Sagaria

by John Dahlgren

  By the time Sir Tombin was sitting up and looking around him, a light but freezing drizzle had begun to fall. It dampened not just their clothes and bodies, but also their spirits. Even Flip was looking quelled, his usual chirpy comments muted. None of them felt much like breakfast, which was a good thing because they didn’t have anything left to eat. Soon they were on their way.

  Climbing the nearest slope of the Junk Mountains proved even more difficult than Sagandran had anticipated. Every time he put his foot down, the surface – bottles, cans, crumpled paper, rotted food, once, even a dead rat – shifted and slid under him, so that rather than walk, he was forced to adopt a tactic of taking each stride as a single entity, to be completed and established before he could start the next. The others were having similar difficulties, he saw whenever he risked raising his eyes from the trash immediately in front of him. They were all terrified of losing their balance and falling into the fetid garbage.

  Snowmane was having the most difficult time of any, but typically, the stallion was making no complaint.

  It was Sir Tombin who first spotted the pass.

  “What a stroke of luck!” he cried.

  Pausing to make sure his footing was sound, Sagandran looked up to follow the Frogly Knight’s pointing finger. Invisible to them before but clearly evident from the angle they’d now reached, was an elbow in the line of the Junk Mountains against the sky. The companions still faced quite a climb to reach it, but it certainly presented a far easier prospect than crossing the range over one of the summits. He’d been trying not to think what it might be like to camp out overnight on the Junk Mountains; now, with luck, they wouldn’t have to.

  This good news elevated all their spirits. Sir Tombin began whistling a jaunty tune as he scrambled up the slope and Samzing, despite their regularly shushing him, cracked a series of bad jokes (“What’s white and can see just as well out of both ends? Snowmane with his eyes shut.”). Flip, who’d decided that being curled up fast asleep in the pocket of Sagandran’s jacket was the best place to be today, woke and started giving a running commentary on the various items of junk that caught his eye. Perima took Sagandran’s hand and they climbed.

  Soon they were standing in the nock of the pass, shivering in the cold and looking out over the terrain ahead. There wasn’t a great deal to see, just a seemingly endless, empty plain. No grass grew, and there were no signs of life at all. The sky over this drab tract was empty of birds.

  “The Never Plains,” said Sir Tombin, his voice become dispirited once more.

  Samzing spoke briskly, in the tones of one who’d been here before. “Easy enough to understand why it’s called that.”

  “Yes,” agreed Perima. “You’d never come here if you didn’t have to.”

  “Something like that,” said Samzing, grinning.

  “Good thing we had to,” said Flip cheerily, “or we wouldn’t be here.”

  It was a logic that was hard to refute. No one tried.

  They started the painstaking process of slithering and sliding downhill over the slope of junk.

  “How are we going to find Qarnapheeran in the middle of all that nothing?” gasped Sagandran as he and Perima drew alongside Sir Tombin. He suddenly clutched her hand more tightly as she almost fell sideways.

  “I don’t know,” said Sir Tombin frankly. “Queen Mirabella told us it wasn’t a question of us finding Qarnapheeran. It’s more a matter of Qarnapheeran finding us, and deciding it wants to allow us to see it. That’s what our wizard friend,” he pointed a thumb back up the slope to where Samzing was dawdling, “told us as well. I think all we can do is believe them.”

  “We’ll look a bit silly if they’re wrong,” observed Flip.

  “And starve to death as well,” added Perima, breathing heavily in the aftermath of her near-fall.

  As dismal and forbidding as the Never Plains might be, it was a welcome change to be walking on a flat and solid surface after all the uncertainties of the Junk Mountains. The rain did its best to forestall any lifting of their spirits. It grew steadily heavier until it was torrential, soaking them to the skin and blinding them whenever time they tried to lift their gaze from the ground. The packed earth underfoot rapidly became mud, so they were either skidding as badly as they had on the junk heaps or were having to trudge laboriously. Pace by pace, their feet were rising reluctantly with great sucking noises. When they looked behind them, the Junk Mountains were no longer to be seen. The curtains of rain masked them entirely from view.

  “Are we sure we’re not going around in circles?” asked Perima. “I did enough of that back in Wonderville, thank you very much. I’m becoming quite an expert at it.”

  “No, we’re going in a straight line,” replied Sir Tombin. “I’m sure we must be. I think.”

  The more they talked about it the less certain they became.

  “It’s not important,” cried Sir Tombin desperately at last. “It’s really not important to know which direction we’re going or which direction we’ve come from. All that matters is that we reach Qarnapheeran. The city will find us whatever way we go, so long as it wants to.”

  “You speak wisely, Sir Frog,” came a voice out of the rain.

  The raindrops made so much noise as they hammered into the mud that they barely heard it at first, but then the words slowly penetrated their minds.

  “Who was that?” said Perima.

  “Me,” replied the voice, this time identifiably behind them.

  The companions turned as one. There was no one to be seen.

  “Wh–where are you?” said Sir Tombin, his hand on the hilt of Xaraxeer.

  “Directly in front of your eyes.”

  The gray wall of falling rain slowly changed, outlines gradually emerging from its formlessness. Colors began to emerge: here a hint of vermillion, there a smear of turquoise. Before long, it seemed to Sagandran as if he were looking at a face supported by a cloud of different hues, then the hues themselves started to coalesce. At last he could see the figure of an incredibly skinny, incredibly withered, incredibly ancient man leaning on a crooked stick. Several long seconds passed as the figure came into focus as if, thought Sagandran, someone were adjusting the lens of a slide projector. Once he could see the face more clearly, he wondered if he’d been right in his assessment of it as that of an old man. Now it was more like the face of a bird. What he’d taken to be a long, crooked, bony nose was really almost a beak. The birdman was wearing a broad- brimmed green hat, so that it was hard to see his eyes. His clothing seemed to have been sewn from a million brightly colored rags.

  “Whom do we have the honor of addressing?” said Sir Tombin formally, removing his own hat and bowing low.

  “My name is Fattanillo,” said the birdman. “You need know no more of me than that. The question is, who are you? Few people venture into the Never Plains, and hardly ever have I seen a band of them as strange and motley as you are.”

  “Our business is our own,” replied Sir Tombin, “until we know to whom we speak.” Realizing his words might sound tart, he bowed again.

  Sagandran took a step forward. “We’re looking for the city of Qarnapheeran. We were told by Queen Mirabella of Spectram that it was here in the Never Plains.”

  “Queen Mirabella, eh?” said Fattanillo. “If you’re speaking the truth, you come on good authority. Is she still as pretty as ever?”

  “Prettier,” said Sir Tombin before he could stop himself. “And ever more regal,” he added, trying to make amends. Blushing turned his green face a most curious shade.

  “Great gams too,” interposed Samzing. He was looking thoughtfully at Fattanillo.

  “We need to speak to the wizards of Qarnapheeran to tell them of the danger the three worlds are facing,” said Sagandran forthrightly, tired already of the word-dancing, “and we need to ask for their help. The goal of our quest is to reach the Shadow World, and Queen Mirabella told us that the only way to get there was with the aid of the wizards of Qarnapheeran.�
�

  “Let me see if it’s true what you’re telling me.” The birdman put the tip of the forefinger of his free hand to where his chin should be, and once more faded slightly out of focus.

  Sagandran felt a feather-light tickle in his mind.

  “Ah, yes,” Fattanillo continued, regaining solidity. “Everything is as you say. I’ll be pleased to guide you the last small distance to the city.”

  Samzing abruptly came to a decision. “I know you,” he said.

  The birdman turned toward him. “I don’t think I—”

  “It’s my old pal, Fats Fattanillo, isn’t it?”

  There was a sudden tension in the rain-drenched air.

  “Only one person ever called me that,” said Fattanillo slowly. “My … let’s call it my obesity … my strictly temporary obesity … it was just a phase I was going through, you understand. It was always a matter of opinion and everybody, save one individual, thought fit not to make mention of it. The one exception was perhaps the most scurrilous wizard ever to visit these parts, a man of such moral degradation that birds fell stone dead from the sky rather than fly over his head.”

  “Glad to know I made an impression,” said Samzing smugly.

  Fattanillo began to laugh. “It’s my buddy, Fishface, isn’t it? I didn’t recognize you after all these years. There was only one wizard more despicable than myself, and I did my best to keep up with you through my student years. Fats and Fishface, the scourge of taverns and maidenheads throughout Qarnapheeran. Ah, those were the days. How exceedingly well met. What in the world brings you here?”

  “Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that,” said Samzing loftily, then his voice hardened. “Mainly the fact that the abhorrent Arkanamon is trying to take over Sagaria and, after us, the Earthworld. My youthful friend here wasn’t overstating the case when he said the three worlds are in danger. Our mission is truly a pressing one.”

  “Then I will take you urgently to Qarnapheeran,” said Fattanillo. “Once there, Fishface, maybe you and I could …?” He mimed lifting a glass to his lips. “There’s a lot we have to speak about that’s perhaps not for every ear.” The birdman gave a conspiratorial wink.

  “There’s nothing would please me more, Fats,” said Samzing loudly, his face smothered in smiles, “but the urgency of our quest, you know? Perhaps we’ll have a chance, or perhaps we’ll have to wait ’til later.”

  “I’ll hold you to that almost-promise,” said the birdman.

  Sagandran cut in on the reunion. “Um, we want to get to Qarnapheeran, remember?”

  Fattanillo drew himself together. “Yes, of course, and it’s to Qarnapheeran I shall take you forthwith.”

  He showed no signs of moving from the spot on which he stood.

  “Er …” said Perima.

  “Watch,” said Fattanillo conspiratorially. “It’s a new method of getting to Qarnapheeran. I devised it only a week or so ago, and I haven’t had the opportunity to show it off yet. You people are the first.”

  These wizards are as bad as each other, thought Sagandran sadly.

  “Watch,” repeated Fattanillo.

  Half-turning, he lifted his staff and, using the tip, he sketched the outline of an archway in the rain.

  There was an almighty flash of brilliance, as if ten thousand lightning bolts had all struck the same place at once. The boom of thunder sounded like a million eager voices all talking simultaneously, deafening the companions. Even the rain seemed to be jolted out of its downward course by the blast.

  Once his head had stopped spinning and his vision had stopped blurring, Sagandran saw that there was now an arched doorway standing in the mud. Without a wall to support it, it looked as if it should fall over under the beat of the rain, but somehow it stayed upright.

  “Ah, yes, side effects,” said Fattanillo happily, watching as they recovered from the detonation. “Got to do something about them.”

  “You always were a clumsy spellcaster, Fats,” remarked Samzing, “and age hasn’t improved you.”

  Fattanillo shrugged. “Welcome to Qarnapheeran,” he said.

  Sagandran looked at the door; it was made of wood and had once been painted orange, but had faded to a sort of indecisive brown. It did nothing. He blinked. It was still just a door.

  “Well, open it, someone,” said Fattanillo. “Do I have to do everything around here?”

  Sir Tombin looked at the faces of his friends, then strode to the door. He opened it cautiously, and bright light poured out into the gloom of the rain-tormented plain.

  “What you do,” said Fattanillo, as if explaining something for the thousandth time to a recalcitrant child, “is go through it.”

  Sir Tombin gaped back at him. “And this is Qarnapheeran?”

  “Yes. Where else? I told you I’d take you there.”

  “All right.”

  The Frogly Knight braced his shoulders and stepped over the threshold. At once, he threw back his head and laughed, reaching out his arms as if he wanted to embrace the sky above him. Samzing could see that Sir Tombin was standing in dazzling sunshine.

  The others quickly followed the Frogly Knight.

  As they were stepping through the doorway, Perima looked up at Samzing with a smirk.

  “Fishface?” she said.

  “Watch it,” growled the wizard.

  Sagandran had never seen anything like the city they now found themselves in, and he suspected that none of the others had either (with the obvious exception of Samzing, who’d been here many years before).

  Green hills rimmed the horizon, holding a city in the cup of their hand that was not widely scattered; its buildings did not strive to touch the sky, but the city was nevertheless superbly proportioned and conceived, whichever way he looked. It bore an ethereal, gossamer beauty that belonged more to snowflakes than to stones. Those few structures that did reach more than a few stories high seemed to float rather than rest on the ground, and they carried fanciful architectural embellishments that apparently defied gravity. These included elliptically spiraled stairways that led outward and upward from upper stories to end nowhere; statuaries that would have been gargoyles were it not for the flighty capriciousness of the fragile spirit creatures they portrayed; steeples that corkscrewed their way heavenward; hanging gardens; and pagodas that had the delicacy of lamb’s fleece. All of the colors were restful and subdued, yet Qarnapheeran did not give the impression of drabness. Instead, Sagandran thought, it was as if the stones and tiles and the other unimaginable materials of which it was constructed possessed deep reservoirs of brightness that they could have exhibited had they so chosen. There were people everywhere dressed in robes that were brighter versions of the city’s hues, and many of them were talking vigorously, arms waving or laughing uproariously; yet the city lacked clamor, as if it were so old that the briefness of a human scale of time could not be permitted to stamp its mark, even temporarily.

  He saw the dignity of the city, yet this was no sterile, moribund dignity. Qarnapheeran was a place very much alive.

  A young man dressed in a sea-blue robe approached. He had curly black hair and bright black eyes that seemed to sparkle as he swiftly evaluated them.

  “Greetings, travelers,” he called when he was still a little distance away. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  “But Fattanillo only just—” Perima began.

  “Oh, that was a long time ago,” said the young man. His appraisal of her made her blush. “Here in Qarnapheeran, the clock hands turn at the pace we decree, rather than us bowing to the dictates of the clock hands. My name is Shano, and I’ve been instructed to escort you to the main temple. If you will permit, I will see that your horse is well-stabled and fed.”

  While Perima took a few moments to bid Snowmane farewell, promising the stallion that this time she would not leave without him, another blue-robed young man approached to take the reins from her hands.

  “Come,” said Shano as the horse was led away. He began walking off at a lei
surely pace.

  “Who was the guy we spoke to at the gate?” asked Sagandran, walking along next to Shano while still looking around in all directions at the strangeness of the city’s buildings. “Fattanillo, he said his name was.”

  “Fattanillo,” replied Shano, “guards the door that leads from the outside world to Qarnapheeran, and has done so since long before I was born. His task is to allow in only those the city deems true.”

  “What happens,” said Perima, speaking as if she felt she should perhaps keep the question to herself, “if people stray into the Never Plains by accident and get lost? What if they need to be helped before they die of starvation or something?”

  “Fattanillo shows them the doorway, just as he showed you, and we take them in and care for them until they’re ready to leave. Most often, by then they don’t want to. They’ve become a part of Qarnapheeran or Qarnapheeran has become a part of them; it makes no difference which way round. You see, no one ever comes to Qarnapheeran by accident, even though they may think they do. The city draws the people it wants here, whether they know it or not.”

  “Like Samzing’s searching spell,” murmured Sagandran.

  “Your wizard friend used a searching spell to find us?” said Shano with a smile. “I thought as much. Yes, it’s the same sort of thing.”

  Perima nodded, satisfied, but already there was another question pressing past her lips. “Why is Fattanillo so much like a bird?”

  “A strange question coming from someone who’s so friendly with a frog,” commented Shano wryly. “But I’ll answer you as true as I know, which is not the complete story, far from it. The only person who really knows is Fattanillo himself, and he never talks about it. It seems that long ago he was a wizard like any other, but one day he made an error casting one of his spells. The spell worked all right (he wanted to make himself fly like a bird, because he was late for an assignation) but afterward he was unable to reverse its effects.” He chuckled and then his face turned serious. “Magic is not to be taken lightly, you see. Having the power to perform magic is a great blessing and a great privilege, but also brings with it a great responsibility. If you do not concentrate entirely on what you are doing and focus your mind and soul, spellcasting can be extremely dangerous to yourself and others.”