Jinx On The Divide (19 page)

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happen ... and there was this flash of green lightning, and
you
appeared. Listen, I'm going to order you to do something, and I want you to disobey me."

"You'd have to use the right words," said the brandee slowly.

"What are they?"

The brandee hesitated. It was one sandstorm of a dilemma. If he told this sinistrom how to command him and the powerword stuff had been a lie, he would be the servant of a shadow-beast. But would it be any worse than being the slave of a thane? Not really. Might as well go for it. "In the name of K'Faddle, the one who cast you ..." he recited.

"In the name of K'Faddle, the one who cast you," repeated Grimspite, "I command you to stand on your head."

"I'm useless at acrobatics," said the brandee. "Can't you ask me to do something else?"

The sinistrom was smiling now, his jaws stretched wide.

"What?" said the brandee.

"You're not standing on your head," said Grimspite. "Have a cookie."

"I can't ..." The brandee stopped mid-sentence.

Grimspite pushed the plate of cookies toward him with his paw.

The brandee took one. Then he bit into it, and the sugary sweetness that flooded his mouth was quite indescribably wonderful. "Exquisite!" gasped the brandee. "Delectable! Magnificent!"

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"Welcome to the real world," said Grimspite. "Have another cookie. The honey ones are particularly nice."

"That powerword has turned me into a human being, then?" said the brandee, his mouth full of cookie. "With no going back?" Then he choked, and found out about coughing.

"Have a slurp of rainbow juice," said Grimspite. "It helps."

The brandee had a slurp of rainbow juice, and found out about hiccups.

"Not a human being," said Grimspite, glancing at the brandee's ears. "A nomad. A desert-dwelling being, of an old and noble race."

"Oh." He hiccupped again.

Grimspite gave him a thump on the back, which came as a surprise, but the hiccups stopped.

"In that case," said the brandee, once he'd recovered, "I can go back to Kaflabad, the Jewel of the Desert. Yes. That will suit me very well."

Grimspite went over to one of the bookshelves and took down a thick volume entitled
Craggy Magic.
"There's a section in here about powerwords," he said, reading the entry. Then he said, "Oh, dear."

"What?"

"A powerword can do great good and enormous harm, in equal measure."

"So something awful's happened somewhere," said the brandee. "And speaking of awful ..." He took a deep

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breath and told Grimspite all about the jinx box in his greenhouse.

"We have to retrieve your lamp," said Grimspite, when he'd finished. "That jinx box must be destroyed."

"I think it's the last one in existence of the old kind."

"I know a little about them," said Grimspite. "They react very strangely to scientific events. The explosion inside your lamp was a scientific event. That may have restored its memory of otherworld things -- in which case, it will be raring to get those powerwords spoken by someone. And it'll be a real charm merchant. Those old jinx boxes could sweet-talk even the best-intentioned people. They were all dedicated mischief-makers, but some were downright wicked and wanted only to create chaos. I'm afraid it sounds as though this box is one of them, and with every powerword spoken, it will become more self-confident and more destructive. We have to stop it. There's only one good side to it -- once it releases a word, it forgets it."

"So the one you've just used is gone forever?"

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"I don't know," said Grimspite.

Goodbody looked thoughtful, had another swig of rainbow juice, and astonished himself with a burp.

Many, many miles away, in a four-poster bed in a castle in the forest, a japegrin opened his eyes.

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***

11

***

"I don't know anything about magic lamps," grumbled Scoffit the carrionwing. "I'm in waste disposal." She had been asked -- at wandpoint -- to present herself at Squill's headquarters.

Squill threw the lamp across the floor. It landed with a loud clunk against the opposite wall, and rocked back and forth a couple of times before coming to rest.

"It should have been foolproof, that K'Faddle summons," he said. "I want you to fly the lamp to Kaflabad for me and take it to the Service Department. Ziggurat Three."

"I'm in Garbage," repeated the carrionwing. "I'm not a courier."

"You're whatever I say you are," snarled Squill. "If you want to keep your feathers, that is."

Squill's secretary came in, her auburn hair tumbling over her shoulders like a spray of autumn leaves. "Catchfly and Pepperwort are outside," she said.

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Squill brightened. "Do they have the human boy with them? We don't have any executions lined up for next week." The secretary shook her head.

Squill's mouth set in a thin, hard line. "Send them in."

Pepperwort walked in rather hesitantly, but Catchfly was far more composed. He dumped the rolled-up carpet he was carrying in the corner of the room, and told the story of Rhino's escape with great flair, placing the blame squarely on Felix's shoulders. According to him, Felix had called down the Sky-mold with a scientific torch, allowing Rhino to steal Squill's fire-breather, and the others to get away on the carpet. He explained how he'd shot the carpet out of the sky at almost maximum wand range, tracked it down, wrestled it free from a snagglefang, and come straight back to Yergud on it to tell the thane what had happened.

The carpet in question didn't comment -- in fact, it sounded as though it were snoring.

Squill looked extremely thoughtful. "You think this torch contraption acted in conjunction with the hex and did something unexpected?"

Catchfly nodded.

"This science and magic combination sounds too unpredictable to be really useful. A well-functioning magic lamp would be much more to the purpose. So where is the brandee?"

"He escaped as well, Your Excellency, streaming off into the sky and becoming one with the Sky-mold."

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"So he could be anywhere, if he's still alive." Squill turned back to the carrionwing. "On your way, stink-feathers," he said. "I want you to get that lamp to Kaflabad as soon as possible."

Scoffit stuffed the lamp in her leg pouch and went. Kaflabad was a tall order. Andria was a lot closer; there would be a real courier service operating out of Andria. She could charge it to Squill's account and make herself scarce. She took off, heading east.

Ironclaw looked around the cave in amazement. The fire-breather had obviously been in residence for a long time. There were jeweled bangles, necklaces, ankle rings, piles of coins, ingots of silver, nuggets of gold. A leg ring, with enameled toadstools in pink and orange. Fuzzy would like that; it would match her talons. He could give it to her when he found her. He felt so pleased with this idea that he completely forgot to actually
put
it in his leg pouch. There were even entire
crocks
of gold -- some lined up like loaves of bread in a baker's window, others lying on their sides, cracked and damaged, their terracotta lids askew. Ironclaw gulped. There was a king's ransom in here. His noble intention of restoring all the things to their rightful owners was totally unrealistic.
Ten
brazzles would not have been enough to carry all this treasure away.

There was still a lot of hissing and wing rattling going on outside, so Ironclaw decided to stay where he was for a while.

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He examined a few of the objects for ownership marks, but the only name he found -- k'faddle & offspring, inscribed on the base of a crystal ball -- was the maker's name. He peered into it. Nothing. He'd never had much faith in the things, but he'd never tried to use one before, either. He wiped it with his wing, and looked again. This time he could see swirls of gray moving around like speeded-up clouds, and a streak of green in the midst of them, but that was all. He gave up. K'Faddle & Offspring had a dreadful reputation; the company was always being sued by someone or other. He continued rummaging -- but the next thing he found made his tail flick back and forth with alarm.

In a small depression in the rock lay two oval white eggs, which were splattered with scarlet streaks. These glowed with an inner light that moved like tiny rivers of red syrup. He wondered how long it would be before the eggs hatched into replicas of their antisocial mother.

He suddenly became aware that everything had become very quiet outside. He went back to the entrance and tried to angle his head so that he could peer through the opening without his beak advertising his presence. The fire-breather had her back toward him, and her tail was curled into a question mark. The new arrival was pressed against her, flank to flank. Their heads were close together, and their long blue tongues were flickering like flames. For a moment, Ironclaw thought he was in danger of interrupting a rather private moment -- then he wondered whether it was a form of

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communication. The creatures could roar, but their vocal cords weren't any good for speech. The new one was a deep sea-green, which meant it was a male. He couldn't be the father of the eggs, though -- could he? He wasn't wild; he was wearing a saddle. And what was more, he had Squill's kicking-boot emblem daubed on his flank with scale paint.

Then Ironclaw saw the young japegrin standing behind them, quaking with fear. It did look like a japegrin at first glance, with its flaming red hair -- until you noticed the rounded ears. Ironclaw was very good at putting two and two together, and he didn't like the answer he came up with one little bit.

The female was a wild fire-breather. She was probably very attractive, in the way fiery females frequently are. The male was a tame one -- and a magnificent specimen, too. He would be, if he was Squill's personal vehicle. But somehow he had met up with the wild female when he was on his own, and it had been love at first sight. The hissing and wing rattling hadn't been signs of hostility at all. Squill's fire-breather was the father of the eggs in the cave, and he'd brought his secret mate a little present. Supper for two -- a human child. Ironclaw had never seen this youngster before, so presumably it was Rhino, the boy his daughter had been looking for.

He wondered if the female had forgotten about him. Then both the fire-breathers turned their heads toward the cave entrance, and he knew they'd been discussing him. He slipped out of the cave and into the open as quickly as

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possible -- being trapped in an enclosed space would be very bad news indeed.

The boy hugged himself with his arms, glanced to his left and right, and then stayed where he was. The wall of the crater, though not sheer, was very steep, and a fire-breather could have picked him off it at its leisure.

Squill's fire-breather didn't seem to know what to do. It was unlikely that he'd ever had a confrontation with a brazzle before. Brazzles would have been on the Friendly Creatures List, and it was doubtful that years of training could be overturned without a second thought. He shifted from leg to leg, fidgeting his wings and looking agitated.

The female was an entirely different matter. She had already attacked Ironclaw and would undoubtedly do so again -- she had seen him coming out of her lair, and for all he knew, she assumed he'd eaten her eggs. He disliked eggs intensely, but the fire-breather wouldn't know that. Somehow, he needed to do another one of those tricky vertical takeoffs, and scoop up the boy with his talons.

Ironclaw waited until the female charged, galloping along the ledge toward him in that ungainly way that fire-breathers had. He knew she wouldn't be able to belch her flamethrower breath at him with sufficient accuracy while she was running. Nevertheless, it was a close call, and as Ironclaw lifted into the air, he was aware that she'd managed to singe a couple of his feathers. She skidded to a halt and spun around as he flew over her head -- but it was too late. Ironclaw had

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seized the boy by his clothing and was up and away. He glanced back as he reached the rim of the crater, and saw her lash out at the male with her hind legs. Such indiscriminate displays of temper didn't bode well for their long-term relationship.

The human child wriggled and squealed. This was very stupid behavior; if Ironclaw dropped him from that height, he would certainly die. After a little while, the boy seemed to realize this, for he stopped struggling.

Ironclaw was none too sure what to do with him. He wanted to continue searching for his daughter, but he couldn't just dump the boy in the snowy wastes below. He decided to land and discuss the matter with him. He started to look for somewhere suitable among the fissures and geysers, and then he spotted a sort of natural chimney. He turned his magnifying vision on it -- and that was when he saw Fuzzy, sitting beside a sleigh with Felix and Betony. He let out a screech of delight and spiraled down.

"It's my dad!" squawked Fuzzy, leaping to her feet and spreading her wings. This time, she managed a little hop and hover, and although she landed again fairly quickly, it was a good sign. The hex was beginning to wear off.

Felix could hardly believe his eyes. Life had suddenly started to look up.

Ironclaw set Rhino gently onto the ground, and gave his daughter a quick greeting-preen. "Got a present for you,