitable angle.

“What are you doing?” Weakstomach asked, alarmed.  “You aren’t going to touch that!”

Stephen crouched and reached his fingers into the severed back of the head.  Blue-green blood oozed out along his glove, slippery and thick.  He wrapped his hand around the back of the tongue and tugged at it.  It stayed where it was.

Frowning, Stephen took his knife—with the clean hand—and held the end of the tongue while he severed the delicate material attaching it to the mouth.

“You’ve made your point,” said Weakstomach.  “Enchanters can do disgusting things.  Now stop.  Really, stop.”

“It’s not disgusting,” said Stephen.  “You skin animals, don’t you?  Empty out their insides and eat them?”

“I don’t eat monsters,” said Weakstomach, in a voice that indicated that he fully believed Stephen did.

Stephen set his knife on the snow, got a firm grip of the tongue with both hands, and walked backwards, using his weight to pull seven feet of curled tongue out of the monster’s head.  He retrieved his knife, cleaned it, and began the weary process of preserving the tongue.

He barely managed it; pushing so much magic into snowmen and magical grenades had drained him.  It was just as well he had waited the forty-five minutes it had taken to retrieve Tinkerfingers.  As it was, the job was slapdash; he’d have to either use the tongue or renew it within the week.

“You’re sick, you know that?” Weakstomach said as Stephen rolled up the tongue and hid it in an empty pocket.  “Collecting trophies, making monsters.  I used to think those things I heard about enchanters were all make-believe.  I was such a fool.”

“That’s nice,” Stephen said wearily.  He had met people like Weakstomach before; there was one in every town.  Men like that made trouble, and Stephen had always done his best to avoid them.  Since that usually meant leaving a job early and spending a cold night walking to the next town, Stephen was somewhat less than pleased.

There was some sort of fuss going on nearby.  Stephen made an overt show of noticing it and hurrying over, to avoid spending any more time in Weakstomach’s company.  Stephen leaned over Miss Ironfist’s shoulder.  “What’s going on?”

“Show some respect,” hissed Miss Ironfist.  “He’s dying.”

Stephen abruptly wished he had kept talking with Weakstomach.  Everyone was looking somber, and Medic was standing to one side, helpless.

The dying man himself lay on the snow, badly burned.  Stephen didn’t recognize him, although he knew the mace at his side.  It bore the clear marks of enchantment, and Stephen remembered placing a base of speed, with secondary magic for—

No, it didn’t really matter what for, because its user was done with it; Deadman wouldn’t need any weaponry where he was going.

Medic spotted him and, for the barest moment, his eyes brightened with hope.  “Has the Enchanter come to help?”

All heads turned toward him.  “No,” said Stephen uncomfortably.  “He’s dead.”

And indeed, in that moment, Deadman had breathed his last.  Even if Stephen had had the ability to heal—which he did not—there was nothing that could be done.

“The Enchanter only came for the eyes,” said Weakstomach.

Stephen whirled on him.  “What are you talking about?”

“Or the hands, maybe, or the ears.  The Enchanter likes taking trophies from his kills.”

“I didn’t kill him!  The monster did!”

“When all along you could have stopped it, no doubt.  Why’d you wait so long?  Were you hoping we’d all die and you’d be free? Or did you want all your little trophies first.”

“I don’t want his eyes.”

“Of course you do.  You like collecting body parts.  Don’t deny it.”

“Take them,” said the Jolly Executioner.

Stephen gaped.

“Take them.  They are no use to him and using them in an enchantment would do some good.”

“Yes,” said Banananose unexpectedly.  “If you gave his eyes to a creature you made, it would almost be as if part of him were alive again.  He’d like that.”

“He would?”

“He would have.”

“I really don’t—”

“Stop arguing and take them, Enchanter!” the Jolly Executioner barked.

The company was looking at him, waiting for him to obey.  Stephen withdrew his knife, still slightly stained with blue-green blood and looked at it.  He looked at the eyes.

This was going to be tricky.

Eyes did shrink a little after death, but that’d take some time—and knives weren’t exactly designed to extricate eyes from skulls.

After a moment’s thought, Stephen pulled the material away from Deadman’s face and cut the around each eye, his enchanted knife slipping easily through bone and tissue.  Then he levered the bone up and out, and set it on the ground next to him.  Somewhere off behind him, he heard Weakstomach retching.  It was not, Stephen had to admit, his most elegant work.

Stephen lifted each eyeball carefully and detached it from the brain, leaving just enough tissue that it would be easy to reconnect the eyes to his monster.  He preserved them quickly—he had just enough magic left after all, and tucked them away inside his robes.

Stephen stood and backed away from the corpse with the ruined face.

“Well,” said Tinkerfingers, white as snow, “that was educational.”

“And gross,” said Youngster.

None of the rest of the company said anything at all.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Pound, of course, referring to the monetary amount
. 

But pounds can refer to so many things in so many contexts
. 

Pound of flesh; po
unding heart; the village pound

Where the bad pets go.

The town of Chubblewooble hunkered miserably between two rivers.  The Wooble flowed from the northwest, the Chubble from the northeast, and the two met just south of the town to form the Chubblewooble river.  There were no bridges spanning any of the rivers and the land above the town was blocked by sheer cliffs.

At this time of year, the rivers were iced over at the edges, but for the most part still flowed swift and deep.  There was only one way across.  The Jolly Executioner led the company to the juncture of the Chubble and Wooble at which point, at the southern tip of the town, was a dismal little hut and a ferry.

“Hello there!” hollered the Jolly Executioner from the bank of the Wooble.  “Ahoy the ferry!”

There was no response.  The Jolly Executioner repeated his call and, after a few minutes, a depressingly shabby figure emerged from the hut.  It was a man, not old, but lined with sourness and ill temper.

“What’s wrong with you?” he shrieked.  “Can’t you let a fellow sleep?”

“It’s mid-afternoon,” replied the Jolly Executioner, “and we are weary travelers.  Ferry us across the river and you will be rewarded.”

“I will, will I? How do I know what you’ll pay me?  Could be, you’re lying.  How much do you have?”

“Enough to pay for this short passage.  Stop dithering, man; we have wounded.”

“And how did they get that way, that’s what I want to know.  No—save your lies.  All I care about is your money.  How much?”

“It’s no concern of yours how much we have.”

“Nah, nah—how much do you propose to pay me?  The river’s cold, my bed’s warm, and I’m not ferrying you all across until I know it’ll be worth my while.”

The Jolly Executioner looked over his company.  “Half-penny each,” he said, “for horses also.  That’s generous.”

The ferryman cleared his teeth with a filthy fingernail, thinking.  “We’ll see what the old bag thinks,” he said.  “Woman!  Get out here!”

The hut door opened and out stepped the second incredibly beautiful woman Stephen had seen in the past two weeks.  She had masses of feathery white-blond hair flowing down her back and enormous gray eyes.  These eyes flashed over the company once, as she leaned over to whisper in the ferryman’s ear.

He grinned and nodded.  “My wife,” he yelled over the river, “reckons it ought to be a penny each and double for the horse.”

His
wife
? thought Stephen. 
Really
?  He squinted at her.  It didn’t seem possible that someone blessed with such unearthly loveliness would choose to spend her life in the squalid hut of a repulsive ferryman.

Beside him, Youngster was having similar thoughts.  “She’s married to that horrible old idiot?”

“Maybe she’s horrible too, underneath.  She made the ferryman raise his price.”

“As is only right!  Imagine being that poor.  Wouldn’t you raise the price?”

“No; that’d be illegal.  The law sets prices on all enchantments.”

“But if you could—”

“Probably.  But she still might be horrible.”

“She’s not!  Look at her—you can tell she’s gentle and sweet.”

“Yes, well,” said Tinkerfingers, “just promise us you won’t try to ride to her rescue.  She might not find you an improvement.”

Youngster flushed and glared at him.

Further down the bank, the Jolly Executioner was haggling at the top of his lungs.  “For that price, we’d be better off swimming!”

“Wounded?  In freezing water?  Against this current?  Wearing armor? I’d like to see you try!”

The ferryman’s wife whispered in his ear.

“My wife says you’re being rude and I should raise the price.  Two pennies each.”

“Ridiculous!  Extortion!  Your original price was bad enough—but we’ll take it.  I am not an ungenerous man.”

“You’re a weirdo, that’s what you are!  And you’re too late.  Call it forty for the lot of you—excluding the horses.  You’ll have to leave them behind.  I don’t hold with ferrying livestock.”

“Forty!  There are only nineteen of us!”

“Forty’s close enough.”

“We’ll pay it—only if you include the horses.”

“For horses, you’d better be willing to pay sixty.”

“Forty-five.”

The ferryman’s wife whispered to him.  He nodded.  “Fifty, and not a penny less!”

“Done!”  The Jolly Executioner stepped back, muttering under his breath, “You old miser.  If conditions were other, I’d swim across the river and teach you some manners.”

Taking his time, the ferryman readied his ferry and poled across the Wooble.  Up close, Stephen liked the look of him even less.  The sour lines on his face were deepened by greed and malnutrition, and there was a craven twitch in his left eye.  It was, although he did not realize it, how most people imagined the face of an enchanter.

“I’ll take the money first,” the ferryman said, stopping five feet off the bank.  “Once it’s safe in my wife’s hands, I’ll come back for you lot.”

“What?” snarled the Jolly Executioner. 

“You think I’m stupid because I’m poor and ugly,” said the ferryman, “but I’m not.  You’re nineteen strong men and twenty horses.  How am I to protect myself against you if you attack me?”

“How would your wife protect the money, if she had it?” Stephen shot back.

“Don’t you get shirty with me—” the ferryman began, but broke off when he spotted Stephen’s blue robes.  “What’s that?”

“I,” said Stephen with great dignity, “am not a ‘what.’  I am an enchanter.”

The ferryman’s face twisted with bitter disgust.  “In that case, you can keep your money and your wounded.  I want no part in you lot.”  The ferryman adjusted his pole and made to push off.

Stephen could feel the angry eyes rounding on him, and he quickly realized that if he didn’t resolve the situation immediately, it would not go well for him.  So, with a sign, he once more drew himself up into enchanter mode.  He had never used it as frequently as since he had met the Jolly Executioner, and it was no longer as fun as it used to be. 

“Halt!” he cried, holding up a hand.

“Not likely.”

“Would you force me to use my magic upon you?  I am an enchanter!”

“But you can’t do a thing against me without breaking the law and getting yourself executed.  I know my rights.”  The ferryman moved to push off through the swiftly running water.

“Ferryman!” cried Stephen.  “Know this!  We are no ordinary band of travelers, and I no simple law-abiding magic worker.  If you leave us now I shall curse you forever!  Your toes shall wither and die upon your feet; flies will swarm about your head; your house shall fall down and disable your wife; your bed will be filled with maggots and they shall crawl into your eyes; all who see you will hate you and children will throw rocks upon you—”

“I’ll double your fee,” said the Jolly Executioner.

“You have a deal,” said the ferryman.

More than a dozen trips across the Wooble river later, the entire company stood on the outskirts of the town of Chubblewooble.

“I’ve kept my bargain,” said the ferryman.  “Keep yours.  Give me my money.”

“Certainly,” said the Jolly Executioner.  “When it is time to leave, you shall ferry us once more across the Chubble.  I shall go last, and when only we two stand upon the shore, I shall give you your fee.”

The ferryman bared his teeth.  “That wasn’t our agreement.”

“And yet our agreement never specified otherwise.”

The ferryman stomped his feet, swore at them all, and stormed back into his hovel.  His wife poked her head out a second later.  “Get on with you,” she said.  “Don’t hang about.”

“Believe me,” said Warthog; “we’ll be happy to go.”

“It’s not right,” sighed Youngster.  “She was so beautiful.  She should have been kind.”

Up close, Chubblewooble was nearly as abhorrent as the ferryman.  The buildings were ramshackle, the snow goopy brown and yellow, the atmosphere hopeless.  The few people about were thin, pallid individuals with dull eyes and lank hair; the only animals were rats and yowling cats.  All were emaciated to the point of grotesqueness.

Stephen had, in his many years as a traveling enchanter, learned to read towns.  He knew immediately which were friendly, which had work for him, which would pay, which would allow him to stay the night reasonably cheaply, and which it was wiser to avoid altogether. 

He wished the ferryman had refused them passage.

“We’ll start by looking for an inn,” announced the Jolly Executioner.  “If none, the townsfolk will have to put us up.  They look like they’ll take money.”

Stephen thought that money didn’t matter to these folks.  It didn’t, when there was nothing to buy.

“You can’t eat money,” muttered Whimsy, who apparently had the same idea.  Stephen shot him a sideways look.  He had never paid much attention to Whimsy before—and it was still so cold that all he could see of him was thick brown material and a long red scarf around his face.  It occurred to Stephen that he had seen the faces of almost none of the company, and the only face he had seen clearly had been Deadman’s, while he had been cutting the eyes out.

The eyes were still in his pocket.  He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with them—or whether he wanted to do anything with them, other than throw them as far away as he could.  But the Jolly Executioner would notice, and ask, and he would know Stephen had disobeyed his orders.

Stephen was struck with unexpected shame.  He had been excusing all his actions by telling himself that he was following orders.  He had all but told the ferryman that he had gone rogue.  Was that what he was—really?  Was he willing to do anything, so long as he had an excuse?  Had he obeyed the law all these years not because he thought it was right, but because he was afraid not to?  Had he no standards at all?  Sure, the Jolly Executioner might be annoyed if Stephen threw the eyeballs away, but—what if it was the right thing to do?  Was Stephen willing to do something wrong, because the Jolly Executioner had wanted him to? 

Was there no going back from the slaughter in Crying?  He didn’t have to be a criminal just because people thought he was.

Had he gone rogue without realizing it?

Stephen took his hand out of his pocket.  The eyes stayed where they were, along with shame.

It didn’t matter, he told himself.  It’s what Deadman would have wanted.  That’s what his friends had said.

Was Banananose a friend of Deadman?  Stephen had no idea.  He hadn’t seemed very sad, but then, Stephen had been able to see no more of his face than the bulge his nose made under his facemask.

“There,” said Granite, pointing.  “There’s your inn.”

The inn was nothing like Stephen would have expected for such a town.  He had seldom seen a more welcoming sight. 
The Dry Juicer
was a large inn, a full two stories tall with additional attached stables for their horses.  The inn was large enough that it might actually have beds for all of them—glorious, warm beds with soft mattresses and blankets and actual food, not endless supplies of wolf meat and venison and ancient scones.