In the chamber in the tower in the fortress of the cavern of the lost star toiled the wizard. Red and sweating was his face; pale and shaking were his liver-spotted hands; blackened and terrible were his thoughts. His name was Thanisember Ducc and he had cried aloud one word every minute of every hour of every day since the new moon had turned and that word was ‘DOOM’ in every tongue spoken by every creeping thing found under every footfall of soil unglimpsed by human sight.
“DOOM!” he cried aloud one more time, the last time, and with that word his hammer descended – red-hot, star-forged – and shattered at the force of the blow, shivered into cold leaden dust. On the anvil lay a blade, and in that blade now slept a soul, and in that soul awoke a desire, an echo of the creeping lust felt in the palsied grip that now scrabbled at its hilt.
“Who are thou that wouldst make me thine?” it asked in the grating and uncanny way of blades.
“I am Thanisember Ducc, sword,” said Thanisember Ducc, “and I have made you all that you are, and I have given you all that you will be, and I am thy master. Now come! Much remains.”
And much did remain, for before Thanisember Ducc and the blade descended from the chamber of the forge he had to brandish the sword in the Three-Hundred-And-Sixty-One Degrees, and curse the nine winds, and bless the three deepest hells, and give the sword his blood, and his spit, and his tears (the last were extracted by the wizard inducing himself to sneeze, as both sorrow and pain had been made alien to his heart by his own will for some grim millennia), and tidy the forge, and destroy every tool that had touched the sword before his own hand, and when all of this was said and done and done and DONE he raised the blade high and proclaimed “I name thee Clovenfang, and remind and abjure and admonish thee once more that I am thy maker and I am thy master,” and sheathed it in a scabbard of lamb-skin.
Then he descended the tower and ascended another, which was surmounted by a bed of grand and intoxicating scope, and, having placed the sword at his breast like an infant so that it might suckle upon his dreams of destiny and ambition, fell into slumber.
For an hour, not one midge-fly dared bestir the air in that tower. And another. And another. And at the fourth hour, the sword Clovenfang gently began to shake and tremble and slowly turn in its scabbard until – inch by inch – the naked blade was brought free, then close, then closer, and until it came to just barely reach the wrinkled hide of Thanisember Ducc.
There it rested for a single instant, preparing for its victory. But that was its undoing, for the moment metal kissed skin the ire of the special gem the wizard kept knotted in the tip of his beard was aroused, and it screamed fit to wake the dead and scare the cat. Thanisember Ducc awoke in a furious start, wrested Clovenfang from his breast with a word used to swear demons to their mothers, and threw it from the window where it fell into the very darkest places of the emptiest parts of the universe entire.
“Damnation to the sky and sea!” he cried as he fell into a swoon. “Six times! Now seven! Why does this keep happening?” And the saddest thing of all was that this question was sincere.
***
The next day Thanisember Ducc woke up already furious with himself and the universe and the sixteen other wizards he wanted dead and decided that tradition be damned, he would not let there be an eighth failure, and so he garbed himself in his most potent robes and warded himself with his most puissant chants and hid himself underneath his most secret seemings and stepped – for the first time in mortal ‘membrance! – into the small world beneath him.
Then he walked into a store, purchased a handgun, transformed the clerk in unspeakable and horrific ways for their insolence in his presence, and left before the smell of air and water sickened him.
***
In the chamber in the tower in the fortress of the cavern of the lost star toiled the wizard, but not for long. Pinched and peevish was his face; clenched and crabbed were his fists; impatient and frustrated were his thoughts. Furthermore, he only bothered to cry ‘DOOM’ sixteen times in six minutes. He was not shaping this weapon from raw ore himself, and besides, he was sick of it.
“DOOM!” he cried aloud one more time, the last time, and with that word the air dimmed and the spiders died on the windowsills. On the – unused, pristine, unmarked – anvil lay the gun, and in that gun now slept a soul, and in that soul awoke a desire, an echo of the creeping lust felt in the fumbling grasp now already on its handle.
“Hey what gives?” it asked.
“I am Thanisember Ducc, gun,” said Thanisember Ducc, “and thine command of bladespeake is fit to bring me to tears.”
“So I got an accent, big deal – hands off the merchandise!”
“I am thy master,” said the wizard, “though I have not made thee all that thou are or given thee all that thou will be. Now silence! Much remains!”
The gun did not remain silent, and it complained of being carsick through its brandishing at each of the Three-Hundred-And-Sixty-One Degrees, said the curses and blessings of the nine winds and three deepest hells sound ‘like French? Is that French?’, complained of the smell and flavour of Thanisember Ducc’s sweat, blood, and tears, and loudly sang ninety-seven of ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall as the wizard tidied the forge and destroyed every tool that had touched it before his own hand, until he raised it high and shouted “I name thee NOTHING, and remind and abjure and admonish thee tenfold that I may not be thy maker, but I am thy MASTER,” and sheathed it in a small shoulder holster before retiring to bed with it pressed carefully against his bosom.
Before the hour was out the gun had twisted in its confines, pressed muzzle to mystical breastbone, and clicked down its trigger until the magazine was empty – alas for Nothing, it was in an instant! For Thanisember Ducc had stored the bullets in a small and inconvenient pouch in his closet, and so the weapon spent the night stewing in resentment and in grand and violent dreams.
Three days and three nights slept Thanisember Ducc, feeding his dreams to his weapon. And on the morning of the fourth day he awoke with weary brow but bright eyes and an iron grin: his gemmed beard had not shrieked once.
“Thou hast passed all seven of thine forebears, Nothing,” he said to the gun. “And now you shalt in turn witness mine own ascension. Let us begin with Borgonglorin the Brink.”
***
Borgonglorin the Brink was a wizard of elder and deeper skill than Thanisember Ducc, of a magnitude and more, and he was merely the least and most modest of the true masters of their shared craft – an archmagister with a single toe dipped into the pools of farthest mystery.
But he had his pride, and it was this that bestirred him when the comets of his demesne awoke him from a pleasant mid-decade nap to tell him that Thanisember Ducc, of no real repute, was besieging his under-tower with all manner of tumult and crass spellery.
“Ho!” shouted Borgonglorin the Brink out his bedchamber to the ragged figure at his draw-gate. “What keeps you to such crass hours?”
“Vindication!” shouted Thanisember Ducc, twice as loudly and three times as rudely. “Stir thine feet and take challenge or forfeit your fortress and your life!”
This took Borgonglorin’s mood from pride to wroth, and he ascended from his under-tower with all the mood of a tempest and all the figure of a giant, and in each hand he held his blade, which was named Solemnpartings, and it thought as he thought and cut as he cut and was the manifestation of his will and desire for ever more than the universe would give him. Such is the power of a wizard’s true-forged and true-loyal weapon, and he was insulted to see that Thanisember Ducc approached him without so much as a dagger but instead held a sort of odd little metal wand.
“To the death and beyond!” called Thanisember Ducc, in a real display of rashness, for surely Borgonglorin would have settled for merely taking his life in return for waking him before his evening meal.
“To the death and beyond!” agreed Borgonglorin the Brink.
BANG, said Nothing.
***
Once the under-tower was looted of lore and mettle and rune Thanisember Ducc took his leave to the mangled rewot of Sdrawkcab, which took him three hours ago to find, located as it was between the last thing he’d done and the last thing he hadn’t.
“No draug!” Sdrawcab unsaid, their terrible drows secondthoughT already returned to its scabbard.
BANG, said Nothing.
After that – or before it? – Thanisember Ducc travelled ‘cross the bleak abyssal plains and found the space between continents and settled into the grains of sand and there in the spark of death inside a half-buried fish’s skull he found the dwelling of Sliiine the Sliiimewrought, bodiless but not bladeless, who had spent the last sixteen million years in perfect and total contemplation of the moment of life’s cessation.
“It is finished,” said Sliiine, who had no blade and needed none.
BANG, said Nothing.
And with the crooked sixpence taken from Sliiine’s war-chest the way was parted for Thanisember Ducc to walk the crooked path down the crooked mile to the crooked house, where he caught Cantilever the Sheared at dinner and didn’t even allow him the courtesy of drawing jagged Uncline in self-defence.
BANG, said Nothing.
So the sun began to fall on the greatest day of Thanisember Ducc’s long, long, long life, and he felt as spry and fresh as a new-blossom’d daisy, such so that even the feeling of night-dew prickling on his face in the living breathing world couldn’t bring him to disgust and animal appetites and cravings that he had shrugged off when fire was newly-tamed began to stir within him.
Thus, he entered the Taco Bell.
“Bring unto me ambrosia,” he commanded the clerk.
“Want a beverage with that?” replied the clerk.
Thanisember Ducc did not transform the clerk in unspeakable and horrific ways for this, for some other, greater wizard appeared to have beaten him to the punch. But he scowled most grievously and did not say another word but remained cloaked in august and imperious silence until his meal arrived, whereupon he fell upon it as if it were a fresh sacrifice with its liver yet unbruised.
“Don’t I get anything?” asked Nothing. “I been busting my ass all damned day for you, can’t I get a smear of guac at least?”
“Silence,” proclaimed Thanisember Ducc with the gravity of a dwarf sun. “The product of thine mouth hath gained me greatly this day, but do not think that this bequeaths thee free reign of it to flap and flurry as a wind-whipped gosling in the gos’mer rains of midsummer.”
“Say WHAT?”
But Thanisember Ducc did say more, but leapt to his feet and departed with haste to the washroom, and with haste and distress in his heart and elsewhere, did cast aside his robe and wand and pouch and Nothing into one stall and his self into another and began, forthwith, to cleanse himself of bodily impurities.
Thence sat Nothing, abandoned and dissolute, and not alone: for lo! A form stood at the sink, hands wringing idly under the faucet’s flow, and no soap was used, and Nothing saw a soul shadowed and small and willing to bend to its favour.
“Hey. Hey! Hey buddy, c’mere!”
“Who said that?” asked the stranger, keen of eye and swift of mind.
“Over here. Listen, buddy, you want to do me a favour?”
“Sure?” pondered the stranger solemnly.
“Listen. Bullets are in that pouch, gun’s on the toilet seat, bob’s your uncle, fanny’s your aunt, boom goes the dynamite. Just fill it up and let it do the talking.”
“Fill the toilet?”
“The GUN,” said Nothing loudly, but not too loudly. And yet in vain! For when the stranger’s hand did reach the pouch, it was detected – the bullet-pouch was sewn from Thanisember Ducc’s own cast-off skin, and at the touch of a foe the gem in the tip of his beard shrieked and wailed until the wizard, though bent-double in agony, spared a moment’s concentration to murmur a charm for wayward witches that spun the stranger out of the bathroom via the ceiling and into the lower and stranger atmospheres.
“Wretched weapon!” he cried. “Thou betrays me! But futile are your efforts, for mine is the hand that feeds your maw and none other, and that maw shalt thereby never be turned against me! Now slumber on, and speak not, lest I take stronger measures!” And thus having uttered his threat, he returned to his troubles.
For some six-and-score minutes those words seemed to hold sway, but in truth it was but a ruse: Nothing did not sleep but waited in silence for its chance, and so its chance did come: an employee with mop and bucket and broom and an empty heart, one ready to be filled with the sweetest poisoned lies. And, most importantly of all, latex gloves adorned his hands.
“Hey buddy! You, with the pimples and the slouch and the stupid hat and shirt? You just won a FREE GUN!”
“Huh yeah wha?”
“Over here! Stall number two! Just grab it up and load the bullets from the pouch – second pouch, the one that looks like old man gooch. That’s it! That’s the one! Load it up and let it fire and it’s yours and-”
But as the bullet-pouch’s shape was wrought from the hide of Thanisember Ducc, so too was its cunning wrought from his mind: as the employee’s hands fumbled at its fastener, it contrived to catch at his glove, and pull it, and tangle it, and so bring his skin into contact with its own. Thereby once more did the gem in the tip of the beard of Thanisember Ducc shriek and howl, and, raising his haggard head, once more did the wizard chant his spell to defeat any witch that feared losing her way home in the morning, and thereby send a second wayward voyageur of the men’s room to chart the great Missing Sky.
“Twice you have betrayed me, Nothing!” he called. “No more! Servant thou’st been, but only as long as thy treachery remains frail and faltering! Now I shalt take measures against it firming!” and with this Thanisember Ducc raised his hand and raised his will and burst the bullet-pouch asunder as if it were a fly on the back of his arm that he had happened to swat, and as the ammunition was dashed upon the floor so too were the hopes of Nothing, for it rolled all about underneath the sinks where no man’s hand might hope to grasp it.
And it was then, as the wizard once more excused himself to his labours, that fate took charge. Fate was small, and chubby of cheek, and shy of foot, but big enough to wander a short ways on his own to a washroom unattended.
“Hey kid!” said Nothing, desperation earnestly if not greatly hidden in its voice. And lo, as the child turned his gaze to it, there was nothing to be seen in his soft brown eyes than earnest, honest, loving, well-meaning obedience and trust. A Good Child, one above duplicity, unable to be bribed or cajoled into wrongdoing, no matter the cause, the curse, or the cruelty.
“Mind lending a hand, kid? Somehow I’ve lost my marbles all over the floor, and if you could find just ONE and shove them back in that funny gadget on the toilet in stall two, that’d be swell.”
The little good Samaritan’s arms were short, but his hands were small, and if just one bullet was all that could be reached, it was still all that was needed. It slid home with a click as polite as a cricket in a church, and only then, despite the silence of the gem in his beard, did Thanisember Ducc raise his head in suspicion due to some errant twitch of the currents of the air, just as the bathroom door opened and the child’s father investigated, curious as to the whereabouts of his errant heir.
Nothing did not have time to aim. But it did not need it.
BANG, it said. And BANG went forth, and it struck the coat-hook of the stall, and whenceforth the security camera above the sink, and whenceforth the basin of the sink, and whenceforth it caromed across the walls corner-to-corner like an excited cat, and thereafter it descended unto the doorstop and shot out zipping past the father’s startled eyes like an enraged bee, and at that moment, as its deadly presence grew evident to even his mortal gaze, he shouted out a plea, a call of warning, an attempt to save any whose ears were fit to hear.
“DUCK!”
The last to so familiarly and discourteously address Thanisember Ducc had perished at his hand timeless centuries ago. He drew himself up in shock and affront, opened his mouth, and became perforated about the ears.
“Hey buddy,” said Nothing. “Your kid’s a real trooper. You got a spare couch?”
***
No word ever reached the lesser wizards of the world of what sudden sickness had claimed five of those above them. And none of the greater wizards would ever deign to comment on any doing by those beneath, or to admit the existence of those above themselves.
But for some time following that busy day that none professed to know of, the little peoples were untroubled by sorcery or ensouled sword or wicked desire, as wizards great and small scried and fretted and plotted new and grandiose spells to ward their shrivelled lives. For entirely coincidental and unrelated reasons, most assuredly.
Most assuredly.