Tales of the Dying Earth Read online

  Some intuition or perhaps a charm warned Kandive when Turjan slipped through the purple hangings. Kandive leapt to his feet.

  "Go!" he ordered the girl. "Out of the room quickly! Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with magic!"

  The girl ran hastily from the chamber. Kandive's hand stole to his throat and pulled forth the hidden amulet. But Turjan shielded his gaze with his hand.

  Kandive uttered a powerful charm which loosened space free of all warp. So Turjan's spell was void and he became visible.

  "Turjan of Miir skulks through my palace!" snarled Kandive.

  "With ready death on my lips," spoke Turjan. "Turn your back, Kandive, or I speak a spell and run you through with my sword."

  Kandive made as if to obey, but instead shouted the syllables bringing the Omnipotent Sphere about him.

  "Now I call my guards, Turjan," announced Kandive contemptuously,

  "and you shall be cast to the Deodands in the tank."

  Kandive did not know the engraved band Turjan wore on his wrist, a most powerful rune, maintaining a field solvent of all magic. Still guarding his vision against the amulet, Turjan stepped through the Sphere. Kandive's great blue eyes bulged.

  "Call the guards," said Turjan. "They will find your body riddled by lines of fire."

  "Your body, Turjan!" cried the prince, babbling the spell. Instantly the blazing wires of the Excellent Prismatic Spray lashed from all directions at Turjan. Kandive watched the furious rain with a wolfish grin, but his expression changed quickly to consternation. A finger's breath from Turjan's skin the fire-darts dissolved into a thousand gray puffs of smoke.

  "Turn your back, Kandive," Turjan ordered. "Your magic is useless against Laccodel's Rune." But Kandive took a step toward a spring in the wall.

  "Halt!" cried Turjan. "One more step and the Spray splits you thousandfold!"

  Kandive stopped short. In helpless rage he turned his back and Turjan, stepping forward quickly, reached over Kandive's neck, seized the amulet and raised it free. It crawled in his hand and through the fingers there passed a glimpse of blue. A daze shook his brain, and for an instant he heard a murmur of avid voices . . . His vision cleared. He backed away from Kandive, stuffing the amulet in his pouch. Kandive asked, "May I now turn about in safety?"

  "When you wish," responded Turjan, clasping his pouch. Kandive, seeing Turjan occupied, negligently stepped to the wall and placed his hand on a spring.

  "Turjan," he said, "you are lost. Before you may utter a syllable, I will open the floor and drop you a great dark distance. Can your charms avail against this?"

  Turjan halted in mid-motion, fixed his eyes upon Kandive's red and gold face. Then he dropped his eyes sheepishly. "Ah, Kandive," he fretted,

  "you have outwitted me. If I return you the amulet, may I go free?"

  'Toss the amulet at my feet," said Kandive, gloating. "Also Laccodel's Rune. Then I shall decide what mercy to grant you."

  "Even the Rune?" Turjan asked, forcing a piteous note to his voice.

  "Or your life."

  Turjan reached into his pouch and grasped the crystal Pandelume had given him. He pulled it forth and held it against the pommel of his sword.

  "Ho, Kandive," he said, "I have discerned your trick. You merely wish to frighten me into surrender. I defy you!"

  Kandive shrugged. "Die then." He pushed the spring. The floor jerked open, and Turjan disappeared into the gulf. But when Kandive raced below to claim Turjan's body, he found no trace, and he spent the rest of the night in temper, brooding over wine.

  Turjan found himself in the circular room of Pandelume's manse.

  Embelyon's many-colored lights streamed through the sky-windows upon his shoulder—sapphire blue, the yellow of marigolds, blood red. There was silence through the house. Turjan moved away from the rune in the floor, glancing uneasily to the door, fearful lest Pandelume, unaware of his presence, enter the room.

  "Pandelume!" he called. "I have returned!"

  There was no response. Deep quiet held the house. Turjan wished he were in the open air where the odor of sorcery was less strong. He looked at the doors; one led to the entrance hall, the other he knew not where.

  The door on the right hand must lead outside; he laid his hand on the latch to pull it open. But he paused. Suppose he were mistaken, and Pandelume's form were revealed? Would it be wiser to wait here?

  A solution occurred to him. His back to the door, he swung it open.

  "Pandelume!" he called.

  A soft intermittent sound came to his ears from behind, and he seemed to hear a labored breath. Suddenly frightened, Turjan stepped back into the circular room and closed the door.

  He resigned himself to patience and sat on the floor.

  A gasping cry came from the next room. Turjan leapt to his feet.

  "Turjan? You are there?"

  "Yes; I have returned with the amulet."

  "Do this quickly," panted the voice. "Guarding your sight, hang the amulet over your neck and enter."

  Turjan, spurred by the urgency of the voice, closed his eyes and arranged the amulet on his chest. He groped to the door and flung it wide.

  Silence of a shocked intensity held an instant; then came an appalling screech, so wild and demoniac that Turjan's brain sang. Mighty pinions buffeted the air, there was a hiss and the scrape of metal. Then, amidst muffled roaring, an icy wind bit Turjan's face. Another hiss—and all was quiet.

  "My gratitude is yours," said the calm voice of Pandelume. "Few times have I experienced such dire stress, and without your aid might not have repulsed that creature of hell."

  A hand lifted the amulet from Turjan's neck. After a moment of silence Pandelume's voice sounded again from a distance.

  "You may open your eyes."

  Turjan did so. He was in Pandelume's workroom; amidst much else, he saw vats like his own.

  "I will not thank you," said Pandelume. "But in order that a fitting symmetry be maintained, I perform a service for a service. I will not only guide your hands as you work among the vats, but also will I teach you other matters of value."

  In this fashion did Turjan enter his apprenticeship to Pandelume. Day and far into the opalescent Embelyon night he worked under Pandelume's unseen tutelage. He learned the secret of renewed youth, many spells of the ancients, and a strange abstract lore that Pandelume termed "Mathematics."

  "Within this instrument," said Pandelume, "resides the Universe.

  Passive in itself and not of sorcery, it elucidates every problem, each phase of existence, all the secrets of time and space. Your spells and runes are built upon its power and codified according to a great underlying mosaic of magic. The design of this mosaic we cannot surmise; our knowledge is didactic, empirical, arbitrary. Phandaal glimpsed the pattern and so was able to formulate many of the spells which bear his name. I have endeavored through the ages to break the clouded glass, but so far my research has failed. He who discovers the pattern will know all of sorcery and be a man powerful beyond comprehension."

  So Turjan applied himself to the study and learned many of the simpler routines.

  "I find herein a wonderful beauty," he told Pandelume. "This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity."

  In spite of these other studies, Turjan spent most of his time at the vats, and under Pandelume's guidance achieved the mastery he sought.

  As a recreation he formed a girl of exotic design, whom he named Floriel.

  The hair of the girl he had found with Kandive on the night of the festival had fixed in his mind, and he gave his creature pale green hair. She had skin of creamy tan and wide emerald eyes. Turjan was intoxicated with delight when he brought her wet and perfect from the vat. She learned quickly and soon knew how to speak with Turjan. She was one of dreamy and wistful habit, caring for little but wandering among the flowers of the
meadow, or sitting silently by the river; yet she was a pleasant creature and her gentle manners amused Turjan.

  But one day the black-haired T'sais came riding past on her horse, steely-eyed, slashing at flowers with her sword. The innocent Floriel wandered by and T'sais, exclaiming "Green-eyed woman—your aspect horrifies me, it is death for you!" cut her down as she had the flowers in her path.

  Turjan, hearing the hooves, came from the workroom in time to witness the sword-play. He paled in rage and a spell of twisting torment rose to his lips. Then T'sais looked at him and cursed him, and in the pale face and dark eyes he saw her misery and the spirit that caused her to defy her fate and hold to her life. Many emotions fought in him, but at last he permitted T'sais to ride on. He buried Floriel by the river-bank and tried to forget her in intense study.

  A few days later he raised his head from his work.

  "Pandelume! Are you near?"

  "What do you wish, Turjan?"

  "You mentioned that when you made T'sais, a flaw warped her brain.

  Now I would create one like her, of the same intensity, yet sound of mind and spirit."

  "As you will," replied Pandelume indifferently, and gave Turjan the pattern.

  So Turjan built a sister to T'sais, and day by day watched the same slender body, the same proud features take form.

  When her time came, and she sat up in her vat, eyes glowing with joyful life, Turjan was breathless in haste to help her forth.

  She stood before him wet and naked, a twin to T'sais, but where the face of T'sais was racked by hate, here dwelt peace and merriment; where the eyes of T'sais glowed with fury, here shone the stars of imagination.

  Turjan stood wondering at the perfection of his own creation. "Your name shall be T'sain," said he, "and already I know that you will be part of my life."

  He abandoned all else to teach T'sain, and she learned with marvelous speed.

  "Presently we return to Earth," he told her, "to my home beside a great river in the green land of Ascolais."

  "Is the sky of Earth filled with colors?" she inquired.

  "No," he replied. "The sky of Earth is a fathomless dark blue, and an ancient red sun rides across the sky. When night falls the stars appear in patterns that I will teach you. Embelyon is beautiful, but Earth is wide, and the horizons extend far off into mystery. As soon as Pandelume wills, we return to Earth."

  T'sain loved to swim in the river, and sometimes Turjan came down to splash her and toss rocks in the water while he dreamed. Against T'sais he had warned her, and she had promised to be wary.

  But one day, as Turjan made preparations for departure, she wandered far afield through the meadows, mindful only of the colors at play in the sky, the majesty of the tall blurred trees, the changing flowers at her feet; she looked on the world with a wonder that is only for those new from the vats. Across several low hills she wandered, and through a dark forest where she found a cold brook. She drank and sauntered along the bank, and presently came upon a small dwelling.

  The door being open, T'sain looked to see who might live here. But the house was vacant, and the only furnishings were a neat pallet of grass, a table with a basket of nuts, a shelf with a few articles of wood and pewter.

  T'sain turned to go on her way, but at this moment she heard the ominous thud of hooves, sweeping close like fate. The black horse slid to a stop before her. T'sain shrank back in the doorway, all Turjan's warnings returning to her mind. But T'sais had dismounted and came forward with her sword ready. As she raised to strike, their eyes met, and T'sais halted in wonder.

  It was a sight to excite the brain, the beautiful twins wearing the same white waist-high breeches, with the same intense eyes and careless hair, the same slim pale bodies, the one wearing on her face hate for every atom of the universe, the other a gay exuberance.

  T'sais found her voice.

  "How is this, witch? You bear my semblance, yet you are not me. Or has the boon of madness come at last to dim my sight of the world?"

  T'sain shook her head. "I am T'sain. You are my twin, T'sais, my sister. For this I must love you and you must love me."

  "Love? I love nothing! I will kill you and so make the world better by one less evil." She raised her sword again.

  "No!" cried T'sain in anguish. "Why do you wish to harm me? I have done no wrong!"

  "You do wrong by existing, and you offend me by coming to mock my own hideous mold."

  T'sain laughed, "Hideous? No. I am beautiful, for Turjan says so.

  Therefore you are beautiful, too."

  T'sais' face was like marble.

  "You make sport of me."

  "Never. You are indeed very beautiful."

  T'sais dropped the point of her sword to the ground. Her face relaxed into thought.

  "Beauty! What is beauty? Can it be that I am blind, that a fiend distorts my vision? Tell me, how does one see beauty?"

  "I don't know," said T'sain. "It seems very plain to me. Is not the play of colors across the sky beautiful?"

  T'sais looked up in astonishment. "The harsh glarings? They are either angry or dreary, in either case detestable."

  "See how delicate are the flowers, fragile and charming."

  "They are parasites, they smell vilely."

  T'sain was puzzled. "I do not know how to explain beauty. You seem to find joy in nothing. Does nothing give you satisfaction?"

  "Only killing and destruction. So then these must be beautiful."

  T'sain frowned. "I would term these evil concepts."

  "Do you believe so?"

  "I am sure of it."

  T'sais considered. "How can I know how to act? I have been certain, and now you tell me that I do evil!"

  T'sain shrugged. "I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life. Turjan could explain to you easily."

  "Who is Turjan?" inquired T'sais.

  "He is a very good man," replied T'sain, "and I love him greatly. Soon we go to Earth, where the sky is vast and deep and of dark blue."

  "Earth. ... If I went to Earth, could I also find beauty and love?"

  "That may be, for you have a brain to understand beauty, and beauty of your own to attract love."

  "Then I kill no more, regardless of what wickedness I see. I will ask Pandelume to send me to Earth."

  T'sain stepped forward, put her arms around T'sais, and kissed her.

  "You are my sister and I will love you."

  T’sais’ face froze. Rend, stab, bite, said her brain, but a deeper surge welled up from her flowing blood, from every cell of her body, to suffuse her with a sudden flush of pleasure. She smiled.

  "Then—I love you, my sister. I kill no more, and I will find and know beauty on Earth or die."

  T'sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.

  T'sain stood in the doorway, watching her sister ride off through the colors. Behind her came a shout, and Turjan approached.

  "T'sain! Has that frenzied witch harmed you?" He did not wait for a reply. "Enough! I kill her with a spell, that she may wreak no more pain."

  He turned to voice a terrible charm of fire, but T'sain put her hand to his mouth.

  "No, Turjan, you must not. She has promised to kill no more. She goes to Earth seeking what she may not find in Embelyon."

  So Turjan and T'sain watched T'sais disappear across the many-colored meadow.

  "Turjan," spoke T'sain.

  "What is your wish?"

  "When we come to Earth, will you find me a black horse like that of T'sais?"

  "Indeed," said Turjan, laughing, as they started back to the house of Pandelume.

  2. MAZIRIAN THE MAGICIAN

  DEEP IN thought, Mazirian the Magician walked his garden. Trees fruited with many intoxications overhung his path, and flowers bowed obsequiously as he passed. An inch above the ground, dull as agates, the eyes of mandrakes followed the tread of his black-slippered feet. Such was Mazirian's garden—three terraces gr
owing with strange and wonderful vegetations. Certain plants swam with changing iridescences; others held up blooms pulsing like sea-anemones, purple, green, lilac, pink, yellow. Here grew trees like feather parasols, trees with transparent trunks threaded with red and yellow veins, trees with foliage like metal foil, each leaf a different metal—copper, silver, blue tantalum, bronze, green indium. Here blooms like bubbles tugged gently upward from glazed green leaves, there a shrub bore a thousand pipe-shaped blossoms, each whistling softly to make music of the ancient Earth, of the ruby-red sunlight, water seeping through black soil, the languid winds. And beyond the roqual hedge the trees of the forest made a tall wall of mystery. In this waning hour of Earth's life no man could count himself familiar with the glens, the glades, the dells and deeps, the secluded clearings, the ruined pavilions, the sun-dappled pleasaunces, the gullys and heights, the various brooks, freshets, ponds, the meadows, thickets, brakes and rocky outcrops.

  Mazirian paced his garden with a brow frowning in thought. His step was slow and his arms were clenched behind his back. There was one who had brought him puzzlement, doubt, and a great desire: a delightful woman-creature who dwelt in the woods. She came to his garden half-laughing and always wary, riding a black horse with eyes like golden crystals. Many times had Mazirian tried to take her; always her horse had borne her from his varied enticements, threats, and subterfuges.

  Agonized screaming jarred the garden. Mazirian, hastening his step, found a mole chewing the stalk of a plant-animal hybrid. He killed the marauder, and the screams subsided to a dull gasping. Mazirian stroked a furry leaf and the red mouth hissed in pleasure.

  Then: "K-k-k-k-k-k-k," spoke the plant. Mazirian stooped, held the rodent to the red mouth. The mouth sucked, the small body slid into the stomach-bladder underground. The plant gurgled, eructated, and Mazirian watched with satisfaction.