Reets
groaned like an old bear. “Not again,” he mumbled, tracking the ruckus to the
side of the bed and finding the eldest of the advisors peeking over the rim of
his book, one corner of his mouth glistening with drool.
“He passed?” Godfry asked.
“No yet,” Reets chided. “I told yeh I’d
wake yeh if’n he did.”
“Did you, now,” Godfry said, blinking
heavily at the crumpled mattress and scratching his massive brush-pile mane.
Finding no answers there, he said, “What was that about death, then?”
“Fixin problems, Godfry,” Reets said. “Had
nothin to do with ole Sam.”
Godfry screwed up his face. “Problems, you
say.”
“Yep.”
“Like the rivers?” Godfry asked. “And that
fellow with no skin?”
Reets let the limping strides of his boots
echo in the room before saying, “Yep.”
“Ah, good, good,” Godfry said. “Any
solutions then?”
Reets looked to the rafters, wondering how
to proceed. He would have preferred that Godfry return to his book and,
ultimately, to slumber. But since the old man seemed intent on remaining awake—and
since he was, technically, part of the royal council—Reets decided to humor
him.
Jabbing a crooked finger at the slurping
darkness in the corner, the halfling said, “Won’t be no solutions so long as ole
big mouth keeps gettin in the way.”
Godfry mouthed the word big mouth
and turned in the direction of the halfling’s finger. Watching this, Reets
thought for sure the old man would either ask him to explain who was in the
corner or why their mouth was so large. But instead, the ancient counselor
raised his bushy white brows and began to nod, bobbing his head up and down as
one does when what they hear resonates to the core.
“I see, I see,” he mumbled.
From her seclusion in the shadows, the
titan said, “As usual, Godfry dear, Counselor Baggershaft will not be satisfied
until we declare war on every rock and rill this side of Erinthalmus. And our
friend, Counselor Sneel,” she added, helpfully, “still suffers from the
delusion that all things can be solved by hiring his impoverished brethren to
the south.”
“Ahhh,” Godfry said, his head tottering.
“Yes, that sounds about right.”
Curling his upper lip, Reets shot the old
coot a dirty look and said, “Wha’ do you know bout anythin,
sleepy-head?”
The wintery haystack of hair tottered
towards him. “What’s that, now?”
“You heard me,” Reets snapped. “Stead’a
sittin over there and playin the fool, why doan’ you try comin up with answers? You
been here longer than the rest’a us.”
Godfry stared at him—no surprise
there—then began to dig in his beard. “I’m not sure I can say,” he offered
weakly. “I’m not sure anything like this has ever happened,” he added. “We had
the occasional ugling wander out of the Bottoms, and every once in a while
someone would go to close to the Harriun and get suck in by whatever it is that
sucks people in, but…but we never had anything like this, never a lost river or
a crushed animal or…or anything like this.” He shook his head at the memories
or, possibly, the lack thereof.
Reets made a self-righteously huff and
said, “No solutions, huh?”
Godfry pulled his hand from his beard.
“No. No, I don’t think so,” he said. “What did we have so far? It was the,
um…the military, yes.” He nodded at Reets. “And then the mercenaries,” he said,
pointing to Bal. Turning to the corner, he gawked openly for a time, then said,
“What was Mums’ idea?”
Reets allowed himself a smirk. “Ask her,
why doan’ yeh?”
This couldn’t have worked out better. Reets
had gona after the feeb and was now getting a piece of the big mouth as well,
putting her right out there to squirm. He knew this because they would never
hear the Muminofilous Solution to the happenings. That just wasn’t her
style.
Her style—also known as the coward’s
style—was to sit on the fence and throw stones at everyone else, tearing apart
their ideas, while being sure to protect and conceal her own. And when asked to
share those precious ideas, she would tell them all to pack sand. Well, not in
those exact words—she’d be diplomatic about it—but rest assured there’d be no
solution.
“I agree with Godfry,” Mums said, and when
the halfling nearly fell over, she added, “I think this is a new phase in the
history of the land.”
Regaining his balance, Reets stopped his
pacing and turned to face her, embracing the shadows and inertia and awaiting
her response. But instead of hearing a response, he watched as something
enormous—crafted of old yak skins and dusty llama hides—stood to its feet.
First came the knees, followed by the
elbows and shoulders, and then Mums was lumbering out of the darkness and into
the candle light, something with tree-trunk legs and long swinging arms,
something that had to duck each rafter as it moved to the four-poster.
Once there, she rested her huge,
liquid-brown eyes on the mattress and studied the rumpled blankets in the middle…
and the purple glow at the headboard.
“He’s dying,” Mums said, and somehow that
obvious statement took the halfling off guard. Perhaps it was hearing such a
harsh declaration stated in the titan’s sweet and mellifluous tones, but he
felt the words sink a little deeper in his chest. He liked old Sam. They all
did. For that matter, anyone who ever met him did.
Still gaining his bearing, Reets limped to
the foot of the bed and completed the political pattern; a counselor on each
side of the mattress: Igus, Erinthalmus, and Onador, respectively.
Craning his head over the bed, straining
every warped tendon in his atrophied neck, Reets peered at the white and wasted
face peaking up from the covers. It was the face of death to some—the face of horror
to others—but to the halfling, it was the face of an old friend.
He remembered, distinctly, the day he’d
been appointed to this crummy little kingdom on the other side of nowhere and
he’d not been pleased. He’d already heard rumors of how weak and whiny the
humans were—just a step up from the titans, when you got down to it—and he was
dreading his arrival like a swift kick to the groin.
Samrod Denbauk, however—the king of that
crummy little kingdom and Great Diplomat to so many other lands—had changed all
that. Old Sam, as he was known to friends and family and subjects, had met the
twisted halfling not at the roundtable or at the throne room, but at a tiny
inner door set in the Rivergate on the west end of the castle.
Sam had been smiling broadly and extending
both hands at the time, one hand to grip the halfling’s twisted digits and the
other to clap over the top and squeeze. Reets let him, responding with the
traditional halfling greeting—a curt grunt and nod—and then waiting for the
silly-hearted suck-up’s true colors to shine through.
But that never happened. Old Sam greeted
everyone like that. Some he even hugged, pulling them in with both arms and
pounding them on the back.
Old Sam, he thought grimly, peering
down at the pale and wrinkled face. Good ole Sam.
In a voice that matched Reets’ expression,
Mums said, “He ruled well, did he not? Arn may have tamed the land and Fendly
may have built it and Galimose might have defended it, but it was old Sam
who…,” she trailed off, a long and rueful sigh escaping her lips, “…it was old
Sam who peopled it.”
On the other side of the bed, Godfry made
a dry and rasping noise with his throat. When Reets looked over, he caught the
old man smiling.
“But now,” Mums said, pointing at the dull
glow at the king’s throat, “his light leaves him, as did his royal protector.”
She gestured to the room. “The king’s own protector—that has never left his
side or the side of any king before
him—has forsaken our loving king, forsaken him not from spite or complacency,
but from simple resignation.
“For our good king is beyond the point of
saving. Not by war,” she announced, locking eyes with Reets, “not by men,”
she reiterated, turning to Bal. “Please remember that,” she said, turning to
Godfry, “because when it comes time to address the happenings and seek out a
course of action, you should be prepared for the eventuality that our land is
as sick as our king.”
She stepped back from the bed, silence
descending and candle lights dancing.
“But unlike kingdoms…,” Balthus wheezed,
“…kings have heirs.”
“Oh, I agree,” Mums said, “but Sam’s heirs
are not Sam, and they will not carry on as Sam, no more than Sam carried on as
his father.”
Wrinkling his face, Reets said, “Are yeh
sayin his heirs won’t fare so well? Cause we ah’ready know—”
Mums whirled on him. “I am not speaking of
heirs, Reetsle. I am speaking of land, the land that is waking up and
will soon replace the kingdom we know. I have this deep and unpleasant feeling
that this new land is going to burst from its cage like a wild beast—And
when that time comes,” she said, lumbering to the shuttered window opposite
the bed and indicating it with a thick and furry finger, “the kingdom we call
Jashandar will be no more.
“That kingdom will whither and die
while something dark and terrible rises in its stead. I am, of course, speaking
of the monster that Arn suppressed over an epoch ago, the monster which Sam’s ancestors
referred to as Drugana.”
Reets looked around at his fellow counselors, eager to see if they
looked as confused as he felt, but if Balthus were struggling with the titan’s
speech, he made no outward sign other than to lick his scaly lips. Godfry, on
the other hand, had slumped in his chair and was snoring at the ceiling.
Reets pulled the pipe from his gnarled
lips and poked the stem at her. “Tha’s a load of pig swill,” he said,
emphasizing pig swill with a stab of the pipe. “But even if it
weren’t, woman, yeh still din’t give us no course’a action.”
The titan stared at him. “I thought it was
self-evident,” she said, speaking in a tone that was somewhat cold and
heartless. “We leave.”
Reets mouthed the word, refusing to give
it power by speaking it aloud. Retreat—the titan’s cowardly answer for
practically everything—was the only profanity not allowed in the
Halfling Book of Curse Words, worse even than using a halfling’s full name.
Still wrestling with this, Reets heard
Godfry speaking near the bed, a low and muttering sound that sounded like it
was coming from the other side of the world. He turned to face him, still
reeling from the titan’s bizarre solution and only half-interested in what the
eldest of the counselors had to say. But as he lay eyes on local
representative, he found him still slouched in his chair and very much asleep.
A cold draft stole through the halfling as
he thought back to the voice. It hadn’t really sounded like Godfry now that he gave the voice some reflection. It
had sounded dull and ethereal, not unlike the whisper of a moan seeping from a
dream.
Part of that interpretation could have
been his atrocious halfling hearing—which was akin to wearing steel mugs tied
over both ears—but quality aside, there had been a voice at the bed,
because he could see the other two advisors moving steadily towards it, Mums
reaching the mattress in two massive strides and Balthus shuffling forward with
the soft caress of his slippers and the hard tap of his cane.
Tell me it weren’t him, Reets
thought, limping to the bed and hooking his fingers in the sheets. But as he
twisted his deformed neck over the blankets once more, he saw that it was
him. He knew this even before he heard his spooky voice a second time, even
before he saw his quivering lips trying to form the words.
He knew this because he could see the Raya
Amulet around the king’s neck and noticed the way it blazed with purple
light. But in case there was any doubt, he watched as the king wrestled his
mouth into place and spoke again his low and ghostly words:
“…it…”
“…is…”
“…time…”
