Comic Relief

The moment Teshi was born, everyone present said that he was destined to become someone’s Comic Relief. They just couldn’t help it: he was such a funny-looking baby with his wild frizzy tuft of blond hair and one eye turned permanently outwards. He looked nothing like his siblings, who all had beautifully straight locks and perfect pairs of forward-facing eyes. His parents were a little disappointed that the Fates had seen fit to give them a Comic Relief child, but they shrugged their shoulders and decided that they would do their best by him. They grew so used to calling him “the little Comic” that they almost forgot to give him a proper name until he began to make his first efforts to talk. After a frantic consultation in the next room, they agreed to call him Teshi, meaning “uncontrollable laughter” in the ancient tongue of their land, Danesea.

Teshi, for his part, seemed to take his future role in stride. Only once did he question what seemed to him to be a growing contradiction.

“Mama, why is it that the others are smarter than me?” he said to her one day after coming home from the village school when he was about six years old.

His mother turned away from the bucket of dishes she had been rinsing, wiping her hands on her skirt. She smiled at her amusing boy. “What makes you ask such a thing?”

“I can answer all the questions Teacher asks us in class, and she never calls on me! And the other kids never know the right answers!” Teshi said, his plump lips forming a pout.

“What makes you think you know the answers?” his mother asked, her smile growing.

“Because they’re the same ones that are in the books Teacher gives us. I know because I look them up after class, and they’re always the same as mine! It’s not fair!”

“Ah, my poppet.” His mother drew him in to her cozy waist. “Never you mind. Schoolwork just isn’t for you. You’re meant for great things! You’re going to become Comic Relief to a hero someday, I just know you are!”

“But what if I don’t want to do that? What if I want to be good in school instead?”

His mother gave one of her great belly laughs that she was famous for throughout the village. “Hark at you! Only six and already telling jokes! You’ll be a Comic Relief yet, just you watch. We must get your father to hear that one when he comes home from the fields!” And, still chuckling, she walked away.

After being forced to repeat his ‘joke’ to an endless stream of amused relatives and friends, Teshi decided that it would be better not to bring up the appropriateness of his future role in the world again. It made too little sense to him, yet everyone else seemed to accept it. He decided he might as well keep his mouth shut and accept it in kind.

One day, not long after Teshi had turned fifteen, he was poring over a battered book of jokes when his youngest brother came racing into the house full of news about heroes in town. Teshi, wearing his most mulish I-don’t-care face, accompanied his brother to the village square. Practically the entire village was there to ogle at the newcomers. The heroes themselves, two blond men and a raven-haired woman, seemed much more concerned with looking impressive than with anything else. However, when the woman saw the expression Teshi was wearing, she let out a snort of laughter. Her two companions glanced at her inquiringly, and she bent forward to whisper to them. Teshi was now struggling to keep his face impassive rather than mulish, because the entire village was craning to peer at what the heroes deemed worthy of their attention. An excited spat of murmurs broke out. Teshi could feel his face getting red, which he knew made him look even more ridiculous than usual. He hated people staring at him.

The female hero raised her hands for silence, and instantly the village went quiet but for the sounds of animals in the distance. “Friends,” the woman announced grandly. “We have just now discovered the last key to the success of our noble quest, right here in this very village!”

Everyone present knew she meant Teshi. All the bedtime stories of heroes said no group quest was complete without a resident Comic Relief, and it was apparent that this particular group was lacking one. Hands came behind Teshi, shoving him forward into the open ring of people in which the heroes stood.

“What do you think? Join us?” asked one of the male heroes.

Teshi glanced around, hoping to find some excuse to refuse. He certainly didn’t feel prepared to be anyone’s Comic Relief, not yet. But then his eyes found his parents, standing on the edge of the crowd. They were beaming, arms around each other. His mother had tears in her eyes, and she gave him a tiny nod of encouragement. Sighing heavily, Teshi turned back to the heroes. “I…” his voice cracked. A wave of good-natured giggles swept through the town, and Teshi blushed again. “I suppose I could come,” he stuttered at last.

“Good lad!” The man clapped him on the back.

“Out of curiosity, just where are we going?” asked Teshi. But no one heard him amid the ensuing din of his acceptance by the heroes.

A few days later, Teshi sat silently on the mule the heroes had found for him, wishing the journey could be over. He was not used to the long hours of riding, and his companions took no notice of his discomfort. As he sat, he took a moment to study the other three on their splendid horses. Roy, the eldest, was craggy of face and of a nature inclined to silent brooding. At the moment, however, he was complaining, which Teshi privately found an improvement on the usual silence.

“Ah, that I should be reduced to this! A hero of my stature, who has slain many monsters in fierce combat, about to join in combat against a mere mortal man! Why, it’s demeaning enough to make one cry!”

“What does he mean by that?” Teshi whispered to Owain, the other male hero of the group who was just a few years older than Teshi himself.

Owain sneered at him. “Don’t you know anything, Comic Relief? My Uncle Roy is one of the Legendary Heroes of Danesea. He has been in the King’s employ for many years, slaying dangerous monsters such as dragons and gryphons.”

“Then why isn’t he now?” asked Teshi.

“Never tell him I told you this, but he was…honorably discharged…when a dragon rampaged through the royal progress and nearly killed the King,” whispered Owain conspiratorially. He straightened when Roy turned back to glare at them for a moment.

Merita, the female hero, edged her horse forward. “Enough of such idle chatter. Comic Relief, amuse us with a joke!”

An hour later, after regaling them with the majority of his repertoire of memorized jokes, Teshi’s cheeks were growing quite sore from making ridiculous faces in order to achieve the desired affect of laughter. He decided to cut his losses.

“Knock-knock?”

“I want to answer him this time!” Merita demanded when Owain opened his mouth.

“No, it’s my turn, you answered the last knock-knock joke!”

“But not the last joke, you did!”

Teshi sighed. “Knock-knock?”

“Whosthere?” Merita said quickly, then stuck her tongue out at Owain, who glared at her.

“Nobody.”

“Nobody who?”

“I just told you. Nobody’s here anymore. The jokes are done.”

“Wha—” Owain and Merita looked at one another, and then began arguing about the point of the joke, which gave Teshi a much-needed chance to massage his sore face.

They were still bickering when Roy, who had been brooding again, called a halt for the night. Teshi had given up trying to reconcile between Owain and Merita. They didn’t seem to appreciate his efforts at all. In fact, they almost seemed to enjoy the arguments. At last Teshi’s mind had caught up with him and he recognized that they were in a state of Sexual Tension he’d read was common among young heroes and heroines out on a quest for the first time. Thereafter, he let them alone and kept his eyes on the scenery, which was green, peaceful hill after green, peaceful hill, until the sun had nearly dropped below the horizon.

“Where are we, exactly? Are we still in Danesea?” Teshi asked once they were all seated around the fire eating their evening ration from Roy’s pack.

Roy wrinkled his craggy face into a scowl. “I see you know little of geography. We are in Drákon, home of the foulest Evil Overlord ever to despoil this land!”

“Evil Overlord?” The surrounding lands hadn’t seemed despoiled to Teshi.

“Yes, of course!” Owain’s eyes grew faraway as he looked at the stars. “It is our task to rid this land of the evil blight that has been upon it far too long, and to establish a just ruler in place of the oppressor. And then the world will acclaim us all as the greatest heroes to ever live!”

“Hush, nephew,” Roy snapped, giving the younger man a cuff on the back of the head. “This is but the beginning of our adventures. Soon we will be back in Danesea, riding out to slay monsters just as I once did. But with you and Merita at my side, I will not fail again!” Having made that pronouncement, he lapsed back into meditative silence. Teshi, taking his cue from the older man, spent the remainder of the evening contemplating what he’d just learned. Despite his study of the miniscule political science he’d been taught in school, Teshi knew very little about Drákon’s current Evil Overlord other than he was the forty-first to bear the title and came from a long line of very cruel men who oppressed and terrorized their people. From his readings, he was very glad that Danesea had an ordinary King and Queen. Having an Evil Overlord as your ruler didn’t sound particularly pleasant, and to that end heroes were constantly attempting to end their tyranny by seeking them out to do battle. Teshi, from Owain’s comment, felt it was safe to assume that this was to be their task in Drákon. As the group at last approached the capital city of Drákon at the end of a week’s travel, he resolved to bolster them in their mission in any way possible.

“Halt there, strangers. State your business in the city, please.” This order came from a bored-looking guard who was minding the city’s main southern gate. Teshi only heard this much of the conversation clearly, because he’d been waiting for this opportunity to fix a problem with his left stirrup while their party was no longer moving. He bent low and began wrestling with the stubborn strap that had been rubbing on his leg for the past day and a half, but looked up sharply when he heard angry voices.

“Don’t you incompetent fools know who I am?” Roy was blustering. “I am one of the Legendary Heroes of Danesea! How dare you question my right to enter your city?”

“A hero, eh? Are these your companions in arms?” the guard said, clearly now far from bored. He gave a short, sharp whistle in the direction of the large gatehouse.

“Yes, these are my companions, Owain the Valorous and Merita the—what are you doing? Unhand me! You cowards! Give me back my sword and I’ll defeat every last one of you!” Roy began screaming incoherent insults as he, Merita and Owain were swarmed by at least twenty black-clad guards pouring from the gatehouse. Within seconds all three heroes were in chains.

“Take them on up to the castle dungeon, boys. Give them a taste of His Overlordship’s best hospitality,” the first guard said to his companions. Then he rounded on the heroes. “And you three had best mind your step. The guards up there aren’t as friendly as we lowly gate sentries, and they’ve no love for heroes at the castle.” Then they were gone, leaving Teshi sitting all alone on his mule. Had he been anyone else, he would have called out or tried to follow, but he knew the last place he wanted to end up was in a dungeon belonging to an Evil Overlord. The thought conjured up too many images of torture chambers and days without food.

Teshi took a quick glance around the stone corner and sighed. The long, straight hall was as empty of movement as a tomb. There were wooden doors on both sides of the corridor, but no sounds came from behind them. As he started forward, he reflected on how easy it had been to get inside the castle. After circling around to the back of the imposing black stone structure that dominated the city center, the one with its roof covered in sharpened spikes, he had made sure he’d been recruited to join a line of people carrying sacks of food into the castle kitchens. Once his sack had been deposited, he had merely walked down a deserted corridor as if he knew exactly what he was doing. No one he’d passed thus far had thought to question someone as simple-looking as he was. For once, Teshi was almost grateful for the wild hair and outward-turned eye that had gained him his status as a Comic Relief. Now all that was left was to find the dungeons and somehow free Roy, Merita, and Owain. From there it would be up to them to locate and deal with the Overlord.

“Hey, boy, how did you get in here?” a man’s voice suddenly asked from behind him. Teshi gasped as the sharpened edge of a sword abruptly pressed itself to his throat. His arms were pinned in a vicelike grip in a matter of seconds. Uselessly trying to break free, he was dragged down the corridor he had just been preparing to enter and into a torch-lit room that was otherwise empty. This is it, he thought miserably, I’m about to be tortured out of my mind until they find out my connection to the heroes. I hope I can hold out. He steeled himself.

Instead, he was dumped unceremoniously to the stone floor and the door slammed behind him. Pressing his ear to the wood, he heard a woman say, “What should we do with him, sir?”

“Fetch Lieutenant Torsten immediately for an interview. Make sure to have him wear the cloak and circlet. I’ll stand guard here.” This voice belonged to the man who had asked Teshi how he’d gotten in and whose sword Teshi assumed had been pressed to his throat.

“But, sir…”

“Don’t argue with me, Britta. Just do it,” the voice said, sounding impatient, but with a slight undertone that might have been amusement. Clearly its owner expected to be obeyed.

“Yes, sir.” As feet tapped away down the stone corridor, Teshi thought, I wish I could command that kind of respect…

It seemed hours later, though in reality it was only a few minutes, when the sound of feet in the corridor told Teshi that he was about to be ‘interviewed’. He scrambled back from the door on his knees as it creaked open. It revealed a powerfully-built man with dark hair that had a few threads of gray showing above the ears. Around the man’s broad shoulders was draped a knee-length black cloak and on his head was a thin black circlet. He was flanked by two people in matching black uniforms: a hard-looking woman in her twenties and a dark-haired man wearing gauntlets who appeared to be in his early thirties, whom Teshi assumed to be Britta and her commanding fellow guard.

“W-who are you?” Teshi stammered, then cursed himself for the inane question. Just the sort of thing a simpleminded Comic Relief would ask.

“I am Ordarnis, Evil Overlord and ruler of Drákon,” the man in the circlet responded coldly. “Who are you?”

“T-Teshi,” Teshi responded. This time the stumble was more from surprise than fear. He was certain that the male guard had called this man Lieutenant Torsten earlier. But he supposed he might as well play along and possibly get some information. “Your Overlordship, sir, excuse the question, but…do you know a lieutenant named Torsten?”

The man blinked in surprise, but recovered quickly. “That is the name of my second-in-command. Why, were you looking for him?”

“Not particularly.” Teshi’s thoughts were racing. If this man was really Lieutenant Torsten, and the same Lieutenant Torsten who was apparently second-in-command to the Overlord, then how did Britta’s gauntlet-wearing partner have the authority to summon the realm’s second-most powerful man at a moment’s notice? Unless…a wild, crazy possibility leapt into Teshi’s mind. It was insane, but he felt that for someone in his position there could be no harm in testing it.

He turned to the dark-haired guard. “What exactly do you want to know from me, Your Overlordship, sir?”

Everyone in the room stared open-mouthed, even the Overlord himself. After at least thirty seconds of nothing but stunned silence, Lieutenant Torsten removed the circlet and cloak with a rueful grin. “I honestly don’t know why I bother with these things. That trick took him less time to figure out than I did when you hired me in disguise, didn’t it, sir?”

“By several minutes, I think,” the guard, or rather Overlord Ordarnis, answered. He was still looking at Teshi, but his surprised expression had become thoughtful. “To answer your earlier question, young man, we simply wished to find out exactly how you managed to penetrate the castle defenses, and for what purpose.”

It was Teshi’s turn to be surprised. “That’s all?”

“Initially, that was all. Though we are all naturally very intrigued to hear the reasoning behind your incredibly quick dissection of my disguise. Personally, I hope it is extraordinary. I would hate to lose one of the few means of freedom I have.” Teshi’s interest in this last statement must have shown on his face, for the Overlord sighed and elaborated. “When I don a guard uniform, to nearly everyone who sees me I am just a harmless subordinate. You’ve no idea how much I can learn simply by listening to my underlings talk. And, of course, it’s much safer if Torsten can pretend to be me while interviewing heroes who’ve come to depose me.”

“Safer for whom?” Lieutenant Torsten muttered. Britta’s lips twitched.

“You thought I was a hero?” Teshi asked, surprised and pleased.

“We weren’t sure,” Torsten replied. “By your appearance, we guessed you to be someone’s Comic Relief, possibly for the most recent group of idiots down in the dungeon.” Teshi flushed, causing a grin to flit over the face of Ordarnis. Torsten glanced at his lord, and continued, “We were curious, however, as to why you might have followed them, and especially as to how you got in successfully. Generally a Comic Relief doesn’t have the brains or the nerve for such a feat.”

“Well, I do.” Teshi put his chin forward.

“We know that.” The grin on the Overlord’s face was back, and wider. “And to come right down to it—”

At that moment, the door burst open, and there stood Roy, Merita, and Owain, having apparently escaped from the dungeon and each wielding a loaded crossbow. “Drop your weapons!” ordered Roy.

Ordarnis and Torsten’s swords clattered to the floor, as well as Britta’s long spear. The three castle occupants drew closer together, and Teshi realized that without the cloak, Torsten’s garments matched those of the other two. “Now,” Owain snarled, his eyes glinting, “One of the servants said the Overlord is here in this room. And we know he’s not a woman. So which one of you is it?” His crossbow wavered between Torsten’s broad chest and Ordarnis’s trimmer one.

Overlord and Lieutenant glanced at one another, and shrugged as one. “We’ll never tell,” Torsten said. The look on his face was positively sardonic. “I suppose you’ll just have to kill us both.”

“We’ll see about that,” snapped Merita. She rounded on Teshi. “You! Comic Relief! Which one is the Overlord? Tell us, so that we may kill him and justice can be done! And be quick about it!”

All eyes in the room went to Teshi, who turned as furiously red as he’d ever been in his life. His mind was working just as furiously. Back and forth his eyes slid between villains and heroes, but he honestly couldn’t tell which were which anymore. If he turned in the Overlord, Roy and his party would have their kill and Teshi would return to being the Comic Relief, respected by no one. If he didn’t, likely he, Torsten, Britta, and Ordarnis would all die. But, thinking about the last fifteen minutes compared to the first fifteen years of his life, Teshi had to admit he’d received more respect from the Evil Overlord and his henchmen than he’d ever gotten from his family, his village, and his heroes combined. Added to that, Ordarnis didn’t seem to be a particularly evil person at all, despite his title. Aiding anyone in killing him, well, somehow to Teshi it didn’t seem assuredly right anymore.

And he knew what he had to do. “I’ll give you a riddle to help you figure out who is who,” he began as calmly as he could. He locked eyes with Ordarnis and slid one lid down in a wink. The Overlord nodded, ever so slightly. Taking heart, Teshi smiled innocently at Roy, Owain, and Merita, and said, “It’s a knock-knock joke, but one of you has to start it.”

The heroes glanced at one another. At last, Owain ventured, “Knock-knock?”

“Who’s there?” Teshi’s grin widened as the confusion in the room grew thicker. Owain, Merita, and Roy all bore identical expressions of bafflement. Even Torsten and Britta seemed puzzled. Only the Overlord’s shoulders were shaking, ever so slightly. Then Torsten let out a sudden snort. Britta relaxed, clearly still mystified but knowing that if her superiors weren’t worried then it must be all right. Meanwhile, Teshi’s former companions were having the opposite reaction: at the very least they realized that the ‘joke’ had only been meant to confuse them and was not particularly a joke at all.

“Simpleminded traitor!” snarled Roy. “Prepare to die, all of you!”

The next thing Teshi knew, the Overlord had lunged forward to drag him roughly away from the three heroes, who were cocking and aiming their crossbows. Teshi squeezed his eyes shut. An explosion rocked the room.

When Teshi awoke, someone was gently patting his face. “Come on back, boy. It’s over,” Torsten was saying. Teshi sat up and looked around. All four of the room’s occupants, including himself, were covered in awful-smelling black soot. The door to the hall had been blown off its hinges, and there was no sign of the heroes.

“What—happened?” Teshi mumbled blearily. The Overlord, who had just finished giving terse orders to Britta, heard the question and came over to stand beside his second-in-command.

“Exactly what we hoped would happen,” he said as Torsten offered a hand to help Teshi to his feet, “The crossbows that they stole out of one of our labeled Weapons Closets are part of a special set that are rigged to explode if they’re ever used. One of our many traps for unwary heroes.”

Teshi blinked, trying to absorb this. “Where do you keep the real weapons, then?”

“In the armory, of course. Under heavy guard,” answered Torsten, brushing ashes off his own shoulders. “By the way, I must remember that joke of yours. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it before.”

“It’s one I made up to stop people at home from asking me to tell them more jokes. They hated it when I did that to them, so I thought it might be appropriate.”

“Which brings us to what I was about to say before we were so rudely interrupted,” the Overlord said. “Though the demise of your former employers will certainly make this easier. Would you be willing to consider a contract with us?”

“What?”

“A job, boy. We’re offering you a job,” Torsten put in with a grin.

“Oh, I heard you,” Teshi answered, rolling his eyes, “But why would an Evil Overlord have any need of a Comic Relief?”

“Just any simpleminded Comic Relief would never do. But one of your talents would be inherently valuable,” Torsten explained, “For the same reason that the Overlord can learn a great deal by becoming an ordinary guard, no one will pay much mind to an inordinately clever Comic-Relief-in-residence.”

“What do you say?” the Overlord asked.

He hardly had to consider. “It’s a deal!” Teshi grinned. “When can I start?”

“You can start by telling us exactly how you got into this castle, so we can make sure no Hero in the future can use that route again.”

“Well…” Teshi pretended to consider. “I’ll tell you that if you tell me one thing in return.”

“What do you want to know?” asked Ordarnis suspiciously.

“Why exactly are you called the ‘Evil’ Overlord? You don’t seem to be particularly evil at all. At least to me.”

“It’s a family title. I thought I’d keep it around for sentimental reasons. The one thing further I will say on that subject is this: you’d better hope you never get on my bad side, or you’ll be wishing you’d gone up with those three piles of ash,” the Overlord said as he swept from the room, leaving Teshi staring after him.

“Was he joking?” he asked, turning to Lieutenant Torsten.

“He never jokes,” Torsten said, following his lord. “Come on, boy.”

The young Comic Relief sighed. “Well, it looks like I have my work cut out for me.” He left the room after Torsten.

SamoaPhoenix