And the Princess roused, much to the King’s delight. ‘What joy!’ he cried. ‘Send forth the word—the Princess is awake! We celebrate! Where is my jester?’
The jester pranced in to find his throat received and constricted by Fain, who shook him like a flag.
Pretty soon Fain was once again riding through the forest, the King’s men in pursuit. ‘At least,’ he thought, ‘I have released the Princess. But now that I’ve wrecked my chances at court by killing that mime again, I may as well carry out the other part of my plan— to meet with the old man and get another three wishes for myself. For as far as he’s concerned, he hasn’t met me yet.’ He found the old man sitting in the cave mouth and thought to himself ‘That moron will sit with that thing on his head for at least another day without my help.’
‘You! Idiot!’ he shouted at the man, leaping from the horse and thrashing it into a run. ‘I must hide in your cave.’
‘Take this jar from—’
Fain knocked him against the mossy wall, shattering the urn and freeing the man’s head. The man cried ‘When you merely look, you pine!’ or something like that. As the codger told him about the three wishes, Fain pretended it was the first he’d heard of all this. ‘Only three wishes? Well, you can help me with a problem. I happen to possess the ability to travel into the past—now for my first wish I want to magic my garments back in time also, to save the inconvenience of appearing suddenly naked throughout history. Second, I of course need a constant supply of gold coins to appear in my pockets, no matter how much cash I remove. And third, I wish to travel instantly to the place where Thorn the Warlock enchanted the princess a month ago, yet an hour before it occurred.’ For Fain could not stop thinking about the Princess.
‘You choose well, young stranger,’ cackled the old lunatic.
The day blinked and Fain stood completely naked in the massive audience hall of Thorn the Warlock.
CHAPTER 3
In which Fain pushes his luck with a real sorcerer
At first the Warlock seemed to be a pillar of innards, and then a rearing black serpent with transparent wings— and finally a fork-bearded skeleton, each bone of which was wrapped individually in its own snakeskin envelope. In the tradition of wizard kings, a living coat of arms was massed on the wall behind him, operative lengths of bone and muscle levering like a water clock. The Princess knelt near to Thorn’s throne, her hands chained behind her.
‘Who let the gardener in here?’ bellowed the cloaked cadaver, and Fain thought the remark appropriate, as the hall’s walls were encrusted with gargoyles so over-elaborate they looked like cabbages. ‘Guards— take this wretch to the bird room and let him rot there.’
Fain was about to protest when he saw that the gargoyles were climbing down from the walls and crouching toward him.
Fain was still wondering about the clothing situation. ‘Next time I’ll have to specify that my clothes go with me from place to place, as well as from one time period to another. Does that magical madman keep landing me in it deliberately?’
Three of the gruesome sentinels took him down a maze of corridors past a hellhound kennel, a torture chamber, a green monster standing idle with an exploded face like a thistle, and a kitchen, and finally into the bird room, a high chamber with dove skeletons flying about the place and stone windows open to the air and sea. Fain was thrown into a domed cage and the door swung closed upon him. Two of the guards departed and the last, a hulking mutant with the scrolled horns of a goat, winched the cage upward to the ceiling. ‘He can pull out your soul like a cork,’ said the creature. ‘You will die more slowly this way. My name is Tefnut. Goodbye.’
‘Wait!’ Fain called out. ‘Give me a coat or shirt for warmth. That long-coat on the wall, perhaps.’
‘Why?’
‘I swear, Tefnut, the instant you give me ownership of that coat, I can reward you with a hundred gold coins.’ For Fain knew he could draw endless cash from his pockets, if only he had any pockets.
‘You’re raving,’ said Tefnut.
‘Very well. Then tell me this—did this cage lay upon the floor a half-hour ago?’
‘You should be in a cuckoo clock, I think,’ laughed Tefnut.
Fain wished himself a half-hour back in time and fell from a point in mid-air, with no cage about him, for at this point in time the cage had yet to be winched upward. He was alone. Fain dressed himself in the coat and set out toward the great hall, stopping off at the kitchen to steal a cabbage. ‘Invisibility would be useful for this lark,’ he thought. ‘I’ll bear that in mind for the next time I meet the old cave-dweller.’ As he arrived at the hall, Thorn was entering by the opposite door, dragging the Princess after him. Fain, with the outer layers of the cabbage shoved over his head, hunched over and shouted something like ‘Master—the hellhounds have escaped, the apes are rebelling, a dragon has decided to bite your face, a tornado is coming, flowers everywhere have unclenched like fists, there’s a fire in the kitchen and everywhere else, and the King has discovered the location of your lair and sent armies against you.’
‘Well, I haven’t got any apes,’ said the warlock, ‘but anyway I suppose I’ll have to postpone my demand for marriage, m’dear.’
‘I’m flattered,’ said Fain, but the warlock was too busy to become enraged. He was giving the order to send out the fleet and guardgoyles were scampering in all directions. Fain grabbed the Princess and soon they were rushing aboard a warship and casting off. ‘Gold coins for everyone in return for not killing me!’ he cried, pulling cash from his pockets and ordering the crew to head toward Envashes. Soon they had left behind Thorn’s island and his departing fleet.
At sunset, Fain met the Princess on deck. ‘I seem fated to be hauled back and forth like cargo,’ she snapped.
‘My apologies, madam,’ he told her. ‘If I had planned ahead, this journey would not have been necessary. What is your name?’
‘Aleksa.’
‘How did Thorn bring you here?’
‘He flew.’
‘Flight, of course! And here I am wishing merely to keep my trousers on!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Fain felt he had squandered his wishes—and now he had to travel by normal means, at a normal rate, for a whole month before he would get another chance to add to his gifts.
And all the while the ship was heading in the wrong direction.
CHAPTER 4
In which Fain provokes the crew
In the middle of the Purge Sea it became clear that the crew hated Fain. He had dressed himself in a silk shirt and some baggy Turkish pantaloons, though he kept his coat on for warmth and for the production of the crew’s wages. He had to haul hundreds of gold pieces from his pockets every morning to keep the monstrous sailors sweet, but the sheer accumulated weight of this bounty soon had the ship riding low in the water. ‘Women are bad luck,’ said the crew, looking at the Princess, ‘as are men who dress like women,’ they added, looking at Fain. They sneered that Fain’s magic was weak compared to that of the mighty Thorn, and complained that they had nothing to eat but fish. Fain warned them to stand back and, announcing that he would give them abundant food by sorcery, conjured hundreds of sardines from thin air. Roaring with indignation, the crew threw him overboard.
Though Fain could swim, he realised that he was sinking like a stone, weighed down by the gold in his pockets. He jettisoned handful after handful of gold but the pockets continually re-filled as he descended through the dark brine. ‘Though it’s extremely useful in a thousand other situations,’ he reminded himself pragmatically as he fell into unconsciousness.