“If you never heard of them how would you know if I knew their names or not? I could make up any old names and you’d just nod, being a scholar and all! I’m right, aren’t I?”
Calap Roud was shaking his head but there was a delighted glimmer in his eyes. “Young Brash, it serves you ill to berate one of the Mantle’s judges, don’t you think?”
Brash rounded on him. “You don’t know their names either!”
“That’s true, I don’t, but then, I’m not pretending to be inspired by them, am I?”
“Well, you’re about to hear inspiration of the finest kind!”
“What was inspiring you again?” Tiny Chanter asked.
Flea and Midge snorted.
Our host was waving his hands about, and it was finally understood that this manic gesturing was intended to capture our collective attentions. “Gentlemen, please now! The Poet wishes to begin, and each must have his or her turn-”
“What ‘her’?” demanded Brash. “All the women here got dispensations! Why is that? Is it, perhaps, because everyone eligible to vote happened to be men? Imagine how succulent-”
“Enough of that!” barked Tulgord Vise. “That’s disgusting!”
Arpo Relent added, “What it is, is proof of the immoral decrepitude of artists. Everyone knows it’s the women who do the eating.”
Moments later, in the ensuing silence, the Well Knight frowned. “What?”
“Best begin, Poet,” said Steck Marynd in a hunter’s growl (and don’t they all?).
A wayward ember spun towards Nifty Gum and all three of his Entourage fought to fling themselves heroically into its path, but it went out before it could reach any of them. They settled back, glowering at each other.
Brash strummed the three strings, and began singing in a flat falsetto.
“In ages long past
A long time ago
Before any of us were alive
Before kingdoms rose from the dust
There was a king-”
“Hang on,” said Tiny. “If it was before kingdoms, how could there be a king?”
“You can’t interrupt like that! I’m singing!”
“Why do you think I interrupted?”
“Please,” said the host whose name escapes me again, “let the Poet, er, sing.”
“There was a king
Who name was… Gling
Gling of the Nine Rings
That he won
“On his bling!” Flea sang.
“That he wore one each day
Of the week-”
Apto broke into a coughing fit.
“Gling of the Seven Rings
Was a king whose wife
Had died and sad was his sorrow
For his wife was beloved,
A Queen in her own right.
Her tresses were locks
Flowing down long past
Her shapely shoulders and
Long-haired she was and
Longhair was her name
She who died of grief
Upon the death of their
Daughter and so terrible her grief
She shaved her head and was
Long-haired no longer
And so furious her beloved
Gling that he gathered up