He saw Horatio coming towards him, but it looked as though the magician were twenty feet tall.  Concern was etched across the face of the old man in rough ravines of skin, and as he came closer Grail saw the surface details of the man swim sickenly into focus. Each crater of a pore, every vine of a wisker stood out in stark contrast to each other. 

Grail realized later that he must have then blacked out, as some sort of defense mechanism against insanity, for when he came too he found himself lying on his back, the high arches of the Workshop gracefully supporting the roof over his head. 

“You would?” 

“Yes, and it’s a good thing for you, because I have a plan!” The Wizards pointer finger rose as a match to the exclamation! 

 Grail was hesitant, “Why do you want to help me, I thought you worked for the King…?” 

“Well…” Horatio paused, his brow shrouded in a great pointy cap. “…I need an Assistant.” 

“An Assistant?!”

 ”Yes. To hold down the frogs.” 

“…To hold down the frogs.” Grail said muzzily, as if lost. And then, sharpening, “What do you mean?”

 ”Well…” Mr. Oriculture’s elaboration was interrupted by a sharp knock from the other end of the chamber. Horatio motioned for Grail to step out of sight and then glided over to the door.

The voice that spoke when he opened it was respectively gruff, “Sorry to bother you sir, but I’m here with a request from the King.”     

“Go ahead.” Horatio said mildly.

“The King would like to know if there has been any recent activity at the Smell Trap.”           ”Tell the King that the Smell Trap is well watered but empty, please.”  And with that, Horatio spun away from the door, slamming it with a grin.

“Oh My!” He said, “My mother..she…she…” He searched for the proper words.          

  “She needs to be warned!” He spoke in a panic, whipping words out fast in a jumble, “The King’s guard will visit her! Searching for me!”

His voice rose, and he began to pace, back and forth, his own problems overshadowed by concern for his loved ones. 

Grail emerged into a light brighter than day. It surprised him, as the way had become sinuous, and he must have gaped at the sudden expanse of cavernous interior that lay before him because a bemused voice smoke up from amongst the bright,

“Well, hello there.” It spoke with a staccato rhythm that made Grail’s head spin.

“Did you really just come from down there?” Questioning and then answering itself,

“Yes of course you did.” Grail could still see nothing, and he felt himself swaying on his feet, as if made of grass.

“Well that smell must still be quite a shock. Let me help, take a wiff of this.”

An odor strong enough to put colorful spots in front of his eyes hit Grail’s nostrils. He blinked, and suddenly saw owlish eyes and a long, thin beard. They seemed to float above a stormy sky, which rippled and danced with the beard.

“Good, Good, your resistant to that sort of spell”

Grail snapped his eyes in surprise at that, and sputtered, “You’re a Magician?”

“Indeed I am.” The wiry man then took a long bow,

“Horatio Oriculture, King’s Magician.”

With that the Man stood straight, looking down at Grail blinkingly and still bemused. The younger, unsure of his safety, and still worried about the king’s guards, looked around with haphazard movements of his head.

Horatio Oriculture, picked up on this, and said, with as much grace as he could muster, “So, ah, what is a young gentleman of your stature doing, coming from the passageway that leads to the King’s apartments?”

A look of pure terror stole over Grail’s features, and he moved backwards two steps, as if about to run.

“Stand where you are and do not move.” The Magician spoke mildly, but Grail was frozen, rooted to his spot.

The panic on the boys face was naked, and, blubbering down at his feet he said, “Oh lord, oh lord, oh please Mr. Magician Please don’t…Just don’t.”

This rose the bushy eyebrow of the spell-caster into twin arches, “Just don’t what?”

“Uh.” The boy was at a loss at first, and then said questioningly, “Um, just don’t turn me into a frog.”

Infallible, the Magician acted unsurprised as he said, “Ok. But what did you do?”

           At first, this gave him pause, for he worried that the movement on the walls was only in his head.  It was only after stopping and starring for a bit, that he came to understand that there was now a new source of light for him. It cut long textures into the walls, that seemed to hop as if alive.  

          The lights intensity jumped and spiked in a staccato pattern that made the boy feel vaguely uncomfortable. At first, he thought it was because it was too pure of color to be from a flame. But then, he realized there was a smell now associating with that light. It hung about like a low fug, and it was certainly not pleasant.     

      The smell scared him worse than the light, but he continued towards it, despite the growing stench. Each step closer brought him more of the need to vomit, as if the smell suddenly was from within him, and by chucking up he could rid himself of it.  

          The smell became worse. He wanted to turn and run, but couldn’t. No matter how bad the smell got, he was better off here than back with the King’s Guards. 

His hands out in front, he scooted one foot forward at a time, gratefully aware that each step he took into the unknown, was one step closer for him to his freedom.

“It came from over here.”

Grail paused, straining, willing himself and his passage to remain unfound.The footsteps became louder, and gained volume.

“He must be down here!”

“Quit! If he’s close, we sure can’t spook ‘em.”

“Yar Bugger! If he’s close, we’ve got him now!”

Grail inhaled sharply, making noise like a steam vent. He glanced back, and through his blurred vision he was able to make out the faint outline of the guards, as they marched past. He began to relax, and resumed his slow, quit shuffle forward.Once Again,

“Huh. I could’ve sworn I heard him sneeze here…”

“Ah..He’s here somewhere, these older passageways, with all their junk, are always confusing the sound. Lets go check over in…”

And with that the voices faded away. Grail tried to relax, he tried to keep going, but the individual monumentality of the last five minutes caught up to him, and he collapsed to the floor in a heap, and mourned his lost career.  

Sensing this, he slowed to a trot, and then a stop. He found himself in a hallway shrouded in nostalgia, dripping with tapestries and ancient weapons. Ahead there was a heavy wood door, and most undoubtedly, the Kings Guard. Frantic and looking for a place to hide while he had a chance, he glanced left and then right.

Seeing an opening that seemed to exist behind a suit of armor, he carefully worked his way around the metal legs, in the hope that their shape might conceal him from prying eyes. To his surprise, he found that the opening grew into a passage that twisted down, away into the dark.

 And, So I write this to you, as an ambassador of my lands, commanded to share my story, to the best of my abilities. They asked for a complete record, and in that I will deliver. 

Nonetheless,

 I will hold to the great storytelling tenant of brevity, and only share that which I consider important for the story.

The hardest part was paying attention. Grail had never been very good at that, even while younger, and in school, his attention had always been one to wander. The most interesting subjects were never enough; it was as if they lacked something substantial. To him, his thoughts were powerful; he found escape in that power from the tedium and repetition of everyday life…and now that he was thinking about it, thinking about thinking, he realized that everyday life, that repetitious and repetitive cycle, was sure a lot less boring than the daily meetings he had to attend as a scribe.

Sitting now in the corner of that dank room, his pen scribbling ink upon paper, words he heard but did not process, he worked to bring himself back into that reality, to bring himself back into that moment, and as he did so, realized that he had missed something. Everyone was starring at him, and all he had to return was a blank look.

“Did you get that boy?” An angry set of eyes, framed by a loose set of jowls, glinted over a sharp nose.

“He asked if you got that?”

“Answer him!”

  “You must answer the magistrate for he speaks for the King!” 

“Erm.” A sharp pain rose up in the scribe’s stomach, a knot of anxiety that he felt forced to ignore. Looking down at the parchment, he saw that his hand writing had trailed off mid word, “…and th…” was the last thing written.

Grail could not think of how to share this information with the angry crowd of people gathering around him, “um.”

Articulating that single syllable of defeat with as much grace as he could muster, he sweated, while looking for some sort of distraction. Not finding much, he began to articulate his words as clearly as he could,“Yes, I have it right here.”

            There was a collective sigh of relief, which Grail quickly soured by throwing down his pen and parchment and bolting for the door.No one tried to interfere with him, they just watched him pass with shocked eyes. Taken aback the head magistrate even made a “Tsk-Tsk,” although not quite loud enough for the King to here.

The King himself just watched Grail leave, confident that the young man would be brought to justice.