The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies (3 page)

There was a mirror on the wall beside the door: chest-high for me, full-length for him. He paused and made a face in it. ‘A little girl ought to have some beauty in her life, and in my experience, Yule is when she feels the need most keenly. Even an old Dwarf needs that much; more especially if he’s got no beauty of his own.

‘Hand me down those two boxes, will you? I have a little errand in town.’

I was talking one day with my friend and cover artist, Sarah Dimento (who, by the bye, is a very interesting writer in her own right; I hope you may have a chance to read some of her work one day). We were having a good laugh about online role-playing games, and the immense amounts of magical junk that players accumulate in their monomaniac quest for the biggest and best and flashiest and lethalest gear. And we took to wondering: What happens to all the old equipment that the players trade in for petty cash? I made some investigations—

I had stopped to window-shop, then come in to price a bit of cheap jewellery. The proprietor must have liked the look of me, for he trusted me enough to take a display box of rings and gewgaws out from under glass and let me rummage through them on my own. While I was amusing myself with that, another customer came in, a bulging canvas bag over his shoulder. He was one of these adventurers by the look of him, and not an experienced one; he had on a lot of shiny new armour and other rubbish, more stylish than practical, probably sold to him by some huckster who spotted him for a rube and told him the yarn about how this stuff was 
just
what he needed. This fellow was the counterpart to the first-time camper who goes ‘roughing it’ with six carts full of gear and all the discomforts of home.

Your true hero goes out with a flint and steel and a case-knife, and comes back with a hoard of treasure and a rescued princess – if he wants them. I knew one once, such an old hand that he didn’t even trouble with the flint, and only bothered with princesses if he could score a brace of them. He said it was no more trouble to rescue two at a time, and a lot more sporting to try and bring them back without having them scratch each other’s eyes out. Princesses are a jealous lot, and give the lie to the old yarn about breeding equating to good manners. If you want to see worse manners than wildcats fighting, just stir up two princesses with the same dress on, and set them down in a room together. It needn’t even be dresses; your more particular sort will start up if they both have the same colour of eyes. Jade-green and violet are the worst; especially the ones with tip-tilted noses—

But I digress. This raw young kid with about a hundred pounds of gear on his person, not counting the bag, sauntered in as if he was somebody and heaved the bag up on the counter. I kept still and listened. It is always good to see a skilful tradesman at work, even if he is only a pawnbroker; and this one was a master. He said:—

‘Can I help you?’

‘It says 
Cash for Treasures, Old and Rare,
’ said the kid, referring to the sign outside. ‘If you’ve got the cash, I’ve got the treasures.’

The pawnbroker put on his best shop smile. ‘Well, let’s see what you’ve got.’

The kid puffed his chest up about three sizes and started taking junk out of the bag. ‘For starters, here’s a genuine magic dagger, gold-wrapped hilt, cabochon ruby pommel—’

‘What power is it?’

‘Power? Uh, third, I think. Maybe fourth.’

The broker picked up the dagger as if it were a dead rat, and gave it the fishy eye. ‘I’ll give you threepence for it.’

‘Threepence! You must be mad! The ruby alone is worth—’

‘Never mind the ruby. I’ve got a whole drawer full of these things. Can’t sell ’em. Can’t use ’em. Wouldn’t pare my nails with one. What else have you got?’

The kid looked like he was going to argue, but he stifled it and reached into the bag again. ‘Your loss,’ he grumbled. ‘Well, here’s something you don’t see every day – a singing sword.’

The pawnbroker shook his head. ‘Look over there.’ He jerked a thumb to indicate a display cabinet in a corner. Three swords of various sizes and a dirk, glittering with magic, were laid out on a bed of green baize. ‘Go on, open it.’

The kid went over to the cabinet and opened the glass doors. The swords began to sing, largest one first, climbing the scale by arpeggios:

‘Longsword!’ – ‘Broadsword!’ – ‘Short sword!’ – ‘Dagger!’

Then all together, in four-part harmony: ‘I… ain’t got no bodkin! No bodkin cares—’

‘Enough of that!’ snapped the broker, slamming the doors. The blades fell silent.

The kid gaped and goggled. ‘A barbershop quartet of 
swords?’

‘Yes, and a complete nuisance. The last owner couldn’t keep ’em quiet for five minutes. Said they kept him awake at night; and if he wanted to sneak past something, and dead silence was worth forty gold pieces a second—’

‘I get the picture,’ the kid said glumly. ‘Well, how about a genuine leprechaun’s crock? Straight from the end of the rainbow. Put any old metal in, get fairy-gold out—’

‘Really!’ The broker let on to be shocked. ‘This is a respectable establishment. Do you think I want 
that
 kind of business?’

‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ said the kid. ‘I didn’t think it would—’

‘That’s right, you didn’t think. Counterfeit is counterfeit, no matter what art it’s made by. Consider yourself lucky I don’t call the Watch on you.’

The kid mumbled out three apologies and a grovel. ‘Anyway, I know you’re going to love this next piece.’

The broker folded his arms on his chest. ‘Saving the best for last, eh?’

‘Well, yes, I hope so. Hang on, I’ve got it in here somewhere.’ The kid picked through a number of small pockets on the inside of his money belt. ‘Ah, here it is. A genuine Ring of Power!’

He fished out a wee gold ring, set with a square-cut amethyst bordered with diamonds. ‘This came straight from a dragon’s hoard, and of old from the King of the Eastern Dwarves. Only seven ever made of this type. It was the heirloom of their house from the—’

‘Yes, yes. No good to me.’

‘I suppose you’ve already got one?’ the kid said acidly. He was beginning to lose his temper.

‘Three the Dark Lord has recovered, and the rest are in my inventory. Nobody’s looking for cursed gear, my boy. Have you got anything without a curse on it?’

The kid reached for the bag again. ‘How about Excalibur?’

‘With or without scabbard?’

‘Uh, without.’

‘You sap! The scabbard is worth ten of the sword. That’s what makes it
collectible.
The finest named and pedigreed sword isn’t worth scrap metal unless it’s in the original packaging.’

The kid looked positively downcast. ‘Then you won’t be wanting Durendal or Sacnoth, either.’

‘Not without the dust jackets.’

The young adventurer heaved a mournful sigh. ‘Well,’ he said gamely, ‘I do have one other item. 
This
is something I 
know
you haven’t got.’ He reached deep into the bag and pulled out the very last thing in the bottom: a solid gold chalice, encrusted in jewels, shining of its own light so brightly that it was almost painful to look at. ‘Behold the Holy Grail!’

The pawnbroker gave a sour little laugh. 
‘The
Holy Grail? You mean 
a
Holy Grail.’

‘What do you mean, 
a
Holy Grail? There’s only one—’

‘Look, clearly you don’t know how reseeding works around here. There’s a factory that turns these things out in case lots. Look here, this is one of theirs.’ The broker turned the Grail upside-down and pointed at the inscription on the bottom:

MIRABILIS HOLY RELICS INC.

MADE IN FANTASYLAND

Patent pending

The adventurer’s crest was well and truly fallen by this point. ‘Look, can’t you give me 
anything
for it? You could use it as an ashtray or something.’

The broker shook his head, not unkindly. ‘Do yourself a favour, my boy. Take it outside and smash it with a hammer. It will make you feel better, and save you the trouble of putting that trash back in the bag. No, young fellow, if you want treasures to pawn, you’re going to have to come up with something I don’t see twenty times a day. You could try— Pardon me.’

Another customer had come in, an old man with a scraggly white beard, dressed like a tramp. ‘What have you got for us today, old-timer?’ the shopkeeper asked jovially.

‘Shaving kit and comb,’ said the old man, putting a small leather-wrapped bundle on the counter.

The broker untied the strings and examined the contents. ‘Any enchantments?’

‘Nope.’

‘Not even a self-sharpening blade? Elf-made styptic for magic healing of shaving cuts? Magic hand mirror?’

‘Not a sausage.’

‘Well, well, well! Useful 
and
non-magical. Old man, you’ve come to the right place. Will you part with the whole kit for its weight in gold?’

The old tramp chewed the end of his beard a moment, thinking. ‘Make it triple.’

‘Double.’

‘Done!’

The pawnbroker’s fat, prosperous hand clasped the tramp’s lean and calloused one. ‘Keep an eye out for more of this stuff, will you? Bring it by any time. We’re always looking for honest rarities.’

The kid could not watch this and keep quiet. ‘Oh, this is ridiculous! Razors and combs?’

‘My boy,’ said the broker, ‘you must understand the kind of clientele we get around here. These parts are positively stiff with young fellows like you. They are always out gathering weapons and armour and enchantments, and tawdry stuff with nasty gemstones stuck all over. Just look at this!’ Reverently he held up the simple tortoiseshell comb. ‘You can’t fight with it, you can’t cast spells with it, you can’t barter it with dragons or decipher it for ancient lore. The only thing you can do with this, my boy, is comb your hair. And I’ve never seen an adventurer yet who cared a plus-five fig about his hair. 
This,
my honest young fool, is a treasure old and rare. And it will stay that way, as long as tenderfoots like you go on mistaking shiny for valuable.’

The pawnbroker turned to the old tramp again, beaming. ‘My dear fellow, this is the best find I’ve had all week. You’re welcome here any time; any time, you hear me? Now see if you can scrounge up some more where this came from, and next time I’ll give you a better price. And if you bring me a ball of plain old unenchanted string, why, you can marry my daughter.’

If you are one of the 3.6 Loyal Readers who follow my blog, you have probably become acquainted with my Evil Alter Blogger, H. Smiggy McStudge. He is a small cog in one of the senior departments of Hell: one of those devils who work at damning art forms and cultures, twisting them until they cannot do human souls any good. You have probably seen some of his unsigned work on television, or in high-toned art galleries.

Smiggy looks down on creatures like Screwtape, whom C. S. Lewis so famously wrote about; the kind of devils who tempt individual souls. ‘Mere
retail
damnation,’ as he sneeringly calls it, is beneath him. But he knows a few gentledevils in that branch of the disservice, all the same. I think Mr. Flivverpuff came calling on him, and it was our mutual misfortune that he chanced upon me instead.

Anyway, here is our conversation, pretty much as it occurred. Remember, though, that devils are liars, and you cannot trust everything they say. The fate of suicides, particularly, is not so clear-cut as Flivverpuff makes it seem; though if some warped soul killed himself for the express
purpose
of going to Hell, it is hard to see what could keep him from getting there.

‘—Not exactly a 
ghost
story,’ said the Middle Management Devil, between slurps at his tea. ‘They are not, aha, 
ghosts
when we have them Down Below.’

(Never let anyone tell you that devils are witty or urbane. Only their P. R. department believes this, and a P. R. devil will believe anything. Devils are uniformly hideous, ill-mannered, awkward, and smelly. Imagine the worst science fiction convention you have ever heard of, and then imagine that the common interest binding the people there is not rocket ships or rayguns, but terrorism and torture. The very most polished devil is not quite as urbane as a farting contest at a NASCAR rally.)

‘Go on,’ I said, not because I meant it, but because there was no point in saying anything else. The stranger had slouched into my booth at Denny’s uninvited, taken a seat (now covered in slime), and struck up a tedious conversation, all without a word or glance of permission from me; and he had shoved a grimy business card at me—

B. FLYSPECK FLIVVERPUFF, M. M. D.

—explaining, as if it were something that tickled him all over with pride, that the initials stood for that title which I gave in the first sentence above. He was clearly one of these mad monologuists that you see at diners after the bars have closed, and there was nothing for it but to hold fast and let him talk himself out.

‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘the passion of vengeance is, aha, very good for 
business,
you understand, but we know better than to indulge in it ourselves. The essential work of Middle Management would go completely to pieces. It’s enough to do to tyrannize one’s subordinates and backstab one’s superiors, when one does it in a purely professional and disinterested way. If one did it because of a petty personal grudge – now, I ask you: is there anyone in Hell that you would 
not
hold a grudge against? Nothing would ever get done; nothing at all. The damned would pile up like cordwood, humiliated perhaps, but not actually tormented. Lower Authority would never stand for it.

‘Now this one fellow we had, oh, some centuries back, was absolutely eaten up with that very passion. Revenge, revenge, 
revenge.
It was all he ever thought about; and the only person he ever thought of taking it on was some trivial malefactor named Salazar or Salamander or something of that kind, who he thought had cheated him in some matter to do with – money? a female? a pat on the head from some titled twit? It doesn’t matter; everything Salazar did thereafter, even things of a quite innocent nature, 
this
customer managed to twist it into a further insult against himself. He worked himself up into a froth to anyone who would listen, saying that death was too good for Salazar, even the death of a thousand cuts, or dipping in acid an inch at a time. But he killed him just the same. Oh, he killed him. He caught him by ambush one night outside a tavern, when Salazar was so full of drink that it was leaking out of his ears, and he split him down the middle with three feet of good Toledo steel: not the rubbish they make nowadays for tourists – the old-fashioned kind that you can’t get any longer, which was made with the skill of pure terror, for a man could die in a second if his blade failed him in battle.’

The M. M. D. slurped at his tea again. ‘Too cold,’ he said. ‘Get the waitress to bring me more hot water, will you? And give me some matches while you’re at it.’

‘There’s no smoking,’ I said.

‘Not for 
that,
’ he said, flapping a flabby hand. ‘For the match-heads. I just like the smell of brimstone.’

‘I suppose you would,’ I said glumly, feeling about in my pockets to see if I had got any matches. I hadn’t. Disappointing him was a sour pleasure, and a small one, too, for he seemed to forget all about the matches as he plunged back into his tall tale.

‘So there lay Salazar, or the bits of him, all over the street in the dark, and my customer – what was 
his
 name? – no matter, he doesn’t need it now; would not recognize it if you shouted it in his face. Anyway, he was standing over the body, such as it was, and the other drunks were begging him to run away before someone came to arrest him. They didn’t want any trouble; they most particularly didn’t want to be arrested themselves, and held for four or five years in some Iberian dungeon as material witnesses. But my customer gave them all the back of his hand, and mustered what he thought was his dignity, and said very quietly – I remember it well: the memory was imprinted on his dossier—

‘ “My life is nothing to me now,
Señores.
I have taken my revenge – and – it is not enough. A thousand deaths could not recompense me for the harm that villain has done to me and mine. No, my friends, I go to the gallows with my head held high, because I could do no otherwise.”

‘Well, this did nothing to improve 
their
spirits, I can tell you. They were afraid of being scooped up by the Watch, as I say. But one of them – oh, he was magnificent! He could have been one of us; and maybe one of us put a thought in his brain. He said to my customer, very slowly and solemnly:

‘ “Where is it written that you can kill him only once?”

‘My man looked at him very strangely, as if he had grown a second head, and it had immediately begun reciting clerihews in Swahili. (This was before they had clerihews, but you get the general idea.) “What was that you said?”

‘ “Where is it written,
Señor,
” the other man repeated, “that you can kill him only once?”

‘ “But he is dead now, and he has gone where I cannot reach him.”

‘ “Do you mean that he is in Hell?” the other man scoffed. “Nothing is easier. Have you never learnt your catechism? What does Mother Church tell us of the fate of the suicide?”

‘ “Why, all those who destroy themselves are destined for H—”

‘A lovely light came into my customer’s eyes – if such a thing as light can ever be said to be lovely. Friend’ – it made my flesh crawl to hear him call me 
friend
– ‘I could have kissed that fellow full on the lips, if I had been there. I could have forgiven him; I could have borne to see him miss Hell altogether, not that you ever heard me say such a thing, for the sake of the glorious harm he had done. For he had just guaranteed that my customer’s soul would not only be damned, but damned in the most grotesque and amusing possible way. Let me tell you how,’ he said, as if I had some option of 
not
letting him.

‘That fell light came into his eyes, as I said; and it never left them again, not so long as he 
had
eyes. He reversed his grip on his sword, and put the point against his belly; and he shouted, “Revenge, Salazar! To Hell I pursue thee!” – and it was even more shoddy and theatrical in his bad Castilian, believe me. I cannot do his delivery injustice. Anyway, he drove the blade in up to the hilt, up under his ribs and straight into his heart. And that was the end of him, so far as 
this
world is concerned.

‘Of course he was in Hell in a moment, and in all my centuries I never saw a customer so glad to arrive. I met him at the landing; I started in to give him the standard briefing (for I was not in Management then), but he paid me no mind. He only cared about the one thing, you see. “Where is Salazar?” he asked me. “Tell me where I may find him, so that I can kill him again!”

‘Well, 
I
didn’t know where his playmate was, so I put him off with flapdoodle. I made up some silly riddle, you know, the kind that 
sounds
profound, but doesn’t mean anything – or means whatever you want it to mean, when you finally pretend to yourself that you have it answered. He actually shook my hand – almost pulled it clean off’ (here the Middle Management Devil wrung his flabby wrist as if it still gave him pain) ‘and then took himself off on his mission.

‘I kept an eye on him myself from time to time, but mostly I delegated. That is, I sold tickets. Half the devils in Hell wanted to see this marvel – a man who 
wanted
to be in Hell; who was glad of every torment, because he was so unshakable in his faith that Salazar was there. He was convinced, you see, that his own petty grievance was the worst injury any mortal man ever suffered, and the very worst punishments in the hottest part of the Netherworld must have been rigged up just for Salazar’s especial benefit. We didn’t trouble to disabuse him. No, sir, we egged him on! He shovelled cubic miles of filth with his bare hands; he searched through endless dungheaps for clues that weren’t there; he palled up with torturers and cheerfully submitted to red-hot pincers, just in the hopes of cadging information about his enemy’s whereabouts. He even swam the Lake of Fire at one point, all the way across – and then back again, for he had forgotten one of our riddling clues, and across a third time, before he kept on going. Friend, he was 
ecstatic
because of the pains we loaded on him, so long as he thought Salazar must be having it worse. So I sold tickets, as I said, and hundreds of us took turns watching over him, and fixing up tortures for him, and feeding him false leads that sent him chasing all over Sheol and half of Gehenna. You never saw such mirth among so many devils; and as for me, that ticket-selling stunt was what got me my first break in management.’

He looked so pleased with himself that I had some trouble keeping my ham and eggs down. I saw that I had only a moment to deflect him before he started bragging about 
himself;
so I gritted my teeth and said: ‘What happened to your customer? Did he ever find Salazar?’

‘Oh, yes. After about forty years, when – aha – when ticket sales had dried up, and I had got everything I could get out of him. You never saw such a disappointed shade. Terrified, despairing, angry, bitter, eaten up with remorse – we get all those kinds in Hell; but mere 
disappointment
is a thing we hardly ever see. “Blessed is he who expects nothing,” you know. Finally I let him see Salazar; and he was in the dullest and most pedestrian part of Hell, suffering things that would hardly make your granny weep.

‘Well, my customer was ready to chuck out every devil for miles around, and take over the work himself. He was acrimonious. “What is this!” he bellowed. “Where are the whips and pitchforks? Where are the red-hot chains? Where the fire and the ice, the filth and the lice, and all the torments of flesh and soul that I myself have had to endure? Why is this worm not 
punished!”
And nothing would do him but to kill him again. He had got hold of a scimitar somewhere, from one of our guard devils who swapped it for a ticket; and I made sure he wasn’t deprived of it – this would be too good to miss. He stood just so, just as he had done outside that tavern long ago, and sliced Salazar right down the middle again.

‘But it was no good, you see. If one death was not enough to appease my customer for the trifling wrong that Salazar did him in life, 
two
deaths could not begin to make up for forty years of tramping through Hell and suffering every pain on the books. And that fell light in his eyes grew a little brighter; for he knew he had got to do it again. He fell on his sword a second time, and went to the Hell of Hell; to Hell squared, if you see what I mean. And he started looking for Salazar all over again.

‘Now, don’t you listen to people like Dante; 
they’re
no authorities. The really showy pains of Hell, the fires and forks and all, are all on the first level – the 
public
level, you might say, where the sinners are still hardened from life, and have not yet been broken down by damnation. The lower you go, the less 
real
the punishments become; but the souls get weaker, too, and lose the power of endurance. And it is part and parcel of their torment that they know what is happening to them, and see that they have become such weaklings that they go into frenzies over things that they could have laughed off in life. There is one advanced patient, a customer of mine in the old days, who does nothing all day but sit in a booth like this one, drinking water with an ice cube in it – not because he is thirsty – no, he is hungry, but iced water is all he can get; we make sure of that. And the ice is just a little too cold, and he has a chipped tooth, and taking the millionth sip from that glass, and feeling the same old boring pang shoot through his tooth again – knowing each time that he can resist it less – he would hardly have felt it as a living man, but now it is enough to put him in a towering rage, and he blasphemes and cries and tears what’s left of his hair. More than half the fun comes because he 
knows
he is overreacting, shamelessly, colossally; but he can’t help himself anymore. He is stuck in a rut that he can’t get out of, and will never do anything more now but plod round and round in the same tedious circle of mild discomfort and titanic reaction, for ever and ever, because there will never be anything else to do.’