Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming

Obtaining a sufficient quantity of ichor proved a problem, however. Supply tried to keep every drop of it for themselves. It was only after asking Hermes Trismegistus to intercede for him that Azzie received a quantity adequate for his purposes. And even then he had to counsel Frike, on pain of great torture and possible death, not to touch the precious supplies.

The breasts, haunches, kneecaps, and elbows were easy enough. Ribs and shoulders were in good supply. But Azzie wanted to know the antecedents of every piece of meat he bought, and this knowledge was often beyond the ken of the men he dealt with. Bit by bit, as the warm days wore on with a deepening of greens and the spread of summer flowers, he collected a goodly mess of pieces. But these were the least important parts. The heads, the faces, the hands-these were crucial, and hard to come by.

More days passed, summer storms rattled and rolled, and it seemed he was getting no closer to his goal. He assembled a sample human which stumbled about gibbering until he put it back in the rendering vat, a poor dottering idiot. The creature's brain had evidently decayed before it could be preserved. Azzie began to wonder whether he hadn't bitten off more than he could chew.

But the bright days of summer made the year's-end dead­line seem an eternity away, and he called in laborers to repair the château. He hired husbandmen from nearby villages to put in quick-growing crops. He found these chores an oddly sat­isfying way of passing the time while the head-hunt went on.

The Château des Artes was conveniently situated for jour­neys south to Italy, west to France, east toward Bohemia and Hungary. So while he filled his time with householder's tasks, he sent Frike far and wide on a big gray horse, two pack animals trailing behind. While Frike turned up many curious and useful items, it seemed a slack season for heads. Heads...

He told the mayor of the town, Estel Castelbracht, that he was engaged in various researches to find cures for the plague, the ague, and the tertian fever, which had been sweep­ing these parts since Roman times. He explained that it was necessary to conduct his researches on human flesh, with meth­ods learned from the great alchemists of the period. The mayor, and then the people, took him at his word, for he seemed a jolly sort, never reluctant to treat local sick, very often with good results.

While doing this, Azzie was also considering the props he would need for his Prince Charming game. He sent to Supply for lists of goods, but their replies were always vague, filled with stipulations such as "if still in stock" or "out of stock, more expected soon." What was especially a

He decided he'd better go to Supply, look over their stores himself, and set aside what he would need when his Prince and Princess were ready to be assembled. Yes, it was time to go to Limbo, that ill-defined region where are shaped the superna­tural events that push and pull at the mixed destiny of mankind. And keep an eye out for the proper head ...

Chapter 7

Azzie departed with a feeling of regret. He knew that he should not allow himself to get sentimental over land he would occupy for only a short time, and which he lived on only in order to serve a special purpose. Still, all that work on the mansion and fields... He had never put that much of himself into a place before, watching it change in accord with his wishes. It was begi

And the journey to Limbo was not without its dangers. There was always difficulty passing from one realm to another. The laws of a realm, like those of Earth itself, are not to be understood completely. How less completely, then, were under­stood the strange laws which governed the movement between realms.

Luckily, nothing went wrong this time. He made the nec­essary preparations and spoke the Greek words, the Hebrew exclamation. The fire flared and he suddenly occupied a spot on a long plain, bleak black mountains on either side. The sky was white and hot and there were occasional green swirls in it, as of dji

Just to get around in Limbo was a considerable chore, since its extent was limitless. Luckily, some of its more impor­tant places existed reasonably close together and they exerted something of a pull which drew visitors to them. And there was the Roc service, of which Azzie was able to avail himself. The huge birds had been extinct on Earth for a long time, because of difficulties in making a living after the Pleistocene. But with their broad backs, they were admirably suited for taxi service in this place.

Supply looked like a huge series of warehouses set in the middle of the plain. Supply had wanted plenty of room. Here, Supply's space was sufficient to store all of the living rooms on Earth, with plenty of room left for kitchens and stables. In actual fact, they had never tried to fill all their warehouses. The number of things they would need was limited only by human imagination, which at one time or another sought all things. The number of things that could be of use in the invisible powers' continual attempt either to enlighten or subvert hu­manity was never-ending and called upon everything under the suns. You could never tell when some demon would need a Thracian spear from A.D. 55 or something equally esoteric. Sup­ply simulated most of what was asked for, and Supply possessed some of the most imaginative scene designers ever known.

Supply was built on a bank of the Styx, that stupendous river that runs through Earth and all the heavens and hells, and upon whose dusky surface the ancient boatman, Cha­ron, plied his way between the centuries and the worlds. The supernatural powers he sometimes served considered Earth the greatest game ever conceived and had no wish to be discon­nected from any aspect of it, no matter how far in the future or the past.

Azzie dismounted from the Roc. He walked rapidly, oc­casionally gliding when walking grew onerous, and made his way down the long streets, both sides of which were flanked with warehouses. All of the warehouses had the sign, UNAU­THORIZED PERSONNEL STAY OUT. Armed Salis, the neutral spir­its of Limbo, stood guard. They were armed with energy dissipators. These weapons, which resembled spears with gun sights and triggers, let forth rays of pattern-disrupting particles (though some said waves) which would disrupt the personality pattern of even the greatest of the demons, "whipping his brains to tapioca" in the phrase popular that year. Azzie gave them a wide berth. Limbo had become a dangerous place of late, and this was due more to the guards than the guarded.

At length he came to a warehouse which had an unguarded door. Over it was the sign, INQUIRIES MAY BE MADE HERE. It was a surprisingly blunt statement for so vague and conceptual a place, but Azzie lost no time going to it.

Inside he found about twenty demons of all sorts and de­grees waiting their turn to lodge complaints with a bored young demon clerk who wore a plaid golfing cap in defiance of tem­poral clothing regulations (demons can go into the past or fu­ture, but they are not supposed to bring back souvenirs).

Azzie flashed his black credit card and pushed his way to the head of the line. "This is top priority," he told the clerk. "I've got full clearance from the High Demon Council."