Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Subject: [BDAY] [MG] Party Animals Message-ID: References: Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 19:58:36 GMT Parsifal Lucas was running down the street with light feet and a soaring heart. Behind him the dance music was beginning to take on a deeper, more earthy and sensuous kind of flavor, and he ran so he could complete his errand and get back in time. He overpaid for six sacks of wine, it wasn't the best but it was the best he could find, and he underpaid for a pair of roast fowls, and with uncommon good luck, he found a friend of his, a redheaded drummer who was called Karl after a second cousin who worked for the city. "Karl! Bring the band, there's a circle dance going on down the street by the river road and you wouldn't believe the women!" "Hey, I'm tired, Pars, and it's between sets. You sleep all day or what?" "Nah, just that the piper is _that_ good ... You ever hear panpipes played by a real satyr?" "Uh, no. Don't they sort of, well," he made a common and rude gesture. "Probably, who cares? If there's an orgy in the streets, I'll be happy to participate. Who appointed you priest of Issek anyway?" "Nobody. I can match you vice-for-depravity, I just wanted to know," Karl blustered, trying to cover for a nagging sense that his friend might be having more fun than he was. "Well, he asked me to bring some drummers, if I could find them. You could do worse, there were some pretty high-toned folks in that dance circle, the type that pay for good music. And you've already got paid for the night's work for Melwiss, right?" "You've got a point, so to speak. OK, I'll get Rhythm Song together and we'll meet you here in a few minutes." "Hey, I'm going back there now. I was sent on a `munchie' run." He mimed eating and Karl figured out the idiom, deciding he liked it. "Ok. How's he gonna pipe when he's eating?" "Good point. Loan me your tenor drum." Pars was jumping up and down with totally unconcealed impatience. "No way!" Karl stared at him in shock. Loan an _instrument_ ?? "I'll buy it off you." "With what?" "Here's ten gold." Karl stared at the handful of gold, remembering that Parsifal was not particularly wealthy - poetry didn't always pay well, and Pars was making a bit more on the side as a light work burglar and sometime gigolo, but.. "Hell, Pars, it's only worth five silver. Just one gold and I'll owe you." "Thanks, you're a pal. It's just down Genera street at the plaza where they had the fireworks-watching stands." "We'll be there." Parsifal grinned and nodded and sprinted away down the street towards the river. "Karl, who was that?" The girl who spoke was a new member of his group. Anna, she was called, and she had a xuthr in a case slung over her back and a long, ornately carved tambour-stick that doubled as a staff, in her left hand. "That's my sometimes friend Pars, he's one of the better folk. He says there's a hot crowd up that way, and a satyr who's got a way with the pipes." "Really? Sounds like fun. I haven't played with the forest folk since I came to Generica." She smiled a mischievous smile and strummed a riff on the tambour-stick with her free hand. Oom-ta-tiddleypom -pa pom. "Great. Let's get the others and ... oh, here they come." The two approaching were dressed in the same scruffy finery that was the mark of the street musician. They were identical twins, black-haired and blue-eyed men with well-schooled pleasant expressions that made their homely features look unusually attractive - that and some strategic carnival face paints. "Guys, there's a good crowd forming up at the River plaza, and Pars claims there's a satyr playing pipes who wants some drums for company. You in?" They looked each other in the eye and said in unison, "Sure, what's it pay?" "Just tips, but Pars says there's rich folks in the crowd." They shrugged and picked up their drumset between them - it was a big, heavy single piece of a log that had been carved and cured and carved again, a number of drumheads pulled over various openings. When they played it together the sound was like a rainstorm playing music. Karl picked up his gear-bag and the four of them went north up Genera street towards the river. They heard the drumming first, an infectious tarantella punctuated with the occasional addition of an ethereal piping that pulled it together into the kind of celebratory dance they'd done for weddings and successful business ventures. They came around the corner, and Karl had some serious misgivings, but his feet just kept moving, and the others didn't seem bothered by the way the people resting in the shadows were, well, groping one another without any sense of decorum at all. The circle-dance was still going on, and sitting on a stool in the center was a satyr, a big male with ruddy-bronze skin and golden hair curling on his head and legs. He gleamed with sweat from the exertion of his drumming, first one hand would rattle and blur above the drumhead, while the other brought the remains of a roasted fowl carcass to his mouth, and then he would change hands without breaking the beat to bring a half-filled wineskin to his lips for a long pull, followed by a perfectly timed pass with both hands, a stop, and the pipes would come up for a few moments. The music came to a stop, and the dancers broke the circle, going off in groups of two and three to the dark corners, talking and laughing and sometimes manhandling one another in a way that was sure to scare the horses. Karl somewhat hesitantly led the others forward. The satyr saw them and grinned an open, friendly smile. He beckoned them onward. "Welcome to the party, dudes! Come have a sit, you want something to drink? The wine's not the best but it's good enough, hellooo lovely lady!" Anna blushed and smiled. "Every one of them," she thought to herself, "they all have one thing on their minds." She took a pull on the wineskin he handed her, and felt the wine burning down her throat - this was MUCH stronger than she was used to. Her skin flushed and she coughed and handed the skin around to the other three. The twins liked it a lot, but they were half smashed already. They set up the drums and the instruments. While they were working the satyr began a slow, eerie piping, a haunting tune that kept the dancers and listeners attention. Karl noticed absently that nobody was wandering off to other parties, nobody was looking for a more private place, and some of what was happening was certainly not suited to the hard cobbles of the road, but the participants didn't seem to mind. He watched some more, a sort of lazy heat spreading from the pit of his stomach. There were some fascinating new positions being tried to the haunting music. "What's your group called," the satyr asked him, and he snapped out of the half-trance and noticed there was a strong warm hand on his shoulder. He touched the hand, and it moved into a warm handshake. "We'e, hmm-M!, sorry. We're called Rhythm Song." He carefully looked the satyr in the eyes, trying not to stray down the satyr's muscular, animalistic body, feeling a bit disturbed by the still-rising heat running under his skin. "What do you want us to play?" "I don't suppose you know any R.E.M. No? Well, we'll fix that." The satyr smiled and pulled him close, and a momentary panic died as their lips met. He felt the heat surging again, overriding his objections, and his head suddenly exploded with sound: drums, bells, lutes, horns, guitars, the music of a thousand worlds falling into place around him, more instruments and songs than he thought anyone could hold. A gentle sort of insanity walked through his brain for a moment and everything went black, then his eyes opened and the satyr was no longer holding him, but instead, was in a passionate kiss with Anna, his hands roaming across her body as she stood motionless. Karl watched with a detached sort of pleasure, his skin was tingling all over and his head was throbbing just above the temples, but it was a pleasant sort of ache. He rubbed the sore parts absently and felt a pair of lumps there, tender but kind of rough, and the pain subsided to a quiet itchy sensation. Anna swayed in place as the satyr abandoned her for the twins, taking one in each arm and accepting the stream of wine they poured from the wineskin into his mouth, then he pulled them close and they returned his embrace with a stunned sort of ecstasy. Karl watched her breathing, admiring how she moved, and wondered why he hadn't gone for her before. But then he felt his legs folding under him, and his hands began wandering across his drumset, a mindless repetitive rhythm growing more complex as he added more drums, playing out the music he heard growing inside, sending the heat out into the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the satyr grinning and letting the twins collapse onto their drum, while Anna pulled her xuthr from its case. She began to hum a tune, the sounds crowding in her mind settling down into a single thread as Karl laid down the base notes on his drum set. Her voice rose into a pure tone arching over the top of the music kitelike, and words took shape; Shining people, happy people ... The satyr grinned even wider and began making motions as of playing a lute or a mandolier, and a growling twanging sound like a kitarron but loud, distorted, began to fill the air as he played his imagined instrument, and the sound of the instrument wove under and over the crowd and around the pure bell tones of the xuthr, and the twins began to chant: huu huu huu huu, the dancers in the dark corners arose from their pastimes and began dancing again, a rhythmic wild dance but it was restrained, each staying where they were standing, and the satyr started singing in a thready but strong tenor, Anna's voice weaving in, Shining happy people everywhere, (Happy people) Shining happy people laughing. Karl felt the words coming into his throat and he sang them with a controlled abandon: Everywhere you look, People, people. ... * * * Melwiss the Wise had chosen five of his servants to go out through the crowd, to bring the best of the musicians to his tent. Strangely enough, the third of these was his manservant Hector. Strange because Hector was stone-deaf, an advantage when Melwiss was negotiating with his confidential business associates. Hector knew little about music, but he did know that the best musicians drew crowds. So he followed the growing crowd north on Genera street. Hector was an old man, and he'd seen many things in the years he had travelled with his master. Nonetheless, he did not expect what he saw there. The plaza was packed with people, maybe hundreds of them, wild-eyed with some easily expressed emotion, most of them naked or wearing only the briefest of clothing, dancing and singing along with the music, or so he assumed, being unable to hear them. They didn't seem to notice him. They were watching the center of the plaza, where a small clear area held five musicians, a big gold satyr and four smaller ones, one red-haired with green eyes that held the forests in them, one a female with gold hair and a wanton smile, two black-haired and grinning ferally as they jumped around a compound drum - he recognized the drum, it had belonged to a group he had seen earlier and recommended, but they'd not come at the summons. Stolen instruments? Perhaps the Guard should be notified. A body moved through the crowd, pushing through, and fell out at his feet. It stood, a half-clothed man, laughing and brushing dust off as he pulled his breeks up to cover himself. He looked at Hector and said something, his lips shaping the words "get more wine" and he patted Hector on the shoulder and sprinted towards the Town Square. Hector stared after him - he had looked quite strange. His body was covered with faint tiny scales, in iridescent patterns, and he had a serpentine kind of grace when he moved. Beautiful but inhuman. Hector decided that this must be reported. Melwiss should know, at the very least. He gave one more glance over the crowd, looking more carefully, and seeing more than one who was unusual - a face with a feline cast to it and slitted eyes here, there a body with fine white fur that had looked at first like a tunic, over there a man with feathers instead of hair, and wings from his back. All the crowd looked young, fit and attractive, yet at the same time decadent and more debauched than the wildest Founder's Day party would cause. He saw a face, then, a woman he'd known for years, but she was his age, perhaps this was her daughter? He moved closer and felt a strange throbbing in his bones - the drums were being pounded in a driving rhythm and he could feel the vibrations, fascinating. He moved closer, to feel the sound better, and it grew stronger, compelling. He felt light, an energy he hadn't felt in years, rising in response to the thrumming sensation. He moved to the edge of the crowd and was drawn in.