names

Lombo (“egg”), Woochi’s son, played by Jake;
Washko (“chigger”), Woochi’s half-blind daughter, played by Matt;
Issob-oishi (“colt”), Woochi’s sister-in-law’s daughter, played by Kim;
Nita Tish (“bear-herb”), Woochi’s wife, played by Charles;

11th Communion

scenes

Ishta’s coming downstairs for melos; the Wolf Priest is preparing mysterious rituals outside the walls; Gieron’s asleep; Heshe’s up on the walls doing nothing of importance; Iba’s putting on her sporran; Calvus is working with the troops, as per usual; Woochi goes to find Smelly, who’s late.

The weather’s crappy. There’s a cold steady nasty rain, which occasionally freezes into something not quite sleet. Ishta’s dressed in a long white fur cloak with a big white fur hat. She’s levitating.

Mitahafi’s sent to clean up the church after last night’s party.

Gi and Nil grab large steaming cups of melos and head up to an inner wall. Receptrix joins them, asking whether she really has to stay inside today. Yes.

Gieron’s whining about the weather. Heshe snaps at him, telling him to shut up. The Weaver’s wearing a Gætani umbrella. Fohi’s wearing shoes.

Heshe, Tishkilla, Iba, the Weaver, Woochi, Smelly, Gieron, and Fohi begin to walk the walls. They will complete five circles, each telling stories about their god and how that god relates to the circuit they’re currently making (the three moons, the sea, and the sun). Each priest carries a sign of their office.

The night before, Omphale, Nil’s snake-familiar, with a bit of cheap chalk tied to her tail, made a circumference of the wall, marking it close to the bottom.

Calvus is more interested in the termite-mounds. (He sets an orb on the inner wall to watch for him, so he can watch it later.)

Ilba and Ishkin are sitting by the castle, looking down at the cliff’s edge below. The priests will pick their way along the path, since the old wall has fallen to the valley floor. There’s a half-blind girl sitting on the path and a tiny little boy that follows her along tugging on her skirt. Ilba and Ishkin are making bets. A seven-year-old girl comes running up, freckle-faced, missing front teeth, waving a stick like a sword. Charge! She falls on her ass in the mud. She tries to whack Lombo with her stick and he bites her and she wails and gets up and chases him and ends up laughing. Ilba and Ishkin decide Ilba lost the bet, so she has to steal something from Perdix. You could steal me a shirt, says Ishkin. They don’t have shirts, says Ilba. What do they have to steal? There’s nothing really they have that would be useful to me. Can you steal something so that it stays small? If you could steal something so that it stays small we could hide it in the castle and they’d never know. I could make a secret room for it or something.

The priests are on their second circuit (the sea). Woochi’s kids are jumping around trying to get his attention. Washko starts hitting Lombo and Issa with her walking-stick. It is good, to have children playing on the path, says Tishkilla. Woochi rolls his eyes. Dad! says Lombo. I found a poo shaped like a star!

Ilba’s trying to open the drawer under the hookah where the hash is kept. Perdix asks what she’s doing. Looking for something. The mouse hid it. She produces a piece of mouse-nibbled paper. I think the rest is in here. I had no idea Chittery could open the drawer, says Perdix. Can I look for the rest? Sure. And tell Ishkin to go fetch some melos. Perdix heads back to bed. Ilba steals the unburnt crumb from the hookah bowl. She proposes to Ishkin that she’ll keep stealing hash when she can, and he has to hide it somewhere. He starts working on one of the unfinished walls, to clear a space inside it.

That evening, on the last circuit, there’s a brief glimpse of a shivering servant girl, out in the air over the cliff where the hall once was before it fell.

The Wolf Priest has been eating very specific herbs and foods, and then walking a circuit of the walls with some other Wolves, naked, digging small holes and taking shits in them and covering it up. As they finish their circuit, a whole horde of bugs come squirming up out of the woods to where the Wolves are standing. The Wolf Priest grabs the largest one and eats it. One of the other Wolves pisses an arc around their space. Just outside that, the bugs cluster and clutter around a bush until it takes the form of a person, crouching, made of bugs. The Wolf Priest commands the figure to speak. It clicks and pops and drones and they can make out words. We will accept your line, but we will take one from the town as payment.

Take the Monkey, says the Wolf.

We will take one of our choosing.

Who will you choose?

You will know when we choose.

Tell me now.

There is one you have not protected. When he comes back, we will take him.

Fair, says the Wolf Priest, and the figure dissolves.

Not one of ours, says a Wolf. They go to throw piss on the gates. The gates get wet.

Utchka knits the priests all scarves.

Receptrix chats with Tully about what he’s been up to; Tully tells her about the devices he’s made for the covenant: the gates, the sun.

Nil goes to his room, lays out a sheet of blue paper, puts a piece of white chalk on it, and leaves.

The termite mound starts undulating, shivering, and then leaking a white pasty stuff. Calvus intellegos it, looking at herbam and vim. Minkho’s backing up, growling. It isn’t herbam. Calvus tries animál; the roaches attack. Calvus casts a spell to protect them both and gets back to intellegoing.

Up in the kitchens, dinner’s being prepped. Outside, the priests are done and walking the road back to the covenant. Roaches start to boil into the kitchen through every crack and crevice, tens of thousands of roaches. Gi, Nil, and Utchka are down for dinner, and they start trying to destroy the roaches, but the roaches are terribly resilient. Gi starts turning the roaches into wood-chips. Receptrix is trying to herd the roaches into clumps that Nil can perdo. Utchka’s laying about with her sewing machine.

Calvus is trying to determine what’s inside the termite mound.

Sonata comes down, sees what’s going on, asks if the priests are done walking the walls, then heads up to the top of the Great Hall and starts summoning insect-eating birds.

And as the first birds flutter into the hall, the roaches are gone, except for the wood-chips and the corpses.

Gi goes to tell the priests what’s happened. He tells Sonata the bugs are gone, and asks if Cameron can oversee torching the wood-chips.

There’s a couple-three-dozen insectivorous birds plucking roach-corpses off the floor. Suddenly, the birds take to the air and fly through the kitchen and down into the cellars. Hoopoe feels a faint tug to follow, but doesn’t.

Nil heals the baker, who’d been sliced by Washko in the confusion. Something happens with a drop of blood.

The flock of birds is battering Calvus and Minkho, easily slicing through his protection from animál. Calvus yells at Minkho to keep the birds back and draws a quick unsteady circle on the floor. He sees the rats. Calvus casts his protection and [botches]. The circle isn’t keeping the birds and rats and roaches out, but it is keeping Calvus and Minkho inside. Calvus draws his sword.

Gi finds the priests and lets them know what happened. Must be some mage problem, says Tishkilla. She sends Iba ahead to the Woochi’s house, to see if anything’s happening at the reception planned for the priests.

Perdix and Ilba come down for dinner and discover it will be delayed. After some brief catching-up, Perdix heads into the kitchen and down to the cellars. Ilba follows.

Calvus is swinging and ripping and grabbing and a bird pecks his eye, blinding him. He still manages to see Bubbles, slack-faced, approaching, a cleaver in his hands. He walks up to Calvus, lifting his knife, and when he breaks the barrier, Calvus grabs the arm. Bubbles tries to yank free. Calvus pulls him in and stabs him in the gut and drops him to the ground and slashes at his arm to try to get the cleaver away. Blood’s in his good eye. But the circle’s down. Calvus tells Minkho to run, and Minkho runs, and Calvus falls and hits his head on something.

Nil’s in the reservoir room, and water’s running in threads from the pool toward Nil. The shell in Omphale’s bag is vibrating. The blood’s in there. Omphale slithers out of the bag. Water’s crawling up Nil’s leg.

Sonata’s in there with him, and she sees the water, and she falls back.

Nil intellegos the water. Something will happen if he lets it hit the shell. Something exciting. Nil takes the shell out of the bag and throws it into the pool.

The pool instantly becomes sea-water and there are water-children and over at Hart’s Leap there’s a small earthquake. Here we go, says Hoopoe.

I knew you’d come, says one of the children to Nil. You want to play?

There’s a game further down, says Nil. There’s a man having trouble further down and there are bugs and birds and you should try and see how many you can catch and drown. But not the man! says Sonata. Not the man, or anyone else who lives here.

Okay! says the water, and sploosh!

Calvus hunkers down. The birds are coordinating attacks on anything they can get at. He hears the sound of chuckling water.

The water’s splashing up and grabbing birds and bugs and rats. The salt water stings. Calvus stands and wipes his eye clear and turns to the termite mound. The mound isn’t moving. It’s still covered in that stuff. There’s feathers stuck in it. Bubbles is moaning. There’s splashing footsteps coming down. (The salt water, we are told, causes an apocalypse among a small colony of slugs innocently doing nothing much; they were, perhaps, planning a defense of the covenant against Quintus Opacus, but now we’ll never know.)

Utchka and Ishta and Nishoba are coming down into the cellars. Utchka’s wrapped in all her quilts, and her sewing machine’s been refitted as a large set of shears.

Perdix approaches the termite room, Abakoshi holding her hands above her head and chanting, filling the room with the light of a bright hot day; Shotik’s walking in front of her. Perdix, says Calvus. You’re a mess, says Perdix.

Utchka and Nishoba (and Ilba) carry Bubbles back upstairs, bound in one of Utchka’s soothing quilts. The water swirls up as a small girl and puts her hand in Nil’s. Nil is appropriately embarrassed. Receptrix is in the background. Calvus is casting an intellego spell on the mound, and the mound starts moving with jerky, convulsive, muscular motions. Pebbles and clods of earth start falling. Nil tells the water-girl he has to leave. She wants to know where the shell is. It’s in the pool, says Nil. Come along. Rocks and chunks of earth start falling. Receptrix and Ishta are heading back. Sonata turns to birds and flutters up and out.

Bubbles, wrapped in Utchka’s quilt, mumbles you are not welcome here.

In the reservoir-room, Ishta starts to cast her glass-tunnel spell.

Calvus and Perdix and Nil flee the collapse. A rock hits Calvus and bounces off his protection and he’s fine and they keep going.

The rumbling stops.

Sonata finds Gi and coalesces and tells him about the collapse. He agrees to head back down.

Utchka tells the kitchen staff to start making tea. A lot of tea. Receptrix is soothing Bubbles. Nishoba and Ilba have headed off somewhere together.

The tunnel around them turns to glass and Perdix slips and falls and their light goes out. They help each other to their feet and figure out it’s Ishta’s spell and the spell is going on down toward the termite chamber. They head up faster.

Ishta’s lying on the ground, wiped out from the spell. Ishta, says Perdix. Can you stop it. Can you stop it. Why? It’s going down, right? Into the termite room? She starts to read off the counter-spell, but it’s taking too long. Perdix jerks to their feet and bites off a perdo vim spell, walking a few steps into the tunnel, striking the glassy walls.

Gi’s talking to the earth and the earth is pissed.

Nil’s still holding the water-girl by the hand. Dear? says Nil. Can you go into the pool? The pool won’t let us in, says the girl. We could go play a game. Around the pool. What sort of game? says Nil. Ring-around-the-pool, says the girl. As long as the pool’s all right with you playing, says Nil. The water trickles into a rivulet rushing around the edge of the pool.

Nil steps over the rivulet and into the basin of the pool and walks down to the puddle of fresh water with the shell in it. He picks up the shell, and the rivulet leaps into the shell, filling it up. Nil stands a moment, dripping wet, and then walks back up, the shell held out. His snake on his shoulder.

Ndape finds Calvus and apologizes for not being with him. Calvus tells him there was nothing he could have done to help. We will have to destroy this, says Ndape. Yes, but carefully. It caused the earthquake. I see, says Ndape. Calvus heads back down.

Gi’s introduced to Omphale; Omphale bobs her head. Perdix is dubious. Fascinating, says Sonata. —Some discussion of the shell, and the singing, and the drowned children of Chalycidice. Perdix moves that the meeting adjourn and reconvene about a roaring fire with food and liquor and melos.

Nil puts the smaller shell down and lets the water run into the large conch shell, explaining that the meeting is private and the water should stay. The water explains that it needed water from here to stay here so it took some water from the pipes and the spring and the water because the pool said no. The water’s explaining the Regina’s looking for a mate to make an heir. What kind, she hasn’t figured out yet. Rest for a little while, says Nil. Is Omphale going to stay with us? Maybe later tonight, says Nil.

Perdix notices Ilba isn’t in the trunk when they go to change robes. They whistle her up and order her to come back to the trunk. She says she’s in the pantry. She is, with Nishoba. Make yourself some dinner and comes back upstairs. We’ll be in a council meeting and I want you to be safe. I’m safe in the pantry, says Ilba. Apprentice, says Perdix. Oh well, says Nishoba. They didn’t say anything about you not coming back with me, says Ilba. When Ishkin sees Ilba and Nishoba returning to Perdix’ room, he rolls his eyes and makes himself scarce.

The meeting in the council chamber: Calvus reports that he’s known something was growing inside the termite mound for the past month and a half. Some discussion of the magical composition of the mound. Perdix points out that they’ve locked themselves up with the mound; the question is, was it severed from the forest, or was it always a separate monster? We shall have to kill it, says Sonata. How was it attacking the earth? Pulling it down, says Gi. But it had no terram to its magic, says Sonata. True.

Some discussion of healing the earth, calming it and soothing it, and then killing the mound. Calvus wants to intellego the thing one last time. It is decided to do it as soon as possible; the magi can be ready with their various parts of the operation by the next day, and so. —Some discussion of Nil’s Chalycidcan problem. The priests, it’s decided, will be informed when it’s all done. Sonata says there’s nothing she can do to help the others get ready, so she’s up for adjourning; it’s pretty much agreed. Utchka will knit some additional blankets and caps in case of injuries. Gi will talk to Bubbles, along with Calvus. They will adjourn, and meet again at lunch the next day.

meta

“You’re Tivoing the wall-walking?”