Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  A round of story-telling then ensued. Lak led off, reciting the climactic stanzas from The Last Voyage of Pandarios, every seaman’s favorite epic, in which the High Admiral of the sunk and scattered Corbyrean Grand Fleet paddles the only craft remaining under his command, a leaking skiff, out to confront the sinister galleys of the Buk-Buk horde. “I’d liefer captain a cockleshell than stoke in a flagship, and death will not stay me ashore...”

  Orton Bregnat told the old story of the three wise men of Kephriot, enlivening the well worn phrases with comic facial contortions and expansive gestures, and bringing his cupped palms together in a resounding clop at the end, when the youngest of the trio of mages says, “I think not,” causing all three to instantly disappear.

  Filidor enjoyed the tales, both in their substance and in the manner of their telling. He wished that he knew such stories and had the flair for telling them with vigor and sizzle. He wished it even more when, in time, the attention of the party came around to him, and all looked to the Archon’s nephew to take a turn. With a pang of regret, he realized that the only tales he knew where snippets of gossip from the scribblings of Tet Folbrey, unlikely to be of interest to, or even comprehended by, his new companions. Besides, he had gone off Folbrey.

  Then a thought occurred, and he turned to his inner voice for assistance, speaking low so that the others would think he was merely clearing his throat preparatory to a recital. “Integrator,” he said.

  I am busy, it replied.

  “This will take the tiniest fraction of your capacities.”

  The pilkies have scarred my sheets. My capacity to recharge is diminished.

  “The works of The Bard Obscure are popular among the broad spectrum of society, are they not?”

  They are.

  “Do you know any of them?”

  I recorded the entire The Bard Obscure Festival during the Feast of Name Revocation, some decades ago.

  “My companions expect a tale and I know none that will suit. Please tell me a short one, that I can recount to them.”

  And then you will not bother me until morning?

  “Agreed.”

  Very well. Announce that you will declaim The Riddle of the Rocks.

  Filidor rose and struck an appropriate attitude. “The Riddle of the Rocks,” he said. “By The Bard Obscure.

  “Ethelthon, Chlamys and Tebb were sorcerers of renown. Each rivaled against the others for supremacy in the esoteric arts of prodigistry and cryptomantics. It was their habit to spend time together, with each endeavoring to astound the others by demonstrations of new amazements or novel refinements of old wonders. On these occasions, each performer in turn would take pains to conceal the manner or mechanics of every feat, and each would try to puzzle out how the others achieved their marvels.

  “One day, the three set out in a small boat and traveled a slight distance from shore. Ethelthon caused golden fish to come to the surface, form ranks and battalions, then rise on their tails and pass in review while he answered the salutes the creatures offered with their forefins.

  “Then Chlamys made gestures with her hands that convinced the water to become completely sheer. She conjured onto its surface amusing scenes of the far past and distant future, as well as the ribald present doings of persons in whom the three mages took an interest.

  “Next, Tebb enjoined the water to form itself into discrete shapes and forms, which he fashioned into a great cityscape with manors and castles, roads and walls, rising upon hills or nestled in dales, and all made of the substance of the sea. He populated his creation with marine creatures that went about their business in mimicry of the affairs of human beings.

  “After the displays, the three competitors rested and ate the provisions they had brought with them. In the middle of the meal, Ethelthon suddenly remarked, ‘I have forgotten my wine,’ and with that he stepped out of the boat, walked across the water to the shore, and came back with a flagon of yellow Iriest.

  “Chlamys then announced that she had forgotten certain condiments. She also stepped from the boat, walked across the water, and shortly returned.

  “Then Tebb, sensing that an unannounced contest was underway, remarked that he too had left something ashore. He said a particular word very quietly, then rose and stepped over the side of the boat. Immediately, he sank straight down, but since he had uttered the rudiments of an applicable cantrip, he was able to walk to shore across the bottom, emerging dripping and abashed, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Ethelthon, seeing this, turned to Chlamys and said, ‘I suppose we should have told him about the stepping stones.’

  “At which, Chlamys regarded Ethelthon with a small smile and said, ‘What stepping stones?’”

  The tale had been well received, Filidor remembered, but past that point in the evening his memory could not take him. He surmised that more of the demi-cask’s contents had been transferred to his own recesses, where it had become ungrateful for his hospitality, and was now repaying him in painful coin.

  He looked around and saw that Orton Bregnat was sleeping in a sitting position, his back to the strong hut door, and Henwaye’s cudgel across his lap. There seemed to have been no attempted escapes during the night. That was probably, Filidor thought, a result of the pirates’ having overheard their former captives engaged in an impromptu contest to see who could devise the most imaginative punishment for any who ventured so much as a toenail beyond the strong hut door. Most of the proposed penalties were anatomically unlikely, and some of them probably impossible, but the revelers agreed that all were worth at least a try.

  Filidor closed his eyes and lowered his pained head into his cupped hands. He would liked to have found a place where snoring men were not a significant part of the environment, but in his present condition he doubted he could coordinate legs, arms, hands and feet with sufficient dexterity to move himself there. He thought of Faubon Bassariot, and of the functionary’s pivotal role in bringing him to this morning’s disarray, and then he looked forward to an opportunity to test some of the previous night’s proposed afflictions on the person of his former major-domo.

  The visions which these thoughts conjured cheered the young man somewhat, and he raised his head and opened his eyes again. As he did so, he heard a timid honk from his seaward side, and turned to see the shallows filled with large, green and gold-flecked creatures, all apparently sitting on the sea bottom, their heads and chests above the ripples, their lambent eyes all fixed upon his person.

  “Integrator,” Filidor said, in a voice meant to carry no further than the bones of his own skull. “Where are you?”

  I take that for a rhetorical question, came the response.

  “Take it any way that meets your needs,” said Filidor, “but the Obblob are here, in numbers and with strong expectations.”

  We must deal with them. From what I sense in your fluids, you are not in the most hale of conditions. Are you able?

  “I confess that I am somewhat thinned out,” Filidor, and heard from the integrator what he thought was a sniff.

  “You disapprove?” he said.

  It is not for me to comment. Still, I am not accustomed to dealing with tosspots.

  “I suppose your Filidor is also renowned, among his other superlative qualities, for his abstemiousness.”

  He values moderation.

  “He might value it less after walking a wheel for Gwallyn Henwaye,” said Filidor.

  I cannot make the comparison.

  Filidor drew himself up. “Be it as it may, I will try to rise to the occasion, as long as that occasion is not too high and mighty, nor too prolonged.” He looked at the Obblob, and they looked back. “They don’t consider me a god or anything, do they?” he asked.

  To them you are essentially a conduit for certain cosmic forces and influences, and as such, worthy of respect and quite lucky to touch. But much more a
node than a deity.

  “Good,” said Filidor. “I think I can do a node, but godhood is well beyond me this morning.”

  A question had been troubling him the night before, and he thought to raise it now. “This matter of prophecy,” he said. “I am clearly no prophet. The only reason I spoke the words the Obblob desired to hear was because you had recorded them and fed them to me.”

  So?

  “So it is a sham, is it not?”

  Not at all. Such and such a set of syllables had to be said, and were said. Now the Obblob will have their essences, and without Henwaye’s grinding price. Things are as they were meant to be.

  “But it was arranged so by you and me.”

  Then we are instruments of fate.

  “Knowing instruments,” said Filidor.

  How does that make a difference?

  ***

  The business with the Obblob was neither too protracted nor too taxing. First, Filidor moved along the shore, away from the sleeping men so as not to disturb them. Then, prompted by his internal companion, he told the ultramondes that he was not only a node and conduit, but a ranking representative of the Archonate. As such, he could assure them that the ad hoc arrangements that had been made with Gwallyn Henwaye would now be superseded by an officially sanctioned scheme. The small island would become a legitimate contemplarium, with the pirates its first inmates. Orton Bregnat, whose sleeping form Filidor indicated, would assume the role of warden and dispenser of essence. The Obblob would no longer have to scour the sea floor for precious items to barter -- a tenth of what they had heretofore provided would be sufficient payment. There would also be an ex gratia payment of essences for rescued persons brought to the island.

  One of the Obblob, who might have been a chief or priest, and who knew human speech, translated Filidor’s announcements. The news was well received, as evidenced by a cacophony of hoots and bubblings which Filidor took to represent happiness and relief. The integrator speculated that Henwaye’s grasping for ever more loot had placed considerable personal and social strain on the Obblob ecstatics, so that they had been forced to devote most of their days to treasure hunting, when they would have much preferred to spend their time leisurely contemplating the sublime experiences brought on by human essence. To demonstrate goodwill, Filidor went to the storehouse and brought out several sealed vials of the island’s product, which he gave to the translator to be distributed to the throng.

  After that, the translator replied with a short speech in Obblob, which the integrator rendered even more succinctly: He said, “Yahoo!” Then all of the ultra mondes lined up and came one at a time to Filidor, so that he might touch their offered palms and make them lucky. There followed some perfunctory ceremonial gestures, and the encounter was done. But as the Obblob turned to leave, the voice in Filidor’s head said, Before they go, ask if anyone has a bobblobblobl.

  “What is it?”

  You’ll see.

  Filidor called out the odd syllables. The translator spoke to another of the departing Obblob, and the latter turned around in the shallows and came back to shore. From a pouch strung about its waist, it drew out a handful of what looked to Filidor like colorless slime. Gingerly, the Archon’s apprentice took the proffered stuff, and found it be cool and gelatinous, but when he brought it nearer for a closer inspection, a smell as sharp as strong ammonia but more foul stormed up his nose and seized the olfactory bulb of his brain in a pincer grip. The assault on his senses, when his cerebral organ was already battered by the after effects of the previous night’s indulgence, was more than Filidor could bear. He had never in his life been more acutely aware of possessing a head. He held the acridly reeking thing as far from him as he could, and gasping and retching, he sank to his knees.

  The Obblob apparently took this behavior for a display of glad acceptance. It ducked its head several times and rippled its dorsal tubes in several patterns, said something which Filidor did not have the presence of mind to ask the integrator to translate, and swam away.

  When Filidor’s eyes had stopped watering and he could again take a full breath, he held the lump of goo at arm’s length and asked the integrator, “Is it some kind of weapon? Do we bring ourselves stealthily within hurling distance of Faubon Bassariot and let fly?”

  It is a protective garment, was the reply. Tease it out into a thin sheet.

  “Your sense of humor eludes me,” Filidor said.

  Trust me.

  Head averted and arms extended to their utmost, Filidor shook and pulled the foul-smelling substance, and saw it resolve itself into a thin translucent membrane, as long as he was tall, cylindrical in shape and open at one end. When it was fully extended, dangling from his hands, it became completely transparent, but the strength of its odor did not abate.

  “Is it to keep the rain off?” the young man asked. There was a slight breeze and he moved so that he was upwind. “If so, having one’s nasal passages ravaged seems far too a high price to pay. I would rather be wet than afraid to breathe.”

  Slip it over your head, said the integrator.

  “I will not,” said Filidor. “To be close to the stuff would bring strong men to their knees. To be surrounded on all sides must mean death or madness for anything that possesses a functioning nose.”

  It only smells that way on the outside, and for a purpose.

  Filidor took a deep breath and did as the voice told him. The thin stuff shimmered down over his head and descended to his feet. He took the most tentative sniff possible, and found that there was no odor here inside. When he put out a hand, the cowl-like garment stretched without resistance. It was dry to the touch, loose and billowy, as if he was wearing the finest gauze.

  “Remarkable stuff,” he said.

  More than you yet realize, said the voice. Move closer to the men and call out to them. Wake them.

  Filidor did so. He saw Etch Valderoyn stir, then sit up and muzzily peer about. Byr Lak did likewise, and Orton Bregnat roused with a snort and a start. Filidor called again, at which Valderoyn rubbed his eyes and looked about in alarm, then struggled to his feet. The pizzle aficionados’ gaze swept up and down the shore, then he shaded his eyes and stared out to sea.

  “Wake! Wake!” Valderoyn cried, and kicked at the sleeping form of Finboag Aury. “The lad’s in peril! I can hear him calling, but I can’t find him!”

  Now Bregnat and the others rose and looked about, calling out Filidor’s name. The undermate peered into the strong hut, but saw only Henwaye and his crew. “Spread out, and look for him!” he called to the others.

  “They can’t see me,” Filidor said to his inner listener.

  The outer cells of the bobblobblobl pass particles of light to each other, so that they bend around whatever the garment covers. It protects young Obblob from the appetites that patrol the sea.

  “And the smell?”

  Not everything hunts by sight.

  Etch Valderoyn had come down to the shore. “The Obblob must have carried him off,” he declared, then, when he drew near to where Filidor stood, “Fagh! They have left a taint!”

  The young man said, “Don’t be startled,” but the voice coming from empty air close by the sailor’s ear had the opposite effect. Valderoyn leapt backwards, flailing his arms, and swearing a string of nautical oaths that Filidor had never heard in the better salons of Olkney.

  The young man pulled the bobblobblobl up his body and over his head, which brought a new sequence of profanity.

  “I’ve heard of those things, but never seen one,” said Orton Bregnat, coming down to where Valderoyn stood, his face offering a pageant of expressions.

  “It’s an Obblob cowl,” said Maijung Celemet, reaching out wonderingly to touch the garment, which Filidor was now wadding up into the colorless lump it had formerly been. “They say a man as has one of these will ne’er drown.”

  �
�It’s not drowning I fear,” Filidor said, “and I’d better tell you now the why of it.”

  He told them, without too much elaboration, of what he had learned from Tet Folbrey’s piece in the Implicator. “There is terrible work afoot,” he concluded. “I don’t know what has happened to my uncle. But I do know that, if Bassariot or any who contrive with him should learn that I am not dead, that is an oversight they will repair with all dispatch.”

  Valderoyn growled at that, but Filidor went on, “I will take counsel with the device in my head as to how to proceed, but I can tell you now that I am determined to regain my place and to secure my uncle’s safety. Somehow, I will make this come right.”

  The words sounded braver than Filidor felt, but again he thought of that other Filidor whose tiny universe was folded into this cosmos, that ornament of his age, and drew himself up. “So there it is,” he said.

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Etch Valderoyn, in a way that promised he would strive to perform whatever the young man asked.

  “Aye,” said Orton Bregnat, “we owe you much,” at which the others nodded heads and issued gruff noises of assent.

  For a moment, Filidor imagined himself leading his brave little group of seafarers up the sweeping staircases of the Archonate palace, like a band of heroes in a romance, to cast down Bassariot and all his devious works. Then reality reasserted itself.

  “All I ask is that you keep my continued existence a secret,” he said “Until I have put things as they ought to be.”

  It was so agreed. They breakfasted on the pirates’ provisions, and Bregnat brought Filidor a dose of Colophant’s Universal Assuagement, that he had found with the store of liquor. The remedy soon leached the suffering from the young man’s head, and he pocketed the bottle, reasoning that if his internal resident required its host to be liberally seasoned in raw-edged purple wine, the elixir would come in handy.

  After that, they divided up the heaps of loot that Henwaye had extorted from the Obblob, with only moderate dissension as to who received what. Filidor declined to take a full share, pocketing only a few small and valuable items. When the others pressed him, he demurred, saying, “If I regain my place in the Archonate, wealth means nothing to me; if I do not, it means less than nothing, since it will then sluice into the coffers of Faubon Bassariot and his cronies, after they take it from my dead body.”