And deadly their regarrrrd!
Cold the nipples’ rewarrrd!
And when Anomander rose tall
Between them so did they fall
Sliding down in smears of desire
Down the bold warrior’s gleaming spire!
And crowded the closet!
Sharp the cleaving hatchet!”
“Damn me, poet,” said Tulgord Vise, “the Tomb of Draconus has a closet?”
“They had to hide somewhere!”
“From what, a dead man?”
“He was only sleeping-”
“Who sleeps in a tomb? Was he ensorcelled? Cursed?”
“He ate a poisoned egg,” suggested Nifty Gum, “which was secreted into the clutch of eggs he was served for breakfast. There was a wicked witch who haunted the secret passages of the rabbit hole behind the carrot patch behind the castle-”
“I hate carrots,” said Flea.
Brash Phluster was tearing at his hair. “What castle? It was a tomb I tell you! Even Fisher agrees with me!”
“A carrot through the eye can kill as easily as a knife,” observed Midge.
“I hate witches, too,” said Flea.
“I don’t recall any hatchet in Anomandaris,” said Apto Canavalian. “Rake had a sword-”
“And we been hearing all about it,” said Relish Chanter, and was too bold in her wink at me, but for my fortune none of her brothers were paying any attention to her.
“I don’t recall much sex either-and you’re singing your version to children, Brash? Gods, there must be limits.”
“On art? Never!” cried Brash Phluster.
“I want to hear about the poisoned egg and the witch,” said Sellup.
Nifty Gum smiled. “The witch had a terrible husband who spoke the language of the beasts and knew nothing of humankind, and in seeking to teach him the gifts of love the witch failed and was cast aside. Spiteful and bitter, she pronounced a vow to slay every man upon the world, at least, all those who were particularly hairy. Those she could not kill she would seduce only to shave clean their chest and so steal their power, which she stored in the well at the top of the hill. But her husband of old haunted her still, and at night she dreamed of warped mirrors bearing both her face and his and sometimes the two were one in the same.
“The city was named Tomb. This detail, by the way, is what confused legions of artists, including Fisher himself, who, dare I add, is not so nearly as tall as me. And Draconus was the city’s king, a proud and noble ruler. Indeed he had two daughters, born of no mother, but of his will and magic gifts. Shaped of clay and sharp stones, neither possessed a heart. Their names they took upon themselves the night they became women, when each saw her own soul’s truth and could not look away, could not lie or deceive even unto their own selves.”
Noting at last the host of blank expressions, he said, “The significance of this-”
“Is a form of torture I will not abide,” said Tiny Chanter.
“Carrot through the eye,” said Midge. “Anyone got a carrot?”
“Eye,” said Flea.
“Anomander kills Draconus and gets the sword!” shouted Brash Phluster. “You never let me get to the funny bits-you can’t vote, it’s not fair!”
“Oh be quiet, will you?” said Tulgord Vise. “Plenty of light left this day, and we’ve plenty of cooked meat from yesterday. No, what we need is water. Sardic Thew, what chance the next spring is dry?”
The host stroked his jaw. “We’ve no more than trickles for days now, in every watering hole. I admit I am worried mightily, good sir.”
“Might have to bleed someone,” said Tiny, showing his tiny teeth again. “Who’s flush?”
His brothers laughed.
I spoke then. “Vows are as stone, each a menhir raised like a knuckled finger to the sky. The knights who hunted the Nehemoth were not alone in such cold chisel. Another traveled in the group, a strange and silent man who walked like a hunter in forestlands, yet in his face could be seen the ragged scrawl of a soldier’s cruel life, a past of friends dying in his arms, of the guilt of surviving, of teeth bared to fickle chance and a world stripped of all meaning. The gods are as nothing to a soldier, who in prayer only begs for life and righteous purpose, and both are selfish needs indeed. This is not reaching up to touch god. It is pulling the god down as if stealing a golden idol upon a mantelpiece. Begging voiced as a demand, a plea paid out as if owed, such are a soldier’s prayers.
“Faith fell beneath his marching boots long ago. He knows the curse of reconciliation and knows too its falsity, the emptiness of the ritual. He has abandoned redemption and now lives to excoriate a stain from the world. That stain being the Nehemoth. In this, perhaps, he is the noblest of them all-”
“Not true!” hissed Arpo Relent. “The Well Knight serves only the Good, the Wellness of the soul and the flesh that is its home! Not a single three-finned fish has ever passed these lips! Not a sip of wretched liquor, not a stream of noxious smoke. Vegetables are the gift of god-”
“Didn’t stop you stuffing your maw last night though, did it?”
Arpo glared at Tiny who grinned back. “Necessity-”
“Of which the hunter and soldier understood all too well,” I resumed. “Necessity indeed. The vow stands tall upon the horizon, bold in bleak skies. Even the sun’s light cringes from that dark stone. Has rock earned worship? Does a man so lose himself as to kneel before insensate stone? Does one cherish home or the walls and ceiling so enclosing? To see that vow each day, each night, season upon season, year upon year, is it any wonder that it becomes unto itself a god before the supplicant’s eyes? In making vows we chisel the visage of a master and announce our abjection as its slave.
“Yet, does not the soldier now standing unmoving behind his eyes not see and understand the dissembling demanded of him, the bending of reason, the burnishing into blindness the madness of absurd conviction? He does, and is mocked within himself, and the god of his vow is a closed fist inside iron scales and those iron scales mark the lie of his own hand, there upon the saddle horn.”
At last, Steck Marynd did twist round in his saddle. “You presume at your peril, poet.”
“As do we all,” I replied. “I tell but a tale here. The hunter’s face is not your face. The knights are not as travel here in our company. The carriage is nothing like the carriage in my tale. To noble Purse Snippet I paint a scene close enough to be familiar, indeed, comfortable, as much as such luxury can be achieved here on this fatal trail.”
“Rubbish,” said Steck. “You steal from what you see and claim it invention.”
“Indeed, by simple virtue of changing a name or two here and there, or perhaps it is enough to say that what I relate is not what you may see around you. Each listener crowds eager with an armful of details and shall fill in and buttress up as he or she sees fit.”
Apto Canavalian was frowning, as Judges are in the habit of doing when they can’t really think of anything worth thinking. He then shook his head, casting off the momentary fug, and said, “I see no real value in changing a few names and then making everyone pretend it isn’t what it obviously is. How is this invention, or even creative? Where is the imagination?”
“Buried six feet down, I should think,” said I, and smiled. “In some far off land in no way similar to any place you know, of course.”
“Then why bother with the pathetic shell-game, now you’ve shown us where the nut hides?”
“Did I really need to show you for you to know where it is?”