“Your manners are not at all lost on me, Thunderman,” said Neron, “but after aeons of surprising us in our sleep and butchering us, you'll forgive how I might be inclined to see you...”
“Then you are indeed Elves. I thought so. And I do understand how you all might reckon us to be monsters. But now, why do you bother to hide your ears with glamouries?”
Neron glanced aside at the looks of astonishment from Olloo, Obbree and Sulacha. “I suppose that if you don't see at once, then it could be too long a tale to tell,” he said.
“If I told you that we no longer eat Elves, would that help?”
“Only if we could believe you,” said Neron. “After all, you killed and ate every single one of us who didn't manage to escape your attack on this very palace twenty years ago.”
Veyfnaryr slumped back on the throne with a sigh as he tapped at a tooth. A shivering owl called from a juniper outside the sagging counterpanes of the throne room, long free of window glass, while spring peepers went on whistling from the edge of Jutland Lake in spite of the chill of nightfall. A loon cried out from the far side of the lake. Suddenly he sat up and tugged the bell pull.
“Thunderman...” said Badharan, scurrying in from the door behind the throne.
Suddenly he stopped short with a wide-eyed gasp. “King Neron!” He fell to his knees at once.
“Ah!” said Veyfnaryr. “Then I did indeed hear you say that I was sitting in your chair. You're King Neron. And I'm still just learning what's proper, for which I do beg your pardon. I gave you my name but never once asked for yours...”
“Forgive my indiscretion!” cried Badharan, springing to his feet the moment he saw that he had spilt Neron's name, only to go wide eyed with a gasp and wheel 'round to face Veyfnaryr. “Forgive me Thunderman! And what did you want me to do for you?”
“Fetch refreshments to the board in the dining hall, if you would.”
“But what would that be, Thunderman? These are the only guests we've had since I've been here.”
“Oh, mead and some of that... What was that new stuff? Cheese? Was that it?” said Veyfnaryr, looking a little lost.
Badharan nodded and hurried out at once.
Veyfnaryr watched him all the way out. “So you were the actual Elf king, then, aye?” he said, turning to Neron.
“Well I still am.”
“My,” said Veyfnaryr, bending forward and studying the seat between his legs for an oddly long moment. “Then you actually sat here. Now you just saw Badharan. He's an Elf.”
“I could tell,” said Neron, “even in this light.”
“Well by that I mean that he's alive and everything.”
“I could see that, too,” said Neron.
“I mean we haven't even eaten him, yet.”
Neron folded his arms and looked on.
“Nyr-ruy!” cried Veyfnaryr, suddenly standing up with a big wave at the two score trolls in the room as he addressed them in trollish. “Grab-drag limp-leg metal-head and hoo-hoo-face metal-head out-front and Elf-chain them to the knotty-trunk-tree by the door for the moon-time. And grab-lead Elf and Elf and Elf and Elf to sit-in the juicy- champ place. I'll be in-soon to juicy-eat.” And with that he stepped out by the door behind the throne. The moment he was out of the room, the trolls grabbed them by the arms and tramped through the utter darkness to the dining room to put them in chairs and shove them up against the board.
“Well,” said Sulacha, squirming against the edge of the foul smelling table.
“We're certainly seated.”
“Who's going to eat?” said Olloo, “Are we, or is this Thunderman fellow eating us?”
“Probably not us just yet,” said Neron.
Presently Badharan appeared with a pair of dribbling candles for the table and a two gallon jug of mead. With a bow to Neron, he began filling the brass goblets already set around the board. “He knows you undoubtedly want some light, Your Majesty,” he said. “There never were candles until he got tired of watching me stumbling into things.
Just go ahead. I'm sure he'd have you all start.”
Neron raised his goblet with a nod to the others and took a sip. “Gah!” he said, squeezing shut his eyes as he set down his drink. “I'm sorry, my good fellow, but this seems to be a sweet vinegar.”
“Well it's the sort of mead Thunderman is fond of,” said Badharan. “I expect you'll want to make the best of it.”
Sulacha whistled quietly and set down his goblet.
“How did you survive the great troll raid?” said Neron.
“Me?” said Badharan. “You mean twenty year ago? I wasn't even here then. I was lost, far out at sea. It took me years and years to get here. And I've not yet been here quite a year.”
“Have you tried to escape?” said Olloo, finishing his sip with a tight pucker.
“Not really. They had me in shackles at first, but I've never tried to run off. Why would I? I thought every last Elf was long dead. And Veyfnaryr has had me teaching him several hours a day. Niarg, Elven, Headlandish, reading, writing, magic...”
“Well we'll get you out of here,” said Neron. “Are there others?”
Badharan gave a great sigh. “I just doubt if you'll ever, ever manage,” he said.
“And you're the only Elves I've seen for all these live-long years.”
“Now you said magic,” said Neron. “Not only has no troll ever had the slightest magical ability, no magic known has ever had any effect on any of them whatsoever.
How could he possibly even know about my ear glamouries? You and the soldiers would certainly have seen Human ears on us, but I can't imagine that there was a troll in the room who saw anything but Elf ears.”
“Because he is ten times as powerful as any Elf I ever knew of...”
“But he had no aura at all.”
“He's just not letting you see it. He fairly glows if he lets go. He just doesn't know how to use much of it...” said Badharan, looking up suddenly at the sight of Veyfnaryr coming into the hall.
“Well Badharan,” said Veyfnaryr as he pulled back his chair at the head of the board. “Don't let me stop you. Go ahead. Finish telling. Or do you want me to?”
Badharan gave a sheepish shrug.
“Well then, King Neron,” said Veyfnaryr as he scooted toward his cheese and mead with a screech of his chair, “It turns out that I'm not just a thunderman, I happen to be holy. I was not born to any of the sows here, you see. But I was adopted by Fnayooph, the sow with the hugest milk bags of all the Dyrney. She is my true fmoo, even if she never bore me nor had so much as a bite of my afterbirth.” He paused to quaff his entire goblet of vinegar, ending with a wet, “Ah...” and a big champ of cheese. He gave it a thoughtful chew and swallowed.
“So,” he said. “Demonica, the winged servant of our great goddess Fnadiyaphn, used a magical stone ball to let Dyrjinyryy watch the great Fnadiyaphn herself giving birth to me. And it was Demonica who placed me in the arms of my dear fmoo, Fnayooph...”
The mention of Demonica had everyone quite wide eyed.
“You know of our great goddess and her winged servant then, aye?” he said with delight, looking from face to face.
***
The thicket of roses in the pasture that once crowned the gentle hill overlooking all of the town of Niarg was enclosed for the first time by the circular stockade of the old wooden Castell Niarg. In time, it became the rose garden in the back ward of the great stone castle which followed, where Prince Hebraun courted Minuet under a late summer moon and where Princess Rose played with her kitten in the warm June sun.
Spitemorta cleared away all of that for her amphitheatre which faced across its broad and barren arena to the great stage for her public presentations which made up a corner of the back ward of her massive black castle. Here was the focus of her week long celebration. She raised her chalice to the drunken crowd as she sat back on her throne to watch her soldiers set alight the final wicker man, packed squirming tight with the very last survivor
s of Bernard's Bane at Jut Ford. Pissant scurried over with his jug to top up her vessel. As screams and yodeling wails of agony burst out from the flames, she shot to her feet with cheer after cheer of triumph for the roaring multitude. As glowing cinders began to tumble, orderlies scurried into the arena and onto the streets surrounding the castle to set up trestles and boards for the feasting that was to last all night.
When daylight came, Spitemorta banged into the doorpost on her way into the bedroom of her bower and bounced when she found that the seat of the stool before her dressing table was a bit lower than it should have been. She ballooned her cheeks with a huff as she found her face in the looking-glass. She picked up a brush. “My,” she said as she tugged at her whirling head with her brush strokes. “I'm not up for much of that...”
She looked up to see Demonica standing behind her in the mirror and tossed down her brush with a clatter. “And none of you, Grandmother. I'm going to bed right now.”
“Well,” said Demonica. “Fine celebration, I thought. Just wanted to tell you. And dear, you really want to see to your trolls, don't you think?”
“Did you see how the Niarg townies joined in? They were having such a good time, I know I've got them. I've really got them. Lots of them even danced and cheered when Minuet's soldiers were burning...”
“At least when the cider and sukee are flowing. We brought in three shiploads of sukee from Gwael for this. Stout stuff. You do need to keep that in mind. Some of them can actually count their own fingers when they're sober. And your trolls, dear...”
“Fine, Grandmother. After I've slept, come back and we shall both go.”
“I’ll do that dear. Just don't delay our departure with your handsome general. It would be best to appear just when they're waking for the night, before they’re already doing other things, don't you know. And it doesn't hurt for us to still have enough light to see by.”
“And just how would I let him delay us?”
“Well,” she said, as she sat on the bed and gave the coverlet a knowing pat. “You did have a rather more, shall we say, sustained and amorous meeting during the celebration than typical...”
“No, damn it! There was nothing amorous about it...”
“Well I certainly find that easy to agree with, having been there, but does the general?”
“That’s his problem, not mine.”
“If you say so dear. Well then. To bed with you and I’ll see you before sunset.”
***
The evening sun was just lighting the far wall of Spitemorta's chamber when she was awakened by voices below her window. “Damn you!” she cried, explosively ripping aside her covers. She grabbed up the full water pitcher from her night stand and heaved it out the window to land with a distant pop six storeys down. The talking stopped short.
No one was there when she propped her arms on the sill and peered out. The bell in Argentowre rang. When she couldn't sort out whether it was four or five o'clock, she covered her ears and turned away from the window.
“Oh!” she cried when the stool at her dressing table turned out to be just as unexpectedly low as before. With a squeal, she threw her brush across the room to smack the back of a chair and spin away somewhere on the floor. She labored to her feet and went hunting for it. When stooping to look under a wardrobe sent pains through her head, she went back to her table without the brush and peered into the mirror with the slits of her swollen eyes to find her hair hopelessly matted on one side, “As if I'd spent the month sleeping alongside a dead mouse.” And with that, she cast a glamourie on herself to look radiantly rested and groomed. After a spell of jerking dresses from side to side in one wardrobe after another, she gave up and cast another glamourie to make the kirtle she was wearing appear as though she had not slept all day in it. “And where's my duck?” she shouted.
“And here you led me to believe that there was not one thing amorous going on between the two of you,” said Demonica with a gasp of surprise as she appeared.
“Damn you! Not him. My breakfast!”
“Now did you indeed tell anyone before you went to bed?”
“What are you doing with that childish halo and wings, Grandmother? You've been telling me all these years that no one but me sees you.”
“Who knows? Veyfnaryr has enough power that he just might.”
“Do you seriously believe he's more powerful than Razzmorten?”
“Believe? Dear, he was every bit as powerful as Razzmorten the moment I put him in the arms of Fnayooph, the bathless fmoo who raised him. If you didn't have the Heart and the Staff, he'd make a grease spot of you if you vexed him enough.”
“Ha!” said Spitemorta, feeling for her stool before sitting, this time. “Good medicine for the Beaks. And those four Elves. He could make grease spots out of them, too. Pooh on breakfast, Grandmother. Let's go.”
“Good for you, dear...” said Demonica, looking up suddenly at the knock on the door of the parlour of the bower.
Spitemorta tramped to the door. “What!” she shouted as she grabbed the latch.
She threw it open to find Coel. “Familiar enough all at once to wave aside proper deferential announcements by the help, are we?”
“Because of our indiscretion?” said Coel calmly, as he stepped in without the slightest bob of a bow.
“Ah!” said Demonica. “Here's your duck after all...”
“Shut up!”
“You don't like it referred to that way?” said Coel.
“You ought to be able recognize Grandmother by now...”
“I don't see a soul.”
“And you bet it was indiscrete! You ought to be in the dungeon.”
“Because you invited me...?”
“I did not!”
“Well, sukee's like that,” he said, drawing in a breath. “And had I not had some of it myself, I'd have easily deflected your tugging at me.”
Spitemorta sucked in a furious breath.
“And I reckon it's having to recover from it that has me doing the knocking on your door instead of your service, in order to speed the delivery of the tidings you demanded I convey immediately.”
“What, then?”
“Pennoyer just spoke with me over the ball and said that he and his men followed Waso's traces south nearly to Sweetpea before they lost all sign of him,” he said as he began to pace about. “He said he was convinced that Waso was following the Elves to the Jutwoods until there was utterly no sign of him below Sweetpea. He gave up and turned about at the edge of the woods. He thinks that the Elves led Waso south to convince him that they were headed for Oilean Gairdin. But he gave up trying to find where they actually went.”
“Yea. The Elves would know better than to head for a troll stronghold.”
“So with your permission...”
“Yea. Bye.”
“Good job he didn't think he could make himself at home, Grandmother,” she said, watching him bow and quietly close the door after himself. She held out her hand.
“So shall we?”
“I should say, with it gone dark and all,” said Demonica. “But now, he did indeed have it more the way I remembered.”
Spitemorta thrust out her jaw. “So it's dark,” she said, picking up the Staff. “Just how could those drooling brutes be too busy with anything to pay their respects to their great goddess Fnadiyaphn? And wouldn't Veyfnaryr be pleased to see the very woman who bore him?”
“Maybe not, after you abandoned him for all these years.”
“He'll just have to get over it, won't he? Now let's go. I want to see if they've had an Elf roast. Oh wait.” She scurried over to the row of shoes under her largest wardrobe and grabbed up a pair of Demonica's red spool heeled pumps and hurried to the edge of the bed to put them on.
“Nice slippers,” said Demonica. “It's good that you plan not to be barefoot when making your first impression as omnipotent empress. It might be best if they fit well enough to stay on. You don't want to fall.”
�
�Of course they do, Grandmother,” she said, holding both legs out straight where she sat, so that they dangled at the heels. She rolled her skinweler into her lap and stared into it for a moment.
“You're not changing into Fnadiyaphn, first?”
“Why should I? They already know me this way. All I need is Fnadiyaphn's throat so that I can speak trollish. I get dizzy and I get a terrible headache, but I don't go through the sheer agony of changing every last part of me. So drop it.” And with that, she pressed to her throat the Heart, winking with ruby light. “Ga-hoof!” she barked, steadying herself against a churning moment of dizziness. She held out her hand to Demonica. “Phnyr-sifn- dyri-ja, D'puyf Fmoo.”
At once they found themselves in warm air, alive with the calls of spring peepers, as they stumbled about in the dead cockleburs and pink quartz rubble in front of the castle of Oilean Gairdin, lit with the dull orange light of cooking fires. “What is this?” said Spitemorta, “I thought the front walls were all knocked down.”
“They were,” said Demonica.
“Nyr-ruy!” barked a trollbrute dressed in clay hand prints, suddenly appearing at her back with a spear. “How-be human whore-sow hee-hee-sneak in pee-spot?”
“I'm Fnadiyaphn!” she cried, wheeling about at once.
“Who-be?”
“I thought it would have been better to change...” said Demonica.
“Your great goddess, mother of all Dyrney, you faithless idiot. And if you want to live, you'll bring me Thunderman Fnadi-phnig-nyd before you dare to draw another breath.”
“And I-be Arrdsey-phnyr-pheyf-ne, father of whole wide-world,” he said, tossing his head from side to side. “And Fnadi-phnig-nyd no-be thunderman. And Veyfnaryr now-be holy thunderman...”
“Then fetch him, nitwit!” she roared, setting off his spear with a deafening pop of showering sparks.
With a squeal, he dashed away for the shadows of the castle, slapping at his burning hair.
“I should say that fixed his blasphemy,” said Demonica as every troll in sight stopped short and looked their way.
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 192
