THE MISADVENTURES OF FILIDOR VESHFoppish young Filidor Vesh is a wastrel ne'er-do-well content with his shallow amusements. Then a simple errand for his uncle, the vaguely all-powerful Archon of Old Earth, sends Filidor on a frenetic odyssey across a planet speckled with eccentric nations. Harried at every step by the irascible dwarf Gaskarth and frequently in peril from wild beasts, unfriendly mobs, and a sinister thaumaturge who shows an unusually enthusiastic interest in his luggage, Filidor makes his reluctant pilgrim's progress. And awaiting him at journey's end is an encounter with an ancient and possibly apocalyptic evil.

CHAPTER ONE

The Logodaedalian Club was renowned for three things: the zest of its cuisine, the draftiness of its common rooms, and the verbal wit of its leading members. Filidor Vesh could claim no comparable distinctions. His memberships at the Logodaedalian and a number of other select establishments he owed instead to an accident of birth.

He sat in the well-worn ease of the club's salon, sampling tiny, rich pastries and murmuring polite appreciation for the two remaining contenders in a round-table contest of epigrams. The melee of wits had flowed and ebbed around a succession of sumptuous but subtle courses from the club's ancient kitchens. Now, as the stewards deftly whisked dishes from the table, only Fornol Kray and Leetha Hanch remained in verbal arms.

Fornol Kray shifted his ample weight, cracked a walnut between thumb and forefinger, and plucked a word from his opponent's last sally. "It may be, as you say, that 'a life without dreams is no life, yet dreamers live only their dreams.' " Here he paused to admit the meat of the walnut into that process which would transmute it into yet more Fornol Kray. "I will say that life is lived as comedy, though everywhere it is experienced as tragedy."

Leetha Hanch delayed only the moment required to place a tapered finger at her sharp chin before replying, "As with blessings, so with tragedies. If they are everyone's, they are no one's."

The scattering of applause from the assembled members covered Filidor's yawn. A slim young man of refined sensitivities, he lacked both enthusiasm and accomplishment, and was neither deft nor apt in wordplay. He was, however, the nephew and sole heir of Dezendah Vesh, ninety-eighth (or possibly ninety-ninth) Archon of those regions of old Earth still inhabited by human beings. This relationship conferred upon Filidor certain privileges, of which he took full advantage; it also imposed upon him a number of burdens, the full weight of which he would shortly begin to feel.

Filidor's attention drifted. He turned toward the salon's mirrored wall and attempted to admire from the corner of his eye his own delicate profile, then fell to arranging the meticulous folds of his saffron mantle, which overlaid a shimmering tunic of spun pearl. His legs, languidly extended, were enclosed in tight-fitting hose of a material that hardened gradually as they descended to form a half boot on each pedicured foot.

The contest was dwindling to its end. Fornol Kray had been reduced to the assertion that "insularity is mere mapmaker's conceit," against which Leetha Hanch was already forming a complicated trump on the theme of two-dimensionality. While the company awaited the finishing stroke, Filidor gave thought to the possible diversions offered by the rest of the evening. A clutch of young lordlings planned a cruise by barge across Mornedy Sound, a noisy outing that would include potent drink and pliant ladies of the Upper Town. That was tempting.

On the other hand, Lord Afre would soon present a selection of phantasms coaxed through a tiny and transitory breach between this world and an adjacent plane. As Filidor weighed these attractive prospects, a steward appeared at his elbow to inform him that a messenger from the palace waited in the atrium.

Filidor pressed a coin into the man's hand, bade him tell the messenger that no Filidor Vesh was on the premises, and moved swiftly to make the lie a truth. A side door led to a passage connecting the salon to the kitchens.

 

"Delightfully comic and strange. Think Gulliver's Travels written by P.G. Wodehouse."

 

"Fans of high fantasy will find not only the familiar ingredients of the demanding genre but also some interesting twists."

 

"A fine fantasy novel. . . . It moves along well . . . and develops into a kind of coming-of-age story with an original twist. This is the kind of clever, literate, thoughtful, and oddly realistic social commentary fantasy that gives the lie to the notion that the genre is nothing but brute barbarian men with big swords and helpless barely clothed women."

 

Matt Hughes has published short fiction in such magazines as Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. He is also a freelance corporate and political speechwriter for CEOs of multi-billion dollar corporations and high Canadian political figures. He lives with his wife and sons in British Columbia.

 

Fools Errant by Matthew Hughes
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