By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Twenty-One "Battling the Wind"
"Political Committee! Open up!"
Sarah's father Daffiyd knocked on the door more loudly.
"Political Committee! This is an emergency measure. It requires that all who live in Traeshurstaene be informed and sign off on it one way or another."
Daffiyd stood there, exhausted and angry. Behind him, his wife Gwynnith held a stack of signed petition sheets. They were going from door-to-door to get Berny Cottswold back in charge of the district. They knew he'd restore order plenty quick. He'd be able to call in help, not just from the Home Guard and the police, but from some of the powerful friends he and his family had made over their many years in office.
"Cyndy? Arthur? Do you see these badges we've been given? If you don't come to the door we are authorized to mark you down as recalcitrant. And that won't stand you in very good stead when Berny Cottswold is running things again."
For another moment nothing happened. The pansies by the front door blew coolly in morning air. It was surprising that their blossoms had held out so long. Most of the other flowers had been bitten by the frost and lay withered against their stems. Then, with a long agonizing creak that spoke of untended rust in the hinges, the door opened to the width of its chain lock, and Arthur's face appear squinched in the crack.
"What're ye disturbin' the peaceful citizenry for, Daffiyd? G'mornin' Gwynnith."
"Mornin', Arthur," Gwynnith replied.
"You've got to sign this petition, Arthur. It's only what's good for the town. And good for you too, if you know what that is."
"I daresay I might have a notion," replied Arthur cautiously. "Now, what's all this about badges?"
"They're our badges of office," answered Gwynnith for her husband. "They give us the necessary authority."
"Are they makin' you two little tinpot coppers now?"
"No, Arthur," said Daffiyd, a bit closer to pleading with an old friend than to ordering anyone around. "But, well, the thing is..."
"The thing is, I don't like badges. Some of the fellas are gettin' roughed up down at the docks."
"Well, that is just the problem, Arthur," said Gwynnith. "These hard men are turning into wild beasts. Have you heard how they are behaving?"
"Ay. Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren't. There's a lot of bad feelin' round here, with Tilly Lingersall not yet in his grave."
Mrs. Tone was about to rebut this point, when Daffiyd grabbed her hand and said simply:
"Look, Arthur, the fact is, we're exhausted, and my feet are killing me. Can we come in for a sit-down and a good cup of tea?"
Arthur was even more taken aback by Daffiyd's inviting himself in than he was annoyed by the badges.
"Cyndy," Arthur shouted over his shoulder. "We've company. Put the kettle on."
* * * *
"All right, now. Cast the eiderdown eye, Charlie!"
Granny Pansy had cleared a spot on the floor of the wood, having drawn concentric circles in the dirt with the sharp end of a stick. Her brother, Great Uncle Charlie, was winding up like a baseball pitcher. In his hand was a large fluffy ball of feathers and old chicken bones. He reared back on one foot, squinted one eye shut, and then threw the fluffy ball at the target Granny Pansy had drawn. With a sound like crashing glass, the ball exploded as it hit the dirt. There were chicken feathers everywhere.
"What's it say?" asked Great Uncle Charlie spitting out a few feathers and trying to clean his glasses of a few more feathers that had stuck to them. Even Great Uncle Charlie's eyebrows had a few indiscriminate feathers stuck to them.
"Just a minute, just a minute," said Granny Pansy. "They have to settle, you know."
Granny Pansy bent low to the ground, watching every feather float down into place. Slowly, an arrow was forming on the target she had drawn.
"This way," she said, pointing with her arm in the direction of the feather arrow. "Have all the searchers head in the direction of Crossamum Falls."
Barnabas Burrbuckle and the other dockmen who had come from the vigil for Tilly Lingersall began to head toward Crossamum Falls. They had been doused with spell-water back at the Tones' home by Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie. This spell-water had the effect of letting the men sense the direction the eiderdown eye pointed. It also left them feeling lively and alert, even though they'd been up all night, and some of Tilly's good friends had a distracted air about them. They only drawback to the spell-water was that all the men now smelled slightly of chicken broth--and that kept their stomachs grumbling.
Each of the men on the search had been given a talisman by Great Uncle Charlie. These talismans would have the effect of shutting out the siren call of the Gods of Autumn. These men would not be swayed to rash action by the unexpected feelings aroused with the season. They would be like a section of sober judges sitting in the middle of a football rally. They crunched through the fallen leaves with great determination, every eye sharp for any sign of Dar or the runaway Sarah.
"This way," said Barnabas Burrbuckle. The Tones' dog, Roanie, bounced after him.
"So I gathered," replied Tommy Lingersall. It was his brother who was dead, but he had been the first to volunteer to help in the search back at the vigil.
The two men turned toward the Crossamum Falls, and the whole line of thirty-four men turned with them.
After half an hour, and several more casts of the eiderdown eye, Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie came over to where Barnabas lead the searchers and asked him a question.
"Barnabas," began Granny Pansy. "Do you think you and your men can take over from here on?"
"Yes," said Great Uncle Charlie, still spitting chicken feathers out his mouth from the last casting, "the eiderdown eye has been pointing steadily toward the Crossamum Falls, and we've got a lot to do to prepare for the return of the Gods of Autumn."
"Well," drawled Barnabas, without slacking his pace. "I don't unnerstand what ye must do, but I unnerstand ye mun do it."
"There's whole posse of wizards rounding up at the Tones' house to help us do battle with the Gods of Autumn. If we can't lick them, we'll know in a day or two. But, I'd rather not think about that."
"We will search as thoroughly as any men may," Barnabas pledged simply. As far as he was concerned, there was no more to be said.
"I know you and your men can handle it," Granny Pansy said.
"Ay, but I don't like the looks o' thet sky above us." Barnabas squinted through the spotty canopy of the October trees. Indeed, the storm he had feared in the warm evening before was rapidly materializing above them.
"Come on, Charlie," said Granny Pansy, and off they went to meet the wizards.
* * * *
By the time Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie arrived back at the house, there were about a dozen cars parked outside the Tones' home. A litter of tents had been pitched in the back yard. Some were made of silk and had a pattern of dazzling stars on a blue field, some were dingy, tough and travel-worn, and some were as bright and fanciful as clown makeup. In and out of the tents, an intense beehive of activity was going on. Almost all the wizards and witches of Granny Pansy's and Great Uncle Charlie's acquaintance had shown up to help do battle with the Gods of Autumn. They could tell from their own forecastings that the Gods of Autumn were now fully materialized, and one of the number, a Sarge Heiserach, even had intimations that the Ancient One had been involved in this business of the Gods of Autumn in some as yet obscure way.
"Pansy! Charlemagne!"
A chorus of greetings went up when Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie arrived. The rapidly-developing storm cast them all in shadow despite it being early morning. They were both immensely worried about baby Dar, but had to get on with defending the township from the Gods of Autumn before they returned from their interview in the North Country. The various wizards and witches assembled knew all of this, and had their best tricks and spells that they thought could aid in the cause against the gods on display. Granny Pansy reviewed their marvels most carefully. But there was the air of a fair day anyway, despite the seriousness of their cause, and despite the gloomy clouds overhead, and despite their not knowing the whereabouts of either Sarah or Dar. These were magicians about to perform their best feats of legerdemain. They were proud of their abilities. And those abilities, and their pride, were on full display.
A crowd of anxious demonstrators surrounded Granny Pansy. Granny Pansy did her best to try and get them to line up in a row, but there were far too many unabashed individualists in this group to do anything but be themselves.
"Me first," demanded Hemily Higglay. Her cloak was of finest ermine, and jewels traced the cuffs. Her glasses, made by the same optometrist that served the Queen, were secured by a string of sapphires. Hemily was a duchess in East Anglia, and was used to being first in line, every line. Granny Pansy resigned herself to the inevitable.
"What have you prepared against the Gods of Autumn, Hemily?" she asked.
"Oh, you'll like it, Pansy. You'll like it," Hemily gushed. She was quite happy to be first, and warmed up to anyone who gave her what she considered to be her due deference.
"Everyone, stand back," Granny Pansy recommended as Hemily Higglay ducked into her golden tent, the flaps of which were being held open by a pair of comparatively graceful female dwarves. There were some shuffling noises that came from within the tent, and a crash that sounded like the candelabra had hit the portable parquet flooring, followed by Hemily's reemergence. She was carrying an ornate object that was heavy enough to almost overbalance her. Her dwarves rushed to help her.
"No!" commanded Hemily. "No hands but those of a supreme witch must touch the Craggensprakk Guldensool."
The crowd immediately broke into a thousand discussions speculating on exactly what a Craggensprakk Guldensool could possibly be. Some suggested it would rush the Gods of Autumn into another dimension. Others thought it must be to temporarily dazzle and blind them, it was so overwrought with gems itself. Hemily Higglay put the object in the middle of the backyard awkwardly, and then proceeded to back away from it, without taking her eyes off of it. Her small, well-manicured hands protruded from the fancy sleeves of her cloak, and had begun gesturing with a ladylike finesse.
"Soluum bekkadoon tresfuylsk sigimumum," Hemily Higglay began her spell.
As she continued, the Craggensprakk Guldensool began to respond. It unfolded itself like an over-sized orchid, and the petals dug into the ground, revealing an interior made entirely of diamond teeth. The Craggensprakk Guldensool began to walk around the backyard as if looking for something to eat. In a few moments, it had devoured the Tones' pair tree, Sarah's old bicycle that had been left to rust, and a humble, rather dingy, tent whose owner just had time to dive out of before seeing all of his wizardly apparatuses disappear into the beast's glittering maw.
"Hemily, enough, stop this monstrosity," said Granny Pansy.
"Yes, Pansy," agreed Hemily, but she looked rather unsure about how to actually stop the Craggensprakk Guldensool. Her expensive glasses slipped off her nose, and she had to feel around to find them and return them to the perch atop her pointed nose.
"Cease and desist!" Hemily commanded in her firmest tones. Several wizards who had been chatting and pointing behind her back stopped at once. But the Craggensprakk Guldensool was less obedient. It stalked on to eat part of the retaining wall between the Tones' yard at the street, spilling a ton of dirt and gravel on the roadway in the process, before several spell-casters working together got it to grind to a halt. It had been stopped just three feet from Hemily, who was cowering before it in a most unregal posture. It looked like somebody had spilled the contents of a gigantic jewelry box.
Hemily Higglay decided that she needed to retire to her tent for "a little lay-me-down."
For the next hour there was parade of wonders and horrors that unfolded before Granny Pansy. She duly noted the qualities and strengths of each, hoping to throw together some sort of strategy that could use them all in such a way that the whole would be greater than the sum of their parts. Granny Pansy had to admit that, frankly, she had no idea how to stop one God of Autumn, let alone the whole crew. Granny Pansy had a shrewd idea that the weapons and methods being trotted before her on the lawn might serve mostly as distractions to the marauding Gods of Autumn. Whether any of these devices and spells could be counted on to gain them anything but a little time she seriously doubted.
Mr. Tone's hunting hound, Roanie, began to bark furiously and snap at the sky. He was looking up into the air. Wizards and witches close at hand looked at the hound dubiously. And then they looked in the direction that Roanie was looking.
"Look, away to the north!" said Wizard Simmons, gesturing northward with a ruby laser beam that emanated from the end of his wand.
As all eyes turned to follow the ruby beam of light, a sound like rolling thunder came down upon them. The skies opened up in a tremendous barrage of hailstones and hard rain. A blinding bolt of lightning that seemed aimed right at the witches' coven gathered in the Tones' backyard was diverted only at the last split second by the new lightning rod the Tones' had had installed the previous hurricane season. By the time their eyes had readjusted after the bolt had passed, the Gods of Autumn were upon them.
Afagddu was first, bearing his shield before him, and holding his sword aloft for a killing strike. Adsagsona followed, her arms and hands busy with complex gestures of illusion and destruction. At her heels was Aerfen, her ardent playmate, gathering the rainwater into stinging streams and needles as they fell. Aeron and Agrona came last, but not least, for they were the indiscriminate spirits of slaughter and mayhem, living embodiments of the forces that cull the wheat and bring the rich harvest to its conclusion. The same gods that can fatten a silo with grain, can cut down the farmer who cuts down the grain. What is harvested, be it seed or marrow, was a matter on of degree and not of kind to an incensed god.
Making this sudden appearance of the Gods of Autumn in their most ferocious aspect all the more fearsome was the fact that they were all singing. All together they sang a song in the eldest tongue which only witches and wizards knew even a little of. It was a song of destruction and devastation, and they sang it through grim, smiling faces. Great Uncle Charlie, who was a scholar of such languages, in later years eventually pieced the words of the song together into a translation. He had no trouble remembering the words as they sang them, for there was nothing about that afternoon that Charlemagne Sigmund Farnfeather Twisslestarn would ever, ever forget. It stayed before him like a waking nightmare for years.
"Death’s the mortal measure, And Death’s the God’s high meed! Gods, come kill for pleasure And not from lowly need! "Kill the mortal men we find, Doomed by birth and by time-- Double-damned, so why be kind? Kill the mortals, kill the time!"
Down came Afagddu's sword into the Tones' backyard, splitting two tents in half and gouging a great rent in the earth. Wizard Simmons, who was still pointing to the North with his wand, had his arm completely severed at the shoulder. Fortunately, Rganpith was able to staunch the wound with an instant freeze-dried blood spell. Cauldrons floated away while witches still held onto their ladles as Aerfen guided the flows of water hither and thither at will. Adsagona toyed with a dozen souls, watching wizards and witches chase phantom images of herself here and there with a powerful weave of illusion spells. Agrona and Aeron were more direct, more brutal. But their directness, while quite deadly, was actually a bit easier for necromancers to dodge. The skills of all were engaged in running away as fast as possible, throwing up haphazard shield and web spells behind them as they ran. Unfortunately, this often meant that those who were running behind them would get trapped in the webs or rebuffed by the shields. Those so caught or stopped were easy pickings for the Gods of Autumn.
Only a few, including Hemily Higglay, Great Uncle Charlie, who had been using the bathroom inside, and, by sheer luck, Granny Pansy, were far enough away from the initial onslaught to be able to offer some kind of counter-attack.
Granny Pansy, clutching the rain gutter against a sudden flow of water coming around the corner of the house, cast a spell of misidentification against Agrona and Aeron. The two gods, who had been coming on shoulder-to-shoulder, turned to confront each other. Each thought the other was the thing they hated most. Agrona grabbed Aeron by the throat, who in turn clawed at Agrona's belly with his razor-spurred sandals. It was like watching two cats fight to the death, their backs bristling, their claws flashing without mercy.
At the same time as Granny Pansy was casting her spell, Great Uncle Charlie hurled a charm that caused instant deafness and muteness into Afagddu's left ear. He could no long hear the war song he was singing, and the orders he was shouting carried no more meaning than static on the radio. Afagddu grew angry at his insolent subordinates who neither acknowledged nor carried out his commands. After a few minutes of utter frustration, he gathered up Agrona and Aeron bodily, scooping them up in his shield like a pair of tots on a toboggan, and began to march off to the south.
Adsagona and Aerfen, who'd been having a bit more success, were put on the defense by Hemily Higglay's elaborate mechanism. The Craggensprakk Guldensool was pulling apart Adsagona's fine gown faster than she could mend it. Her vanity, the vanity of a beautiful goddess, would not allow her to be seen in dishabille, and she escaped toward the South after Afagddu, the Craggensprakk Guldensool snapping at her hem like a golden dog. Aerfen, when she realized that she was alone on the field of battle, turned into a spout of water and slapped all the assembled crowd in the face as she flowed in an angry torrent into the skinny Mickleswift.
The wizards and witches looked around at the soggy devastation, the ruined tents, the delicate equipment bent and broken, the precious supplies of magic herbs blown to smithereens, the half-drowned rats and toads and snakes and newts that had been so carefully packed to prepare their potions, and, almost as one, heaved such a sigh of despair it would have made hardest-hearted executioner cry to hear it.
"I have an idea," said Granny Pansy.
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE