Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming Part 8

"If I did," Azzie said, "would you play fair with me and not close the stopper?"

"Yes, sir, that I would."

"Would you swear it?"

"On my immortal soul," Ansel said.

"And the other brothers?"

"We also swear," they said.

"Okay, then," Azzie said. "Watch this." He stepped into the bottle and maneuvered so that he fit entirely inside. As soon as he was all the way in the brothers put in the stopper.

Azzie looked out at them. "Okay, quit horsing around and unplug this bottle!"

The brothers chuckled; Ansel motioned to them. Chor and Hald took up a flagstone from the floor, revealing a stone-lined well. From far below came the sound of water.

"Take note, demon," Ansel said. "We'll push you, bottle and all, into the well, and cover it up, and paint a skull and crossbones on it so people will think it's poisoned. Fat chance your friends will have of finding you then."

"You broke your word," Azzie said.

"Well, what of it? Nothing much you can do about it, is there?"

"All I can do," Azzie said, "is tell you a story."

"Come on, let's get away from here," the two other brothers said. But Ansel said, "No, let's hear him out. Then we can laugh and go away."

Azzie said, "Bottles to contain demons have been in con-stant use for several thousand years. Indeed, the first man to ever make a bottle - a Chinaman, by the way - did so in order to trap one of us. The ancient a.s.syrians and Hitt.i.tes kept their demons in clay pots. Certain African tribes keep us in tightly woven baskets. We are aware of this, and of how the customs for trapping us vary from one part of the world to another. In Europe, demons always wear these."

He held up his hand. On his forefinger, or foreclaw, there glistened a brilliant diamond.

"And with it we do this." Azzie swung his arm in an arc, the point of the diamond in contact with the greenish gla.s.s. Azzie swung a circle, then pushed against the gla.s.s. The circle he had cut fell out. He stepped through.

Ansel, his face frozen with fear, said, "We were only kid-ding, boss. Isn't that right, boys?"

"That's right," said Chor and Hald, both of them grinning from ear to ear, sweat dripping from their rudimentary brows.

"Then you'll like this," Azzie said. He waved his fingers and muttered under his breath. There was a flash of light and a puff of smoke. When it cleared, a very small demon with horn-rim gla.s.ses became visible, sitting nearby, writing some-thing with a quill pen, on a parchment.

"Silenus," Azzie said. "Record these three to my account and take them away. They are self-d.a.m.ned."

Silenus nodded, waved his hand, and the three brothers vanished. A moment later, Silenus vanished.

As Azzie remarked later to Frike, it was the easiest three souls he had ever helped d.a.m.n themselves, and with practically no urging on his part.

Chapter 3.

Oh, master, it's so good to be home!" Frike said, throw-ing back the bolt of the front door of the big mansion in Augsburg.

"Itis nice," Azzie said. "Brr." He rubbed his claws together. "It's chilly in here! You must build a fire as soon as you put away the body parts."

Demons, despite or because of their long a.s.sociation with h.e.l.lfire, enjoy a roaring hearth.

"Yes, master. Where do they go?"

"In the cellar laboratory, of course."

Frike hurried out and unloaded the cart. On it, wrapped in various ichor-soaked cloths, were a number of body parts; enough, if Azzie's calculations proved correct, to make up two entire bodies, one male, the other female, to be known thereafter as Prince Charming and Princess Scarlet.

They began working on the bodies the next day. Frike proved to have a useful hand with needle and thread. He put Charming together as neatly as a tailor makes a suit. There were seams and st.i.tch marks, of course, but Azzie told him not to worry about them. Once the bodies were reanimated, they would lose these stigmata of their rebirth.

Those were pleasant domestic evenings. Azzie would settle into a corner of the lab with his copy ofKing Solomon's Secrets, which he had always meant to read but never found the time for. Now it was very pleasant to sit in the lab with its smells of fusel oil, kerosene, sulfur, ammonia, and permeating it all, the rich, complex odors of scorched and putrid flesh; to sit there with his book open on his knee glancing up every now and again to watch old Frike, his hunchbacked shadow thrown monstrously against a wall by a low-set light, bent over his work with a tiny steel needle.

The needle had been hammered out for him by the Ruud, smallest and most cunning of the dwarves of central Europe. The thread was the finest silk from Taprobane, so gossamer and transparent that it seemed as if the lips of the gaping wound separating an arm from shoulder were adhering to each other by some sort of physical magnetism, or by magic. But the onl0y magic in this case was Frike's tiny needle, making its neat little holes and forming, bit by bit, a whole man from the pile of body parts stacked neatly at his left side on a bed of glacial ice.

Frike was a careful workman, but he did bear watching. More than once he put feet where arms should be, either be-cause of dim-sightedness or some perverted sense of humor. But when he joined the Princess' midsection to Charming's head, Azzie decided that this was too much. "Stop that non-sense,"

he told Frike, "or I'll put you in a Pit where you can fuse gravel into rock for a few centuries to teach you serious-ness."

"Sorry, master," Frike said, and worked with exact.i.tude and propriety thereafter.

And so the bodies took shape. Apart from the pending matter of appropriate eyes, the only real problem was Princess Scarlet's mismatched hands. It was not so important that they were of different sizes. But one was yellow and the other white, and this could not be permitted. Azzie discarded the yellow one and made a quick expedition to the Schnachtsburg Doctoring Center. There, in a shop dedicated to necrophilious memora-bilia, he was fortunate enough to find a pickpocket's hand for Princess Scarlet.

Soon after his return, Azzie received word from Supply that his castle was ready for delivery to his coordinates in Transylvania. Azzie departed immediately, flying across the Alps to the plain of Hungary.

The land stretched ahead of him, lushly green, tree-scattered. He found the exact spot he had picked, which he remembered from the grove of tall purple trees that bloomed there, the only ones of their kind in the world, trees whose existence ended before modern science could declare them anomalous.

Merioneth was there waiting for him, a thin, ill-favored demon from Supply who wore pince-nez and carried a scroll attached by bra.s.s studs to a well-smoothed piece of wood-the progenitor of the clipboard.

"You Azzie Elbub?" Merioneth asked.

"Of course I am," Azzie said. "Why else would I be here?"

"You could have your reasons. Got some ID?"

Azzie showed the black credit card with his name engraved on it.

"It doesn't have a picture," Merioneth noted, "but I'll ac-cept it all the same. Okay, where do you want it?"

Azzie looked around. The site he had chosen was rolling countryside. He looked it over critically.

"I want the castle right there," he said.

"Over there on that flat piece?"

"That's it. But first you must put down a gla.s.s mountain."

"I beg your pardon?" Merioneth said.

"I want a gla.s.s mountain. The enchanted castle must sit on top of it."

"You want the castle on top of a gla.s.s mountain?"

"Of course. That's where enchanted castles always stand."

"Usually, maybe even often, but not always. I can cite several traditional tales - "

"This castle is going to stand on a gla.s.s mountain," Azzie said.

Merioneth took off his pince-nez, polished them on his gray fur, put them back on. He opened his briefcase. It was made of well-tanned human skin, and its clasps were yellowed teeth. Azzie admired it and decided to get one like it when he had the time. Merioneth opened the case and shuffled through papers. At last he selected a sheet and read it with pursed lips.

"This is your original work order," he said. "It says nothing here about a mountain."

Azzie came over and read the work order. "It says here you will supply standard landscaping."

"Standard landscaping does not include a mountain of gla.s.s. Why not have us move in an existing mountain?"

"It has to be of gla.s.s," Azzie said. "As far as I know, there are no existing mountains of gla.s.s."

"So why not take a dead volcano instead?" Merioneth said. "With lots of obsidian?"

"It won't do," Azzie said. "Gla.s.s mountains have been a feature of folklore since people began telling tales. Surely you have one somewhere in Supply?"

Merioneth pursed his lips and looked doubtful. "Maybe we do and maybe we don't. The point is, it isn't on the work order."

"Can't we put it there now?"

"No, it's too late."

"Can't we get around that somehow?" Azzie asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I'll pay the extra myself. Can I put it on the card?"

Merioneth shrugged again. "It's not a matter of that. The work order has already been filled out and signed."

Azzie looked at it. He pointed. "You could write it in right there, just above the signature. 'One gla.s.s mountain, and one enchanted forest.' "

"If my supervisor ever found out . . ."

"And I'll make it worth your while," Azzie said. He reached into a pocket inside his cloak and took out a small satchel. It was here that he kept his valuables. Here, in a chamois bag, he had the gemstones Rognir had invested with him. He took out a handful and showed them to Merioneth.

"So?" Merioneth said.

"Yours," Azzie said, "if you write me in a gla.s.s mountain."

Merioneth looked at the jewels. "I could get into a lot of trouble over this."

Azzie added a few more gems.

"I guess I can do it," Merioneth said, taking the stones. He bent over the work order and scribbled, then looked up. "But an enchanted forest-that's another matter."

"Enchanted forests are no big deal," Azzie pointed out.

"They're not rare, like gla.s.s mountains. Everywhere you go you find enchanted forests."

"Until you need one in a hurry," Merioneth said, his gaze on Azzie's chamois bag. "I suppose you want a road through it, too, huh?"

"Nothing fancy. A dirt track would be fine."

"And who's to survey it, eh? I'd need a surveyor. And a surveyor's services - "

"I know, it isn't on the original work order." Azzie selected four more stones and gave them to Merioneth. "Will that do?"

"That takes care of the forest and the basic landscaping. But you also want it enchanted. Right?"

"That's what I told you. What good would it be if it weren't enchanted?"

"Don't get huffy withme," Merioneth said. "This forest is nothing to me. I'm just trying to understand the order. What sort of enchantments did you have in mind?"

"The usual stuff," Azzie said. "Animated flame trees will do nicely. There are always plenty of them in stock."

"You're a horticulturist that you know that?" Merioneth said caustically. "Fact is there are d.a.m.n few flame trees avail-able at this time of year. And I suppose you want them to have magic thorns?"

"Of course."

"Magic thorns aren't standard."

A few more gems changed hands.

"Now, let's see," Merioneth said. "What exactly should these magical thorns do?"

"The usual thing," Azzie said. "When a traveler pa.s.ses who is not pure in heart, or not in possession of the proper magical counterspells, they impale him."

"I thought you'd want that! Impaling's extra!"

"Extra! What in h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"I got more to do than hang around here jawing with you," Merioneth said, and unfolded his wings.

Azzie paid over a few more gems. The chamois bag was empty. He had gone through Rognir's treasure in a surprisingly short time.