The land trembles to the slightest footfall, the beetle and the bhederin, and in the charms of the wind one can hear countless cries for succor.
Of course, with all the chewing and gnawing going on, not one of us could hear a damned thing.
We are pilgrims of necessity, stumbling in the habits of privation.
“The Dantoc must have known a mighty thirst.” So said Apto Canavalian. “Two heavy skins, just for an old woman hiding in the cool gloom.”
“Elderly as she is,” replied Mister Must from atop the carriage, “the Dantoc Calmpositis holds to the teaching of Mendic Hellup, whose central tenet is that water is the secret of all life, and much physical suffering comes from a chronic undernourishment of water in our bodies.” He chewed on his pipe stem for a moment, and then said, “Or something like that.”
“You’re an odd one,” Apto noted, squinting up at the driver. “Times you sound rolled up as a scholar, but others like a herder who sleeps under his cow.”
“Disparate my learnings, sir.”
Moments of malice come to us all. How to explain them? One might set hands upon breast and claim the righteous stance of self-preservation. Is this enough to cleanse the terrible bright splashes stinging the eye? Or what of simple instinctive retaliation from a kneeling position, bearing one’s own dark wounds of flesh and spirit? A life lived is a life of regrets, and who can stand at the close of one’s years and deny the twisted skeins skirled out in one’s wake?
In this moment, as the burden of the tale was set upon me once more, could I have held up before my own visage a silvered mirror, would I recoil before a mien of vicious spite? Were all witness to something bestial, akin to a rock-ape’s mad gleam upon discovering a bloated tick dangling from an armpit? Did I snarl like a hyena in a laughing pit? A sex-sodden woman with penis and knife in hand, or breasts descending as weapons of suffocation upon a helpless, exhausted face? Wicked my regard?
Or naught but a sleepy blink and the coolness of a trickling rill only moments from a poisonous chuckle? Pray, you decide.
“The mortal brain,” quoth I, “is an amorous quagmire. Man and woman both swim sordid currents in the gurgling caverns of unfettered desire. We spread the legs of unknown women at a glance, or take possession of the Gila Monster’s stubby tail in a single flutter of sultry lashes. Coy is our silent ravishing, abulge with mutual lust pungent as a drunkard’s breath. In the minds of each and every one of us, bodies writhe slick with oiled perfumes, scenes flash hot as fire, and the world beyond is stripped naked to our secret eyes. We rock and we pitch, we sink fast and grasp tight. Our mouths are teased open and tongues find bedmates. Aftermaths wash away and with them all consequence, leaving only the knowing meet of eyes or that shiver of nearness with unspoken truths sweet as a lick.”
None interrupted, proof of the truth of my words, and each and all had slid into and far down the wet channel so warm, so perfect in base pleasure. Sweat beaded beneath napes, walks stiffened awkward. Do you deny? What man would not roger nine of ten women he might see in a single day? Ninety of a hundred? What woman does not imagine clutching a dozen crotches and by magic touch make hard what was soft, huge what was puny? Does she not, with a shudder, then dream the draining weakness of utter surrender? We are rutters of the mind and in the array of each and every pose can be found all the misery and joy of existence. History’s tumult is the travail of frustration and desire, murder the slaughter of rivals, slaying the coined purse of the spurned. Children die ... to make room for more children! Pregnant women swing wild their trophies of conquest pitched so fierce upon their creaking hips. Young men lock horns in swagger and brainless gnashing of eyes. Old men drool over lost youth when all was possible and so little was grasped. Old women perch light as ragged songbirds on brawny young arms not even hinting of blemishes to come. But do not decry such truths! They are the glory of life itself! Make wild all celebration!
Just be sure to invite me along.
“Among the pilgrims,” so I did resume after an appropriate duration to stir the stew, “maelstroms raged in silent touch of glance and hungers were awakened and the conviction of terrible starvation sizzled with certainty, and for all the threats spoken and unspoken, ah, love will find a way. Legs yearn to yawn, thighs quiver to clamp hard. Snakes strain to bludgeon into ruin all barriers to sentinel readiness.
“There was a woman,” and if possible, why, even the mules and horses trod more softly to challenge not my words, “a sister to three bold warriors, and desired by all other men in the company. Hard and certain the warnings issued by the brothers. War in answer to despoiling, a thousand legions upon the march, a siege of a hundred years and a hundred great heroes dead on the sand. The toppling of kings and wizards upon the rack. Heads on spikes and wives raped and children sold into slavery. The aghast regard of horrified gods. No less to any and all of these the stern threats from the brothers.
“But who could deny her beauty? And who could ignore the hooked bait in the net she daily cast so wide into her path and wake both?”
Did I risk a glance at Relish Chanter? I did not. But let us imagine now her precious expression at this moment. Eyes wide in horror? Lips slack? A rising flush? Or, and with surety I would cast my coin here, an odd brightness to her gaze, the hint of a half-smile, a touch wilder and wider the sway of her petalled hips.
Perhaps even a deflagrant toss of her head. No young woman, after all, can be chained to childhood and all its perverse innocence, no matter how many belligerent brothers she has in tow. The flush apple beckons every hand, and the fruit in turn yearns to be plucked.
“Among the poets and bards,” said I then, “there was a statesman of the tender arts, elder in his years, but creativity’s flower (still so lush in his mind) proclaimed with blind lie a vigour long past. And one night, after days of effort growing ever more desperate, ever more careless, did he finally catch the maiden’s eye. Whilst the brothers slept, heads anod and snores asnore, out they crept into the night — “
“But I—’’
Poor Calap Roud, alas, got no further.
With a roar, Tiny Chanter lunged upon the hapless old man. The fist that struck the poet was driven hard as a mace, crushing visage and sending shards of bone deep into Calap’s brain. In his collapse not a finger’s breadth of his body evinced the remotest sign of life.
Oh dear.
Do the gods stand in wait for each and every one of us? So many do believe. Someone has to pay for this mess. But who among us does not also believe that he or she would boldly meet such immortal regard? Did we not drag our sack of excuses all this way? Our riotous justifications? Even death itself could not defy this baggage train chained to our ankles and various other protuberances. Truly, can anyone here honestly assert they would do other than argue their case, all their cases, that mountain heap of cases that is the toll of a life furtively lived?
‘Yes, oh Great Ones, such was my laziness that I could not be bothered to dispose of my litter in the proper receptacles, and a thousand times I pissed against a wall behind my neighbours house, even as I coveted and eventually seduced his wife. And yes, I was in the habit of riding my horse through town and country too quickly, exercising arrogant disregard for courtesy and caution. I cut off other riders out of spite, I threatened to trample pedestrians at every turn! I always bought the biggest horse to better intimidate others and to offset my sexual incapacities! I bullied and lied and cheated and had good reasons every time. I long ago decided that I was the centre of all existence, emperor of emperors—all this to hide my venal, pathetic self After all, we are stupider than we like to believe: why, this is the very meaning of sentience, and if you gods are not to blame for your own miserable creations, then who is?’
Just so.
And, as poor Calap Roud’s corpse cooled there on the hard ground, and all the others stared in array of horror, shock, sudden appetite, or mulish indifference, first upon Calap and then upon me, and then back again, deft in swivel to avoid t
he Chanters with their gnarly fists and black expressions (and Relish, of course, who stood examining her fingernails).
Yet t’was Relish who spoke first. “As if.”
Extraordinary indeed, how two tiny words could shift the world about-face, the volumes of disdain and disgust, disbelief and a hundred other disses, so filling her breath by way of tone and pitch as to leave not a single witness in doubt of her veracity. Calap Roud in Relish’s arms? The absurdity of that notion was as a lightning strike to blast away idiotic conviction, and in the vacuous echo of her comment, why, all eyes now fixed in outrage upon Tiny Chanter.
Whose scowl deepened. “What?”
“Now we’ll never hear what happened to the Imass!” So cried our amiable host, as hosts must by nature be ever practical.
The mood soured then, until I humbly said, “Not necessarily. I know that particular tale. Perhaps not with the perfect recall with which Calap Roud iterated it, but I shall do my best to satisfy.”
“Better choice than your own story,” muttered Apto, “which is liable to see us all killed before you’re done with it.”
“Unacceptable,” pronounced Purse Snippet. “Flicker owes me his tale.”
“Now he owes us another one!” barked Tulgord Vise.
“Exactly!” chimed Brash Phluster, who, though an artist of modest talents, was not a fool.
“I shall assume the added burden,” said I, “in humble acknowledgment of my small role in poor Calap Roud’s fate —”
“Small?” snorted Steck Marynd.
“Indeed,” I replied, “for did I not state with sure and unambiguous clarity that my tale bears only superficial similarity to our present reality?”
As they all pondered this, Mister Must descended from the carriage, to get his butchering tools from the trunk. A man of many skills, was Mister Must, and almost as practical as Sardic Thew.
Butchering a human was, in detail, little different from butchering any other large animal. The guts must be removed, and quickly. The carcass must be skinned and boned and then bled as best as one is able under the circumstances. This generally involved hanging the quartered sections from the prong hooks at the back end of the carriage, and while this resulted in a spattered trail of blood upon the conveyance’s path, why, the symbolic significance was very nearly perfect. In any case, Mister Must worked with proficient alacrity, slicing through cartilage and tendon and gristle, and in no time at all the various pieces that had once been Calap Roud depended dripping from the carriage stern. His head was sent rolling in the direction of the shallow pit containing his hide, organs and intestines.
Does this shock? Look upon the crowd that is your company. Pox the mind with visions of dressed and quartered renditions, all animation drained away. The horror to come in the wake of such imaginings (well, one hopes horror comes) is a complicated melange. A face of life, a host of words, an ocean of swirling thoughts to brighten active eyes. Grace and motion and a sense that before you is a creature of time (just as you no doubt are), with past, present and future. A single step could set you in his or her sandals, as easy as that. To then jolt one’s senses into a realm of butchered meat and red bone, a future torn away, and eyes made dull and empty, ah, is any journey as cruel and disquieting as that one?
To answer: yes, when complimented with the growling of one’s own stomach and savory hints wetting the tongue.
Is it cowardice to turn away, to leave Mister Must to his work whilst one admires the sky and horizon, or perhaps frown in vaunted interest at the watchful regard of the horses or the gimlet study from the mules? Certainly not to meet the gaze of anyone else. Cowardice? Absolutely.
Poor Calap Roud. What grief and remorse assails me!
Brash Phluster sidled close as the trek resumed. “That was vicious, Flicker.”
“When the mouse is cornered—”
“ ‘Mouse?’ Not you. More like a serpent in our midst.”
“I am pleased you heeded the warning.”
“I bet you are. I could have blurted it out, you know. And you’d have been lying there beside Roud, and I’d be safe.”
“Do you wish me to resume my tale, Brash? Recounting all the other lovers of the woman with the brothers?”
“Won’t work a second time.”
“You would stake your life on Tiny Chanter’s self-control?”
Brash licked his lips. “Anyway, now you have two stories, and Purse isn’t happy about it. She’s disgusted by what you did to Calap. Using her story like that. She feels guilty, too.”
“Why, Brash, that is most perceptive.”
“She won’t be forgiving, not anymore.”
“Indeed not.”
“I think you’re a dead man.”
“Brash!” bellowed Tulgord Vise. “Cheer us up! Sing, lad, sing!”
“But we got our supper!”
Tiny Chanter laughed and then said, “Maybe we want dessert. Midge?”
“Dessert.”
“Flea?”
“No thanks.”
His brothers halted and stared at him. Flea’s expression was pained. “I been bunged up now six whole days. I got bits of four people in me, and poets at that. Bad poets.”
Tiny’s hands twitched. “A dessert will do you good, Flea.”
“Honey-glazed,” suggested Midge, “if I can find a hive.”
Flea frowned. “Maybe an eyeball or two,” he conceded.
“Brash!” Tiny roared.
“I got one! Listen, this one’s brilliant. It’s called ‘Night of the Assassin’—”
“Knights can’t be assassins,” objected Arpo Relent. “It’s a rule. Knights can’t be assassins, wizards can’t be weapon-masters and mendics got to use clubs and maces. Everyone knows that.”
Tulgord Vise frowned. “Clubs? What?”
No, ‘night’ as in the sun going down.”
“They ride into the sunset, yes, but only at the end.”
Brash looked round, somewhat wildly.
“Let’s hear it,” commanded Tiny.
“Mummumummymummy! Ooloolooloo!”
“Oh sorrow!” came a gargled croak from Sellup, who stumbled along behind the carriage and was now ghostly with dust.
“I was just warming up my singing voice,” Brash explained. “Now, “Night of the Assassin,” by Brash Phluster. An original composition. Lyrics by Brash Phluster, music by Brash Phluster. Composed in the year—”
“Sing or die,” said Tiny Chanter.
“In the black heart of Malaz City
on a black night of blackness so darrrk
no one could see a thing it was all gritty
when a guard cried out ‘harrrrk!’
But the darkness did not answer
because no one was therrre
Kalam Mekhar was climbing the tower
instead of using the stairrr
The Mad Empress sat on her throne
dreaming up news ways of torturrre
when she heard a terrible groan
and she did bless the mendic’s currre
There was writing carved on the wall
great kings and mad tyrants wrote dire curses
there in the gloomy royal stall
so rank with smeared mercies—”
“She’s sitting on a shit-hole?” Tulgord Vise demanded. “Taking a dump?”
“That’s the whole point!” Brash retorted. “Everybody sings about kings and princesses and heroes but nobody ever mentions natural bodily functions. I introduced the Mad Empress at a vulnerable moment, you see? To earn her more sympathy and remind listeners she’s as human as anybody.”
“People know all that,” Tulgord said, “and they don’t want to hear about it in a damned song about assassins!”
“I’m setting the scene!”
“Let him go on,” said Tiny. Then he pointed a culpable finger at Brash. “But no more natural bodily functions.”
“Out of the dark night sky
rained down matter most fou
lll
and Kalam swore and wiped at his eye
wishing he’d brought a towelll
But the chute yawned above him
his way to the Mad Empress was a black hollle
could he but reach the sticky rim
he was but moments from his goallll
In days of yore she was an assassin too
a whore of murder with claws unfurlllled
but now she just needed hard to poo
straining to make her hair currrlll”
“I said—”
“It’s part of the story!” squealed Brash Phluster. “I can’t help it!”
“Neither could the Empress, seems,” added Apto under his breath.
“Kalam looked up then to see a grenado
but swift he was in dodging its plungggge
and he launched up into the brown window
and in the narrow channel he thrashed and lunggged
And climbed and climbed seeking the light
or at least he hoped for some other wayyy
to end the plight of this darkest night
as he prayed for the light of daayyy
Through the narrowest of chutes
he clambered into a pink caverrrnnn
and swam among the furly flukes
“ ‘oh’ he cried, “when will I ever learrnnn?”
Tis said across the entire empire
that the Empress Laseen did give birrthhh
to the Royal Assassins of the Claw entire
you can take that for what it’s worrthhh
But Kalam Mekhar knew her better than most
and he did carve his name on her wallll
and we’d all swear he got there first
because we never went there at allll!”
Imagine, if you dare, the nature of the silence that followed ‘Night of the Assassin.’ To this very day, all these years later, I struggle and fail to find words of sufficient girth and suitable precision and can only crawl a reach closer, prostrate with nary more than a few gibbering mumbles. We had all halted, I do recall, but the faces on all sides were but a blur, barring that of Sellup, who marched in from a cloud of dust smiling with blackened teeth and said, “Thank you for waiting!”