The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5 (8 page)

“Until…

“Another voice cried out. ‘Hear me, folk! Listen! There’s sorrow too. For his mother has passed in the birth. Just now gone. Young Miss Trooly, yet brave she was, she gave her own life for her son.’

“Silence fell fleetingly over all, as folk hung their heads in respect for the dead.

“‘It can’t be so,’ sobbed a girl. ‘O my Troo!’

“‘
To Heaven
…’ sang someone. ‘
I’ll ever love you
…’

“I looked at my brother.
‘A third magic number.’

“‘The Semperor’s Rule of Threes,’ he confirmed.

“As folk gathered up their things at last to take the journey’s final steps, a couple came forward to claim the child.

“‘His life shall bear testament to this day, the day we found haven and hope. We’ll name him Homeboy to honor his birthplace and raise him as our own.

“‘And please,’ they added solemnly, ‘bring the mother’s body. We shall make a sacred place here and bury her with dignity.’

“I worried a while that we’d done something dark, that our wishes had summoned some evil magician. This was wonder and lore alright, but not the way we’d ever dreamed. Our child’s play was over it seemed. No more games for Ayrie and me.”

“By now, even the wide boven beasts had lumbered along to leave us behind, while taking the time to drop unwelcome souvenirs in our path as they went
— a minefield filled with fragrant reminders of their ruminations. So we climbed the sides of our cart and leapt, up to the top of your withers and hip, and rode vell-back the rest of the trip. Our chevox knew enough to follow, the poor abandoned cart in tow.

“We caught up to the slowest of slow folk and made our way woodward with them. They were the timeworn, the crippled and weak, but the wiliest ones at cheating death. Of these a few were Picklings, or what remained of them.
The first folk heroes, chosen ten by each elder when the Treasured were culled from across the land. They were marked, it is said, for heart or head, for brawn or might, or out of spite. But no matter how or why, they survived. For near forty winters of withering bitter, enrobed in ice, entombed by snows, buried but alive… under two score summers’ devil sun, a-swamp in stinking muck too thick, half drowned, all sick, and swallowed by an evil hot, a heat that but hell knows… they thrived against even these awful odds — of oddcats and malaphants, reek frogs and flyrats, hungry snarl hogs by the pack, giant stingle wings, prick gnats, skyfire storms and blood snake rains, hollow fever in the veins, brain flukes, foul, leaking pus, and canker pox to eat the flesh — the only sleep, eternal rest, caught in corpse vine, skinworm mesh, or if you liked a dirt nap best, devil’s moss or sucker grass, depending how you’d rather pass. Although for a lad, the swamps were the test, where lurked it was said a siren lass who led men to wade into bogs too deep, to slip to the depths of marsh madness.

“So that’s how these salty old Picklings were brined — a fight to the death with death and time.
Though bent by their struggles, never to fall. They were the most alive of us all.

“A wizened man, barefoot and draped in rags, stepped aside us from out of nowhere. He carried a young girl on his back and had a desperate look, a stare full of want that would not let go. The pair kept pace for a while that way before the poor soul finally spoke.

“‘Please… I know you are Huryx’ sons… good like him I’m sure of it. My grandchild, she can walk no more and I grow weak… I beg… may she ride with you… just the rest of the way?’

“‘Of course!’ said Ayrie.
‘Hand her up.’ And we squeezed the girl in between us.

“‘My name is Hannyn Lyll,’ she smiled. The prettiest thing I’d ever seen.

“As you pranced away with the three of us, I glanced back and saw her grandfather falter. Then he fell to his knees and wept.”

“The sky was full of silhouettes, prey birds upset at our arrival, all aswirl overhead. Their caws and cries echoed against the wood.

“Everyone scurried to make hasty camp in the little light left of the day. No time to explore our new home now, that would have to wait for tomorrow. But the sun set red in the distant west, the last of its blood spilled on full-bellied clouds portending the new life to come.

“It was not long before that vision was gone, washed away on the eventide of night.

“Someone shouted.
‘Hurry! Hurry up! The Treasuror is soon to speak!’ And we could see fires lit ahead and folk hoisting branches ablaze as torches.

“So you flew the rest of the way, old boy. It was all we could do to hold on. Our hair went everywhere in the wind and Hannyn, though she screamed, seemed to have the most fun… Well, maybe except for me.

“All were assembled on the rim of a rise where a tree wall rose from the airy plain. At our left the elders had planted their flags and sat or stood waiting, all whispers and signs. On our right the folk milled about in a mob, with more than a few sharing grog-skins of drink — mostly thick, potent mudmeade, guzzled and gulped. We wove a way between the two and stole a good spot right up front. Ayrie helped Hannyn down on his back then the four of us found soft seats in the grass.

“Father loomed large on a great, ancient stump that served as makeshift stage. His kind eyes surveyed the scene before him, embracing the moment to take it all in. One of them gave us a playful wink. He straightened his tattered and dust-covered clothes with a tug on the soily green waistcoat he loved, which used to be fancy in grandfather’s day, then raised both hands for silence. Mother stood by him in the glow, more motherly than ever in a plain but wild-made dress of undyed limberwood and vine. She shot the folk a look to hush them. The Guard, both rings aligned behind in their usual order of ull and syr, held pikes up high to make the point.

“With that our father, Huryx Hurx, the Treasuror, son of Treasurors, spoke.”

“‘Fellow travelers! Gather near. The time has come, O pioneers, to end this endless trail of tears. To roll our rock of ages here. To rest. At last.

“‘You elder statesmen!
Lend an ear! You wander-lost of two score years! You Guard of war, our shield and spear! This is your tale be told.

“‘For thirteen thousand days of fear, you carried all that you could bear, and braved to save what we hold dear.
Our word. Our blood.

“‘So hand and heart might live, you gave the all you had to give, leaving but your broken bones and dreams.

“‘And your reward, the wicked Wild, starless nightmare of a child.

“‘Your only guide, blind faith.’

“Father paused as if letting the words sink in while the flicker of a thousand flames reflected upon his handsome face. Then he pointed to the sky.

“‘Behold the stars!
Heaven’s gate. A gift of light, the fruit of faith. Your reward, a golden pom. Cast on sacred ground.’

“He spread his arms wide.
‘Paradise found.’

“Many of the plain folk wept, or bowed their heads in prayer or thought.

“‘Trusted friends! Tested souls! This night is unlike all before. Folk of heart and soil! Four generations, lost no more.

“‘No more olders lost
(fallen) gone too frail to follow, or fathers lost (slipped) in the swamps and swallowed, or mothers lost (cold) from the deathly hollows, or children lost (orphaned) left starved and sallow.

“‘No more.

“‘Our weary age is over — every one, new-born. Tomorrow, we make haven here. And evermore vow that we keep safe the ruby red blood enjeweled in us all. The gift of our fathers! The wealth of our land! The Semperor’s secret trove!

“‘Treasured ones
…’ he added last, with right fist firm upon the heart and left held open to the wood, ‘Welcome home.’”

“The folk burst into a wild celebration with loud cheers and tossings of things in the air — sticks and stones, hats and shoes, small children too, who were then largely caught.

“‘Hur-yx!
Hur-yx! Hur-yx! Hur-yx!’

“The elders applauded politely, taking their cue from Madam Pum.

“Even the Guard joined in on the fun, chanting a sweet little dirge of their own, laced ever so lightly with death.

“O father! Dear da. Had I known or foreseen… I would give all now to warn you… How sour would turn the wine from that day, made of the shiny, sweet pom prize you gave. Yes, how the tempting fruit would rot and ever spoil our treasured lot. And how red the blood I would spill to go back, to return and turn your mind… if my foe were not that devil time.”

Fyryx spat on the straw, as if trying to purge a foul taste from his tongue.

“When we woke in the morning we all took stock of our new world and each of its wonders. The wood’s edge was lined by a dense stand of arbors
— great stately hoaks full of cheek-filling haycorns and tall sweeping swillows as well — leavish trees willing to let us pass. They quickly gave way to a soft, mossy grove that welcomed bare feet and caressed the toes. From there the land rose in a slope just so to form a fine hillock for defenders to hold and for keeping a watch on the wide plain below. Atop of that hillock our peeled eyes found six sibling hillocks all around, each one a little less high and more round but blessed of green pastures for boven to graze with soft sweetgrass for pleasing cheese. And along these verdant, lazy fields flowed a forest lavish and alive, of wildflowers bright by honey hives, of fleshfruit hung low, fat nuts to try, with truffle root for Treasure Pie, and flocks of slow billit to catch and fry. For builder and maker it offered as much, in everwood lumber and limberwood trunks, or stone of all sorts for our roads, huts, and such.

“It seemed to some the Semperor himself had surely made this place
— and made it just so to quench all thirst, to fill every want or need… even down to the cold, clear spring that we found just over the high hill’s crest, in a notch just right for settlement. And that’s where we set to making our Keep, by a babbling brook running east.

“Yet another thirst there was, an older hunger our master knew that could not be so happily measured or met.
A dark want. A red need. The lust for blood. The wont to bleed… It would be a lie to deny it… And so the maker crafted here one more wonder, an instrument made to feed and satiate that beast. Too bad the children found it first.

“Small screams drew us from far and wide through a sun-dappled valley of rosewood and pyne to the edge of a huge field of green
— but a green of vein-blue hue it was, like an ocean stained with jealousy. There in the deep of that sweetgrass sea stood a twisted old ironwood tree. It snaked skyward, spawn of a gray strain unknown, ominous, lost, at anchor alone, a strange scurvy pirate, no skull but all bones, bleeding black sap like bile. With gnarled, fingery branches it cast a wide net, nails longing to scratch at our treasure and get it…

“Two tots, the Mayn twins, had wandered too near in their innocence not knowing what was to fear. It taught them a lesson they’d never forget
— a course in assailing with cutty sharps from its twitching limbs and hard arms. Men found them under the waves of blades, still with this world but maimed, everharmed.

“For the boy, Droydyn, his right hand was gone. His sister Nystra had lost her left.

“At least our medicine, all that we’d learned by trial of the Wild, spared their lives. From that day on we boys, the three, were often at their side — then when better, they at ours, always in tow. We didn’t mind. Sweet Hannyn especially befriended them both, Droy and Nys, the siblings she never knew. And up they grew, the plucky pair, not as a single-handed two but together too handy to compare. In fact by the age of seventeen, yet apprenticed and their father’s own, they would be unmatched already, the finest craftsmen of pikes ever known. The twain of Mayn. Magic stick makers. Treasured by the Guard.”

“Grrrrrr-OWWW…”

Fyryx sat up with a start.

“Grrrrrrrrr-OWWW…”

He snatched up the strangers’ sword from the floor and scrambled to his feet.

“It tracks us even here, the beast… to the very edge of our Keep.”

With a few steps he reached the tent’s front doorflap and pressed his ear to listen.

“This thing prowls with a purpose. Thirst it must for more of the blood, your
blood, that it tasted yesterday.”

Fyryx noticed the lamp that he hung and how it now burned low. Its oil was almost empty.
Its light but an afterglow.

“Morning is soon to come, my friend, and daylight will send this devil home. No oddcat strays far from its lair for long. Not once the sun comes up.”

He heard the growl again but this time at a distance.

“It chills the spine, that sound does, even from afar.”

Fyryx lowered the borrowed sword and began to pace the fore chamber floor. He was silent for a while. His shot eyes were all but shut, somewhere else.

At last he looked.

The petrified vell now seemed strangely serene. Was this the unworldly before him?

At last he spoke.

“You have a peace about you, old boy. Perhaps my childish tales have helped. We were never more alive than then, your pureblood never
more clear… In those memories maybe you’ve found some relief from the poison that now pollutes your veins. A moment’s peace at least — in a place of the past where your soul can rest a while from the venom’s reach. Away from its fire and ice.