Have Imagination, Will Travel Read online

  She reasoned that if she asked the villagers, she would be told the Fire Gods were angry, the Earth Gods were furious and the Grass Gods had proven their opportunistic nature and seeded the ground while they had the chance.

  She reasoned further that if she asked Jagrad Darkthorne, she would be told the Giant-Worm-Who-Lived-Beneath-The-Earth was bleeding from a mortal wound afflicted by the Crab-Beast-Of-The-Realm-Of-Infinite-Beaches.

  Tarne sensed someone nearby and her head snapped up, her eyes narrowing as they fell upon a girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen years. She was trying to conceal herself behind a tree, although since there were only three trees in the area, and two of those had been toppled by the quakes, there was little chance of such a gambit succeeding.

  “What?” Tarne barked at her. “I’m busy here.”

  The girl gasped, trying harder to hide herself behind the tree as though somehow Tarne would not be able to see her if she did so. “It’s true,” the girl muttered, afraid. “You are a witch.”

  Usually it took a lightshow before people said such a thing about her. “But I haven’t done anything yet,” Tarne protested.

  “You knew I was there without having to turn around.”

  Tarne stared at her as though the girl was an idiot; something which she had assumed she was anyway. The village idiot amongst a village full of idiots. “There’s only one place to hide,” Tarne said slowly, counting off on her fingers, “plus it’s broad daylight and you cast something which is generally known as a shadow. And thirdly I heard your feet on the fallen leaves, and fourth of course you were mumbling to yourself while you stood there, likely saying a prayer to whatever idle deity your people worship. How then could I not have heard you?”

  “A witch,” the girl said, wide-eyed. “I knew you were a witch.”

  Tarne tried not to become angry, although never really seemed to accomplish that at times like this. “Look, I’m not a witch, all right?” The more people called her a witch, the more respect she got from everyone she met, but also the more people tended to want to burn her at the stake. It was a somewhat rough trade-off.

  “If you’re not a witch,” the girl started slowly, although her voice trailed off at this point.

  “Yes?” Tarne prompted icily.

  “If you’re not a witch, how did you know I was standing behind the tree?”

  Tarne counted to ten, although she must have done it aloud, because the girl turned and fled in abject fright. “Perfect,” Tarne muttered as she rose and dusted off her knees. “Just what I need, another village thinking I’m a witch when I leave them.” She glanced up at the sky and her gaze caught a cloud which looked to her much like a large eye. “What are you looking at?” she muttered, and headed back to the village.

  Sparky was speaking with several of the elders when she returned. Good, Tarne decided, for she could deliver her news to all of them at once and then they could leave. Her mood had deteriorated and did not promise to get better any time soon, so she decided she needed to place herself as far from these villagers as was humanly possible. Or witchily possible.

  “Heather,” Sparky said, relieved to see her. Clearly he had had a tough time arguing with the elders over how to solve their problems. “We were just talking about what possibilities we might have for saving these people.”

  “Stow it,” Tarne said, “I’m not in the mood.” To the elders she said brusquely, “The fire-water is actually super-heated rock which melts, breaks through the surface and then cools back into rock. There are probably thermal vents under your land, and something disturbed them recently, most likely natural shifts in the local geological patterns. There’s nothing to do about them, they’ll likely calm down by themselves in due course. Stay here and weather them out or take your people and move to a different location. Your call, but I wouldn’t take too long deciding if I were you. Come along, Sparky, we’re leaving.”

  Sparky watched her walk off, his mouth agape, and turned to the befuddled, horrified villagers. “Well there you have it,” Sparky announced. “Another community’s troubles solved by the Darkthorne Legion. Call us day, call us night, and come what may we’ll solve your plight.” He offered a perfunctory bow, skittering back even as he did so, finally turning and almost stumbling as he hastened to catch up to his companion. “Hey, Heather, wait up.”

  “What?” she barked, not slowing her pace at all.

  “Well, you could’ve been a bit nicer about all of that.”

  “Like you care about anyone’s welfare,” Tarne sneered. “Just go fetch Jagrad and Sara so we can all get out of here before the next lava surge.”

  “A pickpocket I may be, but at least I care about those people back there, Heather.”

  Tarne glanced aside to him and regarded his furious expression. “How much did you make out of them by the way?”

  Sparky’s fury transformed to an instant grin. “Bad card players. I got enough money from playing those saps to set us up in the good life for at least a couple of weeks. I also pickpocketed enough to buy us food to last us a month. Oh, and after you’d stormed off, I managed to filch a gold ring off one of the elder’s fingers.”

  “And you complain about my lack of morals?”

  Sparky winked. “When ya got it, ya got it.”

  Tarne watched him move off and was glad they would soon be out of the area. Perhaps, she reflected, Darkthorne had been right when he had refused to come down from the hills not so long ago. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been stopping to sort out everyone’s little problems on their way to Bastelle. But then one did not enter Bastelle without the means to pay one’s way, for Bastelle was the largest and most expensive city in the lands. It was also where the royal palace was located and as such where a small band of mercenaries could find decent work without having to look too hard.

  “You don’t really feel bad about trying to help those people.”

  The voice startled Tarne, although she tried to maintain her composure as the old man regarded her with cold, yet still caring eyes. He was sitting down upon a rock at the edge of the village, for he had chosen not to enter along with the others. Perhaps he had had the right idea, Tarne reflected, although that would have meant admitting that Darkthorne had also had a right idea, which would have been a terrible thing to do to such an ego. The old man wore a long blue robe with expensive white material beneath this, which Tarne had always supposed to be a shirt although had never cared enough to actually ask. His beard was white and long enough to stretch to his waist, and he hobbled along on a gnarled stick although never lagged behind. Atop his head there rested a fedora. Perhaps not the most traditional of wizard’s hats, but just last week he was wearing a straw hat with corks hanging from it. The fedora was, she believed, a definite improvement.

  The man’s name was ... well, Tarne did not actually know his name since he had never told her. She referred to him as Old Man Robes and the name had stuck. He did not seem to mind, and if he didn’t mind, she didn’t mind.

  Tarne tried to march straight past him, although stopped and balled her hands into fists by her side. “What do you mean I don’t really feel bad about trying to help them?”

  “Well let’s face it, you’re a good person at heart.”

  “They called me a witch.”

  “You are. To their eyes anyway.”

  “Just because I know about the earth and plants and animals – and not to stand out in a large puddle during a lightning storm – it doesn’t make me a witch.”

  “No.”

  “And I shouldn’t have to put up with ... with people like that calling me a witch to my face.”

  “Assuredly not.”

  “And why then should I care one whit what happens to them now that I’ve left them?”

  “And that’s the question, isn’t it?” Old Man Robes said, a mercurial glint to his eyes. “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t,” Tarne said guiltily.

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”
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  “No?”

  “No. They can burn by fire-water, see if I care. If they can’t recognise lava, then it’s their own fault. They’ve been warned, and that’s where my duty ends.”

  “Ah, so you do admit you have some form of duty?”

  “I never said that. I don’t owe ignorant peasants anything.”

  “And the children?”

  “Are better off not being brought up if that’s what adulthood has in store for them.”

  “Right. So better to rob them of their worldly goods, tell them to clear out without actually doing anything to stop their woes, and pray to your gods that they don’t pray to their gods and come up with a solution all of their own. Perfect.”

  Tarne narrowed her eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Why, should I be?”

  “Heather!”

  The voice belonged to Jagrad Darkthorne, and Tarne gladly turned her back on Old Man Robes that she might talk to someone with slightly less sanity. Presently, the sane mind held little interest for her. “What is it with you people shouting at me today?” she snapped.

  “Sparky says we’re leaving.”

  “Is he qualified to make that kind of decision?”

  “He says you said we’re leaving.”

  “Well if he said I said we’re leaving, we must be leaving.”

  “So you’re saying what he said you said is true?”

  “You’re saying you need to ask whether what I’m saying is the same as what he said I said?”

  “I’m saying ...” Darkthorne paused, his brow a deeply furrowed frown. “Heather, are we leaving?”

  “Shame,” she sighed. “We could have gone on like that for hours.”

  “Well?”

  “Yes. Yes, we’re leaving. We’ve done all we can for these people, which was frankly not very much, and now it’s time to go because I don’t really want to be here when the next quake strikes.”

  “Can’t you stop them?”

  “What, you think I’m a sorceress now or something?”

  “No, I figured you were a witch, though.”

  “You want a slap, Jagrad?”

  “Depends if you mean it, Heather.”

  “Pardon me for interrupting this conversation which I’m not following anyway,” Sparky said, “but we have enough money to survive in Bastelle for a little while, and that was what we wanted in the first place. What say we all head out there and see what turns up, yeah?”

  “I don’t like the thought of leaving these people in the lurch,” Darkthorne said.

  Tarne laughed and folded her arms. “But you were the one who didn’t even want to set foot in their village to begin with.”

  “Well, now I think we should help them.”

  “What, because I say we shouldn’t?”

  “No, because I say we should.” Darkthorne did his best to puff out his chest and make himself appear more important than he was. “Remember, it’s my name that will buy you nice things in the next town.”

  “You really want that slap, don’t you?”

  Darkthorne exhaled, not being able to hold his chest out for very long. “I just don’t think of it as gaining very good karma leaving people without first solving their troubles.”

  “Jagrad, we can’t solve the troubles of the entire world. We visit somewhere, we move on. Story of our lives. Besides, karma? When have you ever cared what happens to you in the next life? Now, are we going on to Bastelle or aren’t we?”

  “I vote aye,” Sparky said.

  “Shut up,” Darkthorne and Tarne said together.

  There was silence amongst the group for some moments, then Kiel said, “I vote aye.”

  “Fair enough,” Darkthorne sighed. “We’ll go to Bastelle.” He turned to face the distant city with a grin upon his moustached lips, and shouted loud for all the world to hear, “Onward, to the palace!”

  And he charged off across the lands.

  “What a strange man,” Old Man Robes said to himself.

  “Who is more the fool?” Tarne muttered, not wishing to finish the axiom as they began to follow in the wake of the somewhat mentally unstable Jagrad Darkthorne.

  FUTURE CHAPTER

  “I don’t like that cloud,” Jagrad Darkthorne muttered, although he supposed the thick black cloud rising from the navigation system was the least of his concerns. The navcom had been destroyed, and that meant they would have to manoeuvre their vessel using their good old-fashioned senses. “Sara, give me something I can work with.”

  “If you stopped shouting at me a minute I might just be able to do that,” Sara Kiel shouted back over her shoulder without turning around. The room was small, considering there were three people crammed inside, and Kiel knew her job well enough to just get on with doing it. She did not need Captain Darkthorne shouting at her and she certainly didn’t need to hear his opinions. But then she supposed he had been that way since before she first met him and doubted he would change now.

  Kiel was from a planet of limited technologies, and when the strange eagle-like craft had descended from the heavens, she had seized her opportunity and stowed aboard. Her people were not entirely ignorant of space travel, although they did not engage in such themselves. They were spiritual and believed the existence of life elsewhere in the universe detracted from their own importance. Many even refused to admit the existence of beings from the stars. Kiel, however, had always been curious as to what was beyond the atmosphere of her own world, and had stowed away. Darkthorne did not like to revisit planets; there was always the possibility the law might catch up to him. Thus had he been forced to either keep Kiel or dump her at the next port. She promised that if he chose the latter, she would go to the authorities and tell them all about Darkthorne’s craft, his current position and anything she had managed to find out about his crew. Darkthorne had threatened to throw her off the vessel before they reached the next port, and Kiel had called his bluff.

  Thus had Sara Kiel joined the small crew of the Princess Aurellia, and had never looked back. Since she had always been able to find her way through the deserts of her homeland by following the stars, Darkthorne had offered her the position of piloting the vessel, something which he had always maintained himself. According to Tarne, it was something at which he was not particularly good, and there had been general relief when Kiel had proved a better pilot.

  Tarne, now that we have mentioned her, lay upon her back at the rear of the chamber. Several of the circuits had blown and Tarne was attempting to effect repairs. How Tarne and the captain had met was an entirely different story, although since there were so many explosions erupting about her presently, Kiel decided she had best concentrate on her actual job.

  Something darted past the side window of their vessel and streaked out in front, burning from the rear and showing itself to be some form of smaller fighter-craft.

  “What’s that?” Darkthorne yelled, on his feet in an instant.

  Kiel banked sharply to purposefully throw him back into his chair, although annoyingly enough he was able through long experience to remain on his feet. “Would you get out of my face and let me do my job?” Kiel shouted at him, and not for the first time.

  The Princess Aurellia was wanted by several different authorities for a variety of crimes, although the captain was wanted for more. They were smugglers by trade, although were not averse to taking other assignments, such as acting as mercenaries or offering protection. They also tended to cheat at cards a lot, which was, surprisingly, the main reason they had so many people after them. Presently, the fighter-craft outside were not after them for anything of the sort, however. For once they had done very little wrong, and it was the fault of some very silly laws that they were now being shot at. They had stopped briefly at the planet Naphtha, which was for the most part a hot, offensive world where people lived in artificial domes. They had very little reason for being on Naphtha, save that they had been passing the general area and decided to stop by. Planets were so
few and far between throughout the universe that when you arrived to within a few million miles of one, it was best to stop for a spell. They had landed, therefore, that they might take advantage of the locals’ inability to cheat at cards, and had intended to walk away with a tidy sum.

  All was going well, until Captain Darkthorne had decided to flirt with one of the locals. He had spent the night at the roulette table with her and the two had become quite attached. Tarne and Sparky had thought little of it, and indeed Kiel remained behind with the vessel and had not witnessed any of this. The first she had known that something was wrong was when she had caught sight of Darkthorne, Tarne and Sparky running full tilt back to the craft, shouting all the while for her to lift off. Kiel had done so, and the Princess Aurellia had broken the stratosphere without any trouble.

  Then the problem had been explained to Kiel. It seemed that Darkthorne had spent the night with the girl, which did not surprise Kiel at all. What was news to her, and news to all of them in fact, was that such activities were forbidden until after wedlock, and that Darkthorne had broken the planet’s cardinal rule. Because of the small size of their habitations and the sheer lack of room for expansion on a world so hot, marriage was sacred, and Darkthorne’s act had gone against everything they believed in. They had marked him a blasphemer and had come after him with guns and hatchets, so Darkthorne had run as fast as he possibly could.

  They had thought this would have marked the end of the matter, but then the small fighter-craft had appeared in the spaceways beside them and had started to fire missiles. It seemed the people of Naphtha took their rules very seriously indeed.