By contrast, though: on learning that his lord was a loser in the game of life after all, the groom who tended Western Wind saddled up the stallion, sighing.

 

 

"At least this small recompense is due to me," he muttered, and opened the door of the stable.

 

 

Later, in Barbizond, he offered the steed's services to cover some mares in heat, and from the foals which resulted built up a livery-stable of his own.

 

 

Likewise the falconer, on being told the news, gathered his prize merlin and went out into the countryside to get what living he could; he lost the merlin by flying it at an eagle which had stolen a child, a match the eagle was foredoomed to win. But that child was the only son of a wealthy land-owner, and in gratitude he made the falconer bailiff of his estates.

 

 

Also the cook gathered a brand from beneath his cauldron and went forth by a secret passage leading from the back of his ox-roasting hearth. There he turned his ankle on a square object lying in the dust of the passageway, and the light of the brand showed that it was the lost Book of Knightly Vigor, from which- legend claimed-the Count of Hyfel, founder of Teq, had gained the amorous skill to woo and wed his twenty-seven brides. With recipes from it he opened a cookshop, and defeated lovers from a score of cities trudged over hill and dale to sample his unique concoctions.

 

 

Amid all this coming and going, however, the captives from Wantwich were content to find their way to freedom in the warm morning sun.

 

 

IX

 

 

On their first return, the villagers were a trifle puzzled to discover that the pond beside the green, which for as long as anyone could recall had been placid, now roiled unaccountably. However, as their repairs proceeded-new roofs and shutters, new gates and fences, to replace those broken by the troops from Teq-that disturbance ceased. Before the new beer was brewed, before new barrels were coopered, before a new fiddle had been made for Fiddler Jarge, the water had resumed its normal state.

 

 

And on the day when-belatedly-Leluak led out his bride to start the dancing proper to a marriage, a person in a black cloak stood with a benign smile in the shelter of a sycamore.

 

 

"Was it not clever, Horimos?" he said under his breath to the elemental prisoned beneath the water. "Was it not ingenious to pervert the thinking of rational men into the random path of a gambler, who lacks even the dangerous knowledge of an enchanter when he tampers with the forces of chaos?"

 

 

Unnoticed except by the traveler, the pond gave off a bubble full of foul marshy gas, which might have been intended for an answer.

 

 

"Shu-ut-brr'p-brr'up!"

 

 

"By all means, Horimos," the traveler murmured, and drained the mug of Brewer Harring's good beer which he, like all passers-by on a festival day, had been offered. He set the vessel on a handy stump, and the music rose to a frantic gay crescendo.

 

 

When, a little diffidently, the new bride came to greet him and ask if he would like to take his turn at partnering her in the dance, there was no trace of his presence except the empty mug.

 

 

four

 

 

DREAD EMPIRE

 

 

Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word...

 

 

-Pope: The Dunciad

 

 

I

 

 

"Good morrow, sir," the folk said civilly to the person in black who stood leaning on a staff-of unusual substance-watching them fetch and carry water from the Gander's Well. He answered in turn, but absently, preoccupied, and none of them marked him so closely as to recognize him again. It was plain that he was concerned with private thoughts.

 

 

Indeed, so absorbed was he that the sun dipped down and the boys and the goodwives whose chore it was to collect water had gone home to their well-earned supper, before he stirred a pace from where he'd wasted the day. Then it was to address a man, well muffled against the evening cool, who came to scrape a few flakes of punk from a rotten tree-stump, not a great distance from the well's mouth, and dropped them as he gathered them into a pottery jar.

 

 

Seeing him then apply a fizzling wick of braided withes, the traveler said, "You go a journey, I take it, sir!"

 

 

"Why, yes!" the man said, glancing up. "I'm called to see my sister, who's in labor with a nephew for me; her man's abroad, and someone responsible must be by to take her other bairns in charge."

 

 

"And this is what you'll use for tinder?" said the traveler, pointing with his staff at the tree-stump.

 

 

"None better can be found in this vicinity," said the man. "All who must go a trip by night make use of it. It carries fire through the most amazing storms. In fact, it's said"-but here he coughed, as though by way of apology for seeming to give credit to such a superstition-"there's some bright spirit in it, that fosters the sparks against all odds. If you, sir, whom I judge to be a stranger, think of continuing your walk by night, I counsel you should avail yourself of this. More than once friends of mine have been grateful for it, thinking to finish a journey in daylight, and then coming on a washed-out bridge or flooded ford!"

 

 

"How far away then can your sister live? As yet, there's light in the sky; there's an hour or two before full dark, at least."

 

 

"Hmph!" said the man, straightening as he capped his tinder-jar and tossed aside his wick of withes, to sputter on ground made wet by water spilled from buckets day-long dipped in the well. " 'Tis plain you really are a stranger, sir! Needs must I go by Cleftor Heights, and there the dark falls fast, believe you me! Indeed, if you'll forgive me, I must make haste, even with this to save me in the pitch black."

 

 

"One final question," said the traveler, and gestured with his staff. "I've seen these folk tramp weary miles from town to fill yoked pails of water at this well. Is it regarded as especially sweet?"

 

 

The man chuckled. "Why, sir, as to drinking straight, not especially," he returned. "But, see you, the season's on us to brew ale and beer, and-for what reason I know not-if you brew with water from the Gander's Well, you remain lively and jolly all evening long, and the morning after your head's clear and your belly calm. Be sure in the taverns of the town they offer you nothing worse; sometimes they'll try and fool a stranger with what they will not drink themselves."

 

 

"Thanks for the counsel," said the traveler in black.

 

 

When he was alone, he shook his head sorrowfully. Once on this site Yorbeth had brooded in his guise of a tree, his longest tap-root fed from a miraculous spring. Then that sad greedy fool of a packman...

 

 

But he was mortal, which the elemental had not been, and what was left? This stump, yielding tinder for overnight travelers, and a well whose chief renown was for the brewing of beer!

 

 

Yet it was not entirely to be wondered at. The news was of a piece with all the rest of what he'd learned during this, the latest of so many journeys undertaken in accordance with the obligations which bound him. Latest? Not impossibly, he was beginning to believe, the last.

 

 

For once it had made small difference that this journey was this journey, not the one before or after. In chaos, randomness was so extreme, the very contrasts made for a sense of uniformity. Now there were actual changes: the vanishing of Yorbeth not the greatest.

 

 

Back beyond Leppersley, for instance, Farchgrind was a household pet! The people heard him still, but conjured him to entertain their friends, and scoffed when he made his bragging promises. Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes had spent his substance, whatever the nature of it might be, and wearied of his struggle against the past. Footsteps left by those who plodded up his hill endured an hour or more.

 

 

And Barbizond had gone with Ryovora, despite Sardhin. The progress of rationality had worn him down-that bright being in his rainbow-gleaming cloud. It was still claimed that a knife from Barbizond would keep its edge forever, but the only man who'd mentioned the notion to the traveler this trip had been a sober farmer in Kanish-Kulya, and he'd employed the same diffident tone as the man just departed, the one who'd been embarrassed at reference to a spirit in the punk which carried fire so well.

 

 

That farmer was an earthy man leading a placid life, a little puzzled now and then when one of his fat and happy ploughboys brought some improbable growth to show him: a bunch of grapes that shone like polished metal, a turnip which, split apart, revealed the chambers of a human heart...

 

 

But his wine was plentiful and sweet, and there was never a lack of roasts to grace the spits in his kitchen, so he bothered his head not at all with traces of another age. Even the ancestry of his daughter-in-law was a source of kindly jokes around his table. Time was when any good Kanish family like his would have banished Kulya girls to the goose-run, be they never so beautiful-or perhaps honored their beauty by gang-rape if there were half a dozen sufficiently drunken men about.

 

 

Now, regal in a gown of peach-colored silk, a Kulya lady nightly shared his dinners, his heir fondly touching her goblet with his own to drink toast after toast to their three handsome boys asleep upstairs. With grandchildren growing apace, who should care when the blade of a harrow caught in the eye-socket of some moldering skull? That war was over; the armistice continued.

 

 

Likewise in Teq they made a mock of Lady Luck: her offering was a gobbet of spittle, launched at the floor when one of the company voiced hopes for an over-bold project.

 

 

Yet the rule bound him, and the traveler's nature was not such that he should complain. Forth he went on paths grown unfamiliar, and spoke with many people in many places, as for example in Wocrahin, where once-

 

 

Memory! Memory! He had never foreseen that that intangible, binding the fluid nature of eternity into the sequential tidiness of Time, would also hamper the will like age itself! Almost, he began to envy those who could die....

 

 

No matter. In Wocrahin a man sat gobbling lamprey-pie in a splendid banquet-hall: gross in a purple doublet smeared with gravy-stains. Words chomped around a full mouth of the fish and crust, he forced out, " 'Fonly w'were freah y'muzzhr!"

 

 

"Ah, yes!" sighed his wife, accustomed to interpreting such talk: she fat as a prize breeding-sow, though childless, her vast bosom exposed almost to the bulging nipples over a gown crusted with seed-pearls, her head seeming to be depressed into her neck by the weight of the gem-crusted tiara she had put on, though they had no company to dinner apart from the thirty scrag-lean servants ranged around the hall.

 

 

"Would we were free of my mother!" she echoed when she had swilled her gullet with a swig of wine. "Ah, how finely we would live were we rid of her! She eats us out of house and home, the old bag!"

 

 

"Sh'yeats zazouter 'ousernome!" concurred the man.

 

 

The tall windows of the banquet-hall stood open to the warm summer night. Beyond them, watching the line of beggars who daily came-more from habit than optimism-to beg the cook for scraps, the traveler in black both heard the exchange and also saw the lady's mother, in draggled rags, pleading at the barred grille of the cellar where she was pent for a share of the beggars' crumbs.

 

 

He tapped his staff on the wall.

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," he said, and went away. The ceiling of the banquet-hall creaked behind him; it freed the greedy pair within a minute from all burdens, life itself not excluded.

 

 

Likewise in Medham, a city noted for its lovely girls, a man sat in a tavern who had tried scores of them and recounted how expert he was at seduction.

 

 

"Ah, if I had a quart of ale for every one, I'd hardly be sober again in this life!" he hinted to his listeners, turning over his purse and finding it void of coin. "Why, did not the lady Fretcha come to me on hands and knees, saying I'd ruined her for life? Haw-haw! Begged me, on my oath-literally begged me-to make an 'honest woman' of her! Haw-haw-haw! And then there was the lady Brismalet; she did the same-what impudence! And the lady Thespie, and then Padovine... Ho! As I say, did I but have a quart of ale for each-"

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," said his neighbor, a person in black with an unusual staff, and rose. No one noticed him depart. All were too taken aback at the spectacle of the boastful philanderer, belly distended like a hogshead, vomiting disgustingly because he could not hold ale amounting to twenty-six quarts.

 

 

"You stupid brute!" cried a carter in a hamlet hard by Acromel, and lashed his horse across the hindquarters with a steel-barbed whip. Violent though was the blow, it barely drew blood-he'd employed the whip so often, the horse's back and legs were cicatrized with impermeable scars. Nonetheless the poor beast whinnied and cringed. Therefore he beat it again, and harder still.

 

 

"Ho, that you were blessed with more sense!" he roared. "Would you could learn how not to spill my load crossing a rut!"

 

 

Still grumbling about the horse's lack of wit, he went to the back of the cart to retrieve the ill-stowed sack of grain which had tumbled off.

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, and the horse reared up, tipping the whole ton-weight of bags on the stooping carter. Then it chewed intelligently through the traces and took its leave, to enjoy lush upland grass and roam free.

 

 

"By your favor, sir," said a boy of ten or twelve years, hunting a hedgerow near the village Wyve, "are such plants poisonous or wholesome?"

 

 

Offering for inspection a glabrous brownish fungus.

 

 

"Wholesome," said the traveler. "They may be fried."

 

 

With a moue, the boy tossed the toadstool aside.

 

 

"Are you not glad to have found that it's edible?" asked the traveler. "I took it you were gathering food."

 

 

"No, sir," said the boy. His voice and eyes were older than his years. "I seek poisons to give to my mother; she rules me unkindly and will not let me do whatever I like."

 

 

He sighed enormously. "Ah, that I might recognize instanter what may be relied on to entrain death!"

 

 

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, and went on, leaving the boy weeping because he realized: no matter what diet is chosen, sooner or later death ensues.

 

 

Thus, pretty much as might have been expected, the way of the traveler wound on, until that night which overtook him deeper than other nights on the flank of Rotten Tor, in which he discovered why the honest working-man from Gander's Well had carefully sought tinder to bear on a journey a mere hour in length.

 

 

And why the tinder had to be of a tree which once had drunk a marvelous spring far underground.

 

 

And also one thing far more important: why, when all about him he saw the triumph of the homely commonplace virtues, the prevalence only of the everyday vices such as laziness and greed-earnest, if any were to be had, of the impending conclusion of his task-he first should learn the flavor of that bitter new edge acquired by apprehension, which turns it into something cruder.

 

 

Fear.

 

 

II

 

 

Truly this was not like an ordinary night! Though she was wrapped in a good plaid shawl, and had moreover mittens to her hands, the woman was dismayed by the solidity of the blackness, by the chill that bit from it through garments never so well-woven, to the ultimate marrow. Behind her the child Nelva, whom she had not dared to leave at home, was too weary-or too cold- even to whimper.

 

 

At least, though, far ahead there gleamed one spark: the mark of her destination.

 

 

Though going back...

 

 

She shivered so violently her teeth chattered. It was something to be faced, the return, and couldn't be helped. Bowing her head, although there was no apparent wind, she clung to her daughter's hand and hurried on.

 

 

Lights gleamed fantastical the length of the little shop. Whoever had suffered by the coming of these unseasonable black nights to the Clef tor Fells, it wasn't Master Buldebrime who owned the place. Lamps shone on the adze-shapen counter facing the door that admitted clients from the street, and on all the pale pine planks doing the duty of shelves which lined the room wherever there was solid wall. There was even a lit lamp hung on that other door, of boards nailed to a saltire frame, giving access to the living-quarters of the house.

 

 

Certain of these lamps burned candles of good tallow, and more of rank stale fat. Some burned wicks floating in clear sweet oil, but these were few, and fewest of all that were alight this evening were the ones which fed on exotic aromatic distillations and dispersed into the air not only a luminance slightly tinged with sapphire-blue but also a delightful perfume. These last had reservoirs to match their content: fine-wrought in alabaster, amethyst and orichalcum.

 

 

Cold on the street it might be, but shutters had boarded in the shop's two streetward windows long before, so well sealed at their edges by strips of wetted leather that the air within was past being only warm. Now it was hot with all those flames entrapped by clear glass chimneys, or tinted crystal globes, or shields of thin-pared horn. The delicate scent of the most costly of them faded into a stench of vaporized fat; on their rich diet, the flames looked almost starved.

 

 

Nonetheless, even now, their glimmering colors made the coarse roof of overarching beams look like a mine of dismal coal illumined unexpectedly by an irrupting river that had washed a shaft of sunshine underground and shown that there were also jewels in the rock.

 

 

On the counter a tall time-candle, bright red wax crossed at thumb-joint intervals by bands of black, told that the hours of trading for today were nearly done.

 

 

Abruptly and in unison the flames bowed, like heads of barley in a field assaulted by a storm, and in from the street dived the woman, her clogs announcing her arrival on the floor-flags. Forgetful on the instant of her weariness and chill, the toddler Nelva at her skirts exclaimed with ooh! and aah! at seeing this wonderland of colored light. A rush of burnt-wax stink took to the outdoors like a dying man's gasp, and there was a cry from beyond the inner wall: "I come apace!"

 

 

Snuffers in hand ready to douse the time-candle and the rest, the owner of the shop appeared in a tallow-stiff smock. Shaven, his red jowls glistened as though he sweated the very fabric of his wares. He was poised to fawn, expecting one of the gentry who came by ordinary to view his stocks late in the evening, they being readier than the common sort to brave the dark, what with their covered carriages and palankeens.

 

 

But that lasted a mere eyeblink. Here was only some nondescript poor woman, likely hoping to trade some useless odds and ends against a lamp instead of purchasing one with honest currency.

 

 

"What is it you want?" he demanded.

 

 

"What would I come here for but a lamp?" the woman snapped, and added from the corner of her mouth, "Be silent, Nelva!"

 

 

The little girl complied, but her eyes remained enormously round as she gazed from one to another of the shining lights.

 

 

"Here!" went on the woman, slapping coins on the counter. "Three good coppers, as you see-what's more the rims aren't clipped! We need a lamp to eat our supper by. The one we had is broke, and do I set Nelva here close enough by the hearth to see by fire-flame smoke makes her weep and salts her dish with tears. For the bairn's sake, give me the best you can."

 

 

She planted her hands on her hips and stood back. Taking up the coins, Master Buldebrime studied them. As claimed, they were properly round and gave back to the time-candle the proper reddish sheen. He bit one, shrugged, and turned to a shelf of his cheapest lamps.

 

 

"This is the best I can do," he said, selecting one. "Take it or leave it."

 

 

The woman looked it over cannily. She said, "But that's a short candle in it, that's been lit!"

 

 

"Then take a brand-new candle, and my blessings," the shopkeeper snorted, catching one up at random from a stack and throwing the shortened one to be re-melted later. "For three coppers that's the most I can spare. And wouldn't part with so much but that yon's a pretty child." He eyed Nelva, leaning forward on the counter. "Hmm! Yes! In three-four years you should let me know again. I'll 'prentice her to the candle-making trade. There's men aplenty who'd wed a wife with such a profitable skill."

 

 

Wrapping the lamp in her shawl, the woman said harshly, "Thank you, but no, Master Buldebrime! We hear the tales of your apprentices, even out where we live by Rotten Tor. So you like little girls as well as boys?"

 

 

The shopkeeper's face darkened below the saddest ruby of any of his lamps.

 

 

"Get out!" he rasped, and made as though to hurl his bronze snuffers.

 

 

Though the hand which clutched the coins stayed safely resting on the counter.

 

 

Once more the flames quavered as, faced with the prospect of returning to that dreadful black and cold, the child objected to the notion of departure; shortly, however, her mother dragged her over the threshold and the door banged shut. Buldebrime remained for a long moment fuming as foully as his cheapest candles, then mastered his rage and went to bar the entrance. He made the rounds with his snuffers, and resorted at last to his cosy living-room, leaving the shop lit only- through a skylight-by the far-off gleam of four crucial conjunct planets wheeling downward from the zenithal line.

 

 

III

 

 

Not right, the traveler decided-not right at all!

 

 

He stood and pondered on the flank of Rotten Tor, a louring crest so friable not even goats might climb it in safety, staring in what long familiarity assured him must be the direction of Cleftor Vale. Granted that the entire valley lay in the daytime shadow of the Heights, should it not now be lit at least by starshine? And, come to that, was not the moon inclining towards its full?

 

 

Yet here was such blackness as only a shout might penetrate-or a scream! Like the one which had just re-echoed to him, in two parts: beginning with the cry of a child, continuing in a tone louder, deeper, more heartfelt.

 

 

"Ho, that we were safe at home! Help, if there's anyone there!"

 

 

The traveler did not need to hide his smile; the blackness performed that function for him. Tapping his way with his staff, he skirted the brink of the rocky torrent which here assured the summertime vegetation of its moisture, and was shortly heard approaching by the woman who had called out.

 

 

"Ah! Friend, whoever you may be!" She caught blindly at his arm. "Save me and my daughter-take us in!"

 

 

"I have no lodging hereabout," said the traveler. "But you do, surely."

 

 

"What?" The woman seemed bewildered; then of a sudden recovered herself. "Why, what a fool I must be!" She went forward, groping, and shortly was heard to knock her fists on resounding planks. "Home!" she cried. "Oh, praise be!"

 

 

A door creaked on awkward hinges, and a gleam of firelight showed the outline of a cottage originally built of sturdy four-square logs and boards, that now was tilt-roofed and wore a melancholy garb of grey-green lichen. The child ran forward and threw her arms around a man who rose from a truckle-bed, discarding a blanket of threadbare woollen stuff, but could not speak in greeting for a cough which overcame him.

 

 

"My dear, you're safe!" he croaked when he recovered. "Oh, you should not have taken Nelva!"

 

 

"You were asleep," the woman said, embracing him. "And it's so rarely that you sleep quite sound... Ah, but I'm forgetting! Yarn, this gentleman who stands at the door: he's my savior!"

 

 

The traveler entered at her beckoning and gave a bow.

 

 

"I was almost lost!" the woman babbled. "It was so dark-"

 

 

"But surely," Yarn began, and coughed a second time, and tried again. "But surely you went to buy a lamp!"

 

 

"Indeed, indeed! To Master Buldebrime's-here, sir," she added to the stranger, bustling about as she spoke while child and father sat down side by side on the bed, "do you make yourself comfortable, and welcome too' I'd have fallen in the gorge had you not chanced by, so completely was I lost on my own doorstep! Excuse the sparseness of our hospitality, but if you fancy such rude fare we can offer a broth of greens, and maybe some bread, and-"

 

 

"But to buy a lamp, and come home in the dark!" Yarn got that out in a single breath, before hacking into coughs anew.

 

 

"Hah!" The woman stopped in the middle of the floor, where firelight showed her silhouette, and put her hands on her hips. "When I get back to town, shall I ever give Buldebrime a tongue-lashing! That lamp! That lamp! Here!"

 

 

She produced it from the folds of her shawl. "Why, did I not light it to see the path by, returning home? And did it not in the same moment smoke over its chimney, blacker than a barn-door?"

 

 

She gestured violently at her husband with it.

 

 

"Your pardon for my ill-temper, sir," she added to the traveler. "But to be without a lamp these nights is more than a body can bear. It's as though the very dark outside comes creeping in at the unstopped chinks of the wall, dulling the fire-glow! And, say all our neighbors, Goodie Blanchett and Goodie Howkle and the rest: go to Master Buldebrime, his lamps are best, we have our own and sit by night in their warm yellow shine..." As she talked, she was rubbing the smoked-over glass on her shawl. Damp logs on the earth sputtered a counterpoint to her speech.

 

 

"I'll light it again, to prove my word," she said, and bent to pick a pine-splinter from the fire.

 

 

"What's worst of all," she added as she carried the flame to the twisted wick, "he took coin from me for it-not a mere bucket of ewe's milk, or some trifle we could spare! And it does this! Sir!"-rounding on the traveler-"do you not think it criminal, to take advantage of a poor soul thus?"

 

 

But the traveler was not paying attention. Gazing at the lamp-chimney, which as predicted was on the instant blearing over, he was uttering sad words within his head:

 

 

"Ah, Wolpec, Wolpec! Has it come to this?"

 

 

Once this pallid thing of grimy smoke had been an elemental he-even he-was now and then compelled to consult. There were conditions attached to such inquiry, by which he-even he-was forced to abide. Here, now, on the chimney of a common lamp, there writhed blurred characters such as formerly had expressed transcendent truths... but who alive could certify the meaning of such messages? Those tongues had been forgotten everywhere!'

 

 

Reacting to the concentration of his gaze, the woman ventured, "Sir, you're not by any chance skilled in the repair of lamps, are you... ?"

 

 

Then, registering the fierceness of his expression, she fell into a puzzled silence.

 

 

Some of the old laws, it appeared, still stood, but the understructure of them must have cracked, as a building may retain its general shape yet lack huge plates of stucco from its facade and be unsafe to walk the stairways of. For this lamp was showing three truths in the ancient manner, without the ancient and obligatory rites....

 

 

Of three, the first incomprehensible, in a variety of writing that creatures not quite man-like had employed to record dealings in imponderables. It had been hazarded that the records concerned a trade in souls, but that was barely an approximation. In any case, being an invention of chaos, the symbols had any value anyone cared to assign them.

 

 

And it was fading, and it was time to ask again.

 

 

"How come you to this pass?" the traveler thought.

 

 

Now, the one debatable, in a single hieroglyph such as might have been seen on the high pillars of EtnumYuzup before that metropolis dissolved into dust with thunderclaps. The Grand Five Weavers had grown self-indulgent, and no longer observed the instructions they had issued to themselves in the days of the foundation of their city. This might be read plainly; the traveler read it.

 

 

One would cease.

 

 

Now for the final truth, the ineluctable... but the question must be aptly posed. Indeed, the traveler realized, it had better not be a question but a statement, a truth of comparable import. Within his head he framed it: "I have many names, but a single nature."

 

 

The weakening elemental understood, and on the glass appeared the characters of a poem by Shen-i-ya Eng-t'an Zwu, who sat for a thousand years beneath an elm while none could tell whether he lived or died, so wholly was he attuned to the world around.

 

 

Smoke

 

 

fades into the air

 

 

is no more seen

 

 

The candle-dousing winds of ages seemed to sough in the chimney of the cottage.

 

 

"Sir," the woman said anxiously, "I wish you'd not bother so much with our trifling problem!"

 

 

"Is it not in fact a great matter for you, lacking a lamp?" The traveler didn't raise his head.

 

 

The woman sighed. "Well, I must confess it is, sir. For eating close by the fire, and breathing smoke, is hard on my little one, and my man Yarn above all, what with his chest-trouble.... I'd set my heart on having a good bright clear new lamp!"

 

 

"As you wish," said the traveler, not without sorrow, "so be it."

 

 

He blew out the flame. When he cleaned the glass and lit it anew, it shed a grateful pure yellow light.

 

 

Wolpec was little, though wise; candles had sufficed in which to pen him. Fegrim was vast, and underlay a mountain. But he had seen among the snag-toothed peaks of Kanish-Kulya how his volcano slumbered now beneath a cap of white, where once it had spouted smoke a mile high. No ripples stirred the pool of Horimos, and after untold eons the river Metamorphia had changed that nature it once had of changing things.

 

 

Wives rinsed their laundry in the spring at Geirion, and the eldritch song Jorkas had been used to sing was turned a lullaby with nonsense words to soothe asleep happy babes in wicker cradles. Even the names of the greatest ones: Tuprid and Iaschalanva, Juorril and Lry-were one to speak them, folk would answer, "Who?"

 

 

They had departed, to fret powerless among the stars, and sometimes hurl futile spears of flame across the night... at which sight lovers, hand in hand, would cry merrily, "Look, there's a star to wish on! Wish for early marriage and long happiness!" And kiss, and forget it in a moment.

 

 

Except here, and that was very strange. Disquieting! It was indeed in Cleftor country as had been described to him: as though the black of night could filter through the walls and dull the fire. Flames here were sullen red, and their heat was muted. This was not true of the new lamp, but there were reasons for that.

 

 

It would be politic, the traveler reasoned, to behold the dawn.

 

 

Therefore, dissolving one of the forces that curdled the light-beams of his staff, he picked his way across the hut's floor silently, abandoning the thick warm fleece he'd been allotted for a coverlet. Outside, the last hour of the night was oppressive with mephitic stench, as though every home in the valley had kept a fire ablaze all night against the mantle of blackness, and all their smokes had come together in a foul miasma. Even the blade of light from his staff was foreshortened a pace or two ahead of his toes.

 

 

The trade of lamp-maker hereabouts must indeed be a profitable pursuit.

 

 

What this blackness was not was easy to define. It wasn't smoke, although much was now mingled in it. It was not fog, clammy and opaque, yet cleanly, being drops of fine-divided water. It was not cloud, which is of the same substance. It was-well, it was an inverse of brightness.

 

 

When dawn came, belatedly by the traveler's calculation, it behaved moreover in a peculiar fashion. Rather than thinning and being dispelled, as night ought to be by the rising sun, it drew in on itself, lying bare yard by yard the countryside, as though one could make thick black tar flow uphill. And uphill was its direction, out of the vale and towards the ragged pinnacles of Cleftor Heights. There, at some point almost beyond the traveler's range of vision, it gathered itself as it were into a ball, into a spiraling cone, into a wisp... and nothing.

 

 

Yet it had left, over every inch of ground where it had lain, a brooding aura of dismal foreboding.

 

 

Going by ordinary ways, he later came on some children turned out of the house to play, who were listlessly tossing pebbles at a target scratched on a tree-bole, and seemingly cared little whether they hit it or not; at least, none among them was keeping score.

 

 

"Who rules these lands?" the traveler inquired, and one of them answered.

 

 

"I think his name is Garch, sir. Would you that I go home and ask my mother? She would know."

 

 

"Thank you; the name's enough," the traveler said.

 

 

IV

 

 

At the full moon Garch Thegn of Cleftor Heights held certain audiences that differed markedly from the common run of his daily business. One day before the full, he spoke to no one, but locked himself away in private rooms to pore over great tomes and crumbling scrolls; one day after, it was never sure-even to his chief counselors and stewards-whether he would be fit to resume his normal court, in his great hall tiled with chrysoberyl slabs.

 

 

Yet withal his was a domain envied far and wide in this country; by all criteria it was improbable. Though most of it was rocky and its soil was thin, its kine were famed for their fatness and the richness of their milk. Though their roots were shallow, often planted in mere crevices, never a hedge but yielded nuts and fruit to be preserved by boiling down in honey. Though it was unpopulous, with villages few and far between, its folk were tall and strong and raised healthy children; what was more, garments elsewhere reserved to the grandest ladies might here be seen gracing a farmer's wife driving her trap to market, or her daughter on a high-day bound for the wife-taking dance. Velvet and suede, samite and purple plush, were donned as casually as homespun, and only at the very fringes of the Garch estates-as for example hard by Rotten Tor-did families lack for silver spoons and porcelain dishes to entertain company at table.

 

 

Paradoxically, with all this the folk of the district were misliked. It was said they were overly cunning; it was said that doing business with them was like trying to stand an eel on its tail. It was further hinted that it was best not to let your daughter marry one, be he never so prosperous, for in a short while her only care for her family would be to take what advantage of them she might, and she'd have become like her neighbors, purse-mouthed, hard-eyed, and fond of coin.

 

 

Despite such talk, however, visitors came frequently to Garch's mansion, for purposes of trade. Notable among these, and arriving typically in the second quarter of the moon, were persons of a particular sort, who brought not conventional goods, but ideas, and treasures, and relics-it being at this specific time of the month that the thegn was readiest to receive them.

 

 

Few, nonetheless, passed the fierce initial scrutiny of his counselors; penalties for wasting the thegn's time were severe, and all supplicants for audience must be grilled beforehand by these three. Each morning they assembled in an anteroom beside the great hall, with a scribe and a paymaster carrying a chest of coins, and saw everyone who had come intending to trade. Often the business was quick and simple, concerning only regular goods that might be swiftly bargained for, such as tapestry, or unguents, or fine handicrafts. Similarly, there were those who offered services, skill in carving or tailoring or cobbling, and were desirous to display the shield of warrant of their lord over their place of business; these were invariably permitted to undertake a trial venture for a small fixed fee-or, if they failed a first time, for no fee at all-then engaged on contract if their talents proved adequate. One of this sort had once been Master Buldebrime, and now he supplied the lamps and candles for the mansion, toiling monthly up from the town with a selection of his choicest productions.

 

 

Sometimes, however, the proceedings went slowly, and involved interrogation, and it was the hardiest and most venturesome of the visitors who endured this. A few such were on hand today.

 

 

Garch's trusted counselors were three, as aforesaid. In a high-backed chair of horsebones pinned with bronze and padded with bags of chicken-down, the old crone Roiga sat to the left. To the right sat Garch's sister, Lady Scail, on lacquered ivory made soft with whole sheepskins. And in the center, scorning luxury, presided one-eyed Runch on a common counting-house stool. He wore green; Roiga, brown; the lady Scail, yellow. All else in the room was sterile grey.

 

 

"Admit the first," said Runch in a barking voice, and alert servants ushered in a man who wore the garb of the Shebyas, itinerant traders whose home on the Isle of Sheb had gone back to yellow jungle; no one was certain why, but enchantment was suspected. Doffing his cap, he placed before Runch an object in a small pink sack.

 

 

"Your honors, I bring a rare relic, from a city sunken in the depths of Lake Taxhling. Had I but the gold to finance such an expedition, I'd hire divers-of which as you are doubtless aware there are a plenitude in that region where they gather mussel-pearls-and go rake the bottom-mud to produce beyond a peradventure many other potent articles. He coughed behind his hand and dropped his voice. "I suspect it would be superfluous to mention that knowledge of an extraordinary kind was available to the inhabitants of that city, which I'm sure you will concede it's better not to name aloud."

 

 

Runch looked over the relic, which was a corroded axe-blade. He said, pushing it aside, "You cannot name the city, because it isn't there. What you have is part of the cargo of a boat capsized by a storm. Go away."

 

 

"But your honor-your grace-your highness...!" the man expostulated. The crone Roiga snapped bony fingers, and an attendant hurried him away.

 

 

"Next," she said in a voice like rustling dried leaves.

 

 

A man entered who swept the floor with a blue cloak as he bowed. "I, sire and ladies," he announced, "acquired a book at Pratchelberg. Lacking the skill to read the ancient language in which it's couched, I thought to bring it to your thegn, as being the most renowned, the most expert, the most-"

 

 

"Save your breath," murmured the lady Scail, having turned a mere half-dozen of the pages. "This text's corrupt, and anyway my brother has a better copy."

 

 

Protesting quite as loudly as his forerunner, the man in the blue cloak made a forced departure. To the music of his wails, a third supplicant approached, offering a small furry ball.

 

 

"This unique article," he declared, "speaks when it's gently squeezed, crying out in a small shrill voice. By repute it grew on the ranches of Yorbeth, and I laid out half my life's savings so that it might be brought to Thegn Garch."

 

 

Roiga took it and listened to its cry. She said as she threw it aside again, "Hah! Yes, indeed, it does speak -by forcing air through twin taut reeds! And do you know what it says? It says, 'The man who bought me is a fool!' Get you gone!"

 

 

"Will they never learn?" murmured the lady Scail as this man also was frog-marched out. She had taken a tiny pad of emery and was buffing at her blood-red nails. "Who remains-anyone?"

 

 

And there was a girl.

 

 

Suddenly there came an electric tingling in the air, and Scail laid by her emery-pad and Roiga closed her thin old hands on the reassuringly solid nearer edge of the table and Runch confirmed his balance on his stool.

 

 

She stood before them in a broad hat and fur breeches and a black mail shirt. For a long while there was utter silence.

 

 

Then, at length, she moved to place before them a small packet wrapped in parchment and bound with a white ribbon. She said, "Spices."

 

 

The three counselors inhaled as one, and it was Roiga who finally said, "Vantcheen-yes?"

 

 

The girl nodded. She was very thin, as though a skeleton had been dressed again in its skin without the underlying fat and muscle, and her eyes burned like a black fire.

 

 

"Then name your price!" cried Runch.

 

 

"Ah, yes. A price." The girl tapped a sharp front tooth with a nail even sharper. "Silver, then. A hammer-head. Three ounces' weight."

 

 

The three counselors tensed. Lady Scail said, "As to the shaft...?"

 

 

The girl shook her head ever so slightly, and gave ever so slight a smile. She said, "I thank you for the offer. But the shaft has already been-uh-given to me."

 

 

"Oh, but you're so young!" exclaimed Roiga. "And yet you're so skilled!"

 

 

"Thank you again," the girl murmured, and turned to go.

 

 

"Wait!" cried Lady Scail. "Do you not wish to speak with my brother the thegn? It's long since one was here who was so adept!"

 

 

"If the constellations are proper for the meeting, I shall meet the thegn," said the girl composedly, and took from the scribe a draft to cover her pay, authorizing the mansion's master smith to forge the silver hammer-head.

 

 

There was a deep silence for some while following her departure. The handle of that hammer had to be gristly-and some, particularly men, would call it grisly....

 

 

Then they were poised, very well pleased, to adjourn for the day, the only other supplicants for audience being of the common run-disputants over boundary fence, or prospective parents-in-law come to determine the proper size of a marriage-portion-when there was a furious stamping and considerable shouting beyond the door, and at the head of a gaggle of stewards, secretaries and waiting-room maids, their master himself came blasting into the room.

 

 

The counselors beheld his expression of blind rage with amazement, rising to their feet.

 

 

"I have been cheated and deceived!" roared Garch.

 

 

By ordinary he was pretty much a fop, this wealthy lord of improbably rich estates, but now his brown hair and beard were tousled, the laces hung down from his dark red shirt, and his fine worsted stockings slopped over the tops of his boots. To emphasize his outburst, he hammered on the table, and came near to scattering the vantcheen spice.

 

 

"Search me this mansion, every nook and cranny!" he shouted. "Moreover, all the lands about! And if it be not found within the hour, send to the deceiver Bulderbrime and bring him here!"

 

 

"If what be not found?" countered Scail, who as his sister might most freely of the three ask that simple necessary question without inflaming him to further rage.

 

 

Garch mastered himself with vast effort, drew close, and whispered in her ear. By watching the change in her face, base attendants from whom he meant to keep the detailed facts deduced at once it was a matter of grave import. Some among the best informed put two and two together and when they received their orders a moment later-to go forth and bring in all the lamps and candles that could be found-decided it would be politic to go in search of service with some other lord.

 

 

It was, after all, a mere day and a half short of full moon.

 

 

By contrast with the thegn, Master Bulderbrime was in a high good humor. Walking through the back rooms of his home, that also served as shop, factory and warehouse, he no more than cuffed any of his apprentices today, not once employing the tawse that hung at his belt for administration of severer punishment.

 

 

"Here are eleven candles almost the weight of twelve!" he barked at one child, charged with bearing finished work from the ranked poetry molds to be checked on the steelyard-but even she and the boy who had filled the molds escaped with mere open-handed slaps. Satisfied that they were dutifully trimming the surplus wax to be re-melted, he continued.

 

 

"Not so lavish with that essence!" he growled at a boy engaged in adding perfumes, drop by drop, to a mix of oils for the most expensive lamps. "Don't you know it conies from Alpraphand? Hah! I've half a mind to make you walk such a distance on this floor, to brand in your memory knowledge of how far that is! Still, that would take you weeks, and I'll neither feed nor clothe you 'less you're working hard to pay for it!"

 

 

Accordingly that apprentice too got off with a smacking.

 

 

Persuaded at length that all was well below, as much as affected the making, storing and vending of his wares, he proceeded to the upper floor. This was partitioned into three large chambers. First he came into his own, luxurious, where a couch stood upholstered in deep warm bear-hide and a little girl was industriously polishing a pier-glass.

 

 

To her, he said nothing; to himself he murmured that it was a pity she was destined for the eventual requirements of Lord Garch. Otherwise...

 

 

Still, there must be no breath of scandal about this house! If there were, respectable folk would cease to apprentice their brats with him, who kept no wife nor even a serving-maid. For that reason, the two other rooms on this story could be locked at night, and the keys remained always under his hand. One room for girls, the other for boys, they were in most regards identical, each containing heaps of rags soiled by long use and troughs into which at dawn and sunset he poured bucketfuls of gruel for the apprentices to lap. Now and then he also accorded them scraps of bacon and the outer leaves of cabbages: experience having shown that without a morsel of meat and a nibble of greens, the children grew sickly-hence unprofitable. He begrudged the cost, but tolerated it.

 

 

One further door remained at this level, and he opened it with the smallest of his many keys. Beyond was a steep flight of steps, hardly more than a slanted ladder, which he climbed. Despite the effort it required to haul his bulk to the top, he was humming a cheery strain when he emerged into the attic that it led to: a large open space lighted by two dusty dormers, lately re-floored with well-planed boards that did not creak.

 

 

Below, although they applied themselves to their work, the apprentices found time-as usual-to whisper and make gestures with offensive import. One boy of fourteen, bolder than the rest, and inured to being beaten for his obduracy, filched a more-than-finger-sized piece of wax and began to shape it into a human form. Pausing beside him, a girl who might have been pretty before a pint of Bulderbrime's hot tallow seared a puckered scar down her left cheek offered criticism and comment. Others gathered to see what was happening, and suggested improvements. In a little while the likeness to their master was unmistakable, and they chuckled and clutched at one another in delight.

 

 

When the doll was perfected, they hid it in a chink between the planks of the wall, to furnish further amusement at some future time.

 

 

Above, unaware of this, Buldebrime approached the center of his attic room. There stood a stool and a table bearing a number of books bound in leather from unconventional sources. Also there was a brazier, and a locked aumbry with carven doors hung from a main-post of the roof. The lamp-maker opened this last, and removed from it a number of small articles: a bundle of feathers, a bag of herbs, and some powders.

 

 

Watching from deep shadow, the traveler in black repressed a sigh. He hated these hole-in-corner enchanters, not merely because they were victims of the same paradox that had misled their more distinguished predecessors-desiring to control chaos for the sake of the power to be had from it, yet anxious not to destroy it by exerting over-much control-but also because he'd found them ignorant, discourteous and casual. Buldebrime seemed typical of many.

 

 

He did not attempt to make himself known. Had Buldebrime been as adept as he presumably liked to think he was, he would not have needed to be told there was a Presence in the room.

 

 

He set out what was requisite for the sorcery he intended to undertake, bar one crucial item: a single candle. And then, in the instant before he discovered that the candle was not where he thought it was, there came a thunderous hammering from the entrance to the shop, followed by a loud cry.

 

 

"Buldebrime! Buldebrime! Open in the name of Garch Tegn of Cleftor Heights!"

 

 

The traveler gave a nod and took his leave.

 

 

V

 

 

There was a certain spot, a fair sward set with rocks flat-topped as though designed expressly to be sat upon, commanding a fine view of the thegn's mansion and within lazy strolling distance of the villages nearest thereto. In any other community it might safely have been predicted that on fine clear evenings such as this local folk would often congregate here, bringing provender and beer and possibly a tabor and some fifes, to enjoy the pleasant outlook and reflect on their luck in serving so notably able a ruler.

 

 

Here, however, the safe prediction was that by late afternoon all who did not have utterly unavoidable business would have retreated to their homes, bolting and shuttering them against the onset of that unnatural night which soaked up starlight and bit at the bones with vicious teeth.

 

 

So indeed the case proved. The last herds were driven back to their byres, the last flocks were folded, long before the sun had touched the divided peaks of the Cleft Tor. As the shadows lengthened, the air grew thick, and the aura which had infected the whole day curdled into a foretaste of the dark to come.

 

 

Seated alongside a curving track, his staff across his knees, the traveler gazed towards the thegn's mansion. It was a handsome, if uninspired, edifice. Girdling it in the place of a curteyn-wall there were low-roofed outbuildings perhaps a hundred paces by two hundred, made of grey stone, interrupted by a gate and speckled with windows. These enclosed a courtyard above ground-level, whose cobbled surface concealed subterranean dungeons and other hidden chambers, and from the center of this yard upreared a tower, or rather frustrum, its sloping sides approximating the base of a cone. There were the private quarters of the thegn. Terminating its truncated top, there was a winch-house where by shifts a score or so of muscular deaf-mutes waited the signal to save Garch the effort of climbing stairs, by hauling on ropes to lift a kind of palankeen steadied by greased poles and capable of being halted at any floor of the tower.

 

 

As the traveler studied this mansion, he saw servants come to set out torches by the gate, though there was still considerable sun-time left in the day.

 

 

Eventually there came in sight around the curve of the road a sort of small procession. It began with a striding man-at-arms, suspiciously staring this way and that. It continued with a personage in the garb of a Shebya: blue cap, green coat, black boots and silver spurs. He rode astride a palfrey. Then came a girl attired in pink as a page, but bosomed too heavily for there to be much chance of mistaking her sex, leading the first of a pair of pack-mules whose wooden saddles were half empty, and lastly another man-at-arms leading the second mule. Such was a common spectacle in any well-governed land; the Shebyas were the greatest traders of the age, and even the poorest possessed at least a couple of beasts and an attendant.

 

 

The leader of this party, however, was clearly not overjoyed with whatever business he'd most recently conducted. He frowned as he rode, and not infrequently uttered objurgations.

 

 

He redoubled them for fluency and loudness when, on spotting the black-clad figure by the track, the leading man-at-arms dropped his spear to an attack position and cried, "Halt!" The palfrey obeyed with extraordinary promptness, and thereby almost spilled his rider to the road.

 

 

"Good morrow," said the traveler mildly. "Sir, would you command your man to put up that over-eager point? It's aligned upon a portion of my carcass that I am anxious to preserve intact."

 

 

"Do so," the Shebya commanded, and pulled a face. "Forgive him," he continued, doffing his cap. "But we're collectively upset, I'd have you know, and very edgy, as it were. We've done so poorly on our errand to this famous thegn-of which we had, I must admit, high hopes."

 

 

"The saddles of your mules seem light enough," the traveler murmured.

 

 

"Oh, ordinary pack-goods one can dispose of anywhere," the Shebya shrugged. His keen eyes were fixed on the curious staff the traveler held, and one could almost hear the logical, though erroneous, deductions he was making. "But... Well, sir, might I hazard a guess that you too are bound to call on Garch?"

 

 

"That possibility," the traveler conceded, "should not be entirely ruled out."

 

 

"I thought so!" the other exclaimed, leaning forward on his palfrey's withers. "Might I further suggest that you would welcome information concerning the thegn's alleged willingness to purchase-ah-intangibles and other rare items at a respectable price?"

 

 

"It would be rash to deny," the traveler said, "that I have heard reference to some such habit of his."

 

 

"Then, sir, save your trouble. Turn about, and escape the oncoming night - for, truly, the nights they have hereabout are not of the common cosy kind. The tales you've likely heard are arrant nonsense."

 

 

"Nonsense, you say?"

 

 

"Yes indeed!" The Shebya grew confidential, lowering his tone. "Why, did I not bring him an object virtually beyond price? And did I not in the upshot have to peddle it door to door, for use in some lousy household enchantment instead of in the grand ceremonials of an adept? That it should keep company with pollywogs and chicken-blood-faugh! I ask you! Would not dragon-spawn have been meeter?"

 

 

"And was the article efficacious?" the traveler asked, hiding a smile.

 

 

The Shebya spread his hands. "Sir, that is not for me to determine. Suffice it to say that tomorrow will tell; for the sake of insurance, as it were, against the risk that the purchaser may prove inadequately skilled in conjuration to extract maximum benefit from the acquisition, I suppose to be some distance hence." His mask of annoyance, willy-nilly, gave place to a grin; it was granted by everyone that, rogues though the Shebyas might be, they were at least engaging rogues.

 

 

"Howbeit," he appended, "take my advice. Don't go to Garch expecting to sell him remarkable and unique artifacts or data at such price as will ensure comfort to your old age. Apart from all else, the mansion is in a turmoil. Someone, so to speak, would appear to have laden the thegn's codpiece with live ants, and he gibbers like a man distraught, ordering all who displease him to be shortened by the head without appeal. Another excellent reason for departure-which, sir, if you will forgive the briefness of this conversation, inclines me forthwith to resume my journey."

 

 

After he and his companions had gone, the traveler remained. The air thickened still further. It felt almost resistant to the limbs, like milk turned with an admixture of rennet. Lost on a high outcrop, a kid bleated hopelessly for its nanny. Chill that one might have mistaken for agonizing frost laid a tight hold on the land, yet no pools crisped with ice. The traveler frowned and waited longer still.

 

 

Over the high tower of the mansion, at last, the coffin-black of night started to appear: solid-seeming blotches on the sky. At roughly the same time, there were noises to be heard along the road again, coming from the direction opposite to that which the Shebya and his troupe had taken. Into sight came a party of hurrying men on horseback, full-armed, glancing apprehensively at the gathering dark. Some had equipped themselves with torches, and kept making motions towards their flint and steel.

 

 

In their midst, tied face to tail on a dirty donkey, was Buldebrime moaning and crying out, hands lashed at his back and his grease-stiff smock badly torn.

 

 

Some distance behind, unable to keep pace, a furious driver cursed a pair of shaggy-fetlocked horses drawing a cart loaded until the springs sagged with candles, lamps, and articles in bags which could not clearly be discerned.

 

 

Of itself, the parade might have been amusing. Given the circumstances which had led to it, the traveler could not find it other than appalling.

 

 

The darkness spread, and yet it did not move. Rather, it occurred, moment by moment, at places further from its source.

 

 

VI

 

 

"Be calm!" Lady Scail for the latest of countless times adjured her brother.

 

 

"Be calm?" he echoed, mocking her. "How can I be? Are not they deserting us, the traitors, deserting me who gave them prosperity from this lean harsh country and made them the envy of folk in richer lands?"

 

 

It was true: news came every' few minutes of some trusted serving-man, soldier or steward who had surreptitiously crept away from the household.

 

 

"Is it not, moreover," he pursued, "the night before full moon? Is it not nearing midnight of that night? Must I not shortly go into the prescribed retreat? And how can we tell as yet how greatly we've been deceived by Buldebrime? Perhaps he miscalibrated our time-candles, so we'll have no means to tell the proper hour!"

 

 

Admittedly, it was impossible to make astronomic observations under nights as black as these.

 

 

Nonetheless, she blasted the same injunction at him, saying, "You fool, you have to keep your head at any cost! How many enchanters have not gone to doom because an elemental took advantage of just that weakness in their character?"

 

 

Sweating, gulping draught after draught of wine to lend him courage, he did his best to comply, since reason was on her side. However, self-mastery was hard. The mansion, and not only that but the entire surrounding countryside, was aquiver. The jagged range of Cleftor Heights was thrumming to a soundless vibration of menace, as though one of the beings incarcerated in a restless star had found the means to transmit terror down a shaft of light and struck the bedrock into resonating the keynote of a symphony of disaster, against the advent of the instrumentalists.

 

 

Moreover, it is not good for one who invokes the forces of chaos to pay any attention whatsoever to reason....

 

 

"Where's Roiga?" Garch demanded of a sudden.

 

 

"Where she should be: making ready in your room."

 

 

"And Runch?"

 

 

"They called him to the gate a while ago. They've sighted the party bringing Buldebrime."

 

 

"Then I'll go down to the dungeons," Garch declared, and drained his goblet. "I must be first to learn what that traitor's done!"

 

 

There was routine in this mansion, as in the household of any great lord, and to outward appearance it was being maintained. At the corner of two echoing corridors the traveler in black saw proof of this. Thump-thump down the passages to the beat of drums came the nightly provisions for the company at dinner: pies stuffed with game so heavy two men staggered under the load, and the whole roasted haunches of oxen and sheep; then serving-girls with jugs of wine and beer, and butlers carrying fine white linen napkins on their arms, and boys with ewers and basins that the diners might wash their hands in scented water, and harpists, and flautists, and a dwarf. This last hobbled awkwardly in an overlong gown, designed to make him trip often on its hem for the amusement of the gathering.

 

 

One could not intelligently foresee there being much laughter in the banquet-hall tonight. The stones from which the building was erected shared the incipient convulsions of the landscape, and overmuch dust danced in the light of the torches.

 

 

Intermittently, from beneath the floor, issued screams.

 

 

Orderly, with professional niceness, the least spoken-of among Garch's retainers-Tradesman Humblenode, the torturer-had set out the varied equipment for his task: here whips and fetters, thumbscrews there; tongs, knives and nooses at another place; and in the center of all a brazier, at which a little dirty boy worked a blacksmith's bellows in a vain attempt to make the fuel burn as bright as was required. Even here under the courtyard, where the walls oozed continual damp, the pervasive obliterating light-absorption of the strange night made itself known.

 

 

At the mere sight of Humblenode's instruments Buldebrime had collapsed into sniveling, and it was long after the thegn's intrusion into his cell that they contrived to make him utter coherent words.

 

 

"No, I did not filch any such candle! I have no knowledge of enchantment!"

 

 

"Try him with a little red iron," Garch proposed, and Tradesman Humblenode set a suitable tool to the fire.

 

 

"Have pity, have pity!" Buldebrime cried. "I swear by Orgimos and Phorophos, by Aldegund and Patrapaz and Dencycon-!"

 

 

"I thought you had no knowledge of enchantment?" Garch murmured, and gestured for Humblenode's assistants to stretch the lamp-maker on a rack.

 

 

But in a short space from the application of the first iron he escaped into unconsciousness, and not all Humblenode's art sufficed to awake him.

 

 

"Is Roiga meantime testing the lamps and candles that were brought with him?" Garch remembered to ask, somewhat belatedly. He had given that instruction, and not checked that it was carried out-though Runch and Roiga, of all his retinue, had most to lose by neglecting his requirements.

 

 

"I come from her, sir," a nervous waiting-maid reported, who was trying not to look at the limp body of Buldebrime, or anything else present in the cell. "She assures me she has tested every one, and whatever you seek-uh-isn't there."

 

 

Garch drew himself up to his full height. "So the treacherous lamp-man has tricked me," he muttered. "Can he not be aroused by midnight?"

 

 

"By no art known to me," said Humblenode apologetically. It was the first time he had failed his master, and he braced himself as though to endure his own style of treatment in consequence.

 

 

But Garch swung on his heel and strode away.

 

 

He came upon his sister, together with Runch and attendants, at the head of the dank noisome stairway to the dungeons; his private means of vertical transport did not, for logical reasons, extend into this level.

 

 

"Have you succeeded?" Scail cried.

 

 

"Failed!"

 

 

"And midnight nears!" Runch muttered.

 

 

"What must be done, must be done," said Garch. "Prepare me for my watch alone."

 

 

"But surely tonight it was imperative to conjure Wolpec, and ask his earnest of your ultimate success!" Under her face-mantling layers of rouge and powder, the lady Scail blanched.

 

 

"What's to be done will be done now!" Garch snapped. "Like it or not! You have tomorrow's daylight to run away by, if that's your plan. For the moment, leave me - time is short."

 

 

Without so much as a brotherly embrace, let alone that other kind which had in the past lent certain crucial potency to his doings, he pushed by them both and was gone.

 

 

Under the supervision of the crone Roiga, servants had toiled to bring many articles into the cabinet she was making ready. It lacked windows, naturally; what air there was must seep through tiny crevices, and about each, carefully marked, there had been inscribed a line of minuscule writing in an obsolete syllabary. It lacked furniture, too; in place of that it was hung with curtains of goat-hide, woven marsh-grass and the plaited hair of murdered girls. There was a mirror in the center of its floor, which was as true a circle as the mason's art could contrive, but that mirror was cracked across, and the traveler knew with what hammer the blow would have been struck: silver-headed, hafted with a portion of his anatomy that some man-albeit briefly-would have lived to regret the loss of. He had been aware that enchantments of this calibre were still conducted, but in this case at least one unqualifiedly essential preliminary to them had been totally neglected.

 

 

Patience.

 

 

Rat's-bane and wolf-hemp; powder of dragon-bone and mullet-roe; candied mallow and murex pigment; vantcheen spice... Yes, all the ancient indispensables were here. Bar one. Bar the one that mattered more than anything.

 

 

The traveler withdrew into dismal contemplation.

 

 

Then, finally, Garch came, pale and trembling but determined not to let his companions recognize the full depth of his terror, to perform the rites required of him as lord of this land which yielded more than its proper share of good things. He was correctly robed in a chasuble of blood-hue; he correctly wore one shoe of hide and one of cloth; he correctly bore the wand, the orb and the sash; and the proper symbols, though awkwardly, had been inscribed on his palms with henna and indigo.

 

 

He entered the door of ashwood clamped with brass, and it was closed at his back with the traditional braided withes: one at the height of his neck, one at the height of his heart, and one at the height of his genitals. That done, Runch and Roiga and Scail perforce withdrew. Unless they chose to run away, indeed, by tomorrow's daylight, the process was in train and they were to be dragged with it.

 

 

Even running away might not help.

 

 

As for the traveler in black, he had no choice. This was intrinsically a part of that which bound him. From this moment forward, he was compelled to remain. Here was no petty hearthside conjuration, to be laughed at when it failed and probably neglected thereafter; here was no witty tampering with the course of natural events, such as certain happy enchanters had counted a fair reward for the relief of boredom; here was no ritual from which overt profit instantly ensued, such as the merchant enchanters of a bygone age had employed to make their cities prosperous.

 

 

No, those trivialities could be ignored. Here, though, was a ceremony so elaborate, so pregnant with possibility and so absolutely devoid of probability that its very name, regardless of what language it was uttered in, sent shivers down the spines of uncomprehending listeners. Here, set on foot in a selfish lordling's mansion, was such a pattern as had not been undertaken since the epoch of the Grand Five Weavers and the Notorious Magisters of Alken Cromlech: the most ancient, the most arcane, the most honorable appellation of the Ones Who-

 

 

The traveler froze the progress of his mind. Almost, he had recited the full title to himself. And were he to do so, all-all-everything would be eternally lost.

 

 

If it were not already lost. He feared it was.

 

 

VII

 

 

The lady Scail slept but ill that night, and when her shoulder was gently touched at last by the waiting-maid who attended her in her chamber, she rolled her face fretfully back into her satin pillows.

 

 

"Fool!" she snapped. "I said to waken me at dawn. I'll have your head for disturbing me when it's still full dark!"

 

 

Indeed, across the windows a pall of utter lightlessness remained.

 

 

"But, madam," whispered the poor girl, "according to our time-candles dawn should have befallen an hour ago. Yet the sky remains like pitch!"

 

 

Lady Scail sat up on the instant. Through the opened shutters she saw the truth of the maid's assertion. Rising from her night-couch, she exclaimed in wonder.

 

 

"Why-why, that bodes success after all! Here, girl, go rout out Runch and Roiga from their beds, and bid them wait on me at once!"

 

 

Unprecedentedly, without waiting to be handed her day-time garments, she threw aside her sleeping-gown and struggled by herself into a creased chemise.

 

 

Similarly awakened, Roiga trembled with delight and anticipation. She had spent weary decades pent in a worn-out body, with her knees cracking from the rheumatism and her eyes returning blurred images of the outer world. Now under her shriveled bosom her heart beat hammer-wise at the impending prospect of re-purchased youth.

 

 

It was the same for one-eyed Runch: still a mighty man to outward view, scorning the luxury of his companions and affecting the disciplined, hardy habits of a soldier accustomed to sleeping in fields and marching all day through sleet and hail. Therefore he reposed at night on a simple bed of planks with one blanket.

 

 

But over the past few years he had more and more often failed to pleasure the girls he summoned to his couch, until at length he had been unable to endure further humiliation, and took to sleeping alone.

 

 

The promise of being able to rectify that...!

 

 

These three, however-and perhaps Garch himself, but none could certify what was transpiring in his secret room-were the only persons in the whole of the Cleftor lands who found any semblance of joy to greet the advent of this amazing and unprecedented...day? Well, "day" it should indeed have been by rights, and everywhere there should have been the normal daily bustle: the younger children playing by the doorway, the older dispatched to their dame-schools with their slates and pencils; the farmers bound to market hauling their travoises laden with cheese and bacon, their wives plucking geese or hunting eggs...

 

 

But over all the country from Deldale to Herman's Wynd, and back again from Contrescarp to the Ten Leagues' Stone, at Poultry Rock and Brown Hamlet and Legge, at Yammerdale and Gallowtree and Chade, at Swansbroom and Swingthrimble and Slowge, it was dark until what should have been high noon.

 

 

And when the light eventually came, it was the wrong sort of light. It was the sickly grew glow of chaos, that bleached all color into the dullness of ash.

 

 

Now the mountains showed deformed, like mutant fungi; now the trees, vaguely visible, stood rigid as parodies in a picture, and the random disposition of their branches seemed to summate the entire gestural vocabulary of obscene signs such as might be made with a man's upraised fingers. Watching the changing sky in high delight from the vantage of the tower's solar, Roiga and Scail and Runch shouted in succession for the best wine, the richest mead, the finest delicacies that the stores could offer, by way of pre-celebrating their anticipated triumph. The blackness of night and morning had retreated to the fringes of the Cleftor domain, and now it was as though a tunnel had been opened, vertically to the frontiers of the sky, for the beings from beyond to make a grand re-entry to their former state.

 

 

But the servant-maids gawped and gaped and rubbed their ears as they came and went, for there was a dullness to their hearing that occasionally approached an ache, and there was a stale taste in all mouths which twice made Runch accuse a waiting-wench of giving him vinegar, not wine, and a dragging heaviness oppressed all bodies. Yet for the most part those three frenetic counselors-if no one else-were able to ignore it, and drank toast after toast to the wonderful skills of Garch their thegn.

 

 

It was not until they were three parts drunken that they realized there was another in the solar apart from the servants they had bidden to attend them.

 

 

"Who's that?" cried Scail, and slopped wine down her dress in turning to look over her shoulder.

 

 

"Oh-oh!" Roiga moaned, and would have shrunk into hiding.

 

 

"Declare yourself!" shouted Runch, rising and drawing the sword he always wore.

 

 

"Here I am," the intruder said, black cloak swishing as he strode forward to the tap-tap measure of his staff. "Put up that blade, for it's no protection against the doom that's coming to you."

 

 

Runch hesitated, and the sword-point he had presented to the traveler's chest wavered back and forth. He said, "Who...?"

 

 

"One who has many names but a single nature."

 

 

They were thunderstruck on the instant. Dropping her mug of wine, Scail whimpered, "But I thought-"

 

 

"Did you?" the traveler sighed. "Yes, I can believe that you must have regarded my existence as superstition, and your brother likewise. Else you'd have buckled to like sensible folk, and taken what was to hand and made the most of it. Instead of which... Do you know who awaits admission to this place?"

 

 

Uncertain, but feigning bravado out of shame at her spasm of cowardice, Roiga said bluffly, "Why of course. Have we not agreed to call on Tuprid?"

 

 

"Tuprid who takes pleasure only in destruction, whom I saw snuff a star as men would snuff a candle, that he might witness the dying agony of the creatures on its planets as they froze into everlasting ice. And who else?"

 

 

"Why, Caschalanva, of course!" Runch exclaimed.

 

 

"He who prefers the fire to Tuprid's cold. They're ancient rivals. Each struggles to outdo the other in causing pain. And with them?"

 

 

"Quorril!" said Scail, and began to sound a fraction nervous, which though well justified was a belated sign.

 

 

"Whose diet is souls," said the traveler. "And Lry?" They all three nodded.

 

 

"To whom," he concluded, love is hate-who breeds discord and warfare like the plague. And you believe these to be the only ones your brother has invoked?"

 

 

There was a second of silence. "It was all we agreed he should invoke," Scail said at length. "It's with them that we struck our bargain."

 

 

"Bargain!" The traveler gave a sad laugh.

 

 

"Why, certainly! Do they not owe us toll, for opening the road back to where they once ruled?" She was on her feet, facing him defiantly. "Should they not be grateful?"

 

 

"Yes! Is it not a trifle, in view of such a grand service, that they should restore my manhood?" Runch demanded. And-

 

 

"Will they not give me back my youth?" shouted Roiga.

 

 

At the same moment there was a shifting underfoot, as though the land had taken on a colossal weight, and their dialogue with the traveler in black was forgotten. They rushed to the windows and peered out, this way and that, striving to catch a glimpse of whatever had descended to the earth.

 

 

"Oh, my wonderful brother!" Scail cried. "Had I but the half of his skills!"

 

 

"Well, well!" the traveler said, and then again: "Well, well! As you wish, so be it."

 

 

None of them heard him. Nor did they hear the later whisper that echoed from the stone walls following his departure, which sounded a little like:

 

 

"Now why did I not think of that before?"

 

 

VIII

 

 

This, therefore, was the manner of the coming back of the former great ones to the world. And it was not totally to their liking.

 

 

Left alone in the stock-depleted house of Buldebrime, the gaggle of apprentices had at first been worried and afraid; then the boy of fourteen who had conceived the notion of making that mocking doll sought to calm the youngest of his companions by producing it again, and they dissolved into laughter as he put it through absurd motions by heating it so the limbs could be deformed. Laughter made them grow bolder, and recalled them to routine. They fed themselves, and then since their master was not present to forbid them they made free of the house, tumbling together in many enjoyable games until sleep overtook them.

 

 

On the morrow, however, they were frightened anew by the curious unprecedented length of the darkness enveloping the neighborhood, and moreover they were hungry, because last night they had eaten their fill from the supplies in the pantry. For some of them it was the first time in months they had had a square meal; so nothing was left but crumbs.

 

 

They hunted high and low by the wan light of such candles as they had managed to make for themselves after Buldebrime's stock had been confiscated by Garch's men, and ultimately found a way to prise off the padlock blocking their access to the attic room. In company of the girl with the scarred face, the leading boy braved the ladder-like steps and looked around the shadowed books and mystic articles with amazement.

 

 

"Would that I knew what all these things are for and could employ them!" the girl said.

 

 

The traveler spoke soft words, unnoticed, in a corner.

 

 

In the increasing chill of their hut by Rotten Tor, little Nelva and her mother listened in agony to the racking coughs the cold afflicted upon Yarn.

 

 

"Oh, mother!" the bairn cried, seeing how the fire faded and gave no heat. "Would I knew what the nice man in black did, to make the lamp burn brightly! Then I'd do it to the logs, and we'd all be warm!"

 

 

The traveler again spoke unheard words, and went his way.

 

 

Trapped by the incredible darkness in a very bad inn, the Shebya trader scratched his flea-bites and wrangled with the landlord, claiming that anyone who offered such hard beds and such foul beer had no right to the regular score from his clients. At length, losing temper, he shouted at the man.

 

 

"Ho, that I knew a way to rid the world of greed like yours, that turns one's stomach sour with fury! Ho, that I dealt here only with honest fellows like myself, having codes and principles that require strict adherence to a bargain!"

 

 

He was exaggerating just a little; nonetheless, the Shebyas were frank, as all agreed, though a hint of sleight-of-mind might sometimes give them the better of a deal with anybody less subtle.

 

 

Chuckling, the traveler spoke and tapped his staff on the wall.

 

 

He wondered how it was faring with Garch Thegn of Cleftor Heights.

 

 

And the answer, framed in brief, was-not so well.

 

 

Down to him came the powers to which he'd bowed, weary of long conjurations, but content inasmuch as all had said to him, "We'll go see first that you have kept your word, and then we'll speak of settling our bargain!"

 

 

Which, according to the books in which he reposed his trust, was as fair an answer as they'd ever given anyone.

 

 

So into the nervous night, blear-eyed, he waited on their presence, and ultimately at the moment which- said a well-measured time-candle, and no visible stars- corresponded with the time of full moon, he rose expectantly from his discomfortable posture on the floor in the middle of his cracked mirror.

 

 

One came of the four, and only one, and in such rage as made the walls shake and the tower-top tremble. And reached out for Garch, and he was not.

 

 

Because...

 

 

That elemental, Tuprid, who had snuffed stars, had gone to see first of the places in his allegedly regained domain the nearest to a star, a place of light: to wit, a lamp-maker's shop. And there had found awaiting him a little girl, scar-faced, beside whom a boy clutched her hand to loan her courage, chanting at a candle they had brought and making it burn against the fiercest orders of the visitor. Below, the other children cried, and she thought of them, and made her efforts double, and in the upshot melted a maker of great darkness into shapeless wax dribbling across a book bound in human skin.

 

 

After that, very suddenly, the stars could be viewed by the skylight.

 

 

Also the elemental Caschalanva, who preferred the taste of fire to that of ice, had gone down by the bitter vales under Rotten Tor, and a little girl who wished desperately to make the logs burn more brightly had sensed in an instant of inspiration precisely what was needful to be done....

 

 

And in an inn where fleas plagued the customers, the being Lry who fostered dissension found a predilection towards greed that was emanating from the spot with such force as gales have, using a mountain-range for organ-pipes. Greed being among the chiefest of his tools, he grasped at it-and when it dissipated fractionally after, he was swept into nowhere along with it.

 

 

Whereupon, learning of the fate of his companions that were a good deal more than merely companions, Quorril returned to say that they were cheated, and- souls being his diet-seized Garch's with a snatch of an immaterial claw that laid wide open the wall of his secret room, emitting fumes. The high tower of the mansion tumbled down, its foundations turning to mud and sand.

 

 

Among the ruins, with her dying breath, the lady Scail called down a doom upon him for what he had done to her brother, and-she being now dowered, as she had desired, with the half of Garch's skills, and in particular that half which concerned the binding, rather than the releasing, of elementals-Quorril ceased his flight to the sky, and perforced joined her, and Roiga, and Runch, buried forever beneath that stack of masonry.

 

 

"Where let him rest," the traveler said contentedly, having viewed all this from the vantage of the same sward where he had conversed with the Shebya.

 

 

"And Buldebrime, and Tradesman Humblenode," a quiet voice confirmed alongside him. He had not expected to be alone at a moment like this; he did not look around. "And many more!"

 

 

"And many less guilty, Highness," he appended. "Yet none of them entirely innocent. Willing, at least, to serve a lord whose power was drawn from chaos, when it was apparent to any commonsensical mind that no mortal force could make this barren land so wealthy. Equally, prepared to apprentice children to masters who starved and beat them, for the sake of having them learn a profitable trade...."

 

 

He shrugged, both hands clasping his staff. "No matter, though," he concluded. "Has it not all come to a very tidy end?"

 

 

There was a silence. Also it was dark here. But it was the regular honest dark of a spring night around moonset: nothing worse.

 

 

"At end," the quiet voice said meditatively. "Yes, perhaps it is an end. It might as well be.... You know, my friend, there's something very curious!"

 

 

"Tell me," the traveler invited, who now knew in any case the most important thing that had guided his existence. Still, there were degrees of importance, and even a triviality might provoke interest.

 

 

"Of all the qualities I endowed you with," the voice said, "the most potent has proved to be a certain witty elegance. A-a neatness, a sense of practical economy!"

 

 

"I've fostered it," the traveler agreed. "Having but one nature, I must needs make the most of what I owned." He gestured with his staff at the barely-seen view. "Besides, was it not that practical mode of thinking which reduced the opportunities of access for the ancient ones to these few should-be-barren acres?"

 

 

"Yes, it was."

 

 

"And was not that the designated purpose of my being?"

 

 

There was no answer. After a while the traveler said, "I'm sorry. You must be feeling grievous loss."

 

 

"I?" Beside him the One Who had assigned him to his task, come to witness this last confrontation in the guise of a tall pale and extraordinarily thin girl, shook back long locks under a wide-brimmed hat. "Loss of the other natures that were mine? Why, not at all! Is it not the goal and purpose of the universe that all things shall ultimately have a single nature? I know that to be true, for I decreed it."

 

 

This was what they had not realized at Cleftor Heights: that Tuprid and Caschalanva, Quorril and Lry, and moreover Wolpec and Yorbeth and Farchgrind and Fegrim and Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes, and all the countless rest of those elementals, were the fellow-natures of the One Who had conceived an age in which no creature should possess more than one nature-and had created a personage with many names as earnest of that eventual occurrence.

 

 

Accordingly, the last remaining nature of that One spoke with the traveler and sounded weary.

 

 

"So here I stand, my friend, to link with you like the fingers of a pair of hands, interlocked. What remains to me is what you never had; what remains to you is what I never had. It is a question of complimentarity. But after all these eons you understand that."

 

 

The traveler nodded, and she heaved a sigh.

 

 

"Hah, yes, old friend, my page is past-past like that unnatural night which will nevermore be seen in Cleftor's vales! Eternity at last has found its end, because the powers of chaos have been tamed. And with what little fetters! The wish of a child to help her mother; the distaste of apprentices for then: master; the annoyance of a pedlar-man; and the love of a sister for her stupid brother!"

 

 

"Then my time is past too," the traveler said, ignoring her recital of his tricks-to-triumph-which was just, because all he had was in her gift. "And... And I'm not at all sorry. I was almost coming to miss the enemies I matched against in other ages. You could have undermined me by that weakness."

 

 

"I could." The answer was predictable. She could- everything. Now, however, it was a question not of "could" but "would," and the time for willing chaos had gone by.

 

 

More silence intervened, and then the traveler stretched and yawned.

 

 

"I long for rest," he said. "But-one more thing. Who is to come after us?"

 

 

"Let him decide who he is," said the pale girl, and took him by the hand which lacked the staff. Turning, they went together into absence.

 

 

The End