Too Many Curses (14 page)

"Expropriate!"

"Expropriate," repeated the sludge lifelessly. Reproductions of Nessy's clothing budded on its body. Like the creature's skin, the clothes were too perfect, free of smudge or wrinkle.

"That's impressive," said Yazpib.

"That's impressive," agreed the sludge.

"Does it always do that?" asked Echo.

"Does it always do that?" asked the sludge.

"It mimics," said Nessy.

"It mimics."

"Can't you make it stop that?"

"Can't you make it stop that?"

"Reticence," commanded Nessy, and the sludge quieted.

"I thought you didn't know much magic," said Yazpib.

"I don't. These are trained responses." She went to a pot full of dead crickets, retrieved a handful, and threw them to the sludge. Motionless, it accepted its reward, absorbing the treat directly through its pseudoflesh.

"If I had a stomach, I'd be ill," said Echo. "Why do we need this thing?"

"Margle made the sludge by accident," said Nessy. "But his theory was that it could be trained to replace men of influence and power with indistinguishable duplicates that he controlled. The biggest obstacle is that the sludge is still merely a fungus with mimetic properties. But it can be taught, or more precisely, conditioned to respond to stimuli."

"Incredible, Nessy," said Yazpib. "I had no idea you were so well versed in alchemical biological study."

"I'm not." She held up the notebook and pointed to the paragraph she'd just repeated before reading more. "The sludge, however, is currently too unstable. Its imitative nature can respond reflexively and unpredictably."

The nurgax sniffed at the sludge. It whimpered then growled and nudged the sludge harshly. Nessy's rigid double fell over. Its perfectly imperfect skin turned a deep purple, and horns sprouted from several uncomfortable points.

"Amorphous," commanded Nessy. Her copy oozed and melted into its natural slimy form.

"I still don't understand why we need it," said Echo.

To answer the question, Nessy gave another command. "Transmogrificate Margle."

The sludge's response was instant. Whereas its transformation into Nessy had taken minutes, its new form was merely a slurp and pop away. Margle, or at least a relatively strong facsimile, stood before them. It wasn't perfect. As with Nessy's form, it seemed a touch unfinished, just shy of those little details that were never missed until they weren't there. No wrinkles around the eyes. Nostrils that were too symmetrical. Eyebrows which arched too severely. And its simulated robe didn't sway with the breeze running through the labs. But none of this seemed especially odd when taking on a wizard's shape. Even imperfectly copied, this Margle was far more human-looking than Tiama the Scarred.

"He'd already trained it to wear his form." Nessy circled Margle, searching for serious flaws.

"This is for Tiama," said Yazpib.

Nessy nodded. "She has to see Margle. Otherwise, she'll figure something is wrong."

"It could work."

"It could work," said Margle, but he spoke with Nessy's voice.

"Oh, great," said Echo.

"Oh, great."

"This thing is useless."

"This thing is useless."

"Oh, reticence!" growled Echo.

Margle fell quiet.

Echo sighed. "It'll never pass. Not up close. I mean, look at it. It doesn't even move. It just stands there. And forget about a conversation."

"Forget about a conversation," said Margle, this time with Echo's voice.

"Reticence," she said.

Margle opened his mouth wide. No words came out, but the mouth remained agape. His eyes twitched in their sockets.

"It's not even reliably trained. Can't we try something else?" asked Echo. "Maybe Yazpib could teach you some sort of illusion spell."

"It'd never work," said Yazpib. "Nessy hasn't the talent yet
for magic that complex. Tiama would certainly see through any such attempt."

"I can't imagine this'll do much better. You see my point, don't you, Nessy?"

But Nessy wasn't listening. She was too busy working on solutions. The sludge couldn't pass for Margle. Not up close. This was true. But wizards were eccentric, full of odd habits, and perhaps there was a way to use this to their advantage.

"I still don't see why you need me," said Echo.

"Because you're going to be Margle's brain." Nessy ran a finger down the notebook page. "We're going to teach it to obey only you."

"Me? Why me?"

"Because you're invisible," said Yazpib, "which clearly makes you the perfect candidate. That's good thinking, Nessy."

"That's good thinking, Nessy," agreed Margle unbidden.

"Reticence, damn it!" commanded Echo. "Reticence!"

The order was apparently too much for the sludge's reactionary intellect. It screamed, long and loud and somewhat musically. Its face, Margle's face, boiled and dripped away until it was a body without a head, which still stood there, howling the same three notes over and over again.

"Amorphous!" shouted Nessy over the din.

The sludge returned to its slimy, silent form.

"From now on, Echo, you're to give the commands."

"If you think I should." Echo paused, and Nessy assumed that this would've been a moment when she shrugged, had she still possessed a body. "Transmogrigate . . ."

"Transmogrificate," corrected Nessy.

"Sorry. Transmogrificate Margle."

The sludge reshaped itself into the wizard again. Except this time, it lacked a nose.

"Am I the only one who sees the flaws in this plan?"

"Let me worry about that," said Nessy. "Right now, you just concentrate on learning how to handle the sludge. We need it to be able to speak and perhaps move an arm."

"It would be great if we could get it to glower," added Yazpib. "Then it would look much more like Margle."

"We'll work on that too if there's time," said Nessy. "I think I can distract Tiama for another day. Anything more than that, I'd rather not risk."

The noseless, motionless Margle stared straight ahead. Black syrup dripped from his right ear and ran down his neck.

"This will never work," said Echo.

"This will never work," agreed Margle, but at least this time he sounded like himself.

Nessy retired early. Trapping the hellhound had taken its toll. She'd always prided herself on her endurance, and several times in her career she'd worked days on end without resting when the situation called for it. But the levitation spell had left her drained. Magic was not a gentle art. Subtle, perhaps, but demanding and consuming also. Nessy understood that taking care of the castle also meant taking care of herself. To work while exhausted invited sloppiness and mistakes, and now wasn't the time for mistakes. Not with so much going on within the castle walls. Better to get some rest and deal with things from a fresh perspective.

There were still many things to be done, but these would wait until morning at the very least. And if some disaster struck in those passing hours, Nessy didn't imagine she was
capable of dealing with it anyway. So she dragged herself into her hallway corner, curled up on her cot, and with the last bit of strength nearly left her, closed her eyes.

"Aren't we going to read tonight?" asked the monster under her bed.

She kept her eyes shut. "I'm sorry. Maybe tomorrow."

"This is two nights in a row."

"I've been very busy," she mumbled softly. She'd nearly drifted off when he spoke up again.

"There's someone else, isn't there?"

She had neither the energy or the interest to ask what he meant. She just yawned and thought about covering her ears with her pillow and throwing her blanket over her head. But Margle had never given her a pillow or a blanket. Even if she had such luxuries, it would've been unforgivably rude, and she wasn't that tired yet.

"There's another monster, isn't there? That's it. You found someone you like better."

He took her lack of denial as admittance of guilt. He glowered up with his three eyes. "It's the monster in the chest. It's all those gold coins he has, isn't it? You know, they're not real. And they're all cursed. If you spend even one, you'll get the rot. All your limbs will fall off. Even your tail. And the stench. Oh, the stench is dreadful. Next thing you know, you draw flies, and you're bursting with maggots. Maggots everywhere. Ever had a maggot squirming up your nose? It's terribly unpleasant. You don't want that."

"No," she agreed. "I don't."

The monster under her bed was silent just long enough to let her think the subject had passed.

"It's not the monster under the floorboards, is it?" he said. "I know that one all too well. She'll promise you three wishes if you free her, but don't believe her. She'd just eat you as soon as she was free."

Nessy rolled over.

"It isn't that one in the catacombs, is it? That lurky one."

"There is no other monster," she said.

The monster under her bed drew deeper into his darkness until his shimmering eyes were barely visible. "A likely story. . . ." He continued to mutter loud enough to be heard without being understood. But she was already fast asleep by then.

The castle, however, didn't sleep. Not tonight. Instead, it groaned and creaked, rumbled and shuddered. All the sinister creatures within it, all the monsters, horrors and dark wizardesses within its walls, were nothing compared to the malignant will of the castle itself. But the castle wasn't all evil. It had learned, if quite by accident, degrees of affection, a modicum of care and compassion for its inhabitants. These qualities, slight as they might be, struggled against the castle's greater depravity. The affection nibbled on the castle's metaphorical little toe, while the compassion itched like mad behind a figurative ear. Neither inflicted anything but irritation, and this made the castle even more dangerous. On the second night without its master, the bonds that shackled it loosened just a bit.

And in this mostly evil, slightly good, and extremely annoyed castle, things began to happen.

Decapitated Dan didn't sleep. This was nothing new. He never had, even when alive. As a boy, he'd sit up all night. He'd sit in his chair, and he'd stare up at the moon. Just stare. If there were clouds in the sky, he'd stare where the moon would've been. And he'd smile to himself. His father had remarked more than once that Dan should be put to bed. That even if he didn't sleep, all that staring at the moon could only be trouble.

"Where's the harm?" disagreed his mother. "Perhaps he'll grow into a scholar of the heavens. Maybe even discover a new planet and name it after me. Won't that be lovely?"

Still smiling, Dan would turn his head and nod as if he'd been listening before turning his attention back to the moon.

"No good can come of it," said his father nightly. "It's sure to set madness on the boy."

But Dan had known better. He was certain he'd been born mad. If not that, he'd been a lunatic prodigy, developing shining dementia even before he could walk. Either way, Dan had accepted his madness. So much so, that he was quite surprised when the rest of the world wouldn't. He expected them to understand that this was his job, his calling, and to execute him for a few stranglings here and there, a dozen unpleasant acts with livestock, and a few pretty fires
was as logical as killing a baker for baking, a cobbler for cobbling, or a lawyer for lawyering. Well, perhaps a lawyer might deserve to be put down for that, Dan would muse with his unsettling, unflinching grin.

He still remembered his execution, and the look on his parents' faces before the ax beheaded him. They just couldn't understand. He pitied them. But he'd never pitied himself. Though sometimes, on these long stretches when he could only sit on the spice rack, look up at the ceiling and pretend it was a sky with a big, blue moon, he wondered if his mother's dream had been so foolish after all.

"Something you would've enjoyed, eh, boring Mister Bones," he whispered to the skeleton dozing silently in the corner. Strange, how Mister Bones slept when Decapitated Dan never had.

He spied something new in the kitchen and it drew his attention from the imaginary heavens and the very special imaginary planet that he'd named "Elsa," after his mother. This hadn't been her name, but he liked the way it sounded just the same. He waggled on his jaw, very slowly rocking his skull a few degrees to the right.

"Well, hello, hello there."

The Door At The End Of The Hall groaned.

"Fancy seeing you here," said Dan. "But you'd best be quiet. Unless you want to wake ol' Mister Bones. He's got no ears, but even he doesn't sleep through everything."

The Door creaked softly. The ring of its handle stretched toward Dan.

"Oh that I could open you, you grand ol' door."

The Door shuddered and moaned.

"I'm sure we'd have a great bit of fun then," Dan agreed. "So what is behind you, if you don't mind me asking?"

Creak.

"Come now, come now. You can trust me with a secret. Everyone says so. Or they would if they knew all the secrets ol' Dan kept."

Creak?

"Oh no. I couldn't tell you. Not a one of 'em." With a satisfied grin, he swayed on his perch. "Not for free anyway. But if you part with one of your secrets, maybe ol' Dan could be persuaded to part with one of his."

The Door considered the offer.

"It's a good one, it is. A juicy confidence from the heart of the castle itself."

The Door swayed its parchment runes while puffs of fog flitted from under it.

Groan groan groan. Thump. Thump.

Dan frowned. "That's it? Nothing else?"

The Door groaned a growl.

"No offense, no offense. I was just expecting something more—oh, I don't know—more dramatic."

The Door thumped curtly.

"Don't be like that. You're an evil portal. That's never in any doubt. But ol' Dan likes his evilness gorgeous and roaring. You're a bit too subtle for my tastes. But to each his own."

Groan groan squeak?

"Ah yes. My secret now, eh? It's a good one." He whispered. "Margle is coming back."