Chapter 71: Here’s Looking At Euclid
In Which Strephon fights a dragon and Miss True attacks things from a different angle.
“Cassandra? Are you all right?”
Cassandra's eyes snapped back into focus. She was sitting on the love seat and surrounded by a circle of concerned faces. “I'm awake!” she said, a little too abruptly to be convincing, but nevertheless truthfully.
“You looked like you were spacing out for a moment there,” Cecily said.
Had she? Sheila's song had done something to her. It hadn't made her unconscious; she had been extremely conscious, perhaps more conscious than she had been in her life. Her mind had been so full of thought and sensation that she needed a moment or two to sort it out. “Where are Sheila and Winston?”
“They left, dear,” Mrs. Palmer said, in a kindly but worried tone, the voice of one practiced in offering comfort and solace to invalids whose minds were wandering. “Just a minute ago.”
Cassandra nodded. She remembered now. For a brief moment she had been immersed in awareness, but the tide was receding now and she was finding her footing again. Her friends still looked uncertain. “Was I saying something?”
Mrs. Palmer hesitated and glanced at Grandma Simms, who gave her assent with a solemn nod. “It sounded like you were saying something rude about your math class. It didn't make a lot of sense to me, I'm afraid.”
“It was Geometry,” Theodora corrected her. “She said, 'Bugger up the geometry.’”
Ah, that was it. “The Geometry!” Now it came back to her. She lunged for the purple paperweight. It was sitting on the end table beside the love seat where she had left it during her interview with Morrigan. The stone glowed even brighter than before. “The paperweights are part of the spell – ow!” The stone was also much hotter than it was. It almost burned her fingers. Fortunately, Strephon was the sort who put doilies on his furniture. Cassandra gathered up the edges of the doily on the end table together and picked up the stone. “They form a pentagram which focuses the magical whatever, right?”
Mrs. Palmer nodded.
“That means for the spell to work, all the stone have to be in the right configuration to make the pentacle.”
“I think I see where this is going,” Grandma Simms said.
“So if we bugger up the geometry...”
Cecily squealed, “We bugger the spell!”
Cassandra placed the lacy bundle with the purple paperweight in Devon's hands. “Devon, I need you to take this far away. As far as you can go. Far enough to disturb the pentagram.”
Devon hesitated. “Mortal magic can be tricky. This is a really big spell. If it goes wrong, it won’t be like a dud Christmas cracker that fails to go ‘pop’. There’s no telling what may happen. It could blow up in your face. Or worse.”
This had occurred to Cassandra as well. “The alternative is, the demon goes free. As long as I can stop that, I… well, I’ll just take the chance.”
Devon nodded solemnly and accepted the stone. “I go, I go! Swifter than the arrow from the Tartar's --”
“NOW!” The sense of peace Sheila's song had given Cassandra was already starting to fade and she was remembering how frayed her nerves were.
Devon vanished.
“What now?” Theodora asked.
Cassandra took a deep breath. “I want to wait a bit. I don't know how long Devon will need, but I want to give him a minute just to be safe. And then... I'm going to cast the damn spell.”
* * * * *
As Strephon lunged to attack Knox, it occurred to him that he had never actually received any formal training in swordsmanship, apart from some brief practice with the sword-canes hidden in his crutches. Were he facing a fencer of even moderate skill, he would doubtless be outclassed. Fortunately, having transformed into a dragon, Knox was roughly the size of an omnibus, making it difficult for Strephon to miss.
Strephon's sword glanced off the dragon's scaly leg. “Oo! A hit! A palpable hit!” the dragon chortled. Damn. Knox was mocking him, Using Shakespeare, no less. Easy to hit, but harder to wound. Still, every worm has its weak spot, as the fellow said. Now where had he heard that saying? No matter. He seemed to recall that a dragon's underbelly was more lightly armored, but Knox was crouching with his head lowered making it impossible to get at the underbelly without going past his grinning, tooth-filled jaws.
Since that was the case, Strephon would simply strike where he could. He delivered three sharp strikes to the dragon's face. The beast's face was a dense mass of horn and hide over a dense skull, ideally suited to deflect a sword-blade. Unless Strephon was lucky enough to strike the eye, well-protected by the dragon's skull ridges, he was unlikely to do the beast serious harm. He might, however, get Knox to flinch and maybe back off a bit, offering Strephon an opening.
“Come now, Bellman,” Knox taunted, “surely you can do better than that! Let me show you how it's done.” With that, the dragon reared his head back and drew in a deep breath to let loose a blast of fire.
That was the opening Strephon needed. He dropped into a crouch and jumped to one side on top of the dragon's tail which curled nearby. He could feel the heat of the dragonfire on his face as it singed past him, but he avoided its brunt.
“Hullo, what are you playing at?” Knox rumbled. Good. He was vexed.
Strephon ran up the tail along the dragon's spine. Faeries, he had always been told, could dance on moonbeams and balance on a cobweb. Dashing up the back of a thrashing, peevish dragon was a bit more difficult, but he did not have to run very far; just enough to reach the top of Knox's gargantuan desk. The beast tried to shake him off, but Strephon kept his footing until he was close enough to jump. “And with one leap, Jack was free,” Strephon said to himself. Well, not free exactly, but in a somewhat better position anyway.
He took a moment to assess his new situation. The black onyx surface of the desk was smooth and treacherous; he'd need to be careful of his footing. Nearby sat a cup for holding pens and a coffee mug lettered with the words “WORLD'S GREATEST CEO.” No ego there. Like the desk, all the items on the desk had been enlarged to accommodate Knox's current stature. The coffee mug was large enough to bathe in and the pens in the pen holder were as long as a lance. They might serve as makeshift weapons at need; something to keep in mind. At the far end of the desk, the five paperweights glowed with malevolent incandescence. The thin beams of light connecting them to form a pentagram reminded Strephon of a spider's web: a web in which both he and Cassandra had become entangled.
Ignoring the five-pointed omen, Strephon charged across the desk to his goal: the enormous laptop computer Knox was using to scry on Cassandra. He could plainly see the screen now. It showed Cassandra in his parlor with Mrs. Palmer, Grandma Simms and the others. Strephon resisted the urge to stop and try to communicate with Cassandra. That was not his objective. He threw his entire weight against the screen and tipped it over the edge of the desk sending the whole thing crashing to the floor.
“Have a care, Bellman!” Knox shouted. “Those things are bloody expensive! Or at least it would be if it were real. Nevertheless, that was quite rude. And futile. I hope you don't think I have no other ways of observing your coquette.”
Strephon did not doubt this was the case. His goal was to keep Knox occupied. He gave a set of pen holders a vigorous kick to tip it over, and shoved Knox's coffee mug towards the edge of the desk. Only the prompt interception by the dragon's foreclaw prevented it from following the computer onto the floor. This had its desired effect. Distracted by Strephon's flurry of petty vandalism, Knox had dropped his guard, leaving his smooth broad chest unprotected and just within Strephon's reach.
With all his might, Strephon thrust his sword into the dragon's chest. The beast reared back on his hind legs, so far as the chamber's low ceiling would permit, and uttered a piteous wail. “I am hurt! A plague o' both thine houses!” He clasped his foreclaws to his chest where Strephon had stabbed him. 'Tis not so deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door, but 'tis enough. 'Twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” He gave an over-ripe gasp which would have gotten him booed off the stage of the Old Vic and cried, “A hearse! A hearse! My kingdom for a hearse!”
“Are you quite finished?”
The dragon looked down and slowly opened up his hands. There was no blood on his chest, nor even signs of a would. “Ah. My mistake. I'm not dying after all. Such a pity. I had really an exquisite death scene all worked out. But I do have business I need to attend to. I think it's time to put an end to this game.”
The dragon flared his nostrils and drew in a deep breath. Strephon could guess what was coming next. He raised his shield and crouched behind it.
A concentrated blast of incandescent malevolence erupted from the dragon's jaws, knocking Strephon backwards. His shield cracked under its impact and he toppled over the edge of the desk. The shattered shield dissolved, like candy floss before a vengeful teakettle. His armor grew dull and its polished plate turned to tweed as the magic of the dragon's breath stripped away the enchantment Strephon had used to create it. Strephon found himself once again clad in his plain brown suit. His crutch, strangely enough, remained a sword, perhaps because it had been enchanted to begin with and held more tenaciously to the transformation Strephon had wrought upon it, but his legs, his wretched, superannuated limbs, had reverted to their pitiful mortal state and their pain ricocheted through his body.
Knox simply ignored Strephon. He gathered up the pieces of his illusory desktop and conjured them into a new scrying. “Let's see what Miss True has been doing,” he mused. “I don't like this. She's up to something...”
Strephon felt helpless, even more than before. Knox had shrugged off his best attempt as if it were nothing, and the beast wasn't even bothering to toy with him. “The blighter's unkillable,” Strephon muttered.
“Nothing's unkillable if it's alive in the first place.”
Strephon started to see Inanna crouched by his side. Somehow she had managed to avoid being crushed during the skirmish with the dragon. She offered her arm to help Strephon sit up.
“That's obvious,” Strephon grumbled, accepting her arm with ill grace. “And not terribly helpful.”
“I'm not allowed to help you. You may have released me from my oath to you, but my oath to him binds me still.”
That was true, Strephon silently admitted.
“I can tell you no secrets. I can say nothing that he himself has not told you already.”
“Well of course, but --”
“I can tell you only what he has already revealed.”
She repeated it with an odd emphasis. She clearly meant the remark to be significant, but for the life of him Strephon could not guess why, and he was in no mood for puzzles. “Don't forget,” she added, “he's been bound in hawthorn and entombed in stone for over fourteen centuries.”
“I know. He keeps going on about it.”
“And in that time, no one has seen his true form.”
“I don't see what --”
“Not one single person.” Inanna gripped Strephon's hand.
Now the penny dropped. No one had ever seen Knox's true form. Neither had Strephon. The beast Strephon had been fighting with was simply another of Knox's simulacra. To test the matter, Strephon re-focused his perception to look for Knox's aura. He saw nothing. The dragon had no aura whatsoever, just like Knox's appearance at Melchior's dinner party. No wonder the beast was immune to attack.
“Why Inanna, you devious little minx.” She couldn't, by her oath, give her any hints, but she could remind him of the hints Knox had already let slip in his interminable boasting.
Inanna blushed at the compliment. “Call me Clarise,” she said.
But if Knox and his draconic form were both marionettes, then where was the real Togwogmagog?
Strephon had had enough of fighting illusions. He would no longer play Knox's game. With steely determination, he removed his jacket and pulled it inside out.
NEXT: Five Smooth Stones