The Philosophical Strangler(139)

We did have a moment’s unpleasantness with the Torrid Terror. And the Flaying Crutchman. But the Minions of the Minotaur were pretty small potatoes and the Minotaur himself never made a showing. And now that I’ve had a bit of a set-to with troglodytes I can assure you that their reputation is grossly exaggerated.

The Mesozoic ones might have been a bit of a handful, true. But with Greyboar along that encounter was pretty much a picnic. Actually, it was a picnic. The troglodytes mistook Greyboar for a distant cousin and insisted we stay for lunch. Don’t ask me what we ate. The less said about Mesozoic troglodyte cuisine the better.

But at least we didn’t run into any poetry, except for when Hrundig got tipsy at the picnic—on what? don’t ask—and he started matching lays with the Mesozoic troglodytes and got adopted into the clan himself.

In fact, when we finally got back into our house we discovered that only thirty-six hours had elapsed. At least, according to the grandfather clock which Jenny and Angela had bought at an auction and installed into what they called our “foyer.”

Zulkeh was ecstatic. “Proof positive!” he exclaimed. “For this alone, the expedition was worth it! Irrefutable evidence that time passes in the netherworld at a rate precisely”—a bunch of incomprehensible twaddle here—“and that Greenwich Laebmauntsforscynneweëld is every bit the dunce that I have named him in treatises too numerous to detail. To which,” he added, stalking toward the library, “I shall now add yet another.”





So he was happy. Marvelous.

So was Shelyid, needless to say, because while the wizard spent the next several days in nonstop scribbling at the writing desk in the library, the dwarf could lounge around without any of the onerous duties which Zulkeh usually saddled him with. Dust the mage off, once or twice, and that was it. Spent the rest of his time with Hrundig and Greyboar and the Cat getting plastered down at The Trough. Marvelous.

Magrit must have been happy too, judging from the way she decamped in the middle of the first night back. I caught a glimpse of her by candlelight passing through the front door, cackling something about Finally Getting Even with somebody or other. Wittgenstein mooned me on the way out.

Marvelous.

Gwendolyn and Benvenuti? Oh, they were downright ecstatic—in that ridiculous star-crossed-lovers’ achy-breaky way of theirs. Because of the “rigors,” as they say, of our trek out of the netherworld, they hadn’t been able to talk much until we got back. Then they spent a few hours holding hands on the couch in the salon, having what people call a “heart-to-heart.” Much as I tried, I couldn’t help overhearing some of it. The gist of which was that As He Was Still Committed To Art—and had apparently picked up some kind of silly Foul Wrong To Be Righted In The Blood Of The Evildoer along the way—and She Was As Always Bound Body And Soul To The Cause and, furthermore, Disapproved Of Personal Vengeance, their love was every bit As Hopeless As Ever and therefore They Must Part Again.

Which, once settled, didn’t stop the two of them from spending the next several days not moving once out of their bedroom on the third floor. Well. “Not moving” in the sense of leaving the bed. I began to fear for the structural integrity of the building. Marvelous.

On the morning of the fourth day after our return from the netherworld, Benny stopped into the library to bid me farewell. Hrundig was with him, waiting in the doorway.

“Adieu, good Ignace!” he exclaimed, in his perfect baritone. “I must be off! There is a wrong to be avenged! In the blood of the perpetrator!”

I’d been wondering why he was garbed all in black. He even drew his rapier out of its scabbard and inspected the razor-sharp blade with great satisfaction. Which was a bit unusual. Despite appearances, Benvenuti really wasn’t much given to dramatic excess.

“Off, I say! Godferret Superior #3 is a doomed man!”

I hadn’t realized Benny had a grudge against the guy as much as Hrundig did. Normally, I would have asked about it, but I was too mired in my own misery to care much about the travails of others.

I did manage to summon up enough civility to inquire as to his plans After The Wrongdoer Met His Just Desserts. Given that Benvenuti had pretty much scuttled his prospects as an artist anywhere in Sfinctria. Benny shrugged and said that he was thinking of perhaps trying his fortune in Kankria.

“Kankr?” I choked. “Kankr? They haven’t got a pot to piss in!”

“All the greater the challenge, then!” he replied. His perfect teeth gleamed under the perfect mustache. Then, with a flourish of his cape, he was gone and Hrundig with him.