[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

The Druid Time began to recover from whatever metaphysical mushroom binge it had been on while Lord Etceteron slept at some point in the middle of a day of blazing heat. Awaking he heard, saw and, unfortunately, smelt a large company of gaudy scarlet warriors, whose chains currently bound him about so completely that, surrounded by scarlet ranks as he was, to the observing modern eye (not that there was any such thing, since this account was penned by Deeproot the Ent and not, for example, a long-haired weirdo in a roleplay) he would most have resembled a cannon ball at the battle of Isandhlwana. The sun was bright and hot, and he couldn't move his hands to get his flask but he was being carried, which made matters simpler. Consciousness wasn't worth it so he gave it a miss.

When next he came to himself it was a disappointing visit. He was chained up in a standard-issue dank cell and it was the middle of the night. Reaching for his flask, he found that it had moved to another pocket, and that it now had a note attached to it. The note simply read "Do we look stupid?" It wasn't the first time that his night-cap had been taken for nightshade, so not for the first time he began to polish it off.

Topfloorien had been a bad idea. Now his thoughts were mostly of Vinaigrettiel the Fair, the Col-i-Flaur of Careless Gardenhon. He bewailed their parting, he cursed the sword Wylkynsion (which had spent three hours trying to persuade the MoreScenarios' leader to kill him with it), and his own decision to take the job. As it was he had drunk the proceeds of the trip within six months, and had to put up with the sword for long and bitter years of bickering and dirty jokes. Somebody else was enduring the constant niggles of the Black Sword now, and Earnur found himself regretting only the need to drop one of his heroic soubriquets. His last waking thoughts before the extra belladonna, placed in his drink by the guards, lulled him into his usual gentle nocturnal coma were of Vinaigrettiel, but delicacy forbids that I give any details.

He awoke to the sensation of being dragged roughly to his feet, and as usual it was someone in uniform who was doing the uplifting. The guard was scruffy, short and flabby, and a dog-eared roll-up hung from the corner of his mouth. "'Er ladyship will see yew naow," announced the hopeless excuse for a figure of authority, exhaling a foul smoke into Lord Etceteron's face and receiving the toxic fumes of his unconventional tipple in return. Both men blanched visibly, an impasse of machismo.

Earnur was led from his cell (two much more competent guards met him at the door and chained his arms to his sides before allowing him to proceed), along countless stairs, up myriad gratuitously steep and narrow staircases from the hell of the cells to the bizarre purgatorial splendour of the fortress above. He was shoved and chivvied past murals depicting scenes of questionable moral content and, to Etceteron's eye at least, even more questionable anatomical accuracy. He passed furniture made from human bones standing before works of art of astonishing beauty; he saw heavy red velvet draping iron engines in which spikes and blades featured prominently and he winced at the open braziers and racks of weapons that festooned the rooms. The Great Hall, however, surpassed all the others in its aggressive opulence: it was like a diamond-studded hammer.

The massive chamber filled most of this wing of the fortress. Its exquisite roof of wrought iron and stained glass split the light into weirdly dancing colours that reminded Etceteron uncomfortably of the time he'd eaten the wrong mushrooms and woken up in Khand dressed as a belly dancer. Iron candlesticks bore huge cylinders of guttering tallow that were no more candles than a sabre-toothed tiger is a domestic cat. At the far end, beneath a gigantic tapestry of the fall of Valvoline, a massive flight of stone steps led up to a large dias carpeted in silks and satins, on which was a throne from one of Edgar Allan Poe's nastier nightmares, before which Earnur was flung unceremoniously.

It was made of solid iron, which had been wrought into tortured and grotesque swirls that sprouted spikes at every conceivable angle; the apex of the canopy was set with an axe blade: this was not a throne in which one would sit who deserved to be known as Good Queen anything. Its current occupant had been born to sit there. She: all-powerful, all-knowing, and disturbingly handy with a whip.

Her outfit looked more like an instrument of torture even than some of the things he'd been tortured with. It was all straps and buckles, with strangely unnecessary leather and metal accoutrements and an enormous fan of a collar that reached above the crown of Her head. The spike theme was carried on with gusto throughout. The Lord of Dun Sóbrin, however, was no longer looking at the uncomfortable outfit, the nightmarish hall or the Throne: he was gazing in astonishment at She, and She, in an unexpected move, was looking at him with no less amazement.

"You." They both said, competing in the badly-hidden shock stakes without a clear winner being declared. For each looked upon the owner of the most embarrassing nickname they had ever invented (no I'm not going to repeat them. You can enjoy hours of fruitless speculation about what they were) and for the first time in many years Earnur and Vinaigrettiel were (almost) face to face.

"I've got some of your things in a box somewhere..." she ventured.

"I had some of yours, but I was mugged in Ozfestiath." he replied brilliantly.

"Don't worry about that," she answered sweetly. "I got them."

"So... umm... what are you doing with yourself these days?" he inquired with almost non-existent suavity.

"I am a Queen. Beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night. Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain. Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning. Strong as the foundations of the earth. You remember; I told you that time when you gave me that ring."

Somewhere in Lord Etceteron's ragged brain a few exhausted synapses perked up in recognition before succumbing to some residual alcohol. "That's right," he mused. "I took you to that old battlefield and I found it in the river. Whatever happened to it?"

She raised Her right hand languidly, displaying a gold ring. He could not read the fiery letters through his hangover, but he knew what they said, near enough: Earnur 4 Vinaigrettiel; he had taken it to be inscribed himself.

A guard - clearly an unwilling emissary from the others - sidled in, holding in his hand a piece of paper. Probably another declaration of war for her signature, She considered. "What do you mean, minion, by interrupting my interrogation?" She demanded icily, and Etceteron winced on the servitor's behalf. He had heard that tone before.

"Message for you, Milady." squeaked the unknown soldier.

"Bring it to me." She commanded, and the lily-liveried guard ascended the great staircase with timid tread. She took the message from his petrified grasp and read it impatiently. When She had finished she stabbed him off-handedly with a detachable spike designed for that purpose. "Why do they waste my time with trivialities?" She fumed. "Any fool can pay a gas bill!"

Two more guards were summoned to carry away their luckless companion, at which point She continued: "How's your famous sword?" in a tone that suggested to the listener that the best answer would be 'it fell into a volcano.' "It fell into a volcano." he replied.

"What a shame," said Vinaigrettiel brightly, her eyes brimming with utter indifference. "It rather suited you."

"Not really. Bloody thing drove me up the wall most of the time, and the rest of the time I was dru... asleep." Etceteron flannelled cheerfully.

"Be that as it may," said the Fair One, and her voice changed to one more suited to her surroundings. "You are my prisoner. What, I wonder, shall I do with you while I ponder what use you will be?" She rose as she said this, and left the question hanging for a tension-ridden age while She climbed down from Her throne and allowed one elegantly-manicured finger to glide briefly along one of Earnur's manly biceps. Suddenly she stopped, her face inches from Earnur's own. "I think," she declared huskily, "that for now I shall put you back in your cell. It's what Mr. Fluffy would have wanted."

With that She called Her guards, who dragged Earnur back to his stinking cell, although by the sickeningly dopy smile on his face one would have thought it was a suite at the Regency. He drank a cheerful toast to his guards to thank them for the more-than-usually gentle shove to the floor, and settled down to enjoy the warm, pink coma of the annoying lover, in which I shall leave him to avoid any gastric upheavals it may cause.

[ March 18, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]