The Outsorcerer's Apprentice (14 page)

He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the idea out through his ear. Impossible. For one thing, that sort of
manipulation takes time, you’d need generations to implant a superstition that deeply. True, but to a YouSpace user, time spent Somewhere Else doesn’t pass back home; you could doughnut in, spend a thousand years building a culture and a civilisation from scratch, and be back where you started from before your coffee went cold. Yes, but who would bother? Who might possibly have that much of a vested interest in—?

The unicorn stood up. It was looking at him out of those great big gormless blue eyes. “Not now,” he snapped, “I’m thinking,” but the unicorn continued to stare, making rational thought impossible. He sighed, turned to face it and said, “What?”

The unicorn fluttered its ridiculous eyelashes. Then, with the tip of its delicate hoof, it pawed at the ground.

“What?” Benny demanded. “You want to go toilet?”

The unicorn pawed again; and this time, Benny could see that it had traced a pattern in the leaf mould. A circle; no, two concentric circles, a big one with a little one inside. The shape of a—

“Oh come
on
,” Benny said. The unicorn tossed its head, so that for a moment its mane floated like sea spray; then it shuffled over a bit to a fresh patch of leaf mould and started again; first a big circle, then a smaller one inside. It gave the impression that it was prepared to go on doing it all day, if necessary.

I should be excited, Benny thought. I should be filled with fragile hope and wild joy. Instead–he ran a quick analysis protocol, and the result came back;
insulted
. Yes, quite. On the other hand, it wasn’t as though he was awash with alternative courses of action. He cleared his throat.

“Hello, unicorn,” he said.

Flutter, flutter, went the eyelashes. Bat, bat.

He pointed at the circles in the mould. “Doughnut.”

Bat, bat, flutter. Dear God, he thought. No wonder Barbie loves these creatures. “You know where I can find a doughnut.”

Flutter, flutter, bat, flutter. “Got you. Right, can you take me there?”

Flutter. Bat.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Flut.

Shouting won’t help, he told himself. There’s no need to shout. “
Hey!
” he shouted. The unicorn opened its eyes wide and backed away a step or two; and that’s me told, Benny reflected. “Nice unicorn,” he said, and tried to find a smile from somewhere. That made the unicorn back away further, and he could see its point. “
Nice
unicorn. Take me to your doughnut. Please?”

The unicorn tossed its mane again, and swished its tail. It was deciding whether to forgive him, which was so
unfair
. Never mind. If it took him to a doughnut, and the doughnut took him home, none of it would matter; he could get on with his revision, take his exam, tell the necessary lies and get his first-class honours degree, and never have to think about Prince Florizel or unicorns or anything of the sort ever again. So: “Nice unicorn. I’m sorry I shouted, and I think your mane looks really pretty, and
please
can you show me where the doughnut is? Please?”

Slowly the unicorn arched its neck, then solemnly lowered its head in an unmistakable nod.
Yes!
, Danny thought, and took a slow step forward—

Which was just as well, because if he’d stayed where he was, the arrow that snaked through the air and buried itself up to the socket in a tree would have hit him, and that would have been that. As it was, he felt a blast of air like you get from one of those pocket electric fans, and found himself staring at a quivering arrowshaft, about four inches from his
nose. By the time he’d snapped out of it, the unicorn had bolted.

“
Hey!
” he yelled, and was about to run after it when the bushes rustled and out jumped six goblins. He froze.

“Oops,” grunted the lead goblin, in the act of nocking an arrow on his bowstring. “Sorry, squire, didn’t see you there.”

The goblin was about five feet tall, hunchbacked, NFL-shouldered, its huge head attached to its massive chest by the shortest neck ever. It had curly tusks at the corners of its mouth, ears like fried eggs and no perceptible nose; and the old joke,
so how does it smell? Terrible
, was no more than a statement of fact. Benny tried to say something, but his jaw had gone numb.

“Didn’t think, see?” the goblin went on. “Like, you don’t worry about hitting anyone when you shoot at unicorns, cos they won’t let people get near. Not unless they’re—” He stopped and grinned. “Anyhow,” he added, “no harm done. Come on, lads, we can head it off by the waterfall.” It grinned again, revealing a mouth containing far too many teeth, all pointed. “I expect you just haven’t met the right girl yet,” it said. “See you around.”

The goblins loped away up the road, chuckling hoarsely. Benny sat down without intending to, and kept perfectly still until his heart had stopped trying to bash its way out of his ribcage. Goblins. The orcward squad. It just gets better and better.

Eventually he found the strength to start walking; and as he walked, he thought; come on, how hard can it be? You get flour, water or milk, probably an egg, you whisk them all up together to make a sort of paste, roll it into a string and join the ends, then you warm it over a heat source and there you go. Food with a hole in the middle. I can do this.

So he trudge back to the castle with a stone in his shoe, and stormed into the kitchen yelling, “Everybody out!”
When he’d shooed away the last of the kitchen staff and had the place to himself, he nosed around until he’d found flour, eggs, milk, a slab of evil-looking white lard and a frying pan. He’d remembered at the last minute that you deep-fried the things. He emptied two scuttles of coal onto the fire and blew it with the bellows until it was roaring cheerfully away. Now then, he said to himself. Let the dog see the rabbit.

Evicted by royalty in person, the kitchen staff fled in all directions, then crept back and reconvened on the archery lawn, grouped around the old well. Fortuitous; because when first black smoke and then long, curling tongues of flame started billowing out of the kitchen window, they were only a couple of dozen yard away and were able to swing into action immediately, filling buckets from the stable yard and forming a human chain. An hour and a half later, the fire was under control; and, apart from the thatch having to be dragged off the haybarn as a precaution, damage to the adjoining buildings was minimal. Most important of all, the prince came through the ordeal with hardly a scratch, thanks to prompt action by a junior kitchen maid, who kicked down the door and carried him out over her shoulder. A good night’s sleep worked wonders, and the doctor was able to assure the assembled court that, provided he got plenty of rest, His Highness would be up and about again in a day or two and no harm done.

The last part was something of an overstatement, because the kitchen block itself was a total ruin. The appropriate brave face was jammed on the situation by the Lord High Chamberlain, who arranged for emergency bread and cheese to be freighted in by fast (fastish) cart from the outlying villages; until it arrived, he announced, there was plenty of celery in the walled garden, and nice fresh watercress, and some delicious crab apples from the tree opposite the south gatehouse, and they could all muck in together, no standing
on ceremony, and it’d be fun. His words were received in respectful, stony silence by the hundred and sixteen men and women who worked in the palace and got their meals as part of their pay, though they were rather less taciturn later on, apparently. Anyway, nobody had been killed, that was the main thing, and any impromptu cookery session you can walk away from is a success. Even so—

“What were you thinking of, Your Highness?” the chamberlain said, not for the first time. “With all due respect, leaving the purely physical damage to one side for a moment, the political fallout—”

“I just wanted to cook something, all right?” Benny groaned. “For crying out loud, it’s my kitchen—”

“Was your kitchen. Also, Your Highness, that’s not strictly true. Under the doctrine of separation of powers embodied in the fifth schedule to the third amendment to the constitution, you as Prince represent the executive arm of the State, whereas the everyday routine functions of government, including the smooth operation of the palace complex, are properly speaking the prerogative of the administrative arm, as represented by myself and the Lord Chief Equerry of the Bedchamber. So, to be nit-pickingly pedantic—”

“It’s your kitchen.”

“I like to think of it as
our
kitchen,” the chamberlain said smoothly. “Once it’s rebuilt, of course, which I have to say isn’t going to be any day soon. Apparently the slates for the roof have to come from Beal Regard, which is a two-week trip by river barge or three weeks by pack horse, because you can’t get a cart across the Whitewater before July at the earliest—”

“Um,” Benny said wretchedly. “I’m being a real nuisance, aren’t I?”

“You’re the prince,” the chamberlain replied, his tone of voice making it quite clear that that wasn’t to be construed as
an answer to the question. “So, naturally, your word is law and your actions are above reproach. However—”

“Quite.”

“Indeed. So, if it’s entirely convenient to Your Highness, and not wanting to check or hinder your unfettered executive powers in any way, if you could possibly see your way to staying out of the kitchen when it’s rebuilt—”

Benny sighed. “All right.”

“If at all possible, never ever setting foot in that part of the castle campus ever again—”

“All
right
. Fine. Why is it some people find it so hard to take yes for an answer?”

“And furthermore,” the chamberlain ground on, “if Your Highness could possibly be good enough to give a binding undertaking not to interfere or concern himself in any way in matters relating to food preparation—Only,” he went on, lowering his voice, “there’s been a quite ridiculous rumour going the rounds lately, obviously no basis to it whatsoever, but associating Your Highness with, let’s say, some highly unsavoury food-related practices; and rather than have the rumourmongers rounded up and beheaded, which we really don’t want to have to do if we can possibly avoid it, maybe it’d be better if the whole issue just died quietly away and was forgotten about, which isn’t going to happen if Your Highness goes around the place making, well,
suggestions
—”

“Ah.”

“Yes. So, if you could please just eat what’s put in front of you and leave everything else to us, it’d make my life so much easier, and probably rather longer as well. If it pleases Your Highness, of course.”

When the chamberlain and the other courtiers eventually went away and left him in peace, Benny lay back in the darkness and reflected that, if he really was being controlled by an unseen power rather than simply being a replay on Life’s
pinball table, the unseen power was winning hands down. Not only was he stuck here; every avenue of escape he’d so far identified had been methodically blocked. That was probably just his paranoia talking (other people have parrots), because at each step there was a perfectly reasonable alternative view. A falcon had stolen his doughnut; well, birds do that sort of thing, and tame falcons are trained to snatch food from the hand. The people here didn’t know about doughnuts; well, so what? They didn’t know about Scotch eggs or tiramisu either; that’s not evidence of a supernatural conspiracy. The food-with-holes-in thing looked a bit mean, but every society has its taboos, like not eating with the left hand or not walking through the streets with no clothes on–weird to outsiders, as inherent as breathing to those who believe in them. The fire was just the sort of thing that happens when inflammable materials and a culinary kludge come together in a confined space. Break the sequence of events down into its component parts and examine each part, and you’re left with a collection of the sort of Stuff that Happens. So there you go. Who’s a clever boy, then, croaked his paranoia.

Fine. Now for a plan of action. Um.

He sent for the chamberlain. “I want you to organise a hunt,” he said.

The chamberlain relaxed. This was more his idea of proper prince stuff. “Of course, Your Highness. So good to see you’re yourself again.”

If only, Benny thought. “A unicorn hunt.”

The chamberlain’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you think that’s altogether wise?”

“Yup,” Benny said crisply. “Let’s say tomorrow morning, shall we?”

“The association in the public mind; you and unicorns—”

“Nice early start, I think. They say it’s going to be sunny.”

“Apropos of nothing at all,” the chamberlain said, “the King of Lyonesse’s daughter comes of age in three weeks, and they say she’s a very nice girl, once you get to know her. You could do worse.”

“Say about half ten? We’ll need hounds and beaters and all that sort of thing.”

“Or there’s the Grand Duchess of Beal Regard,” the chamberlain said. “Sweet nature, very artistic, by all accounts. She makes wind chimes out of old gate hinges.”

“I shall want the unicorn taken alive, of course,” Benny said firmly. “After all, they’re quite rare, and it’d be nice to have a tame one in the palace garden.”

“Or there’s the new barmaid at the Red Lion.”

“That’s all for now,” Benny said. “Thank you so much.”

J
ohn the Lawyer–people had trouble with his name; they tended to elide the -aw sound into an I–enjoyed working with Elves. It suited him perfectly, particularly when it came to his relationship with his co-workers. For John, revenge wasn’t just a dish best served cold; it was a delicacy to be savoured, with infinite care taken over its preparation, to produce the ultimate banquet. To start with, a delicate resentment soufflé, garnished with insults and disdain
rechaufée aux fines herbes
, followed by a bloody steak of deviousness with sides of highly spiced retribution on a bed of bruised feelings, followed by a chocolate and vanilla gloat, coffee and biscuits. So; every time an Elf looked down its nose at him, or pretended not to have heard what he said, or explained a simple concept very slowly and carefully for his benefit, John smiled, bided his time and added another course to his dream menu.

In the meantime, however, he had a living to earn, targets to meet and surpass; which could have been awkward, since the partners never gave him anything to do, arguing that although they themselves were wonderfully liberal and advanced and had no problems about humans whatsoever, they couldn’t expect their clients to share such enlightened
attitudes. No problem; John was perfectly content to fend for himself, preferred it that way, in fact, since it gave him so much more scope to be creative as far as the niceties of professional ethics were concerned. The invention of the contingency fee had been a stroke of genius, though he did say so himself. And now, with the case of
Yglaine vs the Universe
, he had the perfect springboard, the chance of a lifetime; a shot at the wizard himself.

If you’re going to undermine the very foundations of society, you have to dig deep. So John started with newspaper clippings. He needed to know where the wizard had come from, how long he’d been here, how he’d started; basic, obvious facts that nobody, when they came to think about it, actually knew. Fortunately, the archives of
Sneer
and
Superior on Sunday
went back a thousand years, though the older material had been transcribed onto gossamer some time ago and was a real bitch to read.

His initial findings surprised him, though in a good way. A thousand years ago, the wizard was already well established and occupying roughly the same pivotal position in the society and economy of the Known World as he was today. Splendid: the deeper the roots, the bigger the hole you make when you drag the tree out with chains. He turned his attention to the media collection of the Elvenhome University library, department of Classical Journalism.

In order to house its vast archive, the department rented a network of disused mineshafts from King Mordak. It wasn’t terribly nice down there: cold, damp and an uncomfortable whiff of goblin, with the possibility of a cave-in ever-present at the back of one’s mind. As is so often the case, however, the best treasure is buried deepest. It was in a three thousand year-old edition of
Supercilious!
, classified-ads section, that John found what he’d been looking for:

And then a name he couldn’t begin to pronounce, and a box number. Fortunately he’d brought with him his copy of the official authorised history of the Sylvan Elves Youth Ensemble, so it only took him a moment to glance at the index and discover that the SEYE was founded three thousand years ago; a fortnight, in fact, after the newspaper ad first appeared.

He grinned, made a note of the file reference, brushed dust out of his hair and trimmed the wick of his lamp. He had a date, a starting point, and–he thought lovingly of the absence of a statute of limitations in Elvish law–three thousand years’ worth of potential class actions. Furthermore, he could be fairly safe in assuming that this wonderful resource was his and his alone. The thought of Elven lawyers getting up off their bony arses, huddling down here in the cold and the dark, actually doing some work for a change, was laughable. The other side wouldn’t know what hit them.

A 2750-year-old edition of
Snark
yielded up the next gold nugget. In an editorial white-hot with self-righteous fury, the environmental-affairs correspondent fulminated against the dwarves for their criminally reckless plans to expand their mining operations under the Forest, with all the concomitant threats of pollution, water contamination, subsidence, seismic instability and property values meltdown that went with them. In his final paragraph, the writer spared a teaspoonful of venom for the shadowy figure behind it all, the secretive and reclusive buyer known only as the wizard, whose insatiable appetite for shining yellow rocks had prompted this appalling violation of natural resources. When will the dwarves finally realise that their short-sighted pursuit of
mere profit will one day quite literally cost them the earth, etc, etc.

An extra point of interest snagged his attention; loads of ripe stuff about the dwarves, but not a single mention of the goblins. Now he came to think about it, how long had the goblins been involved in the mining caper? Goblin history was very much the Cinderella of academic enquiry–the horrid things have a history? Who cares?–so there wasn’t a handy reference book he could turn to. He made a note to find out more about it, and ploughed on. The roof of the tunnel shook and a small cloud of dust floated down, coating the backs of his hands. Not that there was anything to worry about. The goblin Mine Safety Commission had inspected these tunnels and certified them Moderately Safe.

A paragraph in a 2200-year-old
Beautiful Yellow Face
caught his eye. It was the lead story in the paper’s Human News section (you had to know where to look–sandwiched in between the gardening column and the wine reviews). The headline was;
Human Prince Torn Apart By Mob
, and it told the story of how Prince Valentine (twenty-one) had been killed by his own subjects for gross breaches of human food taboos. Reliable sources stated that Valentine had previously burned down the palace kitchen in the course of his bizarre and twisted experiments into illegal food, and only his exalted rank had saved him from prosecution after he’d made explicit advances to local women, trying to make them his accomplices in acts of food perforation. Pursued through the town by a furious mob armed with pitchforks, Valentine had reportedly sought sanctuary from the wizard, who barred the doors against him. Unconfirmed reports added that Valentine’s last words, as he cowered against the bronze gates of the wizard’s sinister compound, were
It’s all his fault, he
—

The final paragraph was just the usual Elven moralising and demands for immediate action on pitchfork control;
nothing new there. By the look of it, he decided, this Prince Valentine had deserved everything he’d got. Even so—Maybe it was just one of those royal things, he thought; maybe all that waving and smiling and opening village fêtes eventually gets to you, and you find yourself compelled by some dark urge to do things to pastry. He didn’t know much about young Florizel, but if what he’d heard was true, he was headed in the same direction; in which case, there was bound to be a lawsuit in it somewhere. Watch this space.

But that was all just side salad and croutons in the great scheme of things. The important bit was how the doomed Prince Valentine had gone running to the wizard, and those absolutely fascinating interrupted last words. It’s all his fault. He—

He what?

Infuriatingly, the
Face
was the only paper back then that bothered with human stories, unless they had an Elven interest angle, so there weren’t any other accounts to compare this one with. But humans kept records, too, particularly where royalty was concerned. The problem was getting at them. Somewhere in the palace archives there’d be an autopsy report, the conclusions of an internal security review, something of the sort; witness statements, possibly with a slightly fuller version of those tantalising last words. It’s all his fault, he—
what?
He made me do it? He left me no choice? He said he’d cover it up for me? Of course, there was the danger that the full, true account might turn out to be relatively innocent; he never told me, or, he warned me but I didn’t listen. Sometimes a tantalising fragment is so much more effective than the full text, because even juries have imaginations, and everyone loves to think the worst. Looked at from that perspective,
it’s all his fault, he
—was about as good as it gets. After all, he reflected, when I saw it I conclusion-jumped faster and further than a New Year Games athlete, and I’m
used to this stuff, and I’m human. An Elf juror, simply crying out to have his preconceptions about humans graphically confirmed, is going to leave me eating slipstream.

He grinned; but the smile froze on his face. The roof wasn’t just shaking, it was visibly moving, up and down like somebody’s chest when they breathe. Thick clouds of dust and grit filled the air, and when he jumped to his feet, the ground sort of wriggled under him, nearly pitching him flat on his face. There was no time to think; he ran, and kept running until the stitch in his side was bad enough to override the blind terror and make him stop and drop to his knees. Fortunately, he’d come far enough; he was out of the side shaft and back in the main gallery, which appeared to be behaving itself. By the time he was able to breathe again, the tremors had stopped. He sat with his back to a wall for a long time, content to concentrate on being alive. Odd how you take that for granted, when it’s such a remarkable thing.

It was a long time before he could bring himself to stand up and walk the dozen yards or so to the end of the gallery, and look back at the tunnel he’d come running out of. About fifteen yards down, he could see a great pile of rocks, completely blocking the passageway. He closed his eyes, trying at all costs to avoid the enormous fact that he could so easily be under all that weight, if he’d been just a tad slower, or if he’d tripped over and fallen. One little slip and he’d have been the flattest man in the world; John, the human crêpe. Oh boy.

Then he thought: Moderately Safe? I’m going to sue those bastards for every penny they’ve got.

And then he thought; the records. All that data. All that
evidence
. And it was there, I
saw
it, and now it’s gone and I can’t prove anything. That is just so—

Fortuitous?

He looked up. All he could see was roof, but he knew that above and beyond it was earth, blue sky, a world he’d always
believed was comfortingly random, chaotic and meaningless. Stuff just happens, he’d always taken that absolutely on trust, and manifest destinies and grand designs are just things people make up in order to manipulate the gullible. There’s no rhyme or reason, there’s no need for anything like that. Goblin-built tunnels collapse; of course they do, the real wonder is that they stay up at all. And giants wander down from the mountains from time to time, and idiotic princes get caught with their fingers in the batter, and that’s just the crumblings of the primordial cookie, it doesn’t
mean
anything. Which is fine; because if for one moment you thought it was somehow planned, prearranged, that someone somewhere was doing all this shit to you
on purpose
, you’d get so mad you couldn’t stand it a moment longer—

A deep rumble suggested that this wasn’t really the time or the place for an internal debate on the nature of the universe. He retreated to the stairwell, then paused to take one last long look. We’ll call it an accident for now, he silently announced. But if I find out that it was deliberate, I’m warning you—

A pebble the size of a grape dropped from the roof and bounced off his head. With a squeal like a startled pig, he scampered up the stairs and didn’t stop until he was outside in the light.