The Pixilated Peeress

II – The Senescent Sorcerer

Tired though he was, Thorolf found sleep hard to come by. It seemed to him that he was just dropping off when he was aware of light and motion. He found Yvette already dressed, winding cloths around the coronet. He said: "Sleep well, Countess?"

"Not so well as sometimes, with you tossing and turning all night."

The soldier reddened. "Your pardon. I fear the con­tiguity of one so fair ..."

"No need to apologize; at least it proves you no ef­feminate. Vulfilac yonder snores like a sawmill. Do not folk of his class rise early?"

Thorolf smiled. "Not when they've spent half the night rescuing penniless damsels from their pursuers!"

Breakfasted and mounted again, Thorolf turned his horse toward Zurshnitt. Clad in the smith's wife's feast-day finery, Yvette sat pillion behind him on the mare. On her head she wore her coronet so wrapped in cloth as to seem a turban. Out of sight of the smithy, Thorolf said:

"We must needs deposit that golden hoop safely and descend upon Doctor Bardi. But first I have my duties—"

"Not so, Sergeant! The care of me and my small treasure should come first."

"Sorry, my dear, but I cannot—"

"And what preempts my orders, sirrah?"

"First I must needs report to barracks and get leave for the day. Then I must visit the Constabulary about last night's fracas and the corpses we left at the smithy."

"Marry come up! The wishes of one of my rank—"

"Mean nought in Rhaetia, since you are but one more titled refugee, entitled to kind treatment but no master­ship."

"But I insist—"

"It's a long walk to Zurshnitt," growled Thorolf. Yvette subsided. After a while she burst out:

"It is so unfair that I, a descendant of a hundred kings and princes, should have to beg and wheedle for what is mine by right! Means it nought that I am a direct, legitimate descendant of the hero-king, Ricolf the Third?"

Thorolf grinned. "But if you claim credit for the good deeds of King Ricolf, then you must accept blame for the crimes of the mad King Leodast, who murdered his parents and then burned all those people. Certes, if we hanged everyone with a murderer in's pedigree, not enough would survive to bury the bodies!"

"Master Thorolf, I wish no more of your irksome speech!"

"Aye-aye, your Highness!" With his most irritating chuckle, Thorolf fell silent.

Smelling of decades' accumulation of dust, Doctor Bar­di's sanctum resembled a small-town museum into which heterogeneous objects had been crowded far be­yond the room's capacity. A human skeleton grinned whitely from a corner. Shelves were jam-packed with books. Atop these volumes lay others on their sides; and on this makeshift shelving reposed skulls, limb bones, mineral specimens, the stuffed or dried remains of various creatures, and dusty bottles, jars, and jugs. More flotsam from the past hung from the ceiling; as he entered, Thorolf hit his head on a small stuffed crocodile.

After introductions, Yvette turned on her formidable charm. "Thorolf has told me much of you," she said to Bardi with a winning smile."Do you live here all alone?"

"Aye, save for a woman who comes in betimes to clean and cook. Every moon or so she is seized by a passion to tidy up my house. After such a purification, I can never find the book or scroll I need. And now, my dears, if ye would not have me add the time spent in polite persiflage to my fee, let us to business."

"Dear me!" wheezed the ancient iatromage after learning his visitors' problems. " 'Tis a bit out of my line; I do not command deltas nor yet give rubbish the semblance of gold. But whereas Thorolf asks, I will do what I can. Ye say ye wish the look of a short, dark, dumpy female, eh? Dear me. Shall this be merely an illusion or glamor? Or would ye that I truly change your nature?"

"What are the virtues and faults of each proceed­ing?" Yvette asked.

"The illusion is easily cast and cheap; but it is ban­ished as easily. A drop of wine or beer in the eyes were enough to reveal the true appearance of the ensorcelled one, as will a view of the subject in a mirror. The true change requires a more difficult and costly spell, and it will not soon reverse itself without an additional oper­ation. Moreover, those who undergo it complain that it causes pain during the actual change."

"I choose the true change," said Yvette. "How long can I count upon its endurance?"

"For six months to a year, unless ye cause me or another to cast the reversing spell sooner. For, I must add, the usual fee."

"Charge the cost to Master Thorolf," said Yvette air­ily. "He knows I shall repay him when I recover my land." She smiled at Thorolf. "That's understood, is it not?"

Thorolf understood nothing of the kind; in fact he had been wondering how Bardi's services were to be paid for. He opened his mouth to protest, but so regal was Yvette's demeanor that nothing came out but a fee­ble, "Well—ah—"

"Good! That's settled," said the Countess. "When shall we begin, learned Doctor?"

"Forthwith; but the preparations will take—dear me—above an hour." Bardi stepped to a set of book­shelves, moved a dried human head encumbering the books, and pulled out an ancient folio. He blew dust off it, causing Thorolf to sneeze; put it back, and fum­bled for another.

"Can we be done by dinner time?" asked Thorolf.

"Assuredly." The mage pulled out another volume.

"One other matter, Doctor," said Thorolf when he had blown his nose. "Show him the coronet, Countess."

Thorolf explained the need for a safe hiding place for the object. Bardi agreed to give it, too, a magical dis­guise and keep it in his custody until a more lasting arrangement could be made.

An hour and a half later, they watched as the old iatromage puttered about a pentacle drawn in charcoal on the floor. Five black candles had been set in the corners of the pentagram, casting a shimmery, greenish light around the otherwise darkened room.

"There!" said the magus, wiping his charcoal-stained hands on his black, symbol-spangled robe. "If ye'll take yon seats, my dears, we shall commence." He put away his spectacles, fumbled for another pair, and opened a volume.

The next hour was, for Thorolf, the mixture of te­dium and apprehension that every lengthy magical op­eration aroused in him, much like the sensations of a soldier awaiting the command to advance. Bardi chanted in unknown tongues, made passes with a wand, and shouted names to summon unseen presences. The light­ing dimmed; the space within the pentacle was filled with fog or smoke.

Thorolf thought he could discern substantial forms-colored russet, rose, yellow, and aquamarine—moving within. There were momentary hints of faces, limbs, and tentacles; but they shifted, dissolved, and reassem­bled in different configurations before he could perceive a substantial shape. He felt a prickling at the roots of his hair, as if an army of ants were crawling over him. A sidelong glance showed Yvette leaning back with her eyes closed, breathing heavily.

After what seemed hours, Bardi cried a dismissal. The fog in the pentacle faded. One candle guttered. The iatromage scuffed a couple of lines of the pentacle.

"That is it," he croaked. "My dears, ye may now go about your affairs. Remember that, about midnight, the lady will swiftly become short, dark, and dumpy. And now good night, for so powerful a spell doth tax one of my years."

Leading Salnia with one hand and supporting Yvette's arm with the other, Thorolf walked along the rounded cobbles, slippery with drizzle. Darkness had fallen; the watchfires at the main crossings gave a nickering, rubescent light. Two men of the Constabulary, with hal­berds on their shoulders, greeted Thorolf. One called: "Hey, be this our virtuous sergeant on a tryst at last?"

"Nay," growled Thorolf. "Know, knaves, that this be the rightful Queen of Armoria, and we plot to oust the usurper."

Thorolf stopped before the Green Dragon Inn, where he was known. In the light of the lantern over the door, Yvette looked puzzled. Then her face cleared. "Oh, I see! You did but jest about my rank. I thank you for the promotion." She giggled.

"Better late than never," said Thorolf. "I'll essay to get you a private room."

"Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! Where mean you to sleep?"

"Back at the barracks."

"Rubbish, my good Sergeant! Think you, when I'm fleeing Gondomar the Tedious and have by good hap found a lusty bodyguard, that I'd let him go off leaving me de­fenseless? You shall spend the night with me, and that is that. Sleep on the floor if you will, but you shall stay within sight and call. The Queen of Armoria commands it!"

Thus they found themselves in what, Thorolf thought, must be the room that Vasco the innkeeper reserved for nobility. The bed was big enough for three, and there was plenty of room besides. There was a dressing table and a mirror, a dressing chair, and a settee, as well as a writing desk with another chair. Such splendor, Thorolf thought, had resulted from Yvette's queenly demand:

"Your very best, Master Taverner!"

Thorolf left the room to Yvette while he washed off the grime of travel in the common bathtub. Escorting her to dinner, he found himself unconsciously assuming the toplofty air of a nobleman to match her born-to-command manner. That and her courtly accent had reduced even the experienced Vasco to subservience de­spite Yvette's proletarian costume. When they were seated, Vasco produced a dusty bottle, saying:

"Firanzian, third year of Consul Rudolf. Will it suit your Ladyship?"

"Belike it will," she said. "Let's have a trial."

When the wine was poured, Yvette took a sizable mouthful. "Aha!" she said. "This is an improvement over Goodman Vulfilac's small beer—not that I scorn the honest fellow's hospitality."

Over dinner, Yvette entertained Thorolf with tales of courtly scandals in the New Neapolitan Empire. She rattled out as much in a minute as most folk did in five. Thorolf found her talk fascinating, though he some­times wished he could get a word in edgewise.

He also noted, with rising alarm, her execution on the bottle of costly wine. By the end of the repast it was all gone, and Thorolf was sure that she had drunk more of it than he.

He noted another thing. There were two other tables of diners in the common room. These had somehow gotten wind of the fact that Thorolf was with a noble lady. They turned in their seats to stare until Thorolf scowled them into averting their gaze.

The other diners had departed; Thorolf was wiping his mouth and preparing to rise when Yvette said: "Oh, linger an instant, Thorolf! Master Taverner, hast some water-of-life in stock?"

"Aye, your Ladyship," said Vasco.

"Then fetch a noggin apiece, pray."

"Countess," said Thorolf, "think you not that you've had enough?"

"My good Sergeant, I have been on the run for days, and this is my first chance to take my ease in a duck's age! Thank you, Mashter—Master Taverner."

She tossed down the colorless schnapps with a single gulp, while Thorolf drank his by sips. Then she fixed him with a purposeful stare. "Tell me, dear rescuer, what meant those yokels of the nightwatch, chaffing you about their virtuous sergeant? I mean, when you clept me Queen of Armoria." She giggled.

"Merely," said Thorolf uncomfortably, "that they have not seen me strolling with the strumpets of the town, as they have many of mine unwed soldier lads."

Yvette's glance became sharp. "Are you one of those unlucky ones whose passions veer toward their own sex?"

"Kernun forbid! I am as avid for womankind as any."

"Well, then, an you roll not the local trollops, hast a regular light o' love whom you visit for a bout betwixt sheets?"

"Nay, none." Thorolf stared at his noggin, increas­ingly embarrassed by the direction of the questions.

"Then whom have you fuf-futtered?"

Thorolf gulped, his wits slowed by drink. The ques­tion appalled him; it was certainly not what he had been brought up to consider ladylike. On the other hand, with this masterful woman, he feared he could never get away with the pretense of ever having been a great lover. He barter!:

"Well—in sooth—I haven't."

"What? How old are you?"

"Twenty-nine."

"Three more years than I, a man of normal urgings— or so you say—and a virgin? 'Tis a thing incredible. In Carinthia they'd put you in a curio cabinet." She beck­oned Vasco and ordered another round of aqua vitae.

"Really, Countess," said Thorolf, "you will rue your overindulgence—"

"No one tells the daughter of a hundred kings and nobles what to do! But back to your case. What's the caush of your unwonted abstinence?"

Thorolf gulped again. "Well, if you must know, I promised my mother on her deathbed not to fornicate before marriage. I once got as far as betrothal to the daughter of our senior sergeant; but she forsook me for one who, I ween, was less scrupulous."

She drank more schnapps and giggled. "Sh—serves you right! What a pity that yours be a lower-class organ! I could give you lessons—break you in—were not plebian organs forbidden my c—c—" She fell into a spell of hiccups.

Thorolf said, "Mean you—ah—that you've had much experience of such things?"

She got her hiccups under control. "What thinkst? We of the true nobility make no holy idol of chast—" The hiccups broke in again.

Fearing that she would pass out or get publicly sick, Thorolf spoke sharply, in the tone he used on stumbling recruits: "Come, Yvette! Let me take you to bed!"

He half-forcibly dragged her out of her seat and guided her, staggering, to the stair. Here she became so unsteady that he picked her up and carried her to the room. When he would have laid her on the bed, she said:

"Put me down, Thorolf! I am hale; but tell nobody that I cannot hold my liquor. 'Twas jush the fatigue of recent days."

When her feet came to the floor, she pulled Thorolf. clutching his arm and staggering, to the settee. There she pushed him down, sat on his lap, and kissed him vigorously. "There! Izh—isn't that better?"

"Well—ah—"

She kissed him some more. "Now you shall learn what you should have found out years agone."

"Methought you said—"

"Ne'mind what I shaid. I'm a noblewoman and can bed anyone I like. Besides, I'm in your debt, and debts mush be paid. Since I cannot fill your hat with g-gold ..." Rising unsteadily, she did off the bodice, blouse, skirt, petticoat, and accessories. Leaving the garments bor­rowed from Vulfilac in a heap on the floor, in full pink-and-white glory she staggered back to Thorolf and fumbled with his laces, mumbling:

"Flinch not; I'll not hurt you. You actually blush!" She peeled off Thorolf's shirt. "Now your breeks ... Aha. I see you have indeed the means ..."

"I only hope I can meet your expectations," said Thorolf.

"Fear not: if our first firsh try come to nought ..." As she pulled off the last of Thorolf's linen small­clothes, she broke off, dropped the underwear, and fell into a sitting position on the settee. "Thorolf, I feel very strange of a sudden!"

"After all that liquor—" he began sententiously.

"But then, too, it must be close to the time for Bardi's spell to take effect."

"Oh, I had forgotten! Wilt still love me, even though I become dark and dumpy? I shall still be the same ... Ouch! I am in pain ... glub—"

As Thorolf gazed with mounting horror, the slight, golden-haired woman changed before his eyes. Her voice sounded like the bubbling of gas through swamp water and then ceased. She seemed to flow together. Her limbs became limp, as if their bones had dissolved. Her face lost form and sank into her body.

Thorolf shrank back, for the thing on the settee was no longer remotely human. Its parts shifted into a com­pletely alien configuration. The limbs and eyes mi­grated to one end, leaving the torso a mere fleshy bag.

The four limbs split lengthwise to form eight, which became sucker-lined tentacles. They surrounded the mouth, which acquired a short, horny beak. The skin changed to a shiny, mottled, dark-brown integument, over which rippled flashes of red, yellow, white, and black. The Countess had become an octopus.

Thorolf sat paralyzed. When he gathered his bare legs beneath him to spring up, the octopus whipped tentacles around his neck and hoisted its bag of a body into his lap. It pressed its beak against his bare chest, but it did not bite him: it merely touched his skin lightly here and there. Thorolf realized that it was trying to kiss him.

To be seduced by a drunken octopus was, he thought, not a fate that befalls many. If he survived this night, he would have a tale he could dine out on for years; but just now he would gladly forgo the experience.

"Yvette!" he cried. The octopus continued to snug­gle, as if she expected him to continue the project on which they had embarked. But not only did Thorolf have no idea of how to do this, his lust had also col­lapsed like a tent blown down in a gale.

He shouted, still without effect. Then he realized that, as a sea creature, the octopus lacked the organs for hearing and speech. How, he frantically wondered, could he communicate?

At last the octopus slithered off his lap. With serpen­tine tentacular writhings, it heaved itself across the room to the dressing table, while changes of color, white to tan to brown to black, rippled over its shiny skin. Find­ing locomotion out of water hard, it clambered labori­ously up on the dressing chair and stared at its reflection in the mirror. The image was that of an octopus, prov­ing that this change was no mere glamor or illusion.

Then the octopus slid off the chair with a plop and humped and wriggled to the washstand. There it picked up the pitcher and, its tentacles quivering with strain, tipped the vessel over itself, so that water splashed over its body and trickled to the floor. It dropped the empty pitcher, swiveled about to face Thorolf, and waved its tentacles, pointing a couple of them at the pitcher. It seemed to be trying to say something; but with neither lungs nor an agreed-upon sign language, it failed.

Next, it slithered to the writing desk and, groping about on the desktop, located the inkwell. It dipped the tip of a tentacle into the ink and wrote on the wall in large, crude letters: WATER.

Of course, Thorolf thought, such a marine creature could not long survive in air. But how to succor it? He could not stand pouring pitcher after pitcher over it. The water would leak through the floor and bring Vasco on the run. And whence would come such a supply of water?

The octopus seemed to divine his thought. Again it dipped the tentacle and wrote: TUB.

Light broke upon Thorolf. He nodded, hastily pulled on his shirt and trews, and went below to find Vasco. To the innkeeper he said:

"My lady demands a bath. Will your people haul up a tub and several bucketfuls of water?"

"Sergeant!" said Vasco. "Why can she not bathe in the perfectly good tub at the end of the hall, as ye did aforetime?"

"She's high-born and fussy," said Thorolf. "She in­sists on utter privacy."

" 'Twill cost extra," the taverner warned. "And 'twill take an hour to heat the water."

"The water need not be heated."

"A rugged wench," Vasco muttered.

Back in the room, Thorolf signaled that he had suc­ceeded. He opened the door of the wardrobe and mo­tioned Yvette to enter. She was barely concealed therein when a knock announced the arrival of the squirrel-toothed potboy and the maid, lugging a large wooden tub. They set it down and eyed Thorolf curiously before departing for the water. They soon returned, each bear­ing two buckets. When these had been emptied into the tub, the potboy asked: "Be that enough, sir?"

Thorolf looked into the tub. "Nay; we need four buckets more."

When four additional buckets had been emptied, Thorolf said, "Methinks that will do."

The maid went out, but the potboy hung around say­ing: "Will there be aught else, sir?" His youthful glance roamed the room. He must be puzzled, Thorolf thought, not to see Yvette. Either he is angling for a tip or hop­ing to glimpse a noble lady at her bath. "Well, sir, an ye think of aught else—"

The door of the wardrobe flew open, and Yvette slithered across the floor. The sound of life-giving wa­ter had plainly put upon her self-restraint more stress than it could withstand.

As the octopus whipped a tentacle over the edge of the tub, the potboy stared with bulging eyes. When Yvette slid bonelessly into the tub with a small splash, the potboy fled with piercing shrieks.

Thorolf closed the door and looked into the tub. Yvette lay flattened down on the bottom like a cluster of hiber­nating serpents, with the water covering all but her eyes.

The eyes that gazed up at Thorolf had slit pupils like those of a cat, but the slits were horizontal instead of vertical.

A tentacle snaked out of the tub. For an instant, Tho­rolf wondered if he would be seized and pulled in, though for what purpose he could only guess. He braced himself to resist, but the tentacle merely stroked and patted his chest, as if to show affection.

Footsteps sounded, and Thorolf heard Vasco's knock. He narrowly opened the door and slipped out, firmly holding the knob to cut off the view of the room.

"Yea, Master Vasco?" he said with an air of inno­cent surprise.

"Sergeant," said Vasco, "my potboy just now came clattering down the stair, crying that a devil in the form of a monstrous spider had issued from the wardrobe and sprung at him. He raced off into the night."

"Oh. that," said Thorolf, thinking fast. "My lady had disrobed and secluded herself in the wardrobe. When the maid departed, she issued forth, supposing your boy had likewise gone. When she saw the strip­ling, she snatched my cloak and wrapped it about her."

Vasco rubbed his chin. "Very well, Sergeant, if ye say so. I do hope there be no wizardry connected with this. If the word got out, 'twere bad for my trade."

"Worry not," said Thorolf. "Meanwhile, pray give orders that none shall enter the room until we signify."

"I understand, Sergeant. Strength to your yard!" With a knowing leer, Vasco departed.

Thorolf returned to the room and sank down upon the settee, thinking. At last he rose and bent over the tub. Speaking with exaggerated lip movements, he said: "I go to visit Doctor Bardi again." When she lay quietly, he pointed to himself and then to the door. He pulled a cov­erlet off the bed, spread it over the tub, and left.