with the daggers, felt the shock of impact, and was borne back to the window and almost thrown out of it.
“You will get the parchment for me!” shrieked the thing. Flesh was melting off it, revealing the scaly, skeletal beast within, a creature not wholly present on the earth, for Hereward’s daggers, ensorcelled as they were, were slowly sinking through its wrists, the scales reforming behind the passage of the steel.
“Never!” shouted Hereward, quickly followed by, “Mister Fitz! To me! Narhalet-Narhalit, aid me!”
“You will obey!” shrieked the beast, and bit at Hereward’s shoulder. He twisted away, but its teeth raked through his night-shirt and tore flesh. At the same time, his daggers lost all purchase on the creature’s wrists. Instantly, it went for him again, and he only managed to avoid its grasp by suddenly slipping down the wall and sliding between the creature’s legs. He was attempting to roll away when it latched on to his back, dragged him up, and threw him on the bed.
“Remove the strings and open the parchment,” it instructed him. “Or you shall be hurt, and hurt again, until you obey!”
Hereward gaped. It was not in response to the creature’s command, but an inadvertent reaction to the sudden arrival of a completely naked yet literally radiant Lallit. Surrounded by a nimbus of the violet hue favored by her god, she burst into the room and made a swatting motion in the air, as if crushing a mosquito.
A hole appeared in the creature’s chest, followed by a geyser of greenish ichor that splashed the end of Sir Hereward’s bed, the stained linen immediately beginning to send up small tendrils of evil-smelling smoke.
Despite what would be a mortal injury to a human, the beast was not distressed. It turned away from Sir Hereward and tensed to spring at Lallit.
Before it could do so, Hereward jumped up and smashed it on the head with The Compendium of Commonplaces, it being the only makeshift weapon close at hand. The huge, brass-and-leather-bound book boomed like a gong as it struck the monster, and most of the tome turned to ash in Hereward’s hands, leaving him clutching a ragged folio of loosely bound pages, without any binding or brass accoutrements.
Hereward dropped the newly slim volume and dove for his saber. He drew it and spun about, ready to slash, but there was nothing there to hit. The creature had also turned to ash, had been picked up by a doubtlessly divine wind, and was being carried out the closest window, to be spread to the four corners of the earth.
The nimbus around Lallit faded, her knees buckled, and Hereward was just able to hop forward and catch her as she fell. However, he could not hold her weight with his injured foot, so both of them toppled back into the bed, just as Mister Fitz peered cautiously around the doorway, a sorcerous needle held in his cupped hand, its inhuman brilliance quickly dulled as he took in the situation.
But as the puppet replaced the needle inside his pointy hat, the small guard with the large ax leapt up the last step, his weapon held ready to use on anyone who violated the purity of the temple’s novices.
“But I haven’t…” protested Sir Hereward. He reluctantly released Lallit, and started patting out the incipient fire at the end of the bed. “We didn’t…”
“What am I doing here?” asked Lallit wonderingly. She had the look of someone still waking from a dream. “I felt the god…”
“Narhalet-Narhalit has been here,” confirmed Mister Fitz. He looked at the guard, his little blue-painted eyes sharp on his papier-mâché head. “This is the god’s business, Jabek, however it may appear.”
“Aye, I feel it so,” said Jabek. He smiled, and added, “But I’ll ask you to explain it to Sister Gobbe.”
“Oh, the mandora is broken!” exclaimed Lallit. She picked up the instrument, whose neck was broken, and cradled it to her. “Sir Hereward wanted to give it to you for your birthday, Mister Fitz.”
“A birthday present?” asked Mister Fitz. “For me?”
“According to the book I was reading, sorcerous puppets have a common birthday,” said Sir Hereward. “The fourth day of the Second Month.”
“But I am not a common puppet,” said Mister Fitz. “Nor can it be said that I was born on any particular day, given my gradual ascent to full sentience over the course of my making. Besides, those other puppets have their birthday on the fifth day of the Second Month.”
Hereward shrugged, grimacing as he felt