LITMIR.BIZ

      t turned out the Punjab was in India. Did you know that? No, you didn’t; don’t pretend. But don’t feel bad, either, because David “Mack” MacAvoy also had no idea where the Punjab was until very recently. He’s learned a lot about the Punjab lately.

      For instance, he learned that the Punjab² is a warm, sunny place, at least at this particular time of year. Mack noticed how sunny and warm it was because he was on the ground staring right up at that warm sunny sun.

      He was on the ground because creatures called Brembles were keeping him there.

      Do you know what a Bremble is? Probably not, because Brembles no longer exist. (The last Bremble died in 1797, and he was quite old by then.) Brembles were a hybrid species, not something that occurred naturally, but a species created by evil forces. Imagine a large gorilla. No, twice that big. Now imagine that instead of being a peaceable plant eater, that oversized gorilla was extremely unpleasant. Now imagine that instead of fur, that extremely unpleasant oversized gorilla was covered in something very like porcupine quills. So, already: not good.

      But now imagine that the porcupine quills were the least of it, because where a gorilla would have hands, Brembles had what looked like some terrible explosion of thorns, spikes, and razor wire. From the center of this melee of thorns, spikes, and razor wire protruded one spike, longer than the others, which was known as a chulk. This chulk was split so that it was really two spikes with a narrow gap between them, rather like two tines of a fork.

      It was these chulks that the Brembles used to pin Mack in place. They had driven their chulks deep into the ground in such a way as to pin his four limbs down.

      In addition to being staked out, he was also stretched a bit so that the muscles in his chest felt almost as if they might tear. This made it hard to breathe, which in turn made it hard to scream, which was okay because there was no one to come to his rescue.

      Did he want to scream? Definitely.

      Mack was utterly unable to reach a hand to his face, which was a shame because there were red ants crawling into his ears and nose and scouting around his eyeballs. These were not the little ants you might see at a picnic. These ants were not trying to get at the coleslaw. Unless coleslaw is a euphemism for Mack’s brain.

      Mack had a pretty good view of one ant in particular that was walking right across his eyeball—his left eyeball, as it happened. Mack blinked furiously, hoping to discourage the ant, but each sweep of his eyelid just knocked the ant around a little, which is no way to discourage an ant.

      Seen in extreme close-up, the ant was like some fuzzy, out-of-focus, terrifying alien robot. It had six legs, a carapace,³ and a rounded-off pyramid of a head with huge, elongated pincers on the front. It had little black BBs for eyes. And its tail had a stinger like a combination claw and shot needle that would squirt painful venom if stabbed into something.

      Like, say, an eyeball.

      In all honesty, the ants were not as creepy as the giraffe-necked beetles that had been exploring Mack’s face just minutes before. But Mack had gotten rid of the beetles using his enlightened puissance—the mystical power possessed by only a few—and some words from the Vargran language—known to even fewer.

      All he’d had to do was yell, “Lom-ma fabfor!”⁴ and the beetles had disappeared. Mack had been studying his Vargran. He was all Vargraned up. He had come to the Punjab ready for trouble. Just one little problem: the enlightened puissance isn’t some endless water faucet with power just flowing out like, well, water. No, it’s more like a drip drip drip of water. It comes, then it stops, then slowly, sloooowly it builds back up until there’s enough to drip. A treasonous Tong Elf had once told him it took a full day, but Tong Elves lied. Still, it took a while, and while you were waiting for it to build back up … you’d find that ants had replaced the beetles, and now where were you?

      Well, you were staked out by the chulks of Brembles in the Punjab with ants in your eyeballs, that’s where you were.

      “Ahhhh!” he gasped because right then an ant bit him. Not the eyeball ant. An ear ant. An ant just inside his ear. The bottom part of the ear canal, if you want to be really specific.

      It felt exactly like someone had heated a needle over a fire and then stabbed it into his ear canal. Not good.

      “Ahhhh!” Mack cried again, straining for breath. “That hurts!”

      “Aha! I see they are biting,” Valin gloated. “That’s very bad news, Mack, my timeless foe, because once one ant starts, they all get into it. Within a minute, a hundred ants will sink their painful stingers into you! You will cry out in pain. Then you will swell up. And of course die. And thus will my family’s honor be avenged!”

      “I am not your timeless foe, you lunatic!”

      Valin was standing over him but providing no shade from the blazing sun above. He was dressed flamboyantly in puffy zebra-striped pantaloons, black leather boots that rose to his knees, and a purple vest over no shirt. To top it all off, he had an amazing hat that looked like the kind of thing Puss in Boots or maybe a pirate might wear. It had an actual pink feather. From his wide belt hung a dagger and a short sword.

      It was an eccentric look.

      Beyond Valin stood the terrible Nafia⁵ assassin Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout. Paddy was an elderly gentleman dressed all in green. Green suede shoes, green slacks, a green-and-yellow waistcoat over a very pale green shirt but beneath a bright-green sport coat. And on top of his shiny, bald head, there was a green bowler hat.

      Even in India, which is a diverse and tolerant country known for interesting

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