Languishing draft! Minstrel Whistler and the Gnomish Inquisition

 Hello, my loves. This one is a partial draft orphaned years ago, written mostly to amuse fellow roleplaying gamers. I still find it amusing. Maybe I'll continue it. :) In the meantime, enjoy the gnomish hijinx.

-Dux

____

“…and we are fortunate, for it is for us to set down the most thrilling adventure ever to ring end to end with truth, a story of gold and villainy, of heroism and true poetry.  You are particularly blessed, as you have this candid window into my travels in unedited form; may you be blessed by my curse of rheumatism!  Scribe, let us begin the work.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Ahh, so it is like that?  I weary you already?  I will have you know that before I was this genial shambles of handsome old bones, I was an esteemed explorer, acclaimed minstrel, and the foremost author –“

“AHEM.”

“The foremost author, I say, of the erotic epic.”

“To be a peddler of smut is no great distinction, and I do not see why the priest wishes to set down the ramblings I have heard you mutter in kitchen and Hall, but I am here to lend a semblance of coherence to it, sir.  I—“

“The master of the erotic epic -- “

“Tupping liberty.”

“Ah.  Ah!  Now, that, I say, should be the title of my second great political manifesto regarding personal freedom and the structure of our civilization–“

“Fucking hell.”

“Aye, the work to which it is a sequel, treating on your very own Order and its highly perverse abuses of the public trust.  You must surely be familiar, and perhaps would consent to an interview?  No?  But no use speaking of that which is not yet published.  I speak, of course, of the Misadventures of the Tapster.”

“Ugh!”

“So you’ve heard of it!  Perhaps… even read it?”

“No!  Well… yes.  It is unavoidable among novices.”

“And what did you think?  Magnificent, is it not?”

“Utter twaddle.  And one ought not to end the reader on a cliff in a novel of uncertain circulation.”

“The reader!  While the characters’ fate hangs uncertain, the reader is, one assumes, comfortably arrayed in his chair – ah.  I understand.  Well, well, my boy.  Perhaps it is not my place to advise you here, but if the climax of the book was insufficient, you could have paged back to Chapter Nine, in which—“

“Not.  What.  I.  Meant.”

“Hm.”

“Well?  Shall we write down this ridiculous story of yours?”

“By all means.”  The old man leaned forward and grinned, rubbing his crabbed hands together between the worn velveteen knees of his russet breeches.  His rings jangled on the narrow parts of his fingers, between the knots arthritis had made of his knuckles.

 

I am not ashamed to admit that in the twenty-seventh year of my life, I was rescued by a damsel both precious and dainty.  I had fallen, you see, into a crevasse – don’t be vulgar, boy, this is historical – and was both surprised and somewhat horrified to find that it was some sort of animal trap, set with vicious stakes smeared with both Cause and Effect, and replete with the evidence that other miserable creatures had also missed seeing the leaf cover for what it was.  The tenderer viands of those which were edible had been cut and carted off, and the gristly remains left layered with lime and probable bandits.  It is from this profligacy that I knew that Farhetha was a nation of bounty and plenty, as poorer souls would have stewed the bones and possibly the bandits.  At any rate, Yours Truly was poor garnish for this dish, having survived both the fall and the spear piercing my calf, and I protested my situation with vehemence.

                And so this damsel appeared, a fair vision with skin like pearl strewn with spices, and eyes the color of the clay of my home valley.  She was wearing the practical homespun and leathers of her people, and carrying one of the dangerous clockworks which they are so reluctant to trade.  “Damn,” she murmured.  “I was hopin’ you’d be a goat.”

                I assured her that I could be whatever she wished, if she could assist me in removing the offending stake from my leg, and she wiped her hands on her apron and made up her mind to help me.  Although I remember her face with crystal clarity to this day, its every lash and freckle, I grow old; I cannot recall her name.  Ah yes, only her surname, which was Birdbeer.

                …Birdbeer?

Indeed.  The rumor had it that it is what her great-great-grandpap called chicken broth, and had been a successful innkeeper as were his descendants; it gave its name both to tavern and his quite august clan.

                Were they of noble stock?

Ach, that’s another fight and not one we have time for if we are to begin this tale in earnest.  Don’t let Cook hear you or we shall have a treatise on cuisine instead of this.  Now, don’t look so hopeful; nine tenths would be unprintable.  Onward!

                Maid Birdbeer was slight and but half my height, but she was not one to let a challenge lie, for which I was grateful due to the lime and the filthy stick marring my stocking.  She used her clockworks to drive a loop of metal into the stone wall of the pit, and then affixed a pulley and line to this; with the help of a few lads of her noble stock, they had pulled me out in no time.  However, I was not so fortunate as to be able to continue my journey, as sadly my limb and trousers were mangled.  The Birdbeers accepted their reward from my purse, and then debated the merits of accommodating my indigence; fortunately, the sight of my flute – historical! --served as my passport, and it was decided that I’d be entertainment at the tavern during my recuperation.

                Maid Birdbeer’s gran, Hester, was a wee tunny terror whose rheumy eyes seemed never to close and whose attempts to mend me with chicken soup, scolding, and the unfortunately exterior application of strong spirits were not to be interrupted by early departure.  Not trusting in the good sense of the young, that august personage chained my good ankle in the public room, where I slept, ate, recuperated, and sang for my supper during my recovery.  It was a twilight time for me, both because the Farhethans prefer their rooms dark and because I was never sure if I were in my right mind or raving.  The leg initially festered, but then, having been frightened into behaving by scolding and spirits and one terrifying physicker with steam and clockwork tools for every painful exigency, healed. 

                Now, I have mentioned that I was unsettled, and I would not have you think I was a coward, so allow me to explain the more alarming qualities of Farhethan sartorial standards.  First, when I say Maid Birdbeer was half my height, you must understand that she was a tall and comely lass by Farhethan standards.  Quite honestly, not a soul among whom I traveled there was so tall that they wouldn’t glare into my navel if I were so rude as to stand full height – an impossibility in the inn, my boy.  And that itself was a terrifying, rather than an adorable, quality, since each Farhethan adult files his or her teeth to fashionable points as a way of rendering the wide smile more striking.  One would think they would bite their rather long tongues, at least when they are using them to wash their faces, but they seem to get along all right.  And although I have said that Gran Hester Birdbeer’s milky eyes indeed never closed, I have to say I have never seen any other Farhethan’s eyelid either; I don’t think they have them.  I’ve never seen one blink.  And they certainly don’t have eyebrows.  Other than that, they are comely little souls, fair and finely built.  Their children are adorable, if rather prone to staring.  No Farhethan would be completely dressed without the wide leathern belt that bears every loop, pouch, and pocket that can fit on it, nor without every clockwork and gadget, candle and compass, needle, thimble, icepick, and scissors that can be fit into or onto the loops and pockets.  They jingle quite without armor – and few wear armor, although we will get to that.  Each one is capable of building a bridge or a birdcage at a moment’s notice, and they argue endlessly about the maddest possible way to do so, seeming to hold it in high esteem to concoct something highly impractical.  Don’t look at me that way; your Order also attempts to do things the least natural way possible, no?  Even the tavern was rigged to the rafters with pulleys and screws, rotating platforms and trap doors, locks made like puzzles so that only those in the know could unfix them, and so on.

                Anyway, I was a caged songbird, and one dark day was much like another.  They live underground, so only the dampness of their attire could tell me the weather, and I had become accustomed to endless rounds of birdbeer and gloom.  Occasionally, taller visitors would arrive, but none of them was inspired to find trouble with our hosts, so they would pass me tales and weak sympathy but not help with the chain that had become wearisome upon my ankle.  Men, among Farhethan gnomes, are nervous, and usually have somewhere else to be as soon as whatever they’ve brought for tinkering has been fixed or thoroughly broken.

                I was singing, one day, to a crowd of locals and a nervous pair of men who were sent as messengers to the Queen, when some Farhethan men came in in armor.  And what armor it was!  Diminutive as the wearers were, they would never have been able to bear its weight if it was not so marvelously engineered as to interlock piece into piece and so support itself.  It whirred and clicked impressively while they walked.  They were draped with cloaks of the homespun rabbit wool so popular among the gnomes, but dyed impressively crimson and shot through with tiny wires and gears of copper so that I could not be sure they would not transform spontaneously into a carriage or a clothes mangle.  They carried painfully articulated scepters, and I faltered in my song. 

                The young scribe with them seized the opportunity.  “The Minstrel comes with us,” he said with all the authority he could muster, nervously licking the place his eyebrow would have been if he had had one.  Actually, you remind me of him.  Pomp and circumstance.  “By order of the High Inquisitor.”

                Well, I gasped in fear.  “An Inquisitor?”  I’d never heard a religious word in Birdbeer Inn, and many sacrilegious ones.  I could not imagine an inquisition here.

                The scribe rolled his eyes – no small feat, given the lack of lids.  “No, the High Inquisitor – for you tall folk, you know.  Requires different technique.  Different furniture.”  He grinned the dog’s grin of his people and I knew I was meant to take this as a menacing leer.  It worked.  I was fairly unhappy.

                Maid Birdbeer clucked her tongue.  “Well, that’s that, I suppose.  Do either of you gentlemen sing?” she asked the messengers, who assured her they could not.

                And so I was escorted to the High Inquisitor.

 

I was “high,” at least nearly six feet so; High Inquisitor Barnaby was not.  Standing in the center of his office, his three-foot height accentuated by a tall pointed hat in crimson and copper that matched his vestments, he was a most impressive figure.  The toes of his sabbatons were machined copper, and positively glowed against a floor that seemed to have been carpeted with small pelts of many dull earthen colors and textures.  He fixed me with a regal stare and impatiently licked his earlobe.

When I was conducted, crouching, through the dim halls to his office, I could not have anticipated the splendor of that room.  Every inch of the walls were decorated with what seemed to be a tapestry made of leather; in high relief, it portrayed features in agony.  Lips sewn closed, empty eye sockets, anguished expressions, faces.  Here and there, tassels of tongues or ornaments of polished fingerbone.  It was all a most effective reminder of worldly fallibility, and I recommend this décor to your Order, as it instantly turned my thoughts to prayer.  High Inquisitor Barnaby followed my gaze around the room and smiled.  I was unnerved to see that while he had not followed the fashion of filing the teeth, his teeth were still triangular and sharp.

“Minstrel Tallfolk,” he said dramatically.  “I have been awaiting you.”

“Er, no, your honor; they call me that, but I am actually known as John Whistler,” I told him.  “It may be that you have the wrong man—“

He laughed.  “You’re not under arrest, Master Whistler.  I have heard that minstrels travel far and wide in the above world, and that you grow familiar with the customs of various places.”  He moved around a desk that was the only artifact in the room not to later give me nightmares, and sat down on the only chair in the room without straps.  With a lazy gesture of his hand, he indicated that I should sit down across from him.  I did, gingerly, misliking the way the chair legs rumpled the hair of the rug of scalps.

“Indeed, your honor,” I said.  I was neither eager to be there nor to find disfavor.

He looked directly at me.  His eyes were like beads of jet, mostly pupil in the dimness but ringed with azure blue.  They reminded me of something.

Once, when the discussion that followed a particularly heated game of cards turned ugly, two of my associates jokingly put me down a well while they searched for better cards among my effects.  The merry japesters left me in the well for a span of two hours, during which I had ample time to contemplate the shadow of the bucket centered in a blue ring.  Barnaby’s pupils were like the dark underside of that bucket, offering nothing, blotting out most of the blue.  It dawned on me that he was far from sober; the smoke that hazed the charnel décor of the room was no incense.

“Do you speak Althfar Erthe?” he asked genially. 

“K’he erthe thu,” I answered.  I’d blown the conjugation, but he grunted with satisfaction.

“And Maital Trade Speech?”

“Ay bego!” I answered with more robust confidence and much better grammar.  I was beginning to think he wanted me as a translator.

“And Kallan Bet?”

“Dorsha,” I grinned.  I made that one up, but after he hadn’t called me out on the Althfar, I thought it would be better to seem useful than to be infallible.  Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I say.

He steepled his fingers and nodded.  “Excellent.”  My hunch was correct; he wanted me to translate the words of the men he … inquisited … about a certain case.   And so it was, at last, that I found myself in a new pair of trousers – ridiculously shaped ones a genie would have blushed to wear, for the Farhethan idea of men’s sizes ran somewhat hot and cold, but of finely woven rabbit wool in crimson and with a ludicrous copper codpiece.  The trousers matched my equally rich, and poorly tailored, jacket of the same wool and metal trim.  John Whistler had joined the Inquisition.

 

Now, the Inquisition of Farhetha is not the same as any Inquisition you have read about, Scribe, so don’t get yourself tied in knots.  As mentioned, it is not a particularly religious place – don’t drool, it’s unbecoming.  It’s more resembling the King’s Guard, here; if they want to know a thing, why, they go out and find the answers, usually starting with a few fingernails and proceeding from there.  But whereas the King’s Guard are merely loyal enthusiasts, Inquisition is a permanent and aspirational career in Farhetha. 

It turns out that Barnaby was not particularly well esteemed, despite his “High” title; he answered to an unmodified Inquisitor and thence to the Grand Inquisitor, a small woman of such cutting menace that I cannot think of her, to this day, without shivers.  His splendor was largely theatrical and he was still learning his craft.  I shudder to imagine what he has become now that he is better trained, however; even a terrible High Inquisitor is sufficient.  At first, I could not imagine what he had done to land in the doghouse so solidly that he was “promoted” to High Inquisitor.  After all, he had considerable discretion and a fine command of his own theatricality: gravitas, hauteur, energy, a clotheshorse physique, and fierce intelligence.  Eventually, I came to understand that the latter was the problem for him, both when he was a royal page and even as High Inquisitor.  Although it came to light that he had not actually been taken in by my ruse regarding Kallan Bet, he was prone to an ornery sense of humor that brought him no end of trouble, and would often let situations develop in order to allow the other boot to drop… as it did upon me when my lack of Kallan Bet made for a very unpleasant month of travel, which we will discuss later.  No, later, boy, if then.  The problem was that one time during his tenure as a page, the boot had NOT dropped, and the quarry had escaped the trap.  After his visit to the Inquisition, he had been offered a lateral change of career – one that was frequently a dead end, sometimes even for those standing beside the table.  I don’t know when he began smoking, before or after his appointment, but there are some things one doesn’t ask.

And so, on my first day, I was scuttled into a room of understated horror that set my nerves on edge.  The floor was stained and grooved with stone drains to keep visitors from slipping and accidentally breaking a bone; the walls were rough bare stone with one large iron ring at about shoulder level on each of its four walls, and it blazed with torchlight from braziers in every corner.  It was the first room since I had come underground where I could stand up fully, and as I listened to the cracking of my spine, I realized I had fine insight into torture that might help me in my grisly work.  But I didn’t need to opine; the central furnishing in the room was a thick oaken door propped up on sawhorses, upon which a chubby man in a loincloth was bound by heavy leather straps.  His head was strapped also, immobile.  He blubbered greasily with joy when he saw me, and then with dismay as I was joined by Barnaby.

The two Apprentice High Inquisitors, standing on stools, sweated and strained to hold up oily wooden buckets by their rope handles.  A familiar, cheesy aroma grabbed at my attention, but could not make sense in context.  The man on the table was panicked.  “I don’t know anything!” he blurted at Barnaby.  “They asked me about her, but I don’t know a thing!”

Barnaby mounted the tallest of the stools and stood menacingly, somewhat above the man, looking down at him with unhurried curiosity.  He ran a finger down the man’s jowl and neck, admiring the texture of his skin – I shuddered – and prodded the bulge of his chubby breast with his head cocked.  The man shivered and strove for eye contact; I reassessed his courage, as I was not yet ready to try eye contact with Barnaby again.  Slowly, with a disturbingly effete flick of his wrist, Barnaby pulled a handkerchief from his own pocket and unfolded it.  He pulled a piece of parchment from the same pocket, and unfolded it as well.  Then, he draped both, paper first, over the man’s face.  “Master Whistler, could you ask this very foolish man again whether he has knowledge of the woman who has dared to steal the Golden Dragon?”

I stepped up behind Barnaby, getting grim-jawed looks from the two Pikemen lounging against the wall to remind me not to do anything un-Inquisitive, and sighed, “Do you know anything about the woman who stole the Golden Dragon?  I… I suggest you speak before this gets ugly.”

“Please!” the man burbled, but Barnaby had already grinned disturbingly at the Apprentices, and the one on the right side of the table slowly began to pour the contents of the bucket over the man’s face.  It was yellow and oily, and pressed the cloth against the man’s face.  He coughed and snorted in horrified disbelief and terror, starving for air. 

Barnaby looked over his shoulder, and I met his gaze with considerable discomfort.  “Is that…?”

“Butter,” he confirmed.

“Well, that will clarify things.”

To my surprise, he laughed with delight.  “Very good, Master Whistler!  This may be a better appointment for you than I had guessed when I heard you torturing your mandolin.”

“No need to butter me up.”

He studied me.  “No.  You’ve been here longer than that.  But you may have heard interesting gossip about the Dragon?  No?  Oh, we are being rude.  Let’s give our guest another opportunity to explain himself.”

The Apprentices moved the cloth, and the man gasped and reeled for breath, then retched at the strong smell of butter.  His coughing spattered butter onto Barnaby’s face, but the latter did not startle.  Slowly, he extended the tip of his tongue to lick the wayward droplet from his own eyeball.  Then, he spoke.  “We’ve still the better part of the first bucket, Master Clavio.  And of course, after the external application, there is still the, ah…”

“I don’t know anything!  Nothing about your goddamn golden griffon!”

“Dragon.”

“Dragon?  Dragon!  I don’t know anything!”

“Hmm.”  Barnaby gestured; the sodden mask was replaced, and more butter was poured over the man.  I watched it form rivulets on the grooved floor and realized that not all the stains were blood; I somewhat wished that they had been.  Barnaby followed my lugubrious gaze and expression, and draped his tiny arm over my shoulders, standing tiptoe on his footstool to do it.  “Butterboarding is irresistible,” he whispered.

“It’s horrible,” I whispered back.  He smiled and nodded genially.

The man came up coughing and helplessly shuddering.  “I don’t know her!  All I know is that the elf looking for her said she was a druid.  But I didn’t know a thing to tell him either, please, please, you have to believe me!”

“Oh, I can tell you speak the truth,” Barnaby said, as if offhand.  He wagged a finger.  “I’ve a ring for that.  Never failed me.”

“Then – why the butter?!” I exclaimed.

His smile was slow and cruel, his eyes twinkling.  “I like to marinate.”

The man screamed then, in terror and despair.  I ran for the hallway, slipping on butter, and stood fighting the urge to vomit for what felt like an age.  I won the fight, but only just.  Barnaby emerged in a moment with icy dignity, closed the door behind him upon the terrified wails, and put his tiny hands on his hips to regard me.  Hunched over as I was, I still towered over him, of course; he sighed and flicked some switch in his robes, and his copper sabbatons suddenly telescoped in such a way as to raise him up as stilts.  Eye to eye, then, he glared at me. 

Then he began to giggle.  He seemed to expect me to join in, but I couldn’t convincingly do so, and so he masked his amusement with a serious expression and said, “we’re going to go speak with Inquisitor Coalcart and see what has been discovered from his gnomish companion.”

“You don’t need a translator here,” I said, regretting it immediately.

“No,” he said genially.  “But you’ve performed admirably.  The poor bastard will never be the same.  If anyone offers him hot buttered rum, he will have apoplexy.  Now come on.  You may still prove useful here, and I am sure it is better than continuing The Birdbeer Chronicles at the inn.”

 

A half hour’s contempt from the Inquisitor later, and I found myself seated nose to nose with a young gnome named Wolfgang Winecellar.  Well, I was seated; he was stretched to his utmost height and was, in fact, on tiptoe, his arms extending above him to a ring in the wall.  Inquisitor Coalcart and High Inquisitor Barnaby had drunk a few of their small cups of spirits, laughed conspiratorially, and decided that I might unsettle a gnomish prisoner just as surely as gnomes unsettle human ones.  However, a solid look at Winecellar convinced me otherwise; he was a lank and rancid adventurer, and even deprived of his pocketed leathern belt and gadgets, it was clear that he was a hasty sort who awaited no peer reviews before building whatever popped into his head.  He was scarred from spatters from some ancient explosion, and new, more livid scars told of a badly implemented headgear of some kind; his arms were tattooed with formulae he obviously intended to keep secret.  Also, his teeth were filed to a fine point with one tip broken off, and it gave him the unpleasant look of an opossum considering the merits of biting.

I did my best to glower.  “Master Winecellar,” I intoned, hoping for the Barnaby flourish to come through in my voice.  “Tell me about the druid.”

“She were tall,” he said readily.  I expected more to follow, but it didn’t.

“Was she elven?  Human?” I asked. 

He screwed up his mouth unflatteringly and cocked his head.  “Don’t rightly know.”

“Orcish?”

“Naooo, not that.  I’d hae said.  She were tall,” he said.

“About how tall?” I asked.  I illustrated with my hand, held horizontally at multiple heights near my own, up and down.

He did his best to shrug.  “Can’t say, rightly.  After a point, it all becomes pointless to count.  Two times me height or two and one fourth?  Don’t care.  Tall.”

“Was she fair?”

He looked at me as if I were an idiot.  “She were… tall.”

“You couldn’t tell if she was fair?!”

“Could you, from a pair of legs and a navel?”

I considered.  “There are legends –“

And then the Inquisitors came in.  Barnaby looked mightily out of sorts, but Coalcart merely looked contemptuous.  “That’s enough, Master Whistler.  I can see nothing further will emerge from this conversation.”

Barnaby gestured, not kindly, for me to come to heel – and I followed at a scramble, notwithstanding our relative heights.  Believe me when I say that I eat very little butter these days, and with the memory fresh in my mind of the “marinade,” I was not about to buck his orders.