Robert Rankin - Retromancer

‘Calm your thoughts, my dear Rizla,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘This fellow interests me, slightly. Tell me, Mr Gusset, how did you come to be here?’

The clown did scratchings at his toupeed topknot, his squirty flower revolved.

I was deceived, were the words that appeared. Deceived and conveyed to this hovel.

‘I’ll have you know I keep a clean and tidy house,’ complained Fangio. Who now appeared to be the only living person present in the bar, besides myself and Mr Rune. ‘And I bartered fairly. Although what exactly that MP3 Player I bartered with actually does, I have no idea.’

I looked at Mr Rune.

And he looked back at me.

‘Not good,’ I said. ‘A loose end there, I think.’

And Mr Rune nodded. ‘But another must be tied here first,’ said he. And addressing the clownish bogeyman he asked, ‘Deceived by whom?’

One of your kind, came words in the air. But he is a greater wizard than you. One who can command such as myself. And such as me fear no man living, but I have fear of him.

‘Intriguing,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And would you care, or indeed dare, to speak the name of this mighty wizard?’

You’ll know it soon enough.

‘Then so mote it be.’ And Hugo Rune interlaced his fingers and did knuckle-crackings. ‘And so it is time for us to say farewell. My companion and myself have a free lunch that needs taking. And as for you, there is always something roasting down below.’ And he spoke these final two words with heavy emphasis. Then flung forth his force.

The clown did duckings and divings too and Fangio lost his dartboard.

And now the clown flung more than just flans, and beams of mystical energy criss-crossed the saloon bar like searchlights in the Blitz. And many explosions flared around and about and I ducked down for cover.

Fangio howled and ‘rued the day’ and called for an end to hostilities. But the Magus and the manky clown were fiercely battling it out. I peeped from beneath our specially reserved table, where I had taken to hiding, and watched in awe as this item and that levitated from the pigskin valise and bombarded the unwholesome prankster.

The unwholesome prankster retaliated with further flans, which hissed and bubbled as they struck walls, as if they were of noxious acid.

Then suddenly things went white all around and I became confused. There seemed to be white and whirlingness to every side of me. And then I became aware that this white and whirlingness was the ball of string that I had seen Mr Rune deposit into the heavy pigskin valise. And Mr Rune was now wearing the gardening gloves and the ball of string had extended itself and was wrapped all about the horrible clown, from throat to great big shoes, much in the way that a mummy might be, if wrapped not in linen but string.

The clown was struggling, but to no avail, and Mr Rune was smiling.

‘And so, my fine fellow,’ I heard him say, ‘even the most heinous clown of Satan is no match for a ball of ACME garden twine that has been thrice blessed by Ava, the Goddess of Gardeners.’

Ava Gardner? I thought, but I did not say a word.

‘So it is time for you to take your leave.’ And Mr Rune approached the clown.

And I now rose to cheer my friend, thinking all was won.

But Hugo Rune had stepped too close and horrible horrors occurred.

The clown, though bound from neck to ankle, opened his mouth and out shot a terrible tongue. Like an evil black snake it curled into the bar and swept about Hugo Rune. The Magus was pinned by the atramentous coils that fixed him in a hideous embrace.

And words now flowed from the vile clown’s ears, words that spelled out ill.

Your end is nigh, thou bumbling oaf. I crush your bloated body-

Then I heard the sounds of crackling bones as the black coils crushed my friend. It was surely the end and a horrible end and I felt sick to my soul.

So I leaped onto the table, threw wide my arms and shouted words of power. Words that I knew not the meaning of, but shouted all the same.

And there was a dreadful rushing roaring sound, as of a steam train bursting from a tunnel. A flash and a bang and a wallop and a whoosh and the bad clown vanished away.

Mr Rune lay prone upon the floor and I hastened to him to help. He raised himself upon his elbows and stared me full in the face.

‘How?’ he asked of me. ‘How, Rizla, did you know those words? I sought to speak those very words myself, but the creature had me in its coils. How did you know what to call?’

I helped the Magus to his feet and dusted down his robes. Picked up his mitre, dusted this and handed it to him.

‘In the toilet,’ I said, ‘I met The Hermit again. Diogenes, my guardian angel. He told me that I might find the need for words that I knew not the meaning of. And that when I did I must call them out as they entered my head or all would be lost to me. I just opened my mouth and the words you needed to speak came out of it.’

‘You have the makings of a magician, young Rizla,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And you have certainly earned yourself a free lunch.’

But, as I had said to Hugo Rune previously, I had been informed that there was no such thing as a free lunch and this day proved the point.

We had ordered, certainly, and Fangio, even viewing the ruination of his softly smoking bar, had indeed taken our order, when the saloon bar door opened and in strode Lord Jason Lark-Rising, fighter ace and all-round hero.

‘Mr Rune,’ he called to the Magus. ‘I thought I’d find you here.’

‘One more lunch for the boy in blue,’ said Mr Hugo Rune.

‘Sadly, no time for luncheon,’ said His Lordship. ‘Come with bad tidings, I regret. A break-in at your manse. I called by to say my hellos and found the front door off the hinge. The neighbours told me that they’d seen some workmen chappies earlier removing some complicated piece of futuristic-looking apparatus from there into a lorry. The neighbours said that these workmen chappies were being chivvied along by a tall thin chap with a great black beard. Ring any bells with you?’

‘Count Otto Black,’ I said, in a whisper. ‘He has stolen the field generator.’

‘And it is all my fault,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘I walked right into a trap. The great wizard, whom the clown feared? The mendicant who sold the ghost to Fangio? None other than Count Otto Black – who else could it possibly have been? And I allowed myself to fall into his trap, leaving the manse unattended to perform an exorcism here. He played upon my weak point, Rizla, and that is my vanity.’

‘I am very sorry,’ I said. ‘This is all very bad.’

‘It was inevitable,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘The word of the day. The word was inevitable. I am THE FOOL.’

THE MAGICIAN

I had never seen Himself look quite so down before. On the following morn he hardly touched my breakfast.

‘Perk up,’ I said, in that well-meaning yet totally inappropriate manner that some folk use when speaking to manic depressives. ‘We might have lost the battle, but I am sure we will win the war.’

‘Are you, young Rizla? Are you?’ The Magus sank lower into his chair and seemed to be shrinking away.

‘Count Otto snatched the Chronovision [8]but you still beat him and won it back.’

‘Indeed, indeed.’ The Magus now sank lower.

‘You can steal my sausage if you want. I will look the other way.’ But even this enticement failed to rouse him.

‘I fear, Rizla,’ he said at length, ‘that I have become nothing more than an anachronism. A portly gent in out-of-date tweeds who dabbles in magic and never pays his bills.’