Yet, examine the image intelligently and you will find within it a profound message, or even many profound messages. In order to determine which message is the true one, it is necessary to apply the same good judgement you would extend to any important matter. For example, my dream of the pig conveyed five possible meanings:
First: That it would be an act of piglike greed to buy a new pair of shoes.
Second: That, if I were buying shoes, I should seek out those of pig leather, and not ox leather.
Third: That I should be wary of bacon or pork for the next while, for it is apt to be as tough as shoe leather.
Fourth: That I should beware of animals which might steal my shoes.
Fifth: That I should be careful not to splash my shoes in the mud because it might give them a foul smell, like a pigsty.
On considering these options, I reasoned the first and second to be inappropriate, for I was not considering the purchase of shoes. The third also I rejected, for pork and bacon give me the burps and I eat them only rarely. The fourth message seemed to lack relevance. The fifth message, then, was the true one. I therefore took great pains to stay away from puddles, and my efforts were rewarded with a pair of shoes that are clean and dry today, even though it has rained several times during the past weeks.
Truly, I would no sooner ignore a dream than I would walk along the cliff edge with my eyes closed, and this belief in the importance of dreams and omens is not superstition, but logic, proved with logic and reason, and those who deny this also deny reason, and thus, if they do it consciously, they are clearly lunatics, and if they do it unconsciously, they are clearly fools.
I will return to my tale now, and you will see how I applied my reasoning in the field, as it were.
On thinking about the news which Lyvell had given me, I realized it was my destiny to restore the fortunes of the Duke of Oaster—for if this were not so, then why should I have received news of the duke when I did? I realized also that, with my great army, I had the means whereby I might attain this destiny. Still, questions remained: What route should I take to find the duke? And how urgent was his need for my aid?
First, I considered the question of urgency. I reasoned that, since I had heard the news of the duke’s dispossession quite soon after the event had occurred (within a year, I guessed), I should therefore hurry to his aid. This line of thinking, unfortunately, was wrong, as you will see later.
Next, I considered the route, and here my reasoning was much more inspired. Was it ordained, I asked myself, that I should scuttle back to the River Ram, find ships, and cross the Atlantic Ocean once more? Clearly not, for providence had left many enemies in my wake, and this can only have been in order to discourage my return along the route I had taken. What is more, I had sent my own ship to sail around the coast of America to the western town of Great Tasker. I had planned to travel overland, meeting the ship at that faraway port, and now it seemed that destiny supported my plan, for were I to do otherwise I would lose a good ship and large quantities of gold and jewels.
So, I must travel west across America. But how, then, was I to help the duke, whose lands were an ocean away to the east? The problem was vexing. Nevertheless, I resolved to place my faith in God, and to travel west, though it might fly in the face of reason, for I knew, somehow, an answer would be given to me.
My faith was soon justified. I was no more than a few days from Molys when I came to a river with a wooden bridge and a bridgehouse beside it. I banged upon the door of the house with my staff, and a short time later the bridgekeeper answered it. She was an old woman dressed in shabby robes. Her hair was white and very long, but the wisdom in her eyes reminded me of the pictures I had seen of saints and prophets.
I said to her, “I wish to cross the bridge with my myrmidons. Is your bridge a strong one.”
“Strong? Yes indeed,” she said.
“How many myrmidons do you estimate it will support at one time,” I asked.
“Six,” she said. “But perhaps eight. Although if they were my myrmidons, I would send no more than two across at a time, and if I were in a cautious frame of mind, I would send only one, and I would tell each to step carefully with it, avoiding those planks which have a spongy feel to them.”
These words did not inspire my confidence. Since it was past nightfall, and it is not wise to cross an untested bridge in the dark, I ordered my myrmidons to put up camp on the near side.
Now, the bridgekeeper’s name was Cayglee, or Caglee, or one of those American names. Her given name, in any case, is unimportant. What is important is, thanks to my great faith and all my recent contemplation, I was filled with goodness and humility, and I decided I would invite this simple bridgekeeper to dine with me in my tent. I had intended this as no more than an act of charity, but once again, just as it happened with Lyvell, great truths were revealed to me during the course of the meal.
(Truly, around that time, hardly a month seemed to go by without my receiving a great revelation or making an astonishing discovery. My good fortune was quite remarkable.)
We were eating a fine meal of wined lamb, which the slaves had prepared, when I decided, on the spur of the moment, to tell this woman of the problem I faced.
“How,” I said in my frustration, “is it possible for me to travel west but return to the east?”
She replied, in a strange, faraway voice, that I might do so through the knowledge of Directional Exhaustion.
I knew at once that this old woman had been possessed by the ghost of Saint Elifax the Mariner, who, I instantly perceived, was grateful I had built a beautiful cathedral in his name in Molys and wished to help me in my travels. Some people, upon realizing they were talking to a ghost, would have become afraid, but I stayed quite calm, and simply asked those questions which I wished answered.
“I have never heard of Directional Exhaustion,” I said. “Explain the principle.”
Here she shook her head and said she could not do so. “It is a great secret which was imparted to me long ago when I was initiated into the Navigator’s Guild, long before I became a bridgekeeper.”
I pressed her to confide in me, but at first she would not be persuaded, saying she had sworn never to reveal the secret to another soul.
I said, “You are clearly a woman of great honour. But tell me, by whom did you swear this oath of secrecy.”
“Why, by God,” she replied.
“Then, as an archbishop, I command you to tell me,” I said, “for it is God’s will you share your secrets with his closest servants.”
“That is reasonable,” she said. “Yet I also paid a high price in gold to learn the secret.”
Here I knew the saint’s ghost was testing me, so I offered him, or her, gold if she would tell me the secret. We negotiated for some minutes, and finally agreed a price of two hundred arrans was fair. I gave her the money, and she told me the secret.
Naturally, since I paid a high price for the secret myself, I do not intend to share it at no cost in this book. Therefore, I have reproduced the secret only in the most expensive edition (which, as I plan it, is to be bound in cream deerskin with gold lettering). If that is the edition which you, the reader, are now reading, you will be pleased to know your edition was well worth the additional expense, for it contains this extra secret, worth two hundred arrans, and you may rejoice in the fact that the following paragraphs are reproduced only in your edition. The cheaper editions will not contain the secret at all, moving instead to the next leg of my travels.
The bridgekeeper (which is to say, Saint Elifax) began by telling me that, in life, the most important qualities are those of persistence and tenacity. “With these two traits,” she said, “all obstacles may be overcome. Do you agree with this?”
I told her this view certainly tallied with my own experiences, and she said “Ah, I see you have a good mind. Many people stumble upon that fi
rst part.”
She then went on to talk about the nature of travel. “If you travel westward,” she said, “you believe, perhaps, that you are moving further and further west.”
I said, yes, this indeed was my understanding.
“Your belief is mistaken,” she said. “The truth of the matter is that you are always in the same place. The name we give to this place is ‘here.’”
This made complete sense to me, and I told her so, for I had often wondered how people could speak of “here” as a single place, when, apparently, its location changed as the speaker moved about. But almost instantly a question entered my fast-moving mind.
“How, then, is my apparent motion to be explained?” I asked.
She replied, “What changes is not your position but the quality of your surroundings, the ‘here’ you occupy. Every place has a unique quality which is a mixture of the properties of north, east, west and south. Points further west have more ‘westness’ to them and less ‘eastness.’ Points in the south have more ‘southness’ and less ‘northness.’”
“Therefore,” I said, “there must be some point on earth which has none of these properties.”
“That is certainly true,” she said, “and what a terrible place it must be.”
I agreed with her wholeheartedly there, and we sat for a few moments shaking our heads and thinking about this nightmarish place before she continued with her explanation.
“When travelling in any direction, the traveller changes the properties of the ‘here’ he occupies. So, if he is travelling west, the place gains in westness but loses eastness. Is that clear?”
“Completely clear,” I said. “But tell me, is there a limit to how much westness a point can have?”
“Ah, you have cut to the very nub of the matter,” she said. “Such a sharp mind! Yes, indeed there is a limit. And this is where the personal characteristics of perseverance and tenacity come into play. For, if the traveller has sufficient perseverance, and the tenacity to endure hardship, it is possible to travel so far west—or, for that matter, so far in any other direction—that the point he occupies becomes saturated with westness. In other words, it is not possible for the point to become any more westerly. If, upon reaching that point, the traveller goes but a single inch further west, a very remarkable thing happens. By the grace of God, all the westness of the point will instantly drain away to nothing, leaving room for thousands of miles of continued westward travel.”
“Where does all the westness go?” I asked.
“An intelligent and perceptive question, to be sure,” replied the bridgekeeper. “All the westness is poured, as if through a siphon, into the property of eastness.”
“The traveller, then, is transported in an instant from a point of utmost westness to a point of utmost eastness.”
“Exactly so.”
“The moment of this transference must be a very jarring one,” I said.
“In fact, it is not,” replied the bridgekeeper. “Indeed, the passage from the limits of western travel to the limits of eastern travel is barely perceptible, save by the most astute and delicate perception.”
“It follows, from what you have told me,” I said, “that a traveller proceeding west from a given city, must, if he travels far enough in a westward direction, return to his starting point.”
“Yes! Yes! You understand perfectly!” she said, delighted at my intelligence.
“Let us consider this phenomenon from a practical standpoint,” I said. “I wish to return to my homelands in the east by travelling west. The question is, how long would such a journey take? Ten years? Twenty? A hundred? A thousand?”
She said, “The Western Extremity lies in the Pacific Ocean, approximately three thousand miles west of the American coast, and just a few score miles beyond the island of Sira Tereen. From there, you will be transported to the Great Eastern Sea, at a point some five thousand miles from the eastern coast of Dranseet, and from there, if you wish, you may travel overland to Europe. In any event, the journey from the west coast of America to the eastern coast of Dranseet, passing through the Western and Eastern Extremities will take ten weeks, if your ship is fast and the winds are favourable.”
“It seems remarkable,” I commented, “that by applying one’s efforts in one direction, one may be taken into another. Yet perhaps the process is like kneading dough: through the constant pressure upon the dough, and strong will of the baker, the bread will compress no more, and becomes not smaller, but much larger than it was to start with.”
“I have heard numerous people try to explain the underlying principle many times,” said the bridgekeeper, “but never has anyone expressed it so exactly or so simply.”
There you have it then. This was the secret of Directional Exhaustion which Saint Elifax imparted to me.
The next day, when it was light, I crossed the bridge with my myrmidons, which took some hours, but which was accomplished without the loss of any myrmidons or slaves. The bridgekeeper was nowhere to be seen during this time, but as we marched away over the hills beyond the river, I happened to look back in the direction of the bridge. To my astonishment, I saw it had vanished, together with the house. Also, trees had appeared at the spot where the house had been, and the shape of the river had changed. Furthermore, I saw a grey bird flying over the trees, and the appearance of this bird in many ways resembled the old bridgekeeper.
Now, a sceptic might say I simply looked back in the wrong direction and saw some other part of the river, but this was not so, for my sense of direction is excellent, and even though we took a winding route over the hills, I do not think I would have become confused in this way, and if I had become confused, I would have admitted it. As proof of this last fact, I will tell next of a navigational error I did make, and the tragic consequences of it.
The Ninth Part
In Which I Describe A Series Of Terrible Calamities Which Befell Me
For three months I marched westward across the continent of America with my myrmidons. I was filled with a great energy to return to my homeland and to unleash my myrmidons upon the enemies of the Duke of Oaster, who, as I believed it, had been greatly wronged by the king.
My plan was to march across the continent until I reached Great Tasker, upon the western coast, where I would once more take possession of my ship (since I judged it should arrive ahead of me by several weeks).
So, I marched for a month or so, and at last I came to a great body of water, which I took to be the Pacific Ocean. I followed the coast, and then inland a little, until I came to a town, which I believed to be Great Tasker. It had been a very tiresome journey, and I was grateful it was finally at an end.
You will imagine my dismay, however, when I entered the town and discovered this was not Great Tasker, but the town of Sudbury, and this body of water, which I had taken for the Pacific Ocean (for it certainly seemed very flat and peaceful) was merely one of the huge lakes in the region.
And if you do not have a sense of the geography of the world (for in this ignorant age, many people do not), this means, instead of crossing the entire American continent, I had crossed only a fifth part of it, and was sitting in the heart of Manitario, with thousands of miles of travel remaining to me.
Upon making this discovery, I was filled with a Sad Mood. I left the town again, and for many hours I sat on the shore of the huge lake, surrounded by my soldiers as I gazed out at the waves and splashed my feet, and, it seemed, the longer I sat, the sadder I became. I felt I would never return to my homeland. The way behind me was blocked by my cruel enemies, while the march ahead seemed impossibly slow and wearisome. And at the end of the march would come not rest, but a long and dangerous ocean journey.
It was all too much for me, and I felt close to weeping. I am a hardy soul, however, and not given to emotions of weakness. Instead, my sadness turned outwards, transforming itself like a mighty p
hoenix into anger. In my mind, I raged at the town whose presence had so cruelly tricked me, lifting my great hopes and dreams, only to dash them upon the millstone of hardship and crush them to the rancid flour of despair.
Then, I fear, my Sad Mood got the better of me, and I commanded my army to lay waste to the town of Sudbury so no trace of it should remain to sadden me further.
Here is how I did it.
I had my myrmidons surround the town, then I sent the Behemoths scaling the walls to deal with the guards patrolling at the top. Those great black brutes were excellent climbers, and were up those walls as quickly and easily as you or I might climb a ladder. Once at the top, they were dangerous fellows indeed, for they ran around the walls, and when they came upon a guard, why, they just gave him a swipe with their long arms, sending the myrmidons flying off the wall and tumbling to the ground.
With the walls cleared, the Behemoths returned to me. We then moved forward together, the Behemoths surrounding me to protect me from arrows or spears. When we reached the wall, I placed my hands upon it and began to remove the bindings which held it up. It took, perhaps, an hour to walk around the entire wall, removing every large binding I found, and replacing them with the same unstable Struts of Atlas I had used to destroy the three ships on the Duck Islands, for I find these bindings are ideally suited to the demolition of buildings. Then we retreated, and, after a few minutes, the bindings collapsed, bringing the walls down, together with a good many buildings which stood in the shadow of those walls.
Next, I advanced my myrmidons, telling them to kill any people they might see, and to remove from the town any items of gold or silver, or any items which contained gemstones, or any other small and valuable items.
This they promptly did, storming through the gates and setting upon the unfortunate citizens with a fury terrible to see and hear. Indeed, at times the spectacle was so horrible I was forced to place my hands over my ears and to close my eyes.
The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography Page 13