The Outsorcerer's Apprentice (26 page)

It was resting on Mordak’s palm, colourful and glowing like one of the yellow stones. Very slowly, keeping his hand dead level, he lowered it until the back of his hand was flat on the ground. Then, with a clawtip, he gently nudged it off his palm and quickly snatched his hand away. He was sure he could feel it tingling. “Keep that disgusting thing away from me,” he growled, in a voice that brought goblins running from all over the glade. “Get rid of it, for crying out loud. It’s—”

“Useful, sir,” the old man said reproachfully. “But not to worry. Young Art’ll look after it for you, he’s used to them,
spends all his time playing with the bloody things, sir, pardon my Elvish. You can even play chess on ’em, sir. Wonderful what they think of nowadays.”

“Don’t be stupid, how can that thing play chess, it hasn’t got any arms.” Mordak looked up, terrified. “It hasn’t, has it?”

“Not in that price range, sir. Here, Art, look after this phone for the gentleman. And don’t go using up all his battery, neither.” The young man stuffed his sandwich in his mouth to free his hands, picked the box up carefully and put it away in an inside pocket. “Well, I’ll be off. Look after His Majesty, Art. Be seeing you.”

M
aybe the word was finally starting to get around, because the wolf looked like it really, really didn’t want to have to do this. But it was making an effort to smile, in spite of the way its teeth were chattering. It was enough to break your heart.

“Listen, wolf,” Buttercup interrupted. “You don’t know it, but this is your lucky day.”

“All the better to see you with, my—what?”

With the sort of fluent efficiency, bordering on grace, that only comes with long practice, Buttercup reached out and twisted the wolf’s ear round her hand. The other hand held the edge of the hatchet blade to its scrawny throat. “It just so happens,” she said, “that I don’t need any clocks or spoons, I’m all right for tea and I’ve just had lunch, so I don’t want any cucumber sandwiches. Also, my friend’s there behind that bush, having a pee, and he thinks girls disembowelling wolves is unfeminine. So, I’m going to count to three. One. Two. You’re still here.”

“You’re holding my ear,” the wolf pointed out.

“What? Oh, right.” Buttercup looked into its eyes, and saw nothing but stupidity. “If I let you go,” she said, “you’re going to try and jump me, and then I’ll have to kill you.”

“Um.”

“I could wait for my friend and get him to hit you over the head with a rock, but your skulls are so damn thin on top, I don’t suppose he can get away with just stunning you.” She thought for a moment. “There wouldn’t be any rope in your cottage, would there?”

“Sorry.”

“Oh damn. Look, could you
try
not to jump me, just this once? I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

The wolf looked really sad. “Sorry,” it said.

“Me, too.” Buttercup braced herself for the long slice across the jugular vein, then hesitated. “Turquine,” she called out.

Sir Turquine appeared from the bushes, adjusting his breeches. He took one look at the wolf and drew his sword. “Hang on, I’m—”

“It’s all right,” Buttercup said wearily, “everything’s under control. Look, I want you to do something for me.”

“Sure.”

She looked back at the wolf. “Right,” she said. “I’m only the poor defenceless little country girl, but that over there is the fortuitously arriving knight. With me so far?”

“Wrff.”

“Splendid. Now, obviously, you’ve got to do your damnedest to eat up the little country girl, I understand that. In a way, I sort of respect you for it. But clearly, if the fortuitously arriving knight has fortuitously arrived, you’re no longer under any obligation to attack me, and you can run away and save your miserable skin. Agreed?”

The wolf narrowed its eyes in thought. “A knight.”

“Most definitely.”

“Not a woodcutter.”

Hell, she thought. She’d so hoped it wouldn’t pick up on that. “Think of him as a sort of honorary woodcutter.”

“Hey,” Turquine objected. “And besides, in actual fact I’m not a
practising
knight any more, I’m in retail groceries.”

The confusion in the wolf’s eyes would’ve touched a heart of stone. “He’s a grocer?”

“With a sword. Big, sharp sword. He kills dragons with it.”

“This is all wrong,” the wolf protested. “It’s not
fair
. Grocers aren’t allowed.”

Buttercup stopped grinding her teeth long enough to say, “Turquine, be a love and just chop down that sapling there, would you?”

“What, this one?”

“That’s fine.
Now
,” she went on, “you saw that, he cut wood. Therefore, he’s a woodcutter. All right, in just a second I’m going to let go of your ear, and you’re going to—Oh bugger.”

“Never mind,” Turquine said kindly, as she wiped blood out of her eye, “you did everything you could. I thought that woodcutting thing was really smart. Did you just think of that, or—?”

“Not now, Turquine,” Buttercup said, as the dead body slumped into an untidy heap on the ground. Always so messy, legs in a tangle, head impossibly sideways. “Oh, damn and blast the stupid thing. What did it have to go and do that for?”

Turquine was frowning. “It wasn’t your fault. Not the wolf’s fault, either. It’s the system.”

“Oh, of course. Society is to blame. That’s so very profound.”

“You heard what it said,” Turquine replied quietly. “It’s not right, it said. I think I have to agree. Same with the dragons. Something is so not right around here.”

Buttercup shrugged, wiped her hatchet on the grass and put it away in her basket, on top of Florizel’s nasty talking box. “No argument from me on that score. Come on, we
might as well check out the cottage. Well, it’d be a shame to let it go to waste.”

They found the usual stuff inside the cottage: scatter cushions, a nice clock, a carved wood tea caddy and a rather fine bone-china tea service, the milk jug slightly chipped. Buttercup shovelled them into her basket, out of force of habit. There wasn’t quite enough room, so she had to squash them down a bit to get the cover back on. “This is really strange,” Turquine said, examining one of the chairs. “All this stuff. We never had anything as good as this back at the castle, and my dad’s a baron. How can a
wolf
—?”

He froze. Buttercup’s basket was playing music again. “Oh hell,” he said.

Buttercup tumbled all the wolf-plunder out onto the floor. The slate thing was glowing, and the music was definitely coming out of it. “I must’ve woken it up somehow,” Buttercup said.

“That does it.” Turquine picked up Buttercup’s hatchet. “I’m going to kill it, right now.”

“No, don’t.” He lowered his arm. “I’m going to talk to it.”

“Are you sure that’s—?”

“No,” Buttercup said, “but what the hell.” She picked it up, held it at arm’s length and said, “Hello?”

It carried on playing music. “It can’t hear you,” Turquine said.

“I think you have to squeeze it in a special place.”

“Ick.”

The glass plate, she observed, was decorated with bizarre symbols. She prodded one at random with her fingernail. “Hello?
Hello
.”

“Hello?”

She dropped the slate, but managed to catch it before it hit the ground. “Yes, hello. Are you the wizard?”

“Who is this?”

She looked at Turquine, then said, “If you’re the wizard, we’ve got your talking shiny slate thing.”

Pause. “Well, of course you have, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Is Sir Turquine there, by any chance?”

Buttercup stared at the slate, then turned and held it out. “It’s for you.”

“No way.” Turquine shook his head ferociously. “For all I know, it’ll suck my soul out through my nose. And anyway, how the hell does it know my—?”

“
Talk to it
.”

Turquine shrugged, then took the slate from her, pinching it warily between thumb and middle forefinger. “Yes,” he said, “I’m Sir Turquine. What about it?”

“This is the wizard. Thank you for finding my magic box.”

“Ah, so it
is
—”

“If you’d be kind enough to bring it to the front gate of Sair Carathorn, I’ll give you fifty gold florins. Hello? Are you there?”

It was talking to Turquine’s foot, because at the words
fifty gold florins
he’d dropped it and frozen stiff, like a mammoth in a glacier. Buttercup swept down, grabbed it and stuffed it back in his hand, then kicked him on the shin.

“Ah, right, yes,” Turquine said. He seemed to be having trouble with his lower jaw. “Fifty florins, well, that’s fair, I guess. See you soon.”

“Splendid. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Um, what do I do now?”

“Just put the magic box in your pocket, it’ll be fine. Goodbye.”

Turquine shrugged and pocketed the slate. His mouth formed the words
fifty gold florins
, but no sound came out.

“Turquine.”

Probably because 90 per cent of the women he’d met
over the last five years had been princesses he didn’t want to marry, Turquine was no expert on female psychology, as he’d have been the first to admit. Interpreting the tone of Buttercup’s voice, however, was hardly rocket science. “
Fifty
gold—”

“He doesn’t mean it. It’s a trap.”

“Oh come on,” Turquine pleaded. “We’ve got his box. He wants it back. He’s got
loads
of money. Why the hell has it got to be a trap?”

“He’s the wizard. And we’re on our way to do him over. Or had you forgotten?”

Turquine made a faint whimpering noise. “All right,” he said. “No problem. We’ll punish him by making him pay us fifty gold florins if he wants his box back. How much more harsh do you want to be?”

“It’s a trap,” Buttercup said firmly. “Trust me. There are no fifty florins. And we aren’t going to walk up to the gate of Sair Carathorn and ring the bell. Got that?”

Turquine winced, then nodded sadly. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “Too good to be true and all that sort of thing. Pity, though. Fifty gold florins, for crying out loud. Have you any idea how much cheese we could’ve bought for that?”

“Cheese?”

“For the stall. I was thinking. Vegetables are all right as far as they go, but cheese is where the real money is. I was in a tavern in Atramar the other day, one miserable little corner of stale cheese, a penny farthing. We could make out like
bandits
.”

She couldn’t resist. Before she knew what she was doing, she was in his arms. “Ouch,” he said. “You’re squashing the hilt of my dagger into my solar plexus.”

“Turquine.”

“Yes?”

“Stop
talking
.”

Which he did, for nearly two minutes. It was probably the happiest moment in both of their lives so far, and it was a pity it had to be spoilt by a loud voice calling out, “Armed Elves, we have the cottage surrounded—”

“Damn,” Buttercup said.

“—Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands on your heads. I repeat—”

Turquine wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Elves?”

“Better go and see what they want.”

“Bastards. Oh well.” He unbuckled his sword belt and threw it through the window. “What could we have done to piss off the Elves?” he said.

“Well, we’re grocers now. Maybe we misused an apostrophe.”

They walked through the door together, and found themselves in the middle of a ring of black-clad pointy-eared bowmen, all aiming straight at them. If Buttercup had been on her own, she’d have ducked and let them shoot each other, but with Turquine along she didn’t want to take the risk. “You,” ordered an Elf. “Step away from the basket. I say again—”

“I heard you the first time.” Buttercup put the basket down. “Who are you? That’s not Elf Service uniform, you’re not policemen. You can’t just—”

But it turned out that they could, and they did. Buttercup and Turquine were cuffed, blindfolded and loaded into a windowless cart. When they were aboard and the doors had been bolted and padlocked shut, the cart and its escort moved off down the road, in the direction of Sair Carathorn.

I
f, as he’d hypothesised, heroism for Benny Gulbenkian consisted of patience and thoroughness in the face of dispiriting frustration, he’d overtaken Beowulf some time ago and was catching up fast on Robin Hood and Luke Skywalker. He had no idea how many miles of identical paved, surprisingly well-swept tunnel he’d walked down, how many side turnings and cul-de-sacs he’d explored, all to no result. His feet were hurting, he was starving hungry and he needed a pee, and the thought of Perseus and Captain Kirk choking on his dust was no longer quite enough to keep him motivated. The afterburn from the adrenalin rush he’d got from escaping from the Chairman was about all that was keeping him going, though he wasn’t entirely sure that what he was feeling was that and not heartburn. All he needed was toothache, and his wretchedness loyalty card would be all filled up.

Toothache or goblins; but he still hadn’t seen one, which was very strange. The deeper into the mountain he went, the more evidence he’d encountered that goblins had been here once, from half-gnawed bones on the floor to goblin graffiti on the walls (rather an anti-climax; mostly it was stuff like
Victory to King Mordak and the seven-year plan!
or
Productivity is the sinews of war
, with just the occasional
Thrag was here
, and the pinnacle of goblin humour,
See other wall
). The neatly stacked pickaxes suggested they hadn’t left in a hurry or a panic; they’d just gone. Maybe it was a goblin holiday; or maybe, more likely, they’d all gone off to fight the dwarves. In which case, they could be back at any moment, probably feeling jovial and boisterous. He shivered, and quickened his pace.

He turned a corner and entered a long, high-roofed gallery, in use until quite recently; the walls were bare rock, and here and there they sparkled with tiny knobs of the same shiny yellow stone that lit the tunnels. A worked-out seam, presumably. Benny didn’t like the loud noise his feet made on the sheet-metal floor. He was trying to decide whether to spend a long time shuffling across it as quietly as possible, or march across it quick and noisy and get it over with, when he realised there was something breathing behind him.

Mental geometry, coupled with best-guess estimates of the time it’d take him to run the length of the gallery, compared and contrasted with the best time of a notional goblin warrior. The results of his calculations weren’t encouraging, so he turned to face the breather.

“Oh,” he said. “You again.”

“Hello,” the unicorn said. “You found it all right, then.”

“Have I?”

“Oh yes.” The unicorn nodded, setting its milk-white mane dancing in a revolting display of gratuitous prettiness. “This is Gallery One, more usually known as the Cradle of All Goblins. Just think, it was on this very spot, two thousand years ago, that the first Ecumenical Goblin Council met and voted that they were a species.”

“Fancy,” Benny said. “All right, then. Where is it?”

“Where’s what? Oh, you mean—”

“Yes,” Benny said. “You told me, if I went to this Cradle place, I’d find a doughnut.”

“That’s not what I actually said.”

“Sure.” Benny laughed scornfully. “Here it comes, you’re going to weasel out of it, aren’t you? Because there isn’t a doughnut, is there?”

“No,” said the unicorn.

“Ha! I should have known.”

“No doughnut,” the unicorn repeated. “Just a phone.”

Instantly, it had Benny’s full and undivided attention. “What? A real phone?”

“Mphm. Here, look. I’m resting my hoof on it.”

And so it was. There was only a corner visible, but enough for Benny to identify it as a sixth-generation Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits ZX5000 InTouch, quite possibly the coolest phone in the multiverse. It was glowing faintly, which meant it was fully charged and working, and if the unicorn shifted its weight just a tiny bit in the wrong direction it would go
crunch
and be completely useless. “That phone,” Benny said.

“Yes.”

“Look, would you mind awfully keeping
very
,
very still
, because—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” the unicorn said pleasantly. “I’m not going to tread on it and crush it
accidentally
. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. I promised you, didn’t I, that if you made your way to the Cradle of All Goblins, you’d find what you need to get out of here and go back to where you came from. And here we are, and here it is. Another prophesy fulfilled, on schedule and under budget.”

“Did you just bring it here?”

“Well, yes. It didn’t walk here on its own.”

“So you had it all along.”

“Yes.”

“So you could’ve given it to me back in the forest.”

“No,” the unicorn said, “because back then you hadn’t earned it. But now you have. And here it is, available for you to take and use. Except,” it added quickly, “termsandconditionsapply.”

Disappointment can be quite relaxing. “Of course they do,” Benny said wearily. “All right, what’s the deal?”

The unicorn swished its tail. “In order to gain possession of this phone—”

It paused. A cue. “Yes?” Benny obliged.

“This entirely functional KIC ZX5000 InTouch, capable of receiving a signal
anywhere
. Including here.”

“Yes.”

“And capable, therefore, of enabling you to Google a foolproof doughnut recipe that even you will be capable of following without loss of life or excessive damage to property—”

“
Yes?
”

“All you have to do,” the unicorn said, “is take it. You indicate to me that you want it, I step back, you pick it up, it’s yours. That’s it. That’s the deal.”

Benny looked at the unicorn. “That’s it.”

“Absolutely. Everything I’ve just told you is true.”

“Yeah, right. What about the devious little catch you’ve neglected to mention?”

“I have left out nothing of importance.”

Benny blinked twice. “I say, move away from the phone, and then you move away and it’s mine and it works?”

“That’s right.”

“So all I have to do to get it is want it?”

“Concisely, accurately and elegantly put,” the unicorn said. “All you have to do is want it.”

The unicorn’s eyes were as deep as wells. “It’s a trap,” Benny said. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s a
trap
, silly. But everything I’ve told you is true, and I haven’t left anything out.”

Benny sighed. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, “I’m being a bit thick today. If everything you’ve said is true et bloody cetera, how’s it a trap?”

“Ah.” The unicorn looked smug. “If you take the phone, you can never go home.”

That feeling of stepping on a missing stair. “But you said it’s working.”

“Yes.”

“And if I take it, I can Google doughnut recipes and make a doughnut and escape.”

“Yes.”

“Right back to where I came from, a fraction of a second after I left.”

“Exactly so. I guarantee it. You can get on with your revision for your exams. What fun.”

Benny craned his neck for a better view. Yes, beyond question a KIC ZX5000. He could just about remember a time (three days ago, from one perspective) when a KIC InTouch was the one thing he wanted most of all in the entire universe. Now it was a plastic box you could do something useful with, just a way of getting what he really wanted. And also, apparently, a trap. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I still don’t get it. Would it absolutely kill you to explain?”

“Of course not,” the unicorn said brightly. “My apologies, I’d assumed you’d already figured it out, a smart boy like you. If you take this phone, you will escape from this world and never return. With me so far?”

“You bet.”

“You may have noticed,” the unicorn went on, “that there’s quite a lot wrong with this world. Put crudely, it doesn’t work.”

“I’d sort of noticed.”

“That’s because it’s been messed around with by an unscrupulous character from your own reality, the individual known over here as the wizard. Sooner or later, if things go on as they are, the wizard will control and exploit every living thing in this world, and it won’t be a very happy place. In fact, it’ll be utterly wretched.”

Benny winced. “And how is that my fault exactly?”

“Not at all. Not your fault, not your problem. However, you are the only person in the multiverse–you know about multiverse theory? Oh good. You are the only person in the multiverse capable of stopping the wizard, setting these people free, undoing the harm the wizard’s done and making it all happy-ever-after. Only you. But you don’t have to.”

“Um.”

“You’re perfectly at liberty to pick up this phone, find out how to make doughnuts, make one and leave this world for ever, go back to your old life and carry on exactly where you left off. Just say the word. You don’t have to do that, even. Just nod. Ready? Or would you like me to count you down from three or something?”

Then Benny remembered something. “Just a minute,” he said. “You’re forgetting something. Back in the forest, there was all that stuff about three tasks.”

“That’s right.”

“The great truth that was hidden, right the ancestral wrong, and throw the fire into the ring of power. Only when I’ve done all that—”

The unicorn gave him a sweet smile. “I think we may be at cross purposes here,” it said. “The three tasks were if you wanted to go home. If you want to escape back where you came from, just take the phone. Now, are you ready? Three—”

Benny shook his head. “All right,” he said, “hold on a second. If I go away, things will be very bad.”

“For everyone here, yes. Not for you personally. You’ll be just fine.”

“Things will be very bad, for everyone.”

“Everyone
here
, that’s right, yes. But what do you care? You’re not even from this reality. After all, back in the reality you came from, things aren’t exactly super-wonderful. There’s starvation, disease, your economy’s stupendously buggered without even the excuse of supernatural intervention. You never seemed particularly concerned about any of that stuff when you were there, so it’s not like you’re one of those bleeding-heart types who can’t sleep at night for thinking of the plight of the ring-tailed lemur.”

Benny realised his fists were clenched. Silly. But human. “There was nothing I could do.”

“Of course not,” the unicorn said soothingly, “I forgot, sorry. That doesn’t alter the point, though, does it? The bad stuff there wasn’t your fault, and neither is the bad stuff here. So why not take the phone and depart in peace?” It lowered its voice into a soft whisper. “Nobody will ever know.”

Benny took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said. “Step away from the phone.”

“Ah!” the unicorn’s eyes gleamed, but it backed delicately away. And there was the ZX5000, glowing soft as the dawn, all the colours of the enhanced rainbow. Benny looked at it for about four seconds, rather a long time in context. Then he took a long stride forward, placed his heel on the phone and ground it into the iron plating of the floor, until he could feel its screen go
crunch
.

“Indeed,” the unicorn said. “What is life without the occasional grand gesture? Well done.”

“Don’t you patronise me, you Disneyfied bloody mule.” He stepped back, and there were little popping noises where he trod on tiny shards of broken glass. “That wasn’t fair. Because it’s
not
my fault, and I shouldn’t have to sort out
other people’s messes. And what the hell do you mean, I couldn’t have gone home?”

The unicorn suddenly went blank. “Sorry,” it said, “this unit is not programmed to resolve fundamental metaphysical issues. Sayonara, Florizel. Have a great day.”

Benny stooped to grab the wreckage of the phone, but, by the time he’d straightened up with his arm cocked to throw, the unicorn had vanished.