To Die In Vasparkhan
by James Lecky
It was upon the command of Marphet VII, the Grim
Emperor of Vasparkhan, that I, Telton the Fool, left
the service of my master, Baron Evestian, and
journeyed to the south across desert, waste and sea.
On the day that the summons arrived – carried by
a royal herald dressed cap-a-pie in sombre grey as
befitted his station – I had dallied a while in the
Baron's gardens with his youngest wife, Anahid,
sipping fine wine and whispering sweet words of love.
As the Baron's Fool I had the right to whichever of
his wives I chose – so long as she in turn was willing
– and had grown more than fond of Anahid, she of the
fiery hair and skin like milk.
In truth, the Baron might have refused Marphet's
order, since he owed no allegiance to the Grim
Emperor, but the loss of his newest wife's affection
after less than a year of marriage coloured his
decision. Added to this, the reputation of Marphet VII
for taking by force that which had been refused to him
– as the severed heads of a hundred southern Kings
attested – made him more than prepared to give away
the services of his Fool.
“You are to present yourself before the Grim
Emperor no later than the tenth day of Winter,” he
told me after his household guards had taken me from
the garden and into his stately presence.
“To what end, my lord?”
“To make the Grim Emperor laugh, what other
reason could there be?”
“But, my lord, the Grim Emperor never laughs.”
“Quite so,” he said. He raised one hand to his
face and stroked his oiled beard. “Nevertheless, it is
now your duty.” He rose from his onyx throne.
“Preparations for your departure are already underway.
You leave on the morrow.” With that he waved a
dismissal and I left.
I spent the rest of that day collecting those few
possessions that were mine alone – the jester's stick
with its Punchinello headball, two suits of bright
motley trimmed with silver bells, an assortment of
juggling balls and clubs and a small pouch of cantrips
written in the Elder Script. Afterwards I wandered the
corridors of the Baron's castle, hoping for the
opportunity to say farewell to the Lady Anahid. None
presented itself.
And so at dawn the next day I took my leave of
Castle Evestian, with a heart both heavy and full of
dread but a wide smile painted upon my face. The Baron
himself bade me farewell – jealous he may have been,
but he nevertheless was saddened to lose such a fine
Fool. For three weeks I journeyed by caravan across
the Flint Wastes towards the port of Trazbon and the
ship that would take me south across the Ekrabahn Sea.
The journey, monotonous though it was, gave me
ample time to ponder my predicament.
Of all the kingdoms of Jendia, that great
continent that is the very heart of the world, the
only one that had never been touched by laughter was
Vasparkhan. For her peoples there was only one art –
that of war – one which they had long since perfected,
the edge of their artistry kept keen by incessant
expansion.
The herald, a stern-faced, taciturn fellow by the
name of Khoren, added a little to my knowledge, though
he answered my questions as best as he was able.
“Only the weak laugh,” he said. “Never the
strong.”
“If that is the case, why then should the Grim
Emperor require a Fool, even one as skilled as I?”
“It is our custom at Year's End that the Emperor
prove his strength,” he said. “Many have tried to make
his Highness laugh – none succeeded.”
“And what became of them?”
“The Royal Jackals feasted upon their innards.”
“After they had been killed, of course?”
“No.” He bared his teeth, not in a smile, but in
a grimace that was wolfish, anticipatory, as though he
could already hear the screams of fear, the crunching
bones of yet another Fool who had tried and failed.
That night, huddled under my blankets while razor
winds howled across the Flint Wastes, I considered
making a run for the north, stealing one of the camels
and fleeing as fast as it would carry me. But no. The
Grim Emperor had a long reach, as he had already
proven, and I doubted that any kingdom would be brave
or foolhardy enough to offer me succour. Instead I
resolved to meet this challenge head on. After all,
was I not Telton the Fool, master of japes and capers?
Had I not wrought raucous laugher from the most
mirthless of audiences, once even causing the High
Priest of Harvelon to break his vow of silence and
roar out 'Bravo!' at my antics?
I offered up a plea to Kelos, God of Laughter,
and slept fitfully, my dreams filled with howls and
snarls.
*
For the rest of our journey towards the sea, I
spent my time honing my art – performing tricks and
japes for my fellow passengers and the azalai
who drove the camels. Great gusts of mirth threatened
to drown out the howling winds and even Khoren once
came close to a chuckle when I imitated his clipped
tones and perpetual glower, although I think our rich
food disagreed with the poor fellow and it may have
simply been trapped wind.
At Trazbon I bade a last fond farewell to my
homeland, and Khoren and I embarked upon the merchant
galley that would take us to Vasparkhan and the stony
face of the Grim Emperor.
But the gods – and Kelos in particular – like
nothing more than a good joke, for on our fourth day
a-voyaging a storm arose and I was swept overboard by
a wave as tall as the keep of Baron Evestian's castle.
Saved from the tender ministrations of the Royal
Jackals and sent instead into the less-tender jaws of
the sea and all the snapping, biting, hungry things
that dwell therein.
Or so I believed at the time.
*
The sound of gulls awoke me. There was wet sand
beneath my cheek, and when I groaned a dribble of
brine and bile escaped from between my lips. The abode
of the dead was not filled with flame and brimstone
after all, but with sea water and guano. The sun beat
upon my back, and incessant waves dragged at my
breeches. Determined not to face the afterlife with a
bared arse, I stood and surveyed my surroundings.
Before me, a long stretch of white sand leading
to dense, green forest, behind me the ocean that had
chosen to spit me out.
Alive, then – for my aches and bruises could
never have belonged to a dead man – I made my way from
beach to forest, leaving a trail of wet footprints in
my wake.
The pouch with its collection of cantrips was
still secured to my belt, although my other
possessions – my Punchinello stick and various little
tricks – had been claimed by the sea in payment for my
life. The cantrips were small magics, suited best to
securing wondrous oohs and aahs from bumpkins and
those who had never seen the work of a real sorcerer,
but they served to start a fire at which I dried my
clothes, and to lure a few forest creatures of the
edible kind with which I filled my grumbling belly.
Suitably buoyed up, I took stock of my
surroundings and situation.
The island – for I soon determined that I had
been cast upon an island – was no more than three
leagues from from promontory to promontory, with a
steep hill at its centre that rose like the tonsured
head of an aged monk.
With no better plan than to better know my new –
and very private – kingdom, I made my way to the
summit of the hill. The climb took most of the day and
by the time I was halfway there night had already
begun to fall.
Somewhere in the depths of the forest behind me
an animal snarled. I am a man utterly unused to the
wilds and, in my imagination, I envisioned a great
manticore prowling through the trees, slaver falling
from its lips and the delicious smell of ripe Fool in
its nostrils. Fear gave my fatigued limbs a burst of
speed and good fortune took me to the mouth of a cave,
large enough for a slim fellow such as myself to crawl
into, yet small enough to keep any large beasts
without.
After a short while had passed, I finally
realised that no beasts, large or otherwise, were
pursing me and, since the cave was comparatively warm
and comfortable, I elected to spend the night there.
Another of my trusty cantrips provided enough
illumination for me to study my surroundings.
What I had believed to be no more than a small
hollow in the hill turned out to be much more than
that.
A vault, huge as the Great Cathedral Of Bu, the
roof so far above that the feeble light of my little
trick could not begin to pierce it. No natural
phenomenon this, the hand of its builders could been
seen in every brick and tile, in every alabaster
carving.
But which path to take? The sloping thoroughfare
of jet and lapis that led upward, or the one of
emerald and mercury that led into the depths – or,
indeed, the one of brick and rubble that led back the
way I had come and into the jaws of not-so imaginary
beasts.
Yet, if there is one impulse that drives the life
of a Fool it is curiosity – that impish desire to pull
aside the curtain, to peek through the keyhole, to
know another man's secrets that you might mock them.
I chose the downward path – I had walked uphill
enough that day – and descended into the depths.
By my small I light I glimpsed horrors that
swooped through the darkness – creatures that had
never felt the touch of the sun, Huge as eagles,
eyeless, with both scale and fur on their hides. Like
the rays of the S'ren Sea, and as graceful in their
own sinister way, they moved through the darkness with
utter assurity.
Downwards I went, leaving the blind, swooping
things to their games, and came at last to the floor
of the vault.
And there the light of my cantrip was magnified a
thousandfold or more, glittering from the gold and
silver and precious jewels that decorated every
surface. But my attention was not drawn by them,
rather it was forcibly taken by the figures that lined
the room, facing towards a throne of pure obsidian a
hundred paces away.
A thousand mummies, brittle as glass, paying
respect to their mummified King.
Human in shape, but unhuman in aspect, the face
of each bore a wide rictus grin, but their dessicated
eyes held no joy. If they had died laughing, then the
jest had been a dark one indeed.
As I drew closer to the throne, I could see the
creature that sat there.
Not a King. A Jester. A Fool like myself. No, not
like me, for I had never been adored by so many.
I approached with tremulous steps, expecting the
creature to rise at any moment. But it did not, even
when I reached out and touched the suit of motley it
wore, not even when I took the stick from its hand.
And a fine stick it was too, carved from ebony,
its headball a grotesque, grinning skull, tasselled
with silk and velvet, finished with half a dozen bells
of purest palladium.
There is a story that is told, whenever and
wherever Fools gather together, of the god that
existed before Kelos, an altogether darker and fiercer
god that men named Yuckla. It is said that, in the
time before man rose to his feet, the Elder Races
warred upon each other, howling with laughter as they
did so, to establish the supremacy of one god or the
other.
In the end Kelos reigned supreme and reduced his
brother-god to mortal status – a joke which Kelos
alone found amusing.
Kelos is a god to make men smile and giggle, to
chortle, guffaw and piss their breeches with laughter.
His jests are often cruel, for the gods find laughter
in the suffering of men, but what darker jests, we
wonder, might Yuckla have bestowed upon the world?
It was the jester's stick of that ancient,
all-but-forgotten god that I held in my hand.
I dared not shake it, for fear of the dreadful
music it might produce, but instead wrapped it in the
tatters of my tunic and left that place as quickly as
I was able. Better to face the beasts on the
mountainside than those frozen, gleeful yet mirthless
faces.
Outside, by the clear, cold light of the moon, I
unwrapped the stick and examined it once again. The
grinning face did not seem so terrifying now, its
expression no worse than some of those I applied to my
own features. Yet the light in its eyes – two chips of
emerald – was baleful, as though the face mocked its
own smile.
A noise from the surrounding trees startled me,
and I turned to see a beast in the undergrowth. Not
the manticore of my imagination, but a rodent – a rat
large as a wolf, lips drawn back from vicious, yellow
fangs, hunger written on its face.
It sprang and I lashed out with the only weapon I
had to hand, the jester's stick of the doomed god
Yuckla.
The blow did not connect; it did not need to. The
first tinkle of those palladium bells was enough to
set the rat to its heels – a note so melancholy that
it might have been the underscore to a suicide.
And with it, the words of the First Great Cosmic
Joke.
“Laugh, laugh, for the gods themselves are mad
and care not for the affairs of men.”
I laughed until I farted.
The First Great Cosmic Joke.
And it was awful.
*
Of my time on that island I need say little more.
The beasts kept their distance, or perhaps there had
been only that one, too afraid to approach my camp. It
was a safe, if somewhat monotonous week that passed
before I saw a ship on the horizon.
She flew the red and silver standard of
Vasparkhan, and her single passenger was none other
than my old travelling companion Khoren, come to seek
me out at the command of His Highness Marphet VII.
“Years End will be upon us soon,” he said by way
of greeting. “And you are to come to Vasparkhan.”
“It is good to see you and your splendid ship,” I
said. “But alas I am unable to obey the Grim Emperor's
edict at this time.”
“You would be unwise to do so, Telton.” He made
no threat, but the tone of his voice was redolent of
pincers on flesh, of fire and the rack.
“The tools of my trade have been lost,” I said.
“How can I hope to amuse His Majesty when I have no
tricks to astound him?” I saw no need to mention
Yuckla's stick, nor indeed the vault that glittered
with gold and silver. Such things would only have
served as distraction.
“The items you require will be provided,” Khoren
said. “Those whom the Jackals took have no need of
them now.”
I shook my head with mock severity “Tsk, tsk,
friend Khoren, don't you know that it is impolite to
juggle with a dead man's balls?”
Not even the merest flicker disturbed his stoic
features.
“Come,” he said. “The Grim Emperor awaits.”
*
The road to Vasparkhan was lined with crosses.
And to each was lashed and nailed a man, for the Grim
Emperor dealt harshly with those who displeased him.
Carrion birds took to the air as our little
convoy passed by – the iron shod wheels of the coach
clattering and crunching along a highway cobbled with
human skulls – but they were fat, ungainly things
hardly capable of maintaining flight for more than a
moment of two before returning to their grisly
banquet.
The city itself was nothing to behold. Vasparkhan
had no need of walls – the spears of her warriors are
barrier enough – and her architecture was plain to the
point of monotony. Only the Grim Emperor's palace had
any hint of individuality, though Castle Evestian was
a hundred times more splendid.
I was given food and lodging – both functional
rather than expansive – and allowed to close new
tricks and motley.
The next day, I was brought before the Grim
Emperor himself.
*
He was not a tall man, the Grim Emperor, nor did
he exude grace and breeding as some monarchs do. The
clothes he wore were of plain, unbleached linen and
the crown upon his head was no more than a crude
circle of beaten gold. Yet this man had the blood of
thousands upon his hands, and his adherence to the
gruesome customs of his land was absolute.
Looking upon his face, so without motion that it
might have been carved from ironwood, I found it all
too easy to believe that this man had never smiled –
let alone laughed – even once in his life.
“Make me laugh, Fool,” he said. No more than
that.
And so I did as I was bid.
I am not a man given to bluster or hyperbole, so
when I tell you that I am the finest Fool on the Four
Continents you may believe me. Oh, perhaps there are
those who are nearly my equal – Holjon of Lifpal, for
one, or Ruskin of Cabbaren for another – but such men
are few and far between, and it is my proud boast that
I can wring laughter from a rock.
But the Grim Emperor was not a rock. He was
harder than that.
My finest capers, my deftest feats of
legerdemain, my warmly vicious lampoons of other
monarchs did not move him in any way. I saw him begin
to drum his fingers upon the arm of his plain oak
throne and, although he gave me his fullest attention,
nothing I did or said brought any other response from
him.
From the courtyard outside I could hear the sound
of hungry dogs and the scrape, scrape, scrape of a
blade being sharpened upon a grinding stone – all the
better to gut a Fool.
I renewed my efforts, but to no avail. The jokes
and anecdotes that had reduced the Baron's household
to helpless tears did nothing to stir the Grim
Emperor. I might have elicited a chuckle from a corpse
with greater success.
A cold breeze, keen as a razor's edge, blew
across the back of my neck. Icy sweat dripped from
beneath my tasselled cap and the tinkling of the bells
upon my breeches was a cacophony without beat or
meter.
“Are you done, Fool?” the Grim Emperor asked.
“I fear that I may be, Your Highness.”
He rose from his throne and for the first time I
sensed the power in the man, and the sadness. Such
monsters as Marphet VII should not have the luxury of
remorse or the soothing pain of guilt, yet they were
there in him. Yes, it was that which gave the Grim
Emperor his title.
And his strength.
It takes a strong man to live his life with
horror, knowing that each day he must stain his soul a
little more and climb down another rung into Hell.
“Have you no more tricks, Fool?” he said, and
there was rust in his iron voice. “No stories to amuse
me?”
“There may be one, Your Highness,” I told him and
drew the Jester God's stick from my tunic. In my
pride, I had never thought to use it, for what use is
such an old, terrible, joke and if my own skill and
talent could not make the Grim Emperor laugh, then
what kind of Fool could I claim to be?
I was a Fool who did not want to be fed to the
Royal Jackals, screaming and crying and shitting
myself.
And so I shook the stick.
Gently, at first, allowing the notes – and the
joke – to build.
“Laugh... laugh... for... the... gods...
themselves... are... mad... and... care... not...
for... the... affairs... of... men...”
Then, faster and faster until the jest filled
every corner of the room.
“Laugh, laugh, for the gods themselves are mad
and care not for the affairs of men.”
The perfect joke to complement a life of murder
and sorrow.
The Grim Emperor did not laugh, but a single tear
ran from his eye and down his cheek.
“It is a good joke, Fool.”
“And yet His Highness does not laugh.”
“No. He does not.”
“Yet He weeps.”
The Grim Emperor raised one hand to his cheek and
felt the wetness of his own tear. How much remorse did
that single drop of salt water contain? More,
certainly, than any man has a right to experience in
one lifetime.
“I never thought...”, he said.
And then he began to laugh.
But there was no joy in that laughter, rather it
was the laugh of a man who has accepted who and what
he is – what he has allowed himself to become. Like
the scrape of knife on bone, or the song of a sword as
it cuts through innocent flesh.
The utterly mirthless hilarity of a sadist.
“You may leave, Fool,” he said through great
bellows of chilling laughter. “I have no further need
of you.”
I ran from the palace, past startled guards and
confused courtiers who listened with blank faces to
the unaccustomed sound of the Grim Emperor's joy. And
each one that I passed began to chuckle in that same
grisly fashion.
It was the most terrible sound I have ever heard.
It followed me as I fled the city, grew louder
with every step as it was taken up by a hundred
thousand throats.
“Laugh, laugh, for the gods themselves are mad
and care nothing for the affairs of men.”
*
Six months of wandering took me back to the
environs of Castle Evestian and the less than warm
welcome of my master the Baron.
Along the way I threw the Jester God's stick into
the deepest part of the Ekrabahn Sea, for I could no
longer bear to have it about me. Some jests should
remain unsaid.
Oh, I can still make a room shake with hilarity,
but I take no pleasure in it, for in each note I hear
the laughter of Marphet VII, last of the Grim
Emperors.
Khoren had been right when he told me that the
strong do not laugh, for how can a man hold a spear
when his whole body shakes with
cachinnation, or raise a shield when he is racked
with mirth?
The enemies of Vasparkhan – and they were legion
– rose up and ground her into dust.
It is said that Marphet roared with laughter as
they nailed him to his cross.
For what else could he do?
The End