Fain The Sorcerer. Steve Aylett

fish peered in through the cloudy windows and only seemed to find his shouting and arm-waving all the more fascinating. There was also a lot of sifting scum which didn’t seem to have any firm idea where it wanted to go. Fain slumped back, feeling useless.

      Becoming sleepy and glimpsing black underwater souls, Fain was awoken by a mermaid with scales of green silver, a mother-of-pearl face and golden-ochre eyes. For a day the mermaid sustained the air in the wreck by hauling down the inverted shell of a giant mollusc and upending it inside the cabin. The following morning she took Fain to the beach of a small island.

      For weeks Fain lived here. Sleeping on the beach was like being in the palm of nature’s hand. The mermaid showed him seaweed which, when the observer made the small effort to forget that it was seaweed, showed itself to be a ribbon of runes. She taught him to breathe underwater by explaining that it was the same as not breathing when out of water—something millions of mortal men had achieved. They swam over the ember glow of coral reefs. Here trailed the fine biology of lace creatures, varicose jellyfish and honeycomb skeins of yellow which the mermaid seemed to tell him in her slow, low, bubbling voice were part of the sea’s mind. She taught him to see the liquid gold architecture of ocean currents as leaves of art flitted past. Fishes with silver throats poured through the old slimy ship offshore, a galleon forgotten into murk. It looked different to him now, the furred cabin a good dark shell for shy eels and a landscape for snails like walking doorknobs. It seemed books, too, were improved by the sea—dipped into it, even the slimmest plumped up.

      But like a fool—indeed so like a fool he was one—Fain found a way to escape this sun trap. Laying in the shallow surf with the mermaid one day, the sea leaving hieroglyphs in the sand around them, he heard her tell of a conch shell through which he could speak into the dreams of any person anywhere. ‘None of my scant magic can transport me across the world,’ he thought. ‘But I can call someone who does have that power.’

      As the mermaid looked on with a puzzled smile, he spoke into the shell: ‘Hackler Thorn is so insignificant no-one even bothers to really hate him, and what serves as his brain is a sort of thin gas such as you’d find ghosting in the ribcage of a chicken dead for nine years. So says Fain the Sorcerer!’

      Fain retrieved his coat and clothing, kissed the mermaid’s hard glossy head and told her to hide in the sea. He felt something strange in his belly as he watched her broad silver tail slap out of view beneath the green waves. And he was still wondering about it when Hackler Thorn landed on the beach astride a black rose dragon. Today Thorn was spectral and glabrous like a newborn moon-baby. He also had fangs where a milder man would have had eyelashes, and these clicked when he blinked—which was three times during the following exchange.

      ‘Fain. I am not alone in wondering whether you are a spud. Yours is the stupidity of which men have known by fabulous report alone—until now.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘It seems idiots no longer mask their identities but boast of their ignorance. I’ve a longstanding policy of clouting such creatures to the grave.’

      ‘I’ll not fight with you, nor your male equivalent.’

      Thorn blinked for the third time, and then produced a grey metal sphere from his saddlebag. ‘Do you know what this is?’

      ‘Some sort of parsnip?’

      ‘This is a jailhead, used for carrying souls away like kittens in a sack.’ Thorn touched a bung or valve near its underside. ‘Welcome.’

      Fain found himself standing in a small room with a hundred other people, up to his neck in murky soup.

      19

      CHAPTER 6

      In which Fain swims through human soup

      It was a low-domed chamber filled with murky fluid and a hand-picked assortment of gibbering wretches. In the soup up to their necks, they wore hats in a variety of styles. ‘Welcome, newly hopeless,’ said the nearest grey man, who seemed relatively cheerful. ‘And here are your knitting and sewing materials.’

      ‘What for?’

      ‘For making hats, of course. One must keep up appearances.’

      Fain took the sewing kit. ‘Thank you, kind sir—I hope to outshine every bonnet here. But is not escape the more urgent matter? There must be an entrance to this cell.’

      ‘Perhaps, but it is not above the soup. And who would want to submerge and see the terrible state our bodies must be in? I have seen occasional matters floating on the surface which I have made an effort not to recognise.’

      ‘The place has stained his wits,’ thought Fain, and asked aloud, ‘Don’t you find this stinking place unpleasant?’

      ‘Yes, it’s quite limited. Hackler Thorn is one who has, on balance, lived a fortunate life, and so believes that a so-called “living hell” is a punishment different from the life of an average man. We howl here, occasionally, so as not to make him wonder. But otherwise it is an acceptable domicile. I served Hackler Thorn.’

      ‘You were in his army?’

      ‘Not me,’ said the grey man. ‘I spent a short time pouring candles—a very short time, as I was a bartender and my little trick and its solid aftermath were not appreciated. I made the mistake of handing one such undrinkable clot to a thirsty stranger who turned out to be Thorn. Why was a candlemaker working in an alehouse? I had fallen hard because of an artistic enterprise, an innovation whereby I painted portraits in wax so that over time they would become jowled and wrinkled like their subjects. Oh I’m baffled now by my actions—who wants to see such stuff? And so, here I am.’

      ‘The sooner I accept local custom,’ thought Fain, ‘the longer I shall remain. Not every contract is sealed by waking consent.’

      Diving beneath the broth, he swam between the prisoners, many mere stands of bone loosely adrift with pale and soggy meat. Breathing easy as a merman in the murk, Fain saw the inner side of the entry valve, the size of a barrel lid. Grabbing the rim, he pulled himself headfirst toward it.