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= LANTERN ROAD =

a novella in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

8.

Just hours ago, Jory had waited on the high walls above the women's quarters at Castle Ramyon, among flowing chrysanthemum banners.

The area around Castle Ramyon always had a certain unique smell, a floral-like scent of the tywix fungus. In fact it was the time of the tywix festival in the villages around Ramyon, for the fabled mushroom was in the beginning of its annual throe season, when it had soaked up just enough water to suddenly proliferate across the landscape in a myriad of dimly glowing saucer shapes big as a man's hand. And they had a certain smell—sweet as honey, musky as river flowers, mild as oats. They were prized among the finest of Oba's fungal wealth, and ships carried them all over the local galaxy.

The night always had a certain charm and magic, Jory O'Call thought as he leaned on the parapets high above Lord Ramyon's castle, which itself overlooked a series of wildly plunging gorges above a forest, a lake, a small town, and, of course, the flow of lights five klix away on the Obayyo.

While he waited for the baba to leave Lady Ramy's suite and retire to her own unknowable dark hole, Jory must have patience and wait. Ramy would be waiting for him, eager to share the latest poem, the silliest joke or gossip about the castle, and, of late, embraces that led to ever greater risk.

Jory had grown up at the castle and knew the limits. He could get away with things no other human could. He was at the Lord Ramyon's pleasure, though the old warrior would have little speech with him. As long as Jory guided Ramyon's youngest and favorite daughter Ramy in matters of ancient Oba poetry and song, and did not transgress too badly, Jory was tolerated with a certain wink, a laugh, the patient air with which one treated a pet. After all, to see a human dressed in Oba court robes—moss-green silk coat, broad mint-white silk sash and camiss, ankle-length moss-green kilt, sturdy wooden sandals—was like seeing an animal dressed like a person. Ramyon had reason to be complacent. He was getting older. All three of his sons were married and in the field, keeping Ramyon's enemies at bay and the retainers in line. His house babas were strong in commerce and dark arts. All four of his daughters were married off and the matter of dowries finished. Only his youngest, Ramy, lived at home half the time, the other half at Dumonhi when her husband was home from the wars. Lord Ramyon, still fierce looking with his black robes and swords, could stride about the palace gardens picking moon roses, listening to Ramy's tinkling voice singsong ancient riddles and poems, and smiling at Jory as if the latter were a lap dog.

As a human, Jory was wallpaper, as the retainers said. Early in his childhood, Jory had been chosen for his talents at art and music to become a child pedagogue to the Ramyon children. Whatever their lowly status, the humans could sometimes produce prodigious talent. Every generation, a few humans made their way to some of the larger castles as prodigies, as wonders, as teachers, as oddities who could singsong Shurian epics and short poems with the deeper, stronger voices of humans. Likewise, a few bull-strong human men always found their way into each warlord's army. It was said that the robber barons at the far haunted reaches had more than one human among their gangs.

The Shurians took human children early, on the theory that they could be totally domesticated and would not bring any hostile ideas, such as stabbing the lord in his bed or throwing his children off a high wall—things that had happened in previous centuries, and were hideously punished, with entire human villages razed, and rows of chopped off heads strung for klix along the Obayyo as a warning to those humans carrying cargo on their shoulders.

But Jory carried in him an ember of pride, a spark of rebellion. When Jory was a little boy of about 3, his uncle had taken him to a meeting of the Twelve Moon Society. That was a forbidden group of Shurian and human thinkers who schemed to liberate Oba from the warlords and give humans equality under the law. Jory had not fully understood the lofty words spoken around a warm fire in a dark underground warehouse while some 20 shadowy figures clapped and nodded assent. But he remembered the feeling he'd had, the infectious sense of freedom, the exhilaration of strutting about and speaking one's mind, even though he experienced those things through the mouths and animated expressions of others. Toward the end of the meeting there had been sudden chaos—the fire put out, smoke filling the room, men whispering in panic, feet thrashing this way and that, while Lord Ramyon's men beat the doors down with iron axes and tramped in waving their swords. His uncle had half dragged, half carried Jory to a window and handed him out to a passing cargo woman, a human who spirited him into the woods and then into a mountain hideout. When Jory was returned to his parents days later, he'd seen the rows of staves in the human settlement, in the main square. The men's eyes were gone, birds were busy about their lips, and their skin had turned black, but Jory could still recognize his uncle. His mother had let him see, as a warning, but briefly, before yanking him away. Up on the Obayyo, another row of heads on staves—the Shurian element of the Twelve Moon Society. The Lord Ramyon must have been satisfied that his informers had rooted out the entire nest, and his torturers put their skills to good use.

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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.