How to Rescue a Dead Princess (21 page)

“A few hours, I'd say. That gives you plenty of time to gaze upon this beauty. I mean, look at that!” He gestured grandly, knocking the magic box off the rack. It fell through the cloud cover and vanished from sight. “I wish that hadn't happened,” he remarked to nobody in particular.

“Is that as big of a problem as I think it is?” asked Randall.

“Unless you're so optimistic as to be mentally defective, yes.” The machine began to tilt downward and pass through the clouds again. Toby glanced around the rapidly-approaching land. “You don't see any water we could land in, do you?”

“No!” shouted Randall, totally panicked.

“Any full-bodied people we could land on to cushion the impact?”

“No! None! We're all done for!”

“I really have to apologize for this,” Toby said.

“Apology accepted,” Bug told him.

“At least I didn't charge you. That'll ease my conscience in these last few moments.”

The sail broke off, followed immediately by the two empty seats on the end. Yvonne leaned over toward Randall. “I'm sorry if this is inconvenient, but I really don't want to die being known as Yvonne the Pure.”

“Um, I'd be happy to oblige, but right now I'm suffering from the Terminal Droop.”

They were heading straight for a small town. “Thirty seconds ‘til the splatfest,” Toby announced. “Would you like me to continue the countdown or just shut up and leave you to your final thoughts?” The entire rack broke off, nearly taking Toby with it. “Ah, like it matters,” he said.

“I have a confession to make before I die,” said Jack. “I eat slugs.”

“Jack!” exclaimed Yvonne, horrified.

“It's the truth,” he sobbed. “I never intended to, but one day I saw a slug out on the ground and I had some salt handy, so I poured the salt on it to watch it dissolve, but then I figured that was a waste of good salt, and one thing led to another, and soon I was addicted! Oh, spank me now!”

“Look at all those people down there,” said Toby, pointing to the town, which was much closer now. “I wonder what's going on? I hope it's a funeral so we don't bum anybody's high spirits.”

“Wait!” Randall shouted. “There's a haystack down there! Aim for it!”

“I can't! We lost the controls!” said Toby. “But I've got an idea! Everyone lean to the left!” He leaned to the left, falling off the machine with a scream and hurtling toward the ground without the benefit of a large iron bar to cushion the impact.

“I miss him already,” said Bug.

“This has been a long thirty seconds,” Yvonne noted.

“Look!” said Randall. “Fruit carts! If we jump at the precise moment, we can land on them!”

“And over there!” said Jack. “Children playing with rubber balls! We can land on those as well!”

“And behind that barn!” said Yvonne. “Somebody spat out a piece of chewing gum!”

They were seconds from hitting the ground. Just before the individual seats broke off, Randall, Jack, and Yvonne leapt from the machine. Bug flew off and landed happily on the shoulder of a woman who currently needed some counseling.

Randall struck a load of tomatoes, spraying red chunks everywhere and wasting a great deal of food. Jack hit the rubber balls at the perfect angle and bounced off them, landing painfully on the ground. The chewing gum absorbed enough of the force of Yvonne's landing that she remained intact. And Toby had managed to hit the haystack, though a severe allergy to all straw-based products currently had him in a sneezing fit.

The remainder of the flying machine smashed into a large group of men in black armor—some servants of the Dark One who were in the process of making prisoners of the town's residents. But there were plenty more. The town had been overtaken by them, and citizens were being chained together and marched toward an unknown destination.

“It's them!” shouted one of the town's residents. “They who are prophesized to fall from the sky and defeat the Dark One!”

“You moron!” shouted another resident. “The prophecy was for a guy in a duck suit to defeat the Dark One, and he drowned in the pond!”

Randall sat up and tried to squirm his way out of the tomato cart. Two men in the black armor approached him, swords drawn.

“Seize the others!” one of the men shouted to his comrades. “We'll take care of this one.”

“Don't come any closer!” Randall said. “I am the great and powerful magician Slurpy, here to wreak my vengeance upon those who would dare attempt to take me into custody!”

“Hold on,” said the man, who wore a name tag reading ‘Nichols.’ “You mean to tell me that you crashed here just so you could wreak vengeance upon people who might try and capture you after you crashed?”

“Indeed.”

“Hello? Mr. Brain? Are you home? What kind of moronic thinking is that, crashing into a tomato cart just on the off-chance that we might try to kidnap you? Can you say ‘ninny?'”

“Don't test him!” said Nichols’ partner, Gelder, nervously. “The ways of magicians are truly mysterious.”

“If this guy really is a magician, then he's the biggest dork-maestro I've ever met.” He pointed the end of his sword at Randall's face. “If you're such a good magician, do something about my sword before I poke it into that little dent in between your nose and upper lip.”

“You mean my philtrum,” said Randall.

“Of course I mean your philtrum!”

“Such a vulgar display of power would be beneath my standards,” said Randall. “But heed my warning. If any section of my philtrum is damaged by your blade, the repercussions will be swift and painful.”

“For who?”

“For you.”

“Oh.” Nichols hesitated. “Okay, fine. I won't use my sword. But we're going to take you and your friends to see the Dark One, and he will punish you as he sees fit.”

“You will take us nowhere!” said Randall in a booming voice. “You will release us, and you will release the citizens of this town, or I shall become very, very angry!”

“If you're such a golly-gee-whiz great magician, how come you're still standing there with tomato gook all over you?”

Suddenly a hangman's noose was thrown around Randall's neck from behind. He clutched at it and gagged as he was dragged to the rear of the tomato cart. After he managed to turn around, he saw a group of five or six of the black-armored warriors, one of them holding the end of the rope.

“He lies!” shouted the rope-holder. “A real magician would have escaped by now!”

“Kill him!” shouted Nichols. “I want him dead!”

“Ah, you want everybody dead,” muttered Gelder.

Randall, trying to keep from being strangled, was pulled out of the cart and thrown to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Yvonne being chained to the end of the line of prisoners. Out of the other corner of his eye he noticed the same thing happening to Jack and Toby. About twenty of the men in black armor remained behind, excluding the ones that had been hit by the machine and were moaning in pain.

“Leave him alone!” said Bug, flying into the crowd of men. One of them quickly reached up and plucked Bug out of the air.

“I'll put it with the other insects,” he said.

Nichols walked around the cart. “Get him to his feet!”

Randall was yanked to a standing position. “I get one more warning, right?”

“The warnings have ended,” said Nichols. He raised his sword again. “Okay, which eye should I gouge out first?”

One of the men raised his hand. “The right! The right! Ooh! Ooh! Please do the right!”

Gelder glanced over his shoulder. “Did you guys hear something? Like an approaching group of marauders?”

Everyone stopped and listened. There was definitely a large number of footsteps approaching. “Who could it be?” asked one of the men.

Then the group, thirty strong, came into view at the other end of the street, running at top speed. “Oh no,” whispered Nichols. “Not them.”

“We are the League of Waldos!” the leader shouted as they continued rushing forward. “We are here to...” The leader trailed off, and quit running. The others did as well. “Where are you taking those people?”

“They are prisoners of the Dark One!” Nichols announced.

“Well, we're on a mission of destruction from King Irving of Rainey, who outranks your Dark One. So bring those people back and let us get to work!”

“We were here first,” said Nichols.

“First doesn't mean anything! Did Sir Frey of Grabien get credit for discovering the Isles of Paradise, just because he was there first? No, it was Sir Ronald of Burgin, who kicked his butt!”

“Wrong!” said Nichols. “Sir Ronald did
not
kick Sir Frey's butt! Sir Ronald never even made it to the real Isles of Paradise—he actually visited the Sinking Isles, which were already inhabited, and tried to tell everyone he'd found the Isles of Paradise and that he'd taken Sir Frey out in three rounds. The writers of the history books were prejudiced against Sir Frey because he was an albino, which is why we have this distorted view of history now!”

“Attack!” the League of Waldos leader shouted.

“React!” Nichols shouted.

The two groups of warriors rushed towards each other. Randall, now without anyone watching him, began running off after the line of prisoners to save his friends.

BEING SURE to keep out of sight, Randall followed the prisoners as they were marched across the countryside by the warriors. One of the warriors walked up and down the line, leading them in a chant.

“We are slaves of the Dark One!” he said in rhythm.

“We are slaves of the Dark One!” the prisoners repeated.

“The Dark One is number one!”

“The Dark One is number one!”

It went on like that for hours. Randall kept waiting for an opportunity to perform a daring rescue, but there was never an opening, and he was unable to think of something clever to shout at the warriors just before freeing the prisoners. The best he could come up with was “Hey, you warriors—watch this!” which seemed inadequate.

Then they approached the dark tower, which was dark enough to pose a serious safety hazard. It was at the top of a poorly-lit mountain lacking even guardrails. The prisoners were led up the mountain path, and through a tunnel labeled “Prisoner Entrance: Please Watch Your Head.” Realizing that the tunnel's gate was going to be closed after the last prisoner passed through, Randall waited for the nearby warrior to look away, then hurriedly moved into position directly behind Yvonne, Jack, and Toby.

“Take my hand so they'll think I'm chained to you,” he whispered to Toby, who did so.

The nearby warrior glanced at Randall and did a double-take. “Where did you come from?”

“Not you too!” Randall wailed. “Nobody ever notices me! It's like nobody even knows I exist! I sat behind Raven Goingback for two years in reading class and she never once acknowledged my presence! What's wrong with me? Somebody please say what's wrong with me so I can change!”

“Ah, shut up,” said the warrior. “She was probably just ignoring you.”

They passed through the mouth of the tunnel, and the gates were slammed shut behind them. They continued to march down the winding tunnel, as the chanting warrior added a third verse.

“He's number one, he's number one!” he chanted.

“He's number one, he's number one!” the prisoners repeated.

“I can't believe you risked your life for us!” Yvonne said. “You're a true hero!”

“Well, let's not get carried away,” said Jack. “I'd be willing to call him brave, but to be a hero he needs to actually save somebody.”

“Okay, so he's a martyr,” said Yvonne. “That's almost as good.”

“Depends on how prolonged his death is.”

“I'm not here to be a martyr!” Randall snapped. “Believe me, it won't take much for me to make like a donkey carrier and haul ass!”

“Uh, Randall,” said Jack. “Do me a favor. Next time you feel the urge to say something like ‘make like a donkey carrier and haul ass,’ count to ten first. Slowly.”

“Sorry. I'm just going to play this by ear, okay?”

A fist pounded into Randall's ear, knocking him to the ground and revealing that he wasn't chained. “No talking!” said the warrior. “Hey ... what happened to your chains?”

“The other warrior said that I could leave them off because of my skin condition,” Randall explained.

“What have you got? Leprosy?”

“That's right. Talk about wrecking one's social standing!”

“I have a friend who's working on a cure for leprosy,” said the warrior. “He's going to finish it once he pulls himself together.”

“I think we have a winner for the Comment Most Suitable For Eternal Ignoring,” said Jack.

“Unfortunately,” said the warrior, grabbing Randall by the arm and pulling him to his feet, “I'm going to have to overrule my co-worker on this one.” He snapped a chain around Randall's wrist. “Just don't jiggle your hand around much and it should stay on.”

“Definitely a martyr now,” said Jack.

The prisoners filed into a huge ballroom, where they were seated on uncomfortable stone benches. There were convenient drink holders, but no drinks seemed to be forthcoming. In the front of the room was a stage, the backdrop of which was a giant picture of the Dark One giving the thumbs-up sign and the slogan “The Dark One: If You Had A Choice, He'd Be The Best One.”

After a few anticipatory moments, one of the warriors removed his helmet and walked up onto the stage. “Down in front!” a voice cried out.

“Ooh, a nice crowd tonight,” said the warrior, peering out into the audience. “How many of you are from out of town? Ha-ha, just kidding, all of you are, of course.”

“I'm not,” said one of the prisoners in the second row. “I live two blocks away, but I was in Warfield visiting my mother.”

“And this serves you right for coming to see me so rarely,” said the old woman next to him. “Maybe if you'd stopped by more than once every couple years this wouldn't have happened.”

“Fight! Fight!” shouted another prisoner.

“No fights, please,” said the warrior on the stage. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Bamberg, your host for this educational and hopefully entertaining evening.”

The prisoners tried to applaud, but there wasn't enough slack on their chains.