“Hello!” he called now, tiring of the walk. “Is anyone here? For I am a lost traveler, plump and out of shape, wandering helplessly in your abandoned quarry.”
As he expected, a dark form came toward him out of the mists, in no great hurry, lured by the promise of such an easy meal. The deodand, in the manner of its kind, looked much like a man except for the flat, sooty black of its skin and the bright gleam of its claws and fangs. It stopped now to inspect him through slitted, bile-yellow eyes.
“You exaggerate your own plumpness, traveler,” it said disapprovingly. “Except for that moderate roll of fat around your middle I would not call you plump at all.”
“Your eyes are as faulty as they are inhumanly strange,” cried Lixal, nettled. “There is no such roll of fat. I described myself thusly merely to lure you out so that I might dispose of you without wasting my entire morning in search.”
The deodand looked at him curiously. “Are you a warrior, then? I confess you do not resemble it. In fact, you have the slack, well-fed look of a merchant. Do you plan to end my reign of terror here in Saepia by offering me better employment elsewhere? I confess that I feel an urge to explore other places and to eat newer, more exotic people.”
Lixal laughed in scorn. “Do not be impertinent. I am no simple merchant, but Lixal Laqavee, the Dire Mage in Late-Evening Blue. If you do not know my name already you will have ample time to reflect on it with rue in the cold place to which I will send you.”
The deodand moved closer, stopping only when Lixal raised a hand in warning. “Strange. I have never heard of such a magician as yourself, and other than that small talisman on your wrist I see no evidence of power about you. If I wrong you please forgive me, but you do not strike me as much of a wizard at all. Could you be mistaken?”
“Mistaken? Can you mistake this?” His irritation now become something closer to blind rage, Lixal waved his hand and uttered the Thunderous Exhalation of Banishment in his loudest and most impressive voice. The sky rumbled as if in terror at the great forces employed and a flash of light surrounded the deodand as though lightning had sprung out of the creature’s carbon-colored pores. But the next instant, instead of shrinking into utter vanishment like a man falling down an endless well, as all the previous men and beasts struck with the Exhalation had done, the deodand suddenly came sliding toward Lixal as rapidly as if the foul creature were a canal boat dragged by a magically superanimated donkey. Lixal had time only to throw his hands in front of his face and give out a brief squeak of terror, then the deodand smacked to a sudden halt a scant two paces away from him as though the creature had run into a soft but inflexible and unseen wall.
Lixal looked between his fingers at the deodand, whose hideous aspect was not improved a whit by close proximity. The deodand looked back at him, an expression of bemusement on its cruel, inhuman features.
“A strange kind of banishment,” it said, taking a step back. A moment later it leaped at Lixal, fangs bared. Whatever had prevented it from reaching him before stopped it this time as welclass="underline" the deodand bounced harmlessly back from him. “Hmmm,” the creature said. “Your spell seems to have worked in reverse of the way you intended it, drawing me toward you instead of exiling me.” The deodand turned and tried to walk away but could not get more than a step before it was again brought up short. “I am held like a leashed moon circling a planet, unable to move away from you,” it said in frustration. “But that talisman on your wrist seems to prevent me reaching you and completing my earlier intention, namely, to destroy you and eat you.” It frowned, hiding its terrifying pointed teeth behind a pouting lower lip. “I am not happy with this state of affairs, magician. Release me and I will go my way without molesting you further. You have my word.”
Lixal stared at the creature, who was so close he could smell its sour, feral scent, the odor of bones and rotting flesh that hovered in its proximity like the morning fogs that hung over the quarry. “I…I cannot,” he said at last. “I have not the capability to undo the spell.”
The deodand made a noise of disgust. “As a both a wizard and deodand-slayer, then, you are close to an utter failure. What are we to do now?” A look of calculation entered its yellow eyes. “If you cannot release me in the conventional way, you must consider removing your bracelet and letting me kill you. That way at least one of us will live his life out the way the spirits of the void intended.”
“On the contrary!” said Lixal, piqued. “Why would I permit you to kill me? You may just as easily kill yourself — I imagine those sharp claws will work as efficaciously on your own jugular as mine. Then I can go on with my own life, which has much more to recommend it than your skulking, marrow-guzzling, baby-stealing existence.”
“Clearly we will not easily find agreement on this,” said the deodand. “A thought occurs to me. Have you offended another wizard lately?”
Lixal thought immediately of Eliastre and the impression of dissatisfaction he had displayed at their parting, but was unwilling to broach the subject to the deodand after such a short acquaintance. “Anything is possible in the rarefied yet contentious circles in which I travel. Why do you ask?”
“Because if so, it is likely that even death will not release us. If this misfiring of your incantation is the result of thaumaturgical malice, it may well be designed so that even if one of us dies, the other’s fortunes will not improve. For instance, I am compelled to be in your vicinity. If you die and become motionless bones, it is quite logical that I will be compelled to remain in the spot where you fell. Similarly, should you achieve the unlikely result of killing me, the corpse would probably still adhere to your person no matter where you traveled. The material shells of my tribe decay loathsomely but extremely slowly. In short, you would spend the rest of your life dragging my rotting corpse behind you.”
Lixal closed his eyes in disgust and dismay. “Eliastre!” he said, and it was a bitter curse upon his tongue. “I know this is his hand at work. He has treated me shamefully with this trick and I will have revenge on him, somehow!”
The deodand stared at him. “What name is this?”
“It is the name of one we apparently must visit,” Lixal said. “That is our only hope to escape our unpleasantly twinned fate. Come with me.” He grimaced sadly. “I think we must steer clear of Saepia as we leave these environs. The townspeople now will have several reasons not to love me, and I will tell you honestly that they never cared much for you.”
Like two climbers bound by a rope, Lixal and the deodand made their way through the forest and back to the camp outside town where the traveling troop was still ensconced. The players would have been at worst indifferent to the arrival of Lixal in other circumstances, but his companion filled the whole camp with unhappiness.
“Do not move,” shouted the apothecary Kwerion. “A terrible beast pursues you! Throw yourself down on the ground and we will do our best to slay it!”
“Please offer the creature no harm,” said Lixal. “Otherwise, and in the doubtful circumstance that you destroy it, I will be condemned to drag its stinking, putrefying corpse around with me for the rest of my natural days beneath our dying sun.”
When Lixal had explained what had befallen, the rest of the troop was much amazed. “You must find a sorceror of great power to help you,” said Kwerion.
“Or a sympathetic god,” suggested Ferlash, who was having trouble keeping amusement off his face.
“Surely someone as clever as yourself will find a solution,” said a young woman named Minka, who had replaced the young woman who had given Lixal the bracelet in the role of the troop’s primary educational dancer. Minka had of late expressed a certain warmness toward Lixal, and though she was clearly disappointed by this latest turn of events, she seemed determined to at least keep her options open. “Then you will find your way back to us.”