Songs of the Dying Earth

1: Above Derna

Some way up behind the steep forested canyon wherethrough flows the slender River Derna, lies a depressing landscape dotted with small villages. One evening, a male child of less than two years was found wandering in the vicinity. Smothered by the dim red dying of the light, among tall clumps of spite-grass and blackly spreading thorn-willow, the infant might easily have gone unnoticed. But it is possible his gleaming golden hair may have been mistaken for something valuable in the metallic way.

The fellow who did so, by name Swind, having learned his error, still carried the infant to the adjacent village of Ratgrad.

“Ho, Swind: Could you not have left that thing where it was? Where is your charity? No doubt some passing hungry gib or ghoul would have welcomed it.”

“Tush,” said Swind sullenly, dumping the crying boy in the dirt. “In the era of sun’s death, life is ever valuable and must be preserved — so that it may also be punished for the insolence of persisting.”

Accordingly Swind and his wife, Slannt, were given the child to raise, which they did following the village tradition. They starved the boy and rained constant blows upon him, these actions ornamented by witty verbal abuse in the village mode. Despite such care, he grew to the age of eighteen. He was well-made and handsome, with a tawny skin, large dark eyes, and his hair still golden under the filth Slannt and others diligently rubbed in it.

His given name was Blurkel. But by the time of his seventh year, he thought nevertheless that he had recalled his real name, which was, he believed, Evillo. Nothing else could he remember of his former life.

Ratgrad was married to another local village, the equally charmless Plodge. Once every month, the denizens of both villages would meet on a bare rock, known either as Ratplod or Plodrat Spike. There they would sit about a large fire and drink fermented erb berries, next singing various unharmonious songs, and telling stories of the most uninspiring kind.

Fell the day of the festival.

To the Spike trooped all Ratgrad, Evillo perforce going with them.

The celebration proceeded as it always did, becoming more loathesome by the minute. By the hour that the old sun began to crawl to its lair in the west, the Spike and its surrounding shrubland rang to uncouth carroling and eructations.

Evillo, to escape the attentions of certain unpalatable village maidens, had climbed up a tall lone daobado that spread its bronzy limbs behind the rock. From here, suddenly he beheld a solitary figure walking towards the Spike. Evillo stared with all the power of his dark eyes, thinking perhaps that he imagined what he saw; visitors were infrequent thereabouts. But curiously, as a sunfall red as an over-aged wine of Tanvilkat obscured the scene, the figure grew ever more apparent. It had the shape of a man, but was closely robed and hooded.

Something thundered in Evillo’s ears: his heart.

Just then, the village look-out, who was that evening the master-hacker Fawp, also noted an arrival and let out a yowl.

Startled silence beset the revellers. Many jumped drunkenly to their feet, and every eye fixed upon the grey-cloaked stranger.

“Stay,’” bellowed Fawp, who had drawn his cleaver. “Proclaim your type and intention.”

“Also be aware,” added Glak, the carcass-heaver, “while we slay enemies instanter, friends who visit us are required to present a gift.”

The mysterious figure had drawn near and now spoke in a low and sonorous tone.

“I am neither enemy nor friend. But I will present a gift.”

Stupid greed overcame the stupid bravado of the villagers. They pressed forward and now clustered about the stranger as he entered the sphere of firelight.

Up in the tree, Evillo watched, half waiting for some magic sloughing of disguise, revealing the man to be a frit or other fiend. But the hooded figure did not metamorph into anything else. He came to the fireside and rested himself on a large flat stone. And precisely then, through the mesh of the hood which concealed his face, Evillo fancied that he glimpsed two human eyes that glowed with a mental ability far beyond the average. For a moment, they met his own, and then passed on.

“Be seated,” said the stranger to the villagers, and such was his authority that each of them at once obeyed. “The gift I offer is modest, but you shall have it. Know then, I am Canja Veck the Fabler. He who is compelled, by a nameless but omnipotent force, to travel the dying earth, and there to recount its stories to any that will hear.”

It was as if the mindless, drunken clamour had never been. As if the sinking sun had wiped all trace of it away with the last swipe of a wine-soaked sponge. In utter stillness, eyes wide and lips parted, the village folk sat waiting like ensorcelled children. And Evillo with them; he more than all.

For every hour of that night of ever-unmooned nights, the Fabler told his tales.

They were by turns swift and fearful, glamorous and enmarvelled, mystic, ribald, hilarious, and of a shocking horror. Canja Veck so controlled his captive audience that none moved more than a muscle, gave no sign of life beyond a blink, a gasp, a sigh or flash of laughter. Drink untasted, fire smouldering low, so they sat. While for Evillo, it was as if at last he had found true reality, the world itself, and it was nothing like the cramped cell he had, from two years old, been forced to occupy.

As he outlined the histories of his heroes and heroines, Canja Veck described also the varieties of place that formed a backdrop. Of Ascolais he spoke, and the white, half-ruined city of Kaiin, of Saponid lands, whose golden-eyed peoples dwelled beyond high Fer Aquila. He suggested the oblique Land of the Falling Wall, and wild Kauchique, and such antique metropoli as doomed Olek’hnit, and such occluded and occult regions as the Cobalt Mountains, and that fearsome forest the Lig Thig or Great Erm. He indicated the demonic realm of Jeldred, created only to house evil, which surely it did; Embelyon too, an alter-world the unseeable magician Pandelume had made to conceal himself, whose skies were fluctuant rainbows. And he told of Almery in the south, from whence stalked — less a hero than the transverse of all heroism — Cugel, the self-styled Clever, an arresting person, long of leg, deft of hand, light of finger, blessed by the luck of fiends — and the unluck of one cursed, which two states constantly cancelled each other out. Cugel was, besides, a perfect genius of cunning and razor wit, and also, on ocassion, an utter numbskull.

At last, the black of night grew threadbare in the east. The red sun pulled itself from sleep and glared upon the world that it must still serve, though itself of more than pensionable age.

The spellbound villagers slipped from their enchantment.

They stared eastward to gauge, in the manner of the time, how the solar disc fared. Seeing that it still burned, they looked around again to the rock where Canja Veck had been seated. But he was gone.

Only Evillo, who had not bothered with the sun, had seen him rise up, shake the dew from his robe, and move silently away. Only Evillo, sliding down the daobado, had dared pursue this mage among storytellers away from the rock, the villages, and, without a backward glance, down into the cliffy forests above the Derna.

About Midday, Evillo caught up to Canja Veck, who had paused on a wooded spur. Far below, the river was now visible, splashing like a hurried serpent through the ravine.

“Mighty sir—”

Canja Veck did not turn.

“Sir — great magician—”

To this, Canja Veck responded. “My title is Fabler.”

“Mighty Fabler—” but here Evillo, steeped so long in village concepts, could think of no means to convey his wants. Instead, in embarrassed banality he asked, “But are you not hungry, sir? Have you eaten today?”

“No,” replied Canja Veck gravely, “but I have eaten tomorrow, that tomorrow when the sun goes black. Eaten it entire.”

Evillo waited in great awe.

“By which I mean,” Canja Veck amended gently, “as any story-maker will, that I see the future as well as the past. I think you have not,” he added, “drunk their vile brew of fermented erb berry. Good. It is named, like the similarly styled tea, less for its stimulous than for the sting included in over-imbibition. Since an actual erb, as you may know, is a combination of man, bear, lank-lizard, and demon. Or so certain sorces report.”

“Phandaal’s Purple Book?” hazarded Evillo, referring back to the Fabler’s tales.

Canja Veck shook his head. Mildly, he inquired, “What do you wish from me?”

Evillo felt that he could not speak. He spread his arms and gazed in desperation. “I wish — to live — the life of such a hero as Guyal — or Turjan — or Cugel! Cugel the most.”

“Callous and manipulative Cugel? Clever Cugel the fool?”

Evillo deemed himself incapable of constructing sentences. He put his hands into his filthy hair and tore it in frustration.

“Peace,” said Canja Veck. “Look how far already you have come from your beginnings. If you will be the hero of a story, that fate is yours to conjur. There lies the river, and there the ancient broken road that will lead you to Porphiron Scar, and thence to white-walled Kaiin.”

“And Almery—” whispered Evillo.

“A journey of long months,” said Canja Veck, cool as distant stars. “Unless your transport should be super-normal.”

Evillo, in a sort of exultant panic, stared out across the river to the road, which, when seen from this height, was narrow as a thread of woven flint. A shadow shifted, noiseless, sudden. Looking about, Evillo saw that Canja Veck had once more serenely vanished. The young man stood alone upon the brink of his destiny, and of the cliff. And in that second, a ghastly and insane shriek sounded from the air. Down swept a gaunt black bird, one third the size of a full-grown man, its scarlet beak levelled squarely at Evillo’s newly-woken heart. Whether it were self-determined or the misstep of terror, Evillo sprang straight off the spur, and, in another moment, was hurtling towards the river far beneath.

2: Khiss

Three winds slapped Evillo’s face as he fell. Then he was dashed into the river, which, possibly irritated by his unanounced advent, beat him as severely as any Ratgradian. Plunged through silver water to black, Evillo grew unaware for an indeterminate duration.

This trance ended however when an opposite propulsion seized him. He was borne again upward and crashed back through the surface of the Derna, as if through a plate of exploding glass.

Evillo, fighting for breath, found himself held high in the air by the brawny arms of a blue-scaled and blackly scowling man-creature of considerable girth.

“By Pizca Escaleron, incomparable god of my race, how darest thou violate the sacred deeps of the river?”

“I—” attempted Evillo, as he choked forth a percentage of said deeps from his lungs.

“Cease thy verminous squeaks, thou minuscule! Whence camest thou, with such impertinent rush? Didst even knock, thou rustical? Nay, thou didst in no sort. Know, thou intruding inculco, that I, a mighty lord among the river Fiscians, was just then in exquisite dalliance with a fair lady of my realm, which delicious process thou, by thy foul and uninvited entrance, hath disrupted. Had I not sworn upon the eternal fins of peerless Pizca Escaleron, to take no more than three lives in any morning, and having already availed myself early of today’s quota, I would tear thee, limbs from torso, devour thine unworthy liver before thy degraded eyes, and cast thy remains into the realms of dreadful Kalu.”

“I—” attempted Evillo once more.

“Pearl-button thy lips, thou failed oyster. I am done with thee. Go forth and suffer!”

And with these and similar sentiments, the creature flung Evillo all across the Derna and into some bushes of stinging leaves beyond the road.

Evillo crawled from the bushes and presently sat by the highway.

In fact, the road was often broken up by the ingress of the river. The traveller would be forced to detour here and there among banks of thorn and tubegrass, from which fluted the usual inane whistling. Leagues off, so Evillo thought, the land seemed to check. This was perhaps Porphiron Scar? As shock abated, Evillo felt his eagerness return. And not long after, he noted a tall male figure striding over the terrain towards him.

When the man drew level, Evillo got to his feet.

“Pardon an ignorant nobody,” he cautiously began, “but does the city lie in that direction?”

The man was indeed very tall; his height was well above one and three quarter ells. Long black hair coursed to his waist, and his garments were the indigo and ebony shades of day sky and night. With dark blue eyes, he regarded Evillo. “My name,” said this man, “is Kaiine. What do you deduce therefrom?”

“That you are a citizen of the city of Kaiin?” immoderatly supplied Evillo.

“Which may, naturally,” said the man “be a false deduction. All of which you should certainly avoid. On the other hand, you are correct in my case. Be wary however, when you resume your trek, of the large and beautiful snail that lies in the grass at your feet.”

In surprise, Evillo glanced down and beheld the snail. The tall gallant had already disappeared around a bend in the road, but Evillo had been most impressed by the care the man had taken over the fate of a snail. Unwarned, Evillo might well have trodden upon it. How very sensitive and civilized therefore must be all Kaiinians!

Evillo prepared to step carefully over the snail, which was indeed attractive, with a jade tinge to its body, its shell a crystalline whorl. The snail spoke: “Forgive me, my friend, I could not but overhear your exchange with the Darkographer Kaiine. Are you en route to the city?” Evillo exalted. A snail which spoke! And was also urbane! This surely was the very stuff of fable, magic, and sophistication!

“I am.”

“Might I then trouble you to permit my accompanying you? I fear that you will need to port me, or I shall lag sadly behind. But I weigh little, and the occasional wholesome leaf or lactuca will sustain my existence. Nor do I crave any expensive alocholic beverages.”

Evillo conceded this, and raised the snail. He placed it on his left shoulder, from which vantage, as the snail explained, it could see the road as well as he.

For a while then, they progressed in silence. Evillo was shyly tongue-tied, if the truth were told.

Eventually, the snail inaugurated a brief conversation. “The man with whom you formerly spoke is, as I mentioned, a darkographer. You ask, what then is a darkographer? He is one who maps the world, before the sun goes dark and melds everything with shadow.

“But it may be that you are curious too as to the circumstances of my being here, so far from my house at Kaiin. It chanced, during pursuit of my livlihood, which is to cure burns by silkenly crawling across the afflicted area, that a rogue subdued me with a drugged lettuce and bore me off. He intended, he shamelessly confessed, to boil me with garlic to tempt his desired mistress, avile frog-eating harridan of Thamber Meadow, who is known to send men regularly to their deaths. My abductor meanwhile ranted that he had avoided someone unavoidable, by the simple expedient of not going near him, despite some inducement to do with a tapestry of gold, or some such yarn. Fortunately, another of the rogue’s fellowship, being displeased with him, came after, and slew my persecutor on the road. Unnoted during the proceedings, I escaped. Since then, I have spent six days and nights on my return journey.

“Yet enough of me. Let us discuss you. What do you seek in white-walled Kaiin?”

Evillo was nervous that he might bore his eloquent companion. Modestly, he replied, “I am only a peasant of no account. But even I have heard of the wonders of the city.”

“And your name?”

“I — call myself Evillo.”

The snail seemed to cogitate. “That is a name unfamiliar to me. I myself am known as Khiss.”

A couple more miles passed in quietness.

Then Khiss spoke again. “Tell me, friend Evillo, what trade or abilities do you bring to the city?”

Evillo sighed. “None that I know of.”

“To succeed therein,” Khiss continued in its musical, faintly tinkling voice, “you will require at least the skills of reading, numeracy, and fighting, not essentially in that order.”

“I possess none of them.”

“Alas,” said Khiss. “Let us pause.”

Dejectedly, Evillo, and so, the snail, once more sat down. They were by now on a long sweep of land, and saw the hyacinthine brink of the Scar directly before them. But what use was that? Plainly, Evillo was unfit to continue.

“What shall I do? Must I go back to the wedded despondancy of Ratgrad and Plodge?”

“Do not contemplate such a tragedy,” advised Khiss fastidiously. “Attend now. I myself am willing to teach you the three abilities I have listed, plus several others. I will even teach you to cure burns, and a little magic, for example, perhaps, Phandaal’s geas of the Unputdownable Tome, if not the indespensible but alarming Locative Selfulsion, this last being, I consider, a double-edged sword. In return for these lessons, however, due to the unmitagable Laws of Equivalence, you must in turn perform some slight corresponding services for myself. You will barely note these. Are you agreeable then to engage in such barter?”

Evillo’s head whirled. He stared into the emerald eyes of the snail Khiss which, mounted on their tender jade stalks, gazed beadily into his.

“But how long will it take you to educate me? I am an ignoramus:”

“All the more swiftly then shall we go on. Erroneous old knowledge often impedes the entry of new. Be aware that my kind, being slow of motion, are flame-swift of thought and tutor accordingly. Had men only realized as much, their empires of stars had never floundered, nor would the expiring sun now pant and swoon, but, regenerated, have reinvented the entire earth.”

Evillo sat astounded, as well he might.

Khiss eyed him a moment more, then spoke certain uncannily soporific phrases, which included the mellifluous words Twylura Phlaim, Phurn, and Undimmoril.

As the young man sprawled senseless yet again among the tubegrass, Khiss climbed to the top of a flowering blush-hyssop, and began the hypnotic schooling.

The sun meanwhile, which seemed to have picked up Khiss’ boast, fretfully veiled itself in mauve vapour. This phenomenon, understandably, caused fright and pandemonium throughout the land, since humanity naturally expected possible eternal dark at any moment. But the vapour passed within three minutes; leaving all as before.

When Evillo awoke, he at once knew that he was possessed of many handy knacks, not the least being martial art. Later that day, directly against Porphiron Scar, he was enabled to test this when a leucomorph sidled from a covert.

No sooner seen than recognized from the tales of Canja Veck, Evillo leapt feet first against the monster and brought it down. Then, reaching instinctively for his sword, Evillo impaled the leucomorph’s pallor on a solitary tree.

“But how,” Evillo wondered, “do I come to have sword belt and sword? It was instantly there to hand, and I was aware of a curious blue sheen upon it as I wielded the blade.”

“That is because it is well polished. While you slept, I came upon the assemblage in the grass. Given your new talents, I assumed it should be yours,” Khiss answered, with the utmost reasonableness.

Below the Scar lay Kaiin, and beyond the city, the smalt-blue waters of Sanreale Bay. Evillo descended quickly, and passing by the elevated arena of Mad King Shin, sight-saw the preposterously enhanced palace of the present ruler, Kandive, sometimes nicknamed the golden.

The streets were full of interesting people, black-skinned and pale, and scented women in long-stemmed gowns. Khiss, with ‘a few discreet murmurs, directed Evillo presently away through a grid of complex streets decked firstly with tall houses, and then with houses less tall, and at last with the lowest of houses. So they moved along the scabrous bank of a canal, reeking of components best left undescribed. Here rose a crumbling hostelry, the Inn of the Tired Sun.

“Enter, and seek a room,” commanded Khiss.

“I? How will I know what to say—”

“Trust in the superior tutelage lavished on you.” Evillo, having already been thrilled by his prowess with the lurking, now skewered, leucomorph, strode manfully into the inn. At once, words sprang to his tongue.

“A room, I pray you,” he announced to the landlord. “And meantime, a meal with alcoholic additions.”

The landlord, a brooding man of no teeth, frowned unencouragement.

“Expand initially upon why you enter clad in rags, and with dirt in your hair. Besides why you carry a snail on your shoulder? Do you wish it cooked for your repast? Be enlightened: we serve only our own viands, and never stoop to prepare take-in. Nor do we serve paupers. Payment is anticipated. I doubt if you have ever seen a terce, let alone been awarded one.”

Again and at once, dialogue leapt from Evillo’s mind to his lips.

Ringingly, he declared, “Know, unworthy innkeep, I am the noble Lord Evillo, sent in disguise to inspect the taverns of Kaiin, and by no less exalted a personage than Prince Kandive himself. The prince wishes to learn how business is conducted in his city, and especially what politenesses and kindnesses are extended to strangers. Already I perceive, and hearken to, your bent for rudeness and sulk. Had I not heard better formerly of you from my cousin—” here Evillo hesitated, unable in fact to coin a name—“who shall be nameless, that he thought you both charitable and courteous, I would even now have reported your conduct to his highness. But I will grant a second chance.”

The landlord hurried from behind his counter. “Good sir, forgive my joke — which was, of course, but too easy to misinterpret. I saw at once that you are who you say you are. I will myself show you to the nicest room, and arrange a fine dinner. It will be my personal delight to cook the snail for you myself—”

“Pish! The snail is not for cooking. It is a sorcerous brooch of incredible value, bestowed upon me by a descendant of the magician Phandaal. Say nothing else lest you offend me further.”

In the room above, Evillo bathed and barbered himself, then found in a closet some clean garments and linen of an unusual richness, including a long-billed hat of a claret hue. These donned, he was prompted to regard himself in the mirror also unexpectedly found in the closet. While doing this, his pleasure was distracted. A blue-green image suddenly misted the glass. It conveyed a landscape of opalescent beauty, with waters, woods, and mountains, all folded in turquoise luminescence. Next instant, it was gone. While Khiss had seemed to notice nothing. Evillo blamed the mirage on his over-stimulated nerves.

They went down to supper, and so passed the evening. Never in his days had Evillo known such luxuries, for although the inn was not of the best, by comparisom with Ratgrad, it seemed a very-heaven of the Overworld. Khiss dined on a lettuce.

All around, the other patrons nudged each other. “See, see, there is Prince Kandive’s courtier, no doubt related to the ruler also, for note his silk jacket and behold the colour of his hair!”

About this time, Evillo conceived the notion that Khiss had grown a little larger, due no doubt to the nourishment of his salad.

When Evillo and Khiss made to retire, an alluring young woman with amethyst hair and fine eyes, if dressed rather to extremes, approached Evillo in the upper corridor.

She inquired if he might be uncomfortable on his own during the night in an unfamiliar building, and offered to keep him company. She would only charge him, she assured him, for the cost of her own chamber at the inn, which obviously, through being with him, she would not use. This room was somewhat sumptuous and accordingly highly-priced, she regretted to say. But she was always prepared to give it up, she said, if needed elsewhere. Evillo was touched, and taken with her, and so about to concur, when Khiss sternly murmured, reminding him that in actuality he had no money at all. With sorrow then, Evillo declined the lady’s offer.

At this, her manner inexplicably altered. She shouted vigorously in several octaves. Finally, she called on a demon, whom she named Cardamoq, demanding that it chastise whoever so insulted a poor working girl. In haste, Evillo and Khiss withdrew.

Quiet returned. Outside, the tired sun sank behind the Tired Sun, and unspeakable things playfully splashed into the canal.

3: The Old Town

During the night, the leucomorph, having with some difficulty detached itself from the branches of the tree, bounded through the inn window. It had followed Evillo’s scent trail and entered the city — an act unusual for its kind — next clambering up the inn’s rickety wall.

A deal of noise resulted. Yells and curses, sounds of blows and counter-blows, the crash of furniture, augmented by warbling growls.

Next, the chamber door burst wide. Evillo and the leucomorph erupted forth, to the elaborate consternation of other guests. Within minutes, many of these rushed screaming from the inn and down the street, wrapped only in bed-sheets. Others hid below tables in the main hall where, in the general distress, a lamp was inevitably knocked from a low rafter, causing a fire. At last, Evillo and the leucomorph, still locked in combat, retired once more into the upper room, where the young man succeeded in braining the thing with the night-pot, then casting it back from the window into the canal. Here it sank amid a cloud of white bubbles. Below, the fire was extinguished. Evillo lay down, ignoring his bruises, and returned exhaustedly to sleep. Sleep was of short duration however.

No sooner did dawn tip the sky than the door of his room once more crashed open.

“Arise, villain!” roared the muscle-girt captain of a band of city militia, each man brandishing sword and club. “You are to accompany us to jail.”

Evillo, yet somnolent, still felt his mouth sparkle with words. “You mistake your man!” he cried.

“No, not we. You are a wretch who lured a filthy monster into this inn, wherewith to wreck the establishment. Worse even than this, as was earlier reported by the landlord, you have impersonated a member of the royal household.” Eloquently plead as he would, Evillo found himself disarmed of his sword and briskly conducted into the street. He was then marched away into the pillar-fallen and ruinous Old Town of Kaiin, where stood the fearsome, seven-storey dungeon errected aeons before by Gbile the Intolerant. Only when cast upon a vast and stenchful floor in semi-darkness, did he discover that Khiss had accompanied him, and still sat on his left shoulder.

There passed then an unpleasant compendium of hours. The large room was already well stocked with criminals. Some groaned, and some uttered maledictions against various persons, amulets, and gods which had failed them. Some, more energetic, brawled and rolled across the space. Some crept about and attempted unneighbourly acts on the rest. One of these even essayed the theft of Khiss, thinking it to be a jewel. Evillo dissuaded the man, telling him that the gem was worthless, and besides carried a malwill, being the very cause of Evillo’s imprisonment.

At noon, a panel was undone in the iron barrier, and a communal cauldron of lumpy, steaming gruel pushed through. On this, most flung themselves, slavering and hooting. Only those too weak, or in such despair as to be beyond nurture, desisted. Evillo numbered himself among the latter.

However, with noon some little drips of maroon light had also penetrated the prison, through an assortment of cracks. By these miserable rays, Evillo noticed a tall and well-dressed older man with sable hair, who sat to one side. Neither eating or grieving, nor complaining, he had fixed Evillo with a piercing grey gaze.

“Behold,” whispered Khiss, as if to itself, “it is the sorcerer Pendatas Baard.”

Evillo racked his now burnished wits. He did not identify the name, although, for a fleeting moment it had seemed familiar. But the man’s gaze disconcerted him, and, presently, lacking the guidance of Khiss, Evillo rose and went towards him.

The cold eyes lifted. “And do you know me?” inquired the mage.

“You are Pendatas Baard, the sorcerer. Why therefore are you in a dungeon? Do your powers desert you?”

This was perhaps too bold; the man grimaced, then smiled in superior fashion.

“My powers are formidable. I was well taught by my father, the lamented Ultra-Mage Kateraspex. Know then, I am here due to an experiment on my part, extrapolated from Phandaal’s empurpled theorem of Locative Selfulsion.”

Evillo recalled that Khiss, at their first meeting, had mentioned this particular magic.

“What does the theorem entail?” he asked.

“Surely,” said the mage, “so much is evident?”

Evillo temporized. “You will pardon me, I hope, but it seemed to me that you stared at me a while. Maybe you have some task for me to perform? Even decidedly, such a necessary task as will cause my swift liberation from this jail?”

“No, nothing like that,” replied the mage. “It seemed to me for a moment that I recognized something about you. Have you travelled much?”

Evillo must admit he had not. But then he became animated, thinking of his much-travelled hero, Cugel, and added, “But I have journeyed in my mind. My mind has visited so many spots. The sombre north — the Ocean of Sighs — Almery of dim bare hills, the heaving river Xzan, sometimes called the Twish…the glass-turreted manse of the Laughing—”

“Quite,” interposed Pendatas Baard concludingly.

Just then, a loud clang shook the dungeon, followed by screeching. In their shoving anxiety to feed, the food vehicle had been toppled among the diners, and a man received burned legs and feet. As the unfortunate lay flapping on the floor, a curious compunction overcame Evillo. Leaving the mage, he hastened to the scalded man. Lying on the floor, Evillo commenced to crawl over his wounded legs. Cries of affronted mockery resulted, then fell still as Evillo completed his progress. The burned man bounced to his feet. “I am cured! The pain is laved from me! My skin is whole!” So much might be witnessed as a fact.

The other prisoners promptly crowded about Evillo. “You are a mighty sorcerer. Save us, great master! We are all innocent as newborn elds. Only free us, and we will be your slaves. Refuse — and mage or not, you shall die!”

Evillo stood aghast, and neither the teaching of Khiss. nor any memories of Cugel’s wit, provided him at this point with eloquence.

“Khiss! Instruct me — what now?”

Khiss murmured.

“The great master whispers a spell,” surmised the prisoners. “Let us hope it summons our release — for our sakes and his!”

“It is as you desire,” Evillo confirmed hastily. “But stand further off, or the force of the freeing mantra may smash us all to pieces.” The prisoners withdrew. Khiss then muttered again. Directed by the mutter, Evillo spun about in time to see the real magician, Pendatas Baard, wavering in and out of visibility.

Faithful to Khiss’ next injunction, Evillo raced to the mage, and flung himself upon him, grasping him vigorously with both arms and legs.

Pendatas Baard uttered a strangled roar of rage and pain, but the vacillating waver, now unstoppable, had swiftly involved Evillo also. In another second, the full trio, mage, young man, and snail, vanished from the dungeon.

4: The Sembling

There was a form of bad weather in Almery that day. The three travellers fell amid the tempest, as simultaneously on the hard eastern banks of the Xzan or Twish.

Evillo found that, rather than brush water drops from his face, he brushed off small flexible animalcules of a bluish type which, hitting him here and elsewhere, bit him.

For a short time, Pendatas Baard and Evillo were united in a frenzied dance, beating away this vicious insectile rain. Presently, the mage thought to erect by sorcery a canopy of steel that, no doubt inadvertantly, sheltered Evillo also. Here they huddled, while without the sky fell and the river popped and sizzled.

“You will accept my heartiest curse for this, you felon, a curse too vile even to detail but lasting your life long,” stormed Pendatas Baard. “Render your name, that I may fix the bane more thoroughly.”

“If I should modestly decline such honour?”

“I shall blast you to syrop here and now.”

“Blurkel,” offered Evillo.

“My thanks. Consider yourself, Blurkel, accursed to the sorry limit of your days. I will not trouble to curse your brooch. Such an exertion is beneath me. Did you not know that your idiotic attempt to wrap me in an embrace of farewell, however understandable, must dislodge the architecture of the Selfulsion? Behold where you have landed me!”

“Where?” asked Evillo, for he had not yet identified the geography.

“The Selfulsion, which I, like my father Kateraspex, have almost perfected from Phandaal’s theorem, having permitted me to enter the ancient jail and verify certain opinions I hold on the vile nature of humanity, was due to return me to my domicile in the Old Town. Your solipsistic intercession has instead dashed both of us across the landscape and into the environ of Almery, in which country I must assume that you, if not I, take an obsessive interest.”

“Almery:”

“Just so. The fanged beetle-pour has lessened: regard, above the slopes, the manse of that pest, Iucounu the Laughing Magician. He has already sensed me and sent a storm of biting mites. He was the mortal foe of my father. And now, quite preposterously, is mine.”

From the tales of Cugel, Evillo had already learned of the malice of Iucounu, but also of other events which might be expected to have curtailed it. “But is Iucounu not dead? I had heard—”

“Bah: Such criminals never die, they are ineradicable.”

“Can you not then at once avail yourself of the Selfulsion, and vacate the spot?”

“That is the one flaw in my calculus. In the prison, I learned that I was unable immediately to reactivate the spell. Two hours must elapse before I found myself in a position to depart. At which juncture, you befoulled the locomotion. Normally, the practitioner — myself — may, via the Selfulsion, physically manifest in an instant at any place on the earth of which he knows, and which he may at least partially envisage. But your image of this place, the purlieus of Iucounu, proved stronger than my own merely formulaic memory of my house. A second time I curse you, Blurkel, and a third!”

Dejected, Evillo left the shelter of the steel canopy. The rain of beetles had ceased, although clouds yet blew across the dark blue sky, revealing the sun only in ruby winks.

Nevertheless he saw — up the hill, nor so far off — the manse that Canja Veck had so aptly described. Its steep gables and lace-work of sky-walks and balconies glittered in the racing interrupted light, while the green glass domes flashed now peridot, now carnelian, reminding him of the flickering tongues of snakes.

“What shall I do?” he inquired of Khiss.

“What men must do. You are here. You must go on.”

It seemed to Evillo then that Khiss had grown far heavier, and even perhaps rather larger. As if the snail symbolized the weight of the mage’s projected curses — which presumably had missed Evillo himself.

As he climbed the hill, Evillo glanced back once, and noted Pendatas Baard digging for himself, by means of magic, a deep hidey-hole in the ground.

The manse lay along a road paved by brown tiles. These showed some symptoms of wear. Evillo had also spotted a deserted village overwhelmed by trees. Several disconcerting ruins of seemingly great age also lay around. In short, nothing but the magician’s home was at all in repair.

Evillo had deduced from the tales the Fabler recounted that Iucounu, even he, had finally met his match — less in the person of Cugel than through the energies of the alarming god-being Sadlark, and the terrible Spatterlight. Yet surely the touchy mage Pendatas should have known the truth.

An air of desuetude and disconsolation nevertheless hung over the building. Reaching it, and cautious as Cugel himself had once been, the young man peered in at a number of windows. Through one, he viewed a chamber hung with crimson papers, where something whirled vaguely along the floor. Through another was a large hall laid with an intricately woven rug of forest green, fusk, fruslian mauve, and orange. On this stood a slender tantalum pedestal atop which, slowly and gracefully, there danced the skeleton of a rodent. In a third window, he spied a beautiful sylph with silver hairs but she faded even as he looked. Within the fourth window, nothing at all was visible — which is to say, nothing, since the entire room was a disturbing void from which Evillo quickly averted his eyes.

He had, in fact, no wish to risk entry. Star-struck curiosity alone impelled him to circle the fatal house. Nor did his teacher Khiss remonstrate, despite once or twice making a tsking noise.

Evillo then found a side-door in the stone-work, hanging ajar.

Beyond lay a courtyard where grew a single spindly mulgoon tree of purple leaves. At that moment, the clouds left the sun. Magenta light flooded the area, and from under the tree came gliding a person whom Evillo might have met only yesterday, he knew him so infallibly. Small and pearshaped, his upper body was bundled in a black tunic with a collar of tall quills. His bird-thin legs were clad in many-coloured pantaloons. His bald head and face had the form and yellow shade of a perch-pumpkin; his eyes were miniatures of dead wood. His mouth curved in an eternal grin. Who else could it be but the Laughing One?

“What have we here?” asked Iucounu, mirthful and merciless. “Yet one more visitor? Ah, to be so popular is indeed a boon! Pray enter and witness my treasures. Never stint your imaginative ambitions with regard to stealing anything you may see. Do pray indulge your most venal fantasies! You will not be the first to do so, nor, I suspect, the last. Until the sun goes out, no doubt, callers will arrive on similar missions.”

Khiss offered nothing. Evillo’s brain sent a message to his tongue.

“I am glad to see you well, sir,” he said, offering a low bow.

“Had you heard I was not?”

Evillo checked, sensing his blunder.

Iucolunu added, leering with apparent glee, “Some story of my perishment in a fountain, I judge, consumed by the Spatterlight, which Cugel the Unclever tricked me into pressing home upon my forehead?”

“Clearly greatly exaggerated…” stammered Evillo.

“Not necessarily. Or perhaps. Which would you say? Do you believe I am dead? More to the point, do I believe I am?”

Evillo now prudently kept quiet.

“I will say this,” the magician continued, “whether Iucounu lives or has died, whether he has died but has since rebecome living, if he is perhaps secreted in study elsewhere about the manse, or even should he be away from home merely visiting some other, I remain, and currently shall do so always. Grasp, if you are able: I am a sembling which Iucounu made in his own likeness. And now I am caretaker of his castle. In me you will, should you wish to make a test of me, find all his formidable and eclectically amusing powers, for I have been invested with them in perpetuity. Therefore, abandon shyness and step within.”

“Your generosity overmatches, alas, my available time. I am due at the manse of my employer, who sent me out solely to locate his pet vowl, which had strayed from the garden,” Evillo dissembled.

“Ah, a pet.” said Iucounu’s sembling. “Iucounu too did or does have one such. See, there it bounds! Ettis, my pretty, to me! To me!” A shrill bark at once responded from above.

Evillo recalled Ettis also. Cugel’s gambits to avoid poison offered him by the magician, had resulted in the animal’s death. This self-same creature now soared down from the air, conceivably having sprung from a handy parapet. Although still round and long furred, with circular black eyes, Evillo was aware of two extra characteristics missing from the Ettis of the story. Firstly, the daylight shone through its body, Secondly, its teeth and claws had grown to abnormal length and acuity. Ettis, it seemed, had become an undead vampiric salk.

“Pardon me — I hear my master’s impatient shout and must be gone,” cried Evillo, and took to his heels.

His intention was to charge at once downhill, in the direction of the River Xzan. If needful, he would jump right into it, even should he discompose thereby another Fiscian lover.

Nevertheless, a spell of the magician, or of the guardian sembling, had already been activated. To his despair, Evillo found that he could run only around the manse, here and there leaping over obstacles, such as steps or small statues. In doing this, he passed by the windows through which he had previously stared. He noted inadvertantly that the rodent bones now danced a tarantella, but the whirl in the red paper room, like the sylph, was gone. Rushing by the void, however, a perturbing thought assailed him, even in the midst of his own concern. It seemed to him he had caught a faint echo of converse inside the nothingness: “Let tonight last forever!” said one. “My own sentiment;” averred another. “There is never more to experience than this single ‘now’.”

Had Cugel, in his triumph, uttered some guileless sophistry and thus himself activated a dormant but deadly domestic safeguard, involving petrified time?

But there was no margin to ponder. Evillo ran, swordless since the jail, and unable to break away from the magician’s walls. While behind him galloped Ettis, now on terra firma, now in the air, its joyous canine screams splintering the ears.

“Khiss:” gasped Evillo, as he entered his second circuit of the enormous building, “do you indeed youself know the spell of Selfulsion? It seemed to me you might. If so — can you not release said knack and send us hence?”

Khiss answered, “I will do my best, despite the jolting I presently receive. But you yourself must visualize some place of charm and safety. I cannot work alone.”

How heavy in that moment seemed the snail that Evillo carried.

“I know so little, and yet my skull is packed with the scenes of Cugel’s journeys — but anywhere other than here will serve.”

No sooner had Evillo panted out the words than he stumbled over a low wall inlaid with glossold. He fell into a bush of flowering casperine, from which some of the leftover blue beetlecules lifted to bite him. At the same instant, Ettis came flying from the air like a furry pancake, claws akimbo.

Evillo gave himself up for lost. Then he experienced once more the sensation of fog and vertigo that had attended his ejection from the prison with Pendatas Baard. Rather than Ettis, another country slammed into his spine. He lay staring up into a swimming hallucination of sea-green hills scarfed in a soft blue mist. This lasted less than a heartbeat. Thereafter, he was glaring through the foliage of a gigantic thamber oak to the blood-red sky of sunfall. Stars were already visible, their constellations set in unfamiliar patterns. The diamond mask of Lyraleth bemused him.

He came gradually to see he was in a forest glade, and all alone. If he had sloughed the intolerable Ettis, so he had also sloughed his mentor, Khiss.

Primed to lament, Evillo rose. And learned that he was not quite alone after all.

He had dropped on this occasion into the vernal labyrinth of the Lig Thig, or Great Erm, that stupendous and ominous forest of the far north. Here Cugel had undergone certain trials and tribulations.

About the glade, the trees clustered close, towering deodars and capacious amberquers, limned with cochineal highlights. Northern mandouars loured like priests attired in smoke. Contrastingly, a pleasing scent of vanilla drifted on an evening Fader, or west wind. The aroma wafted from a long clay pipe that three sabre-toothed, man-eating Deodands passed to and fro between them. They were the impossibly unhuman black of burned skeel. They smoked, and smiled to welcome Evillo to dinner, he being the food.

5: In the Lig Thig and At the Blue Lamped Inn

As the daylight ebbed, the tallest Deodand approached Evillo. The Deodand spoke.

“What a pleasure that you have entered the glade. My friends and I have not eaten a morsel for several days. The last of our — shall I say — patrons did however leave us this pipe and pouch of pods and herbs. A selfless thought. We have much enjoyed it.”

Evillo glanced at the Deodand. “A tonic to hear you speak of friendship. I fear that my own friend, a very fat fellow named Huge, has lagged behind. Already I miss him painfully, he is such fine company, and though hardly the height of that tree, is at least three times its girth.”

The Deodand paused, appearing interested.

“Is he so? Why then is he so disappointingly late?”

“Initially, I believe, in order to persuade two other grand fellows of our acquaintance, by name Gargantuan and Likewise, to come with us on our jaunt.”

“Well, then,” said the Deodand, with a winning grin, “while we await such excellent extra confreres, we may partake of a starter dish before the feast. Come! We insist that you participate; indeed, it is essential. That seen to, we will greet your friends when they arrive with equal gladness.”

“This causes embarrassment,” grieved Evillo. “Without a certain act, Huge, Gargantuan, and Likewise will not appear. Let me elucidate. You will have noted my supernatural method of arrival? I can translocate from any one place to any other at the blink of an eye. Huge, inevitably, can do the same. However he has recently become prey to a silly habit of wishing me always, when once I reach any destination, to observe a fussy ritual. Without this, which infallibly he detects from afar, he refuses to follow me. Nor obviously, therefore, will our hefty friends.”

By now, the two other Deodands had approached. They sat elegantly on nearby tree-stumps, the pipe stowed. One sang a little ditty.

“What then does the ritual entail?” another asked at length.

“It is so tiresome,” replied Evillo, “I feel I should omit it. Let us simply proceed to the food. After all, three such enormous gentlemen as my friends will surely deplete your stores.”

“Not precisely,” the first Deodand reassured him. “No, no, we long to meet with them. I urge you to enact the ritual. We will patiently stand by.”

“Alas, I must ask you to assist. But no — it is beneath you! Let us make do with the starter dish, of whatever sort it is.”

“Not at all. Be assured. We are more than willing to help you.”

The other two Deodands concurred with enthusiasm. “Very well then, I must bind your eyes with these strips torn from my shirt, as so — yes, indeed, they must come from my own garments or Huge will know, and withhold his company. There. I trust they are not too tight. Now each of us must lie face down on the ground and count, one after the other, to the number one hundred. You, sir, the first. Then you, sir, and lastly, sir, you. I must do the counting last of all, for so my foolish friend Huge will have it.”

The Deodands lay down and pressed their faces to the soil.

By now, the forest was darkening through impressive tints of Kauchique Ale and Violet Mendolence. Evillo, bolt upright by the oak, made pretence that he too had lain down.

“We are all now in position,” he informed the Deodands. “Some final advice. Do not begin your counting until I give the signal — Huge is most touchy. After that, and when you are done, do not stir, let alone look about until I have concluded my own count, during which Huge and the others will join us. Be aware that Huge, owing to his extreme bulk, so disturbs the equilibrium of anywhere that he translocates himself to, let alone if in company, that you will be vastly endangered by precipitate motion, especially of the eyes — for just this cause, I have blindfolded you. Hold tight to the ground. Await my signals. And for such inconvenience, accept a thousand apologies.”

Evillo paused. The sky was black as ink and only Lyraleth remained visible.

“Commence!” he ordered, and hastily, on silent feet, sought the avenues of the forest.

He had been running for less than a count of fifty however, when he detected sounds of pursuit.

Above him in the dark, Evillo also heard a small and plaintive call. Seizing the trunk of a massive tree, he climbed at speed to an elevated bough.

The owner of the little calling voice squinted at him with tiny luminous eyes. He was a Twk man, and nearby, his dragonfly sat preening its wings among the leaves.

“To repay this favour,” said the Twk, “I require salt.”

“I have none. Which favour?”

“I am owed,” said the Twk. “Know that flights of my kind were recently lured toward the northern limits, with a promise of endless salination, by the unsympathetic mage Pendatas Baard, in his relentless search for the usufructdom of Undimmoril. He claimed of us many and various deeds. When wages came due, he directed us to the sea’s edge, and recommended we pan the tideless waves for our reward.”

“I am sorry to hear this,” whispered Evillo, “but hush a moment, if you will. My hunters prowl below.”

The Twk gazed over at the three Deodands, who, illumined by the single large star, sniffed about the tree roots beneath, now and then glancing thoughtfully up into the branches.

“Perhaps I shall betray you to them,” mused the Twk. “Sometimes Deodands carry salt, to season less tasty kills.”

Evillo felt an eerie coolth on his arm. Looking distractedly, he found Khiss. But Khiss had grown startlingly during their separation, to the size of a cat.

From below came the discouraging sound of agile feet attempting the tree.

“Contain your amazement,” instructed Khiss, in a new and testy tone. “We must depart at once. Due to your inanity, not only did we once more miss the target, but were segregated during the transmission. We shall now again try the Selfulsion. On this occasion, by all five demons of Lumarth, think only of some terminus secure, and, preferably, blue.”

Evillo’s mind became a perfect blank. But already, Khiss and he were pulsing as their bodily atoms disbanded. From nowhere, a sourceless memory of blueness filled his thoughts. He interpretted this as another of Cugel’s temporary haunts, and conjured the Inn of Blue Lamps, southward, in Saskervoy.

Such had been the delay and confusion none the less, that the two wayfarers entered the inn by a high closed window, and so descended in a hail of glass upon several dissatisfied diners.

Evillo and Khiss extricated themselves from a roast fowl and a large platter of stewed callow with roseberry. The Twk and dragonfly, involved in the Selfulsion owing to proximity, dived into the salt-dish.

A landlord loomed. Evillo assumed that he was Krasnark, the very same who had waited on Cugel in the Fabler’s tale. Black-browed and tall, he glowered. On his forehead, a faint scar boded ill.

“Am I never to free my premises of these surreal incursions? Ever since the fateful night when those two wretches played their gambler’s tricks, the villainy of which only later were revealed to me, bad cess has plagued this inn!”

“It is true,” confided a buxom dame in cerise plast, beaming upon Evillo despite his antisocial entrance. “Poor Krasnark was brained by an unseen force and fell into the still-room below, spilling and breaking items to the value of nineteen florins! Besides, a worthy worminger was wounded in the foot by a crustaceous sphigale let go from its tank, the lighting was damaged, beards were sliced, and gentlemen harried at the trough of convenience.”

“And now,” snarled Krasnark, “the ghoul-goat Cleenisz has taken up residence in the cellar, where it lies in wait for my potboys!”

On this cue, a malevolent bleating of inappropriate volume resounded from below. The floor shook.

“If you have stirred up the thing,” threatened Krasnark, “by your louche flop into my hall, I will charge you the sum of two hundred terces. The probity of Saskervoy is at stake.”

Most of the patrons were now evacuating the inn, even the lady in cerise. Seemingly, they did not take to the voice of Cleenisz.

“I regret, landlord,” said Evillo, “I have not a copper shaving to my name.”

“But,” hissed Khiss, its whisper loudly audible due to its current size, which was now more approximate to that of a small lion, “hand him this ring gleaming there in the spilled salt. It will pay for all.”

Evillo took the ring. It was worth more than the entire inn, very likely, a great smouldering gem of bluish-green set in blue tantalum, and chased with blue gold.

Krasnark’s manner altered. “That will tally to a nicety, sir. Let me entreat you to finish the dinner you have already sampled…or should you wish to follow me to the urinal?”

Evillo did not attend. A turquoise radiance was flaring from the jewel’s heart. It seemed to fill the inn, fading the blue lucifer lamplight to ashes.

There again appeared to him then the mysterious misty woods, hills, valleys, and mountains, the lakes like moire silk, which he had glimpsed so many times before. Evillo, dazzled by the sheen, wondered if this vision, as had the violet eye cusps of the Overworld, at least in Cugel’s experience, so effected the organ of sight as to influence also all other senses. For Evillo seemed to smell the fragrance of trees, flowers, and water, and he almost felt the brush of satin leaves against his face.

And then a woman appeared at the heart of the wonder. Her figure was slender, but with exquisite accentuations. Her skin resembled the palest and most clear nacre. Long lustrous hair, in colour the spice pink of a cold dawn, streamed about her. Her eyes were like emeralds in a lavender dusk. She was beauty incarnate, and instantly Evillo found he knew her name, which in ecstasy he breathed aloud: “Twylura Phlaim!”

“Never decant your curses on me:” thundered Krasnark. “Know that I am protected by amulets. Douse the witchlight and hand over the gewgaw. On reflection, I see it will barely cover the cost of dinner, let alone the broken window and lost custom. And still I must pay for eviction of the goat.”

Two things thereafter occurred as one. Khiss spoke in a penetrating and masculine tone, rendering to Krasnark an uncensored direction. At this, the landlord bellowed in affront. While from beneath came the noise of smashing pilasters, and out of the collapsing floor shouldered the ghoul-goat Cleenisz.

“We apply the Selfulsion,” ordered Khiss, with the utmost authority. “Evillo, fix your eyes upon the image in the ring, and summon no other of your ridiculous Cugelesque venues.”

The lucifer, by which the inn lamps were powered, blew up in a furl of royal blue fire. All else was fog and spinning.

6: Undimmoril

On every side, and to each horizon, stretched the fair, liberally-laked land of Undimmoril. It was as already Evillo had partially viewed it, landscaped enchantingly by unknown gods, and coloured with irri-descent blues and greens and every ethereal shade between. Above, the sky was also a composition of jade and azure, and lit sourcelessly, not in the way of sunlight, but more a vivid twilight under a full and incandescent moon.

Presently, Evillo looked about for Khiss. But the snail was again absent. Instead, beside him on the lake shore sat a princely young man, of about Evillo’s own age. The newcomer was both tall and strong, with long hair the tint of verdigris and eyes like the darkest malachite. He was clad in velvet dyed cyanide and yu-sapphire, and a wide brimmed hat sporting seven peaks, trimmed with carmine effulgence.

“Gawp, if you must,” he said, in offhand condenscension. “I should guess I am, as in the past, a sight to ravish all eyes.”

“Where is Khiss?” Evillo asked.

“Ha! Where do you think?”

“You are — it.”

“Indeed. I am Prince Khiss. I know you are a simpleton. There is no demand that you should labour the point.”

“And this place?”

“The lovely usufructdom of Undimmoril, where never can shine a sun nor ever can a sun die. This is my realm, from which I was ousted, by the plots of the magician Kasteraspex. And here, I believe, is my clariot.”

Certainly a powerful and well-groomed clariot, ready caparisoned, a riding animal of the crossed breed of wheriot and claris, and, in this instance, peacock blue, was stepping tidily along the shore, tossing its four-horned head and chartreuse mane.

Rising, the prince who had been a snail vaulted lightly into the saddle. Graciously, he invited Evillo: “Run beside me if you wish. I am bound for my home, the incomparable palace of Phurn.”

Evillo, seeing nothing else to be done, did as Prince Khiss suggested.

As they advanced then, prince and steed galloping nimbly, Evillo stumbling breathless and groaning alongside, Khiss related his story, and Evillo’s part in it.

“Kateraspex entered the usufructdom of my domain by means of Phandaal’s theoretic Locative Selfulsion, which he, the unworthy Kateraspex, had somehow — and doubtless by accident — realized. Kateraspex then annexed the territory of Undimmoril. I, of course, opposed him. Although myself well-versed in thaumaturgic art, the devil overcame me by a ploy too complex to explain. Since to explain it would exceed our time together, and decidedly your intellect. Suffice it to say, Kateraspex exiled me to the paltry alter-world of the earth, and robbed me, once there, of the ability to reveal my plight. However, owing to the Laws of Equivalence, the villian was yet compelled to allow me to retain certain benefits. These comprised my knowledge and skill in various fields, and those formulas I had mastered of magery. Also he must permit me, albeit haphazardly, to recoup my royal sword, one set of princely clothing, and a ring that marked my status as ruler.

“However again, such was the magician’s vile cunning that he made sure I might not put to use any of these elements. He decreed that, my feet once touching the ground of Earth, I should become a more attractive copy of the first creature I beheld there. Which was, as even you may fathom, a snail.

“My only hope then, which Kateraspex failed to foresee, was that I might find some gullible dunce. For if I could but imbue his noddle with some of my own talents, currently useless to me, he and I would together make up a source of power. Meanwhile, every piece of fair fortune my pupil might expect to encounter would instantly magnetize to my own self, he then suffering a counterbalance of lucklessness. As this happened, my reserves of energy would be recharged.

“Generously, I shall not chide you with the long wait I had, due to your tardy arrival. For though I met many dunderheads, they were too fly to trust me. While the gullible were already so mentally crammed with idiocies my tuition found no room. You, however, were perfection. An imbecile, empty as the night of moon.

“Soon enough you gained my sword, then the garments, and, at length the ring. With each acquisition too you obtained a fleeting glimpse of Undimmoril. Finally, a vision of my land was established in your imagination. Thus primed, the Selfulsions needed lesser and then no intervals between them. Only your intransigent Cugeline fad caused difficulty. In the end, even that did not avail. We achieved Undimmoril. Where, once more on hallowed ground, I reverted to my true persona and emptied your brain of my wisdom. All is now mine. Notice, even the sword has come back to me.”

Khiss laughed with joy. Evillo sensed that his own mind was hollow and confused. Khiss was prompted to one more admission:

“By the by, it was not you at whom that farlock, Pendatas Baard, sat staring at in the prison. He stared at me. He had never seen me, either as prince or snail, yet he sensed some remnant about me of his accursed father. Who, you may be entertained to know, Pendatas himself dispatched, on a rare paternal visit, with a venom of the Saponids. Ever after, Pendatas has sought for Undimmoril himself. With slight success, as we note.”

Exhausted by this far from terse account, as much as by enforced exercise, Evillo plunged face forward in the grass. From this vantage, he grew aware of the palace of Phurn standing close by. It was supplied with pillars of turquoise and many thin towers like sticks of angelica. Gardens garlanded all, crowded with terebinth and myhrhadion, eluent teff and gentians.

In the gateway was the wonderful woman with pink hair. Khiss cried aloud in delight and reined in the clariot. “Behold, my wife, Twylura Phlaim, the only female worthy to partner my splendour!” Glancing back, Khiss added, “Evillo, you may depart. In a moment, I will open a portal, and you will then be propelled back to the fount of your useless and unaesthetic existence.”

Before this was done however, the beautiful Twylura Phlaim mounted a cat-headed chariot, which leapt on hare’s legs up the hill.

“Art thou home so soon?” she exclaimed to her husband, in a peculiarly raucous tone. “Be cautioned, Khiss, in thy long absence, Twylura Phlaim grew bored and ran away with an untypically handsome gleft. Instead I have taken her place.”

“Who then are you?” demanded Prince Khiss.

“The demon Cardamoq. Come thou now and embrace me.” Khiss had grown white. The clariot reared and unseated him. Khiss landed by Evillo.

“Oh, Evillo, dear friend, despite my restored powers, the demon’s strength overwhelms me! Let us therefore at once return to our beloved dying earth—”

“Nay, husband. Thou shalt stay with thy beloved Cardomoq!” screeched the demon unmusically. She had grown two heads, and smoke billowed from the six nostrils of each. “To be sure of it, I shall transfer some of thy powers to the yellow-haired human there. He may keep them as a momento of this happy reunion.”

A blow fell on Evillo’s head. He sensed the portal open in the alter-world of Undimmoril, and wisely knew no more.

In fact, he fell to earth in the red sunlight of Kaiin. A multitude of hands were assisting him to rise, and the air rang with voices detailing how he had been searched for everywhere. Next came the militia and ringed him round.

Tiredly, Evillo anticipated the prison, but instead the throng, cheering and rejoicing, bore him to the palace of Kandive the golden.

“How pleasing that we have refound you, dear boy,” declaimed Kandive. “I am already bereft of sons and nephews; they have such a propensity for extended voyages whereon they vanish. It seems to me, when we have consulted the proper sages, that you will be my direct heir, in default of all the others. For you are the child of my half-sister who, sixteen years before and when visiting an obscure fane above the Derna, mislaid you, through sheer carelessness, near the village of Ratgrad.”

Evillo stood nonplussed. Had his good luck returned? He grasped also that certain powers belonging to the arrogant Khiss had indeed been given to him. Released from Khiss’ personalized Equivalence, Evillo might surely now enjoy them. And not least as heir to white-walled Kaiin.

While he was considering these prospects, he saw amid the crowd the Darkographer Kaiine. Evillo recalled how he had misunderstood the gallant’s warning — not to avoid stepping upon the snail, but simply to avoid the snail altogether.

So easily might one topple into folly. One must have things straight.

He therefore at once asked Kandive, “And is my name Evillo, as I have thought from the age of seven?”

“Not at all,” replied the puzzled Kandive. “By the cyclopaedia, whatever put such an idea in your head?

“What then, sir, is my name?”

“Why, my boy, hear, and thereafter bear with pride your true cognomen, written in the archives of Ascolais. It is Blurkel.”

Evillo staggered. Supposing this due to rapture, Kandive clapped him on the back.

But it was the full weight of the strident three-fold curse of Pendatas Baard, coming home to roost. Vented upon him in the name of Blurkel, the young man felt it attach itself like a swarm of stones.

That very night, as all feasted in the lavish courts of Kandive, the recurrent leucomorph uncharacteristically dropped from a chandelier upon Blurkel. Its attack had been much refined by practice.