The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5 (10 page)

“And how ‘bout a sudsy bath to boot, to throw or kick in while I’m wishing on it? We might as well ‘Reach for the stars,’ as you say. And what better wish than a wash?”

John Cap let the moment pass and listened for more from the wall at his back. After a while the scraping stopped and the few muffled voices he’d heard faded out. Although, he thought he could still hear a song, as if over the hills and far away off. Only the smell remained the same.

He noticed a pout of disappointment on Morio’s always honest face.

“No bathroom here ‘O. Or room service either. But I bet you’d be sorry with what they’d deliver.”

“Room service, John Cap?”

“Never mind. Just forget it.”

The watchman suddenly spun around, away from Morio and Vaam, and struggled up the tilted floor to the other end of the rectangled room. And there he faced the massive door through which they had passed a few hours before, cast in as prisoners by the Guard and left alone to stew.

He squinted at it and tipped his head, using what weakling light he had. Then the young man motioned with his strong hand. “Look at this,” he said.

Morio, heartened, did not wait or even think to hesitate. He eagerly crawled to the door on all fours, pausing only to let out a sneeze and a snort. In fact, he flew with such ease on his knees that he met his friend in no time.

Then they stared side by side at the rosewood, those men, each on his own and the both of them. The tall one from his steady feet. The shorter still stuck to his seat.

John Cap pondered what he saw and pressed a palm to his handsome jaw. “These panels
— they seem to be carved with scenes, just like they’re telling a story. Do you recognize them? Do you know what they mean?”

The porkly man looked as best he could while wiping his nose on a tattered sleeve. “Hmmm, yes… I believe… Ah, indeed! Now that could be…”

“Yo. Are you going to tell me?”

Morio beamed a childlike light that all but lit the gloomy room. “I shall have no higher calling in life.” He pointed way up. “Let’s start at the top.”

John Cap eyed the most distant square where a man becrowned and in flowing robes led a long line of the young. They marched two by two from a gleaming city. “Who is that guy, the one with the beard? He looks kind of kingly to me.”

“Kingly? Yes, oh I should say! A Semperor of Syland he must be.
Perhaps the last of his line — the one who sent these poor folk here before the Troubled Times.”

“In the next scene the bearded man is gone and the people seem to be wandering…”

“Lost. Lordless and forlorn. With countless of their untold number frail and falling for four panels more. And longish panels they are at that. They take a good half of the door. See there? What an epic journey it must have been, a quest to test the best of men, and women and children as well…” Morio nodded knowingly. “But this is the gist of the few fabled tales that I’d heard somewhere and a time ago. So I’d swear that it all rings true to me.”

“And that brings us to here,” said John Cap. He stretched out his fingers to touch the figures and shapes before him at arm’s length. The rosewood was smooth against his skin and smelled of something flowerish, a fragrance set free when it met his flesh. He could tell that it had been tooled and rubbed well with perfumed oils to make it shine. But his findings too made him raise a brow, for such craft did not fit in this box of pyne.

And another surprise — these panes portrayed a happier time. “Something has changed. What’s happening?”

Morio took a look and spoke. “I recognize the great plain that we crossed, albeit airborne thanks to the ogs. So this must depict their trek here from afar with dawn’s rising orb as a guide or Pole Star. (I’m just guessing about the Pole-
ish guide, but the carver does show the sun on their side.) Then their nights turned to halcyon days in this place, sweet dreams washing the nightmares away — wiped clean like a frown from each sunny face. No mourning on them anymore.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” muttered John Cap with a telling smirk. He moved his hand to the form of a man in the midst of a speech to a crowd by a wood. A multitude was amassed before him, all enthralled by whatever he said. Some marks were inscribed beneath his feet. “H Hurx ~ Treasuror III,” they read.

“Hurx? I think we just heard that name out in the field tonight. Isn’t that what they called those boys?”

“Their uncle too,” added Morio, “our friend with the little red riding beard.”

Distracted, the young man did not hear. He pressed his thumb to one of the marks then studied the fresh impression it made — lines and angles on his skin. “So ‘treasuror’ must be some local leader, like a governor or mayor.”

“Or
an electryon.”

“What’s that?”

“Most likely like one of those two you bespoke. But ‘twas how we knew office holders back home, when it was still a free land called Merth.”

“And let me guess
— they were usually crooks.”

“Crooks or things much worse.
But how…”

“I’m learning that some things are universal.”

“Yet exceptions there are, some giants among us. Those meant to make their place and time.”

John Cap surveyed the remaining scenes. “It seems like H Hurx must have been such a man, judging from the rest of this side…”

Yes, the artist showed life going well for a while with a bounty of all that they might want or need. Game for meat. Greens and seed. Timber or stone. Time to breed.

And a leader beloved, wise, and kind.

So much heaven sent to a folk so forsaken. Redemption. Rebirth. The smell of bacon.

But then there by the floor, at the foot of the door, the magical yarn got caught in a knot.
A tragic tangle of the tale. For in the final frame they found not chords of joy or sweet string sounds but notes of fond farewell and grief. Runes etched around an empty seat told of a treasured man’s defeat as Guard and folk and elders sung the tune of a life too brief.

H Hurx was gone or lost or ghost.

Yet to his place a young man rose. A handsome one, his elder son — “Ayryx of Hurx” it said below. As all bore witness to his grace, he bowed his head and turned his face in humility to the sacred ground. And the mantle of Treasuror was bestowed upon his shoulder with a pike.

Thus was this enshrined for time to come in the red hewed
everwood.

John Cap stepped back searching ceiling to floor, hoping to find a few panels more. “We need to know where the story goes to understand these people.”

Morio grabbed the young man’s arm and with it fought to make his feet. “Perhaps on the other side of this door, my friend, it may continue. I did not notice when we came in.”

“The door was open. It couldn’t be seen.”

“Of course, now I remember too. Anyhow, it’s high time we try the latch,” said Morio doughtily reaching out. He itched for a fight with its rough handle. “Perchance we can sneak a peek or two or even snatch a more leisurely glance.”

John Cap was wary yet did not object.

But try as he might, despite clutching it tightly, the man o’ more simply could not trip the catch. And so some grumbling ensued.

“It’s locked.”

“We’re stuck.”

“Do you think we should knock?”

“Then what, Morio, ask the guards for a tour? I’m sure that they’d love to punch our tickets.”

“Yes please! That’s the ticket indeed dear lad, the magic of wishful thinking at work. A tour plus punch to quench our thirst? Now I’m truly optimistic!”

“But maybe just hold that thought for a bit, ‘cause I’d rather live till daylight. And anyway, Vaam is still asleep.”

“I could wake her if you’d like.”

“No ‘O, not yet. She needs more time. Let her dream on a little longer.”

Then the two men did their best to recall what they saw on their path that night to this place, this hell-scented pigpen of fallen angles, this lopsided lockbox of purpose unknown…

The Guard had led them from Liar’s Tree field down a road by a glade to the foot of a hill. There, yet under night’s thick cloak, they saw a dark structure loom ahead enshadowed from the moon. It was oddly tall amidst the trees with a face of silent stone
— a visage unwelcoming, gray, and cold. Windowless it was this façade, though oriented east, as if keeping some secret unseen within or shunning the light of the world without.

And so by the push and prod of the pike were the three strangers sent single file inside, to and through its open maw all of two stories high and yawning wide. On their left and their right there they passed twin great gates of hardest ironwood wrought by hand. Upon those gates a herd of shapes adorned the void that they minded with beasts.

One thing low and snaky, two lofty a-wing, some devilish dirt dog, an odd cat-like king. Bull-sheep and bear-ass greeted them too, both by a boar-rat and all under toe of a tusky behemoth from realms far below.

The clear voice of the tall young woman rang like a song through the stony hall. “Why this menagerie?” she sang. “Why honor these unheard-of creatures here?”

But she and her friends knew not of this place. And the Guard were in no mood for show and tell.

Rudely were they ushered on through a chamber of dull-colored
quarrystone. Its floor was smooth, worn down in places, as if by rituals oft repeated. Yet its ceiling soared halfway to the heavens. They glimpsed strange implements hung from the walls, devilish things that seemed made to maul or maybe maim or make holey somehow.

Dead ahead a pair more of the armored Guard awaited them mirthless and still
— stoic sentinels standing on either side of a gaping inner doorway. The hole of it filled a space like the first through which they had safely passed, but from this deeper one there spilled an unavoidable blackness. Far off to the left at a table there sat two others, yet Guard those were not. They looked of old plainsmen, swarthy and crude, who eyed the strangers with cold disdain. One leaned back with his feet propped up as he sharpened the tip of a goring pole. It was bile-stained a vile green. The other bit into a blood-red pom and spit out its seeds with spite on the floor. Both wore the leathery skin of countless seasons riding wild and free, as ranger men of a treeless land, ever awash in sun and dust.

The doorkeepers held abreast and ready a brace of heart-crossed battle pikes. Now each rapped his own two together twelve times in a duel of hard knocks to announce their guests. By this were the guests held in rapt attention with no choice but to listen. Nor had they a hope to avoid the vision of hosts of apparitions sprung from the chamber’s phantom lamplight just for the chance to dance for them.

Ghosts of a hidden history… were we never let to tell our story… but for the shadows upon these walls… where we evermore dwell…

Done, the rappers sang a song, a torch song of hellish welcome:

Had you a good wife?

A strong, young son?

Beautiful daughters

Chased yet virgin?

Questioned guest

Pale ghost, pale ghost

Cornered beast

Pale ghost

We see soft hands, signs

Of rich lands owned,

Fine fabrics your skin,

Fat flesh on bone

Hapless guest

Pale ghost, pale ghost

Captured beast

Pale ghost

And in some safe haven

Of holywood,

For what is your
treasure

Of gold now good?

Helpless guest

Pale ghost, pale ghost

Hogtied beast

Pale ghost

“This pelt be of value”

“For marrow, his bones”

“Hang him till tomorrow”

“All blood let and run”

No marrow tomorrow

Your hide be gone

The last of your ‘morrows

Bled on this ground

Sorrow tomorrow

Six feet down

Death bed made

No sound

Screamless guest

Pale ghost, pale ghost

Dreamless guest

Pale ghost, pale ghost

Hopeless guest

Pale ghost, pale ghost

Lifeless beast

Pale ghost

So into darkness the three were thrown, over the crown of ghastly glow.

Morio must have felt that his shoes had gone loose for he bent at the belly to tie them. His plump hands nimbly found the soft, weathered boven-hide leather and laces but something sharp as well.

“Wow! Oh! Ho, that smarts!” he exclaimed with a wince of pain.