Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  The Preceptor’s whirlaway rose and darted away. Alfaro followed, as did Rhialto. Below, Barbanikos launched a spell with dramatic results.

  The spell struck the dome, flashed brilliantly, rebounded, caught Barbanikos before he could dodge. His great dandelion puff of white hair exploded. Down he went, smoldering, whirlaway shedding pieces, its animating sandestin shrieking. Wreckage scattered down the flank of Hazur. Small fires burned out before they could spread.

  Rhialto observed, “Barbanikos succeeded.”

  A black O ring a dozen feet across pulsed in the surface of the dome. Haze of Wheary Water darted through. No instant doom struck him down. Mune the Mage followed. The other magicians wasted no time.

  Rhialto remarked, “Our reputations are unlikely to recover if we fail to follow.”

  Alfaro had a thought about opportunity knocking. Should that slowly shrinking O ring close a dozen estates would become masterless.

  Ildefonse caught his eye. “Learn to think things through.”

  Alfaro opened his mouth to protest.

  “Had you developed that skill early you would have had no need to migrate in haste.”

  Rhialto observed, “You are a slow learner. Nevertheless, you show promise. And you have youth’s sharp eye.”

  Youth’s sharp eye, unable to meet Ildefonse’s fierce gaze, wandered to the pelgrane contemplating prospects on the river road, then to the feeble sun. “Gilgad was right. The sun has a green topknot. And maybe a beard or tail.” Both discernable when considered from a dozen degrees off direct.

  Rhialto and Ildefonse discovered it, too. And Rhialto saw something more. “There is a line, fine as a thread of silk, connecting the earth to the sun.”

  Ildefonse said, “Would that we had Moadel here to sketch it.”

  Alfaro suggested, “I could get my brother. He has a talent for drawing.” Tihomir was immensely blessed in that one way.

  “Unnecessary. The sun will persist for a few more days. Our task is more immediate. Rhialto. Lead the way. I will sweep up the rear.”

  Rhialto tilted his jeweled whirlaway toward the shrinking O ring. Disgruntled, Alfaro followed.

  9

  “There’s no color,” Alfaro exclaimed.

  “But there is,” Rhialto countered. “Te Ratje’s gray, in all its thousand shades. Gray is the color of absolute rectitude.”

  “Unsettling news,” Ildefonse said. “Barbanikos’s aperture has closed.”

  The hole had become a black circle floating in the air. The acre unveiled by the Forthright Option of Absolute Clarity had dwindled to a patch a dozen yards in its extreme dimension, too.

  Rhialto said, “I have not been here before.”

  Ildefonse confessed, “My visit has become so remote that I might need weeks to exhume the memories. Alfaro was correct. There is a blue moth. I need recover no memories, though, to understand that the street below leads to the heart of Amuldar.”

  The others had gone that way. Dust hung in the air, stirred by their passage. There was nothing here to seize their attention. This was the most bland of cities. No structure stood taller than three stories, nor wore any shape but that of a gray block, absolutely utilitarian.

  “Where are the towers? The minarets? The onion-domed spires?”

  Ildefonse said, “The silhouette was what the Good Magician believed he was creating. Now we are inside what actually came of his vision.”

  “Valdaran the Just destroyed the magicians of Grand Motholam for this?”

  Rhialto chuckled. Ildefonse did not respond.

  Alfaro squeaked, startled by a big blue moth that just missed his face.

  The elder magicians slowed. “Time for caution,” Rhialto said, indicating a strew of polished wood and wickerwork that had been a whirlaway not long ago.

  “Mune the Mage,” Ildefonse decided. “I don’t see a corpse, so he walked away.”

  Several large moths, or maybe butterflies, flitted randomly nearby. They ranged in color from dark turquoise to pale royal blue. Alfaro said, “Looks like writing on their wings.”

  “Those are spells in Te Ratje’s own script.” The Preceptor evaded a moth as big as his spread hand. “One of his contributions to magic. Even he could encompass no more than four spells at a time. So he made these creatures. He could read a spell if he so chose, or he could arm them so the insects could deliver disaster by fortuitous impact. This would be an instance of the latter.”

  Rhialto prized a small purple stone from its mount on the tiller bar of his whirlaway, whispered to it, pegged it at an especially hefty moth. The moth turned onto its back and wobbled downward.

  Ildefonse observed, “That one carried the Dismal Itch.”

  “They’re all nuisance spells.” Rhialto’s right hand danced. His purple stone zipped from butterfly to moth, trailing ichors and broken wings.

  They fell where others had fallen already. Then there was Mune the Mage, clumping onward with inspired determination, his iridescent cape an aurora against the gray. Ghostly, shimmering footprints shone where he trod but faded quickly. Ildefonse observed, “I believe his temper is up. Forward, Mune! Forward, with alacrity!”

  Mune the Mage made a rude gesture. Even so, Rhialto swooped down for a few words. He returned to report, “Only his dignity is injured. As you might expect, though, he’s already grumbling about restitution.”

  Alfaro said, “I see something.”

  All three slowed.

  There was a hint of color at the heart of Amuldar, about as lively as that of a plant found lying beneath a rock. It filled the spectrum but every shade was washed out, a ghost of what it might have been.

  Thither, too, stood a scatter of structures resembling those seen against the sun. None were the size the silhouette had suggested.

  An expansive plaza lay surrounded by those. A squadron of unmanned whirlways sat there. The Preceptor said, “They’re all here but Barbanikos and Mune the Mage.”

  The three settled to the gray stone surface, which trembled with ribbons of color for an instant after each dismounted.

  Alfaro understood. The color here, weak as it might be, existed only because outsiders had tracked it in.

  10

  Fallen Lepidoptera marked the path into the squarest and grayest square gray structure, where no light lived. Alfaro drew his short sword from beneath his coat. A moonstone in the pommel, properly seduced, shed a brisk light, which illuminated a circle twenty feet in radius. Rhialto and Ildefonse were impressed. “An heirloom,” Alafaro explained. The acquisition of which had precipitated the cascade of events that had brought the Morag brothers to Ascolais.

  “Amazing,” Ildefonse said. “But we need something more.”

  The hall seemed to have no boundary but the wall through which they had entered. The other magicians were around somewhere, though, as evidenced by remote echoes and flashes.

  “What is this place?” Alfaro asked.

  The Preceptor said, “Your guess will be as good as any.”

  There was a deep mechanical clunk. The floor shuddered. Light began to develop, accompanied by a rising hum. The distant voices sounded distraught.

  Alfaro damped his moonstone, turned slowly.

  The wall behind boasted countless shelves of books, up into darkness and off into the distance to either hand. “Preceptor…”

  “I did tell you there were libraries superior to my own. Forward!”

  Ildefonse stepped out. Alfaro followed. He did not want to be alone, now. There was danger in the air. Rhialto felt it, too. He appeared uncharacteristically nervous. Ildefonse followed tracks in dust disturbed by those who had run the gantlet in the dark.

  “Ghosts,” Alfaro said as they moved through acres of tables and chairs, all dusty.

  Creatures high in the air floated their way. Both were near-naked girls who appeared to have substance. Rhialto murmured approval. He had a reputation concerning which no one had yet produced hard evidence.

  “Take care,” Ildefonse
warned. “They’ll be more than they seem.”

  Rhialto added, “I suspect a sophisticated twist on the theme of the moths. The one to the left seems vaguely familiar.”

  The Preceptor said, “She is showing you what the secret Rhialto wants to see. This trap consists of choice. You have to chose to touch. But if you do, you’ll have no time for regrets.”

  “Te Ratje’s way. Destroy you by pandering to your weaknesses.”

  Similar ghosts floated ahead. They formed an aerial guide to other magicians. Not all those ghosts were female or young.

  A scream, yonder. A brilliant flash. Then a half minute of utter silence during which the ghosts hung motionless. Then a grinding began, as of hundred ton granite blocks sliding across one another.

  Ildefonse stepped out vigorously. Alfaro, perforce, kept up. Rhialto remained close behind, muttering as he wrestled temptation.

  11

  Perdustin had screamed. Gilgad reported, “He touched a girl. Haze saw it coming. He interceded.”

  Perdustin was down and singed but alive at the center of an acre of clear floor under the appearance of an open sky.

  “And the girl?” Ildefonse asked.

  “Shattered.” A red-gloved hand indicated a scatter that appeared to be bits of torn paper. “Sadly, none of the young ladies are any more real.”

  “It’s all illusion,” Haze said, before retailing his version of events.

  Ranks of gargantuan, dusty machines surrounded the acre. “Where did that come from?” Alfaro asked. “We saw none of it till we got here.”

  Gilgad shrugged. “Things work differently inside Amuldar.” He was frightened. And, in that, he was not unique.

  “What is that?” Morag indicated the sky, where alien constellations roamed. Where fine lines, plainly visible despite being black, waved like the tentacles of a kraken eager to feast on stars.

  Someone said, “Ask Te Ratje when he turns up.”

  A dozen pairs of eyes contemplated the wispy curve of pale green trailed by a sun that had set.

  Ildefonse knelt beside Perdustin. Rhialto hovered. The other magicians grumbled because not one worthy souvenir had surfaced.

  Alfaro glanced back. What about those books? Then he resumed studying the sky.

  Saffron words, written on air, floated over his shoulder. YOU WITNESS THE EVOLUTION OF THE STARS. A MILLION GALACTIC YEARS PASS FOR EACH THREE MINUTES YOU WATCH.

  Stricken, Alfaro watched black tentacles for a moment before he turned to face the oldest little old man he had ever seen. Liver spotted, nearly hairless, with a left eyelid that drooped precipitously. The left end of his mouth sagged, too. His wrinkles had wrinkles. He had an arresting nymphet under either arm. His toes dragged when they moved. They were no ghosts. Alfaro felt the heat coming off them. They would bleed, not scatter like bits of torn paper.

  Alfaro watched the improbable: self-proclaimed fearless magicians of Almery and Ascolais began to mewl, to wet themselves, and, in the case of Nahourezzin, to faint. Though, to be exactly reasonable, his faint had exhaustion and prolonged stress behind it. Morag noted, too, some who were not obviously intimidated, the Preceptor and Rhialto the Marvellous among them.

  12

  “Te Ratje?” Rhialto asked.

  The old man inclined his head. After a pause. He did not seem quite sure. More girls gathered to support him. Their touch did not inconvenience him.

  “Their concern is intriguing,” Ildefonse murmured. “They exist at his will. And he isn’t healthy.”

  Rhialto opined, “Even my formidable resources would be taxed were I tasked to entertain so many gems.”

  Alfaro asked, “Who are they? They’re exquisite. Does he create them himself?” His own such efforts always turned ugly.

  “No. Long ago he traversed time, harvesting the essences of the finest beauties and most accomplished courtesans, each at her perfect moment of ripeness: firm, unblemished, and a trifle green. He decants their simulacra at will.”

  Ildefonse added, “Youth’s fancy.”

  Rhialto said, “The girls are not precisely aware of their status, but do understand that they have been fished from time’s deep and are dependent on his affection for their immortality.”

  Alfaro wondered, “Why is he so old?” By which he meant: Why had Te Ratje let himself suffer time’s indignities?

  According to Rhialto, “His mind never worked like any other. Belike, though, this is just a seeming, like Ildefonse, or Haze, or Zahoulik-Khuntze with his illustrated iron fingernails.”

  Alfaro examined the Preceptor. As ever, Ildefonse seemed a warm, plump, golden whiskered grandfather type. Had he a truer aspect?

  The Good Magician became someone dramatically less feeble. He stood tall, strong, hard, saturnine, and entirely without humor. But his eyes did not change. They remained ancient and half blind. Nor did he speak.

  Te Ratje stabbed the air with his left forefinger. His fingernail glowed. He wrote: WELCOME, ALL. ALFARO MORAG. SCION OF DESTINY. YOU HAVE BEEN A LONG TIME COMING. His lines were thirty characters long, floated upward to fade in tendrils and puffs of yellow-lime vapor.

  “Always a showoff!” Herark the Harbinger sneered.

  TIME HAS BETRAYED ME. MUST YOU SABOTAGE MY GREAT WORK AGAIN?

  Rhialto was skeptical. “I see no sign of work, great, trivial, wicked, or otherwise. I see the dust of abiding neglect.”

  I HAVE ABANDONED ALL EFFORTS TO IMPROVE MANKIND. THE BEAST IS A SHALLOW, SELFISH, INNATELY WICKED INGRATE. I LEAVE HIM TO HIS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE AMUSEMENTS. I FOCUS SOLEY UPON THE PRESERVATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND MINISTRATION TO THE SUN.

  The Good Magician gestured. The air between himself and the magicians resolved into a diorama six feet to a side and three deep. An exact replica of the space they occupied revealed itself, with miniscules of magicians and girls at its center.

  Te Ratje’s illuminated forefinger extended to become a slim four foot yellow-green pointer. LIBRARY. INCLUDING EVERY BOOK WRITTEN SINCE THE 13TH AEON.

  Ildefonse actually winked at Alfaro.

  THESE ENGINES DETECT CREATIVE WORK IN PROCESS. WHEN A WORK IS COMPLETED, A SUITE OF SPELLS INTERRUPTS TIME, AN ASSOCIATE TRAVELS TO THE CREATION POINT AND RENDERS AN EXACT DUPLICATE. NO POEM, NO SONG, NO ROMANCE, NO MASTERWORK OF MAGIC OR HISTORY IS EVER LOST, THUS.

  Alfaro detected a taint of madness.

  The magicians had ignored the books in their haste to find more worldly treasures. But, now, every book written for eight aeons? Including the lost grimoires of Phandaal, the Amberlins, the Vaspurials, and Zinqzin? Three quarters of all magical knowledge had been lost since Grand Motholam.

  A blind man could smell the greed beginning to simmer.

  Deliberately provoked? Alfaro wondered.

  Inside the diorama several engines turned a pale lilac rose. THERE BEATS THE HEART OF AMULDAR. THOSE DO THE GREAT WORK OF TIME. THOSE REACH OUT TO THE STARS AND DRAW THE SUSTENANCE FOR WHICH OUR SUN HUNGERS.

  Gesture. A sphere of denominated space appeared overhead, the sun a bloody pea at its center. A scatter of latter age stars blazed at the boundary, true scale of distance ignored. Threads of black touched those and lashed the empty regions between. Every thread pulled something unseen into one of the two green tails spiraling out from the sun’s poles.

  AS I GIFT MY ANGELS LIFE, SO DO I GIFT LIFE TO ALL THAT GOES UPON THE EARTH. COME.

  Alfaro blurted, “Me?”

  YOU. YOU ARE THE ONLY INNOCENT HERE.

  Morag gulped air. He felt like a small boy caught with his hand in a purse that was not his own. A situation in which he had found himself more than once. A glance round showed him none of the magicians moving, or even aware. “A stasis? One that exempts me, though I’m at a distance and did not initiate it?”

  YES. Wicked smile. The Good Magician continued to grow stronger and younger. THERE IS LITTLE TO DO HERE BUT TEND THE ENGINES, STUDY, AND INDULGE IN RESEARCH. He smiled more wickedly as two of his pets slipped under his arms. Another, a sleek black-haire
d beauty wearing a pageboy cut like a visorless bascinet, who roiled Morag’s thoughts from the moment he spied her, sidled up beside Alfaro. Her wicked eyes told him she knew perfectly well that she could make him her slave in an instant.

  Te Ratje said, WITH ALL THE GREAT MAGICAL TEXTS AT HAND, AND TIME IN NO SHORT SUPPLY, EVEN A DILITANTE CAN FIND CLEVER NEW WAYS TO USE MAGIC.

  Distracted by the nymph and natural flaws in his character, Alfaro followed Te Ratje’s speech only in its broadest concept.

  The story Te Ratje told was dubious even to a naïve youth just beginning to grasp how far out of his depth he was with the magicians of Almery and Ascolais. Who had begun to understand that he needed, desperately, to rein in his natural inclinations, lest he suffer a fate not unlike that enjoyed by his miniscules.

  From glances caught, he knew that Byzant the Necrope had something in mind.

  13

  The nymph rubbed against Alfaro like an affectionate cat. He asked, “Is this distraction necessary?”

  I CANNOT CONTROL THEIR AFFECTIONS.

  Alfaro remained unsure of how he had moved from the plaza of the engines to a cozy little library rich with comfort and polished wood. It could not possibly hold all the books created across eight aeons. It was crowded by two magicians and three girls.

  WHAT BOOK WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE?

  Because a lust for its possession had brought him to this pass, Alfaro said, “Lutung Kasarung’s The Book of Changes.”

  Te Ratje extended an arm impossibly far, retrieved a volume. He presented it to Alfaro. It was a pristine copy, never opened. Alfaro placed it gently on a small teak table featuring a finish so deep the book seemed to sink. Shaking, he asked, “What are you doing to me?”

  I WANT YOU TO BECOME MY APPRENTICE.

  “Why?” Morag blurted.

  YOU ARE THE FIRST TO FIND AMULDAR IN AEONS. YOU COME BURDENED BY NEITHER PREJUDICE NOR GREEDS FROM THE PAST, ONLY BY PICAYUNE WEAKNESSES EXAGGERATED BY YOUR TALENT.

  “Why would Te Ratje want an apprentice?”

  EVEN THE BEAUTIFUL MUST DIE.

  Alfaro was baffled. He was confused. In moments of honesty, he could admit that he was not a good man, just a man who excelled at self-justification. He was not a man made in the style of the Good Magician.