The Fallable Fiend Read online

  I trailed back to the sanctum. “Well,” snarled Maldivius, “where is our dinner now?”

  I told what had befallen.

  “You idiot!” screamed the wizard. “By Zevatas’ beard, of all the stupid, blundering, incompetent, feckless fiends I ever did know, you are the worst!”

  He snatched up his wand and chased me around the chamber, whacking me on the head and shoulders. An ordinary stick of that size I should hardly have felt, but the wand gives a horrid tingling, burning sensation when it hits. By the third lap around, I began to feel resentment. I could easily have torn Doctor Maldivius limb from limb, but I was kept from doing so by the terms of my indenture and fear of my own government.

  “Why don’t we trade old Catfish in, boss?” said Master Grax. “Send him back to the Twelfth Plane and demand another one with at least the brains of a hoptoad.”

  Doctor Maldivius stood panting and leaning on his wand. “Take this wretched imitation of a demon back to the kitchen and start over.”

  Grax led me back through the maze, grinning and uttering many a quip on my want of intellect. (It is common practice among human beings to make these meaningless remarks they call “jokes,” whereupon they bare their teeth and go, “Ha ha ha.” This seems to give them pleasure.) When we arrived, I found that all the water in the pot containing the turnips had boiled away, so that the turnips were half-burnt and stuck to the pot.

  It was three hours after my first arrival in the kitchen before I assembled a passable dinner for this pair of cantankerous conjurors. Then I got lost in the maze again on my way to the sanctum. By the rime I found my customers, the victuals were cold. Luckily for me, the twain had by this time drunk so much olikau that they never noticed. Grax was in a fit of giggling. When I asked Maldivius when and what I myself was to eat, he only goggled at me and mumbled: “Huh? What? Who?”

  So back I went to the kitchen and cooked my own dinner. It was no gourmet meal, but being ravenous I found it better than anything I have tasted before or since.

  ###

  During the following days, my cookery improved, albeit I do not think I could ever apply for a post as chef in the palace of a great lord of the Prime Plane. Then, when Grax was out on an errand, Maldivius called me in to the sanctum.

  “I am taking the mule to Ir on the morrow,” he said. “I hope to be back two or three days thereafter. You will be alone most of the time. I would that you remained here in the sanctum on guard, save for the most necessary occasions. Fetch your repasts in here to eat. You can sleep on the divan.”

  “Will not Master Grax be here to keep me company, sir?”

  “I know not what you mean by ‘keep company’, for it has not escaped me that the feelings betwixt you two can hardly be described as love. In any case, I know from experience that, even if I command Grax to remain, he will sneak off to Chemnis the minute I am out of sight. This is one reason for my having contracted for your services.”

  “Wherefore does he that, sir?”

  Maldivius: “He has a girl in town, whom he visits for purposes of—ah—fornication. I have told him and told him that to rise into the upper ranks of the profession, one must relinquish such fleshly pleasures. But he pays me no heed. Like most youths, he thinks that everybody older than himself is far gone in senile decay.”

  “Were you, sir, as abstemious as you wish him to be when you were his age?”

  “Shut up and mind your business, you impudent rascal. Ahem. Attend closely. You shall remain on guard here warding my property, especially the Sibylline Sapphire. If anyone enter the sanctum ere I return, you shall devour him instanter.”

  “Really, sir? I should think—”

  “You are not indentured to think, but to follow orders! Listen, comprehend, and obey! The first person to enter the sanctum before my return is to be eaten alive! No exceptions! It is not as if they will not have been warned. Grax has lettered a sign, BEWARE OF THE DEMON, and posted it at the entrance. Do you understand?”

  I sighed. “Aye, sir. May I take the liberty of asking the nature of your errand?”

  Maldivius chuckled. “It is my chance to make what the vulgar call a ‘killing.’ For, in my Sapphire, I have seen doom approaching Ir. Since only I am cognizant of this, I should be able to squeeze a respectable fee out of the skinflint Syndics in return for this news.”

  “Sir, as a citizen of Ir, I should think you would deem it your duty to warn the state regardless of reward—”

  “You dare to tell me my duty, sirrah?” Maldivius snatched up his wand as if to strike me but then mastered himself. “Someday I will explain. Suffice it to say that I have no particular loyalty to a city whose judges have fleeced me, whose rich have scorned me, where my colleagues have plotted against me, and where even the boys have followed me, throwing stones and hooting. An I obeyed my urges, I would let their doom overtake them. But to abandon an opportunity for profit for a petty revenge were youthful folly. Forget not your orders, now!”

  II

  JIMMON THE SYNDIC

  I followed the wizard up the cliffside stairs to the top. Around us lay the ruined temple of Psaan, the Novarian god of the sea. The stumps of marble columns rose in ranks like a company of soldiers magically turned to stone, while separate column drums and fragments littered the cracked and tilted marble pave. Grass grew in the cracks. So did shrubs and even a few trees, which had canted the flags in their growth. There had once, Maldivius told me, been much more to the ruins, but for centuries the Chemnites had used the site as a quarry.

  While I saddled up the mule and strapped the doctor’s traveling bag to the cantle, Maldivius repeated his instructions. Then off he went.

  Doctor Maldivius was right about his apprentice. The diviner was hardly out of sight, and I had started down the stair, when I had to halt to allow Master Grax, wearing his good doublet and boots, to ascend. The youth grinned.

  “Well, old Catfish,” he said, “I’m off to town. I’ll warrant you wish you had what I’m going for!” He jerked his pelvis to illustrate.

  “I own I shall miss my wife,” I said, “but—”

  “You mean demons have wives, just like people?”

  “Of course. What thought you?”

  “Methought that when you were fain to increase, you split down the middle and each half-became a whole new demon, as Maldivius says some little water creatures do. Do you futter your wives as we do?”

  “Aye, though not the year round, as you Prime Planers seem to.”

  Grax: “Well, why not come to Chemnis with me? I know a dame—”

  “My orders forbid. Besides, I misdoubt that a human woman would enjoy carnal congress with me.”

  “Why not? Wrong size?”

  “Nay; it is the spiny barbs on my male member.”

  “You actually have one?”

  “Certes, inside.”

  “How do your women—demonesses, I suppose I should call them—take the spiny barbs?”

  “They find them pleasantly stimulating. But now I needs must take up my post in the central chamber.”

  “Well, stupid, don’t fall asleep and let some thief clean the place out! A couple of boys down in Chemnis wouldn’t mind eking out their earnings by a bit of burglary. Expect me back on the morrow.”

  He strode off on the dusty track that Maldivius had taken. I returned to the sanctum. For several days I had been too busy to digest the food I had eaten and hence had become somewhat bloated. I welcomed the chance to sink into digestive torpor. This lasted into the following day, as I could tell from the little water clock on one of Maldivius’ tables.

  I had roused myself and was refilling the reservoir of the water clock when I heard the sound of boot heels in the maze. It might, I thought, be Grax; or it might be an intruder.

  Then I remembered how insistent Doctor Maldivius had been about my devouring the first person to enter the sanctum before his return. No exceptions, he had said; I must follow his orders literally and implicitly. When I tried to ask
whether he was fain to except Master Grax, he had shut me off. Meseemed he wished me, for some arcane reason, to treat Grax as I would any other intruder.

  Presently, Grax stood in the entrance with a sack of edibles, bought in the village, on one shoulder. “Hola there, stupid!” he cried. “Poor old Catfish, can do nought better than sit in the sanctum and look ugly, like the idol of some heathen god—ho, what do you?”

  Grax had advanced into the sanctum as he spoke. He had time for but one short scream as I sprang upon the youth, tore him to pieces, and ate him. I must say that he was pleasanter as provender than as a living companion.

  Some things, however, perturbed me. For one, the brief struggle had disordered the room. A table was overset, and gore was spattered far and wide. Fearing that Maldivius would chastise me for sloppy housekeeping, I set to work with bucket, mop, and broom and in an hour had almost erased all traces of the fracas. The larger bones of the late Grax I stacked neatly on an empty bookshelf. A gout of blood had struck a copy of Material and Spiritual Perfection in Ten Easy Lessons, by Voltiper of Kortoli, on the bookshelves. The blood had run between the pages, staining several with a large red blot.

  As I worked, another thought oppressed me. On the Twelfth Plane, ever since Wonk the Reformer, devouring fellow beings alive has been strictly forbidden. I supposed that the Prime Plane had similar regulations, although I had had no opportunity to master this world’s many legal systems. I was comforted to think that, since I acted under Maldivius’ orders, the responsibility would be his.

  ###

  Doctor Maldivius returned late the next day. He asked: “Where is Grax?”

  “Following your orders, master, I was compelled to devour him.”

  “What?”

  “Aye, sir.” I explained the circumstances.

  “Imbecile!” shrieked the wizard, going for me with his wand again. “Fool! Dunce! Lout! Ass! Dolt! Blunderhead! What have I done to the gods that they should visit a jolthead like you upon me?”

  He was chasing and whacking me all the while. I darted out of the chamber but got lost in the maze. As a result, Maldivius cornered me at the end of a blind passage and continued his beating until exhaustion forced him to stop.

  “Mean you,” I said at last, “that you did not intend me to eat this youth?”

  “Of course I meant it!” Whack. “Any idiot could have seen that!”

  “But, sir, you expressly commanded me—” And I went through the logic of the situation again.

  Maldivius raked his gray hair back from his face and drew his sleeve across his forehead. “Beshrew me, but I suppose I ought to have known better. Come back to the chamber.” When we reached the sanctum, he said: “Gather up those bones, tie them together, and throw them into the sea.”

  “I am sorry, sir; I did but try to give satisfaction. As we say in Ning, no one being can excel in everything. Will Grax’s disappearance entail any legal consequences for you?”

  “Not likely. He was a kinless orphan; that was why he wished to become my apprentice. If, however, you should be asked, say that he fell from the cliff and was carried off by some denizen of the deep. Now let us plan a proper dinner, for I expect an eminent visitor tomorrow.”

  “Who is this, master?”

  “His Excellency Jimmon, the Chief Syndic of Ir. I made them an offer, but they derided it and suggested one-tenth of my price as a just requital. Jimmon said he might drop by to discuss the matter further. This bids fair to be a lengthy haggle.”

  “Are you sure, sir, that the doom you foresee will not come upon the land whist you and the Syndics chaffer? As we say on my plane, a fish in the creel is worth two in the stream.”

  “Nay, nay; I keep watch on this menace by my Sapphire. We have a plenty of time.”

  “Sir, may I ask what sort of menace this is?”

  “You may ask, ha ha, but I won’t answer. I know better than to—ah—let this bird out of its cage by blabbing what’s known only to me. Now get to work.”

  ###

  His Excellency the Syndic Jimmon was a fat, bald man borne in a litter, who stayed overnight while his servants went to Chemnis for lodging. I did my best to play the perfect servant. I had been told to stand behind the chair of the guest at dinner, to anticipate his every wish.

  Betimes, Jimmon and Maldivius haggled over the price of revealing Ir’s doom, and betimes they gossiped about events in Ir. Jimmon said: “If someone stop not that accursed woman, by Thio’s horn, she’ll attain the Board of Syndics yet.”

  “What of it?” said Maldivius. “Since your government is based upon wealth, and Madam Roska has the wealth, why should you mind her taking her seat amongst you?”

  “We have never had a woman syndic; ’twere unprecedented. Moreover, everyone knows what a silly female she is.”

  “Ahem. Not too silly to multiply her fortune, methinks.”

  “By witchcraft, belike. ’Tis said she dabbles in wizardry. Humph. The world is out of joint, when a featherwitted frail can amass such lucre. But let us talk of pleasanter things. Have you seen Bagardo’s traveling circus, eh? ’Twas in Ir last fiftnight, and meseems Bagardo the Great is now touring the smaller towns and villages. His entertainment is not bad. But if he come to Chemnis, beware that he fleece you not. Like all such mountebanks, he’s full of wiles and guile.”

  Maldivius chuckled. “He needs must arise early to fleece me and not—ah—the other way round. Stop your squirming, Your Excellency; my servant will not harm you. He is a very paragon of literal obedience.”

  “Then, wouldst mind asking him to stand behind your chair instead of mine? His looks disquiet me, and I’m getting a crick in my poor neck from craning it to view him.”

  Maldivius commanded me to change my place. I obeyed, albeit I found it hard to understand Jimmon’s apprehensions. At home, I am deemed a perfectly average sort of demon, in no way outstanding or formidable.

  The next day, Syndic Jimmon departed in his litter, bouncing on the shoulders of eight stalwart bearers. Maldivius told me: “Now understand once and for all, O Zdim, that your purpose in guarding my sanctum is not to slay anyone who happens by, but to forestall thievery. So you shall devour thieves and none other.”

  “But, master, how shall I know a thief?”

  “By his actions, fool! If he seek to snatch some bauble of mine and make off with it, destroy him. But, if he be merely a customer wishing his horoscope cast, or a peddler with sundries for sale, or a villager from Chemnis who fain would exchange a sack of produce for aid in finding his wife’s lost bangle, then seat him courteously and watch him closely until I return. But, unless he truly attempt to filch, harm him not! Have you got that through your adamantine skull?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  For the next fortnight, little happened. I continued to cook and clean. Maldivius went once to Chemnis and once to Ir; Jimmon paid us one more visit. Maldivius and Jimmon continued their chaffer, inching towards each other’s positions with snail-like sloth. At this rate, meseemed the predicted doom would have come and gone thrice over ere they reached agreement.

  When not otherwise occupied, Maldivius consulted the Sibylline Sapphire. Since he insisted that I stand guard over him while he was in his vaticinatory trance, I soon learned his procedure. He prayed; he burnt a mixture of spicy herbs in a little brazier and inhaled the smoke; he chanted a spell in the Mulvanian tongue, beginning:

  Jyū zormē barh tigai tyūvu;

  Jyū zormē barh tigai tyūvu . . .

  I could tell from a sensation in my tendrils when the spell began to take effect.

  Having mastered my domestic tasks, I found time hanging heavily on my hands. We demons are far more patient than these fidgety Prime Planers; natheless, I found sitting hour upon hour in the sanctum, doing absolutely nothing, more than a little tedious. At length I asked: “Master, might I take the liberty of reading one of your books whilst I wait?”

  “Why,” said Maldivius, “can you read Novarian?”

  “I
studied it in school, and—”

  “Mean you that you have schools, too, on the Twelfth Plane?”

  “Certes, sir. How else should we rear our young in the ways they should go?”

  Maldivius: “And young as well? Somehow I have never heard of a young demon.”

  “Naturally, since we do not permit the immature of our kind to serve on the Prime Plane. It were too hazardous for them. I assure you that we are hatched, and grow, and die like other sentient creatures. But about your books, I see you have a lexicon to help with words I know not. I beg you to suffer me to use it.”

  “Hm, hm. Not a bad idea. When you become skilled enough, belike you can read to me, as poor Grax was wont to do. At my age, I needs employ a reading glass, which makes reading a laborious business. What sort of book have you in mind?”

  “I should like to start on this one, sir,” I said, pulling out the copy of Voltiper’s Material and Spiritual Perfection in Ten Easy Lessons. “Methinks I shall need all the perfection I can attain to furnish satisfaction on this unfamiliar plane.”

  “Let me see that!” said he, snatching the book out of my claws. His old eyes—keen enough despite his words—had glimpsed the blots of blood that marred several pages. “A souvenir of poor Grax, eh? Lucky for you, O fiend, that the book is of no magical import. Take it, and may you profit from its advice.”

  So, with the help of Maldivius’ lexicon, I began plowing through Voltiper of Kortoli. The second chapter was devoted to Voltiper’s theories of diet. He was, it transpired, a vegetarian. He averred that only by eschewing the flesh of animals could the reader attain the sought-for perfect health and spiritual attunement with the cosmos. Voltiper also had moral objections to slaying sentient beings for food. He held that they had souls, even if rudimentary ones, and that they were akin to human beings as a result of evolutionary descent from common ancestors.