CH 3 - New Worlds, Old Problems
The banquet was ripe with ribald celebration. The sultry heat in the grand hall was sweat-inducing and the thick cloying air made Elnn gag if he breathed in too deeply. His thin gossamer shirt and silk wrym pants clung to his pale skin. It had bothered him at first but now he was drunk enough off the gray alcohol of the ashrooms not to notice. He ran his tongue over his gums savoring and shuddering at the alkaline taste.
Elnn stared up at the Keng that sat at the far end of the grand hall. The snub-nosed man was resting his yellow feet in a mineral pool that bubbled and frothed next to his throne. A woman sat beside him, his arm wrapped around her waist. He lifted a rock-hewn chalice to the hall and bellowed, “To the Rat Keng and his Snake Wife.”
The other men hissed in unison, the gray alcohol misting the air, “May they look kindly on our offering and turn a blind eye to the sins that take place in the dark,” the Keng continued.
Elnn ineffectually wiped the back of his hand across his brow; the sweat quickly dotted his face once more. He flipped his long blond hair out of his eyes and focused on the Keng sitting in his dark corner. Teglayen with a rock-cut goblet held up to her lips at all times, seemed to be enjoying her new title. Elnn had met with her in the dark tunnels on the edge of the warren a couple of times, and now he drank her in with his eyes. The soft glowing pulse of the grand hall’s walls made her skin shimmer, and the warmth of the red-hot lava flowing through troughs on either side of the Keng’s rock throne seemed to add softness to her features, but she wore a skirt of thin-rock with a matching corset. For all the softness she held, the thin-rock’s angular organic cut seemed like armor and made her look like a daunting, spring-loaded golem; built by a theurgic master. Elnn and Teglayan had been thirteen when they absconded to those abandoned shafts. There they had joked and played kissing games in the shadows. This was before his father had been killed. Elnn began to stand up, but Malthus clapped a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back to his seat on the granite-hewn bench.
“Eat Elnn, else the wine will go right to your head,” Malthus shoved a meager plate of algae in front of him, it quivered with mild sentience.
“It’s too hot and awakening now,” Elnn tossed it aside. The only thing keeping the algae from scurrying away was the ice bath it had received earlier that morning but after sitting out in the sweltering hall it began thermosysthesis once more.
Malthus shook his head, “You should be careful and remember your station.”
“Station,” Elnn replied mockingly, “What station? You think he got to where he is remembering his ‘Station’.” Elnn nodded towards the Keng, “He killed brothers and uncles to become Keng. You think he was worried that he was reaching above and beyond his title?”
Malthus guffawed as he sipped on his ashwine, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It shimmered metallic gray as he placed it on his knee “The whole bit about the brothers and uncles is good enough reason to listen to me.”
“Advice is free Malthus, and gives you plausible deniability,” Elnn replied matter of factly, and reached past Malthus to draw more wine from his decanter; “You’d feel guilty if I died but would be able to live with it since you warned me.” Elnn glared, “Or you could pretend you were a real warrenman and stand up for yourself. Malthus, the tastiest mushroom grows on the sheerest ledge.”
Malthus shrugged his pointy shoulders, “That’s what My Uncle used to say. Tastiest mushrooms and all, but he’s feeding mushrooms now.”
The stone doors to the hall started opening and a herald ran sideways between the widening crevice, “Crobalt of Grund, emissary to Keng Brelt of the West Warrens, safeguarding Keng Brelt’s torch-bearer Frelde.” Crobalt strode through the doors and walked up to the Keng. Frelde followed a few feet behind Crobalt. Frelde had a short and stocky frame and wore a frost-forged palladium helm that shone brightly but hid his eyes and face. It had large side-facing ears worked into the helmet to resemble the West Warrens Bat sigil.
“Keng Brelt sends his warmest regards,” Crobalt stood two heads taller than the Keng and wore a black cloak with thin blue trim over scaly armor. He pulled back his hood and shook his head. Shaggy long black locks flung back and forth, and a sort of skittering howl emitted from his clenched teeth that was just on the edge of the Warren men’s hearing.
The Keng laughed heartily and took his arm from Teglayan to push himself up and clasp Crobalt by the shoulder, “Well met Crobalt! The ease with which you have picked up the traditions of Grund astounds me.” The Keng spread his arms wide and roused his torchbearers, “Do you remember what a skinny whelp this one was? Could hardly keep his torch lit and stay pace on the patrols.”
Emboldened by the ashwine, Karak the Keng’s torch-bearer spoke up, “I remember when he was a small cave prawn and would get caught in the green ways. He’d be ballin’ and the watch would show up and cut him loose. He could have gotten out but he panicked like a Shrout mole and would have worked himself into a heart spasm if we hadn’t shown up.”
Greth another torch-bearer submitted his usual sanctimonious comment, “That my friends were twenty and five years ago and the Rat king says to think of only today; the past is a black tunnel that warps and the future only ever reaches the edge of the torchlight.”
“Well-spoken Greth,” Crobalt smiled ear to ear, a flash of silver was tucked up in the corner of his mouth from where he had replaced some teeth, “The past is the past and often the truth is more contrived the harder we try to remember it. A lot has changed since I left these warrens.”
“Yes yes, a lot has Crobalt,” The Keng replied, in a biting tone and the laughter was gone from his voice, “it’s too bad you weren’t around when your father passed away. He didn’t have the greatest claims but it was enough to live off of and entitled you to sit at our table.”
“Well, it’s a good thing Grund is such an…enterprising Warren, Which brings us full circle as to why I am here. Is she the soon-to-be bride?” Crobalt pointed at Teglayan who, in turn, bowed before him. Her long blonde hair reached down around each side of her heart-shaped face, touching the stone floor.
“Yes she is the lucky one, and I believe you have something for me as well,” there was a glint in the Keng’s eye and he licked his lips. Crobalt opened the sack that he had been carrying over his shoulder and upended it on the stone table before the Keng. Gemstones ranging in size from small pebbles to palm-sized stones pitter-pattered out and captured the warm glow of the lava veins in the wall. The horde shimmered there and each of the men felt the same primordial lust. The urge to feel the cool angular shapes pressed in their hands, while covetously looking to see if anyone else was watching them. None of the men moved forward, though, and the Keng’s torch-bearers looked from each man to the next; waiting for the slightest inclination of just such. Some were weighing the odds, some like Malthus eyed the horde with feigned disinterest, but Elnn was looking at Teglayan’s wide eyes as she stared down at how much she was worth, disbelieving that a man would give so much just to marry her and make her a queen. Then Elnn noticed Crobalt who was smiling mischievously and realized that Crobalt had purposely tempted the men. Urging them on to chaos and taking pleasure in their looks of awkward restraint.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Frelde spoke up for the first time, “We start back first thing at the end of cycles.”
“I will be sorry to see my favorite niece leave us,” Replied the Keng, “but the Dowry offered up to my Warren, and the promise of fealty, are appreciated gifts.”
Frelde stared at the Keng, his eyes shadowed by the rim of his helm, “I will wait in my chambers and meet your chosen torch-bearers here at the appointed time.” Frelde spun on his heel and the many glittering chain-links that comprised his armor shimmered like he was a red-scaled iguana as he sauntered back out of the hall. The warrenmen stared after him awestruck as to why someone would ever turn their back on a banquet.
Crobalt’s hearty laughs made the hall boom with rejoice, “More ashwine for us then, am I right my fellow Warrenmen?” with that statement the awkward air was cleared and the men and women in the hall broke back into their incandescent jubilee. No longer curious as to why King Brelt’s chosen emissary would take leave from such a rare celebration.
The cycles passed and the Warren as a whole fell into a sweaty stupor. The drummers banged on their wrym skin instruments while the stone flutes wheezed out mellifluous notes that made Elnn’s head thick, and his thoughts clamber like a sick shrout blinded by torchlight.
Crobalt sat at the table closest to the Keng, where all his superior torch-bearers drank, ate, and joked loudly with them about the women in Grund and his adventures through the ways.
Elnn eyed him all night catching a few snippets of the conversation from his lowly seat at the back of the hall.
“The Heldre have been getting more adventurous lately. They’ve been attacking normal patrols as close as two leagues away from Grund. They seem to be collecting themselves somewhere between Grund and here, Waitomo. The caravaneers have been suffering for it,” Crobalt stopped talking to pick his teeth with a slim rib bone from the roasted shrout the table was enjoying.
Karak sitting across from Crobalt exclaimed, “Damned Heldre. Abominations they are, with their webbed feet and eyeless faces.”
“Ohh they have eyes Karak, just not ones that see,” laughed Crobalt.
Keft cut in, “Better them than those Doppelgängers! You wave a torch at a lone Heldre and they run away, but a Doppelgänger, well it’s not too often you feel the need to wave a torch or aim a crossbow at your friend.”
“There’s no such thing as Doppelgängers Keft, although I’ve shared a bed with a woman in Grund, that looked indistinguishable from your sister,” Crobalt winked at Keft who started grumbling into his stone tankard, “Besides how would you ever know someone is a doppelganger? Is there a test, or something?”
Greth took the opportunity to speak of The Rat Keng as he often did, “The Rat Keng burrowed down into the depths of this hallowed world and found all the riches he had promised to his torch-bearers. His torch bearers carried him back on their shoulders to their Warren and placed the stone crown on his head, but one came back possessed by a doppelgänger, the Keng’s second in command. He grew withdrawn and jealous of those around him and argued that even though the horde was split evenly among the warren, that some deserved more consideration than others.”
“There sure are a lot of stories about this Rat Keng fellow. My favorite one is when he gets swallowed by a Wyrm and lives in its gut for a year,” Crobalt cut in.
Greth sputtered, “Blasphemy! You dare question the cave of a thousand carvings?”
“The only thing I trust is the feel of my short sword shoved into something’s guts. I’ve killed Heldre before, I’ve felt the hilt of my blade quiver with the death throes of a Wyrm, and I’ve even spent a week trying to clean the unctuous bile of an Emperor Ant out of the links in my armor. I have yet to kill a doppelgänger and therefore doubt they even exist,” Crobalt slammed his clenched fist down on the table, “How’s that for blasphemy?”
The rest of the table jumped as Crobalt’s hand hit the table, but immediately broke into titters of laughter. Greth buried his red-bearded face in his tankard.
“What do you think of Crobalt,” Elnn asked Malthus.
“Well he’s a well-known sword for hire, used to be the heir to the Feltrip Warrenry, and now he does Keng Brelt’s dirty work in the Western Warrens. Probably gets more gold now than he would have ever gotten staying here in the Eastern Warrens. He also would have ended up with a sword in his back, just like his father,” replied Malthus.
Elnn sighed, “But what do you really think? I mean he did it, he escaped and now he’s his own warrenman. He’s free to wander and plunder on his own accord.”
“Not, if it weren’t, Keng Contel, or Keng Brelt, it would be one of the other Kengs that he would swear fealty to. Either that or become a Warrenless, an exiled pariah that no warrenkin would lend their torchlight to, wandering the caves just waiting to become something’s dinner,” Malthus shuddered at the Idea and Elnn rolled his eyes at his friend's lack of liberty. He often thought about how Keng Contel had come to power. He had taken what he wanted, not out of a sense that he deserved it or that he thought he could do better, but simply because he wanted it. Apparently, he had wanted it, more than Elnn’s father if the stories were true.
Elnn looked up at his uncle seated at the farther end of Keng Contel’s table. He was quietly sipping his ashwine, listening to the men around him stoically. Elnn’s uncle Wern looked identical to Elnn’s father; except for the eye patch he wore. He was two years younger as well and lorded over the Trigfel Warrenery since Elnn’s father passed. He wore the silver worked rabbit insignia of the Trigfel warren on his breast, but Elnn would never wear it himself, his elder cousin Osten would. At least the Keng had let Elnn live, he thought. A small consolation compared to losing your father and getting skipped over when it came to your birthright. He held no hatred for his uncle, but he did not respect the man either. He was a pushover and too reserved, as was Osten. If the other nobles continued to slowly expand their territories and claim jump what little resources were rightfully Elnn’s families, there may not be a Trigfel Sept in the coming decades.
The Keng stood up and the commotion in the banquet hall petered out, “It is time for the most important ritual to accompany this celebration,” Explained the Keng, “I will now ask my fellow warrenmen for their consent and aid in this marriage. Torchbearers, you understand the importance of this alliance and have just as much to gain from it. Our people will be better off in the years to come and I know that good Keng Brelt will be an exemplary husband, who will provide the protection and quality of life you deserve Teglayan,” The Keng placed his hand on her bare shoulder. “So who here revokes my claims? Who here would take Teglayan’s hand in Keng Brelt’s stead? Show me this most worthy warrenman, who is more than likely a stupid man to venture into such folly.”
The torch-bearers and warrenkin waggled their heads back and forth, no one daring to stand up and challenge the Keng. The tradition was old but a tradition nonetheless and the Keng enjoyed watching his subjects fidget and show their utter compliance and acceptance in his decisions, even if it was a benign offer.
“Since no one will challenge my decision I can only assume we have widespread consent for this betrothal, which brings us to our next tradition, the choosing of the party!” The Keng bellowed out the last part and the hall exploded in cheering. This was their chance. They were all nobles and afforded some upward mobility but being a part of the wedding party would mean a chance to meet with other nobles and an innocuous enough smokescreen for alliances between smaller septs to be struck upon. Plus there was a reward from the Keng for successfully delivering the bride to her groom. Payment included titles and deeds to holdings, perhaps enough to start one’s own sept or warronry, but the first wedding favor party members would receive was a precious gem.