“What’s the rush?”
“Oh, nothing much,” the Imir responded a bit sarcastically. “Only that the Dark Baron slipped our leash and is free once again and that, perhaps not coincidentally, Sugasto seems to be getting his act together once more.”
Joe shook his head in wonder and returned a wry smile. “Back to normal,” he sighed. “Nice to see you, too, Poquah.”
CHAPTER 5
PLOTS GO WRONG, AS USUAL
Anyone, whether hero or villain, human or fairy, whose life or death would in any way change the course of destiny, shall always be given a way out, no matter how certain the doom or absolute the trap.
Throckmorton P. Ruddygore looked his old self and none the worse for wear, almost out of place in his grand sorcerer’s robes, which he favored in Husaquahr. Of course, he also looked out of place in his characteristic formal wear on Earth. Frankly, he looked as if he should be wearing a red suit with white fur trim, for there was not one from Earth who met him who didn’t immediately think of him as the perfect, perhaps the real Santa Claus.
“Joe! Tiana! And, oh yes, the young master Irving as well! Welcome, welcome to my humble abode!”
Irving looked around the sumptuous great hall, with its ornate gold on almost everything, its finely polished handcrafted furniture, thick, plush rugs, and all the rest that shouted the height of luxury, even back home, and sniggered a bit.
“Come, now. Have seats! Anywhere at all, please. How was your vacation?”
Joe took one of the chairs and Tiana sat down cross-legged on the floor to his left without even thinking about it.
“Restful, until the last week or so, “Joe told him. “Irving’s gotten pretty good on a horse and shows real potential. We had a pretty rough trip until the last day, though. Short on money, long on problems. It was worth it, I think, to get back into some kind of trim, and, of course, to get to know my son a little bit more.”
The old sorcerer nodded. Irving had just sat down in the plushest, most comfortable chair he’d ever experienced in his whole life when the host said, “But, come, come! I’m forgetting my manners. You must be starved after such a journey! Come, let us sup, and then we’ll have time to talk!”
Irving was suddenly torn between leaving the most luxurious seat he’d ever sat in and the idea of real, decent food. It was no contest; food won. Besides, he thought, this joint is so big, if I don’t follow them now, I may never find my way out.
They walked for what seemed like a mile, then entered a huge banquet hall, with a long table and plush red chairs and a kind of screened-off area where, it appeared, the food came from.
“We’ll just eat in the small dining room tonight,” Ruddygore said almost apologetically.
Showoff! Irving thought. But the old geezer really did have things to show off, he had to admit that. Now this was the way to live!
“Take any seat,” Ruddygore told them. “We don’t stand on formality here most of the time.”
Joe took a seat to one side of the far end and Irving the other. Ruddygore went around to sit at the head, then noticed that Tiana was just standing there. “Come, come, girl! Sit!”
She looked almost in tears. “I—I can’t. I just can’t, that’s all.”
The sorcerer got up and walked around to her and looked her over with a gaze so fixed and concentrated that it seemed as if he even looked inside her and inventoried the atoms in her structure.
“Oh, my! The Rules have been rather vicious to you since we came back, haven’t they, my dear? Oh, my! I must be growing old and senile. That possibility simply never entered my head. Well, there are no slaves at Terindell—fairy folk work for peanuts and have a much lower overhead than humans. And I’ll not have any guest in my house serving here. Tell you what— you go into the kitchen and eat what you like and gossip with the help, and we’ll talk together, you and I, privately later. Okay?”
She nodded, looked at Joe, who seemed a little confused, but shrugged, and she walked back behind the screen and presumably into the kitchen.
“What’s that about?” Joe asked him. “We all ate at the cafes together.”
Ruddygore took his seat and nodded. “True, but that’s a different situation. Those sorts of places are within her allowable social range. In this setting, she could serve us, but she could not join us. How long has she been fixed in this level?”
“A couple of days. Oh, it’s been little changes all along, but this way, just maybe two, three days tops.”
“I thought as much. She’s going to have a tough time because she’s smart and strong-willed and used to equality, at the very least. I’ve seen minds snap under that sort of strain.”
“Can’t you unslave her?” Irving asked him. “I mean, you’re a superpowerful wizard, right?”
“True, young sir, but I am bound by the Rules just as much as she is. She may not like it, but she understands that as well. The only two ways I know would be to use the most powerful of djinn magicks, which I will not do unless there is no alternative, so dangerous is it, or, alternatively, to switch her soul to another body with different Rules.”
“You can do that?”
“No, that’s one outside my knowledge. I could put one into an empty vessel—that’s simple. It’s getting it out, and maintaining the empty vessel, that’s the problem. It’s one that Sugasto somehow solved, or probably either appropriated or got from Baron Boquillas.”
“I keep hearin’ ’bout this bad dude the Baron. What’s his problem?” the boy asked.
“He’s a throwback. The most brilliant mathemagical mind in ten thousand years. There’s probably not a single thing we can imagine that he couldn’t figure out how to do if he wanted to do so.”
“Yeah? So how come you beat him, then?”
Ruddygore sighed. “The Baron suffers from several flaws without which he would have been invincible. For one thing, he suffers from an admirable lack of imagination. He’s predictable to a degree, and his mind works in narrow channels. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t come up with highly innovative new ways to cause trouble—that television preacher business he tried on Earth was highly creative—but he is obsessed only with Earthly power over others. He is unshakable in his belief that out of Hell can come all of the solutions to all of the problems of the universe. He was taken in by that idea, just as many others were and continue to be taken in by it, and because he knows he is brilliant, he is incapable of believing that he can be taken in. It’s a nasty little mental circle common to megalomaniacs.”
“And you lost him when you had him?”
Ruddygore sighed. “Alas, yes. I should have known better, but after what happened back on Earth when he was loosed there, essentially powerless himself, I didn’t dare allow him to remain there again.”
“Then why not just kill him? I mean, he kills lots of folks, don’t he?”
Ruddygore nodded. “The Rules again. They gave him his chance, his way out, by seducing me with the idea that I could use and control him to get at Sugasto. It’s an arbitrary Rule, but it’s not one we can hate, either. Your father’s escaped death more than once because of the same regulation.” There was a commotion behind him, and he paused and brightened. “Ah, but I think the food has arrived! Business and hard thinking can wait until we’ve done.”
And arrive it did. Short, plump fairies who looked like a cross between the Munchkins and the Pillsbury Doughboy began marching out with platter after platter, course after course. It was an impeccably cooked feast for twelve, and even after Joe and Irv had eaten their fill and Ruddygore had eaten six times theirs, there was plenty left over.