Wistril Compleat (13 page)

One of Kern's first acts after speaking with
Wistril was to fetch the goblin-clock from the study and bring it
carefully down to the Great Hall. There, it had stepped gingerly
out of his hands and onto the table, examined the age-blackened
table-top with brief metallic disdain, and had settled on a corner
near the door before resuming its steadfast clicking.

Kern sought out the clock-face. Half an hour,
he thought. No more.

The clock ticked on. Finally, as Kern was
about to send one of the lads to seek out Wistril and the Lady, the
Great Hall doors flew open, and Lady Emmerbee stepped through.
Genner, Sir Knobby, and the serving gargoyles followed in her wake.
Kern noted that the butler was red-faced and grinning, that the
gargoyles in the dresses immediately commenced a fierce round of
soft hooting with their fellows, and that Sir Knobby himself was
glassy-eyed and open-mouthed.

The goblin-clock chimed. Kern counted, licked
his lips, shouted for Sir Knobby.

Ten minutes, he thought. Where is the
Master?

Before Sir Knobby could ease his way through
the crowd, a roar like thunder filled the room, and a sudden brief
tremor, and a fleeting sensation of falling. Gargoyles hooted;
candles flickered; somewhere, a chair fell, and then all was
silent.

The goblin-clock squeezed its eyes shut, and
clasped its bells down tight with tiny clicking hands.

Another blast rang out in the Hall, louder
and longer than the first, so loud it rattled glass throughout
Kauph and nearly made Kern drop his wands.

"Now, Apprentice!" shouted Wistril, unseen,
in the wake of the blast. "Complete the spell! Do it now!"

"No!" shrieked Lady Emmerbee, when she saw
the wands in Kern's hands. "I beg you, do not!"

Kern brought the wands near, but kept them
from touching. "Join us, Master," he shouted, casting to and fro
for some glimpse of Wistril. "Join us and I'll touch them."

"Confound you, Apprentice,"" shouted Wistril,
still unseen, in reply. "We have no time. The spell has failed. The
haunts are doing their work. Save yourselves, while you may!"

Kern took in a breath. "I'll save us all,
Master," he said, drawing the wands apart. "Save us all, or save
none."

The Lady let out her breath. "In truth, he
means as he says," she cried. "Join us, husband! Join us, and let
the jinni be!"

Wistril appeared, scowling fiercely, standing
atop and in the center of the Great Hall dining table. Beside him
appeared the big oval scrying mirror, its glass a worried black,
runes writhing and dancing across its mahogany frame. In his hand,
Wistril held his staff, which glowed at the ends and trailed smoke.
"Confound it, touch the wands!" he cried. "Now!"

Kern nodded, brought his hands together
quickly, let the attraction of the wands for each other speed their
flight. His hands met with a flash, and the wands spat fire, coiled
about each other, and vanished.

"Done, Master," said Kern. "We're safe."

The air in the Great Hall went chill. Kern
watched as everywhere breath began to steam, as glasses and plates
were covered with sudden rimes of ice, as the face of the
goblin-clock went white with frost.

Wistril saw, and went pale. "No," he said.
"No, apprentice, I fear we are not safe at all." Wistril turned to
face the Lady Emmerbee, his face grave. "I fear I have failed you,
Lady," he said. "For this, I beg pardon."

A new thunder rode the air, and it took an
instant for Kern to recognize it not as thunder, but as
chuckling.

"Ho, wizard," said the thunderous new voice.
"Where shall you now hide, if not beneath the river of time?"

Still atop the table, Wistril turned toward
the voice. "I shall not hide at all," he said. "I await you here.
These others, though. They have done you no harm."

Laughter rang out. A darkening in the air
formed before Wistril, took on the shape of something tall and
swaying and many-limbed. The shadows it cast were like those of
thick ropes, coiling and uncoiling ceaselessly about some gnarled
inner trunk.

"Harm?" snarled the jinni. "What do you know
of harm?" it said. "Have you been forced to this miserable realm
and enslaved, where every touch of earth or air is as a stroke of
flame?"

"Ah, but are you are not freed?" asked
Wistril, as the writhing shadows fell across him.

"Indeed, I am freed," replied the jinni. Kern
saw just a hint of a smile take shape with in the shadows, many
teeth within it, and then it was gone. "It seems my former captor
mis-spoke the binding. I shall miss him," said the shadow. "He was
a man of rare . . . taste."

Wistril nodded. "I trust you are aware that I
was agency to your freedom?"

"Oh, verily," said the jinni. "I saw your
shades flitting about. Saw them fly, heard them whisper." It
laughed again, and Kern felt like ice was being drawn down his back
at the sound of it.

"Clever. Most clever. Clever enough to make
me consider that you knew the manner of my binding, Wizard," said
the jinni, leaning close. The brief toothy smile returned.

"Clever enough that you might know my
name?"

"I know it," said Wistril. "I know it,
unpleasant though it is."

"Speak it to me, then," said the jinni.
"Speak it, lest I peel away your skin and rub you in salt."

"I shall not," said Wistril. "Not now. Not
ever. I am not a fool," he added. "Nor do I wish to share your late
captor's fate."

"Say it, or I crack your bones lengthwise and
suck out the marrow where you stand."

Wistril tilted his head.

"I will not," he said, mildly.

"Say it!" thundered the jinni. "Speak my
name! Speak it, or I shall pluck out your eyes!"

"Enough," said Wistril. He scowled, and
waggled his finger at the darkness. "There are children
present."

To Kern's amazement, the whirling darkness
shrank.

"I shall not speak your name," said Wistril.
"Not now, not ever. Your binding is broken; your name is your own.
Good day, farewell, and begone."

The jinni roared, and Kern leaped for the
edge of the table, and as Wistril looked serenely into the face of
the darkness the jinni rose up, swelling and roaring.

Pandemonium fell upon the Hall. In an instant
a clamor and a rush for the doors surged through the room. Kern
caught a single glimpse of the Lady Emmerbee, struggling to reach
Wistril, before Genner caught her by the wrist and dragged her
struggling and kicking through the doors and out of the Hall.

The jinni's roaring shadow swelled further,
its howl reached a deafening crescendo, and then, just as Kern
braced himself for a blow, the sight and sound and shadow of the
thing vanished, plunging the Hall into silence.

"Good riddance," said Wistril.

Kern leaped upon the table and sought out
Wistril, who watched the exodus from the Hall and nodded at Kern's
approach.

"You ignored my directive concerning the
wands," said Wistril.

"I delayed," said Kern. "I did not ignore."
He lifted an eyebrow, cocked his head.

"What happened to the spell in the wands?" he
asked.

"The jinni happened," said Wistril. "The
wands vanished because the jinni snatched them from your
grasp."

"And the spell?" asked Kern.

"Snuffed out like a candle-flame," replied
Wistril. Kern saw the wizard suppress a shudder. "Truly a
formidable being, in some respects."

"All that business with its name -- were you
expecting that, Master?" asked Kern.

Wistril let out a breath. "I was hoping for
it," he said. "My research into jinnis and their bindings revealed
little," he said. "A single footnote, in fact, concerning the Law
of Names. From this I surmised that once the jinni was unbound from
the Carthrop that it could only meddle with those foolish enough to
invoke its name," he said. He shook his head. "Thank Horat's
Encompassing Bestiary and Reference Thaumaturgical," he added. "It
received faint praise from the College review board, but without it
we would surely have perished."

Kern stepped into an empty chair and then
down onto the floor, and Wistril followed him.

"The Carthrop wizard is gone, then," said
Kern.

"Most unpleasantly, I fear," said Wistril.
"He had no time to order the jinni to direct unpleasantness against
us, before it was upon him," he added. "Eye-plucking. Bah. I may
well have overestimated its intelligence."

"And the Baron?" asked Kern. "What of him,
and his army?" Kern had a brief unpleasant premonition of a long
wintry siege, of gnawing on cold biscuits and dodging wobbling
arrows in the courtyard.

Wistril smiled, a thin tight smile. "I
bespoke his fate earlier," he said. "But here. See."

The mirror on the table flashed, and within
the glass a scene took shape.

Kern saw the trampled expanse just beyond
Kauph's walls. Distant in the glass, he saw scores of men fleeing,
their heads barely visible above the slight rise in the road just
before the bridge. One of the armored heads sported a long purple
feather, bedraggled and broken at the tip, but bobbing quickly away
nonetheless. Above it darted the wumpus cat, which circled and
dived and clawed with feline glee.

Closer in the glass lay the ruins of the
Baron's army. Wagons lay smashed and strewn about, their contents
spilled and scattered across the hard, rocky ground.

Swords lay scattered amid the wreckage,
twisted and broken, as did arrows and armor and bundles and casks.
Kern even made out the tattered standard of House Carthrop, which
lay abandoned in the dust, the cloth ripped to dirty shreds.

"How, Master?" asked Kern.

Wistril pointed to a shattered wagon with the
smoldering head of his staff. "Soon after I learned the jinni's
name," he said, "I translated it into an old form of Oomish
rune-writing. I changed a single character, instructed Lord
Essraven and a few of the smaller gargoyles in its drawing, and
sent them quietly out among our Carthrop friend's encampment," he
said. "There, they went about writing the name on various items of
armament and gear."

Kern frowned. "How did Lord Essraven write
anything?" he said. "Spooks can't hold pens."

"True," said Wistril. "The haunts traced the
runes with their fingers, and left cold metal in their wake. The
morning dew formed the characters. Ah, and the spells you formed.
Some of them formed odd characters on bits of armor and clothing,
while others spoke names in the air. Perhaps the jinni, in its
state of agitation, mistook these for parts of its name, as well."
Wistril shrugged. "I suppose that the jinni, once unbound from the
unfortunate Herthmore, felt bound to investigate so many
near-portrayals of its name."

Kern surveyed the scene, and shook his head.
"I'm surprised any of them survived," he said.

"Had the jinni found his whole name, written
true, none would have," said Wistril. He nodded at the glass. "An
idea I entertained, but ultimately rejected. Let the Law and the
houses he has injured hunt down and punish this outlaw Carthrop,"
he said. "I have spoken to both the High House and various lesser
houses concerning the Baron's whereabouts and recent activities,"
said Wistril. "Even if he evades the villagers at the foot of the
mountain, he shall soon face wrath from every side." The rotund
wizard thumped his staff down once on the floor. "Put your feet on
my tables, will you? Bah. We are done with him."

Kern nodded. "I don't see any, um, remains,"
he said.

"No," replied Wistril. Kern saw something
like a shudder run across Wistril's stout frame. "Be glad of what
you do not see, and gladder still that you nothing of the wizard
Herthmore's fate," he said. "I fear the glass will never be the
same."

"Wistril!" cried the Lady Emmerbee, who
appeared in the still-packed Great Hall doors and began to shoulder
her way back into the Hall. "Lord Kauph! Are you unharmed?"

"I suffer from nothing worse than thirst,
Lady," said Wistril. "Apprentice. Tend to that," he said, with a
dismissive wave at the debris in the mirror. "The Lady and I have
sundry matters to discuss."

And with that, Wistril turned and was gone,
the Lady Emmerbee on his arm. Kern righted a fallen chair, took a
single step toward them, and suddenly recalled the Lady's frantic
plea to Wistril, just before he'd touched the useless wands.

Husband. She'd called Wistril husband.

Kern dived for the door, but the Hall beyond
was empty.

"Hoot," said Sir Knobby, who appeared at his
side, and laid long clawed fingers gently on his shoulder.
"Hoot."

Kern sighed, and nodded, and together with
Sir Knobby he turned toward the west and sought out the courtyard
and the gates and the silent field of wreckage beyond.

"Just tell me this," said Kern, fuming, to
Sir Knobby. "Was it a nice wedding?"

The gargoyle pulled back his lips and laughed
and Kern threw up his hands and stamped for the gates.

Kern pretended to write a letter and watched
Wistril instead. A plate of food--not just any food, but Cook's
best soufflé, nearly six hours in the making--sat cooling and
untouched on Wistril's desk. A glass of Upland beer sat beside the
soufflé, growing warm and losing its head and Wistril hadn't moved
a hand toward either.

Instead, the wizard wrote. Another letter to
the missus, thought Kern, with a smile.

Or perhaps yet another revision to the paper
they planned to submit jointly to the Review -- "On the Secondary
Magnetic Effects of Large-scale Persistent Spellworks Upon the
Flight Patterns of Wyverns, Minor Griffins, and Sundry Other
Migratory Winged Species," Kern noted. Ah, the poetry of love.

And then there were the late nights at the
scrying glass. Kern shook his head.

These Oomish folk are a complicated lot, and
no mistake, he thought. First they get married. Then the Lady
Emmerbee packs up and leaves. Now they can't let a day pass without
a brace of letters and a round at the glass.