“Do you think we are all simply lip gloss and chainmail?” said Wish.
“I bet I’m as good as a fighter as you are,” said September.
“I don’t fight. I kill. There’s a difference.”
“Presumably fairness,” said Cinnamon.
“I’m especially good with swords,” September said and winked.
“Well, I’m good with all words,” I joked. I thought for a moment. “Fighting is not the right word, nor is killing. Living is the right word. You do not live as I do.”
September strutted away from the line and joined me. She turned and rested her back on the ship’s rail, crossing her legs. “And how do you live?”
“Without hope.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” she countered. “Surely you could just give up in all these fights you throw yourself into.”
“I should die the right way,” I said. “Death, like life, is an art.”
“Death is a part of life. Your quest for a perfect death seems to be inexorably linked to a quest for a perfect life—and a perfect life is something everyone finds ridiculous.” She leveled her gaze on me, and calmly narrowed her jade eyes.
“Death is the end of life,” I said. She rolled her eyes at me. “Death is distinct from life,” I continued, “and for someone who claims to be good with swords, you haven’t done a good job of cutting so far.” I grinned.
“So you will cling to life until you find this perfect death?” She tilted her head back, and gazed up at the stars. Her ebony locks flowed out into the midnight sky in a hypnotic stream.
I waited a moment before answering. My response was slow and somber, just like the words written on tombstones. “I am preparing a great hecatomb for the Cadaver King, for I would like to be his prince, a cavalier of the shade. So many want to be kings in life, which is fleeting, but death—death is forever, and in forever is where I would like to rule. So again, it would be improper for me to visit my king before the ceremony is over, before my offering is complete.”
“Well if it’s a hecatomb you are preparing, you need more heifers,” she said smugly.
“It is a great hecatomb, and I am the final offering. I will go down to the underworld as no other has ever done,” I said turning my back to the others and clenching the ship’s dark rails. “A thousand screams from scalpless victims, from crawling monarchs with broken crowns unjewled, shattered faces, and shredded robes will announce me. A thousand distraught wives with a thousand self-inflicted wounds will toss a thousand tears from their urns to anoint the withered path I tread. These will be followed by a thousand un-limbed heroes with rent armor, broken blades, and expired hopes. This will be the incense I throw across the marble altar of oblivion.”
I wrapped Coffin’s shroud tight around my body and whispered. “I don’t need life, and that’s what sets me beyond life. My task needs life, and when I’m done with it, then I won’t need life anymore.”
“You will finally be a true free spirit,” said September as she patted my arm and turned and strode away.
“Ah, here is a soul in fear and trembling and much spiritual trial! Judge for yourselves! See how much ruin his good name brings upon him!” Stunt said behind me, leading a whole pack of aged, beautiful women. With weapons.
“Sorry, I thought you were a werewolf or some bloodthirsty revenant, here to massacre us,” a woman in tattered chainmail and leather said as she lowered her crossbow. “I’m Delicioux.”
“Perhaps at some point I will be,” I said as I swept my eyes over all of them. “But for the moment I’m Evander.” I guess no one had talked to September and her friends.
“I think he’s already been with Scammander for too long,” she said over her shoulder.
“Oh, no one is around Scammander for too long, they tend not to last,” Stunt said to snickers and jeering.
“A werewolf, though?” I had never seen one of those, only heard of them in stories.
A bronze skinned woman in a ripped chainmail shirt with crossed scimitars behind her back strutted forward to speak. “Yes, some lycanthrope has been killing women all over the countryside—but seems to have a predilection for nobles.”
“Guess that means most of you rapscallions are safe,” I joked.
“I’m Nevada, by the way,” she said as the moonlight illuminated her tall leather boots. I could see two outstretched mountain lions etched in gold crawling down the side of each dark leather boot.
I looked over to Stunt. “Where do you find these—”
“You tell me where you found your latest acquaintance first,” he interrupted.
Stunt sauntered up beside me and grabbed the railing along the stern of the ship with both hands, then leaned out into the sky, taking a large breath. He slowly straightened, then rested his elbow on the rail and planted his chin in his palm, still looking out into the lavender and ebony sky.
Finally, he stood up: “Scammander has played many parts throughout his life—traitor, madman, dreamer, peasant, courtesan, murderer, lover, but perhaps the most perplexing one yet is his decision to play your friend.” He sighed and looked away. “No one really knows how old he is or what he knows or even what he doesn’t know. He goes away from time to time, but he always appears again as a grinning young elf, like he has never aged a day. Even elves age!” he said flinging his arm up in the air. “But not Scammander! He is like some sojourning attempter-god that has bent his frame to our mortal laws, but bends our laws to his immortal frame of mind.”
I said nothing, but continued gazing out into the night. Eventually, I thought up a worthy question to ask an immortal poet.
“What’s the worst word in the world?”
“Scammander,” he said, without hesitation.
“Why does he spell it with two m’s?” asked Nevada.
“Because I’m duplicitous,” said Scammander, emerging from the shadows.
“Sneaking up on us, instead of sneaking away!” I laughed as I shoved him. There was some snickering among the gathered ladies. “Where have you been? Sleeping all this time?”
“Oh no, he certainly hasn’t been sleeping,” said Stunt. “Scammander is an insomniac.”
Scammander nodded. “An old curse my mother cast on me a long time ago. I’ve never been able to remove it.”
The conversation whisked by me before I could ask how long he had actually remained awake for.
“He nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth,” quipped Stunt.
“That seems more pertinent to your wretched ilk,” jeered Scammander.
“What in the world is Scammander doing with a minotaur?” said Delicioux. “Are you teaching him magic?” An uneasy silence fell down across the floating boat, and I could see the gathered girls looking worriedly at one another amid the shade and lavender light from the sky.
“Does anyone else know about this?” Stunt suddenly seemed very worried. “Harboring you as a murderous criminal is one thing, but harboring you as a villain teaching a minotaur the dangerous art of magic is something else entirely.”
“Evander isn’t my pupil, he is my brother,” said Scammander. No one bought it.
I reached into my shroud and began to pick targets.
“Oh, I think he’s your lover,” Stunt said and laughed uneasily. “I just didn’t know you had taken your relationship to that level of bondage,” he laughed again and turned to face his companions as he pointed to the metal cuff still wrapped around Scammander’s wrist, shinning in the moonlight. There was another uneasy silence before the gathering of ladies slowly thinned out, leaving the three of us alone with the night.
“What are you holding by your side there?” I said, pointing to the shadows near Scammander.
“De Brevitate Vitae,” he said lifting a shotgun up from out of the shadows, which dripped away from the gilded silver barrels as they pulsed in the moonlight.
Looks like I hadn’t been the only one picking out people to shoot.
“I’ve been holding it for him
…for quite some time,” Stunt said peering down at it.
Scammander was absorbed in the shotgun, but finally spoke as he slowly admired the weapon. “When the dwarves closed a mine, with the last cart of metal they would make drinking goblets; sometimes they drank from them in the bottom of the mine and sang songs then left them there, and sometimes they carried them to the surface. The metal for this weapon was forged from cups found one hundred years after a deadly mine collapse in Mount Tolkien, that fecund hill, full of rich ore, and most of it from a cup that lay on the opposite side of a wall of rocks, just a few inches away from an outstretched skeletal hand, with the rest of the body buried behind the wall.” Scammander paused as his fingers drifted down the fat twin barrels, gleaming with moonbeams. “But this part,” he said as he tapped the thick wooden handle, “this part is perhaps even more sacred. It is crafted from the sacrosanct wood of trees cut down in a consecrated grove by a heretical druid.”
Stunt scoffed. “Scammander triumphed in a debate when he forced a halfling hierophant to agree that a plant was an animal. The little hierophant was so enraged at being embarrassed in front of an assembly of his fellow druid peers, that he ran through the grove cursing and cutting down trees.”
“Still wonder how that never stirred up Ol’ Neddy,” Scammander said.
“Hah, that angry forest deity?” Stunt laughed.
“Yes, that old wrath of nature, that feral knight. If ‘every first drink is poured to the Hart of the Woods,’ as the song goes in the hunter’s tavern, then that great stag is greatly named, for he’s too staggering drunk to hit anything. And now you see the malice of the hunter’s supplication, that they are not trying to appease the verdurous deity, but in fact keep him drunk and impotent, so they may take the lives of his beloved subjects.”
“Knowing, all-too-knowing, Scammander,” Stunt said with a sigh and slow shake of his head. “Some of the hunters even dip their arrows in ale, so at least death will be sweet. You might have remembered that if you weren’t so intent on subverting old myths, or at least tempered your learning with more poetry.”
“Poetic knowledge can only know the ways of gods and men, but never the gods and men themselves.”
“And philosophy can only question them, and never know anything,” Stunt quickly countered. Then he turned to me: “Which would you choose Evander?”
“Whichever helps me die,” I said. There was a flash in Stunt’s eyes as he turned back to Scammander, who was smirking as usual. Someone had won something, though I wasn’t sure who.
“And once you die, what will your tombstone say?”
“I’ve gone to get my sword,” I said. “What about yours?”
“Your verses did this,” Stunt replied.
“Buried, but not put to rest,” I said, thinking about my lonely tombstone.
“Here lies one who never lied before, but will now lie forever, and especially lie before forever.” Scammander said, joining in our game. “I only wish I had started lying earlier.”
Stunt shook his head. “Here lies Scammander, but he lied everywhere else too.”
I chuckled.
“Wenches, wine, and a little bit of murder,” Stunt said.
“And thievery,” added Scammander.
“Never again. Never again will I be foolish enough to live,” I said.
“Trust not the eyes. Trust not the ears. Trust not the hands. Trust not the nose. Trust not the mind,” said Scammander.
“And definitely not Scammander,” said Stunt. The two looked at each other and grinned. I could have listened to them quarrel for my entire life.
“From nothing to nothing,” I said.
“Why go on? You’re already here,” jeered Scammander.
“Strive for women, not ideals,” said Stunt.
“Soon, this face too will be gone,” I said.
“I can no longer hear, and am thankful,” said Stunt.
“Fortune favors herself,” said Scammander.
“Neither in Time, nor Eternity, but a desolate Never.” I said.
A grave silence fell across the three of us. I had a way of ending conversations.
“I had originally come updeck to invite you both to the Troubadour’s Test, the Test of Breath, which I intend to enter under my old name,” Stunt said finally. The ancient poet put up his hand as Scammander started to protest. “It would be perfect for you to asylum in the great theatre.”
“It might even give you some time to recollect some things,” I said.
“After all, given your renowned hatred of the theatre and playwrights, it will be the last place anyone will come looking for you.”
Stunt obviously wanted us off The Criseida, but Scammander wouldn’t give in. “I’ll think about it.”
“I also want to tell you something else. Something more poetic.”
“What’s that?” I said. It wasn’t every day that one was fortunate enough to hear a tale from the greatest bard to ever live.
“Listen Evander, and I will tell you a story of a poet amidst the philosophers—”
“Just remember he’s telling a story,” Scammander quipped.
“At its most sacred, philosophy is a debate about Being versus Becoming. The first philosopher to most diamondly articulate the argument for Being was a young, radical aristocrat known for his broad body and even broader mind, which poets of the time openly admired, even if they disagreed with its conclusions.”
“He was a formidable wrestler too,” Scammander noted.
Stunt consented and continued. “It took millennia for the proponents of Becoming to find his equal, and some believe that all philosophy, indeed all of civilization, is a mere working out and reply to this young philosopher’s theories.
“However, there is an oral legend not written on any scrolls and known only to a few, which suggests an equally potent and equally cogent formulation of Becoming, and which originated from a young and ardent pupil of the great philosopher. He too had written his great theories in a text known to antiquity as Of Mutability. This student, however, respected his teacher too much to openly challenge the theories of his teacher and was deeply in love with a young girl, which was forbidden in the philosopher’s school. Persi—for this was the name of the great student of water and all that changes—confessed all of this to the love of his life late one night. He was in distress, and asked for his love to save him. She looked into his eyes, and then into the fire.
“The young philosopher understood what his love had suggested. Full of turmoil, he grabbed the book with a trembling hand and threw it into the flames; he begged his love to kiss him until it had burned to ashes so that he would not throw himself into the flames in an attempt to save it. And so she did.
“To the students of Becoming, this is the greatest lesson, their most sacred teaching, and also what made Persi their great master. For while masters of Being seek to preserve their wisdom in writing, those of Becoming know that knowledge is fleeting, and must someday pass away again, only to be lost and created anew.”
“For your own sake I hope you come up with a better story for the Troubadour’s Test,” Scammander said, folding his arms across his chest.
“What exactly is the Troubadour’s Test?” I asked.
Scammander buried his face in his hands and let loose a deep groan.
“A minstrel competition, held the first weekend of every new year, in the courtyard of Castle Mulberry. There will be a surfeit of corybantic capering, a tour of its legendary vineyards as a prelude to a comic play, and there will also be a tragedy. The test is on the third morning, and is to see which poet can make a rose bloom in a young maidens cheek, or as some say, make the sun rise twice in one morning.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a challenge,” muttered Scammander. “What young girl doesn’t tread the flowery path of love with an armful of novels and poetic sentiments?”
“May a thousand novels blossom in your heart,” whispered Stunt, “for you sound like one of us who is lo
ved by the muses, and so I greet you with the lyrical salutation of our sect.”
Scammander didn’t seem to be too thrilled about being invited to the Troubadour’s Test or initiated into the mysteries and rites of the poets.
“Love is Death’s mask,” grumbled Scammander. “And as the old poet says, he whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad with Love.”
Stunt shook his head as though something had been profaned. In fact, it seemed that all Stunt did when Scammander was around was shake his head. “Evander is this really the kind of knowledge you want? Is this really the sort of thing you want to spend your life saying? Do you really wish to use sabers against flowers?”
Stunt had asked a potent question, and out of reverence I honored it with the most precious of perfumes that one can bring to the altar: silence.
“Well, what do you want Evander?”
I looked far up into the sky from deep within my hood, then consecrated a falling star with my phrase: “That the world should stop killing good people, or that good people should start killing it. That is my one wish.”
I realized after I had finished speaking that I was shaking.
Stunt’s eyes were very large, but he swallowed and spoke: “So there is a teleological suspension of the ethical.”
“Grave robber,” Scammander said and shot a piercing glare at the poet.
“You’re still young Evander, there are volcanoes in you.” Stunt clapped his hand on my back and gazed out into the night sky. “The world has turned its back on you and you have been given an excellent opportunity to stab it.”
“Don’t miss,” Scammander said wistfully as a light wind tossed his hair around his shoulders.
“I almost forgot,” Stunt said as he handed something over to Scammander.
“What is it?” I asked hoping for a magic book of spells or another weapon.
“Pendicott Ponder’s Bestarium vocabulum,” Scammander said, reading the cover. “I don’t need this garbage,” he said, flinging the book over the rail of the sky-sailing ship. Stunt’s blade flashed past my nose, skewering the old book just before it dropped out of sight. The bard slowly brought the sword in front of Scammander’s face, then gently tilted his wrist down. Reluctantly, Scammander tugged it off the weapon.
Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse Page 2
