The Mongolian Wizard Stories (online stories 1-7) Read online

  But Sir Toby showed none. “I am searching for my men. Forty went into the wainscoting and not a one has come out. Something terrible has happened here in the darkness and I fear it was a massacre.”

  “A massacre . . . of toy soldiers?”

  “They are not toys,” Sir Toby said grimly, “but living, thinking men like you and me. Those you saw are mercenaries from a recently-discovered island nation in the Pacific Ocean. They—” Sir Toby paused. “It would help if I knew how much you already know.”

  “I know that you are in a very suspicious position and I am all but certain that you are a spy—for whom I cannot say. Allow me to assure you that the diplomatic immunity you enjoy upstairs will not of necessity protect you here, where there are no witnesses.”

  “You are a hard and suspicious man, kapitänleutnant, and I wish I had a dozen like you working for me. Yes, I am a spy, in the service of His Majesty King Oberon VII, and, yes, I was placing agents in the building to determine the disposition of the various powers represented here. Your nation and mine both recognize the threat posed by the Mongolian Wizard and thus it is but prudent for us to do all we can to promote an alliance of the great houses of Europe. I make no apologies for a deed that requires none.”

  Geri made a low noise in the back of his throat. Careful to keep his outward attention focused on the English spy, Ritter followed the wolf’s thoughts and then said, “It seems that at least part of your story is true. My partner scents small corpses—many of them—two rooms further in.”

  * * *

  When Sir Toby saw the tiny bodies scattered about the floor, he hurried to them and, kneeling, searched anxiously for any sign of life. “Dead, all of them!” he moaned. “Yet there’s not a mark on anyone. What can have caused this horror?”

  Meanwhile, Ritter followed a foul stench to the foot of a crate that had been broken open and, among its splintered slats, found something that looked like the bedraggled corpse of a rooster tangled up with a dead adder. He nudged the thing over with his toe, and lit a match so he could examine it. His blood ran cold.

  It was a basilisk.

  “I’ve found the cause of the massacre,” he said. “Dead, thank God.”

  Sir Toby brought his candle close. “Its breast is riddled with bullet-holes. Dying though they were from its poison, my men brought the monster down.” He wiped a tear from his eye. Then, “The basilisk is a desert creature. How in the world did one wind up here?”

  “They released it. For some reason they broke into this crate and it was waiting inside.” Ritter put his hands into the breach and began pulling slats free. Most of the crate’s interior was empty—living space for the guardian basilisk, obviously—but at its center was a smaller box, perhaps three feet across, made of teak. Its surface was richly carved in geometric patterns and stylized flames. He lifted the lid and the scents of cinnamon, spikenard, and myrrh wafted forth. Inside the box, nestled among dried spices, was something smooth and golden and round.

  It glowed in the darkness.

  Sir Toby grabbed Ritter from behind and pulled him away from the thing. “Don’t touch it!” he cried. “It’s a thousand times more lethal than the basilisk ever was.”

  “What is it?” Ritter said wonderingly.

  “A phoenix egg.”

  * * *

  The conferees did not much like being evacuated, of course. But Ritter knew his authority and was prepared to act on it. He set one of his men to hammering on the alarm gong and others to emptying out the Schloss floor by floor. “Don’t be afraid to shoot anyone who disobeys you,” he said, knowing that a soldier with such orders would present himself in such a way as to make the action unnecessary. To the building-master, he said, “Have the ostlers get the horses into harness and line up every carriage you have out front. Lords and wizards go first, naturally, but I want every human being down to the meanest servant out of here by midnight.”

  “But where will they go?” the man demanded.

  Ritter glanced at Sir Toby. “The village at the foot of the mountain ought to be far enough,” the wizard said.

  “Send them to Plattergarten. We can requisition space for them when we get there. Nobody is to wait on luggage or to take more than they can easily carry. When you run out of carriages, send people down the road on foot. My soldiers will go last and rest assured they will not be easy on anyone who tries to stay.” A distressed nobleman came running up and he turned to face the man. “Yes, uncle?”

  “What madness is this? You are making enemies of half the wizards on the continent!”

  “Better that they should hate me than that they should die.” Ritter crooked a finger and one of his men stepped forward. “See the margrave to his carriage and make certain that his is the first to leave.”

  When the margrave had been led away, Ritter murmured, “Do you think we can get all of them safely away?”

  “Somebody brought the phoenix egg here, and that someone can only have been one of the visiting wizards. Whoever it was, you may be sure, is high in the Mongolian Wizard’s trust. He would not be somebody to be lightly discarded. Yet all the delegates are still on the mountain. That, and the tradition that says that the phoenix is invariably reborn at dawn, tell me we have time enough and some to spare.”

  “Very good,” Ritter said. “Things seem to be well underway here. Let’s see if we can catch our saboteur.”

  * * *

  It was twilight by the time the first carriage rumbled down the mountain. Standing at the gatehouse by the entrance to the grounds, Ritter saw his uncle’s face, white and disapproving as a ghost’s, through its window. “I hope I have not just disinherited myself,” he remarked. Though, in fact, the prospect did not bother him one whit. He was now convinced that war was coming, and in time of war there was always work for a soldier.

  “I, meanwhile, hope that your furry friend is as good as you say.” Sir Toby stood, hands in pockets, scowling, with his greatcoat flapping slightly in the chill breeze.

  “Cinnamon, spikenard, and myrrh are distinctive odors. Geri sensed the combination more than once over the past three days, but I thought it merely a whiff of perfume worn by one of the ladies. Our saboteur has traces of those spices on his hands and does not know it. We shall sniff him out, never fear.”

  One by one, the carriages paused at the gatehouse, then trundled down the road from Schloss Greiffenhorst and disappeared into darkness. Ritter stamped his feet and blew on his hands to keep warm. Occasionally a runner came, bearing news or requesting instructions. But Geri, though he dutifully sniffed at each conveyance, discovered nothing.

  Until Madame de Lafontaine’s carriage stopped and the wolf let out a mental howl so loud that Ritter was almost surprised when the lady herself showed no signs of hearing it. “If you would please step out of the carriage, milady,” he said. “This is only a formality.”

  She alit. “All this fuss, simply to meet me?” Madame de Lafontaine said in an amused tone. Coquettishly, she pointed her fan toward his chest.

  Without warning, Geri leaped, snarling, at the woman. Ritter thrust himself into the wolf’s mind, merging identity with it, all but becoming the wolf, trying to bring him under control. But before he could, a puff of smoke appeared at the tip of the fan. Agonizing pain washed through him as a bullet penetrated Geri’s brain.

  The wolf, though dead or dying, was carried onward by momentum, and his body knocked over Madame de Lafontaine. Clutching his own head, Ritter also fell to the ground.

  It was from a prone position that, uncomprehending, he saw Sir Toby walk toward the fallen woman, pistol in hand. Her eyes widened in shock as he pointed it at her.

  Sir Toby fired.

  In an instant, Madame de Lafontaine’s appearance changed. Gone was the beautiful young Frenchwoman, replaced not by an older version of herself but by an equally young woman with short black hair and sharp features—a glamour-wielder, like Madame de Lafontaine, but in the service of a different master. The fan she held w
as now revealed to be a pistol.

  All this Ritter saw in the instant before he passed out.

  * * *

  At sunrise, the mountaintop erupted in fire and ceased to be. Everyone in the village below, standing in the streets to watch, threw up their arms to block the sight and turned away from its fury. When Ritter could see again, there was a luminous cloud of smoke and ash rising from what had been Schloss Greiffenhorst. Coalescing in the heart of the fire, a mighty firebird slowly took form. It started to move its tremendous wings even before they were complete. Then, over the course of several minutes, it broke free of the rising cloud and began the long flight back to its ancestral homelands in the East.

  “A terrifying sight,” Ritter said at last.

  “There are worse to come,” Sir Toby replied. “I arrived at the conference late because, by a special dispensation of your Emperor Rupert, I had arranged an interview with the Wittenberg Sibyl. She foresees cities destroyed, farmlands blasted, the slaughter of millions in a pointless and genocidal war. This she told me in great and horrifying detail.”

  “But surely that is only a possible future,” Ritter said. “As I understand it, the Sibyl always offers two contradictory predictions, one much darker than the other.”

  “You don’t understand. What I told you was the good outcome. The one where, after terrible suffering, the Mongolian Wizard and his evil empire are defeated. The alternative—well, I do not care to speak of the alternative.”

  They stood in silence for a time, watching the cloud over the mountain rise and then spread, like a tremendous mushroom. At last Sir Toby said, “I am sorry your wolf died.”

  “Geri was a soldier, like me. When one is a soldier, it is occasionally one’s duty to die.”

  “I understand that necessity, but I still regret each death. Today, before I sleep, I must write to the families of forty soldiers, informing them of their loved one’s heroism—and of his death. Believe me, I understand your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “They tell me you have a second wolf, almost fully trained. How long before he is fit for service?”

  “Freki should be ready in three weeks. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re working for me now.”

  Ritter turned to face the English wizard. “Eh?”

  “I intend to ask your uncle to arrange for your government to lend you to me under extended leave. After all this—” Sir Toby gestured up at what had been the mountaintop “—I don’t see him refusing me much of anything.”

  “But . . . why me?”

  “You’re smart, you’re skeptical, and with a little encouragement I believe you could be ruthless. Also, I’ve recently lost one of my best agents. I have an opening.” Sir Toby placed a hand on Ritter’s shoulder and squeezed briefly. “Welcome to the British Secret Service, son. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have letters to write.”

  Ritter watched the enormous man walk away and, as he did, could not help but wonder.

  There was only one individual who would have benefited from the phoenix’s birth while the conference was in full session—the Mongolian Wizard. The act would have killed half the leadership of lands he was sure to invade soon. Seen that way, the attempted sabotage had backfired. Those same lords and wizards who could not get along with each other would now assuredly set aside their differences to form a cohesive alliance against the common enemy whose ruthlessness had just been so vividly demonstrated.

  However . . .

  However, looked at another way, as an act of sabotage that was intended to fail, suspicion must necessarily fall a little closer to home.

  Though the sun had risen, the morning was still bitter cold. A wind blew up and went right through his clothing, chilling him to the bone. Sir Toby had said that his best agent had died recently. Ritter could not help thinking of the look of shock on the face of the glamour-wielder when Sir Toby shot her. Shock, possibly, at his betrayal? Her body had been left on the mountaintop. There could be no identifying it now. No way that Ritter could ever know if his dark supposition were true.

  Yet, even if it were, could he entirely condemn his new master for an act whose repercussions were surely for the good? Forty-one deaths weighed against millions. Sir Toby valued tough-mindedness above all things. To him, that was the kind of calculation that solved itself.

  Dark days were ahead, and he was going to be a part of them. Ritter fervently hoped he would never reach the point where such a sacrifice would seem to him a sensible thing.

  But he rather suspected that he would.

  The Fire Gown

  The armies of the Mongolian Wizard had just crossed into Poland when Sir Tobias Gracchus Willoughby-Quirke arrived at Buckingham, with attaché and wolf in tow. Entering the palace with uncharacteristic briskness, he was confronted by the sight of servants hurrying every which way in a manner closely resembling panic. He and his attaché exchanged glances. Had the news they had come to relay somehow preceded them?

  In that instant of uncertainty, the Lord Chamberlain, a lean man with a beak like a crow’s, cried, “Tobias! Thank heavens you’re here.” Seizing Sir Toby’s arm, the Earl of Beckford leaned close and murmured, “Queen Titania is dead.” After the briefest pause to let the news sink in, he continued: “Spontaneous combustion, apparently. In her bedchamber, not an hour ago. I’m no wizard, but it looks damnably suspicious to me. This is your sort of thing, so I’m counting on you to clear it up. Establish what happened and settle the matter once and for all.”

  Coming on this of all days, the queen’s death could not possibly be coincidental. But Sir Toby merely said, “Ordinarily, I would be anxious to help. But my mission today is too urgent for even tragedy to delay. I must see the king immediately.”

  “Yes, yes, I am sure your business is vitally important. But if King Oberon is unwilling to see you—what then? The poor fellow is practically comatose with shock and grief and will surely remain so until the circumstances of Titania’s death have been resolved.”

  Sir Toby’s face, customarily bland and amiable, twisted unhappily. “Then take me to the queen’s chambers immediately.”

  The soldiers standing guard before the queen’s door parted at their approach. Inside, Sir Toby discovered a perfect circle of black where the oriental carpet had been burned to cinder and a corresponding, though softer-edged, circle of soot on the ceiling above. The smell of charred human flesh lingered in the air.

  The queen must have gone up like a flare.

  Sir Toby looked around the room, so clean and tidy in all aspects save for the black nullity in its center. Even the carpet was bright where it was not actually destroyed. “Where is the body?”

  “It was taken to the chapel,” Lord Beckford said.

  “What? This is the scene of a crime! What idiot—?”

  The Lord Chamberlain threw Sir Toby the sort of look he normally reserved for bunglers or political archrivals. “King Oberon himself gave the order, of course. Which was, naturally, instantly obeyed. He has locked himself in the chapel with the cindered remains of his wife, and left instructions not to be disturbed under any circumstances.”

  Grimacing, Sir Toby pinched the flesh between his eyes. Then he said, “Ritter? Tell me what you observe.”

  * * *

  Franz-Karl Ritter, late of the Werewolf Corps but still partnered with his wolf Freki, gazed about the queen’s bedchamber with an interest natural to a young man who knew he was unlikely ever to be in such a place again. “There don’t seem to be any closets,” he commented.

  The grey-haired servant who had trailed the Lord Chamberlain as silently and ignoredly as Ritter had trailed Sir Toby said in a tone of mild reproof, “The queen’s clothing is brought in by her dresser. Therefore she does not require closets.”

  Ritter spun on his heel. “The queen has a dresser? Then she must have been present when the Feuerbrunst, the—damn this language! How do you say it? The—”

  “Conflagration,” Sir Toby said. “
You are right, she must be questioned. Mr. Vestey, please send for Lady Anne at once.”

  “But she—”

  “Now, Mr. Vestey.”

  Meanwhile, Ritter slid into Freki’s mind and sent the beast padding softly about the perimeter of the room. His sensorium was flooded with a wolfish richness of smell. It was dominated by the stench of death, of course, but there were other odors as well: perfumes, poudre de riz, a rose petal–scented chemical used to clean the carpet, linen sheets with just a hint of the queen’s scent upon them (which was so common a thing in his investigations that Ritter had no difficulty ignoring it), satin comforters, Irish lace, and here and there a small flake of soot that had floated free of the queen’s immolation. Plus . . . “Give me a hand moving the bed away from the wall,” Ritter commanded.

  Without a murmur of protest, Sir Toby and Lord Beckford obeyed. Grunting, they three wrestled the massive piece of furniture outward.

  Ritter whipped out a pair of white gloves and donned them. Then, stooping, he retrieved a small charred scrap of red cloth. “Aha! Here is the weapon—the dress itself. The cloth is woven from a thread made up of salamander’s hair.”

  “Salamander? A fire sprite, you mean. Are you certain?”

  “If you had the nose of a wolf, you would not doubt it. There is nothing that smells remotely like it.” Ritter drew a square of paper from his pocket and began folding it into an envelope for the cloth remnant. “Now if only we knew how it was ignited. Once set ablaze, of course, the human body will go up as a matter of course. Essential fat in a woman runs between eight to twelve percent of her body weight, which is easily enough to—” A woman appeared in the doorway and he withdrew from Freki’s mind.

  “Sir? You sent for me?” The woman who followed the saturnine Mr. Vestey into the room was of aristocratic rather than beautiful features. Her hands were freshly bandaged.

  Instantly, Sir Toby was all warmth and avuncular concern. “My dear Lady Anne! How terrible this experience must have been for you. Your poor hands! I trust that they have brought in a wizard from the College of Chirurgeons to place a healing spell upon them.”