The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5

by John Klobucher

  The night owl answered with, “Who…” then stopped. It seemed that he knew not how to respond. But Morio, hogging the floor, carried on.

  “I do note one small flaw in this appellation, otherwise sweet though it may well be. It reminds me, so sadly, how hungry I am — and how very empty is my growling tummy. Oh, for a slice of porkling pie! I think I’d give an eye. Even a bite would do.”

  John Cap fought to hold back a smile. “Man, sometimes you just kill me ‘O. Where I come from they’d call you a weirdo.”

  Somehow Morio got what that meant. And it made him upset.

  “A lifetime ago I heard words like those…” he said in a mumble, aslump toward the floor, “in an age and place long gone, my young guest.” His round, sweet face lost its usual mirth. “When I too knew something of being uncommon…”

  Morio raised a soft, hammy fist and rubbed at his puffy eyes with it. They were watery now and bloodshot, their pure tan stained in rills of red. And he made a sniffly sound with his nose like someone ready to cry a river.

  “Aw… damn, Morio. It’s alright. I didn’t mean anything by it guy. That’s the same thing they said about me.”

  Morio perked up. “Is this true?”

  John Cap nodded, “Yup, I swear,” and tapped his heart with his palm. “Promise you.”

  “Why then we’re practically brothers in harms! Or cousins of some kind, I suppose. But I’m sure we are something near, dear friend.”

  And Morio made a funny salute that no one but he could see through the dim. It appeared to matter not to him. Morio Yoop was happy again.

  A nebulous blue bled down from above. It seeped from the sky through a hole in the ceiling. A beam the chameleon moon slipped in.

  “Now tell me of your dreams, John Cap. What are those for a man without sleep? Whether ones come true or not…”

  It took John Cap a while to speak, as if hoping the silence would answer for him. But sound of a drip from overhead filled the void with time instead. Like a tick, tick, tick in the timelessness. The marking of moments by drumbeat drops of rainwater falling from the past. Somehow it became unbearably loud.

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “How so?”

  “Because… I’m not sure what a dream even is.”

  “Reveries? Flights of fancy?”

  “Now you’re really losing me.”

  “The vision that comes when you close your eyes?”

  “I see the back of my eyelids — it’s black.”

  The room, it seemed, had turned slightly lighter. The seeing was bluish but better now.

  Morio shifted his seat from discomfort then, crossing his legs, sat back. His torn shirt stuck to the sticky wall.

  “Has your mind never journeyed to faraway lands?” he waxed with a rip and a sweep of his hand. “Imagining sweet drink and foods never had? Or creatures and wonders beguiling to see, all the while battling bravely a foe as evil as can be? With allies of legend, the subjects of song, who sing every rite and right every wrong?”

  “Hello?” John Cap sang, “You’ve got to be joking. Just look where I am. What’s left to imagine?”

  The young man ran his hands through his hair then held them there atop his head. His blond locks looked all precious silver — a trick of lunar alchemy.

  “Then what of your past or your home, comrade? Do your thoughts never conjure up scenes to play out in places with faces you’ve known or loved?”

  “I’d just as soon forget all that.”

  Morio sighed, a tad deflated, for the moment admitting himself defeated.

  “Well, I have a dream today my friend — to get a drink and best this thirst. A swig to wet my whistle. All of our absorbing talk has left me o so very parched and scratchy as a thistle! Dry as the vast Western Desert of Merth. Believe you me I shan’t be picky. Pom wine, brewn ale, a cup from the saltless sea — anything.”

  With that he lay down and fell back asleep.

  John Cap must have thirsted too. He held out his right hand, palm side up, and caught a few moments of refalling rain, which still leaked down from some pool on the roof. Then he raised that cup to his lips and drank. The overdue drops were warm on his tongue and salty like tears of remembrance.

  After a while the dripping slowed and with it time as well. But the watchman could not tell. He had turned already to something timeless with his wide and lonely eyes. It was the other on whom he gazed — the girl in a halo of sapphire blue aglow at the end of the room.

  Perched on a platform all alone, there she sat… yet not.

  His lips mouthed words with barely a breath, words he meant for her. “If this is some kind of fairy tale Vaam, then you’ve got to be Sleeping Beauty. I wonder what story you’re living tonight. Where have your dreams gone this time?”

  John Cap stared at the shape she made. He seemed unable to look away.

  It turned out the plump one’s return to Nod was short-lived and woefully failed. No, that land would not let him in again lest he steal the rest of this waning night. So it led him instead to wander and moan, roaming the netherworld between. The half-awake realm of hopes and screams.

  Morio tossed about and groaned, in some phantom conversation. He mumbled of sweet things now unclean with someone from a dream unseen. Nightmare talk till he woke with a start.

  Still drunk of that uneasy sleep, he tried too fast to rise afeet from the angled floor of pynewood planks. But somewhat dizzy was he, unsteady and ready to stagger and fall. So he reached out for the tarry wall and a place to brace himself.

  Yet it was not wallwood his fingers found but the touch and clutch of a vine thick around. He had a handful in his mitt. It felt hairy, no… furry, and wet.

  A drip too slimy to grip it was, so his grasp let slip and he fell with a bump on his prized and slightly ample rump. “Ho!” he exclaimed with surprise in his eyes. “How did I not notice you before, mister rope hanging right by my head?!”

  It seemed to fall from atop the wall, spilling out of a gap just under the ceiling. Almost like a natural thing that sprung there on its own.

  Morio rocked to mock the swing of the giant’s string he had set in motion. “You have a dodgy way of moving,” he bemused with a touch of frustration. But the man had a plan or at least a notion of how to take another whack, a hack at the tip of the twisty twine, or epic tail, whichever it was. Checking the angle of its dangle, the round fellow readied himself to strike.

  “One, two, THREEE…”

  With the speed of a greazy frying-swine, fat but fast as skyfire, Morio grabbed the vine again. This time he had it by both hands.

  “I’ve got you now, you knotty one!” he teased with a pleasing tone. “Don’t think that I don’t know the ropes!”

  Then in pitched battle to pull himself up, he let loose on the line with a mighty yank. But the vine had another idea in mind. It gave way with an arm’s length of slack, landing Morio back on his behind.

  And it did more than that.

  High atop the opposite wall, the one under which the younger man stood, five long and narrow windows flew open to the night. They were set in place in the shape of a hand and such a delicate hand it was. The hand of a woman or wizened man. Four slender fingers and thin thumb that cast a pallor on Morio Yoop in the form of a ghastly grasp. A palm that pointed nowhere good. Sign of something that shed little light.

  There was something else at hand as well. The sound of stone on stone, and an even fouler smell. It came from a door in the window wall twenty paces or so from John Cap’s stand, on his right-hand side.

  Morio knew what that noise was. “I hear our friends afoot again. But lord knows ‘tis no easy feat to name that rank and vile stink, my noble night owl sir. Death be the odor of the day, don’t you think?”

  John Cap, who had seen it all, just gave him a look. “I think you woke them up. You probably shouldn’t have pulled that thing.” Then he raised his favored wrist and spoke in low tones to the strap wrapped around it. “Va
am will not be happy.”

  “Maybe so,” chimed Morio. “On the other hand, with any luck, perhaps they’ll bring us breakfast! Oh to be waited on hand and foot, now wouldn’t that be sweet?! Yes…

  “And how ‘bout a sudsy bath to boot, to throw or kick in while I’m wishing on it? We might as well ‘Reach for the stars,’ as you say. And what better wish than a wash?”

  John Cap let the moment pass and listened for more from the wall at his back. After a while the scraping stopped and the few muffled voices he’d heard faded out. Although, he thought he could still hear a song, as if over the hills and far away off. Only the smell remained the same.

  He noticed a pout of disappointment on Morio’s always honest face.

  “No bathroom here ‘O. Or room service either. But I bet you’d be sorry with what they’d deliver.”

  “Room service, John Cap?”

  “Never mind. Just forget it.”

  The watchman suddenly spun around, away from Morio and Vaam, and struggled up the tilted floor to the other end of the rectangled room. And there he faced the massive door through which they had passed a few hours before, cast in as prisoners by the Guard and left alone to stew.

  He squinted at it and tipped his head, using what weakling light he had. Then the young man motioned with his strong hand. “Look at this,” he said.

  Morio, heartened, did not wait or even think to hesitate. He eagerly crawled to the door on all fours, pausing only to let out a sneeze and a snort. In fact, he flew with such ease on his knees that he met his friend in no time.

  Then they stared side by side at the rosewood, those men, each on his own and the both of them. The tall one from his steady feet. The shorter still stuck to his seat.

  John Cap pondered what he saw and pressed a palm to his handsome jaw. “These panels — they seem to be carved with scenes, just like they’re telling a story. Do you recognize them? Do you know what they mean?”

  The porkly man looked as best he could while wiping his nose on a tattered sleeve. “Hmmm, yes… I believe… Ah, indeed! Now that could be…”

  “Yo. Are you going to tell me?”

  Morio beamed a childlike light that all but lit the gloomy room. “I shall have no higher calling in life.” He pointed way up. “Let’s start at the top.”

  John Cap eyed the most distant square where a man becrowned and in flowing robes led a long line of the young. They marched two by two from a gleaming city. “Who is that guy, the one with the beard? He looks kind of kingly to me.”

  “Kingly? Yes, oh I should say! A Semperor of Syland he must be. Perhaps the last of his line — the one who sent these poor folk here before the Troubled Times.”

  “In the next scene the bearded man is gone and the people seem to be wandering…”

  “Lost. Lordless and forlorn. With countless of their untold number frail and falling for four panels more. And longish panels they are at that. They take a good half of the door. See there? What an epic journey it must have been, a quest to test the best of men, and women and children as well…” Morio nodded knowingly. “But this is the gist of the few fabled tales that I’d heard somewhere and a time ago. So I’d swear that it all rings true to me.”

  “And that brings us to here,” said John Cap. He stretched out his fingers to touch the figures and shapes before him at arm’s length. The rosewood was smooth against his skin and smelled of something flowerish, a fragrance set free when it met his flesh. He could tell that it had been tooled and rubbed well with perfumed oils to make it shine. But his findings too made him raise a brow, for such craft did not fit in this box of pyne.

  And another surprise — these panes portrayed a happier time. “Something has changed. What’s happening?”

  Morio took a look and spoke. “I recognize the great plain that we crossed, albeit airborne thanks to the ogs. So this must depict their trek here from afar with dawn’s rising orb as a guide or Pole Star. (I’m just guessing about the Pole-ish guide, but the carver does show the sun on their side.) Then their nights turned to halcyon days in this place, sweet dreams washing the nightmares away — wiped clean like a frown from each sunny face. No mourning on them anymore.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” muttered John Cap with a telling smirk. He moved his hand to the form of a man in the midst of a speech to a crowd by a wood. A multitude was amassed before him, all enthralled by whatever he said. Some marks were inscribed beneath his feet. “H Hurx ~ Treasuror III,” they read.

  “Hurx? I think we just heard that name out in the field tonight. Isn’t that what they called those boys?”

  “Their uncle too,” added Morio, “our friend with the little red riding beard.”

  Distracted, the young man did not hear. He pressed his thumb to one of the marks then studied the fresh impression it made — lines and angles on his skin. “So ‘treasuror’ must be some local leader, like a governor or mayor.”

  “Or an electryon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Most likely like one of those two you bespoke. But ‘twas how we knew office holders back home, when it was still a free land called Merth.”

  “And let me guess — they were usually crooks.”

  “Crooks or things much worse. But how…”

  “I’m learning that some things are universal.”

  “Yet exceptions there are, some giants among us. Those meant to make their place and time.”

  John Cap surveyed the remaining scenes. “It seems like H Hurx must have been such a man, judging from the rest of this side…”

  Yes, the artist showed life going well for a while with a bounty of all that they might want or need. Game for meat. Greens and seed. Timber or stone. Time to breed.

  And a leader beloved, wise, and kind.

  So much heaven sent to a folk so forsaken. Redemption. Rebirth. The smell of bacon.

  But then there by the floor, at the foot of the door, the magical yarn got caught in a knot. A tragic tangle of the tale. For in the final frame they found not chords of joy or sweet string sounds but notes of fond farewell and grief. Runes etched around an empty seat told of a treasured man’s defeat as Guard and folk and elders sung the tune of a life too brief.

  H Hurx was gone or lost or ghost.

  Yet to his place a young man rose. A handsome one, his elder son — “Ayryx of Hurx” it said below. As all bore witness to his grace, he bowed his head and turned his face in humility to the sacred ground. And the mantle of Treasuror was bestowed upon his shoulder with a pike.

  Thus was this enshrined for time to come in the red hewed everwood.

  John Cap stepped back searching ceiling to floor, hoping to find a few panels more. “We need to know where the story goes to understand these people.”

  Morio grabbed the young man’s arm and with it fought to make his feet. “Perhaps on the other side of this door, my friend, it may continue. I did not notice when we came in.”

  “The door was open. It couldn’t be seen.”

  “Of course, now I remember too. Anyhow, it’s high time we try the latch,” said Morio doughtily reaching out. He itched for a fight with its rough handle. “Perchance we can sneak a peek or two or even snatch a more leisurely glance.”

  John Cap was wary yet did not object.

  But try as he might, despite clutching it tightly, the man o’ more simply could not trip the catch. And so some grumbling ensued.

  “It’s locked.”

  “We’re stuck.”

  “Do you think we should knock?”

  “Then what, Morio, ask the guards for a tour? I’m sure that they’d love to punch our tickets.”

  “Yes please! That’s the ticket indeed dear lad, the magic of wishful thinking at work. A tour plus punch to quench our thirst? Now I’m truly optimistic!”

  “But maybe just hold that thought for a bit, ‘cause I’d rather live till daylight. And anyway, Vaam is still asleep.”

  “I could wake her if you’d like.”
/>   “No ‘O, not yet. She needs more time. Let her dream on a little longer.”

  Then the two men did their best to recall what they saw on their path that night to this place, this hell-scented pigpen of fallen angles, this lopsided lockbox of purpose unknown…

  The Guard had led them from Liar’s Tree field down a road by a glade to the foot of a hill. There, yet under night’s thick cloak, they saw a dark structure loom ahead enshadowed from the moon. It was oddly tall amidst the trees with a face of silent stone — a visage unwelcoming, gray, and cold. Windowless it was this façade, though oriented east, as if keeping some secret unseen within or shunning the light of the world without.

  And so by the push and prod of the pike were the three strangers sent single file inside, to and through its open maw all of two stories high and yawning wide. On their left and their right there they passed twin great gates of hardest ironwood wrought by hand. Upon those gates a herd of shapes adorned the void that they minded with beasts.

  One thing low and snaky, two lofty a-wing, some devilish dirt dog, an odd cat-like king. Bull-sheep and bear-ass greeted them too, both by a boar-rat and all under toe of a tusky behemoth from realms far below.

  The clear voice of the tall young woman rang like a song through the stony hall. “Why this menagerie?” she sang. “Why honor these unheard-of creatures here?”

  But she and her friends knew not of this place. And the Guard were in no mood for show and tell.

  Rudely were they ushered on through a chamber of dull-colored quarrystone. Its floor was smooth, worn down in places, as if by rituals oft repeated. Yet its ceiling soared halfway to the heavens. They glimpsed strange implements hung from the walls, devilish things that seemed made to maul or maybe maim or make holey somehow.

  Dead ahead a pair more of the armored Guard awaited them mirthless and still — stoic sentinels standing on either side of a gaping inner doorway. The hole of it filled a space like the first through which they had safely passed, but from this deeper one there spilled an unavoidable blackness. Far off to the left at a table there sat two others, yet Guard those were not. They looked of old plainsmen, swarthy and crude, who eyed the strangers with cold disdain. One leaned back with his feet propped up as he sharpened the tip of a goring pole. It was bile-stained a vile green. The other bit into a blood-red pom and spit out its seeds with spite on the floor. Both wore the leathery skin of countless seasons riding wild and free, as ranger men of a treeless land, ever awash in sun and dust.