The Garden of Unearthly Delights (15 page)

‘How
so?’

‘You’ll
find out. Now, let me give you this.’ MacGuffin drew a small pouch from his
pocket and tossed it across the table.

Maxwell
took the thing between thumb and forefinger and examined it without a lot of
interest. ‘And what is this?’

‘It’s a
bag with a hole in it.’

‘Oh,
thanks very much.’ Maxwell made to fling the thing away.

‘Not so
fast. Put your hand inside.’

‘Why?’
asked Maxwell.

‘Don’t
ask why. Just do what you’re told.’

‘There’s
nothing nasty in there?’

‘There’s
nothing
in there at all.’

Maxwell
gingerly slipped his hand through the opening and felt inside the pouch. He
could feel
nothing.
He slipped his hand in further. Up to the wrist. The
forearm. Up to the elbow.

‘By the
Goddess,’ Maxwell yanked out elbow, forearm, wrist and hand. ‘How does it do
that?’

‘Never
mind the how. Just be aware that it does. When you locate Ewavett, slip the bag
over her head and draw it down to her feet. Whatever is contained within the
bag loses its weight and so may be easily transported.’

‘That’s
very clever,’ said Maxwell, truly impressed. ‘Did you give Rushmear a pouch
like this?’ Maxwell tucked the thing into his trouser pocket.

‘What I
gave or did not give Rushmear is no concern of yours.’

‘Fair
enough. But tell me, with all the magic at your disposal, why do you not simply
travel to Rameer and acquire Ewavett yourself?’

‘I am
too busy here. I cannot leave the village.’

‘I
suspect otherwise. I suspect that this Sultan Sergio, who rules a city rather than
a village, is your superior in magic. I further suspect that it would be
nothing less than suicidal to attempt
stealing
Ewavett from him. And I—’

‘Enough,
Maxwell. Enough. I have my people to care for.’

‘Your
slaves to rule, more like.’

‘Enough!’
MacGuffin snapped his fingers and Maxwell’s jaw
locked.

‘Grmmph!’
went Maxwell. ‘Rmmph, mmmmph!’

‘Will
you hold your tongue?’

Maxwell
nodded vigorously.

‘Good.’
MacGuffin snapped his fingers again and Maxwell’s jaw unlocked.

‘Now I
shall remove your soul.’

‘No,’
said Maxwell. ‘Listen.’

‘Careful
now.

‘I’m
being careful. You don’t understand. I’m not like others of this time. If you
take my soul you will kill me.’

‘That
would be a shame. But no doubt I can put your body to good use. Or at least
your skin. Stuffed and imaginatively mounted it can join the others in my
private basement collection.’

‘You
vile bastard!’ Maxwell lunged across the table. The magician drew back and
uttered certain words of power. Maxwell’s hands became affixed to the table
top.

‘Now
let this be done,’ said MacGuffin, drawing a slim transparent tube from the
glass-topped cabinet. ‘Please speak no further words, or you go upon your way
with a maggot for a tongue.

What
happened next happened horribly fast and was horribly horrible also. MacGuffin
snatched hold of Maxwell’s head, drew it up, rammed the transparent tube up his
left nostril, pushed and pushed and pushed. Maxwell’s eyes started from their
sockets. Blood spurted from his right nostril. MacGuffin put the other end of
the tube into his mouth and sucked. There was a terrible sound. A scream? A
whine? A high-pitched sawing? MacGuffin lifted his nose-ring and took from his
mouth a shining crystal globe which he examined carefully, nodded over, then
placed in the cabinet.

Then he
tore the tube from Maxwell’s nose.

Maxwell’s
hands freed. He slumped back in his chair, gagging and wretching. He clutched
at his head.

‘Hurts,
doesn’t it?’ said MacGuffin. ‘But the operation was a success and the patient
didn’t die.’

Maxwell
opened his eyes and stared at MacGuffin. Suddenly all had changed. If MacGuffin
had seemed evil before, now he seemed something much more than that, a
transcendent malignant horror. Evil beyond all evilness.

‘You
will experience a shift in your sensitivities,’ said this loathsome beast. ‘A
man without a soul is a very angry man. A man bereft of scruple or conscience
or compassion; a man driven by rage and motivated only by the desire to be
reunited with his spirit.’

Maxwell
foamed about the mouth. ‘I will kill you,’ he said.

‘No,
you will not do that. You will do what I wish you to do. Fetch me Ewavett or
die so doing. I told you that fate led you directly to my door. Is not Carrion
the perfect name for a man without a soul?’

Maxwell
fought like a madman to rise from his seat. ‘Know also this, Maxwell: I am ever
alert. Do not think to return here empty handed. Do not think to sneak back and
attempt to take me by surprise. This cabinet, for instance, opens only at my
command. A word from me and it destroys its contents. Others have gone before
you. Others who thought as you now think. They are gone into the nothingness
that awaits us all. lam not.’

Maxwell
glared with unbridled hatred at the magician and opened his mouth to speak
curses.

The
magician raised a hand. ‘Though nothing would give me greater pleasure than to
hear whatever it is you wish to say, as you have only twenty-three days in
which to complete your mission, it would be churlish of me to keep you here
chatting. So, Maxwell, farewell.’

MacGuffin
rose to his feet and flung wide his arms. ‘Horse and Hattock, Maxwell’s chair,’
he cried. ‘To the outskirts of Rameer’s kingdom at the hurry up. Be gone.

The
chair lifted from the floor. Maxwell tried to leap from it, but MacGuffin’s
magic was proof against that sort of thing. The chair swung across the room
towards an open window and passed through it into the sky.

Maxwell,
now clinging to the chair for what dear life remained to him, was only able to
turn his head, glare back at. MacGuffin and utter three small words.

But, though
they were small, and only three in number, these were special words. Words
which had brought untold joy to millions of discerning movie goers the old
world over.

‘I’ll
be back,’ howled Maxwell.

‘I’ll
be back!’

10

Maxwell clung fearfully to
the flying chair.

With
the red sky above, the grey earth below and himself lost somewhere in between,
he sought to attempt the near impossible and collect his widely scattered wits.

He was
angry.
Very
angry. A red-mist rage stormed around inside his head, kicking
his senses all about. His nose was bleeding and his ears popped. His teeth
rattled and his knees, now restored to power, knocked together violently.

Maxwell
was in a bit of a state. What had MacGuffin done to him? Taken his soul?
Impossible! Nonsense! You couldn’t do a thing like that to someone. You just
couldn’t. There had to be a more logical explanation for the alarming situation
he now found himself in. And the dreadful way he felt, wrung out like a jaded
J-cloth, yet simmering as soup.

 Perhaps
he’d been hypnotized or narcotized, that was more likely. Bunged some dire
hallucinogenic in his breakfast. Maxwell ground his rattling teeth. It was
neither of those and he knew it. He’d had his first taste of magic in this new
world of myth and legend and he was now in the worst trouble he’d ever been in.

He had
to think his way out of this mess, and fast. Twenty-three days, MacGuffin had
said. Twenty-three days, then wipe-out.

‘I’ll
fix you, you BASTARD!’ Maxwell raised a fist, the chair tilted alarmingly and
Maxwell clung on once more for what was left of his dear life.

What
did he know for certain? What could he cling to, mentally?

Well,
he knew why MacGuffin had given him this crap chair to sit on. That was one.

And he
knew what he was expected to do. Somehow steal Ewavett from the Sultan Rameer,
pop her in her magical pouch and return with her to MacGuffin. That was two. Or
twelve, or a hundred and seven. There was nothing certain at all there.

Kill
MacGuffin. Yes, he was absolutely certain about that one. The evil MacGuffin
must die.

Maxwell’s
teeth resumed their rattling. He
was
absolutely certain about that.
Which was terrible. Murder somebody? He, Maxwell Karrien, murder somebody?
Unthinkable. Up until now. But he, Max Carrion, man without a soul, man
consumed by anger and hatred.

‘Get a
grip,’ Maxwell told himself. ‘You are the Imagineer. Cool reason. Strategy.
Forward planning. Logic. Low cunning — lots of low cunning. Just get a grip.
Don’t go to pieces. And don’t fall off.’

The
chair flew on.

Maxwell
set about the job of persuading it to land. He impersonated the voice of the
magician and cried, ‘Horse and Hattock, Maxwell’s chair, and back to MacGuffin
at once.’

The
chair ignored him.

Maxwell
locked his feet about the chair’s legs, formed aerofoils with his hands and
sought to steer the thing down.

The
chair flew on regardless.

Maxwell
took to wondering, as one would, just what held the chair aloft. Magic surely
obeyed some scientific principles. Gravity
was
being defied here, after
all. How was the magic done?

Did
some invisible entity, summoned from the Goddess knew where and slave to the
unspeakable MacGuffin, carry the chair upon its winged shoulders?

Was it
a beam of force, possibly embodying elements of the transperambulation of
pseudo-cosmic antimatter?

Had the
atomic structure of the chair been altered in some way that it was repulsed by
the magnetic polarity of the planet?

Maxwell
pondered upon the last possibility. What might occur if he could break the
chair up, a bit at a time? Would its power slowly ebb away? Would it gently
sink to the ground?

Or
simply plummet?

With
his
luck?

Maxwell
hunched on the chair and resigned himself to wait.

Onward
flew the knackered bentwood. Onward ever onward.

Villages
passed beneath. Rivers, streams, hills and mountains. A sea. Some
dismal-looking islands. Maxwell recognized nothing.

Either
the topography of the world had altered substantially when the great transition
came, or he was simply flying over bits of it that he knew nothing of. One or
either, both or neither, were as likely. There was no consolation to be had.

The
chair moved at a fair old lick and Maxwell didn’t have his cloak. It was bloody
cold. By sunset he was hungry. And he needed the toilet. By sundown he was
still hungry, but he had managed to piss on a fishing boat.

Whether
the chair was offended by this, Maxwell didn’t know, but with the coming of
night it took to performing hair-raising aerial manoeuvres which seemed
expressly calculated to dislodge him.

There
was no sleep for Maxwell, and if it hadn’t been for the thoughts which crowded
his head, concerning the sequence of horrific tortures he would subject
MacGuffin to prior to the slow and agonizing death, he would surely have nodded
off and plunged to a swift one of his own.

By dawn
Maxwell was grey-faced and crazy-eyed. Determination now held a rein to his
fury. Revenge was ever uppermost in his mashed-about mind. Survival, at any
cost, to satisfy this vengeance, the driving force of his being. And nasty
stuff like that.

Shortly
after sunrise the chair began to lose altitude. Maxwell could only guess how
far he’d travelled, but it had to be many hundreds of miles. Far too many to
walk back.

Maxwell
recalled the magician saying that if he completed his mission successfully he
would learn how to return. Learn how to activate the chair, perhaps?

But now
was not the time for guessing. Now, Maxwell realized, was the time for praying.
The chair was going down.

Fast.

Pell-mell.

And
helter-skelter.

Maxwell’s
ears went, pop pop pop. A boiled sweet to suck on would have been nice. Down
went the chair and up rushed the ground. Maxwell could hear it coming. And he
could see it too.

It was
a green and pleasant land. Far better looking’ than all that waste and moor
he’d tramped across. But there was no joy whatever in the speed of its
approach.

‘Slow
down!’ Maxwell told the chair.
‘Slow down!’

The
chair was deaf to Maxwell’s pleas. It had evidently reached its destination
and, was now eager to return to its natural habitat. The chair began to spin on
its vertical axis, the dreaded ‘Roman Candle’, much afeared by parachutists.
Round and round went Maxwell and down and down and down.