louderback @ 7:21pm: Warrior Mage


Warrior Mage
Chapter 1 - Assassins

Three men on rooftops watched a fourth as he walked casually toward his home. They were two assassins and their leader for this assignment, Ardin of Dolmor. The two assassins were archers, new to the guild, and of no interest to Ardin. This was an initiation of sorts for them, and a test for their target. If Sathid, the new Mage to the court of Onold of Lewen, and their target, was killed, the assassins could advance. If he did not die, Ardin would learn something about the man he had contracted to murder.


Ardin raised his hand and waved. Two arrows flew from two rooftops on opposite sides of the street a rehearsed five-count apart. Below, the mage turned his head and the first arrow missed him, seeming to brush his cheek in passing. The second arrow arrived just as the mage turned sideways. It also seemed to barely brush its intended victim in passing.

Sathid turned and ran a few steps back to where the first arrow lay on the ground. He picked this up, struck a pose like a javelin-thrower and spoke a harsh syllable. The arrow rose from his hand to above roof height, turned and falconed downward toward the man who fired it. He ran. The arrow followed him in his course across the rooftop, swerving and eventually coming in front of him. He stopped. The arrow mongoosed into his chest, the motion swifter than if it had been fired from a bow.

Ardin returned his attention to Sathid the mage. He was continuing on his way, apparently unperturbed by the attempt on his life. Signaling a return to home to his remaining cohort, Ardin left the roof.

Chapter 2 - Reconnaissance

Five days later, Ardin of Dolmor, skilled assassin and leader of his own band had amassed enough information about his target to begin assessing the requirements for filling what began to look like a very difficult contract.

The team was gathered to discuss the information gathered about their target. Gadin worked as a guard inside the Citadel. He had gathered a surprisingly large amount of information. Ardin wondered if that was somehow suspicious. "The mage arrived here, and was presented at court the same day, last year the day before the King's birthday celebration."

"What does this mean Gadin?" Ardin's tone was schoolmasterish, a tone he affected when dealing with his subordinates. It gave them the illusion that he was teaching them, not just using them.

"That he was expected. He could not have and arrived and presented on the same day otherwise."

"And..."

"And... that he wanted to be present at the birthday celebration. He had to be presented at court or he could not have attended."

"Good, we have some history. What has he done since?"

Adros spoke; he was the swamper at both the inn and the tavern nearest the Citadel gate. Guards and the non-nobility of the court often frequented both. "He's done damned li'l since he 'rived. He's made no friends. He has nuh enemies other than them anyone has j'st bein' at court."

"What does he do with his time?"

"He's a quiet 'un. T'sort 'at never uses a full sentence when a word'll do. He practices sword and 'is dagger-work wit' tuh men-'t-arms of the Citadel. Once a week he goes out to the city."

"What does he do in the city, Adros."

"Nuhb'dy f'r sure knows. T' guards think he's a mistress some'eres 'cause he comes back some'at bedraggled. He n'vr stays out overnight, though. He allus comes back in t' early hours."

"Nobody know of a certain where he goes?"

"I followed him." This was old Isgrig. "He visits a house in the Street of Triumphs. Second from the corner on the east side where it meets the Jeweler's road. Nothing special about the house that I can see. Belongs to an old man named Corvus Jae. Never saw Jae. There’s a woman the neighbors think is his daughter that is about the mage's age. Maybe it's her he visits."

"Have you seen the woman? What are her habits? What is her name?"

"Nobody knows the woman's name. Goes out to market early every morning, early even for marketing. Still dark when she gets to the vendors stalls."

Ardin thought for a moment, "What does she buy?"

"Does it matter? Who cares what vegetables she buys?"

"*I* care. Knowing what she buys might tell me how many she is buying for. It might tell me if Corvus Jae is in good health. It might tell me where he is from. How does she dress?"

"Dresses well. Not richly, but like a woman with a stable income."

"Her dress is Northern? Southern? Is it like that of a local?"

"Local. Clothing seems used, not old."

"Who has been watching our mage?"

"I," Mubrin spoke. "He's a man of rigid habits as near as I can tell."

"Yes..."

"He rises with the sun. He um… eats breakfast in the kitchen. Standing up. Um…always a pair of boiled eggs, some bread, and some fruit. He goes from there um… to whichever courtyard is being used for um… military training and participates as a new recruit."

"What do you mean by that?"

"He trains in the same um.. skills the new recruits are learning. I haven't seen this. The Recruits say so. They um… they also say he seems as skilled as their instructors at times."

"What else?"

"His dress is rather um… consistent."

"Consistent?"

"Courtiers are peacocks, you know that. Um… they wear a new color every day and must have a new cloak each um… time a leaf touches their shoulder. He wears the same clothes at all times. Um… it is mended. It is mended um…expertly, but it is not replaced at every turn."

"Does he appear at court in mended clothes?"

"He does not um… appear at court, it seems."

"When he is done with his fencing and such how does he spend his day."

"Um… is morning is mostly spent reading. He gets a book from the royal library where he is a daily visitor and um… climbs the South wall of the Citadel where he reads while um… sitting in the sun."

"... and watches the road from Bairne."

"He returns his um… book to the royal library then returns to the um… kitchen for a lunch same as his breakfast. In the um… afternoons he climbs the tower on the Street of Victories that lies at the corner of the Caravan Road. It’s um… the tower of a merchant named Ithis or um… Iskis. He stays there until um… quite late. A meal is um… delivered to him from the castle kitchen by a boy named um… Raudel Deen. The boy leaves the food in the vestibule and um… takes away the previous day's platter."

"That sounds useful. Learn what you can of the boy. We may be able to use him."

"I will. Um… there is um…more"

Ardin gestured...

"He wears um… armor. Always."

"Explain."

"I have never seen him um… out of the one outfit he wears. He um… must have other clothes but he uses them um… seldom if he does. He wears that mage's cloak at all times, even um… in the heat of the day. It's not quite a um… standard mage's cloak, though. The color is off and um… the design too."

"That tells you..."

"Um... he's not a standard mage?"

"Perhaps." or, he thought, "He's not really a mage at all" To Mubrin he said, "You said he wears armor."

"Um… yes. Everything is red, but it is um… blood red, not mage's scarlet. He wears a um… mail-shirt, um… enameled red scale-mail, very closely stitched and um… extremely high quality from the look of it. I jostled him on the road and um… got a good look. He wears a sort of um… tasset on each thigh, a bit short and made of hardened leather. It looks um…study. He wears military boots, but not um… standard stuff, much heavier in the shaft and with side welts um… battle gear. The um… vamp looks to be of enameled um… metal too."

"He seems prepared to do battle physically as well as magically. What magic have we seen him do?"

"Um… the recruits at the Citadel say a lucky blow um… angered him one day and that his blade um… burst into flame before he left all angry. Um… apart from that, your own account of that um… arrow trick is all I know."

"Isgrig, you know the mage in old town. Take him some good ale from our supply and see if he'll talk to you about the meaning of that blood-red color for mages. Ask him about the pattern of his cloak too. Have Mubrin draw it for you. Everyone. Keep watching him. I want to know who his friends are. I want an angle on the boy. I want to know who Corvus Jae is and who the woman who lives with him is and what her relationship to Sathid might be."

Chapter 3 - From the South

Sathid descended the curving kitchen stairs. Servers rushed by him, smiling briefly as they passed. It had taken a while to accustom them to passing him. At first, as he descended to the kitchen, they would stop and turn around or attempt to back down the stairs in front of him causing some spectacular collisions.

As ever, bent, gray, Gethel had his plate ready for him as soon as he entered. His bread was hot, the butter just beginning to melt. She somehow knew the moment he entered the stairwell. That was why he ate in the kitchen. The servants knew things about the Citadel and the people in it that no spymaster would ever learn. Sathid sat on the end of a bench and pulled off his gloves. As he began to peel his eggs, he noticed that his usual apple had been replaced with a small bunch of grapes. Unusual, that, Gethel was as constant as the desert wind that peppered the city eternally from the West.

He had only just cracked his egg when Gethel bustled up, took it from his hand and deftly peeled it in four quick strokes. She grumbled all the while, "Two eggs ever' day, and still can't peel 'em." She peeled the second egg, scraped the shells into her apron and bustled away like a chiding hen after a wayward chick. The truth was, Sathid peeled his eggs slowly, lingered over his breakfast, because the endless noise, the conflicting smells, the servers and cooks rushing in chaotic dance like warriors on a battlefield made him nostalgic for his apprentice days. Apprenticed to the mage clan he had done every job there was to do in a castle before he was allowed to commence his studies. A sip from his goblet surprised Sathid. He had crisp, very clear apple juice instead of the usual water. He popped a grape into his mouth and was pleased by the combination of tart and sweet. Leave it to Gethel to turn a peasant meal into a chorus of taste. Where did they get the grapes?

As he stood to go, Gethel tempted him, as always, "Will you have a sweet?"

He turned and played the game they always played, "Grandmother, I would burst if I had a bite more." He turned away.

"This is special, a new confection!"

He turned again, saw chocolate squares dusted with a brownish powder and decided it might just be special, "Then I will try one." Gethel had already turned away and turned back with an almost shocked expression, "Because you importune me so resolutely. Because it is you, beautiful maiden, who asks. Because your pastries are so light that they might be swept away upon the next breeze." Heads were turning his way. The staff had never seen him so talkative.

Old Gethel blushed bright red. She had been neither beautiful nor maiden for half a century and had never been much flattered even then. She offered the plate of pastries with a slight bow that just missed being a curtsey, "If Milord please."

He popped it into his mouth. It was a simple chocolate sprinkled with dust from a crushed kavi bean. The flavor was one he had experienced, but kavi was unknown in Lewen. It was special, indeed.

Gethel was already receding; the kitchen staff was already beginning to smile at her and prepare remarks at her expense. Loudly, to be heard above the din, "Beautiful Gethel. May I have another?" His earlier remarks had caused a number of looks and some snickering. His unprecedented request and his obvious flattery of the woman all of them thought of as an old battle-axe or worse caused a local silence in the kitchen.

"Milord may have what he will," she offered her pastries and her almost-curtsey again.

Sathid smiled at the double-entendre and wondered if Gethel was aware of it. "Grandmother. This is delightful. Have you a secret to this?"

"Not me, the new cook's boy. Undercook he makes us call 'im. He just started this week and brought a bag of black beans with 'im. He calls 'em kavi beans. He's just another cook's boy though, black beans or no."

"From the South no doubt."

"Don't bring your mage's ways into the kitchen. How would you know that? He *is* a Southerner. Of Solan I think he is."

"Lovely Gethel, there have been only two caravans arrive this month, both from the South. Any new cook's boy would likely be from those would he not?"

"Well, when you put it like that... Here I thought you'd done something clever!"

"Much of magecraft is noticing things. I suspect in your kitchen you are regarded as clever yourself. What’s this cook’s boy’s name? That would settle where he is from."

"Oh, go on. You are just angling to get another pastry! And… I think he is Hamir dru. That would certainly be a name of the South."

"It would indeed, so we have learned that kavi beans have come to us from the south.” She offered the plate again and he gestured it away, “Sadly no, I must go out. I thank you for an excellent meal," He turned and departed for the courtyard.

Heads shook and snickers slithered out over broad smiles as he departed. Gethel rapped her knuckles on a nearby table "What are you all looking at!"

Sathid climbed the South wall of the Citadel. There he looked down onto four courtyards. They were put to various uses, as they were needed. Today the Westernmost was set up for archery practice. That suited him well. He headed back to his rooms for his bow.

In the West courtyard, he approached the Sergeant who would be teaching that day. It was Grof of Canid. Sathid and Grof got along well. Grof had retired from the army a commander and re-enlisted as a sergeant to teach, a role he enjoyed. He also took Sathid's injunction to "treat him like a recruit" seriously, for which the mage was grateful. It was hard getting the other teachers to treat him as other than a mage. It is hard to learn how to fight when people are trying hard not to hurt you.

For two hours, they took turns firing at the butts across the courtyard. They practiced individual accuracy, volleying, and firing from various formations. It was useful practice for Sathid. He was an adequate archer but out of practice and in need of considerable refinement. The last hour of the training was quite interesting to Sathid however.

Grof called out, “Take off your quivers. Put ‘em over here! Get back in line.” They obeyed and once they were aligned Groff shouted out, “You’ve fired you last volley. Your quiver is empty, your last arrow spent. What ya going to do with your bow?”

Near the end of the line, one recruit tossed his to the ground and drew his sword. Grof charged him. As he ran, he drew his dagger and cut his bowstring. Reaching the recruit, Domin, he swung the end of the bow and caught him squarely on the nose. Domin, to his credit, swung with his sword, but Grof blocked it as with a quarterstaff. He pushed Domin back with the tip of the bow against his throat and took a broad swing that smacked flat against the recruit’s ear. Domin retreated. Groff got close, rapped Domin’s sword hand and saw his sword fall to the ground. He rapped him again against the forearm with the haft of the bow, Domin fell back again. Using the recurve of the bow, Grof pulled Domin’s legs out from under him. As he fell, he slashed across the recruit’s face with the string of the bow, leaving a cut.

“Get up. I’ll look at that cut before you go.” Grof moved to the front of the line, turned and addressed them. “I do NOT recommend that ya do any of the things I just did. I did make the point, I think, that the bow is not useless just because ya have no arrows. On the battlefield, the amount of time between the moment when ya drop ya bow and draw ya sword could allow someone to kill ya. In a tight place, ya bow is as strong and as hard as a quarterstaff. Ya can strike with it, defend with it, and disarm with it. Never throw away a weapon in battle until ya can pick up another one. He stepped back, “Shield exercises tomorrow in this courtyard. Sergeant Merku. Dismissed!”

louderback @ 6:09pm: The Giant of Capsheaf Crag

         I've been the keeper of the lighthouse since my thirtieth year. The eldest son of my family has been the lightkeeper since the time of the father of my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather. That sounds a great many years, but the lighthouse has been here far longer.
         I came to my post early. Most of us become lightkeeper about the time most men retire, but my father's illness took him young. Because of that I have done my duty longer than most of my predecessors, a full five and forty years.
         My long tenure as lightkeeper nears an end. I'll send for my son soon and he will take my place. Before I leave here, though, I have three duties I must perform. Tradition says I must stay a year with my son as he learns the life of the lightkeeper, and that I will certainly do.
         The second duty involves the library. The lighthouse offers little to leaven the solitary existence of the lightkeeper but the library. It is a remarkable one, ancient as the lighthouse and large, over five thousand volumes. I vowed in my first days here to read them all. I am near to completing that and I feel my life would have an enormous failure in it should I not complete my task. I have less than fifty volumes to go.
         My last duty is both public and a secret. As a matter of tradition, each of my forefathers has kept the lighthouse logbook. In it we record each passing ship, the weather of the day, and anything we might see that seems worth recording. I have been diligent at this and I have done something my forebears did not. I have read every logbook in the library.
         My public duty will be to turn my logbook over to my son and to have him start his own. The secret duty I must perform is one in which each of my predecessors has indulged, though none of them wrote of it. I break with tradition by writing of it now. Each of them, as will I, reviewed every page of their logbook and removed certain references to a secret that we keep. I will do this and, as they did, I will hide the stolen pages in the wooden casket in the library wall. I will tell my son, when his time comes, to do the same.
         The secret is the Giant.
         My father did not tell me of him, could not perhaps. He wrote of him, so I know that he knew.
         I first discovered the Giant with my hearing. One day but a few days before my first winter in the lighthouse, I heard a sound carried on the wind. It was faint and the wind brought it to me only occasionally. It was, though, unmistakable. It was weeping. Unmistakably I heard bitter and inconsolate weeping carried to me on the raw winter wind.
I stood for hours seeking the point from which that crushing sound emanated. It was crushing. Hearing it I was near to weeping. It continued through the night and the next day. I walked circles around the light leaning this way and that, straining my hearing to locate the source of the sound. It took me days, and in all that time it never abated. Not for an instant did it cease.
         The sound came to me from Capsheaf Crag. Capsheaf is an irregular yellow outcrop of rock fixed tight between earth and sky. It over-tops the distant cliffs to the South and is higher than any point that can be seen from the lighthouse. It lies beside the glacier that creeps down from Widow Mountain to the East. That glacier has finally neared the sea in my lifetime. I will not live to see it reach the water, but the water, on occasion reaches it.
         I first knew of the Giant by his absence. The weeping stopped. It took years for me ever to see him. He comes before the first day of winter and bears in his hand a great spray of the blue flowers that grow on Widow Mountain. He sits upon Capsheaf crag and stays there immobile, weeping, until the winter goes. Even when he is present, I cannot really see him. He seems made of the same stone as the crag. I can only tell that he is there because twice a year the shape of the crag is different. It changes when he arrives and again when he departs. And of course, there are the blue flowers.
         The blue flowers live in his hand through the harsh winter weather. Only the winds may steal a few petals to shower them across the glacier. When he goes the petals blow away painting the snow blue for a moment and then they are gone until he returns.
         Why he comes I cannot say. Why he weeps so inconsolably is something about which I can only guess. But I have read the logbooks. The first lightkeeper in my family, the father of the grandfather of my grandfather's grandfather heard the weeping. The Giant's sorrow has lasted more than two hundred years. When my family assumed the duty of keeping the light the family of the earlier keepers took the logbooks. I wonder if they mentioned the Giant?
         In reflecting on the Giant's sorrow have often reflected on my own. I raised my son alone. His mother, my only love, died of giving him to me. I could think of no other woman after her. My son gave me solace else I might have wept my life away as bitterly as the Giant. I wonder if he makes his pilgrimage each year for love? Are the flowers a tribute to a lost love? A gift in case she might return?
         The winter ended last week. He has gone again, and the weeping with him. His departure was followed by a massive storm, one of the fiercest in my memory. It came ashore near Capsheaf Crag and the waves, more than thirty feet high at times, washed far inland. The wind blew away the last vestiges of snow and the blowing spray washed all the land. The wind and waves chiseled away at the glacier too.
         As the sun set I looked across the ocean to Capsheaf Crag and the glacier and I saw what I think no man has ever seen. The setting sun illuminated the glacier, the glacier scoured by the storm to a crystalline clarity. It was blue. It was a wall of ice made up of a million blue flower petals as deep into the glacier as the sun could penetrate. Those petals if freed to float upon the wind would make a path across the sky to exceed the mightiest river in all the world.
         How might I compare my emotion to his? Is sorrow not utterly hollow, incapable of defining what the Giant must feel? What word could define the feeling that left behind a river of flowers frozen in a glacier of tears?

louderback @ 3:52pm: An Old Sketchbook
An old sketchbook      I found an old sketchbook in my attic. I thought little of it at the time and put it in the "trash" pile. Hours later, I carried a laundry basket of trash to the curb and exhausted plopped it down for the "spring clean up" crew to haul away. There was that sketchbook on top. I turned back to the house, stopped, turned back, snagged the book, and headed for the sofa.
     A cold drink in hand I flopped, gloriously tired, on the sofa and started thumbing through images over 40 years old.
     The first page was horrid. Disembodied and hideously disfigured faces stared back at me. I remembered the frustration of trying to draw faces. These were my first attempts at a realistic representation of a person. I was not yet twelve when I started drawing them. It was quite a long time before I improved.
     The back of that page was better. Long-legged horses cavorted on the page. They circled around a huge-bodied beast that had the virtue of being a three-quarter view instead of a profile. It showed a little imagination at least. The next page was devoted to hooves, tails, saddles and a few ears. Some were actually pretty good.
     With a flip I moved into the realm of automobiles. Funny, but every car in the world seemed to have a spoiler on the tail and a scoop on the hood. In the corner, crowded out by all that horsepower was a bicycle. The wright brothers would have been proud of it.
     Another bicycle occupied much of the next page. It must have been dead, as birds circled it all over the page. You know those birds, the "V" birds that don't actually require much drawing. Alone, at the top of the page and separated from the birds, was a perfect Halloween bat, lacking only the string to be completely unconvincing.
     Did I draw all these close together? How separated in time were these? I can't remember. Did do then as I do now and sometimes fill in an empty spot on a page? Was I this prolific in those days? Moving from bike to bird to bat? Was that the "b" page?
     The next page moved away from the "b" theme, well… perhaps. There was a torso that was entirely too muscular to be a real man. There were half a dozen hands with bulging biceps and very small hands. Elbows seem to have been a problem for me back then. Shoulders too. Must have been reading too many comic books, every figure was entirely too fit to be anything but a superhero.
     The next page was torn out. With a flash, I remembered it. Odd what sticks in your mind. It was a "naughty" page. I drew some nudes. Men and women that certainly not were anatomically correct. But then, what did I know at that age. I remember drawing a woman in lotus who would have been unable to rise (or stand if she did) endowed as I had her.
     After the missing page, landscapes seem to have captured my attention. Trees and bits of trees, some flowing water, a bit of grass. Rocks of course, studded the page. Lots of rocks studded the page— and the next. I must have gone through a rock phase.
     Crosshatching and hashing seems to have entered my repertoire at this point. Perhaps a new artist had interested me. There were a good many fantastic shapes and amorphous designs. I wonder if this was my "Steve Ditko" phase? Certainly the next few pages showed signs of surrealism.
     I flipped Forward and things just stopped. More than half the book was blank. Why did I quit? Did I get a new book? I know I continued sketching… have continued to this day. I flipped backward.
     The last picture was a portrait. Full-faced. Shaded, rendered well, altogether well executed. A notation at the bottom read "as the Silver Surfer". It took me a moment to realize I was looking at my own face.

louderback @ 2:57pm: Freewriting - Mary

Mary

She strode in, the very picture of humility. If you can think of a tsunami as humble. Her presence was like the crash of a tidal wave onto a seaside village. Everyone was devastated. Nobody was unaffected. Nobody would ever be the same.

She had black hair the color of a raven whose wings shine blue in the sun. It was long and she wore it tied up bandit's mask of a rag that went well with the many bits of jewelry you found here and there when you examined her. Her clothes were invariably black and ornamented with touches of silver. I've never met anyone who could pull off the "gypsy princess" routine, but if she had tried, I'd have bought it — from her.

She showed up every night around midnight. Every man in the place held his breath until she arrived. Every woman waited too. You'd think they would have hated her for her effect on their men but it wasn't so. Not even in the beginning was she their rival or their enemy, but their friend.

She sat alone at a table in the back for about ten minutes. Finally Warren, our resident maestro of nine-ball had the courage to approach her. Damn my sour piss-yellow soul that it wasn't me. She invited him to sit. Gil magically appeared with drinks — it would take something supernatural to pull Gil out from behind his bar. She and Warren talked like old friends for half the evening with every eye in the place on them then he got up and took a stool at the bar. I surrendered the stool to which I was considering being surgically attached and sat beside him. Microeconds later, Gil joined us. "Who is she?" was my question. "What is she like?" was Gil's. I guess my question stemmed from my old cop instincts kicking in, because I didn't care who she was. From the very depths of my soul, there was nothing I truly wanted to know more than what she was like. I wanted to know her habits, her voice, her every quirk. I wanted to know what she ate, what she liked, what she wanted that I might satisfy her every whim. I wanted to know what she looked like rising from the water, tousled from a restless night's sleep, sweaty from love-making, relaxed beneath a tropic sun. I wanted to know what in God's name I could give her, do for her, somehow please her, that she might love me.

Warren's only response was "Talk to her." He said not another word — for several days as far as I know — but rather sat and watched the parade.

Every night for a month, this wonder of creation joined us in our seedy bar and we bought her drinks and lay our souls on the grimy bistro table before her that she might know us — somehow love us… maybe one of us at least.

When my turn came, I was one of the last, she held my hand and said to me things nobody will ever hear. I felt blessed that she held my hand, she had rarely touched anyone else. She knew me before I spoke to her the things I'd never before told anyone, and never again will. When I'd poured out myself into the unfillable cup that was she I found that she could love me, did love me.

She entered our lives on the 7th of May and on the 3rd of June we sat expectantly watching the door and were disappointed.

Warren said her name was Mary. Is that the name for love?

louderback @ 11:34pm: Freewriting: Shore Dweller

Shore Dweller

I like living by the water. I've never been a beach person, really. I don't like baking on the sand. Heat simply exhausts me in an unpleasant way. Neither am I a sailor. I do well enough on boats but have no enthusiasm for them. Zipping about on fast boats seems pointless, I don't care one way or other about fishing, and as a means of transportation, there's usually a better way.

The thing I like is the smell and the sight of the ocean. Even a large enough lake incites in me the feelings that I enjoy. There's a "connectedness" to the shores of a large body of water that draws me to it. It is at the shore that the earth takes definition. If there were only sea, the world would be formless. If there were no sea, the earth would be a less auspicious place, and more aptly named.

Stand at the edge of the ocean and here is food, here is animal life in tremendous variety, here is vegetation, shade, and the confluence of climate that is most desirable. I read once that more than eighty-seven percent of the human race lives within fifteen kilometers of running water. We are shore dwellers. I am.

louderback @ 9:46pm: Freewriting: Lament

Lament

We watched him ascend, knowing in our hearts we would not see him return. Brave we thought him. Valiant and foolish, vain perhaps we thought him. Some though him unequal to the task, that his courage was false and would fail him in the end, but it was not so. The hundred-odd of us who lived in the village in those days and were overshadowed by the old fortress that was the source of so much woe could not believe that he was any different than others who had entered there. He was different. For five days we stood vigil while witchlights played behind the gaping holes in the fortress walls. We heard the banshee wails and indecipherable cries that sounded like a man in torture. Crashes as of walls tumbling, and a rush as though a dam had burst tumbled down the hill as boulders of sound to torment us.

When all had been silent for a day and a night, we left. Thinking his a valiant death, we left and went about our business, fearing the reprisal from the fortress that we knew would come. The ogre would descend. Homes would be crushed flat, and lives snuffed like candles in a storm. Some fled to the forest, but most simply waited. There was no outrunning the monster, nor escaping him if he chose you as his prey.

A'noon of the seventh day, Stehan, son of Han the woodwright, came shrieking into the village. We thought the Ogre upon us, as, in a way he was, but not as we expected. Out of the foothills, down the lane that was our main street came Ardulf, dragging one leg and stumbling under the weight of his trophy. He bore across his shoulders, like a deer taken in the forest, the head and the attached shoulder and arm of the Ogre. He stood as solidly as he might in the center of our small village and flung his grotesque trophy to the ground. In a second he fell beside it and was unknowing.

At the end of seven days we buried Ardulf where he fell. We dug deep and placed the Ogre at the bottom of the pit. Then we laid a floor of pine logs and piled it high with sweet scented flowers before we lowered Ardulf to his grave. None may walk through our village without seeing the stelae and honoring he who slew the Ogre. Ardulf had no family that we have discovered, no heirs, no legacy save that the lives of one hundred souls and all their descendants will know his name and keep it for as long as there is voice to sing his praise and memory to know his name.

louderback @ 2:59pm: Freewriting Grumbles from the Grave
Grumbles from the grave. Night watchman at an old cemetery is a lousy job. No matter how unimaginative or stolid you might be, you eventually start hearing night noises. The guy before me did. They guy after me will.

Seems like it is worst at Midnight. Of course, the fluff-brains would call that traditional and want you to believe it had to do with astrology, the position of the stars, the moon's orbit, or what-have-you. I think it's crap. I just think that is the time when the world's grip on reality is at its weakest. I think that's all it is and nothing more.

The world is what most people believe it is. When everyone is awake and thinking, nothing supernatural or disturbing happens. When everyone is asleep, dreaming, using that monkey-brain at the back of the one we use all day, the one that just reacts, fears, scrambles up its tree to howl, that's when the stuff that we can't believe during the day comes out. We believe a lot of things deep down in the dark that we don't believe in the light of day.

So when I hear grumbles from the grave I don't doubt my senses. I don't panic either. I just walk on by and let the restless ones do what they have to do and I try to cope with the problems that affect me during the day. I right the occasional tombstone. I re-seed the grass that mysteriously dies. I report the "vandalism". Occasionally, I shout at kids that stumble onto one of the really active graves, but unless they do so I just let them sit down in the back corner where they think I don't see them and let them spook themselves.

I just work here. It's not up to me to fix the world.

louderback @ 2:58pm: School Smells

One of the things I always hated about school was the abundance of smells that I found unpleasant. Just walking in the door there was always that floor wax smell mixed with leaves and wetness from people dragging crap inside on their shoes. It had a sticky quality and a musty sharpness too. Head for your locker and you get surrounded by other students. There's a symphony of vile odors for you. Stinky shoes, hairspray, grotesque floral perfume, sweat, the body odor of that guy that showered annually, even the cigarette stink bleeding off the teachers who were toxic with nicotine. There's nothing as annoying to me as a female who smells like a bowl of fruit instead of a woman. Walk past the drinking fountain and you smell the acrid rust/hard water smell that is still somehow not bad enough to keep you from drinking there. Pass the bathroom and you experience olfactory pangs that you feel all the way to you bowls. Some time in the day you're going to have to go in there and smell the shit and urine stink overlaid with sanitizing hockey pucks and blue water aromas. In middle school, the locker room was there. That is a special situation. Foul shoes, perspiration soaked cotton, socks with a special dusty quality to their reek. Overlay that with deodorants while one group or another is dressing or undressing and you get special nuances of vileness. Then of course there's the classroom. The music room smells of nerves and wood polish. The home room reeks of chalk, bubble gum, and irritability. Study hall has a smell of sweat from those who don't think they need to shower after gym if they're only going to study hall, and of markers underlining in books that have already been marked to death. Then of course there was the unique affliction of the cafeteria and the rooms near it. I'm not even going to go there.

louderback @ 4:12pm: Freewriting: The Room
The Room
I did not recognize the place in which I woke. I was in pain. I was in considerable pain. My legs did not work and though I saw no evidence of severe injury, they afflicted me with pain that felt like broken bones and crushed or lacerated flesh. My arms felt better, but every joint from shoulder to fingertips felt as though it had been stretched to its breaking point. My breathing was labored, the ache with each intake of breath told of broken ribs. It took a considerable time for me to take inventory in this fashion and it was only after that I took stock of my surroundings. There were walls around me. At least I could not see any great distance and there was no visible horizon. If I seem questioning on so elementary a matter, accept that my eyes were blurry and that the walls had no visible joint with ceiling or floor and exhibited nothing resembling a corner. The boundaries I was experiencing were nacre-like in that they had that mother-of-pearl sheen and pinkish rainbow of iridescence. They were, however, of a …well, stolid nature. One cannot look at the surface of a wall and determine its thickness, but looking on these walls one knew, beyond doubt, that they were solid— dense and impenetrable. The floor, ceiling, and walls were identically featureless and the sloping smoothing of the edges (appreciated manually, as I was lying near a wall) left me with a somewhat dizzying and disorienting discomfort around the eyes when I tried too hard, or too long, to focus.

louderback @ 11:31pm: Freewriting: the boarding house

I knew my days at the boarding house were numbered. I knew it the first day when Mrs. Reedy introduced me, and my fellow new arrival Paul to Mrs. Bainbridge in the hallway. She drew a sharp distinction with both word and tone, informing Mrs. Bainbridge that I was the new Boarder and Paul was a roomer. You could hear the capital "B" in Boarder and the implied "only" in (lower case) roomer. Why it mattered to her where Paul took his meals, that being the distinction between a boarder and a roomer, I cannot imagine. My needs for meals were simple and I would likely be taking only breakfast at Mrs. Reedy's — something I made quite clear to her. I nevertheless learned after a few days that I had earned her silent ire by not appearing for lunch or supper. "Boarders," I was told with proper capitalization and emphasis by a fellow Boarder, one Willis Dover, "typically appear at the meals for which they pay." According to Mrs. Reedy, I paid for three meals a day and she would, therefore, set a place for me (and prepare and discard uneaten food) at all three meals. This knowledge was dispensed with the soup as Mrs. Reedy presided over the evening meal from her throne-like chair at the head of the table. This rigidity was typical of the woman and was, as I was to learn, only the tip of the iceberg.

louderback @ 1:27am: Freewriting: the enormous ship

The ship was astoundingly large. I watched it approach through the main viewport. While any ship can seem overwhelming when it is close and spans the entire horizon, this ship kept reminding me of its size in subtle ways. It was more than a kilometer distant and still crowded us. The ships coming and going constantly from its landing bays were the size of a mining asteroid, many times the size of the ship in which I stood, and seemed flit about its ponderousness. The body of the ship was rotating, slowly to my eyes, but I knew that that was illusion. At its outer rim, the gravity created by centripetal spin was heavier than that of Jupiter. I suppose the awe I felt for the craft was somewhat diminished by the ridiculous, to my eye, colors she was painted. The command cabin at the top and the thrust nacelles at the bottom were painted a vivid red. The main body of the craft was alternately striped with primary red, vivid yellow and a rather squamous green, giving the whole ship rather the aspect of an enormous spinning top painted to resemble a circus clown. An extremely large, ominous, rather sinister circus clown…

louderback @ 6:50pm: Freewriting, The Jewel City

I stand on the roof of the tallest of ten thousand towers. Facing west, the estuary is a perfect "V" kept so by walls of white adamantine lining the river bed. Behind me the sun rises and shadows of translucent towers made of gemstones and quartz add multicolored tints to the water. I turn to take in the Jewel City, Agla Tamon Amon, Jewel of the Thunder River. The towers are arranged artistically, not for flow of traffic or any other sort of organization. The Jewel City is like a flowerbed tended by a fanatic gardener. The streets are all but unseen in this light and nobody moves at this hour. As the sun rises to my right, topping the mountain that shields the city, mighty Tamon Amarth, it lights the Jeweled Falls. They spring from some immense underground source near the treeline of the mountain. The waters run less than a mile before they come to the Cleft. There they rush out across the Diamond Barrier, a huge vein of quartz bigger than a stadium and burst into the air where they fall almost exactly half a mile to the very floor of the Valley of Thunder whence the Thunder river makes its way to the sea. As the sunrise turns the Diamond Barrier pink I face to the South and look upon the fleet that lies there. Sixty thousand, Dromunds, biremes, triremes, even quinqueremes lay at anchor surrounded by a dozen or more smaller ships to attend them each. Altogether one hundred thousand ships and more than million men lay waiting to take my city. They were but the most recent such army. They were not the largest.

louderback @ 8:01pm: Freewriting: I dreamt of her
I dreamt of her. Long black tresses framing an elfin face. Her eyes are big and brown, her lips a perfect bow that reveals brilliant teeth when she laughs that way. Her musical laughter can freeze me in my step. She is a sorceress, her magic can ensnare my thoughts. She is a poet whose verse can cage my soul. Her song's demanding rhythm can make my spirit dance in joy or dejection, but only to her tune. Her dance makes my blood pound and my heart race until I live only for her movements. I am a captive. I am soul-bound. I dreamt of her. I dream of her. I would give my reality to make her flesh that I might be her slave.

louderback @ 7:11pm: Freewriting: The cold

The cold is numbing. The wind permeates my body. The warmest clothing is as nothing against this chill. It is somehow worse because I am blind. All went white — then black— hours ago. Was it hours? How long have I really been out here? It seems like days. I have eaten three times. Is that one day? Could it not be only a matter of hours, since I crave nourishment so ardently in this Hell of ice. Is it perhaps longer? I can't trust any of my other senses, why should my perception of time be unaffected? I've been able to keep moving through sheer force of will and the reasoned conviction that if I stop I will die. I think I have been moving in a straight line. I know I have been able to follow the line of cliffs I saw when I was still able to see. I remember that they pointed as directly as I could tell toward my old encampment. The gear there could save my life. Tents, heaters, food, radio gear, and medical equipment. I will lose my toes, of a certainty, probably my feet as well. I suspect I'll lose some or all of my fingers. I hope they are functional enough to allow me to do some first aid on myself. The forecast called for -30° temperatures and 30mph winds. That means I could be experiencing effective cold of nearly -80°. The others left before me. Perhaps they made it before the snow came. Maybe they're out looking for me. Maybe the things I stumble against are huddled bodies. There is no way for me to know. I'm not certain I'll even know the camp if I ever reach it. I hear a sound! A pounding fluttering noise! It sounds like a helicopter! No. No helicopter could fly in this. More likely an avalanche. Maybe I'll be buried. It would be quick.

louderback @ 10:16pm: Freewriting: At the bar

The bartender brought me my usual. Instead of having an office, I'd been occupying the same stool for about twelve hours of each day for the last five years. He had no trouble remembering what I drink, nor when I drink it. I start the mornings with tea. He bought a teapot and keeps oolong stocked just for me. After noon I switch to water with a lime. Most people think it is a Gin and Tonic. I don't disabuse them of the notion. By supper time I start on Beer. The bartender has Dortmunder Union on draft for my convenience. Nick treats me well. I keep investing in the bar. I currently own my bar stool and about 10 percent of the place.

That has come about slowly, but seems to be an inevitability. I need to be "find-able". I'm a PI. Private Investigator. I am at the bottom of the heap where such things are concerned. I'm forever following spouses afflicted by sexual narcolepsy. They keep falling into bed. I'm an expert at the cheesy set-up, the not-quite-illegal entrapment, the art of skulking, and the casually incriminating conversation. Where PIs are concerned I do the stuff nobody else will touch. That's why I can afford a bar stool and not an office.

The fact that the wealthy need somebody to do the unmentionable is why I own ten percent of a profitable bar.

louderback @ 2:22pm: Freewriting: Subway

          I stood next to a woman on the subway. She was one of those heavy sour-faced people. She wore clothing too weighty for the season. She bore it as armor against the world. It kept the gaze of others from touching her skin. She lived in isolation in the most crowded city on the planet.

          I lived deep inside my skin too. We all do. It is just a matter of how much we expose ourselves. We hide behind names, clothes, personae, or floppy hats. I knew a man who hid himself with a brightly colored vest and a huge umbrella. He was important enough that people called him "penguin" behind his back but never to his face. I wanted to buy him a monocle. I should have.

          The rhythm of the train as we pass stations, the flashing lights, the bumps of the tracks and the sway and murmur of passengers' conversation is hypnotic. I hear it every night and it makes me drift into the same state of distant, quiet loathing. The subway is a dirty place. It is filled with people that were clean ten hours ago. Now they stink, no matter how they try not to. They stand too close. They touch you. They don't have to but they always do. It is always the one you don't want near you. You always know they're going to do it. I see one coming now. I know he's going to do it. He's walking to the back of the car. Why? What earthly reason has he got to move?

          He's bald. He's wearing a vest and carrying his coat. Who wears a vest in the summer? His tie is ugly and twenty years too wide. He's got to be fifty, young enough to know better, but too old to care. He's bulky with middle-aged fat. He was muscular once, probably thinks he still is. His shoulders are too broad for his shirt, probably too broad for his coat. I'll bet he can't button it probably. That's why he isn't wearing it. He looks like an off-duty bartender. Probably a business man in the third phase of his career, the part where he tries to live on his past accomplishments and is really on the skids.

          He is weaving between the other riders, shouldering his way. He moves to the other side of the car. If he stays there he'll miss me, but I know he's going to come back this way, He's going to give me the ass. It is inevitable. He won't look at me; the young ones do that. The old ones look at me until they get close then turn around.

          Yes. He's crossing the car this way. I knew he'd come past me. He's here. He stinks. Stale aftershave. Way too much stale aftershave and sweat come rolling off him. He smells like socks and sore feet, too. I can smell some fear, some anger, and a little bit of lust in the background. He's got a girlfriend somewhere. Here's the turn, a neat pirouette, clean as a dancer and he rubs his ass against my thigh. He doesn't have to, there's room for him to get by. Damn! Why do they do that?

          He's past me now.

          Sour-face is grinning at me. She saw it happen. They never rub on her. She could feel my discomfort. I watch him as he moves to the back of the car. He finds a seat back there. I'm surprised. He actually had a reason to move. Over the murmur I hear him chatting up a granny-lady. He seems a pleasant enough sort.

          Sour-face watches me with skeleton teeth. She has blank eyes. My stop is not far now. I'll be glad to be away from the subway. The streets aren't much better, but the hypnotic lull of the train leaves me feeling dirty every day. People here seem to be droned-out, leveled to a common strain of unsavory yeast-remains in the brew of the city. I feel like the subway is a strainer that never gets cleaned.

          Two stops before mine a kid gets on. He's trouble. His eyes don't even see the train. He's somewhere else in his mind and his plan has already taken him beyond whatever he's going to do. He's jerky and nervous. People step away. It is obvious to everyone. He moves to the middle of the car. He's too close to me. Damn. I can't go anywhere. Sour-face looks at me, skeleton teeth grinning in fear this time.

          Kid pulls a knife and shouts something incoherent. He grabs a skinny old man and demands his wallet. Asshole. Hasn't he heard of video? The old guy digs for his wallet and sensibly digs all the cash out hands it to the kid keeping the wallet. Kid grabs it, pushes skinny and moves toward me. Skinny in a lightning moves I'd never have expected, trips Kid and sends him sprawling. I put my foot down on the kid's hand and his knife goes spinning. Sour-face snatches it up and it disappears. Kids up like a jack-in-the-box screaming, looking for the knife, and everyone just ignores him. It's a little scary watching him rant. He takes a while to realize he isn't going to get his way. He looks around, sees that everyone is watching him, sees that everyone knows his face, and realizes things didn't work out. I think the kid is maybe thirteen. He turns to skinny and with kind of a disgusted stiff-armed gesture hands him back his money. He goes and stands by the door.

          At the next stop he bolts. I get off too. I'm one stop before mine but I can't stand the train anymore. I'm going to walk home. I need a different rhythm, a different set of lights. I need some night air, I need to walk the streets, and I need to get out from underground.

          Yeah, like the streets are whole lots cleaner.

louderback @ 9:38am: Freewriting: pastoral

      I used to wander the hills of a morning. I'd ride out when the sun rose until I found a likely spot to tether my horse, a place with lots of greenery, some shade, and a bit of water near enough. I'd tie him there and strike off on my own.
      These excursions had no purpose save solitude. I hungered for it in those days, though, honestly, I had it in abundance. I would climb the gentle slopes in search of vantages I'd not achieved. I sought out new views, as is so common a goal of youth. I found them often enough, or so I felt.
      By noon I was fatigued enough that I would open the small sack of food I carried with me and enjoy a bit of fruit and some bread. A wedge of cheese was a treat. Such meals I hardly noticed at the time. I look back now and regard them as I would a feast.
      Afterward I slept, stretched wide upon grassy banks beneath shade trees. Cool breezes for a lullaby - quiet sounds of the wood accompanied me to my sleep. I think I may have rested there better than any time in my life.
      The dreams I dreamt there are lost to me. They were fancies of the most pastoral and bucolic sort. I remember nothing of them save the happy tone and satisfying feeling left behind upon awakening. I dreamt, I am sure, of the sky and of the clouds, not of some catacthonian beast. No monsters plagued me then as now they do and simplicity was my theme, not the complexity that haunts my thoughts in these times.
      Those simple days of youth are lost to me. I surrendered them gladly, and too soon, as is always the way with youth. We strive for the things we think we want not knowing what we have.
      I traded my horse for an automobile and my leisurely days for hard hours of schooling. In time I traded schooling for work and work for business.
      My simple meals became meetings and those simply vanished in time. The quiet reflection of a nap on a grassy knoll was replaced with planned exercise and, quite rarely, with yoga and meditation. My dreams were of a different ilk for many years. I dreamt not of things that left me happy on awakening but of accomplishment and of strife that left me struggling in my sleep and exhausted after.
      I lived the good life, I am told. I was a success. I was envied. I had money and a measure of power. Influence on the world around me was mine and people did obey me when I felt it was important. All the things that I felt I should fight and strive for I achieved in good measure.
      And now I'm old. My health has failed. I am blind; my body is no longer really under my control. I can walk, but it is an effort. I have returned to the home of my childhood. I cannot ride a horse or I would do so and go again out into the fields and try to recapture once again one of those moments of my youth. Sadly I can't accomplish that. I find that I neglected to make any true friends in all my years and that here at my end I am alone. I have a nurse. I can pay her to lead me out into my yard. Nothing I say will induce her to take me out into the fields and help me find a hillside where I might lay upon the grass. It would not be "good" for me. She is not my friend. She does not love me. She is my caregiver.
     So I will live however many years are left to me in sight of those hills but I will not see them. I will live within walking distance of a quiet grassy knoll where I might nap but I will never walk there. I will sit quietly in the sun within dreaming distance of my childhood dreams but I will never dream them again.

louderback @ 3:10pm: Ferryman

There are days when I am only lonely. Usually it is worse than that. The spiral stairs that lead down into Hooley's place is symbolic of the downward path the denizens are on when they find this bar.

Hooley's bar is a stop on the way to the depths. Few stay long. Those that do are barnacles on the scarred hull of the scuttled ship of life. We cling and take our nourishment from something long dead and steal a little from passersby. It is as vile as it sounds.

My particular scam is avuncular fellowship. I'm the friendly old reprobate at the end of the bar. I'll buy you a drink and cadge six or seven from you before you realize you're doing most of the buying. I'll talk your ear off, be your best friend, give you good advice and take your money with a friendly arm around your shoulder while I push you through the trap door or shove you out onto the street and into the storm. Oh, and if I can I'll take your coat.

I serve a useful function. I strip you of the last of your useful possessions and all that meaningless cash before you hit rock bottom. I enable you to find your way to the gutter so you can surrender the things of this world and move on to the next. I save you all the beatings and muggings you'd suffer if you still owned much of anything of value. I ferry you to the ferryman after a fashion.

I'm not the worst to be found here. Hooley is far worse than me. He stands behind the bar and orchestrates it all. He serves his poisonous drinks and steers you to the different parts of the bar based on his expert assessment of your condition. Newcomers go to see Charming. She's a prostitute only by courtesy. She never actually sleeps with anyone. She's charming. She chats, she drinks, she strokes the ego and the occasional thigh. She takes your money and steals your thoughts. She leaves you weak in the knees and stupid as can be. When you leave you're not fit company for man nor beast. Hooley pumps you full of black bile and sends you to her again and again until you're too weak to be of use to her and then he serves you a still stronger concoction.

When you're drinking that fuming brew, you wind up at Junior's table. Junior's the gambler. Of course, nothing that happens between you and Junior is a gamble. It is all tremendous fun, a spinning game of joyous revelry and laughter while your money whirls away, while your car is sold, your house is mortgaged, your marriage vanishes, your job disintegrates. While everything you own turns to cash, then to chips, then to chips that belong to Junior, you laugh and smile. Then you begin to cry.

Hooley takes you back, serves you a sweet liqueur and introduces you to Old Horace. Horace has been everywhere and done everything. He knows everyone. He can help. He gets you on your feet. He's your friend. He gives you a pill to prop you up. He gives a pill to let you sleep. He finds you a place to live. He finds a friend who loans you some money. A month goes by. You call your mother and cash in your bonds. Another month goes by. You call your brother and your uncle and get a loan. Two more weeks go by. You sell your burial plot and cash in your retirement fund. After two more weeks, you sell your kids college funds and get rid of that plot of land you were going to build on. Then it takes a week. Those coins your son collected? Sold! Then it takes three days. The stamps? Sold! Day by day, item after item, gradually it all goes.

Then Hooley introduces you to me.

There're days when I am only lonely. Then I meet people like you. I work my scam. I do my little song and dance. I make my living and cling to my semblance of life. Knowing people as they spiral past me makes my life worse not better. I am the ferryman's ferryman and it frightens me. I wonder who will come for me one day and how I'll know him when the time comes. I've never seen anyone escape, I don't know that it'd give me any hope to see it happen.

louderback @ 9:20am: The Burning

Bonfire Mound

Bonfire Mound stands near the center of a remarkably level, grassy, plain. A level plain in Kansas is hardly a rarity, but Bonfire makes the twenty-mile circle it centers a unique feature of the land. These days the locals all say of the name, if asked, "Bonfire Mound? The indians used to light fires up there." Some also say, "Spring and Summer, on the longest day and the shortest, that's when they lit their fires."

They did not. My grandfather knew that they did not and he told me so. His tales of his visits with the children of the old Chiefs have stuck with me all my life. One bit of information he passed along always seemed much more a warning than just a tale. He believed. I believe. "When that mound changes, it's time to burn it again. That's what they told me. That's what I'm tellin' you." said Grandad, "You remember it Chad."

Bonfire Mound is remarkable in many ways. It is a sixty-foot cone flattened at the top as though you had miniaturized a mesa. It is near to perfectly circular at the base and the top is as near to a perfect, level, circle as you can get. The sides are nothing but dirt covered with dry-baked bitter grass that never greens no matter the weather. The grass is a tight net around the mound. There are no gullies, no washes down the sides of the cone. The wind has not eroded the mound in any fashion that I can discover. Bonfire Mound sits, unaltered, a symmetrical pylon in the center of a plain. And so it has for all my life, my father's lifec and my grandfather's.

This summer, the grass on Bonfire Mound died. I passed near the mound in the spring and it was as it had always been. Two months later, the grass was gone, save for some clinging clumps that floated in the wind. In the course of another week, the mound was completely bare. I began making weekly trips to photograph the mound.

Once the grass was gone, the wind took over. The wind for weeks seemed unusually strong, unusually consistent, ever from the southwest, ever blasting away at the mound. Slowly, small gullies, slender crevices, long depressions, began to appear in the mound. The first hard rain expanded these, deepened them.

By the end of summer, the mound had become a spire. The flat top of the mound seemed unchanged, but the sides were near-vertical and it seemed more a pillar than a mound.

more to come...

louderback @ 6:39pm: The Pit

Days of wandering have led me to a place familiar though never seen. How many places like this, though, have I seen? The stairs that mount to a high door carved in rock, tucked behind an outcrop, or hidden by a ledge. Through the undecorated door that opens by some means I never expect to learn — I just smash them — there is always the black, rough-carved tunnel that seems to absorb light. Stairs lead down. They are always ancient. They are always uncomfortable. The ceiling is too low in places, as though those that used the tunnel didn't mind bending double. Perhaps they were just that small. The steps are narrow in width and breadth, and shallow in depth in such a way as to cramp my legs as I climb down.

They always travel downward. They go deep, spiralling, curving in odd directions at odd angles. They always travel downward without a break, no landing, no niches, never a torch, nor any light source at all, in sight. Worn by countless steps across centuries, each tread id worn smooth in the center and out to the edges as though no repair was ever attempted, as though those who walked here simply shifted their path toward the walls. The walls though rough have a moist, rugose, appearance. To the touch they are completely dry. The temperature is cool and the air moist at first but as I descend a heated, dusty, dead-smelling, flat-feeling atmosphere fills the shaft.

My fear always mounts as I descend. Every descent, every one, has been uneventful, but each is gravid with dread. I know what to expect now but the denouement of that winding descent remains traumatic. How can I express inappropriateness of my response to a simple scene?

At the bottom of each shaft is a complex of auditoria. A central floor, level — seeming uncannily level after the rude nature of the stair — and wide leads past empty hemispheric chambers filled with dust and seldom aught else. At its end there is ever the same room. Approaching it, my loathing rises. It whirls up and about like smoke spiraling snakily 'round a pole.

Before me is ever the same scene. A hemisphere with the forward edge abridged to form a chord perhaps one-third of the width of the circular floor. This edge is a precipice above a fissure that descends beyond any depth my senses may apprehend. Upon the uttermost margin of the chasm is a mound of skulls supporting what is veridically a throne. Looking on it my loathing crescendo for the throne was not made for a human form. What sat there however long ago might have had some form of man but to see its seat betrays its vile, ineffable nature. The whole is lopsided, not the work of a poor craftsman, but a skilled one. It was made to cradle a form that was unnatural, an abomination, a vile excresence of the earth, misshapen, mal-formed, and of evil aspect.

My abhorrence of the throne is compounded by my detestation of the repugnant skulls on which it rests. Revulsion overwhelms me, choking my thoughts, screaming through my being, a fierce ululation from the dark and noisome era when such things as bore such skulls devilled, defiled, the earth they trod. In a frenzy, I cast down the throne and topple the vile skulls into the fissure, hating to touch them, but knowing no alternative.

Climbing slowly, always ennervated, I try to placate my heart pledging that whatever vile rite was done in such a place can not be done again.

louderback @ 11:32am:

There came a time after seeming endless agonies when I died and died again. Torments heaped upon my body were insubstantial phantoms compared to the dry, wrenching, tug of death after death. That which is dead may die and from that death, and without resurrection, die again. The depths to which I was borne were incomprehensible, the sensations of repeated dying ineffable.

Things danced around me and rent my flesh. There was a time without flesh when the winds tore me as they would erode a sandstone crag, blasting microscopic bits into the void. To be clad again in skin and bone at the moment of dissolution but lent obscurity to a paradoxical event.

to be continued …

louderback @ 1:56pm: First Installment

Kodrus Prince of Haft

     "My Lord."
     The man so addressed was Kodrus, self-styled Prince of Haft. Seated behind a low desk reading, his considerable height was not apparent. When he stood. his waist-length red hair, knotted fashionably at the right side of his head emphasized his height. A black tabard overlaid his tunic of shimmering blue and he girded it with an incongruously utilitarian leather strap. His black hose fit closely and showed evidence of fine tailoring. His slippers of finest supple leather might barely be shoes at all. As he stood, Kodrus asked, "Yes, Jace?"
     Jace, Kodrus' liegeman, friend, and a warrior of repute in his own right stood some four hands shorter than his friend. Black, shiny hair marked him as a Southman, but his features bore the pale sensitivity, the long jaw, and the dark eyes of the North. "My Lord, war chariots approach the Cleft."
     "Who are they?"
     "None recognized their markings, Lord," said Jace. "They approach in great haste and in considerable numbers."
     "Order extra men to the bastion. I go now to arm myself. I will join you at the Cleft as soon as I may. How many are they?" Kodrus turned to leave.
     "Over one hundred, Lord."
     Kodrus halted mid-step. One hundred chariots would empty the North of charioteers. Three warriors or four in each chariot, one driver, perhaps two for some of the larger vehicles, meant perhaps five hundred men under arms. No ten Barons or Earls from beyond the river could field such an army. No standing army on either side of the rivers could face them. Even the immense Southern Counties could not defend against such a force.
     In hast, Kodrus laid aside his overgarments. He began donning donned harqueton and habergon.
     A knock sounded, "Atiunus, my Prince!"
     "Enter!" he called through the thick door.
     "How may I serve, Kodrus?" asked Asiunus in a stentorian tone.
     "You needn't bellow. I can hear you."
     "Ha! The price of living in a fortress. Half our words are delivered in a shout in order to be heard through a stone wall or a thick door."
     Kodrus grunted inarticulately with arms over head trying to wiggle into his habergeon. Stepping close, Atiunus helped the prince. He remarked, "You didn't summon me to help you dress."
     "No. Far from it. I summoned you to give you charge of the keep in my absence."
     "How long an absence?"
     "Over one-hundred chariots approach the Cleft. I'm going there now. I want you to summon every available man and send them behind me. Send messengers to all the barons, call in the levies. Send the majority of them to the Cleft. Reinforce the Twin Bridges and the Southern Gates. Keep a reserve here prepared to join me at the Cleft or at any of the other strong points."
     "Is it war then, Kodrus?"
     "I don't know what it is," exasperation colored his tone, "but I'm damned well going to find out and find out now." He stalked off.
     "Lord Prince!"
     Kodrus turned, "What?"
     For an answer Atiunus pointed at the Prince's feet.
     Looking at his shoes, Kodrus sighed. "Well, Ati, you haven't helped me with dressing since I was a child. It appears I did summon you to help me with it after all. After all these years. Help with my riding boots, won't you?"
     Atiunus smiled at hearing "Ati" a childhood name not used by the Prince in years. He smiled more, remembering the child the Prince had been. As he knelt before Kodrus the man, Atiunus looked for the inquisitive, affectionate, and above all, joyful child that Kodrus had been. He saw instead a Prince of men, a warrior, a politician, a builder of Empire.
     "Your face mirrors considerable distress, my friend. Am I forgetting something? Are there provisions I've forgotten to make for this sort of emergency?"
     "No, Kodrus. It is I that am forgetting. I will manage here. Have no fears. I will send an army to join you."

- R.R.Louderback
copyright 2004 all rights reserved

louderback @ 5:01pm: stairs

I walked a short stone corridor built of rough dark stones taller than a man. At its end I climbed the seven steps to the iron gate that barred the place of my awakening. Dressed in the heavy, gray, hooded robe of my dark order I stepped out into the twilight. The iron gate of my sanctuary opened silently under the pressure of my hand. That startled and upset me. It had not opened in … how long? It had been years, at least. It should have been rusted shut or frozen from disuse.

I walked slowly, but I felt I was hurrying. My steps were regular, dogged, mechanical almost even though I was hurrying. As I walked, I raged inwardly. I was furious, angry, in a vicious mood. I wanted nothing more than to run from place to place exacting punishment. Who had awakened me? What called me forth from my sleep of ages? I was not sure who was to be punished but my mind flamed with desire for revenge. I strove to move quickly, but my body refused to move at more than a smooth walk. My mechanical tread angered me further. My mind leaped from scene to scene of bloody massacre. Was I remembering or imagining? I didn't care. If it was false, I would make it true.

Before me was a changed landscape. Where had stood a deep forest was open fields as far as the horizon. There were trees at the edge of my vision, but nothing nearby. The field was full of roots and stumps cut off close to the ground. It was as though an entire forest had been cut down to the level of the grass. Behind me lay my sanctuary, but I did not turn to look at it. To do so would call me to return and that I could not do. Not now. Not yet.

I walked slowly, stumblingly, but avoiding the worst of the obstacles. I sought the fount of summoning in a fury. Who had called me? They would be there. They would be punished. I strode onward, purposefully but in seeming slow motion toward the light on the horizon. It was an unholy reddish aurora, diffuse and somehow rugose. It was the light of the equinox. It was the light of summoning. It was the dire light of monstrous sacrifice. I had been summoned in the only way possible. Thrice three hundred souls had died to effect my awakening. Their souls called to me. Their hearts beat in my heart, Their blood was a stain in my mind.

A feeder stood in the field as I walked by it moved then sensing me fully withdrew. Its limbs dipped downward and the trunk flexed in its ugly ropy way. I passed quite near it and it shied back from me. I did not touch it, though I had the urge. It shed its dangerous leech-like leaves as I passed and as they touched me they snagged at my skin. I did not fear them, though any beast, any creature, they touched would be slashed by their tiny fangs.

I approached a mound perhaps six feet in height and conical in the extreme, At the top, I knelt and began to dig. There were roots and ropy feeder tentacles in the ground and I tore and shreded them to reach bare earth. I plunged my hand deep inside and hot blood welled out. It smelled of copper and heated earth. The blood pooled briefly, then began to trickle down the sides of the hill in three places.

I descended the hill and watched the blood run away from the mound. It reeked and steamed. The blood was singularly foul-smelling and had scent of rot. I followed it as it led across the field in a straight path. It moved like a slug crawling. It pulled itself forward and reached another larger conical mound and formed a moat around it.

to be continued …

louderback @ 5:00pm: Bones

copyright by RR Louderback, All rights reserved.

Bones in the Attic

The ghost in my house led me to the bones in the attic.

I grant you, a casual statement with such implications might be a bit to swallow, but that's just the way you'll have to take this medicine. I do have a ghost in my house. Ask anyone who's used my guest room. For that matter, ask anyone who's used my washing machine. There are bones in the attic. Lots of bones. They weren't there last March when my spring cleaning filled half a dozen boxes with memorabilia intended to clutter the later years of my life.

To be continued …

louderback @ 4:49pm: Someday I'll put some fiction in here...
Rant du jour... "Poor" is not semantically equal to "real!"

I've been taking some hits in E-mail the last couple of days. It is not a big thing to me but one phrase has cropped up a couple of times and it irritates the crap outta me.

"Welcome to the real world."

I'm alive, I have an income. I've had many years with a relatively high salary. I've had help from friends and family. I've lived well for many years. I have food and a car, cable and cable internet, a phone with long distance service, heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. I have a prescription plan that covers most of my drugs. My insurance takes care of almost all my doctor visits and hospital stays. Life could be a lot worse.

I'm a lucky guy. I know it. I'm grateful for it ... now will y'all shut up about it OK?

I've been firmly ensconced in my middle-class luxury for most of my life. Giving up that isn't easy for me. There is no virtue assumed with the trappings of poverty. Nor will I accede to the idea that having possessions or accumulating wealth carries with it a burden of evil.

I've done well for myself for forty years. I am losing the things I've accumulated and I'm unable to replace them. I am less competent than once I was.

Surrendering cable television or an internet connection won't be all that crushing a blow to my life. What hurts is the downward spiral as my abilities fade, my competence crumbles, the trappings of my life whither.

I'm not moving to the "real" world. A modem internet connection is not more "real" than a cable internet connection — it is just slower. Living on a pension or on the dole is not "real" it is simply less luxurious. I am not headed for abject poverty, homelessness and starvation. I am headed closer to them than I ever wanted or expected. It is not "real" it is a damned shame.

My foot is on the brake, but I am still headed downhill. There is little about this that is within my control. I lament not my destination, but my inability to alter my course — that's real.