From: rvacca@vyasa.helios.nd.edu (robert vacca)
Subject: Fragment of a Larger Work, Never to be Completed
Summary:  You can see why I'm never going to finish it.
Organization: University of Notre Dame
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 05:43:46 GMT


	"You have failed me." said the king.

	He said it in a flat voice, tonelessly.  It was
neither a question nor an accusation, yet the wizard
treated it as such.

	"I have not!"  he contested.  "The situation is
still winnable.  Many of the peasants are merely swayed
temporarily by the sweet words of the evil one, but they
are not given body and soul to Him and his Kind.  They
can be brought back to truth."

	The king frowned.  "I believe it not."

	The wizard retorted "And I tell you it is, and I
am the wizard of your court.  I have never failed you."

	"Yet there is a reason that I am the king, and you
are my wizard.  _My_ wizard.  _My_ kingdom," he stated,
regaining a little vitality, "although not for very much
longer."  He slumped back onto his throne.

	"It can be won," stated the wizard, with an edge
in his voice that did not reach the pit of his stomach.

	"Then win it."

---

	The wizard trod up the stairs to his tower.  His
tower stood high above the Ivory Castle, laid out during
the reign of the first king George, namesake of his king.
His tower alone of the castle was not ivory, but rather
solid stone.  Solidity was what he needed.

	He arrived at his laboratory.  Gone were all the
beakers and alembics that usually filled the space.  Such
experimentation had been halted as a new evil one rose to
walk the land.  At first this evil one seemed no different
from his predecessors, easily vanquishable by the combined
effort of himself and the royal Knight.  But the ails that
had stricken the Knight when there was none to fight had
carried him off.  And the wizard's efforts alone had not,
apparently, been enough.  But he had tried.

	The detrius of his efforts were everywhere.  Charts
detailing the spread of the forces of the evil one.  Maps
showing his strengths and weaknesses, and how they had changed
over time.

	This was the most dispiriting part of his studies.
The first maps showed almost all blue, just a few spots of
red in traditionally rebellious areas.  But it had spread.
The evil one had done his work well.  Seducing the peasants
with appeals to their greed, by promising them untold riches
that had been locked away in the Ivory Castle by the king and
his ministers, he had spread his word throughout the land.
Many once bedrock-solid lands were now of debatable loyalty.
And in many once-respectable lands, the enemy now walked the
streets openly.

	And nobody understood.  The king knew his reign was in
trouble, but refused to hear of proving the evil one wrong by
the simple expedient of throwing open the royal treasuries and
showing that they were bare, all funds since exhausted in the
war against the evil one.  There was nothing there, and there
would not be for a long time, since levying taxes against the
peasantry would not only play into the evil one's hands, but
also there was nothing left.  The peasants could not afford
any more taxes.  Everything they had had been taken by one of
the sides in the war, or wiped out in the crossfire.

	No, one person- THING, he reminded himself, it is a
thing- understood.  He felt a deep sense of irony that the
only being with whom he could converse was a mortal enemy.

	The wizard had captured it with a mighty spell, one of
the minions of the evil one.  By the creature's own admission,
it was at the lowest level of the evil one's minions, which,
given their small numbers, made it very high in the army of
the evil one, which consisted mostly of deluded peasants.  At
first he had used it as a source of information, for which it 
was magnificently suited, once a few spells of compelling had 
been placed upon it.  As time went on, though, he found himself 
treating the creature more and more like an equal.  The spells
were now not always used, the creature knew he could compel it
and held nothing back.  Despite the revulsion, he began to like
it, and the feeling seemed to some degree mutual.

	It always understood what he said.  It just disagreed.

	He spoke a word of power, and the spell that had hidden
it went away.

	It was trapped in a pentagram atop a worktable.  From
inside the pentagram, it could work no magics without his permission
save one- the ability to change its shape, as long as doing so did 
not enable it to escape.  Right now it had taken the form of a young
man of ordinary mien, wearing rainbow colored robes.  It claimed
that this was its true appearance. which the wizard felt must be
a falsehood.  Surely no thing so evil could look like that.  Yet
he was always unwilling to compel it to take its true shape.

	"Hi, wiz." it said.  "How's it hanging?"

	"You are insolent as usual."

	"A-yup." it replied.  "But I asked how you were."

	"What do you care, fiend?"

	"Hey, I like you.  I think I may try and convince our
forces to spare you when we storm the Ivory Castle."

	"It will never happen," the wizard declaimed with a
confidence he in no way felt.

	"Oh, we will," said the creature.  "One of my magics
lets me see through time.  You've had me use it before, don't
you recall?  When you did, I looked and saw our victory.  Dunno
if you survive, or not.  The big picture is always fine, but the
small stuff is often hazy."

	"You lie." said the wizard, sweating.

	"Try compelling me and see," said the thing, grinning
wide and shifting into a gargoyle, the better to grin widely.

	"You try my patience."

	"You mean you're afraid." it grinned.

	"Yes.  I mean no!  I mean... I mean I am here to plan
strategy, and I will use your help.  And, for the last word on
this subject, even should your forces win, you will die before
the victory."

	"Oh, I dunno about that..." it trailed off, grinning
infuriatingly, "but that's small stuff anyway."

	"Enough!"

	"Nuff said.  What do you want?"

	"What I've always wanted.  A way to stop the forces of
the evil one..."

	"He's not evil, you know.  None of us are.  We're the
good guys.  You're a good guy on the wrong side."

	"Don't interrupt!  Remember what I can do to you!"

	"Sorry.  You were saying?"

	"...or, if you really don't know how, why he is having
so much more success than his predecessors with the same methods.
They failed, spectacularly, yet now my maps drown in red ink."

	"If your maps drown in red ink, it's because the peasants
do as well.  You've spent all their money, and their children's
money as well."

	"Silence!" thundered the wizard.

	"Aw, come off your high horse.  You know how much money
you people have spent better than I, and I know plenty."

	"It was money well spent..." started the wizard.

	"Hey, don't justify yourself to _me_.  I just want to
know why you don't see the inevitable, and join us.  You're
really skilled, and we could use you.  You're too good to waste."

	The wizard thought about commanding the creature to be
silent, but it was too late.  He knew the creature was right, that
he was doomed to lose.  But should he do the honorable thing and
die for what was right, or trust the blandishments of his enemy
and hope against hope that everything he had known from childhood
had been wrong...

	High in his tower, the wizard James Baker pondered, and
the Democrat watching him exulted.

			       ***
---
David Vacca, Just an Excitable Boy.

		["Call me 'lvacca@saintmarys.edu'"]
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