“Not in any sense,” said Meternales with a sigh. “Though Vaissa was reputed to have been a beauty in her youth. Wealthy and respected old dames, the sisters, as unalike as two children of one father might be, and ‘tis said they hate each other dearly. It is said further that Deviaticus Lert scolded them often for their quarreling, and at last exerted his peace with a dead hand, for he made it a condition of their inheritance that they must dwell together in the family home, and on no account might either of them remove therefrom, on pain of being cut off from his fortune.
“And so they made a truce. Lert Hall is a squat townhouse horned with two towers, one to the east and one to the west. In the westernmost, Vaissa resides, with her jewels and her gowns and her rare perfumes. In the easternmost dwells Trunadora, with her books, her alembics, her vials and athenors.”
“H’m! Is she a witch?”
“They are both sorceresses, though neither is inclined to active practice. Trunadora is of a retiring and studious nature, and Vaissa employed her charms to get her lovers, when she could still entertain them. Now she traffics in court gossip and meddles in the affairs of the young, dispensing love-philtres and advice. Trunadora remains aloof in her tower.
“At one point only do their lives intersect, these sisters, and that is in their affection for a certain green bird. How they came by him, I was never able to learn, but all my researches persuade me that he is the surviving one of the two once owned by Daratello. I attempted to buy him from the daughters of Lert, and was rejected in no uncertain terms.”
“I should think so!” said Cugel, stroking his long chin. “They must find him remarkably useful, if he is in truth a repository for ancient spells.”
“Yet it is otherwise!” said Meternales, clenching his fists in an agony of recollection. “They have no least suspicion of what they have, and the green bird—perhaps valuing a peaceful life—has apparently declined to enlighten them! He is as their child. They love him fondly, foolishly, as only a pair of ancient spinsters may love a pet. If the house of Lert went up in flames, Vaissa would cheerfully leave Trunadora to roast amid the coals, but she would heave aside burning beams to rescue Pippy; and you may guess that her sister would do likewise.”
“‘Pippy’? queried Cugel.
“That is the name they have given the bird,” said Meternales sadly. “Well. Frustrated as I was in my repeated efforts to purchase the bird, I at last resolved to steal him. I am no burglar, I fear; I was caught attempting to scale the house wall. The city guard brought me before Justice Rhabdion, and the rest you may imagine.”
“How very sad,” said Cugel. “You ought to have employed a professional, you know.”
“I thought of that,” said Meternales, pulling at his beard in fretful wise. “Afterward.”
Thereafter, Cugel was observed to gaze often at the high walls of the chasm, pacing out distances and doing sums in the sand. His fellow enchasmates thought he had taken leave of his senses when he began trading gold for their rags, and dicing to win more rags still, but madness was a common condition in the chasm and no one thought the less of him for that.
When he had a great heap of rags, Cugel busied himself unweaving them, and plaiting the fibers together with his slender fingers into a rope of considerable length. Having produced a coil of many ells, he wound it around his arm one fine morning and stood to harangue his fellow prisoners.
“Gentlemen! Who among you would escape this dismal confinement?”
The answer was so patently obvious that his audience merely gaped at him, until the man with red curls said: “Every wretch here desires his freedom. But what remedy?”
“I propose,” said Cugel, with a brilliant smile, “a plan! Saving the very elderly, we are all lean as whipcord and reasonably fit, since the one advantage we have in this hellish place is that we are free from any diseases of surfeit. Have you ever been so fortunate as to watch acrobats making a human pyramid? Let us do likewise! Regard this fine rope I have made. By my calculations, if you are able to construct a pyramid thirty feet in height, and if I mount upon your backs and whirl my rope after the fashion of the herders of Grodz, I may cast it out and catch the arm of the statue of the goddess Ethodea, which you may have noticed on the edge of Justice Rhabdion’s garden. I may then swing across and anchor it fast, and the rest of you may pull it taut and clear of the vines, and so follow me along it to freedom. What say you?”
Cugel’s voice rang out like a trumpet, and the enchasmates were inspired. “Why have we never thought of this before?” cried the man with red curls. “Oh, to be free again!”
“There is only one thing needful,” said Cugel. “I require a bar of metal, with which to weight the end of my rope, and which will happily catch in the crook of the goddess’s arm. Has any among you such a thing? All heads turned to the engineer Kroshod, who carried a crow-chisel. He lifted it, looking dubious.
“This is good iron,” he said, “But if it should be lost—” The impatience of his fellows would not permit him to finish his statement. The crow-chisel was snatched from his hands and passed to Cugel.
Thereafter, the strongest of the men linked arms and formed the first storey of the pyramid, under Cugel’s direction. Other men removed their sandals and scrambled up to stand on their shoulders, linking arms likewise, and more scrambled up to make a third storey, and two more made a fourth. Swaying, trembling, sweating, they stood, as Cugel swarmed up them with his boots prudently tied about his neck.
“Make haste!” cried the man with red curls, who was in the bottom tier.
“Never fear,” Cugel assured him, uncoiling his rope and swinging the weighted end in an ever-widening circle about his head. Once, twice, thrice, and he let it fly, straight for the goddess of mercy. The crow-chisel caught in the angle of her arm, the rope pulled tight. Taking firm hold, Cugel leaped and swung in a short arc, landing a full three-quarters of the way up among the vines of Saskervoy. Cugel swarmed up the rope in frantic haste, as the vines bit at him.
He lost a toe before managing to pull himself over the top, and ran limping to the base of the statue. There he stanched the bleeding with a hank of dried grasses before pulling his boots on once more. Swiftly he pulled the rope up after him and dislodged the crow-chisel from the statue. He examined the crow-chisel critically a moment, judging that it would undoubtedly prove useful in future endeavors, and tucked it into his belt before setting off through the garden of Justice Rhabdion, whistling through his teeth.
A fortnight’s dicing sufficed for Cugel to possess himself of funds for enough substantial meals to restore his person, a suit of fine clothing, and a few hours’ worth of titivation in a tonsorial parlor. He preened before the barber’s glass, pleased to imagine that whoever beheld him, in his present state, would judge him a debonair hero, dashing yet eminently trustworthy.
Cugel then betook himself to the vicinity wherein stood the residence of the yellow-eyed daughters of Deviaticus Lert. Their townhouse was easily enough found, with its pair of towers rearing against the sky like a dowager’s horned headdress. He secured a room in an inn across the street, and for some few days observed carefully who came and went by the sisters’ gate. Their door was kept by an immense old gogmagog, in his sand-colored skin so like to the color of the wall that he seemed like a guardian statue.
Regularly, in the early afternoon, an open palanquin would be carried forth past him by four gasping and staggering servants. In the palanquin rode a monstrously fat old creature, swathed in veils of white and powder-blue silk, with blue paint emphasizing the bright and brass-colored eyes wherewith she kept a sharp regard on the passing traffic.
Her habits were most regular. Cugel followed the palanquin at a respectful distance, and learned that Dame Vaissa was invariably borne off to the vicinity of Prince Kandive’s palace. There she remained, engaged, as far as Cugel could learn, in bibulous merriment, elephantine flirtation, and the adjudication of young lovers’ quarrels. Generally, she was carried home in the e
arly hours of the morning, a time—as Cugel was pleased to note—when the streets of Kaiin were dark, the haunt of footpads and other persons intent on mischief.
But three faint stars were visible when Cugel, waiting in the deep shadow of an alley, heard the uneven tramping footfall of Dame Vaissa’s bearers returning to the house of Lert. He drew a white handkerchief from his pocket and waved it, a brief ghostly flash in the shadows but clearly visible to the hired bullies who waited in the doorway of the tenement opposite.
When the palanquin came abreast of the tenement, the bullies poured forth, brandishing clubs, with which they proceeded to break the kneecaps of Dame Vaissa’s bearers. These crumpled to the ground with screams of pain, unable to so much as raise a hand in protest as Dame Vaissa was spilled from her palanquin into the street. Their screams were as nothing to Dame Vaissa’s.
“Ho! Brigands! Murderers! Avaunt!” roared Cugel, bounding from the shadows with drawn sword. “How dare you! Fly, you worthless sons of Deodands! Oh, cowards, to attack a helpless lady!” He beat the nearest of the bullies with the flat of his sword, far more vigorously than had been agreed on, with the result that the man snarled and went for him in earnest with his club. Cugel’s cheap blade was shattered. There had been murder done, but for the fact that Dame Vaissa rose ponderously on hands and knees and extended one beringed hand. She uttered a phrase of excoriation and the bullies were instantly alight as torches, burning to puffs of ash too quickly to shriek. Cugel, singed by proximity, danced backward.
“Fair madam, speak!” he cried, wondering whether his eyebrows had been crisped away. “Did the varlets hurt you? Allow me!” he added, hastening to lend an arm as Dame Vaissa endeavored to rise to her feet. Cugel winced in pain, for her weight was fair to pull his arm from its socket and her nails dug into his flesh; but the darkness hid his expression.
“I thank you, kind gallant, I am only a little bruised,” said Dame Vaissa, in a voice husky and breathless. “Alack! Your sword has been broken.”
“It was my father’s,” said Cugel, with an artful catch in his voice, “But no matter! It perished in the best of causes. Madam, we must not linger here; there may be others yet lurking. Pray allow me to escort you to your house. I will return with some of your household to collect the bearers. Where do you reside?”
Dame Vaissa permitted herself to be led, teetering on four-inch heels, to the house of Lert, and prudently resisted swooning from shock until she had charmed them past the door-warden and was comfortably seated in her own front hall. She revived long enough to waddle to the front door and murmur an incantation, in order that the gogmagog might permit Cugel egress; for it was so ensorceled as to permit entry only grudgingly, but was even less inclined to allow departure. Cugel led the gardener and scullery-boy back to the injured chair-bearers, who were still groaning and rolling in the street. There he left them to manage recovering their fellows, and wasted no time in running back to the house of Lert, cheerily giving the gogmagog the entry-password.
Dame Vaissa had been revived with a brandy posset, and was sitting up to receive Cugel when he returned. She bestowed upon him many coquettish expressions of gratitude, and would have pressed a purse of gold upon him as well, had Cugel not refused with a perfect imitation of chivalry. She saw him to the door, once again interceding for him with the door-warden; she implored Cugel to return by daylight, that she might converse with him at greater length during more respectable hours, and this Cugel gladly agreed to do. As he departed, he noted a staircase opening off the left of the hall, as one also opened off the right. He cast his gaze up there, hoping to spy a cage, but none was in evidence. Rather, from the top of the leftmost stair, a gaunt wraith peered down, a lean-chopped harpy in an old dressing gown, hair in curling papers, watching him with sunken yellow eyes.
Bowing and kissing Dame Vaissa’s plump hand, he made his exit.
“It is so rare to find a brave and kind-hearted gentleman of breeding, nowadays,” said Dame Vaissa, pouring out a cup of thin grey wine of Cil. Cugel accepted it and smiled at her across the cup’s brim. She wore, today, an ensemble of mustard-colored sarcenet trimmed in a pattern of gold wire, with a choker and earrings of jet beads, and was liberally powdered and rouged.
“Dear madam, I merely did what any true man would do. Would, indeed, that I had been able to act more effectively! Would that I had been able to carry away arms and armor from our estates at Kauchique, before I was sent into exile! Sadly, the fallen fortunes of my house have left me barely able to defend a fair lady’s honor.”
“How you do flatter an old woman,” said Dame Vaissa, with a titter. “Am I correct, then, in assuming that you have presently no occupation?”
“A gentleman never has an occupation, dear lady. He has only pastimes.” Cugel affected a lofty sneer into the distance. ‘Nonetheless, it is true that I am, at the moment, without funds or prospects. Yes.”
“Then I do wish you would allow me to offer you a position in my household,” said Dame Vaissa, leaning forward to place her hand upon Cugel’s knee. “The duties would be nominal, of course. And you would be doing such a favor for a poor old frightened creature living alone!”
“Why, madam, you place me in a delicate position as regards mine honor,” said Cugel, making a gesture as though he were about to clap his hand to the pommel of his sword and then looking down with a well-acted rueful glance, as though remembering that it had broken. “How can I refuse my protection to a woman alone?…Though I had heard you have a sister.”
“Oh, her!” Dame Vaissa made a dismissive gesture. “Poor creature’s a recluse. Never came out in society at all, and now she’s half-mad. Lives upstairs among her books. And, whereas I have a robust constitution and a healthy appetite, she has withered away like an old spider. You wouldn’t find it worthwhile making her acquaintance, I can assure you. However,” and her amber eyes brightened, “I can think of one person you ought to meet, if you would reside here with us. Assist me to rise, kind sir.”
She extended a coy hand. Cugel hauled her to her feet from the chaise-lounge upholstered in lavender plush that was her customary receiving-seat, and she took a few rolling steps before muttering Phandaal’s Hovering Platform. At once a disc, not quite a yard across, appeared before her, floating some three inches above the floor. A black rod, seemingly made of onyx, extended upward from one side, and curved at the end into a sort of tiller. Dame Vaissa stepped up on the disc and it moved forward at her command.
“There! Much more convenient. Let us proceed, dear Cugel.”
She drifted before him like a great untethered balloon, up a flight of stairs and into a conservatory on the second floor of the main house. Cugel felt sweat prickling his forehead from the moment he entered the room, for it was disagreeably warm within. The upper walls and domed ceiling were all of glass, admitting the dull red light of the sun, but no breath of wind. He saw every variety of fruit tree growing in immense pots, and ferns, and orchids, and flowering vines that festooned the walls like tapestries. A fountain in the form of a Deodand urinating gushed quietly near the room’s center, adding a further degree of moistness to the air.
Near the fountain, a ring of iron depended on a long chain from the ceiling, and small cups were set at either side of the ring. Perched between them was a green bird, with a long trailing tail of scarlet and a nutcracker beak. As Cugel approached, it cocked its head to regard him, with an ancient reptilian eye; then returned its attention to the woman, no less ancient and reptilian, who was offering it a slice of some pink fruit.
“Won’t he have his sweet ripe breakfast? Look! It’s the very first of the season, so it is, and Trunadora cut it up specially for her little precious Pippy. Won’t he have some?” She placed the slice between her withered lips and leaned close to offer it to the bird, who took it diffidently.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Dame Vaissa. Dame Trunadora turned, indignant. Cugel recognized the old woman he’d seen peering from the staircase on the previ
ous evening. Now she wore a pleated gown of gray velvet, with a long strand of white corals about her neck. Her face was severely clean, innocent of powder or mascara; but if it had not been, and if the aquiline bones of her face had been well-padded with fat, rather than protruding as shoal rock protrudes from sand at low tide, Cugel might have been able to discern some resemblance to her sister.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in your boudoir, sleeping off another night of disgusting excess, as you customarily are at this hour of the day? I am the one who sees to it that darling Pippy gets his little breakfast. If it was left to you, he’d starve! And who is this? Have you started bringing your entertainments home again? I wonder you aren’t ashamed, at your age!”
“You cold-hearted old stick!” Dame Vaissa gripped the tiller of her flying platform in a passion of rage. “You haven’t an ounce of feeling, you haven’t indeed! For your information, I was set upon by murderers and rapists last night on my way home, and had it not been for the timely appearance of this noble virtuous gentleman, anything might have happened! And how dare you imply that I neglect my little Pippy!”
“It’s true!” Dame Trunadora addressed Cugel. “She never remembers to change the water in his drinking-cup!”
“You foul old liar!”
“And look here!” Dame Trunadora gestured at a green and calcined stalagmite of droppings directly under the bird’s hanging ring, rising from the floor to a height of seven or eight inches. “This is her responsibility! I’ve waited for days to see if she even noticed it hadn’t been cleaned. You never did it yourself, did you, you lazy sybarite? You had that manservant doing it, didn’t you? The one I caught stealing the spoons.”
Dame Vaissa opened and shut her mouth, words temporarily choked by outrage. Cugel, noting that Meternales had not understated matters, wondered how he might play the sisters against each other.
Songs of the Dying Earth Page 27