Gareth and th Lost Island (4 page)

“You wouldn’t be laughing so hard if you were there,”
Tralnis said sourly. “Imagine a dozen horses, and at least half
that many humans, with uncontrollable and sustained flatulence for
an extended period of time,” he stated, trying to describe the
horror they had experienced. Henry looked up from the floor, looked
at a headline on the newspaper, and started laughing again. He
pulled himself up by holding onto the table, and pointed a long
orange furred finger at the article. Tralnis folded the paper over,
and read the article in question. “Well Gareth, it looks like we
made the news. It seems a mysterious sewer gas leak has forced
residents in a one block circle around the Spirits Merchant to
evacuate their homes and shops,” he paraphrased.

“Oops,” was all Gareth could think of to say. Henry
shook his head in amusement and went back to work near the
stove.

“Enough about ‘The Great Stink of 13,026’ as the
paper is calling it. I’m much more interested in what happened
right before that. Did you finally divest yourself of that annoying
condition called virginity?” he asked bluntly.

Gareth took a sip of tea before answering, allowing
the herbs to settle his stomach. “No, the curse is still going
strong,” he replied sullenly.

“Nonsense boy, you are not cursed. You’re a handsome
young lad who has had a bit of bad luck, now and then,” Tralnis
said, trying to reassure Gareth.

“A bit of bad luck?!” Gareth echoed as if he couldn’t
believe what he was hearing. “Your memory must be fading now that
you’re over a hundred. You have forgotten a few important details
of my love life. Since I turned 16, there have been 18 times where
I’ve almost lost my virginity. Each time something happens that
interferes with it. At my count, it’s been three husbands, four
fathers, six mothers, two sisters, a freak tidal wave, a rogue
flock of Green Bellied Robins, and a meteor that struck the house
next to the one I was in that have kept me from having sex,” he
countered strongly, thankful the herbs were helping with his
headache.

Tralnis thought about it for a moment, and then said,
“You’re right, you’re cursed… but that’s no reason to stop
trying.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Gareth replied
with a smile. “Never give up. The next stone you dig up might be
the gem you’re looking for,” he stated, quoting a common Dwarvish
saying.

“Hah! That’s the spirit!” Tralnis agreed.

Henry snorted, grunted, and growled.

“What did he say?” Tralnis asked.

“He said the Chims have a similar saying, but theirs
involves grooming a lot of other Chims before finding the one with
the tastiest bugs,” Gareth relayed.

Tralnis shuddered. “And
that
is why we never
have raisins on our toast, or in our porridge in this kitchen,” he
muttered.

Henry heard him and let out a string of angry
sounding noises.

“He said that it’s an old saying, and most of them
bathe regularly now, thank you very much,” Gareth translated. “He
has a point you know. Chim social grooming isn’t that different
than the… uh…
more intimate
, shall we say, customs practiced
by your people,” he pointed out.

Tralnis smiled wistfully as he remembered good times
under the mountains. He snapped out of his revelry when the large
brass bell of the grandfather clock in the hallway rang loudly
eight times. Tralnis pushed himself away from the table, and then
walked over to Gareth to put a friendly hand on the young man’s
shoulder. “Finish up, lad. You only have a few hours to bathe and
dress before you have to present yourself in front of the
Professors’ Conclave to become the youngest tenured professor in
University history,” he reminded him.

Gareth paced nervously outside of the huge arched
doors of the Cathedral of Knowledge, the hub of the University
Arcanum. He was wearing a white, button down shirt with a high
collar and gray wool trousers. A thin bowtie in the blue assigned
to the School of Languages accented his shirt. To make himself feel
balanced, one of his cufflinks was made of semiprecious jade as his
nod to the Applied Magics Division, while the other was made from
brown quartz for the Archeology Department. His black knee high
boots were polished to a mirror like shine.

Trying to distract himself from his nervousness,
Gareth glanced up at the flying buttresses and slender spires that
reached up to the heavens. He remembered reading an early treatises
on the Cathedral that explained the grandeur of the building. It
was designed to make anyone feel insignificant in comparison to the
vast amounts of knowledge held within its walls. Gareth had always
thought it was a perfect expression of the pompousness displayed by
most of the senior professors. He always thought of them as aloof,
intellectual royalty sneering down at their subjects from their
high tower walls. Gareth’s secret hope was that when he became a
tenured professor himself, he might be able to shatter that image
so his students would feel he was approachable. He thought that was
the best way to instill a love of learning, the likes of which
flowed through his veins.

Gareth relaxed a bit when he recognized the forms of
Tralnis and Henry running towards him from the direction of their
shared townhome. Henry was running using one hand and both feet to
propel himself in a slightly lopsided fashion. He would have been
more balanced had he not been holding a garment bag high above his
head to keep it from touching the ground. When they finally got
near him, the Chim and Dwarf paused to catch their breath.

When he had enough air to speak, Tralnis pointed to
the garment bag. “I don’t want to know what deals with the
underworld Henry had to make, but he somehow managed to get that
bit of horse manure out of your jacket,” he praised. Henry opened
the bag, and proudly held up the jacket for Gareth to see.

“Henry, you’re a lifesaver. I don’t even want to
think about how bad it would have looked if I showed up for the
Tenure Arguments without my teaching jacket,” Gareth said in
relief. Henry motioned for Gareth to turn around and slid the
jacket over his arms and onto his shoulders. Feeling much more
confident now that he was properly dressed, Gareth turned around
and smiled at his friends. His smile faltered when he went to
straighten his cuffs, and noticed the wide blue band on his right
sleeve was barely hanging on. “That’s weird, I’ve never seen any of
your sewing come apart like that, Henry,” he informed the Chim.

For some reason that Gareth couldn’t fathom, Henry
let out a snort that usually signified he felt guilty about
something. It wasn’t a verbal cue from the Chim language, but a
subconscious gesture Gareth had picked up on after growing up as a
Henry’s friend.

“I know how much attention you always put into
details, it must have been defective thread,” Gareth assured Henry.
The Chim gave a noncommittal shrug with his shoulders, and dug out
a straight pin from one of the many pockets on his vest. Crouching
down to see better, Henry pinned the stripe on in such a way that
no one would know it wasn’t fully held on by thread.

Tralnis slapped Gareth on the back, and motioned
towards the imposing doors with their gigantic brass fittings.
“Come on lad, it’s time you joined the ranks of the senior
professors,” he said loudly. In a much quieter voice, he added,
“I’m damned proud of you, son!”

Gareth placed his hand on Tralnis’ shoulder. “That
means more to me that any tenured position ever will,” he told him
before squaring his shoulders, and walking towards the doors.

Henry raced in front of the two professors, and held
the doors open with a closed mouth smile. Once they were inside,
Gareth and Tralnis paused to let Henry catch up with them. Turning
to their right, the three of them approached a long vaulted hallway
which had a ceiling three stories above them. The roof was arched
with stained glass windows running along the length of it. The
windows cast pools of different colored lights on the larger than
life two story tall statues of the most famous professors from the
University Arcanum.

Gareth paused at one statute that stood out from the
rest, or at least to him it did. Unlike all of the other statues,
this one wasn’t of a human, but one of the Cyclops from the large
continent to the south of them. Of course being a Cyclops, this two
story tall statue was the only one that was life sized. Juth the
Blind was the founder of the School of Languages, and insisted that
by understanding each other’s languages, the 12 sentient races
could overcome their differences to prevent a Third Great
Apocalypse from happening.

Tralnis paused next to Gareth, and strained his neck
to look up at the statue’s face. “You know, it’s funny. In every
depiction of Juth the Blind that I’ve come across, I’ve never seen
anything that indicated he couldn’t see. Take this statue for
instance, it looks like his eye is tracking our progress down the
Hall of Greatness,” he mentioned in an offhand manner.

“That’s because Juth could see just fine,” Gareth
replied.

“Then why in the name of my bearded grandma was he
called Juth the Blind,” Tralnis demanded.

Shaking his head, Gareth replied, “Trust me, you
don’t want to know.”

Tralnis responded by putting his hands on his hips in
a gesture of stubbornness. “I’m almost eight times older than you.
I think I can handle it,” he assured him.

Gareth let out a snort that was half amusement and
half horror as he remembered hitting the library trying to answer
why Juth had been saddled with the title, “The Blind.” He pointed
up to the gray stone waistcoat showing under an overcoat of the
same stone. “Luckily, they never painted these statues. Juth’s
favorite outfit was a waistcoat with a chartreuse base and brown
paisleys paired with a pink overcoat,” Gareth explained.

Tralnis and Henry both made slight gagging sounds.
“Sorry, I just had a small bit of vomit make its way to my mouth.
Gareth, forgive me for doubting your wisdom. Next time you tell me
I don’t want to know, I’ll believe you,” Tralnis apologized.
Without being asked, Henry pulled a small tin from his vest, and
offered a mint to Tralnis after taking one for himself. “Thank you,
Henry,” Tralnis stated.

The three of them made their way to the end of the
hallway where the other candidates for tenure were sorting
themselves out by name, and by which school they worked for.
Tralnis and Henry wished Gareth good luck one more time before they
entered Enclave Hall without him. Following some tradition, the
reasons for which had been lost over time, Gareth stepped to the
end of the line since the School of Languages was always the last
to go in. He waited patiently, while each of the other candidates
walked through the solid oak doors. The other professors returned a
minute or two after they left with the wide strip of their school
embroidered with gold on the edges.

When it was finally Gareth’s turn, he strode through
the doors with his head held high. His step almost faltered as he
walked into the Conclave Hall for the first time. The room was an
enormous circle with two floors of seating. Most of the seats on
the first floor were full, with only half of the seats on the
second floor occupied. On the far edge of the circle across from
the main entrance was a large throne like chair on a raised
platform. The center “throne” was flanked by several smaller, yet
still impressive, chairs. The smaller chairs were set aside for the
heads of the various schools within the University, while the
throne like chair was reserved for the Dean of the University
Arcanum.

In the center of the room were two teaching lecterns
with a waist high wooden railing running between them. The tenure
candidate was expected to stand in the middle of the railing, while
his sponsor would take the lectern on the left and explain to the
Dean why the candidate should be granted tenure. The lectern on the
right was hardly ever used, as it was for any professor who opposed
the candidate. Since a candidate being given tenure had no bearing
on their pay, and would only reduce the teaching duties of the
other professors, no one could remember a candidate being opposed
during the last century.

Once Gareth was standing behind the railing, he
looked around at the Conclave and noticed a spot where a professor
of Political Philosophy was sitting with no one willing to come
near him. The fact that the man was roughly the same size as
Gareth, and had a very suspicious looking stain on his jacket, told
Gareth exactly how Henry managed to give him a clean jacket. Gareth
would have been upset with his hairy friend if the victim of the
theft hadn’t been someone responsible for teaching politicians the
tricks of their trade.

The Chancellor, a man of frighteningly advanced
years, stood from his chair, and read from the leather bound book
in front of him. After adjusting his reading glasses, the
Chancellor’s eyes and voice betrayed his boredom as he read, “As
dictated in the University’s charter, no professor may be granted
tenure without arguments for and potentially against it being heard
in front of the Conclave of Professors and Dean of the University.
Therefore, in this year 13,026 After the Second Great Apocalypse,
Professor Gareth Mintel comes before the Dean of the University
Arcanum and Conclave of Professors as a candidate for Tenured
Professor. Who sponsors and speaks for the candidate?”

“I, Doctor Tralnis Granitestaff, do sponsor and speak
for Professor Mintel. If it pleases the Chancellor, I would
approach the Conclave, and deliver arguments on behalf of this most
worthy candidate,” Tralnis said loudly, giving the traditional
reply. The Chancellor nodded his old, wrinkled head, and Tralnis
approached the lectern on Gareth’s left. University servants rushed
before him to place a step stool in front of the lectern so
everyone could see the Dwarf.