Lore of the Underlings: Episode 6 ~ Meeting Minyon (3 page)

The followers were just plain folk but
growing by the minute.

“We missed you yesterday Mr. Minyon,” waved
one woman, hailing him.

“Yes, we hope that all’s alright,” cooed
another, quite concerned.

“Was it your health?”

“Or your four humors?”

More and more folk-women, and some men,
fluttered in like May moths to a flame.

“Did you catch the croup that’s going
around?”

The man, Minyon Myne, pressed both palms to
his breast and sighed as if truly touched. Then he gave a light
wave back to the crowd. His lips, thin but firm, seemed to form the
words, “Bless your precious hearts…”

“Pray tell you’re in good spirits now,”
called someone from a far-flung row.

“Please, dear elderman, tell us so!”

Minyon Myne, the perfect gentle man, made a
low, slow bow then looked up again. His face had the gloss of
polished headstone.

“I am humbled, treasured friends, by your
thoughtful concern for my own health and wellness.”

His voice poured out smooth as thick, silky
snake’s milk.

“Rest assured that I’ve never been better,
graced by a hand from the great beyond.”

Much relieved, his flock grew giddy, eager to
share their news with him.

“Oh, you’ve missed some real excitement!”

“Have ya heard word of the goings on?”

“And we’ve wanted for your calm, sage
counsel.”

“If just to survive the council’s
return…”

Minyon let slip the slightest grin but then
in an instant it was gone.

The entourage stopped, having met its match —
the rapture around the stranger John Cap. And yet they hardly
noticed that, or the fact that they’d come to a sudden halt. For
such was their lingering wonder about the pious one’s prior
whereabouts.

“If ya don’t mind sayin’ father Minyon, where
in the wide world of Ayll have ya been?”

The elderman held his long hand high, as if
about to testify.

Everyone pricked up an ear to hear him.

“Our path brings us back from a sacred trek,
an annual mission, this day of remembrance.” He turned to his west
and the broad-chested huntsman. “I think you know Axon, my
righteous son.” Then he looked to the huntress at his east. “And
bravehearted Eela, my daughter and sundial…” He smiled a beaming
smile at her. “Of us all, the youngest yet one most cunning…”

It must have been the sight of her, now lit
just so in the pure, sweet light, that brought the elderman to
tears, a sudden well that fell from his face.

“A moment, dear peers, to compose
myself…”

But all were spellbound by his sorrow. They
studied the Mynes from head to toe.

The three of them — Minyon and his kin — had
hair of red like the best of men, but longer and sleeker, straight
down to the shoulder, or spilling over to cover the back, with a
slick wet look as if soaked in blood. A liquid thick, maroon, and
sticky. They shared a remarkable skin tone too, this middle-aged
man and two just grown children, made of a substance more sculpted
than born — something mined then fashioned into shape — hand
finished, rubbed hard till near perfection, reflecting a glassy
kind of complexion a few shades paler than typical folk. And their
eyes surprised as well. Deep pools of dark, all but black as a
vell’s.

Black too was the garb this Minyon wore, a
simple suit of woven worm’s wool, clothes unadorned and strangely
clean for someone coming from the road. Although they did fit his
beardlessness.

Son and daughter were dressed in worn
leathers, boar and boven, both softened by time. He in a vest
baring arms and chest with wading pants just past his knees. She
wearing less, but a low-cut bodice and short kilt showing her
endless legs.

Each one was shod in old, crude sandals.

Finally, minister Myne continued, wiping the
wetness from his cheek. “Thank you, fair Keep’s-people, for your
indulgence. You must forgive this… my mortal weakness…”

“No need to apologize, pastor Myne.”

“Yes, please take you time.”

Minyon placed his palms together in a
grateful, prayer-like pose.

“You are too kind, my brothers and sisters...
O, what more witness does one need to show what a woeful soul I am.
A sinner no better than any of you. A flesh and blood man of
Syland.”

All eyes upon him were damp now too.

“Still, I owe you the simple truth.”

Axon tucked the talon blade into his wide
belt of boven hide. Eela twirled her spear in the air then stuck it
in the ground.

The elderman’s gaze turned distant and hazy,
as if into a misty past.

“As on every Mid Summer’s Eve for thirteen
full yet hollow years, I led my family in retreat, commemorating
the one not here. Our bittersweet anniversary… of love and the hell
of our lives before… For it was this day all those seasons long
gone that the Wild took my wife and their dear mother, Faunon.”

Minyon tipped his head to the heavens then
back earthbound looking folklorn again. He seemed to meet each
treasured eye, reaching a heartstring deep inside. And there was a
soothing to this voice, a music difficult to describe.

“My son and daughter grew to know the weight
of this solemn time on me. And so it was yesterday they surprised
their unworthy father with a present. Something to lighten my heavy
heart.”

He spread his arms wide to touch them
both.

“It was a daredevil hunt they devised and the
ritual sacrifice of a beast born of hate, heat, darkness, and death
— a creature I’d met but in lore and myth. Bull-bear or bear-bull
as you wish, a monster both mammoth and malicious with bitter
irony, nothing delicious, dripping from every crack, each tip of
its thorny-toed hooves and black bared teeth. We found it guarding
the pass southwest, at the place that the plainsmen call Hell’s
Breath.”

The faithful gasped in disbelief.

“Oh, my friends, what happened then… it was
something to behold! No less than a quest from some new testament
or deed retold from a book of olde. A scene beyond my wildest
dreams. An act befitting our fallen queen. Faunon honored by her
children. Sainted, consecrated in blood…

“They drew straws and the first task fell to
Eela to track and trap the bully thing, a trial using naught but
her bare feet and the wits she had about her. Well, as well as the
aid of a herder’s spear borrowed from a flocker here.

“She poked and prodded the grizzly demon
until it was bullfull, seeing red. A bad-news bear gone very
mad.”

Heads bobbed and nodded in approval, although
no one made a sound now or uttered a single word.

“The final feat belonged to Axon, armed with
only a claw-blade in hand. Standing face to face with the beast, he
spoke his last peace, a warrior’s speech:

Give me life

But brutish and short

For kin and bone

I give my heart!

“Then he went in for the kill.”

Suddenly Minyon slipped into a whisper and
people pressed closer just to hear.

“That’s when I found myself on my knees —
miracle, wonder unfolding before me. A vision of foul bile spilled
on the soil, turning the stained ground holy.”

The followers were fully beguiled. The
elderman’s voice grew louder again.

“I swear that a father has never been
prouder.” He sighed in a sad and wistful way.

“Don’t stop now,” a new acolyte worried.

“Tell us the tail of your story.”

“Amen!”

Minyon smiled. “Of course I will. How could I
leave you out there in the wild?”

The sun shone in his entrancing eyes like two
stones of treasured obsidian.

“To do justice to this animal king, they
gutted it swiftly and by hand — Eela peeling its pelt from the
front, Axon skinning the belly and back. It came to them like
second nature, the more the gore the more they enjoyed it. Soon
there were entrails everywhere.

“And I read them, just to be sure.”

That really piqued his pupils’ interest.

“What did they say?!”

“Please…”

“Yes, yes, do school us!”

He raised his palm and silenced them with a
dramatic pause…

“First I foresaw an impending feast, a menu
full of fetid beast — truly, all bull,” he quipped. “Bear with
me…”

His joking evoked a fawning laugh. Then
Minyon’s tenor turned serious.

“But down in the bowels, I found true news
and knew we needed to return. So we hastily fashioned a pilgrim’s
pyre and set our sacrifice afire.

“Grateful for its gift to us we ate of its
meat, lifting it up to the heavens first in humble praise of this
life not taken in vain. And we prayed that by this offering we
might bring some peace to the wrongly departed — their long-lost,
my much-missed, our dearly beloved. The girl of my dreams taken
bride by a nightmare. O my Faunon Myne…

“I searched for a sign of her in the flames…
but no spirit appeared or called our names. That is, until
suddenly, there it was! For an instant a flare of light so bright,
the glow of a figure all in white… And then in a flash it was gone
— burned out. Nothing but ashes, dust in the wind.”

Minyon cleared his throat.

“No firebird rising, born again…”

He looked off as if keeping a deeper pain or
something darker to himself.

“It was just at dusk’s dawn that we set out
for home, we three, the last of my family line. And as nightfall
stole the remains of the day, I felt a familiar old feeling return
— the curse of being a Fell-Behind, left lost in the dark for
twenty-some years, abandoned for thousands of suns…”

Minyon suddenly stopped himself and took on a
lighter near cheery look. “But enough of the past, let’s leave that
for the future — it’s high time to get to the present tents!” Then
he shifted his stance setting course for the entrance.

“Wait!” wailed a whey woman.

“Elderman Minyon…”

“What of your prophecies?”

“And those omens?!”

“Ah yes,” Minyon mused, “I guess I can share
them… Though judgment hour is all but here. I’ll have to foretell
in a nutshell.”

Just then from the settlement hill tolled a
hellish warning bell.

Minyon Myne pressed on nonetheless. “It was
the brute’s distempered blood, cold to the touch and sour to taste,
that told me first to test the heart. That organ showed signs of a
fabled animal — mighty, brave but gravely ill, as if wounded by a
hound of hell or perhaps a creature more feline…”

“Ooo!”

“Amazing!”

“On the nose.”

“So, so sad to say but so…”

“Whoa is the great vell Arrowborne.”

“The brother Treasuror’s very own…”

The congregation seemed poised to sing the
praises of the graceful steed. Until Minyon interrupted them.

“And speaking of that woeful one,” he said in
a plush and velvet tone, “I spied troubled times ahead for our dear
and fearless leader. A season of wither, storm clouds coming, in
the murk of the bared bull’s phlegm…”

“Thank heavens you’re back to warn him!”

“Is there hope for a savior?”

“Some higher power?”

“Lord willing,” smiled the elderman.

“And what about strangers?” asked Teely Tynn.
“Were there any portents of them?”

The augur thought and stroked his chin. “Yes,
now that you mention it. Deep down in the belly of the beast, I
found food enough for a three-day feast — vermin and varmints of
all shapes and sizes — provisions as if for an epic quest. To me
these were symbols of wayfarers, three, from distant lands on a
mission of mercy. Emissaries bearing gifts, envoys with long tales
in hand.

“And…”

Minyon hesitated a moment, pondering, then
went on.

“I sensed something else, next door in the
liver… Not always trustworthy but I’ll tell…

“The smell of its bile foreshadowed a leaver,
one drenched in the stench of the Wild’s vast swamps through which
he’d tried to run and hide. A young fool making a fateful mistake.
An error of Eros. A futile trial. And then in the end an
unspeakable sentence, bloodless but fatal — or so it seemed —
judging by the spleen.”

Again Mrs. Tynn was keen to chime in. “Word
is the leaver’s a son of Yin and a prodigal one if you know what I
mean. Thank God that they’re not my bloody kin. No Yin is even a
neighbor of mine. And those strangers? Just his lawyers. Yes, fancy
ones from a bench or bar in the court of public opinion…”

No one could get a word in edgewise. Even
Minyon. She droned on.

“Either that or they’re tourists on vacation
who took a really wrong turn…”

But then a hubbub from the mob up ahead
finally squelched the woman’s spiel. Minyon squinted to catch the
cause but his vision was screened by the groundswell of people.

“Hmmm, it seems I did not foresee…”

He enjoined his young crusaders again, a calm
but curious look on his face.

“Go my children. Investigate…”

The daughter answered by grabbing her spear,
the son by unsheathing his jagged dagger. Then Axon and Eela plowed
through the crowd to scout out the source of all the commotion.

They seemed not to see the folk in their way,
so driven were they by basic instinct — a distinctively animal
passion. It turned their walk into stalking again, just as in
Minyon’s unspun yarn. And they spoke in a tongue of growls and
grunting, the primal language of preying, hunting…

Well, up until they broke into the open. For
that’s when they first laid eyes on him, John Cap the hunky
anchored man.

“Who?!” They froze in unison, waving their
weapons in his direction.

This visitor was news to them, these
cloistered two, the spawn of Minyon. A stranger in shackles, still
lady-killer. Some young man in manacles knocking ‘em dead.

“They called him Captain,” someone
answered.