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IMPRINT OF CHAOS
Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, quen dixere Chaos: rudis indigestaque moles.
-Ovid: Metamorphoses, I5
I
He had many names, but one nature, and this unique nature made him subject to certain laws not binding upon ordinary persons. In a compensatory fashion, he was also free from certain other laws more commonly in force.
Still, there was nothing to choose as regards rigidity between his particular set of laws and those others. And one rule by which he had very strictly to abide was that at set seasons he should overlook that portion of the All which had been allotted to him as his individual responsibility.
Accordingly, on the day after the conjunction of four significant planets in that vicinity, he set forth on a journey which was to be at once the same as and yet different from those many which had preceded it.
It had been ordained that at this time, unless there were some pressing reason to the contrary, he should tramp along commonplace roads, and with goodwill enough-it was not a constituent of his nature that he should rail against necessity-he so arranged his route that it wound and turned and curved through all those zones where he might be made answerable for events, and ended within a short distance of where it had begun. It ended, to be precise, at the city called Ryovora: that place of all places in his domains where people had their heads screwed on the right way.
He did this for an excellent reason. It was an assurance to him that when he subsequently reviewed the situation the memory of one spot where he might justly feel pleased with his work would be uppermost in recollection.
Therefore, on a sunny morning when there were birds singing and few clouds in a sky filled with the scent of flowers, he began to trudge along a dusty road towards his first destination.
That was a great black city upreared around a high tower, which was called by its inhabitants Acromel, the place where honey itself was bitter. It was sometimes a cause of mild astonishment-even to him of the many names and the single nature-that this most difficult of cities should be located within a few hours' walking of Ryovora. Nonetheless, it was so.
And to be able to state without fear of contradiction that anything whatsoever was so was a gauge and earnest of his achievement.
Before him, the road began to zig-zag on the slope of a hill dotted with grey-leaved bushes, A local wind raised dust-devils among the bushes and erased the footprints of those who passed by. It was under this hill that the traveler had incarcerated Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes, to whom memories of yesterday were hateful; some small power remained to this elemental, and he perforce employed it to wipe yesterday's traces away.
He took his staff in his hand-it was made of light, curdled with a number of interesting forces-and rapped once on an outcrop of bare rock at the side of the pathway.
"Laprivan!" he cried. "Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes!"
At his call the dust-devils ceased their whirling. Resentfully, they sank back to the earth, so that the dust of which they were composed again covered the bared roots of the grey-leaved bushes. Most folk in the district assumed that the leaves were grey from the dust of passage, or from their nature; it was not so.
Laprivan heaved in his underground prison, and the road shook. Cracks wide enough to have swallowed a farm-cart appeared in its surface. From them, a great voice boomed.
"What do you want with me, today of all days? Have you not had enough even now of tormenting me?"
"I do not torment -you," was the calm reply. "It is your memory that torments you."
"Leave me be, then," said the great voice sullenly. "Let me go on wiping away that memory."
"As you wish, so be it," the traveler answered, and gestured with his staff. The cracks in the road closed click; the dust-devils re-formed; and when he looked back from the crest of the hill his footsteps had already been expunged.
The road wound on, empty, towards Acromel. For some distance before it actually reached the city it ran contiguous with the river called Metamorphia, a fact known to rather few people, because although it seemed that this was the same river which poured in under the high black battlements of the city, it was not the same-for good and sufficient cause. It was the nature of the river Metamorphia to change the nature of things, and consequently it changed its own nature after flowing a prescribed number of leagues.
The traveler paused by a stone wall overlooking the dark stream, and meditatively regarded objects floating past. Some had been fishes, perhaps; others were detritus of the banks-leaves, branches, stones. Those which had been stones continued to float, of course; those which had been of a flotatory nature sank.
He broke a piece of stone from the crumbling parapet of the wall, and cast it down. The alteration it underwent was not altogether pleasant to witness.
He raised his eyes after a while, and descried a girl on the opposite bank, who had come forward out of a clump of trees while he was lost in contemplation. She was extremely beautiful. Moreover she had been at no pains to hide the fact, for she was dressed exclusively in her long, lovely hair.
"You also are aware of the nature of this river," she said after regarding him for a little.
"I have been advised that the nature of the river is to change the nature of things," the traveler conceded. "And consequently it changes its own nature also."
"Come down with me, then, and bathe in it!"
"Why should you wish your nature changed?" was the reply. "Are you not beautiful?"
"Beautiful I am!" cried the girl passionately. "But I am without sense!"
"Then you are Lorega of Acromel, and your fame has spread far."
"I am Lorega of Acromel, as you say." She fixed him with her honey-colored eyes, and shrugged the garb of her hair more closely around her. "And how do men call you?"
"I have many names, but one nature. You may call me Mazda, or anything you please."
"Do you not even know your own name, then? Do you not have a name that you prefer?"
"The name matters little if the nature does not change."
She laughed scornfully. "You speak in resounding but in empty phrases, Mazda or whoever you may be! If your nature is unchangeable, give demonstration! Let me see you descend into the water of this river!"
"I did not say that," murmured the traveler peaceably. "I did not say my nature was unchangeable."
"Then you are a coward. Nonetheless, come down with me and bathe in this river."
"I shall not. And it would be well for you to think on this, Lorega of Acromel: that if you are without sense, your intention to bathe in Metamorphia is also without sense."
"That is too deep for me," said Lorega unhappily, and a tear stole down her satiny cheek. "I cannot reason as wise persons do. Therefore let my nature be changed!"
"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler in a heavy tone, and motioned with his staff. A great lump of the bank detached itself and fell with a huge splashing into the water. A wave of this water soaked Lorega from head to foot, and she underwent, as did the earth of the bank the moment it broke the surface, changes.
Thoughtfully, and a mite sadly, the traveler turned to continue his journey towards Acromel. Behind him, the welkin rang with the miserable cries of what had formerly been Lorega. But he was bound by certain laws. He did not look back.
Before the vast black gate of the city, which was a hundred feet high and a hundred feet wide, two men in shabby clothes were fighting with quarter-staffs. The traveler leaned on his own staff and watched them batter at one another for fully an hour before they both found themselves too weak to continue, and had to stand panting and glaring at each other to recover their breath.
"What is the quarrel between you?" said the traveler then.
"Little man in black, it concerns not you," grunted the nearer of the two. "Go your way and leave us be."
"Wait!" said the other. "Ask first whether he likewise is bent on the same errand!"
"A good point!" conceded the first, and raised his great cudgel menacingly. "Speak, you!"
"First I must know what your errand was, before I can say if mine is the same or not," the traveler pointed out.
"A good point!" admitted the second, who had now also approached to threaten him. "Know that I am Ripil of the village called Masergon-"
"And I," interrupted the first, "am Tolex of the village called Wyve. Last week I set forth from my father's house, he having six other sons older than I-"
"As did I!" Ripil broke in. "Exactly as did I! You've registered my name, I trust, stranger? You will have good cause to remember it one day!"
"All men will!" snapped Tolex contemptuously. "They will remember your name to laugh at it, and when boys scribble it daringly on the wall with charcoal old women will spit on the ground as they hobble past!"
Ripil scowled at him. "Booby! Possessed of unbelievable effrontery! Go your way before it is too late, and the people of this city hang you in chains before the altar!"
"Your errand, though!" cried the traveler, just in time to forestall a renewal of the fighting.
Tolex gave him a huge but humorless grin. "Why, it's all so simple! This idiot called Ripil came hither thinking to make his fortune, dethrone Duke Vaul, and claim the hand of Lorega of Acromel! As though a dunderheaded village lout could do more than dream of such glories!"
"And your own ambition?"
"Why, I have come to make my fortune and be chosen as heir to Duke Vaul, when naturally I shall be assigned Lorega's hand!"
The traveler, not unexpectedly, burst out laughing. In a moment Tolex began to laugh also, thinking that it was Ripil's foolishness alone which had caused the joke, and Ripil, his face black like a storm-cloud, caught up his quarterstaff and began to belabor him anew.
The traveler left them to it, and went forward into the city.
II
In this city called Acromel there was a temple, crowning the black tower about which the buildings clustered like a single onyx on a pillar of agate. In this temple, before the red idol of the god Lacrovas-Pellidin-Agshad-Agshad, Duke Vaul yawned behind his hand.
"Take her," he said to the chief priest, nodding his large black-bearded head to his left. The priest bowed to the hard slippery floor and signaled his minions. In a moment the consort who had shared Vaul's life for fifteen years, and until that moment had also shared his throne, was hanging from the gallows in front of the altar, her heart's blood trickling onto Agshad's hands outstretched like a cup to receive it.
And still that was not enough.
Duke Vaul knitted his brows until his forehead was creased like a field trenched to grow vegetables, and drummed with his thick fingers on the arm of his ebony chair. He looked at the idol.
From the vantage-point where he sat, he saw Agshad in the attitude of accepting sacrifice: mouth open, eyes closed, hands outstretched and cupped with blood filling them. On the left Pellidin, who shared Agshad's body but not his head or his limbs, was portrayed in the act of executing justice: to wit, wringing the life from three persons of indeterminate sex-indeterminate, because Pellidin's cruel grasp had compressed their bodies into a gelatinous mess and left only their arms and legs sticking out like the limbs of a beetle. On the right, Lacrovas was portrayed in the mode of obliterating enemies, with a sword in one hand and a morning-star in the other. And finally, facing away from the spot where by preference Duke Vaul had his throne located, there was the second Agshad in the attitude of devotion, with hands clasped together and eyes cast heavenward in a beseeching look. That was the aspect of the Quadruple God with which Duke Vaul had the least concern.
Below the dais on which he presided, priests and acolytes by the hundred-predominantly sacrificers, men expert in every art of human butchery-wove their lines of movement into traditional magical patterns. Their chanting ascended eerily towards the domed roof of the temple, along with the stink of candles made from the fat of those who had hung earlier in the chains before the altar. There was no point in letting their mortal remains go to waste, was there?
But on the other hand there was no point-so far-in any of this ritual. At least, the desired effect had not been accomplished. If even his own consort had not sufficed to provoke the sought-after reaction, what would? Duke Vaul cast around in his mind.
On impulse, he signaled the deputy chief priest, and pointed a hairy-backed finger at the chief priest himself. "Take him," he directed.
And that was no good, either.
Accordingly, he sent out the temple guard into the city at half an hour past noon of that day, and the guardsmen set about gathering idle citizens into the yard before the temple. If it wasn't a matter of quality, reasoned Duke Vaul, it might perhaps be a matter of quantity. The second priest-now of course the chief priest by right of succession-had been consulted, and had given it as his considered opinion that a hundred all at once must have the desired effect. Duke Vaul, to be on the safe side, had ordained that a thousand should be brought to the temple, and had set carpenters and metalsmiths to work on the chain-jangling gallows to accommodate them.
The temple guardsmen carried out their assignment with a will, all the better because they feared the lot might fall on them when Duke Vaul had used up his supply of ordinary townsfolk. They brought in everyone they could catch, and among the crowd was a small man in black clothing, who seemed to be consumed with uncontrollable laughter.
His merriment, in fact, was so extreme that it became infectious, and the Duke noticed the fact and bellowed across the temple floor in a howl of fury.
"Who is that idiot who laughs in this sacred spot?" his bull voice demanded. "Does the fellow not realize that these are serious matters and may be disturbed by the least error in our actions? Priests! Drag him forth and make him stand before me!"
In a little while, because the throng was so great, the black-clad traveler was escorted to the foot of the duke's dais.. He bowed compliantly enough when the rough hand of a guardsman struck him behind the head, but the cheerful twinkle did no depart from his eyes, and this peculiarity struck Duke Vaul at once.
He began to muse about the consequences of sacrificing one who did not take the Quadruple God seriously, and eventually spoke through the tangle of his beard.
"How do men call you, foolish one?" he boomed.
"I have many names, but one nature."
"And why are you laughing at these holy matters?"
"But I am not!"
"Then are you laughing at me?" thundered the duke, heaving himself forward on his throne so that the boards of the dais creaked and squealed. His eyes flashed terribly.
"No, I laugh at the foolishness of mankind," said the black-clad traveler.
"So! In what impressively mirthful manner is this foolishness manifest, pray?"
"Why, thus," the traveler said, and told the story of Tolex and Ripil, fighting before the gate of the city.
But Duke Vaul did not find the anecdote in the least degree amusing. He commanded that the temple guard should at once go in search of these two, and fumed while they were hunted down. When they arrived, however, it was as corpses they were laid on the temple floor.
"Mighty Duke!" cried the guardsmen respectfully, bowing their heads as one, and then let their captain continue.
"Sire, we found these two clasped dying in each other's arms. Each bore one bloody cudgel; each has a broken skull."
"Throw them into the river," said Duke Vaul curtly, and resumed converse with the black-clad traveler.
"You arrogate to yourself the right to laugh at men's foolishness," he said, and gave a wicked grin. "Then tell me this: are you yourself entirely wise?"
"Alas, yes," said the traveler. "I have but one nature." "Then you can succeed where all my so-called wise men have failed. See you this idol?"
"I could hardly avoid seeing it. It is a considerable work of-ah--art."
"It is claimed that a way exists to invest it with life, and when this way is found it will then set forth to lay waste the enemies of this city and execute justice upon them. By every means we have sought to bestow life upon it; we have given it blood, which is life, as you doubtless know, from every class and condition of person. Even my consort, who but a few hours ago sat beside me on this throne"-the duke wiped away an imaginary tear-"now hangs with her throat gashed on that chain-jangling gibbet before the altar. Still, though, the idol declines to come to life. We need its aid, for our enemies are abroad in every corner of the world; from Ryovora to the ends of the earth they plot our downfall and destruction."
"Some of what you say is true," nodded the traveler.
"Some? Only some? What then is false? Tell me! And it had better be correct, or else you shall go to join that stupid chief priest who finally tired my patience! You can see what became of him!"
The traveler glanced up and spread his hands. Indeed, it was perfectly clear-what with the second mouth, the red-oozing one, the priest had lately acquired in his throat.
"Well, first of all," he said, "there does exist a way to bring the idol to life. And second, yes, it will then destroy the enemies of this city. But third, they do not hide in far corners of the land. They are here in Acromel."
"Say you so?" Duke Vaul frowned. "You may be right, for, knowing what a powerful weapon we wield against them-or shall wield, when we unknot this riddle-they may well be trying to interfere with, our experiments. Good! Go on!"
"How so, short of demonstrating what I mean?"
"You?" The duke jerked forward on his throne, clutching the ebony arms so tightly his knuckles glistened white. "You can bring the idol to life?"
The traveler gave a weary nod. All the laughter had gone out of him.
"Then do it!" roared Duke Vaul. "But remember! If you fail, a worse fate awaits you than my chief priest suffered!"
"As you wish, so be it," sighed the traveler. With his staff he made a single pass in the air before the altar, and the idol moved.
Agshad in the attitude of devotion did not open his clasped hands. But Lacrovas swung his sword, and Duke Vaul's bearded head sprang from his shoulders.
Pellidin let fall the three crushed persons from his hand and seized the headless body. That he squeezed instead, and the cupped hands of Agshad in the posture of accepting sacrifice filled with the blood of the duke, expressed like juice from a ripe fruit.
After that the idol stepped down from the altar and began to stamp on the priests.
Thoughtfully, having made his escape unnoticed in the confusion, the traveler took to the road again.
Perhaps there would be nothing worse to behold during this journey than what he had observed in Acromel. Perhaps there would be something a million times as bad. It was to establish such information that he undertook his journeyings.
In Kanish-Kulya they were fighting a war, and each side was breathing threatenings and slaughter against the other.
"Oh that fire would descend from heaven and eat up our enemies!" cried the Kanishmen.
"Oh that the earth would open and swallow up our enemies!" cried the Kulyamen.
"As you wish," said the traveler, "so be it."
He tapped the ground with his staff, and Fegrim who was pent in a volcano answered that tapping and heaved mightily. Afterwards, when the country was beginning to sprout again-for lava makes fertile soil- men dug up bones and skulls as they prepared the ground for planting.
On the shores of Lake Taxhling, men sat around their canoes swapping lies while they waited for a particular favorable star to ascend above the horizon. One lied better than all the rest.
But he lied not as his companion lied-to pass the time, to amuse each other harmlessly. He lied to feed a consuming vanity hungrier than all the bellies of all the people in the villages along the shore of the lake, who waited day in, day out, with inexhaustible patience for their menfolk to return with their catch.
Said the braggart, "If only I could meet with such another fish as I caught single-handed in Lake Moroho when I was a stripling of fifteen! Then you would understand the fisherman's art! Alas, though"-with a sigh-"there are only piddling fish in Lake Taxhling!"
"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, who had accepted the offer of food by their fire. And the next dawn the boaster came home screaming with excitement about the huge fish he had caught, as great as the one he had taken in Lake Moroho. His companions crowded around to see it-and the mountains rang with their laughter, because it was smaller than some others they themselves had taken during the night.
"I do not wish him to love me for my beauty or my fortune," declared the haughty child of a merchant in the city called Barbizond, where there was always a rainbow in the sky owing to the presence of the bright being Sardhin chained inside a thundercloud with fetters of lightning. The girl was beautiful, and rich, and inordinately proud.
"No!" she continually insisted, discarding suitor after suitor. "I wish to be loved for myself, for what I am!"
"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, who had come in the guise of a pilgrim to one of the jousts organized that this lady might view her potential husbands. Twenty-one men had died in the lists that afternoon, and she had thrown her glove in the champion's face and gone to supper.
The next time there were jousts announced, no challenger came, and the girl pulled a face and demanded that more heralds go forth. Her father summoned a hundred heralds. The news went abroad. And personable young men said in every city, "Fight for a stuck-up shrew like her? Ho-ho! I've better ways to pass my time, and so've my friends!"
At length the truth dawned upon her, and she became miserable. She had never been happy. She had only thought she was happy. Little by little, her pride evaporated. And one day, a young man came by chance to her father's house and found she was a quiet, submissive, pleasant girl, and married her.
Thus the journey approached its end. The traveler felt a natural relief that nothing excessively untoward had occurred as he hastened his footsteps towards the goal and climax of his excursion-towards Ryovora, where men were sensible and clear-sighted, and made no trouble that he had to rectify. After this final visit, he could be assured that his duty was fulfilled.
Not that all was well by any means. There were enchanters still, and ogres, and certain elementals roamed abroad, and of human problems there might be no end. Still, the worst of his afflictions were growing fewer. One by one, the imprints of the original chaos were fading away, like the footmarks of travelers on the road above the hill where Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes was prisoned.
Then, as the gold and silver towers of Ryovora came to view, he saw that an aura surrounded them as of a brewing storm, and his hope and trust in the people of that city melted away.
III
At the city called Barbizond, where he had been but recently, there was likewise an aura around the tallest towers. There, however, it was a fair thing and pleasant to look upon, imbued with the essence of bright-if cruel, nonetheless lovely-Sardhin chained in his cloud. Ryovora had been immune since time immemorial from such disadvantageous infestations as elementals, principalities and powers; the local folk prided themselves on being creatures of hard plain sense, sober in the making of decisions, practical and rational and causing a minimum of trouble to the world.
That something had happened to alter this state of affairs... ! There was a conundrum to make the very universe shiver in chill anticipation!
The traveler turned aside from the track, making no attempt to conceal his frowns, and instead of pursuing a straight course into the city, he diverged across a verdant meadow in the midst of which hovered a mist like the mists of early morning, but more dense. When the grey wisps had closed around him entirely, to the point where they would have incapacitated the vision of any ordinary trespasser, he dissolved one of the forces which curdled the light he employed as a staff, and a clear bright beam penetrated the opacity. It had barely sheared the mist when a quiet voice spoke to him.
"Since you know where you are, I know who you are. Come into the castle, and be welcome,"
The mist lifted, and the traveler went forward into the courtyard of a castle that reared seemingly to heaven, with great towers which almost pierced the sky. Two dragons chained beside the portcullis bowed their heads fawningly to the visitor; four man-like persons whose bodies were of burnished steel came to escort him-one before, one behind, one at each side- through the gateway and across the yard; twenty trumpeters sounded a blast from a gallery as he ascended the steps towards the chief tower and keep, and they also were of polished steel.
There was a scent of magic in this air. Echoes of half-forgotten cantrips resounded, incredibly faint, from the masonry of the walls. Here and there blue light dripped from a projecting cornice; shadows moved with no one to cast them.
Then a door of oak studded with brass swung open on silent hinges, giving access to a room across which slanted a thick bar of sunlight from a window standing wide. The sunlight illumined the shriveled mummy of a mandrake. In jars covered with black cloth, ranged on on oak shelf, were twenty homunculi. A brazier burned, giving off a thick, very pleasant smell like warm honey.
From behind a table on which heavy books were piled that served also as a perch for a drowsy owl, a person in dark red robes rose to greet the traveler, and spoke, inclining his head.
"It is traditional that no one shall pierce the mist with which I protect my privacy save an invited guest or one who has a single nature. And, the universe being as it is, only one-ah-individual has a single nature. I am the enchanter Manuus. Be welcome, sir."
The black-clad traveler bent his head in reply. A chair was placed for him, not by visible hands; he sat in it, disposing his cloak comfortably over the arm. Manuus took from a cupboard a large flask and two mugs of pottery ornamented with complex symbols in blue enamel. From the flask-which bore symbols in green enamel-he spilled a couple of drops of sparkling liquid, muttering words which made the walls hum faintly. The drops vanished before they reached the floor, and the enchanter gave a nod of satisfaction and filled the mugs.
"What is your business here, sir?" he inquired, resuming his own seat after handing the first mug to his caller.
"There is an aura about Ryovora," said the traveler. "Before I enter the city I wish to ascertain what its cause may be."
Manuus nodded thoughtfully, stroking the wispy grey beard that clung at his chin like a wisp of the mist that guarded his home from casual prying.
"You will forgive me mentioning the fact," he said in an apologetic tone, "but it is asserted somewhere in one of these books--in a volume, moreover, in which I have come to place some degree of confidence-that if your nature is single, then it must logically follow that you answer questions as well as asking them."
"That is so. And I see plainly that you put trust in the tome of which you speak. The faceless drinker to whom you poured libation a moment ago is not elsewhere referred to."
Silence ensued between them for a space, while each contemplated the other. There was, though, a certain distinction, inasmuch as the enchanter studied the outward guise of the traveler, whereas the traveler examined the totality of his host.
"Ask away, then," invited the traveler at length. "And I may say that the more involved your question, the simpler and more difficult to understand will be my answer."
"And vice versa?" suggested Manuus, his old eyes twinkling.
"Exactly."
"Very well, then. Who are you? Note, please, that I do not ask how you are called. You have an infinity of names."
The traveler smiled. "You are a talented man," he conceded. "That is a good question, frankly phrased. So I will answer frankly. I am he to whom was entrusted the task of bringing order forth from chaos. Hence the reason why I have but one nature."
"If your nature were such that you demanded honor in full measure with your worth, all the days of my life would not suffice to do you homage," said Manuus seriously. "Ask now what you would know."
"What's the trouble in Ryovora?"
Maliciously, Manuus made his eyes sparkle. He said, "I am not bound by your laws, sir. Therefore I will answer in the human style-simply, to simple questions. There is dissatisfaction with the order of things as they are."
"Fair," the traveler conceded. "Ask away."
Manuus hesitated. "Who," he resumed at length, "imposed-?"
And his tongue locked in his mouth, while the traveler looked on him with an expression blending cynicism and sympathy. When at last the enchanter was able to speak again, he muttered, "Your pardon. It was of the nature of a test. I had seen it stated that..."
"That there are certain questions which one literally and physically is forbidden to ask?" The traveler chuckled. "Why, then, your test has confirmed the fact. I, even I, could not answer the question I suspect you were intending to frame. However, a question that cannot be asked is ipso facto no question at all. You may try again."
Manuus licked his lips. What had transpired within his head during that instant of involuntary paralysis defied comprehension. He was, though, brave and enterprising, and shortly ventured, "On the other hand I believe I may legitimately ask: what is the purpose of your task?"
"You may."
"So I do." Leaning back triumphant in his chair.
"Why! When all things have but one nature, they will be subsumed into the Original All. Time will stop. This conclusion is desirable."
Manuus looked sourly at the brazier. "Desirable, perhaps-but appallingly dull. Speak again."
"In what particular respect are the citizens of Ryovora dissatisfied?"
Manuus turned the question over and over in his brilliant mind, seeking a way to milk from it a further opportunity to interrogate his distinguished visitor. He failed.
"They are displeased that they have no gods," he replied.
Three bolts of lightning sheared the clear blue sky beyond the window; three claps of thunder in succession made the room re-echo and startled the sleepy owl into giving three little hops across the great book on which he squatted. The black-clad traveler ignored these events, taking a further sip from his mug, but on his face a frown was suddenly engraved.
"Ask a third time," he invited.
"Why, this is not altogether necessary," said Manuus in high delight. "But so I will!" He darted his gaze from place to place within the room as though in quest of inspiration, and finally lit on the proper line of inquiry.
"What was there, before things became as they are now?"
"I will show you," said the traveler, and dipped one fingertip into his mug. He drew forth a drop of liquid in which was entrapped a sparkling bubble.
"Regard this bubble," he instructed Manuus. "And see..."
In those days, the forces were none of them chained. They raged unchecked through every corner and quarter of the cosmos. Here for instance ruled Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes, capricious, whimsical; when he stared things melted in frightful agony. There a bright being shed radiance, but the radiance was all-consuming, and that which was solid and dull was flashed into fire. At another place, creatures in number one million fought desperately for the possession of a single grain of dust; the fury of their contesting laid waste solar systems.
Once-twice-a third time something burgeoned, which had about it a comforting aura of rationality, predictability, stability; about this nucleus, time was generated from eternity. Time entails memory, memory entails conscience, conscience entails thought for the future, which is itself implied by the existence of time. Twice the forces of chaos raged around this focal point, and swallowed it back into oblivion; then the will of Tuprid and Caschalanva, of Quorril and Lry, and of an infinite number of elemental beings, reigned once more. But none, of them was supreme, because in chaos nothing can endure, nothing can be absolute, nothing sure or certain or reliable.
In that age, suns flashed like fires, burning brightly one instant, ashes the next. On planets circling a million suns creatures who could think struggled to reduce the chaos to order, and when they thought they had most nearly achieved it, chance ordained that all their work should go for nothing, absorbed again into the faceless dark.
"But that was before me," said the traveler, and squashed the bubble so that it burst.
"I have seen," said Manuus with inexpressible weariness. "But I have not understood."
"Man does not comprehend chaos. That is why man is man, and not of another nature." The traveler smiled at him. "I wish now to pose my final question; do you grant that I have well and sufficiently answered yours?"
"You have given me another million questions to ask," sighed Manuus, shaking his grey head. "But that also, I suppose, stems from the nature of mankind. Ask away."
"Your supposition is correct. Now my last question: enchanter, what is your opinion of a god?"
"I do not know what a god is," said Manuus. "And I doubt that any man knows, though many think they do."
"Fair enough," said the black-clad traveler, and rose.
"Have you not even one more question to put to me?" suggested the enchanter with a wan smile.
"No," said the traveler.
Manuus gave a shrug and rose also. "Then I can only thank you for having graced my dwelling, sir," he said formally. "Few of my colleagues can have enjoyed the honor of receiving you personally."
The traveler bestowed on him a hard, forthright look.
"I have many names, but one nature," he said. "Man has one name, and many more than two natures. But the essential two are these: that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos. You, sir, are not a better enchanter for having received me here, but a worse one. And, I may say, such people as you are often the greatest allies of the powers who were before me."
"I resent that, sir," said Manuus frostily. "Let it not be said that I oppose one whose task I am aware of."
"A third element of man's nature," the traveler murmured, "is this: that he shall not understand what he is doing. Good day to you, Manuus-though whether it will be is rather up to you than up to me."
The traveler left Manuus deep in thought, with one elbow on a book in front of him, his chin cupped in his hand, his eyes staring vacantly at his pet owl. The traveler set forward, towards the gold and silver towers of Ryovora, and there went among the populace confirming what he had been told.
That same argument which Manuus had put him bluntly, he heard indirectly expressed before the houses of the great merchant-enchanters, who conjured this city's goods from the far corners of the world; so too in the market-square, and in private homes, and in taverns and theatres and laboratories and even in the houses of ill-repute. And when at last he came to stand upon the roof of a high silver tower and overlook the sleeping city in the small dead hours, he was convinced.
Yes, truly, the people of Ryovora were dissatisfied, and it was as Manuus had claimed. They had struggled through centuries inquiring of the mute cosmos what its nature and the nature of man might be, and they were left still hungering, to the point of growing weary.
This hunger-so they said-would be assuaged if only they had a god, as did their neighbors in Acromel. News had arrived, of course, that the god of Acromel had caused the death of many citizens, and widespread misery, but they ascribed all that to the stupidity of Duke Vaul. "We are sensible people!" they insisted. "We would know how to treat a god!"
The traveler stood gazing out over the placid, sleeping city. Moonlight shone on the roofs of glorious buildings, on the river's ripples, on bridges and mansions and on fine wide roads.
He had asked everywhere, "What is the nature of a god?" And they had said confidently, "We have no god, so how can we tell? But if we had one-ah, then we should know!"
The traveler remained rapt in thought until the dawn-flush tinged the east, absorbing and reviewing the desire that inchoately washed against his mind. At last, a breath or two before the sun rose, a quirking smile twisted his mouth upwards, and he put out his staff over the city and said, "As you wish, so be it."
Then, his task for the moment being accomplished, he departed.
IV
To park a car while one goes for a walk in the woods is not uncommon. To return and find that the car is no longer there is not unprecedented. But to return and find that the road itself, on which the car was parked, has likewise vanished, is a different matter entirely.
Yet for a man who rules himself by the straightforward logic of common sense, there is no need instantly to assume that a problem of this nature is insoluble. Bernard Brown was such a person, and it was to him that this improbable event had just occurred.
"Well!" he said, looking at the indisputably grassy surface of the narrow ride between two high hedges where to the best of his recollection-and his memory was a good one-there had shortly before been a tarmac highway. "Well!" he said again, and since there was no obvious alternative sat down on a rock and smoked a cigarette in a philosophical manner.
However, no one came by who might enlighten him on the fate either of his car or of the road it had been on, so when the cigarette had reduced to a stub, he dropped it in the grass, ground it out with his foot, and began to walk along the lane between the hedges.
By the straightforward logic of common sense, a road which had been here a scant hour ago could not during his absence have removed itself to another location. Therefore it must be he who was misplaced; he had no doubt missed his way in the pleasant summery woodland, and would eventually return if not to the road he had first followed then to some other that intersected with it.
He strode along jauntily enough, not much worried by the turn of affairs, and whistled as he walked. Occasionally the hedges on either side parted after he had gone by, and eyes studied him thoughtfully, but since he did not notice this fact it did not trouble him.
At length the hedges ended, and with them the trees of the wood, and he emerged onto a rutted track between two ploughed fields. On the near side of one of these fields a man with a kerchief tied around his neck and his legs soiled to the knee with dirt was backing up a large and obstreperous horse, harnessed to a cart whose contents were indeterminate but stank incredibly. Politely ignoring the smell, Bernard spoke to the man directly.
"Excuse me! Can you tell me the way to the London road?"
The man considered for a moment. Then he spat in the earth where it was new-turned by his horse's enormous hooves, and said bluntly, "No."
Well, that was at least an answer, if not a very helpful one. Bernard Brown shrugged and walked on.
Again the grassy ride passed between hedges, and began to wind so that at any one moment only twenty paces of it before and twenty behind were in clear view. From around a bend ahead a voice could be heard raised in song and growing louder. This voice was of intersexual quality, neither altogether male nor altogether female, and shrilled occasionally on the highest notes with shiver-provoking acidity.
Shortly, the singer came in sight, and Bernard found himself confronted by a young man, with very white hair cut short around his head, riding negligently on a gaily caparisoned horse that moved its head in time with the beat of its master's song. His attire was extraordinary, for he wore a shirt of red and yellow and loose breeches of bright green, the color of a sour apple, and his horse was if anything more surprising, inasmuch as it was skewbald of purple and pale blue. The rider accompanied his singing on a small plucked instrument, the strings of which chirruped like birds.
When he perceived Bernard, he abandoned his song in mid-phrase, let his instrument fall on a baldric to his side, and halted his horse. Then he leaned one hand on the pommel of his saddle and fixed the pedestrian with bright hard eyes; these were violet.
"Good morrow, stranger," he said in a light tone. "And what is your business here?"
"I'm trying to find the London road again," said Bernard Brown, lifting his eyebrows in astonishment at the spectacle.
"There is no such road near here," said the young man, and shook his head sorrowfully. "I know that to be a fact for all the roads in this vicinity belong to me."
"Now this is all very well," said Bernard, and gave a smile to show he was party to the joke. "But while it may amuse you to make such a grandiose assertion, it does not amuse me to be denied essential guidance. I've lost my way somehow, through taking a wrong turning in the woods, and I badly need directions."
The young man drew himself upright and urged his horse forward-and it could be seen now that this was not a young man riding a horse, nor was there in fact a horse being ridden, but some sort of confusion of the two, in that the man's legs were not separated at all from his mount. They ended in fleshy stalks, uniting with the belly of that part of the composite animal resembling a horse.
"This is extraordinary!" thought Bernard to himself, but being mannerly forbore to remark on the combination.
The young man gave him a hard stare, hand falling to a sharp sword beside his left thigh. "Who are you?" he demanded. "And where are you from, that you do not recognize me?"
Nettled, Bernard rejoined, "Unless you had taken part in a circus, or been exhibited at the Zoo, I would not presume to recognize you!"
The horse-head and the man-head together reared back in appalled amazement, and the bright sword whined through the air. Discreetly, feeling that he had to do with a creature whose mind was as abnormal as its body, Bernard had already stepped out of range when the blade flashed by.
"I am Jorkas!" howled the man-horse creature. "Now do you still say you do not know me?"
Alarmed at the composite personage's behavior, Bernard replied in a tone as civil as could be expected after the attack with the sword, "No, sir, I do not, and I may say that your actions give me little cause to wish we had become acquainted earlier."
The man-face contorted with unbelievable rage, and the sword swung high for a second blow as the horse-body danced three steps towards Bernard. He was on the point of making an inglorious-and predictably ill-fated-retreat, when a sudden ringing noise indicated that the blade had struck something very resistant in its downward passage. Indeed, the man-creature was shaking its sword-arm as though it had been numbed all the way to the shoulder.
The obstacle the sword had encountered was a glittering staff, upheld in the firm grip of a black-clad man who had somehow contrived to approach the two of them without being noticed. This person was now standing, leaning on the staff, and regarding Jorkas with a wry expression.
Jorkas shrugged, sheathed the sword, and took up his instrument again. His horse-legs bore him cantering away down the lane, and when he was out of sight around the bend his counter-tenor voice was once more heard raised in song.
"Thank you, sir," Bernard said to his rescuer, wiping his face and not unduly surprised to find he had been perspiring. "I must confess I was not prepared to meet anything like that in this quiet lane."
The black-clad one smiled, a faraway look in his eyes. "I have rendered some small service," he said matter-of-factly. "And I would add a smidgin of advice to it, too. If you expect nothing and everything, you will do well."
Bernard settled his jacket more comfortably around his shoulders and blinked several times in succession "Well, sir, taken whichever way, I cannot see your advice proving unsound. Particularly if this neighborhood is populated by more amazing freaks such as Jorkas!"
"Yes, he. bears the imprint of chaos, does he not?" said the man in black. "He is left over, so to speak. He is fairly harmless; things have by-passed him, and his power grows small."
"The power of that sword, had it reached its target, would have been quite sufficient to dispose of me, Bernard pointed out. "Has he escaped from some- some fantastic menagerie?"
"He has rather endured from a period of absolute confusion," was the reply, which though apparently meaningful served not at all to lessen either Bernard's puzzlement or his alarm. He decided, nonetheless, to forego further inquiry into the matter, and to revert to his major preoccupation.
"Can you, sir, tell me where lies the London road?"
"I can," said the other with a chuckle. "But it would be of small help to you if I did, since you cannot come to it from here. No, listen to me, and I will give you directions which will eventually bring you where you wish to be."
Since that was the best the black-clad man was willing to offer, Bernard had perforce to nod his acceptance.
"Go forward from here," said his mentor, "until you reach three twisted alder-trees standing alone in a meadow. You will recognize them readily enough. Stand before them and bow your head three times, and then take the path around them. In a little while it will bring you to a city. And whatever you do, do not speak with a woman in clothing the color of blood. Otherwise I cannot answer for the consequences."
"What nonsense!" thought Bernard to himself. But since he had no choice he thanked the other civilly and went on circumspectly down the lane.
The three alder-trees poked up, white and gnarled, from the grass of the promised meadow, like the fingers of a skeleton. Bernard hesitated, looking about him. He felt foolish to be going to do what he had been advised to do. Still, as far as he could tell no one was watching him, and the straightforward logic of common sense had long ago informed him that he was not at present in a location where common sense was greatly prized.
He was troubled, though, that he could see no sign at all of a road beyond this point, so that unless he did what he had been told, and it-ah-worked, he would have to retrace his path, with the concomitant prospect of a second encounter with Jorkas. For that he had no stomach. Accordingly he bowed his head three times, and was amazed to find that he was standing on a clearly-defined path. Which, he likewise noticed, led nowhere except around the alders.
Well, the black-clad man had said he should take the path which led around them. He turned to his left and strode resolutely along the circular path, hopeful of getting somewhere eventually.
At his third turn, when he was feeling truly embarrassed by his own silliness, he looked towards the alder-trees again and saw a very beautiful woman standing among them. She had a face of perfect oval shape, skin like mother-of-pearl and hair blacker than midnight. But she was gowned from shoulders to ankles in a dress that was red as blood.
She spoke to him in a musical voice, sarcastically. "And where do you think your circumambulations will carry you, my foolish friend? Did no one ever inform you that walking in circles takes you nowhere? Why not go forward? See!"
She raised her right arm, on which golden bracelets jangled, and when Bernard followed her pointing fingers he saw a city clustered around an enormous tower, the top of which resembled an onyx and the shaft of which resembled agate.
A strange sort of city! Yet at least a habitation, not a stretch of deserted countryside. He was half-minded to make hastily towards it, and yet felt a vague foreboding. There was an aura about that city...
He spoke to the air, to himself, not to the woman in red, and said, "The man who saved me from Jorkas advised me not to speak with a woman in a dress the color of blood. I assume this advice extends to not following any suggestion she may make to me." Doggedly he continued his rotatory progress, while the woman's laughter tinkled irritatingly in his ears, and was rewarded on his next circuit to see that she had gone. Somewhere. Somehow.
Moreover, another city was in "sight, and this was not so disturbing. Its towers were of gold and silver, and although the sky about it was of an electrical blue shade that seemed to presage nothing less familiar than the advent of a storm.
"There, perhaps," reasoned Bernard, "I may escape this conglomeration of cryptic non-meaningful events, and may even track down someone who can tell me how to get home."
He struck out across the meadow, and shortly came to a good though dusty road, which led straight towards the city with the gold and silver towers. Determined to reach it in the least possible time, he thrust the road behind him with feet that now began to ache more than a little.
"So!" said the enchanter Manuus, leaning back in his chair with a chuckle. "So!" he said again, dropping the cover-made of bat's skin as fine and supple as silk -over his scrying-glass. "Well, well, well, well, well!"
V
At the head of the council table-which, because the weather was oppressive, he had caused to be set out under the sycamore trees in the Moth Garden-the Margrave of Ryovora sat, frowning terribly.
Before him, the table stretched almost a hundred feet, in sections that were joined so cleverly the overarching trees could admire their reflections intact in the polished top. Nothing spoiled the perfection of this table, except the purplish sheen it had acquired from the heavy close air now filling the city.
To right and left of him, ranked in their chairs, sat the nobility of Ryovora, men and women of vast individual distinction: the merchant-enchanters, the persons of inquiring mind, the thinkers, the creators, all those to whom this city owed its fame and reputation.
The Margrave spoke, not looking at those who listened.
"Tell us what has taken place in your quarter of the town, Petrovic."
Petrovic, a dry little man with a withered face like an old apple, coughed apologetically and said, "There are omens. I have cast runes to ascertain their meaning.
They have no known meaning. Milk has been soured in the pan four mornings running in my demesne."
"And Ruman?"
Ruman was a man built like an oak tree, whose thick gnarled hands were twisting restlessly in his lap. He said, "I have slaughtered animals to divine what may be read in their entrails. I agree with Petrovic-these omens have no known significance. But two springs under the wall of the city, which have not failed in more centuries than I can discover, are dry this morning."
"And Gostala?"
Gostala was a woman with a queenly bosom and a queenly diadem of white hair plaited around her head. She said, "I have watched the flight of birds each dawn for seven days, and also at sunset. The results are confused. But a two-headed lamb has been born in the village of Dunwray."
"And Eadwil?"
Eadwil was hardly more than a boy. His chin was innocent of a beard and when he spoke his voice was like a reed pipe; still, one must respect his precocious wisdom. He said, "I have analyzed the relative situations of the stars and planets, and am driven to the hypotheses that either we know nothing at all or some unknown heavenly body is influencing events. A comet, perhaps. But yesterday lightning struck three times out of a clear sky, and-and, Margrave, I'm frightened!"
The Margrave nodded and made a comforting gesture in the air. It didn't help much. He said, "But this cannot be the whole story. I move that we-here, now, in full council-ask Him Who Must Know."
Eadwil rose to his feet. On his youthful lips trembled a sob, which he stoutly repressed.
"I request your permission to withdraw, then," he said. "It is well known how He Who Must Know deals with those in-uh-my condition."
The Margrave coughed and nodded approval of the discreet reference. Eadwil owed some of his precocity to the postponement of a major upheaval in his physiology, and the elemental they were considering found virgins vulnerable to his powers.
"Agreed," he said, and Eadwil departed, sighing with relief.
Before they could proceed with the business before them, however, there was a rustling sound from far down the table, and a voice spoke like the soughing of wind in bare winter woods.
"Margrave, I suggest otherwise."
The Margrave shifted uncomfortably in his chair. That was Tyllwin who spoke, a figure as gaunt as a scarecrow and as thin as a rake, who sat among them by courtesy because no one knew where he had come from or how old he was, but everyone knew he had many and peculiar powers which had never been put to use. Just as well, maybe. Whenever Tyllwin spoke, untoward events followed. The Margrave saw with alarm that several blossoms on nearby trees were withering.
"Speak, Tyllwin," he muttered, and braced himself.
Tyllwin chuckled, a scratching noise, and the flowers on the whole of one tree turned to fruit and rotted where they hung. His nearest neighbors left their seats hastily and moved towards the Margrave's end of the table.
Tyllwin's huge found head, like a turnip-ghost's, turned to watch them, and a smile curved his dusty lips. He said, "Is it not certain, masters of Ryovora, that these things foreshadow an important event?"
The rotten fruits fell with a squelching sound, and, ants hurried from among the roots of the trees to investigate. The company hardly dared do more than nod.
"Therefore," said Tyllwin, "I suggest we investigate the commotion which is shortly to take place at the main gate."
He fell silent. A few dead leaves blew across the table. Most of them clustered before Tyllwin's place, and he touched them with a bony hand, making them dissolve. The watchers trembled.
Still, the Margrave was relieved to find that nothing more outrageous was going to follow Tyllwin's unexpected loquacity. He said, "Well, what is the opinion of you all?"
Ruman spoke up, with a glance towards Tyllwin that lasted only half a second after meeting Tyllwin's eyes. He said, "I have not scried any such commotion."
"But you have not scried since yesterday," objected Gostala with feminine practicality.
"True, true. Then I am with Tyllwin."
"Petrovic?" inquired the Margrave.
"I am aware," that dried-up individual said in a doubtful tone, "that the people believe all our troubles would be at an end if we had a god, as other cities do. I hope that in this instance they are wrong; they usually are. Having heard from our neighbors at Acromel how severely they suffer from their deity-"
"This is far from the point," interrupted Gostala, tapping the table with a thumb-bone which had once been the property of a man fortunate enough-or unfortunate enough-to be her lover. "I say we do not know. Let us therefore expect both nothing and everything."
"Rational and well-spoken!" approved the Margrave. "Those in favor...?"
All present laid their right hands on the table, except Tuc, who had left his in the mouth of a dragon beyond an interesting sea of fire far to the north. Even Tyllwin moved with the rest, causing yet more leaves to wither and tremble on the tree that had suffered most since he broke from his impassivity.
"Agreed, then," said the Margrave. "Let us go thither."
The company rose with a bustle and began to adjourn to the main gate. The Margrave, however, remained behind a few moments, contemplating Tyllwin, who had not vacated his place.
When the others were at a distance he judged safe, he addressed the enchanter in a low voice.
"Tyllwin, what is your opinion of a god?"
Tyllwin laughed creakingly. "I have been asked that before," he said. "And I will answer as I did then: I do not know what a god is, and I doubt that many men do, either."
A branch on the tree overhanging him split with a warning cry, so that the Margrave flung up his hand automatically before his face. When he looked again, Tyllwin was gone.
The commotion at the gates, foreseen by Tyllwin and by no other of the council members, had already begun when the stately procession entered the avenue leading to them. Each enchanter had come after his or her own style: Petrovic walking with his staff called Nitra, from which voices could sometimes be heard when the moon was full; Gostala riding on a creature she had conjured out of the deep water which was its natural element, that cried aloud in heart-rending agony at every step; Ruman on the shoulders of a giant ape fettered with brass; Eadwil on his own young legs, although his feet shone red-hot when he had gone ten paces-this was to do with a geas about which no one ever inquired closely. The air about them crackled with the struggle between protective conjurations and the tense oppressive aura that enshrouded Ryovora.
In the wide street before the gateway a crowd had gathered, laughing, shouting, exclaiming with wonderment. In the midst of the throng, a man in outlandish attire, his face set in a frown of puzzlement, was vainly trying to contend with a hundred questions simultaneously.
The crowd parted to let the nobility by, and at once closed in again, like water around a slow-moving boat
The Margrave came up behind the rest, panting somewhat, for he was getting fat, and looked the stranger over curiously, while the people's voices rose to almost a roar and then sank again into a muttering buzz. At last, having cast a beseeching glance at his companions and received no offers of assistance, he was compelled to address the newcomer.
"Sir, who are you and what do you want?"
In the terribly patient tone of one dealing with lunatics, the stranger said, "My name is Bernard Brown, and all I want is to go home."
"That is easy enough," said the Margrave in relief. But if he had paused to reflect that Tyllwin was concerned at this man's arrival, he would not so soon have been optimistic. He rounded on Petrovic. "Will you oblige?" he said.
Petrovic looked up in the air and down at the ground. He scratched a number of ideograms in the dust with his staff Nitra, then hastily scuffed them over with his foot. He said flatly, "No."
"Well, if you won't you won't," sighed the Margrave. He appealed to Gostala, who merely shook her regal head and went on scrutinizing Bernard Brown.
"Eadwil!" cried the Margrave.
The boy, whose face had gone perfectly pale, stammered a few incomprehensible words and burst into tears.
"See! They can't! What did I tell you?" bellowed a bull-like voice from the crowd, and the Margrave shot a glance at the speaker as sharp as a spear.
"Come forth!" he commanded, and with the aid of a number of bystanders the fellow pushed and shoved until he stood before his ruler. He was an insolent-faced churl with a shock of corn-colored hair, and wore a leather apron with big pockets in which reposed the tools of his trade. He appeared to be some kind of worker in metal.
"You are-" said the Margrave, and ran through a short formula in his mind. "You are Brim, a locksmith. What did you mean by what you said?"
"What I said, of course," the fellow retorted, seeming amused. "Why, anyone can see he's not to be pushed around by ordinary folk!"
"Explain further," commanded the Margrave.
"Why, 'tes simple as your mind...sir." Brim thrust an errant lock of hair back into place with his blunt thumb. "I see it plain, and so do all of us. Here we've been saying these years past that what's amiss with Ryovora is we haven't got a god like all those towns around the world every wherever. And now, today, what else do the omens say? Can you tell us that?"
He thrust a stubby finger at the Margrave's chest. The Margrave recoiled and looked at him distastefully. But he was by inclination an honest man, so he had to shake his head and admit that although the noble enchanters had speculated long and long about the recent omens they had not been able to arrive at any conclusion.
"There, mates! What did I tell you?" bellowed Brim, whirling to face the crowd. There was an answering yell, and in a moment the situation had turned topsyturvy. The throng had closed in on Bernard Brown, unmindful that they trod on some of the nobles' toes, and had seized him and gone chairing him down the avenue, while men, women and children ran and skipped behind him, singing a rhythmic song and laughing like hyenas.
"Well!" said the Margrave in vexation. "This is a most improper and irregular state of affairs!"
VI
The Margrave had cause to repeat those words, with still greater emphasis and an even more sombre expression, the following morning. He sat once more at the head of the long table in the Moth Garden, for the air had become if anything more oppressive than yesterday; moreover, reports of omens seemed to have doubled in number.
"This is extremely aggravating!" said the Margrave testily. "Virtually the entire populace is firmly convinced this stranger is a god, simply because they can't make head or tail of what he says. Accordingly, they have turned me out of my own palace-I spent an uncomfortable night here in the Moth Garden-and are at work converting it into a temple for this character without so much as a by-your-leave!"
Eadwil suppressed an inappropriate smile. "Moreover," he supplied, "all those persons who have voyaged extensively are being interrogated concerning the correct manner in which to pay homage to a new deity. Brim the locksmith, around whom this ferment seems to be most turgid, has traveled to Acromel and is enthusiastic for human sacrifice; there is a group of women who in their youth were captives in Barbizond and wish to hold daily single combats before the altar; a man who formerly fished Lake Taxhling declares that the sole method of adopting the god is to burn down the city twice a year and re-build it, as the fisherfolk do with their reed-hut villages..."
Petrovic shook his withered head and opined, "No good will come of this."
"Has anyone knowledge of Tyllwin's whereabouts?" inquired the Margrave, for the gaunt one's place was empty today.
A shudder went down the table, and those in earshot shook their heads, not without expressions of relief.
"Well, then, let us proceed to a decision," said the Margrave. He shifted in his chair; his night in the open, although the weather was warm, had left him feeling bruised all over.
"The first point to establish," said Gostala sensibly, "is whether this Bernard Brown is indeed a god. If not-well!"
"Agreed!" came a chorus in reply.
Ruman snorted and thumped the table with a ham-like fist. "And how, pray, do we set about that?" he demanded with honey-sweet sarcasm. "For we have all previously confessed that we do not know what a god is. Was that not the reason why we never had gods in the old days?"
"I fear very much," said the Margrave heavily, "that the days of rational procedure in Ryovora may be finished. It would appear that the populace are already treating Bernard Brown as a god; unless, then, we arrive at disproofs adequate to disabuse them, life in Ryovora is doomed to become insufferable."
"Hah!" said Gostala without mirth.
"I have a suggestion," ventured Eadwil. "A god is reputed to have knowledge and power beyond what men may command. Let us therefore interrogate Bernard Brown on the most recondite and esoteric of our arts. If he fails to answer well, let us challenge him before the people, so that it may be seen his talents are small compared to ours."
"The proposal is rational," admitted the Margrave. "As I said, however, the days of rational thought here may be numbered.... However, if there is no better idea-.?"
None was forthcoming. Accordingly, the company betook themselves to the newly converted temple, that had formerly been the palace of the Margrave.
They found Bernard Brown-much worried, to judge by his expression-seated on a large silver and ebony throne above an enormous improvised altar. Before this throne the townsfolk were coming and going with gifts. Their most prized possessions were heaped about his feet, from their inherited table-plate to their newest garments. On the altar were piled luscious fruits and choice cuts of meat, together with bottles of delicious wine. Bernard Brown was sucking at one of the fruits and attempting to question the people. But they would not answer him; they merely listened respectfully, then went and wrote down what he said, with a view to creating a canon of mystical precepts.
The newcomers paused in the great hall to examine what had been done, and Eadwil spoke privily to the Margrave.
"Has not Tyllwin been here?" he said under his breath.
"You are right!" confirmed the Margrave. "I can scent his power in the air. Now what snare has that devious personage laid in our path?"
He advanced towards the altar. Taking his stand some ten feet away-because of the heaped-up gifts- he raised his voice and addressed the putative god.
"Sir! We are the nobility of Ryovora, come to determine whether or no you are a god, as the populace maintain!"
Bernard Brown gave a cautious nod. "I was advised about your intention," he confided. "And I have been warned not to deny the possibility. Since meeting with Jorkas on my way here, I have acquired a healthy respect for the advice I am given hereabouts, no matter how lunatic it may seem. Contrariwise, however, being honest, I must state that prior to my arrival in your city the notion that I might be a god had never crossed my mind."
The Margrave exchanged frustrated glances first with Eadwil and then with Ruman, who snorted characteristically and called to Bernard Brown.
"Are we to take it, then, that you believe it possible you're a god?"
"I don't know what to believe," said Bernard unhappily. "Until yesterday I had always pictured myself as a perfectly ordinary man. But certainly I am not ordinary in this world, wherever and whatever it may be."
"Come now!" said Ruman, bridling. "This is a reputable and well-regarded city! Or was, until you chose to intrude on its traditional sober existence."
"I chose nothing of the sort, if you will forgive my contradicting you," Bernard sighed. "All I want is to be allowed to go home!"
"This does not sound like the utterance of a god," the Margrave muttered to Eadwil, who nodded.
"Sir," he said to Bernard, "we wish to determine your powers. Are you acquainted with the Book of Universal Shame, and can you conjure from it?"
By now, the townspeople had ceased their going and coming before the altar, and were gathering in silence to listen to this discussion. It was plain that a few of them were unconvinced, propitiating Bernard only by way of insurance, as it were.
"I never heard of it," said Bernard, swallowing.
"Then of the Book of Three Red Elephants? Perhaps of the Casket of Disbelief?"
To each name Bernard shook his head.
Eadwil turned smiling to the Margrave. "It is most unlikely that he is a god!"
Then in their turn Petrovic, Gostala and Ruman questioned Bernard about the most esoteric wisdom known to them-which implied the most esoteric wisdom known to anyone. Some few individuals surpassed the enchanters of Ryovora, such as Manuus, but those persons were far beyond the commerce of everyday life and chose to exist alone with their powers, not intruding on mundane affairs.
To each inquiry Bernard was constrained to reply in the negative, and in the watching crowd some began to stare significantly at Brim. The locksmith grew more and more flustered and annoyed, until at last, when Ruman had completed his questioning, he strode forward and faced the altar challengingly, hands on hips.
"Let's have it straight!" he bellowed. "Are you a god, or is this false pretenses?"
"I-I was advised not to deny it," said Bernard tentatively, and the Margrave clapped his hand to his forehead.
"Fool that I am!" he exclaimed, and thrust Brim to one side, ignoring the fellow's complaint. "It was Tyllwin who advised you thus, was it not?"
"I don't suppose it can do much harm to say who it was," Bernard decided reflectively. "Uh-whether it was Tyllwin or not, I'm unsure, for he gave me no name. But I can describe him: a very charming elderly gentleman, with a wisp of white beard clinging at his chin."
"Manuus!" exclaimed several persons together, and the Margrave whirled to face his colleagues.
"How many of you had seen Tyllwin before yesterday?" he demanded.
"Why-" began three or four speakers, and as one fell silent with expressions of amazement.
"You have it!" snapped the Margrave. "He was there, and some enchantment persuaded us he was seated by right and custom. But I for one now realize that I have no other knowledge of Tyllwin. Well, then! So Manuus is behind all this! We must go to him and tell him that he is not permitted to meddle in Ryovora's affairs. If he chose to live among us as a responsible citizen, that would be a different cauldron of spells. But as things are, we can only respect his privacy so long as he respects ours."
There was much shuffling of feet. With juvenile dignity Eadwil spoke up. "Margrave, I regret that I dare not face Manuus in this connection. My powers are inadequate as yet. I hate to shelter behind my youth- but."
And he took his leave.
One by one, shamefacedly, the others of the council followed his example, until the Margrave was left by himself, and the townsfolk, having garnered from these events only that the nobles had failed to disprove Bernard's divinity, hastily resumed their self-imposed tasks.
"A fine lot we breed in Ryovora!" exclaimed the Margrave scornfully. The scorn was a mask for his own forebodings; he was less of an enchanter than many who served under him, having achieved his eminence on administrative skills. But nonetheless he was a resolute man, and accordingly he summoned his train and set forth to beard Manuus in his castle.
The mists parted in such fashion as to imply that this call was not unexpected, and having left his attendants huddled together in the great yard he ascended to Manuus's sanctum with determined steps. There the enchanter greeted him with warm expressions of respect.
But the Margrave was ill at ease in this place of discomfortable forces, and came to the point as quickly as manners would permit. He said firmly, when he had the chance, "Sir, since you are Tyllwin's master you know my errand."
"Correction," the enchanter parried blandly. "I am Tyllwin. I have certain other natures beside my own-a trait which I share with all persons save one alone."
The Margrave made an appropriate sign at the mention of him who has many names but one nature, and pressed on with what he had to say.
"We will not tolerate interference, sir," he declared. "Since time immemorial we in Ryovora have striven to create a tradition of calm rationality, and to rely upon hard sense. This petty trick of intruding a so-called god like a gaming-piece into our affairs is hardly worthy of a gentleman of your distinction."
"I agree," said Manuus. "And you may therefrom deduce it is not of my choosing."
"What?"
"In this matter," the enchanter continued, ignoring the exclamation, "you and I are on the same side: so to say, the outside. It will perhaps interest you to know that he of whom we were speaking a moment ago- whose nature is single-was sitting in that chair only two days ago."
The Margrave shivered, and wondered what he had stumbled into. He said respectfully, "Manuus, your powers are beyond imagining!"
"Oh, he did not come at my bidding!" With a thin chuckle. "Rather the reverse!"
"However that may be, I shall take leave of you," said the Margrave, rising and bowing. "For if this matter is his concern, I dare do nothing to intervene."
Manuus shook his head, his eyes twinkling. "I am afraid you have no choice, Margrave," he said. "Like it or not, you and I are both concatenated in this web."
At which the Margrave departed, his heart so heavy he could barely lift his boots, and when he was gone Manuus fell to ceremonies of a land that had not been performed in living memory, and strange phenomena attended them. There was a storm on peaceful Lake Taxhling; in Barbizond, three madmen ran screaming through the streets; on a hill near Acromel, dust-devils ceased their whirling. Last, but not least, several persons in Ryovora itself saw visions of a disturbing nature, and went hastily to the new-designated temple to place yet more offerings at the feet of Bernard Brown and to consult the already sizable record of his sayings.
Studying them, they found no comfort.
VII
And thus the matter was to remain for another day. The Margrave, making as was his custom the best of a bad job, called up an obliging spirit and had a pavilion built in the Moth Garden to serve as a temporary surrogate for his palace; there he sat, swearing mightily, far into the night, while he pondered the information Manuus had divulged.
Those other nobles of Ryovora who were best skilled in the art of magic met to discuss in low tones over their wine the riddle of distinguishing divinity from humanity. They remained unswayed by both the clamor of the populace, led by Brim, and the scant evidence furnished by their interrogation of Bernard Brown. It seemed implausible, they allowed, that such a person should be a god; nonetheless, one must respect the powers of Manuus, and perhaps in the mood to make a jest of Ryovora he could have conjured up an authentic deity....
The common folk, similarly, found themselves impaled by a dilemma. However, they had been longing for a god of some sort for a considerable while; indisputably someone strange had come among them, preceded by complex indecipherable omens, and it was generally deemed advisable to act as though he were a genuine god until some incontestable argument to the contrary should be advanced.
So the night passed; and of those many who spent it restlessly, not the least fervent seeker of repose was Bernard Brown, for all that his couch was a vast stack of gorgeous offerings in velvet and satin.
It had been centuries since another city had marched against Ryovora. The citizens had long ago deduced that their best protection was their reputation; who after all would dare attack that city where pre-eminently the populace enjoyed the gift to plan and reason?
Perennially cautious, nonetheless, they financed the wages of a team of watchmen... and next day as dawn was breaking the current incumbent of the watchman's post en route to his customary breakfast gave a casual glance across the country separating Ryovora from Acromel.
And saw with astonishment-not to mention disbelief-that a red idol a hundred feet high was striding with enormous yells towards him.
Such an idol, the watchman realized, could be none other than the Quadruple God of Acromel.
Around the monstrous crimson feet were fetters of riveted steel; before and behind, men went with blazing torches on poles fifty feet long, prodding and driving it in a desired direction. Sometimes the thing's yelling howled into a ridiculous falsetto when a torch made contact with its blood-colored limbs, and the drovers had to scatter and flee from the blows of eight gigantic fists. But they returned, and it became plain to see that they now well understood the actions of their idol, and could drive it like a maddened bull because its rage made it unthinking.
The watchman sounded an alarm, that spread through the streets of Ryovora like flood-waters through a burst levee, and men, women, even children leapt from sleep to dash hither and thither in confusion.
One by one the nobles were summoned, and assembled on the ramparts in an impressive band; thousand by thousand the common folk acquired makeshift weapons-knives, scythes, axes-and numbered off into centuries to prepare for battle.