The Dantoc Calmpositis, eldest among the venerable Dantocs of Reliant City, must remain a creature unknown. Suffice it to say she was the first to set out from the Gates of Nowhere and her manservant Mister Must Ambertroshin, seated on the high bench of the carriage, his face shielded by a broad woven hat, uttered his welcome to the other travellers with a thick-volumed nod, and in this generous instant the conveyance and the old woman presumed within it became an island on wheels round which the others clustered like shrikes and gulls, for as everyone knows, no island truly stays in one place. As it crouches upon the sea and sand so too it floats in the mind, as a memory, a dream. We are cast out from it and we yearn to return. The world has run aground, history is a storm, and like the Dantoc Calmpositis, we would all hide in anonymity among the fragrant flowers and virtuous nuts, precious to none and a stranger to all.
Among the pilgrims seeking the shrine of the Indifferent God is a tall hawk of a man who was quick to offer his name and each time he did so an expectant look came to his vultured eyes, for did we not know him? Twitches would find his narrow face in the roaring blankness of our ignorance, and if oil glistened on and dripped from the raven feathered hair draped down the sides of his pressed-in head, well, none of us would dare comment, would we? But this man noted all and scratched and pecked his list of offenders and in the jerking bobs of his rather tiny head anyone near would hear a grackling sound commensurate with the duly irritated; and off he would march, destination certain but unknown, in the manner of a cock exploring an abandoned henhouse.
Well attired and possibly famous and so well comforted by material riches that he could discard them all (for a short time, at least), he proclaimed for himself the task of host among the travellers, taking a proprietary air in the settling of camp at day’s end beginning on that first night from the Gates of Nowhere, upon finding the oddly vacated Finder habitations past the old tumulus. He would, in the days and nights to come, grasp hold of this role even as his fine coat flew to tatters and swirling feathers waked his every step, and the cockerel eye-glint would sharpen its madness as the impossible solitude persisted.
Clearly, he was a man of sparrow fates. Yet in the interest of fairness, our host was also a man of hidden wounds. Of that I am reasonably certain, and if he knew wealth so too he had once known destitution, and if anonymity now haunted him, once there had roosted infamy. Or at least notoriety.
Oh, and his name, lest we forget, was Sardic Thew.
Seeking the shrine of an altogether different Indifferent God, we come at last to the poets and bards. Ahead, in the city of Farrog, waited the Festival of Flowers and Sunny Days, a grand fete that culminated in a contest of poetry and song to award one supremely talented artist the Mantle proclaiming him or her The Century’s Greatest Artist. That this is an annual award, one might hesitantly submit, simply underscores the fickle nature of critics and humans alike.
The world of the artist is a warrened maze of weasels, to be sure. Long bodies of black fur snake underfoot, quick to nip and snick. One must dance for fame, one must pull up skirts or wing out carrots for an instant’s shudder of validation or one more day’s respite from the gnawing world. Beneath the delighted smiles and happy nods and clasped forearms and whatnot, resides the grisly truth that there is no audience grand and vast enough to devour them all. No, goes the scurrilous conviction, the audience is in fact made up of five people, four of whom the artist knows well and in so knowing trusts not a single utterance of opinion. And who, pray tell, is that fifth person? That stranger? That arbiter of omnipotent power? No one knows. It is torture.
But one thing is certain. Too many artists for one person. Therefore, every poet and every painter and every bard and every sculptor dreams of murder. Just to snap hand downward, grasp hard the squirming snarling thing, and set it among one’s foes!
In this respect, the artists so gathered in this fell group of travellers, found in the truth to come an answer to their most fervent prayers. Pity them all.
But enough commiseration. The poet has made the nest and must squat in it whilst the vermin seethe and swarm up the crack of doubt and into fickle talent’s crotch. Look then, upon Calap Roud, the elder statesman of Reliant City’s rotundary of artists, each of whom sits perched in precarious perfection well above the guano floor of the cage (oh of course it is gilded). This is Calap’s twenty-third journey across the Great Dry of inspiration’s perdition, and he is yet to win the Mantle.
Indeed, in his wretchedly long life, he draws close upon the century himself. One might even claim that Calap Roud is the Mantle, though none might leap for joy at the prospect of taking him home, even for a fortnight. There is a miserable collection of alchemies available to the wealthy and desperate (and how often do those two thrash limbs entwined in the same rickety bed?) to beat off the three cackling crows of old age, death, and ambition’s dusty bowl, and Calap Roud remains a sponge of hope, smelling of almonds and cloves and lizard gall-bladders.
And so with the miracle of elixirs and a disgustingly strong constitution, Calap Roud looks half his age, except for the bitter fury in his eyes. He waits to be discovered (for even in Reliant City his reputation was not one of discovery but of pathetic bullying, backstabbing, sordid underhand graft and of course gaggles of hangers-on of all sexes, willing, at least on the surface, to suffer the wriggle of Calap’s fickler every now and then; and worst of all, poor Calap knows it’s all a fraud). Thus, whilst he has stolen a thousand sonnets, scores of epic poems and millions of clever offhanded comments uttered by talented upstarts stupidly within range of his hearing, at his very core he stares, mouth open, upon a chasm on all sides, wind howling and buffeting him as he totters on his perch. Where is the golden cage? Where are all the white-headed fools he shat upon? There’s nothing down there but more down there going so far down there is no there at all.
Calap Roud has spent his entire albeit modest fortune bribing every judge he could find in Farrog. This was his last chance. He would win the Mantle. He deserved it. Not a single one of the countless vices hunting the weakling artists of the world dragged him down – no, he had slipped free of them all on a blinding road of virtuous living. He was ninety-two years old, and this year he would be discovered!
No alchemies or potions in the world could do much about the fact that, as one grew older and yet older, so too one’s ears and nose. Calap Roud, as modestly wrinkled as a man in his late forties, had the ears of a veteran rock ape of G’danisban’s coliseum and the nose of a probiscus monkey who’d instigated too many tavern brawls. His teeth were so worn down one was reminded of catfish mouths biting at nipples. From his old man’s eyes came a leer for every woman, and from his leer came out a worm-like tongue with a head of purple veins.
Object of his lust, more often than not, was to be found in the Nemil beauty sitting languidly upon the other side of the fire (and if temptation burns where else would she be?). Purse Snippet was a dancer and orator famous across the breadth of Seven Cities. Need it be even said that such a combination of talents was sure to launch spurting enthusiasm among the heavy-breathing multitudes known to inhabit cities, towns, villages, hamlets, huts, caves and closets the world over?