Lore of the Underlings: Episode 7 ~ Ho-man Holds Court Read online

  Lore of the Underlings: Episode 7 ~ Ho-man Holds Court

  Tales of tongues unknown

  Translated by John Klobucher

  (he wrote it too, but don’t tell anyone and spoil the fun)

  Copyright 2014 John Klobucher

  Smashwords Edition

  Visit John Klobucher’s author page at Smashwords.com

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  Cover art by John Klobucher

  Table of Contents

  Episode 7 ~ Ho-man Holds Court

  About the Author

  Episode 7 ~ Ho-man Holds Court

  “How can you tell if you’ve gone to hell?”

  John Cap groaned and tried again to pry his heavy eyelids open. Everything around him was red, not to mention sideways. And spinning.

  “Guess that answers that… pffft!”

  The young man spit out a mouthful of soot, a bitter powder he’d somehow inhaled. Flecks of it stuck to his tongue and lips. He found his face half buried in it.

  He struggled to lift his groggy head from the pillow of pale-gray, ghostly ash. His body rose but then fell back to bed in cinders of something recently burned and reduced to a fine, warm dust.

  Only now did John Cap hear the music. It was a twisted, jagged jig that droned and whined from an unseen band. The phantom sound raised the hair on his neck — yet it was merely accompaniment. The main act was something to be seen.

  With one more concerted effort, the stranger finally made his knees. He was less lucky clearing his sky-blue eyes of the bloodshot glaze that clouded them still. Blinking was no use at all. Then he found to his surprise that his hands were unbound, let loose at last. “Odd mistake for the guards to make,” the foreigner muttered to himself. He pressed a fist to each sore socket and rubbed both eyeballs long and hard.

  It worked, and there they were again…

  The hellion horde that had kid-napped John Cap encircled him still with weapons drawn. Yet here and now in this hallowed hall they seemed to have a higher mission. Some sacred deed. An ancient act.

  It was a twitchy ritual dance, the wheeling reel of souls entranced or all enthralled by power that a stranger must not understand. Round and round they ringed their guest in cold, concentric emptiness. They played ripples in the abyss — blood red, fluid, crimson-tied, fevered since they’d cast aside their shrouds of deathly black for masks of scary scarlet leather.

  Suddenly they came to a halt and chanted something sweet and tart:

  Break the siege bread

  Mete that meat

  Cut a head cheese

  Eat eat eat!

  May the Semperor

  Bless this feast

  The chamber burst into raucous cheering from somewhere behind the chorus line.

  “Hear hear!”

  “Bravo!”

  “Some thanks-giving!”

  In answer the dancers took a bow and shook their axes gleefully.

  “Bone appetite, lord judge and jury!”

  Then, duty done, they turned back to children and all ran giggling out to play.

  With the wee ones out of the way, John Cap had a whole new view and a moment or two to take it in… beginning with the thin beams of sunlight arrayed around him like bars of some prison. A jail for a man from a shadow land who’d broken out of prism. He counted seventeen of them.

  They poured down from the dome above, seventeen streams of the ethereal, only to spill upon the ground, the chamber’s base and earthly floor. As they passed through the heavy air they lit up the clouds of smoke like ghosts. Seventeen pale, ironic spawn from something born so pure.

  “Meat me, Peggy!”

  “Quench us, wench!”

  “Over here woman…”

  “More boar!”

  Voices from beyond the beams now claimed John Cap’s unwrapped attention. He bent an ear to listen in. He squinted to spot the source of them.

  “How many billit is that, my friend?”

  “I stopped counting after seven…”

  “If only they ranked us Guard by bones.”

  “Oodor-ull, you’d be number one!”

  The fool’s gold flicker of rich, oily lamplight painted a gallery of faces, portraits of Keep’s people young and old who were oddly spaced out in uneven rows. Some the stranger seemed to know from an earlier thrilling episode. Others were still a mystery to him, only a blur in the warm gilded glow.

  In either case, the noises they made grew louder and louder, filling his ears. Grunting, gulping, gnashing, guzzling — not to mention a belch or two. And, just maybe masked by those feeding sounds, a hint of sadder undertones...

  Then men began singing and clanged their big mugglets in one great crescendo that nearly hurt.

  On top of it all, John Cap’s stomach growled from the smells of the guardsmen’s hearty feast. The young man had not eaten in days, but for that bite at Eela’s fruit. He was smart enough not to expect food now. No one threw him even a crumb. In fact, they just ignored him.

  And yet drops of sweat had started to bead up on the stranger’s suntanned forehead, ready to drip from his rugged brow. “Who the devil turned up the heat?” he wondered, whistling long and low. As he did, the liquid rolled down his cheek till the salty wet met his handsome lip. He seemed to savor the taste of it. Something familiar… human…

  That’s when he noticed a score of torches around the perimeter of the room. They flamed and flared as if in anger — warning, foreshadowing what was to come. They hissed like an upset nest of vipers, telling all in serpent’s tongue.

  The fire had John Cap hypnotized. He froze and stared at it licking the air, fanned by an ire that burned somewhere near yet deep deep down in the heart of darkness.

  “Name and address…” asked a voice. It was plain as day and very close.

  A gangly man with pockmarked skin stood over the still-kneeling stranger. He held a leafy ledger in hand and a sharp quilled stylus poised to write.

  The query took John Cap by surprise. “Huh?” he started. “Sorry… What?”

  The quizzical fellow repeated himself and offered up a patient smile, apparently sensing his subject’s confusion.

  “For the record,” he explained. “Just the standard questionnaire.”

  The young man replied with a half-hearted nod as if unsure he understood. “Okay. In that case, I’m John Cap and I come from…” He hesitated. “Elsewhere.”

  “Tom Cat — I like the sound of that. But I don’t have a clue how to spell it.” The man scratched his head and scrawled something down. “Well… close enough I guess,” he laughed. “And this land of Elvesware, is it far?”

  John Cap shrugged his big, broad shoulders. “Hard to say, mister. Yes and no. I just know for sure you can’t get there from here.”

  The thin man wrote some more in his notebook, etching fine lines on its colorful leaves. Each rune he made bled a blood-like sap that left a trail of red behind.

  “Hmmm.” He stopped. “There’s no line for land. You’re the first foreigner that we’ve had.

  “Wish I’d brought the long form…”

  He muttered a moment, tapping his head with the non-business end of his pointy pen. He seeme
d to be debating something. John Cap used the pause to study him, a fellow of roughly thirty years with eyes of gold though a pasty complexion. His hair was a tale of two citizens too. In front it sprung from his scalp like scrubgrass, all short spikey tufts nearly grazed to the ground. The back he wore long as a chevox tail; it fell across his narrow shoulders down to the blades in silky brown.

  Yet he had but a wisp of what you’d call a beard — an odd blond goatee almost too light to notice.

  At last the questioner took a glance at the shadowed fore door of the tent. He suddenly looked a little anxious. “Anyway, we’d better carry on. It won’t be long before the fun.”

  “Um, before we do that,” piped up John Cap, who now kneeled knightly upon one knee, “I’d just like to know…”

  “Last-meal menu? That’s page three. You can choose billit or billit-free.”

  “Well…”

  “Funeral pyre options and fees? Our new no-smoking policy?”

  “Well, actually, no, if that’s okay. I was just hoping to catch your name… and maybe some explanation…”

  The penman leaned in and winked at him. “There’s not much time,” he whispered. “But I’ll tell what I can, Tom Cat my friend.”

  The young man grinned, opting not to correct him. This new pet name was the least of his problems.

  Then without warning a half-gnawed boar rib beaned the scribe off his oblong noggin.

  “Ho-man!” bellowed one of the Guard, “why has this hearing not begun? Who dares delay us, the core of our war men?!”

  Ho-man felt for the dull red welt that was starting to form above his ear. “Sorry about that, Xyzor-ull sir, but we need the grand inquisitor. Just stepped out for a moment or two. He’s bound to be back fairly soon.”

  “The grand… You should have said… Never mind. Let him take his treasured time.”

  When the Guard had finished, Ho-man bowed and turned back to the pre-tried teen. “So, old bean, as I was saying…” He squatted down on the sooty ground, ready to do some spilling.

  “As you might have heard from our honored Guard, these days most folk call me Ho-man, though that is not my given name. For I was the first born of this oasis and honored as Homeboy, my claim to fame. Yet sadly my surname was also reset on that sweet and bitter summer’s day… the day when my mum died birthing me. Since my dad had already passed in The Crossing, another family who took pity adopted this half-blessed, double-crossed orphan. That’s how I joined the Havvum clan.”

  Ho-man wiped a tear from his eye with the backside of his prose-stained hand.

  “And they raised me well, in the Treasured way. Made me what I am today,” he chirped in his usual chipper voice. “Record keeper of our Keep and clerk of the Treasuror’s court, of course!”

  John Cap appeared to be lost for words. Luckily the clerk found more.

  “Oh, and if I forgot to mention — I’m grateful to get such a kind kind of question.”

  At that Homeboy Havvum reopened his notebook and drew what looked like a happy face. Then he flipped to a mark on a far-flung page.

  “We’re required by law to state your age.”

  The young man readily gave his answer but something bright distracted him. “Seven…” he turned to take it in, “…teen.” It was white and blinding. Then…

  “Ogdog?!” He uttered the name in wonder underneath his bated breath. “Sure glad to see you here… I guess…”

  There bathed in beams at the chamber’s dead center and all aglow like an omen of death, his comrade the battle-hardened changeling stuck up from the blackened earth. He was still in the form of a sword of tusk — a long, broad alabaster blade — that someone had made a point of thrusting deep deep down through the floor’s scorched crust. In anger, by the looks of it.

  Sight of that mock but lifelike weapon made him ponder even more.

  “What exactly am I here for?”

  But Ho-man was once again watching the door and did not even hear the query.

  The visitor couldn’t help but notice how this soul differed from the rest. Not your average Sylander. He had a style the others missed.

  It began with his mug, which all but beamed despite a mouthful of tea-stained teeth and the ironwood fillings that capped them off. Smiles were hard to come by here, often even frowned upon. A grin like this one’s was uncommon, so happy-go-lucky and ear-to-ear. And speaking of ears, his two appeared to be dressed for anything but a hearing — courting disaster you might say — for each one wore a ring of fire according to the naked eye. In fact it was merely a pair of flameworms, pets he liked to keep close by. Not really jewelry but eye-catching still… for a modern family guy. At least his clothes had the same design and hemlines as the other folk’s, though Ho-man’s were fashioned in colors and patterns with an extra flash of magic. Call it a flair for the dramatic. Or maybe a flare that bared his heart. The ensemble surely made a statement, intentional or not.

  John Cap cleared his arid throat and finally got the man’s attention.

  “Sorry, Tom Cat… Come again?”

  “What is all of this about?”

  The clerk reached into his right hip pocket and pulled out a rolled up scroll of parchment. He spread it flat and read a bit. “Docket says Keep versus male teen, leaver — if that helps to clear things up.”

  “Not exactly,” smirked John Cap. “I thought my crime was coming here.”

  Ho-man laughed and shook his head. “No, no silly! The leaver’s another. And just what the judge plans for you… I’ve no clue.”

  John Cap took the news in stride, looking not all that surprised. He nodded toward the audience.

  “How ‘bout a rundown of this crowd — anyone I should know… or avoid?”

  “Sure,” said the notary. “Good idea. Let’s start with those gentlemen over there.” Ho-man indicated the Guard. “By now you might recognize some of them.”

  They were eleven in a row, right up front and sitting low to the ground on boulders smooth and cold of hard yet hollow pillowstone. A half-ring of chieftains weighing in on rocks light as feathers and granite-strong. Not the most comfortable kind of cushions but seating befitting these hardened men.

  John Cap studied their colorful armor and noticed the rainbow that they made. “Yup — the riders from the field. Boy they were fast. Flew in from nowhere. Had us corralled before we knew it…”

  Just then he spotted a dark cloud among them, a brooding black hole in their midst.

  There was no mistaking this nemesis.

  “Oh man, not that one again. My friends and I were just pitted against him and it wasn’t any fun.”

  Yet there was something funny about him, sitting so sullen and so very still. Eschewing the billit. Forgoing the ale.

  “That’s not the usual Syar-ull.”

  The words were Ho-man’s but carefully muffled — he dared not be overheard. A whisper weak, barely audible, as if echoed from beyond. “Just between you and me, my friend, I’d like a peek behind that cowl.”

  Only now did John Cap catch the fact that each of the Guard had been unmasked, with just one exception. He saw in their faces a range of ages but all were steely-eyed rock-hard men, warriors trained to break not bend.

  The stranger asked a dangerous question. “What’s the black Guard hiding from?”

  “Whoa!” cautioned Ho-man, “don’t go there. It’s no time to poke the bear…”

  The word keeper changed the topic and quick.

  “When you’re dealing with these soldiers you’ve got to know their pecking order. Fortunately there’s a rule of thumb. Just remember this nursery rhyme:

  Sing a song of Syland

  Our isle of blood and lore,

  Two and twenty sentries

  Guard her ‘syr’ to shore

  If you last that first trial

  You’ll face eleven more;

  Syar and his ‘ull’ patrol

  The heartless at our core

  Ring around the motherland!

&n
bsp; Long live the Semperor!

  The foreigner looked a tad unsure so Ho-man expounded further still.

  “These Guard set on stone are the ultimate kind and lords of this island’s inner ring — sectors around the Wild we’re in and most protected from the world. They represent an order of knights that the Semperors formed in days of old. A royal force of loyal men, picked by hand from across the land and sharpened, honed like an ironwood pike. Those early kings deployed the Guard to bring rule to a lawless time, ending the clan wars at long last, imposing a harsh but enduring peace. And in the wake of their bloody reign was born our sacred nation…”

  John Cap tried to be diplomatic. “And what a nation. It’s unique.”

  Ho-man nodded and went on. “These days, in our Keep at least, Guard of the ull fill a special role by serving the Treasuror as his council — a corps of advisors and sounding board. They tend to meet in this same tent but always in secret, at his whim. Such as the session this very morn. Even I got the boot for most of it.”

  The clerk now looked from the armored men and to the row that loomed behind them.

  “Then again, I shouldn’t complain. I do get to witness once per moon when they convene our parliament, a body called the House of Keep. In fact it’s my task to record word for word every motion, each speech that’s made or heard… Not that the Treasuror pays any heed… But you can bet there’ll be debate — heavy, hot, and plenty of it.” Ho-man chuckled to himself. “Fireworks and flying fur. Quite the show when they get going (even if it signifies nothing).”

  John Cap stopped him. “Which ‘they’ do you mean?”

  “You’re staring at them,” answered Ho-man. “Beyond this squadron, the eldest of elders, solons and doyens who’ve come to observe…”

  A handful of well-dressed elder statesmen appeared to have risen up from nowhere, as if conjured in thin air. On closer inspection they’d been set in high chairs, lofty seating carved with care at the pinnacle of furniture making. Such a perch made them seem nearly regal, rare men and women looking down on the lowly groundlings surrounding them.