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.
“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 boat, and I could see the gathered girls looking at one another amid the shade and lavender light from the sky.
“Does anyone else know about this?” Stunt suddenly seemed very worried.
“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 beneath his robe 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 Vita,” 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 wasn’t 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 thousand nine hundred and thirty seven 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 wood of trees cut down in a sacred grove by a 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.”
“Hah, that angry forest deity?” I 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 so 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 make 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 beer, 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,” said Stunt.
“Buried, but not put to rest,” I said.
“Here lies one who never lied before, but will now lie forever, and especially lie before forever.” Scammander said, joining in. “I only wish I had started lying earlier,”
Stunt shook his head. “Here lies Scammander, but he lied everywhere else too.”
“Wenches, wine, and a little bit of murder,” Stunt said again.
“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 in a desolated Never,” I said.
A grave silence fell across the three of us. I had a way of ending conversations.
***
“I came up deck to invite you both to the Troubadour’s Test, which I intend to enter under my old name,” Stunt said finally. A slow dawn began to spread soft pink and purple and yellow hues across the sky.
“Troubadour’s Test?” I said. “What is that?”
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, and on Friday night there will be a tour of its legendary vineyards as a prelude to a comic play, and Saturday there will be a tragedy. The test is on Sunday 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 another day.”
“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 loved 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. “You see 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 spoke as a white star burned across the pink horizon of morning: “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,” mumbled Scammander.
“You’re still young Evander, there are volcanoes in you.” Stunt clapped his hand on my back and gazed into the rising sun like an old eagle. “The world has turned its back on you and you have been given an excellent opportunity to stab it.”
“Don’t miss,” said Scammander, wistfully.
“I think your mother found out the wrong ogre is king,” I said, looking out into the sky. I could see large dark shadows passing through the clouds, getting closer to the ship.
The ship began to slow as two large dragons, leviathans of the sky, emerged on either side of the ship. Around them flew a small fleet of armored elves carrying long, silver lances, riding on the backs of proud griffins.
“Now is probably the time to speed up,” I said.
“He can’t,” stated Scammander, as a soft breeze brushed his blonde hair about his face and shoulders.
“Dragons,” muttered Stunt. I couldn’t tell if it was a curse or a statement of fact.
###
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Table of Contents
SPLATTERISM:
PROLOGUE
JOURNEYS END
THE TENDER VALE OF UBIQUITIOUS HAPPINESS AND HALYCON CONTENTMENT
ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSE OF PERSONAL FANTASY
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
VAE VICTIS
WRAITHSSENTIMENT
LE MOT JUSTE
THE DAY THAT NEVER COMES
ONLY THE BEGINNING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
IRONICALLY PLACED EXORDIUM (AN EARNEST EXHORTATION)
CHIC KILLS: SEPTEMBER AS EDUCATRIX (OR, OF LIPGLOSS AND CHAINMAIL)
Splatterism: The Tragic Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse Page 8