FSF, March-April 2010 (21 page)

"Nina will have to learn to get over it."

I wanted to tell him that he had been right about Judy. She had wanted Ray killed and got BD to do it for love. How did she murder someone who could read her mind? Instinct requires no thought and an artist is quicker than a snake.

I could also have told Lizard that the minute she got what she needed from him for her show, he'd be dropped cold.

But Lizard was having fun and the past is magic at our point in life. I'd had my ration of magic and now he was getting his. So I said it all sounded good and to keep me informed.

Mostly, I've learned not to let people cross me up. And I sit waiting for the phone to ring.

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Ramsey Shehadeh splits his time between writing software and writing stories. His fiction has appeared recently in
Weird Tales
and
Strange Horizons.
His blog at
www.doodleplex.com
includes recent posts about Cthulhu fortune cookies and a hypothetical job interview by the 2008 Republican candidate for Vice-President.

The commission came to Door, as so many of these commissions do, in a dream. But not his
own
dream. Door was a chair, an invisible chair, and thus a very practical creature, more concerned with the workaday challenges of everyday chairhood than the frippery of somnambulant phantasm. No: the dream belonged to his master, the ancient and decrepit wizard Epidapheles, who had an accidental talent for extroverted dreaming. Nearly every night, Door was hauled unceremoniously out of sleep by the id-parade of Epidapheles's dreams, marching noisily out of his head and into the world.

Usually, the actors in these dreams consisted of buxom women in various levels of clad, ranging from scantily to un-, whose happiness depended exclusively and entirely on their ability to please the old wizard. There were times, however, when Epidapheles's external dreamscape intersected with
another
of his accidental talents—clairvoyance—and Door found himself witness to events in far-flung lands. It was in this way that he stumbled onto the affair of the insufficiently affectionate ocelot.

The scene: an opulent throne room, in a beautiful palace, in a verdant and happy kingdom. The players: a handsome king, a wise old advisor, a beautiful queen, an ocelot. The mood: grim. The king sat slumped in his throne, his handsome features sagging under the weight of a great sorrow, staring disconsolately at the ocelot that lay curled up on a plush lavender cushion at his feet.

All of which was superimposed in ghostly splendor on the fetid sewer in which Door and his master were passing the night. They were in the process of fleeing from an angry group of mercenaries, whose prized siege engine Epidapheles had transformed into a cheese-making device, rather than—as the commission had specified—a “hellish apparatus of agony-infused death."

The wizard slept uneasily throughout the dream, no doubt discomfited by the absence of his usual retinue of harlots. Door, however, watched, transfixed.

"My lord,” said the dream's wise old adviser. “She is simply fatigued. Or perhaps ill. I am sure that her present disposition is in no way a reflection of her regard for You."

"But it's not
true
, Victor,” said the king. “Kitty doesn't
love
me. That's all there is to it.” He placed his hand over his forehead. Presently, his shoulders began to shake, and a small, mewling, sobbing sound emanated from his Person.

The court, as one, looked tactfully at its shoes.

The adviser exchanged a quick, furtive glance with the queen, then cleared his throat. “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be best to send Kitty to the Kingdom of Drameter. The Animal Trainers of Drameter are renowned for their..."

The king surged off of his throne and strode to the edge of the dais, his umber cape billowing fetchingly behind him, and glared at his adviser. “Can you
train
someone to love you, Victor? Is love a skill to be
imposed
? Is it a talent to be
acquired
, Victor? Is that what it is?"

"No, my lord."

"Love is a
feeling
. It is a state of
mind
. It is a part of one's
soul
, Victor. It is
sui generis
. Do you not understand this?"

"I do, my lord."

"And yet you continually bombard me with
experts
who purport to have the skill to turn Kitty's heart into an organ that beats with
affection
instead of
cold indifference
. Why do you do this, Victor?"

"Because I wish for your happiness, my lord."

"Only one being in this whole world holds the key to my happiness, Victor!” cried the king. He whirled and ran back to his throne and fell to his knees before the ocelot's cushion. “Why do you not love me, Kitty? In what way am I not worthy of your affections? You need only tell me, and I will fell mountains, ford oceans, conquer kingdoms to ameliorate my failings! Tell me, Kitty! Tell me!"

The queen was shielding her eyes with her hand now, and her shoulders were shaking. But the sounds emanating from her Person were not sorrowful, exactly. They seemed, in fact, to share many qualities with helpless laughter.

The king raised his arms to the heavens, and cried: “I beseech thee, oh ye gods! Deliver me from this sorrow! Is there no one in all the wide world who can help me?"

At this point, Epidapheles, who had been snoring steadily, drew most of a passing cloud of sewer flies into his mouth and woke, spluttering and coughing. The scene vanished.

He sat up, and looked around blearily, until his eyes fell on Door. “Your master is hungry,” he said.

"Then he might consider turning the raw sewage that surrounds him into cheese,” said Door. “Cheese-focused magic apparently being one of his talents."

"They didn't specify
how
they wanted their silly device to produce carnage,” said Epidapheles, grumpily. “Do you have any idea what bad cheese does to your digestion? Do you remember that rotten brie I had in Shalindar last year? I spent a week on the chamber pot. I thought I was going to crap my lungs out."

"It wasn't brie, old man, as I told you then. Brie isn't brackish, it isn't skull-and-crossbones shaped, and it doesn't emanate miasmatic black smoke. Go back to sleep."

But Epidapheles had already begun to nod off. Presently, he was snoring again. A moment later, a large, mostly naked woman dressed in smaller, completely naked women stepped out of his head and began to wax breathless, coquettish approval.

Door sighed.

They emerged from the sewer a week later, to the dismay of all passersby with the misfortune of possessing noses, and resumed their flight, albeit at a more leisurely pace. Within the hour, they were out of the city and on the road, heading in a direction that seemed least likely to contain enraged mercenaries.

Epidapheles yawned, and scratched idly at the area of his robes he called the Naughties. “Ocelot?” he said.

Door nodded. Nodding was difficult for him, as he had no head with which to nod. He managed it by bending his back forward, slightly, and waggling his slats. It was a subtle, inscrutable gesture, accessible to only the most observant, and Epidapheles was observant in exactly the same way that a lamppost was melancholy: which is to say, not at all.

Not that it mattered. Door could have set himself on fire and run around in circles, screaming, and it wouldn't have made much difference. Epidapheles was Musing, and once musing did not have conversations so much as conduct monologues in the general direction of whoever happened to be standing nearby.

"Ocelot,” said Epidapheles, again. “Is it a kind of Damsel?"

"No,” said Door. “It's a kind of cat."

"Perhaps a Damsel from the Duchy of Ocelot."

"It's a spotted, nocturnal wildcat. It spends a lot of time in trees."

"I have heard tales of the fabled beauty of the women of Ocelot. The fair hair. The limpid azure eyes."

"There is no Duchy of Ocelot. It's not a damsel."

"And, as you know, saving Damsels from Peril is one of my many talents."

"You've never saved a damsel, or
anything
, from peril."

"It seems to me that any Damsel beholden to a sovereign who wishes to render her more
Affectionate
is, by definition, a Damsel in Peril."

Door sighed. Again, a difficult act for a chair, but one he'd perfected over many years of service to Epidapheles. “It's not a damsel."

"I will accept the commission!” cried Epidapheles. “Let us fly,
fly
, to the Duchy of Ocelot and deliver this poor hapless maiden from the clutches of the evil, lecherous vizier who has enslaved her!"

He lifted his robes and proceeded down the road in the glacial, lurching gait that passed, in the lexicon of Epidapheles, for running. He was going the wrong way, of course, but Door knew from long experience that there was no sense in pointing this out. The old wizard would soon collapse from exhaustion, a state in which he was slightly more susceptible to reason.

Door sighed, and turned the wrong way down the road.

One of the difficulties of being a chair—especially an invisible chair tethered by magical bonds to a decrepit old wizard—is that it is more or less impossible to ask for directions. Only the drunk and the insane react well to conversations with invisible furniture, and these people can hardly be relied on. So the responsibility fell upon Epidapheles's narrow, slumped shoulders, where it seemed extremely ill at ease.

"You wish for me,” said the old man, “to ask that merchant where I can find a kingdom whose regent has been incapacitated by his love for an ocelot?"

"Well, don't say it like
that
,” said Door. “You need to dress it up a little."

Epidapheles mused. “I should phrase it in a way that sounds less ridiculous."

"Yes, exactly."

"While still maintaining the
sense
of the question."

"Right."

"Is this ‘ocelot,’ then, a veiled reference to Lady Ocelot?"

Door sighed. “Yes,” he said.

"A cleverly encoded query, then, designed to deflect attention from our true Purpose."

"Yes, fine."

Epiapheles mused. “Why don't I just divine the location of this regent, and be done with it?"

Door shuddered. The last time Epidapheles had attempted to cast his divining spell, his eyebrows had come to life and, with tiny squeals of joy, leapt off his face and onto a passing Lady's—where they murdered her own delicate, carefully plucked eyebrows, cast them aside, and attached themselves to her porcelain forehead. Her husband—the Lord of Crags Hill, a man known locally as Lord Kill-Murder—was not pleased, and neither was his ogre army.

There were no ogre armies around at the moment, but Door had no doubt that the old man could blunder into summoning one, if no closer dangers were available. He sighed. Sometimes he dreamt of a world where chairs could be sentient without attaching themselves to hapless conjurers. It was a pleasant dream: he was free, he was independent, and he did useful things that weren't in any way insane or suicidal.

"Because,” he said, shaking off his reverie, “that would be a waste of your talents. Why would a man who can raise mountains bother with a sideshow magician's parlor tricks?"

"Ah yes, good point,” said Epidapheles, puffing up a bit. “I could just bring his paltry little kingdom to
me
."

"And mention a queen with raven hair,” said Door, quickly. “That might help."

Epidapheles nodded, and strode up to the fruit merchant, who was glaring at a dusty urchin. The urchin was loitering beside the cantaloupes, ostentatiously not stealing anything.

"Merchant!” said Epidapheles. “Do you know who I am?"

The merchant glanced at him, frowned, then turned his attention back to the urchin. “Why would I know who you are?"

"Ah, yes,” said Epidapheles. “I often forget about the profound ignorance of the common people. Suffice it to say that I am your Better.” He cleared his throat. “I will soon be asking you a Question. The fact that I, a great Wizard of wide repute, am asking a question of you, an inconsequential Laborer of no repute whatsoever, should not in any way be construed as a bridge across the vast social chasm that separates us."

Door sighed, and looked at the urchin, whose thin tissue of innocent nonchalance seemed to be fraying.

"You will now tell me,” said Epidapheles, “where I can find a king whose...” He faltered here, and Door could almost
hear
the grindings of his memory seizing up. “...whose raven has...” He faltered again, and crinkled his forehead. “...whose raven has stopped oscillating,” he said, weakly.

Door sidled up to the boy. “Hello,” he said. “You can't see me."

The boy started and looked around, panicked. “God?"

"No,” said Door. “Not at all."

"Oh good.” The boy seemed relieved. “Mommy says if God ever catches me I'm in big trouble."

"No, not God. Do you know anything about a king who has an unhealthy obsession with his ocelot?"

The boy's eyes narrowed. “Maybe."

"I need to know which king that is."

The boy tried to narrow his eyes a bit more, but there wasn't much narrowing room left, so he just closed them. “Maybe,” he said again.

"Look, I'll help you with your cantaloupe problem if you tell me who it is."

He opened his eyes. “Really?"

"Really."

"It's King Treacle. In the Kingdom of Uther.” He pointed vaguely northward. “That way."

"Good,” said Door. “Run along, then."

"Thank you, sir.” He hesitated. “If God catches me, can I say you made me do it?"

"Yes, fine."

"Thank you, sir,” he said, again, then snatched a cantaloupe, ducked under the merchant's beefy arms, and ran.

The merchant roared, lunged at the boy, and then tripped over Door, who'd quickly interposed himself between the fruit stand and the fleeing urchin. The merchant sprawled forward, onto the street, like a meaty, hirsute starfish.