Ch: 131 Eyes Without A Face
After a tragically short nap and cuddle, the duo wandered back downstairs, looking refreshed.
When they came down for dinner, Dannyl, Tallum, Liam and Ivy were working on something very fast and complex, while Tawny sat at the Pianoforte and blushed furiously.
Dannyl’s fingers were flying, scorching up and down the neck, drawing ecstatic wails from his instrument.
“Wow! You guys are wild… where did you hear ‘Misirlou’?” He wondered aloud. “Dick Dale, he’s awesome. Are you guys all dreaming up old music, like Liam does sometimes?”
“No, we’ve all heard this, a few times.” Ivy giggled from behind her drums. “Tawny, go tell Becky she can bring the kids back in now.”
“Really, we should be adults about this and…” Liam kissed Tawny, silencing her, mid complaint.
He pulled her off into the garden, laughing and saying: “Just some good clean fun… besides, you want to know what makes him…” Liam pantomimed a furious and very suggestive air guitar for a moment.
For some reason, Tawny blushed the deep, blazing red of molten gold and dragged her man away. “Becky… Kids, the music is over…” She called into the twilit garden.
“Uhh, oh, ok.” Gary provided his usual heaping helping of intellectual leavening to the conversational batter. The others left him staring helplessly as the discussion sank and fell flat.
Shai flopped onto the sofa beside Otho the dog and kicked her feet up, looking at peace with the world as Becky and the kids joined her. Gary set about serving dinner, since he was too amped up to sit still.
Ivy, Liam, Dannyl and strangely enough, Herlick, Khan and Luna, were all clustered together in the far corner of the bar, deep in some musical discussion.
Dannyl and Liam had their instruments out, playing short sections of the classic they had been working on.
It was a special piece to him, improvising in and around the main theme to ‘Misirlou’ on a new instrument was his personal baseline for competency, it demanded absolute certainty, you can’t be timid on that one… He used that trick in other venues as well. He hadn’t gotten there on the shamisen yet and not by a mile with the trumpet. He blushed a little, thinking on that track.
Dinner was pretty much set up and cooking, he only needed to stir the cream of mushroom soup occasionally and watch the bread in the oven. He listened to their debate and experimental riffs idly, not really paying attention, until Ivy stood up.
“Screw it, I’m just gonna ask.”
“I’m in too!” Dannyl announced, joining her as she strode into the kitchen with a purposeful tread and a serious look on her face. The rest followed along, crowding in, at and behind the counter.
“Alright minstrel boy… dish. What is it that makes…” Ivy jerked her thumb at Dannyl, who raised his guitar and shredded the third measure of wildly ecstatic, yet structured music. “...happen when you and Shai…” Dannyl played it again, with a huge grin.
“What are you guys talking about?” He demanded, but he was blushing furiously and looking for an escape route.
Becky had enough, she got up from her place by the fire, took Shai by the hand and admonished the kids firmly, to stay put. She dragged her sister into the conversation in the kitchen with a weary and reluctant sigh.
“Shut up you goons, this is grownup family business.” She barked in full High Priestess style, before turning on the confused duo. “Gary, Shai… when you two go upstairs to ‘discuss matters’ or ‘scold Gary’, or when you ‘go fishing’... sometimes, when you’re tired… not always, but pretty often…”
She was blushing now, turning a shade of rich maroon under her dark cheeks. Finally she blurted it out, before Ivy’s giggling could break her will.
“When you two have sex, the instruments in the house play music, usually that song… it’s pretty intense. Pretty… sexually charged.” She said, sagging in relief when she was done.
“Gods, it’s exhausting, when it happens during the day, I have to take the kids out to play, cause… yikes.”
Somehow, the upper regions of Gary’s face went chalk white, everything above his lower eyelids took on a deathly pallor. The rest, all the way down to the collar of his shirt, went red, then purple, before settling back on scarlet.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, young lady.” He said, very precisely, while flopsweat gathered on his brow.
Shai laughed, oh how she laughed… then stopped. “Gary… play that bit o music fer me.” She said, dangerously. When he produced his guitar, she stopped him. “Nae… The flute, boy, play it on the recorder.”
“I uhh… I mean, it’s, kinda…” He stammered. “Now that I know, I can keep it from happening again… sorry guys.” He muttered in the deepest depths of shame.
“The recorder… Is that it?” Ivy asked, smiling wide. “Hey lover… fancy learning to play the flute? Too bad, you’re learning it no matter what.” She never even gave the big guy a chance to answer, he just grinned and seemed eager.
Shai kissed her mortified boy, on those devilish lips. “Tis the tongue lad, wicked quick… I recognise the tune ye do play, now I’ve heard it properly, rather than just felt it…” She swayed her hips at him dangerously, setting off her sweet chimes.
“I’ve a mind tae learn those tricks, fer meself.” Shai whispered in his ear, while he took the bread from the oven. He nearly dropped the hot tray of loaves, but her boy was smiling. He was even more flushed and sweaty now, but the food made it to the table anyway.
“Chocolate cake fer dessert, then off to bed… Sweet Shai wants a music lesson.”
“You guys are just awful.” Becky sighed happily.
#
“Of course we knew, Thirp is too polite to say anything unasked, I just enjoyed the anticipation of this great day!” Marduk lounged in a hammock and swayed with mirth.
“The colors you turned… how did you do that half and half thing, was it low blood pressure and an adrenaline overdose? Impressive. I thought you might faint…”
Chuckles The Clown from Mesopotamia went on and on. He enjoyed it so much, it took a while for him to notice his hammock had sewn itself closed, cocooning him in a snug web. A silken trap, which quickly engulfed his head, silencing him.
Gary left the struggling deity there, just for a while. Thirp would surely let him out, later.
“Hey! Brigid! Can we talk?” He called to the gleaming entity, lingering on his margins. She had settled in the back of his new orchard, on a little spit of land dangling over the never. The boy hopped the picket fence, feeling fine and trotted over to her homey little forge.
“What troubles you…” She hesitated, lingering there, uncertainty stilling her hammer.
“Gary, or you can call me a Fool, most folks do.” He hopped up to sit on her workbench, defiling its sacred plane with his nethers.
“Very well, Fool of a Gary. Are you comfy, do you desire a pillow?” She demanded gently, with a hint of a smile.
“I’m actually, the pillow king.” He said smugly, as a regal cushion of scarlet and gold damask appeared beneath his bottom. Tassels of spun silver and gold jingled softly, as tinkling bells at the ends chimed and rang a merry song of his majesty’s good graces.
“Morrigan is torn on you boy, she’s of more than three minds at least. Sometimes I wonder whether she hopes you live to a ripe old age, or kick your last in a ditch tomorrow…” She gave him a gentle, motherly smile.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“For me, I look forward to watching your antics for a good long while. Now get your arse off my workbench, you undead filth and tell me what you are after.”
“I can respect that, what I have at the moment is a moral, ethical and artisanal dilemma.” He hopped down and vanished his pillow. “There’s this ghost of a dead Hollow One…”
“Wait, one died?” when? What killed it?” She demanded quickly. “I need the exact circumstances…”
“Chill, I caught one a few weeks ago, I finally learned how to kill it. Now I have its shade in a bucket back home. I need to figure out a way to communicate with something so alien.”
“You caught one…” She said quietly. “You did for the Skrigg as well, yes? I smell the end of some other demon on you too. Morrigan may have given you a tool with greater utility than she knows.” She stepped closer, looking him up and down as though seeing him for the first time.
“Perhaps I have erred with my gifts as well, though in a very different way. My gift serves you well now, remember Fool, my gifts are not shackles, nor are they immutable, should a need arise. I have other gifts to give, to the worthy.”
She sketched a quick diagram and handed it to him, spelt out in arcane runes on a scroll, with very direct instructions.
“This calls for a three pound ingot of ‘mortal iron’, what’s that?” He asked, puzzling over the scroll.
“The blood of humans and most animals… it contains iron, that is your answer. Extract and refine your materials, follow the instructions. You have a quantity of it already in your possession.” She spoke with growing distaste, and dwindling patience.
“Wait, I have some? I don’t remember doing any… blood stuff. I’m pretty sure I would remember that.” Gary grumbled softly.
“Your big friend is quite crafty; we should meet, he and I. He collected the weapons and tools of the fallen redcaps after your battle. Filthy buggers, they are the main producers of mortal iron, it is a result of their diet. Gnomes are vegetarians by nature, redcaps fancy themselves carnivores…” The radiant, blazing entity flared up a little, clearly unhappy with the topic.
“The discomfort they feel after every ‘meal’ is a tiny vengeance, wrought by their victims; even mortal iron is toxic to the fae… Their forges smell abominable, I have no part in their craft.” She waved in dismissal. “You should feel awful, forcing me to speak of such things. Be on your way, Fool.”
“I really feel like I should have been taking notes there.” Gary muttered as he walked back, confused and somehow less certain than before asking for advice.
#
Down in the shop, way before dawn, Gary found it; a basket of rusty knives, sickles, hammers and other makeshift weapons. Tucked near a bin of normal scrap iron and craft waste, awaiting the smelter, none of the objects were even close to being worth keeping. They were all ill crafted and lumpy, coated with a light powdering of rust and dark black underneath. He touched one and got a response immediately.
Knife, butcher, unranked. quality, low/broken. Resource, material component.
Mortal Iron knife, This ‘item’ was forged from the excreta of a clan of redcaps, this object is highly suspect, morally, ethically and hygienically.
Not telling the gang, especially Tallum and Ivy, what the knives were made of was going to be difficult. Almost as tough as actually handling the abominable things. It took a while to smelt them down in a conjured furnace, untainted by common iron.
It huffed and chuffed on the illforged stuff, blasting impurities best left unpondered, into his extractor hood. His waste barrel of vile scum and klinkers, skimmed from the surface, was not encouraging either.
He managed the pour solo, since it was small, filling his preheated mold with blazing, sputtering iron. The rest he poured into a long bar mold, conjured in clay. A half hour later, he cracked the mold with a bronze hammer and prybar, splitting it neatly at the seam.
An oval of iron, contoured roughly into a human head clattered to the workbench, along with a few dozen other small objects. They fell free, clean of any residue, as his conjured mold vanished along with the tools. He just loved cracking them open, rather than dismissing the whole thing.
With a set of bronze tongs, he dropped the stuff into a bed of fresh, dry sand to cool.
When Shai came down, only a faint whiff of something noxious remained, even that blew away as the breeze came up with sunrise.
“What be this ye craft there? Tis odd tae see thee working iron…” She took a closer look and backed away carefully. “I mislike that, very much I do mislike it.”
“The mask? Yeah it’s pretty messed up. If I want it to talk, I have to give it a face, it can’t have mine.” He grumbled.
No eyes stared from the empty sockets of the heavy sculpture. It had features that were both exaggerated and unremarkable, more a suggestion of a face than a recognisable visage.
“Creepy, lad. Very creepy.” She shuddered a little, facing the gaze of that empty, inhuman thing.
“That’s just the base of the thing, I’m still working on the rest.” He locked the uncanny object in a cupboard with the other nasties he wanted the kids kept away from, like the rest of Tallum’s iron scrap or, crap.
“Now this thing… I don’t even know why I made it. It just felt like I should… it feels like somebody was whispering in my ear while I was working. Morrigan, I suspect.”
It was a simple, sturdy cudgel of turned ironwood, stained black with some faintly wet looking substance. The comfortable grip ended in the head and viciously fanged, open mouth of a pit viper, forged in lifelike detail of black iron.
The rest of the beast wound sinuously up the length of the weapon. It spiraled lazily up from the grip, with tight, iron coils completely enclosing the ‘sweet spot’ in scaly metal. Its pointed tail emerged from the blunt head of the thing as a vicious spike.
Every scale and coil, every rippling undulating length of the serpent seemed ready to leap out and attack. As to whether it wished the life of its wielder, or their foe was an open question.
Sparkling, black and green pearl eyes seemed to shift and blink in disquieting, predatory ways. Its fangs were burnished, bright and silvered. Only tiny inscriptions marred the gleaming, pointed teeth, waiting to plunge into the flesh of any who sought to use the weapon. Certainly no one could hold the thing, without getting those needle teeth in their wrist.
This Mortal Coil, enchanted weapon, club/cudgel/bludgeon Incomplete, null/null/null.
“Ware my bite, it is death. Ware my strike, death is a mercy.”
“Gods boy, I’d nae touch that wicked thing, but tis a work of terrible craft. An ye did challenge in craftmoot wi such works, yer journeyman’s apron would be thine. Now hide that ere the children see it.” She sighed deeply.
“I kinnae mislike the darkness in thee, for tis thine… but I would see less of it. Certainly I should nae wish tae see such a weapon. Tis evil.”
“No babe, it’s just a weapon… made from evil parts and bad intentions…” He paused to contemplate the disturbing thing.
“You’re right, evil.” He put it in a heavy leather case and tucked it away, in the farthest corners of his backside.
“Aye, that be the way of it… I would that we ne’er see aught of that again…”
“I’ve heard of this craftmoot thing.” He cleverly shifted the subject subtly and with deft skill. “I can challenge the temple to win legitimacy with the guild?” He carried on babbling, while tidying up his workbench and dismissing the rest of his conjured tools.
“Tis a meeting called in Craft temple, an two impartial masters of any craft agree, there be a sacred trial by crafts.” She whispered in awe. “Tis nae been done in many long years in Wheatford. All manner of disputes were once settled under Craftlaw, wi cunning hands an keen minds.”
“Good to know…” He murmured thoughtfully. “It’s been too busy to worry about Craft, I reckoned I’d solve that after my upcoming slave auction.” He snorted in derision. “Until I know where I’m winding up, nobody gets anything. Right now, I have a handy excuse for any job I don’t wanna do. Suits me.”
“Indolent layabout… Ye’ll nae get one coin tae rub ‘gainst another wi that thinking.” She sassed, jingling her bracelet of silver bank tokens at him as, together they climbed the stairs into another foggy morning.
They headed for their favorite spot by the fireplace for a good cuddle in the early morning quiet.
Tallum and Dannyl were on breakfast duty today, so the pair lounged by the fire, waiting for Becky and the kids to come downstairs.
“We never did get to a bank…” He mumbled as he fished his coin pouch out, weighing the wash leather bag on his palm. “Pretty grim.” He pawed it open and did a little digging. “Ugh, ‘bout two and a half bronze marks in loose change, mostly copper bits.”
“What of the big bag, lad?” She nudged him a few times with a pointy elbow, when he didn’t move quick enough to suit her. It was pretty disappointing, when the sack finally appeared. He dropped the sad, deflated thing on the sofa between them and opened it up.
“I’ve still got two of those big silver ones…” He muttered into the mostly empty sack.
A small pool of quarter, half dollar sized and one ounce bronze coins, a few big, fat, three ounce gold moons and a school of smaller marks and halves snuggled with the two huge, six ounce silver ingots.
“Boy, ye are still madly wealthy, but where did it all go? I dinnae…” Slowly, her brows furrowed into a glare. “Ye did give a great heap of coin tae Otho… fer some scheme or plot, or I miss my guess by a mile.”
“Uhh, huh. Esperanza too, I’ve got a bunch of things on the boil. I may have hired the Stonesmiths for a little work back home, too.” He smiled in a very predatory way, the smile he reserved for nobles he planned to vex.
“Before I finish, I’m gonna piss a lot of people off... I wanna get as much good stuff done on the front end as I can.”
“Ye are nae ‘finished’ til I let thee be finished, boy. Tis yer back end I’ll keep an eye on, fer now. Mayhap I’ll hire thee, fer day labor. Frae time tae time, on the cheap.”
He plumped his coin pouch up with a couple bronze halves, somehow the big bag seemed much lighter, for only removing one ounce.
#
At breakfast, all eyes turned to Gary, expectantly. “Are we traveling today? Or will you be sprawling about naked on the lawn again?” Liam asked with a grin.
“Harr dee harrrr harr… will everybody that killed two immortal beings this week, please raise their hand?” He demanded, while lifting his right arm high. “Amy… put your hand down.” He grumbled happily.
“I didn’t wan you ta feel like a weirdo...” She giggled.
“Anyway, I’m good now, really good.” He turned to the duke and his guards. “Jules, are you traveling with us? Plenty of room if you guys wanna.”
“Excellent, Alex and the others will no doubt catch us up on the road. He moves his troops quickly, that man.” Julius nodded to his people with a smile. The guards saluted, fist over heart and excused themselves, leaving big sir Pennryn as the duke’s lifeguard.
“They should have their gear packed and mounts ready soon. We can depart whenever you get…” He waved his hands all around. “...all this ready.” The duke stood, so he and Pennryn could trade off snugging each other’s armor for travel.
“I hope we don’t slow you down too much, we’d feel awful.” Gary seemed amused, as he spoke, so did the rest, even the little ones. The horses seemed to be enjoying a private joke as well.
“I’m sure it will be fine, I often jest with Philip, that things run more smoothly when I’m out of town hunting… He always smiles, but never laughs when I joke that way, I wonder why.” Julius seemed pensive for a moment, then shook it off.
“No matter, a leisurely ride through the countryside is a fine way to spend early spring days…”
While the duke expounded on the virtues of casual travel, the inn rapidly emptied of people.
“Your grace… all the others are outside, waiting.” Pennryn spoke very quietly, but Julius was unaccustomed to being interrupted, so it was super effective.
“...exercised, well and properly shod horses, a troop should be able to cover twenty five miles in a day and remain fit for action… What?”
The duke’s mouth stumbled to a halt, mid lecture, as he looked around and found… no one. Just himself and his guards, who were still packing in the barracks room and his chamber.
“They didn’t even wash the dishes…” Mai grumbled when she looked over the tidy inn, with a sink full of cruddy plates, cups and bowls.
“I swear I saw one of the older kids throwing trash in the pool.” Carrick mumbled. “This place is mad, is it strange that they are slovenly?”
The whole mad crew was outside, cinching the last few straps and ties on their mounts, ready to go and waiting expectantly.
#