The Redhaired Herring

He'd hypnotize me if I gave him the time. I put the bamboo tube to my lips and blew the contents in his face. The djinn sneezed, then his eyelids drooped and he yawned. He weaved, placed a hand on the floor to steady himself, but miraculously and soon he toppled forward. I rolled to the side to not get trapped under his body. When I got back on my feet he curled up like a baby napping on the rug. By the time I ransacked the jewelry box he snored like an old man. I'd mixed the powdered draught myself under the critical eyes of Franklin and Solomon, from the same genus as the blackflower, a potion of silken dust that caused beings like djinns and genies to sleep.

We'd paid to know the wily Sharak-Fauz's secrets, knew in advance he'd have a magical guardian minding his amulet.

In my hand I held the Onyx and Amethyst object the djinn stationed by the jewelry box was assigned to protect. I lost no time popping it out of its amulet setting and into its indentation in the rectangular case to complete the power crescent. The thin leather box closed with a decisive snap. I felt no rush of power, no different than I had before I completed the grid. Solomon had not been able to tell if I'd be affected physically, psychically, or supernaturally, he didn't know. It might mean the grid wasn't functioning, or it might not. We waged war with an unknown quantity for a weapon.

If I felt anything I felt like a great deal of time had elapsed. I was about to consult my watch when someone or something entered the room, the creak of the opening door warned me. I whirled. In the doorway stood an Amazon of a woman. In the flickering obscure light her skin appeared bronzed and leathery in the dancing shadows. A Mohawk of hair erected like stiff brush bristles from her otherwise shaven head, her nipples of her large breasts pierced with gold bars. She wore nothing except a pair of leather panties. In her fists she grasped a battleaxe she swung like a beserker. She chopped up the bed and the dresser and a lot of other furniture besides while I ducked the whistling arcs of her slashes.

I attempted chanting a spell while avoiding the edge of her axe. Easier said than done, I bit off the words lunging about. The flat of her blade smacked against my chest sending me flying halfway across the room. I landed on top of a pile of kindling, thankful not to be dead, hurt or unconscious. The insane crazy bitch leaped through the air at me, flying without touching the ground. I couldn't move, but intently muttered the spell I'd started. The airborne Amazon furiously swung her axe at my head with me powerless to do anything except to keep chanting. I finished the remainder of the spell a second before she rung the curtain down on me. The axe blade came to an abrupt stop, so did she, frozen in mid-air as if by magic. And indeed magic it was too, magic from the combination of power sources. It had to be! I've cast that same shielding spell fifty times without the spectacular results it produced then.

Solomon had said the grid would take a few minutes to fully commingle into the power crescent.

My opponent was surely a beserker demon. Although I had her suspended in the air motionless she was a long way from being subdued. I am not the only one capable of casting a spell in Needle City and her mouth worked as she did some chanting of her own. Words grated out of her like metal plates rubbing together in a language I did not understand. I cast another spell to deflect hers. An electric hiss crackled in the air accompanied by a brief rain of sparks.

Hoping the place wouldn't go up in flames I laid among the splinters playing spell and counterspell with the unmoving demon above me. If I made a mistake the axe would finish its stroke and divide my head like a melon. We traded spells back and forth for an inordinate amount of time, beads of sweat trickled across my face as it wore on. In spite of the grueling ordeal I felt strength roiling through my muscles and into my soul, I wasn't tiring, I was getting stronger. The power exhilarated me, made me higher than I've ever been.

After much back and forth I remembered a banishment spell I thought I'd forgotten. I used it on the Amazon. An explosion of bright light illuminated her bronze limbs and crimson Mohawk as she went screaming back into demon Hell. My arms collapsed by my sides, my whole body limp but not from lack of strength. I could move now. I basked in an afterglow of sorts, had I not work to do I could have gone to sleep well satiated.

How long had she and I fought? I'd been checking my watch when she first entered the room. When I looked it startled me to learn our mental war lasted nearly three hours. I jumped to my feet; I could relax later. Now that I had what I came for I needed to secure the scene in preparation for the return of Sharak-Fauz. On the landing I heard screams from downstairs.

I hurried recklessly through the bizarre house, some rooms swimming with mist, others with temperatures ranging from cold to hot, drastic changes in atmospheric pressure, plays of light. The cries grew louder, became loudest outside a door in the kitchen. I didn't know where it led but turned the knob anyway. Ahead of me a flight of stairs descended into the hazy torchlight from the room at the bottom, a basement or dungeon. A bright crack followed by the shriek of a girl reverberated up the stair.

"This is what you get, you young tramp, for killing one of my hellhounds," snarled a man's voice.

"Your hellhound was about to rip my throat out," sobbed the girl.

"Sajja tells me you were trespassing. Did you come to steal, my pretty little thief?"

"No," the girl groaned, drawing out the word.

I eased down the stairs one at a time praying they wouldn't creak like the door to the room where I'd encountered the djinn and the demon. I recognized the two voices. The man was, of course, Sharak-Fauz. I wondered how Diana Duffy-Maguire knew where to find his mansion. When I got in a position to peek over the banister I saw her. Diana had been stripped naked and tied over a trestle, her arse as red as her hair. Sharak-Fauz, also unclothed and a grotesque sight to top it off, stood behind her holding a birch cane in one hand and his member swollen in his other. He'd not anointed it yet from the looks of things but I got the distinct impression the caning had ended and Sharak-Fauz was about to get his money's worth for the Starch he'd scored from Jack the Lad.

I slipped down a couple more steps in order to better see the other man down there, the one addressed as Sajja. He appeared to be a carbon copy of the spearman I'd killed in the front yard. In his hand he held Diana's knife.

He was saying: "This is what she used on the hellhound, your corpulence."

"Crikey, that's a bloody big pigsticker," commented the fat man.

"It was meant for your heart, not the hound's!" Diana sneered defiantly.

In the face of adversity it pleased me to hear the old Duffy-Maguire temper alive and well. The fiesty girl may have taken a beating, but her spirit hadn't. I'd best get down there before her mouth got her bottom into any more trouble.

I drew the old revolver I'd appropriated, launched myself feet first across the top of the banister. When I landed Sajja whipped around with a clatter of chain mail. He instantaneously assessed me as an enemy and raised Diana's knife to throw. I fired a shot and his knees buckled under him. Sajja fell forward, probably deceased, his helmet crashing across the stone.

I already mumbled an incantation knowing Sharak-Fauz would not give in without a fight. He turned to face me, ludicrous and revolting in his nakedness. I ripped off the gel-mask, dropped it on the ground.

"James Shea!" he boomed. "You're not supposed to be in the city, you were exiled."

"Get me out of here, Jimmy," squawled Diana.

I ignored them both, building the spell under my breath. He saw what I had in mind and uttered a counterspell. We matched wits for quite a while, but nowhere near as long as I had with his demon. She had been alert and on the offensive, Sharak-Fauz I'd caught with his pants down relatively unprepared. But sparks flew and electricity buzzed and I knew moments of grim doubt in spite of possessing the power crescent.

At one point in our contest of wills I overheard Diana uttering an incantation herself. Sharak-Fauz and I currently engaged in a purely isometric contest with metaphysical shields, the casual observer might think we merely stood and stared at each other. Standing there straining against him I witnessed Diana's knife worm itself out from under Sajja and slither and scrape across the stone floor. Both of us watched the animated blade return to its owner's hand. She immediately began sawing at her bonds. Once she cut herself loose she'd stick her knife in Sharak-Fauz. I couldn't let her kill him. I redoubled my willpower to dominate him, drawing dizzying strength and stamina from the grid.

Diana succeeded in freeing herself. She let out a war whoop as she scampered into position and hefted the knife. Sharak-Fauz's chest was closer to Diana than the painting had been in my lodgings, closer than the footpad in the alleyway.

Her throw could not miss.

Sharak-Fauz must have sensed impending doom.

He funneled a splinter of his attention away from me, lifted a casual hand toward Diana. Bending his fingers as if he gripped an invisible baseball he cast it in her direction, but what he was casting was a spell. The instant Diana hurled her knife at his heart she became encased inside a ball resembling a giant soap bubble. Her flung weapon ricocheted off the clear thin wall and landed at her feet. She tried to walk but the bubble didn't roll around like a ball, it stayed in place. She punched impotently against the membranous barrier, swearing fluently in Irish.

The sliver of attention Sharak-Fauz paid Diana proved to be his downfall. I finally managed to get through the interstices of the magical net woven around him. The power crescent sapped his strength and dulled his magic. Still grossly erect he wobbled on his feet like a punch drunk boxer, defeated.

I used a levitation spell on him so I could float him around like a balloon, he was too heavy to carry up a flight of stairs. Sharak-Fauz drifted upwards until the ceiling blocked further ascent. Then both Diana and he cursed.

Diana cried, "Get me out of this thing!"

Sharak-Fauz voiced a series of unpleasantries from above, pressed against the rafters.

I went over to Diana, touched my fingertips against hers with the clear barrier between them.

"Help me!" the redhead croaked repeatedly. While thinking about what spell would set her free it became necessary to invoke a spell of silence on the fat man to shut him up. His wails outnumbered Diana's.

I asked her, "How did you get here?"

"What are you doing with all those panties in your coat?"

"I'd say you've got better things to concern yourself with at the moment."

"Can't you utter some magic words and burst this bubble?"

"I would if I could, gimme a bloody minute. And speaking of magic words, is that an enchanted knife that returns to its bearer when called or did your granny teach you a telekinesis spell?"

"She taught me a lot of things!"

"Shame on her for not teaching you to keep your distance from magicians like Sharak-Fauz. Your meddling could've got you killed instead of just getting your bottom warmed."

"Quit looking at me. Get my clothes, get me out of this!"

"You're a magician too, got any ideas?"

"I'm not a magician like you are, you let me believe you were in the thieves' Guild."

"If I could have a moment's quiet please, I need to think."

I also needed to get Sharak-Fauz to the coach. The fat man had places to be and people to meet. My watch read one thirty in the morning. I had to take care of Sharak-Fauz before seeing to Diana's troubles. My battle was only half-won.

I glanced around, the place smelled weird, almost sickening. Taking my pencil flash out of my pocket I investigated further into the darker recesses of the big room.

Diana yowled, "Hey, hey, where are you going, what about me?"

I discovered barred holding cells in the rock of the wall, like caves with bars, putrid with waste, blackened human bones and a skull or two scattered on the ground and, in the very back, a furnace. I found nothing alive, a dungeon of the dead. Sharak-Fauz, you sick bastard! My bottle went and I hastened back to Diana in the bubble and Sharak-Fauz on the ceiling. She had been prodding at the clear barrier with the point of her knife, she looked at me and started to say something but saw the disgust on my face.

Without a word to her I navigated the floating man up the stairs, through the house and out the front door. In the yard a pair of hellhounds attacked on the way to the gate. They came at me in single file one at a time. I had my flash in my left hand and the revolver in my right. With no compunction I put a bullet in each of the hounds' skulls.

On the other side of the wall hooves clopped on the cobbled street. I poked my head out the gate and saw Terence reining in the horses. The fat man hovered overhead like a blimp remote controlled from land. I navigated him back toward the ground but not all the way. Jonesy and Franklin would appreciate his weightlessness when they wrestled him into the coach. Terence watched me directing the human dirigible.

He said, "We've been concerned, doctor, it's been more than four hours."

"I got delayed. Can you send another coach back for me? I've got unfinished business in the fat man's house, I'll join you in about half an hour."

"I can arrange it, sir. Take about ten minutes."

"That'll be fine."

I thanked him and conscripted old Solomon into service. He wouldn't fit in the coach with Jonesy and Franklin anyway after they loaded Sharak-Fauz aboard. We raced back to the house. I had the revolver drawn but no creatures threatened us outside, maybe there'd only been the three dogs.

I instructed Solomon, "Don't look at any of the paintings or stuff on the shelves. Especially don't open any drawers, jars or doors. Start tearing down the draperies and pile them in mounds around the walls of the first floor."

"What are you gonna do, set a fire?"

"We're burning this gruesome house of magic to the ground," I said, "But don't strike a single match before I get back."

I ran to the kitchen and down the stairs to check on the poor trapped Diana. She wasn't trapped anymore.

Poor Diana was gone.

**********

I got back to the Crooked Candle Inn an hour after dawn. A line of black smoke dissipated into the sky above the spires of Needle City. There'd been quite a fire last night, five alarm. No one attended to the front desk but I had the key and went up the stairs. I was a little surprised to find my door unlocked.

Diana wore a peasant blouse and a long wool skirt. She sat in the chair brushing her red tresses in the mirror. I was glad to see her, very glad she wasn't the demon I'd mistaken her for.

I said, "Didn't expect to find you here."

Big tolerant smile. "What have you got to say for yourself?"

Not knowing how to answer, what she expected as an answer, I asked, "How did you get out of the bubble?"

She set down the brush. "I kept digging at it with my knife and burst it finally."

I flopped down on the bed bone tired and flipped my hat onto the quilt. "Why didn't you wait around?"

"You had things to do, obviously busy. I knew you would turn up here eventually."

"How did you know where to find Sharak-Fauz's house?"

"Easy, I followed you."

"You did. When? In the coach?"

She smiled widely, I liked the light spray of freckles across her nose. "When you glimpsed me among the crowd at the Slave Fairs you tried to catch up with me."

"Did I now?" I asked. But I had, when I left the Oracle.

"But I circled around behind you. You seemed preoccupied after I gave you the slip, weren't paying attention in back of you. I trailed you to the coach. When the horses trotted off, I caught it before it got up to speed and hitched a ride. I saw we were going to Needle City so I climbed into the undercarriage. The gate guards never noticed me, neither did you. Then you went over a wall and I dropped to the ground when the coach got out of sight and scaled a different wall."

"The man in the house said you killed a hellhound?"

"Talk about scary, I almost wet myself when that monster charged across the grounds."

"You diverted the attention off me by roaming around in the yard. What about the other creatures? I saw more dogs."

"The man you shot called them off, he took me downstairs and we waited till Sharak-Fauz got home. He was angry, hadn't found any slave girls he fancied."

"No slave girl will ever cower in terror of Sharak-Fauz again."

"Sounds like somebody had a busy night. What did you do with him?"

"Transported him to an all-night session of the Congress. To make a long story short he's serving a life sentence, imprisoned in the catacombs beneath Sodom City."

"How'd that happen?" she asked.

"Through the aid of my testimony, and a panel of others', the Congress circumvented the Court and convicted him of crimes against humanity. I testified about the furnace and the bones in his dungeon and more. Others had similar tales to tell. The coppers also had evidence Sharak-Fauz conducted experiments on more than just slave girls. The magistrates locked him up. A man can do whatever he wants to with his property in Sodom just so long as he leaves the local citizenry alone."

"He was murdering citizens?" she gasped. "And slave girls?"

"And plenty more you don't want to know."

She stood up and smoothed her skirt. "That creep deserves the justice he got."

"I got some justice out of the deal too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I won't have to wear fake beards and masks anymore when I travel to and from Sodom City. The Congress voided my sentence of exile. Sharak-Fauz engineered my exile through the Congress with false evidence presented against me. I've been working with the magic underground for years to unseat him from power. Tonight we succeeded at long last. Just an hour ago the exile judgment against Dr. James Shea, D.O.M., was overturned in the House. I'll be reinstated at full ranking in the Court in the next ten days."

Diana congratulated me and asked: "You are a high-ranking magician, aren't you? A sorcerer?"

I nodded and stood back up. "Well, I guess I'd better move on, I just came by to get a few things," I said. "Keep the room if you like, it's paid for for several more days. Sorry I spoiled your trip."

"Everything worked out in the end, Sharak-Fauz will die a thousand deaths in the catacombs rather than just the one I planned to mete out."

"Still, I misrepresented myself to you the whole time."

"You only thought you did, Jimmy."

"Huh?"

"The second you peeled off the fake beard I recognized you as Dr. James Shea. Up till then I suspected it."

"You did?"

"My grandmother had a photograph of you. Well, actually you and three other men, one of them Sharak-Fauz. She was in the picture too, she told me the five of you were the most powerful sorcerers in the world when I was a little girl. I never forgot. The picture's in my valise. You had to know her, her name was Cassandra Duffy-Maguire."

"I remember the day the photo was taken, so were quite a few others. Your granny was but one of dozens of members of the high Court, Cassandra was only a nodding acquaintance of mine I'm afraid. Like me she used a host of pseudonyms when she wove her magic, I never knew her as Duffy-Maguire. Shame I hadn't got to know her better." I put on my hat.

"Are you leaving? What's the rush?" Diana asked, agitated.

"I'd best be off."