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Old 02-27-2007, 08:59 AM   #12
The Squatter of Amon Rûdh
Spectre of Decay
 
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Released from the saccharine Music of Holding, Mëanderin and his crew looked about in a slightly more dazed and confused fashion than usual. They looked at one another, then at the dead Watchers, and finally at Tara and Gateskeeper before losing their places and going back to the beginning. It was Redwine who voiced their common thoughts; he whose previous nautical experience had also consisted of getting lost in exotic places.

‘?’

‘!’ replied his captain, also dispensing with an actual sentence.

‘Too late,’ lamented Gateskeeper. ‘Already their minds are lost.’

‘Command not found, Player 1’ replied Tara, whose vocabulary was intended for simpler situations.

‘Who are you?’

Mëanderin’s confused tones were soon drowned out by the cry of his heroes. The first to shout his defiance was Noplan the Destroyer, who still held Trollbeer in one meaty fist.

‘You killed the girls!’

‘Yeah,’ added Harald Nicehair. ‘And the blonde was giving me the eye!’

‘What are you going to do now?’ wondered Orphultrus the Bard. ‘Spill all the wine? Break my lyre? Steal our playing cards?’

‘Hang on,’ Exlax interjected. ‘He’s brought another girl with him, and she’s not wearing much either.’

‘Yeah, but she’s also just killed all the others. What if there are more free women on this island and she kills them all?’

The crew began to edge menacingly towards Gateskeeper and Tara. Some of them still hefted large pieces of wood, but this time there was a distinct threat to their flexing.

‘Wait!’ cried Starstruc. ‘I remember something else: we were…’

At the cry of ‘wait’ the rest of the crew immediately and abruptly ignored him and carried on with what they were doing. In a crisis, volume trumps competence every time. Mëanderin leaped to his subordinate’s aid by tripping over his cloak and falling headlong onto the sand. His helmet fell off and rolled into a patch of seaweed.

Gateskeeper’s greeting died on his lips as he realised how the situation had been misinterpreted. Fellow masters of arcana would have recognised his companion sooner, and failing that he could simply begin the mantra of greeting known as Dédparôt Sceč, which his order were obliged to recite in full as soon as one word of it was spoken. These men, however, knew nothing of the sacred lore of Monteé Pi-thon, and men of their stamp might be enraged by gratuitous quotation. Thinking fast, Gateskeeper invoked the most powerful spell of diversion known to his craft. Drawing himself up to his full height, he raised his staff above his head and in a voice of doom declaimed the dread words of the Charm of Distracted Purpose:

Maenswëpr hârts Sol-Itár! Bëdë-fôr um’*

The Hyperbolists stopped dead in their tracks. Some began to argue loudly about arcane matters, such as the origin of seagulls and how many days it had taken to arrive from the previous island. Others simply gazed into space, occasionally moving their hands in an apparently random combination of actions. None retained any of their violent interest in Gateskeeper or his lethal companion except Mëanderin himself, whose attempts to retrieve his lost helmet from beneath his crew’s feet had distracted him from Gateskeeper’s words. He stood up, grasping his headgear triumphantly.

‘Got it!’ announced the captain, turning to face his men. ‘Now, as I was about to say… um… lads?’

Gradually it dawned on Mëanderin that his men might not have their minds so set on diplomacy as might have been the case.

‘Well, that’s hardly polite,’ he remonstrated. ‘You haven’t even greeted these strangers yet.’

Some of the crew called out vague words of welcome, without once focusing on the newcomers.

‘Welcome to our camp, strangers,’ announced their leader, hamming slightly in the style of someone teaching manners to a toddler. ‘I am Mëanderin, captain of the Uncounted Surplus Ship Hyperbolic; and these are my crew of gallant heroes, who seek to aid in the great war of Frân-čaes.’

Gateskeeper had got rather drunk at the victory celebrations several years before, but he didn’t have the heart to mention it to this bedraggled specimen; especially since he saw an opportunity for free transportation.

‘I am Gateskeeper, creator of Soft Wares and Guardian of the Coded Source. Whither art thou bound, warrior of Rǿdidendrun?’

Gateskeeper was under the mistaken impression that all heroes respond well to archaism, particularly those deficient in directional competence. After his previous experience in the Fellowship of the Things, one can scarcely blame him.

‘Well, since the war’s at Illiúmë I thought we might go there next, not that it’s any of your business,’ responded the captain, mildly annoyed at being mistaken for a tourist.

‘I only ask,’ explained Gateskeeper mildly, ‘because if you are indeed Mëanderin, lord of Mithicà, you’re about six-hundred miles off course. I thought you might be going somewhere else first.’

‘Ah. I was wondering when you’d spot that,’ rejoined Mëanderin. ‘Well done. We are, in fact, in search of an oracle to guide us in our quest.’

‘I know oracles,’ announced Gateskeeper. If you know how to phrase your queries properly they can tell you anything you want to know, but none may be invoked in this environment. You must call on them using methods that are known to me’.

‘Will you guide us in our search for data? We had thought many things lost to us since we crashed the ship.’

‘I will help you on two conditions,’ replied Gateskeeper portentously. ‘Firstly, you shall stop all of these anachronistic I.T. related puns; and secondly, you will agree to transport me and my companions for the duration of our quest, which shall remain nameless for the present.’

‘So you want us to provide you with a vehicle to achieve your ends, which will remain secret from us until you’ve reached them; in return for which you will help us to do something complicated in such a way that we don’t learn anything about it and therefore can’t do it again without your help?’

‘Yes. Such a pact is known among my order as –he searched his mind for the meaning of the words- a boilerplate end-user licence agreement, but what I said about anachronisms counts double for making me do it.’

It is now, gentle reader, that you will come to know those bargaining skills that had earned Mëanderin such a reputation throughout the seaways of Muddled Mirth. Examining Gateskeeper’s offer with great care and deliberation, taking into account the unspecified duration and requirements of their agreement and the vagueness of the proffered support, he looked his new acquaintance squarely in the eye and announced the only decision that had even occurred to him.

‘O wise one, you have my solemn pledge on it. Now, what's the chance of getting a few moments alone with your companion?’

--

* Quixotic: ‘You shall forget what you were doing and proceed no further.’
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