Yowler Foul-Up (18 page)

Without another word, she closed her eyes and levitated off the floor, arms held high and lips mouthing inaudible chants.

Flicka blinked and swallowed. She knew a little magic, enough to keep the witches away from the Fogrise water supply when she was a child, but she’d never read much beyond chapter four of
Magellan’s Mastery
. This woman, on the other hand, looked as if she might actually know what she was doing.

A large ruby red mist had begun to swirl around the Lark, gathering pace as it developed into a swathe of cloud. The speed of the cloud intensified, swirling faster and faster until the Lark was nothing more than a shadow in the eye of the storm.

The room swam with magic.

The stone machine shattered.

Flicka prayed.

And Duke Modeset, having woken from his slumber, held aloft the silver saber (arm and all) and hurled it with all his might at the center of the cloud. Or else he would have done if his ancestor’s appendage hadn’t chosen that moment to take over.

The dead arm of Lord Bowlcock glowed a ghostly green as it floated on the air, saber raised high. Suddenly, it swung back and released the blade, which traveled at lightning speed across the room, spinning over and over on a fierce and unstoppable course.

There was a moment of silence in which the air tingled so loudly that it set the duke’s teeth on edge.

Then the magic died, instantaneously.

The Lark, blood leaking between her lips, staggered back with the sword protruding from her stomach.

“May the Great Yowler curse you all in your graves,” she said, and died.

Flicka hurried over to the duke and flung her arms around him. Standing there, with his butler’s daughter clinging to him like a limpet, Modeset made a startling realization that this was infinitely more terrifying than the priestess
or
the narrowly averted destruction of Dullitch.

This, he thought, is the closest I’ve ever got to a real woman. A voice deep within his subconscious added: something you’re definitely going to have to rectify.

Flicka peered up at him through tearful eyes.

“I have something to tell you, Lord M,” she said, sniveling.

“Go on.”

“It’s about Obegarde; I’m afraid he’s dead.”

A
N INTERESTING SCENE GREETED
Modeset and Flicka as they arrived on the landing below, dragging the unconscious form of Edwy after them.

They stopped in their tracks.

Jimmy Quickstint, looking dazed but aware, was standing over the trembling, obese guard that Modeset had encountered previously, the model blunderbuss pointed right at the disciple’s groin.

“This is Moors,” he said. “I think he wants to tell us a story.”

“P-p-please don’t kill me!” the disciple gibbered. “I don’t know how I got involved in all of this! I only wanted to be part of something!”

Modeset glanced at Flicka and then stepped forward. “Do you know how we can repair the damage your lunatic cult has caused?”

Moors shook his head and blubbed. “N-n-no.”

“Then we’re not interested in mercy,” continued the duke. “Jimmy, pull the trigger.”

“No! Please! I’ll tell you how to reverse the work of the glare machine.”

“And return everyone to their flesh state?”

“Yes.”

“How marvelous. And after that?”

Moors looked confused; sweat beaded on his brow. “I don’t follow. … ”

“Oh, you don’t? Jimmy!”

The gravedigger raised the blunderbuss once more.

“Okay, okay … what else do you want?”

“I want to know everything,” he said. “From beginning to end, start to finish, the whole pathetic story. You can begin with the reversal procedure.”

It took a few minutes for Moors to stop sniveling. He plunged a hand into the pockets of the elephantine robe that draped his endless rolls of gut, and produced a small mirror on a chain.

“Mirror,” he said weakly. “If the Batchtiki glares at you in daylight, it turns your flesh to stone. If its glare is reflected back to it, stone becomes flesh. Or so the scripture says.”

“I find that hard to believe; my wrist guard reflected the lizard’s stare directly. How come the lizard didn’t turn to stone?”

“The Batchtiki are a species cursed by the gods. They can’t see themselves. Well-known fact.”

“Is it.”

“Y-yes. We had to reverse a few glares during our testing phase. You just point the lizard away from you, hold a mirror up to it, and aim at whoever you want to be r-refreshed.”

Modeset nodded and grabbed the chain.

“Very well,” he said, turning to Flicka. “Take this and go downstairs to the room with the lizard cage. Change Pegrand back; be careful. When he’s human again, or at least has returned to his usual state of equivalence, perform a similar ritual on the people of Plunge. Make sure they know what happened here, and who is responsible for saving them: namely us.”

Flicka frowned. “You think they’ll be grateful, Lord M?”

“No, but at least we won’t get rocks thrown at us when we try to leave. Oh, and have Obegarde taken to the town chapel. We’ll bury him here in Plunge; after all, he did try to save the place, and I’m sure the people here will show him more respect than any Dullitch citizen could afford.”

Flicka started off down the spiral staircase, followed by Jimmy, who was still wielding the blunderbuss as if he truly believed that a vivid imagination could fire the thing.

“Right,” said Modeset, turning with a snarl on the last remaining disciple. “Do you know what this is?”

He brought the arm round from behind his back and brandished the silver saber.

Moors shook his head; sweat was streaming down his cheeks.

“This,” the duke went on, “spelled oblivion for your friend the Lark. Let us see what it spells for you.”

He lowered the saber and allowed it to nudge the throat of Moors.

“Well?” he prompted. “I think it wants to know everything almost as much as I do. You’re not going to disappoint us both, surely?”

“N-n-no. I’ll talk …”

“Yes, you will. Go on, then!”

“I worked at Counterfeit House. I was lonely: no wife, no kids, and no friends. So I looked around for something to do, some kind of meeting I could go to.”

“A meeting for sad, lonely people?”

“Yes … you must know what I mean. I can smell fellow unfortunates a mile off.”

Modeset tried not to look uncomfortable, and applied the merest fraction of pressure upon the saber.

“Ahhh … all right! So anyway, I found this new group that had started up at the Yowler church. The regular worshippers got together on Friday nights, but I was always working then. The Holy Convocation of Lopsalm met of a Tuesday lunchtime.”

“So you went along?”

Moors nodded. “The Lark was there, and Lopsalm. Mixer, the gnome, joined a few days after me; he was just a cleaner at the church, but they soon had him running round as an assassin. They chose him as the keeper of the great book, then faked a robbery so that the Yowler priests wouldn’t get suspicious when it went missing. It was all the Lark’s doing. She and Lopsalm were always conspiring, whispering to each other about some kind of deal they wouldn’t let the rest of us in on.”

“The rest of you? You and Mixer, you mean.”

Moors wiped a globule of saliva from his fat lips.

“And Edwy,” he blubbed, pointing at the prone figure. “He came last. He was workin’ at the church as a caretaker, too. He’d overheard one of the meetings. They talked him into becoming number five.”

“I see.”

“And then, one night, they told us.”

Modeset raised an eyebrow. “Told you? Told you what?”

“About the machines; that’s what all the whisperin’ had been about. They’d found this mad inventor who’d been thrown out of the Mechanics’ Society. Somehow, among the three of them, they’d made exact replicas of the machines Doiley used in
Leaving Legends
, to turn the people of Plunge to stone.”

“And you were shown these machines immediately?”

Moors nodded. “Lopsalm assigned us each a task. I was in charge of the reflecting machine, finding a place to hide it and then keeping it hidden. It wasn’t too difficult; I used to be pretty influential in the guild. Edwy organized the church rota so that no one else found out about our Tuesday meetings. Mixer was supposed to tie up loose ends.”

“Such as?”

“The thief brought the lizards, so he had to go. The Lark had friends at Counterfeit House who sorted out a high-level forgery for her; they had to go. The old inventor … well, you get the picture.”

Modeset lowered the saber slightly. “The inventor was killed too?”

“Oh no,” said Moors, heaving a sigh of relief as the edge of the blade drew away. “Mixer put the frighteners on the old fool, and we never saw him after that.”

“Who came up with the idea in the first place?”

“Lopsalm, but really the Lark triggered it all off. During her time at the palace, Mistress Lauris had studied ancient lore. She discovered the Batchtiki, learned about their natural habitat. She even spent a few weeks in Grinswood checkin’ up to see if the tomes were right. It was Lopsalm who suggested the theft; he’s hated the dukes ever since he was fired from the palace.”

“What?
Lopsalm
worked for Curfew?”

“No,” said Moors. “For Vitkins. That’s where he met the Lark. Then Lord Vitkins died and you came in, your lordship. They disliked you right enough, but nothing like they hate your cousin. Oh, they d
espise
Mr. Curfew; say he isn’t a patch on either you
or
your uncle; say he’ll bring the city down.”

“But the Yowlers put him in power!”

“They had to! He was your only relative. The main order won’t get rid of him because he is of the blood. That’s when the group came up with this idea of breakin’ away from the others ’n’ turnin’ everyone to stone. S’posed to bring back Yowler, it was. Ha! They must’ve been mad, believin’ all that rubbish. …”

“Yes,” said Modeset thoughtfully. “Religion has a lot to answer for.”

“It’s not just that, Lord Modeset.
Nobody
likes Viscount Curfew. He’s a spiteful man. Lopsalm thought the cult could make a difference, put him in his place.”

“By turning the population to stone?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time; Lopsalm and the Lark made it all seem so … noble. I never meant to hurt anyone.”

“No, people like you seldom do. So, basically, Lopsalm and the Lark cooked this whole mess up between them, and you and your pathetic cohorts were merely pawns in their little game?”

Moors considered the question.

“Lopsalm’s crazy,” he said eventually. “I truly believe that. But the Lark, she knew what she was doing. I reckon she’d been planning to pull off something big for years. Fate probably brought the two of ’em together.”

“Hmm.”

Modeset stepped back.

“The people of Plunge will want an explanation,” he said. “I’m sure that you’ll be more than happy to provide them with one, after you’ve cleared up what little remains of your beloved mistress.”

He licked his lips, turned, and headed off down the spiral staircase.

“And let this be a lesson to you,” he called back. “Cults have a tendency to be manipulative and dangerous; so next time you want friends, try joining something sensible … like church.”

R
EANIMATING THE PEOPLE OF
Plunge turned out to be a tough (and largely thankless) task. Most of them had little or no idea of what had happened, and therefore, upon regaining consciousness, quickly came to the inevitable conclusion that somebody had broken into their homes to point a lizard away from them. It was hard to fathom, and resentment was rife. Eventually, the mayor would explain at great length just how much in Modeset’s debt they all were but, for the time being, chaos reigned.

Jareth Obegarde was carried to a plinth on the edge of the village, where a small service was performed. The wound in his chest had closed, and his eyelids twitched several times, but nobody seemed to notice.

The service itself was nothing to write home about, especially since the Plunge priesthood had only a vague notion of what a loftwing was. Instead, they resorted to the more usual speeches full of useful phrases like “Rest in peace,” “Take it easy,” and “Don’t get up for the milkman.”

Modeset was the only mourner who cried, although Pegrand wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t due to the bite of the wind.

As the small group made their way back down to the village, they were informed that a raven had arrived, carrying an important message from Dullitch.

Modeset read it through carefully and smiled.

“Those wishing to be teleported back to the city by the all-powerful hand of the grand Wrickshaw Muldoon must stand in the town square at noon tomorrow. The city will pay a small recompense for anyone who quickly forgets the use of magic involved in this procedure.”

“He must be quite the ticket, that wizard,” Pegrand said, taking the note when Modeset proffered it to him.

“Are you serious, man? You’ve seen him—”

“Yes, milord, but he
did
get us all out here in one piece … mostly. Besides, look, he’s got letters after his name: G.O.F. What’s that, Grand Order of—”

“It probably stands for Geriatric Old Fool. Now, do get a move on. We need to find somewhere to stay tonight.”

T
HE FOLLOWING EVENING, MODESET
released a giant raven from the highest window of Plunge Keep. On reflection, he could’ve sent the note back with Jimmy, but teleportation spells were dicey at the best of times and he couldn’t risk
this
note going astray.

“Nice of Baron Herpes to let us stay here, milord,” said Pegrand, straightening his jerkin in the chamber’s angular mirror.

“It’s Herps, Pegrand. Baron H-e-r-p-s. And we
did
save his subjects from being turned to stone.”

“Well, actually, milord—”

“Yes, okay, we didn’t. Satisfied? But at the very least, we turned them from stone back into flesh. Surely that deserves food, board, and lodging for a couple of days. Besides, this was once part of my land; that counts for something, doesn’t it?”