Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey (43 page)

Von Graeb turned and swung his saber at Mowler. In a move far too quick for his aged frame, the necromancer deflected the blade with his bare hand. Von Graeb fell off balance as the weight of the blade was scattered into a thousand tiny shards that harmlessly rained down on the floor. He stood in an attempt to grapple the old man, but a circular wall of black flame sprang up around Mowler.

“Ah! So cold it burns!” Von Graeb shouted, withdrawing from the black fire. He put his burnt hand into his jacket and withdrew.

Viktor and Al’ghul both sprang toward the sorcerer, but they were likewise repulsed by the eldritch fire.

Lescher, infuriated, yelled “You used me! I thought you were the graf! My dedication is to the empire, not to a devil-lover. I’ll have you, old man!”

The servant hefted a nearby wooden chair and threw it at Mowler, but it bounced harmlessly off the flickering ebony wall.

The sorcerer still stood, so Heraclix, determined to rid the world of his curse, drew the silvered scimitar and approached.

Mowler held one hand up, then the other, as if to defend himself from the golem’s imminent attack.

Suddenly, Heraclix stopped still, frozen to the floor, unable to move.

“He has the marks!” Shouted Al’ghul, “the marks of binding on his hands!”

Those who could see his upheld palms through the black flame beheld two glowing yellow sigils there, as if hot coals had been
embedded in the old man’s flesh. Indeed, smoke writhed up past his fingertips and into the air before him.

“You know you
could
actually do me harm with that sword,” Mowler taunted, “if only you could move . . . boy!

“As for the rest of you. I will hear no more of you. Silence!” he yelled, his voice magically amplified to the point that the chandelier in the room shook and all in the room covered their ears, momentarily deafened. Each tried to cry out, but their voices were mute.

If they could have heard, they would have heard a strange noise, a voice, but not a completely human voice, croaking its way through the air and into the chamber.

“Caw! Caw! Phony!” it said, circling overhead.

“Cacophony, my old friend,” Mowler said. “Good. I was afraid I was at a momentary stalemate. Now the tide turns in my favor yet again. Come to me, my friend.”

Caw-Caw-Phony flew down in an ever-tightening spiral, well within the circle of flame by the time the raven-demon glided beneath the topmost black tongues.

Mowler turned toward the emperor, whose hearing, as with the others, had now returned.

“Your majesty, perhaps you should save everyone here a great deal of pain by voluntarily surrendering to the Ottomans. It would be most judicious of you. They are, by now, through Bozsok and approaching the city gates. So much destruction is avoidable, if you make it so. So much sorrow. Such a waste.”

The sound of running boots preceded the entry of Sergeant Herzog into the chamber. At first all he could manage was “What in . . .” Then, seeing the emperor, Herzog bowed, after hastily acknowledging the others in what appeared to be a rather chaotic matter of state in which he didn’t want to become involved, and gave this report: “Your majesty, the enemy army is on its way from Bozsok followed by another Ottoman force ten times larger marching in its wake! There is little hope . . .”

“There is
no
hope!” Mowler shouted, delighted.

“Now you shall witness the greatest sacrifice the world has ever known! And I, I shall wrest the crown of Hell from the decapitated head of Beelzebub himself!”

He smiled a wide, gap filled smile, then turned to Caw-Caw-Phony, who had perched itself on his shoulder. “Come, my friend, we will go open the gates of the city and invite the first of our sacrificial host. They will soon be joined in battle with the forces to the north, whom I shall rush here for the special occasion. Then I will offer them all up to the very powers of darkness and open the gates of Hell on Earth. It shall be a glorious entry that will lead to the coronation of the new King of the Underworld! Now, we must go . . .”

Mowler paused for a moment, straining to hear something.

“What was that? Do speak up, you stupid bird. I can’t hear what it is you are trying to tell me.”

He moved his head to the side, closer to Caw-Caw-Phony.

“I said speak . . . Ow!” Mowler yelped and recoiled. “Ah! Stop! What are you doing, foul fowl?”

He winced, reached up to grab the bird, who pecked again and again at the sorcerer’s head. Soon, a light stream of blood trickled from the silver beak.

“Get off of me!” Mowler yelled, swinging wildly at the bird. Caw-Caw-Phony deftly pecked at the sorcerer’s pate until the old lich connected with a lucky swipe that sent the bird sprawling to the ground, seemingly dead.

“Even you are against me, but why . . .”

He stopped as he saw the bird’s carcass flutter, lift up from the floor, and fall again. Its gut had been split, and from the hole emerged a diminutive figure who drew a bow back to its full strain.

“Pomp hates to do this,” she said.

Pomp let the arrow fly. It struck Mowler full in the face, causing him to jerk backward and take two staggering steps back to maintain his balance.

As he steadied himself, his features softened. The evil grin that had smeared his countenance relaxed into a pleasant smile. His eyes grew wide and soft.

“My, but you are beautiful,” he said.

The wall of black flame disappeared.

Pomp stifled a gag.

“Pomp really hates to do this.”

“But I, Mowler, no, call me Mattatheus, I Mattatheus, well, I don’t know if I have the words to express my admiration for you, my . . . yes, it’s true . . . my love!”

“Hurry up!” Pomp called out.

“Oh, but let’s not rush in, let’s enjoy the time . . .”

“Not you!” Pomp said sternly, “Viktor, hurry up!”

“Right away,” the real Graf Von Edelweir said, surprised that his voice had returned to him once the wizard was distracted. “But I was so enjoying . . .”

“Now!” Pomp yelled.

“All right,” he said, pulling a round object from his robes.

Von Edelweir uttered some words that Mowler might have understood if he wasn’t, at that moment, completely enamored of little Pomp.

Mowler didn’t see that the object that the graf cast toward the ground at his feet was a painted ceramic eyeball that burst open in a flash and a puff of smoke. He didn’t see the man-shaped headless figure that emerged from the smoke. Mowler only had eyes for Pomp, and he realized too late that Panopticus had eyes only for Mowler. Hundreds and hundreds of eyes.

When he felt his soul slipping from his body he began to understand that he was being killed by the demon.

“Pomp, my love! Help me! I only want to be with you, my life shall be a torment without you!”

Panopticus laughed and all in the room shuddered.

“Oh, you shall know torment,” said the demon with no mouth, “I’ll see to that. And as for life, you won’t need to worry about that any more!”

And as the ghost slipped from Mowler’s dying body, Panopticus grabbed the screeching ectoplasmic entity and packed it with his hands as if he were forming a snowball, cramming it in on itself until Mowler’s screams grew more and more quiet—until it cried in a very, very tiny voice, it’s final word: “Pomp!”

Panopticus laughed, holding up a barbed-tail larva by its hook, the wrinkled face of Mattatheus Mowler the only characteristic left to distinguish it from every other newly lost soul in Hell.

“His Majesty, Beelzebub, King of Hell, shall have a devil of a time with you, my little pet!”

“Pztkzx!” the worm replied.

Panopticus vanished in a blinding flash leaving only the smell of sulfurous smoke behind.

The agha and his men stumbled up into the foothills south of Bozsok, bruised and bitten. The town’s location was easily seen as a plume of smoke atop the mountain. They quickly ascended the hill, as much to flee the strange place through which they had just traveled as to meet up with the rest of the pasha’s army. The agha’s horse had to be put down, as his dancing had killed three men and broken twice as many limbs before the men came to their senses long enough to kill the beast. To add insult to injury, the supernatural forces that had terrorized his men and entranced his horse saw fit not only to force his horse to dance into his men, but to do it in the form of a most undignified and embarrassing Germanic Polka.

But now the agha led his troops on foot up to the burning village and there reported to the pasha.

“Most exalted pasha,” the agha reported, “I am here with my men, though we lost three men and my horse to some strange phenomena a few miles back.”

“You need not make up stories for why you are late, agha,” the pasha said. “Today will be ours. I can understand your giddiness at the prospect of victory.”

“Victory, so soon?” the agha asked.

“Very soon. Look back whence you came.”

A cloud of dust ascended from the foothills.

“The sultan has heard of my genius and has sent his army to join the fray! I shall be rewarded handsomely, I suspect.”

The hooves of the approaching cavalry became a deafening roar. The air choked with dust.

But it wasn’t dust that caused the pasha to wrinkle his brow. Though his own ego inflated with the thought of rich reward, it didn’t fully overshadow his reason. He recognized the sultan’s guard, the swordmaster at the head, a pair of janissaries behind him, and a cadre of viziers, at the center of which rode the sultan himself. Surely the entourage was meant to show the importance that the sultan had put on his meeting with Pasha Mustafa Il-Ibrahim.

One question nagged at him. “How did they get here so quickly?” he said aloud.

“Probably the same way we came,” the agha replied.

“But that was not in the plan . . .”

“Pasha Il-Ibrahim!” the sultan called out. “Come forth!” The sultan’s entourage parted to allow the pasha to dismount, bow, and crawl toward the Sultan’s horse.

Il-Ibrahim expected to lift his eyes to a vision of grandeur: the sultan, fat and smiling, his gold tooth sparkling in the sun, hand extended to the pasha with a bag full of precious gems, a pair of shapely virgins to whom the sultan would nod, signaling the women to take their place by the pasha’s side to be wed right there on the spot.

“Pasha!” the sultan’s voice called him out of the dream.

He looked up and was sorely disappointed.

A circle of lance points converged on the area around his head like a sharp iron halo.

“Pasha. I did not authorize this incursion.”

“Ah . . .” Il-Ibrahim began.

“Silence dog! Do not speak. You shall never again speak as a pasha.”

The sultan gestured to the side.

“This,” he motioned for someone to come nearer, “is your replacement, the new pasha, Beyruit Al Mahdr.”

Al Mahdr ceremoniously stooped down and removed the fez from Il-Ibrahim’s head.

“He won’t be needing that any more,” the sultan joked.

The shadow of an ax made its way through the crowd.

E
PILOGUE

H
eraclix and Pomp walked and flew, respectively, down a long, flat road lined with broad canals, sun to their right as evening approached. Behind them, Vienna was lit up with candles in celebration of the marriage of the new Viennese Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Graf Felix Von Graeb, to the emperor’s cousin, the Lady Adelaide. Across the canals, vast fields of tulips swayed in the spring breeze, the cool, salty wind of the North Sea gently blowing in their faces. An old man in a green boat waved without looking, then retracted the gesture when he saw the enormity of the lone traveler. Of course, Pomp couldn’t be seen.

“Another hour or so, and we’ll be there,” the giant says.

“Tell Pomp again, before we get there.” She was quite proud to be the only one in Faerie to understand “before.” “Tell Pomp why you must go.”

“Think back”—Heraclix was amused and quite proud that Pomp was, perhaps, the only fairy who
could
understand these words—“to what happened after Pasha Beyruit Al Mahdr met Graf Viktor Von Edelweir, the
real
Von Edelweir, at the borders of Bozsok.”