Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  Lirianne pinched her nose and took a sniff. The scent of sorcery was so strong it almost made her sneeze. There was magic here. “Oho,” she said. “I smell wizard.”

  Whistling a spritely tune, she sauntered closer. A ramshackle cart was drawn up near the bottom of the steps. Slumped against one of its wheels was a huge, ugly man, bigbellied and ripe, with coarse dark hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He looked up as Lirianne approached. “I would not go up there if I were you. It is a bad place. Men go in. No men come out.”

  “Well, I am no man as you can plainly see, and I love bad places. Who might you be?”

  “Polymumpho is my name. I am a Pooner.”

  “I am not familiar with the Pooners.”

  “Few are.” He shrugged, a massive rippling of his shoulders. “Are those your Twk-men? Tell them my master went inside the inn to hide.”

  “Master?”

  “Three years ago I played at peggoty with Chimwazle. When my coin ran out, I bet myself.”

  “Is your master a sorcerer?”

  Another shrug. “He thinks he is.”

  Lirianne touched the hilt of Tickle-Me-Sweet. “Then you may consider yourself free. I shall make good your debt for you.”

  “Truly?” He got to his feet. “Can I have the cart?”

  “If you wish.”

  A wide grin split his face. “Hop on, and I will carry you to Kaiin. You will be safe, I promise you. Pooners only eat the flesh of men when the stars are in alignment.”

  Lirianne glanced up. Half a dozen stars were visible above the trees, dusty diamonds glimmering in a purple velvet sky. “And who will be the judge of whether the stars are properly aligned for such a feast, or no?”

  “On that account you may place your trust in me.”

  She giggled. “No, I think not. I am for the inn.”

  “And I for the road.” The Pooner lifted the traces of the cart. “If Chimwazle complains of my absence, tell him that my debt is yours.”

  “I shall.” Lirianne watched as Polymumpho rumbled off toward Kaiin, the empty cart bouncing and jouncing behind him. She scampered up the winding stone steps, and pushed her way through the door into the Tarn House.

  The common room smelled of mold and smoke and ghouls, and a little leucomorph as well, though none such were presently in evidence. One table was packed with hairy rustics, another occupied by a big-bosomed slattern sipping wine from a dinted silver goblet. An old man attired in the antique fashion of a knight of ancient Thorsingol sat lonely and forlorn, his long white beard spotted with purple soupstains.

  Chimwazle was not hard to find. He sat beneath the ale casks with another rogue, each of them appearing more unsavory than the other. The latter had the stink of rat about him; the former smelled of toad. The rattish man wore a grey leather vest with sparking silver buttons over a tight-fitting shirt striped in cream and azure, with large puffy sleeves. On his pointed head perched a wide-brimmed blue hat decorated with a fan of peacock feathers. His toadish companion, beset by drooping jowls, pebbled skin, and greenish flesh that made him look faintly nauseated, favored a floppy cap that resembled a deflated mushroom, a soiled mauve tunic with golden scrollwork at collar, sleeve, and hem, and green shoes turned up at the toe. His lips were full and fat, his mouth so wide it all but touched the pendulous lobes of his ears.

  Both vagabonds eyed Lirianne lasciviously as they weighed the possibilities of erotic dalliance. The toad actually dared to venture a small smile. Lirianne knew how that game was played. She removed her hat, bowed to them, and approached their table. A spread of painted placards covered its rough wooden surface, beside the remains of a congealed and singularly unappealing meat pie. “What game is this?” she asked, oh so innocent.

  “Peggoty,” said the toadish man. “Do you know it?”

  “No,” she said, “but I love to play. Will you teach me?”

  “Gladly. Have a seat. I am Chimwazle, oft called the Gallant. My friend is known as Rocallo the Reluctant.”

  “Redoubtable,” the rat-faced man corrected, “and I am Prince Rocallo, if it please you. The landlord is about here somewhere. Will you take a drink, girl?”

  “I will,” she said. “Are you wizards? You have a sorcerous look about you.”

  Chimwazle made a dismissive gesture. “Such pretty eyes you have, and sharp as well. I know a spell or two.”

  “A charm to make milk sour?” suggested Rocallo. “That is a spell that many know, though it takes six days to work.”

  “That, and many more,” boasted Chimwazle, “each more potent than the last.”

  “Will you show me?” Lirianne asked, in a breathless voice.

  “Perhaps when we know each other better.”

  “Oh, please. I have always wanted to see true magic.”

  “Magic adds spice to the gristle that is life,” proclaimed Chimwazle, leering, “but I do not care to waste my wonderments before such lumpkins and pooners as surround us. Later when we are alone, I shall perform such magics for you as you have never seen, until you cry out in joy and awe. But first some ale, and a hand or three of pegotty to get our juices flowing! What stakes shall we play for?”

  “Oh, I am sure you will think of something,” said Lirianne.

  By the time Molloqos the Melancholy caught sight of the Tarn House, the swollen sun was setting, easing itself down in the west like an old fat man lowering himself into his favorite chair.

  Muttering softly in a tongue no living man had spoken since the Gray Sorcerers went to the stars, the sorcerer commanded a halt. The inn beside the tarn was most inviting to the casual glance, but Molloqos was of a suspicious cast, and had long ago learned that things were not always as they seemed. He muttered a brief invocation, and lifted up an ebon staff. Atop the shaft was a crystal orb, within which a great golden eye looked this way and that. No spell nor illusion could deceive the True-Seeing Eye.

  Stripped of its glamor, the Tarn House stood weathered and grey, three stories tall and oddly narrow. It leaned sideways like a drunken wormiger, a crooked flight of flagstone steps leading upwards to its door. Diamond-shaped panes of green glass gave the light from within a diseased and leprous cast; its roof was overgrown with drooping ropes of fungus. Behind the inn the tarn was black as pitch and redolent of decay, dotted with drowned trees, its dark oily waters stirring ominously. A stable stood off to one side, a structure so decayed that even dead Deodands might balk at entering.

  At the foot of the inn’s steps was a sign that read:

  TARN HOUSE

  Famous for Our Hissing Eels

  The right front Deodand spoke up. “The earth is dying and soon the sun will fail. Here beneath this rotten roof is a fit abode for Molloqos to spend eternity.”

  “The earth is dying and soon the sun shall fail,” Molloqos agreed, “but if the end should overtake us here, I shall spend eternity seated by a fire savoring a dish of hissing eels, whilst you stand shivering in the dark and cold, watching pieces of your body ripen and rot and tumble to the ground.” Adjusting the drape of his Cloak of Fearful Mein, he gathered up his tall ebony staff, descended from the palanquin, stepped into the weed-choked yard, and began to climb the steps up to the inn.

  Above, a door banged open. A man emerged, a small and servile creature with gravy spatters on his apron who could only be the innkeeper. As he hurried down, wiping his hands upon his apron, he caught his first good sight of Molloqos, and paled.

  As well he might. White as bone was the flesh of Molloqos, beneath his Cloak of Fearful Mien. Deep and dark and full of sadness were his eyes. His nose curved downward in a hook; his lips were thin and rather dour; his hands large, expressive, long-fingered. On his right hand his fingernails were painted black, on his left scarlet. His long legs were clothed in striped pantaloons of those same colors, tucked into calf-high boots of polished grue hide. Black and scarlet was his hair as well, blood and night mixed together; on his head perched a wide-brimmed hat of purple velvet decorated with a gr
een pearl and a white quill.

  “Dread sir,” the innkeep said, “those…those Deodands…”

  “…will not trouble you. Death diminishes even such savage appetites as theirs.”

  “We…we do not oft see sorcerers at the Tarn House.”

  Molloqos was unsurprised. Once the dying earth had teemed with such, but in these last days even magic was waning. Spells seemed less potent than before, their very words harder to grasp and hold. The grimoires themselves were crumbling, falling to dust in ancient libraries as their protective charms winked out like guttering candles. And as the magic failed, so too did the magicians. Some fell to their own servants, the demons and sandestins who once obeyed their every whim. Others were hunted down by shadow swords, or torn apart by angry mobs of women. The wisest slipped away to other times and other places, their vast and drafty manses vanishing like mist before the sunrise. Their very names had become the stuff of legend: Mazirian the Magician, Turjan of Miir, Rhialto the Marvelous, the Enigmatic Mumph, Gilgad, Pandelume, Ildefonse the Perceptor.

  Yet Molloqos remained, and it was his intent to go on remaining, to live to drink a final cup of wine while he watched the sun go out. “You stand in the presence of Molloqos the Melancholy, poet, philosopher, archmage, and necromancer, a student of forgotten tongues and bane of demonkind,” he informed the cringing landlord. “Every corner of this dying earth is known to me. I collect curious artifacts from aeons past, translate crumbling scrolls no other man can read, converse with the dead, delight the living, frighten the meek, and awe the unenlightened. My vengeance is a cold black wind, my affection warm as a yellow sun. The rules and laws that govern lesser men I brush off as a wayfarer might brush the dust from his cloak. This night I will honor you with my custom. No obsequies are necessary. I will require your best room, dry and spacious, with a feather mattress. I shall sup with you as well. A thick slice of wild boar would fill me nicely, with such side dishes as your kitchen may supply.”

  “We have no boars hereabouts, wild or tame. The grues and the erbs ate most of them, and the rest were dragged down into the tarn. I can serve you a meat pie, or a piping hot bowl of purple scrumby, but I don’t think you’d like the one, and I know you’d hate t’other.” The innkeep swallowed. “A thousand pardons, dread sir. My humble house is not fit for such as you. No doubt you would find some other inn more comfortable.”

  Molloqos let his visage darken. “No doubt,” said he, “but as no other inn presents itself, I must make do with yours.”

  The innkeep dabbed at his forehead with his apron. “Dread sir, begging your pardons and meaning no offense, but I’ve some trouble from sorcerous folk before. Some, not so honest as you, settle their accounts with purses of ensorcelled stones and chunks of dung glamored to look like gold, and others have been known to inflict boils and warts on unhappy serving wenches and innocent innkeepers when the service does not meet their standards.”

  “The remedy is simple,” declared Molloqos the Melancholy. “See that the service is all that it should be, and you will have no difficulties. You have my word, I will perform no sorceries in your common room, inflict no boils nor warts upon your staff, nor settle my account with dung. But now I grow weary of this banter. The day is done, the sun is fled, and I am weary, so here I mean to stay the night. Your choice is simple. Accomodate me, or else I shall pronounce Gargoo’s Festering Reek upon you and leave you to choke upon your own stench until the end of your days. Which will not be long in coming, as pelgranes and erbs are drawn to the smell as mice are drawn to a nice ripe cheese.”

  The innkeep’s mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. After a moment, he shuffled to one side. Molloqos aknowledged the surrender with a nod, ascended the rest of the steps, and shoved through the inn’s front door.

  The interior of the Tarn House proved to be just as dark, damp, and dismal as the exterior. A queer sour odor hung in the air, though Molloqos would not have ventured to say whether it emanated from the innkeep, the other customers, or whatever was cooking in the kitchen. A hush fell upon the common room at his entrance. All eyes turned toward him, as was only to be expected. In his Cloak of Fearful Mien, he was a dreadful sight.

  Molloqos took a seat at the table by the window. Only then did he permit himself to inspect his fellow guests. The group near the fire, growling at each other in low, gutteral voices, reminded the sorcerer of turnips with hair. Over by the ale casks, a pretty young girl was laughing and flirting with a pair of obvious scoundrels, one of whom appeared to be not entirely human. Nearby an old man slept, his head on the table, pillowed atop his folded arms. There was a woman just beyond him, sloshing the dregs of her wine and eying the wizard speculatively across the room. A glance was enough to tell Molloqos that she was a woman of the evening, though in her case evening was edging on toward night. Her visage was not altogether hideous, although there was something odd and unsettling about the look of her ears. Still, she had a pleasing shape, her eyes were large and dark and liquid, and the fire woke red highlights in her long black hair.

  Or so it seemed through the eyes that Molloqos had been born with, but he knew better than to put his trust in those. Softly, softly, he whispered an invocation, and looked again through the enchanted golden eye atop his staff. This time he saw true.

  For his supper, the sorcerer ordered a meat pie, as the specialty of the house was unavailable. After one bite Molloqos put down his spoon, feeling even more melancholy than he had a moment before. Wisps of steam rose through the pie’s broken crust to form hideous faces in the air, their mouths open in torment. When the landlord returned to inquire if the repast was to his liking, Molloqos gave him a reproachful look and said, “You are fortunate that I am not so quick to wroth as most of my brethen.”

  “I am grateful for your forebearance, dread sir.”

  “Let us hope that your bedchambers keep to a higher standard than your kitchen.”

  “For three terces you can share the big bed with Mumpo and his family,” the landlord said, indicating the rustics near the hearth. “A private room will cost you twelve.”

  “None but the best for Molloqos the Melancholy.”

  “Our best room rents for twenty terces, and is presently occupied by Prince Rocallo.”

  “Remove his things at once, and have the room readied for me,” Molloqos commanded. He might have said a good deal more, but just then the dark-eyed woman woman rose and came over to his table. He nodded toward the chair across from him. “Sit.”

  She sat. “Why do you look so sad?”

  “It is the lot of man. I look at you, and see the child that you were. Once you had a mother who held you to her breast. Once you had a father who dandled you upon his knee. You were their pretty little girl, and through your eyes they saw again the wonders of the world. Now they are dead and the world is dying, and their child sells her sadness to strangers.”

  “We are strangers now, but we need not remain so,” the woman said. “My name is—”

  “—no concern of mine. Are you a child still, to speak your true name to a sorcerer?”

  “Sage counsel.” She put her hand upon his sleeve. “Do you have a room? Let us repair upstairs, and I will make you happy.”

  “Unlikely. The earth is dying. So too the race of men. No erotic act can change that, no matter how perverse or energetic.”

  “There is still hope,” the woman said. “For you, for me, for all of us. Only last year I lay with a man who said a child had been born to a woman of Saskervoy.”

  “He lied, or was deceived. At Saskervoy the women weep as elsewhere, and devour their children in the womb. Man dwindles, and soon shall disappear. The earth will become the haunt of Deodands and pelgranes and worse things, until the last light flickers out. There was no child. Nor will there be.”

  The woman shivered. “Still,” she said, “still. So long as men and women endure, we must try. Try with me.”

  “As you wish.” He was Molloqos the Melancholy, and he had
seen her for what she was. “When I retire, you may come to my bedchamber, and we shall try the truth of things.”

  The placards were made of dark black wood, sliced paper thin and brightly painted. They made a faint clacking sound when Lirianne turned them over. The game was simple enough. They played for terces. Lirianne won more than she lost, though she did not fail to note that whenever the wagering was heavy, somehow Chimwazle showed the brightest placards, no matter how promising her own had seemed at first.

  “Fortune favors you this evening,” Chimwazle announced, after a dozen hands, “but playing for such small stakes grows tiresome.” He placed a golden centum on the table. “Who will meet my wager?”

  “I,” said Rocallo. “The earth is dying, and with it all of us. What do a few coins matter to a corpse?”

  Lirianne looked sad. “I have no gold to wager.”

  “No matter,” said Chimwazle. “I have taken a fancy to your hat. Put that in the wager, against our gold.”

  “Oho. Is that the way of it?” She cocked her head and ran the tip of her tongue across her lip. “Why not?”

  Shortly she was hatless, which was no more than she had expected. She handed the prize to Chimwazle with a flourish and shook out her hair, smiling as he stared at her. Lirianne took care never to look directly at the sorcerer seated by the window, but she had been aware of him since the moment he had entered. Gaunt and grim and fearsome, that one, and he stank of sorcery so strongly that it overwhelmed the lesser magics wafting off the odious fraud Chimwazle. Most of the great mages were dead or fled, slain by shadow swords or gone to some underworld or overworld, or perhaps to distant stars. Those few who remained upon the dying earth were gathering in Kaiin, she knew, hoping to find safety there behind the white-walled city’s ancient enchantments. This was surely one of them.

  Her palm itched, and Tickle-Me-Sweet sang silent by her side. Lirianne had tempered its steel in the blood of the first wizard she had slain, when she was six-and-ten. No protective spell was proof against such a blade, though she herself had no defense but her wits. The hard part of killing wizards was knowing when to do it, since most of them could turn you into dust with a few well-chosen words.