A Stark And Wormy Knight (29 page)

Despite the creature’s unusual strategem, Lixal won again that night. He had been put on notice, however: the deodand was learning and he would have to increase the effort he put into the games if he wished to maintain his supremacy and his unbroken record. He found himself regretting, as he had many times before, that hundreds of consecutive victories in a game of skill should net him exactly nothing in the way of monetary reward. It was a suffering more poignant than anything Eliastre could have devised for him.

* * *

At last they reached the small metropolis of Catechumia, home of Twitterel’s Emporium. Lixal and the deodand paused and waited for nightfall in a glade on the outskirts of town, not far from the place where Lixal’s troop had once camped.

“Do not trouble yourself with speech when we meet Eliastre,” he warned the deodand. “It will be a tense negotiation and best served by devices I alone can bring to bear. In fact,” he said after a moment’s thought, “It may be best if you remain outside the door while I step just inside it, so that the treacherous onetime mage knows nothing of your presence and can prepare no defense against you, should I find it necessary to call upon you.”

“You have tried once already to trap me on the other side of a door, Laqavee,” the deodand said sourly. “Not only that, but it was a church door, which you thought might increase the efficacy of the strategem. And what happened?”

“You wrong me! That was weeks ago and I intend no such trickery here…!”

“You discovered you could not go forward while I remained on the other side of the door,” the creature reminded him. “Like the golden links of a magister’s cuff, we are bound together, willy-nilly — one cannot proceed without the other.”

“As far as our current plan, I desired only to keep your presence a secret at the outset,” Lixal said in a sulky voice. “But you will do as you feel you must.”

“Yes, I shall,” said the deodand. “And you would be wise to remember that.”

When midnight came they crossed town swiftly and mostly silently, although Lixal was forced to remonstrate severely with the deodand who would have eaten a drunkard he found sleeping in an alcove outside a shuttered tavern.

“He is of no interest to anyone except me,” the creature argued. “How can you prevent me when you have starved me of proper man-flesh for so long?”

“Because if we are discovered things will go badly for both of us. If the gnawed bones of even the lowliest of townsfolk come to public attention, will not the presence of such as yourself in Catechumia instantly be inferred?”

“They might suppose a wolf had snuck into town,” suggested the deodand. “Why do you continually thwart me? You will not even let me eat the flesh of the dead of your species, which your people scorn so much they bury it in the ground, far from their habitations!”

“I do not let you eat the flesh of corpses because it sickens me,” replied Lixal coldly. “It is proof that, no matter how you aspire to be otherwise, you and your ilk are no better than beasts.”

“Like those you call beasts, we do not waste perfectly edible tissues. Our own kind, at the end of their days, are perfectly happy to be returned to the communal stomach.”

Lixal shuddered. “Enough. This is the street.”

But to his great unhappiness, when Lixal approached the doorway of what had once been Twitterel’s Emporium it gave every sign of being long deserted. “Here,” Lixal cried, “this is wretched in the extreme! The coward has decamped. Let us enter and see if there is any clue to his present whereabouts.”

The deodand easily, if somewhat noisily, broke the bolt on the door and they went into the large, dark room that had once been densely packed with Twitterel-who-was-Eliastre’s stock in trade. Now nothing lined the shelves but cobwebs, and even these looked long-abandoned. A rat, perhaps disturbed by the deodand’s unusual scent, scurried into a corner hole and disappeared.
“He seems to have left you a note, Laqavee,” said the deodand, pointing. “It has your name on it.”

Lixal, who did not have the creature’s sharp vision, had to locate the folded parchment nailed to the wall by touch, then take it outside into the flickering glow of the street-lantern to read it.

To Lixal Laqavee, extortionist and counterfeit thaumaturge,

the missive began,

If you are reading this, one of two things has occurred. If you have come to pay what you owe me, I stand surprised and pleased. In this case you may give thirteen thousand terces to the landlord of this establishment (he lives next door) and I will receive it from him at a time in the future and in a manner known only to myself. In a spirit of forgiveness, I will also warn you that at no time should you attempt the Exhalation of Thunderous Banishment on a deodand.

If you have not returned to erase your debt, as I think more likely, it is because you have used the Exhalation on one of the dusky creatures, but for some reason my intention of teaching you a lesson has been thwarted and you mean to remonstrate with me. (It is possible that my transposition of two key words, because hurried, was not as damaging to the effect as I hoped. It is even remotely possible that the protective charm you wore on your wrist was more useful than it appeared, in which case I must blame my own overconfidence.) If any combination of these is the case for your return, my various curses upon you remain in force and I inform you also that I have moved my business to another town and chosen another name, so that any attempt by you to stir up trouble for me with the Council of Thaumaturgic Practitioners will be doomed to failure.

You, sir, may rot in hell with my congenial approval.

signed, He Who Was Twitterel

Lixal crumpled the parchment in his fist. “Repay him?” he growled. “His purse will groan indeed with the weight of my repayment. His account shall be paid to bursting!”

“Your metaphors are inexact,” the deodand said. “I take it we shall not be parting company as quickly as we both had hoped.”

* * *

Like two prisoners condemned to share a cell, Lixal and the deodand grew weary of each other’s company in the weeks and months after they left Catechumia. Lixal searched half-heartedly for news of the ex-wizard Eliastre, but he was inhibited by the constant presence of the deodand, who proved a dampening influence on conversation with most of humankind, and so he all but gave up hope of ever locating the author of his predicament, who could have set up shop anew in any one of hundreds of towns and cities across Almery or even farther countries still.

While they were everywhere shunned by men, they came occasionally into contact with other deodands, who looked on Lixal not with fear or curiosity, but rather as a potential source of nutrients. When his bracelet proved more than these new deodands could overcome, they settled instead for desultory gossip with their trapped comrade. Lixal was forced to listen to long discussions criticizing what all parties but himself saw as his ridiculous opposition to the eating of human flesh, living or dead. The deodand bound to him by the Exhalation was inevitably buoyed after these discussions with like-minded peers, and would often bring an even greater energy to bear on their nightly games of King’s Compass: at times Lixal was hard-pressed to keep up his unbroken record of victories, but keep it he did, and, stinging from the deodandic imputation of his prudishness, did not hesitate to remind his opponent as often as possible of that creature’s campaign of futility.

“Yes, it is easy to criticize,” Lixal often said as the board was packed away. “But one has only to review our sporting history to see who has the superior approach to life.” He was even beginning to grow used to this mode of existence, despite the inadequate nature of the deodand as both a conversationalist and competitor.

Then, almost a year after their initial joining, came the day when the talismanic bracelet, the admirer’s gift that had so long protected Lixal Laqavee’s life, suddenly ceased to function.

* * *

Lixal discovered that the spell was no longer efficacious in a sudden and extremely unpleasant manner: one moment he slept, dreaming of a charmed scenario in which he was causing Eliastre’s bony nose to sprout carbuncles that were actually bigger than the ex-wizard himself, and laughing as the old man screeched and pleaded for mercy. Then he awoke to discover the deodand’s stinking breath on his face and the demonic yellow eyes only an inch or two from his own.

Lixal had time only for a choked squeal, then the taloned hand closed on his neck.

“Oh, but you are soft, you humans,” the thing whispered, not from stealth it seemed but from pure pleasure in the moment, as if to speak loudly would be to induce a jarring note into an otherwise sublime melody. “My claws would pass through your throat like butter. I will certainly have to choose a slower and more satisfying method of dispatching you.”

“M-my b-b-bracelet,” stuttered Lixal. “What have you done to it?”

“I?” The deodand chortled. “I have done nothing. But as I recall, it was meant to protect you from untimely death. Apparently in whatever way these things are calculated your time of dying has arrived. Perhaps in a different state of affairs, a paralleled existence of some sort, this is the moment when you would have been struck lifeless by a falling slate from a roof or mowed down by an overladen horse cart whose driver had lost his grip on the reins. But fear not! In this plane of reality you shall not have to go searching for your death, Laqavee, since by convenience I am here to make certain that things proceed for you as just the Fates desire they should!”

“But why? Have I mistreated you so badly? We have traveled together for a full round of seasons.” Lixal raised a trembling hand with the intention of giving the deodand an encouraging, brotherly pat, but at the sight of the creature’s bared fangs he swiftly withdrew it again. “We are as close as any of our two kinds have ever been – we understand each other as well as our two species have ever managed. Surely it would be a shame to throw all that away!”

The deodand made a noise of sarcastic amusement. “What does that mean? Had you spent a year chained against your will to a standing rib roast, do you suggest that when the fetters were removed you would suddenly wish to preserve your friendship with it? You are my prey, Laqavee. Circumstances have pressed us together. Now circumstances have released me to destroy you.”

The grip on his neck was tightening now. “Hold, hold!” Lixal cried. “Do you not remember what you yourself suggested? That if I were to die you would be held to the spot where my bones fell?”

“I have considered just that during this long night, since I first realized your magical bracelet no longer dissuaded me. My solution is elegant: I shall devour you bones and all. Thus I will be confined only to the vicinity of my own stomach, something that is already the case.” The deodand laughed in pleasure. “After all, you spoke glowingly yourself of the closeness of our acquaintanceship, Laqavee — surely you could wish no greater proximity than within my gut!”

The foul stench of the thing’s breath was almost enough to snatch away what little remained of Lixal’s dizzied consciousness. He closed his eyes so that he would not have to see the deodand’s terrible gaze when it murdered him. “Very well, then,” he said with as much aplomb as he could muster, although every limb in his body trembled as though he had an ague. “At least I die with the satisfaction of knowing that a deodand has never beaten a human at King’s Compass and now never shall.”

He waited.

He continued to wait.

Lixal could not help remembering that the deodand had earlier spoken of a death both slower and more satisfying than simply having his throat torn out – satisfying to the murderous creature, Lixal had no doubt, rather than to himself. Was that why the thing hesitated?

At last he opened his eyes again. The fiery yellow orbs were asquint in anger and some other emotion, harder to discern.

“You have put your finger on a problem,” the deodand admitted. “By my account, you have beaten me thrice-three-hundred and forty-four times out of an equal number of contests. And yet I have felt for some time now that I was on the verge of mastering the game and defeating you. You yourself must admit that our matches have become more competitive.”

“In all fairness, I must agree with your assertion,” said Lixal. “You have improved both your hoarding and your double sentry maneuver.”

The deodand stood, keeping its claw wrapped around Lixal Laqavee’s neck and thus forcing him to stand as well. “Here is my solution,” the creature told him. “We will continue to play. As long as you can defeat me I will let you live, because I must know that when I win, as ultimately I feel sure I must, it will be by the sole fact of my own improving skill.”

Lixal felt a little relieved – his death was to be at least momentarily postponed – but the knowledge did not bring the quickening of hope that might have accompanied such a reprieve in other circumstances. The deodand did not sleep, while Lixal felt the need to do so for many hours of every day. The deodand was swift and powerful while he, Lixal, was a great deal less so. And no human with any wit at all would try to help him.

Still, perhaps something unforeseen might happen that would allow him to conquer the beast or escape. The events of Lixal’s life had taught him that circumstances were bound to change, and occasionally even for the better.