“I
am sooo proud of you,” Mums said, engulfing both scout and cat-thing in
a shaggy embrace. There were groans of protest from within—not to mention a
good deal of hissing—but the titan ignored these cries and continued to sway
with her cargo, rocking them in her arms. “Just look at you,” she said, “all
the way inside this time.”
The scout grunted and cat-thing spit and,
from the sound of them, Brine assumed they were both rather stunned by this
sudden display. Even so, Brine doubted they were any more stunned than he
was.
Muminofilous—despite her bestial size and
grisly appearance—was not a creature of the wild and, therefore, was not
apt to greet this man as Reets had greeted him, unless she and the council had grown
close to the scout over time. But even if she had, Brine still wasn’t sure that
explained what he was seeing.
Because if they’re so close to each
other, he wondered, why isn’t the scout reciprocating? Why is he disgruntled
over these affectionate displays?
Case in point, Mums had no more than set
the man down and the filthy fellow was stumbling back from her, showing no more
love for the titan than he had for the general or halfling. On a positive note,
the cat-thing did seem to have been subdued, but Brine did not believe this to
be a sign of affection.
From where the disciple stood crouched
behind his teacher, the animal looked as though it was suffering from partial
asphyxiation. The writhing and kicking had ceased and a new state of lethargy had
settled over the beast, leaving it to lie in the scout’s bleeding arms with
barely enough strength to glare at the titan.
Taking notice of the look, Mums said, “Is
your little friend not well?”
The scout shook his head.
“ee…ates-it…ere,” he said, speaking over something in his mouth.
Blinking her huge, brown eyes, Mums said,
“Was that, He hates it here?”
The scout frowned. “ot…ee,” he said,
glancing at his angry cargo. “ephs’…a-irl.”
“Oh, it’s a girl?”
The scout nodded that this was so and the
titan went on to ask a number of other superfluous questions, questions that
sent a mental monkey wrench slamming down into the spinning gears of Brine’s
theory.
If this scout visited the council on a
regular basis, then wouldn’t Mums have known the creature’s gender? And if this
precious little creature truly hated it here, wouldn’t the council have been
used to its violent display? And come to think of it—judging by the way Reets
had approached the man and by the questions Mums was asking—had they never seen
this horrid thing before?
It was possible the scout left the animal
outside when he delivered his reports, but Brine doubted it. He could tell by
the way the man was holding the creature that he cared immensely for her and,
for that matter, if he were going to leave the little monster outside, this
delicate occasion would have been the time to follow through.
So, for the council to act as though
they’d never seen her, the scout almost couldn’t be a regular emissary. And if
that were the case, then why did they insist on treating him in such an
intimate manner? Was it possible they knew him through someone el—
From over his shoulder, the answer to that
question came yelping up from behind: “Oh, baby! Baby! Honey! Oh, how are
yeh, baby? Are yeh okay? Do yeh need anythin? Yeh need me to do anythin?”
Brine turned to see Gariel Morlique
scampering across the room in direct route for the scout and, as had been the case
with the advisers, the warmth displayed between them was decidedly one-sided.
As the screeching woman bore down upon the man, arms reaching and tongue
waggling, the scout actually winced and drew away.
“mm…ine,” he said, moving arms and
shoulders so she could not take hold. “mm…ine.”
“But, baby, yeh know I don’t have to go
out tonight. I—I can stay with yeh, I can. An’ we can talk or take a walk or…or
whatever yeh want.”
“M...,” the scout said, “…Ine!”
“What…What’s that, honey? I can’t…,” she
wrinkled up her nose, grimacing at the bulge in his cheek. “What’s in your
mouth, Hon?”
Still bobbing up and down, still rubbing
the creature hidden in his arms, the scout brought his lips to the mug in his
hand and jettisoned a stream of black fluid.
“I said I’m fine.”
Gariel gawked at him. “You sure, baby?”
And when he said that he was, she said, “But, Sweetie, I can…I can help yeh. I
can take yeh home an’…an’ yeh know, talk an’ stuff.” She gave a nod at the word
stuff that caused the others in the circle to look at the floor or
ceiling, and even the scout, whose mouth had yet to fill with saliva, made it a
point not to comment.
Oblivious to the awkward silence around
her, Gariel shot a baffled look at the door in the rear of the room and said,
“Well, I…I jus thought you’d be upset, yeh know, bout goin’ in there. It ain’t
gona be fun, baby, yeh know it ain’t gona be fun.” She turned back around. “I
just thought, yeh know, when you was done we’d go home an’ talk or snuggle
or—or I can make yeh some…I’ll make whatever yeh want, yeh like soup, baby? I
can ma—”
Gariel Morlique—who until that point had
been leaning over the scout like a concerned mother hen—reared back as if
struck in the face, the care in her eyes quickly replaced with a squinting
abhorrence. “Uh…baby,” she said, trying to keep her voice from joining
the caustic ranks of her face, “why—why yeh holdin that thing?”
The scout glanced down at the frightened
creature in his arms.
Gariel said, “Why doan’ yeh put it down,
baby? Jus fer a spell, huh? Yeh doan’ wanna take it in with yeh, baby.
Not in there, yeh doan’.”
And again, the woman who’d once rescued
Brine from the bullies of his youth made another glance at the door in the back
of the room. Brine had seen the earlier look, as well as heard the earlier
reference, but he’d been so shocked at the time—by her casual reference to
carnal knowledge—that he completely failed to pay the comment much heed.
This time, however, he paid the reference
and glance ample heed. He even turned and searched the rear wall for
another door to which Gariel might have gestured, because surely she did not mean
the door Brine was to use. Surely, she had not implied this
muck-encrusted scout had news so urgent as to warrant a journey through that
door. But try as he might, he found nothing back there but a few dusty
decorations and a handful of chairs.
It was possible she’d made a mistake—Brine
had about as much respect for this woman’s perspicacity as he did for that of a
yipping dog—but none of the advisers had bothered correcting her. In fact, the
only one among them who seemed to share the disciple’s astonishment—the one now
giving the rear wall a similar look of concern—was the scout himself. When he finished, he took a
step back and closed his arms over his pet.
“Go where, now?” he asked, and then it was
the butcher’s daughter who donned a look of confusion, this one, Brine thought,
tinted with fear and worry and traces of panic.
Gariel reached out for the retreating
woodsman as if to answer his question with a caress, then seemed to remember
the vicious cargo in his arms and drew back her hand, turning to the advisers
and shaking her head. The scout, his own face wrinkling with growing alarm, was
darting his eyes from adviser to adviser as well, settling finally on the one
face that had brought him.
After making another generous contribution
to the mug, he said, “What’s she talkin bout, Serit?”
The general appeared to be turning gray as
he lowered his jaw to answer, the only sound emerging a repetitive, “I-I-I-I…,”
that only grew worse as all heads turned to watch the epileptic display.
Tilting her massive head forward, Mums
said, “You did tell him, didn’t you, Serit?”
“Well, yes, I told him,” Serit
declared, brushing at the medals beneath his mail as the titan’s protuberant
brown eyes bore steadily into him. “He wasn’t overly fond of the idea then
either,” he concluded.
“You told him what was expected once he
reached the castle,” she said doubtfully, “and you failed to take his mug
away?” She reached a shaggy hand for the receptacle. “I’m sorry, but a cup of
bodily secretion is not—”
“Eh, Mum,” Serit interrupted, raising one
gaunt finger and giving her a sheepish look. “Before we ventured into the
kitchen to fetch the cup, I’m afraid he was depositing his excess on the
castle floor.”
The titan stared at the thick, black
contents of the steel container, then at the strained expression on the scout’s
face. “You can keep the mug,” she said, grudgingly, “but if I were you, I would
strongly consider removing that mass from your jaw and leaving it and
the cup out here.”
“ow…um?” the scout asked, his speech
already thick with saliva.
“Because very soon,” Mums explained,
giving the general another accusatory glance, “Kowin will finish with his
scribing and you will take the healer’s place, at which point you might find it
useful if your tongue was not obstructed.”
The scout’s squinting eyes shot to the
door in the back of the room. He stared for a time, like a convict surveying
the entrance to his cell, then shook his head.
Mums cast another baleful look at the
general, watched as Serit shrugged helplessly back, and then turned to the
scout. “Listen,” she said, “I know that it won’t be pleasant for you in there
and I know you can imagine a whole host of other activities you would rather
pursue, but I also know,” she told him as sweetly as she could, “that
you are one of the most resilient young men I have ever known and that you will
survive.” She paused and made a face, possibly a smile. “And just remember that
we would not ask this of you if it were not ab—”
The rest of her message was lost as a loud
snap broke from behind them. Brine, as well as everyone else, turned to face
the door in the back of the room, all eyes watching as a second steely sound
popped in the air.
For a moment, nothing moved—the door and
its trim seeming to stop the sands of time—and then, with a rusty scream of
hinges and the ancient groan of wood, the rectangular barrier swung back into
the wall and darkness filled the void.
Brine dared not speak, nor breathe.
Something was moving in the shadows,
something squattish and black, its feet drowning in the hem of its black robes,
its hands swallowed by the sleeves. It waddled further from the gloom and Brine
thought he saw something squirm within the hollow of its cowl, something
pink-eyed and pale that he suddenly recognized as a face…a face that he knew.
It was the royal healer Mums had
referenced earlier, the man whose chamber door used to sing with the screams of
suffering animals and whose eating habits behind the stables sent a chill up Brine’s
spine.
There were, of course, other bizarre
traits about this pale little man—some regarding his sleeping habits, others
pertaining to the strange bulges in his robes—but none of them were on Brine’s
mind at the moment. What was on the disciple’s mind now was the way the
healer’s pink and beady eyes were narrowing on the scout.
“You,” the healer barked, jabbing
his colorless nail at the woodsman. “You comes, now.”
The scout didn’t move.
“I say you—Comes Now!”
The scout, in the screaming silence of the
room, leaned over his mug and, without taking his eyes from the healer, added
to its contents.
The healer had no answer for this. He
turned his twitching right eye on the advisers. “What wrong him?” he
said. “Purple most gone.”
Mums moved next to the defiant scout, made
to lay a hand on his shoulder, then thought better of it and let her shaggy paw
hover. She drew a bovine breath and searched her mind for an alternate means of
changing the scout’s stance.
“Listen,” she said, speaking to the scout
as she stared at the disciple. “It’s not like you’ll be going in alone. Brine’s
here,” she said, pointing to where the disciple stood crouched behind his
teacher.
The scout squinted at Brine as he had the
door in the rear of the room. Whoever this man was, he did not appear convinced
that the man with the ponytail was who the titan claimed. He shook his head at her.
“Doan’ look like Brine,” he said, mildly.
Mild
or not, though, Brine felt a flush of heat spreading across his face. Maybe it
was the fatigue he had accrued from his journey, or the fear of what lay in
wait for him in the shadows of the back room, but this repeated questioning of
his appearance by the rabble of this land—spooky shepherds, idiot guards,
deformed halflings—had finally left a very bad taste in his already soured
mouth, a taste he could not swallow.
Stepping from behind his teacher, Brine sneered
at the dirty scout. “Well, I am. I am,” he said, his head nodding maniacally,
“despite how I look, or what you think—or what anyone thinks—” he glared
at Reets, “I am Brine, I am, so…so who are you, then? Hmm? I just
want to know—Who do you think you are?”
But rather than the scout, it was the
titan who answered the disciple. She’d been closest at the time of Brine’s outburst
and had stepped forward in the event of an escalation. She stared at him for
quite some time and then said, in what Brine considered to be a somewhat embarrassed
tone, “This is Jashandar, Brine.” And when Brine couldn’t stop himself from
frowning, she added, “This is your brother.”