Swords & Dark Magic (22 page)

(That was a year ago. It’s still there.)

The rest of the round was just straightforward stuff: a possession, a small rift, a couple of incursions, which I sealed with a strong closure and duly reported when I got back. Since then, I’ve volunteered for a screening, been to see a couple of counselors, bought a pair of full-length mirrors. And I’ve been promoted; field officer, superior grade. They’re quite pleased with me, and no wonder. I seem to be getting better at the job all the time. And I’m writing a paper, would you believe: modifications to
unam sanctam
. Quicker, safer, much more efficient. So blindingly obvious, I’m surprised no one’s ever thought of it before.

Father Prior is surprised but pleased. I don’t know what’s got into you, he said.

GARTH NIX grew up in Canberra, Australia. When he turned nineteen, he left to drive around the United Kingdom in a beat-up Austin with a boot full of books and a Silver-Reed typewriter. Despite a wheel literally falling off the car, he survived to return to Australia and study at the University of Canberra. He has since worked in a bookshop, as a book publicist, a publisher’s sales representative, an editor, a literary agent, and as a public relations and marketing consultant. His first story was published in 1984 and was followed by novels
The Ragwitch, Sabriel, Shade’s Children, Lirael, Abhorsen,
the six-book YA fantasy series the Seventh Tower, and, most recently, the seven-book the Keys to the Kingdom series. He lives in Sydney with his wife and their two children.

A SUITABLE PRESENT FOR A SORCEROUS PUPPET

Garth Nix

Sir Hereward licked his finger and turned the page of the enormous tome that was perched precariously on a metal frame next to his sickbed. It was not a book he would have chosen to read—or rather to fossick through like a rook searching for seed in a new-sown field—but as it was the only book in the lonely tower by the sea, he had little choice. Having broken two small but important bones in his left foot, he could not range farther afield for other amusements, so reading it had to be. This particular book was entitled
The Compendium of Commonplaces
and presented itself as a collection of knowledge that should be at the command of every reasonably educated gentleman of Jerreke, a country that had ceased to exist some thousand years before, shortly after the book was printed.

The demise of Jerreke and the publication of the book were not likely to be connected, though Sir Hereward did notice that the pages were often bound out of order, or the folios were incorrect, and that there was a general carelessness with numbers. Together, these might be symptomatic of the somewhat unusual end of Jerreke, a city-state which had defaulted on its debts so enormously that its entire population had to be sold into slavery.

The finger-licking was required by the book’s long, dark hibernation inside a chest up in the attic of the tower. A thoroughly damp finger was a necessary aid to the separation of the sadly gummed-together pages.

Sir Hereward sighed as he turned another page. His enthusiasm for reading had diminished in the turning of several hundred pages, with its concomitant several hundred finger-lickings, for he had found only two entries worth reading: one on how to cheat at a board game that had changed its name but was still widely played in the known world; and another on the multiplicity of uses of the root spice cabizend, some surprising number of which fell into Hereward’s professional area of expertise as an artillerist and maker of incendiaries.

In fact, Hereward was about to give up and bellow to the housekeeper who kept the tower to bring him some ale, when the title of the next commonplace caught his eye. It was called “On the Propitiation of Sorcerous Puppets.”

As Sir Hereward’s constant companion, comrade-in-arms, and onetime nanny was a sorcerous puppet known as Mister Fitz, this was very much of interest to the injured knight. He eagerly read on, and though the piece was short and referred solely to the more usual kind of sorcerous puppet—one made to sing, dance, and entertain—he did learn something new.

According to Doctor Professor Laxelender Prouzin, the author of this particular, far-from-commonplace entry, all sorcerous puppets shared a common birthday, much in the manner of the priests of a number of particularly jealous godlets, who allowed no individuality among their chosen servants (some of them even going as far as the Xarwashian god of bookkeeping and ware-houses, who not only refused his servants individual birthdays but referred to them all by the same name).

Sir Hereward quickly calculated this shared birthday of the puppets, transposing the Tramontic calendar that had been used in Jerreke with the more modern Adjusted Celestial, and discovered that it would occur in a matter of days, depending on whether it was currently the first or the second day of what the Adjusted Celestial calendar prosaically called “Second Month” and the Tramontics had termed “Expialomon.”

As Sir Hereward had been laid up for a week already, and had no urgent matters to attend to, he had rather lost track of the date.

“Sister Gobbe!” called out Sir Hereward. “Sister Gobbe!”

Sister Gobbe was the priestess-housekeeper who looked after the tower and its guests as a representative of the Cloister of Narhalet-Narhalit. Colloquially known as Nar-Nar, it was a gentle and kindly deity whose slow but healing powers had aided tens of thousands of petitioners over the last several millennia. This particular tower was one of the more remote bastions of Nar-Nar’s presence upon the earth, and likely to be abandoned in the not too distant future. Hence it was staffed only by Sister Gobbe and an as yet unseen novice Sir Hereward believed might be called “Sisterling Lallit”—a name he had overheard being hissed by Sister Gobbe outside his door the previous evening. There was also a guard, a small but broad-shouldered fellow with a very large ax, who doubtless could call upon Nar-Nar’s rather less well-known powers to open wounds that hadn’t even happened yet, rather than heal ones that had.

Fortunately for all concerned, Narhalet-Narhalit was far from a proscribed entity, but a welcome extrusion into the world, so the god and its followers were not an item of business for Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz. Consequently, their discovery of the tower en route from Tar’s End to Bazynghame had been a welcome opportunity for the lame and hobbling knight to rest up and let the bones in his foot knit faster than they would anywhere else.

Mister Fitz had also taken their forced rest as an opportunity to engage in some activity that he said had hitherto been impracticable on their travels, though Sir Hereward was not entirely sure what that meant. The sorcerous puppet was up to something. He had taken to exploring the sea caves that ate into the cliffs near the tower, and he returned each evening covered in a layer of what looked like salt, suggesting immersion in the ocean and subsequent drying. This was odd in a creature who usually avoided complete submersion, being made of papier-mâché and carved timber, albeit sorcerously altered, but Sir Hereward had not made enquiry. He knew that Mister Fitz would tell him of his activities in due course, if there was any need for Sir Hereward to know.

“Sir?”

It was not Sister Gobbe who appeared in the doorway, red-faced and puffing as she always was from the tightly spiraling stair, but a considerably younger and far more attractive attendant, who might have wafted her way upstairs on a beam of sunlight, for she was neither out of breath, nor was her habit or broad-brimmed hat in any disarray.

“I am Sisterling Lallit,” said the vision. “Sister Gobbe has had to go into the village, to speak to Boll about the veal to go with the crayfish sauce for Your Honor’s dinner. Is there anything you need?”

Sir Hereward continued to stare and failed to answer. It had been some months since he had even the slightest conversation with a beautiful woman, and he was both surprised and sadly out of practice. But as she continued to stand in the door, with her head down and her face shadowed by her hat, he recovered himself.

“My companion, Mister Fitz,” he began. “The puppet, you know…”

“Yes, sir,” said Sisterling Lallit. “A most wondrous puppet, and so wise.”

“Yes…just so,” said Sir Hereward. He wondered what Mister Fitz had been talking about with Sisterling Lallit, but pressed on. “It is his birthday on the fourth of Second Month—”

“Tomorrow!” exclaimed Lallit, proving Sir Hereward had been even more careless about the passage of time than he’d thought. She raised her hands and inadvertently looked up, to show Hereward a face of great charm and liveliness, though sadly marred by the lack of the old and faded facial scars he had been brought up to regard as necessary to true beauty. “You should have said! It will be a doing to manage a feast—”

“Mister Fitz does not eat, so a feast is superfluous,” said Sir Hereward, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “However, I wish to give him a present. Given that we are leagues from any shop or merchant, and in any case, I cannot for the moment leave my bed…I wondered if there might be something suitable in the tower that I might purchase for Mister Fitz.”

“Something suitable?” asked Lallit. She tugged her earlobe and frowned, a gesture Sir Hereward found irresistible. “I don’t know…”

“Come and sit by me,” said Sir Hereward. He slid over and patted the mattress by his side. “To begin with, you can tell me what is in the attic above. Most particularly, a musical instrument would meet the need.”

Doctor Professor Laxelender Prouzin had written that musical instruments were the usual gift to an entertainer puppet, and Sir Hereward supposed that one might be of interest to Mister Fitz, who was quite capable of appearing to be an entertainer puppet. He could sing most sweetly and seemingly play any musical instrument, and dance fascinatingly as well. But Mister Fitz was not an entertainer puppet, and usually only deployed these talents as a ruse or deception, shortly before unleashing his other, even more greatly developed skills as a practitioner of arcane arts that were not generally the province of puppets. Or of people, for that matter.

“Oh, I’m not allowed to come into your room, sir,” exclaimed Lallit. “Sister Gobbe is most strict about who may handle patients, and Mister Fitz told me of your vow, and I would not wish to accidentally—”

“My vow?” asked Sir Hereward suspiciously. He thought for a moment, then asked, “Ah, which one? I have…made several.”

“To not share the breath of a woman, by intent or accident—save a consecrated priestess of course—till you have finished your pilgrimage to the Rood of Bazynghame,” said Lallit innocently. “Don’t worry, I shall breathe ever so softly, and stay in the doorway.”

“I am grateful,” said Sir Hereward, though he felt quite the opposite emotion.

“About this present for Mister Fitz…”

“Perhaps it is all too difficult,” said Sir Hereward, whose affection for the puppet had encountered a sudden reverse. He turned his head to the side and sighed heavily. “I shall simply wish him a happy birthday and leave it at that.”

“But there is an instrument in the attic,” said Lallit. “In the same chest your book came from, there is a mandora…or a gallichon…of five strings, such as my uncle plays. Though it is perhaps too large and heavy for Mister Fitz.”

Sir Hereward thought of several occasions when Mister Fitz had shown his true strength. He remembered those spindly wooden puppet arms inside Mister Fitz’s thin coat, the cuffs sliding back as he lifted the Arch-Priest of Larruk-Agre above his bulbous head and threw him into the mouth of the volcano; or the time when Fitz had beheaded a slave gladiator below the arena pits of Yarken. The look of surprise on the fellow’s face had matched Sir Hereward’s own expression, for Mister Fitz had been standing on the gladiator’s head at the time, and had pulled the tip of the man’s own blade back…

“I can fetch it down,” said Lallit, interrupting his reminiscences. “Sister Gobbe would set a fair price, I’m sure.”

“Very well,” said Hereward. “A fine mandora might be the very thing. If it is not too much trouble, I would like to see it. When is Sister Gobbe returning?”

“Oh, I will fetch it for you now,” said Lallit. “Sister Gobbe won’t be back for hours yet.”

“My thanks,” said Sir Hereward. “But how will you hand it to me, if we must not share our breath?”

“Oh, I can hold my breath for ages,” said Lallit innocently. She demonstrated, taking a deep breath that thrust out her chest. Sir Hereward watched in admiration, tempered by his annoyance at Mister Fitz. It was uncharacteristic of the puppet to preemptively meddle in Hereward’s amorous affairs, and it galled no less to know it was almost certainly for a good reason.

Lallit held her breath for quite some time, before suddenly exhaling, turning her head so her breath went up the stairs. She smiled and followed it up to the attic. A minute later, Hereward heard her footsteps as she looked around, the oak-planked floor of the attic being the ceiling of his room.

The novice returned a few minutes later, carrying a stringed instrument that looked to Sir Hereward like an oversize lute. He could play the lute somewhat, and sing passably, as Mister Fitz graded his voice, but the knight had done neither for some years.

Lallit paused for an intake of breath and the resultant inflation of her habit at the door, then nimbly crossed the room, deposited the mandora on the end of Hereward’s bed, and retreated as swiftly back to the stair.

Hereward leaned forward and took up the instrument. The mandora was made of ash with an open rose of ebony inlaid around the sound hole. It was still strung, which surprised him, for it had presumably been there for some lengthy time, and the strings were of a material other than gut, one that he could not immediately recognize.

He was about to pluck a note when he saw that the sound hole was obstructed, and that there was something inside the body of the mandora. Closer investigation revealed it to be a parchment folded into a triangle, which was sealed with wax at each corner. It could not be removed without de-stringing the instrument, which meant that it had been put there on purpose, and the mandora strung thereafter.