Category: Writ

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN OF the nomadic Xao, one of three peoples descended from the Exilic Lands’ original inhabitants. But of their sundered cousins, the forest-dwelling Xai, few tales have been told – and fewer still are those outsiders who have visited their native home and returned with tales of their own.

As was his longstanding habit when his coin jar became heavy, Prosatio Silban and his dray-beast Onward were taking their ease by meandering through someplace unfamiliar to either of them: in this case, the vast and light-dappled Greenlanes, north of the Uulian Commonwell. From the forest’s flat, leaf-carpeted floor sprouted tall and variegated stands of spirewood, teal cypress, half-moon bay, and many other trees the cook-errant couldn’t identify. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Game Game”

DESPITE ITS GENERAL ALLURE, IMMORTALITY isn’t necessarily suitable for everyone.

“To the point: You shall live forever as the centerpiece of my next theatrical work, The Cook For Any Price; or, A Delicious Wage,” Amaeus Tozar said, raising his yava-mug for emphasis. “Nothing more, and nothing less. And I will not allow you to decline.” Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Wicked Stage”

SOMETIMES, THE MOST RANDOM OF encounters can also be the most memorable.

Prosatio Silban was driving his galleywagon high on the switchback road between Mountainfoot and Overlook, and passing the time by whistling selections from Orcio Phatar’s famous musical suite, Grand Dreams Delayed. The early afternoon was as perfect as one could wish – warm sun, passing clouds, exquisite view, lazy drone of distant sapphire-bees – but the worried cook-errant paid scant attention.

If I don’t arrive by sunset, my would-be patron will not be pleased, he thought. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Poet’s Souvenir”

“WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT element of the Perfect Meal?” someone once asked Prosatio Silban.

“The company,” came his reply.

“But cannot one have a perfect meal by oneself?” his inquisitor persisted.

The cook-errant thought for a moment. “Only if that one,” he said with a smile, “is at One.”

IT WAS AS BEAUTIFUL, BREEZY, and otherwise uneventful a day as any in the Three Cities and Thousand Villages of the Uulian Commonwell, save for one particular: the long queues of people, in every settlement of any size, waiting their turn for the Decennial Tally.

Prosatio Silban’s galleywagon was parked in the rustic riverside village of Frogbottom, near the end of the human line that stretched to the Tabulators sitting at a wooden table. The two bored-looking, guard-flanked officials, wrapped in the tricolor robes of Commonwell bureaucrats, asked each person the same three questions: “Name?” “Age?” “Occupation?” This slow parade of individuals, couples, and families had been going on all morning and looked as if it would continue into the afternoon as well. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Counting Time”

SITTING ON THE SODDEN DRIVER’S bench of his tilted and storm-mired galleywagon, warm rain dribbling into crevices public and private, Prosatio Silban briefly flirted with his own demise.

The impulse, though not its brevity, was the oldest of his three reflexive reactions to unanticipated misfortune. But neither giddy laughter nor philosophical resignation seemed suited to the billowing mist soaking his body and soul, so dense that the plaited yak-hair reins in his left hand stretched tautly forward into apparent nothingness.

The Cook For Any Price sighed and shook his head before calling a single hoarse syllable into the all-enclosing grey wall before him. Continue reading “Brokedown Palate (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

SMALL KINDNESSES CAN OVERCOME GREAT cruelties, as Prosatio Silban discovered one day to his everlasting pleasure.

The circumstances began with the beefy cook reflecting on yet another boisterous morning crowd surrounding his painted menu-board in the Itinerants’ Quarter of Pormaris’ famous South Marketplace. If only there were some way to serve my clientele without their jostling each other for primacy, he thought. I am grateful for their coin – but my board, and seating, is not up to their numbers. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Amazing Replicator”

IF YOU’RE GOING TO STAKE your reputation on a single product, it had better be a good one.

The large, one-eyed woman behind the food-stall counter was brusque but not unfriendly. “We have stew,” she told Prosatio Silban. “That’s all we have. That’s all you need.” Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Centuried Stew”

DESPITE A FERVENT BELIEF IN those of the Flickering Gods he felt had not been sanitized into irrelevance, it had been long since Prosatio Silban had thought of Them as answering Their adherents’ every prayer.

Not that this stopped him from asking, mind you. As the pithyism went: “Sometimes the answer to a prayer is ‘no’ – assuming there be any answer at all.” And though the beefy cook could perhaps rely over-much on the dicey art of divine intervention, even he had to admit that some prayers were more effective than others. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Awesome Spectacle”

“WHY DO YOU DO WHAT you do?” asked the young woman sitting at one of Prosatio Silban’s tables-and-chairs. “Aside from earning a wage, I mean.”

“Why does a painter paint, or a musician compose, or a sculptor bring to life the figures hidden in wood and stone?” the cook-errant responded, as he grated yak-cheese over her order of hot wheat-threads. “It is an Art, and Art is by its nature compelling to the artist. The secret, you see, is to take a sheer and sincere delight in the forms and sensations one produces. The medium is secondary.”

(If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. And if you want another 85 of them (so far) in one easy-to-read package, here’s the e-book!)

THE “PURE CITY,” SO SAY the Sacreants, is the eternal home reserved for the souls of pious Uulians, where their earned rewards are consonant with their earthly deeds.

Capital criminals, on the other hand, are a different matter. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Final Refection”

GIVEN SOMETHING AS ESSENTIAL AND ubiquitous as fatberry-oil, it was perhaps unsurprising how little thought people gave to its source and acquisition.

Anyone in need of stove- and/or lamp-fuel could obtain it for themselves with little effort by mashing the abundant purple berries and collecting their unctuous fluid, leaving over fatberry-cakes – fragrant maroon lumps suitable for two purposes: 1) igniting funeral pyres, contract-sealing altars, and other important flames, and 2) feeding hungry buopoths.

Prosatio Silban had little use for the first of these applications and quite a lot for the second (as well as for the oil, of course). Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Harnessless Dray-Beast”