Going Pear Shaped. A tale of wizards, lizards and galvanised tubing salesmen.

Chapter 15: 'Whose stupid idea was it to include you on this trip, anyway?'

Chapter 15: 'Whose stupid idea was it to include you on this trip, anyway?'

The door to the Spellchamber of Moebius Wyrmface swung slowly open.

'Anybody there?'  Smallscale inquired nervously, in case there was.

He had thought that it was going to be tricky to enter the Citadel again, especially if he was a lizard with a price on his head.  But the first obstacle - the Great Gate of Gila - had proved less of a problem than he had imagined.  For a start, it was hanging off its hinges.  The guard room was also deserted.  Smallscale had walked unchallenged into the heart of the Citadel itself. 

Where had everyone gone? 

As he sneaked quietly around a side alley, he found out.  The lizards were assembled in the streets that fed into the courtyard at the base of the tower.  Smallscale spotted the distinctive black cloaks of the Dark Mages, hovering at the fringes of the crowd like flies around a carcass of meat.  At the centre of this seething crowd was a pattern drawn on the stone floor of the courtyard - arcane symbols that Smallscale immediately recognised as an impossibly large version of Rossum's Pentangle.  On Pyrus, being impossible was merely a warm-up for a real challenge.  Every few moments, a high pitched whining noise filled the air as the pentangle charged itself up until it shone like blue neon.  Then a lizard would step into it and disappear in a pulse of light accompanied by a shower of blue sparks. 

The air was alive with the sharp, prickly sensation of magic.

It seemed that every lizard there was carrying a weapon of some sort.  Most of them were weighed down with axes, swords and shields.  Some were sharpening their blades while they waited their turn on the Pentangle.  Others licked the edges of knives with their forked tongues in anticipation.  But it was the cold, manic grins they all wore that filled Smallscale with a terrible sense of dread.  They were spoiling for a fight - you could see it in their faces.  And in their teeth.

The Spellchamber door was unlocked.  After all, no one in their right mind would enter the spellchamber of a Master Mage without an invitation unless they wanted to carry themselves home in a bucket.

Smallscale took a deep breath and stepped into the subdued lighting of the spellchamber.  It was pretty much as he remembered it.  The neat piles of scrolls and parchments, the books of runes and encyclopaedias of sorcerous knowledge, all arranged in order on the shelves.  The elements of magic inscribed onto pages whose very words could drive the unprepared insane.  Everything was in its place, as though the arcane forces of magic could be tamed by the mere use of a cross-reference.

Smallscale sighed.  He knew that the answers to some of his problems lay in this room.  Still, if only he could work out what he was looking for, he certainly wouldn't have any trouble finding it.

There was a movement in the darkness from the far corner.  Smallscale jumped back in shock.

The crow squinted out through the bars of the cage at him and blinked.

'Oh, hello, Mr. Crow,' said Smallscale, his heartbeat slowing down to a gallop.  'I didn't see you there.'

He walked around the bench and peered into the cage.  Something bothered him.  It wasn't unknown for wizards to keep familiars - it just didn't seem the sort of thing that Moebius would do.  And why was it necessary to protect the bird from magical spells by putting it in a cage made of antihex, the only material impervious to magic?  Unless...

Suddenly the crow gave a squawk, rolled its tiny eyes up and fell off the perch with a thump.  It lay on its back with its feet sticking in the air and its beak open.