One day I shall stand before the Nehemoth, before Bauchelain and Korbal Broach. I shall look upon true evil. And they will see in my eyes all the evil that I have done, and they will smile and call me friend. Companion. Cohort in the League of Venality. Could I deny them?
Faith? Look upon Nifty Gum, this broken thing here. An artist beloved, so beloved his retinue of worshippers would bare fangs against the envy of the gods themselves.
I found their trail, even as the shadows of dusk closed in. A rampant, rabid thing, skittering this way and that, a small herd led by a blind bull. Rocks overturned, plants torn loose-yes, they hungered. They thirsted. And suffered. Two women, the man they honoured with their loyalty.
In darkness I came upon their first camp, and from the scuffs and signs I was able to reconstruct the dreadful events with nary a test to my woodsmanship. See me claw my face yet again? The youngest was set upon, the other two in cahoots, a pact forged in a demon’s hole, that one. The innocent child, strangled, all the soft parts of her sweet form torn away by savage teeth. Teeth. Ah, Midge, do I see you pause in your breaking fast? Well you should. You see, when those eager mouths drank and fed, poor Oggle Gush was not yet dead.
They ate themselves sick, did Pampera and Nifty. And they left the body in their wake, spoiled, rotting. I see your shock, Brash Phluster, and I do mock it. If you had but one adoring fan in your wake, and starvation loomed, you would not hesitate-deny it not! See Nifty Gum, huddled there. No hesitation stuttered his hands.
When I renewed my tracking, I admit my thoughts were black as a pauper’s pit. Now, I did hunt. I believed I could forge this distinction, you see, between what they had done to that child, and all that we have done on this here trail. Is not the soul a thing of sweet conceit?
So now, consider this. He had but one worshipper left, and she was close in that she shared his crime, a murderess, a belly-bloated beauty he could touch with familiarity so absolute no mortal could step between them. You might think. And you might fold tight your arms and whisper easing words to yourself. She but followed his lead-what else could she do, after all?
Was it guilt, then, that launched her upon his back? That sank teeth into his shoulder, striving towards his throat? The mouth-fuls of spurting flesh she gobbled down, even as he shrieked and thrashed? And what of Nifty Gum? That he should twist round and bite her in turn, fatally as it transpired, snipping through her jugular, whereupon he bathed and did drink deep. Even as she died, she gnawed upon his right calf, and so was left in a pose of blessed defiance.
I caught him twenty paces down from this final atrocity, limping and streaming crimson. Oh yes, all of you set eyes upon him now. This poet of appetites. Study him in your arrayed expressions of horror and disgust. Hypocrites one and all. You. Me. The wretched gods, too. Aye, I should have killed him then and there. A quarrel through the back of his head. I should have. But no. Why should the blood stain my hands alone? I give him to you, pilgrims. He is the end of this path, the one we have all chosen. I give him to you all. My gift.
As his last words drifted and sank into earth and flesh, Brash Phluster licked his lips and said, “But, where is she? Can’t we still-”
“No,” growled Mister Must, in a tone that stirred awake his soldier days, “we cannot, Phluster.”
“But I don’t want to die!”
And at that, Steck Marynd did weep.
For myself, I admit to a certain satisfaction. Oh, don’t look at me like that! Given the chance, what artist wouldn’t eat his fans? Think of the satisfaction! Far preferable than the opposite, I fervently assert. But let us skip and dance from such admissions, lest they unveil things even more unsightly.
Sellup crawled from the ditch, her split lips stretched back in a ghastly smile, her eyes fixing upon Nifty Gum. “All for me!” she cackled, dragging herself closer. “I won’t eat you, darling! I’m not even hungry!”
The wretched poet, thrice named Artist of the Century, lifted his bedraggled head. The modest balance of his features was gone, each detail inexpertly reassembled into a pastiche of Gumdom. Old blood stained his chin, flaked the edges of his tunneled mouth. Flanking the ill-ruddered nose, each eye struggled with the other, fighting over proper alignment, which neither could quite manage. And if a lockbox waited behind those orbs, it was kicked over, contents strewn in tangled heaps. From the weep of his crusted nostrils to the coagulated clumps in his stringy hair, he was indeed a man bereft of his Entourage, barring one dead hag avowing undying servitude.
“It was the eggs,” he whispered.
At this even Sellup paused.
“I was so hungry. All I could think of was… was eggs! Sunny side up, scrambled, poached.” Trembling fingertips touched his mouth and he flinched, as if those fingers did not belong to him at all. “Those tales. A dragon spawn trapped in a giant egg- that’s just stupid. I–I don’t even like meat! Not real meat. But eggs, that’s different. Like an idea not yet born, I could eat those.
I so want to! It was the maiden he stole. The Egg Demon, I mean. Stole-stole away in the night! I tried to warn them, you see, I really did. But they wouldn’t listen!” He stabbed a finger at Sellup. “You! You wouldn’t listen! I’m out of ideas, don’t you see that!? Why do you think I plundered every fairy tale I could find? It’s- it’s-all gone!”
“I’ll be your egg, sweetie!” She picked up a rock and rapped it against the side of her head, eliciting a strange muted thump. “Crack me open, darling! See? It’s easy!”
As one might imagine, we stared in morbid fascination at this tableau and all its bizarre logic, and I was reminded of that cabal of poets from Aren a few centuries back, the ones who imbibed all manner of hallucinogens in a misplaced search for enlightenment, only to get lost in the private weirdness that is the artist’s mortal brain when it can discern nothing but its own navel (and who needs hallucinogens for that?).
“Get away from me.”
“Sweetie!” Thump-thump. “Here take my rock!” Thump! “You can do it too!” Thump! “It’s easy!”
As it turned out, even Nifty Gum was of no mind to discover what hid inside the skull of one of his fans. Instead, he whispered, “Someone end it. Please. Someone. Plea-”
I would hazard the notion that this heartfelt utterance referred to a wholly natural desire to see Sellup expunged from his (and everyone else’s) sight, and in that regard Nifty won my sympathies entire. For reasons unknown, however (oh how I lie, don’t I?), Tulgord Vise misinterpreted the Great Artist and in answer he thrust his sword between the poet’s shoulder blades. The point burst from Nifty’s chest in a welter of blood and splintered bone.
Nifty’s eyes gave up the struggle, and he sagged, leaning heavily on the sword blade before, with a grunt, Tulgord heaved the weapon free. The poet fell back in a puff of dust.
Sellup moaned. “Thumbsy?”
Seeing the man’s lips moving, I edged closer-after a wary glance Tulgord’s way, but he was already cleaning his blade in the sand beside the trail-and then I leaned close. “Nifty? It is me, Flicker.”
Sudden horror lit up Nifty’s eyes. “The eggs,” he breathed. “The eggs!”
Whereupon, with a strange, blissful smile, he died.
Is this the fate for all artists who wantonly steal inspiration? Certainly not, and shame on you for even suggesting it.
Our family was indeed in tatters. But this morning was yet to give up the last of its shocking revelations, for at that moment Well Knight Arpo Relent sat up, blinking the gobs of mucous from his eyes. The crack in his head dripped pink tears, but he seemed unmindful of that.
“Who dressed me?” he demanded in an odd voice.
Apto Canavalian lifted his gaze, and a most forlorn and dejected gaze it was. “Your mother?”
Arpo stood, somewhat unsteadily, and tugged clumsily at the straps of his armour. “I don’t need this.”