CHAPTER XXVII: Dance Along the Rim of the World

Greagoir remained motionless and unspeaking for several days, and the guilt-ridden Tatya doted in tireless servitude over his sleeping master. The apprentice cursed himself for having allowed Greagoir to continue his sad tale, but now none of his contrite pleadings or diligent efforts could rouse Greagoir from his self-imposed exile. Had Tatya not been so distraught, he may well have noticed that some of the color had returned his master's face, and that he sometimes stirred in the midst of his dark dreams.

"Selfish, that's what you are," Tatya muttered, "selfish and stupid!"

"Yes, you are stupid," Greagoir drawled languidly as if still entranced by his dream-state, "but stupidity is an infirmity of youth, and the only cure is a good dose of age." He licked his cracked lips and his eyes fluttered weakly open. "Yet as you can see, the dosage is oft more deadly than the disease."

Delighted, Tatya ignored (as usual) Greagoir's jabbing pun, and embraced his master tearfully.

"Tatya!" Greagoir groused irritably, "As I have not yet died, is it your intent to smother me?"

"O dear master, I thought that you had left me!" the apprentice cried miserably.

"Tatya, we must all take our leave sooner or later," Greagoir grumbled without the hint of sentiment. "I have not trained thee these last several years to be a hired mourner for my funeral procession, scant as it may soon prove to be. Now, cease your ignoble caterwauling and prepare me some food. Can you not see I am famished, you lazy lout!"

Tatya rolled his eyes and grinned as he rushed off to fetch his master's meal, but the smirk faded into thoughtfulness as he doled some savory stew into a bowl. Had the master really been training the apprentice all this time? Often in the past, it did not seem more than the meanest servitude -- the dreary scribing of a series of meandering monologues at the behest of an eccentric scholar -- but these last several months had emboldened the scribeling, who only now could see the deft maneuvering by which the master had set the apprentice on the path to his chosen profession. Yes, now without reservation Tatya emphatically chose to follow Greagoir in this odd life of self-depravation, vainglory and verbosity. Henceforth, he would mirror the efforts of his beloved master.

"Dash it all, Tatya!" Greagoir bellowed from the other room. "Are you growing the ingredients for the meal? Might I get something to eat while I still have strength to chew?"

Or perhaps not, Tatya thought with a wince.

Although Greagoir had revived somewhat, he could no longer rise from his bed. This, of course, only increased his cantankerous nature (his tongue-lashings, however, had lost none of their potency), but Tatya stoically shrugged off even the most towering rants of the crippled curmudgeon, wisely deciding that channeling the frustrated master's fettered energy into recitations might prove a tonic for his failing health (or at the least, curtail the chains of curses he hurled). During a particularly nasty explosion (wherein Greagoir likened Tatya to Orkish extremities of a most unseemly nature), the serene apprentice quelled the outburst by slyly asking, "What happened after you were told of Princess Leannan's sad demise?"

Greagoir opened his mouth and raised an accusative finger towards the heavens, but the tirade was instantly suffocated with a gasp and then a groan of sudden defeat. Realizing he had been perhaps just a bit too harsh on Tatya, Greagoir accepted the cruel query as a none-too-subtle reminder of his own beastly attitude. "What happened?" he sighed at last, "Nothing, or at least naught that I could recall for some time. Looking back, I can see that I was rather callous towards Leannan's handmaiden, ignoring her plight and merely riding away after I had learned of our shared loss. I did not thank her, nor did I offer her any assistance." He cast a blind eye in Tatya's direction and groaned morosely, "Many are my regrets, Tatya, but that bitter bit of selfishness on my part still unsettles me. I was too lost in my own grief to care for anyone…least of all myself."

The master bit his lip pensively, chewing the vagueness of fleeting memories. "I remember riding northward, as that seemed to be the path of least resistance – few refugees chose to flee in that direction. I drank little and ate not at all; one cares little for food when one has lived too long. But there was plenty of forage for the horse, and he showed little concern for our errant ride. Truthfully, I had no certain destination save perhaps for a deep-seated compulsion to fly to the furthest edge of the world and cast myself into the frigid Northern Sea, seeking blessed oblivion in her icy embrace. Days…nights…endless miles --'twas all a bitter blur -- made more bleak as the rolling, green terrain surrendered to the somber and sparse moors.

"The farther I traversed in my blind ride, the colder it became, till my steed heaved great gusts of frosty mist as he trod over the hard scrabble and heather. The cold sting of the wintry wind did little to rouse me from my melancholy; nay, it merely numbed my senses all the more. The bald remnants of the mighty mountains Morgoth reared in the time before time piled in jagged profusion before me like some long-dead behemoth's skull-less, snaggle-toothed jawbone, eroded now to the point where its spiny peaks proved no deterrent to travel, with gaping cavities wide enough for whole regiments to pass through ten men abreast. But the treacherous terrain of scaling shale and crumbling, ice-bitten limestone proved dubious for a rider and his mount; therefore, I at last conceded the ride and walked instead with my horse scrambling behind me.

"Haphazardly picking my way up the blasted slope, my surging impulse for self-destruction still impelled me forward; although I must admit that the need for this prolonged and arduous journey to entertain such a spectacular exit – with neither notoriety nor fanfare -- has proven in hindsight to be merely a bit of epic whimsy, poetic grandeur on such a ridiculous scale that it could only be fathomed in the mind of a passionately overwrought youth. Yet, such was my melancholy at the time that only a final gesture of the grandest magnitude would suffice. Now, passing the very crest of the blasted hills, I was buffeted by the brutal winds that roared and bit without ceasing from the howling desolation of the fathomless Northern Sea, which is called Ekkaia in the ancient texts. The great gray expanse yawned endlessly before my watering eyes, a vast tortured field of frozen waves and broken floes of glacial brine petrified after ages of violent upheaval and grinding turmoil into grotesque statuary and mangled monoliths: grasping, clinging, curling, colliding, leaning, swerving, toppling and rising in confusion; with wisps and gusts and eddies of windborne hoarfrost capering and pirouetting down the maddening labyrinth of avenues and alleys that meandered in and out and around the manically sculpted and rimed ice.

"Wiping the stinging tears from my squinting eyes, I searched vainly for open water, but could only perceive a faint black ribbon of slushy current along the farthest horizon, countless miles from the twisted shore. Despairing of my goal, denied my grand gesture, I sat defeated atop the icy ridge, allowing the scourging winds to exact their cold punishment on my tired bones. Exhaustion and despondency, the clutching hands that strangle the spirit, choked the last vestige of will from aching body, and I laid down there to die. I spoke Leannan's name once but the shrieking wind stole even my voice, and like horrid laughter, it echoed in my ears until I surrendered to darkness."

Tatya involuntarily shivered. His teeth chattered and his fingers grew numb as he gripped his quill. Suddenly, he remembered he had left the window ajar and the cold rain from without had blown the hinged bit of wood framing affixed with waxed paper wide open, chilling the room. Setting his writing paraphernalia aside while the master paused, Tatya bolted fast the window and resumed his vigil alongside Greagoir's bed. The master paid little heed to the apprentice's movements, for the coldness of the room meshed precisely with his wintry reverie.

Sitting once again at his station, Tatya, impatient of the prolonged silence, beckoned: "Yet, you did not die."

"Tatya, I see your powers of deduction have grown great over the years," Greagoir huffed in exasperation. "Of course I did not die, fool! Although I should have." Then as if to punish Tatya further for his impudence, Greagoir pouted, refusing to continue the tale.

Not to be outmaneuvered in this scholarly chess match, Tatya sighed, "Ah, but you are tired, master; perhaps we should leave off here so that you may regain your wits."

"My wits? My wits!" Greagoir exploded, and was about to condemn Tatya in the most execrable terms, when he suddenly thought better of it. Winking a blind eye at his apprentice, he grinned slyly and said, "Nay, dear Tatya, we shall continue. You may scrub the chamber pot after we have finished."

Having regained the upper hand (and relishing Tatya's inability to offer a suitable retort), Greagoir continued with renewed gusto: "No, I of course did not die, which was remarkable not for the manner in which I was rescued, but rather, by the hand that saved me."

Tatya recalled a conversation many months earlier regarding the great black staff his master had long carried about and the personage that had presented it to him. "Ah! It was the wizard!" Tatya blurted excitedly, "the tale of the wizard and the black staff!"

Greagoir forcibly bit his lip to stifle a surging curse. Drawing a deep breath from the very pit of his stricken frame, he then exhaled a menacing hiss through clenched teeth, "Yes, the black staff, Tatya -- which I would brain you with if it were only within my grasp!"

The apprentice lapsed into a jumble of mumbled apologies as the master rolled his eyes and sighed. When a sufficient amount of time lapsed and silence once again pervaded the room, Greagoir continued, "Now, short of any further impudent explosions (at this he cast a rather sharp glance in Tatya's direction), "I was recounting the manner in which I was rescued, and by whom."

Greagoir paused a bit longer for a weightier effect, and then fell back into his trancelike, bardic cadence.