The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  While they climbed, white wispy clouds which had gathered in the high gullies of scilinon in the morning had grown to a mass of blackness that hid in the mountains to the west. Great streamers ran from it across the gulf below, joined and boiled upward, lifting and sinking like a full-tided sea, rising at last to the high ridge where the Demons stood and wrapping them in a cloak of vapour with a chill wind in its folds, and darkness in broad noon-day. They halted, for they might not see the rocks before them. The wind grew boisterous, shouting among the splintered towers. Snow swept powdery and keen across the ridge. The cloud lifted and plunged again like some great bird shadowing them with its wings. From its bosom the lightning flared above and below. Thunder crashed on the heels of the lightning, sending the echoes rolling among the distant cliffs. Their weapons, planted in the snow, sizzled with blue flame; Juss had counselled laying them aside lest they should perish holding them. Crouched in a hollow of the snow among the rocks of that high ridge of Koshtra Pivrarcha, Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz weathered that night of terror. When night came they knew not, for the storm brought darkness on them hours before sun-down. Blinding snow and sleet and fire and thunder, and wild winds shrieking in the gullies till the firm mountain seemed to rock, kept them awake. They were near frozen, and scarce desired aught but death, which might bring them ease from that hellish roundelay.

  Day broke with a weak gray light, and the storm died down. Juss stood up weary beyond speech. Mivarsh said, “Ye be devils, but of myself I marvel. For I have dwelt by snow mountains all my days, and many I wot of that have been benighted on the snows in wild weather. And not one but was starved by reason of the cold. I speak of them that were found. Many were not found, for the spirits devoured them.”

  Whereat Lord Brandoch Daha laughed aloud, saying, “O Mivarsh, I fear me that in thee I have but a graceless dog. Look on him, that in hardihood and bodily endurance against all hardships of frost or fire surpasseth me as greatly as I surpass thee. Yet is he weariest of the three. Wouldst know why? I’ll tell thee: all night he hath striven against the cold, chafing not himself only but me and thee to save us from frost-bite. And be sure nought else had saved thy carcase.”

  By then was the mist grown lighter, so that they might see the ridge for a hundred paces or more where it went up before them, each pinnacle standing out shadowy and unsubstantial against the next succeeding one more shadowy still. And the pinnacles showed monstrous huge through the mist, like mountain peaks in stature.

  They roped and set forth, scaling the towers or turning them, now on this side now on that; sometimes standing on teeth of rock that seemed cut off from all earth else, solitary in a sea of shifting vapour; sometimes descending into a deep gash in the ridge with a blank wall rearing aloft on the further side and empty air yawning to left and right. The rocks were firm and good, like those they had first climbed from the glacier. But they went but a slow pace, for the climbing was difficult and made dangerous by new snow and by the ice that glazed the rocks.

  As the day wore the wind was fallen, and all was still when they stood at length before a ridge of hard ice that shot steeply up before them like the edge of a sword. The east side of it on their left was almost sheer, ending in a blank precipice that dropped out of sight without a break. The western slope, scarcely less steep, ran down in a white even sheet of frozen snow till the clouds engulfed it.

  Brandoch Daha waited on the last blunt tooth of rock at the foot of the ice-ridge. “The rest is thine,” he cried to Lord Juss. “I would not that any save thou should tread him first, for he is thy mountain.”

  “Without thee I had never won up hither,” answered Juss; “and it is not fitting that I should have that glory to stand first upon the peak when thine was the main achievement. Go thou before.”

  “I will not,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “And it is not so.”

  So Juss went forward, smiting with his axe great steps just below the backbone of the ridge on the western side, and Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz followed in the steps.

  Presently a wind arose in the unseen spaces of the sky, and tore the mist like a rotten garment. Spears of sunlight blazed through the rifts. Distant sunny lands shimmered in the unimaginable depths to the southward, seen over the crest of a tremendous wall that stood beyond the abyss: a screen of black rock buttresses seamed with a thousand gullies of glistening snow, and crowned as with battlements with a row of mountain peaks, savage and fierce of form, that made the eye blink for their brightness: the lean spires of the summit-ridge of Koshtra Pivrarcha. These, that the Demons had so long looked up to as in distant heaven, now lay beneath their feet. Only the peak they climbed still reared itself above them, clear now and near to view, showing a bare beetling cliff on the north-east, overhung by a cornice of snow. Juss marked the cornice, turned him again to his step-cutting, and in half an hour from the breaking of the clouds stood on that unascended pinnacle, with all earth beneath him.

  They went down a few feet on the southern side and sat on some rocks. A fair lake studded with islands lay bosomed in wooded and crag-girt hills at the foot of a deep-cut valley which ran down from the Gates of Zimiamvia. Ailinon and Ashnilam rose near by in the west, with the delicate white peak of Akra Garsh showing between them. Beyond, mountain beyond mountain like the sea.

  Juss looked southward where the blue land stretched in fold upon fold of rolling country, soft and misty, till it melted in the sky. “Thou and I,” said he, “first of the children of men, now behold with living eyes the fabled land of Zimiamvia. Is that true, thinkest thou, which philosophers tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed, even they that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories thereof, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?”

  “Who knoweth?” said Brandoch Daha, resting his chin in his hand and gazing south as in a dream. “Who shall say he knoweth?”

  They were silent awhile. Then Juss spake saying, “If thou and I come thither at last, O my friend, shall we remember Demonland?” And when he answered him not, Juss said, “I had rather row on Moommere under the stars of a summer’s might, than be a King of all the land of Zimiamvia. And I had rather watch the sunrise on the Scarf, than dwell in gladness all my days on an island of that enchanted Lake of Ravary, under Koshtra Belorn.”

  Now the curtain of cloud that had hung till now about the eastern heights was rent into shreds, and Koshtra Belorn stood like a maiden before them, two or three miles to eastward, facing the slanting rays of the sun. On all her vast precipices scarce a rock showed bare, so encrusted were they with a dazzling robe of snow. More lovely she seemed and more graceful in her airy poise than they had yet beheld her. Juss and Brandoch Daha rose up, as men arise to greet a queen in her majesty. In silence they looked on her for some minutes.

  Then Brandoch Daha spake, saying, “Behold thy bride, O Juss.”

  Pinkhus Kahanovich (1884–1950) was a philosopher, critic, and writer who wrote in Yiddish under the pen name of Der Nister (literally meaning: “The Hidden One”). He was born in the city of Berdychiv, in what is now Ukraine. In 1920 he went into brief exile, first to Lithuania and then Germany. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1925. In 1950, he was arrested in conditions of secrecy and died shortly thereafter in a prison hospital. His grave, near the Siberian city of Vorkuta, was only recently identified. To date the only book-length translations of his work into English are of the social-realist novel The Family Mashber and Regrowth, a collection of posthumously published short stories. His work was said to be inspired by the stories of Rabbi Nachman, a teacher of the kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). His style was considered unique for the Yiddish language, as it included Jewish mysticism alongside other world religions. Although he had several books published, his two-volume collection Ge
dakht (“Imagined”) was his first successful literary project. This story is from that collection, for the first time translated into English.

  At the Border

  Der Nister

  Translated by Joseph Tomaras

  AT THE BORDER between the town and the desert, there is someone who keeps watchful guard on the desert boundary, who appears to be a sort of wild beast, and she is eternally watchful and guarding.

  —What do you expect from the desert?

  —Someone is coming from there, and will show himself—she says.

  —Who?

  —She holds herself back from responding….But it comes out, at the end of the day, when she is tired from patrolling, and worn out from always looking around; when she seats herself on a stone, and her face is marked by care and turns sorrowfully toward the desert; when you find yourself near her, and remain standing by her to give her a break from her watch, and you ask: “For whom are you waiting?” She takes a long, drawn-out look face-to-face with the questioner, then she takes in the questioner’s face and whole body in a glance, then she turns toward the desert and, looking down, she begins to speak:

  —For whom am I waiting? For the two-humped camel from the desert.

  —And what is the camel carrying?

  —No rider and no herdsman. No merchandise and no travelers. Just two candles upon its humps…

  —What do you mean?

  —The beast begins her story:

  * * *

  —

  Far out in the desert, beneath an enormous sand-dune, lived the last of the giants. The giant pledged to make his way back to the homeland of his ancestors, to excavate their temples and their gods, to bring them back to life and power. He had wandered over half the world, until he came to the desert and went to sleep beneath that dune….They say that he found the gods inside that dune, and the storytellers claim that on an evening when the dune is shrouded in darkness and is overtaken by the desert’s dusky winds, you can see his walking stick wrapped in his coat left resting at its peak. He put them up there, and forgot where he left them, and looked around the dune, never finding them. And he yearns, and he waits, impatiently; one night, when his legs stretch, and his head rises from out of the peak, the dune will explode to bits. He will open his eyes, and no shadow will pass over them. Not the slightest whistle of the winds will escape detection by his ears. But for a while, they did not hear and did not see. Only once, upon some evening, after great exertions and much seeking, did he hear a voice coming from the very peak of the dune, and this is what the voice said to him:

  “Giant, you will not bring back the rule of your gods, nor shall the line of your ancestors be made powerful, for you shall find no mate and cannot bring a new generation into being.”

  Hearing this, the giant thought to himself: Where could he find a mate, since he was the last of the line of giants? Where could he turn, when his race had nearly died out, and the people of the town were unlike him, and looked upon him as a monstrosity, a wild, primeval relic? Whenever he walked through the town, his head blocked out the sun, and whenever he ran through it, his feet brought accidents and catastrophes. He had devoured forests and flocks of livestock, destroyed cities and fields. People were like mites to him; they would hide themselves from him in holes in the ground and the cracks between stones. So he thought: To whom could he turn? Who could advise him? The voice of the dune had spoken to him only once, and would not busy itself with his troubles any more. He was furious. He looked all around him in the desert: Perhaps someone would come to him after all, perhaps something would be revealed to him in the distance. But the desert was desert, and nothing else, so he sat alone in his place. His eyes could find nothing beside himself in all that space, nothing beside the horizon and the skies, in which not even birds were to be seen. Again he waited for some time, sitting with care and attention, so worn down and saddened, until finally he noticed the noise of wings around his head. He lifted his head, and he saw a bird, a gigantic bird of great wingspan, wheeling over his head, flying around and around in a perfect circle. Then the bird descended from its heights and remained hovering near him, and began to speak to him:

  “Giant, do not worry, do not be sad! Your mate is already waiting for you, but she is very far away from you. I have brought to you, from the place where she can be found, a letter from her.”

  The giant saw a letter that the bird had dropped at his feet, folded and sealed, and fell to the earth to grab it. He opened it up to read it, and this is what he read:

  “To the last of the Giants, wherever he may not be and wherever he may not be found, whether at sea or on shore, in a village or in the desert: I wish you great peace, blessings, and treasure! We should get to know one another. At the corner of the desert where the wilderness meets the sea, at the stony shore, we survive and remain. Our ancestors ruled as kings for a long time, until they died out, wiped themselves out by killing one another in battles, leaving us as the remainder of the race of giants only one daughter; she lives high in a tower, with three windows, of which one faces the sea, a second toward dry land, and a third faces up to the heavens above. And from there she rules and issues decrees, through one window, upon the sea and upon the fish of the sea, from the second, upon the land and upon the livestock and wild beasts of the land, and from the third, upon the winds and storms and all manner of birds in the air above. All the creatures hear her and obey her decrees, and she alone follows her gods and abides by their commandments. Thus have the gods commanded her: What she shall sit through and what she shall endure, for the tower of empire is getting old, and no one is repairing it; termites have been found in its walls, and holes have already been eaten through….She is still young, but her youth is passing without sweetness. Her body is strong, and she can give birth to a new generation of giants. So the gods have advised her: They know with certainty that there is still a male giant remaining, somewhere at sea or upon the land, but somewhere far away and thus in the same circumstance as her, living alone and searching for his other half. He searches, but has not found his mate—so she should seek after him, and bring him to her tower. She has followed the advice of her gods, turning to the birds and asking the swiftest, most skillful of flyers: who shall find the giant for me? One came forward to accept the mission. From the young empress he has taken a letter, to fly all over the world searching for the giant, at sea and on land, leaving no spot unexamined. And you, who now reads this letter that the bird has brought to your feet, you are the one, the only one, called upon to take the daughter of giants as your mate. She says to you: Come to me. Love and riches await you, you the only one, the long-awaited one.”

  Having finished reading, the giant looked up again at where the bird was, and saw the bird once again flying above and around the spot. So he asked the bird:

  “And how do you get to the daughter of giants?”

  “By foot.”

  “In which direction should I go?”

  “This way, as the bird flies.”

  The bird stopped looking down at the giant and lifted himself higher into the sky, then flew a few more circles around the giant’s head, and then, straightening himself out, pointed himself toward a horizon and flew away. The giant lifted himself from where he was seated, turned his face in the direction that the bird had flown, then turned his whole body in that direction, and with his very first step, departed the sand dune for the very last time. He turned to look at its peak, and addressed these words to the dune:

  “Dune, I say to you, I swear to you, just as I rested beneath you and at your foot, so shall my gods rest upon your highest peak, and my firstborn, the first to issue from my loins, shall serve upon you as a High Priest, the first High Priest and most loyal servant of you, great mountain!”

  So he said, and the giant took his first step, and with that step, covered what would be a day’s journey for a man; then with the other foot, anot
her day’s journey, and once again the first foot. And then the giant made for himself, in the midst of the desert, a sort of tent, out of sticks and branches, sheets and rags, and the whole structure was weak as a hut and sagging toward the earth, which in the middle of the desert, in the great lonely expanse of the desert, was just pitiful. The tent was too small for the giant to see out of it, or else he would have seen, through the opening of the tent, a sort of a person, hidden by and rising from the earth. The person was wrapped in a dark cloak from head to toe, face and eyes invisible. When the giant finally noticed this person, he wondered: Who can that be, and what are they doing here in the desert? He bent over to yell downward:

  “Who is there?”

  “The leper,” came the answer in a voice from the ground, weak and dampened from being wrapped in a cloak.

  “And what are you doing here in the desert?”

  “There is no place for me in the town.”

  “And where has the leper come from?”

  “From the daughter of giants, who lives at the corner of the desert.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Please bend down lower, closer to me, I don’t have the strength to yell any louder.”

  And the giant bent over, laying his head and half his body on the ground, while the leper stood up and began to tell this story:

  * * *

  —

  —At the edge of the desert and the shore of the sea, there is a palace, where there lives the last daughter of giants, the remainder of the old race of giants, and she lives there alone, she has no mate. Her youth is passing in unhappiness and loneliness, she spends her time alone with the walls around her, day and night she has no joy in her life, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She has retained all her hereditary powers, though, and to this day she speaks to the birds as her ancestors did before her, and they serve her following all her commands. She called upon them and sent the best and swiftest, to go and to fly to the ends of the earth to find her destined one, her other half, her giant. He flew and he flew, searching for a long time, and he found nothing, no one, and finally he turned around to come back home, and he met me on the way. Back then I was young, and also a giant, and I was also searching for my mate, my other half. He was pleased to meet me, hailed me, showed me the way, and told me a great deal—about her life and her suffering alone in the palace. I stood up and made my way following the bird. I was coming to her, to her youth and her home, filling up with love for her. I spent some time with her, got to know her, and readied myself to become her lordly husband….And I did, finally, I became her husband. And one night, when the moon reigned in the sky and sea and shined in upon us through the window, and she and I were together, and there was not another creature in the palace besides us two, I saw her, lying in bed in the light of the moon, and I was terrified. She looked at me in total silence with her two eyes, and her eyes were cold. Her face looked as though there was nothing there to see at all, as if I were invisible, not there at all. So I turned to her and asked her: What are you thinking? What are you feeling? She did not answer me. So I asked her again: What is the matter with you? What are you looking at that way? Who are you thinking of? She looked down at me and answered, “Of another, a better one, not you who is lying there.”