So arrayed they waited tensely while the sun cleared the horizon and the Quadruple God with his attendants came to take station before the city walls.

 

 

At a sign from one who seemed to be the leader, the torch-wielders compelled the god to halt, and he stood screaming empty threats at the unresponsive sky. Then this same man advanced to stand on a small knoll and gaze insolently at the nobles of Ryovora.

 

 

"Greetings!" he called merrily. "News has come to us in Acromel that you have been fortunate enough to acquire a god in the past few days! Well, as it happens we in Acromel have been fortunate in more ways than one-we have lost Duke Vaul, who had for many years oppressed us, and we have gained power of the Quadruple God." The man gestured over his shoulder at the misshapen idol.

 

 

"It seems to us," the spokesman went on, "that our god is very foolish, although extremely strong. It is said that your god is weak, but extremely wise. We have not been able to make head or tail of these cryptic utterances which have been relayed to us! Regardless of that, we wish to try conclusions and thus determine whether brute strength in a god is a quality superior to sageness. I await your answer, sirs and ladies! Failing this trial, we shall of course goad the Quadruple God into Ryovora, and since he overtops all but your highest towers, I suspect that would be a major misfortune for the city."

 

 

He bowed with a flourish of his right hand, and descended from the knoll.

 

 

The Margrave, scowling so deeply it seemed a ploughshare must have crossed his brow, called the nobles into conference on the ramparts, and spoke worriedly concerning this challenge. Some were of opinion that if the personage with many names and one nature had taken a hand, there was nothing any of them could do; others poured scorn on this faint-hearted attitude, among them Ruman, whose bull laugh echoed around the walls.

 

 

"Never say die!" he boomed. "Some magic is of an order that will bind even gods, and I have important knowledge of this magic. Go, fetch me a black goat and a white pigeon, and a mirror cracked from edge to edge, and I will discomfit the Quadruple Idiot over there!"

 

 

So it was ordained, and Ruman withdrew into a large black cloud with his goat, his pigeon and his mirror, and what he did to them brought about thunderclaps.

 

 

But eventually the cloud blew away, and there was no trace of Ruman.

 

 

"This is ridiculous!" said Gostala with feminine directness, and Petrovic nodded his old dried-up head.

 

 

"I agree," he rasped. "Goats, forsooth! Pigeons! Mirrors! Claptrap! Now I came prepared, Margrave- I have here a phial containing the blood of an unborn child. That and my knowledge are all I require."

 

 

Then Petrovic set about his task, and did what he had to do in the sight of all, which was most disturbing. The Margrave, trying not to watch, wished Petrovic had had the decency to conceal himself as Ruman had done.

 

 

Yet the business failed, and Petrovic returned to them at last speaking a tongue no one could understand, and burst into tears when he realized what had transpired. The great red idol still fumed and howled and shook his chains.

 

 

"Igoroth!" said Gostala in exasperation. "Dumedinnis! And likewise Algorethon!"

 

 

Three odd-looking gentlemen-one in blue, one in white, one in green-walked through a nearby wall and stood before her. None of them was entirely normal in appearance, though it was hard to say in what particular respect.

 

 

"Get rid of that-object!" directed Gostala forcefully.

 

 

The three peculiar personages looked at her, then at each other, then at her again. Premeditatedly, they shook their heads, and departed, taking her with them.

 

 

The Margrave hastily hurled a protective charm about the city, to guard against a re-appearance of the three-for they were notoriously tough to tackle-and bit his lip in frustration. This was a bad business altogether, and the worst fears he had carried away from his interview with Manuus were being overfulfilled.

 

 

"These are indeed magics to bind a god," said Eadwil, his boyish face white and strained because his feet were blazing hot-he had walked from his dwelling when news of the attack was brought. "But are they magics to bind one such as Manuus? Margrave, I think Tyllwin may be found in the vicinity."

 

 

"You are a true citizen of Ryovora," the Margrave said with enthusiasm. "That is clear reasoning."

 

 

He strode forward to the battlements and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Tyllwin!" he bellowed towards the Acromel party. "Tyllwin, ha!"

 

 

An acre of grass turned brown and died, while songbirds that had been chanting in the trees nearby fell stiffly from their perches. And from the besieging company the gaunt figure of Tyllwin was borne into view on the back of a brawny slave.

 

 

"You desire speech with me, Margrave?" said that scarecrow form.

 

 

"So this is your doing!" exclaimed the Margrave in disgust.

 

 

Tyllwin's thin chuckle carried clearly to his ears; also to those of various dogs, causing them to howl.

 

 

"Why, Margrave, did I not state that you and I are on the same side in this matter? Admit frankly that the pretended god in your palace is not to your taste! Admit that it is in our common interest to show his fallibility by matching him against this perfectly genuine god from Acromel!"

 

 

"It's for this reason that you have destroyed three of the leading enchanters of our city?" bellowed the Margrave. "Why could you not have left us to deal with the matter ourselves?"

 

 

Tyllwin's voice was suddenly as dull as doom. "Because he whose nature is single has a hand in the affair."

 

 

He fell silent. A horse neighed into the quietness, and the neigh became a scream of agony.

 

 

The Margrave looked helplessly at Eadwil, who shook his head. "Against Manuus, which of us can stand?" he said. "Moreover, the business is escaping our control. Look down into the street. The townsfolk have gone to fetch their god, supplicating him for protection."

 

 

Indeed, down the broad avenue leading to the main gate, they saw a pressing throng of men and women, and among them a figure in outlandish attire who was crying out for aid and receiving none. Brim the locksmith could be discerned grasping his elbow, hurrying him willy-nilly along, and occasional voices rang out distinct above the general uproar.

 

 

"Save us! Defeat the enemy god! We have no hope except in you!"

 

 

"Hah!" said the Margrave in mingled pity and annoyance. "So nothing will convince them the wretch is not a god, but that he be laid low by the Quadruple One. Well, at least we now know which way the lot is cast."

 

 

Eadwil mustered the ghost of a smile. "I wonder!" he said. "I wonder...!"

 

 

Shortly the leaders of the crowd opened the gates, and poured forth onto an open level space where they could confront the menacing array of troops from Acromel. On seeing those armored ranks-for the enemy had doubtless made careful preparations, whereas the folk of Ryovora had been surprised-many felt qualms and tried to draw back, but the press was too great, and at length the mass of them, in number three or four thousand, simmered and seethed but stood still.

 

 

Urging his god forward, and sweating, Brim the locksmith made a path to the front of the crowd. "There!" he bellowed, throwing up his arm to indicate the hideous red idol. "That's the best they can muster against you! Hark at his howling! Why, already he fears your mere presence!"

 

 

"I must go down," said the Margrave in low tones. "I have no stomach to stand and watch the poor fools massacred."

 

 

"I will come also," said Eadwil. And accordingly they descended together to the gate. Among muttered threats from the commoners, saying that if these nobles were going to- interfere out of spite they would get short shrift, they elbowed closer and closer to Bernard. The heat of Eadwil's glowing feet helped clear a path.

 

 

At last the Margrave was face to face with Bernard Brown, and cast on him a look full of sympathy.

 

 

"This is none of our doing," he said in apologetic tones. "It seems that the people of Ryovora, so long reputed sensible, have finally taken leave of their senses."

 

 

Bernard Brown blinked unhappily at him. "I think you are right, sir," he agreed. "Especially since this galumphing monstrosity is plainly nothing more than an overgrown child."

 

 

"A what?" said the Margrave, and Eadwil was seen to be grinning almost from ear to ear.

 

 

"An overgrown child," repeated Bernard patiently. "Why, he howls and strikes out and breaks things at random-this is not the behavior of an intelligent, adult personality! Moreover, one must assume that the folk of Acromel have attempted to establish communication with the idol, must one not?"

 

 

"Why-ah..." The Margrave was bewildered. "One would imagine so, yes!"

 

 

"Yet their preferred mode of communication proves to be torches on sticks." Bernard spread his hands. "I deduce that we have here a case of arrested development, and what I would propose..."

 

 

VIII

 

 

Wave upon wave of laughter rang out around the walls of Ryovora, and at once the citizens, led by the Margrave, set about implementing Bernard's plan. Eadwil stood a little apart, his lips set in a smile that bid fair to become permanent.

 

 

Meanwhile, the sky grew to full brightness, and the sun hoisted itself towards the meridian. Among the ranks of those from Acromel a certain impatience grew manifest. The long torches which served to goad the idol were withdrawn one by one, soaked in fresh pitch, and re-lit; the chains which tethered his sixteen limbs were anchored firmly to posts hammered in the ground, so that the teams of men afoot and ahorse who weighed him down when he was on the move might relax for a while; but in the comings and goings of the people, there was more restlessness than purpose.

 

 

Ultimately, towards mid-day, the spokesman who had previously addressed the nobility of Ryovora again ascended his knoll and called for the Margrave. Sweating from his work, hands filthy, his richly embroidered sleeves turned back above his elbows, the Margrave leaned over the ramparts and gave a wave.

 

 

"Margrave! Our god is restive! Time wastes, and we desire to know the outcome of this affair!"

 

 

The Margrave glanced down into the avenue below the wall, where work was proceeding apace under Bernard Brown's direction. Far below him, Eadwil raised an arm in signal that all was ready.

 

 

"Good!" said the Margrave to himself, and called to the spokesman for Acromel.

 

 

"Our city's god is prepared to meet yours!"

 

 

The man from Acromel at once spun on his heel and yelled to those charged with loosing the Quadruple God's chains. A moment passed; then, from the front of the crowd before the gate, diffidently yet with unfaltering strides Bernard Brown marched out towards the enemy.

 

 

A gust of merriment ascended, and the welkin echoed with scornful gibes. But Bernard kept on marching towards the Quadruple God.

 

 

And the Quadruple God paid him no attention.

 

 

Behind the approaching man, behind the ramparts of the city, another figure was appearing-a figure so gigantic, so bloated, so huge that the Quadruple God seemed a mere ant by comparison. This apparition had a head with teeth twenty feet long in its gash of a mouth; it had arms like a hundred barrels, it had legs planted either side of a tall building.

 

 

This figure was growing. It was rising as though from the depths of the earth, and all four heads of the Quadruple God were striving to fasten their eyes on it at once.

 

 

Gracefully, considering its incredible bulk-thanks to an afterthought of Eadwil's-the bloated colossus raised its arms into a menacing posture. From the camp of the men of Acromel, the naked eye could not detect the fine silk cords governing its motions.

 

 

And then this construct of inflated wineskins, of paint and cane and waxed fabric supported with hot air, spoke with the massed voice of all the citizens of Ryovora, a voice like the crashing of a waterfall.

 

 

"Go away!" said the monster with terrible emphasis.

 

 

And the Quadruple God burst his chains, stamped on the torch-bearers, and fled.

 

 

Only once was his panicky progress interrupted before he regained the familiar sanctuary of his temple at Acromel on the far horizon. That was when a gaunt and scarecrow-like person rushed into his path, crying in a voice which though thin and reedy caused cracks to open in the surface of the land, and strange colors to muddy the clear blue of the sky.

 

 

The Quadruple God trampled this nuisance with three of his eight massive feet, and left nothing but a smear like a crushed beetle to mark the spot.

 

 

Triumphantly, the people of Ryovora went forward in the wake of the people of Acromel, and with their ad-hoc weapons wrought considerable havoc among the laggards. Not the most tongue-tied of them was Brim the locksmith, who spent more breath on yelling praise of his own perceptiveness than on catching up with the rearguard of the enemy.

 

 

But certain of his fellows who had been lukewarm in their acceptance of Bernard Brown as a ready-made god turned aside to surround Brim in a hostile manner. "Nonsense!" they said emphatically. "If we had not been lured by fools like you away from our customary trust in common sense, we should have seen what he saw and done what he advised, anyway."

 

 

Then they set about Brim with meticulous thoroughness, and impressed the extent of his stupidity upon him, in such fashion as to ensure he could never again overlook these various mementos. That chore attended to, and the other party in utter disarray, they returned with satisfaction to their homes. By that time the aura of blue depression which had pervaded the atmosphere these many weeks past had dissipated; the cause for rejoicing which this gave them made them forget altogether about Bernard Brown.

 

 

The Margrave and his nobles assembled again in the Moth Garden, and the people began to reclaim the offerings they had set before Bernard's altar, to feast on them and deck themselves in gaudy ceremonial attire. To preoccupy the nobles, though, there were still problems, and Eadwil spoke of the most pressing when they were met.

 

 

He said, "I think, sirs and ladies, that the age for enchantments is passing."

 

 

The Margrave nodded. So did several others. Some of them glanced at the place which had been-very briefly-Tyllwin's.

 

 

"Regard it this way," said Eadwil musingly. "In its nature enchantment, magic, whatever term you give the art, is a survival of the chaos which we know reigned before time. But the imprint of that chaos is fading from the world. The confusion which causes stone idols to walk, elementals to be personified in storm-clouds, humans to blend with animals and spirits to speak from fire and water, is gradually succumbing to that same hard sense on which we in Ryovora traditionally rely."

 

 

"Well spoken!" applauded the Margrave. Eadwil gave him a sidelong glance and concluded thus.

 

 

"Manuus is-was-whether as Tyllwin or himself, a master of chaos. So are we all in lesser degree. But the greatest master of all has proved to be a simple stranger lacking all acquaintance with the esoteric arts. Colleagues and friends, magic is of the past. Rationality and logic will rule the future." He bent his gaze below the table. "My feet, I may add, have not burned since I arrived at this conclusion. So I think I shall forthwith take steps to set right the other disadvantage consequent upon my command of magic. Excuse me."

 

 

And with a hop and a skip he departed in the wake of a saucy-eyed girl who was bearing fruit from the garden to the feast the people were preparing.

 

 

Another who was in the Moth Garden was a black-clad traveler, whose face twitched into a satisfied smile when he heard Eadwil's words. He did not need to wait longer or listen more.

 

 

On that same knoll from which the spokesman of Acromel's forces had addressed the Margrave, Bernard Brown sat with his chin in his hands, staring gloomily at nothing. His dismal contemplation was interrupted at length by the presence of one who was not a stranger, who stood before him leaning on a remarkable staff.

 

 

"I've seen you before," said Bernard slowly. "Well, who are you?"

 

 

The black-clad one chuckled. "He to whom the task was given of bringing order out of chaos in this corner of the universe," he replied. "And who are you?"

 

 

"I'm not sure I know any longer," admitted Bernard after a pause. "I thought I was Bernard Brown until recently, and that I was a rather ordinary kind of person. But these past few days people have been telling me so repeatedly I'm a god that I've almost been convinced of the idea."

 

 

The black-clad man clucked with his tongue. "I'm afraid that isn't true at all," he said. "So-since I was responsible for involving you with all this-I'd better explain."

 

 

He sat down companionably alongside Bernard on the knoll, and gestured in the air with his staff. A short distance away, in a pleasant meadow, some clinging ground-mist cleared to reveal the ruins of a castle, smoking quietly.

 

 

"An enchanter called Manuus dwelt there," he said. "A person with-so to speak-a vested interest in the chaos which formerly engulfed the entire universe. This sort of thing."

 

 

He gestured again, and out of a hill a mile or two this side of Acromel a-a-a... Well, a pair of yellow eyes peered briefly. What could be seen in those eyes defied description. It made Bernard shudder with amazement and repugnance.

 

 

"So where am I?" he demanded. "Or is it a question of when am I?"

 

 

"Neither. We are speaking of a borderland between chaos, existing in eternity, and reason, existing in time.

 

 

At this moment, the balance is uncertain, but it is tipping, bit by bit. You have been quite invaluable in tilting it beyond a crucial point."

 

 

"I don't understand!" complained Bernard.

 

 

"No matter. If you did understand the nature of chaos, men being what they are, you would certainly be conceited enough to wish to exploit it. This in fact is what those vain enchanters do: turn the forces of chaos to their own advantage. But, logically, to control chaos with reason is to impose lasting order on it. This implies in turn that sooner or later chaos will reign no longer."

 

 

Bernard's face exhibited sudden comprehension. "I see!" he exclaimed. "In other words, these magicians or whatever necessarily destroy what they most desire to preserve, by imposing rational control on it."

 

 

"You get the point exactly," said the one in black.

 

 

"And it's up to you to ensure that things come out right?"

 

 

"Alas, yes!"

 

 

"Hmm!" Bernard rubbed his chin. "That sounds like a tough chore! Who landed you with it, if I may ask?"

 

 

"You may not. I'm very sorry." The tone was final; still, the words were succeeded by a chuckle. This black-garbed fellow was really very pleasant, Bernard reflected. Casting around for the other question he had meant to put, he recalled it.

 

 

"Well, then! May I at least ask what it was I did?"

 

 

"That, yes! You see, there was dissatisfaction in Ryovora so long as the people felt they had to have "a god. So I gave them one... of a kind. And after all that, they realized their god had done nothing for them which they could not have achieved by using their heads. My compliments, by the way, on the elegant manner in which you demonstrated that."

 

 

"I was scared silly," confessed Bernard.

 

 

"But you kept your wits about you, and refused to be overawed by mere size. The universe is a big place, and there are many corners of it where chaos on the grand scale still obtains. This, then, is a valuable attitude to inculcate."

 

 

Bernard pondered for a while. At last he shook his head and sighed. "I guess I'm actually dreaming," he said. "I can't believe a word you say."

 

 

"Congratulations, and thank you," said the black-clad one dryly. "That you can speak thus is an earnest of my eventual success. Sometimes it seems a very long way away."

 

 

"What will-if this is the right way to put it-what will happen then?"

 

 

"I don't know," said his companion. "Why should I care? I'll have finished my appointed job. And since you have now finished yours..."

 

 

When he was alone, the traveler in black stood awhile leaning on his staff of curdled light, gazing at the wreck of Manuus's castle.

 

 

Chaos.

 

 

He decreed it out of existence. Since Manuus no longer held it tenaciously in being, it disappeared. Across the site the grass grew green and orderly.

 

 

The traveler wished that Bernard had not asked his last question. It was discomforting. Now and then he regretted that he must inevitably find out its answer.

 

 

Yet it was not in his nature-and his nature was single-to undo anything he had done. Therefore, inexorably, he was approaching that ultimate moment.

 

 

He shrugged, and then there was nothing but the knoll and the afternoon sunlight, while people made merry in Ryovora.

 

 

two

 

 

BREAK THE DOOR OF HELL

 

 

"I will break the door of hell and smash the bolts; I will bring up the dead to eat food with the living, and the living shall be outnumbered by the host of them."

 

 

-The Epic of Gilgamesh

 

 

I

 

 

Time had come to Ryovora.

 

 

The traveler in black contemplated the fact from the brow of the hill where he had imprisoned Laprivan, more eons ago than it was possible to count. Leaning on his staff made of light, he repressed a shiver. Single though his nature might be, unique though that attribute certainly was, he was not immune from apprehension; his endowments did not include omniscience.

 

 

Time had come to that great city: Time, in which could exist order and logic and rational thought. And so it was removed from his domain for ever, vanished from the borderland of chaos situated timeless in eternity.

 

 

The task for which his single nature fitted him was the bringing forth of order; accordingly it might have been expected that he should feel the satisfaction of achievement, or even a mildly conceited pleasure. He did not, and for this there were two most cogent reasons and a third which he preferred not to consider.

 

 

The first, and most piquing, was that his duty lay on him: this season followed the conjunction of four significant planets hereabout, and he was setting forth to oversee that portion of the All which lay in his charge, as he was constrained to. And he had grown accustomed to terminating his round of inspection at Ryovora. Lapses and backsliding from common sense had occasionally minded him to alter this habit; still, he had never done so, and to discover that Ryovora was elsewhere annoyed him somewhat.

 

 

The second reason was not annoying. It was alarming, and dismaying, and unprecedented, and many other distressing epithets.

 

 

"In sum," the traveler in black announced to the air, "it's unheard-of!"

 

 

Another city had arisen in the borderland of chaos, and it was stamped all over with the betraying mark of Time.

 

 

How was it possible? Carried in some eddy whose flow ran counter to the universal trend, so that from reason and logic it receded to the random reign of chance? Presumably. Yet the means whereby such an eddy might be created seemed inconceivable. Some great enchantment would be required, and in the grip of Time enchantment was impossible.

 

 

"A contradiction in terms!" exclaimed the traveler, speaking aloud again to distract his mind from the third and least palatable reason for regretting the loss of Ryovora. It was known to him that when he had accomplished his task all things would have but one nature; then they would be subsumed into the Original All, and time would have a stop. Beyond which point...

 

 

He glanced around him at the hillside. As ever, among the sparse-leaved grey bushes, dust-devils were sifting their substance, fine as ashes, over the footprints he had left on the path. Raising his staff, he tapped with it on a rock: once, twice, and again.

 

 

At the third tap the elemental Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes heaved in his underground prison and cracks appeared in the road. From these his voice boomed, monstrous, making the welkin echo.

 

 

"Leave me be!"

 

 

"What do you know of the city which stands yonder?" said the traveler in black.

 

 

"Nothing," responded Laprivan with sullenness.

 

 

"Nothing? You say so to spare yourself the pain of memory! Shall I send you where Ryovora has gone, into the domain of Time? There memories cannot be expunged by whirling dust!"

 

 

The whole hill shuddered, and an avalanche of pale rock rattled on its further side. The sourceless voice moaned, "What should I know of the city yonder? No man has come from it and passed this way."

 

 

"Bad," said the traveler thoughtfully. "Very bad."

 

 

After that he was silent for a long while, until at last the elemental pleaded, "Leave me be! Leave me to wipe clean the slate of yesterday!"

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler absently, and tapped with his staff again. The cracks in the ground closed; the dust-devils resumed their revolutions.

 

 

Ignoring all this, the traveler gazed over the green and gracious meadows of the valley. There the strange city lay in noon-tide sunlight like a worn-out toy cast aside by a giant-child. The heedless ruin of Time was everywhere about it, toothmarks of the greatest leveler on brick and stone and metal. It had been fair and rich, that was plain; its gates were of oak and bronze-but the bronze was corroded green; its towers were of silver and orichalcum-but their bright sheen was overlaid with a dull mist like the foul breath of a swamp; its streets were broad and paved with marble-but the flags lifted to the roots of wild plants, and here and there one found holes filled by the rain and noxious with algae and insect-larvae.

 

 

Out of Time and into chaos. Almost beyond belief.

 

 

At length he stirred himself. There was nothing else for it-so he reasoned-but to set off on his journey of obligation, and come at last not to familiar, welcome Ryovora, but to this enigma wished on him by fate and boding no good whatever.

 

 

Anxiety carried him far and fast, and little by little it was mitigated by relief. To learn that Acromel stood where it had, albeit altered; to find that they yet fished Lake Taxhling when the proper stars came out, and that the river Metamorphia fed it with strange unspawned creatures, greedy and unwholesome-this was reassuring, an earnest of balance continued in the cosmos.

 

 

And at these places, and many many more, he did what on this as on all his journeys was required of him.

 

 

A lonely hut stood on the shelf-edge of a mountain pasture in the land called Eyneran; here when he paused to ask a crust of bread and a sup of ewe's milk from the flock.high and distant as clouds on the steep meadow, a woman with a frightened face opened the ill-carpentered door to him, and met his request with a silent shake of the head.

 

 

She was wrinkled and worn out beyond her years; yet the hut was sound, a savory smell filled the air, and the clean floor and many copper pots the traveler could see assorted badly with her ragged gown and bare feet. He waited. Shortly a cry-man-deep, yet edged with a child's petulance-rang out.

 

 

"Mother, come here! The pot's boiling over! What's keeping you, you lazy slut?"

 

 

"Mintra!" whispered the woman, and a patter of feet announced the passage of a girl, some twelve years old, across the floor to tend the pot.

 

 

Another cry, still louder: "Mother, I told you to come here! Mintra can't lift the pot when it's full, you stupid old bag of bones!"

 

 

"We can't give you food," the woman said to the traveler. "All of it is for my son."

 

 

The traveler nodded, but waited still. Then at last with great heaving and panting the son came into view: gross-bulging in his apparel of velvet worked with gilt wire and stained with slobberings of food, so tall he nearly scraped the roof with his pate, yet so fat he breathed hard for the simple effort of standing upright.

 

 

His fist, big as a ham, cracked his mother behind the ear.

 

 

"Why don't you die, you lazy old cow, and get it over with?" he bellowed.

 

 

"It'd be a merciful relief," the woman whimpered. "And die I would of my own free will, but that I stand alone between you and Mintra! With me gone you'd take her like a harlot, sister or no!"

 

 

"And wouldn't she be a tasty bit for my bed?" chortled the son with an evil grin, his tongue emerging thick as an ox's to stroke his lips lasciviously.

 

 

"As you wish," said the traveler, "so be it." And he knocked his staff on the threshold and took his leave.

 

 

That night the plague stole silent from the mountain mist, and took the mother as the son had wished; then the girl Mintra fled on light feet down the hill-trails and the fever-giddy glutton went calling her among the heedless sheep until his gross weight dislodged a rock and sent him over a precipice to feed the crows.

 

 

In the rich city Gryte a thief spoke to curse the briefness of the summer night, which had cut short his plan to break the wall of a merchant's counting-house.

 

 

"Oh that dawn never overtook me!" he cried. "Oh that I had lasting darkness whereby to ply my trade!"

 

 

"As you wish," said the traveler, "so be it." And darkness came: two thick grey cataracts that shut the light away.

 

 

Likewise in Medham was another rogue, striving to seduce a lady who feared her charms were passing with the years so that he might win to a coffer of gold secreted in her chamber. "I love you!" declared this smooth-tongued deceiver. "I'd wed you had you no more than rags and a shack!"

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, and bailiffs came down the street to advise the lady that her house and treasure were forfeit on another's debt. Upon which the liar turned and ran, not staying to hear a city officer who followed hard on the bailiffs' heels report the honoring of the debt a day past due.

 

 

So too in Wocrahin a swaggering bully came down the street on market-day, cuffing aside children with the back of his hand and housewives with the flat of his sword. "Oh that my way were not cluttered with such riffraff!" he exclaimed, his shoulder butting into the traveler's chest.

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, and when the bully turned the corner the street he walked was empty under a leaden sky-and the buildings on either side, and the taverns, and the shops. Nor did he again in all eternity have to push aside the riffraff he had cursed; he was alone.

 

 

This, however, was not the sum total of the traveler's doings as he passed from place to place within his realm. In Kanish-Kulya they had built a wall to keep Kanishmen and Kulyamen apart, and from either side, set into the masonry, grinned down the skulls of those dead in a war for which the reason had long been forgotten. In this strange and dreadful place Fegrim was pent under a volcano; shadowed by its cone the traveler halted and spoke long and seriously with that elemental, and when he was done the country for a mile on every side was dusted with cinders, little and bright as fireflies.

 

 

At Gander's Well, branched Yorbeth brooded in the guise of a tall tree whose main root tapped a wonderful subterranean spring and whose boughs, fed with miraculous sap, sprouted leaves and fruit the like of which had not been seen under any sun before. The traveler spent an hour in the shade of that tree, and for the questions he asked was constrained to carry away a red twig and later catch a cat and perform a ceremony with these two items-a price he paid with heavy heart, for he had been told nothing of any great use in his inquiries.

 

 

Also he consulted with Farchgrind, and in Leppersley he cast the bones of a girl's foot to read the runes they formed, and after great labor he incarcerated Wolpec in a candle over whose flame he smoked a piece of glass which thereupon showed three truths: one ineluctable, one debatable and one incomprehensible. That was in Teq, when the end of his journey was near.

 

 

So presently he came to Barbizond, where there was always a rainbow in the sky because of the bright being Sardhin, chained inside a thundercloud with fetters of lightning. Three courses remained to him: he might free Sardhin and let him speak, and from here to the horizon nothing would be left save himself, the elemental, and that which was of its nature bright, as jewels, or fire, or the edge of a keen-bladed knife; or he might do as once he had done under similar circumstances-address himself to an enchanter and make use of powers that trespassed too far towards naked chaos to be within his own scope--or, finally, he might go forward in ignorance to the strange city and confront the challenge of fate without the armor of foreknowledge.

 

 

Some little while remained to him before he needed to take his irreversible decision. Coming to Barbizond, therefore, he made his way down a fine broad avenue where plane and lime trees alternated in the direction of a steel-blue temple. There stood the altar of Hnua-Threl, who was also Sardhin when he chose to be; the people invoked him with daily single combats on the temple floor. They were not a gentle folk, these inhabitants of Barbizond, but they were stately, and died-in tournaments, or by the assassin's knife, or by their own hand-with dignity.

 

 

A death had lately occurred, that was plain, for approaching the city gate came a funeral procession: on a high-wheeled cart drawn by apes in brazen harness, the corpse wrapped in sheets of lead, gold and woven leaves; a band of gongmen beating a slow measure to accompany musicians whistling on bird-toned pipes no longer than a finger; eight female slaves naked to the ceaseless warm rain; and last a straggle of mourners, conducting themselves for the most part with appropriate solemnity.

 

 

He who passed penultimately of the mourners, however, was a fat and jolly person on each of whose shoulders perched a boy-child, and the two were playing peekaboo around the brim of his enormous leather hat. The traveler stared long at him before stepping out from the shelter of the nearest tree and addressing him courteously.

 

 

"Your pardon, sir, but are you not named Eadwil?"

 

 

"I am," the fat one answered, not loath to halt and let the funeral wend its way to the graveyard without his assistance. "Should I know you, sir?"

 

 

"Perhaps not," said the traveler in black. "Though I know you. I'd not expected to see you here; you were formerly one of the chief merchant enchanters of Ryovora."

 

 

"A long time ago, sir," Eadwil answered with a deprecating smile. The two children on his shoulders giggled, and one of them tried to catch hold of the traveler's staff, almost lost his balance, and righted himself with the aid of a pat from Eadwil's broad soft hand.

 

 

"May I ask what brought about your change of residence?" the traveler murmured.

 

 

"My change of employment," Eadwil shrugged, again nearly dislodging the more venturesome boy. "You spoke of me as a merchant enchanter; so I was! But when the decision was taken, many years ago, to let rational thought rule Ryovora and put an end to conjurations there, certain consequences followed. For myself I have no regrets; there was a geas upon me which made my feet glow red-hot when I walked, and now nothing worse attends a long tramp like today's than an occasional blister. And these my grandsons too -hey, you little nuisances?-they'd not be here today if I'd continued to submit to the other main restriction which purchased my powers." He rubbed the boys' backs affectionately, and they responded by pulling his ears.

 

 

This was quite true, as the traveler was aware. Eadwil had postponed the growing of his beard until unusually late in life by making the trade on which his command of magic had been founded.

 

 

"So there came an end to my conjuring of fine silks and spices, of rare wines and exotic perfumes!" Eadwil pursed his lips. "And there were, one must confess, certain persons in Ryovora who felt the lack of these luxuries and accused us retired enchanters of-ha-hm!-betraying them. Therefore I removed to Barbizond. It's a fair city in its way, and even though the local customs are not wholly to my taste, here they do at least have scores of enchanters of their own, so that no one plagues me to be about magical doings.... You have late news of Ryovora, sir? For it comes to my mind that I've heard nothing from my old home in quite a while."

 

 

The traveler shook his head and gave a wry smile. "It's a fair span since I set foot there. Indeed, I was hoping you might be able to give me certain information which I lack, rather than vice versa."

 

 

Eadwil looked politely downcast at being of no help; then one of the boys grew impatient and started to fidget.

 

 

"Home?" said his grandfather, and laughed indulgently. "Very well-old Harpentile is in no state to notice that we failed to attend his burying. Good day to you, sir," he added to the traveler. "It's been pleasant to renew our acquaintance, and I greatly hope you find someone who can aid you in these inquiries where I failed you."

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler under his breath, and a great weight seemed to recede from his heart.

 

 

II

 

 

That accomplished, there was no more to 'do than sit and wait until the course of fate worked itself out. The traveler took a chair at a curbside tavern; with his elbows on a green table-top, protected from the rain by a pink umbrella, he watched the passers-by and wondered in what guise his helper would come.

 

 

The avenue grew crowded as the day wasted. Horsemen in gay jerkins with armor clanking at their saddlebows came by, challengers in some tourney for the hand of an heiress; also there were pedlars, and wonder-workers possessed of a few small tricks-for which they had paid excessively, to judge by their reddened eyes, pocked cheeks, limping gait or even womanly-shrill voices.... No wonder, the traveler reflected, Eadwil felt his grandsons were the better bargain.

 

 

Women, too, passed: high-wimpled dames attended by maids and dandling curious unnamable pets; harlots in diaphanous cloaks through which it was not quite possible to tell if they were diseased; goodwives with panniers of stinking salted fish and loaves of bread and sealed jars of pollywogs for use in the commonplace home enchantments of this city.

 

 

And children likewise: many naked, not necessarily from poverty but because skin was the best raincoat under Barbizond's light continual shower, others in fantastical costumes to match their parents' whims- helmets of huge eggshells, bodices of leaves glued like scales and breeches made to resemble plant-stems in springtime. With spinning windmills, toy lances, tops, hoops and skipping-ropes, they darted among the adults and left a trail of joyful disorder.

 

 

There was no joy in the heart of the traveler in black-only a dulled apprehension.

 

 

The places at the tables before the tavern filled with customers, until only one was left-the second chair at the table where the traveler waited. Then, to the instant, appeared a curious bewildered figure from the direction of the city gate: a pale-faced, wild-haired man in a russet cape, clinging to a pitiful bag of belongings as though to a baulk of timber in an ocean of insanity. Time had etched his brow with suffering, and the traveler knew him the moment he clapped eyes on him.

 

 

Abreast of the tavern the stranger stopped. Enviously his eyes scanned the delicacies placed before the customers: fragrant stoups of wine, mounds of mashed fruit stuck with silver spoons, crisp sheets of the moon-bark that only this city's enchanters knew how to conjure across the freezing gulf of space without spoiling. Huddling his bag under his arm, he felt in his script for money, and produced one solitary copper coin.

 

 

Hesitant, he approached the traveler in black. "Sir, by your leave," he muttered, "will this purchase anything at your tavern here?" And proffered the coin on a trembling palm.

 

 

The traveler took it and turned it over, and was at pains to conceal the shock he felt on seeing what name the reverse of the coin bore.

 

 

Ys!

 

 

A city in Time so great and famous that rumors of it had crossed the tenuous border of chaos, running ahead of those who bore its news until the stories were magnified beyond believing, until there were prophecies caused by the recirculation of those rumors through one corner of eternity and back to Time ahead of reality.

 

 

"No?" said the stranger sadly, seeing how long the black-clad one spent staring at his only money.

 

 

"Why-!" the latter exclaimed, and rubbed the coin with his fingertips, very lightly. "I should say so, friend! Is it not good gold, that passes anywhere?"

 

 

"Gold?" The stranger snatched it back, almost dropping his shabby bag in his agitation, and scrutinized it incredulously. Through the coppery tarnish gleamed the dull warm yellow of precious metal.

 

 

Without more ado he slumped into the vacant chair at this table, and a waggle-hipped servant-girl came to his side. "Food and drink!" he commanded, letting the miraculous coin ring on the table. "I starve and I'm clemmed with thirst-therefore be quick!"

 

 

Eyes twinkling, the traveler regarded his new acquaintance. "And how are you called, sir?" he demanded.

 

 

"Jacques of Ys is my name," the other sighed. "Though truth to tell I'm not overmuch inclined to add my origin to my name any longer."

 

 

"Why so?"

 

 

"Could you wish to be shamed by connection with a cityful of fools?"

 

 

"Considering the matter with due reflection," said the traveler, "I think-no."

 

 

"Well, then!" Jacques ran his long bony fingers through his already untidy hair; the water had been trying to slick it down, but half an ocean would have been unequal to the task. He was a gaunt man, neither old nor young, with burning grey eyes and a bush of tawny beard.

 

 

"So in what way are the folk of Ys foolish?" probed the traveler.

 

 

"Oh, once they were a great people," grunted Jacques. "And that's where the trouble started, I suppose.

 

 

Once we had a fleet-and not on any land-locked lake, either, but on Oceanus itself, mother of storms and gulls. Also we had an army to guard our trade-routes, skilful money-changers, wise counselors... Ah, Ys was among the noblest cities of the world!"

 

 

"I believe I've heard so," the traveler agreed.

 

 

"Then your news is stale, sir!" Jacques thumped the table. "Listen! There came changes-in the times, in the weather, in the currents of the sea. To be expected, I say, for did not Heraclitus teach us all things flow? But soft living and much ease had stolen the brains out of the people's heads! Faced with the silting-up of our great estuary, did they go to it and build dredgers? They did not! Faced with a landslide that closed our chief silk-road, did they send scouts to locate another way? They did not! Faced with long winters that killed our autumn wheat in the ground, did they sow barley or the hardy northern oat? They did not!"

 

 

"Then what did they do?" the traveler inquired. "If anything."

 

 

"Fell first to moaning and wringing their hands, and lamenting their sad fate; then, when this proved unfruitful and incapable of filling the granaries, turned to a crowning imbecility and invoked the impossible aid of magic. I see you scowl, sir, and well you may, for all the world knows that magic is a vain and ridiculous snare laid by evil demons in the path of mankind."

 

 

This was a stubborn and unobservant fellow, clearly; with his hand closed around a coin that veritable magic-and no petty domestic hearth-spell, either-had turned from copper to gold, he could still make such an assertion. He would not care for this domain in which he now found himself. Still, there was no help for that.

 

 

"And to what purposes tended their research in- ah-magic?" the traveler asked.

 

 

"To bring back the great days of the past, if you please," said Jacques with majestic scorn, and on the last word crammed his mouth full from a dish the serving-girl placed before him.

 

 

While he assuaged his hunger, his companion contemplated these data. Yes, such an event as Jacques had described would account for the paradox of Ys reversing the cosmic trend and exchanging Time for eternity and its attendant confusions. But there must have been a great and terrible lust in the minds of very many people for the change to be brought about; there must have been public foolishness on a scale unparalleled in the All. Thinking on this, the traveler felt his face grow grim.

 

 

Reaching for his staff, he made to depart, and Jacques glanced up with his cheeks bulging. Having swallowed frantically, he spoke, "Sir, did I intrude on your meditations? Your pardon if-"

 

 

"No, no! You merely recalled me to some unfinished business. You are correct in your description of the people of Ys. They are fools indeed. So do not-if you will take my advice-go back there."

 

 

"Where else shall I go, then?" Jacques countered, and for a second despair looked out from behind his eyes. "I set off thinking no place could be worse than my home-town had now become-yet on this brief journey I've seen wonders and marvels that make me question my own good sense. I met a creature on the road that was neither man nor beast, but a blending; I saw a shining sprite washing feet like alabaster in a cloud rimmed with rainbows; and once when I bent to drink from a stream I saw pictures in the water which... No, I dare not say what I thought I saw." "That would be the brook called Geirion," said the traveler, and appended a crooked smile. "Don't worry- things seen there can never become real. The folk round about go to the brook to rid themselves of baseless fears."

 

 

Jacques glanced over his shoulder at the motley crowd and shivered with dismay. "Nonetheless, sir, I'm not minded to remain in this peculiar city!"

 

 

"It would be more comfortable for you to adapt to the local customs than to go home," the traveler warned. "A certain rather spectacular doom is apt to overtake Ys, if things are as you say."

 

 

"Doom!" cried Jacques, and an unholy joy lit his face. "I told them so-over and again I told them! Would I could witness it, for the satisfaction of seeing how right I was!"

 

 

The traveler sighed, but there was no help for it now; his single nature bound him to unique courses of action. He said sourly, "As you wish, so be it. Go hence towards the city men call Acromel, where honey is bitter, but do not enter it. Go rather around it towards the setting sun, and you will reach a gray hill fledged with grey bushes where there are always dust-devils, which will wipe out your tracks the moment you have passed. From the brow of that hill you may behold Ys at the moment of disaster."

 

 

"Now just a moment!" exclaimed Jacques, rising. "From my boyhood up I've wandered around Ys, and I know of no such hill as you describe!"

 

 

The traveler shrugged and turned away. Jacques caught his cloak.

 

 

"Wait! What's your name, that you say such strange things and send me on such an improbable errand?"

 

 

"You may call me Mazda, or anything you choose." The black-clad traveler shook off the grip with a moue of distaste.

 

 

"Hah! That's rich!" Jacques set his hands on his hips and laughed. "But still... Well, sir, for the sake of wanting to see how Ys goes to its doom, I'll follow your instructions. And my thanks!"

 

 

He parodied a bow, flourishing a hat that was not on his head.

 

 

"You may not thank me more than this once," said the traveler sadly, and went his way.

 

 

III

 

 

Lord Vengis sat in the Hall of State at Ys, and gazed at the nobility assembled in his presence. He tried to ignore the sad condition of the hall. Once this had been a building to marvel at: mirrors higher than a man lined its walls, set between pilasters of marble, gilt and onyx, and the arching roof had been painted by a great master with scenes in eleven bright colors, depicting the birth of Saint Clotilda, the martyrdom of Saint Gaufroy-that one was mostly in red-and the ascension of Saint Eulogos to heaven on the back of a leaping dolphin. Moreover the floor had been carpeted with ermine and bear-pelts.

 

 

The pelts had gone. Or, to be more exact, some of them had gone away and returned-but in unusual fashion: they had been cut into coats for the nobles, and now enveloped impressive paunches and bosoms with the assistance of gilt girdles. Moreover, half of the mirrors were fly-specked, and some were cracked, while worst of all some of the slabs of marble forming the floor had been prised up to expose crude foundations of rubble-a rumor having run around as to the effectiveness of marble for sacrificial altars-and on an irregularity due to this cause, in an ill-lit corner, Lord Vengis had twisted his ankle en route to his throne.

 

 

This place was a condensation of the trouble afflicting the whole of Ys. The harbors that once swallowed the twice-daily ocean tides were blocked with stinking silt; grass grew on the stone moles, as in the wheel-ruts on the fine old roads leading away from the city-at least, according to report; none of the personages present could vouch for the assertion, all having declined to venture out of Ys since things took this turn for the worse. So also in the gardens of the great houses a plant like, but not identical with, mistletoe had spread over the handsome trees, letting fall a horrid sticky fruit on those who walked beneath; in the deep sweet-water wells servants claimed that they heard ominous voices, so that now they refused to let -down buckets for fear of drawing up those who spoke; last week's market had reduced to two old men squabbling over a cracked earthen pot and a comb of dirty wild honey.

 

 

Lord Vengis glowered at the company, and they fell silent by degrees. Their attendants moved, silent as shadows, to the double doors of entrance, closed them, barred them against all intrusion-for this was no discussion which common people were permitted to overhear.

 

 

With the clanging down of the final bar, one leapt to his feet at the end of the front rank of gilded chairs, uttering a groan and cramming his fingers into his mouth. All eyes turned.

 

 

"Fool, Bardolus!" Lord Vengis rapped. "What ails you?"

 

 

"In that mirror!" Bardolus gibbered, trying to point and finding his shaky arm disobedient to his will. "I saw in the mirror-"

 

 

"What? What?" chorused a dozen fearful voices.

 

 

Bardolus was a small man whose manner was never better than diffident; he was accounted clever, but in a sly fashion that had won him few friends and none who would trust him. He said now, mopping sweat, "I don't know. I saw something in that mirror that was not also in this hall."

 

 

Time hesitated in its course, until Lord Vengis gave a harsh laugh and slapped the arm of his throne.

 

 

"You'll have to grow accustomed to manifestations like that, Bardolus!" he gibed. "So long as the things stay in the mirror, what's to worry you? It's when they emerge into the everyday world that you must look out. Why, only the other day, when I was in my thaumaturgic cabinet testing a certain formula, I-But enough of that." He coughed, and behind his polite covering hand glanced to see whether his words had had the desired effect. They had, even though the episode to which he referred was an invention. True, he'd spent much time in his cabinet; true, he'd rehearsed many formulae; alas, nothing had so far come of his efforts, not even a harmless spectre in a mirror.

 

 

Still, that would change. One could tell by the feel of the very air. There were forces in it that no man could put a name to, and sometimes scalps prickled as they do before a thunderstorm.

 

 

"We are here for a reason you know," he said after an impressive pause. "We are agreed on the only course open to us. We admit that modern Ys stands on the shoulders of great men and women. Yet to what has their ambition led us? Unkind fate has burdened us with such difficulties as they never encountered, and we eat stale bread and rancid meat, where they gorged pies running with gravy and soft delicious fruits from the ends of the earth. We drink plain water, none too clean, where they enjoyed wine and mead, and beer like brown crystal!

 

 

"We have concluded that for all their-admitted- greatness, they are responsible, not us! We did not ask to be born at a time when our trees rot, our crops wither, our harbor is blocked. In every way they are responsible: for siting Ys where it stands, for breeding children to inherit such a miserable legacy!"

 

 

"Aye!" came a rumble of assent from around the hall.

 

 

"Some faint-hearts, some ignorant fools, have argued with us," Vengis went on, warming to a speech he had not intended to deliver. "These, of course, are base-born, lacking the insight which is the birthright of the nobility. Jacques the scrivener, for example, would have had us turn to with hoes and shovels and clear the harbor-and if hoes and shovels were lacking, with our bare hands!"

 

 

This time the response lay between a shudder and a chuckle. "What's become of Jacques, by the way?" someone asked audibly.

 

 

"Does it matter?" Vengis countered, drawing together his beetling brows. "We know we are adopting the right course. We have decided that we must employ more potent tools than crude-ah-agricultural implements to cope with so massive a disaster. We must, in short, restore all our fortunes, and the splendour of our city, and root out once for all the disaffection among the rabble spread by such as Jacques, by exploiting the mightiest means available to us. Magically, by decree of the will, by harnessing supernatural forces, we shall again make Ys the envy of the world!"

 

 

A roar of approval and a barrage of clapping. Unnoticed in the shadows, one listener alone did not applaud; instead, he stood leaning on his staff, shaking his head from side to side.

 

 

"Let us have news, then-encouraging news of our progress!" Vengis cried. "I call first on Dame Seulte, around whose home last time I rode by I could not help noticing an aura pregnant with remarkable phenomena."

 

 

Silence. At length a portly woman near the back of the hall rose-with some difficulty, for her weight- and spoke.

 

 

"Dame Seulte, as you know, is my close neighbor, and as she is not here I think perhaps I ought to mention that yesterday she was in high spirits and confident of success in her experiments. She had obtained a freewill gift of a child to offer to-well, to a creature best not named directly. When I met her, she was leading the pretty thing home on a leash of green leather. Such a sweet sight!"

 

 

"Dame Rosa!" said a young man from nearer the front, turning in his chair. "A free-will gift-are you sure?"

 

 

And his companion, a pale girl of no more than eighteen in a dress of brown velvet, said doubtfully, "My maid referred to a fire at Dame Seulte's house this morning...."

 

 

Vengis slapped the arm of his throne again, making a sound as sharp as a gavel's rap. He said sternly, "No defeatist talk if you please, Lady Vivette!"

 

 

"But are you sure it was a free-will gift?" persisted the young man at Vivette's side.

 

 

Dame Rosa said stiffly, "Dame Seulte had promised to raise the child as her own, and the parents were poor and hungry; they parted with it willingly."

 

 

"Then there must have been a fire at her home this morning," said the young man, and shrugged. "Our copy of the book she conjured from has a leaf that hers lacks, and on it the authorities are cited by dozens. Ingredients obtained by deception are of no avail in that ceremony."

 

 

There was a stunned pause. Dame Seulte, after all, had only been trying to manifest a comparatively straight-forward elemental.

 

 

"I have more cheerful news," said a sweet, enticing voice from the opposite side of the assembly. They turned gratefully; this was Lady Meleagra, whose eyes like sapphires, lips like rose-petals and skin like snow had broken hearts for ten of her twenty-one years. As Eadwil had once done in Ryovora-though she was unaware of that precedent-she had purchased her ability upon terms. Herself, she had not yet suffered in consequence; she was, though, constrained to impose a most regrettable proviso on anyone who craved to share the pleasures of her bedchamber. It was an efficacious precaution against undesired supernatural intervention, but it had signally reduced the number of her suitors.

 

 

"I sense a change here in Ys," she mused aloud. "A great wonder has overtaken this city. So far I do not know its precise nature, but the fact is indisputable. See!"

 

 

She extended one graceful arm, swathed in white lace so fine her skin tinted it pink, and in the central aisle dividing the company a thing appeared. It was dark, and it writhed; apart from that it had no describable attributes save two glowing eyes alive with hatred. It lasted half a minute before it slowly faded, and at its going the air was permeated by a dank steamy odor against which those foresighted enough to have brought them buried their noses in bouquets of flowers.

 

 

By degrees a clamor arose, and on all sides the nobles strove to show they had been equally successful. "Look!" cried Messer Hautnoix, and between his hands he strung a chain of gleaming bubbles from nowhere, and again, and yet a third time before the glamour faded. And: "See!" cried Dame Faussein, shaking a drum made of a gourd and capped either end with tattooed skin from a drowned sailor; this made the hall pitch-black for as long as it sounded, and all present had the eerie sense that they were adrift in an infinite void. And: "Watch!" bellowed rough old Messer d'Icque, spreading a scarlet cloth at the full stretch of both arms; on the cloth, a mouth opened and uttered five sonorous words that no one present understood.

 

 

Smiles greeted these achievements, and loud approbation gave place to a babble of inquiry as to means. "Five nights drunk under a gallows!" boasted Messer Hautnoix-"A day and a night and a day kissing the mouth of the man who bequeathed his skin!" bragged Dame Faussein-"Doing things to a goat I can't discuss with ladies present," Messer d'Icque muttered behind his hand.

 

 

"But Ub-Shebbab came to me when I did no more than call his name," said Meleagra, and at these disturbing words those closest to her chair drew as far back as they could without appearing rude.

 

 

Vengis on his high throne joined neither in the praising nor in the questioning; his heavy-jowled face remained set as stone. Had he not submitted himself to worse indignities? Had he not made pledges which in retrospect caused him to quail? And what had derived from his struggles? Nothing! Not even a pretty trick-siness like Messer Hautnoix's shining bubbles!

 

 

He thumped on his chair-side again, and cut through the chatter with a furious roar.

 

 

"Enough! Enough! Are you children early out of school, that you disgrace our meeting with mere gossip? How far do these cantrips advance us to our goal? That's the question!"

 

 

A little embarrassed, the company subsided into a period of asking each other with their eyes whether any was bold enough to claim progress in their central problem. At first they avoided looking at Meleagra; then, no other offer being forthcoming, they took that plunge and were rewarded with a sigh and a shake of the head.

 

 

"As I thought!" Vengis crowed in scorn. "You're overwhelmed with bright spectacle, and have forgotten the urgent purpose confronting us..Next time you go to conjure, ask yourselves first this: if I succeed, what comes by way of benefit? Can I eat it? Can I put in on my back, or mend my roof with it? In fine, how will it serve not only me, but the nobility and commonalty of Ys?"

 

 

He glared at the now fidgety assembly. "It's not going to be easy, I know that well. I've had no success to speak of, myself. But at least I haven't been diverted down superfluous by-ways!"

 

 

The one standing in shadow shook his head once more. Here truly was a company of fools, and chief of them their chief Vengis: a man of consuming arrogance and vanity, blind to his faults and proud beyond description. This being so...

 

 

He gave a gentle cough, and heads whisked to see from whom the noise issued. Vengis half-rose from his seat in astonishment.

 

 

"What are you doing here?" he thundered. "Who let you in without my leave?"

 

 

The traveler in black walked without a sound along the aisle dividing the company until he was face to face with Vengis, and there was that in his eyes which stifled further speech prior to the answering of that double question.

 

 

At last he said, "As to what I am doing here-why, I am listening to and pondering what you've said. As to the leave that was granted me to join you, I go where my presence is required, whether you wish it or no."

 

 

The ranked nobles of the city held their breath. This was the utterance of one holding an authority they dared not challenge.

 

 

"What-what do you want of us?" whispered Vengis when he had regained some of his composure.

 

 

"Say rather what you want of me," the traveler riposted with a sardonic cock of his head. "From the confusion of your meeting I've been unable to make it out. Put it in words for me. That is, if you have any clear idea of your ambitions... ?"

 

 

There was a gently insulting turn to that last phrase. Vengis bridled.

 

 

"Of course we do!" he blustered. "Have you not seen the pitiable pass to which our fair city is reduced?"

 

 

"I have," acknowledged the black-garbed intruder. "And as nearly as I can discern, you hold your ancestors to be to blame."

 

 

"We do so!" Vengis snapped. "And we crave to make them rectify their crime. We seek to call them back, that they may behold the ruin they've bequeathed us, and compel them to set matters right."

 

 

"Compulsion is no part of my nature," said the traveler. "I am acquainted only with free choice. Yet you say you have chosen-what then restrains you from action?"

 

 

"What do you think?" That was Bardolus, half-frantic with the tension of the moment. "We want the power to bring about this aim, and so far all we've managed to achieve is some minor manifestations and a few personal calamities!"

 

 

"Like the one which overtook Dame Seulte?"

 

 

"Ah... Well, yes, I suppose!"

 

 

"And is this the common desire of you all?" asked the traveler with very great sadness, casting his gaze to the furthest corners of the company..

 

 

"Aye!" came the chorus of replies.

 

 

"As you wish," said the traveler, "so be it." And he departed.

 

 

IV

 

 

Where he went, none of them saw. He passed from among them swiftly as thought, silently as shadows, and they had no more stomach for their consultations since he had spoken.

 

 

Yet they felt a lightness, a sense of promise, as they called the servants to unbar the doors and made their several ways towards their homes. The streets by which they passed seemed more crowded than of late, and not a few of them had the impression that they recognized among the throng a familiar face, a known gait, or a garment of distinctive cut. However, such fancies were of a piece with the general mood, and served only to heighten the taut anticipation they had brought away from the Hall of State.

 

 

"What think you of Dame Seulte's fate?" said the Lady Vivette to her companion-who was also her brother, but they had judged that an advantage in making their earlier experiments. She spoke as their carriage creaked and jolted into the courtyard of their ancestral home, a short ride only from the Hall of State; behind, the hinges of the gates complained of rust and lack of oil when the retainers forced them to.

 

 

"I think she was unwise," her brother said. His name was Ormond to the world, but recently he had adopted another during a midnight ritual, and Vivette knew what it was and held some power over him in consequence.

 

 

"Do you believe we have been gifted by this-this personage?" Vivette inquired. "I have a feeling myself that perhaps we have."

 

 

Ormond shrugged. "We can but put it to the test. Shall we now, or wait until after dinner?"

 

 

"Now!" Vivette said positively.

 

 

So, duly, they made their preparations: putting on fantastical garments which contained unexpected lacunae, and over these various organic items relinquished by their original owners, such as a necklace of children's eyes embedded in glass for Vivette and a mask made from a horse's head for Ormond. Arrayed, they repaired to a room in the highest tower of their mansion, where by custom deceased heads of their family had been laid in state for a day and a night before burial since untold generations ago.

 

 

There, in a pentacle bounded by four braziers and a pot of wax boiling over a lamp, they indulged in some not unpleasurable pastimes, taking care to recite continually turn and turn about a series of impressive cantrips. The room darkened as they went on, and great excitement almost interrupted their concentration, but they stuck at it, and...

 

 

"Look!" whispered Vivette, and pointed to the catafalque removed to a corner of the room. Under the black velvet draperies a form was lying-that of a man armed and armored.

 

 

"Why! Just so, in the picture downstairs, did Honorius our great-grandfather lie when he was awaiting burial!" Ormond snapped, and leapt to his feet to pull back the velvet.

 

 

Impassive, a steel visor confronted them. Vivette eased it open, and in the dark interior of the helmet eyes gleamed and a rush of foetid breath escaped. Stiffly, with effort, the occupant of the armor arose from the catafalque.

 

 

"Come, my descendants, let me kiss you both," said a rusty voice, and iron arms resistlessly encircled them, though they struggled to get away. "What, have you no affection to your own kinsman?"

 

 

There was a hollow hideous chuckle as the embrace grew tighter; the necklace of eyes cracked, like a handful of cobnuts, the horse-mask went thudding to the floor, and spittle-wet lips clamped first on one mouth, then the other.

 

 

Both fainted.

 

 

When they recovered, the figure in armor was gone, but where it had taken shape on the catafalque lay a manuscript book in bindings of leather and brass, open to the page recording the death of Honorius from a contagious fever against which no medicine was of use, in the three-and-thirtieth year of his age.

 

 

Dame Rosa, in her palanquin borne between two white female donkeys, passed the corner on which stood the house formerly owned by Dame Seulte, and drew aside the curtains to peer curiously upward. Sure enough, as her maid had declared, from the window of the room in which Seulte had been accustomed to conduct her experiments, a licking tongue of greasy black smoke had smeared the wall.

 

 

She clucked with her tongue. Poor Seulte! Had she but waited another day, she might have enjoyed the fruit of her efforts. That at least was Dame Rosa's belief; she trusted the promise the one in black had made, and looked forward with impatience to the earliest moment she could closet herself with her books and apparatus and rehearse with improvements the most relevant of her formulae.

 

 

Her family had in the past been counted among the most lascivious of Ys, and excessive indulgence by its womenfolk in the pleasures of the bed had often threatened to overpopulate the resources of their not inconsiderable estates. Accordingly there was a cellar where surplus children had for generations been discreetly disposed of, not by crude and brutal means but by consigning the problem of their nourishment to the fates. She entered this cellar by a bronze door, which she locked with a heavy key, and passed between rows of wooden stalls in each of which a set of rat-gnawed bones lay on foul straw, gyves about one ankle.

 

 

She had chosen this place after much thought. Surely, she reasoned, the point of departure to eternity of so many spirits must be imbued with a peculiar potency!

 

 

Her method of working involved feathers, four liquids of which the least noxious was fresh blood, and long silent concentration while seated on a stool of unique design with no other covering for her ample frame than her age-sparse hair could afford. Briskly she carried out the introductory rites; then she sat down and closed her eyes, shivering from excitement and not from cold.

 

 

She had, the books stated, to keep her eyes shut until she had completed the recital of a cantrip that lasted eight whole pages in minuscule script. There were two pages to go when she heard the first rustlings and clicketings behind her. There was one page to go when the first touch came on her fleshy thigh. Desperately wanting to know what marvels her work had brought about, she raced through the last page, and on the concluding word came the first bite.

 

 

Thirty starving children mad with hunger, their teeth as keen as any rat's, left gnaw-marks on her bones too.

 

 

Bardolus trembled as he piled many curious ingredients high on the charcoal-filled brazier before his mirror. He had chosen the mirror spell out of those known to him because he had, after all, come closest to success with it before-even if he had been taken aback to see a manifestation in the unconstrained mirrors of the Hall of State.

 

 

He wished he could find the courage to abandon the entire project, but fear and conceit combined to drive him on. He was beside himself with jealousy to think that a slip of a girl like Meleagra--not to mention that coarse peasant type d'Icque, or stupid complacent Dame Faussein!-had mastered magical powers in such a matter-of-fact fashion, while he still cried out in terror at the consequences of his own thaumaturgy.

 

 

He struck a light and ignited the pile. Saturated with the fat of a sow that had devoured her own farrow, it blazed up and gave off a choking smoke that veiled the mirror until it was all consumed.

 

 

Then the air cleared, and in the mirror he found a face he knew: that of his mother, who was dead.

 

 

"My son Bardolus," she said with fawning sweetness. "Look behind you! There is an oaken cupboard which you have known since you were a child. Press the last knob in the carved design, and a secret drawer will open. In the drawer is that which gave me power over your father. Take it as my gift."

 

 

The image faded. A little puzzled, Bardolus hesitated before doing as directed. He remembered his father only dimly; he had been a strange man, alternating between hysterical gaiety and depression so deep he would sit by the hour contemplating a knife or a dish of poison, plucking up the courage to take his own life.

 

 

Yet... power.

 

 

He pressed the knob and the drawer slid open, revealing a packet made of a strange yellow paper and sealed with green wax. He broke the seal convulsively, and a fine powder spurted at his face, seeming to seek his nostrils of its own accord. He tried to dodge, but that was useless; he inhaled it all, and the packet lay empty on his palm.

 

 

Another few seconds, and vast elation filled him. Why, he could do anything! He was ten feet tall, stronger than an ox, more potent than the heroes of legend and so handsome no wench could withstand him if he courted her.

 

 

He threw down the packet and raced towards the street.

 

 

From the mirror drifted mists, that coalesced into the shape of his mother, and ultimately grew strong enough to lift the empty packet in gnarled old fingers and regard it out of bleary eyes.

 

 

"You deserve no better fate than the one who got you on my body against my will," she whispered. "One hour, Bardolus-one hour of delirium! And afterwards despair. For it will be no use hunting for more of this drug, Bardolus! I never compounded more than one dose at a time, and it was by postponing for a day the next mixing that I held power over your father. There is no one to mix it for you, Bardolus! No one at all!"

 

 

V

 

 

But these were not all the calamities that overtook Ys, that once-fair city. For those whom the black-clad traveler had challenged truly did not know what would rescue them from their predicament, and out of greed and laziness had demanded the utmost they could conceive. Lost in this plethora of manifestations-somewhere-was precisely and exactly what was needful; that much the traveler was bound to grant. But, as he had warned them, he could not compel anyone to do the right thing. Choice was what he dealt in.

 

 

And those who made a wrong choice did so because of what they were.

 

 

His friends had generally liked Messer Hautnoix, who was engagingly like a child, what with his delight in such toys as the pretty colored bubbles he had displayed in the Hall of State. It was characteristic of him that, compelled to spend five nights under a gibbet for the privilege, he passed the entire time drunk to avoid excessive contemplation of his plight.

 

 

Yet when he repaired to his chosen ground of the execution dock and chuckled while he cut the throats of a white cock and a black hen, the one who came to him proved to be the first bearer of his line's name, professionally the municipal hangman, who had so loved his work that more than once he paid the silence of witnesses who would have saved victims from the rope; this being discovered, they had set him swinging on his own gallows at the last.

 

 

Much time having passed since he last performed his office, he seized his chance with alacrity, and sunset found Messer Hautnoix dangling from a noose while his forebear walked back to the city gate, rubbing his bloated hands to think of what he could look forward to.

 

 

Dame Faussein, who had paid a drowned sailor so generously for the loan of his skin, made further use of her curious little drum when she came home, regarding tried and tested means as superior to any not yet proven workable. It was regrettable-and she certainly did regret it, though not for long-that this time the darkness to which its beating carried her was the musty interior of her ancestral vault, where the warmth of her living body, while it lasted, gave strange solace to an aunt and two uncles whose relationship, now as in their lifetimes, was more complex than the conventional ties of kinship. Her eyes continued to perceive darkness when the three together had lifted off the enclosing marble lid of their mausoleum and gone forth to see how things now stood with Ys.

 

 

Messer d'Icque was indeed of peasant stock-that was no secret in Ys. His inclinations were towards country matters, and it has never been any secret anywhere that events transpire in lonely country districts at which the sophisticates of cities would be nauseated or appalled. The whole of his urban residence had been stunk out for weeks by a dung-pile he had had made in the central courtyard, because it was said to be in the warmth of rotting manure that homunculi came to artificial life. This heap of foulness he ignored today, however; his mind was set on the proper employment of his stock of animelles, a springtime by-product on farms, where sheep and cattle are bred. His plan, moreover, was not to fry and serve them as a seasonal delicacy.

 

 

To him, the ritual completed, came a progenitor who had felt the frustration of an aging wife, racked with childbearing beyond the point at which she was capable of assuaging his desires, and who had violated the daughter of his bailiff; it then also being spring. The bailiff had returned early from the task of which animelles were the result, and to avenge the slight on his family's honor had made prompt use of the implement in his hand. For twenty-one generations the sufferer had awaited the chance to afflict on another the operation sustained by himself, and he did so without a by-your-leave. Leaving Messer d'Icque to leak away his life's blood, he thereafter set out to multiply his trophies from all possible male sources.

 

 

No word of this had been brought to the beauteous Meleagra when she came home. She had never cared for Messer d'Icque, thinking him rough and ill-bred, and the news that he had involuntarily qualified to share her overnight company would have interested her not at all.

 

 

In a boudoir hung with lace draperies, containing a round golden bed and a mirror abstracted from the Hall of State, as being the largest in Ys-which she had mounted cunningly on the ceiling-she caused her maids first to draw curtains at the many high windows, then to light candles which gave off a fragrant, intoxicating aroma. She suffered them to remove her clothing, to prepare her a bath in which she dissolved a handful of polychrome salts, and to sing in harmony while they sponged her from head to toe. Sweetmeats were brought on a white platter and a silver filigree dish, and twenty-four new gowns were displayed before her on the body of a dumb girl who matched the dimensions of her figure.

 

 

All the while this was going on, she was musing over a crucial decision: should she, or should she not, act upon the promise the black-clad one had made?

 

 

That he had the power to which he laid claim, she never doubted. Two years before anyone else in Ys saw what needed to be done, she had closed a bargain concerning her virginity which she had scrupulously kept- at first partly from fear, but lately out of simple habit.

 

 

And what she had purchased by the bargain had enabled her to recognize the single nature of their unaccountable visitor.

 

 

A single nature! Surely that must imply its possessor could neither lie nor deceive! In which case she might employ her talents now to produce results compared to which her previous achievements were dross. Her whole life since the age of eleven had been on the edge of a precipice-and there were creatures at the bottom of the chasm which she had eluded only by the most exact pre-planning. Accordingly, the notion of exercising her powers at least once in full foreknowledge of success attracted her. An uncharacteristic yielding to vanity had made her call Ub-Shebbab to the Hall of State; he was the meekest and mildest of the beings she had conjured up, yet her skin prickled when she thought of what might have...

 

 

No, that happened only to fools and bunglers. And she was neither. She reached her decision and dismissed her maids. Them gone, she put on a gown which had not been displayed during her bath, worked all over in gold wire with a single sentence in a forgotten language; then she opened a brass chest and took out gifts she had exacted from various suitors before information about her inflexible rule was noised abroad.

 

 

There was a twig from Yorbeth, bearing a leaf transparent as glass and a brown, blotched fruit which tinkled like a bell; there was a vial of rainwater caught at the foot of the rainbow overarching Barbizond, that had a trifle of Sardhin's essence in it; there was a block of pumice from the volcano where Fegrim slumbered; there was a jar of grey dust from the hill where Laprivan was shut away; there was a hair from the head of Farchgrind, an inch of candle that had revealed the secret thoughts of Wolpec but had been allowed to burn one instant longer than was safe, and a drawing of two birds and a crocodile made by a possessed child.

 

 

Also there was a book.

 

 

Following with care the instructions it contained, she danced around her boudoir keening, crawled twice backwards across the floor with a knife between her teeth, and at last cut her forearm and let three drops of her blood fall on the carpet. When she looked for them the stains had vanished.

 

 

Nothing else happened in the room. She had expected that; humming, she called her maids back to change her gown for something more conventional and went down to the dining-hall where supper was to be served.

 

 

Already as she approached it she could hear the clatter of dishes, the clamor of conversation. That boded a great company. She hurried the last few steps and threw open the door.

 

 

Every place at her great table-and there were thirty-six-was taken; the servants had pressed into use benches from the kitchen, too, and the sideboards and the serving-tables were alike packed with a hungry horde. For all the scullions and maids could do, the food, brought on trolleys because there was more of it than a man could lift, disappeared within instants of being set down, and still the howl went up for more. The bread had gone, the meat, the wine; now it was boiled turnips and hedge-greens, broth of bones and barley, and beer much too new to serve by ordinary.

 

 

Yet that was not all. Behind, between, among those who ate went others looting. The fine brocade drapes had been torn down to clothe naked bodies, leather-backed chairs stripped to afford protection to sore feet, tapestries turned to cloaks and ponchos. One wild-eyed woman, lacking anything else, had smeared herself with gravy to break up the maggot pallidity of her skin.

 

 

Meleagra stood in the doorway for a long heartbeat of time before the chief steward caught sight of her and came running to beg her help.

 

 

"Mistress, what shall we do? They are in every room -five hundred of them at the least count! And all, all have claimed the right to what you have, for they say they are your ancestors and this is their home too!"

 

 

"My ancestors?" whispered Meleagra. Her eyes, drawn as by a magnet, went to him who had taken her seat at the head of the table, and a silence overcame the entire company.

 

 

The one at whom she gazed was a cross-eyed, ill-favored fellow in a dirty doublet, unshaven and with black around his nails. He gave her a smile that displayed gapped yellow teeth, and spoke in a soft voice with a peasant's accent.

 

 

"Ah, Meleagra, sure and you set a fine table! This meal which you account an everyday affair matches the grandest feasts we held in times gone by!"

 

 

"Who-who are you?" Meleagra choked out.

 

 

"You know me not?" The fellow cocked an eyebrow traversed by a scar. "Why, Damien, of course, who built the house and founded the family's fortune in the earliest age of Ys. And. at my side Cosimo, my firstborn here-though I had by-blows aplenty in another town! And Syriax his wife and their children Ruslan, Roland and Igraine; and their children Mark, Valetta, Corin, Ludwig, Matthaus, Letty, Seamus; theirs, Orlando, Hugo, Dianne, twins Nathaniel and Enoch-"

 

 

"Stop! Stop!" Meleagra put her hands to her temples; the room seemed to be spinning, and from every side gross faces leered at her, or thin drawn faces gazed with stony regard, or dull faces moped, or...

 

 

"There is no more food!" the steward shouted. "We have killed all the poultry, the larder's bare, the wine-casks are drained, the last carp is gone from the pond, the beer-barrels are exhausted and even the well is dry!"

 

 

"You've done this to me?" Meleagra whispered to her remotest ancestor Damien. "But I gave you breath and life, and this new opportunity-I invited you here!"

 

 

"You?" said Damien with contempt. "Is that the only act of importance you can boast of? Did we your ancestors not build this house, this city, its fair avenues and fine harbors and full stores? Have you done nothing save parasitize upon our leavings? I read in your eyes that that is so! Here we are alive, who died before you saw the light-do you still call yourself the mistress of this house? Hah! You are a thing not worth the thinking of, less than dust, for dust can be seen to dance in sunbeams. You are the flame of a candle guttering out. So-poof!"

 

 

He blew at the candle closest him upon the great table, and with the extinction of its flame there was no such person as Meleagra-never had been-never could be.

 

 

VI

 

 

Long hours Lord Vengis had paced in the high room above the Hall of State, pondering the day's events and screwing himself to the point where he would again begin his conjurations. The day wasted; shadows lengthened; evening cold began to permeate the building, and he called for fire.

 

 

He was afraid.

 

 

He had seen in the eyes of the traveler in black a warning which his pride forbade him to heed; he was ashamed because he was afraid, yet shame could not break fear's grip. He wished to do as his colleagues were doing-what if he alone remained untalented in sorcery when blockheads like Bardolus or half-grown wenches like Vivette boasted powers unnamable?

 

 

Nonetheless, he dithered and delayed, and had not yet cast a rune nor recited the first line of a single formula when the sergeant of the guard came stiffly to report a disturbance in the town.

 

 

"Disturbance?" Vengis rapped. "Fool, be precise! What do you mean?"

 

 

"Why, sir"-and the sergeant rubbed his chin dolefully-"some hours agone there were complaints of desecration in the graveyard by the cathedral, the curate saying that a vault was open and the bones removed. But seeing as how we've had call for similar extraordinary materials that your lordship required, I decided best not to say anything. Now, though, the affair has ramified. For example, the side wall of the building here is cracked where they entombed alive a woman named Igraine-you've seen the plaque-accused of commerce with a familiar spirit in the guise of a cat..."

 

 

From the street below came a howl as of maddened beasts, and the sergeant flinched visibly. But he continued in his best official manner.

 

 

"Then, your lordship, at dusk reports came of strangers in the city, and we called out the patrols for fear of infiltration by some jealous invader. Myself, I've stopped twenty-one persons, and all spoke with the accent of our city and gave names concordant with our nomenclature. But it seems I've seen such names on gravestones before nowsome, indeed, earlier today when I answered the complaint at the cathedral. And what brings me in to you, begging your indulgence, is the curious business of the man and the two wives."

 

 

"What's that?" whispered Vengis, sweat pearling his face.

 

 

"Well, sir, there was this man, one whom I'd challenged, walking with a girl of fifteen-odd. Comes up from nowhere a woman aged as he was-forty, maybe- and says she is his wife and what's this hussy doing with her husband? So then the little girl says they were married legally and then there follows screaming of insults and hair-pulling and at the last we must clap 'em in the jail to cool their heels. Which is-uh-difficult. For every cell, they promise me, is full, and that's more than I can understand. This morning the turnkey's records say there were one hundred and one places vacant for new prisoners."

 

 

Vengis's voice had failed him. He chewed his nails and stared with burning eyes at the sergeant.

 

 

"What shall I do, your lordship?" the man finally asked.

 

 

"I-I..." Vengis spun around and strode to a window overlooking the main square. He thrust the casement open and leaned out. By the last dim light of the dying day he could see a myriad people gathering. Some were colorful and substantial, but these were few. Most were grey as the stones they trod, arid trailed curious wispy streamers behind them, like cobwebs. But all alike exhibited an air of bewilderment, as though they were lost in the mazes of time and eternity, and could not find a way back to the present moment.

 

 

Vengis began to babble incoherently.

 

 

There came a thundering knock at the door of the room where they were, and a cavernous groaning voice said, "Open! Open in the name of the Lord of Ys!"

 

 

Shrugging, the sergeant made to obey, but Vengis ran after him, clawing at his arm. "Don't! Don't let them in!" he wailed.

 

 

"But, your lordship," said the sergeant firmly, "it is in your name that he seeks entry, so it must be a matter of importance. Besides, with your permission, I'm expecting a report from my patrols."

 

 

Vengis searched the room with feverish eyes. In the far corner he spied a closet large as a man; he dashed to it, and slammed the door with him inside.

 

 

The sergeant, astonished, went nonetheless to answer the knock, and fell back in dismay before the apparition which confronted him. Gaunt, tall, with a second mouth gaping redly in his throat, here was the figure of legendary Lord Gazemon who had laid the foundation stone of Ys with his own two hands.

 

 

Now those hands held a broadsword; now he advanced with slow terrible steps upon the closet in which Vengis thought to secrete himself, and battered down the planks of the door to hale that miserable successor of his into the wan torchlight.

 

 

"You know me!" croaked the city's founder.

 

 

Gulping, moaning, Vengis contrived a nod, and the huge spectre shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. "Oh, to what a dwarfish stature have shrunk these weaklings of today!" he bellowed. The sergeant, cowering behind an oaken table, could not tell by which mouth Gazemon spoke-his natural one, or the second which had let out his life.

 

 

Again the door rattled to an imperious knock, and he scuttled to answer before Gazemon could address him. With trembling hands he admitted those who stood without: Lorin, who had slain Gazemon by treachery and usurped his throne; Angus, who had reclaimed that throne into the rightful line of descent; then Caed; then Dame Degrance who passed for a man and ruled like one until the physicians at her deathbed unmasked her sex; then Walter of Meux; then Auberon; then Lams, and the first Vengis who was a stout and brave leader for the one short year he survived, and others and others to the latest who had sat the chair below prior to the advent of the incumbent lord.

 

 

With axes, maces, swords, with pens and scrolls and money-changer's scales according to the form of power by which they had made Ys great, they gathered around the hapless target of their contempt.

 

 

"We have walked abroad in the city since we were called from rest," rumbled Gazemon, his grip still fast on Vengis's shoulder. "We have seen stagnant puddles in the streets, shutters dangling from one hinge on the cracked walls of once-fine houses; we have been followed by beggars and starving children in Ys which we devoted our lives to, making it a city that the world should envy! You have given our golden towers to tarnish, our iron doors to rust; you have given our splendid harbor to the mud and our fat grain-fields to the weeds; you have squandered our treasury on baubles, forgetful that we paid for it with blood. How say you all, you who listen here? Is it not time that we held an accounting?"