Too Many Curses Read online

  "Margle?"

  She flinched instinctively. Margle would never allow her to use his name if he were still alive. She was quite certain he was dead. For now.

  The nurgax licked her with its wet tongue and laughed. Its laugh was a lot like a kobold's, half bark and half chuckle. Was that because of the bond, she wondered, or just coincidence?

  She set her fears aside, and using the cooperative nurgax as a ladder, retrieved the jar from its high shelf. It boiled furiously, shaking in her arms. She walked down the nurgax's tail, set the jar on the floor, and unscrewed the lid. The yellow fluid calmed. The eyes, teeth and tongue rose to the surface in the arrangement of a vague face.

  "Thank you. Ah, I've missed the fresh air." The eyes bobbed, and the teeth floated into a smile. "Yazpib the Magnificent, finest wizard of a thousand kingdoms, at your service."

  Sir Thedeus was less concerned with introductions. "Why haven't we changed back?"

  "Only works that way with inexperienced wizards. New wizards build their spell matrices around themselves, tying them to their own life because it is a relatively easy technique. Now Margle was an old hand at the magic arts. He'd learned to create self-sustaining arcane webs, thus allowing his spells to exist independent of his well-being." Yazpib sensed he was losing his audience. "So killing Margle doesn't necessarily end his curses."

  Echo sighed. "We're stuck like this."

  "That largely depends on how well Margle crafted his spell construction. Generally, the magic begins to fracture without the periodic reinforcement of will, the glue to shore up the leaks. So to speak. How long this might take varies with the metaphysical solidity of these spells and the applicable thaumaturgical pressures."

  Though Nessy had looked in Margle's books, she hadn't ventured into advanced magical theory. But she got the gist of it. Margle was a great wizard, and while his spells would probably crumble eventually, it could be a very long wait.

  Yazpib continued. "However, any spell can be countered. I was never as talented as my brother, but with his death, I might be able to break your curses. But I'm a touch indisposed."

  "Yer worthless to us then, lad?" said Sir Thedeus.

  "I know magic. I just can't do it anymore."

  Sir Thedeus gnashed his fangs. "Useless wanker. If ye were any good as a wizard, Margle would be in that jar."

  Yazpib's floating teeth clicked against each other. "Thirty years ago, I'd have turned you into a worm for that."

  "Ach, screw his lid back on."

  "Will you two stop bickering?" asked Echo.

  "I was just trying to help," said Yazpib.

  "If I have any eggs to pickle, I'll let ye know," snapped Sir Thedeus.

  Yazpib literally boiled. "Oh, go eat a cockroach."

  "I'm a fruit bat, ye git."

  "Will you two shut up and let me think?" said Echo.

  They kept shouting over each other. The nurgax glanced at each. It mimicked the snarls and sneers with its wide mouth. Nessy couldn't take the noise any longer. She dropped to all fours and strolled from the chamber. Kobolds were equally comfortable upright or prostrate. It was mostly a matter of personal preference. She'd grown up a quadruped, but assisting wizards required a lot of carrying. While she could use her mouth, there were a lot of things Margle asked her to carry that she'd rather not have tasted. She mostly went bipedal now, only going back to her childhood when she needed to run or contemplate.

  The nurgax followed without prompting. Nessy started down the stairs in no particular rush. A ghastly transparent corpse of moldering flesh, tattered clothing, and clinking chains appeared before her. He wailed, and the temperature dropped.

  "I said not now, Richard."

  The apparition frowned. "Oh come on, now. I was rather proud of that one."

  "It was very good, but I'm distracted at the moment."

  Richard descended the steps with her. He could only go as far as the bottom. For reasons only Margle might understand, Richard was consigned to haunt the castle's many staircases. Why he bothered trying to be frightening, Nessy didn't know. Boredom, she supposed. She usually humored him, but was too distracted right now.

  The nurgax snapped at Richard's dangling chains. It alternately growled and purred at him.

  "So what happened up there? I heard quite a commotion."

  "Margle is dead."

  "Dead?" Richard stopped and wiggled his immaterial fingers. "Why am I still here?"

  "Something to do with spell matrices," said Nessy. "Ask the jar."

  He disappeared. Perhaps back to the top of the stairs or to another staircase entirely.

  Oddly, Nessy felt saddened. She hadn't exactly liked Margle, but she would miss him and her castle, her home. And her friends. Bodiless, transmogrified, or staircase-bound as they might be.

  Echo's panting voice bounced suddenly beside Nessy. "We figured it out."

  The nurgax jerked around for the voice's source. It snorted cautiously, and Echo chuckled. "Stop it. That tickles."

  Nessy stood. She snapped her fingers. "Sit."

  Whatever bond they shared, it responded immediately.

  "We need your help, Nessy. You have to help us break our curses."

  "I told you, I don't know any true magic."

  "But Yazpib does. He just needs an able body."

  Nessy's ears tilted forward. They always did when she was considering things. Then they flattened. "It won't work. Kobolds don't have a talent for magic. And even if I did, Margle is dead. It will only be a matter of time before his rivals arrive to claim his castle."

  "They don't know that yet."

  "They will. Wizards smell death like vultures. They'll pick this place clean."

  "We can't do this without you. Please?"

  This was a bad idea. Nessy couldn't possibly match Margle's wizardry. She would most likely die experimenting with magic as most apprentice wizards did. Or Margle's rivals would descend on the castle and kill her. But she'd long ago accepted her unpleasant death when embarking on her career. And Margle was usually gone anyway, so it wouldn't be very different. And he might even come back. Until she was certain he wouldn't, it was her duty to care for his castle and his collections.

  "Very well."

  "You won't regret it. I'll go tell the others."

  Nessy rarely regretted. As long as things proceeded on an interesting course, she didn't care where tomorrow might lead. In any case, she could always change her mind when the other wizards finally came for their plunder.

  The nurgax licked its lips and belched. Nessy could still smell the wizard on its breath.

  TWO

  Word of Margle's death spread quickly through the castle. There were no secrets where every tapestry talked, where a witness lived in every flowerpot, where the spiders, rats, and serpents peeking from behind the shadows were known to gossip among themselves and walls bled with rumor. Actually, it was only one wall, but that was more than enough, since Nessy had to clean up after it.

  Is he really dead? the glistening red letters asked.

  Nessy rung out a rag she kept nearby along with a bucket of fresh water for convenience. "Yes, Walter." She wiped away the gray brick.

  Why am I still a wall? The question mark at the end of the question was twice as large as the rest of the letters.

  "It's complicated."

  Complicated? He's dead! I should be a man again! Oh damn! Oh no! I'm going to be like this forever!

  "Calm down, Walter."

  But it was too late. When a bleeding wall rambled, it was sure to be a mess. Letters ran together into a flowing crimson stream to puddle on the floor. Nessy grabbed some towels she kept folded nearby and put them down to stem the tide. Loath as she was to have an untidy castle, the Thing That Devours needed to be fed. And the key to maintaining the castle was prioritizing. She made a mental note to come back later with her three best mops.

  The last time she was late with the monthly meal for the Thing That Devours, it'd shrieked for a solid week, loud
enough to rattle the castle's lower depths. The Beast Which Annoys, in an effort to not be outdone, howled for another eight days after that. That affected all the various ghosts haunting the nearby rooms, causing them to grow ill and vomit gallons of ectoplasmic residue. Nessy spent hours scouring the slime and still found bits in the cracks on occasion. She never forgot to feed the Thing That Devours after that.

  She made her way to the vaults, where Margle had stockpiled a seemingly endless supply of meat. Not every beast in the castle ate flesh. The unicorns lived on the purest morning dew and lightest dandelion wisps, and the mind worms sustained themselves on memories of food, thriving on Nessy's recollections of rabbit stew and peach cobbler. But most every other magical beast in Margle's menagerie enjoyed more unsavory appetites.

  The nurgax, ever loyal, followed quietly behind her.

  In the hall of portraits, she was assaulted by more questions of Margle's death. It had amused the wizard to consign his enemies of royal blood to prisons of ink and paint.

  "He can't truly be dead," said Lady Elaine while filling her cup from her bottomless teapot. She'd spurned Margle's affections, and he'd trapped her in a lovely image of a tea party. True, the other guests painted in the party were just that, soulless, immobile paint, and it was a torture to be certain. But Margle must surely have loved her in his own twisted manner to allow her the luxury of a perpetual sunny day.

  Lord Gilgamesh, on the other hand, was painted into a dank, dusky room with a small window to let in light. There was only one door in his portrait, and something terribly horrible had been drawn on the other side. The only thing holding the monster at bay was Gilgamesh keeping the door closed. "I wish I could've seen him get it," he said through gritted teeth. He shifted his shoulders, and the door opened a crack. A tentacle slipped through. Gilgamesh bit it fiercely, and the horror recoiled with a shriek.

  Caliban the Ogre King, who lived in a charcoal sketch of a gloomy forest, and a poorly drawn sketch at that, poked out his head from behind a tree. "Did you see him die yourself, Nessy?"

  "Not exactly, but I did hear it."

  The nurgax hiccupped sheepishly.

  "Everyone knows a wizard isn't dead until his head has been removed and his body stuffed with pine needles," remarked a scholarly dwarf duke consigned to an oil painting of a library with tall shelves and not a single stepladder. "Then you have to burn it under a half-moon while a cock crows."

  A dragon emperor imprisoned in a very small cave with only a single copper coin to roll between his talons hissed, "Balderdash. You have to boil the corpse in river water and chant the wizard's name backwards six times."

  "Are you a fool?" said the dwarf. "That's the surest way to bring him back to life!"

  "Ridiculous mortals!" bellowed a demigod in a water-color dungeon. "The only way to truly kill a wizard is to eat his right kidney while whistling a Titan funeral dirge! Or is it the left? Which is the evil kidney?"

  She left the painted denizens to their bickering. She passed a looking glass, and her image said, "He has to be dead." It was Melvin of the Mirrors, who found form in reflections. "I saw the whole thing from the full-length mirror in the corner of the tower. Two bites and he was gone. Wizard or not, I don't see how any man could survive."

  "I suppose."

  She wasn't truly certain, and she wasn't especially interested in theorizing. Her only concern was with maintaining castle upkeep as she always did. Neither Margle nor his constant threats had ever been her true motivation. She enjoyed her work for the work itself, and she considered the castle her home as much as Margle's. More so, in fact. While the wizard had spent much of his time off collecting arcane artifacts, bringing kingdoms to ruin, and other assorted dark wizardly doings, she was the one who was always here, day in, day out, keeping disorder in check. A difficult job truly, but rewarding and enjoyable.

  The oddest thing about the Thing That Devours was that it didn't devour all that much. Just a bucketful of brains once a month. It wasn't even a very big bucket. Not nearly as large as the brain bucket used to feed the corpse drakes. And only half the size of her entrails pail for Huxtable the hog.

  She hurried to the vaults where Margle had stockpiled a grand supply of brains, skin, hearts, kidneys (both good and evil) and so forth in giant, presorted copper cylinders. This hadn't always been so. Years ago, the vault had been a terrible jumble. Nessy had a strong stomach, but she'd never enjoyed picking through the mountains of organs for very specific meals. Many of the creatures in Margle's collection had very special diets. She'd learned the hard way that feeding a mere spoonful of wolf brains to a nether zombie made them explode.

  The vaults were huge, stretching for leagues. Fortunately, walking them was unnecessary. Margle had devised a miraculous mechanical device that moved the brass walls with rapid efficiency. His name was Crank, and he had once been a sea captain before being transmogrified into a machine, a tremendous gearbox with a face of tin and copper.

  "Ahoy, Nessy!" he shouted up as soon as she appeared atop the vault's tall, steep stairs.

  "Hello, Crank. And how are you today?"

  "Can't complain." His green copper mustache wiggled. "I suppose I could, but I fail to see the point."

  Nessy prided herself on civility, but she took extra care with Crank, whose punishment seemed a shade cruel even by Margle's standards. Yet he maintained a positive attitude and was always helpful.

  His hook swiveled forward. "I believe it's brains you're wanting today."

  Nodding, she put the appropriate bucket on his arm. The floor rumbled as his gears turned with a steady click, click, click. A well in the distance rotated out of line and made its way towards them at a steady pace.

  Sir Thedeus flew into the vault and sat on Nessy's shoulder. "What are ye doing, lass?"

  "Tending the castle." It seemed strange to her that she should have to explain it.

  Echo made her presence known by speaking. "He's dead. You don't have to do that anymore."

  "Who's dead?" asked Crank, perhaps the last resident to learn of these latest events.

  "Margle." Sir Thedeus puffed out his small, furry chest. "I killed him meself. Tore out his throat in a great gush of blood. It was glorious."

  "Yes, well, glorious victories aside," said Echo, "he's dead."

  "Should I still be a machine?" Crank's mustache lowered a few notches as metal eyebrows waggled. "Don't a curse end when its wizard dies?"

  "Apparently not," said Nessy.

  Metal brow wiggling deep in thought, Crank lowered the bucket. "Maybe he isn't dead? A privateer once told me the only sure way to kill a wizard is to feed his corpse to seagulls and then slaughter the seagulls and feed them to sharks and harpoon the sharks and . . ."

  "Not a one of us cares about yer daft sailor stories," said Sir Thedeus. "Margle's dead."

  "He's dead, but the Thing Which Devours must still be fed." Nessy took the freshly filled bucket from Crank.

  "It was human brains you were wanting, wasn't it?"

  "Yes, thank you." She walked to the foot of the stairs, put the bucket down, and chanted briefly. Dust pixies in the corners proceeded to carry the pail up the steps.

  "You'll also be needing asses' ears today if I'm not mistaken."

  "And iguana eyes." She set another bucket on his hook.

  "Ah, yes. Can't forget the iguana eyes, can we?"

  "Nessy lass, if ye keep tending the castle, where are ye going to find the time to break our curses?"

  "I have an hour and forty minutes of unoccupied time every day. I don't mind studying magic then."

  "But that'll take ye forever. Ye canna learn magic in an hour and a half a day."

  "Of course not. I'll only be studying for thirty minutes. I would like some time for myself, after all."

  "Can't we help?" asked Echo. "Lighten your load a little?"

  "I appreciate the offer, but no one else is capable of doing what must be done. And the Thing That Devours won't feed itself. Or perhaps it might
, but I'd rather not grant it the motivation."

  "That's it? That's yer plan?" Sir Thedeus circled her head. "Just act as if nothing has changed while we remain cursed?"

  "What would you have me do? This castle demands my constant attention. You can't expect me to just drop everything and start studying magic all day and night. Everything would fall apart in very short order."

  "Our curses could break on their own before ye get around to learning enough magic."

  "I fail to see the problem with that."

  Sir Thedeus grumbled, and she could see his point. The castle wouldn't succumb to chaos instantly. There was still the very likely possibility that Margle would return from the dead or that other wizards and magi would arrive to plunder his collections. Either prospect meant that time wasn't a luxury she could take for granted. Not that she ever did. It was her most precious commodity, and it looked as if there soon wouldn't be enough hours in the day to take care of everything.

  There was no doubt about it. She was going to have to let some things fall to the wayside. The very idea annoyed her. Every minute of her schedule was accounted for, properly arranged and employed for maximum effect. Margle's death, permanent or not, required certain adjustments.

  Her home was very likely running out of time as well. She didn't like thinking about that, but it was true. The world within these dusty walls was soon to be extinguished, gone forever. And there was nothing she could do about it. All the cooking and cleaning, feeding and polishing: none of it would stop the inevitable end of it all. For a moment, she wondered why she should bother.

  But it was a small moment, gone before she could dwell on it.

  "Perhaps I can squeeze in an hour of magical study a day," she said.

  With the aid of Crank and the dust pixies, Nessy loaded the cart waiting atop the stairs. Normally, she had to pull it herself, but the nurgax was only too happy to take the rope in its mouth and follow, ever obediently. The load proved lighter for the creature, and she made her way at a brisk pace. Margle's bestiary was spread throughout the castle, arranged by wizardly logic. Nessy didn't understand it, other than that some indescribable horrors got along poorly with certain other indescribable horrors. Many truly were indefinable. Shadowy creatures living in deep, dark pits.