#anthologycemberuary

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: “Put Back That Universe!” by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

So that title should clue you in how delightful this story is going to end up being.

Very.

Noted ne’erdowell Smedley Faversham travels back to before the beginning of the Universe to steal it. The entire universe. At the moment of the Big Bang when its just a singularity that once could pick up and stick in one’s pocket and go strolling away.

That is exactly what I hoped the story would be when I saw the title.

Although some may naysay the thing as silly.

At this point, the Gentle Reader may wonder how Smedley Faversham was able to stay alive, since the oxygen molecules necessary for breathing (to say nothing of chuckling) had not yet been created by the cosmic aftereffects of the Big Bang. Hence, thus, and consequently there was no air for Smedley to breathe while he was standing at a slight distance in Space-Time from the creation of the universe. For that matter - or lack of matter - there was nothing solid for Smedley to be standing on, since all of the atomic mass in all the infinite dimensions of the universe (minus 189 subatomic particles which still hadn’t arrived yet, and Smedley himself) had already converged into the all-consuming hypersphere. By this same application of pitiless logic, the Gentle Readers may also wonder how Smedley was able to see the hyphersphere, since nearly all the photons in the universe were now inside the gravity well of the sphere, beyond reach of Smedley’s optic nerves.

The Gentle Readers should mind their damned business.

Anyway, Smedley’s wait is interrupted by a subatomic particle. He can tell its a subatomic particle because it has “I AM A SUBATOMIC PARTICLE. I AM NOT A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER IN DISGUISE” written on it.

BUT PLOT TWIST, its Chrono-Constable Newgate Callender of the Paradox Patrol disguised as a quark (he’s plainclothes).

Newgate demands to know what Smedley is doing and Smedley confesses to the biggest heist in... well I can’t say history or time because they’re outside it.

Smedley had planned to file the serial numbers off, maybe repaint the universe so nobody could prove he didn’t obtain it legally. Maybe sell it for parts - break it up into separate galaxies and sell them one at a time. Say they fell off the back of a truck.

But Newgate points out that there is nobody to sell it too. If you take the universe before its created, nobody will be around.

Ah but what about alternate universes? Look around, do you see any? Clearly alternate universes sprang into being from the same Big Bang.

Which fails to happen. By traveling back in time to before the Event 1, Smedley took energy out of the system and now there’s not enough for the critical mass that would start existence.

And that’s definitely a crime. Newgate decides to charge him with the murder of everybody in the universe as well as all the property damage. In one courts? Under what laws? They don’t exist anymore, Smedley protests.

Newgate will think of something.

Alternatively, Smedley decides to destroy the evidence and eats the proto-universe.

But the thermal energy of his heartburn is just the last bit of energy the big bang needs and the universe happens, in Smedley’s stomach.

He wakes up shackled to a bed in the paradox patrol headquarters. Luckily, curry is notorious about how fast it passes through the digestive system. So the universe escaped Smedley before anything bad happened to him.

Although, due to him, the red shift is now orange shift. Way to go, Smedley.

However, since what he did happened outside the universe, it happened outside Space and Time so it technically never took place.

“Looks like you’ve beaten the rap... again, Faversham.”

And for some reason, Newgate’s sister wants to invite Smedley to dinner with the family in celebration of her promotion for busting ‘a gang of time-traveling creationists who went back to Olduvai Gorge during the Pleistocene epoch and tried to murder all the hominids.’

Smedley, however, is not hungry. Eating all matter will do that to a person.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Milord Sir Smiht, the English Wizard by Avram Davidson

This story is big and long but that's because it has a lot of textual embellishments and extraneous details. Very interesting writing style but the general basic gist of the plot is thusly.

Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy finds himself stalking this dude for no greater reason than the guy is wearing a long black cloak with a brown lining. Since long black cloaks aren’t in fashion and those that do wear them have a red lining, this garment struck the doctor as individualism of the highest order. And since its rude to stop someone in the street to ask about their fashion sense, instead he follows him.

Like etiquette demands.

Anyway. The individual stops into the Brothers Swartbloi snuff shop and Engelbert follows after and inquires about the man’s identity.

He happened to have left a business card identifying himself as “MILORD SIR SMIHT, Wizard anglais.”

With the business card, Engelbert can just pop by the man’s business instead of following him everywhere.

When he does, Sir Smiht lampshades that Engelbert followed him halfway across the city but then establishes that his rates are two ducats for a half hour. Engelbert can ask whatever question he wants during that time or just stare. But if he’s interested in employment of the odyllic force, then they should start at once.

Engelbert decides to spend the time performing phrenology on Sir Smiht while Smiht talks about his past.

Seems he was sent abroad by his family after he accidentally disappeared Pigafetti Jones, Royal Astronomer of Wales, during a demonstration of the odyllic forces and then couldn’t bring him back.

Anyway, Engelbert makes an appointment to come back another day.

ANOTHER DAY, and Sir Smiht needs Engelbert’s help translating for a woman who doesn’t speak any languages he does. The Widow Apterhots wishes to be placed in communication with her late husband to find out if he’s happy, wherever he ended up - since he didn’t believe in Hell, just Heaven and Purgatory.

The english wizard sets up his odyllic equipment and places a crucifix that the late husband wore all the time on a small table and bade the widow to hold a pair of metal grips and to focus on her husband.

Sir Smiht asks the husband to move the crucifix if he’s happy wherever he is. Instead, the entire massive sideboard which the equipment rests on starts to move and both the english wizard and Engelbert have to hold it.

Smiht views the results as questionable but the widow is satisfied. Her husband was always so strong!

LATER, Engelbert also sees Smiht use the odyllic apparatus to communicate with the Wizard of Brazil.

Later later, around nine months from when Engelbert first met the wizard, a Frow Puprikosch insists that the wizard see her now and won’t take a no for an answer. She has divorced her husband or he’s dead and the marriage is annulled and anyway he’s much happier in Argentina or somewhere in Africa.

Point being, she’s only interested in love now and she wants the wizard to use odyllic force to make known to her her true love.

Since she won’t go away, Sir Smiht agrees and has her grasp the thingers. But the end result is that a naked man pops out of the equipment - actually the missing Pigafetti Jones.

He’s confused that thirty years has passed but whatever, his horrible wife must be dead and I say who is this lovely lady here?

Frow Puprikosch is very much not displeased with this occurrence and goes off with Mr. Jones.

And incidentally, Sir Smiht’s brother Augustus turns up and says Sir Smiht can come home, since it appears that the missing astronomer has turned up.

Sir Smiht very much would like to return home. Engelbert asks him whether he wants to bring his odyllic equipment and with a moment’s consideration, takes his fancy wizard velvet cap and places it on Engelbert’s head proclaiming that he is now and henceforth the wizard here.

Doctor Eszterhazy looked at the equipage of the odyllic forces, and he slowly rubbed his hands together and smiled.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Absolute and Utter Impossibility of the Facts in the Case of the Vanishing of Henning Vok (A.k.a. The Amazing Blitzen) (R.N. Jack Ralph Cole) by Jack Adrian

That is an amazing title.

So, the titular Henning Vok (aka the Amazing Blitzen, r.n. Jack Ralph Cole) stabbed Herman Jediah Klauss, the Moriarty of Manhattan, in the forehead with an ice pick in plain view of two cops, locked himself in the bathroom, and had completely vanished when the police busted down the door.

That is all very clear. No mystery there whatsoever. In fact, Vok even left a note confessing to the murder and a bunch of others aside.

“Attached is a list of robberies which should feature heavily in your ‘Unsolved’ files. Strike ‘em. I plead guilty on all counts.”

He’s going to retire on his well-gotten gains and he wanted to kill Klauss first for being such a dick.

No, the only real mystery is how he escaped the bathroom without being captured. The window hadn’t been opened in fifty years, the floor and walls are solid, there’s a vent but it has a very choppy fan in it and its very high off the ground.

You could argue that the cops were paid off except one of them was Lieutenant O’Mahoney, notoriously incorruptible and the only totally honest cop on the roster.

Freelance impossible mystery detective Professor Stanislaus Befz posits that it was a deranged midget hiding in a hollowed out hump on an impostor hunchback. But he always says that.

“Balderdash! Out of the three thousand thirty-three Miracle Problems I’ve investigated, analyzed and cataloged over the past quarter century, crazed mannikins hidden in the false humps of ersatz hunchbacks account for well over half!”

He’s not even discouraged by the fact that Vok was a very rangy man who had absolutely no humps. “Mass hypnosis!”

Lieutenant O’Mahoney has his own theory. Vok used to be a contortionist and is skinny as a rake. Its an old building from the 1900s when they built everything bigger. And finally, Vok killed Klauss so he would fall into a tub full of water.

It all leads to one, obvious conclusion. Klauss’ body falling into the tub made a splash that covered up another kind of splash. Clearly, Vok flushed himself down the toilet.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: A Case of Four Fingers by John Grant

Okay, so this one is a bit weird. Or rather, its a typical detective story (seriously, comic fantasy writers really love detective stories of all kinds and weird sub-genres). But its also a bit weird.

See, the story takes place in a small village called Cadaver-in-the-Offing. Two shops and a pub kind of thing. It has a population of about two-hundred if you look at it one way. Or two hundred thousand if you look at it another way.

Because its one of those villages where somebody dies every week and you have to wonder about the population. And it used to be that each victim and side character actually was an individual person but when these things keep happening, characters start blending together. Who can tell one victim from another?

So to save money, the Authorities got big into recycling.

Why have to put out the cash for the undertaker’s bills, when people could be found on the unemployment queues who’d be only too eager to accept zero wages in exchange for board, lodging... and immortality? Oh, sure, they’d have to accept being murdered every once in a while, but they wouldn’t be dead long before being revived, given a different name, maybe a fresh wig, a new home to live in, a new role and probably a new spouse or lover.

And this is all made possible by the protagonist. A resurrectionist of some manner. “So let’s just say no more than that it’s my job to take the ... secondary products of the detectives’ industry and... and mend them.”

Not to say that people like him even though his services make Cadaver-in-the-Offing possible. They avoid him like the plague and look at him like they’ve just trodden in something nasty if they’re forced to deal with him.

A bit of a land of fiction dealy going on.

The plot itself starts when out of eight corpses delivered to Protagonist, one doesn’t arrive. A stage magician called Gerald G. Dukes, known as the Even Mightier Spongini. No corpse, no rez. This has never happened even once in the ten-years-that-was-really-a-century-that-felt-like-eternity.

Protagonist finds out that Inspector Romford (”big in the library market”) was behind the case and he goes to visit him.

He finds Romford getting quite drunk in a pub because he thought he had it all sewn up but damn magicians and being inscrutable asses.

So the detective relays the events of the case. How he attended a show of the Mighty Thrombosis preceded by a performance by the dazzling family acrobatic show the Seven Deadly Finns.

The Mighty Thrombosis went through his act all the way up to the grand finale - where he would pull a live t-rex out of a hat. But all he pulls out is a severed hand. Leaving him to stutter weakly that “This... this was not... intended to happen...”

The hand was identified as belonging to Dukes and since Dukes and MacGregor (Mighty Thrombosis) were archrivals in the magic biz and also in the Dukes having slept with MacGregor’s wife and stolen his tricks biz, MacGregor was held as the prime suspect.

But. There’s no sign of the body. And a severed hand doesn’t necessarily prove murder if you can’t find a blasted body.

So with all the details of the case, Protagonist tells Romford its not his job to solve cases. He’s not a character like everyone else in Cadaver-in-the-Offing. He can’t even offer any useful leads. All he can do is give general life advice to the increasingly drunk detective on the importance of temperance.

Quite later in the afternoon, Romford calls Protagonist and goes oh hey Temperance is important but it makes me think of that old sixties/seventies pop group the Temperance Seven, where the joke was there were actually nine of them.

And come to think of it, there’s only six in the actual Seven Deadly Finns group but seven left the theater.

With Protagonist’s not hint, Romford figured that Dukes and MacGregor’s wife Zelda had conspired the whole thing to frame MacGregor and then run off together. The Finns were in on it because they couldn’t stand MacGregor either.

Romford caught up to Dukes at the Old Bull Hotel all packed up and waiting for Zelda. Of course, the worst that Dukes could be charged with is conspiring to waste police time but Romford was quite angry and invited Dave Knuckle into the arrest and well- Dukes’ body did show up in a hopper after all to the resurrection office.

Oddly, Zelda never showed up. Seems she used the whole incident to skip out on both men in her life. Romford put out an alert to the ports and airports but thinks he missed her. And nobody is going to issue an extradition order for what she’s done.

The conversation goes on a little longer but Protagonist can’t help but notice that at no point did Romford thank him for the case-breaking not-hint. So he doesn’t feel guilty that he kept Zelda’s location a secret.

See, he had met her during the course of Miss Grimthorpe’s The Kat who Killed the Konjurers and they had fallen in love. She hadn’t skipped town. She had come to the one place nobody in Cadaver-in-the-Offing would dream of looking. Because of all the disdain they have for him?

They could live here together for the rest of their lives if they wanted to and nobody would know. And the story ends with ‘a traditional way of celebrating things like this...’

Which is makeouts.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Swords and the Stones by E.K. Grant

I read several stories last night between swearing at squid kids so lets get those knocked out because I am way off schedule.

This is a story that does not actually involve sticking many swords into many stones to see who will become the multi-king.

Even so, its a good story.

Mighty-thewed but injured and exhausted warrior-prince Thol is following the vague instructions of his broken Singing Sword. It wants him to go somewhere and its a right pain if he doesn’t listen. Did you know that a Singing Sword will wail in duet with itself if its broken in half? Thol knows now.

Following the process of going the direction that makes it whine less, Thol encounters a talking marmot that tries to brain him with a rock. He manages to get the marmot at half sword point but spares it when he sees that it has a wife marmot and marmot kids.

The marmot in exchange tells him where he can find water and advises him to be polite to the old man.

At the pool he finds old man Hanegral, crafter of the Singing Swords. The mage is wary of company, having been hounded out of a neighboring kingdom a few years back due to a payment dispute, a Shrinking Curse, and a king’s favorite organ.

Even so. Thol tells Hanegral that he needs to have his Singing Sword mended for the forces of Krollok have overrun his kingdom, killed his father, and sundered his Singing Sword.

Hanegral is not happy to hear this. Singing Sword’s are guaranteed unbreakable. Plus, Krollok was an apprentice of his that ran off when he failed his first journeyman’s tests. He never learned how to make Singing Swords but he apparently learned enough to break them by magnetically attacking the magic that was forged into them.

The old mage invites Thol into his cave, shows him his living fossil (having used magic to talk to the ‘Please-and-thank-you sea Saurian’ (it prizes politeness. Always be polite in fantasy settings)), and examines the broken blade.

Hanegral decides that not only will he fix the Singing Sword, he’ll provide Thol with a weapon to counter Krollok’s. Its bad for business having someone go around breaking your unbreakable product. Hanegral sets Thol up with a golden blade made of god-metal - strong as steel but a third lighter and can cut through standard sword-metal pretty easily. He also says he’s not expecting any payment - think of it as a loaner while Hanegral does warranty repairs on the Singing Sword. But if Thol could, bring back Krollok’s sword so Hanegral can figure out how to proof against the damage it does.

But Thol is not going to want to be in the area while the Singing Sword gets reforged. They get really noisy when you heat them up red-hot.

But then the marmots cry out. Some of Krollok’s men have followed Thol to this cave.

Thol attacks them and manages to take down a number of them with his superior sword but gets knocked out.

When he comes to he learns that the surviving intruders had been eaten by the fossilized lizard. The spell that lets Hanegral talk to it, lets it pull creatures back to its own time and Thol sees some fossilized human bones in the wall with it.

Anyway, with the golden sword, Thol will go back and confront Krollok and free his kingdom. But in case he loses, he’ll have a false letter that will lead Krollok here so he can be introduced to the living fossil. Hanegral doubts that Thol will lose in a fair fight but promises that if Krollok ends up here, he’ll be just one more uncouth snack for the please sea saurian.

I wonder if this is part of a larger story. We don’t see Thol go to confront Krollok but its implied that he’ll be successful. This seems to be one of those fantasy stories that's more about the concepts - magical Singing Swords and dinosaurs reaching through the ages. Fun concepts too.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Frog by Tina Rath

A retelling of the Frog Prince! Well, kinda. A telling of the after happily ever after in a Frog Prince that takes place in a modern but fantastical but terribly realistic setting. What with paparazzi and such.

The titular Frog Prince is writing a Dear Jane letter. Because he tried, oh lord did he tried. But this human life is not working out for him. Its not one thing. Its all the one things: the tabloids mounting a campaign suggesting that he left behind eight hundred fatherless tadpoles in the Well at the World’s End, a pop-genealogist going on cable tv to say there was a chance that he would put frog genes in the royal bloodline (although, as the king points out, the royal bloodline might be improved by that. Besides, remember aunt Ethelburga who got kidnapped by a dragon? Sure she was saved in the nick of time by Siegefried but they sure arranged a quick wedding and a nice looong honeymoon but their daughter certainly seems to have scales), and even just the hectic life expected of him.

Although if there was a last straw it was Ethelburga’s sons Franz and Ernst arranging frog legs during a banquet and the princess’ stricken face.

So he had run upstairs and dialed the witch that had turned him into a frog in the first place and asked to be turned back. She warns him that this is for keeps and gives him instructions.

He writes his letter apologizing and thanking the royal family for attempting to make him feel welcome and then sneaks out.

But the princess catches him. He apologizes and saying that it won’t work out and he’s going back to the well but she interrupts him. “It won’t work here. That’s why I’m coming with you... You want to be a frog, I’ll be a frog. That’s what marriage is about after all.”

Her expression at the banquet wasn’t that she had given up on the prince but that she had given up on her family. Franz and Ernst can fight over who gets to be the heir, if anyone will let them after the scandal.

Because it turns out that the dragon that kidnapped Ethelburga had a mate who was brooding eggs at the time (hence the princess kidnappery?) and dragons typically give birth to two boys and a girl. The girl dragon is willing to talk to the tabloids, do a blood test to prove she’s Franz and Ernst’s half-sister, and do topless pixs if the price is right (dragons are unusual - apparently they hatch out of eggs but still suckle their young? And have ‘six outstanding reasons for appearing on page three in one of our most popular tabloids.’ Welp.)

The family has known about this for a while but has been covering it up. Not that it matters because the princess is OUTTA HERE.

So the frog prince and soon to be frog princess follow the Silver Road (snail trails) across the garden and slowly change into frogs. Then webbed paw in webbed paw, they dive into the Well, never to be seen again by mortal sight.

“To live, happily for ever ever after.”

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Gunsel and Gretel by Esther Friesner

Gunsel is an interesting piece of slang.

I’m kind of reminded of Nimrod, actually. In terms of how one popular work completely changes the popular definition.

Anyway, we have the witch from Hansel and Gretel as a lesbian private detective who fled Germany for America because of Hitler. She ends up getting involved in Nonsense and Shenanigans re: the goose that laid the golden egg when a dame walks into her office and the dame is Gretel.

Comic fantasy writers love them some fairy tale and nursery rhyme noir, geez.

The way the witch tells it, she had a soft spot for Gretel.

She and her brother were no babes in the woods, no matter how they twisted the story later. They might’ve looked like kids, small and scrawny on account of growing up at the Hard Knocks Hotel but they were both safely past the age of consent when they came nibble-nibbling at my door. And believe me, she let on like she would consent any day, if I didn’t pull a Betty Crocker on her. So that’s why he was in the cage but she had the run of the place. Oh yeah, she played innocent-but-willing-to-learn, and she played it good.

That’s why I believed her when she said she didn’t know how to tell if the oven was hote enough. That’s why I stuck my head in first, to show her how it’s done. My head was full of Stardust, dreams of her and me in that kitschy little woodland cottage, me with my feet up on the pile of kiddie bones, her by the oven, baking gingerbread, everything strictly Ladies’ Home Journal.

Next thing I knew, my face was full of live coals.

And then the shoving in an oven and them running off with her life’s savings. Dick move yeah but you’re not really an innocent victim here what with trying to eat her brother?

Anyway, Gretel spins a tale about her brother working for a Mr. LeGras and plotting to steal his Black Bird and then Hansel going missing. Gretel found his place all trashed up and got a referral to a detective for help.

Ms Witch finds that the story has holes so turns Gretel into a toad and rifles through her purse and finds a letter from Hansel that said he planned the theft because he was jealous that LeGras was paying more attention to his English valet Carlisle.

Anyway, the witch still has a soft spot for Gretel and decides to help her even though she knows she’s trouble. Which is when LeGras’ goons break into her office, bean her over the head and ransack her office. They’re there for Gretel but they accidentally take Bogey, the witch’s cat familiar because he had been in toad form at the time.

By the time the witch realizes, Mr. LeGras personally confronts her and he’s wearing a special enchanted ring that has a Reflect spell on it. Sticks and stones may break his bones but spells will bounce off of him and blow up her.

So she and Gretel are forced to return to LeGras’ house. Maybe Hansel will be more willing to talk if Gretel is in danger.

The witch offers another solution. She’s just got dragged into this so if LeGras hires her on as his new witch, she’ll magically track down the Black Bird. Of course, she’ll need her familiar to help work the spell. No tricks, just going to return him to his true form.

She doesn’t bother to mention that his true form is a huge demon and not a cat. Bogey the demon rips apart LeGras’ goons and the man himself and spits out the ring which the witch pockets.

She’s just finished turning Bogey back to convenient travel-sized  cat when Carlisle shows up and pulls a gun on her. Turns out that this was all a plot by Carlisle, Hansel and Gretel working together and using the witch to get rid of LeGras.

The Black Bird was hidden in LeGras’ disguised as a swan, purloined letter style.

But then Carlisle turns on Hansel and Gretel to take the goose for herself. Because Carlisle was another witch in disguise. A COMMIE WITCH. But also the witch that made the ring for LeGras. When she came to America, she found herself having to work for a pittance and figured she needed a big score to set herself up on easy street.

And now to fly off and leave the POV witch to have everything pinned on her.

The witch disagrees and explodes the goose. If she’s not getting anything out of this, neither is the other woman. Who I get the feeling is supposed to be someone too but I have no clue who.

This quite angers Not-Carlisle and she creates quite a huge fireball to throw at Gingerbread Witch. But she forgot about the ring. Boing fwip.

We cut to the witch back in her office, gluing the article about all of this into her scrapbook (its been blamed on a gas explosion). She figures she’s too old for this line of work and should retire, get a cozy cottage up the coast. Maybe get back into the bakery business with some babysitting on the side (please don’t) when another dame walks into the office.

“I need your help. It’s my stepmother. I - I think she wants me dead.”

And the witch completely forgets about retirement, knowing this was how her life was going to be “until the day they chucked my broom into the janitor’s closet at the LA morgue: one case after another, rubbing elbows with the dolls, and the deadbeats, the chumps and the chisellers, the gophers, gorillas and goons, with maybe a princess or two thrown in to keep the game interesting. A whole lot of fairy tales and not enough happily-ever-afters. But hey. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Or the gingerbread.”

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Caliber of the Sword by Larry Lawrence

The old god of all blacksmiths had just finished his finest creation when a messenger arrived. The messenger looked at Vulcan’s forge and said “Longer.”

“What?!” roared Vulcan. “Why?!”

“The Lady in the Lake wants it longer. Something about an ‘extension of manhood.’ Add a couple of inches to it.”

So, yeah, this story is off to a good start.

So Vulcan puts the not-long-enough sword that he spent two hundred years making on the windowsill to cool and starts all over again.

The first sword drops off the windowsill and falls to England where it rested unnoticed for many years.

MANY YEARS LATER, a young, well-meaning lad named Brison is riding a borrowed horse, Swayback, through the countryside when the horse stops.

Brison notices that in a giant pile of manure, there is a sword that has been buried to the hilt. And to his surprise, the sword talks. The sword introduces himself as Calibre.

“Calibre? But isn’t that King Ar-”

“Hah! I am the original. I was supposed to be the fabled sword. Why do you think they call his Ex-calibur?”

Anyway, Calibre laments not being able to swear. Comes from being made to be a good sword but after being buried in poo for so long, Calibre is feeling a little bitter and wants to be evil, wants to be maaaaaad but more than that wants to be bad. He thinks one major act of unkindness would push him over to the other side.

Brison pledges to help because he’s nice that way. The worst deed he can think of is betraying someone but then realizes he’s the only person the sword knows.

“Despite me wanting to change my nature, I cannot betray the one who found me. That cannot change. I still have some rules I need to follow.”

Well, they’ll have time to think of something on the way to CAMELOT. Brison is headed for the yearly tournament. His grandmother who raised him after his parents died in a freak ox-car accident has fallen ill and he plans to petition King Arthur for aid.

“The sick grandmother story, uh-huh”

“How come everyone says that when I  tell my story?”

Anyway, Calibre has settled on a two-birds-one-stone plan when they arrive at the tournament. He’ll create a distraction while Brison swaps him out for Excalibur, them being identical aside from length. Being used to commit a theft is the bad deed that Calibre wants and Brison can return the sword later and claim he retrieved it from the thieves and get a boon from Arthur.

Why, this plan is foolproof!

Calibre does create a distraction by using his telepathic way of speaking to cause a huge fight to break out in the crowd and Brison swaps out the swords but the guards notice that the sword in the display case doesn’t match the indentation in the velvet display pillow.

Brison is captured and thrown in jail while Calibre is left forgotten on the tournament grounds.

Also forgotten, Swayback chews through his tether, finds Calibre and gently picks up the sword in his horse teeth.

Calibre calls out to Brison and explains that this all went according to plan. See, either the theft goes off without a hitch and Calibre not only is used in a theft but also gets to take up his intended place at King Arthur’s side if only for a little OR Brison gets caught and Calibre gets to commit the sin of putting the blame on someone else.

But I thought Calibre couldn’t betray the one who found it? Ah, but it was Swayback, not Brison who found Calibre first. The horse had also been giving the sword lessons in evil and dirty limericks while Brison slept.

So the sword and the horse take off, leaving Brison locked away.

So a sword about Excalibur’s evil twin. Marvelous. This is what language evolved for, to eventually bring us a story where Excalibur’s evil twin tries to replace it.