Tangle Box (6 page)

Now what did he have? Nothing. And it was all Biggar’s fault.

Except, of course, it really wasn’t. It was as much his fault as Biggar’s, and that made him even madder.

What was going to happen to him now? What did good old Skat Mandu have planned?

“I really don’t like that dog,” Biggar repeated, and finally lapsed into silence.

They journeyed on through the morning, and as midday passed they reached the Heart. The Heart was sacred ground, the wellspring of Landover’s magic and the touchstone of her life. It was here that all of Landover’s Kings, including Ben Holiday, had been crowned. It appeared as a clearing amid a forest of giant broad-leaved trees, its perimeter
encircled by Bonnie Blues, its floor a mix of green, gold, and crimson grasses. A dais stood centermost, formed of gleaming white oak timbers and anchored by polished silver stanchions in which massive white candles had been set. Standards ringed the dais, and from their tips flew the flags of the Kings of Landover in a sea of bright colors. Holiday’s was newest, a set of balanced scales held forth against a field of green, a nod back to his years as a lawyer in the old life. All about the dais and across the remainder of the clearing were rows of white velvet kneeling pads and rests.

All of it was clean and perfectly kept, as if in anticipation of the next coronation.

Horris Kew entered the Heart and looked around solemnly. A country’s history winked back at him from every polished timber and post. “Take off your hat, Biggar,” he intoned. “We’re in church.”

Biggar looked about doubtfully, sharp eyes gleaming. “Who in the world takes care of this place?”

Horris stared at him and sighed. “What a philistine you are.”

Biggar flew off his shoulder and settled down on one of the velvet rests. “So now you’re resorting to name calling, are you, Horris? That’s really pathetic.”

And very deliberately he relieved himself on the white cushion.

Horris went rigid for a moment, and then his lanky frame uncoiled as if part serpent and his long limbs worked this way and that, like sticks pinned to a rag doll. “I’ve had about all I’m going to take from you, Biggar. How would you like me to wring your worthless neck?”

“How would you like me to peck out your eyes, Horris?”

“You imbecilic jackdaw!”

“You moronic baboon!”

They glared at each other, Horris with his fingers hooked into claws, Biggar with his feathers ruffled and spread. The
rage swept through them, then dissipated, evaporating like water on stone in the midday sun. The tension eased from their bodies and was replaced by wonder and a vague sense of uneasiness over the spontaneity of their embarrassing behavior.

“That
thing
is responsible for this foolishness,” Horris announced quietly. “Good old Skat Mandu.”

“He’s not what I expected, I admit,” Biggar declared solemnly.

“He’s not even a
he
. He’s an
it.”

“A maggot.”

“A serpent.”

Biggar closed his eyes. “Horris,” he said, a note of wistfulness creeping into his bird voice. “What are we doing here? Wait, don’t say anything until you’ve heard me out. I know how we got here. I understand the mechanics. We let that thing out of the Tangle Box where it was locked away in that patch of fairy mist, and it used the fairy mist to open a door into Landover. I got that part. But what are we doing here? Really, what? Just think about it a moment. This is a dangerous place for us.”

“I know, I know,” Horris sighed.

“All right, then. Why don’t we go somewhere else? Somewhere less … threatening. Why don’t we? Maybe it would listen to a suggestion that we go somewhere else. Maybe it would at least consider sending
us
through, even if
it
still wanted to stay. After all, what does it need us for?”

Horris fixed him with a hard stare. “Where would we go, Biggar? Back to where we came from, where the faithful are waiting to tear us apart? You took care of that option quite nicely.”

“It wasn’t me, Horris. I already told you that. It was Skat Mandu! Or whoever.” Biggar hopped one rest closer. “You want to know where we can go? There are lots of choices. I’ve read about a few. How about that place with the yellow
brick road and the emerald city and all those little people running around, the Munchies or whatever?”

Horris looked at him and sighed. “Biggar, that wasn’t a real place. That was in a book.”

Biggar tried frowning and failed. “No, it wasn’t. It was real.”

“No, Biggar. You’ve short-circuited again. That was Oz. Oz isn’t a real place. It’s a make-believe place.”

“With the wizard and all? With the witches and the flying monkeys? That wasn’t a story. That was real.”

“It was a story, Biggar! A story!”

“All right, Horris, all right! It was a story!” The bird clacked his beak emphatically. He thought a minute. “Okay. How about going to the place with the little people with the furry feet?”

Horris turned red. “What’s the use!” he hissed furiously. He strode past Biggar without looking at him, headed for the trees. “Let’s just report back and get this over with!”

He moved away again, disappearing back into the forest, leaving the Heart behind. After a moment, Biggar followed. They passed out of the sunlight to where it was dark and cool, even at midday, and shadows draped their intricate patterns like spider’s webs across the woodland. They traveled without speaking, Horris striding on determinedly, Biggar hopping from limb to limb, now flying ahead, now winging his way back. Locked in a brown study, Horris pointedly ignored him.

Less than a mile from the Heart, where the light was all but screened away by the interlocking branches of the trees overhead, they descended a steep slope to a dense thicket of brush backed up against a rocky overhang. Easing their way past the brush, they came to a massive flat stone into which symbols had been carved on both sides and across the top. Horris stared at the stone, sighed his weariest sigh, reached up, and touched various symbols in quick succession. He stepped back quickly as the door opened, stone
grating on stone. Biggar landed on his shoulder again and together they watched the black opening of the cave beyond come into focus.

Rather reluctantly, they entered. The stone door grated shut behind them.

There was light in the cave to guide them back into its farthest reaches, a sort of dim phosphorescence that seemed wedded to the rock. It gleamed like silver ore in scattered patches and random streaks, breaking up the gloom sufficiently to allow a relatively safe passage through. It was hot within the cave, an unpleasant sort of warmth that suffused the skin and left it damp and itchy. There was a distinctive smell in the air, too. Horris and Biggar recognized it immediately and knew where it came from.

They reached the deepest part of the cave in moments, the part where the light was brightest, the heat hottest, and the stench rawest. The cave widened and rose some twenty feet at this point, and a scattering of stalactites jutted down from the ceiling like a medieval spear trap. The chamber was empty save for a rickety wooden bed set to one side and an equally rickety wooden table on which a metal washbasin sat. The bed was unmade and the basin unemptied.

Next to the wash basin sat the Tangle Box.

From the deepest corner of the cave came a stirring. “Did you do as you were told?” a voice hissed menacingly.

Horris tried to hold his breath as he spoke so as not to inhale any more of the smell than he had to. “Yes. Just as we were told.”

“What was the response?”

“He said he would think it over. But the wizard and the scribe are going to try to convince him not to let me stay.”

The speaker laughed. It shifted in the gloom, a lifting of its body, a straightening of its limbs. Really, it was hard to tell what was happening, which was very disconcerting. Horris thought back again to when he had laid eyes on it
for the first time, realizing suddenly that he was already unsure of what it was he had seen. The thing that was Skat Mandu had a way of showing only part of itself, a flicker of body or limb or head (never face), a hint of color or shape. What you were left with, ultimately, was a sense of something rather than a definite image. What you were left with, inevitably, was unpleasant and harsh and repulsive.

“Do I frighten you?” the voice asked softly. In the smoky gloom something gleamed a wicked green.

Horris suddenly regretted coming back, thinking that perhaps Biggar had been right after all. What sort of madness was this that they had embraced in releasing the monster? It had been imprisoned in the Tangle Box, and it had tricked them into freeing it, using Biggar as channeler, Horris as conjurer, both as instruments for picking the locks that held it chained. Horris Kew understood in the most secret part of his heart that nothing he had done in creating Skat Mandu had ever really been his idea—it had all come from the
thing
in the Tangle Box, the
thing
that had been locked within the fairy mists, dispatched into exile just as they had been, and consigned to oblivion except for a fate that had brought Horris and Biggar to its unwitting rescue.

“What are we doing here?” Biggar piped up suddenly, a frightened stiffness in his reedy voice.

“What I tell you to do,” the voice hissed.

Skat Mandu came out of the gloom, rising up like a cloud of smoke that had somehow coalesced into a vaguely familiar but not yet complete form. Its smell drove Horris and Biggar back a step in response, and its laugh was low and satisfied. It rippled like fetid water as it shifted about, and they could hear the hiss of its breathing in the sudden silence. It was huge and fat and dominant, and it had the feel of something ancient and terrible.

“I am called the Gorse,” the monster whispered suddenly. “I was of the people who live within the fairy mists, one of their own until I was trapped and confined centuries ago, imprisoned
in the Tangle Box for all time. I was a sorcerer of great power, and I will be so again. You will help me.”

Horris Kew cleared his throat. “I don’t see what we can do.”

The Gorse laughed. “I will be your eyes, Horris Kew. I see you better than you see yourself. You are angry at losing what you had in that other world, but what you want most lies here. You are frightened at what has been done to you, but the courage you lack can be supplied by me. Yes, I manipulated you. Yes, you were my cat’s paw. You will be again, you and the bird both. This is the way of things, Horris. The people of the fairy mists bound me within the Tangle Box with spells that could not be undone from within, but only from without. Someone had to speak them, and I chose you. I whispered the incantations in your mind. I guided your conjuring steps. One by one you spoke the spells of Skat Mandu. One by one you turned the keys to the locks that held me bound. When I was ready to come out, I made the bird confess that Skat Mandu was a charade so that you would be forced to flee. But your escape could only be managed by setting me free. But do not despair. It was as it should be, as it was meant to be. Fate has bound us one to the other.”

Horris wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that, but on the other hand he was intrigued in spite of himself with the possibility that there might be something in this for him. “You have a plan for us?” he asked cautiously.

“A very attractive plan,” the Gorse whispered. “I know of your history, the both of you. You, Horris, were exiled for your vision of what conjuring should be. The bird was exiled for being more than his creator had expected.”

Oddly enough, Horris and Biggar found themselves in immediate agreement with this assessment (although Biggar didn’t much care for constantly being referred to as “the bird”).

“You were embarrassments and nuisances to those who
pretended friendship toward you but in truth feared you and were jealous of you. Such is the nature of the creatures against whom we stand.” The Gorse eased back ponderously into the gloom, smoke, and shadow along the rock. The movement produced a sort of scraping sound, like a knife trimming fish scales. It should not have been possible with something that appeared to be so insubstantial. “Wouldn’t you like to gain a measure of revenge on these fools?” the Gorse demanded.

Horris and Biggar would have liked nothing better, of course. But their uneasiness with the Gorse remained undiminished for all the reassuring words. They didn’t like this creature, didn’t like the sight or smell of it, didn’t even like the idea of it, and they were still of a mind that they had been better off back where they had come from. Still, they were not foolish enough to say so. Instead, they simply waited to hear more.

The darkening atmosphere of the cave seemed to tighten down like a coffin lid as the Gorse suddenly expanded into the shadows, stealing the light. “For myself, I will secure dominion over the fairy mists from which I was sent and over those who dwelt free within them while I was imprisoned. I will have them for my slaves until I tire of them, and then I will see them closed away in such blackness that they will scream endlessly for death’s release.”

Horris Kew swallowed the lump in his throat and forgot about any attempt at backing farther away. On his shoulder, Biggar’s claws tightened until they hurt.

“To you,” the Gorse hissed softly, “I will give Landover—all of it, the whole of it, the country and her people, to do with as you choose.”

The silence that filled the cave was immense. Horris found suddenly that he could not think straight. Landover? What would he do with Landover? He tried to speak and could not. He tried to swallow and could not do that either. He was dry and parched from toes to nose, and all of his
conjuring life was a dim recollection that seemed as ephemeral as smoke.

“You want to give us Landover?” Biggar squeaked suddenly, as if he hadn’t heard right.

The Gorse’s laugh was rough and chilling. “Something even Skat Mandu could not have done for you in your exiled life, isn’t that so? But to earn this gift you must do as I tell you. Exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?”

Horris Kew nodded. Biggar nodded along with him.

“Say it!” the Gorse hissed sharply.