Ratastrophe Catastrophe Page 8

  “I told the young man he could collect his reward from the treasury, Mr. Quarry. I trust you’ve thought of a believable excuse?”

  He got no reply.

  TWELVE

  SIX MILES OUT FROM Dullitch, Diek Wustapha stood on a narrow wooden jetty that extended into the Winter River and watched the first of the rats plummet to their doom. A few cunning exceptions managed to shake off the hypnotic melody long enough to swim for the shore, but a terrible, unseen force pushed them back until they too sank beneath the surface of the water. Diek felt no sorrow for them; in fact, he was moving like a puppet, watching himself from outside his own mind like some sort of unwelcome visitor. The Voice was taking over. Occasionally, it would leave him for an hour or so, as if off on some errand or reporting back to some invisible master, yet it would always return, more powerful and somehow more irresistible than it had been before….

  As for the tune he was playing or where it came from, he had little notion. Indeed, he couldn’t even remember consciously making a decision to offer his services. It had just sort of happened. Come to think of it, he was only dimly aware of having left for Dullitch in the first place. The whole episode was like some strange dream, complete in every detail without need of his mental application. He was experiencing an icy calm. The voices had gone.

  The rats continued to roll over one another, careering toward the icy embrace of oblivion.

  Far off to the west, a storm was brewing. Gray clouds gathered over the Varick Pass. Diek shivered and pulled his cloak tight around him. Then he looked back in the direction of Dullitch, where the sun was disappearing between clouds heavy with rain. It was one of those days that just couldn’t make up its mind.

  “I was thinking,” said Duke Modeset, “about something along the lines of ‘finders keepers, losers never stray.’”

  “I think you’ve got a bit mixed up there, milord,” said Pegrand thoughtfully.

  “Well, whatever, it’s the principle of the thing. He bails out when the fire gets hot, I don’t see why I should burn down my own kitchen.” Modeset blinked. That definitely didn’t sound right.

  “Are we still talking about the foreigner, milord?”

  “No, no, no! I’m talking about the chef. I fired him this morning. He’s the worst one we’ve had yet, him and those wretched zombies he has working for him. It’s like a morgue in that kitchen. The gods only know what drops off them when they’re cooking.”

  “Er, yes, I see, milord. If I might change the subject, we haven’t heard anything from young Wustapha yet.

  “And?”

  “Well, I just wonder what he’s done with all those rats.”

  “Who cares?” said the duke, dismissively. “As long as they are out of Dullitch, they’re somebody else’s concern.”

  “Let’s just hope he’s not taken them to Legrash, milord. Otherwise we might have to give back some of that coal.”

  Modeset smiled. “Dear, dear friend,” he said. “Always the thinker, eh?”

  “Whenever I’m given the initiative, milord.”

  The duke regarded his manservant out of the corner of one eye. “Was that sarcasm, Pegrand?”

  “No, milord. Absolutely not: I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Duke Modeset nodded. “Good man.”

  The following morning, there came a thunderous knocking on the doors of the treasury. A panel slid open.

  “Yeah?”

  Diek stared at a face. It wasn’t a particularly nice face. In fact, it only qualified for membership within society because it had all the correct bits. Diek couldn’t even put a race to it. “My name is Diek Wustapha,” he said, authoritatively. “I have come for my reward.”

  “Hold on,” said the face and disappeared into the shadows.

  After a minute or so, it returned. “No can do,” it said. “My orders say you’ve got to go see the chancellor.”

  “Is that right? And where would I find him?”

  The panel slid shut, and there was some whispering. Then it shot open again. “Follow the alley round to the back of the Treasury. There you’ll find a small door with a gold plate next to it. Knock three times for the chancellor’s secretary.”

  Diek waited for a time, expressionless. Then he turned and walked around to the alley.

  The chancellor’s secretary was a man of few words, and he looked positively resentful even to let those go.

  “Sit.” he snapped, having directed Diek into the sitting area. “Wait.”

  Just over an hour later, Diek was admitted to the chancellor’s inner sanctum.

  Quarry was seated behind his desk, both hands flat on the tabletop and a faint smile playing on his lips. “Welcome, Mr. Wustapha,” he said. “Any problems?”

  “None whatsoever,” answered Diek, his eyes narrowing to slits. “I understood that I was to collect my payment from the Treasury. When I arrived there, I was told you wished to see me beforehand. So I’ll ask you the same question you just asked me: are there any problems, chancellor?”

  There was something in the boy’s voice that Quarry was quite certain he didn’t like one little bit. It had undertones in it. He was sure countrysiders shouldn’t have voices with undertones.

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. Wustapha,” he said, “there are.”

  “Oh?”

  “Before I go into all that,” Quarry went on. “I must ask you: what did you do with the rats?” He crossed his fingers under the table, for luck.

  “I drowned them,” said Diek, a sudden flash of mock concern showing on his face. “You didn’t want them back, did you?”

  Quarry’s grin could have melted lead. “No no, of course not,” he answered. “We just wanted to be certain that our plague would not return to, well, plague us.”

  “There’s little chance of that,” Diek said, with rancor. “Now, where are my thousand crowns?”

  Quarry’s eyes widened. “Goodness gracious,” he exclaimed. “Is that what the good duke told you? A thousand crowns? For sweeping out a few rats?”

  Diek’s face remained expressionless, but deep inside his mind, The Voice was becoming razor edged: he could feel it, once again, starting to take over.

  “Is that your final word, chancellor?” asked Diek, his voice suddenly shifting to an icy, inhuman tone.

  “I, um, beg your pardon?” stammered Quarry.

  “You have no intention of paying me what I’m owed? Is that your final word?”

  Quarry started. He was beginning to get the feeling that he’d missed the middle of the conversation. His fears weren’t calmed by Diek’s sudden smile or by the icy glaze over his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Quarry managed. The room became silent, a dark, brooding quiet that was more unsettling than a hundred heated disputes. Quarry felt something else was required from him. “We simply haven’t the funds to pay you,” he added.

  “And you knew this when you set me to the task?” continued Diek.

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Thank you, Chancellor Quarry.”

  Diek said nothing more. He simply rose from his seat, opened the door and strode out into the hallway. The portal closed with a decisive click.

  “What do you mean ‘gone’?” said Jimmy Quickstint.

  “All three of ’em together,” said Finlayzzon, “just before the rats left. They wrecked the joint on their way out, I might add. And they robbed my donation box; how low can you sink, eh?”

  He waited to see if there was any emotional reaction from the lad. “Well?”

  “Well what?” said Jimmy. “You don’t expect me to pay for them, surely?”

  Finlayzzon shrugged. “You said you were a relative.”

  “Yeah, I am,” said Jimmy. “The poor relation.”

  “Ah…pity.”

  “Yes, it is. Now, do you have any idea where they went?”

  Finlayzzon shook his head.

  “Thanks,” said Jimmy. “I’ll make sure to point all my friends away from here in the future.”

>   “Good!” Finalyzzon called after him. “At least it’ll keep the thieves out.”

  Diek stumbled through the streets, his head swimming with rage and confusion. The crowds swarmed around him. So much noise and so many people. But you know another tune, don’t you, Diek? He stopped, looked around, and grabbed the arm of a passing juggler.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  The man looked bewildered, shook himself free. “Here,” he said. “What’s your problem, mate?”

  Diek shook his head.

  “You’re nuts, you are,” said the juggler, taking a few steps back and colliding with an old woman selling herbal remedies.

  You know another tune, Diek.

  “Shut up!”

  And a place, a magical limbo for traitors.

  “Stop! Go away!” shouted Diek, clasping the sides of his head.

  A crowd of spectators was widening around him.

  Play the other tune, Diek, The Voice went on. They deserve it. There is a place, a secret place of which I am aware. Take your revenge and I can lead you there. No one will ever find them, Diek. No one will ever find them….

  THIRTEEN

  NIGHT ARRIVED IN DULLITCH unfathomably fast.

  A single light flickered in the topmost tower of Dullitch Palace. Duke Modeset was scribbling. It was something he’d done ever since he was a boy, whenever he’d had trouble sleeping. He’d take a quill and a clean scrap of parchment and scratch down all his thoughts; get them out into the open, as it were. Then he’d take them along to a telepathic in town where the underlying message would be unraveled. Usually it was something like, You need more greens or a prune or two in the morning to keep your bowels open.

  Modeset put down the quill and started; he’d drawn a rat. This was turning into quite a fixation. It was the same reason he’d had trouble sleeping, visited in the small hours by nightmare scenarios that had him sprinting across desert wastelands, pursued by seething hordes of rodent marauders. And Diek Wustapha. The countrysider had been out in front, producing terrible melodies without need of any kind of instrument. They just sort of emanated from him, as if he had a gland for producing music.

  Modeset shivered. This was ridiculous. Besides, he’d come to a decision: it was time to abdicate. As soon as the war with Phlegm was won, assuming it could be won (assuming, in fact, that anyone from Phlegm actually realized that they were involved in a war) and all the chaos from the rats had died down, he was off. Somewhere. Anywhere. Soon. Ten years was quite enough. Dullitch was far too strange a kingdom, especially at night. Weird screams would erupt from nowhere, hideous twisted cries of people facing horror without mercy. Modeset was beginning to recognize some of them by pitch. The low, continuous moans were usually caused by the Burrow Street Trolls leaping on some poor unsuspecting beggar, while the higher wailings were caused by young ladies running into Jock the Toddler, a fiend who stalked the streets of Dullitch after sundown, preying on women. He hadn’t actually murdered anyone, but a greengrocer’s wife had some nasty nips on her ankles.

  A door slammed somewhere off to the east. Modeset crossed to the arch windows and peered out into the murky midnight gloom, but he couldn’t see very far in front of his hands for the fog. A second door slammed, followed by a third and a fourth. Modeset rolled his eyes: perhaps it was a contest of some sort. This city had some curious idiosyncrasies; it wouldn’t surprise him. He produced a woolly hat from his robe pocket, took up his candlestick, and wandered down to the dungeons.

  Only two of the cells below Dullitch Palace were occupied. The first contained Elee Klias, a geriatric woman who muttered constantly on the subject of vintage wines and the encouragement of nudity. Presumably, old Duke Culver had imprisoned her for the latter. Modeset ignored her incessant whining and went straight to the second cell.

  As he flung open the door, his frame illuminated a pillory inside of which struggled a trembling figure. Modeset used his candle to light three further brackets before turning to face the small, wizened face of Rochus the Soak.

  “Evening, seer,” Modeset said calmly. “How are they treating you down here?”

  Rochus coughed and spluttered. “Thou shalt pay for this….”

  “Really? An unfortunate attitude, for you were to be released tomorrow.”

  “Ha! Empty words!” grumbled Rochus. “I’ve never encountered such insolence in my life.”

  “Mmm?” said Modeset, a smug grin on his face.

  “Thou’lt swing from the yardarm for this.”

  “Oh, do be quiet, man! Surely you’re not still under the delusion that you’re some kind of god?”

  “I am a great deity, like my father before me,” said Rochus proudly.

  Modeset tried to invoke images of Anglucian the Soak. From what he could remember, the man had been a notorious womanizer, but had little to boast about in the divinity department. A reputation for scampering across battlements pursued by furious husbands didn’t exactly paint a portrait of heavenly nobility. Furthermore, Modeset found it difficult to recall ever seeing the Great Soak with his britches on.

  “Well, now that you mention your father—”

  “Silence!” cried Rochus. “Thy lips seal thy doom.”

  “How amusing,” said Modeset. “Tell me, are you going to give me the information I require voluntarily, or am I going to have to take another set of pins to your fingernails?”

  This question caused Rochus to lapse into a choking fit.

  “So, great seer,” the duke continued, raising his eyebrows. “What is going on in my decrepit city? A single word will suffice, as long as it’s accurate. Conspiracy, perhaps? Some devilish form of rodent warfare from Legrash?”

  Rochus’s cracked lips trembled, parted. “M-m-magic,” he whispered. “Dark, terrible magic.”

  Modeset nodded, rose. As he closed the dungeon door, the soak began to cry.

  “Show us your winter warmers!” screamed Elee, from the next cell.

  Diek marched through the streets of Dullitch, an insane smile on his face and a bizarre melody rising from his flute. Behind him, a group of young children stumbled along, chuckling with a strange merriment, their eyes glazed over. They had staggered out from houses on all sides of the city, appearing at doors and windows, staggering over narrow lanes and stumbling along through dark alleys to find the source of the tune. This oblivious little band was joined by others, and the group became a troop, then a regiment and, finally, an army, all trotting obediently after the stranger with the marvelous music. Soon, they were gone, leaving only the odd cap and a handful of shoes behind them.

  The bells of Dullitch struck midnight….

  A short distance from Dullitch, Gordo Goldeaxe sat beside a small campfire and gnawed his way through a chicken leg. Groan and Tambor were sleeping and, despite the fact that their combined snore could have penetrated the eardrums of a man some sixty miles away, Gordo wasn’t paying them any undue attention. This was because, for the last half an hour, he had been watching a vast cloud form over the city. It was a magical cloud, he felt sure, because it crackled with energy and glowed alternately white and purple against a backdrop of darkness.

  It was also very, very unsettling. Gordo had heard about such atmospheric oddities, of course, and how they formed in an area where gargantuan amounts of magic were being used. But something about this particular buildup was making him wish he’d taken first watch of the evening.

  The screams started just after sunrise, and again Modeset put them down to good old-fashioned Dullitch eccentricity. It was only when he came downstairs for breakfast that he realized things were a little more serious. As he descended the small flight of steps leading to the Great Hall, an entourage of city officials alighted on him like vultures on a corpse. Pegrand was nowhere to be seen.

  “They broke down my door!” yelled Quaris Sands, the Home Secretary, above the fray.

  “They’ve demanded we hang you, Duke Modeset!” added another voice.

  Pegrand appeared
at the doorway, pushed his way inside and slammed the portal. “There’s a rabble outside, milord,” he shouted. “It looks like half the city.”

  Everyone began speaking at once.

  Duke Modeset raised his hand for silence; to his surprise it worked. “One at a time,” he began, offering the group a reassuring smile. “Pegrand, you first. Why is there a rabble outside?”

  “It’s that countrysider, milord,” said his manservant. “Two beggars saw him on Stainer Street and—”

  “Doing what?”

  “Taking the children.”

  Modeset frowned. “What children?”

  “All of them, milord. In the night, like a thief.”

  “But, how?”

  “Same way he got the rats, by all accounts. Played a tune and they followed him.”

  “And the militiaman on duty at the time?”

  Pegrand swallowed, hard. “Chap named Phelt, milord,” he said breathily. “He fell asleep. I think he’d been drinking.”

  “I see,” said Modeset, turning his attention to the rest of the group. “You, with your hand up, you wish to say something?”

  Quaris Sands nodded. “I’m afraid that the Yowler churches, as well as several other religious establishments, have issued statements condemning the situation. If matters are not put in order by Friday, there will be repercussions.”

  “I see,” said Modeset, solemnly. “Does anybody else have something to contribute?”

  “I do,” said Chancellor Quarry. “Understandably, people are beside themselves with distress and confusion; however, there is a third party inciting them to riot.”

  “A third party?”

  “Yes, milord. A young lad came back on his own, said he’d been under the musical spell, but he hadn’t been fast enough to keep up with the rest. He’s lame in one leg, you see.”

  “Hmm…interesting. Did he happen to see where the foreigner was headed?”

  “Not really, milord. I mean, only the direction—”

  “Right, and can we make any guesses based on that?” asked the duke.

  “A few. There’s not many places he could take them without passing through one of the villages, and we’d have heard of that already. Of course, there’s a lot of forest out there, and mountains, I’ll grant you.”