Part 5 (1/2)

Into the Heart of Magic.

'Is this an illusion, too?' Luka boldly asked Captain Aag. 'Is this another of your pesky magic tricks?' Captain Aag gave what might have been intended as a laugh but came out as a sort of snarl. 'Security,' he said, 'is not an Illusion. Security is the Foundation of any World. Alas! Those of us who labour in the field of Security are often misunderstood, regularly abused, and frequently ignored by those whose safety and values we protect, and yet we struggle on. The Maintenance of Security, young feller-me-lad, is a Thankless Task, I'll have you know; and yet Security must be Maintained. No, Security is not a Deception. It is a Burden, and it has fallen upon me. Fortunately, I do not work alone; and a loyal Fire Bug' here Luka saw the little telltale flame hovering at Aag's shoulder 'who makes haste, overcoming all obstacles and distractions, to bring me word that thieves are on their way, a heroic Fire Bug such as we have here, such a Bug is not the creation of flimflam or prestidigitation. Such a Bug is Virtue's Child. Nor is the murderous and terrifying Dragon Nuthog the product of any conjuring trick as you will soon discover.'

He was a man of hair and anger, this Aag, whose henna-tinted locks stood out from his head like wrathful orange serpents; a man, too, of chin hair, whose russet beard stuck out in all directions like the rays of an ill-tempered sun; a man of eyebrows, quarrelsome scarlet bushes which curled upwards and outwards above a pair of glaring black eyes; and a man also of ear hair, long, stiff, crimson strands of ear hair, that corkscrewed outwards from both those fleshy organs of hearing. Blood-red hair sprouted up from Aag's s.h.i.+rt at the collar and out from his pirate's greatcoat at the cuffs, and Luka imagined the Captain's entire body covered in a luxuriant growth, as if that body were a farm and hair its only crop. Soraya, also a flame-haired person, whispered in Luka's right ear that this Grandmaster's bushy excessivity of hair might give all redheads a bad name.

The hair was Aag's anger made visible. Luka could see that from the way it waved around, shaking itself in his direction as if it were a fist. Why was he so angry? Well, there was the little matter of the destruction of his circus by Luka's curse, that much was obvious; but, in the first place, that circus was now revealed to be a side issue, merely the minor Real World plaything of the Gatekeeper of the Heart of Magic, and, in the second place, that hair had been growing for a long, long time, so Captain Aag had plainly been furious all his life, or, if he was by some chance immortal, then he must have been angry since the beginnings of Time.

'His original name was Menetius,' n.o.bodaddy whispered into Luka's left ear, 'and he was once the t.i.tan of Rage, until the King of the G.o.ds lost patience with his crosspatchery, killed him with a thunderbolt, and hurled him into the underworld. Eventually he was allowed to return to this lowly job he's no more than a doorman now so here he is, in a worse mood than ever, I'm sorry to say.'

The seven vultures had arranged themselves in the air above Aag and the dragon, like guests at a banquet, waiting for a feast. Aag, however, was for a moment in a playful mood. 'In other places, such as the Real World,' he said from the dragon's back, almost as if he were speaking to himself, looking off into the distance and adopting a thoughtful expression, 'such terrible creatures as one might encounter the Yeti, the Bigfoot, the Unbearably Unpleasant Child are what I like to call monsters in s.p.a.ce monsters in s.p.a.ce. There they are, but that's all they are, unchangeable, therefore always the same. Whereas here, where you have no business to be, and where you will very shortly be no more, our monsters can be monsters in time as well; that is to say, they can be one monster after another. Nuthog, here, is actually called Jaldibadal Jaldibadal, and she's a Magical Chameleon: quite the quick-change artist is old Jaldi when she wants to be, but she's a lazy good-for-nothing creature a lot of the time. Show them, Nuthog, why don't you? There's no real rush to cook them in dragon-fire, after all. The vultures can wait for their lunch.'

Nuthog the dragon or, more properly, Jaldibadal the Changer gave what sounded very like a tired, serpentine sigh and then mutated, with what looked very like a monstrous unwillingness, into, first, a giant metallic sow, and then, one after the other, a huge, s.h.a.ggy woman-beast with the tail of a scorpion, a Monstrous Carbuncle (a mirrored creature with a diamond s.h.i.+ning out of its head) and an immense mother-tortoise, and finally, with what felt very like a sullen resignation, back into a dragon again. 'Congratulations, Nuthog,' said Captain Aag sarcastically, and his black eyes glittered with anger and his bushy beard flared out around his face like the red flame of an evil match. 'An excellent show. And now, O indolent beast, get on with it and fry these thieves alive before I lose my temper.'

'If my sisters were here beside me, to release me from your spell,' Nuthog spat back, in a voice of considerable sweetness, and in surprising rhyme, 'you wouldn't speak so bravely, and we'd send you back to h.e.l.l.'

'Who are her sisters? Where are they?' Luka hissed at n.o.bodaddy; but then Nuthog blasted the Argo Argo, and all the world was flame. 'It's odd, this business of losing a life,' Luka thought. 'You ought to feel something, but you don't.' Then he noticed that the counter in the top left-hand corner of his field of vision had gone down by fifty lives fifty lives. 'I'd better think fast,' he realised, 'or I'll run out of chances right here.' He had re-formed in the same place as before, and so had Bear and Dog. The residents of the World of Magic were unharmed, though Soraya was complaining loudly. 'If I wanted to be sunburned,' she said, 'I would go and sit in the sun. Point that flame-thrower, please, in some other direction.'

n.o.bodaddy was examining his panama hat, which looked very slightly scorched. 'That's not right,' he grumbled. 'I like this hat.' BLLLAAARRRTT! BLLLAAARRRTT! Another blast of dragon-fire, another fifty lives lost. 'Oh, for goodness' sake,' Soraya cried. 'Don't you know that flying carpets are made of delicate stuff?' The Elephant Birds were also extremely upset. 'Memory is a fragile flower,' complained the Elephant Drake. 'It doesn't respond well to heat.' Another blast of dragon-fire, another fifty lives lost. 'Oh, for goodness' sake,' Soraya cried. 'Don't you know that flying carpets are made of delicate stuff?' The Elephant Birds were also extremely upset. 'Memory is a fragile flower,' complained the Elephant Drake. 'It doesn't respond well to heat.'

Things were rapidly arriving at crisis point. 'Nuthog's sisters,' murmured n.o.bodaddy, 'were imprisoned by the Aalim in blocks of ice, over that way in the Ice Country of Sniffelheim, so that Nuthog would obey Aag's orders.' BLLLAAARRRTT! BLLLAAARRRTT! 'That's one hundred and fifty lives gone in no time at all, just four hundred and sixty-five left,' Luka thought as he came back together; and when he looked around him this time, Soraya and the flying carpet had vanished altogether. 'She has abandoned us,' he thought. 'Which means we're done for.' 'That's one hundred and fifty lives gone in no time at all, just four hundred and sixty-five left,' Luka thought as he came back together; and when he looked around him this time, Soraya and the flying carpet had vanished altogether. 'She has abandoned us,' he thought. 'Which means we're done for.'

Just then Dog the bear asked Jaldibadal a question. 'Are you happy?' he demanded, and the monster looked surprised.

'What sort of question is that?' Nuthog asked in return, forgetting to rhyme in her confusion. 'I'm in the process of burning you to death, and this is the thing you want to ask me? What's it to you? Suppose I was happy; would you be happy for me? And if I was not happy, would you sympathise?'

'For example,' persisted Dog the bear, 'are you getting enough to eat? Because I can see your ribs sticking out through your scales.'

'Those aren't my ribs,' answered Nuthog, looking s.h.i.+fty. 'Those are probably the skeletons of the last people I gobbled down.'

'I knew it,' said Dog the bear. 'He's starving you, just as he underfed the animals in the circus. A bony dragon is an even sadder sight than a skinny elephant.'

'Why are you wasting time?' Captain Aag roared from Nuthog's back. 'Get on with it and finish them off.'

'We rebelled against him back in the Real World,' said Bear the dog, 'and he couldn't do a thing about it, and that was the end of him in that place.'

'Cook them!' shouted Captain Aag. 'Grill them, roast them, blast them, toast them! Bear sausages for dinner! Dog chops! Boy cheeks! Cook them and let's eat!'

'It's my sisters,' Nuthog told Bear the dog mournfully. 'As long as they are imprisoned I have no choice but to do as he says.'

'You always have a choice,' said Dog the bear.

'Also,' said a voice from the sky, 'were these perhaps the sisters you were looking for?'

Everyone aboard the Argo Argo looked up; and there, high above them, was Queen Soraya of Ott, on King Solomon's magic carpet, looked up; and there, high above them, was Queen Soraya of Ott, on King Solomon's magic carpet, Resham Resham, which had grown large enough to carry three enormous, s.h.i.+vering monsters, just released from their prison of ice, too cold to fly, too unwell to metamorphose, but alive, and free.

'Bahut-Sara! Badlo-Badlo! Gyara-Jinn!' shouted Nuthog joyfully. The three rescued Changers uttered weak, but happy, moans in reply. Captain Aag had begun to look distinctly panicky on Nuthog's back. 'L-Let's all stay calm now,' he said, stammering a little. 'Let's all remember that I was only following orders, that it was the Aalim, the Guardians of the Fire, who put the three excellent ladies here on ice, and instructed me to work with you, Nuthog, to guard the Gate to the Heart. Let's understand, too, that Security is a hard taskmaster, who requires some tough decisions, and that in consequence it can happen that some innocents suffer for the sake of the greater good. Nuthog, you can understand that, can't you?'

'Only my friends can call me Nuthog,' said Nuthog, and with a smooth little wiggle she flipped Captain Aag off her back. He landed with a b.u.mp right under her smoking nose. 'And you're no friend of mine,' Nuthog added, 'so the name is Jaldibadal. And I'm sorry to tell you that, no, I don't understand.'

Captain Aag stood up to face his fate. He looked like a very wretched pirate indeed, all hair and no fire. 'Any last words?' enquired Jaldibadal sweetly. Captain Aag shook his fist at her. 'I'll be back!' he roared.

Jaldibadal shook her scaly head. 'No,' she said, 'I'm afraid you won't.' Then she unleashed an immense flame that wrapped itself around Captain Aag, and when the flame died away there was no more Captain, just a small pile of angry-looking ash.

'Actually, of course,' she added, once Aag had been, so to speak, put out, and his vulture troupe had fled into some distant sky, never to be seen again, 'there are Powers in the Heart that could bring him back to life if they chose. But he doesn't have many friends here, and I think he's probably had his last chance.' She blew hard on the little pile of ash that now lay under her nose, and it was scattered to the four winds. 'Now, young Sir,' she said, looking straight at Luka, 'and, I should say, Sir Dog and Sir Bear, how can I be of a.s.sistance?'

Her sisters on the flying carpet flapped their wings experimentally; and found, to their great pleasure, that they could fly again. 'We too will help you,' said Badlo-Badlo the Changer, and Bahut-Sara and Gyara-Jinn nodded their a.s.sent. The Insultana Soraya clapped her hands in delight. 'That's more like it,' she rejoiced. 'We've got an army now.'

In all the excitement n.o.body noticed a small fiery Bug rus.h.i.+ng away from them as quickly as it could fly, making its way deep into the Heart of Magic, whoos.h.i.+ng along as quickly as a wildfire running before a helpful wind.

n.o.bodaddy was acting strangely, Luka thought. He was fidgety, scratching constantly at his panama hat's scorched brim. He seemed irritable, pacing up and down and rubbing his hands together and speaking in monosyllables, when he spoke at all. Sometimes he seemed almost transparent and at other times almost solid, so plainly Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa at home in Kahani was struggling for life and health, and maybe that struggle was having a bad effect on n.o.bodaddy's mood. But Luka began to have other suspicions. Maybe n.o.bodaddy had just been humouring him, toying with him for his own warped amus.e.m.e.nt. Who knew what sort of twisted sense of humour such a creature might have? Maybe he had never expected Luka to get this far, and in fact didn't like the idea that they were now flying towards the Fire of Life itself. Maybe he hadn't been honest, and didn't want the quest to succeed. He'd need watching carefully, Luka decided, in case he tried to sabotage everything at the last moment. He looked, walked and talked like the Shah of Blah, but that didn't make him Luka's father. Maybe Bear and Dog had been right: n.o.bodaddy was not to be trusted an inch. Or maybe there was an argument raging inside him, maybe the Ras.h.i.+d-ness he had absorbed was at war with the death-creature that did the absorbing. Maybe dying was always like this: an argument between death and life.

'Who wins that argument is a matter for another day,' Luka thought. 'Right now, I've got to stop thinking of him as my dad.'

Soraya's flying carpet was aloft again, after briefly landing to allow all the travellers, and the Argo Argo of course, to come aboard. Jaldi, Sara, Badlo and Jinn, the four Changers, in their dragon shapes, flew in strict formation around the of course, to come aboard. Jaldi, Sara, Badlo and Jinn, the four Changers, in their dragon shapes, flew in strict formation around the Resham Resham, one on each of the carpet's four sides, protecting it against any possible attack. Luka looked down and saw below him the River of Time flowing from the distant, and invisible, Lake of Wisdom at the Heart of the Heart (which was still too far away to be seen) the River flowing into, and then out of, the immense Circle of the Circular Sea, at the bottom of which, he knew, slept the giant Worm Bottomfeeder, who coiled his body all the way around the Circle just so that his head could nibble at his tail. Outside the Circle, directly beneath the flying carpet at that moment, were the vast territories of the Badly Behaved G.o.ds the G.o.ds in whom n.o.body believed any longer, except as stories that people once liked to tell.

'They don't have any power in the Real World any more,' Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa used to say, sitting in his favourite squashy armchair, with Luka curled up on his lap, 'so there they all are in the World of Magic, the ancient G.o.ds of the North, the G.o.ds of Greece and Rome, the South American G.o.ds, and the G.o.ds of Sumeria and Egypt long ago. They spend their time, their infinite, timeless time, pretending they are still divine, playing all their old games, fighting their ancient wars over and over again, and trying to forget that n.o.body really cares about them these days, or even remembers their names.'

'That's pretty sad,' Luka said to his father. 'To be honest with you, the Heart of Magic sounds a lot like an old folks' home for washed-up superheroes.'

'Don't let them hear you say that,' Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa replied, 'because they all look gorgeous and youthful and luminous and, well, perfect. Being divine, or even ex-divine, has its perks. And inside the Magic World they still have the use of their superpowers. It's in the Real World that their thunderbolts and enchantments no longer have any effect.'

'It must be awful for them,' Luka said, 'to have been wors.h.i.+pped and adored for so long, and then just discarded, like last year's unfas.h.i.+onable clothes.'

'Particularly for the Aztec deities from Mexico,' Ras.h.i.+d said, putting on his scary voice. 'Because they were used to receiving human sacrifices; the throats of living people were cut and their lifeblood flowed into the G.o.ds' stone goblets. Now there's no blood for those disused G.o.ds to drink. You've heard of vampires? Most of them are blood-thirsty, long-in-the-tooth, undead Aztec G.o.ds. Huitzilopochtli! Tezcatlipoca! Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli! Macuilcoz-cacuauhtli! Itztlacoliuhqui-Ixquimilli '

'Stop, stop,' Luka begged. 'No wonder people stopped wors.h.i.+pping them. n.o.body could p.r.o.nounce their names.'

'Or it may be because they all behaved so badly,' Ras.h.i.+d said.

This got Luka's attention. The notion of G.o.ds behaving badly was an odd one. Weren't G.o.ds supposed to set an example to the people whose G.o.ds they were? 'Not in the Olden Days,' Ras.h.i.+d said. 'These Olden, and now Jobless, G.o.ds usually behaved as badly as people, or actually much worse, because, being G.o.ds, they could behave badly on a bigger scale. They were selfish, rude, meddlesome, vain, b.i.t.c.hy, violent, spiteful, l.u.s.tful, gluttonous, greedy, lazy, dishonest, tricky and stupid, and all of it exaggerated to the maximum, because they had those superpowers. When they were greedy they could swallow a city, and when they were angry they could drown the world. When they meddled in human lives they broke hearts, stole women and started wars. When they were lazy they slept for a thousand years, and when they played their little tricks other people suffered and died. Sometimes a G.o.d would even kill another G.o.d by knowing his weak spot and going for it, the way a wolf goes for the throat of its prey.'

'Maybe it's a good thing they faded away,' Luka said, 'but it must make the Heart of Magic a peculiar sort of place.'

'Nowhere more peculiar in the universe,' Ras.h.i.+d replied.

'And what about the G.o.ds people still believe in?' Luka asked. 'Are they in the Heart of Magic as well?'

'Oh, dear me, no,' said Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa. 'They're all still right here with us.'

The memory of Ras.h.i.+d faded away, and Luka found himself flying over a phantasmagoric landscape dotted with broken columns and statuary, with creatures out of fable and legend walking, running and flying among them. There over there! were two vast and trunkless legs of stone, the last remaining echoes of Ozymandias, King of Kings. Here, slouching towards them, was an immense rough beast, Sphinx-like, only male, and spotted, a man with a hyena's body and its hideous laugh as well, destroying whatever house or temple, hill or tree it pa.s.sed, by the sheer force of its ecstatic, ruinous laughter. And there! yes, right there! was the Sphinx herself! Yes, surely that was she! The Lion with the Woman's Head! See how she stopped strangers and insisted on talking to them ... 'It's too bad,' said Soraya. 'She keeps asking everyone the same old riddle, and n.o.body can be bothered to answer, because everybody has known it for ever. She really needs to get a new act.'

A gigantic egg walked by below them on long, yolk-coloured legs. A winged unicorn flew past. A curious three-part creature a crocodile, lion and hippopotamus combined shuffled its way towards the Circular Sea. The sight of a small G.o.d in the shape of a dog excited Bear. 'That is Xolotl,' warned Soraya. 'Stay away from him. He's the G.o.d of bad luck.' That disappointed Bear the dog a good deal. 'Why does Bad Luck turn out to be a dog?' he complained. 'In the Real World, a faithful dog is very good luck for its owner. No wonder these bad-luck G.o.ds are done for.'

Luka couldn't help noticing that the Heart of Magic was in some disrepair. The Egyptians' pyramids were crumbling, and in the Nordic quarter a gigantic ash tree lay on its side, its three huge roots clutching at the sky. And if those meadows over in that direction were really the Elysian Fields, where the souls of great heroes lived on for ever, why was the gra.s.s so brown? 'These places are in really bad shape,' Luka said, and Soraya nodded sadly. 'Magic is fading from the universe,' she said. 'We aren't needed any more, or that's what you all think, with your High Definitions and low expectations. One of these days you'll wake up and we'll be gone, and then you'll find out what it's like to live without even the idea of Magic. But Time moves on, and there isn't a thing we can do about it. Would you like,' she said, brightening, 'to see the Battle of the Beauties? I believe this is the right time of day.'

The carpet began to fly down towards a great pavilion topped by seven golden, onion-shaped domes, all s.h.i.+ning in the morning sun. 'Shouldn't we stay out of these G.o.ds' and G.o.ddesses' way, though?' Luka objected. 'Surely we don't want them to see us, to know we're here? We are thieves, after all.'

'They can't see you,' Soraya answered. 'If you're from the Real World, they are blind to your existence. You don't exist for them, just as they no longer exist for you. You can walk right up to any number of G.o.ds or G.o.ddesses, say ”boo” and pinch their noses, and they'll act as if nothing happened, or as if they're being bothered by a fly. As for persons from the general neighbourhood, like myself, they don't care about us. We aren't part of their stories, so they think we don't count. Stupid of them, but that's the way they are.'

'Then it's a sort of ghost town,' Luka thought, 'and these supposed almighties are sort of sleepwalkers, or echoes of themselves. It's like a mythological theme park here you could call it G.o.dland only there are no visitors, except for us, and we've come to pilfer a piece of their most precious possession.' To Soraya he said, 'But if they can't see us, won't it be easy to steal the Fire of Life? In which case, shouldn't we just hurry up and do it?'