Fain the Sorcerer (9 page)

‘
I
'
m with you so far.
'

‘
So far you idiot? I just explained the universe!
'

‘
Most people
build
on the obvious to make a point. You seem to have run out of steam.
'

‘
Steam is it? I
'
ll kill you!
'
The man threw himself across the table at Fain, who vanished and reappeared near an ivy-twined pillar nearby.

‘
It
'
s such a beautiful day
—
must we fight? I
'
ve looked forward to meeting you. I want to understand things. Did you write this book?
'

‘
Of course not!
'

‘
Then these are not your own thoughts. Tell me your own thoughts.
'
Fain gestured to a pair of skeletons hung by manacles from an overgrown wall.
‘
For instance, these fellows look a bit pasty. What
'
s the story behind those?
'

‘
Pasty? They
'
re skeletons. Pastiness is the least of their concerns.
'

‘
What
'
s the greatest then?
'

‘
Their lack of usefulness, I suppose. The people who ran them are gone
—
why must these remain?
'

‘
Perhaps some creatures re-use such skeletons the way certain snails take up residence in the shells of their dead comrades.
'

‘
Let us hope. Meanwhile, you may have noticed these giant snails with the heads of crocodiles.
'
The man led Fain into the larger garden.
‘
I call them Vetifers
—
though, like all animals, they do not respond. But will we as a people ever take the hint and stop putting names on animals? I don
'
t think so.
'

‘
They look quite cute. Are they dangerous?
'

‘
They differ from crocodiles in that they are much, much faster.
'

‘
But they
'
re hardly moving.
'

‘
Crocodiles spend most of their time completely motionless. Therefore these creatures, though moving very slowly, are much, much faster than crocodiles. Aren
'
t you, Tony?
'

The particular Vetifer which the man had turned to address lashed suddenly at him and he leapt back, laughing.

‘
Not such a laugh when you
'
re chained to a floor staple. I keep these things to get me over a fear from childhood. Guess what happened to me.
'

‘
Pounced upon by eight screaming chimps?
'

‘
No!
'

‘
Then I don
'
t want to know,
'
said Fain, and realised too late that the man had been referring to the werewolf encounter of his infancy. Careful not to curse himself, Fain tried to veer the conversation back on track.
‘
However, childhood has always interested me. What of your parents?
'

‘
Gone. And my servants are fish with training wheels
—
see?
'

Fain looked to a pavilion at the far end of the garden, where indistinct devices moved in circles.
‘
Alright.
'

‘
Tiny bells line their stomachs to alarm upon escape. I envy them
—
they grew with no illusions of safety or protection.
'

‘
We have not been introduced, sir
—
I am Fain the Gardener.
'

‘
Geoffrey Cubeline.
'

‘
How long have you lived here, Mr Cubeline?
'

‘
Thirty-eight years,
'
said Cubeline.
‘
All my life.
'

‘
I
'
m sorry, Mr Cubeline,
'
said Fain, and travelled twenty years into the past. He stood in the midst of trees. Returning to the terrace, he entered a black cloud of flies which feasted around the bodies of a man and woman who hung chained from a wall, their bellies bursted open in a now dry tumble of black complication.

Approaching the cottage through the small garden, Fain was startled when the door opened and a young man stepped out with a look of such poison sadness the taste of bile came up in Fain
'
s mouth and he wished himself ten years back. He stood in the garden hearing the silence of a child, the sound of a family. He took himself back into the night and entered the cottage invisibly, reappearing to pick his way through the darkness. Remembering his new ability to see in the dark, he invoked this as he entered the room of the child who would be Thorn. What happened here on this night?

The child let out a choked gasp and began to scream. Startled, Fain looked around himself and saw a long mouth in a mirror. It was his own mouth. In order to see in the dark, he had become a giant wolf.

 

 

In which Fain tries to help

 

Fain returned to his own time but had no immediate desire to revisit the crazy old man at the cave. And he was so disturbed by his glimpses of the future that he rarely used that gift again, and sometimes felt a creeping horror when he remembered the insidious forward motion of time which seemed the natural condition. He would later wonder if, since he had the choice, he might set up his life at an earlier time than that into which he had been born. Perhaps at a time when matters were less complicated. With his creeping bent for mermaid reflection, he could no longer abide to eat his magic sardines. He thought of the green gold grotto where the mermaid collected shells as though they were pirate treasure, and pirate treasure as though they were shells. Above all he wished for a place without blame.

For now, chastened by his faults, he travelled, attempting good deeds and observing the lay of things. He sauntered through the tatty wreck of a battlefield where birds, dogs and worms would suffer no interruption to their meal. He conversed on music with a huge black toad like a leather sack. He observed the chaos around a royal crier hailing the official declaration that all was well as the earth cracked and lava wrinkled toward him. He saw an elephantine monster stamp on a man so hard it left something in the mud resembling a Persian carpet, which a merchant then sold as such. He saw sails of shark fabric, vintage consolation swelling in vineyards and skulls tumbling in silt like conches. He climbed to the summit of a temple that was like a city of many levels, its walls covered with maps and diagrams of heaven. He saw stone idols eroded to facelessness and bound with vines, a dead hero
'
s sword embedded in scarred fields, the stars grinding across the sky, foreign marble sunken in hot dirt, tyrants spooning cinders from children
'
s mouths, populations credulous and bovine, and kings with minds the consistency of bread. He visited a land where snow was cinnamon-flavoured for a reason everyone was too guilt-laced to reveal, and a civilisation of honest fear in which people gibbered in cages while lions prowled free. He battled and befriended a giant worm with a vortex for a mouth, and played cards with the Great White Kings of Hell. He travelled twice more through the mirror of Camovine, freeing Glut. He saw knights slugging it out in a pine-pinned clearing for ideas that were not their own. He walked through an empire of warring statues, saw the truth carved into beeswax and eaten, and moths full of gold-dust. On sunned ruins vagabonds sat exalted and with eyes closed.

One day Fain followed a trail of trees into a village.
‘
Welcome to Joisy,
'
hailed a young man who was striding away from him.
‘
You are welcome in my home.
'
The man set about winding a bucket of water from a well.

‘
Thank you,
'
said Fain.
‘
Where is your home?
'

‘
I
'
ll take you there,
'
said the man and withdrew the bucket, walking toward a small house. Then he suddenly wheeled about, dropped the bucket and ran off the opposite way, leaving Fain briefly startled but, knowing humanity for what it was, barely wondering. Fain picked up the bucket and entered the house, which he discovered to be adequately furnished but without a roof. Nor was there any wall above any of the doors. Presently the young man entered, smiling.
‘
Make yourself at home. I am Tagore.
'

Tagore swerved aside and batted against the wall, then seemed to calm down and prepared a meal for which Fain was grateful. When Fain sat down to eat, however, Tagore stood nervously, apparently awaiting some signal that he could be seated.
‘
Won
'
t you join me?
'
Fain asked.

A woman barrelled into the house and slammed against the table, sitting down opposite Fain. Fain could see a tangle of wires above her head.

‘
This is my wife, Vellum.
'

‘
Welcome. It seems Tagore will not be sitting with us this evening. He
'
ll probably have to sleep standing up.
'

‘
You
'
re puppets,
'
said Fain.
‘
Made of meat.
'

‘
We
'
re people, like you,
'
said Tagore.
‘
But with these things attached.
'
Tagore drew a finger down one of the almost invisible wires projecting upward from his head. He did this as though the wire were the edge of a blade. Fain followed the wires upward with his eye, until he was looking at a sky full of clouds. Tagore continued:
‘
You
'
ll find most people here deny it, deny they have no roof, and never look up. They deal with their powerlessness by pretending it
'
s not the case.
'

‘
While we believe that, since we
'
re powerless, why deny the truth of it?
'
said Vellum brightly.

Fain threw his sight beyond the clouds and was there as incognito eyes. Hundreds of teal blue dragons wheeled crowing in a dazzling chill. He blinked and shook his head.

‘
We made the wires too strong to cut,
'
Tagore was saying.

‘
You
made them?
'

‘
Hundreds of years ago,
'
Vellum explained,
‘
we were preyed upon by dragons. Finally, the townspeople lassoed the dragons
'
legs in order to control the creatures and thus retain our sovereignty, freedom and independence. It was our grand experiment. The wires were the precise length to add weight to the affair and thus hamper and tire the monsters. Any attack by the dragons, dipping below full height, was forewarned by a slackening in the wires. But the creatures, being on high, unobserved, and given full means, now control the people. The change was stealthy as dust and still denied. And the wires are now too entangled around the people and around the dragons
'
talons to ever disentangle, until a person dies and rots away. Then their wires are taken up in fear by a son or daughter. The warning slack in the wires is useless, as we have no shelter.
'

‘
In any case,
'
added Tagore,
‘
they can take us wherever they want for the attack. One of us will simply be walked out of the village into the wasteland, and never come back.
'

‘
My dragon is gliding a little low,
'
said Vellum, standing.
‘
I
'
ll take him to see.
'

Vellum took Fain into the wasteland outside the village. Here she showed him ribbons of clothes on a hutch of sticky bones. Some of the bones were suspended a few feet off the ground, turning on a wire like a weathervane. The wires proceeded into the sky.

‘
Hasn
'
t anyone ever rebelled?
'
he asked.

‘
Occasionally someone will try to pull the strings or make themselves sluggish and unmoveable. Most townspeople call it
“
getting heavy
”
. It
'
s frowned upon because it reminds us of our situation.
'
Vellum stopped talking abruptly
—
her wires were gathering and clouding around her shoulders like thread feeding from a loom. As she looked up a dragon swooped down at her, tearing off her head and spitting it into the grass. The monster settled upon the body, bit into it and set about pulling a necklace of meat from the wound.

Recovering from his shock, Fain materialised at a point which overlapped with the dragon, blasting it aside. He had destroyed his own right arm and blown a hole in the dragon
'
s belly, from which garlands of gore were spurting. Fain straddled the dragon.
‘
Agree not to attack these idiots! Then you can work together to untangle and unattach the strings.
'

‘
It
'
s our nature to attack,
'
rasped the dragon,
‘
and if possible, herd people. These wires give us a direct line to our victims
—
we know exactly where to find them, whether for a kill or one in a long series of snacks. And in the meantime, controlling their affairs is amusing. We have good hearing. We know if they discuss rebellion. We use what we are given.
'

Fain set fire to the dragon, sealed his shoulder with a scab of black glass and returned to the village. Tagore, in grief and fury, agreed to call the villagers together at the well.

Fain whispered:
‘
You are all aware that these silvery facsimiles of freedom are actually chains. There are several ways to change this situation. Take hold of large rocks and leapt into the bottomless chasm near here, dragging down a dragon with you to their death and yours. Entangle your wires in the winch drum above this well, and wind your dragon down from the sky. Or allow me, Fain the Sorcerer, to change everything, either by appearing in the sky and summoning fire upon the dragons, or travelling back in time to prevent this situation from beginning.
'

Fain expected a debate on the possibilities of each plan: that the chasm option was rash, that the well option could work only one dragon at a time, leaving everyone else open to attack. But in the faces around him he saw no fear: only embarrassment, evasion, or anger directed at him. While refusing him permission to interfere with their problem, they stated it vaguely enough to allow that there was no problem to be solved.

As Fain took his leave of the village, Tagore bid him farewell. Tagore seemed ashamed for his fellow villagers, but Fain was proud that this one man planned to drag his dragon from the sky, one way or another. He hugged him warmly, and walked away.

Stymied and exhausted, Fain decided his travels were over.