The Enchantress of World's End

Ganelon cleared his throat fretfully.

“Master, why are we sitting here talking? Shouldn’t we be attempting to escape, before these people execute us for our non-existing crimes?”

“All in good time, my boy, all in good time,” chirped the Illusionist in his cheerful way.

“But, magister, the boy doth have a point,” argued Xarda firmly. “Whatever are we waiting for—surely, with your mastery of the Arts Magical, ‘twould be an easy matter to unhinge yon door and dispeople the entire building—”

The Illusionist clucked her into silence.

“You children, with your constant fretting over time lost, spent or wasted!” he sighed. “As if an hour or two, or even three, mattered when measured against a lifetime! Had I harkened to your urgings, I would have resisted arrest or trial or imprisonment with my small skill—to our considerable detriment, for then we should not have made the acquaintance of Prince Erigon, here!”

“Yes, ‘tis true, of course, but—!”

“But nothing, my dear child. We shall be set free when it pleases the good Galendil to free us, and not before,” said the old magician, testily. “For one thing, my dear, has it occurred to you that as soon as night falls, Chx will return to her normal routine of murder, arson, burglary, rapine, and other assorted malfeasances? What better occasion for jail-break, than during that period of the night when such is no longer to be considered a crime?”

The girl knight bunked, as if thunderstruck, then burst out laughing.

“Of course! As soon as night falls, the guards will be withdrawn, so as to partake of the assorted skullduggeries in which each Chxian must, by law, indulge. Forgive me for doubting you, magister! I fear that I had not fully thought through the implications of Chx’s dual legal system …”

“Quite all right, my dear; that’s what older and wiser heads are for. Now, my dear Prince, to return to our most interesting discussion of the Ximchak savages … I believe it was your opinion that they descended through the mountain countries, approaching Valardus from the north. Could it not, perchance, have been from the northwest? My own sources of information, you see, suggest a northwesterly course for the Horde, following their destruction last year of the Thirty Cities of the Gompish Regime …”-

The sun of afternoon declined into the west. However swift the judicial processes of the Chxians might be, the final sentencing certainly seemed a drawn-out and lengthy process. Prince Erigon, they learned, had been condemned to the dungeons beneath the Administratium some four or five days before, on charges of being an un-disturber of the peace. And he still awaited his sentencing.

“Sometimes it is to be chained to labor in the water mines,” he told them. “Other offenders are condemned to penal servitude repairing the aqueduct system. A former cell-mate of mine, an Ixlander, I believe, who acted as a travelling salesman in warlockry with a line of talismans and sigils, ended up serving his term as a sewer-cleanser. An unpleasant task, surely, and a stenchful one, to boot!”

Before sundown, the prisoners were removed from their consnon cell and were escorted by a squadron of monitors so numerous and stoutly armed for resistance to be futile, if not sanguinary, to private cells higher up in the monstrous office. Ganelon did not care to be separated from his dear friends, but no choice in jail accommodations was offered to him, and his master cheerfully bade him be of good spirits and not to fret. Therefore he complied with docility to the new arrangement, and found himself in a cell somewhat smaller even than before, whose door was a solid panel of adamant. The one factor of comfort in his new quarters was that his cell had a window, albeit one heavily barred, which gave forth on a wide prospect of the rooftops and spires of Chx. From this orifice he peered gloomily out upon the westering sun as it sank to its conflagration in the hills.

He wondered where Xarda and the old magician were housed, and why their cells had been switched, and how long would it be before the Illusionist came to free him from his durance? And whatever had possessed them to seek accommodations for the night in this mad metropolis in the first place.

After a time he dozed.

“YOO-HOO! Is that you, dear boy?” a familiar, if unexpected, voice hailed him through the mists of sleep. For a moment, convinced that he dreamed, Ganelon kept Ms eyes closed. But then a whump shook the walls of his cell with staggering impact, bringing down flakes of plaster from the ceiling in a gritty shower.

He opened his eyes and jumped up to see a beaked bronze head peering at him with brightly inquisitive eye-lenses through the bars of the window. It was the Bazonga bird!

“Wh-whatever are you doing here?” he asked, inanely.

The Bird cocked a disapproving eye at him and sniffed in a hurt manner. “Tush! You certainly don’t seem glad to see me,” she complained.

“Well, of course I’m glad to see you; but how … I mean, why …”