Disenchanted (12 page)

“Say,” cried Chad. “I think that’s me!”

Boric saw that it was true. The puppet was a likeness of Chad, with exaggerated features to make him recognizable at a distance. At first he thought that the puppet was being operated from underneath, but realized that the way it danced it must be a marionette. And indeed, he could see now that the puppet was suspended by very fine wires. But how was that possible? There were no rafters above. Where were the puppeteers? Peering into the sky, he realized that they must be hidden amongst the branches of the trees overhanging the amphitheater.

A burst of laughter from the crowd caused him to refocus his attention on the stage: another character, nearly twice the height of the Chad puppet had arisen from beneath the stage. It wore gleaming metal armor and its face was covered with ragged bandages. It carried a silver sword and was doing a sort of dance as well, in time with Chad but on the opposite end of the stage. The two characters hadn’t yet noticed each other.

“And that’s you!” howled Chad, poking Boric in the ribs with his elbow.

Boric regarded his likeness humorlessly. What in Grovlik’s name was it supposed to be doing? The puppet was jerking about the stage furiously, like someone possessed. The crowd laughed uproariously.

Finally it dawned on Boric what the puppet was doing: it was trying to rid itself of its sword. The puppet was flopping its arm around, trying to let go, but the sword was obviously attached to the puppet’s hand. Boric found himself grinding his teeth and letting out a long hissing sound.

After a minute or so of the puppets dancing around the stage, oblivious to each other, they backed into each other and leapt in fright. The two puppets spun to face each other. The Boric puppet jabbed at the Chad puppet with its sword, but the Chad puppet hopped out of the way. The Boric puppet hacked and slashed at the Chad puppet, becoming increasing agitated in its movements, but the Chad puppet simply frolicked out of its way. The crowd was in hysterics. Chad was holding his sides, tears running down his cheeks. Boric’s hiss turned into a rumbling growl.

Not fully aware of what he was doing, Boric got to his feet and strode down the slope, leaping several threfelings with each bound. He jumped onto the stage and dove at the Boric puppet, which dodged his advances. Boric landed on his face and the puppet crept closer, menacing Boric with its miniature sword. Boric’s arm swept out as if to knock the puppet off its feet, but of course this was impossible. The crowd roared with laughter and Boric pulled himself to his feet. If he had been thinking clearly, Boric would have pulled his own sword and cut the puppet’s wires, but he could think only of the humiliation this accursed thing was heaping on him. He intended to tear it to pieces with his bare hands. But first he had to catch it — and every moment the puppet eluded him forced him to further involve himself in this farce, increasing his humiliation.

As he pursued the Boric puppet around the stage, he became aware that laughter was erupting from the crowd seemingly at random. Boric paused, peering at the crowd, prompting a new round of gales. He turned to look behind him and saw the Chad puppet mimicking his stance. While he had been chasing the Boric puppet, the Chad puppet had been chasing him.

Boric let loose a howl of rage. “You dare to mock me, threfelings?” he roared at the crowd. “You who share your dinner with dogs? You who live in warrens of mud carved into the hills of a land left behind by civilization? You runt half-breeds born of hedgehogs and goblins? I’ll cut out your stomachs and feed them to your dogs! I’ll rip out your entrails and strew them across your pathetic hills! I’ll…”

He would have gone on, but he could no longer be heard over the crowd’s laughter. Evidently they had taken his insults and threats as part of the performance. As he trailed off, the audience broke into a standing ovation. Whistles and catcalls echoed through the amphitheater along with shouts of “Bravo!” and “More! Give us more!”

For a moment, Boric’s bony hand hovered over the pommel of his sword. How many of the threfelings could he slaughter before he tired or they put a stop to it?
All of them
, he realized with sudden horror. He would never tire and they could never stop him. He would just kill, and kill, and kill…until every living threfeling had been exterminated.

Boric jumped off the stage and ran off into the night, the cheers of the threfeling crowd echoing after him. He was nearly a half-mile outside of New Threfelton before he could no longer hear the crowd.

“Boric!” called a voice behind him. Chad.

“Leave me alone!” cried Boric, who kept walking.

“Why are you leaving?” asked Chad, running to catch up.

“I don’t belong here, amongst the living. I’m a monster.”

“You don’t seem like a monster.”

Boric stopped and turned to face Chad. “Do you know what’s under these bandages? Do you know what I am? I could have killed those people. All of them. That wasn’t an act, Chad. I nearly did it.”

“I don’t can believe that,” said Chad.

“Then you’re a fool, Chad.”

“I know you weren’t acting,” said Chad. “You were really mad, I could tell. But you wouldn’t have hurt anybody.”

Boric grunted.

“It was just a show,” said Chad. “They were just poking a little fun at you. It’s what threfelings do. We don’t can take anything too seriously.”

Boric said nothing.

“You can leave tomorrow if you want,” offered Chad. “But not tonight. If you leave now, the townspeople will think they did something to offend you.”

“They
did
do something to offend me.”

“Not on purpose. My people pride themselves on their hospitality. Featuring you in the play was just their way of welcoming you.”

“Some welcome.”

Chad snorted. “Boy, you’re really full of yourself, aren’t you?”

Boric glared at Chad. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Where did you live? I mean, before whatever happened to you happened.”

“A city called Brobdingdon, in Ytrisk.”

“Do you have ogres in Brobdingdon?”

“Of course not. Once there was an ogre menacing the southern part of the country, but I hunted him down and killed him.”

“Of course you did,” said Chad. “Just out of curiosity, though, what would happen if an ogre showed up just outside of Brobdingdon one day, baring its teeth and threatening to kill a local peasant who was out picking berries?”

“I know what you’re getting at,” said Boric, “but this is a completely different — ”

“For that matter, what would happen if
you
showed up in Brobdingdon, looking like you do? With your face covered and waving that sword around? Do you suppose you’d be welcomed with open arms? Or do you think maybe your friends and family would do something worse to you than feature you in a puppet show?”

Boric hung his head. Chad was right. He had no right to expect any sort of hospitality from the threfelings. They probably made him a guest out of sheer terror. What else were they going to do? In his defense, though, it wasn’t the mockery that bothered him. At least it wasn’t
mainly
that. It was that he wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t just a puppet himself. Had he been acting on his own volition for the past few days or was this all part of Brand’s plan? And what did his resistance matter if his humanity was rotting away along with his flesh, dooming him to be a soulless servant to Brand? But he couldn’t tell that to Chad, of course.

“All right,” said Boric. “I will stay for tonight. But tomorrow I must leave.”

That seemed to satisfy Chad. They returned to town and caught the rest of the puppet show, which consisted of more parodies of local residents, most of which were completely lost on Boric. Afterward, he retreated to a dark alley where he could watch the night sky. He found it comforting to be able to see the stars moving across the sky in their predetermined paths. It was good to know that the universe’s rhythms continued even if his own heart refused to beat.

FOURTEEN

Boric and Milah left Tyvek early the next morning. The road narrowed after Tyvek, so they rode single file and didn’t speak much. Milah seemed to be growing nervous about her meeting with Boric’s father, and Boric was cursing himself for not telling Milah the truth. The truth was that his father wasn’t some noble with access to the king; he
was
the king. And he didn’t become king by throwing a hundred thousand gold pieces at every alchemist’s daughter who rode into town with a crazy idea. Maybe if Boric vouched for her he could get half that amount, and he could probably spare twenty thousand from his own coffers, and then, with some initial success they could attract some investment from other… No! What was he thinking? He couldn’t afford to spend either his money or his goodwill with his father on this girl’s schemes. Even if she was successful in creating a much improved version of the mirrors, it would take her years. And how would it benefit him? He could see some advantage to being able to instantly communicate orders to officers miles away, but the army already had an effective semaphore system using flags, and when the flags couldn’t be used, a runner could carry a message ten miles in less than hour. The mirrors would have to be vastly improved to be worth an initial expenditure of one hundred thousand gold pieces.

No, Boric admitted to himself, his desire to help Milah stemmed not from the value of the mirrors but rather from the fact that she was a smart, pretty redhead with perfectly formed alabaster breasts. The thought of her breasts, in fact, set him off on a renewed attempt to devise some way of making her scheme work — or at least letting her down easy. If he could find her a nice house in Brobdingdon and set her up with some honest, respectable work in the castle — maybe as a scullery maid or seamstress — she might forget about this whole business with the mirrors. A dusty old laboratory filled with bubbling potions and whatever else one found in a laboratory was no place for a beautiful young woman anyway. With time she’d come to realize that, and be grateful to Boric for rescuing her from a life of fruitless toil. He couldn’t marry her, of course; that was out of the question. But perhaps he could, ahem,
visit
her occasionally.

At some point, she was going to figure out that his father was the king. If she was as smart as he suspected, that point would be about three seconds after some Brobdingdon peasant called out “Hail, Prince Boric!” at the sight of him. Okay, so he would have to tell her before they got to Brobdingdon. He would explain to her that he had many enemies and was therefore traveling under an assumed name — which was true — and apologize that he hadn’t trusted her with his secret. She would understand that, right? Of course she would; she had pretended to be a man for a year. She knew the value of deception. Then he would explain that his father was temperamental and old-fashioned, and that they would need to find another alchemist — a man, of course — to be the figurehead of the operation. Boric would find someone he could trust, someone who would pretend to have meetings with the king and reassure Milah that he and Boric had
just about
convinced the king to provide the money. They would drag this out for months, and meanwhile Milah would settle into her new life, get comfortable, and start to wonder why she had ever wanted to putter around a laboratory making mirrors. When Boric finally broke the news to her, she would just shrug her shoulders and dismiss the whole thing as the unrealistic dream of a child.

About an hour out of Brobdingdon, the road widened again and Milah came up beside him. “Milah,” Boric said. “I have to tell you something about my father. What I was trying to tell you last night. He’s… not just some nobleman in Brobdingdon.”

Mila stared at him in shock. “You lied to me? You’re father’s not a nobleman?”

“No, no,” said Boric. “He is. He’s the
king
.”

Milah scowled. “Don’t mock me, Derek. I’m not some foolish girl who will believe anything you tell me.”

“I’m not mocking you,” said Boric. “And my name isn’t Derek. I’m Boric, Prince of Ytrisk, son of Toric. I’m third in line to the throne.” And hopefully soon I’ll be
first
, thought Boric, if I can get to my father before my brothers poison his mind against me.

Milah’s eyes widened in awe as she realized Boric was telling her the truth. “That’s…that’s wonderful!” she squealed. “We can go directly to the king then! We’ll make the case for funding my laboratory together! How can he say no to his own son?”

This wasn’t going the way Boric planned. How had he given Milah the impression that he was on board with her crazy mirror scheme? At most he had led her to believe that he would mention it to his father, whom she believed to be just one of many noblemen who had some contact with King Toric. Her faith in the compelling nature of her idea was clouding her sense of reality.

Boric explained to her that even though he was a prince, they couldn’t just barge in on the king and hit him up for a hundred thousand gold pieces. They would have to develop their case and wait for an opportune time to present it. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he would have to find a more respectable figure to act as the figurehead of their project and that she was unlikely ever to meet the king herself. He’d have to break that to her later. She accepted what he told her with aplomb, but Boric could see the disappointment on her face.

When they arrived at Brobdingdon, Boric arranged for Milah to stay with a widow whose husband had been a long-time servant and friend of the king. Milah would be comfortable there and would have no direct contact with the king. Boric promised her he would return in a few days with word on the king’s willingness to fund her laboratory. She thanked him cordially, and he went on to Kra’al Brobdingdon without her in the hopes of securing his right to the crown. He needn’t have worried on that score. The king welcomed him with open arms.

“Boric!” cried King Toric as Boric entered the king’s reception room. “The news of your success reached me just after dawn. The ogre has been slain then? The children in the southern towns are safe?”