“She would stand upon a balcony overlooking the canal where the gramthal boats plied carrying people and wares. Butterflies in the warm air would lift as if on sounds to gather round her.” She faltered then, for some unknown reason, and drew a few breaths before continuing, “and though all who chanced to look up, all who set eyes upon her, saw a maiden of promise, indeed, a work of art posed thus upon that balcony, why, in her soul there was war. There was anguish and suffering, there was dying to an invisible enemy, one that could cut the feet beneath every mustered argument, every armoured affirmation. And the dark air was filled with screams and weeping, and upon no horizon did dawn make promise, for this was a night unending and a war without respite.
“A lifetime, she would tell you, is a long time to bleed. There is paint for pallor, the hue of health to hide the ashen cheeks, but the eyes cannot be disguised. There you will find, if you look closely, the tunnels to the battlefield, to that unlighted place where no beauty or love can be found.”
The fire ate wood, coughed smoke. No one spoke. The mirror was smudged, yes, but a mirror nonetheless.
“Had she said but a single word,” muttered someone (was it me?), “a thousand heroes would have rushed to her aid. A thousand paths of love to lead her out of that place.”
“That which cannot love itself cannot give love in return,” she replied. “So it was with this woman. But, she knew in her heart, the war must end. What devours within will, before long, claw its way to the surface, and the gift of beauty will falter. Dissolution rots outward. The desperation grew within her. What could she do? Where in her mind could she go? There was, of course,” and inadvertendy her eyes dropped to the cup in her hands, “sweet oblivion, and all the masks of escape as offered by wine, smoke and such, but these are no more than the paths of decay-gentle paths, to be sure, once one gets used to the stench. And before long, the body begins to fail. Weakness, illness, aching head, a certain lassitude. Death beckons, and by this alone one knows that one’s soul has died.”
“My lady,” Tulgord Vise ventured, “this tale of yours demands a knight, sworn to goodness. Tis a fair damsel in deepest distress-”
“Two knights!” cried Arpo Relent, although with a zeal that sounded, well, forced.
Tulgord grunted. “There is only one one knight in this tale. The other knight is the other knight.”
“There can be two knights! Who is to say there can’t?”
“Me. I’m to say. I will allow two knights, however. The real one, me. The other one, you.”
Arpo Relent’s face was bright red, as if swallowing flames. “I’m not the other knight! You are!”
“When I cut you in two, “Tulgord said, “you can be two knights all by yourself.”
“When you cut me in two you won’t know which way to turn!”
Silence has flavour, and this one was confused, as follow certain statements that, in essence, make no sense whatsoever, yet nonetheless possess a peculiar logic. Such was this momentary interlude composed of frowns, clouds and blinks.
Purse Snippet spoke. “She came to a belief that the gods set alight a spark in every soul, the very core of a mortal spirit, which mayhap burns eternal, or, in less forgiving eyes, but gutters out once the flesh has fallen beyond the last taken breath. To sharpen her need, she chose the latter notion. Now, then, there was haste and more: there was a true edge of possible redemption. If in our lives, we are all that we have and ever will have, then all worth lies in the mortal deed, in that single life.”
“A woman without children, then,” Apto murmured.
“What gift passing such beauty on? No, she was yet to marry, yet to take any seed. Only within her mind had she so aged, seeing an end both close and far off, ten years in a century, ten centuries in an instant. Resolved, then, she would seek to journey to find that spark. Could it be scoured clean, enlivened to such bright fire that all flaws simply burned away? She would see, if she could.
“But what manner this journey? What landscape worth the telling?” And upon that moment her eyes, depthless tunnels, found me. “Will you, kind sir, assemble the scene for my poor tale?”
“Honoured,” said I mostly humbly. “Let us imagine a vast plain, broken and littered. Starved of water and bare of animals. She travels alone and yet in company, a stranger among strangers. All she is she hides behind veils, curtains of privacy, and awaiting her as awaiting the others, there is a river, a flowing thing of life and benison. Upon its tranquil shores waits redemption. Yet it remains distant, with much privation in between. But what of those who travel with her? Why, there are knights avowed to rid the world of the unseemly. In this case, the unseemly personages of two foul sorcerors of the darkest arts. So too there are pilgrims, seeking blessing from an idle god, and a carriage travels with them and hidden within it there is a face, perhaps even two, whom none have yet to see-”
“Hold!” growled Steck Marynd, looming out of the gloom, crossbow held at rest but cocked across one forearm. “See how the colour has left the face of this woman? You draw too close, sir, and I like it not.”
Mister Ambertroshin relit his pipe.
“Lacks imagination,” purred Nifty Gum. “Allow me, Lady Snippet. The village of her birth is a small holding upon the rocky shores of a fjord. Beyond the pastures of her father the king, crowded forests rear up mountain sides, and in a deep fastness there sleeps a dragon, but most restlessly, for she had given birth to an egg, one of vast size, yet so hard was the shell that the child within managed to no more than break holes for its legs and arms, and with its snout it had rubbed thin the shell before its eyes, permitting it a misty regard of the world beyond. And, alas, the egg monster had escaped the cavern and now roved down between the black trees, frightened and lost and so most dangerous.
“In its terrible hunger it has struck now in the longhouse of the king, rolling flat countless warriors as they slept ensorcelled by the child’s magic. Woe, bewails the king! Who can save them? Then came the night-”
“What knight?” Tulgord demanded.
“No, night, as in the sun’s drowning in darkness-”
“The knight drowned the sun?”
“No, fair moon’s golden rise-”
“He’s mooning the sun?”
“Excuse me, what?”
“What’s the knight doing, damn you? Cracking that egg in half, I wager!”
“The sun went down-that kind of night!”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Tulgord Vise snorted. “And the monster set a deep magic upon the longhouse. Bursting down the stout door-”
“He ran into the knight!”
“No, instead, he fell in love with the princess, for as she was ugly on the inside, he was ugly on the outside-”
“I’d suspect,” Apto said, “he’d be pretty ugly on the inside, too. Dragon spawn, trapped in there. No hole for the tail? He’d be neck deep in shit and piss. Why-”
Brash Phluster, working on his second supper, having lost the first one, pointed a finger bone at Nifty and, with a greasy smirk, said, “The Judge is right. You need to explain things like that. The details got to make sense, you know.”
“Magic answers,” snapped Nifty with a toss of his locks. “The monster walked into the main hall and saw her, the princess, and he fell in love. But knowing how she would view him with horror, he was forced to keep her in an enchanted sleep, through music piped out from the various holes in his shell-”
“He farted her a magic song?” Apto asked.
“He piped her a magic song, which made her rise as would one sleep-walking, and so she followed him out from the hall.”
“What’s that story got to do with Purse Snippet’s?” Was that my question? It was.
“I’m getting to that.”
“You’re getting to the point where I vote we spit you on the morrow,” said Tulgord Vise.
Arpo Relent agreed. “What a stupid story, Nifty. An egg monster?”
“There is mythical precedent for-”
“Make your silence deep, poet,” warned Steck Marynd. “My Lady Snippet, do you wish any of these pathetic excuses for poets to resume their take on your tale?”
Purse Snippet frowned, and then nodded. “Flicker’s will suit me, I think. A river, the promise of salvation. Strangers all, and the hidden threat of the hunted-tell me, poet, are they closer to their quarry than any might imagine?”
“Many are the stratagems of the hunted, My Lady, to confound their pursuers. So, who can say?”
“Tell us more of this quest, then.”
“A moment, please,” said Steck Marynd, his voice grating as if climbing a stone wall with naught but fingernails and teeth. “I see that unease has taken hold of Mister Ambertroshin. He gnaws upon the stem and the glow waxes savage again and again.” He shifted the crossbow, his weight fully on the one leg whose foot had not suffered the indignity of a quarrel through it only a short time earlier. “You, sir, what so afflicts you?”