Bob the Mage, ch. 9.

[Author's note: Fiction Friday! once again, with chapter the ninth of our novel, Bob the Mage, which I wrote some years back and have made New and Improved, as they used to say. When last we saw Bob, our fantasy adventure hero, he had attempted to escape a desert island with his companions Astercam and Bourbon, when a weird storm smashed their raft. Bob alone washed up on the dark and scary Big Evil Island, where he found his love, Princess Suzy, as guest at Castle Terror to... Morwor Mordrun Mormor! (thunder sfx) Mormor seems friendly... but can a dude who lives in a castle carved to look like skulls really be that friendly?

Previous chapters can be found at these links:

chapter 8, chapter 7, chapter 6, chapter 5, chapter 4, chapter 3, chapter 2, chapter 1

And remember, if you're enjoying the book, tell a friend! If you're hating the book, keep going! It might get better!]

Bob the Mage

by Frederick Key

Chapter 9

Mormor sat me across the table from Suzy, so far apart that our knees couldn’t touch. I know, I tried. Anyway, just seeing her alive was more wonderful than anything, even the food, with which I duly stuffed myself. I had about one of everything, each bite better than the last, and my mug of ale seemed to refill itself magically, and in twenty minutes I was in a stupor. It was great.

It was then that I realized no one had spoken in twenty minutes. My fellow diners had been watching me, Suzy with pity, Mormor with humor. I decided to say something witty, but a belch forced its way out first. I shook my head, took a breath, and said, “Forgive me, I’ve been starving. Suzy, I thought you were dead.”

“And I you, Bob. When that freak storm hit I thought we were both done for, but somehow the waves carried me to this island, and dropped me somewhat battered on the beach. Zippy has been looking after me since. And you?”

“I washed up on another island, not too far from here. Wouldn’t you know it, just as I was sailing away on a raft, another freak storm hit. Is that amazing or what?” I might have just asked Zippy straight up about the storms, but it’s not nice to accuse someone of treachery and meteorological murder when your stomach is full of his food. Anyway, he’d been so pleasant I was finding it hard to believe he really was into all the skulls and stuff. After all, folks with skull tattoos all over them are nicer than a lot of prim pious people, or at least so the folks with the skull tattoos keep saying. Mormor probably just bought the castle as a fixer-upper, I was thinking, and hadn’t gotten around to de-skulling.

“I’m so happy you didn’t die,” said Suzy.

“Me too, just so I could see you again.”

Sensing approaching mushiness (I assume), Mormor said, “Come, Bob, let us retire for a brandy and talk shop a bit. I would like your thoughts on a professional matter, which I’m sure would bore the fair lady.”

“Yes, let’s,” I said. I was so stupefied by the turn of events—and ten pounds of food and ale—since reaching Big Evil Island that I was to this point unable to focus on what Mormor’s game could be. Maybe he would show his hand now, man-to-man. I was feeling congenial and starting to think Astercam had him all wrong, maybe even that horrible flash storms were just natural around here. Plus, I hadn’t had brandy in a purple thurgwott’s age. “Please forgive me, Suzy, because I really don’t want to be anywhere you aren’t.”

“Yes, Bob,” she said. “Zippy has told me about the demands on a spellcaster’s time, and I am sure you have much to discuss. Besides, I am feeling awfully sleepy.”

“Good night, fair one,” said Mormor as she left us.

I said, “I thank you for the meal, Zippy. May I call you Zippy?”

“Certainly, Bob,” he replied. With a wave of his hand the feast vanished, leaving clean dishes behind; with another wave those too vanished—ye gods, if I had an automatic dish-cleaning spell alone back in Snyrgg I could have been rich—and in their place were two snifters of brandy. “Is Bob your only name, or have you a more familiar one?”

“I’ll level with you, Zippy. My parents, whoever they were, never named me. My fellow urchins used to call me Pocks, for my childhood acne, which fortunately cleared up by the time I was studying under Simon the Unsteady. He called me X for two years, until one day he was so mad at me for screwing up a Mystic Fist spell and accidentally punching his ear with my actual fist that he kicked me into the river. When he saw me float around he started calling me Bob, and the name stuck. You could call me Bobby.”

Mormor rose and took his glass, gesturing me to follow. We left the hall. The corridors were well lit now, and I was doing pretty good myself. Unlike me, however, the source of their illumination was not evident. “I appreciate that you did not tell the lady of my reputation,” Mormor said. “I assume, that as mage yourself, you’ve heard of me.”

“Oh, a word here or there. You know how they gossip around the club. Say, you wouldn’t have some old clothes I could borrow, would you? I’m afraid my rags have been reduced to threads, and I should hate to be socially unacceptable.”

“No fear on that score. In fact, you may be needing an entirely new wardrobe soon.”

“Thanks, I—huh?”

“I mean, our nourishing food will undoubtedly put some meat on your frame.”

“Oh, yes. Sure.”

“You know,” he said as we walked past rows of bookcases filled with ancient tomes, “people do say things about me, quite unfair things. That kind of gossip leads to poor judgment. Like that imbecile Maximo, sending you out to get the Gallstone of the Gods. Maximo thinks it can protect Tegora against wizardry, specifically mine. So he put you to all that trouble, because of fear and ignorance, fired up by gossip.”

“Well, tongues will wag,” I said, and then realized I had never told Suzy or him about my Gallstone-related adventures.

“They say I’m evil. And yet my goal is to bring all the world together in harmony. No more fighting amongst each other, no more starving, no more prejudice and hate. No silly religions, no city-states, no private property, nothing to make war about. Everyone united for one simple purpose.”

“Ah.”

“To obey me.”

“Well, that is…”

“They even have the nerve to say my island is evil. Bobby, I did not name this island. That was from back when Gargothene the Odiferous lived on it. I just found it unoccupied and moved in. I wanted to call it the People’s Island, but you can never get the cartographers to change the names in a timely fashion.”

“The People’s Island. Hmm.”

“Yes, for the benefit of all. I love the people.”

“Of course, of course.”

“So I built my castle here.”

“Well, now, about that, Zippy. You think maybe people find the whole skull and bones theme a bit… off-putting?”

He sighed. “I hired an architect who convinced me to go with the vision thing. Well, what can you do? Artists, right? Say, let’s go down to the rec room.”

“Sure, sure. So, this love of people thing. I guess it’s safe to say you have nothing to do with the freak storms that shipwrecked me and almost killed me twice, did you?”

He stopped and turned, smiling. “Oh, Bobby! If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t be here to ask the question, I assure you.” To illustrate, he held out the hand that was not carrying a glass and, with a brief gesture, shot gouts of flame at me. I made an unmanly eeek! and dropped my glass, but the flame never touched me. It roared past me on all sides, and singed the furniture behind me, yet I was completely unharmed. Well, but for some flames smoldering on stray hairs and threads.

“Right, right,” I said when it ended. “Just, er, asking. I guess I just don’t know why you don’t want me dead. Aside from your love of the people, that is.”

He took me by the elbow. He smelled a bit of sulfur now. “Oh, Bobby, come along.” We passed under an arch to a broad circular stairway, going down. “I should have hoped you wouldn’t ask such a thing. I certainly gave you ample opportunity to perish, but you didn’t. Look at you! You are a true survivor.”

“Um. Thanks?”

“Even when you thought Suzy was dead, and you had no reason to go on living, you still found a way to keep going,” he said, and my blood dropped about fifty degrees. We continued to descend. “Yes, I followed your progress in my Mystic Mirror, even heard your story as you told it to that silly old man Astercam. I was impressed, so I decided to bring you here.”

“So you did control the waves. But you almost turned me into strawberry jam on the rocks.”

“A final test, that’s all, and as usual you survived. Just a moment.” He let go of me and snapped his fingers, and I heard something like fifty-two bolts click open on a thick iron door. We proceeded through into a large chamber full of sounds. “You may wonder what that has to do with me still. After all, I have nothing much to gain from you. I am far more learned, intelligent, wise, and powerful than you could ever hope to be. Even without all that, I am your physical superior and much more attractive to the fair Suzy. Oh, don’t gape like a fish, I haven’t touched her. I need her as she is until she comes to me of her own volition. Here, just step into this cell, thanks. As vast as this chamber is, with scores of corridors with cells, it was difficult finding a spot for you, but it is only temporary, as you shall see.”

“What do you want with Suzy?” I said, trembling.

“She has a role to play,” he said, snapping his fingers again. “It’s difficult to find genuine princesses who maintain purity of any kind. Suzette is close enough. She’s a little weird; she likes you, or did. You see, when you’re a mage who deals with devils, you find that corruption of others is the most efficient means of amassing power. On that score, Suzy is valuable to my plans. But by all means, please continue to think of her fondly. It will make your time here much more useful, to me.

“I have known since I split my first man limb from limb that even the toughest survivor will break when the pain becomes great enough. Consider yourself lucky that you did not meet me a few hundred years ago, when I was young and my experiments lacked finesse. Yes, as you can see now in the adjacent cells, I still like to indulge in some meaningless torture, although it is almost more for appearance’s sake than any fun these days. That man across the way spilled wine on my best kidskin gloves; I removed his face for him and twisted his limbs so he can sense nothing but pain. The apparatus nearby records his thoughts, but they’re rather dull. Just ‘Aaagh.’ Hardly riveting.

“That woman— Well, I forget what she did, but it isn’t important. The bubbling green spots on her skin are colonies of microscopic imps I created. They breed like mad, eating what they need before bursting out into the netherworld. Messy, of course, but she regenerates quickly thanks to the tubes of fluid attached to her neck. She’ll last longer than the others did, I think.

“And that man… Oh, why belabor the point? These are some of my diversions, of which naturally the lady upstairs knows nothing. And, as I’ve mesmerized you, I command you never to speak of them to her. I’m sure your silent mind is reeling with thoughts of what I have in store for you, Bobby, but you needn’t fear. My first experiment for you won’t be terribly painful.

“I wish to find out whether a true survivor can bear mental torture as well as the physical kind. To this end I am applying two discoveries of mine, which that old fool Astercam incidentally brought up through his work. I will this night create a duplicate of you, right down to your dirty fingernails, of materials from the netherworld, which the lady will find hanging by the neck in the quarters next to hers in the morning, along with a very convincing suicide note, all about your awful past, your miserable existence, your unworthiness—true to life, no? If this works, I will work on living duplicates of certain potentates, all under my command, which will replace the real things. But you’ve given me a chance to work on the technique.

“Now, as for you. Look here. Yes, this is a gerbil cage, but you will call it home. Everything you ate tonight from the fruit to the brandy contained a reducing powder of my design, and let me say you’re looking smaller already. I anticipate an optimum lowness of five inches, which ought to remove you from the running as a suitor for Suzy, eh? She’ll think you dead anyway, and at that size you might as well be. But look on the bright side. As long as you amuse me you shall have plenty of food, a sandbox for your personal needs, and see? A little exercise wheel. Perhaps I’ll toss in a rat or two from time to time to keep you busy. I think it shall be fun! But when you do bore me, as you probably will, bear in mind that I have some ideas for experiments on a tiny human as well.

“Well, I think that’s all for your orientation, except to say that the shrinking process will probably leave you feeling like your entire body is sucking in on itself, so you may experience some discomfort. In fact, you may experience some agony. You see, Bobby, this is what comes of trying to marry above your station.

“In five minutes you will snap out of your trance, and then you may howl all you like. No one will hear you but your fellow inmates, and they seem busy with their own howling, don’t they? This is a lovely plate of despair I’ve handed you, and I can’t wait to see how much you can consume before you go utterly insane.

“Oh, and one final thing: Zippy was fine when we were good-fellows-well-met, but from now on it’s Lord Mormor to you, got it? Or just Master. Have a pleasant evening.”

Five minutes later I joined the chorus in my own dark little pit of hell.

[Well, this is the darkest spot Bob has ever been in! How can he escape? Maybe chapter 10 is EVEN DARKER! Better come back Friday and find out! Try not to lose sleep over it!]