The Devil's Influence Read online

  Landyr flung open the door. He yanked a nearby torch from its sconce and charged into the short hallway. At the end were two doors, one on either side. Knowing the left one led to the kitchen and doubting the interloper would take that route, Landyr opened the door on the right. A storage room; barrels lined three walls. No other exit.

  Drawing his short sword, Landyr entered the room, using the torch to lead the way. The man—no, wizard!—had to be in here. Cowering behind a barrel. Preparing a spell to escape. No. In an attempt to escape. He was not going to get past Landyr. The floor. The dust on the stone floor revealed a trail. Right to the far corner, a logical place to hide.

  Completely soundless, Landyr padded his way to the corner. Once close enough, he saw that the barrels had not been stacked against the wall, leaving more than enough room for a wizard to hide. He prepared himself for any spell his limited imagination could think of, anything from invisibility to a bolt of lightning, Landyr gripped his sword tighter. In one fluid motion, he jumped in front of the opening created by the barrels and wall and thrust his sword.

  Nothing. He stabbed nothing.

  Impossible! He refused to believe that his senses were being manipulated by magic; he felt none in the air like he did when he was temporarily paralyzed. He looked down again, making sure the faint trail in the floor dust did indeed lead to here. Yes, it did. But it did not stop here. Landyr crouched down, his torch chasing away the darkness to reveal the scuff marks leading to a hole in the wall. One big enough to fit a person.

  On his knees, Landyr started to crawl in but saw a T intersection immediately ahead. The packed dirt floor revealed nothing as to which direction the coward had fled. He scuttled back out and kicked the nearest barrel as soon as he stood up. “Damnation!”

  “Damnation, indeed,” came from Zellas as he entered the room. “Care to explain your embarrassing outburst?”

  Staring at the hole in the wall, Landyr stabbed at it with his sword, imaging that the wizard poked his head out at just the right time for it to pierce his skull. “He escaped through here.”

  Zellas moved to a better vantage point. His demeanor shifted to concern, as did his tone. “Who? Who escaped?”

  “A wizard. There was a wizard in a black cloak at the hearings. He ensorcelled me, paralyzing me. I fought out of it and followed him here. But he escaped.”

  Zellas took the torch from Landyr and crouched to examine the tunnel. “I must confess, that is a very good reason for your embarrassing outburst. Clearly, this person has intimate knowledge of the castle.”

  “Clearly,” Landyr repeated as he paced the room, opening and closing his fists, clenching away his anger. With one cleansing sigh, he felt much calmer, ready to take any order from his general on what to do next, how to pursue the wizard.

  Zellas stood and walked toward the room’s exit. “Well, we’ll let the castle guard know about this.”

  Almost yelling, Landyr asked, “The castle guard? Why not the Elite Troop? Is that not what we’re for? To handle situations like this?”

  “No. We are here to follow the King’s orders. Right after you ran off, he decreed that the Elite Troop will investigate the kidnappings.”

  “What?” Landyr bellowed so loudly that stray puffs of dust fell from the nearby barrels.

  Sighing, Zellas approached Landyr and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Landyr, I’m speaking as your general. The King found it odd that a confounding amount of stealth was used to kidnap the children of three antique dealers in neighboring towns. He feels something much more sinister is afoot. So, Sergeant, I need you to rouse the Troop and get them prepared to set out within the hour.”

  “But—”

  Zellas tightened his grip on Landyr’s shoulder and gave the younger man a shake. “Landyr, I’m speaking as your friend now—listen to your general.”

  Landyr closed his eyes and inhaled. He held his breath and counted the beats of his heart throbbing at the base of his neck. After one hundred, he exhaled, blowing away his frustration, his anger. Zellas was both his friend and his general. He respected this man. Despite disagreeing wholeheartedly with the prioritization, Landyr let it go and ended the conversation with, “Yes, sir.”

  five

  Phyl sighed as he contemplated how to make his fantasy become reality. It was not much of a change really when he considered it. A change of homes, a change of social status, a change of living partners . . .

  “Schmooooopsie?”

  Phyllis Iphillus froze. That voice filled him with dread. It had all the beauty of a kettledrum and shared the same timbre, as well. The sound ran frissons up his spine so large that they felt like stalactites dangling from his back. He’d once heard a small-time bard, in a smaller-time bar, tell the story of the how a huge piece of the Great Glacier cracked off and laid ruin to an entire civilization all because of a hapless god’s terrible singing and he often wondered if the sound of his wife’s voice would have a very similar effect . . . upon an even greater glacier.

  He needed to sneak out of the house before she realized that he was still home, but Phyl had a problem—he was a satyr. As such, he was forced to hop upon hooves—tiny hooves, admittedly—but proper hooves nonetheless. Never in the history of his race had there been a successful satyr sneak. It simply could not be done. Phyl, although he was an enterprising fellow who was always willing to try something new, was certainly not one to believe that he could bend the acute angle of history’s odds in his favor.

  Phyl sighed. He was simply going to have to talk to his wife.

  “Schmoop . . . oh, there you are!” his wife, Bunice, cried out in glee as she rounded the corner between the kitchen and main room of their house. Her ragged brown hair looked like lumps of dying weeds upon her oblong head and touched the ceiling. As like most ogres, her skin was the shade of fester green and her facial features seemed placed about her head in a slapdash fashion. Excited, she clapped her hands and caused every body part below her wobbly chins to jiggle. “Didn’t you hear me call you? Phyl? Didn’t you?”

  “I did,” he replied, not quick enough to formulate a convincing lie.

  “Then why didn’t you answer me? Phyl? Why didn’t you?”

  “I . . . uh . . . because . . .”

  “Why didn’t you? Phyl? Why? Why?” Her voice undulated, but not smoothly, racing through the octaves at a determined stagger, plunging forward and then stumbling backward.

  “Because . . . because, darling, your voice is a symphony upon my ears, and you are the maestro. To answer you is to interrupt you. I ask you, what sad audience member would dare disturb a master at his craft?”

  “Oh, Phyllie . . . you are so romantic,” the ogress said, flashing a smile so disturbingly lopsided that Phyl reached out for the wall to combat a sudden bout of vertigo. His wife, mistaking his gesture as him reaching out to take her hand, returned the movement.

  Doing his best to avoid her touch, Phyl displayed a dexterity that belied his pot-bellied form. Sinuous hip gyrations led to arm swaying that would have spread envy amongst the most graceful cobras. The speed and fluidity of their movements—her trying to touch him and him doing his best to avoid physical contact—would have been hypnotic had there been anyone else to witness the dance. Phyl watched in disbelief as his wife’s eyelids fluttered in an attempt to remain open. He thanked his luck; this level of exercise was tiring her out! He was in awe of how much sweat was streaming off his head.

  The ogress began to sway, which soon gave way to a full stagger. Despite his labored breathing, Phyl kept up his pantomime dancing until he noticed that his wife had succumbed to slumber. Still on her feet. He sighed. He did not want to be around her, but he wished nothing untoward to befall her. She looked so harmless in this defenseless state, almost adorable, even though she was quite literally three times his size and a stream of drool had already started to flow f
rom the corner of her mouth.

  Behind her was her favorite chair. He wanted nothing more for her to fall back into and remain asleep, but he knew for that to happen he would need to do more than simply make wishes. He pondered the pros and cons and quickly decided that he was simply going to have to give her a gentle nudge. No sooner had he hopped, his hooves clattering on the hardwood floor, then his wife snapped her head around at the clamor and grabbed him with both hands and hugged him. Before he could voice a word of dissent, he found his whole head jammed into the chasm of her bosom, a particularly hard wart poking his cheek.

  Both ears covered, he could still hear her speak, albeit muffled. With every word, her skin vibrated and the wart stabbed various parts of his face. Pressing his hands against her, with zero idea whereupon her body they were sinking into, he pushed. His adrenaline-fueled strength was enough to break free. He was ready to admonish her for acting without his consent, but stopped when he caught the end of her sentence. “. . . brother is coming over.”

  Impossible. He must have heard wrong or taken her words out of context. “What did you just say?”

  “I said my brother is coming over.”

  “Wait . . . what? Why?”

  “He said he needed to talk to you.”

  Phyl had not seen his brother-in-law, Bale Pinkeye, in quite some time. After Phyl and Bale had fought side by side against the mad wizard, Wyren, the two erstwhile heroes had a falling out after Phyl wed Bunice and decided that they should spend some time apart, at Bale’s insistence. Now that their separation was about to end, Phyl found himself wishing that a “long time” were, in fact, a “much longer time.”

  Phyl had been devastated by the loss of their two companions during the war with Wyren and his demons: Zot, a crass and loathsome orc who was much more Bale’s friend, and Pik, a grumpy hobgoblin who was far more Phyl’s friend than Pik had ever let on with his wildly vociferous denials on the subject. Still, Phyl was convinced of their friendship despite Pik’s apparent desire to keep the depth of their caring for each other a secret.

  While Phyl had been almost inconsolable, wailing and mewling like a newborn calf, Bale had a much more mature response—he drank . . . heavily. Bale was never a mean drunk, but there was the undeniable problem that Bale was a very large presence and not normally known for his grace of movement even when sober. A drunk Bale meant broken tables and smashed chairs . . . and more than once, injured bar patrons. A gargoyle that had been sitting too close to Bale when he splintered a chair had the unfortunate luck of a chair leg embedding itself in his arm, despite the protection of his thick hide. The gargoyle had been a good sport about it, removing the foreign body from himself and proceeding to drink until blood loss coupled with severe intoxication led him into a catatonic state.

  After that there was a gorgon who got shattered mug glass in his eye, a harpy barmaid who suffered the indignity of a flung fork down her bodice (the force of the flinging being so great that it embedded itself first on the left side and then in the right), not to mention the cyclops and the seasoning shaker fiasco . . . something Phyl still could not unsee. Property damage and bodily harm, especially in tandem, rarely sat well with barkeeps and so Bale had eventually been banned from every bar within a dozen towns. A depressed ogre could be a resourceful creature, Phyl had learned, and if Bale could not go to the ale and grog and mead, then he would have something even stronger delivered to his house. Well, to Phyl’s house as it were.

  As the alcoholic content of the drinks increased, Bale’s ability to be around others lessened proportionately. After the third time that Bale mistook Phyl for a comfortable chair, the satyr went to Bunice for help.

  Because of the demons, Bale and Bunice had lost all their siblings, Bunice being spared because she had been on a different continent at the time. Upon returning she tried all she could think of to help Bale. Nothing worked. She told Phyl that Bale needed a purpose, needed to find himself, but he could not do so with the memories of pain every time he looked upon the faces of his sister and his satyr friend. They knew he’d never leave on his own, so they got married. They were correct in their assumption that Bale would be so angry with their union that he’d leave.

  Phyl thought about what would happen when Bale returned, but he could not predict the reaction. Why did Bunice allow this? He was not ready. He needed time to think this through.

  “I have to leave,” Phyl said.

  “But, schmoop—”

  “Do not ‘schmoopsie’ me!” Phyl yelled. “I have to go and this time you won’t stop me.”

  What did stop him was turning and walking face first into Bale’s chest. Bale scowled and looked down at the satyr. “What you need to do is stop all of the yelling. Unless you know a bar where we can go, in which case you can yell all you want, little buddy.”

  “I’m not your little buddy,” Phyl huffed, exasperated. “Why are you here? How did you get into my house without me hearing you?”

  “I was born in this house. Lived all my ogreling days here. You think I don’t know how to get in?” Bale asked, his chest puffed out as if breaking into the ancestral home were an accomplishment one should relish.

  “Hello, brother!”

  “Hello, sister! You look maleficent,” Bale smiled.

  “What do you mean? Bale? What?”

  Bale stammered, confusion engulfing him.

  “Magnificent, Bale. You mean ‘magnificent,’ as in she looks utterly ‘magnificent’,” Phyl said with the flair and flourish only a satyr can muster and successfully pull off.

  Her face transitioning from positively petulant to ridiculously radiant at near the speed of sound, Bunice addressed Phyl. “Why, schmoopsie!”

  “Please stop calling me that.”

  “See how good being around Bale is for you? I think you should go play with him for a bit. Catch up. Reminisce. Bury the hatchet,” she said, the tone of her voice sliding from mild suggestion to firm demand.

  “But . . . I . . . but I . . .”

  “You are going out with Bale.”

  “Do you know a bar, Phyl?” Bale asked.

  “No,” Phyl muttered.

  “Probably just as well,” Bale mused. “We’d just miss the others anyway.”

  “What others?” Phyl asked.

  A dread filled him as he awaited Bale’s answer, but caught the meaning from the ogre’s saddening face. He had meant Zot and Pik. Phyl heaved a slumped-shoulder sigh and aimed for the door. Waving to Bale to join him, he said, “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Although he was cognizant of walking, Phyl was paying far more attention to ignoring Bale’s blathering than to his actual physical location. A short while later, Phyl realized he had been following Bale as opposed to leading him when they had stopped in front of an old warehouse. From the shabby look of the exterior, Phyl suppressed his urge to expect any more of the interior of the building but dutifully allowed Bale to usher him inside.

  “Phyl, my friend,” Bale began, “I . . .”

  “. . . Am lost? Confused? Already drunk?” Phyl finished full of the hope that he had guessed properly the remainder of the sentence.

  Bale continued as if Phyl’s voice posed no impediment. “I would like to present to you Bale and his merry band of more friends.”

  Two. There were two other beings in Bale’s merry band of more friends. One being Lapin, the talking rabbit.

  “We need . . . hic . . . more ale!” Lapin said from his perch atop a crate. His rosy cheek fur and insistent shaking suggested to Phyl that the rabbit had already imbibed his weight in ale.

  “Good to see you, Lapin,” Phyl said with the enthusiasm of a wilting flower.

  “And this is Berry,” Bale said gesturing to the other of the two, a centaur.

  Phyl could not explain why, but he now had a sudden urge to listen to Bale’
s idea, no matter how bad it was. The centaur had straight black hair that fell over his right eye and past his chin, giving him a positively enigmatic look. The exposed eye was dark and sullen, brooding in Phyl’s mind. The horse half was as black as his hair and the skin of his human half was a pale as a midnight moon. He wore a simple black vest with pockets in the front, where he tucked his hands. Looking away from everyone else, he mumbled, “It’s Tingle. My last name is Berry. I’m Tingle A. Berry.”

  “I was close,” Bale said. “Now, Phyl, the reason why—”

  “The rabbit ate our lunch,” Tingle blurted.

  “Hey, screw you, buddy,” Lapin hiccupped. “I got hungry waiting for these chumps.”

  “I was waiting just as long as you, but you don’t see me eating everyone else’s food.”

  “Listen here, Dingleberry . . . or whatever your name is . . .”

  Lapin and Tingle Berry droned on, exchanging meaningless back and forth prattle. Curious about Tingle, Phyl watched the morose centaur, as he argued in the most passive way possible, simply using words with little accompanying body language. Fascinated as he was, Phyl could not ignore Bale’s hot breath on the top of his head. “Bale, you’re standing too close to me.”

  “Sorry,” the ogre said, taking a step back.

  “Okay. Now that you have me here, what is the point of all this?”

  “Phyl, I’m getting the band back together.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I . . . I’ve been taking jobs lately, some I’m not too proud of. But then there was this one job from these bad fellas and they really rubbed me the wrong way. Someone must stop them, Phyl. I can’t do it by myself and I really miss the old days, so I need to get the band back together.”

  “But, Bale—”

  “I know . . . please don’t say it. We can’t change the past. But we can honor old memories by creating new ones. What do you say, Phyl? Will you help me?”