I took a step towards him and saw, for the first time, that he had a jagged white scar running down the left side of his face. It started at his temple, barely missed his eye, and ran all the way down to his jaw line. The scar was well camouflaged by his long black hair but when he moved his head it was clearly visible.
I looked at Lucian and Drace to see if they would object to me walking with a strange man. Lucian was frowning and Drace was glaring but since neither of them said anything, I put my arm through Mandrex’s and allowed him to lead me past the staircase and down a long central walkway.
As we made our way to the dining room, I thought that Lord Mandrex must really be loaded. Lucian’s apartment was gorgeously expensive and well appointed but the mansion we were walking through now—really more of a small castle—was filled with rich tapestries and works of art in glass cases, all placed at tasteful intervals. Everything looked like it had cost a fortune.
Many of the works of art appeared to be quite old—ancient pottery and tools from some bygone Stone Age era of Denarin pre-history. I wondered why a guy from a whole other planet would be so interested in the history of someplace else entirely. But then, maybe he was just really into exploring other cultures. Or maybe, as Drace had hinted, his own people didn’t want him so he had decided to immerse himself in the art and language and culture of someplace else entirely.
At last we reached the dining room and I saw one last, massive glass case standing in front of the richly carved double doors. I say glass but I’m not sure what the material was that made up the case—only that it was a clear cube which seemed to hover in mid air at a fixed point—the same way the sleeping platform bed hovered on Lucian’s ship.
Inside the hovering cube was a black velvet pillow. Lying on it was a triangular stone about as big as my clenched fist. It was a strange mottled color—bluish-gray mingled with specks and swirls of brilliant orange. There was a hole in the center of it but it wasn’t completely round—there was a notch at one end that tapered up towards the highest, thinnest point of the triangle. I thought it looked like one of those weird, multicolored crayon rings you can find in craft shops sometimes only it was much larger than a ring—more like bracelet-sized.
“Behold,” Lord Mandrex said to me, nodding at the case. “The Tanterine Key—the oldest relic of Denarin prehistory ever to be discovered. Dealers of antiquities estimate its worth in the hundreds of millions of credits. I, myself, paid a considerable sum to own it when it came to auction.”
I bit my lip. Was he telling us the key wasn’t for sale…or that we couldn’t afford it? Because I was pretty sure we couldn’t. Gold bars not withstanding, I had an idea that Lucian was rich but not that rich. Of course, his family might be that rich—they might be willing to pay millions of credits to find a way to sever his improper bond but I wasn’t sure. As for Drace and myself, well, I got the feeling that Drace was a regular blue collar guy and I was just a starving paralegal. There was no way Mandrex would be getting much out of either of us.
“It’s very lovely,” I murmured, nodding at the Key.
“Not as lovely as you, my dear.” But I had the idea he was paying me an empty compliment. There was something about those whirling, electric-blue eyes…they were cold, distant. As though he’d been hurt in the past and had absolutely no intention of risking his heart again.
Then again, I might have just been reading things into the situation.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Mandrex nodded and ushered us inside a two-story dining room that looked like it could double as a ballroom in a pinch—if they had that kind of thing here.
A single long, high table with a silver tablecloth dominated the room. It was set with thin, oval plates decorated with a swirling turquoise pattern and multiple alien-looking eating implements. On one side were three place settings right in a row. On the other, there was only one. Taking the hint, Drace and Lucian and I went to the side with three. We sat down with Lucian on my right and Drace on my left.
Lord Mandrex seated himself across from us and snapped his fingers twice. Immediately four uniformed servants ran forward, all carrying steaming dishes held out at arm’s length. With a flourish, they set the plates down in front of all of us at exactly the same moment and vanished as quickly as they had appeared.
I looked down at the plate in front of me and had to fight not to wrinkle my nose.
It appeared to be a large serving of long, thin strips of…well, it looked like noodles covered in brown fur. But not like someone had stroked a cat and then dusted their hands over the noodles—more like the noodles themselves had somehow sprouted long, straight hairs right out of their pale, fleshy sides. Mixed in among the furry noodles were large, flat black disks, about the size of a silver dollar. The resulting dish was, shall we say, less than appetizing.
“Ah yes,” Mandrex said grandly. “This is ylla-reth, a high holiday dish from the area around Y’brith.”
I looked at Lucian who nodded and picked up a pair of golden tongs. He used them to stir his hairy noodles. That sounds really wrong, doesn’t it? But believe me, it doesn’t sound half as wrong as it looked. This was some seriously nasty-looking food.
Of course, I would never say that I thought the food looked nasty out loud. Instead, I copied Lucian’s actions, but without much appetite. The hairy noodles and black disks were making my stomach churn. Still, I didn’t want to be impolite so I used my tongs to bring one furry noodle to my lips. It was as tough and dry as carpet liner and had about as much flavor, plus the hairs got stuck in my teeth. It was awful.
“Do you like it?” Lord Mandrex inquired, smiling across the table at me.
“It’s very, uh, chewy,” I said, trying to smile. “A very unique dish. I love trying new things. What is it made of?”
“In the very center of the Sands of Death is a deep cavernous hole which leads many leagues down to the Sunless Sea,” Mandrex informed me. “Growing from the walls of this ancient cavern is the ylla moss. It hangs in long curtains right down to the sandy ground around the sea. Intrepid epicureans shear off sheets of the moss and cut it into long, thin strands. It’s boiled quickly in the clear juice of the yazzen fruit and served piping hot.”
“So…moss? These are long strips of moss?” I lifted another hairy noodle with my tongs questioningly.
“Indeed it is but you’re eating it wrong,” he informed me. “You have to split open the blood mollusks first and mix their bile with the ylla moss to get the most flavor.”
“Blood…mollusks?” I asked hesitantly. “Bile?”
“Observe.” Mandrex picked up another piece of silverware which looked like a tiny golden hammer with a sharp point on one end. He held one of the flat black disks steady with his tongs and gave it a sharp tap with the pointed end of the hammer.
There was a brittle cracking sound and what looked like dark red blood started seeping out of the shattered black disk. It sizzled and sent up a sickly-sweetish cloud of pink steam when it hit the hairy noodles, which immediately went limp.
“And now you can eat it,” Mandrex demonstrated by putting down his tongs and hammer and picking up a pair of golden chopstick looking implements. Without hesitation, he shoved a mouthful of the now-limp, bile-covered, hairy noodles into his mouth.
“Oh, um…” I looked down at my plate which was now even less appealing than before Mandrex had showed me how to prepare it.
“Would you like some help?” Lucian positioned one of my flat, black blood-mollusks with his tongs and cracked it sharply for me before I could answer. “Stir it quickly,” he advised as the blood-like bile came hissing and sizzling out to mix with the noodles. “The bile needs to coat all of the ylla moss strips for the best flavor.”
“Oh, of…of course.” Swallowing hard, I picked up my own set of long, needle-thin golden chopsticks and began swirling them through the steaming mixture. I really, really didn’t want to eat this but since everyone else—even Drace—was digging in, I felt I
had no choice.
This time the hairy noodle I brought to my mouth tasted less like carpet liner and more like dirty, raw liver. Seriously, if you’ve ever gotten mud or dirt in your mouth by accident, that was what it tasted like.
Dirt and raw organ meat. Wow, who wants seconds?
I didn’t gag or spit it out but it was a near thing. I’ve always hated liver—my Aunt Celia used to make it at least twice a month and I always tried to be at a friend’s house for supper on liver nights.
Of course, I couldn’t excuse myself from the table or say anything about how nasty the hairy noodles in bile sauce were. I just kept swirling my chopsticks through them and pretending to eat without actually putting anymore of the awful stuff in my mouth. I also drank lots of the fizzy pink drink in the long, elegant goblet by my plate. Its taste was pleasant if somewhat weird—it reminded me of a cross between champagne and cherry Kool-Aid.
At last Mandrex snapped his fingers again and the servants appeared and whisked the dishes away.
I was hoping dinner was over but no such luck. The next course was set before us almost immediately—large, golden bowls with silver lids on top. The servants removed the lids at exactly the same moment, like it was some kind of dance routine they’d practiced and I blinked at what was revealed. It looked like a bowl of pure black oatmeal with gray lumps in it. There was also half of a pink, plum-sized fruit with blue seeds on a small plate beside it.
“Serri-serri porridge with jub-jub juice,” Lord Mandrex informed us, picking up a long handled golden spoon with a tiny, wedge-shaped bowl at the end of it. “From the K’drin Jungle.”
“Your chefs must be pretty fucking adventurous,” Drace remarked, picking up his own spoon. “We never eat this except during the festival of the Watchful Moons because it’s so damn dangerous to make.”
“How is it dangerous?” I asked, poking my own porridge with my wedge-shaped spoon. I wondered what the gray lumps were—they didn’t look very appealing. “What could be dangerous about porridge?”
“It isn’t the porridge itself which is dangerous, my dear,” Mandrex told me. “It’s the savory challa eyes mixed into it which are perilous to collect.”
“Challa eyes?” I poked a gray lump again but it just sat there. Was it some kind of plant that looked sort of like an eye when it was fresh but just looked like an ugly lump once you cooked it? That seemed like the most logical explanation.
“You have to awaken them with the jub-jub juice.” Mandrex picked up the pink fruit which had been sliced in half to show its blue seeds. “Go on.” He nodded, urging me to do the same.
I picked up the fruit and held it over the bowl of black porridge just as Mandrex was. Lucian and Drace were doing the same.
“Now squeeze,” Mandrex instructed.
I did—we all did—sending a spray of pinkish-purple juice down onto our bowls. Immediately all of the gray lumps quivered and popped open revealing…
“Ugh!” I gasped, dropping the messy jub-jub fruit and pushing back from the table. “Eyes! They’re really eyes!”
Indeed, I now had a bowl of black oat-meal-looking sludge dotted with many tiny golden eyes with large, dark pupils. It looked like a Halloween joke dish—ha-ha, try these worms and dirt I made out of crushed Oreo cookies and gummy worms. Only this was for real.
“Of course they’re eyes,” Drace said, as though it was perfectly reasonable to eat bird’s eyes for dinner. “From the challa bird. You can only catch them during nesting season when they’re separated into individual territories.”
“Is that so?” I asked faintly, still staring at my eye-oatmeal.
“Yeah.” Drace scooped up a spoonful of his own porridge with a particularly large golden eye right in the middle. “They have razor sharp beaks and poison feathers. You mess with one, the whole flock comes after you to peck you to death if you’re not careful.”
“They sound awful,” I said. “Why…why would you want to eat their eyes?”
“Pretty much the only part of them that isn’t poison,” Drace said and took a big bite of the awful oatmeal.
“Try some,” Mandrex urged me. “It’s an acquired taste, I’ll admit but the eyes pop most delightfully between your teeth.”
I scooted back to the table and looked at my eye-studded oatmeal once more. The golden orbs seemed to be staring up at me, daring me to take a bite. Daring me to put one of them in my mouth.
I can’t, I thought. I just can’t!
But if I didn’t, would Lord Mandrex take offense? We were here to try and butter him up enough to get him to loan us the Tanterine Key. If I refused his food, he probably wasn’t going to be feeling too friendly towards us.
You swore you’d do everything you could to get Drace and Lucian separated, I reminded myself. This is part of that.
Taking a deep breath, I scooped out the smallest eye I could find with a big bite of black oatmeal—hoping to hide the taste—and put the whole thing in my mouth.
The flavor of the porridge wasn’t bad—bland and slightly sweet, not that different from plain oatmeal back home. Then I bit into the eye.
It was every bit as horrible as I had imagined it would be. It popped like a grape between my teeth and then my mouth filled with a salty, bitter slime that was like raw egg whites in consistency. The rest of the eye was chewy, like days-old bubble gum, and had a rancid-pepperoni flavor I found nauseating.
I fought not to gag and swallowed as quickly as I could. Picking up my fluted glass, I took a big chug of the pink, fizzy drink inside, draining it completely. A servant re-filled my glass unobtrusively and I drained it again.
Moss-strips with blood-clam sauce and black oatmeal with eyes—what a menu. What was for dessert—chilled monkey brains? Ugh!
“You might want to go easy on the tambord,” Mandrex said, nodding at my glass, which was being refilled for a third time. “It’s mildly alcoholic and known for lowering inhibitions.”
“Oh, it’s just so tasty, I couldn’t stop,” I said weakly, trying to hide the fact that I’d been guzzling my drink to get the disgusting raw-eyeball taste out of my mouth. I knew I ought to eat some more of the porridge—maybe I could just eat around the eyeballs and only get the oatmeal. But I just couldn’t make myself do it. Instead, I stirred the stuff with my spoon, trying to hide as many of the eyeballs as I could in the thick black sludge.
At last, Mandrex snapped his fingers again and announced, “Dessert!”
The awful black eye-ball oatmeal was mercifully whisked away and I felt my stomach clench with anxiety. What could possibly be next? After the first two courses, I couldn’t imagine how awful dessert might be.
I couldn’t have been more surprised when instead of some new disgusting culinary abomination, a pastry that looked like a pastel Rubix Cube was put in front of us.
“Wow…” I looked at the thing from all angles, turning my dainty golden plate to do so. It appeared to be a cube made up of many tiny pastel cubes, all about an inch square. There were lavender cubes, sky-blue cubes, blush pink cubes, and mint green cubes. All of them were individually iced, a little bit like petit fours, and appeared to be made to be detached from the rest of the square cake easily.
I felt the knots in my stomach begin to relax. The dessert was beautiful and by far the most appetizing thing I’d been served so far.
“This is the one dish I still serve which comes from my home planet,” Lord Mandrex said, plucking a pale peach cube from his plate and putting it in his mouth. “Mmm… Nandra cake. I cannot bear to eschew it.”
I thought about asking what it was made of but then decided I didn’t want to know. Tentatively, I picked out a lavender cube and placed it on my tongue. The icing around it melted and a delicate, sweet, slightly floral flavor filled my mouth. To my surprise and relief, I liked it.
I tried a pink piece and got a different, but still tasty flavor. Then a blue piece, then a green piece. All of them were good, especially after the awful first and second courses. Eating
the Nandra cake was kind of like eating extremely light and airy sponge cake flavored like flowers. I drank more of the fizzy tambord with it since it made me extremely thirsty and by the time we were finished with dessert, it’s fair to say I was feeling a little bit tipsy and much more relaxed.
I think that was exactly what Mandrex wanted.
“Now,” he said, when the last dishes were cleared and the servants had left us with several more bottles of tambord in case we were still thirsty. “You wanted to talk business?”
“Yes.” Lucian cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “We wanted to know about leasing the Tanterine Key from you.”
“For what purpose?” Mandrex raised one jet-black eyebrow at him.
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that,” Lucian said.
“Oh. Well, then, I cannot lease you the Key.” Mandrex made a mocking face of disappointment. “Still, it was good of you to come to supper. Thank you very much for your company and I hope the three of you have a lovely evening.”
“Wait!” Drace barked as Mandrex was getting up from the table. “We’ll tell you.”
“He already knows enough about us,” Lucian hissed.
“Well, he’s about to know more.” Drace’s green eyes blazed. “Lucian and I—we were wrongly bonded,” he told Mandrex. “And we’re trying to sever our bond. We need the Tanterine Key to do that.”
“Oh? Does it have some kind of severing properties I am not aware of?” Mandrex asked.
“We don’t know,” I said. “We only know it’s part of the prophesy we were given by Tanta Loro. It’s vital that we have it or these two…” I looked pointedly at Lucian and Drace. “Will be stuck together forever. Which they do not want.”
“Most interesting.” Mandrex stroked his chin, which had one of those adorable clefts in the center of it. With his whirling blue eyes and those big black wings, I thought he looked like a fallen angel—one who was more likely to lead you into temptation than deliver you from evil.
“I’m glad you find our plight amusing,” Lucian said tightly. “Now that you know our reasons for needing the Key, could you find it in yourself to lease it to us for a short time?”
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