The Tides of Avarice (40 page)

Sylvester strained his ears but could hear nothing. Madame Zahnia evidently did, though, because she nodded her head and then looked appalled, much of the color draining from her flabby face.

“A curse,” she breathed. “There is a terrible curse upon all of this, unless …”

Once more there was a short silence. The air itself seemed to grow heavy with dread.

“Ancient forces that should have been left alone are starting to move once more,” said Madame Zahnia, her voice trailing off into the dusty air. “Ancient forces …”

“Yes? Yes?” said Sylvester.

She looked at him with eyes that seemed sightless. When next she spoke he had the impression she was talking to someone a long way behind him and in a different world that only she could detect.

“The course of events has already been set,” she whispered. “It must be followed or catastrophe will be the inevitable consequence. The island that sleeps among the mists of misplaced time must be awoken, whether mortal beings think this is right or wrong. It is too late for the future to be changed. Too late! Aaaaaahhhhhh …”

With a final long sigh she subsided into her chair, her hands slipping off the surface of the Revealer. The crystal ball's glow faded.

For several long moments there was no sound except the breathing of those in the room and a flurry of squeaks from outside as two mice children argued about something.

“What did you see?” said Sylvester at last.

Madame Zahnia shook her head as if emerging from a confusing dream.

“I can't tell you too many things,” she said softly. “Just enough, perhaps. If I told you too much, that would alter your actions and, in turn, that would affect the route of the future. What's going to happen must happen, I tell you!”

“Yes, but what is going to happen?” said Viola pointedly.

“And who were these blasted Zindars?” growled Mrs. Pickleberry.

Madame Zahnia chose to answer the latter question. She signaled to her guests that they could release each other's paws, and everyone made themselves comfortable as she settled into her tale.

“The Zindars, or the People of the Stars as many of the older people used to call them, were an ancient race who inhabited these islands thousands of years ago. They had knowledge that far surpassed anything we know today. Because they knew so much, they called the most arcane and powerful of all their secret magics, tech-know-logy. Nobody now remembers anything of this techknowlogy or what it could do, but folk say that, if only that secret magic could be rediscovered, the world could be a far, far better place … or could meet its fiery doom.

“Yet, few remember the Zindars now. Untold centuries ago they suddenly left Sagaria under circumstances shrouded in mystery, and they have never been seen again. Even the legend of the magical chest of the Zindars is known to a bare few, of whom your friend Deathflash – Rustbane – is unfortunately one and Cap'n Adamite, as bad a rogue as Deathflash if such a thing were possible, was another. It is a tragedy that two villainous pirates could have learned of this lore.

“The Zindars were respected as great teachers, and they were much loved by the peoples of Sagaria. However, what no one knew at the time, except the Zindars themselves, was that they had come to this world in flight from powerful malignant forces which had hunted them through many worlds far beyond this one.”

Sylvester's jaw dropped. Not long ago his world had extended little farther than the environs of Foxglove. Then it had dramatically grown to include the whole of the realm of Sagaria. Now, here was Madame Zahnia talking of other worlds beyond Sagaria! He wasn't certain there was room enough in his brain for all these sudden leaps in the scale of the universe.

Madame Zahnia, oblivious to his racing thoughts, carried on speaking in that same slow, sepulchral voice. “The secret of their hiding place could not last forever, of course. At last, the enemies of the Zindars discovered their whereabouts, and they arrived in the skies of our world in a thousand great flying ships. They too had infinite reserves of techknowlogy, but it was evil techknowlogy. For long years, the evil techknowlogy of the invaders did battle with the benevolent techknowlogy of the Zindars, so that the surface of this world was rent and torn. Mountains were leveled to become desert plains, and seas boiled to float above the clouds. Somehow, the Zindars managed to spare the native Sagarians the worst effects of this great war, but even so, the death tolls were appalling.

“Then, at last, it just suddenly stopped. No one knows why. No one knows how. All we can guess is that the Zindars played one final techknowlogical trick that whisked them out of Sagaria and off somewhere else, far away beyond the curtain of the stars in the wink of an eye, and that they took the evil invaders with them.

“But, just before the warring races disappeared, something happened that will, the Revealer tells me, change the course of our world's future entirely … if everything happens over the next few days and weeks in the way it has been preordained.”

She paused again, as if trying to catch her breath. Sylvester, giving her a sidelong look, realized the old mouse was simply playing upon the dramatic expectations of her audience.

He cleared his throat.

Madame Zahnia took the hint.

“What happened,” she continued, “was that a squadron of the evil invaders managed to trap the King of the Zindars and his closest guard of honor in a remote craggy valley high in the icy mountains of Carvenia. One by one the members of the guard of honor were cut down by lethal enemy fire, until none were left, save the king himself. He was putting up a brave battle against his attackers, but all knew it could be only a matter of time before he went to his final resting place, to where his guard of honor had loyally preceded him.

“It was then that a lowly human intervened to alter the course of Zindar history. There are more humans in Carvenia than you commonly find elsewhere in Sagaria. They're surprisingly good at eking out an existence among the hostile, infertile terrain of that forsaken part of the world. This man, barely more than a boy, really, a shepherd in search of a lost sheep, was drawn by the hissing sound of the techknowlogical weaponry being fired. He strayed into the valley where the combat was continuing. It didn't take him more than a moment to see how the wind was blowing, and it didn't take him more than another moment to snatch up a weapon that one of the dead honor guard had dropped and to run to the side of the King of the Zindars. Side by side and back to back these two fought off the attackers the rest of the day, and by the time the last rays of the sun were extinguished on the horizon they were the only two left standing.

“But the human lad was mortally wounded. He knew this, and the King of the Zindars could tell just by looking at him. The very last of their foes, with its very last gasp of this life, had let fire one final bolt of that blue-green techknowlogical fire they had which could cut through the thickest armor and even great city walls. The fire had burned away the shepherd boy's arm, leaving just a stump from which the blood showered like rain.

“The King of the Zindars cradled his savior's head on his lap and watched the last of the life light ebb from the lad's eyes. Then, as the boy went to that place from which there is no return, the King of the Zindars resolved that, even as his people fled back among the stars, they would leave behind them a gift for this world of Sagaria that had for so long treated them so generously.

“The gift the king decided they would leave was that, sometime in Sagaria's future, there would be the granting to a single mortal of a single wish.”

Madame Zahnia raised a paw as if to fend off an interruption from her listeners. In truth, they were all too enthralled by her tale to be capable of breathing a word. All except Gasbag, who was snoring gently, his head face down on the table in front of him.

As Madame Zahnia lowered her arm she absently clipped Gasbag around the ear and the little zany mouse woke with a jolt and a snuffle.

“Wha—wha—?”

“Pay attention when yer ol' grandma's speaking to ye, you pesky little scapegrace.”

“I was listening. Just in my own way!”

“Gnah!”

Smack!

“That doesn't sound like, well, very much,” said Sylvester nervously, referring to the Zindars' gift.

“Oh, but it is,” responded Madame Zahnia, her attention shifting to Sylvester and away from a grateful looking Gasbag. “It is. Whatever the wish, no matter how great it is, no matter how impossible it might seem, it'll be granted. That's the deal. You can wish for riches far beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and they'll be yours. Or you can wish for your dreams to come true, for your grandest fantasies to be realized right here in the real world, in flesh and blood and stone, and that'll happen too. You could even wish for the stars to start going out, one by one, until the sky is dark and the world is cold and dead, and that'd come about just like you wished it. The only provision the King of the Zindars put in place is that, whatever it is you wish for, it's got to be of your own free will that you're doing it. If someone else tries to force the person who's been selected as the lucky wisher to wish for something else, then that's a wish that won't come true, and the treasure of the Zindars will just lie there like an inert lump, dead to us forever.”

She sighed, then resumed her tale.

“The King of the Zindars took this gift and sealed it in a magical casket, and his followers buried the casket in a place where no one left behind on Sagaria knew where it was. When the time is right, so the Zindars said to the Sagarians, there'll be a person who's as right as the time, and that person will find his footsteps – or her footsteps, true, dearie,” Madame Zahnia added hurriedly to Viola, “that person will find his or her footsteps guided infallibly to where the magical chest of the Zindars lies in its Hiding Place of the Ages” – you can hear those capital letters, mused Sylvester – “and will know how to act wisely with the gift that is found there.”

Madame Zahnia placed both of her front paws flat on the table and looked at each of her visitors' faces in turn.

“You can imagine how much those who are of base heart would give to get their hands on a power like that,” she said portentously, “on the ultimate prize. It is lucky that so few believe the legend. It is unlucky, as I said, that one of those few is that villain, Cap'n Rustbane.”

She paused once more to let the full import of her words sink in.

Sylvester replayed those last few words in his mind. “Those who believe in it, you said,” he observed slowly. “Does that mean you yourself don't? Believe in it, I mean?”

Madame Zahnia cocked her head and looked at him out of one glinty eye, like a bird. “My, you're the sharp-eared young feller, aren't you just?”

Sylvester felt himself blushing. “Well, it's just that you … that you … well …” he found himself stammering.

“It's hocus pocus, isn't it?”

“It surely does sound like hocus pocus,” he agreed. “A lost race from somewhere beyond the stars. A war that tore up the face of the world and stitched it back together again. A magical power that has to be sealed in a treasure chest. The power to make all your wishes come true. It sounds like the sort of thing our mothers tell us to make our eyes grow wide when we're too small to know any better. And yet …”

“And yet you're all prepared to believe it, aren't you?” said Madame Zahnia, her voice sounding kinder that it had at any time since they'd been brought to her.

Sylvester spread his paws. “I … I do.”

She reached forward and patted the back of his forearm. “Good for you, young … Sylvester, wasn't it you said your name was?”

“Sylvester,” he confirmed.

“The legend of the treasure chest of the Zindars,” she said, her voice low as if she were confiding in him, “is one of those legends that's true only so long as you believe in it. For all those people who dismiss it as nothing more than a load of old baloney, something only the credulous would fall for, then sure enough there's nothing in it. It's just a fairy tale. They could be given a map that led them to the exact site where the casket is buried, and they could dig there for a thousand years and still not find anything – not unless they believed in the truth of the tale with all their heart. They'd be trying to get their hands on the gold at the end of the rainbow, because they don't truly believe in that either. But for someone who does believe in the Zindar gift, someone who has a kind of conviction they can't explain that the magical chest of the Zindars is out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered. For them it's a different story, a different story altogether. If they search for it they may find it. And if they find it, then the chances are they're the right person to have done so, just like the old king foretold. And in that case they're the one who can make the greatest wish there's ever been and see it come true.

“Which is why Deathflash – Rustbane – can't be the one to find it. There's no one who believes in the legend more than he does, so he fits the bill that way, all right. But the kind of thing he would wish for, the kind of fate he'd desire to see falling upon this world and all who dwell in it, why it doesn't bear thinking about. It'd be worse than your worst nightmares, wouldn't it, young feller?”

Again she patted the back of Sylvester's forearm in that maternal way.

He gulped. “Yes.”

Madame Zahnia held his gaze a few heartbeats longer, and then fell back into her chair, chortling and chuckling so the ripples of fat in her face ebbed and flowed like ocean waves.

“And here you are believing me,” she said, wiping a little white dot of spittle away from the corner of her mouth, “a well-educated librarian and assistant archivist who should know a whole lot better than to be listening to the maunderings of a daft old jungle charlatan. And I am a charlatan, Sylvester, let no one deceive you otherwise. The advice I give the people who come to me is usually based on things I see or I feel, or that I've learned over many, many years in this world. I spice up common sense, traditional medicine and a passel of good education that no one around here knows I have with a few words of voodoo mumbo jumbo here and there, and everyone thinks I'm the great Voodoo Priestess. Even young Rasco and Gasbag think that.”