Sythyry's Journal

Mirrored from Sythyry.

This being read for Tllith of Yirien, Princess of Septoulny Swamp, «Language»-mage, «Cuisine»-mage, my epistolary savior. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Layer of six fertilized eggs is she; none are crushed. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

Homeward Bound

Johand: Kuur, you are guilty of many crimes against the Scorth Provisional Authority. The proper sentence for these crimes is death. However, we will commute your sentence if you send Cleiestis back to her home.

Kuur: I deny your authority! If you kill me, it will be one more murder on your hands, one more cup of blood at your lips!

Johand: You don’t understand. You are either being stupid or willfully disobedient, and we have established that you, alone among all the Dumu Thoik, are not stupid. The penalty for disobedience is whipping. Now, will you send poor Cleiestis and her eggs back home, or will you die for it?

Kuur: You are a liar and a Scorthman. There is no trusting you. I shall not send the demon away. I will leave her in your hands. She is a vicious and malevolant creature, and she will find a way to destroy you all and claim your souls. Dumu stories — speak of us like this. Ancient Dumu — sorcerers, summoners, enchanters, practitioners like Kuur. No wonder my ancestors did all they could to destroy them, and were as demons to them.

Johand: She’s rather sweet actually. Scorth stories — speak of us as sweet spirits, helpful. Also tiny.

Kuur: You will learn otherwise to your despair, in no small time.

Johand: Baliff, please encourage the prisoner to be cooperative.

Kuur — beaten until he bled and cried out.

Me — not feeling sweet about that. Deserved — yes. Good to watch — no.

Kuur: Very well! You have won this round, Johand! I will send the demon back to the hell of Gemgaru!

Nowhere Bound

Kuur’s workshop — cluttered, scattered! Trash and gauds everywhere! Geometry upon the floor! Burning compost and herbs in the bowl! Sword of metal stabbed into shield of flesh! Everywhere the strange things!

Kuur: Johand, you will work as my assistant. Stand right there, in that octagram.

Johand: The least betrayal and I will have your neck.

Kuur: It won’t be necessary. You shall be dead soon, and I shall as well.

Johand: What treachery is this?

Kuur: The fumigants include drosko nuts. We have all breathed their smoke. You can feel it itching in your chest already. By noontime we’ll have sores sprouting inside our lungs. By evening-time the sores will split, and we will all be choking on our own watery pus. It’s a quite horrible death. So feel free to have your baliff shoot me now, before the pain starts. You’ll be begging him to shoot you soon enough.

Me — darting over! Healing Johand! Healing myself too!

Johand: If I am not mistaken, I haven’t much to worry about from your silly little drosko nuts. I’ve got a friendly couatl, you see. She doesn’t seem eager to heal you though. Perhaps if you’d treated her better …? Still, if you want to have any hope of assassinating me, you’d do well to send her back to Gemgaru and deprive me of her protection. But I think we’ll put an end to your smoky little tricks. I shall be one of your assistants; your son shall be the other.

Kuur: Not my son! He must remain free of the taint of sorcery!

Johand: Baliff, please be so kind as to encourage Kuur a bit more. Don’t break any bones though.

After encouragement — I healed Kuur — my way home.

Nowhere Bound, Again

Douk: I should be in the mines, helping!

Johand: You should be here, obeying the provisional authority.

Kuur: My son! Remember me as a brave man, at the end! He threw a human-head-sized idol of black at Johand. It split, and spilled thick black fluid over him. Kuur flung a torch, and the fluid blazed up.

Johand: I say, this is not comfortable.

Baliffs — Put out the flames as best they can. Club Kuur to unconsciousness.

Me — heal Johand hard!

Johand: I don’t seem to be able to see out of my left eye. I apologize for making you constantly heal me, Cleiestis. I must learn not to trust Kuur a bit.

Third Time

Kuur — bruised, battered into submission. I shall send the monster home. Not wholly into submission: After it is gone I shall assassinate you in peace and comfort.

Johand: I shall anticipate your murderous brutalities almost eagerly.

Sorcery — the stinking of burnt things, the pouring-out of words, the filling a bowl of sand. My digging down into the sand, my eggs strapped to my back between my wings.

Between — Dizzying. Digging down into sand became digging up. Stretching and probing with my head, filling my feathers with sand.

Poking my head out.

Homecoming. Twining necks with Tomolrouc. Homecoming.

Returning to Tellosh

But —

Tellosh — the world of every wickedness. Kuur — wicked. Scorthmen — wicked. Markosh — wicked.

But —

Kuur — wickedly working to save his people from the Scorthmen. Scorthmen — wickedly working to save Kuur’s people from the Markoshian death cloud. Markoshians — wickedly working to avenge their own deaths.

My gift to Johand — I and many priest will go to Tellosh, as the death cloud approaches. Our spells — keeping many of Tellosh alive, perhaps. Not the Dumu Thoik, whose wickedness bit me. Not the Scorthmen, whose wickedness saved me. But the hundred others whom the Scorthmen enslave and give to brutality, if we can get a hundred priests.

It will have to do.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

This being read for Tllith of Yirien, Princess of Septoulny Swamp, «Language»-mage, «Cuisine»-mage, my epistolary savior. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Layer of six fertilized eggs is she; none are crushed. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

Me — free!

Tellosh (this part of it) — thick air heavy with sea-water. Triple the sun, a triangle of tiny celestial lights, yellow-green-red. Mount Duku — tall, pointy, black of stone, mantled with green plants, thorned with outcroppings of crystals. Around it the island, around the island the blood-dark sea all shining with waves like bright scales. The familiar home forests of Gemgaru — away. The familiar gems that grow on plants instead of inside rocks — away. The familiar husband and family and friends — away.

But here — myself, four eggs.

Freedom — to write the long letter to Tomolrouc, the whole of my story so far, to wing-brush worry and dread away from him. He had most of the story from Tllith already, but not the freedom part, and so we rejoice in half-measure apart, even if we would rather rejoice in full measure together.

Freedom — To curl around my eggs in a bowl of warm sand. Before I had laid, I dreaded the wish to coil about eggs as a kind of slavery to the demands of incipient motherhood. Now — Joy and rightness.

Scorthmen — rejoicing too. Couatls — in Scorthmen stories, we are rare and beneficient creatures. (Why rare? We live in Gemgaru, and few can bring us here. Why beneficient? Healing spells, I suppose. There is only a single magic native to Tellosh — the summoning and binding of people from Gemgaru.)

Couatls in Thoik stories — common demons — summoned by the ancestors of the Thoiks in many historical stoires. Like me — bound. Like me — angry. Like me — found ways to take revenge when they could. Like me — crushed whatever greatness and magnitude the Thoiks tried to build, using our blood as mortar and our feathers as bricks.

The rebellion of the Thoiks — a hollow bird’s egg struck a heavy blow by a wing. The thoiks — back in the mines with more bruises and cuts than usual. Some — dead. Some huts — burnt. Some blood — scattered.

But the question — will not leave me alone.

So — I ask.

Asked and Answered

Johand: My lady Cleiestis! It is a pleasure to see you flittering about! My men say that you have brought them luck, and I cannot deny it. What brings your brillant polychrome featheration to my office?

Me: This question — it is a rude one. You — have been nothing but kind to me and done me only good turns. So I think of you as humans of great kindness and justice. Their speech — it does not come easily to me. Spells help some. Its grammar — so awkward and twisted-about [Cleiestis's actual word refers to a serpent who has gotten into a position from which motion is not easy. I can't do that myself; not so flexible. -tll].

Johand: We do our best to behave so, Miss Cleiestis, and I trust that you should never have reason to think otherwise. Miss — there is no knowing why he calls me so. I am not — I am married!

Me: But the Dumu Thoiks — do not think so.

Johand: They are savages and barbarians, miss. The cruel, vicious, and lazy remnant of a wicked sorcerous nation of centuries gone.

Me: Is that why you beat them and make them mine so?

Johand: If circumstances were not so dire, miss, we should have nothing to do with them whatever. As it is, there is little time to make all the preparations that must be made. If we explained and negotiated with them and with all hundreds of such folk, we should still be explaining and negotiating when the poisons from the sky render all explanations and negotiations useless. So we use force; we rush matters; we get ready what can be gotten ready. It is, after all, for their own good.

Me: They do not seem to think it is good, to be whipped and beaten and compelled to mine hard.

Johand: And of course it is not, miss, and that’s not the concern really. You have a kind heart, but this is neither time nor situation for kindness.

Me: Why not?

Johand: Surely, when you look at the night sky, you have noticed the absence of Markosh from its usual place in the heavens, and, if your eyes are good, the odd cyanotic-blue nebula that moves quickly from night to night?

Me: The sky of Tellosh — never have I seen it in night, for I was boxed in every night and every day save today. Unlike the sky of Gemgaru is it. We have no triple sun, no clouds.

An explanation — next he made.

Johand: How strange! You must tell me stories of your fairyland … but I depart from my own narrative. For many years, our scientists have known that the mobile celestial body we call Markosh was a world in its own right, whirling around the triple sun just like Tellosh. For a modicum of years, we knew that it supported life of a sort — indeed, creatures of a strong intellect and strict customs. We exchanged a few neighborly messages, but found them cold and uninterested in such chatter.

Well, not many years ago, five of our gentleman-scientists built a levitationary sphere, capable of reflecting the motion of the suns and thereby moving on its own. They made it airtight, and laid in a stock of comestables, many instruments of science, a few good hunting-rifles, and, I am sure, a stock of proper clothing, including an assortment of hats suitable for every situation. And, thus equipped, they crossed the void.

Well, we don’t know precisely what they found there. A few fragmentary message-squirts made it back to Tellosh. As best we understand, their sphere was seized, and the scientists of Markosh worked hard to comprehend its mechanism. For the purpose of building a void-armada of such spheres equipped for conquest — the conquest of Tellosh.

Well, Sir Langregasm and his fellows put a stop to that, of course. They sabotaged a sort of combination generator station and high temple that supplied power to all of Markosh. They took a bit of an unrestrained approach to it, I might add; they started a growing reaction which ended in the destruction of Markosh.

Still, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, miss, but a world the size of Markosh is not distintegrated in a minute or two. The process took some hours. The Markoshians seemed to think the destruction of their world was a very tit, and nothing would do but that they give us a corresponding tat. So they concocted their own growing reaction. And what did that do, but transmute the wreckage of Markosh into a cloud of nitrostrex or something very like it.

Don’t look so puzzled, Miss. There’s no reason in the world that someone from fairyland should know about nitrostrex. It’s a poisonous vapor: a quadruply-strange version of nitrogen, if I may use such terms. Quite deadly, don’t you know.

They were going to aim the cloud straight at Tellosh. Lord Langregasm evidently chose to ram his void-sphere into their reaction rather than survive and fly back to Tellosh. Jolly good job that he did! As it is, the cloud is on a wobbly course all around the sky, instead of heading here straightaway. We had a decade or so before it landed on Tellosh. Now there are five years left.

Still, our best scientists assure us that, when the nitrostrex comes to Tellosh, there will be a great and terrible dying for a few hours, until the nitrogen in the atmosphere converts the nitrostrex into neatrogen. I’m sorry, miss, there’s no talking about this without the science. Neatrogen enforces orderliness, but it’s not deadly as nitrostrex.

Anyhow, when the cloud comes, anyone in the open who takes a breath of the vapors mixed with air will simply die. In lesser concentrations it causes a slow suffocation and a permanent injury to the lungs.

So we’ve got to get ready for it, miss. In places like Dumu Thoik we’re having the locals dig deep holes, their mines. If they hide in the mines and put wet curtains on all the entrances, and come out in a day or two, they should mostly survive.

We’ve got a more ambitious project or two for Scorthland itself, of course. We’re building vast tents. We don’t want to just save the people of the land, but the animals too, such as we can. Otherwise we’ll be reduced to eating vegetables and insects for all our meals, and that wouldn’t do.

And our men of science have their hopes to build a mighty beam projector to denature the nitrostrex before it comes to us. If we can collect enough perdones for the resonant chamber, and enough of the right metals for the cabling. Save the world with a beam of special light, wouldn’t you know?

So that’s our recent history, miss Cleiestis. A bit frantic, wouldn’t you know. When it’s an emergency one doesn’t always have the best manners. But we’ve got the best intentions, anyhow, as I hope you’ll understand.

Understanding — not easy, but possible.

Me: May I go home?

Johand: I’ll see what can be done.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

[This seemed like a good Thanksgiving post. -bb]

I (Tllith) did my best to interfere! Like this!

Dear Baron Johand,

Please forgive my omission of the customary salutations of your people. I do not know these salutations. I write on a matter of urgency to yourself and your brigade, and many other people as well.

You should be aware that the Duku Thoik tribes are planning a mass rebellion against you in the next few days. The sorcerer-chieftan Kuur Molk Hasp has used magical wiles to unite and inspire the thoiks, and they are ablaze with eagerness and hope.

The sorcery in question is the summoning of a couatl, named Cleiestis, from the world Gemgaru. I am writing on behalf of Cleiestis. She is being held in a box in the totem to Gongonhong, behind a velvet curtain.

Cleiestis is in all respects a victim here. She and her eggs were kidnapped from their own world, and she is bound by magic and by her eggs as hostages. One was crushed while she watched — what more horrible fate could any parent endure?

If you rip the totem’s curtain aside and reveal her to the thoiks, Kuur’s wicked magic will be revealed too, and the rebellion will fail.

I hope that you find it with your best nature to aid Cleiestis.

Sincerely,
     Tllith of the world Yirien.

This being read for Tllith of Yirien, Princess of Septoulny Swamp, «Language»-mage, «Cuisine»-mage. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Layer of six fertilized eggs is she. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. Kidnapped and word-knotted by Kuur Molk Hasp is she, who is worthy of every curse and suffering. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

No! — Three hundred and four hundred — three million and four millions! For — I am out of that cursed box! I am free of Kuur’s cursed words! I am reunited with my eggs!

It is this way:

Kuur — demagoguing, haranging, preaching. Each day — several times he does this. Each time — A hand is thrust beneath my curtain. Each hand — I must heal a thoik, to persuade him to follow Kuur.

Many thoiks — by now, they follow Kuur.

I infer: This time — more than thoiks watched!

[Cleiestis's language has particles indicating states of knowledge. Most of this is told neutrally, as if she observed it. She uses the "I infer" particle to emphasize that she couldn't see what was happening. -bb and tll]

Kuur: Yawb Dwel Bwin, come forth, receive the blessing of Gongonhong!

I infer: A Scorthman steps from behind a hut!

Johand: Kuur, this is disobedience against the Scorth Provisional Authority over Duku. I call upon you to stand down, deliver your totem into my safekeeping, and cease your rabblerousing.

Kuur: You are a brave man, Baron Johand, to come among the Duku Thoik alone, after all you have done to us. You force our hand, this is true. But we will take you now. Thoiks, brave thoiks! This is Baron Johand, who shits forth sufferings upon you all! Take him now!

Johand: I did not come alone. Musketeers, emerge!

A short battle roared and boomed outside of my box. Humans wailed; guns spoke like thunders; swords sang simple songs; humans wailed more.

I infer: Scorthmen — victorious!

Johand: Now, Kuur! Let us see what it is you call Gongonhong!

Johand’s sword-tip — as sharp as any fang, slicing the top of the velvet curtain! Which — fell off the totem. Which — revealed me to thoiks and Scorthmen alike! And — them to me! Easy to tell which was which! Scorthmen — wearing velvet coats and pointed hats in the heat of Duku’s summer! Carrying swords and guns! Thoiks — wearing sensible loincloths! Carrying not much! Many wounded! Some dead!

Thoiks: A couatl! A mystical demon from an astral hell! In the altar of Gongonhong! KUUR! You are no priest, no king! You are sorcerer and wrongulus and blasphemarch! You have conjured a wicked monster from the depths of awful Gemgaru to imitate divine Gongonhong!

A Scorthman: It’s a bloody couatl, like in the stories my nurse used to tell me! I never thought they were real, couatls. I thought they were like leprechauns and daphnillies, just from fairy stories, flitting around sprinking little blessings on poor woodland animals! But there’s a couatl in there, a whole live couatl! Wait ’til I tell my children that I saw a couatl in the flesh with my own eyes. That I bloody rescued one!

Johand — chuckled. Kuur, it seems that your Gongonhong is not quite what you made it out to be, what? Not above a bit of deception to go with your sorcery, are you? Or is it, a bit of sorcery to go with your deception?

Kuur: You are a tun-tuller, a Scorthman. You cannot understand.

Woon: Am I too a tun-tuller and a Scorthman? I know the legends and the old chants! That monster, it is a couatl — a terror of evil and damnation worse than the Scorth! You have brought it to sacred Mount Duku! It must be slain, and you too! Better to slave for shit-hearted Scorthmen than consort with that!

Douk: My father…! What have you done? … It healed my arm. Johand! With your sword, cut my arm from my body now! Better to be maimed than to live with perdition thus attached to me!

Johand: Silence! Silence — did not come. Johand — his pistol boomed. A vassallo burst from the bullet, fragments of fruit showered the thoiks. Silence! Silence — came. This is a matter of Scorthman law. We will take charge of Kuur and the couatl. There will be no hasty maimings or lynchings. We impose the rule of law here, and we will enforce it with swords and guns if we must. Now, disperse!

Thoiks — after slashes with Scorthian whips and Scorthian sabres, they dispersed.

Johand: Now. There is the matter of this Cleiestis that you kidnapped. He reached into the box and pulled me out. I curled around his forearm, and tried to thank him, but Kuur’s words clogged my mouth again. Give back her eggs, free her from your spell.

Kuur: You know nothing of the perils of couatls. If she is unbound she will slay us all.

Johand: I am three heartbeats away from slaying you all myself. I do not take kindly to insurrections and disobedience.

Kuur — Produces forth a few more argues! Johand — Denies them!

Kuur’s chamber of sorcery — We return. In a corner — a box, a jar, are picked from the muddle and litter of items and tools! In the box — three eggs! They look like mine, but are not — are painted! In the jar — four eggs! They are mine!

Kuur’s words of binding — Slip out of my mouth like vomiting! Break on the floor! Gone forever like regular words!

Me: All four eggs of mine! How can this be? Kuur smashed one! Did you take another from my home on Gemgaru?

Kuur: Bah, it is nothing. I smashed a fake egg. It is the ritual in The Green Toad: a fake egg is smashed at the beginning, then all eggs are revealed unharmed at the end. You have no cause to hate me, couatl.

Johand: Aside, perhaps, from the small matter of kidnapping her and her eggs, terrorizing her, enchanting her, and enslaving her.

Kuur: And what do you do, tun-tuller of a Scorthman, heart-shitter lord? You come here, you kill and kidnap some of us, you terrorize us, you bind us with your laws, you enslave us into your mines. Every crime I commit upon a wicked demon, you commit ten thousand fold upon other humans! Any punishment you make upon me, you should inflict upon yourselves ten thousand times as much!

Johand: I see no reason to play at freshman philosophy with you. What we have done, we have done for a very good reason. What you have done, you have done out of wickedness and malice!

Kuur: Malice to the barbarians who come conquering and enslaving us!

Scorthmen — Johand nodded to one. The one struck Kuur with the pommel of his sword. Kuur’s blood fell to the floor, and he held his cheek with blood dripping between his fingers.

Johand: A straightforward response, if not the most sophisticated one philosophically. Now — O couatl, please forgive us for the crudity of your rescue, and for the long delay before it occurred. We were only recently made aware that you had come to grace us, even under these most extremely unfortunate circumstances.

Me: … Thank you. Coiling around his arm! Raised high. The Scorthmen cheered in unison: Tam, Tam, Tamtamterry! To Scorthmen I am no demon. The thoiks who watched, watched in fear. To them I am a demon.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

This being read for Tllith of Yirien, Princess of Septoulny Swamp, «Language»-mage, «Cuisine»-mage. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Layer of six fertilized eggs is she; one is crushed. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. Kidnapped and word-knotted by Kuur Molk Hasp is she, who is worthy of every curse and suffering. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

Suicide?

Me — the pawn of the child-killer! Three days stuck in a box! Casting healing-spells and knowing-spells for him! Food — he gives me none. Drink — he gives none.

Drying and starving — I think hard, do I want to die of the dry and the starve in a dark box? Yes — It will weaken my enemy. No — I will have no way to get any revenge. No — I will not have a way to help my surviving children.

No — He will just come up with some lie about it. He will say You are not fighting hard enough, you have not driven the Scorth off, the gift of Gongonhong is withdrawn until you do.

So — no. I will not die this way. When the starving and the drying come, I will use a healing spell on myself. Then — in the pain of hungry, in the pain of thirsty, but not starving, but not drying.

Thoik Rebellion

The Dumu Thoik — The people of Kuur. Each fake miracle I work by magic brings more of them to Kuur. Unhappy people! But miracles of fake-Gongonhong bring them joy and energy!

Slaves — we are all slaves here. I am slave of Kuur. The Dumu Thoik are slaves of the Scorth. This is how it is, for I can hear thoik talk with thoik, like this.

Woon: What’s all this nonsense your father is mouth-shitting out about Gongonhong?

Douk: Well, Woon. What do you think of the Scorth, and how they are treating us?

Woon: Your father may be a mouth-shitter, but the Scorth are heart-shitters! What is this they command, that I cannot fish for myself and my wife in the morning, then sleep in a hammock by the ocean-shore and drink fermented vossava juice in the afternoon, and then fuck my wife when she tries to cook the fish for dinner? What is this they command, that I must take their metal tools and dig under Mount Dumu for lishtries and perdones and green shug ore every day? What is this they command, that my son must work in the fields like a woman, until he is big enough to work in the mine?

Douk: By what right do the Scorth rule us?

Woon: What right? They have no right! Are they the grandchildren of any gods? No! Or if they are, they are the grandchildren of the god of squid-fuckers and shit-wearing blubber-boys! Are they here with big blessings of mysteries, like your father? They are not! Are they paying us in valuable goods from far-off Scorthland for our hard work? They are not! All they pay is beatings and shootings if we do not! So they have no right to rule us! None!

Douk: How is it that they rule, then?

Woon: Douk, your father is a clouds-in-head idiot. Are you too a clouds-in-head idiot that you say? I think so from these words! It has not been so many years when the Scorth ships come into the bay! Boom, boom! Their big guns knock Chieftan Reen’s hut down, they break trees, they kill Boin and Hobe, and Neen’s wife, what was her name.

Douk: Ralestra was Neen’s wife.

Woon: See! You remember a thing from that time! Then the Scorth come in heavy little boats to the shore. They fight a heavy war! So many of us die, we cannot count it on three hands. They tell us, ‘We need this and we need that, from under the mountain. You get it for us by mining, or you all die.’ So we are now Dumu Under-Thoik, the People Who Tunnel Mount Dumu.

Douk: Do they treat us well?

Woon: Douk, are you forgetting the last days, when they beat you for arguing with the shaft-boss? They are the worst way of treating us! When their mother gives them birth, she does not birth them from the joy-hole, but from the nasty-hole! If the tribe does not make its digging-quota four weeks in a row, they kill the man who digs the worst! Thus died Moin who sang so well, and Heem who would give you a blow job if you gave him fermented vossava juice! And every month the quota gets bigger, bigger, bigger! And do we get any good from this? No we do not! They say that the holes we dig will be our reward!”

Douk: Why do we not fight back any more?

Woon: They have guns and metal swords, we have fishing-spears and sharp sticks. Who they want to kill, they can kill, even the chieftan. Who we want to kill, we make say ‘ow, ow, a Dumu Thoik has poked me with a stick.’

Douk: We have our gods.

Woon: We do not have our gods! With a cannon — Boom! Boom! — the big totems are broken to splinters! With a sword-tip up my ass, they make me carry the little totems to the plaza. Then they have a god bonfire! Do any gods come? No! No gods come!

Douk: Gongonhong has come.

Woon: Gongonhong was exploded to splinters with the other gods!

Douk: He got better. He came to the idol my father made. Now he works miracles from behind the jacket of the Scorth baron who shot him, and he promises us victory over the Scorth.

Woon: Maybe, maybe. Maybe your father is a mouth-shitter today like always.

Douk: If you do not fight against the Scorth, you will be their slave for ever.

Woon: Oh, I fight, I fight, when everyone fights! I am tired of these heart-shitter Scorth! I hate mining! And if Gongonhong is back, that’s just the fish’s cheeks to me.

Douk: We will all fight at the command of Gongonhong, through my father. We will take the picks and mattocks from mining, with our arms as strong from mining as womens’ arms are from farming, and we will break the swords and guns of the Scorth, and we will break the Scorth themselves. And they will die, and all will be as in the old days.

Woon: With your father as chieftan!

Douk: With my father as liberator, as high priest and grandson of Gongonhong. With my father as chieftan, but as a devout priest-chieftan as in the oldest days, not a heavy-ruling chieftan like Chieftan Reen. We have had enough of heavy rulers.

Woon: We have, we have. And we’ll learn to smash them with picks and mattocks — Scorth for sure, and your father for maybe if he doesn’t leave off being such a mouth-shitter and wrongulus.

Douk: My father was not the best, yes, but now he is the high priest of Gongonhong, and now he is the best.

Woon: We’ll see about that. We’ll fight behind him, and if he’s a good general and makes us all free, we’ll let him be chieftan. And if he’s a good chieftan, he can be chieftan as long as he likes.

Douk: That is precisely what Gongonhong commands.

Woon: I still dunno why you aren’t becoming chieftan, Douk.

Douk: I am my father’s loyal son. If he is a bad chieftan, perhaps he will choose to abdicate in my favor. But he will be a good chieftan, I say. And we must kill every Scorth and drive them away before any thoik is chieftan.

Woon: Killing every Scorth, now there’s a good thing to do! Let’s go! What are we waiting for?

Douk: We are waiting to get every thoik ready, knowing the signals, ready to follow my father. If we start today, we are a disorganized mess and the Scorth kill us easily. If we start tomorrow, all together, they will kill some of us, but they will not kill us all.

Woon: Well, now you’re talking sense, Douk. I’ll go get my brothers and my cousins and my blow-friends. We’ll be organized, and ready to go when you give the word — or even when your father does!

Douk: It is good, my friend. It is good, and soon it will be very good.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

This being read for Tllith of Yirien, Princess of Septoulny Swamp, «Language»-mage, «Cuisine»-mage. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Layer of six fertilized eggs is she; one is crushed. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. Kidnapped and word-knotted by Kuur Molk Hasp is she, who is worthy of every curse and suffering. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

My prison box — Contained in the Gongonhong totem, having never left it since it was put therein yesterday. With totem, carried by Kuur’s son and another to the outside. Swaying as it was carried, waving as it was moved. No treetop in a storm has ever seemed less steady than this totem, nor is there a branch to coil around in the prison.

Kuur: Dumu Thoik! Now I speak to all Dumu Thoik! I, Kuur Molk Hasp, of the family of the ancient kings of Dumu Thoik! Gongonhong himself is the founder of my family line, and through an unbroken line of father to son I am the son’s son of Gongonhong!

Yult: Kuur! You are a no-good lame-leg fugg-bagg! Shut up with your boasting and your calling! Most of us have to work in the morning! The voice of Yult is deep and growly and full of anger.

Kuur: Yult! This is how I know his name. In no way am I boasting! Gongonhong himself visited me this afternoon!

Yult: Kuur! Your stupid head is maybe as broken as your limpy leg! Did you see Gongonhong in your beer? Or in the torch-water that the Scorth give?

Kuur: Gongonhong arrived in a transcendental glow. He veiled his face in incense-smoke, so that I should not be burned. He gave me instructions, as a paternal grandfather instructs a grandson! He gave me instructions to communicate to all the tribes!

Yult: I can hear these famous-stupid instructions now. Gongonhong says to you, Kuur! I command you to drink more beer! I command you to fuck other mens’ wives! I command all the tribes to bring you beer! I command all the tribes to bring you women! Kuur, you are a stupid bomp, and full of your tricks. We are busy men, we have to mine for the Scorth. We do not need another master to boss us around.

Kuur: Yult, you shall throw yourself to the ground and beg for the forgiveness of Gongonhong when you know the truth. And I shall grant it, for the will of Gongonhong is for the good of all the tribes, and no harm shall come to any shoik on Mount Dumu by the will of Gongonhong. The opposite! Good shall come to every shoik on Mount Dumu by the will of Gongonhong!

Yult: What good is there in your beer-bubble imagine god, or his words?

Kuur: Yult, you have a heavy bruise on your arm.

Yult: Yes, stupid Kuur, I have a heavy bruise on my arm, and it hurts like a cliff-sheep kicked it. In the mines there are many ways to get hurt, in accidents from the living rock, or punishments from the Scorth. If you were not a lazy-ludd you would be mining yourself and you would know this.

Kuur: Gongonhong brings gifts of ancestral grace to every shoik of the Dumu Thoik! To you he brings a granting of healing! Stretch your arm past the velvet panel on this totem, and you will be bruised no more!

Yult: What’s back there?

Kuur: A mystery shared between myself and my paternal grandfather Gongonhong! For you — all you need to know is, a single finger inside the veil, and you shall be healed!

Yult: Kuur! I make you this bet! I shall try this thing! But if I stick a finger inside and am not instantly healed by Gongonhong, I shall clout you with a mattock until you have three bruises each as bad as this, and you must shut up!

Kuur: Yult! I accept your bet! But if you are healed, you must hear the speaking of Gongonhong as he gave it to me, and you must obey it!

Yult: I accept these terms, inasmuch as your vision of Gongonhong is a phantom of beer bubbles and drug-smoke.

A smashed-tipped finger — stuck into my box under the curtain! I did not want to heal it, but I had to heal it or choke on words.

Yult: Kuur! What is this? My bruises fade like water sinking into hot sand! My pain departs like the yaksha-bird when it hears a sound! My fingertip that was flat from a crushing between rocks, it is as round as my dick!

Kuur: Are you healed, O my clan-cousin?

Yult: I am healed, O my clan-cousin — O my headman and high priest! This is a miracle of Gongonhong, such as has not been seen on the slopes of Mt. Dumu in centuries!

Kuur: It is as I told unto you. Rather, it is as Gongonhong told unto me.

Yult: Gongonhong! Gongonhong is back, with his power and his fire! What does he wish?

Kuur: Gongonhong is back, with his power and his fire. He knows the whips and guns of the Scorth! He deplores the slaveries and mining they have given to every shoik who can mine! He deplores their takings, their beatings, their shootings, their laws! He commands that the traditional ways shall be restored. He commands that the Scorth be killed and driven away. He commands that the Dumu Thoik be restored to their old ways, their happy ways! This is the will of Gongonhong! And we are to perform it!

Yult: This is the beneficient will of Gongonhong! And we shall perform it!

Three or four other voices — Echoed that.

This performance — we repeated several times, with variations. Seven or eight voices answered the second time. Fifteen or sixteen the third. Thirty-one or thirty-two the fourth. And after that the voices were a thunder of chanting: Gongonhong! Gongonhong! Kuur! Kuur! Kuur Molk Hasp!

Villain entire — a one who kills children of an alien species without conscience, is one who cheats his own people.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

After lentil stew was thoroughly devoured, a single question remained — single, but burningly, devastatingly important.

“What recreations are available on this world-boat, to pass the time between here and Ixange?” I asked.

“Well, the number of recreations just doubled when you woke up,” said Hditr.

“We could have talked more to Vong,” noted Eric.

Hditr shook her head. “I am not talking to Vong any more. I’ve been digging exclamation points out of my ears since this trip started anyhow. And insults, too.”

“So what have you been doing?” I asked.

“Eric here refuses to play cards or finger-fonger me. Some stupid excuse about being intangible, makes the embarrassed baldie. So we’ve just been talking,” said Hditr.

I clambered onto the table, pointed one head at Hditr and one at Eric, and tucked my left head under my wing for a fractional nap. “I’ll help with that! Where do you come from, Eric?”

He waves his hands about helplessly, passing them through the table. “I talked with Captain I-can’t-pronounce-it about that. It’s not one of the Sixty Worlds. It might be one of the Ninety, according to the Captain. There are over a hundred of them that haven’t been explored very well.”

I waggled my right-head ears. “That doesn’t math right.”

“That’s what I said too,” said Eric. “But the numbers of worlds aren’t exact. The Thirty Worlds are twenty-eight in number. The Sixty Worlds are those plus eighteen more. Then the Ninety Worlds are those plus a couple hundred.”

“The couple hundred are the Lotsmore?” I asked. “That’s what the badgers called Yirien when they showed up there.”

Hditr nodded. “Exactly. The eighteen more are Marsep’s Discovery, because, um, Marsep discovered eleven of them. We badgers aren’t big on getting precise terminology stuck up our whoffynasties, if you know what I mean and I hope you do ’cause I am not about to explain. Drullguur is one of those. Your yummy, yummy Yirien is a Lotsmore. Ixange is a Lotsmore too. I don’t know a lot about it, except that it’s the home of Idol of «Nudibranch» and has a very famous bridge or two. I do want to do measurements a lot more carefully when you get that sigil. We got some confusing results from «Cuisine». No big blop of blue-boiled blame to you. We were kinda busy not dying from falling into a boiling ocean there.”

“I’m not getting «Nudibranch»,” I said.

“What?? Whyever not??” Hditr seemed personally offended.

I huffed, and waggled my ears. “I’ve only got space for six or maybe eight on my wings, even if I sorcery them to shreds. I could get another four or maybe six small ones on my ears, if I don’t mind being deaf and unable to make important gestures and having those domains weakly ’cause the sigils are small. I suppose I could spare a leg or two. That’s sixteen at most. There are eighty-something domains.”

Hditr shook her head. “A hundred and two and counting, and that’s even if you count stupid ones like «Zucchini» and «Umbrella» and «Gazebo» and … most of them are pretty stupid really. But «Nudibranch»! «Nudibranch» is not stupid! I will think of why in a minute, after I learn what a nudibranch is!”

I ignored her. “Even if I want to totally ruin my body to be the best sigil sorcerer ever — which I do not! — I’m going to have to be choosy. And I can’t think of any good reason to choose «Nudibranch».”

Hditr whuffled and snortled. “There’s an excellent reason around here. I shall think of it in a thickilling thecond!”

I curled my ears rather selfconsciously, while I still had them. (I don’t plan to get rid of them!) “They are not nearly as cute as snail cream puffs. I am not sure what else I will pick. Perhaps «Tea» and «Steam» as my next two.”

“You must really like tea,” said Hditr.

“It’s nice, but I’m trying to be practical here,” I said.

Eric smiled. “What, running the world’s — multiverse’s — best tea ceremony ever?”

I snorted. “Claiming territory! Holding territory! I don’t know about you, but my species gets awfully territorial when we grow up. Especially females, which is what I’m kind of leaning towards.”

“How does tea help with territory?” asked Hditr.

“Wait, you get to choose which sex you are?” asked Eric.

I answered them both at once and nibbled lentil soup with my spare head, and they complained about it, so I did it again, one at a time. “I get to pick. Once. It’s a special sort of skin-shedding, and if I do it above water I turn male over the next year, and if I do it under water I turn female. I’m not physically ready for it yet — maybe a year or two — and I’m not really looking forward to it. Females get bigger territories so I’ll probably go for that. But they’re more tightly stuck to their territories, especially if there are eggs. I like rambling, but I don’t think I get to do it after I pick, either way.” Talking about this always makes me sad.

Eric and Hditr nodded, said a few friendly but clueless things (“Well, we’ll be glad to ramble ’round the rumple with you while you can”), and did not understand.

So I switched topic. “And the other answer is, most of the places I’m likely to get territory are swampy. If I get one and plant it with aromatic herbs, I’ll be able to boil any puddle with «Cuisine» and «Tea», and then have clouds of «Tea» «Steam» to use as weapons, allies, traps.”

Hditr grinned. “Oho! «Tea» and «Steam» and «Cuisine» do make sense together.” She said to Eric, “Domain magic is not really all that strong. You’ve seen Tllith do some pretty nice things, but I expect that’s close to her-or-maybe-his limit. I don’t think any domain mage can toss fireballs and lightning bolts the way you were talking about from your games. But a spell that comes from two domains is much stronger than one from one, and Tllith might get threesies even.”

“So no huge spectacular magic?” said Eric. “If I’ve got to give up on technology, I want to see lighning bolt wands and invocations of massive ugly demons. I’ll be upset if there’s nothing impressive around.”

“I wouldn’t say there’s a nippering nothing impressive. There’s spectacular natural magic — floating cities, waterfalls of fire, cloth tornadoes, stuff like that. There are powerful wizards. The Wizard of Trom turned Dovercramp from a badger like me into a living catapult which set rocks on fire, so they landed as splashes of boiling lava, when Um-Dulci-Dhenk tried to conquer Trom. That was pretty big magic I guess. No domain mage could do that.”

I nodded two heads. “I couldn’t do anything like that. But could the Wizard of Trom do that on Yirien?”

Hditr laughed. “The Wizard of Trom couldn’t do a thumbweight thing outside of Trom. The edge of the city wall was the edge of his power. I hear it’s worse nowadays. He’s got this formal garden next to his manse in Trom, and now that’s the only place he can actually work magic any-the-more.”

“That’s why I want domain magic. It works anywhere,” I said.

“Well, to be perfectly and pricklily precise, I want to be perfectly and punctiliously precise about how well it works anywhere,” said Hditr.

“But you want territory, so you’re not going to be living just anywhere, you’re going to be living in some tea-flavored swamp on Yirien? Why don’t you want to be a wizard?” asked Eric.

“You can’t just decide to become a wizard,” said Hditr. “A few people are born that way, or strobble into it somehow. Being a priest is almost as hard. You can study and pray and train all you like, but if you can’t interest a god, you’re just a bookworm with a bad bitchitude. Domain magic is the one people can just go and pick up — and that’s for people who think it’s a good trade to lose an arm or leg for the power to extract honey-catsup that’s been stirred into stew.”

“Was it hard for you to get priest magic?” I asked.

“Me? Nah. Second month in seminary, we went on a tour of the nearby gods, and Hythace put a necklace of lightning around my neck at first sight.”

Eric and I stared at her. He said, “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

“I don’t either,” I said. “That never happens on Yirien.”

“Hythace, she’s my patron goddess, right? She’s this big black mountain with a perpetual thunderstorm around her top. Pretty talkative for a goddess, even. ‘Course she can’t talk to nobody but clicky-brained clergy. Anyways, she put her mark on me right away. Still got it.” Hditr loosened her tunic. The fur around her neck had been burned to silver.

“Why can’t talk to anyone but clergy?” asked Eric.

“Well, she writes stuff in lighting in her thunderstorm. Gone in an instant. But her clergy can cast memory spells. We use ‘em to remember what she wrote.”

Eric tried and failed to rub his eyes. “She sounds very different than the god I met.”

Hditr shrugged. “Eh, gods. They’re all different. They’re all crazy, too.”

“Isn’t that a little bit blasphemous?” asked Eric.

“If an anti-bishop can’t blaspheme her own goddess, who can?” asked Hditr, apparently seriously.

“I still don’t get what’s an anti-bishop,” said Eric.

“A bishop is a priest in charge of a whole district. Administration, rituals, public dignity, lots of underlings, order, pomp, circumstance, professionalism. Also protecting the honor of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, ensuring revenue, concealing clerical misdeeds, all that stuff. You can’t see me doing most of that, can you? I’ve got as much pomp as a pimp in a pump, and I’m the one performing those clerical misdeeds what need covering up. Wound up in bed with the bishop’s wife of Snorth, I did.”

Eric said, “You said husband, last time.”

“Oh, I slept all slorts of slippery sluttery spouses, I did, and caste be curste” said Hditr. “Anyhow, nobody could imagine some unpolished barmaid’s daughter in charge of a district, least of all me. But neither could they shove me in a corner and ignore me, not after Hythace marked on me and kept calling me over to chat.”

“What did you chat about?” I asked. The gods of Yirien are few in number, and grimly silent.

“Whatever I wanted. Which was sometimes who I was boinking at the time — not her favorite topic, what with her being a ‘her’ only by convention and all — and sometimes was how magic varies from place to place. That, it turned out, is what she was interested in too. So she picked someone who could move around and didn’t mind pissing everyone off with questions to find out. And here I am.”

“What have you found out?”

“I have found out that I have as much of a clue as a clabbered clam, and I gotta investigate everything a whole lot more.” Hditr got herself a chalice of the world-ship’s nasty coffee, lapped at it, and made a face. «Cuisine» and I made it taste good, and she grinned at us.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

This being read for Tllith of Yirien, Princess of Septoulny Swamp, «Language»-mage, «Cuisine»-mage. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Layer of six fertilized eggs is she; one is crushed. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. Kidnapped and word-knotted by Kuur Molk Hasp is she, who is worthy of every curse and suffering. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

Me — coiled in the box, hidden by the curtain of ripped velvet. No words for couatl or spidersen; no couatl or spidersen. No words for humans; but humans were there.

The words of humans — heard from within the box. Translated. Transcribed. A tool to use? But how?

Kuur: Rathigrea, enter my chamber of sorcery! I have need of you!

Rathigrea: What news, my husband? Is it done?

Kuur: It is done, my wife. The spirit from Gemgaru is brought forth from that mystic hell. A serpent-spirit, a bird-spirit, with powers of healing. It is in the box there.

Rathigrea: May I look, my husband? It is a thing out dream and story; I would see it!

Kuur: Lift the curtain and glance, my wife. It hisses with rage; it would destroy our bodies and seethe our souls if it could. It cannot.

The curtain — brushed aside by a hand of Rathigrea. Rathigrea — Shorter than Kuur! Thin! Breechclout of knotted dusty-green cloth! Bruises on her hands, her arms! Fear in her eyes! Fatigue in her limbs! Wonder in her lips.

Rathigrea: It’s beautiful!

Kuur: Its beauty is a trap, my wife, nor should you think of it as less than hideously dangerous. I control it by both hostages and incantations, as the grimoires teach. But I do not trust it. It is a monstrous wicked thing, a demon of devils, and it hates us, it hates all that walks on two legs.

Me — yes! I hate him! But not for counting his legs! For his smashing and stealing of my eggs and me!

Rathigrea: Will it give you the powers you need, Kuur?

Kuur: It will obey me.

Rathigrea: Then let it begin now, my husband. Douk …

Kuur: My son? What has come to Douk?

Rathigrea: He spoke harsh words and heavy insults to the shaft-boss. Upon which the shaft-boss raised his quota again. Douk protested. Douk waved his strong fist and digging-mattock in the face of the shaft-boss. The Scorthmen came then.

Kuur: My son, my son! Does he live?

Rathigrea: He lives. The Scorthmen do not kill good miners. They covered his eyes with rotting meat, and poured live coals on his head. He is sore with burns and stinking with infections.

Kuur: Yet you told me none of this!

Rathigrea: You were at your sorceries, to free us all. I tell you now.

Kuur: Bring the lad to me, wife! My bound spirit shall begin by giving him a healing!

Douk — brought in. Tall, strong, skin of grey. Eyes puffy with sickness. Hairless even on his head — coarsely shaved. Many blisters from burning.

Kuur: Couatl, attend!
D̲URMENT TH̐A̗UN̳ DOKC CH͔AͅAN͌U
I compel thee by the terms of thy binding to work your full power for healing upon any human who places a hand within thine box, delaying not, making excuses not, adding not any sort of injury or trouble or vexation, neither causing unseemliness nor complication, and in all ways must they remain unaware of your presence and nature.
D̲URMENT H̭OI AMARA̬TA̡XS͂EN
And I promise you further that if you displease me in your obedience to this command, I shall smash one of your eggs, mix the yolk with my own shit, and paint you with it.

Response — I wished to make it, fierce and biting and bitter, but I could not, for the sorcerer’s words clogged my mouth when I tried.

Douk — nervously placed his hand under the curtain.

Me — healed the child of the man who had killed my child. My choice — none.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

I scampered forth, an eager bunch of dragon heads, and followed the recipe. The third door on the left opened onto the mess room, a small rectangular room with rounded corners, with four metal tables and sixteen mushroom-shaped stools bolted to the floor, and a grille and a slot upon the wall, and a badger and a ghost on two mushrooms. I spoke the required phrase to the grille. It responded, “Dr̻o̐mmu pson̑tie̛ v̕h͕͒e͖nc.” in buzzy tones. «Language» said that the incantation «Cuisine» had told me was “May I have the condiment assortment with the stew please“, and the answer was “Coming up in a moment, please“.

“By Ghorsam’s ironic earplugs, it’s Tllith, emerged from the virulent virtue-violating embraces of Vong, and speaking in some lunky limulent language! How are you feeling, Tllith?” called Hditr.

“Hi, Hditr and Eric! I think I’m sane again. Hungry, though. I wonder if that’s a side effect of «Cuisine».”

Hditr snorted, “More like a side effect of sleeping for a week. I want to ask you, is that what happened the other time you got a domain sigil?”

I shook my left head, on the advice of «Language». “No, I just talked a lot. That’s not too unusual. Also I got the sigil tatooed in six sessions. It wasn’t such a shock”

Hditr nodded her furry head back. “Slow as a slug in syrup. They say that’s the route to sanity. Quick as a quacking quasit, that’s to get the most power, and boiled bollocks to your brain, right?”

“That seems about right so far,” I admitted. Chitinous appendages pushed a metal tray through the slot. I took it in two mouths, and carried it to Hditr and Eric’s table. It was not a dragon-height table. I had to rear up on four legs to get the tray onto it. Hditr grabbed it with one hand, which I appreciated even if I’m quite sure it wouldn’t have spilled.

I crouched and leapt onto one of the mushrooms Eric gave me an odd look. “Hey there, Tllith. There’s a pedal to make it go up and down, you know.”

“I don’t know!”

“The way you were getting your food and speaking the local lingo to the steward, I thought you’d been on one of these boats before,” he said.

“«Cuisine» and «Language». I’m cheating totally with magic all over,” I said, and started slicing up hard ship’s biscuits with my claws and and otherwise following the recipe.

Eric said, “Oh, right. I’m still not used to magic. I have an easier time thinking of this as some super-advanced spaceship with a high technology food replicator.”

“Nope. We’re in the mucking multiverse of magic, and that’s the ship’s spidersen steward Ghomfuu back in the galley, picking hard-as-halite biscuits out of a wooden box and reheating this stinking slumgummery stew on a spirit lamp,” said Hditr. She ate a spoonful of it with a sigh.

I tasted it. It was bland and inoffensive, a thick slurry of lentils and carrots and onions and tomatoes, rounded out with marjoram and bay and red wine. “It’s not that bad, but the mustard and vinegar help a lot.”

“How the humping halloon did you rate mustard and vinegar? Hey, can I have the pepper sauce if you’re not going to have it?” she said.

“Well, I just asked for it, in the right language. Maybe the steward doesn’t speak Ilmalang. Go ahead on the sauce, but…” I started.

“I’ll just do the dousing deed right away!” She snagged the bowl of honey-catsup, upended it onto her stew, and stirred it in in an instant, and took a spoonful. “Oh, sexually-swinging swine! It’s sweet sauce, not pepper sauce!”

“… it’s not pepper sauce,” I finished.

“Finger-fucking fangflayers, it’s not pepper sauce! Why didn’t you tell me that earlier, while I was grabbing it off your tray and interrupting you just like a jaspered jout so you couldn’t tell me?”

“Not a good combination?” asked Eric.

“Ginger gum and gargled gammon is not a good combination. This is a downright bad combination,” said Hditr. She ate a second spoonful, with a pitiable expression on her face and considerable mock effort choking it down.

“Behold the power of «Cuisine»!” I cried, and cast the mightiest food-spell I had ever seen cast. Also the second food-spell I had ever seen cast. From the luminance of my magic the catsup oozed out of the stew and poured back into the cup it had come from.

“Ooh, I behold, I behold like a believing badger babe! That’s a timely trick,” said Hditr. “Could you score some of that vinegar from our scorpionistic spidersen steward for me?”

“Sure,” I said, and gobbled two more bites of stew and softened biscuits with each head before hopping down off the mushroom and speaking a «Language»-translated incantation in whatever heavily-inflected tongue that was to the steward. In a moment I returned to Hditr with tots of mustard and vinegar.

“Well, thank you kindly, dragon! You’re worth your pay, sure!” she said.

“You’re not paying me,” I noted.

“Well, fine. You’re worth the occasional oscillatingly-orgasmed gift, then. Happy? Who eats catsup with lentil stew, any-the-fuck-how? Or caramel syrup, by Rogalia’s rogering rodents?”

I lifted one head from the stew to ask my domains, and answered Hditr with, “Savory stews with sweet sauces are characteristic of the Bunfi — or Bun̮phíd͖a̦la̯̽ if you want to please them by saying it right — cuisine.”

“Wonder wicks, and thank you kindly. Where are the Bum-fucks, and how do I stay the food-fearing firefarts out of their restaurants?” asked Hditr.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Neither of my domains is that good with geography.” (It turned out that Bunfi are one of the main ethnic groups on Ixange, and there was nothing in the least surprising about an Ixange-based world-ship serving it.)

Mirrored from Sythyry.

This being read for Tllith of Yirien, Princess of Septoulny Swamp, «Language»-mage. This being written by Cleiestis of Gemgaru. Layer of six fertilized eggs is she. Priestess of the third florescence is she, mistress of seven spells and three visible and four invisible potencies. Wife of Tomolrouc is she, who is the assistant administrator of flying insects to the Hoouthgala district. The hope from here is that you are in a state of delighted, and that three happinesses and four contentments are on you.

Myself — Flung into the center of geometry upon the floor of the sorcerer’s room. Held trapped by lines and arcs scribed in ashes and chalk. Walled-in by incense and foul fumigations.

The speaking of Kuur Molk Hasp — Read from the great book.
D̲URMENT HLI͉DIOPSI͆S TRAH̒N͓U̐UT
By the mighty name of GH͈RỌGSI̯AS I bind thee for so long as thine fertilized eggs remain away from thee.
D̲URMENT KOERGIKU̢S POR̕HANEY
By the dread flame DNUR PEZ̳MON DNUR that dwells beyond the eyes of serene TEPHN̄OHIṀ-LA I compel thee to have no commerce with human, spidersen, or couatl save as I permit during that time.
D̲URMENT IRIMITOR NO̘S̈TER̰ KFERGUNT
By the frozen sea DUZ̞MON OC OK whose waves whelmed the Inapplicable Land, I require of thee never to lift against me wing nor fang, spell nor potency, visible nor invisible device, while you remain in Tellosh and after you return to Gemgaru.
D̲URMENT KJAD̅E TILKOM̗ȂNT͈
These bindings and compulsions and requirements have been written in the Imimitable Script upon the all-siring phallus of terrible NOVŎR; they have been inscribed in jade letters upon the all-knowing forehead of redemptive VUXKNIL; they have been cemented upon the all-ruling wrists of cosmic LO͌RN GA͊SḴ DU̐KU̻ EMPU͋ GA͊S͔K. It is done.

The words — Nonsense words! Never meaning anything, those words!

— but —

When I try to plead with Kuur to release me and my eggs … My mouth — full of fire! Burning! (My face-feathers — scorched!) It is DNUR PEZ̳MON DNUR! I cannot speak!

When I strike at Kuur’s hand… My mouth — suddenly crammed full of salt, of ice, of crashing crunching waves — of DUZ̞MON OC OK!

These things — How can they be? But they are.

Kuur — Speaking, Into the box, thou stupid and disobedient spirit!

The box — Crude wood boards. Glued and nailed. A foot high, two long, three wide. One side — cryptic words written: Dallopp and Heem-Smyth, Provisioners to the Royal Army, Scorth One side — a gaping hole of boards smashed away. A black curtain, heavy ripped velvet, glued and tacked to cover the hole, swept aside by the hand of Kuur to show me. Inside — splinters, crumbs of biscuits, scraps!

The box — My cage. My home.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Curse-dreams of curries and cassoulettes simmered me for hours, for days. Bafflements baked me until until golden-brown. Eventually I awoke, to discover that I was tied loosely to a very large bed under a comfortably low ceiling. I quite sensibly started burning the cords off of my legs and necks.

“What!! What are you doing??!! A fire here could be the end of me — of us all!!” wailed Vong. He leapt down and dashed a pitcher of water over me.

It was instantly obvious, even to my sleep-boggled and «Cuisine»-fermented mind, what had happened. We had not in fact escaped onto the world-boat. Vong and his minions had caught up with us. I had been bound. Hditr and Hermen were probably imprisoned or worse. Eric must have escaped, being wholly intangible, and was probably making plans to rescue me as soon as he could find a living ally.

My role was clearly to buy Eric all the time I could manage. “What do you want with me, Vong?”

“I want you not to kill me, you stupid and insane lizard!!” he stated.

“Then let me go, monstrous and wicked toad!” I riposted.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled, and started untying the cords on my legs. I had tricked him! This was almost too easy!

It was, in fact, too easy, for soon Vong proclaimed, “What insolence is this?? “You have made these bonds be wet — be soaking! They cannot be untied!!”

“I think they’re soaked from you dumping a pitcher of water on them,” I pointed out.

“Lout!! Disrespectful beast!! Do not speak thus to me when I am doing a favor for you!!” he snarled.

“Then don’t. I’ll escape on my own,” I snapped, and started gnawing on one of the cords with my ice-head’s mouth. Vong did nothing to stop me; he simply glared. What a hopeless villain!

Well, if he wasn’t going to interrogate me, I would surely interrogate him. While gnawing with one head, I challenged him with another. “What have you done with Hditr, Eric, and that seminary-trained miner?”

“Nothing!!” said Vong sullenly. “It’s what they did to me that you should ask about!!”

One delaying tactic is as good as any other, I supposed. “Well, what did they do to you?”

He sat on a small metal bench or shelf in the opposite wall. When I had gnawed through the cords on my fire-head, I stuck it out to look around. Vong and I were in a small metal room, with two bunks on one side (I was in the upper one), a few drawers and a door and that bench in the other side, and four dim glow-spots in the ceiling’s corners for lighting.

“They got me exiled from Drullguur!!!” said Vong, more emphatically than his usual, hopping to his feet in a sudden passion of fury. “They twisted the minds of the miners against me!!! They raised an insurrection — against me!!! Against a lawfully appointed mayor!!! Who had been working for months for nothing but their benefit and goodification!!!”

“I can’t imagine any other possible cause for an insurrection against you. How could they object to you calling the scriptures ‘fuck poetry’ and having your truncheon-bearing goon threaten them?”

Vong cast himself to the bench despondently. “Exactly!! Exactly!! You understand me, lizard, where neither miners nor mammals do!!” I gathered that he didn’t really understand draconic gestures of sarcasm.

“So, why are we in here?” I asked, getting my forelegs free.

“They didn’t want to share a cabin with me!!” cried Vong. “Me — whose very integument exudes an attar of stulch-rose!! Whose ancestral lineage includes great heroes and mighty insect-finders!! Among whose cousins are numbered both crooners and queens!!”

“… cabin?…” I asked.

“Cabin! And for the entire duration of the voyage to Ixange I must endure their close proximity!! And yours as well!!”

I was perplexed. “Wait, we’re going to Ixange?”

“Yes!! I — exiled from Drullguur!! You and your companions — accompanying me to mock me!!”

“Actually we were trying to escape you and your bully-boys,” I pointed out.

“What?? My bully-boys?? I have no bully-boys!! I never had bully-boys!! I had hired security forces!! But!! They were un-hired insecurity forces when security became necessary!! Instantly they cited a payment dispute and sided with the miners!! Like foul stinking cameoleopard turds born of an improper and infelicitous conjunction between a rotten radish and a festering ferret!!”

That was not an image I much wanted to imagine. In part I was afraid that, if I ever succeeded in imagining it, I would never be able to un-imagine it. “Is there anything to eat here?” After «Cuisine»-fever I was ravenous. “Any croustellines St. Jacques au choufleur, maybe? Or bear’s liver fermented in a sauce of mouse intestines? Or … ” I shook my heads to clear them, which does not work as well for a Yirienian as for a more centralized person, but I had few useful alternatives. “Even anything plausible?”

“Here?? Bah, no!! Nothing!! You must go to the mess room to eat, like anyone!! I shall not be your waiter-slave and bring you delicacies!!” Vong waved a web-fingered hand at a rectangular outline on the metal wall.

I poked at it. Vong snorted, “!!”, and depressed a spring among several on an obscure panel. The door slid aside. I pranced ravenously into the metal tube of a corridor. I used my new-branded powers to cast a spell to seek prepared food — realizing, as I did, that I had become one of the few people in any universe who could do that. It produced directions in the form of a recipe.

1 bunch of dragon heads, fresh if possible, as chef
4 ship’s biscuits
1 pint of reheated lentil stew
Preserved black olives and green pickles
Condiment Assortment
Send the dragon heads leftwards through the steely corridors of the world-ship, and through the third door on the left. Speak the words “Tsu̗vͅh́i̜p̩͒ dw̉exy̻ įr͋n̻ufu̩ lesp͑ d̒w͉̍okty̿ a͈͉l̰bu͓” to the grille upon the wall. When the other ingredients emerge from the slot beneath, thinly slice three biscuits. Make a central well in the thick stew and line it with sliced biscuits. From the condiment assortment, carefully remove and discard the honey-catsup, caramel syrup, and green sauce. Carefully pour the vinegar over one half of the stew, and the mustard over the other half. Crumble the remaining biscuit finely and sprinkle it on top. Serve it forth with olives and pickles on the side to the dragon heads, in full knowledge that no better arrangement is currently possible.