So far, the night had proceeded as any other night since Cugel had entered Dame Vaissa’s service, but now, as Dame Vaissa swept toward the grand staircase on Cugel’s arm, there came a faint yet distinct note, like the cracking of an iron cauldron left too long dry over a fire. Dame Vaissa faltered in her progress, and lurched, so that she would have fallen but for Cugel’s solicitous arm.
“Oh, what is it? she cried. “Something’s the matter with my shoe!”
“Let faithful Cugel see, my lady,” he replied, seating her on the back of one of the stone wolves that guarded Prince Kandive’s doors. “Alas! It’s the left one. It would seem the heel has broken.” Yet Cugel knew well it did not seem, but verily had broken, for had he not spent a careful quarter-hour with a jeweler’s saw cutting through it on an oblique angle?
Dame Vaissa exclaimed in annoyance. “And on the night when Sciliand the Cross-eyed was to stand trial in the court of Love and Beauty! Now I shall be late. Oh, it’s too unfair!”
“Too unfair to come to pass,” said Cugel, with a knowing smile. “See, dear lady, what I have for you here, brought against just such an occurrence? Your second-best banqueting shoes. You may wear these now and miss not a moment of the fun.”
“But, good Cugel, they are the wrong color,” fretted Dame Vaissa. “These are scarlet, and do not suit my gown.” And this was true; she wore an ensemble of turquoise green trimmed with moonstones. Cugel, having planned for this complaint, replied:
“Ah! Then wear them only an hour, while your faithful slave runs back and fetches something more suitable. So you will miss none of your amusements. You have a pea-green pair with diamond heels, have you not?”
“The very thing!” said Dame Vaissa. “Yes, Cugel, do be a dear and fetch them for me. Wake Trunadora. She’ll let you out.” She giggled and added, “She needs no beauty sleep, that’s certain!”
Cugel fitted the red shoes on Dame Vaissa’s plump feet, and assisted her up the grand staircase and through the doors. Then he was off and running through the moonless night, with the broken shoes in his hand and laughter in his heart.
The gogmagog at the door eyed him in a surly manner, but admitted him to the house of Lert readily enough on hearing the entry password. Once within, Cugel cast the broken shoes on a divan in the hallway. One bounced off a satin cushion, clattering to the floor.
“Who’s there? cried a sharp voice. Dame Trunadora peered down her staircase, clutching her dressing-gown to her narrow bosom.
“Only I, madam, poor Cugel. I have a headache; your sister was so kind as to permit me to retire early.”
“Very well, then,” said Dame Trunadora, all suspicion melting from her voice. “Good night, worthy Cugel.”
“Pleasant dreams, madam.”
Cugel hurried deeper into the house, but failed to climb the stair to Dame Vaissa’s tower; rather he went straight up to the solarium, pausing only to dart into the lavatory for the stout sack he had hidden there.
Within the solarium all was silence and darkness, for the daughters of Lert would suffer no lamp to disturb Pippy’s slumbers. Cugel found his way between the potted orchids nonetheless, chuckling to himself as he made out the dark form of the green bird, silhouetted against the glass wall.
“Now, Pippy dearest,” he said, drawing forth the Spancel of Submission he had purchased at the wizard’s stall, “Bid farewell to your pampered life. From this day forth, you have a new master, and you shall see how he rewards insults to his person!”
Making a loop with the spancel, Cugel cast it over the green bird’s head, and drew it tight. “Now! Come to my hand, docile!”
He held up one wrist, with the other hand shaking open the sack into which he meant to fling the bird, that it might not escape as he fled with it down the tunnel to the river. Pippy lifted its head, opening glowing eyes. A moment it regarded Cugel, as though in wonderment. Then its hackles rose, a sure sign of bad temper.
“I bid you come—” Cugel broke off in horror as he saw the hackles still rising, as the bird increased in size and leaped from its iron ring. It landed on the tiles before Cugel, who backed rapidly away to the length of the spancel. He gave it a futile tug.
“I said I bid—” But the creature raised a hand—a hand!—and, with a diffident gesture, lifted away the spancel and cast it to the floor. It stood a head taller than Cugel now, its eyes burning like twin fires. The flickering witch-light of a spell’s dissolution showed Cugel the naked form and lineaments of a powerful man in early middle age.
Cugel would have taken to his heels then, but the mage made a peremptory gesture and Cugel found himself locked as in ice, barely able to breathe. An illumination filled the room. The mage spoke, in a voice like low thunder.
“Thief, you have sorely inconvenienced me! You have cost me a life of sweet and easy retirement. Shall I deprive you of yours? Or shall I devise some worse punishment?”
The mage summoned purple robes, which materialized to swathe his person. Then he clapped his hands and called, a sharp summoning cry. There came a scream from high within the house, changing in pitch as it continued, coming nearer, until the door to the solarium burst open. A bird flew in, a green bird with a yellow head, golden-eyed. It settled on the mage’s left shoulder. A moment later came another scream, a squawking commotion in the night. One of the glass panes shattered and admitted another bird, as like the first as might be in every respect save that it trailed a string of moonstones about its neck. Trembling, panting with exertion, it settled on the mage’s right shoulder.
“My dears, my poor little dears, we must move on,” said Daratello the Psitticist, in a voice of tender regret. “This was a most excellent hiding place, and you have been brave little girls, but this two-legged weasel has penetrated our long refuge. What shall we do with him? Shall I allow you to peck out his eyes? But then he’d still have his tongue, to tell of what he’s seen here. And I can’t ask you to pull out his tongue, darlings; the nasty creature might bite one of you. No…Daddy will deal with him, after all.”
Daratello extended his hand. “Felojun’s Spell of Delusion, little Vaissa, if you please.”
The last thing Cugel heard was the shrill metallic voice of one of the green birds, reciting dread words, before Daratello’s voice repeated them and the universe shattered into meaningless color and sound.
The kitchen drudge waited an hour past the usual time for Cugel to come for the hot water, before deciding she’d better carry it in herself. Two paces inside the solarium door, she stopped and stared openmouthed, to see Cugel the Clever perched inside the iron ring, his knees drawn up about his ears, his elbows held stiffly back. He cocked his head, observing her with a blank inhuman eye; then bent awkwardly and dug about in the seed-cup with his long nose, searching for millet seeds.
Afterword:
In the early Sixties, just after Tolkien’s books had made their initial tremendous splash in the American market, stateside anthologists were scurrying to cash in on the renewed interest in fantastical tales. I was home from school with bronchitis and my mother picked up a paperback anthology for me from Ferguson’s Drugstore, The Young Magicians, edited by Lin Carter. The anthology’s cover copy implied that if I loved Tolkien, I’d love the anthology because it was chock-full of similar fanciful goodness. The actual contents were garnered mostly from American pulps; there was a Robert E. Howard story, there were a couple of Lovecraft pieces, there was some Clark Ashton Smith, and “Turjan of Miir” by Jack Vance. Vance’s story made the strongest impression on me, with its depiction of the decadent court of Prince Kandive the Golden and the perpetually furious anti-heroine T’sais. I loved the way Vance used language, dangling archaic words through his tale like clusters of ripe grapes, throwing out references to other places and people of the Dying Earth without explaining them, so that my imagination scrambled feverishly to color them in.
Many years later I encountered the tales of Cugel the Clever, a liar and thief in a doomed world of liars and thieves, a
s hapless as Wile E. Coyote and by several degrees less moral than Harry Flashman. Probably the least attractive hero it would be possible to find, struggling through a universe like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, a hero only in that nearly everyone else he encounters in that universe is on the make too; and yet the Cugel stories are howlingly funny. If I’d contributed a story to this anthology much earlier in my life, it might have been about T’sais, a girl raging at an imperfect universe. Having made it to midlife, though, and knowing now the value of a good pratfall, I was instead inspired to write about Cugel.
—Kage Baker
Phyllis Eisenstein
The Last Golden Thread
Even if you come from a rich and successful family, the life of a mushroom merchant is not an exciting one. When the scion of such a family decides to spurn the mushroom business and pursue instead the difficult and dangerous trade of magician, he’ll need all of his courage and all of his wits and resources…and yes, a few mushrooms as well!
Phyllis Eisenstein’s short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Amazing, and elsewhere. She’s probably best-known for her series of fantasy stories about the adventures of Alaric the Minstrel, which were later melded into two novels, Born to Exile and In the Red Lord’s Reach. Her other books include the two novels in The Book of Elementals, Sorcerer’s Son and The Crystal Palace, as well as stand-alone novels Shadow of Earth and In the Hands of Glory. Some of her short fiction, including several stories written with husband Alex Eisenstein, has been collected in Night Lives: Nine Stories of the Dark Fantastic. For twenty years she has taught creative writing at Columbia College Chicago, where she and her husband created and edited Spec-Lit, a trade paper anthology showcasing work by her students. Currently, she is employed full-time as Manager of copy editors at a major Chicago ad agency. Phyllis holds a degree in Anthropology from the University of Illinois, where she studied archaeology and traditional societies with arcane belief systems. She and her husband were born in Chicago, and have lived there together for the last forty years.
The Last Golden Thread
Phyllis Eisenstein
As the elder son of the house—by half an hour—it was Bosk Septentrion’s privilege to sit beside his father at dinner. Generally, he avoided that privilege, having long since lost interest in his father’s unending supply of advice, but this night they had a guest, and it was only common courtesy to share a meal with a traveler bound home to Ascolais. He knew his father’s only concern was to create another mercantile connection with the south; Bosk’s concern was the sapling that Turjan of Miir had caused to sprout from their dining table.
“A charming gift,” said Bosk’s father, passing Turjan another serving of succulent three-mushroom stew.
“A bagatelle,” said Turjan. “It will live on the scraps of your meals and bear fruit in a year.”
Bosk could not keep his eyes from the tree, its graceful bole and nodding leaves like a dancer with feathery hair waiting for the music to begin. He had never desired to be a merchant, though for ten generations that had been the fate of every Septentrion son. Now, fifteen winters into his life, he finally knew what he did desire. He looked at his father, speaking earnestly to Turjan of business. He looked at his younger brother Fluvio, at the other end of the table, stabbing the mushrooms in his stew as if they were small animals that might escape. Fluvio, he knew, enjoyed sitting next to their father; Fluvio was the true Septentrion heir.
Bosk reached out to touch the tree. The pale bark was as smooth as the timeworn surface from which it had sprung. Under the table, his father’s buskined foot nudged his ankle, and he drew his hand back to take up his crystalline goblet and sip at the aromatic infusion of fermented mushrooms which was the culmination of the meal as well as the current topic of conversation.
“It may be an acquired taste,” said Turjan.
“As so many things are,” said Bosk’s father. He lifted his own goblet high to show the warm bronze color. “We’ve also found it a useful anodyne for the headaches of overindulgence.” He smiled at Turjan. “You’ll take a flask home with you.”
Turjan set his goblet down and lounged back in his chair. “You’ve laden me with gifts enough already, Master Septentrion.”
Bosk’s father waved that aside. “Dried mushrooms weigh nearly nothing. I merely wish you to remember the friendship you know here.” He inclined his head toward Bosk, though his eyes remained on Turjan. “You have made an impression upon my boys that they will not soon forget.”
Bosk noted that he did not even glance in Fluvio’s direction.
With scarcely a pause, he went on. “Perhaps my eldest can show you around the estate. It has a few vistas worthy of attention. The gorge, of course.”
“Of course,” said Turjan. “And the mines themselves, possibly?”
Bosk’s father shook his head with every evidence of regret. “Much too long a ride for an afternoon, I fear, and the miners are not eager for strangers. They barely tolerate our own visits.”
“A shame,” murmured Turjan. “Well, the gorge then, young Bosk?” He turned to the boy. “I think I would enjoy some exercise after such a satisfying meal.” He pushed his chair away from the table, rose, and gave a small bow to his host.
Outside, they rambled the meticulously manicured grounds, and Turjan praised the lawn, the hedges, and even the ornamental rocks that flanked the long, eastward-curving path.
“The miners care for the grounds,” Bosk told him. “That’s part of our pact with them.”
Turjan nodded. “I trust that, in return, they live well. Your delicacies certainly fetch high enough prices in the south.”
“They live well,” said Bosk. “Better in some ways than we do. Their halls never echo hollow in the night, and their fires warm their chambers better than ours.”
Turjan looked back to the manse, which sprawled, wing upon wing, over a series of eminences. “Your halls are impressive. Your family has wealth that many would envy.”
Bosk clasped his hands behind his back. “We have gained it all through serving our customers,” he said, and he could hear his father’s voice in the words.
“A fine merchant’s attitude,” observed Turjan.
They passed through a scatter of trees, and beyond, abruptly, lay the gorge of the River Derna, nearly a mile deep. At the bottom, the river was a narrow bronze ribbon, its flow glinting dully in the ruddy afternoon sunlight.
“Ah,” said Turjan, and like other visitors, he paused with one leg closer to the chasm, the knee bent as if to push off backward, his whole weight swaying uncertainly from front leg to back. “At Miir, the river is bounded by heights, but none like this.” He peered downward. “Not a sight for the faint of heart.”
Bosk stood a single pace from the brink. He could not recall being afraid of the gorge, so early in life had his father brought him here. He watched Turjan flirt with it, fear showing in the damp sheen of his forehead, and he did not smile, though he knew Fluvio would have done so.
“Was there never a bridge nearby?” Turjan wondered.
Bosk pointed to the south. “They say there was, in the old days, and great conveyances crossed on a frequent schedule. A few stones still marked the approach on this side when my father was a boy, but they have crumbled away since.”
Turjan drew back, leaving a comfortable margin between himself and the chasm. He motioned for Bosk to join him. “Has anyone ever fallen?”
The answer his father always insisted upon was negative, but Bosk had decided he would not lie to Turjan. “My mother,” he said. “She fell, or perhaps jumped.”
Turjan laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I am sorry to have asked such a painful question. I beg your forgiveness.”
Bosk shook his head. “I don’t remember her. It was soon after Fluvio and I were born.”
“Hard to grow up without a mother,” Turjan murmured.
Bosk took a deep breath. “Hard to grow up a Septentrion.”
Knowing only two ways to ask for anything—to beg, as he did with his father, or to negotiate, as he did with the miners—he chose to beg. He dropped to one knee. “Sir, whatever you require, I will do it with my whole heart. Only let me apprentice to you and learn the lore of sorcery.”
Turjan crossed his arms over his chest and gazed at the boy for a long moment. “It seems exciting, doesn’t it? To conjure a tree out of a table.”
“I know there is more,” said Bosk. “There is wisdom beyond measure and a thousand miracles to be wrought. How can any trade in mushrooms compare?”
Turjan shook his head. “None who practice sorcery today know more than a fraction of the edifice Phandaal once commanded. We spend our lives in frustration, trying to retrieve so much that has been lost. Better to be a traveling acrobat, young Bosk, than commit yourself to the lore we seek.”
Bosk swallowed hard. “I ask only a small corner of the whole, sir. I would not presume to think myself capable of more than that.”
Turjan glanced back toward the manse. “Why would you give up a soft life with a firm future for a world of endless questions?”
“Sir…”
“Bosk.” He turned to the boy once more. “You are young to make such an important change.”
“Is your answer no, then?”
“Your father would surely say so. I would guess that you have not discussed this with him.”
The boy shook his head.
“Do so, then,” said Turjan. “And if he approves, we can speak again someday. Possibly next year, when you have had time to consider this matter further.”
Songs of the Dying Earth Page 29