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"Long ago and far away…"
"Long before and far away…"
"Ages ago and far away…"
Matthew, called the Stone of John, Poet-Sage of Sigma Draconis, High-singer of the Pleidean Empire, and Pen of the Silver Duke, was in a word; stumped. He hated to sink to such a banal level of vocabulary, but searching through the vast dictionary of his mind, he was forced to admit that "stumped" was the only word that properly expressed the combined emotions of confusion, hopelessness, frustration, and tenacious stubborness at war in his psyche.
He sighed, deleted the words on his computer screen, and tried to start again.
He got as far as "A" before he gave up again and deleted his screen.
This time, he sat staring at the monitor for a few minutes before, with a low growl of disgust, he stood from his chair and shut the system down.
It was not, he reflected as he made himself a cup of hot chocolate, as if he did this frequently. Generally, he managed to produce work of some quality, even if it wasn't fantastic. In days past, he could write marvelous pieces at the slightest provocation, a talent which had served him well.
More recently, though, it was as though some great divine will was stopping his hand, a massive cork in the flask that poured out his words. He could – and did – spend hours staring at blank computer screens, bidding his poetry to rise from the depths of his soul. Things did float to the top, but only garbage.
The single thing that made the entire ordeal truly terrible was the fact that his patron and master, the Silver Duke of Argentium, had called for a new epic to celebrate the marriage of his daughter to some rich son-of-a-Sirian – Matthew couldn't quite recall who – and expected his faithful Pen to produce one in short order.
Matthew stared idly at his silver pen as his hot chocolate went cold, thinking of the joyous day when that title had first been conferred upon him. A smile touched his face as his memory carried him back to that day full of feasting and fools, and, of course, of his newest epic, "The Battle of La Nova Rouge." All the poetry in the world had seemed his, and the galaxy had bowed before him.
Had. Seemed. Was. All in the past, now. Now, he forced himself to admit, he was a dried-up mockery of a writer, masquerading as a man with even the hint of a spark of genius.
Suddenly, a yawn overcame him, and he stretched his mouth wide open in a most undignified fashion. This semi-heinous act completed, he cast about in search of a clock, and was at once unsurprised and discouraged to discover that it was only a few hours before dawn.
With another gusty sigh of disgust, he rose from his table, mentally writing the day off and checking his calendar. Two days, he thought depressively.
He sat back on his bed, the lights in his room dimmed and a bottle of Centauri port in his hand.
Two days…
He did not wake until late that day, mostly due to the combination of liquor and exhaustion. When he did finally rise, it was in the bleary-eyed stupor that frequently accompanies hard drink on the previous evening. He immediately went about imbibing the remains of his bottle, which only lasted him about fifteen minutes. After he ordered up for another few bottles, he busied himself by sitting at his computer playing Asterfan.
At about noon a servant brought him a light lunch and some heavy liquids, which Matthew pecked at all afternoon in the case of the former, and downed immediately in the case of the latter. The consequence of this was that before eveningtime rolled around and another servant brought up supper, Matthew had achieved a state of such advanced inebriation that he was incapable of anything more than the simplest forms of verbal communication. He didn't have any engagements for that evening, luckily, and so was not disturbed by anything but his own sullen thoughts.
Had anyone asked him why precisely he was going about behaving in that manner, we would have been far too drunk to tell them the truth, which was that he was not entirely sure himself. On the surface, he could have come up with no good reasons at all.
But deep in the pit of his heart and soul, in the darkest abyss of his subconscious, he knew that he held in highest esteem the writers and poets of ancient Earth. Since earliest childhood he had reat the works of Homer, Sophocles, Burns, and others, and the nearly holy writ of Coleridge himself. From this last he had picked up the belief that the highest forms of any art were found when their composer was not under the influence of his or her conscious mind. In a last-ditch move of desperation on the part of his primal id, Matthew drank, in hopes of producing the work of Coleridge, or, heaven forbid, something better.
Needles to say, he was failing. The alcoholic fog in which he had engulfed himself shut his brain off almost completely, and he lay at rest on bed or couch, not writing, not thinking, not eating, not living, and losing his time quickly.
A whole day, in fact.
One day…
He awoke on the morning of his final day stone-cold sober, not the slightest bit hung-over, and quite thoroughly resigned to his imminent death. He was somehow assured that if he failed to produce the requested epic on time, his execution would soon follow, but for some reason, that prospect didn't bother him. He was prepared.
In a final effort, though, he spent the day seated at his computer sometimes watching the ever-lurking word processor, but mostly putzing about, writing farewells to everyone he knew and polishing off his will. The heartfelt note of apology to his patron waxed eloquent, and the warning to the next person to fill his post was blunt and straightforward. He had a sinking feeling that he knew who it would be, too. Most likely, that godawful "apprentice" of his, whats-his-name. Matthew couldn't even remember it. The boy could barely write well enough to be called a poet, let alone a Pen.
Matthew recalled then that he couldn't write at all, and abandoned that line of thought.
As the day carried on its stately march, Matthew felt gradually freer and freer. His letters to kith and kin became gradually wilder and more inane. By the time he got around to writing old romantic interests he was downright catty. His typing flowed easily when writing goodbyes, but the instant he flipped over to create some poetry, Calliope found something better to do, and he was left with nothing but an empty computer screen.
He "worked" in this fashion all day long. He found it rather amusing, in fact, that he was spending the final hours of his last day of freedom in such a fruitless manner. As the afternoon grew long and the clock in his room ticked its slow seconds into late evening, he felt his very vitality running low, and his crazed writings dwindled down to a few jots and tittles.
The progressing night found him wandering listlessly around his quarters, packing his things neatly away and tidying up the final remnants of his existence. Small items were picked up, the dishes done, and his personal effects were gathered into a small, easily removable bundle.
He ran a final sweep of his rooms, checking it all over. It was done. All that was left for him was to find a way to get to sleep for that night. Realizing that he had nothing left to lose, he turned to the obvious solution of alcohol. He was in process of gathering all the liquor in his cabinets and mixing it in one final, glorious cocktail when the vid-phone rang.
He smiled somewhat sardonically, struck by the fact that no one had chosen to call him before, but he passed lazily over to his large, over-stuffed chair and sat down in it heavily. He tapped a few keys on his armrest, and was thoroughly shocked to see his elder sister's face coming to him from across the light-years.
"Matt, darling!" she exclaimed loudly.
Good evening, 'Nyssa," he replied with jazzy sarcasm positively oozing out of his voice. "I trust you are well."
She carried on unperturbed. "Stellar, dear child, absolutely stellar. The new ad has gone over just sparkling well – raves on all the 'casts, absolute gas giants of money, prestige, and power…I am utterly cometstruck by how well it's all going. How are you?"
Matthew, who had not been in the habit of speaking for the last few days, had to take a few moments to collect his words, but finally managed to blurt out: "I'm going to die tomorrow."
A rather interesting series of expressions crossed her face, starting out with a curious form of mild surprise and finishing up with cross concern, taking in astonished indignation, shocked amazement, and terrified worry along the way. "Marsdust. Whatever gave you that stupid idea?"
He waved at her weakly. "Simply, my dear, the obvious fact that my employer will be most displeased with something I did, or, rather, something I am in process of failing to do, and he will be very much embarrassed when I fail to do it tomorrow. Thus, I am most likely a dead man."
"Marsdust." She repeated emphatically. "You'll manage to bring something to him – you always do." He cocked a disbelieving eyebrow at her, but she had already swept onwards. "Permit me to take your mind off it," she said with one of those charming smiles that turned other men's knees to butter. "I picked up the most stunning dress just the other day. My private seamstress did it all out for me the, the dear woman. It's all in this lovely shade he calls 'legend.' Couldn't you just die? Are you paying attention to me?"
"Yes," he replied sleepily, "yes I am. Dress, seamstress, legend, die."
He sat up straighter quite suddenly. "Legend, die. Legends die. Legends never die."
It is almost impossible using this poor medium to convey exactly what went through Matthew's mind at that instant. In the blink of an eyelash, every ounce of alcohol burned out of his system. His entire body throbbed with the pulse of adrenaline fire, and his eyes became sharper. He heard the slightest noise – a roach crawling up one of his walls made a sound to match a supernova. Every fiber of his chair's fabric pressed against his skin with the force of titanium cables. His sense of smell increased tenfold; every hint of his binge, the stale, dank scent of his unwashed clothes, the sweet aromas of his food wafting in from his kitchen, and the actinic smells of the metals around him burned into his nose and seared his brain.
The thoughts within that brain, meanwhile, were scattered in a half-million different directions and focused on a single thought at one and the same time. He had the sensation that he had just been hit full-force by a starcruiser, that a great sea of ideas and thought had swallowed him whole and dragged him down to drown in the murky depths of pure philosophy. His mind throbbed on a string, twisting and bending words around him as he struggled to control them and focus them on the moment and on those few, brief words.
He whispered them, almost as if he was praying. "Legends never die."
Instantly he was up and out of the chair. He had just enough time to blurt out: "Thanks, sis!" and shut down the link before he leapt over to his computer chair. The wait as the machine booted up was interminable, and the fires of hormones and words coursing through his blood made his fingers twitch in very anticipation.
At last, his old, trusted familiar word processor came up, and he began to write.
The next afternoon found him nervous. It was a rare day he presented that he was not sweating mightily throughout. This day in particular was not the best presentation he could think of – he had stayed up the night and wrote…page after page, poetry, sonnets, stories and epics, all springing from that one coruscating flash of inspiration. He found himself blessing his sister in Sol so far away.
Calmly he surveyed the crowd below as they milled about in Argentium's Grand Atrium. The massive plastic dome spanned gracefully among the green hills, and the silver sun shone between the metal supports onto the throng with a gleaming hint of jewels. The Atrium was a symbol, to the people, and to anyone else who came to the system - it said to all who saw it: "We are here, and we are not leaving. We take pride in being Silver."
The appointed hour was approaching, but still Matthew paced his way back and forth, rehearsing and reviewing his poem over and over and over again, rolling the words and phrases on his tongue with inestimable care. He had picked the best. Recalling all the pieces of last night's feverish typing, this, the first, was the right one. The one that would work.
A soft chime sounded – showtime. Matthew walked a few paces into the center of his circle, and waited. And waited. And waited…
Just when he thought that the Duke was playing some sad and twisted practical joke on him, the jets surrounding his hoverpad hissed evilly and started billowing smoke.
He smiled pleasantly to himself as he thought of what his audience was seeing and doing. The Duke had announced him, and then, from high above, a circle of silver metal fell, descending slowly and surrounded by swirling white clouds of fog, and finally came to rest on the top of the raised speaking dais. The clouds dissipated, and there he stood, the great Pen of the Duke of Argentium, clothed in shimmering silver silks, and fully erect to face the people.
As the jets died down, Matthew faced the people, and seemed to stare every individual right in the eye. Within moments, the crowd was hushed down to negligible whispers, and then the Stone of John, greatest Pen on the Western Arm, spoke.
"Stars are born and stars grow old,
But legends are forever told.
From man to man to man to man
Like ever shifting grains of sand,
For Legends never die.
"A Legend lived in days gone by,
His ever-simple dream; to die.
For none could ever best his arm,
None could hope to bring him harm.
His will was but too strong.
"A thousand men to him did go.
A million then, and blow by blow
He waged a war against them all
And all before him soon did fall
Though bravely did they try.
"And so he locked himself away,
To never see the light of day
Till one who could defeat him,
The mighty one to beat him
Came out from the throng
"And there he sits,
Still to this day.
And forever will he stay.
For though he's long since gone to dust,
He cannot die, as all things must,
And lives a Legend ever now.
In your heart – and in mine."
The people were silent. In every chest, every heart beat, and they alone broke the peace that had claimed them all. Each and every soul was touched, and some wept, but even they could not help but make no sound.
Matthew looked over them emotionlessly. Then, a small smile cocked his lips.
As if pre-arranged, the applause burst out from all corners of the Atrium, a roar that seemed to split the sky and threatened to bring the glass down around them all.
The smile never leaving his face, Matthew turned in a full circle, basking in the noise, the shouts, the screams, and the praise. He was redeemed – his title belonged to him once more. He was where he belonged. He wasthe Pen of the Silver Duke.
Until it happened again.