Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  At that moment, Guyal seemed to fall beneath the feet of Magnatz; or, at least, Manxolio lost sight of him. Then Guyal called out: “The second restored efficacy is the magnific adumbration! Use it now on the Analept!”

  Manxolio squinted. The iron pulsed in his grip. The dark zone dispersed. For one terrifying heartbeat of time, the titan reared above them, visible, a vast bulk. At that same moment, from beneath the giant’s toe, issued a strange, piercing, three-toned note. There was a wash of motion, a curtain of upward-rushing dust and wind. Manxolio blinked, caught a last sight of Magnatz the titan dwindling to a mote in the dark blue spaces of the upper sky.

  Perhaps a minute later, the pale disk of the full moon formed a new crater, large as Tycho, and rays of moondust scattered far across the airless surface, forming an asterism. The crater was white-hot with the impact of some vast body, but the glow soon diminished through yellow to pink to a sullen red.

  The Call to the Violent Cloud

  Guyal Rose from the footprint-shaped crater of broken rock where he lay, and made his way wearily to the side of Manxolio.

  Manxolio spoke: “How did you survive the pressure of the giant’s foot?”

  Guyal said, “The Analept was able to produce a repulsive force, under which I hid, like a turtle in a shell. It was not until you employed the many-valued magnific adumbration that the Analeptic lifting energies were augmented to hurl the monster aloft. Unfortunately, I lost my grip on the Analept, and the strand of star-stuff that connected it to Sferendelume in the Pleiades yanked it to an unknown location. Magnatz will not perish, being charmed against suffocation, and neither will he die of old age, so he will remain in the discomfort of decompression, bleeding from his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, until entropy halts the universe. How did you know Iszmagn and Magnatz were in league?”

  “The honed intuition of an Effectuator. The similarity of names. I told myself that a charmed life implies someone to cast the charm; and the magic which swelled his bulk implied a magician. I asked myself why Iszmagn benefits from the depredations of Magnatz; where there is benefit, might there not be alliance?”

  “A correct guess. I am relieved to satisfy, and within moments, the gaes placed by my ancestor, but I am no closer to achieving the resumption of my inner self.”

  Manxolio stared incredulously. “Did you not hear? The titan himself described the theft, and identified its perpetrator.”

  “I was preoccupied by being trod upon, and so some nuances of the conversation regrettably escaped me,” admitted Guyal.

  “The Sorcerer Iszmagn overcame you and took your IOUN stones and your recollections, leaving you alive to study the effects of his experiment in mind-theft. Your dream of revenge is nuncupatory, since so powerful an adversary cannot be overcome.”

  “Was it not you who, earlier this day, spoke of the Law of Equipoise, which demands retaliation for each affront?”

  “And you denied its self-evident verity.”

  Guyal looked up at the sky and uttered a deep sigh.

  Manxolio said, “You are resigned, then, to omit this quest? Return with me to Romarth; we will live lives of ease.”

  “No, I sigh because we go to our fates with no time to prepare: for the sorcerer manifests the Call of the Violent Cloud to ensnare us.”

  There was an noise in the air as of many voices roaring. At once, a column of boiling black smoke hurled down from the sky. Manxolio again commanded the baton to issue the Zone of Primary Nigrescence, which instantly blotted out all sight, but did nothing to impede the Violent Cloud. The two were snatched up, whirled abominably, yanked and jerked in four directions, and then hurled contemptuously to the ground in a spasm of motion.

  It was still dark as pitch. Guyal was surprised not to find himself in the crater of a volcano or the midst of a sea of ice, which would have been the most efficient way to extinguish their lives. Instead, he groaned on pavement, aware of his bruises. As he rose to his feet, he heard a peculiar hissing sound, as if white-hot wires were plunged into sizzling wine. The odor of burning, the smell of hot rock and molten metal came from every side.

  “Do not yet lift the Zone, Manxolio!” warned Guyal, hoping Manxolio was alert. “Someone employs the Excellent Prismatic Spray against us—while the visual phase of reality remains inoperative, the photonic eruption cannot scald us.”

  In a moment, the commotion fell silent. Manxolio lifted the Nigrescent Zone, and visible light returned to the area.

  The Dreaming Sorcerer

  They stood in the courtyard of a tower of onyx and dark basalt, fantastically carved in rococo designs, and upheld by wide flying buttresses. The courtyard held smoldering urns filled with burning floral displays, a dozen cracked statues of glyptodonts from the First Aeon, and a silver-basined fountain, now a mass of boiling steam. The flagstones in each direction were pitted with tiny dark asterisks, evidence of a recent rain of incandescent darts.

  A hundred smoldering little streamers led from the courtyard to a high balcony, where the sorcerer Iszmagn stood, hand still raised and fingertips still glowing, a look of dark satisfaction beginning to elongate into an expression of surprise.

  He wore a knee-length jacket of green cusps, and in the center of each there flashed and floated colors never seen in waking life. The cusps also blinked and stared in alarm, and showed other evidence that they were animate objects, stirred at least to a mockery of life. In the middle of his forehead was the eye of an Archveult of Sirius grafted to his brow, a tendril root no doubt sunk deeply into his brain-pan.

  In a galaxy around his head swarmed and danced the colored polygons of IOUN stones: spheres, ellipsoids, spindles, each the size of a small plum, and vibrant with inner auroras.

  With the merest of hesitations, the sorcerer raised his fingers and the syllables of the Instantaneous Electric Effort gushed forth from his mouth. Tridents and biforks of lighting fell from the balcony, but Manxolio manifested a thick disk of the Nigrescent Zone in midair between them, and the fulgurations were absorbed without effect.

  While the dark zone hung overhead, obscuring their motions, Guyal pointed to the iron-bound oaken doors leading into the tower. Manxolio placed the heel of the Wand on the stones, and jammed the head beneath an ornamental boss. He unfolded the Wand, and augmented the motive force with the Magnific Adumbration. The locks shattered and the door sagged open.

  The Onyx Tower

  Manxolio and Guyal crept into the entrance hall. The wonders of the sorcerer’s walls and ceilings were hidden by Manxolio’s cloud of darkness, but the floor was visible: blocks of hollow glass, each one of which held a different brightly-colored fish. To one side, the first few steps of an insubstantial, spidery, curving stairway were visible.

  There was a snap of energy, and the zone vanished.

  Guyal said, “Unexpected! Iszmagn has discovered how to abjure the primary nigrescence.”

  Manxolio said in a low voice: “I suspect the IOUN stones. Let us retreat, and calculate a more complete stratagem in a leisurely fashion, perhaps over a beaker of Old Golden in the taproom of the Scatterlamp Hotel.”

  Guyal said, “Retreat is unlikely, as the tower is now surrounded with blue extract.” Nearby was an arched window carved with grimacing gnomes. The ground below was infected with aquamarine pulsations of singularly uninviting aspect.

  Up the stairs, they passed through an alchemical lab, seething with alembics and bubbling retorts, and then a chamber composed of looking glasses, each face of which showed a different landscape, none of which were of Earth.

  They came upon Iszmagn in the astrological copula, laying at ease upon a pink couch, a plate of candied figs at his elbow, a hookah in his hand. Huge crystalline windows loomed behind the couch of Iszmagn, showing the sky, the red sun, and the faint full moon with its new crater. The IOUN stones swarmed the glass-domed chamber like bees.

  “Leave me in peace, you clumsy creatures of the waking world!” called Iszmagn. “I have no ambitions, save to live out the remain
der of human life on earth in comfort, collecting my dream-lenses. They are my companions, they whisper love-songs to me as I sleep!”

  Guyal spoke in a voice of doom: “Iszmagn the Sorcerer, for the death of the peoples of Sfere and Vull and gay Undolumei and countless others, and in recompense for the murder of my father and brothers, I call on you to surrender, that your life might be spared. Here stands the Remonstrator of Old Romarth: he will take you into custody, and you will receive the justice of their Magistrates.”

  “What? And toil in the Cleft for my daily ort of bread, and firken of unclean water?” called out Iszmagn in a strange, strangled, high-pitched voice. He gave a shrieking giggle of laughter. His two eyes seemed dull and listless; only the third eye, taken from a nonhuman being from Sirius, glittered with intention.

  Said Guyal. “Will you capitulate? Human life is rare: in all eternity, each man has but one. Better to toil than to perish.”

  “So, I killed your father and all your kin! What of it? I have arranged that you have no memory, so it causes you no real grief: your complaint against me is highly theoretical, if not absurd.”

  Manxolio, made courageous, perhaps, by desperation, spoke up: “Behold, I hold in hand the Implacable Dark Iron Wand of Quordaal.”

  The lenses in Iszmagn’s coat flickered with emotion: the dream images surged and darkened. The sorcerer rose to his feet, saying, “I have attempted reason, but you are stubborn! Enough!” and then he uttered Lispurge’s Vexatious Thrust.

  A gust of the distilled motion darted out toward Manxolio. Guyal leaped in the way: the line of force passed through his chest; Guyal was flung like a rag doll up against a rack of plates of gold, silver, and green iridium; all clattered to the gemmed floorstones.

  Manxolio flourished the Wand: a lance of thousand-lightninged brilliance roared out. Manxolio could not diminish the rush of white fire.

  When at last silence fell, Manxolio blinked purplish dots from his eyes. The Wand was dull and exhausted.

  Iszmagn was unhurt, his chamber undamaged, and the tumbling shapes circling his head were brighter. He emitted a cackle, and the lenses in his coat looked merry. “My IOUN stones drink magical vibrations! I am proof from all attack! Your zone of darkness, I have already deduced how to negate. Your Implacable Iron Wand has no further powers against me!”

  Guyal rose to his feet. There was a hole in his coat, but the flesh beneath was untouched. “You do not know my powers,” he intoned.

  At that moment, there came a momentary lull in the radiation of the sun—it flared like lightning, and then the world was plunged into a jet-black gloom, with the iron-red face of the moon flickering into darkness a half-second later.

  The mage clutched his three eyes and screamed in terror. “The Sun! The death of all life is come!”

  From the window came a noise: beneath the black sky, a lamentation passed across all the lands and seas, as every living man, and other creatures, talking beasts and semihumans, all who knew the meaning of this gloom, let out a cry. The noise was very faint indeed, for the tower was far from any dwelling of man, but it came from all quarters.

  And yet, as good fortune would have it, this was merely a solar spasm of unusual opaqueness: the sun trembled with new effort. Ember-red light seeped forth from scabs on the sun’s surface, and flares clawed their way into visibility like volcanic eruptions. In a few moment, more than half the sun was re-ignited from its buried fires, the world was as well-lit as before, or very nearly.

  When vision returned to the cupola of the tower, the spike of the Implacable Iron Rod could now be seen, having penetrated the skull of the Sorcerer Iszmagn. A river-delta of blood and brain matter, as well as other fluids the sorcerer had introduced into his nervous system, dripped along his neck and down his coat. The lenses were dark, their vitality exhausted: all the carefully collected dreams of the sorcerer were dead.

  The Restoration of Guyal of Sfere

  Manxolio, who held the haft in both hands, and stared in awe at the corpse, only slowly straightened and regained his composure. When he clicked shut the spike, the body slid heavily from the end, and splashed to the floor, already beginning to dissolve. It was clear that the IOUN stones did not protect physical flesh from merely physical assault.

  He turned to Guyal, who seemed whole and unblooded. Manxolio said, “Difficult as this is for an Effectuator to admit, I confess I cannot fathom how you survived a cantrip that normally pierces quenched steel.”

  Guyal smiled and held up his fist. Light shined between the cracks of his fingers. Opening his hand, he let loose a small IOUN stone, which darted like a fish, and took up orbit around the young man’s head. “These stones are mine, or so we deduced. I snatched one from the air as I jumped to take the blow.”

  One by one, the other stones departed from their position near the corpse, and, following the first, took up positions in concentric circles around Guyal. The IOUN stones changed hue and grew duller, as first the oblongs, and then the spindles and spheres, gave up their essence. Guyal of Sferendelume stood taller, and majesty seemed to shine from his face.

  His voice was now stronger, as if vibrant with unearthly wisdom. “I now recall my destiny and fate. Iszmagn was more foolish than I guessed, for the potentium of the Museum of Man upon Sferendelume in Pleiades, a trifling 440 lightyears from Earth, reaches me here still, and, like your Wand, it is directed by thought-pressure alone. Had I known, merely my wish could have set free powers of the first magnitude. Observe!”

  Guyal made no gesture and spoke no spell, but Manxolio felt the floor cant like the deck of a ship. There was a sensation of rushing motion. When it ceased, outside the many windows of the cupola, Manxolio saw that the onyx tower now rested in the midst of the ruins of Sfere.

  An invisible force was lifting the stones of the dam, one by one, and threads of silver water were beginning to return to the dry streambed of the lower Scaum.

  “With the IOUN stones once more in my command, I can seek in the limitless void, discover and recall the Analept to Earth, and anchor it. It is done! Let there be the first anchor point here, in Sfere.

  “The river Scaum shall live again, and bear the traffic of boats and rafts of pilgrims. The Indigo Path of Instantaneous Motion will loft all those who seek to depart the Dying Earth away, beyond the sky, to fair Sferendelume!”

  Manxolio felt the Implacable Wand begin to vibrate in his hand, and it grew heavy as lead.

  “As promised, the wand is restored.” The ringing voice of Guyal of Sferendelume continued, “Manxolio, I charge you to return to Old Romarth and tell them of this hope I bring. The end of Earth need not be the end of Man.

  “As men from all the lands and continents of Earth gather, your decaying city shall be rich once more with the trade of passers-by, both of pilgrims fleeing this dying world, and scholars descending from the stars to gather up the mementos and mysteries of Earth, and buried cities hale aloft from the bottom of the sea. Surely, the lore of the Antiquarians of Romarth will be a signal study, and the treasures of your past no longer need be sold as curios, but shall be properly collected, indexed, and examined by experts.

  “I must now depart, before the IOUN stones grow exhausted, and go to my new world, not with my father, as I’d hoped, but alone.

  “Tell all men that life on Earth is precarious, and commend to them to seek out the bright fields of the ulterior world: but warn them that, if this world holds no souls curious, like me, to seek the stars, I shall not return, and the path be closed forever. With my people slain, what is there for me? I have other duties and other loves beyond the Pleiades, and I hear the silver song of Sheirl calling me to the stars. Ah! Sheirl! I return to you!”

  The Remonstrator of Old Romarth

  Manxolio listened to this with growing disquiet, but said nothing. Guyal flung open the dome of the tower’s cupola, ascended into the sky, and vanished in a flare of indigo light.

  When Guyal the Curator vanished, there came at that moment the strange
three-tone chime of the Analept, even though that instrument was nowhere to be seen.

  Now alone, Manxolio spent the afternoon investigating the various periapts and amulets horded in the store of Iszmagn. He discovered a curious property of the lenses of the sorcerer’s emerald coat: seemingly dead, nonetheless a simple pulse of meaning from the Implacable Wand could elicit an image from them, nightmarish, something from the dark under-mind of humankind, along with a disquieting aura.

  Manxolio selected the most hideous of these lenses, and buried them, one after another, in a rough circle all about the valley of Sfere. He took care to place more of them near the river, or in any direction that promised an easy approach. He invoked them with his Wand, and at once a legion of specters, half-seen, terrifying, crowded the edges of vision.

  He spent an hour cutting warning signs, in as many languages and scripts as he knew, into various rocks and standing walls, or along the bare side of a hill he cleaved in two with the Dark Iron Wand. Blood-curling threats and fanciful implications were abundant. All were warned to stay away, and sinister references were made to the Indigo Path of Death.

  Another application of the power of the Implacable Wand, returned him in a whirl of motion to Old Romarth, indeed, to the very stoop of the Admonastic gate.

  He strolled with stately stride up the narrow streets of the Antiquarian’s Quarter toward his abode, reflecting with infinite satisfaction on the consequence of events.

  “The ancient power is restored to the Implacable Dark Iron Wand of my ancestors. I hold, a single man, the power of a brigade nay, a legion. I have slain a warlock, and a titan, without wound or scar. And, best of all, I now return to the comfortable and expected routine of retiring leisure! The clamor of ten thousand pilgrims, with all their crimes and diseases and strange food flooding into my fair city, has been averted. The learning and wisdom from beyond the stars, which is immense to the point of terror, will not be known on Earth, and the reputation of the Antiquarians will linger undisturbed, and unchallenged.