Songs of the Dying Earth

Lucius Shepard SYLGARMO’S PROCLAMATION

From a second-story window of the Kampaw Inn, near the center of Kaspara Viatatus, Thiago Alves watched the rising of the sun, a habit to which many had become obsessively devoted in these, the last of the last days. A faltering pink ray initiated the event, probing the plum-colored sky above the Mountains of Magnatz; then a slice of crimson light, resembling the bloody fingernail of someone attempting to climb forth from a deep pit, found purchase in a rocky cleft. Finally the solar orb heaved aloft, appearing to settle between two peaks, shuddering and bulging and listing like a balloon half-filled with water, its hue dimming to a wan magenta.

Thiago grimaced to see such a pitiful display and turned his back on the window. He was a powerfully constructed man, his arms and chest and thighs strapped with muscle, yet he went with a light step and could move with startling agility. Though he presented a formidable (even a threatening) image, he had a kindly, forthright air that the less perceptive sometimes mistook for simple-mindedness. Salted with gray, his black hair came down in a peak over his forehead, receding sharply above the eyes — a family trait. Vanity had persuaded him to repair his cauliflower ears, but he had left the remainder of his features battered and lumped by long years in the fighting cage. Heavy scar tissue thickened his orbital ridges, and his nose, broken several times during his career, had acquired the look of a peculiar root vegetable; children were prone to pull on it and giggle.

He dressed in leather trousers and a forest green singlet, and went downstairs and out onto the Avenue of Dynasties, passing beneath several of the vast monuments that spanned it; a side street led him through a gate in the city wall. Swifts made curving flights over the River Chaing and a tall two-master ran with the tide, heading for the estuary. He walked briskly along the riverbank, stopping now and again to do stretching exercises; once his aches and pains had been mastered by the glow of physical exertion, he turned back toward the gate. The city’s eccentric spires — some capped by cupolas of gold and onyx, with decorative finials atop them; others by turrets of tinted glass patterned in swirls and stripes; and others yet by flames, mists, and blurred dimensional disturbances, each signaling the primary attribute of the magician who dwelled beneath — reduced the backdrop of lilac-colored clouds to insignificance.

In the Green Star common room of the Kampaw, a lamplit, dust-hung space all but empty at that early hour, with carved wainscoting, benches and boards, and painted-over windows depicting scenes of golden days and merrymaking through which the weak sun barely penetrated, Thiago breakfasted on griddlecakes and stridleberry conserve, and was contemplating an order of fried glace[1] to fill in the crevices, when the door swung open and four men in robes and intricately tiered caps crowded inside and hobbled toward his table. Magicians, he assumed, judging by the distinctive ornaments affixed to their headgear. Apart from their clothing, they were alike as beans, short and stringy, with pale, round faces, somber expressions and close-cropped black hair, varying in height no more than an inch or two. After an interval a fifth man entered, closed the door and leaned against it, a maneuver that struck Thiago as tactical and put him on the alert. This man differed from his fellows in that he walked without a limp, moving with the supple vigor of youth, and wore loose-fitting black trousers and a high-collared jacket; a rakish, wide-brimmed hat, also black, shadowed his features.

“Have I the pleasure of addressing Thiago Alves?” asked one of the magicians, a man whose eyes darted about with such an inconstancy of focus, they appeared on the verge of leaping out of his head.

“I am he,” Thiago said. “As to whether it will be a pleasure, much depends on the intent of your youthful associate. Does he mean to block my means of egress?”

“Certainly not!”

The magican made a shooing gesture and the youth stepped away from the door. Thiago caught sight of several knives belted to his hip and remained wary.

“I am Vasker,” the magician said. “And this worthy on my left is Disserl.” He indicated a gentleman whose hands roamed restlessly over his body, as if searching for his wallet. “Here is Archimbaust.” Archimbaust nodded, then busied himself with a furious scratching at his thigh. “And here Pelasias.” Pelasias emitted a humming noise that grew louder and louder until, by dint of considerable head-shaking and dry-swallowing, he managed to suppress it.

“If we may sit,” Vasker went on, “I believe we have a proposal that will profit you.”

“Sit if you like,” said Thiago. “I was preparing to order glace and perhaps a pot of mint tea. You have my ear for as long as it will take to consume them. But I am embarked upon a mission of some urgency and cannot listen to distractions, no matter how profitable.”

“And would it distract you to learn…” Archimbaust paused in his delivery to scratch at his elbow. “…that our proposal involves your cousin. The very one for whom you are searching?”

“Cugel?” Thiago wiped his mouth. “What of him?”

“You seek him, do you not?” asked Disserl. “As do we.”

“Yet we have an advantage,” said Vasker. “We have divined his whereabouts.” Thiago wiped his mouth with a napkin and glared at him. “Where is he?”

“Deep within the Great Erm. A village called Joko Anwar. We would travel there ourselves and secure him, but as you see we lack the physical resources for such a task. It requires a robust individual like yourself.”

The young man made a sound — of disgust, thought Thiago — and looked away.

“It is possible to dispatch you to the vicinity of Joko Anwar within minutes,” said Archimbaust. “Why risk a crossing of the Wild Waste and endure the discomfort and danger of a voyage across the Xardoon Sea?”

“Should you travel by conventional means, you may not achieve your goal,” Disserl said. “If Sylgarmo’s recent projections are correct, we might have as little as a handful of days before the sun quits the sky.”

The wizards began debating the merits of Sylgarmo’s Proclamation. Vasker adhered to the optimistic estimate of two and a half centuries, saying the implications of Sylgarmo’s equations were that there would soon be a solar event of some significance, yet not necessarily a terminal one. Archimbaust challenged Sylgarmo’s methods of divination, Disserl held to the pessimistic view, and Pelasias offered a vocabulary of dolorous hums and moans.

To silence them, Thiago banged on the table — this also had the effect of summoning the serving girl and, once he had given her his order, he asked the magicians why they sought Cugel.

“It is a complex issue and not easily distilled,” said Vasker. “In brief, Iucounu the Laughing Magician stole certain of our limbs and organs. We sent Cugel to retrieve them, armed with knowledge that would put an end to Iucounu for all time. Our limbs and organs were restored, but they were returned to us in less than perfect condition. Thus we limp and scratch and shake, and poor Pelasias is forced to communicate his dismay as might a sick hound.”

It seemed to Thiago that Vasker had summarized the matter quite neatly. “And you blame Cugel? Why not Iucounu or one of his servants? Perhaps the manner in which the limbs and organs were stored is at fault. It may be that an impure concentrate was used. Your explanation does not ring true.”

“You fail to comprehend the full scope of Cugel’s iniquity. I can…”

“I know him as well as any man,” said Thiago. “He is spiteful, greedy, and uses people without conscience or concern. Yet never has he acted without reason. You must have done him a grievous injury to warrant such vindictiveness.”

Led by Pelasias’ groaning commentary, the magicians vehemently protested this judgment. Archimbaust was eloquent in their defence. “Our last night together we toasted one another with Iucounu’s wine and feasted on roast fowl from his pantry,” he said. “We sang ribald tunes and exchanged amusing anecdotes. Indeed, Pelasias performed the Five Amiable Assertions, thus consecrating the moment and binding us to friendship.”

“If that is the case, I would counsel you to think well before you dissemble further.” The serving girl set down his tea and Thiago inhaled the pungent steam rising from the pot. “I have little tolerance for ordinary liars and none whatsoever for duplicitous magicians.”

The four men withdrew to the doorway and talked agitatedly among themselves (Pelasias giving forth with plaintive whimpers). After listening for a minute or so, the young man hissed in apparent dissatisfaction. He doffed his hat, releasing a cloud of dark hair, and revealed himself to be a young woman with comely features: a pointy chin and lustrous dark eyes and cunning little mouth arranged in a sullen pout. She would have been beautiful, but her face was so etched with scars, she resembled a patchwork thing. The largest scar ran from the hinge of her jaw down her neck and was wider than the rest, looking as though the intent had been not to disfigure, but to kill. She came toward Thiago and spoke in an effortful hoarse whisper that he assumed to be a byproduct of that wound.

“They claim that while taking inventory of Iucounu’s manse, Cugel happened upon a map made by the magician Pandelume, who dwells on a planet orbiting a distant star,” she said. “The map marks the location of a tower. Within the tower are spells that will permit all who can master them to survive the sun’s death.”

“Cugel’s behavior becomes comprehensible,” said Thiago. “He wished to disable his pursuit.”

The magicians hobbled over from the door. Vasker cast a sour glance at the young woman. “This, then, is our offer,” he said to Thiago. “We will convey you and Derwe to a spot near Joko Anwar, the site of Pandelume’s tower. There you will…”

“Who is this Derwe?”

“Derwe Coreme of the House of Domber,” the woman said. “I ruled in Cil until I ran afoul of your cousin.” She gave the word a loathing emphasis.

“Was it Cugel who marked you so?”

“He did not wield the knives. That was the fancy of the Busacios, a race vile both in form and disposition who inhabit the Great Erm. Yet Cugel is responsible for my scars and more besides. In exchange for information, he handed me over to the Busacios as if I were a bag of tiffle.”

“To continue,” said Vasker in a peremptory tone. “Once there you will enter the tower and immobilize Cugel. He must be kept alive until we have questioned him. Do this and you will share in all we learn.”

The serving girl brought the glace — Thiago inspected his plate with satisfaction.

“When we have done with him,” Vasker went on, “you may extract whatever pleasure you can derive from his torment.” He paused. “Can we consider the bargain sealed?”

“Sealed?” Thiago hitched his shoulders, generating a series of gratifying pops. “Our negotiation has just begun. Is that a spell sniffer I observe about Archimbaust’s neck? And that amulet dangling from Disserl’s hat, it is one that induces a sudden sleep, is it not? Such trinkets would prove invaluable on a journey such as you propose. Then there is the question of my fee. Sit, gentlemen. You may pick at my glace if you wish. Let us hope by the time the meal is done, you will have succeeded in satisfying my requirements.”

The forest known as the Great Erm had the feeling and aspect of an immense cathedral in ruins. Enormous trees swept up into the darkness of the canopy like flying buttresses and from that ceiling depended masses of foliage that might have been shattered roof beams shrouded in tapestries ripped from the walls, the result of an ancient catyclysm. Occasionally Derwe Coreme and Thiago heard faint obsessive tappings and cries that could have issued from no human throat; once they saw an ungainly white shape drop from the canopy and flap off into the gloom, dwindling and dwindling, becoming a point of whiteness, seeming to vanish ultimately into a distance impossible to achieve in so dense a wood, as if it had burrowed into the substance of the real and was making its way toward a destination that lay beyond the borders of the world. The hummocky ground they trod broke into steep defiles and hollows, and every surface was sheathed in moss and lichen, transforming a tallish stump into an ogre’s castle of orange and black, and a fallen trunk into a fairy bridge that spanned between a phosphorescent green boulder and a ferny embankment beneath which long-legged spiders with doorknob-sized bodies wove almost invisible webs wherein they trapped the irlyx, gray man-shaped creatures no bigger than a clothespin that struggled madly against the strands of silk and squeaked and thrust with tiny spears as the hairy abdomens of their captors, stingers extruded, lowered to strike.

It was Derwe who first sighted Pandelume’s tower, a slender needle of yellowish stone showing the middle third of its height through a gap in the foliage. From atop a rise, they saw that beyond the tower, the land declined into a serpentine valley, barely a notch between hills, where several dozen huts with red conical roofs were situated on a bend in a river; beyond the valley, the Great Erm resumed. They hastened toward the tower, but their path was impeded by a deep gorge that had been hidden from their eyes by vegetation. They walked beside it for half an hour but found no spot sufficiently narrow to risk jumping across. The walls of the gorge were virtually concave and the bottom was lost in darkness, thus they had no hope of climbing down and then up the opposite side.

“Those fools have sent us here for nothing!” Derwe Coreme rasped.

“Patience finds a way,” Thiago said. “Soon it will be dark. I suggest we camp by the stream we crossed some minutes ago and wait out the night.”

“Are you aware what night brings in the Great Erm? Bargebeetles. Gids and thyremes. Monstrosities of every stamp. A Deodand has been trailing us for the past hour. Do you wish to share your blanket with him?”

“Where is he? Point him out!”

She gazed at him quizzically. “He stands there, in back of the oak with the barren lower limb.”

Thiago strode directly toward the oak.

Not having anticipated so bold an approach, the Deodand, upon seeing Thiago, took a backward step, his silver eyes widening with surprise. His handsome black devil’s face gaped, exposing an inch more of the fangs that protruded from the corners of his mouth. Thiago gave him a two-handed push, adding to his momentum, and sent him sprawling. He caught one of his legs, stepped over it, dropped to his back and, holding the foot to his belly, he braced against the creature’s body and rolled, wrenching the knee from its socket and — though the flesh felt like petrified wood — fracturing the ankle. The Deodand emitted a throaty scream and screamed again as Thiago stood and drove a heel into his other knee. He repeated the action and heard a crack. Unable to stand, the Deodand crawled after him, his breath hissing. Thiago nimbly eluded his grasp and snapped the elbow joints with deft heel-stomps. He kicked him in the head, to no visible affect. However, he kept on kicking and at last a silver eye burst, cracks spreading across it as they might in a sheet of ice, and fluid spilled forth.

The Deodand thrashed about, keening in frustration.

“How can this be? That you, a human, could have bested me?”

He spoke no more, for Derwe Coreme kneeled at his side and pricked his throat with a thin-bladed knife, causing him to gag, whereupon she sliced off his carmine tongue and stuffed it into his mouth. Within seconds, he had drowned, choking on the blood pouring into his throat.

“I could have dealt with the Deodand,” Derwe Coreme said as they retraced their steps toward the stream. “And with far greater efficiency.”

Thiago made an impertinent sound with his tongue. “Yet you gave no sign of doing so.”

“An auspicious moment had not offered itself.”

“Nor would it have until the Deodand pounced.”

She stopped walking and her hand went to the hilt of a hunting knife. “You fight well, but your style is not one that will allow you to survive long in the Great Erm. I, on the other hand, survived here for three years.”

“Under the protection of the Busacios.”

Her hand tightened on the hilt. “Not so. I escaped after eight months. The remainder of those years I spent hunting Busacios.” She shifted her stance the slightest bit, easing back her left foot and resting her full weight upon it. “Do you know why Vasker hired you? They expect you to control me. They are afraid I will be so inflamed by the sight of Cugel, I may not be able to restrain myself from killing him and all the knowledge that can save them will go glimmering.”

“Are they correct in that assumption?”

“Only in that I will not be controlled.” With her left hand, she brushed a stray hair from her eyes, carefully laying it in place behind her ear. “It is impossible to discern the depths of one’s own heart. My reaction to meeting Cugel again is thus unknowable. If you intend to thwart me, however, perhaps now would be the time.”

Thiago felt the push of her anger; her pulse seemed to fill the air. “I will await a more auspicious moment.”

He began walking again and after a second or two she ran to catch up.

“What are your intentions toward Cugel?” she asked. “I must be the one to kill him.”

“A seer of peerless reputation in Kaiin has assured me that Cugel will not die by my hand, but by his own.”

“He said that? Then he is a fool. Cugel would never take his own life! He defends it as a pig his last truffle.”

Thiago shrugged. “The seer is not often wrong.”

A frown notched Derwe Coreme’s brow. “Of course, if I were to force suicide upon him, if I were to torture him and then offer a choice of more pain, unbearable pain, or the use of one of my knives to end his suffering…That would be delicious, would it not? To watch him slice into his body, seeking the source of his life’s blood, his hands trembling, almost too weak to make the final cut?”

“It would serve a purpose,” said Thiago.

She went with her head down for a few paces and then said, “Yes, the longer I think about it, the more certain I become of your seer’s acumen.”

At Twilight Thiago built a fire that illumined a ragged clearing some fifteen yards in diameter. The stream cut through the edge of the lighted area and, after staring at it yearningly for several minutes, Derwe Coreme stood and removed her jacket.

“I intend to bathe while the warmth of day still lingers,” she said. “There are scars on my body as well as my face, but if the urge to see me at my bath persists, I cannot prevent you from watching. I would caution you, however, against acting upon whatever attendant urges may spring to mind. My knives are never far from hand.”

Thiago, who was eating parched corn and dried apples, grunted to signal his indifference. Yet though he determined not to watch, he could not resist. At that distance the scars resembled tattoos. Kneeling in the stream, the water running about her waist, she was lovely and clean-limbed, an image from legend, the nymph unmindful of a spying ogre, and he wondered at the alchemy that had transformed her into such a hate-filled creature…though he had witnessed such a human result on many previous occasions. Cupping her hand, she sluiced water across her shoulders. He imagined that a woman’s back must be the purest shape in all the world.

Darkness fell. She stepped from the stream, dried herself, probing him with glances as though to know his mind, and then, wrapping herself in a blanket, came to sit by the fire. He maintained a stoic reserve and thought to detect irritation in her manner, as if she were annoyed by his lack of reaction to her nudity. Her scars were livid from the cold water, but now he saw them as designs and irrelevant to her beauty. The fire spoke in a language of snaps and crackles, and a night thing quarreled with itself, its ornate chortling echoing above a backdrop of lesser hoots and trills. She asked why he had chosen fighting as a profession.

“I liked to fight,” he said. “I like it still. In Kaiin there is always a call for fighters to fill Shins Stadium. I did not enjoy hurting my opponents as much as some of the others. Not in the beginning, anyway. Later…perhaps I did. I became First Champion of Kaiin for six years.”

“Did something happen?” she asked. “To make you better or more fierce.”

“Cugel.”

She waited for him to go on.

“It’s an old story.” He spat into the fire. “A woman was at issue.”

When he did not elaborate, she asked why he had waited so long to even the score.

“I lost sight of the matter,” he said. “There were other women. I had money and a large house and friends with which to fill it. Then Sylgarmo’s Proclamation alerted me to the fact that time was growing short. I began to miss the woman again and I recalled the debt I owed my cousin.”

They were silent a while, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Something stirred in the bushes; then a feral outcry, the leaves and branches shook violently; then all was quiet. Derwe Coreme shifted closer to Thiago, reached out tentatively and touched the tip of her finger to a scar that transected his eyebrow, turning a portion of it gray.

“Mine are deeper, but you have more scars than I,” she said wonderingly.

She seemed animated by something other than her usual sullen fury. Her hand lingered near his cheek and in the unsteady light of the fire her expression was open and expectant; but she snatched back her hand and, like an old sun restored for an instant to youthful radiance, its burst of energy spent, she lapsed once again into a funereal glow.

Thiago’s imagination peopled the avenues among the trees with sinister ebony figures whose eyes were the color of fire. Dark spotches the size of a water-shadow filtered down through the canopy. He blinked them away and fought off fatigue. Some time later Derwe Coreme shook him awake. He was dazed, mortified, sputtering apologies for having fallen asleep.

“Keep quiet!” she said.

He continued to apologize and she flicked her hand at his cheek, not quite a slap, and said, “Listen!”

A sound came from the direction of the gorge. He thought initially it was that of a large beast munching greenery, smacking its lips and making pleased rumbles between bites; but as it grew louder and more distinct, he decided this impression had been counterfeited by many voices speaking at once. It grew more distinct yet and he became less certain of its nature.

The gorge brimmed with a night mist. Three pale lights, halated by the mist, rode atop an immense shape that moved ponderously, sluggishly, surging forward one plodding step after another, as though mired in mud. Peering into the murk, Thiago heard laughter and chatter, such as might be uttered by a great assemblage; then a piercing whistle came to his ears. The beast rumbled in apparent distress and flung up its head so that it surfaced from the mist. The sight of its coppery sphinx-like face, bland and empty of all human emotion, struck terror into his heart. A gid![2] Beside him, Derwe Coreme let out a shriek. The gid halted its progress, its cavernous bleak eyes fixed on the thicket where they were hiding. Its nose, the merest bump perforated by two gaping nostrils, lent it a vaguely amphibian aspect, and the lights (globes affixed to its temples and forehead) added a touch of the surreal. Mist obscured its wings and sloping, muscular body.

“Show yourselves!” a booming voice sang out. “It is I, Melorious, who speaks! I offer safe passage through the Great Erm.”

This pronouncement stilled the babble of voices, but soon they returned, directing merry insults and impudent remarks toward Melorious. The gid surged forward and again lifted its head, trying to wedge it through the break in the earth, but failed in the attempt — it was too wide by half. Thiago was now situated directly above the gid’s back and through the mist he saw what looked to be steel panniers strapped to its side. The panniers were each divided into four segments and each segment served as a cage in which forty or fifty men and women were kept. Thiago estimated there were several hundred people so encaged, yet none exhibited the attitude of captives, but rather acted like the passengers on a pleasure barge. Amorous couples lay intertwined on the floor. In another of the panniers, a band consisting of lutes, quintajells and nose-trumpets began tuning their instruments.

“You need not fear the gid,” boomed Melorious. “I have bound it with a potent spell that renders it as docile as a pet thrail. Travel the Great Erm in complete security! Enjoy the companonship of beautiful women lacking all moral rectitude! Come away to Cil and Saskervoy…with first a stop at my subterranean palace for a feast to end all feasts.”

The gid rumbled again, attempting to push the top of its head up through the gorge; a piercing whistle caused it to cease. Thiago perceived an opportunity. He sketched out his scheme with whispers and hand signals. Derwe Coreme looked at him aghast, shook her head vigorously, and shaped the word, no, with her mouth.

“Conscience will not permit me to leave you to the perils of the forest.” A bald, honey-colored man clad in a jacket and trousers of dark blue silk worked with gilt designs, ostensibly Melorious, appeared on the gid’s neck, tethered by a line; he spoke into a small hand-held device. Several other figures, untethered, cowered at his side, clinging to folds of the skin. “Make yourself known at once or I will have to send my minions after you. Wood gaunts and Deodands, beware! The flesh of my men bears a fatal taint that causes demon mites to breed in the belly of whatever consumes it.”

Thiago burst from the thicket, half-dragging Derwe Coreme. She resisted, but upon realizing there was no going back, she outsped him to the edge and leaped, landing atop the gid’s head, now a few feet beneath the lip of the gorge, and sprinted across his brow for the opposite side. Thiago also leaped, but did not land where he had intended. The gid, alarmed by Derwe’s impact, trying to learn what had struck it, tipped its face to the sky, and Thiago came down feet-first near the center of its left eye. He expected to penetrate the membrane, to drown in the humor, but instead he slid along the clammy surface of the eye, fighting for purchase. The gid roared in anguish and tossed its head violently, sending Thiago hurtling through the air and crashing into a ragthorn bush. Screams from the men and women in the panniers stabbed at the air, but he could scarcely distinguish them from the ringing in his ears. Stunned, not knowing where he was, he peeked out and discovered that the ragthorn bush overhung the gorge. A little honey-colored bug in dark blue silks, Melorious dangled from his tether, hanging in front of the gid’s vast, empty face. As Thiago looked on, he managed to set himself aswing by kicking at the gid’s monstrous cheek, but every swing carried him back to the creature, nearer its unsmiling mouth. He had lost the hand-held device and thus his voice (and his whistles) went unheard. It seemed to Thiago that the gid stared at Melorious with a certain melancholy, as though it realized its youth was about to end and was made reluctant by the idea, by the grisly requirements demanded by this rite of passage. Melorious bumped against the creature’s nose and, as he swung out wide again, the gid extended its neck and lazily snapped him up.

Ignoring his hurts, Thiago scrambled to his feet and ran, beating aside branches, tripping over roots, half-falling, intent on putting distance between himself and the gid. Behind him, the creature roared and, though no less loud, it seemed a narrower throat had shaped it — a snarly, grating sound with an odd buzzing quality. There was no sign of Derwe Coreme. He tried to recall if he had seen her clamber up onto the far side (this side) of the gorge, but without success. His lungs began to labor and, after a passage of seconds, he threw himself down under the snakelike roots of a mandouar and burrowed furiously until he was covered with black dirt. A minute or so later he felt a discharge of heat as if something on fire had passed close overhead. He put his head down and lay still for quite some time. When at length he sat up, he kept watch on the sky, picking thorns from his flesh, ill at ease and alert for the slightest sound.

A torrential shower dowsed the first of daylight, a pulsating redness in the east, and thereafter the overcast held. Wind herded black and silver clouds across the sky, accompanied by fitful thunder. Thiago felt around for his pack. It was gone, along with their supply of food and the various runes and devices he had coerced Vasker into giving him. The tower’s summit was visible above a high hill and as he went toward it the rain started up again, blowing sideways into his face, drenching him to the bone. Just below the crest of the hill stood the ruins of a shrine. Its stone porch was more or less intact and beneath it a figure dressed in black sat crosslegged beside a crackling fire. Derwe Coreme. The carcass of a small animal, its bones picked clean, lay beside her. She looked at him incuriously and licked grease from her fingers.

He sat facing her, miserable as mud. A thorn he had been unable to dig out of his back gave him a fresh jab. “Do you have anything to eat?” he asked.

“Where is your pack? Is our food then at the bottom of the gorge?” She gave a rueful sigh, dug into a pocket and handed him a cloth in which a few edible roots and nuts were wrapped.

The roots yielded a bitter juice and, as he gnawed on one, he experienced a sharp pain in his jaw.

She watched him probe the inside of his gum with a forefinger and said, “When we met in Kaspara Viatatus, I worried that you were much like Cugel. The manner in which you dealt with Vasker and the rest reminded me of him. After you crippled the Deodand, I understood you were nothing like Cugel. He does not have your courage and, though your fighting style is not optimal, it reflects a directness of personality. A type of honesty, I thought. Now, having seen you destroy hundreds of lives by means of a foolhardy act, I wonder if what I assumed to be honesty was simply brute stupidity. And I ask myself, is moral incompetence any different from outright iniquity? The result is the same. Innocents die.”

“Are you so naïve that you believe Melorious had a festive weekend planned for those in his cages? His spells had bedizened them — they were dead already. Or perhaps it is for Melorious you grieve?”

She seemed about to speak, but bit back the words. Finally she said, “You forced me to jump into the gorge and race across the forehead of a gid. Does this not, in retrospect, seem ill-considered?”

“Risky, yes. But we have reached our objective, so it can hardly be countenanced ill-considered.”

“‘Patience finds a way’, you said. I suppose this is exemplary of the quality of your patience?”

“One must recognize when the time for patience has passed. I made a decision.”

She brushed dirt from her trousers. “Kindly consult me in detail as to all your future decisions.”

The sky cleared by mid-morning and the sun struck shifting black crescents of shadow from the field of boulders that lay beneath the tower; but the tower itself cast no shadow, a fact that gave Thiago pause, as did the presence of a pelgrane that flapped up from the summit and briefly circled above them before returning to her perch. A female and, judging by her clumsy and erratic flight, gravid — a condition that would render her especially vicious and unpredictable. None of this had a discernable effect upon Derwe Coreme, whose eagerness increased with every step. As they drew near, she could no longer contain her enthusiasm and broke into a trot. By the time Thiago reached the base of the tower, however, she was the picture of dismay, darting about, sliding her hands along the walls and making noises of frustration.

“There’s no door!” she said. “Nothing. There’s nothing!”

The tower was a seamless flow of stone, a single unbroken piece more than a hundred feet high, evolving at its top into a bulbous shape — this had been cut into an intricate filigree pattern of windows that would allow someone inside to scan the area below without revealing themselves. Leaving Derwe Coreme to vent her anger, Thiago began a circumnavigation of the base, testing each slight declivity and projection in hopes that pressing upon one of them would cause a hidden door to open. After an hour or thereabouts, his circuit less than a third complete, he heard bellicose voices coming from the opposite side of the tower, Derwe Coreme’s hoarse outcries loudest of all. She had struck a defensive pose, knives in both her hands, and was fending off five men who encircled her. A sixth lay upon the ground, bleeding from slashes on his arm and chest. On seeing Thiago, the men fell back and their menacing talk subsided. They were a motley group, ranging in age from a mere lad to an elderly, weather-beaten individual with a conical red hat, identical to the roofs of the village below, jammed low onto his brow so that wisps of gray hair stuck out beneath it like bent wires. They were armed with rakes and clad in coarse white garments that were belted about their waists with green sashes. Lead amulets bearing the image of a crude anthropomorphic figure hung from their necks.

“Ho! What’s this?” Thiago gestured with his fist and this served to drive the men farther from Derwe Coreme. “Explain yourselves at once.”

The elderly man was pushed to the fore. “I am Ido, the spiritual charge-man of Joko Anwar. We sought only to inquire of the woman in the name of Yando and she rasped at us in a demon’s voice and attacked. Poor Stellig has suffered a dreadful wound.”

“Lies! They laid hands on me!” Derwe Coreme surged toward the men and Thiago side-stepped to block her way.

“Enlighten me as to the nature of this Yando,” he said.

“He is the god of Joko Anwar,” Ido said. “Indeed, it is said he is the god of all forlorn places.”

“By whom is this said?”

“Why, by Yando himself.”

A portly man with a patchy beard whispered in his ear and Ido said, “To clarify. Yando often appears as a man of burning silver and in this guise he does not speak. But of late he sends his avatar, who confides in us Yando’s truth.”

Derwe Coreme, who had relaxed from her defensive posture, laughed derisively and started to speak, but Thiago intervened.

“Lately, you say? Did the appearance of the avatar predate Sylgarmo’s Proclamation?”

“On the contrary,” said Ido. “It was not long after the Proclamation that Yando sent him to instruct us so we might be saved by the instrumentality of his disciple, Pandelume.”

Thiago gave the matter a turn or two. “This avatar…does he bear some resemblance to me? Does, for instance, his hair come down in a peak over his forehead? Like so?”

Ido examined Thiago’s hair. “There is a passing similarity, but the avatar’s hair is black and of a supreme gloss.”

Derwe Coreme hissed a curse. Thiago laid a hand on her arm. “What form did the avatar’s instruction take?”

All the men whispered together and after they had done, Ido said, “Am I to understand that you wish to undergo purification?”

Thiago hesitated, and Derwe Coreme sprang forward, putting her knife to Ido’s throat.

“We wish access to the tower,” she said.

“Sacrilege!” cried the portly man. “The Red Hat is assaulted! Alert the village!”

Two men ran back toward the village, giving shouts of alarm. Derwe Coreme pressed on the blade and blood trickled from its edge.

“Grant us immediate access,” she said. “Or die.”

Ido closed his eyes. “Only through purification can one gain entrance to the tower and the salvation that lies beyond.”

Derwe Coreme might have sliced him open then and there, but Thiago caught her wrist and squeezed, forcing her to relinquish the knife. Ido stumbled away, rubbing his neck.

Thiago sought to pacify Ido and the portly man, but they refused to listen to his entreaties — they huddled together, lips moving silently, offering ornate gestures of unknown significance to the heavens. At length, giving up on reason, he asked Derwe Coreme, “Can you persuade them to instruct us in the rite of purification?” She had retrieved her knife and was testing the edge with her thumb, contemplating him with a brooding stare.

“Well,” he said. “Can you do so? Preferably without a fatality? I would consider it a personal favor if we could avoid a pitched battle with the villagers.”

She walked over to Ido and held up the blade stained with his blood to his eyes. He loosed a pitiable wail and clutched the portly man more tightly.

“Without interference, I can work wonders,” she said.

At darkest dusk, Derwe Coreme and Thiago stood alone and shivering in the boulder-strewn field beneath the tower. They wore a twin harness of wood and withe that culminated in a great loop above their heads — this, Ido explained, would allow Yando’s winged servant to lift them on high and bring them to salvation. Except for a kind of diaper, designed so as to prevent the harness from cutting into their skin, they were naked and their bodies were festooned with painted symbols, the purpose of which had also been explained in excruciating detail.

Though no more risible than the tenets of other religions, the rites and doctrines of Yando as dictated by the avatar revealed the workings of a dry, sardonic wit. Thiago had no doubt they were his cousin’s creation.

“Consider the green blotch currently being applied,” Ido had said. “By no means is its placement arbitrary. When Yando was summoned from the Uncreate to protect us, he woke to discover that he had inadvertently crushed a litter of copiropith whelps beneath his left thigh. The blotch replicates the stain left by those gentle creatures.”[3]

A last blush of purple faded from the sky. Thiago could barely make out Derwe Coreme beside him, hugging herself against the chill. He cleared his throat and launched into a hymn of praise to Yando, stopping when he noticed that Derwe Coreme remained silent.

“Come,” he said. “We must sing.”

“No, I will not,” she said sullenly.

“The winged servant may not appear.”

“If by ‘winged servant’ you refer to the pelgrane, hunger will bring her to us. I refuse to play the fool for Cugel.”

“In the first place, that the pelgrane and the winged servant are one is merely my hypothesis. Granted, it seems the most likely possibility, but the winged servant may prove to be another agency, one with a discriminating ear. Secondly, if the pelgrane is the winged servant and notices that we are less than enthusiastic in our obedience to ritual, this may arouse its suspicions and cause it to deviate from its routine. I feel such a deviation would not be in our best interests.”

Derwe Coreme was silent.

“Do you agree?” Thiago asked.

“I agree,” she said grudgingly.

“Very well. On the count of three, may I suggest you join me in rendering with brio, ‘At Yando’s Whim, So We Ascend In Gladness’.”

They had just begun the second chorus when the oily reek of a pelgrane filled Thiago’s nostrils. Great wings buffeted the air and they were dragged aloft. The harness swayed like a drunken bell, making it difficult to sustain the vocal, yet they persevered even when the pelgrane spoke.

“Ah, my lunchkins!” it said merrily. “Soon one of you will rest in my belly. But who, who, who shall it be?”

Thiago sang with greater fervor. The pelgrane’s egg sac, a vague white shape, depended from its globular abdomen. He pointed this out to Derwe Coreme and she reached into her diaper. He shook his head violently and added urgency to his delivery of the words “not yet” in the line, “…though not yet do we glimpse the heights…” Scowling, she withdrew her hand.

A pale nimbus of light bulged from the sloping summit of the tower. As they were about to land, Derwe Coreme unhitched herself from the harness. She clung to the loop by one hand, slashed open the sac with the knife that had been hidden in herd diaper, and spilled the eggs into the dark below, drawing an agonized shriek from the pelgrane. Thiago also unhitched. The moment his feet touched stone, he made a leap, grabbed a wing strut and sawed at it with one of Derwe Coreme’s knives. With a wing nearly severed from its body, the pelgrane lost its balance, toppled onto its side and slid toward the abyss, gnashing its tusks and tossing its great stag-beetle head in pain. It hung at the edge, frantically beating its good wing and clawing at the stone.

Breathing heavily, Thiago sat down amongst the bones that littered the summit and watched it struggle. “Why only one of us?” he asked.

The pelgrane continued to struggle.

“You are doomed,” Thiago said. “Your arms will not long support your weight and you will fall. Why not answer my question? You said that soon one of us would be in your belly. Why just one?”

The pelgrane achieved an uneasy equilibrium, a claw hooked on an imperfection in the stone. “He only wanted the women. The men provided me with sustenance.”

“By ‘he’, do you mean Cugel?”

Drool fettered the pelgrane’s tusks. “My time was near and it was onerous for me to hunt. I struck a bargain with the devil!”

“Was it Cugel? Tell me!”

The pelgrane glared at him, loosed its hold on the edge and slipped away into the darkness without a sound.

At the apex of the summit, pale light that emanated from no apparent source spilled from a shaft enclosing a spiral staircase. With her prey close at hand, Derwe Coreme lost all regard for modesty. She ripped off the diaper and, a knife in each hand, began her descent. Thiago’s diaper caught on the railing and he, too, rid himself of the garment.

The shaft opened onto a circular room into whose walls the windows Thiago had seen from the ground were cut. It was absent all furnishings and lit by the same pale sourceless light. A second stairway led down to an even larger room, pentagonal in shape, its gray marble walls resplendent with intricate volutes and a fantastic bestiary carved in bas relief. The air retained a faint sourness, as of dried sweat. Cut into the floor, also of gray marble, was a complicated abstract design. Five curving corridors angled off from the room, receding to a depth Thiago would have believed impossible, given the dimensions of the tower; but this, he reminded himself, was a magician’s tower that cast no shadow and likely was governed by laws other than those to which he was accustomed.

They went cautiously along the first of the corridors, passing a number of doors, all locked, and came at last to a door at the corridor’s end that stood open and admitted to a room, a laboratory of sorts. Derwe Coreme made to enter, but Thiago barred her way with his arm.

“Look first,” he said.

She frowned, yet raised no objection.

Many-colored light penetrated the room from panels in a domed ceiling, shifting from dull orange to peach to lavender. Volumes of obvious antiquity lined the walls. Upon a long table, vials bubbled over low flames and the components of a mysterious device, a puzzle of glittering steel and crystal, lay scattered about. An immense bell jar contained dark objects suspended in what looked to be a red fluid. Several more such jars held items that Thiago could not identify, a few of which appeared to be moving. Then the scene changed. Their view was still of the same room, yet they were considerably closer to the table. The objects submerged in red fluid were fragments of a sunken ship. Gray creatures with sucker mouths, elongated hands and paddle feet crawled over the wreck, as if searching for something. Another jar enclosed a miniature city with a strange geometric uniformity to its architecture whose two tallest towers were aflame. Beneath the largest glass bell, a herd of four-legged beasts with flowing blond hair and womanly breasts fled across a mossy plain, pursued by an army of trees (or a single multi-trunked tree) that extended root-like tentacles to haul itself along.

Unsettled, Thiago and Derwe Coreme returned to the room of gray marble and entered a second corridor, passing along it until they reached a door at its nether end. Through it they saw a valley of golden grasses lorded over by hills with promontories of corroded-looking black rock that might have been the ruins of colossal statuary rendered unrecognizable by time. They could discern no signs of life, no movement whatsoever. The absence of all kinetic value bred a sense of foreboding in Thiago. At the end of a third corridor they stood overlooking a vista that could have been part of the Sousanese Coast south of Val Ombrio: a high reddish sun, barren hills, a stretch of forest, and then a lowland declining to water that glowed a rich pthalocyanine blue. All seemed normal until a flight of winged serpents the size of barges soared low along the coast and in the eye of one that flew straight at the door, veering aside at the last second, Thiago glimpsed their terrified reflection.

They had quit trying the doors, but as they retreated toward the marble room, Thiago idly turned a doorknob and thought to hear a gasp issue from the other side.

“Who’s there?” Thiago gave the door a shake.

He received no answer. Again he rattled the door and said, “We have come to free you. Let me in!”

After an interval, a woman’s voice cried out, “Please help us! We have no key.”

Derwe Coreme pressed on; when Thiago called to her, she said, “Whoever she is, she can wait. I have two more corridors to inspect.”

Before he could speak further, she passed beyond the bend in the corridor. He felt diminished by her absence and this both surprised and iritated him.

He examined the hinges of the door. The bolts were flush to the metal and he did not think he could loosen them with a knife. He set his shoulder to the planking and gave it a test blow. Solid. The corridor, however, was narrow enough that he could brace his back against the opposite wall and put all his strength into a kick. He did so and felt the lock give way the slightest bit. The sound of the kick was startlingly loud, but he drove his foot into the lock again and again until the wood splintered. A few more blows and the door swung open. Two beautiful dark-haired women attired in gauzy costumes that left little to the imagination stood gaping at him in the center of a room furnished with a bed, an armoire, and a mirror. In reflex, Thiago covered himself as best he could.

The younger of the women, scarcely more than a girl, prostrated herself. The older woman regarded him with a mix of hauteur and suspicion; then she stepped forward, standing almost eye-to-eye. She had the well-tended look and fine bone structure of the patrician women with whom he had consorted in Kaiin. Her hair was bound with an ivory and emerald clip. He could not picture her ladling dumplings onto a farmer’s plate in Joko Anwar.

“Who are you?” she asked in a firm voice.

“Thiago Alves of Kaiin.”

“My name is Diletta Orday. I was traveling in…”

“We have no time to exchange personal histories. Is there somewhere you can hide? I cannot fight and watch over you both.”

Diletta’s eyes darted to the side. “There is no hiding place for us so long as the avatar lives.”

The girl on the floor moaned and Diletta said in a challenging tone, “Ruskana believes you will rape us.”

“That is not my intent.” He cast about in the corners of the room. “There were more of you, were there not?”

“We were nineteen in all. The avatar led seventeen along the corridors. None returned. He claims they are with Yando.”

Cugel, Thiago told himself, must have been testing the open doorways, sending the women through and observing what happened. Chances were, he had not liked the results.

“He is no avatar,” Thiago said.

“I am not a fool. I know what he is.” She pointed to the armoire and said archly, “If your intent is to fight, you may need your hands. His clothes are there. Perhaps something will fit.”

Within the armoire was an assortment of men’s clothing. The shirts fit too snugly, hampering his freedom of movement; but he found a pair of trousers that he could squeeze into.

“Can you tell me where he is?” he asked.

“Oh, you will see him shortly.”

As he turned, made curious by the lilt in her voice, he felt a sharp sting in his neck and saw Diletta pulling back from him, wearing a look of triumph. He staggered and, suddenly dizzy, went to one knee. Something struck him in the back and he toppled on his side. A second strike rolled him onto his back. The girl, Ruskana, was engaged in kicking him, grinning like a madwoman. He tried to focus on Diletta, but his vision clouded. Her voice echoed and faded, losing all hint of meaning and tone, becoming an ambient effect, and the kicks, too, became a kind of effect, no longer causing pain, each one seeming to drive him farther from the world.

Voices, too, ushered Thiago back to consciousness. A woman’s voice complaining…Ruskana? Another woman, lower-pitched, asking what she should do. Diletta. Then a familiar man’s voice that brought Thiago fully awake. He lay on his back, his hands bound beneath him, and began to work at loosening his bonds even before he opened his eyes.

“There must have been a woman with him,” said Cugel from a distance. “The pelgrane would not have flown him to the summit, otherwise.”

“Hunger may have overwhelmed its sense of duty,” said Ruskana.

“I attribute no sense of duty to the pelgrane,” said Cugel peevishly. “I suggest that if Thiago had come alone to the field, it would have gained nothing by flying to the summit. It would have eaten him where he stood.”

“We have searched most of the night,” Diletta said. “If a woman was here, she is not here now. Perhaps she took refuge at the end of one of the corridors. If that is the case, we have no need to worry.”

Thiago could not make out Cugel’s response. He slitted his eyes and saw he was lying in a small featureless room with gray marble walls close beside a bluish metal egg some fifteen feet high and ten feet wide, supported by six struts. Beyond lay a stair on the bottom step of which Ruskana stood. It led upward to a ceiling of gray marble. Thiago assumed there was a concealed exit and this would open onto the room with the five branching corridors. He redoubled his efforts at loosening his bonds.

“Is it ready?” Diletta asked, moving into view.

“I must refer to Iucounu’s notes. Minor adjustments may be required.”

Cugel came out from behind the egg. He wore a high-collared black cape, gray trousers, and a velvet tunic of striped mauve and black. On his right thumb was a ring of black stone. His sharp features seemed a perversion of Thiago’s own. What had once manifested as a roguish quality, the product of a quick wit and a penchant for irreverence, seemed to have been eroded by the years, resolving into an imprint of cruelty and capriciousness. The sight of him captivated Thiago. It was as if his view of the world had lacked only this lean figure to complete it. Now, seeing him in the flesh, his loathing for Cugel was given such weight and substance that he understood what he had felt before was a shadow of his true hatred of the man. He was so overwhelmed with revulsion that he could not even make a pretense of being unconscious; he stared at his cousin like a hawk watching supper emerge from a hole until Cugel directed a cursory glance his way.

“Cousin!” A smile sliced Cugel’s features, but did not touch his eyes. “I would not have recognized you if you hadn’t declared yourself to Diletta. You’ve grown so formidable. You have been exercising, have you not? All those scars, so much gray in your hair! I trust life has not treated you unkindly.”

Thiago was unable to muster speech.

“What has led you to seek me out after all these years?” Cugel asked. “A desire to rekindle our childhood bond? Judging by your expression, I think not. An old enmity, perhaps. But what? I cannot recall ever having done you injury. Certainly none to warrant so desperate a journey as you must have made.”

Thiago managed to croak a single word: “Ciel.”

Cugel squatted beside him, tipped his head to one side. “Ciel? It has a ring, I admit, but…” He smacked his forehead. “Not that blond poppet you were smitten with during our formative years? A sweet bite of the apple, that one. By now, she must be a grandmother. Is she well?”

“You know she is not.” Thiago worked at his bonds.

“Ah, yes. I remember. A pity you weren’t there to save her, but you had your priorities in those days, always busy at your brutish sport and your revels. Blaming me for Ciel’s death…you would do as well to blame a bee for sipping from a flower.”

Thiago tried to sweep his legs out from beneath him with a kick, but Cugel, agile as ever, avoided it and caught his ankle. He dragged him forward and left him in front of the machine.

“I have better to do than listen to you whine about a girl dead a quarter of a century.” Cugel flung open a transparent door in the face of the machine and indicated the ovoid chamber within — it contained two padded seats. “In moments, we will be away to a pleasant world far from this moribund planet and its dead sun.”

“Sylgarmo’s Proclamation has yet to be proven,” Thiago said.

“Has it now?”

Smirking, Cugel went to the wall and pressed an indentation. With a grating noise, a portion of the wall retracted, creating as it did a large circular window.

“Welcome to the last morning of the world,” said Cugel.

The sky as revealed by the window was black. Not pitch black, but black pervaded by a sickly glow, the source of which hung nearly dead-center of the window: the sun. Though it was at ten o’clock high, he could look directly at it and for a long moment he could do nothing else. Pale orange plasma filmed across the surface of a sphere that resembled an ember left over from a blaze, a great round ball of crusted carbon cracked and seamed with fire. From points on opposite sides of the sphere there arose enormous crimson effulgences, plumes of solar flame with the aspect of two mismatched horns, flares flung out into space that seemed as though they would eventually form into pinchers that would pluck the earth from its orbit. It was a ghastly, soul-shriveling thing to see. A dread weakness invaded Thiago’s limbs. Ruskana clapped a hand to her mouth and Diletta put a hand on the wall for support. For his part, Cugel appeared enlivened by the sight.

“Ruskana! Take a last look around,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “We want no interruptions. Quickly, girl! Diletta! See to the provisions.”

The sound of Cugel’s voice enlisted Thiago’s hatred once again. He had made progress with his bonds, but needed more time.

“Ruskana!” he shouted as the girl mounted the stair. “There are only two seats inside the machine. Do you believe he will be here when you return? Every woman he has ever known, he has played her false.”

“Ruskana is to ride astride my lap,” said Cugel. “This has been discussed. Now go!” He waved her on.

“There have been a thousand Ruskanas before you,” Thiago said. “Beginning with my Ciel. We quarreled, she and I. Cugel lured her to a solitary place on the outskirts of Kaiin, under the guise of offering advice on how she might repair the relationship. There he drugged her and she died…whereupon he fled. Do not expect better of him, I caution you.”

Ruskana hovered near the top of the stair, the picture of uncertainty.

“Did you expect me stand my ground while you raised a mob?” Cugel made a derisive noise. “That was ever your way. To choose someone you believed was weak for a scapegoat and excite the public temper. But there is no mob here, only these two devoted women. I have come too far and endured too much to be thwarted by the likes of you.” He held his fisted right hand to Thiago’s face, showing him the ring of black stone. “This is Iucounu’s ring. I bested him with his own magic. I have bested demons, giants, creatures that would leave you trembling. What did you hope to achieve against me?”

Cugel stood over Thiago, his face a neutral mask. He reached into the folds of his cape, produced a parchment scroll and tossed it onto Thiago’s chest.

“A gift, cousin,” he said. “The Spell of Forlorn Encystment. It is an option you may wish to exercise. Ask yourself if life is worth living imprisoned within the earth when there is no other choice, and act according to your answer.” He turned to the stair. “Quickly now, Ruskana!”

The girl darted up the last few steps and pressed a stud in the ceiling; a section of the ceiling began to lift.

“She was done with you, Thiago,” Cugel said. “She complied with my every desire.”

Ruskana shrilled a warning. Derwe Coreme had slipped through the opening and stood at the top of the stair, wearing a man’s shirt and trousers. The two women grappled briefly and Ruskana fell, cracking her head on the marble floor. Derwe Coreme spied Cugel and came toward him, knife in hand, face twisted with rage. Cugel darted for the egg and she screamed — it seemed ripped from her chest, furious like a raptor’s scream. She hurled the knife, but Diletta pushed Cugel aside. The knife took her in the throat, penetrating both sides of her neck, and she collapsed. Derwe Coreme hurled a second knife, but it clanged off the door of the egg, with Cugel safe inside. Spatters of Diletta’s blood dappled his cheek, lending him a clownish aspect.

Derwe Coreme sprinted down the steps and pounded on the door, screaming all the while. Cugel’s expression was one of bewilderment. It was as though he were asking, Who is this scarred termagant? He busied himself with final preparations, ignoring her screams…if, indeed, he heard them.

Thiago burst the cords that constrained him.

A humming proceeded from the egg as Cugel, eyes closed in concentration, spoke the activating spell. Thiago got to his feet, and, standing beside Derwe Coreme, confronted him through the door. His spell complete, Cugel opened his eyes and smiled at them with the sweet tranquility of a man gone beyond judgment. The humming rose in pitch.

Thiago gave the egg a tentative push. He cleared Derwe Coreme away from the door, backed off several paces, and ran at it, striking it with his shoulder.

Cugel’s smile faltered. Thiago had another run at the egg, and this time moved it slightly. His shoulder ached, but he made a third run. Concern was written on Cugel’s face, but then the humming evolved into a keening and the egg appeared to be covered in sparkling silt, a film that vibrated over the metal surfaces. Cugel’s smile returned. Thiago charged again, but was repulsed violently and thrown onto his back. The egg rippled, winking bright to dark. Soon it grew insubstantial and vanished, leaving a translucent afterimage in the air.

Thiago studied the afterimage as it faded. Was there a trace of desperation in Cugel’s smile? The beginnings of fear? Was it a true smile or a rictus leer, a sign that his cousin was at the end in extremis? Perhaps Thiago’s bull-rushes had taken a toll, or perhaps Pandelume’s egg had borne Cugel to a less pleasant world than he had imagined and his expression was the initial register of that place. It was useless to speculate. One could but hope. He sank to the floor beside Derwe Coreme, who sat with head in hands.

“He did not know me,” she said mournfully.

Thiago thought to reassure her, but had not the energy to do so. After a bit, he put a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened, but permitted the contact.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “You were gone the entire night.”

“It was strange,” she said. “They searched for me carrying tubes of blue concentrate. I might have killed one, but not both, so I hid in the room at the end of the corridor we first explored.”

“The study…the laboratory?”

“Yes. I met someone there. I…It was an old man, I think. He gave me these clothes and spoke to me of many things. Yet I cannot picture him, nor do I recall a word he said.”

“Pandelume,” said Thiago.

“If it was he, I cannot remember.”

A curious white flickering, a discharge of some type, passed across the face of the sun. They stared hopefully, but it remained a molten horror, like an emblem on an evil flag. Some of the cracks in the black crust were sealing over and the coating of orange plasma looked to have thinned; but it was otherwise unchanged.

“We have to go!” Derwe Coreme sprang to her feet.

“It is a fine notion, but how?”

She went to the wall, pressed an indentation next to the one Cugel had pressed. A wide section of the floor retracted with an accompanying grinding noise. Light streamed upward from a hole. Another staircase spiraled downward. Thiago asked how she had known about the stair. She shook her head and set about retrieving her knives. To remove the blade from Diletta’s neck, she was forced to wrench and tug, her foot pinning the corpse’s shoulder in place, until it came free with a sucking noise. She wiped it clean on her trousers and started down the stairs. Thiago could find no reason to stir himself. One death was like another.

A whisper, one that seemed shaped by the tower itself, as if it were a vast throat enclosing them, said, “Go. Goooo…” The walls of the room wavered like smoke and Thiago had an apprehension that Pandelume was all around them, that the voice was his, and that his substance was the stuff of the walls, the floors, that this was not merely his place…it was him. Deciding that the prospect of a bottomless stair was less fearful than what he might face were he to remain, Thiago came wearily to his feet and began his descent.

It was a long way to the bottom of the stair, longer than would accord with the tower’s height, and they stopped to rest on several occasions. During one such rest period, Derwe Coreme said, “How could those women stay with him?”

“You were with him once.”

“Yes, but I would have left at the earliest opportunity. Our association was based solely on necessity.”

“The women may have been no different from you at the outset. Cugel has a knack for bending people to his will, even when they do not care for him.”

“Do you think he is alive?”

Thiago shrugged. “Who can say?”

At the bottom of the tower was a partly open door. They passed through it and into the field of boulders. The sun was at meridian, shining down a reddish light that, though a shade dimmer than usual, was well within its normal range of brightness. They gazed at it, silent and uncomprehending, shielding their eyes against the glare.

“I am afraid,” said Derwe Coreme as they walked toward the edge of the Great Erm. “Did the sun rekindle as we descended? Have we crossed over to another plane of existence? Did Pandelume intercede for us? Life offered few certainties, but now there are even fewer.”

The high sun burnished the massy dark green crowns of the trees, causing them to seem drenched with blood. Derwe Coreme passed beneath the first of them and along an avenue that ran between two mandouars. Thiago glanced back and saw the tower dissolve into a swirling mist; from the mist another image materialized, that of a gigantic figure who looked to be no more than emptiness dressed in a hooded robe, the features invisible, the body apparent yet unreal. For an instant, something sparkled against the caliginous blackness within the cowl, a blue oval no bigger than a firefly. The same blue, Thiago noted, as the egg in which Cugel had escaped, pulsing with the same vital energy, twinkling like a distant star. It winked dark to bright to dark and then vanished, swallowed by the void.

Intially, Thiago was distressed to think that Cugel might be alive, but when he considered the possibilities, that Cugel might travel on forever in that void, or that he might be bound for some hell of Pandelume’s device, or for one of the worlds they had glimpsed at the ends of the corridors, for the table in the workshop, say, where he would be imprisoned beneath a glass bell and subject to exotic predation…though a clear judgment on the matter was impossible, these notions dispelled his gloom.

Pandelume’s figure dispersed, fading and fading until only the feeble red sun and some puffs of cloud were left in the sky. Thiago broke into a jog in order to catch up with Derwe Coreme. Following her trim figure into the shadows, he recognized that though nothing had changed, everything had changed. The sun or something like it lived on, and the world below was still ruled by magicians and magic, and they themselves were ruled by the magic of doubt and uncertainty; yet knowing this no longer felt oppressive, rather it envigorated him. He was free for the moment of gloom, lighter at heart by one hatred, and the next time Derwe Coreme asked one of her imponderable questions, some matter concerning fate or destiny or the like, he thought he might be inclined, if he deemed the occasion auspicious, to provide her with a definitive answer.