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Skallagrim – In The Vales Of Pagarna

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Stephen R. Babb

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“In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings into the gloom, waiting for something, anything, to pierce into the belly of his study and release the promise of adventure; of clues to interpret; of, at last he would plead, a puzzle he could not solve. And after each story he would return here, into the dark room, and die day by day of boredom. The darkness of his study was his cage, but also the womb of his genius.”

“On Westminster Bridge, Arthur was struck by the brightness of the streetlamps running across like a formation of stars. They shone white against the black coats of the marching gentlefold and fuller than the moon against the fractal spires of Westminster. They were, Arthur quickly realized, the new electric lights, which the city government was installing, avenue by avenue, square by square, in place of the dirty gas lamps that had lit London's public spaces for a century. These new electric ones were brighter. They were cheaper. They required less maintenance. And they shone farther into the dime evening, exposing every crack in the pavement, every plump turtle sheel of stone underfoot. So long to the faint chiaroscuro of London, to the ladies and gentlemen in black-on-black relief. So long to the era of mist and carbonized Newcastle coal, to the stench of the Blackfriars foundry. Welcome to the cleasing glare of the twentieth century.”

“My companion made a noise that, in an aerated environment, would probably have come out as a weary sigh. 'Honestly, I remember a time when being violated by a monstrosity from the abysmal darkness was something you really had to work at. Young people today have no idea, do they?' She paused. 'That is to say, young people twenty years from the time we've just departed will have no idea, will they?' 'Tell me about it,' Miss Reef flicked her tail disdainfully.”

“Do we have an actual plan?' 'Certainly.' She sounded faintly affronted. 'We shall attend the salon in the guise of Mr. Lutrell and his faithful secretary. That's you. Then I'll draw the subject aside in order to ask her some questions about her latest work and use my art, guile, and intense personal charisma to lead her into confessing any role she might have had in the blackmailing of Eirene.' 'That doesn't sound like a plan, so much as a sequence of conversations with tremendous scope to go wrong.' She rose imperiously from the chaise. 'I am the sorceress Shaharazad Hass. I never go wrong. I merely achieve things in a manner I had not intended.”