Gareth and th Lost Island

by Patrick Mallard

  Henry grunted, and whistled, while jerking his head towards Tralnis.

  “Do I even want to know what he said?” Tralnis inquired.

  “He said at least he didn’t dunk them in my tea, like someone else he knows,” Gareth relayed.

  “I don’t know how many times I have to explain that. I was drunk, and wondering if they called it ‘tea-bagging’ because it felt similar to dunking the boys in a cup of tea. How was I to know Henry had just poured you a fresh cup, and it was steaming hot?” Tralnis complained. “Luckily, I had some wonderful burn ointment on had,” he added.

  Not wanting to remember that particular evening, Gareth decided to risk it, and try eating the toast. After drizzling some honey over it, he took a large bite of the sweet and crunchy combination. Unfortunately for Gareth, Henry chose that moment to ask a question with a series of grunts and howls. The mouthful of toast got stuck in Gareth’s throat, as he tried to swallow and laugh at the same time. Henry took two, long steps, and was behind Gareth in an instant. The Chim delivered a strong blow to the back of the young man’s back with one of his large hands. The blow was enough to dislodge the food, and get his friend breathing once more.

  Tralnis watched the action from across the table. When he was certain his skills as a doctor wouldn’t be needed, he put down his paper in frustration. “You know, one of these days I really should learn Chimmish,” he muttered to himself. “When you are able to, Gareth, would you mind telling me what my butler said that was funny enough to get you to choke on your food?” he requested.

  Gareth glanced over at Henry, who was standing as if expecting something. The look on his childhood friend’s face made him chuckle again. When he got himself back under control, Gareth looked at Tralnis, and bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Sorry Tralnis, Henry was asking why you smelled like a horse’s ass when we got home. He was worried you had tried having sex with a Centaur again,” he explained.

  “What is this… remind a Dwarf of his past humiliations day? You two are never going to let me forget that little misadventure, are you?” Tralnis sighed.

  Gareth smiled, despite his hangover. “You fell off of a stepstool, and dislocated your shoulder while buggering a Centaur. You ended up with your arm in a sling for over a month. That’s a story that bears repeating,” he reminded his father with a smirk. Letting Tralnis off the hook, he looked back towards Henry, who had finished brewing the tea with the additional herbs. “Do you remember that Kraunish amulet I dug up on our last expedition?” he asked. Henry nodded his head as he poured Gareth a cup of tea. “Turns out, I was partially correct in deciphering the runes. It did provide a means for escape, but the ‘Unholy Winds’ it mentions came from a different source than I expected. I suspect the talisman was originally sold in a Kraunish joke shop,” he explained. After putting Gareth’s teacup in front of him, Henry lifted the back of his kilt and fanned it as if getting rid of a foul smell. Gareth nodded, and the Chim fell over, howling with laughter.

  “You wouldn’t be laughing so hard if you were there,” Tralnis said sourly. “Imagine a dozen horses, and at least half that many humans, with uncontrollable and sustained flatulence for an extended period of time,” he stated, trying to describe the horror they had experienced. Henry looked up from the floor, looked at a headline on the newspaper, and started laughing again. He pulled himself up by holding onto the table, and pointed a long orange furred finger at the article. Tralnis folded the paper over, and read the article in question. “Well Gareth, it looks like we made the news. It seems a mysterious sewer gas leak has forced residents in a one block circle around the Spirits Merchant to evacuate their homes and shops,” he paraphrased.

  “Oops,” was all Gareth could think of to say. Henry shook his head in amusement and went back to work near the stove.

  “Enough about ‘The Great Stink of 13,026’ as the paper is calling it. I’m much more interested in what happened right before that. Did you finally divest yourself of that annoying condition called virginity?” he asked bluntly.

  Gareth took a sip of tea before answering, allowing the herbs to settle his stomach. “No, the curse is still going strong,” he replied sullenly.

  “Nonsense boy, you are not cursed. You’re a handsome young lad who has had a bit of bad luck, now and then,” Tralnis said, trying to reassure Gareth.

  “A bit of bad luck?!” Gareth echoed as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Your memory must be fading now that you’re over a hundred. You have forgotten a few important details of my love life. Since I turned 16, there have been 18 times where I’ve almost lost my virginity. Each time something happens that interferes with it. At my count, it’s been three husbands, four fathers, six mothers, two sisters, a freak tidal wave, a rogue flock of Green Bellied Robins, and a meteor that struck the house next to the one I was in that have kept me from having sex,” he countered strongly, thankful the herbs were helping with his headache.

  Tralnis thought about it for a moment, and then said, “You’re right, you’re cursed… but that’s no reason to stop trying.”

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” Gareth replied with a smile. “Never give up. The next stone you dig up might be the gem you’re looking for,” he stated, quoting a common Dwarvish saying.

  “Hah! That’s the spirit!” Tralnis agreed.

  Henry snorted, grunted, and growled.

  “What did he say?” Tralnis asked.

  “He said the Chims have a similar saying, but theirs involves grooming a lot of other Chims before finding the one with the tastiest bugs,” Gareth relayed.

  Tralnis shuddered. “And that is why we never have raisins on our toast, or in our porridge in this kitchen,” he muttered.

  Henry heard him and let out a string of angry sounding noises.

  “He said that it’s an old saying, and most of them bathe regularly now, thank you very much,” Gareth translated. “He has a point you know. Chim social grooming isn’t that different than the… uh… more intimate, shall we say, customs practiced by your people,” he pointed out.

  Tralnis smiled wistfully as he remembered good times under the mountains. He snapped out of his revelry when the large brass bell of the grandfather clock in the hallway rang loudly eight times. Tralnis pushed himself away from the table, and then walked over to Gareth to put a friendly hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Finish up, lad. You only have a few hours to bathe and dress before you have to present yourself in front of the Professors’ Conclave to become the youngest tenured professor in University history,” he reminded him.

  Chapter 4

  Gareth paced nervously outside of the huge arched doors of the Cathedral of Knowledge, the hub of the University Arcanum. He was wearing a white, button down shirt with a high collar and gray wool trousers. A thin bowtie in the blue assigned to the School of Languages accented his shirt. To make himself feel balanced, one of his cufflinks was made of semiprecious jade as his nod to the Applied Magics Division, while the other was made from brown quartz for the Archeology Department. His black knee high boots were polished to a mirror like shine.

  Trying to distract himself from his nervousness, Gareth glanced up at the flying buttresses and slender spires that reached up to the heavens. He remembered reading an early treatises on the Cathedral that explained the grandeur of the building. It was designed to make anyone feel insignificant in comparison to the vast amounts of knowledge held within its walls. Gareth had always thought it was a perfect expression of the pompousness displayed by most of the senior professors. He always thought of them as aloof, intellectual royalty sneering down at their subjects from their high tower walls. Gareth’s secret hope was that when he became a tenured professor himself, he might be able to shatter that image so his students would feel he was approachable. He thought that was the best way to instill a love of learning, the likes of which flowed through his veins.

  Gareth relaxed a bit when he recognized the forms of Tralnis and Henry running towards hi
m from the direction of their shared townhome. Henry was running using one hand and both feet to propel himself in a slightly lopsided fashion. He would have been more balanced had he not been holding a garment bag high above his head to keep it from touching the ground. When they finally got near him, the Chim and Dwarf paused to catch their breath.

  When he had enough air to speak, Tralnis pointed to the garment bag. “I don’t want to know what deals with the underworld Henry had to make, but he somehow managed to get that bit of horse manure out of your jacket,” he praised. Henry opened the bag, and proudly held up the jacket for Gareth to see.

  “Henry, you’re a lifesaver. I don’t even want to think about how bad it would have looked if I showed up for the Tenure Arguments without my teaching jacket,” Gareth said in relief. Henry motioned for Gareth to turn around and slid the jacket over his arms and onto his shoulders. Feeling much more confident now that he was properly dressed, Gareth turned around and smiled at his friends. His smile faltered when he went to straighten his cuffs, and noticed the wide blue band on his right sleeve was barely hanging on. “That’s weird, I’ve never seen any of your sewing come apart like that, Henry,” he informed the Chim.

  For some reason that Gareth couldn’t fathom, Henry let out a snort that usually signified he felt guilty about something. It wasn’t a verbal cue from the Chim language, but a subconscious gesture Gareth had picked up on after growing up as a Henry’s friend.

  “I know how much attention you always put into details, it must have been defective thread,” Gareth assured Henry. The Chim gave a noncommittal shrug with his shoulders, and dug out a straight pin from one of the many pockets on his vest. Crouching down to see better, Henry pinned the stripe on in such a way that no one would know it wasn’t fully held on by thread.

  Tralnis slapped Gareth on the back, and motioned towards the imposing doors with their gigantic brass fittings. “Come on lad, it’s time you joined the ranks of the senior professors,” he said loudly. In a much quieter voice, he added, “I’m damned proud of you, son!”

  Gareth placed his hand on Tralnis’ shoulder. “That means more to me that any tenured position ever will,” he told him before squaring his shoulders, and walking towards the doors.

  Henry raced in front of the two professors, and held the doors open with a closed mouth smile. Once they were inside, Gareth and Tralnis paused to let Henry catch up with them. Turning to their right, the three of them approached a long vaulted hallway which had a ceiling three stories above them. The roof was arched with stained glass windows running along the length of it. The windows cast pools of different colored lights on the larger than life two story tall statues of the most famous professors from the University Arcanum.

  Gareth paused at one statute that stood out from the rest, or at least to him it did. Unlike all of the other statues, this one wasn’t of a human, but one of the Cyclops from the large continent to the south of them. Of course being a Cyclops, this two story tall statue was the only one that was life sized. Juth the Blind was the founder of the School of Languages, and insisted that by understanding each other’s languages, the 12 sentient races could overcome their differences to prevent a Third Great Apocalypse from happening.

  Tralnis paused next to Gareth, and strained his neck to look up at the statue’s face. “You know, it’s funny. In every depiction of Juth the Blind that I’ve come across, I’ve never seen anything that indicated he couldn’t see. Take this statue for instance, it looks like his eye is tracking our progress down the Hall of Greatness,” he mentioned in an offhand manner.

  “That’s because Juth could see just fine,” Gareth replied.

  “Then why in the name of my bearded grandma was he called Juth the Blind,” Tralnis demanded.

  Shaking his head, Gareth replied, “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  Tralnis responded by putting his hands on his hips in a gesture of stubbornness. “I’m almost eight times older than you. I think I can handle it,” he assured him.

  Gareth let out a snort that was half amusement and half horror as he remembered hitting the library trying to answer why Juth had been saddled with the title, “The Blind.” He pointed up to the gray stone waistcoat showing under an overcoat of the same stone. “Luckily, they never painted these statues. Juth’s favorite outfit was a waistcoat with a chartreuse base and brown paisleys paired with a pink overcoat,” Gareth explained.

  Tralnis and Henry both made slight gagging sounds. “Sorry, I just had a small bit of vomit make its way to my mouth. Gareth, forgive me for doubting your wisdom. Next time you tell me I don’t want to know, I’ll believe you,” Tralnis apologized. Without being asked, Henry pulled a small tin from his vest, and offered a mint to Tralnis after taking one for himself. “Thank you, Henry,” Tralnis stated.

  The three of them made their way to the end of the hallway where the other candidates for tenure were sorting themselves out by name, and by which school they worked for. Tralnis and Henry wished Gareth good luck one more time before they entered Enclave Hall without him. Following some tradition, the reasons for which had been lost over time, Gareth stepped to the end of the line since the School of Languages was always the last to go in. He waited patiently, while each of the other candidates walked through the solid oak doors. The other professors returned a minute or two after they left with the wide strip of their school embroidered with gold on the edges.

  When it was finally Gareth’s turn, he strode through the doors with his head held high. His step almost faltered as he walked into the Conclave Hall for the first time. The room was an enormous circle with two floors of seating. Most of the seats on the first floor were full, with only half of the seats on the second floor occupied. On the far edge of the circle across from the main entrance was a large throne like chair on a raised platform. The center “throne” was flanked by several smaller, yet still impressive, chairs. The smaller chairs were set aside for the heads of the various schools within the University, while the throne like chair was reserved for the Dean of the University Arcanum.

  In the center of the room were two teaching lecterns with a waist high wooden railing running between them. The tenure candidate was expected to stand in the middle of the railing, while his sponsor would take the lectern on the left and explain to the Dean why the candidate should be granted tenure. The lectern on the right was hardly ever used, as it was for any professor who opposed the candidate. Since a candidate being given tenure had no bearing on their pay, and would only reduce the teaching duties of the other professors, no one could remember a candidate being opposed during the last century.

  Once Gareth was standing behind the railing, he looked around at the Conclave and noticed a spot where a professor of Political Philosophy was sitting with no one willing to come near him. The fact that the man was roughly the same size as Gareth, and had a very suspicious looking stain on his jacket, told Gareth exactly how Henry managed to give him a clean jacket. Gareth would have been upset with his hairy friend if the victim of the theft hadn’t been someone responsible for teaching politicians the tricks of their trade.

  The Chancellor, a man of frighteningly advanced years, stood from his chair, and read from the leather bound book in front of him. After adjusting his reading glasses, the Chancellor’s eyes and voice betrayed his boredom as he read, “As dictated in the University’s charter, no professor may be granted tenure without arguments for and potentially against it being heard in front of the Conclave of Professors and Dean of the University. Therefore, in this year 13,026 After the Second Great Apocalypse, Professor Gareth Mintel comes before the Dean of the University Arcanum and Conclave of Professors as a candidate for Tenured Professor. Who sponsors and speaks for the candidate?”

  “I, Doctor Tralnis Granitestaff, do sponsor and speak for Professor Mintel. If it pleases the Chancellor, I would approach the Conclave, and deliver arguments on behalf of this most worthy candidate,” Tralnis said loudly, giving the traditional reply. The Chan
cellor nodded his old, wrinkled head, and Tralnis approached the lectern on Gareth’s left. University servants rushed before him to place a step stool in front of the lectern so everyone could see the Dwarf.

  “The Conclave recognizes Doctor Granitestaff, Tenured Professor of the School of Medicine,” the Chancellor intoned, as Tralnis climbed to the top of the stepstool. “Before we hear of Professor Mintel’s qualifications, I ask if there are any among us who oppose this candidate being granted tenure?” he inquired.

  To everyone’s surprise, the Head of Political Philosophy stood and announced, “Esteemed Chancellor, and fellow Conclave members, I, Jamice Nutleiss, the Head of Political Philosophy, strongly oppose this… professor’s candidacy for tenureship!”

  The Chancellor was so surprised, he had to be nudged by another professor to continue. Never in his 60 years of being Chancellor had anyone opposed a candidate. With a wave of his withered hand, the Chancellor indicated the empty lectern. “The Conclave recognizes Professor Nutleiss, Head of the Political Philosophy Department,” he stated.

  Gareth and Tralnis looked at each other, stunned at the turn of events. There had been words exchanged between the three of them as Tralnis and Gareth both said what they thought of a school devoted to teaching politicians how to lie, cheat, and swindle the masses. While that’s not exactly how the Department of Political Philosophy worded their training, the end results were the same. Gareth and Tralnis never thought the arguments were severe enough to rate a professor interfering in the affairs of a department that wasn’t their own.

  “Oh no,” Gareth moaned just loud enough for Tralnis to hear. Before Tralnis could ask what was wrong, he asked, “Does the Dryad’s husband from last night remind you of anyone?”

  Tralnis thought for a moment and looked closer at Professor Nutleiss. Sharing the same pudgy face, and extra-long nose, Professor Nutleiss had to be the man’s brother. “I thought there was a reason why I instantly disliked that bloke from the stables. I mean other than that whole bit about him wanting to kill us and all,” he joked.