“What about your memories?” Scammander asked, a little bit desperately.
“Oh no, those are gone forever.”
“Ebenezer, could you take a look at this,” Scammander said, pulling his book of spells from his robe. The gargoyle’s stony expression stretched with surprise as he took the book and began leafing through it.
“A wizard’s personal grimoire,” he said. “And a most impressively spellbound one at that. I confess Scammander, you were so great that stories of your deeds reached even the heights where I sat, in the highest towers of the Academe.” Ebenezer paused on one page, as though he was actually reading the oracular contents. “This is written in the breathless language of the dead, only the most astute academics and wizards can read it.”
“Do you think you can reanimate it?”
The gargoyle chuckled softly. “Oh no, it’s your book Scammander. Only you could do something like that. But I can at least tell you how you might achieve something like that.”
Scammander leaned in closely.
“Read your own spell for it,” he chuckled again and sat the book down, opened to the particular page. “I did manage to learn some of your sect’s esoteric language, listening to wizards for all those years and watching from high above.”
Scammander furrowed his brow and acted like he was reading it, but I wasn’t sure that he understood anything on that page. “Ah yes, of course. I need the heart of a widlerbeast. Do you have any you would like to lend me?”
The gargoyle shook his head. “Witches might have some stored away. Otherwise you would need a bestiary.”
“Why a bestiary?” I asked.
“Well it would describe, in great detail, everything about the wilderbeast. Where they live, what they eat, what they look like, and even how to catch one.”
I leaned back casually in my chair. “Did a scholar by the name of Pendicott Ponder write one?”
“Oh yes, his was a great compendium.”
Scammander cursed and went crashing back onto the floor.
“And exceptionally rare. Assiduously researched, full of brilliantly colored illustrations, and beautifully written—though perhaps not as elegant as Scammander’s spell book.” He fluttered for a moment he was so excited. “There was one edition whose glosses actually contained magic so powerful that a wizard could summon the beast from whatever page he was looking at.”
“Which edition?” I asked.
“The second I believe.”
That ruled out any book Scammander might have stolen.
“The first was rushed since the Academy wanted to appoint him as a department chair, but in order to be a department chair, he had to have a completed dissertation. Thus he submitted his early work as the dissertation, which in turn was published as the first edition.”
“Any idea where we might find that rare second edition?”
“I have no idea. It wasn’t printed much, and was stored in the first archive of the Academy, which was plundered when all those wizards started assassinating each other. There’s no telling where it is, only that it is out of use.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, one could easily populate the entire world with animals, and run it amuck with all kinds of birds, animals, fish, and strange beasts.”
“Someone would have done it by now,” I nodded.
“Wouldn’t even need to be a great sorcerer if the magic is as powerful as you claim,” Scammander said.
“Luckily I am in the presence of a great sorcerer, one who should be able to help me with a request.”
No more books. Anything but books, I thought.
“I would like a wife,” he said.
“Bertram’s got a few to spare,” I muttered.
“You have been in the abyss for too long,” Scammander chuckled.
But the gargoyle was serious.
“I want an innocent, young maiden.”
“Oh those only exist in poems,” Scammander quipped. “It’s settled. I’ll bring you a book,” he said preparing to leave.
The gargoyle fluttered in close. “I want to touch flesh Scammander,” he said. “I want to feel her warmth, I want to see her breath, and the soft rise and fall of her breast as it fills with air. And you will do this for me.”
“I certainly will Ebenezer, for it is quite rare that I get to grant a wish I know will bring ruin and misery upon another who so eagerly asks for it.”
“I will need two things from you Scammander, for it was two lives I saved. A wife, as I just now mentioned, but also that you meet my shifty accomplice, Cuthbert, and give him the first batch of pills. It will be spring exam time by the time you meet him, and I have created my most potent memory pills yet.”
I could see Scammander trying to figure out how to ask for some of those pills without sounding too eager.
“Any chance I can have some of those pills? With all the favors you’re asking of us, we are going to need something to enhance our memories.”
The studious gargoyle considered my request. “If Scammander will swallow this potion and let me read the magic around him.”
“That hardly seems like a fair trade,” Scammander riposted immediately. “Evander might require your pills, but my memory is just fine.”
“Plus, who’s to say you won’t try to assassinate us after you see such esoteric sorcerery revealed to you?” I piled on, aiding Scammander’s negotiations.
“Very well, just a glance then. You need only take a sip,” he said holding out a vial.
Scammander took it and looked at me, before taking a quick pull from the potion.
Scammander disappeared behind layers and layers of letters of tenderest mana.
The gargoyle fluttered around the gleaming stream of wards. “I confess much of this magic is not known to me,” he said, studying the pulsing runes. “I recognize certain strands of dark elf magic, academic magic, and even dragon magic,” he said pointing out certain floating sentences as they drifted by. “These must have taken aeons to cast,” he said, his voice fading.
Ebenezer fluttered over to his shelf and pulled off a large book, frantically turning the pages as he floated back to Scammander, still concealed by the dense imbrications of drifting magical wards.
“Many of these have been broken,” Ebenezer said after a moment. “But you let them recombine,” he said in amazement.
Ebenezer followed one particular glowing strand, studying it then quickly referencing his book, then studying it once more, before finally letting the tome fall to the floor. “Even a marriage charm pronounced by the Fairy King.”
As the glyphs faded away I saw Scammander’s eyes leaping from rune to rune, desperately following strings of ciphers until they vanished, hoping to discern their meaning or discover a clue as to how he could remember to cast them.
I couldn’t tell who was more amazed, Ebenezer, Scammander—or me.
“Very well, a pill for a glance,” Ebenezer said handing it to Scammander. “You will get the rest along with the potions when you meet Cuthbert.”
Scammander looked at the pill.
“I imagine it will help boost your memory just as much as my glance helped me increase my knowledge of magic.”
“And yet it is your most potent?”
“When taken with the potion, or with at least 3 other pills.”
We didn’t have the book that we had roamed the world for, but at least we nearly had some pills. This was probably for the best, for one could at least choke quickly to death on a pill. And if I was going to live for much longer, I wanted to take some pills and gaze upon the horror of the human city so I could remember it for as long as I had left to live.
We stood up ready to leave—only neither of us were sure where to go since technically there was nowhere to go.
“The only way out of an abyss is to forget that you are in an abyss,” Ebenezer said.
“You mean I can’t just drink something from your apothecary’s table?” I said and rubbed
the side of my neck.
“Of course, if you are having trouble forgetting your whereabouts, there is always my magic mirror,” he said pointing behind me. I turned around to a giant floor to ceiling mirror. “It will take you back to the last place you were before entering the void.”
Walking through the mirror was one of the most normal things I had done in the past few days.
We came out behind a tombstone and it was still the middle of the night. I looked over to the scaffold and saw Leyland’s sinewy, furry frame hanging from a noose, head covered by the black hood.
I walked over to lower him, but Scammander stopped me and pointed to the ground. I knelt down below Leyland’s hanging corpse, which slowly swung left and right, and picked up the old guitar which was lying in the cool cemetery grass. The strings had been torn out in a frantic rage and dangled all about the neck of the guitar, and there were deep claw gashes all across the body. I handed the instrument to Scammander who pulled a small scroll out of the guitar and smiled.
“Where are we going to find someone stupid enough to marry an animated piece of stone?” I said, turning to look at Scammander.
“The theatre.”
Then I started choking him, because that’s what the maddening voice inside my head told me to do.
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C. S. Hand
Table of Contents
SPLATTERISM: THE DISQUIETING RECOLLECTIONS OF A MINOTAUR ASSAILANT (AN UPBUILDING EDIFYING DISCOURSE)
Other Books in the Splatterism Series
Historical Introduction: “A Book Written from the Peak of the Soul”
Prologue
Chic Kills: Of Dragons and Champagne (Or, Of Lipgloss and Chainmail)
A Warm Welcome
Deleuzions of Scammandeur (Or, Cool Memes)
Le Livre à Venir
A Scholarly Appendix of Dubious Lessons
A Philippic Against Life
Tombsongs in Riotous Hexameters
Illi qui satis fortunati sunt, ut ante triginta moriantur
A Dithyramb for Possibility (Nil Admirari)
Souvent me Souvient
Per mare tristitiam fugiens per saxa per ignes
Aufhebunghaven: White Mythology II
Bertram’s Marbles
Regarding the Cavalcade of Dejected Gryphons (Or, On Leaps of Faith)
Of Godlike Labor
Souvent me Souvient II
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit
Three Spadefuls for Soren Goodwynd
Tiers of Joy
Dead/End? Or, Incipit Vita Nova
A Lecture Concerning Shadows (Ecce Liber!)
Starlight Cantos
Souvent me Souvient III
Ode to a Saturnine Lycanthrope (Untimely Medications)
Dithyramb for Incredulity: Writ with Ecstatic Breathings
Peri Psuche
Keep in Touch & Never Miss a New Release
Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse Page 37
