Book 3: Sound And Fury
Ch: 3 A Fool Thinks Himself To Be Wise
Lady Trelawny Belen-Kinnis, countess of Foresthome, had an odd expression on her golden, beautiful face. Arrayed in her formal robes of Dana’s cult of Healers, she glared at her prisoners from behind her lace veil with a cold anger hidden behind those soft and doe-like, hazel golden eyes.
“Heidi and Ambrose, no surnames… You claim to be priests of the Light.” Her teeth clicked quietly, as though the golden robed, golden priestess had bitten off that last sentence. “You are most assuredly not Contracted members of that spirit’s clergy… Would you like to try again?”
“It’s true, my lady…” Ambrose insisted weakly, as his stomach began a long fall toward his shoes, a sensation that went on and on, as the priestess turned to go.
“Those who captured you offered to take you back into their care, once they return from their mission…” She stroked her smooth, golden chin and sighed softly, as she gazed around the clean and windowless cells.
“I think that might be for the best, considering your intransigence. My faith forbids most forms of… Well, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.” She smiled behind her scrap of delicate spidersilk lace and shook her head in pity.
From behind the beautiful vision in shimmering golden linen and silk, a rough voice spoke. “My lady… turning them over to the Ward clan is little better than torturing them yourself.”
A wide, burly and hideously ugly man stepped into the light from the cell doors, clad in simple well worn armor of monster leather and steel brigantine. The man’s cold, hard eyes seemed to almost hold a little pity for the prisoners, despite gazing from a scarred and battered face of a street brawler. He had a wickedly flanged mace at his hip, which also looked well used.
“Captain Mallus, I’ll thank you to remember your place.” She snapped at her vassal. “Whatever befalls these poor souls will be none of my doing.” She smiled warmly at the two prisoners, behind their barred cell doors. “They mentioned something about handing you over to someone named ‘Ace, the Demon King of the Turtle Islands’. The fellow sounds a bit awful, but that is not my problem to manage.”
“Even so, my lady…” The scarred and hideous warrior insisted meekly.
“Oh, very well… You are too soft hearted for this work, Mallus.” She chided her ugly vassal gently. “You have until my husband returns from his mission to decide whether to be frank with me.
“He leads the expedition your force attacked with…” She unrolled a small scroll and perused it for a moment, as if to refresh her memory. A few scant seconds later, her nearly hidden lips compressed into a thin frown of displeasure at what she saw on the page.
“Smoked, salted and armored zombies? Oh dear, he really despises necromancers of all types, especially those that try to murder his friends and family. Are you sure you don’t have anything to tell me?”
A few minutes of awkward silence later, the priestess shook her head in pity. “So be it.” Her voice still thrummed with warmth and compassion, but now it held a keen and bitter edge as well.
“Tonight, you will be taken from these cells and brought to the local temple complex. There you will be examined before the clerics of the Light and your Contracts shall be assayed. Only then will we decide what to do with you.”
Heavy doors closed off the barred cell block, leaving the prisoners alone in their blank, sterile, well lit and coldly comfortable cells.
“I think I went too far, Mallus...” Tawny sighed, as they walked up the stairs to the palace together.
“No, my lady, you struck just the right tone. Let them stew for a while and we’ll get results; I can smell the stench of fear, it’s in their bones.” He grinned, showing his wide, square teeth in a feral smile. “The truth will come out, one way or another.”
“My husband is going to have a lot of explaining to do…” The countess grumbled sourly as they emerged in the bustling, lively palace, far above the cells.
#
“I dunno…” Wilf grumbled as they pedaled up the mountain in a loose formation. “I don’t like leaving those… people with aunty Tawny. She’s kinda a softie.”
“Sure, buddy…” Dannyl sighed. “She’s as soft and gentle as can be; but you’ve never seen the iron fist hidden in her kid gloves. Tawny and your mother are more similar than you think; aside from the flashing swords and fists like hammers.”
Sweaty and nicely warmed up by the bright summer day, the kids made good time. The ride back was long, but without any normal bikes in the formation, they made the seven miles or so back to the hike-a-bike section of the trail in slightly more than an hour.
The sun and wind had dried much of the trail, leaving only a few slick, muddy sections to slog over on the way back to the void maw.
Afternoon was just stretching out its first long fingers of shadow to caress the eastern side of the valley, when the kids entered the cave between worlds and vanished into the endless gulfs of nothing that lay beyond.
“All right, stay close…” Dannyl urged the team of youngsters, as they slipped into the unknowable ether.
“Uh… That weird red nebula is still there…” Benny muttered softly as they walked down nothing at all, toward a whole lot more nothing whatsoever.
“Don’t worry about the Devourer of Souls… They’re actually really sweet.” The compact ginger Adventurer sighed fondly at the ominous cloud with the super suspicious name.
“Right, Wilf?” He asked with a wink at the deeply embarrassed lad in red armor.
“I’m not supposed to talk about it…” He mumbled, drawing his snarling red demon menpo up to cover his face.
The rest of the journey took little time, but the awkward silence made it drag on and on for what seemed like hours. All the way down the volcano and into the house they rode, in a tight and wary formation, since there was still the possibility of stray hostiles on the island. They kept a wary eye out for trouble, until Mariah spotted them and launched herself up the slope to greet the returning kids and ‘escort’ them home to the inn by the sea.
The wrecked slave galley had been hauled off and beached on the other side of the lagoon, freeing the trapped and entangled smaller vessels. The family boats seemed to be mostly repaired, while Ace’s little sloop still lacked a mast and a portion of its superstructure’s roof.
“Oh, good!” Amy gasped with relief as they neared the compound. “We might get some sailing in yet!”
“Priorities, Ames...” Rio sighed weakly, knowing in his heart, he was running face first at a brick wall.
#
Everyone met up in the common room of the main house, gathering by the fire, since that was the only indoor space that could accommodate the group. That was also where Gary was laid out on a cot, still out cold, but now simply asleep, watched over at all times by Kree, the sugar wasp princess.
Mariah shot down the chimney in a shower of harmless, illusory sparks and buzzed in a wide circle among the rafters, while Amy and her crew shed their sweaty riding gear for comfy robes and slippers in the foyer.
“They’re back!” She chattered excitedly at the gathered family.
The flurry of hugs, kisses, greetings and demands for updates on the situation on both sides of the veil flew fast and furious, from the home and away teams. The messy and chaotic scrum delayed the whole complex explanation situation for entirely too long. Finally, Liam stood up and clapped his hands, heedless of the sleeping musician by the fire; who stirred and rolled over with a soft mumble at the sharp report.
“There are still four hostile humans on the island, pinned down under a relentless mosquito onslaught. We can let them sweat it out until they decide to turn themselves in.” He declared firmly. “The zombies have all been neutralized, as far as we can determine. None of the familiars have seen or smelled anything of the undead since the battle.” He panned his gaze over the gathered group, slowly taking stock.
“More importantly… Did my wife seem angry?” He asked very carefully.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Nahh, she’s having a blast.” Dannyl said with a grin that failed to ease the count’s nerves. “Especially since we handed her the two stray necromancers we picked up by the roadside…”
Liam opened his mouth to demand more information, only to be forestalled by a loud and oddly familiar voice calling out from the front door.
“Honey, I’m home…” Ghnash the goblin king announced from the entrance to the inn; the one that was at once so familiar and so strange to his senses.
He took in a deep breath and smelled her, the one who he’d dreamt of for so long! An instant later he spotted her, standing above the weak and pitiful Gary he’d fished from the pond not long before. “Shai, baby… It really is me!” He gasped, as he flung himself at her feet.
Strong, familiar hands grasped his shoulders, feeling terrifyingly larger than in his memories. Without effort, she lifted him to his feet and pulled him close, to cry beneath her breasts for a long while.
#
When Gary woke up, Shai was standing over him in the common room… With a short green dude hugged up around her waist just bawling his eyes out and making a snotty goblin mess of himself.
“Uh… heya, lover.” He mumbled weakly at his wife, so far above. “You’re probably pretty pissed at me right now, I get it; but who the heck is this little dude?”
“It be thee… Oh darling mooncalf of mine own.” She muttered, her accent thickened by raw emotions and old wounds freshly scraped raw. “A lost piece of thee and a troubled soul.”
“Ok, lover… I feel like my head is stuffed with wet burlap right now, so I’m going to pretend I understood what you just said.” He mumbled sleepily.
“Wow! He really is just like my papa!” Both Daisybelle and Amy sighed at the same damn time, each one looking at a different man.
“Hmph!” Kree opined sharply from behind Gary’s ear, as he struggled to sit up, with bleary eyes and a doofy smile on his face. “I don’t like him!” She buzzed at the little guy.
“Be nice, Sugar-bee; he’s family, I think.” Gary mumbled while pawing at his own face and scratching his scalp.
“What did I miss? Anything cool?” He asked the gathered friends and family.
They all groaned in unison and began trying to decide who would get to explain that he’d missed the dracolich, the flaming, hard rocking end of the undead horde and all the rest.
Amy won, of course; Gary scooped her into his lap just like he had when she was little and told all the others to hush for a while.
“Aww, man…” Gary sighed a while later. “He played a scorching shamisen solo from undead dragon back... While it breathed unholy ghost fire all over the skellies and the meat golem? That sounds awesome!”
“I shouted some cool stuff, too.” Ghnash muttered from Shai’s embrace. “I was awesome!”
“We wondered about that… Who in creation is Leroy Jenkins?” Ivy demanded sharply.
Only Gary, Ace and Ghnash laughed at her question, but they made up for the puzzled silence of the crowd with pure, raucous joy.
“Respect, Ghnash…” Ace muttered happily as they stifled their laughter down. “Gary Ward, meet Ghnash Whar’rgh, king of the goblins. He’s your… clone? Doppleganger? Shit, I don’t know. We’re all just a huge, confusing mess up in here!”
“I think I can clear some of the confusion up…” Gary offered, once the family had all been caught up on the latest developments. “The thing is, a friend of mine… He kinda got tricked into sealing this world and our world into a time warp…” He smiled a silly little grin at Gandree Ghnash and Ace, his three clones… or maybe, sons. “You know how it is…” Gary strummed a weirdly loud and jarring chord on a guitar no one saw him pick up. Distortion wailed in the room as he began to chant his lyrics.
With a bit of a mind flip,
You're into the time slip…
“No! No musical number! Certainly not that one!” Liam declared in commanding tones, totally ruining the vibe. “I think that if this many of you get going… we might just… I don’t know what…”
“We might… Rock You Like a Hurricane!?” Ace demanded from behind a tasty riff of his own.
“No!” Ward insisted urgently, displaying a bit of his aura in a way he most definitely didn’t usually do around his family. That kind of thing creates tense situations, what with the commanding aura of the divines and the inversely radiant, inglorious halo of menacing, jagged thorned and shadowy fig boughs he now wore.
“There are nine of us here right now…” Ward declared firmly, backed up with a sprinkle of god stuff.
“This fragmentary world is creaking and groaning under the metaphysical weight of us. We should definitely not have a nine way jam sesh with the whole crew. Many of these instruments are linked to their very souls and ours in some very non standard ways…”
“I think he means we should do an acapella number…” Larry suggested, drawing a furious death glare from the local death god.
“No, I mean that we each emit a very large quantity of magic into the world, at all times and across the entire electro-magic-nectic spectrum… and in a few largely theoretical and poorly understood areas as well.” Ward grumbled at himselves.
“We’ve disrupted both the local magical and mundane environment pretty significantly already. Do we really want to tear a new hole in the veil right here, with a funky bass groove?”
“So we can play folk tunes?” Harry asked from behind a carefully studied mask of childlike innocence, as he gutted his poor, hard working uncle Ward.
“Children!” Shai barked firmly into the room, drawing all of the Garies’ attention in an instant. “All nine of thee, off intae the grotto bath taegether! Go hash this out amongst thyselves… and get yer minds in order.” She barked with firm and loving tones that would allow no disobedience.
“Wow… She totally sliced my divine aura…” Ward complained weakly, as they were herded away in a large, weirdly organized, disorganized group of very similar men.
When they were all safely ensconced in the most private chamber in the house outside the workshop, Shai breathed a long sigh of relief.
“I really want to listen in…” Ivy murmured weakly. “Can you even imagine the world shaking secrets they might be discussing right now?
#
Rain poured in through the open roof if the grotto, raising a cloud of mist and steam in the less spacious, hidden pool
“I don’t remember much of my old life, the one I lived before coming to this world…” Gandree sighed softly, floating among the four young Ward boys.
“Only dim recollections of sounds, scents and feelings that are too real to be ignored, but were unknown in this realm of existence. That shared sense of being a stranger in a strange land is one of the bonds tying my mismatched family together; just one of them.”
The other eight Garies all nodded in sober and somber agreement.
“You’re very wise, Gandree… I know Amy, Wilf and Rio look nothing like me, or each other… but like you guys, they are absolutely my kids.” Gary sighed a moment later.
“Wilf is wide and burly, solid and reliable, almost dour; until he gets some wheels under him… But then, look out! He can’t get enough; faster, higher, farther and more draw him like a moth to a flame. In the workshop he was the same way, a soaring and creative soul, working his arts and crafts in wild flights of fancy.”
The new members leaned in close to listen, bringing a sense of intimate comradery to their shared bathtime.
“Rio has dark skin like Amy, but with a tall and athletic build that my daughter’s girlfriends all insist is ‘Dreamy…’ when they think I can’t hear them talking. Rio is a friendly and kind boy, open hearted and eager to help anyone in need, especially those in need.. the big beautiful softie.”
He mumbled dreamily into the steam and fog drenched cavern.
“Amy… My little songbird… She’s smart, strong and determined to make a difference! And that brings her brothers out of their shells and moves them along. I think my kids are gonna do big things!”
“Mmm… yes! Good good! Proud papa!” Ghnash agreed eagerly. “My daughters are, of course, the best best! No doubt of that!” He enthused, with a dismissive wave at the four Ward boys. “These are satisfactory, considering the weak, human stock you had to work with.”
“Ghnash… Daisybelle and I explained to you already…” Gandree murmured in the king’s ear, but loudly enough for everyone else to enjoy the fun. “Goblin supremacy jokes are in poor taste. Do I need to go get her?”
“Bah… I had jokes about Goblinsraum and some other fake german stuff lined up too.” He grumbled. “Double glad I didn’t make the costume…”
“Bad Ghnash!” Gandree scolded the king, while Ward giggled stupidly with Gary over a smoldering pipe. “No cookies at bedtime tonight! Hitler cosplay is not cool!”
“Gandree dwarf doesn't get the irony.” He whined pitifully. “Is tongue in cheek! Satire! Ghnash worst fascist ever! Nub authoritarian tendencies at all.”
“Promise me you won’t make any questionable political costumes and you can have two cookies tonight. Two.” The dwarf sighed under the relentless puppy gob eyes and pitiful pleading.
“Okies… Promises!” His majesty mumbled weakly, donning a crown of bubbles he conjured from the surface of the bath.
“Oh, yeah… Cookies…” The two deeply stoned Garies mumbled in unison
“Only you clowns should feel so safe around a brain eater…” Ace sighed merrily in bright, flashing neon colors; to make sure they all heard loud and clear. “Bunch of freaking morons…”
#
Amy and Becky marched off to the private baths with Shai, silently drawing the rest of the ladies along with them; leaving count Liam in charge of the small group of confused, bemused and abused young men.
“Well, lads… let’s have a jam sesh…” He suggested after a moment, brandishing his well stuffed pipe. “It’s pissing down rain and I think we will be waiting a while.”
#
Beneath the overturned boat, Padilla sipped a trickle of rainwater from a jungle plant’s broad leaf and gasped with relief. “We have to make a break for Tortuga and rejoin the invasion force…” He gasped to his sweaty, feverish crew of three exhausted and thirsty sailors over the almost deafening sound of the short squall sweeping over the island.
“We’ll row for it at midnight, when the skeeters should be least active. Once we’re a hundred yards from shore we should be fine.” He gasped.
“It’ll take three days to row that far, but otherwise we’ll die here, or be captured by those… monsters.”
His crew nodded silently and slipped back into their own thoughts, while using leaves to capture the rain and funnel the water into anything that would hold it.
#
“My Gandree doesn’t look, smell or sound anything like my king papa…” Daisybelle murmured in the bath. “But when I heard him playing my song beside a fire on a cold mountainside, I was sure it was him… Right until I jumped into his lap and kissed him!” She giggled and shook herself all over at the memory.
“At that point, I decided I’d better just keep him… Since just one kiss from me and he’s ruined for all other girls…”
“Anyway…” Amy said cheerfully, as she pushed the goblin girl’s head under the surface for a few moments of quiet. While Daisybelle struggled, not exactly drowning Amy smiled at the gathered ladies.
“This whole thing is going to be an awful mess… even assuming that no more of them… of him… show up. See? Total chaos!” She complained cheerfully, with her arms full of wet, naked, struggling goblin.
“So where was I?” Daisybelle demanded, once she had flipped Amy onto her back and resumed control of the conversation. “Amy is nub good at wrestling.”
The poor girl was caught in a weird and deeply confusing legend arm lock; one that seemed to require more legs and arms than the goblin lass possessed to pull off. She made it work somehow, pinning the larger girl under the surface with ease and keeping her there.
“Ah yes, I remember! My Gandree has a bottom so firm, it’s like spanking a stone! You should all give it a pinch, next time he passes by… just one pinch though!” She insisted, waving a slim green finger above the water’s surface; while still managing to keep Amy stymied.
“Take two pinches and I’ll knife you good!”
Shai relaxed back on the side of the pool, watching the kids goof and clown around. Even Lindsey was in the mix, struggling to free Amy with help from Maya and Ivy. “Would Tawny were here… I could use her wisdom.” She murmured to Becky, who was floating beside her.
“I can’t pretend to really understand what you’re feeling… I only married one man.” The high priestess mumbled to her big, pale sister. “You have a whole harem situation forming… Maybe Ward could give you some advice.”
“Daisybelle… tell me more about young Gandree’s bonny arse…” Shai called to the goblin who was dominating the chaotic struggle in the deep end. “I kin listen, tae yer tale, whilst I drown me little sister, fer a time.” Sure enough, Becky was beneath the surface, gripped in Shai’s iron hard hands.
#