“Lis-semay, lis-semay, drifting along the Appian Way
Stir the pot, word the chant, shove aside the sycophant
Put it down, put it down, deep where the Earth doth roil and frown
To make sure no harm comes to us, lodge it in the heart of Vesuvius
Keep it there, make it stay
As you did for the Greeks at brave Thermopylae.”
There was an explosion of light and darkness. Out of it came … calm. Above them, the clouds grew quiet. Below them, the heaving shadowy seas subsided. Then both vanished, up and gone away, as if they had never been.
They were back in the sewer chamber. Breathing hard, Simwan knew it was so, because breathing hard, he could not escape the putrid smell of the hundreds of rodent carcasses that surrounded him and his outraged nostrils.
Of the Big Bad Dark Thing, there was no sign.
He and his sisters and Pithfwid, not to mention a frantic Señor Nutt, had a bad moment when there was no sign of their uncle Herkimer. Then they spotted him on the far side of the room. He was lying on the corpse-strewn stone floor, one hand holding his head as he struggled to sit up. They were all at his side in a moment: Simwan looking on with concern while the girls fussed and cooed over their no-longer stiff (well, no longer ramrod straight, anyway) uncle. Leaping onto his lap, Señor Nutt rested his front paws on the dead man’s chest and began anxiously licking the moldy, decaying face.
Perhaps predictably, Rose muttered, “Eewww.”
Accepting a sextet of helping hands from the girls, Herkimer rose unsteadily to his feet. To be fair, he was unsteady most of the time, but at present he was certainly a bit more so than usual. Espying Simwan, and with Señor Nutt panting happily at his feet, he tottered over and clapped his nephew firmly on the shoulder.
“That was as fine a piece of uncle throwing as ever I’ve experienced, my boy, and I’ve been tossed around by some of the best! Many are those who would have thought too long about complying with my request. Sometimes even a wizard has to act without thinking.”
“What—what happened?” were the first words Simwan could think to mutter in response.
Peering ceilingward, Uncle Herkimer continued to rest a thankful hand on his nephew’s shoulder while pointing with the other. “I told you that the Big Bad Dark Thing knows itself. Well, I know myself also. I didn’t think it could swallow me and handle that. But I needed someone else to set me in motion.”
After giving Simwan’s shoulder a parting, affectionate squeeze, Uncle Herkimer drew back his hand and for the second time in less than an hour, started toward the dark opening of the conduit that led to the surface. This time, nothing came frothing forth to contest his passage.
Simwan and the girls followed close behind, with a talkative Pithfwid and an argumentative Señor Nutt bringing up the rear. His sisters were already quarreling over which cleaning spells they were going to employ to cleanse themselves and their clothes. They couldn’t just head back to the apartment without doing something about their appearance. Passing Ord pedestrians who happened to catch sight of the three blood-soaked girls and their brother were liable to do anything from faint on the spot to run screaming into the street, while a patrolling policeman would take one look at them and might well assume they were the survivors of a bomb attack, or maybe the worst incident of gang warfare in the history of the city. His sisters’ squabbling left Simwan free to chat with his uncle.
“You said you didn’t think the BBDT could swallow you, could handle who and what you are.” He searched the ghastly but lovable face of his relative as the latter lurched onward, having to bend low so that his dead head would not be knocked clean off by the roof of the tunnel. “I don’t understand what happened. Just who and what are you, Uncle Herkimer?”
The dead man smiled down at him. “I guess your parents haven’t told you much about me, eh?”
Simwan shook his head. “As far as the girls and I know, you’re just Uncle Herkimer. On our mother’s side.”
A renegade maggot spilled out of one ear as Herkimer nodded understandingly. “You must have seen my mailbox when you arrived at my apartment and rang the bell. Do you recall the nameplate?”
It was not the explanation Simwan had expected. He tried hard to remember. In his defense, it had been somewhat of a long day.
He brightened. “J. Herkimer.”
His uncle smiled anew. Suddenly he did not look so old, or so slow, or even quite so dead. Simwan had a brief, bracing glimpse of the great and powerful sorcerer his uncle (on his mother’s side) had once been, lo those many centuries ago.
“The J, ” Uncle Herkimer told his nephew, “stands for Justice. And like I told you, my boy, for it to be effective in combating evil, it inevitably needs someone to set it in motion.”
XXIV
Though little short of Armageddon could have topped their first day in New York for sheer excitement, it must be added that the Deavy offspring had a wondrous good time afterward as well. Mailing the Truth home to Mr. Gemimmel (via Express Harpy) resulted in the joyous news that their mother had made an astonishingly swift and complete recovery and had been discharged from the hospital that very same day. All Hallow’s Eve was especially memorable, with each of them dressed in a different outfit as they wandered up and down this Manhattan street and that. Their costumes drew a good deal of favorable comment from admiring Ord celebrants, though none could surpass the stream of compliments lavished on Uncle Herkimer, even though he had only gone out as himself.
By and by the week went bye-bye, and they had to return home to Clearsight. Their parents were pleased and duly impressed that their offspring had successfully experienced the big city more or less on their own, and that contrary to their mother’s concerns and in line with their father’s prediction, they had encountered no trouble whatsoever in the course of their visit, no trouble at all. To the children’s delight (and great relief), Uncle Herkimer conveyed nothing to counter this perception.
As soon as a convenient opportunity presented itself, the Deavy siblings bicycled back into town and paid their respects to Mr. Gemimmel, who in turn showed them where he had carefully returned the Truth to the empty space on the special shelf in the far, far back of beyond that was located at the rear of his pharmacy. Not long after, a special election was held to determine the fate of the proposed new town mall and its ancillary property development. Much to the surprise of the developers and the town council and the highly paid lobbyists who had pushed for its approval, the proposal was soundly defeated—so soundly that a run-off vote or recount was deemed unnecessary. The puzzled pollsters who had been predicting passage of the amendment to the county’s planning and zoning code that would have allowed the development to go ahead had apparently been wrong all along. Just as many of the voters later admitted they had been from the start. The anti-development group led by Melinda Mae Deavy held a lowkey party to celebrate its defeat.
Life thereafter did not necessarily proceed smoothly, however. Much to Melinda Mae’s disgust, Pithfwid continued his regular habit of bringing home dead mice and the occasional low-flying pigeon and depositing their battered carcasses on the Deavy front steps. With the resumption of school following the holiday, Simwan once more found himself subject to the taunts, pranks, and general teasing of the coubet.
It wasn’t fair, he fumed on more than one occasion. Other young wizards-in-waiting only had to suffer the assaults of dragons and demons, of threatening trolls and grotesque ogres and evil sprites. Those threats, at least, were understandable. Whereas he, who had done nothing to deserve so miserable and patently unfair an adolescence, was forced to deal on a daily basis with nasty, spiteful, mocking little sisters.
All two-and-a-half of them.
About the Author
Alan Dean Foster is the author of more than 120 science fiction and fantasy novels. His books include the Spellsinger Series, the Pip and Fli
nx Series, and numerous Star Wars and Star Trek novelizations. In addition to creating imaginary worlds, Foster travels extensively throughout the world. He has camped in the South Pacific, scuba dived on unexplored reefs, eaten fried piranha in the jungles of Peru, and filmed great white sharks in Australia. In addition to writing and traveling, Foster likes to hike, bodysurf, and powerlift. He and his wife live in Prescott, Arizona, with their troupe of cats. Needless to say, the cats rule the house.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Alan Dean Foster
Cover design by Jesse Hayes
978-1-5040-1587-5
Published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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Alan Dean Foster, The Deavys
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