The House of Yeel (2 page)

Jymoor took a step into the
open doorway. Clearly one aspect of the tales had been true— those
describing the unusual height of the man. The doorway was very
tall, about half again taller than the doorway to Jymoor’s house or
the tavern back at Riverglade.

Expecting to be accosted at any moment,
Jymoor moved into the legendary home. Tall doorways led away to the
left and the right. Jymoor caught sight of a fountain straight
ahead in some kind of atrium. The air around her felt cool and
fresh, without the tang of salt like the air outside.

Behind her a snap and sizzle broke the
silence. Jymoor jumped at the sound. She whirled around. The
entrance had disappeared!

“Spirits preserve me,” Jymoor whispered. Then
she turned back and called out again.

“Lord Yeel? I beg
forgiveness, my lord. I seek audience with you!”

She heard only the soft murmur of the
fountain ahead.

Jymoor stepped forward again so she could
look through the doors to both sides. Long corridors stretched
away, curving with the shape of the house. Strange objects
decorated the halls. Jymoor saw busts of unknown heroes and
paintings of strange places and terrible battles. Nearby Jymoor saw
a full suit of armor made for some being clearly not human, for it
had no less than six arm guards sprouting from the central
breastplate. The helm was wide and flat, with a spiked visor
adorned with silver.

These marvels distracted
Jymoor from her fear. For a moment she forgot her dangerous
trespass and stared at the beauty of the place. Then she began to
walk forward toward the great fountain in the next room.

“Forgive me, Lord Yeel,”
Jymoor cried out. “Lord Yeel, are you there? I am Jymoor, here to
present myself as a gift to you.”

The traveler found herself in a large
circular fountain room. Seven enormous columns rose from the floor
to support a high ceiling. A circular portal in the center of the
ceiling allowed the light of day to pour down into the room.

The fountain itself was
massive. Carvings depicted humanoids with scales and fins around
its perimeter. Tier over tier rose above Jymoor’s head, each
catching the water in large pools and allowing it to swirl down in
a constant rush.

Jymoor took a few steps
around the fountain and saw something else truly singular. An
archway beckoned between the next two smooth pillars. The opening
was filled with a translucent curtain of orange light, wavering
gently as if in a breeze. Jymoor’s mouth dropped open and she
stared at the magical doorway, completely awed by its silent
beauty.

“My lord?” Jymoor said
absentmindedly, stepping toward the curtain. As she watched the
curtain, dim washed-out scenes of faraway lands rotated behind the
shimmering light. Jymoor saw vistas of purple mountains edged with
snow, wide rolling plains, and thick, dark forests. She realized
that perhaps the Great Yeel had traveled to one of these far off
places and left his house unoccupied for the time being. How long
might the lord of this place be gone?

She shook her head and continued around the
fountain. A hallway connected to the fountain room between the next
pair of columns, and Jymoor walked through the arched doorway and
into another elegant white passage.

She strode down the hallway
and noticed movement on her left. A deep brown hardwood picture
frame held a mirror of superb quality, and Jymoor caught her
reflection in it. When she realized this, she exhaled in relief,
until she noticed the details in the mirror. A small squeal escaped
her. She stepped back. Her reflection in the mirror was that of a
beautiful queen, bedecked in the most regal finery imaginable. She
wore a long red dress and a sparkling jeweled crown. Her walking
stick had transformed into a royal scepter.

Jymoor looked away from the mirror and
examined herself. She appeared as normal. She still wore her
simple, dusty travel clothes and her hair felt disheveled. She
checked her reflection again. It still showed her dressed as
royalty.

“I’m so sorry, my lord,”
Jymoor called out. “I lost the dress I was to wear…it got wet in a
storm and then mildew ruined the fine cloth. I’m sorry I don’t
appear as I should. The journey was long.”

Only silence answered her.
She looked back at her reflection and gasped. It now showed her in
a suit of heavy mail, holding a longsword inverted by the hilt,
blade resting against the floor. She shook her head.

“What an amazing place!” she whispered, and
moved on.

The next doorway brought
Jymoor into an elaborate kitchen. Racks of cooking pots and
utensils lined a stone wall next to three large fire pits. In the
center of the room a heavy table sat with a large cutting board in
the center. A collection of blue ovoid shapes were placed on the
board, next to a large knife. Some of the spheres were already
diced, revealing a mottled blue and orange interior.

Jymoor couldn’t guess what
type of food sat before her. She walked around the massive cutting
board and shrugged. Doubtless the master of the house enjoyed
delicacies beyond Jymoor’s ken. Hope arose in the traveler when she
realized that the food in midpreparation must mean that someone
currently inhabited the dwelling. With this thought, she resumed
her search of the house.

A tall tunnel led from the other end of the
kitchen. It angled slightly downward with flawless smooth white
walls.

“Lord Yeel? I beg
forgiveness, but I seek an audience with you,” Jymoor called out.
No answer returned to her ears.

Jymoor walked into the passage. It wound
around and around, sloping gently and leading down into another
level of the house. She wondered if perhaps she had taken a poor
route; still she continued on to see where the twisting corridor
would take her.

The passage ended in a tall,
narrow door that opened up into a square room filled with shelves
full of books. Two archways led out of the room beside the tunnel
from which she had emerged. Jymoor goggled at the huge collection
of tomes, walking up to take a close look. Many of the books had
writing on the spines, but Jymoor couldn’t read any of it. She had
some ability to read and write, as her older sister had served as a
scribe to a wealthy merchant and taught a bit of the language to
Jymoor. This unique combination of talents had been one of the
reasons Jymoor had accepted the mission of traveling to the Far
Coast. But the script on these books didn’t look even vaguely
familiar.

Jymoor heard a noise from the adjacent room.
She stepped through the huge archway uncertainly.

“Hello, is anyone—” her voice caught.

Before Jymoor an awful thing
worked over a huge table. A tall cone of green rubbery flesh rose
from the floor and extended higher than the top of Jymoor’s head.
It was covered in thick skin with a sprinkling of warty growths.
Several long hideous tentacles sprouted from the top of the body.
Jymoor glimpsed eyestalks and dangerous looking hooks at the ends
of the members before a shriek of terror clawed its way from her
throat.

Jymoor turned to run in a
panic. She bolted through the previous room and fumbled at the
latch of the door to the stairs. Her shaking interfered with her
dexterity so that the mechanism defied her for long seconds. She
looked over her shoulder but saw no signs of pursuit. At last the
door was open, and she ran up the sloped passage, winding round and
round until coming to the top. She burst out of the passage and
back into the kitchen.

Jymoor came to a hallway but
wasn’t sure which way to turn. She panicked for a moment until she
heard the soft rustling of the fountain. She ran toward it and came
to the room full of columns. She headed past the glowing curtain
portal and out the way she had come.

As she turned the corner,
heading into the hallway toward the door, she was intercepted by a
tall, thin man in heavy maroon robes.

“Please, dear lady, do calm yourself. I
assure you there is no need—”

“Monster!” yelled Jymoor.
“Run for your life!” She clutched at the man’s robes and tried to
pull him toward the door.

“Monster? Oh no, no. That is
not the case at all, I very strongly assure you, my lady. If you
would take a deep breath and let me explain, you will see that
there is absolutely no need for any alarm on your part. Calm
yourself, breathe deeply, and I shall make everything clear. Very
clear, simple, easy to understand, you see.”

Jymoor absorbed this speech reluctantly, at
first ready to burst away without the stranger, and then with more
calm, still looking repeatedly over her shoulder. At last she
returned to the moment.

“Who…are…” she
stammered.

The stranger shook his head.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Yeel. A collector of relics,
examiner of artifacts. An alchemist at heart, really. I live here.
So nice to meet you, my dear lady.”

Chapter 2: A Plea for Help

Jymoor’s eyes bulged. She
had found the mighty Yeel! The tall man stood patiently before her,
smiling serenely and shifting slightly in his reddish robes. She
immediately believed his words, considering his height and pleasant
appearance. She had imagined on her journey that the wizard would
look either immensely handsome or unspeakably vile. Surely a
personage of such stature could not look mundane. She felt relief
that the other, darker, stories of his monstrous appearance were
false.

“Yeel? My lord? Ah, a
horrible thing—”

“The thing back there, the
thing that you saw, which undoubtedly alarmed you, yes, of course,
that was, um, just a gentle beast of burden, I assure you. It was
my, ah, yes, a harmless creature, you see. He, ah, I mean it, yes
it, trims the plants in the dome and generally keeps things in
order. My helper, sentinel, a harmless worker.”

Jymoor dropped to her knees and groveled.

“Ah, no need for that my
friend, I assure you. Neither I, Yeel, nor my, ah, nor the beast,
the extremely kind and gentle beast that you saw, require any form
of bowing or kneeling, I assure you. My good and very safe
friend.”

Jymoor kept a respectful
pose and listened as best she could to the Great Yeel, but she was
hard pressed to keep up with the rapid rate of banter that came
from the tall, skinny man. Nevertheless, her relief grew as she
learned that this was Yeel, and apparently the awful thing she had
seen presented no danger.

“Forgive me, Yeel. You mean,
it’s like some sort of…giant goat?” asked Jymoor, still breathing
heavily.

“Yes, yes, exactly like a
giant goat. Only different. But no harm in any case. Are you all
right, my friend? I inquire simply because of the odd pose you’ve
struck, which looks to me rather uncomfortable and might in fact
damage your knees if you do not eventually continue the natural
motion by lying on the ground or else perhaps reverse the idea and
return to your normal…that is, our normal standing position. Normal
being the usual configuration of our bodies. Being normal regular
people, of course, which clearly we both are.”

“Forgive me, Great Yeel,”
Jymoor said, rising cautiously. “About the beast. May I ask what’s
it doing inside? I thought it was holding some tools.”

“Oh. Well, it can’t very
well be outside with the harapins, now can it? May I take your
travel cloak, ah…?”

“I’m Jymoor, a gift to you,
my lord. I’m sorry for coming into your house unannounced, but my
people seek your aid, mighty one.”

“No harm done, Jymoor. That
is, ah, yes, no harm done. First we shall endeavor to locate you
some food and drink so you may shake the weariness of the road.
Then perhaps you can tell me what this aid is you require. That
would be an optimum series of events as near as I can
figure.”

Yeel stepped hesitantly one direction and
then the other.

“You…you do know where the
kitchen is?” Jymoor asked uncertainly.

“Of course I—that is,
I…well, you know, it…just follow me. I shall deduce its
location.”

“Deduce? Is this your home?”

“It is my sanctuary. I’m
familiar with the basic principles upon which it has been laid out,
therefore I should be able to locate the kitchen quickly,” Yeel
said.

“The kitchen is this way,”
Jymoor said. “I remember I went through there on the way in.” The
traveler had a troubled look on her face. “Are you really the Great
Yeel?”

“I assure you that I am Yeel. Lay your doubts
to rest,” the odd man said. “I feel sorry that you were forced to
remember where the kitchen is. It seems such a shame. Really, my
humble abode is hardly worthy of such effort on your part, my
friend.”

Jymoor stared at Yeel for a moment, trying to
understand just what the man was saying.

“No need to feel sorry, Lord
Yeel. I just happened to remember because I was just in there
recently—”

“But to have put forth such
heroic effort to remember such a minuscule detail and it’s not even
your sanctuary! Indeed, I am indebted to you. Lead on, by all
means,” Yeel said.

“Yes, it was this
way…”

Jymoor retraced her steps
with the skinny white-haired man in tow. They came into the kitchen
and Yeel looked around.

“An adjoining room must be set aside for
consumption of food items,” Yeel said. He turned full circle
looking around the kitchen and then spotted a small table. Moving
the table into the middle of the room, Yeel indicated a chair to
Jymoor. “Please have a seat, be my guest. No doubt there is a
supply of food in this area,” he said.