TOM Page 5

  Tom was suffering from that human ailment that he’d never had as a cat — too little sleep, and yet needing to stay awake. As a cat, if you needed sleep, you slept. As a famulus, if you slept after first light, the skull of Mrs Drellson took it out on you. To make up for it, Tom thought he’d like a peek at the double-padlocked book the Master had been peering at and muttering from last night.

  There was no open grimoire left on the bench or on the central table. What there was, was a chamber pot. Tom looked at it with tired eyes and no small amount of irritation. Well, best if he took it and emptied it now. He wasn’t used to seeing that particular purple and puce-pansy ornamented pot here. It belonged in the study… no, it was the wrong color.

  It wasn’t, as he’d vaguely hoped, empty.

  There was a heavy roiling purplish smoke covering the bottom. Well, considering the magician’s diet that wasn’t surprising. The brimstone smell in the laboratory could have been due to the chamber pot. On the other hand, the place generally stank of many strange things. Tom sighed and picked it up, and began trudging to the garderobe to empty it. Something was niggling at his tired mind.

  About half way there it came to him. The unfamiliar chamber pot… was very like the sky-blue and pink pansy ornamented one from the magician’s study. He stopped and looked at it again. The pansies were now magenta, and some of them looked like little horned skulls.

  “Demon!” he said, peering at it.

  The smoke stirred and he could see, in the roil of purple smoke, a pair of slitty eyes, of precisely the same shade of magenta that the pansies had been.

  “Cat,” said the smoke in a cracking voice reminiscent of fire-splitting logs.

  Tom nearly… but not quite, dropped the pot.

  “I’m a boy, or maybe a demon too,” Tom said hastily. “And I’m taking you back.”

  The demon snorted smoke. “You’re a cat. I can see your essences. Besides you have a tail. Those are hard to magically transform. Let me loose, cat.”

  “No way. Old Grumptious would kill me.”

  “I can protect you,” said the demon.

  “You couldn’t protect yourself,” pointed out Tom.

  “I will call on legions of help. I am a demon-prince! I am not in his bespelled place now. You will be richly rewarded,” said the demon.

  There was a particular wheedling tone that Tom, now thoroughly awake, distrusted. It reminded him… yes, that was it, it reminded him of the voice of Master Hargarthius, offering him fish.

  “Don’t believe you. Anyway, what can you do for me?”

  “I can make you a cat again, free of this magician,” offered the demon.

  That was enough to make Tom pause in his hasty walk back to the laboratory.

  The demon plainly detected his advantage. “I can give you whatever you desire. I am a being of great power… and this is terribly undignified.”

  Now that Tom could understand. So much of what had been done to him, was undignified for a cat. It was the kind of affront that neither Master Hargarthius nor the skull of Mrs Drellson appreciated. He stopped.

  The demon pressed the advantage. “Feasting, dancing cat-girls, they will be yours.”

  The cat-girls part definitely stirred interest in Tom, interest that met sensible behaviour and told it to get lost. “Cat-girls,” he said.

  “Oh indeed. Cat-girls, dancing and singing for you… and anything else you may desire,” and the pansies reshaped themselves, briefly, into sleek dancing cats with elegant necks and tails.

  He’d won. But the demon didn’t know that and went on. “I can make you the king of cats. Cats everywhere would obey your orders. You will have prince-cats and duke-cats under you, obedient and loyal. Your wish would be their command. Especially the girl cats.”

  Tom started walking again, back to the laboratory. The demon continued to make offers, ever more grandiose. Tom walked faster.

  Just short of the laboratory door, Tom met up with Master Hargarthius, who had the raven on his shoulder. “Where are you going with that thing, boy?” snapped the magician, sounding neither old… nor pleased.

  “Back to the laboratory,” said Tom.

  Master Hargathius peered into the chamber pot. The purple smoke twisted and churned under his gaze but of the eyes there was no sign. And the pansies on the outside were once again pink on a cerulean blue. “And where have you been with it?” he asked, his tone considerably more mild.

  “I was taking it to the garderobe.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “It’s a demon, boy. It doesn’t need to… go. As you must have worked out, or it wouldn’t still be in there.”

  “It was lying to me. Complaining about its dignity,” said Tom. “I’d like to show it worse.” He was cross, now. He knew he was in dire trouble, but the thought of those dancing cat-girls was still with him.

  The raven’s beak closed with a snap. Then it went: “Kaaark! Kaark! Kaark!” which might even have been laughing, if ravens laughed.

  That was definitely a nasty snigger from Master Hargarthius. “Of course it was lying. They always do, boy. Heh, heh. I hadn’t thought of that threat… or bribe. Well done. Put it down in the laboratory. Let’s go and have some beer.”

  So Tom did.

  He did get two things out of the entire experience, well, three really. The first was that he didn’t really like the beer. The magician said it grew on you. So did mould. The second was that he’d never seen the raven sit on Master Hargarthius’s shoulder before. There had to be a reason for all that. The third, less direct lesson, which most humans seemed to need to be taught early, or would never learn, was that demons always lie and don’t know or understand cats. Imagine telling a cat he’d be the king of cats with all other cats in a hierarchy below that obedient to him! Maybe demons worked like that. In the next while Tom established that yes, indeed they did.

  But cats do not.

  Cats didn’t take orders well or willingly. If the magician had wanted that, he should have transformed a dog.

  It must have been the beer growing on them — even the raven had had some. And none of them thought twice about going into the laboratory. If they’d been a little more observant, the master would have quietly closed the door before stepping through the doorway… and possibly have returned to the kitchen to have more beer, or just had Master Hargarthius do his best to incinerate the place. Tom himself, just behind the master with a silver platter with another tankard of beer and some pickles — needed for an experiment, the Magician had loftily explained to the skull of Mrs Drellson — had no chance to see much, until the door swung closed behind them.

  A pity he hadn’t been in front… he might have noticed the spider-webs earlier.

  Not just their presence — there were always spider-webs. The magician used them. But the fact that they now held just a lavender hint of exactly the same shade of angry purple as the pansies on the chamber-pot might have been a clue — that, and the fact that the ceiling was just solid with them. But no one looked up, until it was too late.

  Seconds after they had walked into the room, it wasn’t just the ceiling. The myriads of tiny spiders boiled down the walls, spinning an ever-closing tent of cobwebs. Tom didn’t see a lot more, as they’d smothered the candles in web.

  The Master and the raven both tried to reach the chamber pot and the demon. However, firstly, flying was a poor choice. The raven made it part of the way, and then fell… a little, wings tangled in an ever-growing mass of web… and the magician, striding forward, staff outstretched, didn’t do much better. Tom was free, but Master Hargathius — and his staff — was not.

  Tom had not rushed to the attack. Instead, he’d done what any sensible cat would do — dived for cover. Now, perhaps if the demon had not sent all his spiders to the roof, the space under the workbench in the middle of the laboratory would have been just as cobwebbed, and Tom would have been in the same kind of trouble as the magician, and the raven who was up there and slashing at the sticky cobwe
bs with its dagger-like beak.

  Instead, Tom had crept underneath the workbench, trying to find the darkest and safest corner… which, as the walls and roof were full of cobwebs was more-or-less the middle of the room. He was under the bench, just about directly under the demon-infested chamber-pot, from which a shriek of demonic laughter echoed.

  Then the demon said in voice of unpleasant delight. “You’re trapped now, Magician. At my mercy. Give me my freedom, or you will die here.” It cackled with demonic glee.

  “Nevermore!” croaked the raven. It sounded somewhat muffled.

  “What good do you think this will do you?” demanded Master Hargarthius, sounding both old and grumptious. “You can’t escape from this room even if you could escape the containment spell on the pot, Prince Hariseldon.”

  “You know my name, magician. But you cannot draw the circles. You cannot invoke the powers. Let me loose of here. You have me prisoner. But I have you! You will suffer terrible agonies and I will relish every moment. My power will grow with what I seize from you, I will rise in the hierarchy of demons, and all life will be mine, mine to destroy, slowly and painfully,” boomed the demon. The room was very dim, lit now only by a faint sickly mauve glow from the spider -webs.

  “I didn’t put you in there,” said the Magician. “So I can’t take you out. The boy did the widdershins working.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “What happened to the cat?” asked the demon, as Tom pressed back hard against the back leg of the work-bench. Tom wasn’t too good at interpreting demonic tones of voice, but it did sound decidedly worried. Which was how Tom felt right then. It was nice to know he had company feeling like that.

  He wished he knew precisely what to do, and, principally, how to get out of the laboratory by doing it.

  Master Hargarthius laughed, almost winning the ‘who-can-laugh-most-evilly’ contest with the demon. They really were very evenly matched in that. It did seem that a cat’s ability to see in a dim room was still superior to a trapped demon’s, even if the cat had been transformed in shape, thought Tom, peeping out. Of course that didn’t help, when he couldn’t see a way to escape.

  Just then there was a thump.

  A bundle of cobwebs with a large protruding black beak landed on the floor.

  It uttered a gloomy ‘Nevermore’.

  Obviously the raven’s beak, at least, could cut cobwebs. But spiders, tiny little spiders, were swarming down on silken drop-lines to recapture it. They would spot Tom, no matter how far back he lurked. It didn’t stop him squirming back as far as possible, and getting as his reward a metallic clang as his elbow slid into a wet pool of what was, by the smell, beer. The pickle jar, miraculously unbroken rolled up against his cheek… just as he felt the ghostly touch of little spider-feet on his other cheek. A faintly mauve-glowing mass of them was heading his way, behind the scouts.

  It was a case of do something… or it would be too late to do anything. Reflexively, Tom grabbed the pickle jar and flung it. He hurled it at them — as well as someone not very experienced at throwing can — while lying on his stomach under a workbench.

  That is to say: very badly. The pickle jar did not hit the advancing swarm of little spiders. It hit a bench-leg, hard, because Tom had put all his strength into that terrible throw, and the lid came flying off, spraying an arc of vinegar and glass followed by bouncing brown pickled onions.

  Among the human food he was having to learn to eat, Tom had found the fiery pickled onions to be dangerous, and best avoided.

  It seemed the demon-possessed spiders found them similar, but many, many times worse. The vinegar just obliterated the mass with a vicious hissing that would have made fifty enraged Tom-cats seem quiet. One moment it was there, the next gone. The bouncing pickles tore through the spider-webs like very sharp claws hitting bubbles, with little mauve pops when a spider was in the way. One bounced into the mass surrounding the raven, and the raven, being the raven, stabbed the onion with its beak, and used it to clear its body and legs of cobwebs, before eating the onion. It belched… and descending spiders vaporised.

  Tom realized he’d just been handed a way to bolt. His scrabbling fingers found the jar. It cut him and the vinegar in that cut probably didn’t help his thinking. The jar still had three onions wedged in it. So, with the silver tray as a shield, and a broken jar of ammunition and a bleeding, sore finger, Tom scrambled out, avoiding the glass and the puddle of vinegar.

  That avoidance might have been a mistake, Tom realized, as he emerged into the cobwebbed space… on the far side of the chamber-pot from the door. It was a chamber pot on which the pansies were dancing… some purple, and some puce, and not a few pink, and some in rainbow shades. Something was bulging out of the pot, seething, in just those colors.

  It seemed to be shaping itself into a maniacally grinning mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, reaching for him — and he’d emerged from under the bench far, far too close to it.

  In shock, he pushed the broken jar into that mouth, and then snatched his hand back… without the jar. All he had left was the silver tray, so he slapped that down onto the chamber-pot, like a lid.

  And it seemed to have just that effect.

  The webs faded from their strange colours and then faded entirely, leaving, eventually, one solitary, small spider dangling from a thread above the chamber-pot.

  The raven flapped up onto the bench, looked at the chamber-pot and balanced clumsily on one leg and scratched its own head with its long claws, uttering a mildly puzzled “Caark. Nevermore!” as it stared at the tray.

  Tom expected hearty congratulations and perhaps a fulsome reward from Master Hargarthius. Of course, he got a clout for dropping the beer instead. But it was a gentle clout, comparatively. The master had instead produced a pince nez and was examining the spider. “Clear signs of demonic possession,” he said. “Probably got tempted into the pot. Good thing the creature is not toxic to anything much larger than a fly. You need to do a better job of cleaning up in here, boy.”

  Tom was somewhat resentful, as he’d been told to leave the spiders alone just the week before. Being made a famulus was not all joy to a cat, he thought, grumpily, as he was sent to get a brush and dustpan, and to clear up the glass and spilled vinegar and beer.

  The master contented himself with a good long look at the chamber-pot, and then went to fetch himself more beer, merely telling the raven to watch the pot. And to deal with the spider. The raven did that, promptly, by eating it.

  Tom noticed, however, on returning to the laboratory — which he was careful to do just after the magician — that Master Hargarthius had very long look around the room, and up at the ceiling, before stepping over the threshold.

  There were no hordes of spiders waiting.

  Instead, a few inches above the surface of the workbench… the chamber pot hovered, the pink pansies slowly opening and closing to an eerie throbbing sound echoing from within the pot. It hovered in precisely the way that chamber-pots only usually do very briefly, but it was staying up. It was watched from some distance away by the raven, back on its favorite perch in the corner — a plaster bust of some woman the magician referred to as Athena.

  Tom stayed well back ready to leave for somewhere else, very fast, as Master Hargarthius drew symbols around the chamber pot, and then sprinkled a ring of salt, before lifting the tray, with a loud “Avaunt, Prince Hariselden!”

  Nothing happened. Perhaps the demon had avaunted. At least the eerie throbbing chords of sound stopped.

  Instead of brimstone, the smell emerging from the chamber pot was eye-wateringly of pickled onion. The roiling cloud of earlier had gone, replaced by a faint drift of smoke curling in delicate patterns above the rippling pale lavender liquid.

  “Have we killed it?” asked an awed Tom.

  In answer a somewhat slurred voice came from the chamber pot. “Pieces and luuurve, man. And cool cat.”

  The raven leaned suspiciously over the chamber pot from the magician’s shoul
der, cocking his head to inspect it first with one eye, and then the other, in case it was different from another point of view, presumably. “Nevermore,” it said, to no-one’s surprise.

  Well, no-one, except, it seemed for the demon, which went off in a fit of demonic giggles, sending ripples across the fluid. Finally, it stopped. “You pretty chicks have all the good pickup lines,” it said, dreamily.

  The pickles plainly didn’t entirely agree with the raven, making it the first food Tom had ever come across that had that effect, or degree of courage. It belched, at the chamber-pot. “And I just love your scent,” cooed the demon back at the raven. “How about if we just hang out a bit?” It bubbled a swirl of psychedelic onion-smelling cloud on the face of the water. “We could smoke it up together. Come on in… I got lots of pot…”

  Master Hargarthius put the tray back on top of the chamber-pot, shaking his head disapprovingly. “It’s channelling something from another dimension. No use even talking to it now, let alone teaching it a lesson.”

  “It was stupid, dangerous, and beneath you, Alamaya,” said her Uncle in that the worst of all his tones, more-sorrow-than-anger.

  She didn’t answer. If she did, he’d use her words against her, as he always did. The guard would get better. And there were less flies than there used to be. And the footman, well, she’d got the dose wrong. He would be conscious again soon. And she’d be more careful with the dosage next time. Anyway, it served him right for drinking on the job.

  “It’s for your own good, you know, Princess. Now I’ll have to increase the guards. And it’s not as if I don’t have bigger issues to deal with.”

  “Well, deal with them, instead of me,” she said, sulkily.

  He sighed. “They’re only causing trouble for me, because I stop them from reaching you. Try to understand that Alamaya. And stay away from drugs.”

  Huh. Just last week he’d been telling her to learn about them. Admittedly that had been so she’d know if she was being drugged or poisoned and how to counteract it, but how was she supposed to learn if she stayed away from them?