Authors: John Booth
"I see." Jenny claimed no magical powers but I could have sworn I could see frost forming in the room. "And what was wrong with using THAT on me. Am I not the person who got you into this mess in the first place?"
I have to admit I hadn't seen that response coming.
"If you're going to do that sort of thing, shouldn't it be with your girlfriend?"
I went with silence. Silence is my most eloquent ploy. I should use it more often. I should have used it earlier. Sensing a slight thaw in the local weather I attempted to put my arm around her. She pushed me away and rolled over so she couldn't see me.
"We can't do any of that, now can we? Princess Esmeralda would be watching us."
Going back over it in my head, the first and fatal mistake I made that morning was waking up in the first place.
Jenny went back to sleep after our fight. Either that or she had learnt to snore when she was awake in exactly the same way she does when sleeping. It was still pretty early in the day and we'd been up half the night so it was no great surprise. On the other hand, I couldn't settle down and decided to get up. I picked up Grimaldi's hairbrush and hopped through the door so as not to wake my girlfriend, assuming of course, that she still was my girlfriend.
I wanted the hairbrush far away from me, but I couldn't just dump it. It was Grimaldi's after all, and it wasn't his fault I was hopeless with women. I decided to go downstairs and towards the front of the palace in the hope of finding an equerry.
Now I don't know how royalty is supposed to behave with its staff, but from the day Esmeralda's father recovered his throne, I had been a bit put out by the cavalier way the servants were treated. Nobody ever said ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to them. It was a quick snap of the fingers and 'do this' or 'fetch that'. I wouldn't have lasted a morning as a servant before giving in my notice.
As a reaction, I always tried to treat the servants with courtesy when I asked them to do anything. I spotted the major-domo for the palace standing close to the front doors and gave him a smile and a wave as I walked over to him.
"Can I be of service, Wizard Morrissey?" Thom was a tall elegant man in his fifties who spoke precisely and looked as though he ought to be a king rather than his chief lackey. I was not sure if Thom was his first or last name. It was the only name I heard anybody call him.
"Err, yes. Can you get someone to return this hairbrush to Grimaldi the tailor? He left it in my room last night."
"I'm sure he did, sir." Thom's eyebrows told me he didn't believe a word of it. His eyebrows were much more expressive than the rest of his face, which was a study in deadpan. "Do you have a message you wish me to relay to Grimaldi, sir?"
I felt myself starting to blush. Thom gave me the distinct impression he knew exactly why I had been given that brush and when. Perhaps Grimaldi told him all about it when he delivered it that morning.
"Just thank him for his kindness, if you would. And may I thank you for returning it for me."
"As you wish, sir." Thom put the back of the brush head against his palm. "It is amazing how the wood retains heat, don't you think, sir?"
"Got to go, thanks again." I won't tell you I ran back to the stairs, but I did manage a very fast walk.
My big problem was, what was I going to do next? I didn't want to disturb Jenny. I wasn't the slightest bit hungry and what I wanted most was to sit somewhere and think. Had I been on my own I would have hopped back to my bedroom, but I couldn't abandon Jenny in a far universe even if I could hop straight back. It just didn't seem right.
I compromised by hiding part-way up the small spiral staircase at the end of the corridor from our room. If Jenny left the bedroom, I would hear her, well I certainly would if she called for me. The staircase led up to a fairy castle spire. If anybody actually used the spire for anything, I never saw them. There was quite a bit of dust on the upper steps.
I'd forgotten there was one person in the palace who would have no trouble finding me wherever I was. I had barely begun to relax when a certain female voice called to me.
"Jake, we have to talk. You can't hide from me."
I sighed and walked down the spiral stairs, bumping into Esmeralda at the bottom, as she stood very close to the stair.
"Jake…"
"Esmeralda, I'm tired of this. I don't want you to be able to spy on me. You must stop it right now." I waved my hand arrogantly across her face as I spoke, to annoy her a little.
Esmeralda turned her face away from me for a couple of seconds. When she looked back at me, tears streamed down her face.
"You spawn of a slime toad!" she shouted as she slapped me hard. I staggered backwards and only just managed to stop myself from falling down the stairs. By the time I sorted myself out, she was gone. Lord only knows where.
I rubbed my chin to take the sting out of it and ran the conversation back in my mind. Had Esmeralda just hit me for not using the hairbrush on her? If so, why did she started the conversation with 'We have to talk'? I walked up to the top of the stairs and pushed up the trapdoor in the ceiling at its end.
The spire was open to the elements, but apart from a strong breeze it was warm. I dropped the trapdoor back into place and put my hands on the stone lip of one of the four empty window frames, looking out over what appeared to be a large amount of the kingdom.
"Jake, are you up here?" Jenny's muffled voice asked as she banged her palm on the trapdoor. I opened it up and she poked her head up through the hatch. "I've been looking for you everywhere. Is it safe up here?"
"It is for me, and those with me." I offered Jenny a helping hand and she climbed the remaining steps into the spire.
"Jesus! It just goes straight down." Jenny took a step back as she looked out of the window, nearly falling down through the open trapdoor. I dropped the trapdoor back into place and held her. She was doing her famous death grip again, this time grasping onto my arm.
"It's safe as houses, girl. Just don't lean out of the windows."
Jenny relaxed a little as she got used to the view. It struck me that being up here was a damn sight safer than riding on Fluffy's back, but that was just my opinion.
"How could you do that to Esmeralda," Jenny demanded a few moments later.
Have you ever felt that you were trapped in a series of insane conversations? That was how I felt just then.
"I told you. I never touched her with the hairbrush. I hopped straight back to our room."
"Not then, silly, what you did a bit ago, at the bottom of the stairs. Esmeralda hasn't stopped crying. That's why I came looking for you. You have to put it back."
"Put what back? I did absolutely nothing. Esmeralda swore at me and then she slapped me across the face and ran away. It bloody hurt too."
"Don't swear, Jake," Jenny said automatically. Jenny's parents never swore and she tells me not to whenever I do. I've noticed that this rule does not apply to her when she feels the situation warrants it. Jenny is in many ways a typical woman.
"I'm talking about her gift, the ability to see you wherever you are in Salice. You took it away from her before she slapped you."
Now that was interesting. I was slowly beginning to make some sense of recent events, though not, I will admit, a lot.
"Thank God for that. I don't want her seeing me going to the toilet and I think Esmeralda should be overjoyed too. She was complaining about her visions this morning."
Jenny gave me one of those looks people sometimes give me. I mentioned them earlier.
"What?"
"She loves you, you idiot."
"Nah, she doesn't," I said grinning at the stupidity of the idea. "You're my girlfriend and she knows that. That was how we met in the first place, because I came to Salice to buy a present for you."
Jenny took me in her arms and squeezed my waist.
"Jake, can you imagine how it feels for her? She knows we love each other and she can't help how she feels about you. Her visions were a special connection with you and now you've taken even that away from her."
"Esmeralda insults me every single chance she gets. That's hardly how people who love each other behave."
"You truly are an idiot. Thank all that's holy you're my idiot." Jenny gave me a peck on the cheek.
"Thank you, I think."
"Will you give her back her visions?"
"Not a chance. But I will try and be nicer to her."
"Jake, Jenny! Open the hatch, quickly," a familiar and very demanding voice shouted from the other side of the trapdoor. Jenny and I were standing on it as we held each other.
"She seems to have made a quick recovery," I pointed out as we shuffled off the wood and I lifted it upwards.
Esmeralda shot out of the trapdoor like a jack-in-the-box. Ignoring the two of us she stepped forward and leaned out of the window looking to the south.
"Stop her Jake, she's going to jump!"
"No, I'm not. Look over there, beyond the city and just in front of that gap between the hills."
I moved forward and put my hand over my brow to shield my eyes from the sun. I have very good eyesight even if I say so myself. At first, I thought I was looking at a massive grey snake, then the image resolved into a marching army. The men at the front wore chainmail and carried pikes. Behind them, men in shining breastplates rode on horses and behind the riders were horses pulling carts. It all looked surprisingly familiar.
"It’s an army come to destroy us," Esmeralda shouted at me. "You have to stop them, Jake, you have to."
"Yeah right, me and who's army?" I couldn't have taken the first man with a spike in a fair fight. Esmeralda somehow expected me to defeat an army with my bare hands. Who the hell did she think I was, Superman?
"Jake, you have to do something," Jenny said. She put a hand on my shoulder.
"You are so right, girl. Let's pack up our things, find Fluffy and hop back home. This isn't our war."
I looked out of the spire and across the lands of Salice. The advancing army had unfurled its banners in the minute since I last looked. I would bet good money that the coat of arms on display was that of Lord Per Napshot of Frode, not that it made any difference. While willing to run a bluff for the King and Queen, I couldn't fight a war for them. It was time to go home.
"Fluffy!" I shouted as soon as I got into the courtyard. My voice echoed in the cloisters. My dragon did not appear to be anywhere around. I was irrationally furious with him. When you don't want him around, he's always there but when you want to get out of somewhere quickly, he vanishes on you. I knew I was being unfair, but that was how I felt.
"You can't just leave," Jenny said plaintively. "These are our friends. Esmeralda is your friend. How can you go and leave them in the lurch?"
"Wizard Morrissey, Coward Morrissey is what I say," Esmeralda carped. "Go, we do not want your help. Go back to your mysterious other world of Wales and leave us to be raped and killed."
"You could use that ring. Send sheets of flame at them."
I looked at Jenny and hoped I conveyed the horror I felt. "You want me to use a flame thrower on those soldiers out there, to burn their skin from their faces and watch them die in agony? They are real people in that army, Jenny, not cartoons."
"You could threaten to do it…" Jenny said in a whisper.
"They're professional soldiers, Jenny. Even Esmeralda will tell you these soldiers won't run away if I offer an empty threat."
Jenny looked to Esmeralda for confirmation and Esmeralda reluctantly nodded her head. "They will take it as a sign of weakness if Jake threatens them. It is their way."
"Well, there must be something you can do. What if you cast a spell to stick their feet to the ground?"
I gave this idea some thought. It wasn't bad, though I’d no idea if I could do it. The problem was I saw a snag with the whole plan.
"They wouldn't surrender though, would they?"
Esmeralda stared at me and I could tell she was thinking of lying to me. She must have seen that recognition in my face because she dropped her eyes to the ground before she spoke.
"Mercenaries swear a blood oath and even if we were to offer them mercy they would not believe us. It is not what states do when they capture mercenaries. If we defeat their army in battle, some of them may turn and run away, and we might choose not to chase them down and kill them. That’s the only way apart from winning that mercenaries survive. That certainty makes them formidable warriors. Even the death of their leader will not make them run away. They fight to win."
"Kill or be killed," I said, more to myself than to anybody listening.
"Hop them all away to somewhere else," Jenny suggested rather desperately.
"Even Jake can’t do that, Jenny. A wizard can only transport those he’s touching."
"Fluffy!" I shouted. There was no response. Where was my damned dragon?
Esmeralda launched herself in front of me and went down on her knees. Her face pressed into the crotch of my jeans, which I found highly disconcerting.